photo credit: Lawrence OP

Sing for Joy

Every Sunday morning the pretentiously titled local classical station–The Classical Station–airs several syndicated programs featuring sacred music. One of those is Sing for Joy, a production of Minnesota’s St. Olaf College. Every week the College Pastor presents choral music selected to coincide with the readings from the revised common lectionary. The result is a beautiful production that is well worth your listen, especially if you come from a non-liturgical tradition such as I. I’ve found that keeping up with the common lectionary vocally enhanced by world-class choirs is a delightful way to connect with the Church universal. Sing for Joy presents that certain bountiful depth of sacred music that is too often forgotten. My only disappointment is that the broadcasts, as far as I can tell, are not available via podcast. There is, however, a vast streaming archive available on their site of current and past episodes. You can listen wherever you are no matter the day of the week. Check it out.

Lectionary at Lunch

I discovered this second gem on iTunesU. Concordia Seminary St. Louis hosts an enviable Lectionary at Lunch group every Wednesday that is led by a professor who reads through the OT and NT lessons in Hebrew and Greek, translates them and discusses particular points of interest. The podcast of the group is available free of charge and is well worth your listen, especially if you’re interested in exegesis, translation and original language study. I can’t tell you how beneficial this is to listen to. Check it out.

photo credit: law_keven

Exodus 3:8 (RSV)

I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.

Exodus 2:5-10 (RSV)

Now the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, and her maidens walked beside the river; she saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid to fetch it. 6 When she opened it she saw the child; and lo, the babe was crying. She took pity on him and said, “This is one of the Hebrews’ children.” 7 Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and call you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?” 8 And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Go.” So the girl went and called the child’s mother. 9 And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child away, and nurse him for me, and I will give you your wages.” So the woman took the child and nursed him. 10 And the child grew, and she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son; and she named him Moses, for she said, “Because I drew him out of the water.”

Coming down, seeing, taking out of current affliction, bringing up into luxurious foreign land (Pharaoh’s household for the infant). Similarities notwithstanding, the lexical parallelism is largely lacking in the Hebrew; still found it interesting.

Today’s my birthday, my twenty-fourth birthday: April Fool’s Day. I’ve done a few things in my twenty-four years of existence but when I compare myself to others before me, I fall short. Really short. When I pointed this out to my wife, she replied, “But did they know how to DJ?” If it’s either/or, I’ll leave djing behind in a heartbeat. Check these guy out; different times and places, I know, but seriously: check these guys out.

John Calvin

• By the age of twelve he was a bishop’s clerk. I was just a jerk.
• Soon after, he started college and began taking Latin from one of the greatest teachers of the language. I waited until my senior year of high school to take Latin I. I started college at eighteen.
• By age twenty he had been to two or three different universities and knew Greek. OK, so we’re about even on this point though I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to say I know Greek.
• At twenty-three his commentary on Seneca was published. Only things I’ve ever published are right here through WordPress.
• At twenty-four some thought him a heretic for being aligned with reformation-esque sentiment. He fled. Though I try to punk people out in a Reformation spirit, nobody listens and I needn’t flee.

John Gill

• By age ten he had read through the entire Greek New Testament and began teaching himself Hebrew.
• Mastered Latin classics by age eleven. At age eleven, I mastered my BB gun.
• Before his teens, local clergy would stop by and find out what little Johnny thought. Sunday School teachers told my parents what a brat I was.
• He was the first Baptist to develop a complete systematic theology and a verse-by-verse commentary on the whole Bible. I was probably the first toddler to poop on a church sidewalk.
• He was called Dr. Voluminous. Me? Not even a doctor.
• There was a saying in his day “As sure as John Gill is in the bookseller’s shop.” A saying based on me might be, “As sure as Drew is on his laptop.”

Jonathan Edwards

• At eleven he wrote a remarkable essay on spiders. By eleven, I had barely even killed one.
• Started at Yale not even thirteen years-old. Me: Marshall University, age eighteen.
• At twenty, he pastored a church in New York. At twenty, I hadn’t even been to New York, let alone a pastor.
• Around the age of twenty-three he wrote his rigorous and convicting Resolutions. I’m a slacker now twenty-four.

I Am What I Am

What do I take solace in on my birthday knowing that these Johns before me have accomplished way more than I by my age? Djing. Playing records on turntables. Nay!

Paul writes in1 Corinthians 15:10,

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.

Twenty-four down? Twenty-four down. Let’s keep moving, working harder by God’s grace that is with us.

You’ve heard Rihanna’s song Live Your Life? It sounds an awful lot like she’s using wayehi, a Hebrew waw consecutive. Anyone who’s heard this song now knows how to say “(And) there was” in Hebrew. This word is all over the place inGenesis 1.

“And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was [wayehi] evening and there was [wayehi] morning, the second day” (Genesis 1:8).

Anyways…that’s what I think of when I hear this song…not that I listen to that kind of music…Who’s Rihanna?

Behold! my Hebrew henna tattoo: בשׁם יהוה אקרא

Translate and win a prize!

Most often the phrase “the great exchange” is associated very specifically with the obedience of Christ on the Christian’s behalf as part of his redemptive work whereby he took on our sin (2 Cor. 5:21) and we consequently are able to be clothed in his righteousness (Isaiah 61:10). The great exchange in the New Testament is Jesus takes our sin and we get his righteousness imputed to us. He gets sin, we get God. O glorious gospel! Trust in him now!

Well, the great exchange of Deuteronomy is very similar but less specifically and explicitly about the redemptive work of the Messiah.Deuteronomy 29:10-15 (ESV) magnificently preaches exchange when it reads,

You are standing today all of you before the Lord your God: the heads of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, all the men of Israel, your little ones, your wives, and the sojourner who is in your camp, from the one who chops your wood to the one who draws your water, so that you may enter into the sworn covenant of the Lord your God, which the Lord your God is making with you today, that he may establish you today as his people, and that he may be your God, as he promised you, and as he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. It is not with you alone that I am making this sworn covenant, but with whoever is standing here with us today before the Lord our God, and with whoever is not here with us today.

The bolded portions are to help trace the line of thought amidst the enumerating of persons present (elders, lumberjacks, water boys, etc.). The people are standing before God in order to cross (over) into the covenant of YHWH (לעברך בברית יהוה), a covenant which he is making in order to establish them as his people and he as their God ( לעםוהואיהיה־לך לאלהים למעןהקים־אתך היום לו). The “exchange” is that we become his people and he becomes our God. He gets us, we get him.

The ל (lamedh) prepositions here (ל+עם and ל+אלהים), though functioning differently syntactically, remind me ofSong of Songs 6:3 where quite famously it is asserted that “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.” Here also are ל prepositions, though attached simply to object pronouns masculine and feminine rather than nouns. Again there is a certain amount of what I think can be called exchange or reciprocity which reflects, albeit dimly, the great exchange which is the gospel revealed in the work of Christ and the New Testament Scriptures.

Respond

Take a moment to readDeuteronomy 29. Think about all of God’s provisions for sinful, rebellious laid out throughout the Scriptures. Think on what it means for you, as a Christian, to be part of God’s people. Think on God becoming your God when you at one time were alienated from him and without him in the world (Ephesians 2). Now, rejoice at the thought of the gospel!

If you’re not a Christian, trust in Christ as God’s provision for sinful humanity to be brought back into communion with him after being separated by our sin and rebellion. Now, rejoice in the gospel!

Hebrew Help

What’s the best way to blog Hebrew? I just copy and pasted from e-sword. No vowels. Hopefully, everyone who cares will be able to read it. Sorry if it shows up garbled. Read the English. It’s not a bad translation.

I’ve decided that I love dagesh even though gutturals don’t so much (though aleph does get its dagesh on inLeviticus 23:17). Today I praise God for the Masoretes and their similar love for the dagesh. For without them today would not even be possible. The dagesh doubles the fun. The dagesh hints at the hiding place of a nun (sneaky nun thought that it could assimilate! Dagesh says, “Think again, silly nun.” [Nun as in the Hebrew character, not nun like the habit. Dagesh isn't so good at pointing out hiding nuns...though who can forget the sneaky, mischievious nuns from the Sound of Music]). Disgress…I mean, dagesh also points out our friend the piel. April 10 is Dagesh Day. If a waw starts gettin’ sad, boom! Dagesh and now you’re a shureq!

[PS. What's the plural of dagesh? Dageshi? Dageshae? Dageshim? Dageshoat?]

phil-omni-glot (from Greek phil “love” + Latin omni “all” + Greek glot “tongue, language”) : noun. A lover of all languages. (A personal coinage of yours truly.)

Why love all languages?

The point has been made that the reason people from every tribe, language, people and nation are seen worshiping around Jesus’ throne inRevelation 5 is because people from every tribe, language, people and nation will find him all-satisfying. In other words, what is special about the one true God is that people from every ethnicity and tongue find in him what they need and they worship. God is therefore not a tribal deity whose “splendor” is seen by a select, remote view, but he is the Creator of the heavens and the earth and his Son is the One through whom all that has its existence was created (John 1:3).

Analogy: If I design a pair of shoes and only people in West Virginia like them, I won’t be a failure, but I won’t be a complete success either. However, as in the case of Nike, if I can design shoes that are desired and praised by people all over the world, that points to a superior shoe. A diverse body recognizes its value.

By his blood Jesus ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation (Rev. 5:9). This is their “new song” (Rev. 5:9a), praising this act. The answer then as to why to love all languages is because God loves all languages and ransomed people from every language by the blood of his Son. Moreover, the telos of each of those languages is to find praise and adoration for the Lamb who was slain and is worthy on the lips of the ransomed speakers.

The Christian has another reason to love languages: because the Scriptures were written in other languages (i.e., not English). Consequently, since I know you’ve heard of sermon jams, you’ll want to give the John Chapter 1 Jam herein linked a listen (featuringJohn 1:1-3 from the Greek New Testament and the Latin Vulgate courtesy of GreekLatinAudio.com [sorry, maybe one with Hebrew will be forthcoming]).

Long live philology!

In doing an intensified language course, like J-Term/Summer Hebrew or Greek, having a ready-to-go flashcard program for the computer is where it’s at. Talk about maximizing efficiency and effectiveness. I found the below Microsoft Excel flashcard file for Seow’s Biblical Hebrew vocabulary. I had no idea that Excel was capable of this, but boy is it sweet. I snagged it from Lionel Windsor. His language tools pages are a little treasure trove, and it looks like we get the booty! Thanks, Lionel.

Download Seow Biblical Hebrew Flashcards

[Edit: check the vocabulary list in the Excel file against the chapter's vocabulary list in the book which you are trying to learn first before studying that chapter. I think there are a few discrepancies.]

Leaving on Wednesday (12/12), we’re heading to England over Christmas and New Years. We’ll be back just in time (the day before) to start our respective schools on January 7th. J-term Hebrew I, here I come.