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Ben-Amos writes: “Pepys’ multi-stranded and extensive networks did not necessarily involve support, gifts or particularly dense and affectionate bonds.  His relations with some of his colleagues, towards whom he expressed a certain disdain, appear tenuous, and he regarded them as incompetent, corrupt or uncivilized.  But overall his social networks clearly embraced and fostered giving and receiving numerous services, favors, gifts, and support. . . .”

“This was first and foremost true of his ties with variegated kin in London and Cambridge, with whom he maintained regular contact and mutual visits, and amongst whom the circulation of strategic support and varied favours was apparent.  Pepys himself was the recipient of his cousin’s favours and patronage, and he also benefited greatly from the legal advice and counsel offered by another cousin who was MP for Cambridge.  For his part, Pepys intervened and helped arrange the marriages of his brothers and sister. . . . Pepys acted as executor for a poorer aunt, a butcher’s widow, while numerous favours and services were also exchanged among his other ties.  Thus, a wine merchant and neighbor named William Batelier, who lived in proximity to Pepys, supplied him with wine, books and prints that he had brought from France, and also offered good advice in writing appeals to eminent people at court.”

The suspicious part has to do with Pepys dispensation of favors as a public servant: “When he became clerk in the Navy, he advanced and secured a position for his brother John, as well as secured contracts, loans and varied positions for others among his kin. . . . As clerk of the Navy, Pepys also promoted timber suppliers, dispensing favours to merchant contractors, from which he benefited considerably.  . . . These social ties included associates and his employers at the Navy, merchants and numerous other friends.  Many of these individuals would have been known to each other; all would have been keenly aware of the indispensability as well as the burdens of the bonds and obligations that mutually bound them – ‘how little merit doth prevail in the world but favour,’ as a conversation with a close friend was presumably concluded and subsequently quoted in the diary.”

Gentlemen of the seventeenth century believed they had a particular duty to benefit the commonwealth by their offices, and this included maintaining “the networks of beneficence and gratitude that dominated much of early modern English society and helped to hold it together.  According to Marshall, “Much of gentry society, particularly in the south of England, lived lives dominated by these relationships,” and this was explicitly acknowledged in the writing of the period:

“The importance of these relationships from the perspective of the upper ranks is indicated by the startling declaration of an early seventeenth-century lord lieutenant to the archbishop of Canterbury that a ‘commonwealth’ was ‘nothing more than’ a ‘mutual exchange … of benefits’. It is revealing of the importance of this discourse that in seventeenth-century England a ‘gentleman’ was a ‘generous’ man, that ‘ungrateful’ was generally used to mean unpleasant, and that ingratitude was frequently viewed as the most degenerate vice; Locke was entered into the matriculation book at Christ Church as ‘generosi filius,’ the son of a gentleman, and frequently referred to things as ungrateful when he meant unpleasant. Beneficence and gratitude dominated much of the relationship of the gentry and nobility towards the lower orders in maintaining the traditional social bonds of paternalism, deference and loyalty through considerable patronage, through occasional but important hospitality and through fulfilment of charitable obligations to the ‘deserving’ poor. As Keith Wrightson has written, ‘The paternalistic gentleman, the generous patron, legitimized and justified his position by his actions, in his own eyes, in those of the world and in those of God . . . Such beneficence cost little, and in return a price was tacitly demanded — in terms of deference, obedience and implicit recognition of the legitimacy of the prevailing social order.”

He adds, “The importance of beneficence and gratitude in gentlemen’s obligations and relationships was set out in many works on gentility; by many of the works that formed the standard education of gentlemen, including a host of classical works by authors such as Hesiod, Ovid, Martial, Sallust, Seneca and Cicero; by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century treatises still influential in the Restoration such as Guiccardini’s History of Italy and Ricordi; by many of Shakespeare’s plays, including Coriolanus, Timon of Athens and King Lear, each of which was revived in the Restoration with amendments that increased their already considerable stress upon beneficence; and by many contemporary works, especially the plays of John Dryden.”

Seneca lurked as always in the background: “Between 1678 and 1700 a shortened version of De Beneficiis, edited under the title Seneca’s Morals By Way of Abstract by Roger L’Estrange, went through ten editions. For Seneca, benefiting was a ‘fellow like thing; it purchaseth favour’. The exchange of services bound men together into concordia. This was a low level of ‘friendship’, nurtured by the exchange of benefits, but it was absolutely vital because by creating mutual obligations of gratitude and fostering good will it preserved society. For Seneca, a failure of gratitude led to a collapse of society itself since gratitude was quite literally the social cement holding society together and the central form of social interaction. As L’Estrange declared, almost ‘the whole business of mankind in society’ was said to come ‘under this head’ of beneficence.”

“Pictures of a God who suffered and died, of the deity transformed into a monster through his abject, fleshly wounds: these were meant to train our eyes to see beyond the image, to cross it out without having to do something to undialectic as actually destroying it.”  In Lucas Cranach’s Lutheran art, and especially in his depiction of Luther’s preaching of of the crucified Christ, we see a renewal of an image that, from the start, displayed its object by negating it.  Christ’s incarnation was iconoclastic: the pagan idols crumbled before the infant Jesus; Christ’s humble birth and humiliating death overturned the equation, made concrete in classical art, of the beautiful with the true and the good; his disciples martyred themselves rather than honour the emperor’s portrait; his suffering mortified vision itself.  To do as Protestants did and aim the hammer at the crucifix is to reiterate the gestures that made it.”

He offers a brief summary of what this undertaking would involve:

“In the first edition of his popular Treatise of Morall Phylosophie (1547), William Baldwin entitled one chapter ‘Of benefyttes, and of unthankfulness,’ which he soon expanded into a longer essay ‘Of giving and receiving.’  By the end of the seventeenth century Saint-Evremond could ask rhetorically, ‘Is there a dispute about the acknowledgment of a good turn, a thousand Men refine upon the Discourses of Seneca?’  Catholics and Protestant alike tended to ally the mutual obligations of children and parents with similar ties between rulers and ruled. Essayists expounded the theme, and writers on friendship could hardly avoid it.  Thomas Gainsford in 1616 summarized the clichés in his handbook, including the reflection that ‘benefits have sometimes a taste of bribery,’ and Nicholas Caussin made gratitude the tenth motive for stirring up people of quality to seek Christian perfection; he scattered his pages with metaphors for the power of benefits.  ‘Benefits are sharp-pointed Arrows, which thoroughly penetrate the heart of Tygers and Lions….Good turns are golden Nets, which catch the swiftest gliding Fishes….O how strong bird-lime is a benefit all generous birds are taken with it.’  Clarendon found the fourth psalm an occasion for a brief discourse on the subject.  In the political realm, as we might expect, patriarchalism best expressed the universal wish for a society united like a happy family, with each member gladly acknowledging his indebtedness to the others.”

Cyrus is Yahweh’s Shepherd to lead Israel from Babylon (Isaiah 44:28-45:1; 48:14-15, 20).  But Israel needs more than deliverance from exile.  They need deliverance from sin, and only a Servant greater than Cyrus can provide that.

THE TEXT

“Listen, O coastlands, to Me, and take heed, you peoples from afar!  The Lord has called Me from the womb; from the matrix of My mother He has made mention of My name. And He has made My mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of His hand He has hidden Me, and made Me a polished shaft; in His quiver He has hidden Me. . . .” (Isaiah 49:1-26).

YAHWEH’S SERVANT

When Yahweh’s Spirit-filled Servant was first introduced, he represented Israel’s justice mission to the coastlands (Isaiah 42:1-4).  In chapter 49, he has been prepared with a mouth-sword and as an arrow for a mission to the coastlands (vv. 1-4).  In the intervening chapters, Israel’s plight has been laid out.  Servant Israel needs a Servant.  The reintroduced Servant of chapter 49 is not Israel but a minister to Israel, formed from the womb to gather Israel back to Yahweh (49:5).  He will become a light to the nations who extends salvation to the whole world (49:6), but he is first sent to Israel, where he will be despised and abhorred (49:7; cf. Isaiah 53).

NEW EXODUS

Yahweh’s Servant will lead Israel in a new exodus, but in this context the exodus is not simply a return from Babylon.  It is a return from the more fundamental exile from God’s presence, which began with Adam’s expulsion from Eden.  Yahweh promises to give the Servant as a sign of His covenant pledge to restore Israel (49:8).  Through the Servant, Yahweh will bring the people from darkness, relieve their hunger and thirst, and make a path through the desert (49:9-11).  All creation, longing for the revelation of the sons of God, will rejoice when the Lord redeems His people (49:13).

ZION FORGOTTEN?

The people of Judah are not convinced.  They are in such desperate circumstances that they believe Yahweh must have abandoned them (49:14).  Yahweh responds with a series of speeches (49:18, 22).  In the first, He assures Israel that He can no more forget His people than a mother can forget a nursing child (49:15).  As the names of the tribes of Israel are inscribed on the jewels on the high priest’s breastplate, so the Lord has inscribed Israel’s name on His palms (49:16).  His hands belong to Israel.  He portrays the gathering of builders to the city, who will adorn Zion like a bride (49:16b-18).  Zion has been bereft of children, but her future family will be bigger than ever (49:19-20).  Barren Zion will wonder where all the children came from (49:21).

MIGHTY ONE OF JACOB

In His second response to Zion’s complaint, Yahweh promises to make nations assist Israel.  The Gentiles will carry Zion’s sons and daughters (49:22), kings will be guardians and princesses (like Pharaoh’s daughter) will be nurses (49:23).  Kings will pay homage to Zion (49:23).  Even a mighty man can be robbed of his plunder (49:24-25), but Yahweh, the Redeemer and Mighty One of Jacob, cannot.  The nations who oppose Him will not tear Zion away, but instead will be given over to a macabre cannibal Eucharist, eating their own flesh and drinking their own blood (49:26).

Not so well, judging from the surveys that inform us of the shocking ignorance of the Bible among Bible-believers.

Not so well, judging from the weightlessness of the Bible has in the “pop culture” of many churches.  I have often told students that for Catholic monks the Bible was pop culture.  They heard the Bible constantly, sang the Psalter each week, spent hours a week poring over its pages.  What the Reformers aimed for was a “monaticization of believers” – the spread of the Bible as the popular culture of the whole church, not of a religious elite.

Christian imaginations are today shaped as much by popular music, films, TV shows as they are by the Bible.  Such imaginations have nothing to offer the world beyond lightly Christianized versions of what the world already has.  Only a church with a Bible-saturated imagination will offer a genuine alternative to worldly art, poetry, fiction and film.

Other Reformation images expound further on a similar message, writes Joseph Leo Koerner (The Reformation of the Image).  He describes a 1529 woodcut by Georg Pencz that contrasts a Catholic monk and a Lutheran pastor preaching (255-6): “At the far right, a monk gestures limply from a decorated pulpit that amplifies both his girth and the lavishness of his vestments, while at the left, a gaunt Lutheran minister, exuding piety and strength, speaks from a pulpit that is plain and hard-edged like himself. . . . The Catholic flock is chiefly high-born and divided by class . . . . Artiusans and labourers dominate the evangelical congregation, yet their attitude (reflected by their postures) is assertive. Just before the pulpit, an exemplary ‘common man,’ to whom Lutheran preaching understood itself to be directed, raises his eyes to the preacher. This contrasts with the downcast glances of the Catholics who ‘pray upon beades’ . . . The Protestants instead carry books, presumably bibles, with which they follow with the Bible-based sermon.  Preacher and flock both possess Scripture.”

The Reformers claimed to unleash Scripture, and to bring light into the darkness of the Papal church that kept the Bible closed.  Matheson argues that the light of Scripture was not mainly doctrinal or structural: “Rather, when we read [the Reformer's] sermons and pamphlets we find biblical personalities and images swimming up to the surface of their minds. An irruption, explosion, eruption of the biblical imagination of the patriarchs, prophets, psalmists, and apostles took place” (p. 42).

This is Protestant propaganda, of course.  And like most historical generalizations, it requires qualification in various directions.

For starters, vernacular preaching was not unknown in the late middle ages.  As far back as the thirteenth century, the Fourth Lateran Council declared: “Among the various things that are conducive to the salvation of the Christian people, the nourishment of God’s word is recognized to be especially necessary, since just as the body is fed with material food so the soul is fed with spiritual food. . . . We therefore decree by this general constitution that bishops are to appoint suitable men to carry out with profit this duty of sacred preaching, men who are powerful in word and deed and who will visit with care the peoples entrusted to them in the place of bishops, since these by themselves are unable to do it, and will built them up by word and example . . . . If anyone neglects to do this, let him by subject to severe punishment” (quoted in John Witvliet’s introduction to Worship in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Change and Continuity in Religious Practice, p. 3).

The order did not go unheeded.  ”By the fifteenth century,” writes Diarmaid MacCulloch (The Reformation, 30-1), “congregations increasingly . . . expected regular teaching to feed their faith and tell them about the Bible, which most of them would never read for themselves.  For the first time, the humblest churches aspired to building a pulpit, although this was a dual-purpose piece of furniture that the clergy also used to lead informal prayer. . . . Townsfolk were more likely to have the opportunity of hearing sermons than people in remove villages, perhaps as many as eight hundred sermons during an average lifespan.”  Many of the preachers were not parish clergy, but friars.  Highly educated and sometimes gifted for rhetorical spectacle, the friars brought Christian teaching to many who had no other access to it.  Even parish clergy were increasingly well-educated, and manuals of preaching written during the later middle ages helped them along.  Preaching and teaching movements continued to the beginning of the Reformation era: Zwingli began his career in Zurich with a preachership in Zurich.

In addition to vernacular preaching and teaching, provisions were made for informal vernacular worship services.  MacCulloch (p. 89) mentions Johann Ulrich Sargant, whose Manuale Curatorum (1503) “stressed the importance of sermons, and also prompted preachers to lead devotions in German as they thought fit within the framework of the Mass.  This free form of service was called the prone, taking its name from the screen at the chancel entrance where the priest customarily stood to lead it.  The prone could include prayers or teaching about the liturgy or forthcoming feasts.  It was an important form of late medieval liturgy that has often been ignored because its very informality left few traces in the records, but it is clear that except in Italt it became common all over late medieval Europe.  Not only did the prone anticipate the much more thoroughgoing use of vernacular language that Protestants made in services (and perhaps blunted the shock when that happened), but it also went on being a customary feature of Catholic worship with official approval in many areas well after the Council of Trent.”

Translation is a good index of the complexities of the pre-Reformation situation.  Before Luther posted his theses, the Bible was already riding the wave of the new print technology and printers were responding to the demand for Bibles: “Between 1466 and 1522 there were twenty-two editions of the Bible in High or Low German; it reached Italian in 1471, Dutch in 1477, Spanish in 1478, Czech around the same time, and Catalan in 1492.  From 1473 to 1474 French published opened up a market in abridged bibles, concentrating on the exciting stories and leaving out the more knotty doctrinal passages” (MacCulloch, 70-1).  MacCulloch suggests that “the increase in Bibles created the Reformation rather than being created by it.”

In some areas, though, vernacular Bibles were forbidden.  After Wycliff, the Catholic church banned translation of the Bible into English.  The Reformation provoked a reaction that was particularly severe in Italy.  German Catholics had access to German Bibles, the better to refute the Bible-bearing Lutherans.  But there were no Protestants in Italy by the late sixteenth century, and, MacCulloch (393-4), “there were no vernacular Bibles in the houses of the [Italian] laity.  Pope Paul V was perfectly serious when in 1606 he furiously confronted the Venetian ambassador with the rhetorical question, ‘Do you not know that so much reaching of Scripture ruins the Catholic religion?’  One of the tasks of the of the 1564 Tridentine Index had been to keep vernacular Bibles away from the faithful; anyone wanting to read the Bible in a modern language required permission from the local bishop, and in the 1596 Roman Index the ban became complete and without exception.  In Italy, the Index’s ban was enforced.  Bibles were publicly and ceremonially burned, like heretics; even literary versions of scriptural stories in drama or poetry were frowned on.  As a result, between 1567 and 1773, not a single edition of an Italian-language Bible was printed anywhere in the Italian peninsula.”

The novelty of the Reformation was, thus, not fundamentally in preaching, or in translation.  No doubt more preaching, and preaching with a different content, arose in the Reformation churches. Protestants encouraged believers to have and read their own Bibles, as the images I started with indicate.  There was a significant upgrade in the exposure of the people of God to the Word of God.  But the novelty, the revolutionary novelty, was the change in the language of the liturgy.  Even this was anticipated by the prone, but the prone was not a Eucharistic service.  To pinpoint the specific place where the Reformers unchained the Bible, you have to look at the liturgy.

“Let each man question himself regarding his soul, to learn to hate in it a private feeling . . . and to love in it that communion and society of which it is said The had but one soul and one heart outstretched to God (Acts 4:32). So, indeed, is your very soul not your own; it is also that of all your brothers, whose souls are yours, or rather whose souls combined wit yours are no longer souls, but a single soul, the One Soul of Christ.”

“What does the lover of the Wisdom of God say? Proclaim along with me the greatness of the Lord (Psalm 33:4). I do not wish to love alone.  It is not as if when I have embraced her no one else can find a place to put their hand.  There is such ample space in Wisdom, that all souls may caress her and enjoy her to the full.”

“This is the life in common of a kind of divine and heavenly Republic – a Commonwealth in which the poor are sent away full, for they seek not their own but the things of Jesus Christ.”

For Paulinus, commercium spiritale was a central concept (pp. 231-2): His renunciation of earthly wealth stored up treasure in heaven.  Brown does not think it accurate to understand this in what we would call a “crassly commercial” sense, however.

In Paulinus’ Latin, “the word commercium evoked any form of profitable bonding.  It conjured up the idea of fruitful reciprocity.  More generally . . . commercium implied a ‘harmony within duality’” (quoting Carole Newlands).

In this perspective, Paulinus’ commercium spiritale was rooted in the “decisive joining of heaven and earth brought about by the coming of Christ.  The incarnation of Christ had been the foundational act of ‘exchange.’”  And the link of heaven and earth established by charity also anticipated the final “harmony” and “bonding” of the new Jerusalem.

It would be profitable, perhaps, to revisit Anselm’s theory of the atonement with this in mind.  Perhaps also Paul’s.  Do the commercial terms they use have the same connotation as commercial metaphors do for us?

Come near to . . . what?  From Leviticus, we might expect “offer sacrifice” or “bring your gift.”  That is biblical language.  But in Isaiah 48, the invitation is, somewaht unexpectedly, to draw near to “hear.”  Teaching doesn’t seem to have a prominent place in the drawing-near rites of the tabernacle and temple, but Isaiah views hearing as one of the reasons to “draw near.”

Especially in the New Covenant, where the sanctuary has been opened and the gifts of God – Word, Manna, Rod – have been offered to God’s people, especially now we “draw near to hear.”

The songs of deliverance are not merely expressions of joy, though they are obviously that.  They are also declarations of Yahweh’s redemption.  The text uses three verbs to describe what the singing is to accomplish: By singing, Israel is to announce (nagad), “cause to hear” (hiphil of shama), and “cause to go forth” (hiphil of yatza’).  The message announced, heard, going forther is “Yahweh has redeemed His servant Jacob.”

Singing declares God’s acts.  Song is evangelism.

Norman Shepherd, Former Pastor of Cottage Grove Christian Reformed Church, South Holland, Illinois

Tara Fernandez, senior, New Saint Andrews College

I think something like the opposite is the case.  Yahweh shows mercy to Israel, refrains from judging them with a final judgment, “for His name’s sake” (e.g., Isaiah 48:9).  Yahweh is concerned about His reputation, but the underlying point is that His reputation is so bound up with Israel that the end of Israel would be the end of Yahweh’s name.

In defending His Name, Yahweh is not self-focused; He is Israel-focused.

They have become un-Jacob, a fact that is underlined in verse 4: “Your neck has an iron sinew (Heb. giyd).”  This alludes back to the Mosaic theme of “stiff-necked” Israel; it reaches further back to the story 0f Jacob’s wrestling with God, the very moment when Jacob was “named Israel.”  Then, the Lord touched the sinew (giyd) and gave Jacob a permanent limp.  Israel-of-the-iron-sinew, though, is impervious to Yahweh’s touch.

They don’t receive the healing wound; they don’t walk with the victorious limb.  They are too stiff to bend to Him.

Isaiah 48 closes out a section of the prophecy that began in chapter 40.  It ends with the warning that “there is no peace for the wicked” (48:22), a warning echoed in 57:1 and again at the end of the book (66:22-24).

THE TEXT

“Hear this, O house of Jacob, who are called by the name of Israel, and have come forth from the wellsprings of Judah; who swear by the name of the Lord, and make mention of the God of Israel,
but not in truth or in righteousness. . . .” (Isaiah 48:1-22).

YOU HAVE NOT HEARD

Yahweh addresses the house of Jacob that has come from the “waters” of Judah (Isaiah 48:1).  They swear by Yahweh’s name, invoke the God of Israel, named themselves by the holy city of Jerusalem, lean on the God of Israel (48:1-2).  But Yahweh knows that their hearts are not with him (48:1).  He knows that they have iron necks and bronze foreheads (48:4).  So once again, He calls Judah away from idols back to her basic confession: “Hear, O Israel, Yahweh your God is one God” (Isaiah 48:1; Deuteronomy 6:4).  Yahweh speaks and acts to turn Judah from idols.  He foretells what is going to happen before it happens so Judah won’t trust idols (48:5-6).  He creates new circumstances so that Judah won’t be able to say, “I saw it coming” (48:7).  But it hasn’t worked, because Judah’s ears are closed (48:8; cf. Isaiah 6).  The people of the Shema (“Hear”) don’t list.  Yahweh will not destroy Israel; He restrains and delays His wrath (48:9).  But He will put Judah through the furnace of exile to refine her (48:10).

FIRST AND LAST

Again, Yahweh calls Judah to “Hear” (Isaiah 48:12).  As the first and last, He can speak of former things and of things yet to come (48:12).  And as the Creator who founded earth and spread heaven, He can remold the world as He wills (48:13).  He promises to stretch out an arm against Babylon through the one who will do His pleasure (48:14-15).  The “beloved” one (48:14) is Cyrus, the Persian Shepherd of Israel who does the Lord’s pleasure (44:28).  Verse 16 doesn’t fit easily into the context, and contains the words of Yahweh’s Servant (cf. 42:1).  Though Cyrus will be the agent of Yahweh’s vengeance against Babylon, Yahweh’s Servant, send by Lord Yahweh and His Spirit, will be active as well.  Cyrus is not free-lancing.  He is guided by the Servant of Yahweh.

WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN

Despite Judah’s idolatry and sin, Yahweh is still the God of Israel (“Yahweh your God,” 48:17).  He reminds Judah that He is their teacher (48:17), and tells them what blessings they have forfeited by their disobedience: Peace flowing like a river (48:18), justice like the waves of the sea (48:18), the fulfillment of the Abrahamic promise that they would be like sand on the beach (48:19).  The seed of Judah might have produced an abundant harvest (48:19), an eternal name.

FLEE BABYLON

Even so, Yahweh refuses to give up on His people.  They have rejected His gifts and closed their ears to His commands.  Yet He promises to bring them out from exile in a joyful procession (48:20).  He will do the exodus all over again, splitting the Rock to let water flow in the desert (48:21).  Yet, as in the first exodus, the wicked rebels in Israel will not survive the desert or inherit the land (48:22).

Prior to this point, the genealogies move forward in time, from Levi to his sons all the way down to Elkanah, Samuel, and his son Joel (6:272-28).  After verses 31-32, the genealogies run backwards.

The genealogies on either side of these verses don’t match in every detail, but there are enough matches to make the point.  The following names match:

1. Levi (6:1, 38)

2. Kohath (6:1, 2, 18-30, 38)

3. Izhar (6:2, 38)

4. Korah (6:22, 37)

5. Ebiasaph (6:23, 37)

6. Assir (6:22-23, 37)

7. Tahath (6:24, 37)

8. Elkanah (6:23, 36)

9. Amasai (6:25, 36)

10. Another Elkanah (6:26, 35)

11. Zuph/Zophai (6:26, 35)

12. Eliab/Eliel? (6:27, 34)

13. Jeroham (6:27, 34)

14. Another Elkanah (6:27, 34)

15. Samuel (6:28, 33)

16. Joel (6:28, 33)

“Heman the singer” (6:33) is the hinge of the structure, the center to which the rest of the genealogy points.

In a genealogy that runs from Adam to the exile and beyond, the climax is the appointment of Levitical servants who minister at the ark “with song.”  1 Chronicles 1-9 is a genealogical riff on Jesus’ announcement that the “Father seeks worshipers.”  The aim of all human history is to create a human choir to join the angels at the throne of God.

Heidegger puts it this way: “If he is to become a true cabinetmaker, he makes himself answer and respond above all to the different kinds of wood and to the shapes slumbering within wood – to wood as it enters into man’s dwelling with all the hidden riches of its nature.  In fact, this relatedness to wood is what maintains the whole craft.  Without this relatedness, the craft will never be anything but empty busywork, any occupation with it will be determined exclusively by business concerns.”