The Four: A Survey of the Gospels

Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom

From Behind the Veil: The Epistles of John

Deep Exegesis:The Mystery of Reading Scripture

Jane Austen
(A Biography)

Solomon Among the Postmoderns

The Baptized Body

1 & 2 Kings
Brazos Theological Commentary

The Promise Of His Appearing: An Exposition Of Second Peter

A Great Mystery: Fourteen Wedding Sermons

Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, And Hope In Western Literature

Miniatures & Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen

The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism

A Son To Me: An Exposition of 1 & 2 Samuel

Against Christianity

From Silence to Song: The Davidic Liturgical Revolution

Ascent to Love: A Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy

Blessed Are the Hungry: Meditations on the Lord's Supper

A House For My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament

Heroes of the City of Man: A Christian Guide to Select Ancient Literature

Brightest Heaven of Invention: A Christian Guide To Six Shakespeare Plays

Wise Words: Family Stories That Bring the Proverbs to Life

The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church

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Bible - OT: Chronology of Wisdom Literature

In answer to a reader’s question about the chronology of Solomon’s writings in the OT, I suggested this:

1. Proverbs is instruction to a son during his boyhood/adolescence/young adulthood.  That seems to put it early-ish in Solomon’s life.  He became king around 30 (there’s a complicated argument for this), and reigned 40 years (1 Kings 11:41).  Rehoboam became king at 41 (1 Kings 14:21),so he was born the year before Solomon’s accession.  He would have been 5 in Solomon’s fourth year when he began the temple and Solomon would have been 34 (1 Kings 6:1) and 12 when Solomon finished the temple in the 11th year of his reign when Solomon was 39 (1 Kings 6:37-38).  If Solomon is writing Proverbs during Rehoboam’s adolescence/young adulthood, he would have been writing it during his 40s.

2. Ecclesiastes is mature reflection on Solomon’s achievements as king.  It comes after he has built his own house and pleasure gardens and enjoyed the pleasures of women (Ecclesiastes 2), and has had time to find that it is all vanity.  Solomon took 13 years to complete his own house (1 Kings 7:1); we’re not giving a starting date as far as I can see, but it seems to have started after the temple was finished (cf. 6:37-38).  If that’s true, he started building his own house around the age of 40 and completed it in his early 50s.  He gathered women throughout his reign, but 1 Kings 11 emphasizes that he was turned from Yahweh during his old age.  If he completed his house at 53 or so, had enjoyed the pleasures of women, then his later reflections on the vaporousness of it all would reasonably happen during his late 50s/early 60s.  Which puts Ecclesiastes a decade or two after Proverbs.

3. The Song is a celebration of a unique love (SoS 6:9).  It seems that Solomon already has concubines and other wives, but not as many as he later gathers (6:8).  But he still desires one particular woman.  If this isn’t just cynicism, it seems as if the Song has to come early, before he is turned away to love many foreign women (1 Kings 11).  If, as many suggest, the Song is a celebration of his love for the daughter of Pharaoh, it would have been composed sometime early in his reign.

Bible - OT: Wisdom

What is wisdom?  Follow the canonical progression of wisdom books.

Proverbs: There are two women.  Choose Lady Wisdom and reject Lady Folly.

Ecclesiastes: All is hebel.  Death looms.  Therefore, eat, drink, rejoice in the wife of your youth.  Joy in your wife is the way to Lady Wisdom.

Song of Songs: A man rejoices in his bride, eating and drinking a feast of love.

So:

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Bible - OT: Noble generosity

In Hebrew, the word nadib does double duty.  It describes the “willing” spirit that inspires the people to donate to the tabernacle construction (Exodus 35:5), and the willing spirit that David hopes Yahweh will create in him (Psalm 51:14).  It means generous, liberal.

At the same time the word means “noble.”  In 1 Samuel 2:8, the poor are raised up to sit with the “nobles,” and in the Song of Songs 7:2, the bride is described as the “daughter of a noble,” a “princely maiden.”

I submit that we should read these two meanings together.  To be generous is to act nobly; to be noble in ancient Israel had little to do with high birth and everything to do with generosity and liberality with goods and gifts.  It is thus particularly striking that Hannah would look for the elevation of the “poor” to nobility: Those who have been oppressed and deprived are raised up to take a seat among the generous.

Bible - OT: Passover under Kings

Hezekiah and Josiah celebrate large-scale Passovers.  Why?  What are they being delivered from?  In both cases, Passover is preceded by massive destruction of idols and idolatrous shrines.  First, the humiliation of the “gods of Egypt” and then the Passover.

And that throws light back on the original Passover, which is not only about deliverance from the angel of death or from the tyrant Pharaoh, but a deliverance from Israel’s own devotion to Egypt’s gods.

Bible - OT: Milk and Honey

Throughout the Pentateuch and into Joshua, the land of promise is a land “flowing with milk and honey.”  After that, the phrase virtually disappears.  It is used in the prophets to describe the land given to Israel after the exodus (Jeremiah 11:5; 32:22; Ezekiel 20:6, 15; the partial exception is the “curds and honey” in Isaiah 7:22).  Why?

Hippolytus may give us a clue.  He describes an oblation of milk and honey alongside the oblation of wine; the milk and honey is a reminder of the land promised to “the Fathers” but also a reference to the land that Christ gave, that is, His flesh, “whereby they who believe are nourished like little children.”

Milk and honey are the foods of childhood, as Isaiah 7:15 suggests.  In her infancy, Israel was given a land of baby food.

Bible - OT: Continuing Exile and Canon

NT Wright has long argued that first-century Jews considered themselves to be in a continuing exile.  The canon of the Hebrew Bible suggests as much.

If we take our arrangement (the LXX arrangement), the Hebrew Bible ends with Malachi, who certainly doesn’t see a gloriously restored Israel when he looks around him.

If we take the MT arrangement, the Hebrew Bible ends with the decree of Cyrus; it’s as if the return has never happened.

Either way, the canonical arrangement supports Wright’s contention.

Bible - OT: Wrath

The first time the Hebrew verb “be wrathful” (qatzaf) occurs with Yahweh as subject is in Leviticus 10:6.  The related noun occurs for the first time in Numbers 1:53.  Both, importantly, have to do with the tabernacle.  Yahweh warns that His wrath might break out against Aaron’s family if they mourn for Nadab and Abihu, and in Numbers 1 the priests and Levites encircle the tabernacle to prevent wrath from breaking out against the rest of Israel.  

Yahweh is grieved at the sins of the sons of God (Genesis 6:6), His nose burns against Pharaoh (Exodus 4:14), and His burning consumes His enemies (Exodus 15:7).  But something new happens when Yahweh sets up the tabernacle: Yahweh’s wrath becomes an issue when He comes close to live in Israel’s camp.  Wrath seems to be reserved for post-Sinai Israel; wrath is an expression of Yahweh’s offended love, His jealousy for the bride with whom he covenanted at Sinai.

Bible - OT: Keeping commandments

The English verb “keep” often translates the Hebrew shamar, “guard,” often used to describe the temple ministry of priests and Levites.  Priests and Levites guarded the house of Yahweh, and also, literally, guarded the commandments, written on tablets and placed in the ark of the covenant.

When the OT speaks of “keeping commandments,” then, it is imagining the Israelite as priest, guarding the commandments in the heart of the temple and guarding the commandments taught in Israel.  When the new covenant comes, the law is written on tablets of the human heart, and keeping commandments is another way of speaking of guarding the Spirit’s deposit in the treasure house at the heart of the human temple.

Bible - OT: Ararat

After the flood, Noah releases a dove, which finds no rest (manoach; Gen 8:9).  The ark finds rest (nuach) on Ararat (8:4).  It is one of a dozen puns on the name of Noah in the flood story.

Centuries later, the ark of the covenant (not the same Hebrew word as the ark of Noah) finds rest in Jerusalem, in the ark-tent pitched by David (manoach; 1 Chron 6:31).

Between Genesis 8 and 1 Chronicles 6, the word manoach is used only twice (Deut 28:65; Ruth 3:1).  It is not a common word.  And the fact that it’s used in 1 Chronicles 6 hints at a connection with the flood narrative.

The mountains of Jerusalem are like the mountains of Ararat.  As the fortunes and future of the human race was in the ark on Ararat, so the future and fortunes of humanity are housed in the tent of David on Zion, in the ark of the covenant.  As the renewed remnant of the old creation streamed from Ararat to fill and subdue the earth, so a renewed creation streams from the temple.

Bible - OT: Torah and sex

James Rogers of Texas A&M writes with some notes on the charity of the law, which I reflected on earlier this week with a post on Matthew Levering’s book on Aquinas:

“For this age, I suspect that we have most difficulty thinking of the Mosaic laws on sex as having any charitable telos, but consider the following. (I should add that I think the OT laws regulating sex need to be taken just as Christologically as the laws on sacrifice & etc.):

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Bible - OT: Pentateuchal diversity

Jewish biblical scholar Jon Levenson notices the discrepancies between Exodus and Deuteronomy, specifically regarding the length of time for eating unleavened bread (Exodus 12:18; Deuteronomy 16:8).  The Rabbis noticed them too.  Instead of concluding that this is a signal of multiple sources, he follows the rabbis in suggesting that (in Matthew Levering’s summary) “the operative law is to be discovered by taking both passages into account.  The unity of the Mosaic Torah requires that all data be considered.”

That’s an important lesson, for Christian interpreters no less than rabbinic ones.

Bible - OT: Where are prophets?

First Things has put up an article of mine on prophecy on their web site:http://www.firstthings.com.

Bible - OT: Street Hebrew

With papyrological evidence, there’s some grounds for saying that there’s considerable overlap between the vocabulary and syntax of NT Greek and “street Greek.”  Barr, though, thinks the same about Hebrew: “In Israel at any rate much of the biblical language is unspecialized, for the religious structure is roughly coincident with the linguistic group and the nation as a whole.”  The argument of the last clause is intriguing. One could put it this way: Because the whole nation was covenantally formed, he concludes that the language of the covenant documents and the language of normal life overlapped.  But isn’t it possible that the OT contains a specialized language for common life, just as lawyers speak a specialized language for things that non-lawyers talk about in non-specialized ways?

In any case, in the absence of comparative evidence, there is simply no way to know for sure whether the Hebrew of the Hebrew Bible is street Hebrew or not.  Barr’s main concerns are lexical and semantic, and in that regard it’s likely that there’s considerable overlap.  There’s no reason why traders in the market would not have talked about the latest news about the melek, and no reason to think there was another word for “walk” than halak.

Given the intricate literary form of the Hebrew Bible, and the frequent focus on specialized priestly concerns, however, there’s a good bit of evidence that it’s not street Hebrew in every respect.

Bible - OT: Early Higher Critics

In his recent commentary on Daniel, Jim Jordan suggests that the modern notion that Josiah and his priests wrote “the book of the law” they claimed to discover in the temple was likely shared by people of Josiah’s time: “The image-users of the high places had always resented the official, God-given worship at the temple, and they doubtless saw the ‘discovery’ of this book as just another ‘protestant ploy’ to destroy their ‘holy traditions.’  The callous rich, while happy with the ornate cathedral-worship style of the Jerusalem Temple, no doubt regarded the laws in the Book of the Covenant as having been fabricated to despoil them of their wealth.  These two groups would accuse Josiah, Zephaniah, and Jeremiah of trying to centralize religious power in the Remnant.”

Bible - OT: Silent gods

Idols have mouths, but don’t speak.  But the fear of the prophets is that Yahweh might be the same.  Evil abounds in Israel and the nations, yet Yahweh does nothing and says nothing.  If Yahweh is silent in the face of evil, how does he differ from the gods of the nations?  The problem of evil in the prophets is the problem of God’s silence, which is really a question of theology proper: Is Yahweh any different from Baal or Molech?

Bible - OT: Horns of the Altar

Why grasp the horns of the altar when you’re a fugitive in the temple?  How is it legitimate to touch the horns, when the altar as a whole is forbidden to all but the priests?  The answer to the first is found in the premise of the second: The altar is holy, and communicates holiness to anyone who touches it (if they aren’t holy already).  When a fugitive grasps the horns of the altar, he becomes sanctified and hence inviolable.  If found guilty, he will be killed (like Joab) because of a sacrilege; but if he is innocent, he protects himself with a taboo of holiness.

Bible - OT: Lovely Like Jerusalem

For Protestants, one of the best pieces of news in the past century has been the revival of biblical studies among Catholics. It’s been said (by Mark Noll, of all people!) that, with the new Catholic lectionary, more Scripture is read in Catholic worship than in most Protestant denominations.

As prolific Catholic theologian Aidan Nichols points out in the Prface of his recent overview of the Old Testament, Lovely Like Jerusalem (Ignatius), Catholics often have problems getting a sense of the overall shape of the OT, and understanding its purpose in the church.

Not only Catholics: As Nichols rightly argues early in the book, Protestant scholarship, and hence Protestant church life, have been ruined by neo-Marcionite hostility to the OT (Nichols names Schleiermacher, Harnack, and Bultmann as culprits).

Drawing on recent OT scholarship, recent Catholic thought, as well as on the church fathers, Nichols’s book attempts to guide average Christians in a Christian reading of the OT. He succeeds very nicely.

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Bible - OT: Yahweh/Iehave

“Yahweh” is often thought to be a purely modern rendering of the Hebrew name, but Smalley finds a medieval glossator who writes the name as “Iahave.” She goes on: “The ‘monstrous form’ Jehoveh was already known to Christians in the late thirteenth century. Henry Crossy seems to compromise between Jehoveh and Jahweh by writing Iehave. . . . St. Jerome used IHAO; the IABE of the Greek Father, Theodoret, was probably unknown to him; nor was he likely to have been in contact with the Samaritans, who until quite recent times pronounced ‘Jahweh.’”

Bible - OT: These Ten Times

In Num 14:22, Yahweh charges that Israel has tested Him “these ten times.” Ronald Allen offers this list of 10 rebellions in his Expositor’s Bible Commentary:

1. Israel’s fear that Pharaoh would destroy them, Ex 14:10-12
2. Marah, Ex 15:22-24
3. Hunger in the wilderness, Ex 16:1-3
4. Disobedience to Moses concerning saving manna overnight, Ex 16:19-20
5. Disobedience to Moses concerning gathering manna on Sabbath, Ex 16:27-30
6. Rephidim, Ex 17:1-4. . . .

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Bible - OT: Red Heifer

Nicole Ruane offered an intriguing discussion of the red heifer purification law (Num 19) as an “anti-sacrifice” or “inverted sacrifice.” At a number of points, the actions and concerns of Num 19 overlap with those of the sacrificial texts. The heifer is called a HATTAT (purification offering), and the animal is killed, burned, and its remnants distributed as in a normal sacrifice. (This is in contract to the non-sacrificial procedures for the animal in Deut 21.)

Yet, the rite for the red heifer diverges at significant points from the sacrificial rite. The heifer is not killed at the altar, and its blood is not removed – the text explicitly and uniquely speaks about the burning of the animals blood. The animal is not brought into the holy place, but taken outside the camp, and the portion that is brought into the camp is the portion that is normally excluded – the waste ashes.

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