The Pentateuch somewhat resembles a Hollywood musical. Its story is both interrupted and developed by the songs (poems). Also like a musical, the songs (poems) are not randomly spliced into the story. The songs (poems) develop and carry the central theme of the story. They are the primary means for developing what the narratives are about. A careful attention to the details of the songs (poems) clarifies the message of the Pentateuch.

Have you gathered from Sailhamer that poetic texts aren’t simply rhetorical flourishes? Good.

If you’re curious what that “message of the Pentateuch” is, you’ll definitely want to check out this fine (though oft repetitive) work.

How then is Biblical conquest different from jihad? Shehadeh notes five ways:

The biblical conquest is marked by the following:

1. It is limited to one time, not all times.
2. It is limited to one land, not all lands. It judges sin to fulfill prophecy, not to adhere to a religion.
3. It shows God’s holiness, not his power. Its goal is to bless the whole earth, not subdue it. It is God fighting for his people, not the people fighting for God.
4. It is according to God’s trustworthy nature, not according to a capricious nature.
5. It prefigures God finally absorbing the deserved judgment and wrath on all nations in Christ’s death on the cross. Judgment deserved became judgment absorbed.

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.

photo credit: bartvandamme

Edward VIII was an unlikely third Adam.

In December 1936 Edward VIII, King of England for less than a year, chose to abdicate his place as king in order to marry American socialite Wallis Simpson.

Our first father Adam similarly abdicated his throne to chase after a forbidden love.

Christ temporarily abdicated his to win a people for himself, fallen kings.

Doesn’t your unhappiness point to a previous kingship? Pascal thinks so.

Who would indeed think himself unhappy not to be king except one who had been dispossessed?

On this last aspect where one might expect the work of redemption to continue into eternity future, Edwards writes,

“The Work of Redemption is not an eternal work, that is, it is not a work always a-doing and never accomplished. But the fruits of this work are eternal fruits…[A]s God’s electing love and the covenant of redemption never had a beginning, so the fruits of this work that shall be after the end of the work never will have an end” (A Jonathan Edwards Reader, p. 130).

Why many parts?

My dad asked this question last week as we talked about the relation of the Testaments and the span of redemptive history. Why did God wait so long? My mind was immediately taken to Galatians 4:4 where Paul speaks about God sending for his son in “the fullness of time.” We must remember that what is a long time in our minds is perfect timing is God’s grand scheme of redemptive history. Still, we wonder why.

Edwards likens the many parts of redemptive history to the construction of a building:

“Like an house or temple that is building, first the workmen are sent forth, then the materials are gathered, then ground fitted, then foundation is laid, then the superstructure erected one part after another, till at length the topstone is laid. And all is finished. Now the Work of Redemption in that large sense that has been explained may be compared to such a building that is carrying on from the fall of man to the end of the world. God went about it immediately after the fall of man. Some things were done towards this building then, immediately as maybe hereafter shown; and so God has gone as it were getting materials and building ever since, and so will go on to the end of the world. And then the time shall come when the topstone shall be brought forth and all will appear complete and consummate” (A Jonathan Edwards Reader, 132).

This analogy, however, does not serve to explain why God did things this way. It just makes it more understandable, more reasonable when we think of redemptive history as a work in progress.

Still, why many parts?

God’s glory.

Edwards, as you may well be aware, argues thoroughly and compellingly for God’s glory as the end of all his works (cf. “The End for Which God Created the World”). Most importantly, this is the testimony of the Bible. Therefore, Edwards can conclude his sermon on the work of redemption by saying (n.b. read slowly),

“In all this God designed to accomplish the glory of the blessed Trinity in an exceeding degree. God had a design of glorifying himself from eternity, to glorify each person in the Godhead. The end must considered as first in the order of nature and then the means, and therefore we must conceive that God having proposed this end had then, as it were, the means to choose” (A Jonathan Edwards Reader, p. 135).

In my own words, God’s goal (his end) is to glorify himself. (Don’t worry: your joy in life is not opposed to God glorifying himself but included in it.) The goal is always first or primary. The way to accomplish the goal is secondary or subordinate. God has the right to choose how to accomplish his goal. He chose to do it in many parts. God’s timing like his plan is perfect. We therefore trust him.

A Jonathan Edwards Reader

The book I’ve quoted in this post is A Jonathan Edwards Reader published by Yale University Press. I ordered my copy from Westminster Seminary Bookstore for a class on Jonathan Edwards I’m taking this semester. Use the following referral link to check it out in the Westminster Bookstore (every click gets me closer to a free book): Jonathan Edwards Reader

What’s great about Psalms is that by reading one a day or something similar one covers more topics than would be covered by doing a topical study. Topics emerge which you might not expect to research or do more reading on or even think about. When we think of topics of Scripture, we think of faith, love, peace, and patience, all virtues that are relatively easily understood, learned, and applied (not always, but usually). For such virtues we hang out in Paul’s letters or in the Gospels with the Old Testament almost entirely forgotten. Psalms brings such oversight to a screeching halt.

Covering lots of topics by reading through Psalms, however, is by no means “a walk in the park.” There are hard sayings which we Christians aren’t quite sure what to do with. David seems always to be crying out to God for him to crush his enemies. He wants God to shut their mouths because they’re mocking him. Let them get caught in their own traps that they laid for him. David appears a guiltless man pursued by bandits unjustly whom he wishes God would smite.

At this point in reading (coming across such things), a two-option tension arises:

1. How should I interpret (tweak?) this Scripture to make it more palatable to my own experience and understanding of God? Or…
2. How should this surprising passage of Scripture change me, my understanding and theology?

You see, it’s either change or be changed. I can say, “David didn’t mean such-and-such, he meant this,” changing the text. Or, I can say, “Woah, I didn’t realize the saints operated in such a way or that God would be like this,” allowing myself to be changed by what I read.

But I must be careful here because a careful reading and interpretation of a hard passage is not “changing” the Scripture. For, what is careful reading and changing of interpretation of a passage but changing what I think a specific word means or refers to? Thus, it is me, the reader, who changes not Scripture. I allow what I think something means to change to be more consistent with Scripture. On the other hand, what we must never allow happen is a changing of the Scripture to suit oneself or one’s personal understanding. I am not the measure of all things nor does the Scripture have to account for what I deem my incontestable experience.

The word of God stands. I change.

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 of Song 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 read Deuteronomy 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.

Hill and Walton in their A Survey of the Old Testament describe God’s election of Israel as making “the Israelites the people of God only in a revelatory way.” They further clarify by saying, “By this we mean that God chose them as his instrument of revelation.”

The difference between this use of election and the (modern) Christian usage is that “when we speak of the church as God’s people, we refer to those who have accepted salvation through faith, specifically faith in Jesus Christ.” The Christian concept of election is strictly soteriological while that of Israel as a people is understood as revelatory. This is not to deny that “many Israelites of the Old Testament could be identified as God’s people by virtue of their faith in Yahweh”; but that “God revealed himself to the world through Israel” through the law, their history, writings of the Bible and Jesus the Christ.

How does this square with Romans 11 where Paul seems to be speaking of the election of Israel in soteriological terms? In line with the understanding and differentiation of election given above, “a remnant chosen by grace” (Rom. 11:5) appears to differentiate those Israelites who are “identified as God’s people by their virtue of their faith in Yahweh” from ”the rest [who] were hardened” (Rom. 11:7) who were only God’s people in the sense of belonging to the people group God elected revelatorily. For if Israelite election were the same as Christian soteriological election, how could the Scripture speak of “Israel not find[ing] what it was looking for, but the elect did find it” (Rom. 11:7)? It could not. Therefore the distinction made by Hill and Walton appears to fit with the Pauline distinction made in Romans 11.

Ultimately, this distinction leaves soteriological room for Gentiles which is the vein in which Paul continues through to the end of the chapter leading to an eruption of praise to God:

Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable His judgments and untraceable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counselor? Or who has ever first given to Him, and has to be repaid? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen. (Rom. 11:33-36)

[All quotations from Hill and Walton, A Survey of the Old Testament, Zondervan: 2000, 74. Scripture quotations from the HCSB.]

HT: Codex: Biblical Studies

Check out this sermon on the phrase “him that pisseth against the wall” from the KJV of 1 Kings 14:10. The phrase also occurs in 1Sam 25:22, 25:34; 1Kings 16:11, 21:21, and 2Kings 9:8. The rendering by the KJV, while perhaps vulgar to modern ears, is a word for word translation of the Hebrew.

While I — along with this preacher — lament modern translations that simply render the Hebrew idiom with the English term “male” I do so for very different reasons. In absolute contrast with the meaning of the passage, the ludicrous message the preacher takes from the phrase is that “real men” pee standing up (and I would add, should never lift the toilet seat!). If this preacher would have cracked the cover of even the most useless Bible Commentary, he would have discovered that the expression is contemptuously comparing males to dogs who “piss against the wall.” Thus, I don’t think modern translations bring out the connotative meaning of the original Hebrew by the non-vulgar translation as “male.” See my post Dogs, Urine, and Bible Translations (On the Importance of Translating Connotative Meaning).

“We got pastors who pee sitting down. We got the president of the United States who probably pees sitting down. We got a bunch of preachers, we got a bunch of leaders who don’t stand up and piss against the wall like a man…That’s what’s wrong with America.”

“A man needs to be a man not a male…It’s because the editors of the NIV pee sitting down.”

Drew,

I can’t help feeling a bit sorry for Uzzah. There he was, walking along hot and tired, chatting to his mates. An ox stumbles; Uzzah tries to stop the Ark from getting damaged, doesn’t want it to get scratched. He reaches out to help and he gets struck down by God. I know God is almighty and can do what he wants and maybe Uzzah had done other things to deserve God’s wrath. But the way the Bible puts it Uzzah sounds like an innocent man only trying to help. The nature of God in th Old Testament seems to conflict with the mesage of love and forgiveness in the New. Can they be reconciled? Jesus allowed people to touch him, even healed them. I’m thinking of that woman whose haemorrhage was cured when she touched Jesus cloak. I can’t imagine Jesus cutting down Uzzah for touching him. Has the Old Testament got God wrong? Is he as vengeful and bloodthirsty as it suggests? Maybe the New Testament is too loving and forgiving and God is stern and demands respect above love? Am I talking nonsense, Drew?

Jack

Jack-in-the-Email,

You’re not talking nonsense. I feel sorry for Uzzah, too: literally trying to lend a helping hand; but I guess when God says “don’t touch,” he means it. Sometimes I feel like if I do something [wrong] I may get arbitrarily zapped like Uzzah or worse yet get eaten from the inside out by worms like Herod in Acts 12; but then I remember that God isn’t arbitrary or capricious. He gave specific, explicit instructions for handling the ark, and Herod, well, he was just stupid for accepting deification from his people.

Should we then marvel if people are judged on the spot? We should marvel like the Psalmist when justice is delayed and cry out for the day, as Martin Luther King impassioned in his famous sermon quoting the prophet Amos, saying: “let justice roll down like waters” (Amos 5:24). The topic of justice is a nice segue into your email concerning the two seemingly opposing views of God presented in the Old and New Testaments.

A lot of people want to pit the Old Testament against the New Testament, but I would like to argue that they’re not at odds but complimentary. Is there reconciling to do between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament? Are there two gods at hand? If one has a cursory knowledge of the Bible and/or his view of the “Gods” of the Bible is taken from hearsay, I can understand that he may feel that there is a noticeable inconsistency when comparing the two Testaments; but after becoming familiar with the Bible as a whole, this inconsistency in the mind of the reader should decrease. What the Old Testament contains, the New Testament also contains. It is the error of Marcion to insist that two separate “Gods” exist in the Scriptures because the Testaments seemingly present two opposing views.

“But there is the wrath of God poured out on people in the Old Testament such as in the case of Uzzah, something Jesus would not condone.”
Consider the case of Herod in the New Testament who was smitten by the Angel of the Lord and eaten by worms. Consider Jesus depicted in the final book of the New Testament, Revelation, coming with a robe dipped in blood to judge the earth.

“The God of Jesus seems so loving but this aspect of God isn’t presented in the Old Testament.”
Consider the Psalms which are songs addressed to God: “your steadfast love is better than life” (Psalm 63:3). Also, the Law contains provision for the widow and and the poor and the foreigner that should find themselves in Israel. In fact, the golden rule comes originally not from Jesus in the Gospels but from Leviticus (book of law in the Old Testament): “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18).

The New Testament affirms the God of the Old Testament. Indeed he is the same, not two different, and both Testaments testify to him. It is necessary when thinking of God not too allow yourself to concentrate on only one attribute. Yes, God is love but God is also a righteous judge. These two attributes are not at odds. If we feel he needs reconciled to himself, we lack understanding and knowledge of the whole person of God.

I can see where one would think that the wrath of God in the Old Testament in opposed to the love of God in the New Testament, but I would encourage that person to read the Bible and see that both the love of God is presented in the Old Testament and the wrath of God in the New Testament.

“Let the peoples praise you, O God;
let all the peoples praise you!
Let the nations be glad and sing for joy,
for you judge the peoples with equity
and guide the nations upon earth.
Let the peoples praise you, O God;
let all the peoples praise you!”
Psalm 67:3-5