May 19, 2013 0

Episode 25 – Daniel

By JoshWay in Blog, Podcast

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[TRANSCRIPT:]

In my left hand is a complex system of nerves, blood vessels and muscles. In my right hand is a bible. Let’s do a show abooooooout… THE BIBLE.

[INTRO MUSIC]

Hello, and welcome to BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody. I am Josh Way. This is the podcast where science meets the bible, where we examine the content of the bible through the lenses of history and literature. Our contention is that real people in real moments of real crisis wrote these ancient books for some urgent, constructive reason, not just to provide a cryptic holy book for religious people thousands of years in the future.

We are presently examining the “exile literature” of the bible, those texts borne out of ancient Israel’s devastating forced relocation to Babylon in the fifth century, BCE. As we’ve already observed, the writing that came out of this period reflects the shock and desperation of the displaced people of Israel and Judah. It also introduces us to an exotic new literary genre, the “apocalyptic vision,” and today we’ll encounter more of those today.

Last time we looked at the book of Esther, the only book of the bible that doesn’t mention God at all. It’s a tale of political intrigue and Jewish survival in the latter days of the exile, when Persia had replaced Babylon as the empire in charge. Esther serves as a fascinating contrast to Daniel, since they are so different and yet so very alike at the same time. Esther is, on the surface, a non-religious story about Israel’s ethnic identity among enemies in a foreign land. Esther uses her sexuality and wit to save her people from annihilation. Daniel, on the other hand, is a deeply “religious” book full of angels and visions and prophecies. But, then again, both are stories of hope for the same people suffering the same ordeal.

And, of course, this is a fine opportunity to drive home one of our recurrent points here on BOOK: that in the ancient semitic world which produced the bible, there is really no gap between what we would call “politics” and what we would call “religion.” They are the same thing. Esther isn’t really godless, as we noted in that podcast, and today we’ll see that just because the message of Daniel is wrapped up in a bizarre religious package doesn’t make it any less practical or political. More about that anon. But let’s begin our look at the text.

Daniel is a very dynamic and multidimensional text. It contains several tales about Daniel and his Jewish companions in the courts of Babylon and later Persia. It also contains apocalyptic dreams and visions which foretell the end of exile and the restoration of Israel and Judah. The tales are among the most familiar and beloved bible stories: Daniel’s friends in the fiery furnace, Daniel himself in the lion’s den, and the “handwriting on the wall.” The apocalyptic material is not as well-known today, but it is actually foundational for the rest of the biblical literature. Without Daniel’s prophecies, much of the New Testament – including many words of Jesus – would make no sense to us. Note also that Daniel is one of very few bible texts written in Aramaic, the international language from and following the time of the Persian empire. Here’s now the book begins:

1 In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. 2 And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, with some of the vessels of the house of God. And he brought them to the land of Shinar, to the house of his god, and placed the vessels in the treasury of his god. 3 Then the king commanded Ashpenaz, his chief eunuch, to bring some of the people of Israel, both of the royal family and of the nobility, 4 youths without blemish, of good appearance and skillful in all wisdom, endowed with knowledge, understanding learning, and competent to stand in the king’s palace, and to teach them the literature and language of the Chaldeans. 5 The king assigned them a daily portion of the food that the king ate, and of the wine that he drank. They were to be educated for three years, and at the end of that time they were to stand before the king. 6 Among these were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah of the tribe of Judah. 7 And the chief of the eunuchs gave them names: Daniel he called Belteshazzar, Hananiah he called Shadrach, Mishael he called Meshach, and Azariah he called Abednego.

In an introduction which conforms well to our historical understanding of the exile, Daniel and his friends are carried from Judah to Babylon, where they are put to work in the court of King Nebuchadnezzar. We know, from Daniel and elsewhere, that Babylon’s strategy of conquest over the Near Eastern world involved forcibly “recruiting” and exploiting the best and brightest of a conquered people. Craftsmen, artists, thinkers and writers were identified and grafted into the king’s administration. Daniel and his buddies are the best and brightest of their generation, and so they are given Babylonian educations and Babylonian names.

The rest of chapter one highlights the complicated relationship between the Jewish exiles and their captors. The young Hebrews excel at their studies and impress their Babylonian “hosts,” yet they resolutely defy their masters when asked to participate in activities which conflict with their Jewish identity. The first of these conflicts involves food. Daniel and his friends refuse to eat the king’s food, opting instead to eat vegetables and water. It’s unclear exactly what about the Babylonian food is objectionable, but it certainly has something to do with Israel’s many laws concerning “clean” and “unclean” foods, or prohibitions against eating any animal that was sacrificed to a foreign god. There is no serious consequence for this act of defiance, but it does establish a tension which will only grow louder as we move forward. For now, Daniel succeeds, is promoted, and “has understanding in visions and dreams.” We are reminded – most certainly on purpose – of Joseph in Egypt thousands of years earlier.

In chapter two, King Nebuchadnezzar has a bad dream. It “troubles his spirit” and he demands that his magicians and wise men interpret it. And, just to make certain the interpretation is on the up and up, the interpreter must also reveal the dream. In fact, failure to correctly reveal the dream will result in immediate dismemberment. When no one can meet the king’s demand, an enraged Nebuchadnezzar orders that every wise man in Babylon – including Daniel and his friends – be destroyed. Back in his quarters, Daniel prays a prayer to “the God of heaven” – a common way in the Hebrew Bible of referring to Israel’s God outside the borders of Israel. And before the king’s officials can carry out the order, the dream is revealed to Daniel who offers his interpretation.

Nebuchadnezzar saw a gigantic statue with a head of gold, a chest of silver, a pelvis of bronze, and legs of iron and clay. A huge, uncut stone smashed the statue, reducing every element to dust, at which point the stone became a huge mountain which “filled the entire earth.” The interpretation, according to Daniel: The head of gold is Babylon, the kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar. After it will come another empire, not as strong, and another, even less strong, and finally a fourth, which will be the weakest, a divided kingdom made of iron and clay. In the time of the fourth kingdom, Israel’s God will establish his own “kingdom,” which will surpass all of the kingdoms of the earth and which will “stand forever.” Daniel gets promoted again.

Out of many possible interpretations of the biblical presentation of Daniel’s interpretation of the dream, one has a nice and tidy historical foothold. After Babylon, of course, there will be three more major empires which will rule over the Near Eastern world: Next will be the Medo-Persian Empire (within Daniel’s lifetime), followed by Greece and then Rome. Not only is this interpretation historically tenable, it seems to have the support of the New Testament writers as well – with special attention to the “kingdom of God” motif. But still, we should remain open minded and be slow to hitch our wagon to any easy-peasy historical fulfilment of bible prophecy. For the author’s purposes here in Daniel, the dream interpretation accomplishes two things: it flatters Nebuchadnezzar by assuring him that his kingdom is the greatest while simultaneously offering hope to the conquered peoples. Earthly power passes from throne to throne, but Israel’s God is the source of all power and he will (eventually) take his world back from these emperors. This is the underlying message of everything that is to come in Daniel and in the whole bible for that matter.

In chapter three Nebuchadnezzar erects a golden statue of himself. (A little on-the-nose, but what are you gonna do?) The king decrees that everyone in the land should bow down and worship his image, and when Daniel’s friends Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refuse to do so they are dragged before Nebuchadnezzar and sentenced to be thrown into a large furnace. They politely but resolutely accept their sentence, saying:

16 “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. 17 If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. 18 But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.”

The king’s henchmen throw the young Jews into the furnace, but instead of burning up they are seen “walking around in the midst of the furnace,” with a mysterious fourth figure who looks like “a son of the gods.” Nebuchadnezzar is impressed, so he gives the young men promotions and threatens death to anyone who speaks against them or Israel’s God. One gets the sense that Nebuchadnezzar didn’t take a bathroom break without decreeing that someone be potentially torn limb from limb.

Chapter four is notable for a sudden change in the story’s point of view – it is the only chapter in the book written as a personal, first person decree from King Nebuchadnezzar:

6 I, Nebuchadnezzar, was at ease in my house and prospering in my palace. 5 I saw a dream that made me afraid. As I lay in bed the fancies and the visions of my head alarmed me. 6 So I made a decree that all the wise men of Babylon should be brought before me, that they might make known to me the interpretation of the dream.

This time, he goes straight to Daniel and spills the beans on his scary dream. He saw a lush and beautiful tree, reaching to the heavens, with branches full of birds and fruit to feed the beasts of the earth. But an angel descended from the sky and ordered the tree be cut down, it’s leaves and fruit scattered, and its stump “bound to the earth with iron and bronze.” The stump was given the “mind of a beast” for “seven seasons.” Knowing the interpretation to be far less flattering than the previous one, Daniel is hesitant, but the king insists. Daniel explains that the tree is Nebuchadnezzar himself, with his power and dominion over so much of the earth. But heaven had decreed that the great emperor be chopped down, humiliated, made low, and reduced to the stature of an animal. A year later, this very fate befalls the king. As he stands on the roof of his palace, regarding the vast reaches of his kingdom, this happens:

33 …He was driven from among men and ate grass like an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair grew as long as eagles’ feathers, and his nails were like birds’ claws.

After a time, Nebuchadnezzar regains his “reason” and his “splendor,” but a point has been made: the glory enjoyed by emperors is fleeting and can be taken away at a moment’s notice by one in a higher place of authority. A warning to the oppressor, but perhaps more important a word of hope to the oppressed.

Daniel chapter five features a new king, Belshazzar, the last king of Babylon. He only gets one brief story here in the bible, but it’s a doozie. As the king parties with “thousands” of his lords and concubines, he runs out of glassware and orders that the holy vessels stolen from the Temple in Jerusalem be brought out. As the party rages on, a human hand appears and writes Aramaic words on the wall of the chamber:

25 “MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN”

The words roughly translate as “Numbered, Numbered, Weighed and Divided.” No one can interpret what this sentence might mean until – you guessed it – Daniel is called to the scene. He explains:

26 “This is the interpretation of the matter: MENE, God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; 27 TEKEL, you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting; 28 PERES, your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.”

The message is, “Babylon is finished. The next empire will be here soon to divvy up what’s left of your kingdom.” The text tells us that Belshazzar died that very night, and King Darius the Mede inherited his kingdom.

Daniel retains his high position in the new Medo-Persian empire, until jealous colleagues plot against him. Knowing that Daniel prays daily toward Jerusalem from an open window, they provoke Darius to issue a decree that no one should petition any king or god but him in all the land, and anyone who fails to keep the ordinance should be thrown into a den of lions. The king loves the idea, and Daniel is swiftly dragged before him as a traitor. Darius – who has apparently grown fond of Daniel – reluctantly orders that he be thrown into the lions’ den. Since this is one of the most famous of all bible stories, you probably know that Daniel survives his time in the pit and is promoted once again. He enjoys continued success until the reign of the Persian King Cyrus, who will become a very significant player in Israel’s exile drama.

In chapter seven, Daniel’s extraordinary apocalyptic visions begin and the tone of the book changes somewhat. In fact, many scholars believe that the second six chapters of Daniel represent a separate collection of writings from a different period – not unlike what we observed in the book of Isaiah. While the first half of the book features tales of adventure and survival with Daniel and his friends in the Babylonian and Persian courts, the second half appears to have been written later – perhaps in the second century, during the reign of the Greeks and one ruthless tyrant in particular. More on that in a minute.

Here’s the vision from chapter seven, probably the central text of the book of Daniel:

2 Daniel declared, “I saw in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea. 3 And four great beasts came up out of the sea, different from one another. 4 The first was like a lion and had eagles’ wings. Then as I looked its wings were plucked off, and it was lifted up from the ground and made to stand on two feet like a man, and the mind of a man was given to it. 5 And behold, another beast, a second one, like a bear. It was raised up on one side. It had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth; and it was told, ‘Arise, devour much flesh.’6 After this I looked, and behold, another, like a leopard, with four wings of a bird on its back. And the beast had four heads, and dominion was given to it. 7 After this I saw in the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, terrifying and dreadful and exceedingly strong. It had great iron teeth; it devoured and broke in pieces and stamped what was left with its feet. It was different from all the beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns. 8 I considered the horns, and behold, there came up among them another horn, a little one, before which three of the first horns were plucked up by the roots. And behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking arrogantly.

This is perhaps the first full-blown apocalyptic vision in the bible, following the hints and glimpses in books like Isaiah and Ezekiel. We’ve spoken about apocalyptic in detail before, but some observations bear repeating. First and foremost, and this should be fairly obvious, but the strange creatures and events in apocalyptic texts should not be – and in all reality cannot be – taken as literal things existing in time and space. These are metaphors and symbols. Think of apocalyptic visions as the political cartoons of the ancient world – particularly the Babylonian and Persian corners of the ancient world. These are impossible hyperboles and caricatures, meant to encapsulate and insinuate realities which could not be described using mundane language.

Another important point of clarification when dealing with apocalyptic literature (and bible prophecy in general) is that it is not always or necessarily about the future – that is, our future. While recent generations of (mainly Christian) interpreters have insisted that anything prophetic or visionary in the bible MUST be about the end of the world, which is always just around the corner, it is much more fruitful and appropriate to consider the impact of these visions within the generations which produced them so long ago. Keep that in mind as we read on.

Daniel sees a vision of four monsters climbing out of the sea. The sea, we remember, is identified in the ancient world with chaos and evil. Whatever these creatures are, there is something primal and wicked about them. They are like the snake in the garden story – some kind of force within creation which defies and threatens its order. One looks very much like a cherub, a creature from Akkadian mythology which looks like a lion with eagle’s wings. A second monster resembles a bear that runs amok eating people. The third is like a four-headed leopard with four wings which is given “dominion” to wreak havoc on the earth. The terrifying fourth monster almost defies description. It isn’t compared to any animal, it’s just a “beast” with “iron teeth” and ten horns on its head. When the horns are plucked out, a smaller one appears with a little face on it which proceeds to “speak arrogantly.”

There is a complex system of tropes and symbolism at work in apocalyptic texts, and to be honest we do not have a handle on all of it. Some things become obvious, though: different animals represent different sorts of powers and qualities, horns represent kingly dominion, and certain numbers bear certain meanings (four indicates totality, seven is a number of completeness or perfection, ten represents consolidated and formidable power, etc.). We need not struggle to decipher every last clue, however, as an “angel” will tell Daniel the meaning of the vision later in the chapter. In one sense, this vision is very similar to Nebuchadnezzar’s statue dream, only instead of four forthcoming empires the monsters represent four kings. The first three do their damage but are easily dispatched, while the strange fourth king represents a unique and severe threat. Later in the chapter we learn that each horn on this beast’s head actually represents an individual king, and the small eleventh horn with the big mouth is a “greater” king, one who makes war against God’s people and “sees fit to change the times and the law.”

The climax of the vision sees the “Ancient of Days” – no doubt Israel’s God himself – dealing with all four of the monsters. But he doesn’t do it personally. He appoints a servant – “one like a son of man” – a Hebrew way of saying “a mortal human” – whom he sends down to earth on a cloud to vanquish the fourth beast and establish the new “everlasting kingdom,” the one we saw in the Nebuchadnezzar dream.

This vision will become vital to our reading of the New Testament, as it forms a central element of Jesus’ own self-identity. But here in the Hebrew Bible, we note the impact of its message on Israel in the exile and beyond. Historically, there is good reason to identify the “small horn” of the fourth beast with the Greek tyrant Antiochus Epiphanes IV. Of all the pagan kings to torture and oppress Israel and Judah, he was surely the most vindictive and ruthless. While Babylon and Persia each allowed some semblance of Jewish identity to survive conquest, Antiochus actively sought to stamp it out. He profaned the Temple and made it impossible for Jews – back in their homeland by decree of the Persian King Cyrus before him – to practice the covenant law. He even forced Jewish martyrs to eat pork as they died.

And so two prominent schools of interpretation have emerged regarding Daniel 7: an historical view which sees it as a word of hope and perseverance for Jews suffering under Antiochus Epiphanes IV, and a dispensational Christian view which prefers to read any text like this as a prophecy about the end of the world and the so-called “antichrist.” Thankfully the show is already running long and we have neither the time nor the inclination on BOOK to solve such matters. Suffice to say the big takeaways from Daniel 7 are the mysterious “son of man” figure and the ultimate and effortless victory of God over the oppressive regimes of the earth.

Speaking of running low on time, let’s take an abbreviated look at the rest of the book’s contents. Chapter eight is another vision, this time of a ram being trampled by a goat. The angel – now identified as “Gabriel” – tells Daniel that one is the king of Persia, and the other the king of Greece, who will desecrate and profane the Temple before being defeated himself. Consider the implications of this very specific interpretation to our reading of chapter seven, though it’s also worth noting that Daniel ends this chapter utterly confused and unable to comprehend what he has just seen.

Chapter nine finds Daniel in the court of Darius the Mede reading the writings of Jeremiah, where he finds a prophecy that the exile will end after seventy years (Jer 25:11). Daniel prays a long and reverent prayer to Israel’s God, asking if these seventy years shouldn’t have expired by now. The angel Gabriel returns with good news and bad news: the exile will indeed end, but after seventy times seventy years, or 490 years. Interpreters who whip out their calculators at this point should remember the significance of these numbers – especially in terms of years and eras. For Israel, seven is the number associated with God’s rhythm. He rested on the seventh day, and so his people take a Sabbath on the seventh day. In that same vein, every seventh year in Israel was to be a “jubilee” year, in which society was reset, debts forgiven, and slaves freed. Israel will come out of exile, but only after a “jubilee of jubilees.” Meaning: in God’s own time.

In chapters ten, eleven and twelve, Daniel is working for Cyrus, the Persian King who will sign the order to allow the Jews to return to Jerusalem. Daniel sees a series of troubling visions, narrated for him by an angel named Michael, which depict in more details the struggles and conflicts between the kings of the earth from Daniel’s present until “the end.” Again, some choose to interpret that phrase as a reference to the “end of the space-time world,” while others see it as a reference to the “end of the age,” when exile will be ended and God will re-establish his kingdom as promised. The final vision of Daniel sees a resurrection of “many” of the dead – both Israelites and their pagan oppressors, the former to “the life of the coming age,” and the latter to “shame and contempt.” Like everything else in the book, this is about the ultimate vindication of Israel for the ordeal they are presently suffering.

And that is Daniel. Some say he is a character invented as a representative of faithful Jews throughout the various stages of the exile. Others say he was an especially blessed prophet, called to bring urgent words of hope to his suffering people in bondage. Either way, the dreams and visions of Daniel are biblical game changers in many respects, and will undergird our reading of the New Testament gospels and the book of Revelation – another book which offers us a variety of interpretive possibilities.

For now, this has been BOOK, a bible podcast for everyone, and I have been Josh Way. If you enjoyed this podcast I encourage you to share it with your online friends and family. If you have any comments, questions or constructive feedback, email me at book@joshway.com. You can also leave a voicemail at 801-760-3013, and maybe I’ll answer it on the podcast. Read the BOOK blog and find more content at BOOK.JOSHWAY.COM. That’s it for me, Bible pals. I’ll catch you next time.

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Tags: abednego, antiochus epiphanes iv, babylon, bible, daniel, hebrew bible, meshach, nebuchadnezzar, persia, shadrach

April 7, 2013 1

Episode 24 – Esther

By JoshWay in Blog, Podcast

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[TRANSCRIPT:]

In my right hand is an ice cold bottle of Fentiman’s Cherrytree Cola. In my left hand is a bible. Let’s do a show about… boy, this is a tough one… mmm… OK, the bible.

[INTRO MUSIC]

Hello, and welcome to BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody. I’m Josh Way. Today we continue our examination of the literature that emerged out of Israel’s experiences in exile. In fact these next two podcasts will explore a pair of very different texts from the later period of the exile, when the Persian Empire supplanted Babylon as the “rulers of the world.” Next time we’ll look at Daniel, a wild combination of exile tales and apocalyptic visions which look forward to the vindication and restoration of Israel. Today’s text is a different sort of story about the survival and success of the children of Israel in the often hostile lands where they found themselves living. This is the book of Esther, unique and somewhat controversial for reasons we’ll explore as we move along.

The first verse of Esther provides the historical setting: “in the days of Ahasuerus, the Ahasuerus who reigned from India to Ethiopia over 127 provinces…” It goes on to describe the “armies of Persia and Media.” This is, then, most likely the king we know as Xerxes I, the ruler of the Persian Empire in the middle of the fifth century BCE. The passing of power from one regime to the next, the rise and fall of empires, is something we know well from history and is actually one of the controlling themes of the rest of the bible (the Hebrew Bible and then the New Testament).

Remember when we talked about the evolution of imperial politics from the “kill everything” philosophy of Assyria, to the more shrewd and exploitative ways of Babylon? Persia represents another sea change in the world domination racket. While Assyria left only smoldering ruins in its wake, and Babylon figured out how to steal the good stuff and kidnap the important people, Persia’s approach left even more of a conquered culture intact. They would allow their acquired “provinces” to retain their identity and their land, and would deposit a satrap, a Persian governor or overseer, to manage the territory. Compared with the previous empires, Persia was downright progressive. They minted the world’s first coins, they established the first “international” language, and they fostered economic growth in their conquered lands. This is the the backdrop to the story of Esther. The people of Judah, displaced by the Babylonian destruction of their homeland, find themselves living in foreign places which have now become provinces of Persia. The central theme of the story is the place and identity of these Judahites, who are simultaneously subjects in the eyes of the empire AND foreign interlopers in the eyes of their neighbors.

The main action centers around the throne room of King Ahasuerus. Queen Vashti, his bride, has publicly insulted and displeased him, and so the search begins for a new queen. Chapter two verse two: “Let beautiful young virgins be sought out for the king.” And so the plot is set in motion, and it’s time to meet the cast. Verse 5:

5 In the citadel of Susa lived a Jew by the name of Mordecai, son of Jair son of Shimei son of Kish, a Benjaminite. 6 Kish had been exiled from Jerusalem in the group that was carried into exile along with King Jeconiah of Judah, which had been driven into exile by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. 7 He was foster father to Hadassah – that is, Esther – his uncle’s daughter, for she had neither father nor mother. The girl was shapely and beautiful; and when her father and mother died, Mordecai adopted her as his own daughter.

Now, did you notice something remarkable in that passage? A word we haven’t heard before? This is the very first biblical reference to the children of Israel as “Jews.” It was in fact during the Persian dispersal that the “Judah” people were first known as “Jews.” And It was most likely used as a sort of slur, not unlike the ancient origins of the label “Hebrew.” Mordecai is a Jew from the tribe of Benjamin – the descendents of King Saul – who happens to have a gorgeous young niece named Esther. We could probably guess what happens next, but that won’t be necessary. Esther (the Persian name of the Jewish Hadassah) is one of the “beautiful young virgins” rounded up for the king’s selection, and she so impresses her handlers that she is fast-tracked to the head of the harem. All the while her Jewish heritage is kept a secret, which will be very important later in the story.

Mordecai camps out in front of the royal compound in Susa to keep an eye on his niece and to track her progress. One day, while hanging about, he overhears two of the royal guards – eunuchs, we’re told – plotting to kill the king. He reports them and they are hanged, while Mordecai is commended for his loyalty to the throne. This too will become very important later in the story. Like most tales of Hebrew identity and survival, this is a story of providence disguised as happenstance. In chapter three the major conflict of the story presents itself:

1 Some time later King Ahasuerus promoted Haman son of Hammedatha the Agagite; he advanced him and set him higher than any of the other officials. 2 All the king’s servants in the palace gate knelt and bowed down to Haman, for that was the king’s order concerning him; but Mordecai would not kneel or bow down. 3 Then the king’s servants who were in the palace gate said to Mordecai, “Why do you disobey the king’s order?” 4 When they spoke to him day after day and he would not listen to them, they told Haman, in order to see whether Mordecai’s resolve would prevail; for he had explained to them that he was a Jew. 5 When Haman saw that Mordecai would not kneel or bow down to him, Haman was filled with rage. 6 But he had no desire to lay hands on Mordecai alone; having been told who Mordecai’s people were, Haman plotted to do away with all the Jews, Mordecai’s people, throughout the kingdom of Ahasuerus.

And so we meet our bad guy, and not just any bad guy – he is a descendant of Agag, the king of Israel’s old enemies the Amalekites, who were defeated by Mordecai’s ancestor Saul in events recorded in the first book of Samuel chapter 15. The prophet Samuel killed Agag, but now here is his heir – many miles away from Israel in Susa. The exile upheaved the lives and beliefs of the Jews, and in this story it even had the power to reopen old wounds and rekindle old conflicts.

Haman bides his time for five years, and the text says that he and his advisors cast “purim,” or lots to discover when the moment was right. When the omen says go, Haman presents his plan to the king. There is a people, he says, living among our subjects, who follow a different law, who dishonor the king. He asks Ahasuerus for permission to pass harsh new laws to punish them, should they step out of line. The king grants his request, and Haman sends the decree out to all corners of the empire, that all Jews are to be “annihilated.”

Mordecai hears the news and goes into mourning, and sends word to Esther through a sympathetic eunuch. Chapter four verse seven:

7 …and Mordecai told him all that had happened to him, and all about the money that Haman had offered to pay into the royal treasury for the destruction of the Jews. 8 He also gave him the written text of the law that had been proclaimed in Susa for their destruction. He bade him show it to Esther and inform her, and charge her to go to the king and to appeal to him and to plead with him for her people.

Esther is in a unique position – a secret Jew and a member of the king’s inner circle. But she’s afraid of upsetting the king, and she tells Mordecai as much through the eunuch. Mordecai’s response is a rousing speech, starting in verse thirteen:

13 “Do not imagine that you, of all the Jews, will escape with your life by being in the king’s palace. 14 On the contrary, if you keep silent in this crisis, relief and deliverance will come to the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows, perhaps you have attained this royal position for just such a crisis.”

So Esther agrees to make an appeal to Ahasuerus. She invites the king – and Haman also – to a feast, where she wines them and dines them, and the king offers to grant any request she might have. But Esther doesn’t pounce on the opportunity, she plays it cool, gets them drunk, and invites them to another banquet the next day. This has the effect of keeping the king happy and inflating Haman’s ego. He leaves the palace smiling, only to encounter Mordecai, the Jew whose refusal to bow to Haman sparked the whole plot in the first place. He storms home and hatches a new plot: constructing a fifty foot gallows from which to hang Mordecai for all the local Jews to see. Things look grim. Did Esther miss her chance? Did she drop the ball? Calm down, I’m trying to tell you the story!

That night, King Ahasuerus can’t sleep, so he orders his attendants to read to him from his chronicles, the written records of his reign. And what chapter do they just happen to read for the king? The one where a subject named Mordecai foiled a plot on the king’s life. “Whatever happened to that guy?” Just then, Haman arrives at the palace to ask for permission to hang Mordecai. The awkward scene begins in chapter six, verse six:

6 Haman entered, and the king asked him, “What should be done for a man whom the king wishes to honor?” Haman thought to himself, “Whom would the king wish to honor more than me?” 7 So Haman said to the king, “For the man whom the king wishes to honor, 8 let royal robes be brought, which the king himself has worn, and a horse on which the king has ridden and on whose head a royal crown is set; 9 and let the attire and the horse be put in the charge of one of the king’s noble officials. And let the man whom the king wishes to honor be dressed up and paraded on the horse through the city square, while they proclaim before him: This is what is done for the man whom the king wishes to honor!” 10 “Quick, then!” said the king to Haman. “Get the garb and the horse, as you have said, and do this to Mordecai the Jew, who sits in the king’s gate. Don’t leave out anything that you have proposed!”

Shocked, embarrassed and angry, Haman has no choice but to carry out the king’s decree. Mordecai is dolled up and paraded around the city in a royal procession, while Haman himself calls out words of praise. With the sting of this fresh humiliation still on his backside, Haman returns to the palace to attend Esther’s second banquet. After dinner, when the king is good and drunk once more, Hadassah makes her pitch. Chapter seven, verse three:

3 … “If you will do me the favor, O king, and if it pleases the king, let my life be granted me as my wish, and my people as my request. 4 For we have been sold, my people and I, to be destroyed, massacred, and exterminated. Had we only been sold as slaves, both men and women, I would have kept silent; for the adversary is not worthy of the king’s trouble.” 5 Thereupon King Ahasuerus demanded of Queen Esther, “Who is he and where is he who dared to do this?” 6 “The adversary and enemy,” replied Esther, “is this evil Haman!” And Haman cringed in terror before the king and the queen.

Haman’s bad day gets worse, and the king has him hanged from the very gallows the villain had built for Mordecai. And speaking of Mordecai, the old man is summoned to the palace, and given all of Haman’s property and power, including the king’s signet, by which he is able to repeal Haman’s decree and save the Jews. Chapter eight, verse fifteen:

15 Mordecai left the king’s presence in royal robes of blue and white, with a magnificent crown of gold and a mantle of fine linen and purple wool. And the city of Susa rang with joyous cries. 16 The Jews enjoyed light and gladness, joy and honor. 17 And in every province and in every city, when the king’s command and decree arrived, there was gladness and joy among the Jews, a feast and a holiday. And many of the people of the land professed themselves to be Jews, for the fear of the Jews had fallen upon them.

Unfortunately, it seems that this fear and Haman’s anti-Jewish rhetoric have spread throughout the empire. The next chapter tells of the violent clashes between Jews and other Persian subjects, with 500 men killed in one day in the capital city alone. In every corner of the empire, the Jews prevail and secure their freedom (freedom to continue being subjects of the Persian Empire, but still…). The book ends with the establishment of a new holiday, a feast called Purim – named after the lots cast by Haman and his cronies – which is still celebrated today by Jews worldwide.

And that’s the book of Esther, a tale not just of survival, but of retaliation and prevalence. And this is part of the reason that the book has been something of a hot potato throughout both Jewish and (especially) Christian history. The apparently gleeful vengeance exacted by the Jews in the story, coupled with the surprising fact that God is never mentioned in the entire text, has led some to question its place as a book of the bible. Martin Luther famously insulted the book, stating that it contained no “gospel content.” What to make of all that?

While a case might be made that the book is little more than a violent revenge story, with the enemies of Israel being massacred and destroyed with their own weapons, the historical setting and the machinations of the plot pretty much necessitate the violence. It’s only a real problem if you insist that every corner of the bible must conform to a certain moral or theological standard. Is this a “bible lesson” or an historical witness to the horrors of exile? I’m afraid most religious readers and teachers have felt obligated to see it as the former.

Regarding the “godlessness” of the book, to claim – as many have – that this is a secular intruder in an otherwise religious collection of books is to deeply misunderstand this and many other Jewish texts. The book may not mention Israel’s God, but His presence and His intervention are assumed at every turn. Remember: this is a story of providence disguising itself as happenstance. Hadassah “happens” to be chosen by the king, and Haman “happens” to be an Amalekite, and Mordecai “happens” to save the king’s life, and on and on and on. Every coincidence in the story is – to the right kind of ears – a loud and proud proclamation that the God of the Jews is with them in this strange foreign place. We’ll trace these themes and tensions – God’s providence for the Jews in exile AND their violent confrontations with pagan enemies – throughout the remaining books of the Hebrew Bible and right on into the New Testament, which is more fundamentally about these issues than most of us in the Western world have ever imagined.

This has been BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody, and I have been Josh Way. If you enjoyed this podcast, I encourage you to share, like, tweet, tweep, kreep, blog, tumbl, stumble, chumble, crackle, frackle, spackle and flooz it to your online friends and family. If you have any comments, questions or constructive feedback, email me at book@joshway.com. You can also leave a voicemail at 801-760-3013, and maybe I’ll answer it on the podcast. Read the BOOK blog and find more content at BOOK.JOSHWAY.COM. That’s it for me, Bible pals. I’ll catch you next time.

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Tags: bible, esther, exile, haman, jews, mordecai, persia, purim, xerxes

February 24, 2013 0

Episode 23 – Jonah and the Fish and the Plant and the Worm

By JoshWay in Blog, Podcast

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[TRANSCRIPT:]

A few months back I said the following during our podcast about wisdom literature:

Read properly, the bible can be quite funny. We’ve picked out a few funny bits along the way, but before too long we’ll look at an entire book that I believe is intended as a dark comedy. You probably won’t be able to guess which one…

The time has come, friends, to reveal which book I was talking about. If you’re familiar with the bible, or even vaguely familiar with popular bible stories and tropes, you might be surprised to discover that the book in question is the one about Jonah, the prophet who done got swallowed by a big fish. Is that the part that’s funny? Well, kinda. Join me for a few minutes and I’ll tell you why I think this story was intended to be a dark comedy.

But first, welcome to BOOK!

[INTRO MUSIC]

This is BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody, and I am Josh Way. We have made great strides in our walk through the Hebrew Bible. In fact, all that remain are a handful of short prophetic books and a few tales from the Babylonian/Persian Exile. Jonah is one of the so-called “minor prophets.” It’s not that he doesn’t matter, but that his book is small and has been collected with several other short works which span Israel’s later history – from the time of the kings up to and throughout the dispersal.

With Jonah we have very little data regarding authorship, historicity, or timeframe. The book of Kings indicates that a prophet named Jonah operated during the reign of Jeroboam II in the 8th century, which would place the events of this story in proximity to the Assyrian conquest of Israel. But the actual writing of the text could have been as late as the 3rd century, after the return of Judah from the exile. This is most likely a tale told and retold throughout the centuries that found a particular written format at a particular historical moment. We’ll see a little later on why the historical backdrop is crucial to interpreting the story of Jonah.

Jonah is a short and very stylized story, told with many puns and a thick coating of that aforementioned dark humor. In modern bibles it’s divided into four chapters, and the story does break nicely into four parts. Not unlike Job, Jonah is a book that contemporary Christians have read in a very specific way, but which warrants a fresh perspective. If you’ve learned about Jonah in church, this is probably what you heard: Jonah was a reluctant missionary. God told him to preach repentance to a city called Nineveh, and he refused to go. So God made a whale swallow Jonah and take him to Nineveh, where he delivered God’s message and the people repented of their sins. The lesson: When God calls you to be a missionary, you might resist, but you can’t run from God.

Well, sure. The story certainly does provide those beats. But there’s something glaring about this reading, something wrong that should be obvious… Did you figure it out? How about this: This is a story about Ancient Israel. There weren’t any missionaries! The modern Christian category of “missionary” may nicely retro-fit to this story, but it’s an anachronistic reading that misses the central tension of the thing. Ancient Jews (like modern Jews) didn’t export their religion to other lands and peoples. They weren’t on a mission to “save” people for their God, in fact they were usually asking God to save them FROM their neighbors. So what we have in Jonah is a bizarre story about Israel’s God asking a prophet to offer a message of hope to the bad guys.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Here’s how the story opens:

[1:1] Now the word of YHWH came to Jonah ben Amittai, saying, [2] “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it, for their evil has come to my attention.” [3] But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish away from the presence of YHWH. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of YHWH.

Note right off the bat that we don’t have any “in the year of” or “during the reign of”, nor do we have any biographical info about Jonah. The story simply begins. This doesn’t mean for certain that the book is not meant to be historical, but it does mean that it’s beside the point. The events and themes of the story are what’s important, not whether it happened or not. (I’m not saying that’s the case with every bible text. We have to pay attention to the literary cues.)

The prophet gets his orders from God, and they are kind of crazy. Go to Nineveh – an Assyrian city in the heart of enemy territory – and call them out for their wickedness. Again, this doesn’t strike Christians as odd because of their mindset of “taking the gospel to the world.” But in national Israel this is the most unexpected thing ever. Sure, prophets frequently ranted against enemy nations, but that always for the benefit of Israel’s kings and citizens. What purpose could God possibly have in sending one of Israel’s prophets to the bad guys’ door?

And so we sympathize with Jonah to a certain degree, and we understand why he hops a boat to Tarshish – a city far away across the Mediterranean Sea – about as far away as an ancient Israelite can imagine going. This, by the way, is already supposed to be funny. YHWH gives Jonah an undesirable task, so he hops a ship thinking he can just move out of God’s jurisdiction. This is the thematic undercurrent of the whole book, not unlike Ezekiel’s throne vision. Is Israel’s God still God outside the borders of the land? The literature insists that he is.

Back to the story. Continuing in verse 4:

[4] But YHWH hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship was in danger of breaking up. [5] Then the sailors were afraid, and each cried out to his own god. And they hurled the ship’s cargo into the sea to make it lighter for them. But Jonah had gone down into the hold of the ship where he laid down and fell asleep. [6] The captain came and cried, “How can you sleep so soundly? Get up, call out to your god! Maybe the god will regard us, and we will not die.”

A storm threatens to destroy the boat, and the pagan sailors are terrified. They call out to their gods while Jonah takes a nap in the cabin. Then the sailors cast lots to determine whose god is responsible, and the lot falls to Jonah. Jonah Identifies himself as a “Hebrew,” a worshiper of YHWH, “who made the sea and the dry land,” and he tells them why he is fleeing from Israel. The sailors are alarmed, and so at Jonah’s suggestion they hurl him overboard and the storm subsides. The pagan mariners then rejoice and give offerings to Israel’s God. The first scene ends with a loud and rather familiar message: The “righteousness” of pagans enemies is once again greater than that of an Israelite protagonist. This theme will only get louder as the story continues.

You probably know what happens next. A whale – or rather a “great fish” – swallows Jonah. And since modern readings of Jonah have tended to be serious and heavy-handed, the episode with the fish has been regarded with the same severity and defended as one of history’s great miracles. I think this really misses the point of a text that is clearly designed to be over-the-top and funny. There’s also a pun we miss in English. The Semitic word for “fish” is nun, and a reasonable translation of the name Nineveh is then, “The Fish Place.” Jonah refuses to go to the Fish City, so God – according to verse 17 – “appointed” a fish to come and get him.

Chapter two finds Jonah in the belly of the fish, praying a prayer to YHWH. Now, this prayer is highly regarded today by Christians for its lofty words and pious confessions, but I’m going to suggest that it’s actually supposed to be a parody of religious gobbledygook and a hilarious indictment of Jonah’s arrogance and xenophobia. All you have to do is read the prayer in context and allow the final verse of the chapter to be the punchline of the joke. Let’s begin in verse 7:

[7] When my life was fainting away, I remembered YHWH,
and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple.
[8] Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love.
[9] But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you;
what I have vowed I will pay.
Salvation belongs to the LORD!”

[10] And YHWH commanded the fish and it vomited Jonah out onto dry land.

Now tell me that’s not supposed to be funny! Jonah goes on and on about how religious he is, how he has access to God in his Temple, and how vain and pointless the worship of the pagans is. The fish can’t take it anymore, so it vomits Jonah out onto the shore. I might be wrong, but I think that’s the funniest joke in the bible.

So Jonah, defeated and still reluctant, heads off to Nineveh. And here’s what happens, chapter three verse four:

[4] Jonah went immediately into the city, a day’s journey. And he cried out, “In forty days Nineveh will be overthrown!” [5] And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, every last one of them.

Fasting, wearing sackcloth, and sitting in ashes were common ancient customs associated with mourning and loss. The King of Nineveh decrees that everyone – men, women, children, even animals – participate in a citywide fast to indicate their repentance. God notices their display and relents from his plan to “overthrow” the city. Disaster averted, point made, happy ending. And yet, the book doesn’t end here. There’s one more chapter…

In chapter four, Jonah throws a little hissy fit. Verse 1:

[4:1] But this displeased Jonah greatly, and he was angry. [2] He prayed to YHWH and said, “O YHWH! Isn’t this exactly what I said when I was still in my own country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish, because I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and relenting from disaster. [3] And so, O YHWH, go ahead and take my life from me, for I would rather die than live.”

Instead of leaping for joy at the amazing thing he just witnessed, Jonah is angry: “I KNEW you were gonna pull something like this, God!” It’s really quite remarkable. And if we insist on reading him as the original “missionary,” we’ve got to wonder why he’s such a bigoted jackass. If, however, we read the book as a satire on Israel’s xenophobic, holier-than-thou view of itself over against its pagan neighbors, the story opens up for us.

The final scene of the book is rather quiet and mundane compared with the rest of the story. Jonah goes outside the city and sits in the hot sun to pout. God “appoints” a plant to grow and shade him, which pleases Jonah. God then “appoints” a worm to eat the plant, which displeases the prophet. The book closes as God puts these questions to Jonah:

[9] God said to Jonah, “Are you really so deeply grieved about that plant?” “Yes,” he replied, “So deeply that I want to die.” [10] And YHWH said, “You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, and which you did not grow, which appeared overnight and perished overnight. [11] And so should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not yet know their right hand from their left, and many beasts as well?”

In a speech reminiscent of the book of Job, God points out the absurdity of Jonah’s selfish prejudice. He wept over the death of a plant because it offered him shade at no cost to himself. But the deaths of 120,000 Ninevites wouldn’t have brought a tear to his eye because, according to Jonah’s worldview, they are just foreigners, enemies, fully deserving the wrath of God just for not being born in Israel.

The details on exactly why God was angry with Nineveh and what he planned to do about it are vague, but they’re also not the point. From the perspective of the author (and of Jonah), the shocker is that God is even paying attention to pagans in the first place. The book of Ruth gave us a story about a pagan in Israel who experienced God’s blessing. Ezekiel gave displaced exiles the hopeful message that God’s jurisdiction extended beyond Israel’s borders. Now Jonah goes even further, insisting that this same God cares deeply about the fates not just of Israelites residing in foreign lands, nor of foreigners who happen to reside in Israel, but of actual foreigners living in foreign lands.

This kind of message would not likely have been found in Israel prior to the Exile. But their experiences in Babylon and later in Persia forced serious reevaluation of everything Israel thought they believed about God and their enemies. Pagans were no longer the bad guys living in far off cities. They were often still regarded as enemies, but they were also neighbors and colleagues. Stories like Jonah reflect the anthropological evolution of Israel while asking some very potent questions about her God. It’s a super funny book, but also one that runs surprisingly deep and offers a challenge that is still challenging on our side of history.

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Tags: bible, hebrew, jonah, nineveh, prophet, prophets

February 14, 2013 0

Episode 22 – Ezekiel’s Magical Mystery Tour

By JoshWay in Blog, Podcast

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

[PULP FICTION CLIP - EZEKIEL 25:17]

[TRANSCRIPT:]

A classic clip from my favorite Phil LaMarr movie, Pulp Fiction, featuring a direct quote from the prophet Ezekiel – or is it? Welcome to BOOK!

[INTRO MUSIC]

This is BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody, and I am Josh Way. Today we continue our look at the “major” prophets and the extraordinary literature produced in their names during the time of Judah’s exile in Babylon. And before we get to know Ezekiel and his extremely trippy visions, it might benefit us to take a moment and explore the history of the exile a little more deeply. So far we’ve observed the chronology of exile, that the empire of Assyria destroyed the Northern Kingdom of Israel in the eighth century BCE, and that Babylon conquered Jerusalem in the sixth century and carried the people off into forced relocation. It’s worth our time to talk a little more about the differences between these two giant empires and their approaches to world conquest.

Assyria was perhaps the first “superpower” to set its sights on world domination (the “world” being the extents of the Near Eastern region in which they lived). Their plan was simple: burn everything and kill everyone. Assyria’s ruthless brutality was unstoppable and struck fear into the hearts of small territories like Judah, as we’ve seen in the literary witness of the bible. However, their indiscriminate violence was also their undoing. As they defeated region after region and destroyed every resource, they spread themselves too thin and diluted their own power. This is likely the reason that Isaiah’s forecast came true, and the monstrous empire ran out of steam before it could consume Jerusalem.

Meanwhile Babylon was growing and licking its chops, waiting for its opportunity to take the stage as the ruler of the world. In many ways Babylon was just as brutal as Assyria, but in some very significant ways it was much smarter. Babylon didn’t simply slash and burn their conquests into submission, they actually absorbed the resources of a captured land. And while Assyria may have left some able-bodied subjects alive to serve as slaves, Babylon had a much smarter approach to exile. The leaders and thinkers and culture-makers of the conquered land weren’t slaughtered, they were carried off to Babylon to become subjects of the empire. This is what happened to Jerusalem, in several stages, in the early sixth century BCE, and this is where we meet Ezekiel.

Jeremiah had watched in horror (though perhaps not surprise) as the priests, governors, artists and craftsmen of Judah were led away to Babylon, and among them was Ezekiel. Like Jeremiah, Ezekiel was a priest, but unlike the weeping prophet he was an active duty priest, perhaps even the high priest. And while evidence suggests that the words and visions of Isaiah and Jeremiah might have been recorded and preserved by assistants or disciples, Ezekiel’s writings have a much more personal, autobiographical feel to them. His scroll opens in Babylon, “among the exiles by the Chebar River.” Immediately, Ezekiel has a bizarre vision. Chapter 1, verse 4:

4 I looked, and a stormy wind came sweeping out of the north – a huge cloud and flashing fire, surrounded by a radiance, and in the center of it, in the middle of the fire, gleaming like amber. 5 In the center of it were also the figures of four creatures. And this was their appearance: They had the figures of human beings. 6 However, each had four faces, and each of them had four wings. 7 The legs of each were fused into a single rigid leg, and the feet of each were like a single calf’s hoof, and they sparkled like burnished bronze. 8 They had human hands below their wings. The four of them had their faces and their wings on their four sides. 9 Each one’s wings touched those of the other. They did not turn when they moved, each could move in the direction of any of its faces.
10 Each of them had a human face the front; each of the four had the face of a lion on the right; each of the four had the face of an ox on the left; and each of the four had the face of an eagle the back. 11 Such were their faces. As for their wings, they were separated: above, each had two touching those of the others, while the other two covered its body.

Ezekiel then sees a giant contraption in the sky: Four wheels within wheels, covered with eyes, supporting a great platform, and on that platform the throne of Israel’s God. The throne can move in any direction without turning, and blinding light radiates from it, and deafening noise like thunder precedes it.

OK. This is just chapter one and already we need to stop and have a little chat. This vision – or dream, or reverie, or whatever it is – shares some elements with Isaiah’s vision of the seraphim, the winged fire creatures which orbited the throne of Israel’s God. But the bizarre, impossible descriptions of the “creatures” and the throne here in Ezekiel are something unique and innovative for the Hebrew Bible. Over the centuries, this material has been deeply misunderstood and has inspired two extreme reactions: 1) get weirded out and put the book down, or 2) embrace them as literal descriptions of cosmic monsters and build yourself a panic room.

What we’re encountering here for the first time is a unique and fascinating literary genre called “Apocalyptic.” Now, and I can’t stress this enough, “apocalypse” does NOT mean “the end of the world” or even “an event which changes the world.” “Apocalypse” is a Greek word meaning “hidden,” or “mysterious,” and in this case it refers to a cosmic mystery which could not be explained in mundane language, but which is revealed through strange symbols and metaphors. Understanding how apocalyptic texts work is one of the essential keys to accessing some of the most divisive and problematic texts in the bible.

This can be very hard for us as modern, western readers. We have to forget everything we think we know about “the apocalypse,” and “the end times,” and zombies and Kirk Cameron, and allow history and literature to guide our thinking more than popular culture. There are two other major apocalyptic texts in the bible – a series of strange dreams in the book of Daniel and a first century apocalypse written by the apostle John in the Greek New Testament. Those will take us even deeper into this crazy genre, but Ezekiel gives us a perfect entry point to discover the history and literature behind “apocalypse.”

First, the history: It makes good sense that our first, full-fledged “apocalypse” text comes out of the Babylonian exile. Because, at risk of reduction and oversimplification, it was in Babylon that Israel was exposed to literary traditions which bear a striking resemblance to biblical apocalyptic. Now, I say “at risk of reduction” because it’s really more complicated than that. There are traces, as we saw, of apocalyptic elements in earlier Hebrew texts, and these may have had other influences, such as Canaanite religion. Still, the overall point is this: these texts, strange as they are to us, were familiar and even prevalent in the world which produced the bible. We must assume that the original recipients of these texts would have recognized and understood the rich symbolism immediately.

And speaking of symbolism, this is the literary bread and butter of apocalyptic. The strange, creepy, lurid, often impossible imagery of apocalyptic writing is what makes it unique and powerful. The insistence upon so-called “literal” interpretations of apocalyptic has left many confused and exasperated with the bible. The message of apocalyptic depends on audacious (and usually mixed) metaphors. In this way, these texts are the political cartoons of the ancient world. By insisting that the cartoons must be “real” and one-dimensional, we miss the urgent and relevant message of the text.

And this is perhaps the most important point I can make about apocalyptic: the message of a text like Ezekiel, Daniel, and even Revelation, despite how recent generations have insisted upon reading them, is ALWAYS a message of HOPE. I’ll say that another way: While people today often read apocalyptic texts as warnings of doom disturbing the peaceful status quo of our time, they were in truth originally intended as messages of light and hope in times of extreme turmoil.

And so, back to Ezekiel. Here’s the big picture: Ezekiel, the de facto leader of the people of Judah in exile, must find new words and ways to express the madness and hope of the present crisis. Of course there’s the full, rich tradition of Israel: the Torah, the wisdom books, the Psalms… They are precious, they are the fuel that keeps the people going, but they need something new, something to address and make sense of the chaos of exile. Ezekiel latches onto something outrageous, something that speaks to the present problem, and something which turns the rhetorical weapons of the enemy back on themselves.

Now let’s look at this first vision again: Ezekiel sees four humanoid “creatures,” each with four wings and four faces. One face is human, one is lion, one is ox, and one is eagle. Their wings are spread out, touching at the tip, and they move through the air on a grid – they do not turn when they change direction. Their movement will make more sense in a moment, but about those faces. The human face is, of course, human. The lion is supreme among the wild beasts, and the ox is the most powerful of the domesticated animals. And eagles are the kings of the sky. In some way these beings seem to represent the full company of creatures, man and beast, and in this way they represent the totality of creation itself. They fly ahead of the throne of Israel’s God, proclaiming his sovereignty over the created order and announcing his arrival. Then comes the strange mobile contraption which bears his throne. Beneath it are wheels within wheels, moving in all directions and covered with eyes – whatever this thing is, it is omniscient, it sees all, and it can go anywhere.

And this is the bottom line of Ezekiel’s throne vision: Israel’s God is not – as he had been imagined for generations – contained within the boundaries of Jerusalem, tethered to Zion, trapped in the Temple. If the remnant of Judah is going to find any kind of hope in exile, they have to believe that their God is mobile, that his dominion is not interrupted by their relocation. This vision isn’t meant to reveal something physical and literal about this God, it’s meant to inspire and reassure a people whose entire worldview had been shattered. This is a true apocalypse. It has nothing to do with the “end of the world,” and everything to do with hope for hurting people here, right now, in Babylon by the Chebar River.

Well, now that we’ve taken the time to examine the history and literature behind Ezekiel, let’s take a “greatest hits” look at the rest of his writing. After the throne vision Ezekiel receives his calling, not unlike Samuel and Isaiah and Jeremiah before him. In chapter 2 he hears the voice of God calling him to be a prophet to the exiles:

1 And he said to me, “Son of man, stand up on your feet that I may speak to you.”
2 As he spoke to me, a spirit entered into me and set me upon my feet, and I heard what was being said to me.
3 He said to me, “Son of man, I am sending you to the people of Israel, that nation of rebels, who have rebelled against me. — They as well as their fathers have defied me to this very day.
4 For the sons are brazen of face and stubborn of heart. I send you to them, and you shall say to them: ‘Thus said the Lord GOD…’ 5 whether they listen or not, for they are a rebellious breed, that they may know that there was a prophet among them.

God refers to Ezekiel throughout the scroll as “son of man,” a contentious phrase in some schools of biblical interpretation, but which is simply a Hebrew idiom meaning “human being” or “mortal person.” It’s God’s way of keeping Ezekiel in his place, reminding him of his lowly station. In this vision God gives Ezekiel a scroll filled with his words and commands him to eat it, and he obeys. Now the words of God are “inside” the prophet. But before he can go forth and speak the words to the people, God puts Ezekiel through several symbolic experiences. First, the prophet is struck mute and his body is bound so he cannot leave his house and address the people before the appointed time. Then, in chapter four, Ezekiel sits outside in view of his fellow Israelites and enacts the destruction of Jerusalem with bricks, dirt, and household objects. (The timeline can be a little confusing, but Ezekiel and his colleagues were taken into captivity in several stages, and the siege of Jerusalem would not occur for a few more years.) Ezekiel lies on his left side for over a year, and his right side for forty days, symbolizing the punishments of Israel and Judah.

Now, the bread thing. If you’ve been to the grocery store in the few years, you may have noticed an entire line of food products based on Ezekiel 4:9, in which God gives these instructions to the prophet:

[9] “And now, take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and emmer, and put them into a single vessel and make your bread from them.”

“Hey,” said some well-meaning Christians, “there’s a recipe for bread in the Bible! This must be some kind of magical holy God bread. Let’s make it and sell it!” This leads me to wonder whether they ever kept reading and made it to verse 12:

[12] And you shall eat it as a barley cake, baking it in their sight on human dung.”

Yum! The point of the bread is that it is made out of sparse ingredients and cooked over a last-resort fuel by Ezekiel as he lie on his side, a symbol of Israel’s desperation as their resources are cut off. (By the way, Ezekiel negotiates with God and they settle on ox dung. Dodged a bullet there.) The point of all of this is: soon Jerusalem will fall, and there will be no home to go back to. Exile is not a momentary challenge to be overcome, it is a new reality.

In chapter 8 Ezekiel has a vision of the Temple back in Jerusalem. The prophet walks through the various courts of the temple complex and sees the place trashed, taken over by pagan gods, cults, and sun worship. This is the answer to the unspoken question, “how could Israel’s God allow this calamity to befall the people?” In chapter 9, Ezekiel sees the idolaters in the Temple executed for their crimes, and in chapter 10 the “glory of YHWH” leaves the Temple. The center of Israel’s political AND religious life is symbolically drained of its power. This is the dark b-side to the opening vision of the book.

Then in chapter 11 the tone of Ezekiel’s message changes, not unlike that of Jeremiah, or Isaiah. When the hammer falls and the warnings have been borne out, it’s time for more hopeful words. Verse 17:

[17] Therefore say, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD: I will gather you from the peoples and assemble you out of the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel.’ [18] And when they come there, they will remove from it all its detestable things and all its abominations. [19] And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, [20] that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God.

This is very similar to the “New Covenant” passage in Jeremiah 31, looking forward to a new exodus, the new thing that will have to happen if Israel is ever going to be restored. For Jeremiah, a new Torah would be written on the hearts of the people. Meanwhile, many miles away, Ezekiel confronts the same hope: the Israelites’ hard hearts, bent on easy idolatry and defaming the old covenant, will somehow be cleansed and made new. Then and only then can they return to the land.

Ezekiel predicts the ongoing deportation of more and more Judahites, and condemns the false prophets – those who continued to insist that this was all just a minor bump in the road, and that God’s rescue would come at any moment. After some parables which explore the political treachery at the heart of the Babylonian exile (chapters 17-18, 23), we come to chapter 24 and two juxtaposed accounts of tragic loss, as the final siege of Jerusalem begins back in Judah, and Ezekiel’s wife dies in Babylon. Ezekiel says that God forbids him to mourn, which is a “sign” to the other exiles not to mourn the loss of Jerusalem. To mourn a loss is to ponder its pointlessness, and God has made it clear through the prophet that the death of Jerusalem is not random or unexpected.

The next eight chapters consist of fairly standard “oracles” against Israel’s enemies, words of warning and condemnation that usually wind up being ironically aimed right back at Israel. And here, as a point of trivia, is where Tarantino borrowed a bit from the prophet. Here’s the real Ezekiel 25:17:

I will wreak frightful vengeance upon them by furious punishment; and when I inflict My vengeance upon them, they shall know that I am YHWH.

This comes from an oracle against the Philistines, the great enemy of Israel during the reigns of Saul and David. As you heard Tarantino added a lot of cool sounding stuff about the shepherd and weak, though there are some grammar issues in that line that always bugged me.

After his oracles against the nations, Ezekiel rants a little more about the fall of Jerusalem, and in chapter 34 offers another word of hope, the dream of a “covenant of peace” which will restore the land and the people and bring them back into a relationship with YHWH. This hopeful restoration is envisioned in an extraordinary way in chapter 37. Ezekiel imagines himself in a valley full of dry, brittle bones. God commands the prophet to speak the “word of God” to the bones, which proceed to reconstitute and come back to life. The message of the book is made clear: Israel had to die, but God can and will bring it back to life.

Ezekiel’s next oracle is against a ruler named Gog from a place called Magog. History is unsure who this is a reference to. Is Magog lost to history, or is this a symbolic enemy constructed for the purposes of this vision? No one is sure. But the point of the oracle is clear: this enemy is seen rising up against Israel and suffering a spectacular defeat. Whether this is a future, literal battle or a visionary construct, it stands in stark contrast to the battle with Babylon which ended in disaster.

The rest of Ezekiel’s scroll focuses on the restoration of Israel, specifically a detailed vision of the design and building of a new Temple. The “glory of YHWH” returns to inhabit the new Temple, and a mysterious “prince” appears to rule over New Israel. All of the feasts and traditions are reestablished, and the last few chapters of the book read like a new version of Leviticus or Deuteronomy, as the duties of priests and leaders are described in detail. Of course this makes sense as the way that Ezekiel, himself once the high priest, would explore and anticipate the salvation of Israel.

The final vision of the book (chapter 47-48) sees fresh water flowing out from the New Temple, distributing the central power of the presence of YHWH throughout the restored nation. The land is then portioned out among the twelve tribes of Israel, as it was in the Torah. This makes for a rather boring final chapter (to our eyes), but once again the message is crystal clear: God has not abandoned this family, and just as Israel received its identity and inheritance from the Torah, so again will God deliver and rebuild this nation. What look like technical details to us were words of joy and comfort to the Babylonian exiles.

And so end the words of Ezekiel, the priest without a temple, the leader of a people without a home. The three so-called “major prophets” had very unique voices, but ultimately one message: just as Israel’s punishment in the form of exile was inevitable, so is her ultimate restoration. But how and when will it come about? That hopeful question looms over the rest of the bible. In the coming weeks we’ll continue our examination of the exile literature and the amazing experiences of some other displaced Israelites. But first, next time, I think we’ll deal with a short and strange book called Jonah, which is full of odd surprises.

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Tags: apocalypse, apocalyptic, assyria, babylon, bible, exile, ezekiel, genre, history, israel, judah, literature, prophet

January 27, 2013 0

Episode 21 – Jeremiah: The Man Who Was Very Sad

By JoshWay in Blog, Podcast

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[TRANSCRIPT]

The writings of the biblical prophets are long, dense, and full of confusing and outrageous content. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? PODCAST!! Welcome to BOOK.

[INTRO MUSIC]

This is BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody. I’m Josh Way. Last time we examined the scroll of Isaiah, which presented a prophetic response to two historical crises: the Assyrian conquest of the Northern kingdom of Israel and the devastation and exile of Southern Judah at the hands of Babylon. This week and next we’ll meet two other “major” prophets who lived at the time of the Babylonian exile. Their names are Yirmiyahu (or Jeremiah) and Ezeki’el (or Ezekiel). Jeremiah and Ezekiel give us two unique perspectives on the cataclysmic exile of Judah. For Jeremiah was among those left behind in demolished Jerusalem, and Ezekiel was with those who were dragged off to Babylon. This week we’ll focus on Jeremiah and the lengthy book which bears his name.

Jeremiah was a tormented, miserable dude and truly unique among the prophets of Israel and Judah for a number of reasons which we will explore presently. Here’s how his scroll begins:

[1] The words of Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah, one of the priests at Anathoth in the territory of Benjamin. [2] The word of the LORD came to him in the days of King Josiah son of Amon of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign, [3] and throughout the days of King Jehoiakim the son of Josiah of Judah, and until the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah, the son of Josiah of Judah, when Jerusalem went into exile in the fifth month.

We already have more personal information about Jeremiah than we ever got about Isaiah. He is a priest, for one thing, or rather “one of the priests at Anathoth.” This means he is descended from the family of Abiathar, the priestly family who served under David but were disgraced and banished to Anathoth by Solomon in 1 Kings 2. Jeremiah is from a priestly family, though he is not from the family that is currently running the Temple. It’s complicated.

The political backdrop to Jeremiah’s public campaign is fascinating. It ends with conquest and exile, but it begins in much happier times, during the reign of Josiah. You may remember from our discussion of Kings and Chronicles that Josiah was the last good (and in many ways the last real) King of Judah. In the wake of king after king who discarded and disrespected the covenant religion of Israel, Josiah was a reformer who tried his best to clean house and get the nation back on track. It’s during this time of relative peace and progress that Jeremiah receives his “calling.” We continue in chapter 1:

[4] The word of the LORD came to me:
[5] “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I set you apart;
I appointed you a prophet concerning the nations.”
[6] I replied, “Ah, Lord GOD! I do not know how to speak, for I am still a boy.”
[7] But the LORD said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am still a boy;
but go where I send you, and speak what I command you.
[8] Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you,
declares the LORD.”
[9] Then the LORD put out his hand and touched my mouth.
And the LORD said to me, “I have just put my words in your mouth.
[10] I have appointed you this day over nations and kingdoms, to pluck up and to break down,
to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.”

Unlike Moses, Isaiah, and Ezekiel, whose callings involved bizarre visions of creatures and lights, Jeremiah simply hears a voice, the voice of Israel’s God giving him a mission. And it’s hard to miss the explicitly political nature of this mission, with all the talk of “nations and kingdoms.” Jeremiah is called to speak truth to power, and like the prophets before him, he’d really rather not, thank you very much. God reassures him and uses two visual puns to make his point.

First, he shows Jeremiah an almond branch and says “I’ll be watching you!” This will confuse us if we don’t know that the Hebrew words for “almond” and “watching” sound alike. Next, Jeremiah sees a boiling pot with a steaming spout pointing to the North. Trouble, God says, is coming from the North. And he isn’t kidding… Remember, the Northern kingdom of Israel has already been destroyed and desolate for generations, and Judah has managed to avoid the same fate, up til now.

For the next ten chapters, Jeremiah delivers one scathing critique of Judah after another, insisting that the kingdom’s government and religion are irreparably corrupt. He employs the gut wrenching metaphor of a broken marriage vow, with God as the forsaken cuckold and Jerusalem as the unfaithful bride. This is chapter 3:

[1] “If a man divorces his wife and she goes from him
and becomes another man’s wife, will he return to her?
Would not that land be greatly polluted?
You have played the whore with many lovers; and would you return to me?
declares the LORD.
[2] Lift up your eyes to the bare heights, and see!
Where have you not been ravished?
By the waysides you have sat awaiting lovers like a bandit in the desert.
You have polluted the land with your vile whoredom.
[3] Therefore the showers have been withheld, and the spring rain has not come;
yet you have the forehead of a whore; you refuse to be ashamed.”

And it’s not as if Jeremiah is simply ignoring King Josiah’s reforms, it’s as if those very reforms were the target of his critique, as if to say “it’s all too-little-too-late.” Continuing on:

[4] Have you not just now called to me, ‘My father, you are the friend of my youth—
[5] will he be angry forever, will he be indignant to the end?’
Behold, you have spoken, but you have done all the evil that you could.”

Jeremiah goes on to attack what he sees as the broken religion of Judah: their over-reliance on the Temple and their ignorance of the Torah (chapter 8). And in chapter 10 he outright mocks the sorts of pagan idols that had become popular in the kingdom. Verse 3:

[3] … A tree from the forest is cut down and worked with an axe by the hands of a craftsman.
[4] He decorates it with silver and gold; he fastens it with hammer and nails so it doesn’t fall over.
[5] It’s like a scarecrow in a cucumber field, it cannot speak;
It has to be carried, for it cannot walk.
Do not be afraid of it, for it cannot do evil, neither is it in it to do any good.”

And whereas most prophets before him offered the hope of rescue and restoration should Judah change her ways, Jeremiah’s message is punctuated with a warning of inevitable doom. Verse 22:

[22] Hark a noise! It is coming—
a great commotion out of the north
to make the cities of Judah a desolation, a lair for jackals.

The enemy is coming for us, and when they get here it’s all over. And remember: this is when things are ostensibly going WELL. This is the craziness of Jeremiah’s message and his moment. Isaiah spoke truth to power when the king’s foolishness took Judah to the brink of destruction. Jeremiah must be a divinely-appointed party-pooper and tell Josiah, “Sorry, your majesty, your reforms are nice and things are going well, but it’s all too-little, too-late.”

Given the inherent negativity and conflict in Jeremiah’s campaign, it’s not surprising what a toll it all took on the man. Jeremiah is known as the “weeping prophet,” and most of his writing consists of laments and complaints. Also not surprising is the strong opposition which grew in response to his message, which only intensified the prophet’s torment. The next 10 chapters are about Jeremiah’s personal experiences, and in keeping with the tone of his mission they aren’t particularly fun. Certain men from his hometown rise up and threaten to kill Jeremiah if he doesn’t keep his mouth shut (chapter 11), and a priest named Pashhur has him briefly imprisoned (chapter 20).

Meanwhile, God continually supplies the prophet with unpopular things to say, most of them unhappy symbolic illustrations of Judah’s fate: a once-beautiful loincloth buried in the mud is the once-proud nation in exile (chapter 13), jars full of wine are the drunken uselessness of Judah’s kings and citizens (chapter 13), a lump of malleable clay on a potter’s wheel is the vulnerable city of Jerusalem (chapter 18), and a broken flask is the broken people of Judah (chapter 19). These don’t win Jeremiah any fans. And when the constant gloom of his message and the increasing persecution push Jeremiah over the edge, he loses his cool and has a breakdown in chapter 20, verse 7:

[7] LORD, you have deceived me, and I was deceived;
you are stronger than I, and you have prevailed.
I have become a laughingstock all the day; everyone mocks me.
[8] For whenever I speak, I cry out, I shout, “Violence and destruction!”
For the word of the LORD has become for me a reproach and derision all day long.

ENOUGH! cries Jeremiah, but his work is not done. In fact, the next 10 chapters detail the prophet’s confrontations with his opposition, beginning in chapter 21 with his unhappy words to the last kings of Judah. The last few kings, including the sons of Josiah, were typically stooges of either Egypt or Babylon, both of whom were fighting for control of Judah at the time. The last king, Zedekiah, was an installed puppet of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon. Jeremiah’s message to the kings is this: you are finished. In chapter 21 Zedekiah asks the prophet for a word of hope against Babylon’s tyranny, and this is the reply, in verse 8:

[8] …Thus says the LORD: Behold, I set before you the way of life and the way of death.
[9] He who stays in this city shall die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence,
but he who goes out and surrenders to the Chaldeans who are besieging you shall live and shall have his life as a prize of war.
[10] For I have set my face against this city for harm and not for good, declares the LORD: it shall be given into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall burn it with fire.

Then, in chapter 23, for the first time, Jeremiah starts talking funny:

[5] “The days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. [6] In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: ‘The LORD is our righteousness.’
[7] “Therefore, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when they shall no longer say, ‘As the LORD lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt,’ [8] but ‘As the LORD lives who brought up and led the offspring of the house of Israel out of the north country and out of all the countries where he had driven them.’ Then they shall dwell in their own land.”

Up to this point Jeremiah’s message has been one of inevitable doom and condemnation. Suddenly he sounds more like Isaiah, imagining a righteous king who will restore Judah and bring about a New Exodus. What happened? Well, the timeline of Jeremiah is a bit muddled because this is not a typical narrative. These are the collected writings and sayings of the prophet, so time passes and skips around without us noticing. Jeremiah lived to witness the Babylonian invasion, and he watched in horror as the priests and officials were dragged off into exile. Words of warning give way to words of shock and – ultimately – words of hope. Jeremiah will return to this theme, but for now there are more confrontations to be had. This time, the prophet faces off against some rivals – prophets with opposing viewpoints.

This is a new idea for us, but it only makes sense that in times of strife and chaos, pundits would pop up on all sides with all manner of perspectives. Jeremiah has this to say about the other prophets of Judah, in chapter 23:

[13] “In the prophets of Samaria I saw an unsavory thing:
they prophesied by Baal and led my people Israel astray.
[14] But in the prophets of Jerusalem I have seen a horrible thing:
they commit adultery and walk in lies;
they strengthen the hands of evildoers, so that no one turns from his evil;
all of them have become like Sodom to me, and its inhabitants like Gomorrah.”

We get a little more insight into the type of prophets Jeremiah confronted in chapter 28 as he faces off with a “false prophet” called Hananiah. Their epic rap battle takes place in front of the priests and officials of Zedekiah’s administration. Jeremiah comes before the assembly wearing a yoke, a wooden frame like those worn by beasts of burden, which represented the oppression of Babylon’s King Nebuchadnezzar. Hananiah triumphantly breaks the yoke, freeing Jeremiah from its bondage and makes this proclamation, in verse 11:

[11] And Hananiah spoke in the presence of all the people, saying, “Thus says the LORD: Even so will I break the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon from the neck of all the nations within two years.”

Unfortunately, he was just telling the group what they wanted to hear. The exile lasted for seventy years, and Hananiah was dead within one. It’s easy to demonize your opponents in the heat of a political battle, but hindsight reveals who was on the mark and who was dead wrong.

Then in (what we call) chapter 30 Jeremiah returns to the topic of Israel’s future. This is from chapter 31:

[27] “Days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man and the seed of beast. [28] And it shall come to pass that as I have watched over them to pluck up and break down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring harm, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, declares the LORD. [29] In those days they shall no longer say:
“‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes,
and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’
[30] But everyone shall die for his own iniquity. Each man who eats sour grapes, his own teeth shall be set on edge.

Jeremiah quotes a popular saying of his day, “Fathers have eaten sour grapes and the kids’ teeth are set on edge.” Basically, this means that the mistakes of one generation will be visited upon the next. This kind of thinking goes all the way back to the ten commandments in Exodus 20, which state plainly that God will hold every generation accountable for the sins of previous generations. This is how the covenant law worked – every generation was born into the covenant and picked up where the last one left off. Now, at the “end of all things,” the covenant is shattered and most of Jeremiah’s contemporaries were quick to blame prior generations for their misfortune. Whoever was to blame (previous generations, the current generation, Babylon), the undeniable fact was that the covenant had been broken. A Torah that gave identity to a specific group in a specific territory was of little use when the people were scattered in foreign lands. Jeremiah addresses this harsh reality in a most surprising way. Chapter 31, verse 31:

[31] “Days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, [32] not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD. [33] For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

Jeremiah says that Israel needs a new covenant, a new Torah, a new arrangement with God to get them through the horror of exile. And it can’t be based on inheritance or possession of land anymore, so it will have to happen in the hearts and minds of the people. This kind of talk would have been unthinkable in previous generations, but now it’s the only way forward if this community is going to preserve their identity.

This is a major evolution in Israel’s religious and political thinking (and we should realize by now that the two are one in the same). Just as the Mosaic covenant (the Torah) was the template for how ancient Israel viewed the world and its place in it, the exile and all of its hopes and horrors are now the defining rubric of what will soon be called “Jewish” identity. Israel was born when God saved a group of people from Egypt. That same group now needs to be reborn in a similarly spectacular fashion from the cauldron of Babylon. This is the new central tension for the rest of the bible.

We’ve hit the theological climax of Jeremiah’s message, but the scroll presents many more episodes from his life. Let’s take a quick look at them.

Jeremiah buys a plot of land in Judah DURING THE BABYLONIAN SIEGE as a defiant symbol of hope. (chapter 32)
Jeremiah, once the harbinger of doom for the line of David, swears on behalf of God that the Davidic line will never end. (chapter 33)
King Jehoiakim bans Jeremiah from the Temple, so he hires a scribe named Baruch to write down all of his words on a scroll and read them there out loud. The king gets word of the disturbance and has the scroll burned. Jeremiah and Baruch simply produce another copy. (chapter 36)
The army of Egypt attacks Judah from the south, driving the Babylonian army temporarily back up North. When Jeremiah travels North to check it out, he is falsely accused of deserting to the enemy and is once again thrown into prison. (chapter 37)
Jeremiah is thrown into a cistern (basically a small well) by the king’s cronies but is rescued later on by a sympathetic eunuch, only to be thrown back in the palace jail. (chapter 38)
Jeremiah sits in prison until the day when Babylon finally makes a breach into Jerusalem. With the enemy at the door, the captain of the guard releases Jeremiah and gives him a choice: come with the rest of us to Babylon and I’ll look after you, or find a hiding place and stay in Jerusalem. Jeremiah chooses to stay. (chapter 40)
Jeremiah warns a group of terrified Judahites not to flee to Egypt, a popular destination for terrified Judahites. They consider his warning and then decide to go to Egypt, forcing Jeremiah to go with them. In Egypt, Jeremiah continue to rant against his idolatrous and unfaithful compatriots. (chapter 42-44)

Sadly, Jeremiah remains in Egypt and that’s the last we hear of him. The book ends with a few rants against Babylon and other enemies of Israel, and a final account of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, as well as a record of the three thousand or so citizens of Judah who were carried off into exile. A pathetic ending for a tragic book. And by the way, there’s another bible book called Lamentations, traditionally attributed to Jeremiah, which we may or may not get to so we’ll mention it now. It consists of several poems and prayers mourning the loss of Jerusalem and the Temple. Jeremiah’s authorship is, of course, in question, but it is clearly borne out of the same historical moment.

Of course, this is all just one side of the story. Next time we’ll meet Ezekiel, the closest thing to a leader for the people of Judah in Babylonian exile. His visions and words are surprising and strange, and his prophetic response to exile has some echoes of Jeremiah’s, with some additional innovations. It will also be our first opportunity to discuss APOCALYPTIC, which is very exciting indeed.

This has been BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody, and I have been Josh Way. If you enjoyed this podcast, I encourage you to share, like, tweet, tweep, kleep, blog, tumbl, stumble, chumble, and flooz it to your online friends and family. If you have any comments, questions or constructive feedback, email me at book@joshway.com. You can also leave a voicemail at 801-760-3013, and maybe I’ll answer it on the podcast. Read the BOOK blog and find more content at BOOK.JOSHWAY.COM. That’s it for me, Bible pals. I’ll catch you next time.

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Tags: babylon, bible, exile, jeremiah, lamentations, prophet

January 14, 2013 0

Episode 20 – Isaiah

By JoshWay in Blog, Podcast

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[TRANSCRIPT:]

And thus begins the TWENTIETH installment of this thing called BOOK.

[INTRO MUSIC]

Welcome back to BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody. I’m Josh Way. If you’re just joining us, the premise of the show is simple: an honest and open-minded exploration of the contents of the Judeo-Christian bible with special attention to the history which produced the text and the literary form of the text itself. Here is a very brief recap of where we’ve come so far:

The first book of the bible is the Torah, divided in five scrolls in which the ancient family of Israel gave their own account of their transformation into a nation. After the Torah we looked at Joshua and Judges, which detailed the messy business of the people of Israel inhabiting the land that would be Israel. Ruth and Samuel told how Israel went about choosing kings, and Kings and Chronicles gave two very different perspectives on the national period and the performances of those kings. After a nasty civil war and a division into a northern and a southern kingdom, Israel’s national period came to an end, the northern kingdom being defeated by Assyria in the eighth century BCE and the southern falling to Babylon in the sixth.

After Kings and Chronicles we took a break from the historical narrative to examine some of the specialized literature of the bible: the poetry of the Psalms and the wisdom writings like Proverbs, Qohelet, and Job. Now we turn our gaze to yet another variety of biblical text, one which gives us a side door back into history, but from a very unique and easily misunderstood perspective. We’re going to read the writings of “the Prophets.”

So far we’ve seen prophets as characters in Israel’s historical pageant, and we even speculated that they are the likely authors or editors of the scrolls called “Kings.” Now we encounter several books written by individual prophets, or at least compiled from their public speaking by followers or assistants. Isaiah is the first of the “major” prophets to get his own book in the bible, and that text will be our focus today. First, a few words in review about prophets.

While most people today imagine prophets as hopped-up holy men roaming the street predicting the end of the world, their actual role was much more practical and relevant, even political. Prophets were less like far-off dreamers offering vague, cryptic pronouncements of gloom and hellfire, and more like pundits offering an analysis of an urgent, contemporary crisis. And most prophets weren’t delivering their missives to random citizens in the street, but rather pointing their fingers directly at kings. This is certainly true of Isaiah, who appears to have been an “official” prophet of the royal court of Judah during the reign of King Ahaz in the eighth century BCE. We saw him a couple of times in Kings.

Unlike prophets like Samuel and Elijah, we have little to no biographical information about Isaiah. He does not appear to be a priest, nor does he have any named career other than being a prophet of the court. The book which bears his name is long and dense, and does not have a friendly narrative structure. We often need to consult the corresponding history in Kings to bring it into focus. For purposes that will become apparent as we move along, we’re going to divide Isaiah’s scroll into two sections. The first consists of what we call chapters 1-39.

1 Isaiah, as we’ll call it, corresponds with the eighth century setting in which we met Isaiah in 2 Kings. The backdrop is the growing threat of the Assyrian empire and the bad choices of Judah’s kings. We get five whole chapters of straight-up, open-mic prophecy before we get any sort of introduction to Isaiah himself, but those five chapters tell us some interesting things about Isaiah. His message in this first part of the book is one of dire warning to the kingdom of Judah for losing its way. Most of the kings in his lifetime were corrupt and had rejected the traditional, Davidic, covenantal religion of Israel’s past. Here in chapter 1 Isaiah predicts drastic consequences for the once-great city of Jerusalem:

[21] How the faithful city has become a whore, she who was once full of justice!
Righteousness once lodged in her, but now murderers.
…
[23] Your rulers are rebels and cronies of thieves. Everyone loves a bribe and runs after gifts.
They do not bring justice to the orphan, and the widow’s cause does not come to them.
[24] Therefore the Lord declares, the LORD of hosts, the Mighty One of Israel:
“I will get satisfaction from my enemies and avenge myself on my foes.”
…
[27] Zion shall be redeemed by justice, and those in her who repent, by righteousness.
[28] But rebels and sinners shall be crushed together, and those who forsake the LORD will perish.

But Isaiah isn’t simply a crank, calling down fire and brimstone on all the fat cats. The second thread running throughout the first section of Isaiah is a salient hope that Judah will be restored to its former glory. This is from chapter 2:

[2] It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the hills; and all the nations shall flow to it, [3] and many peoples shall come, and say:
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob,
that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.”
For out of Zion shall go the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
[4] He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide disputes for many peoples;
and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.

Isaiah imagines a triumphant day, a day when not only will Judah be restored as “God’s mountain,” but it will be established as a shining beacon for the whole world, and when warfare between the nations of the earth will end. For some reason, in our own day, when people read and remember biblical prophecy, they only remember the gloom and doom stuff, and the hope is often overlooked. I’ll push that point even harder when we get to apocalyptic literature.

In both of those excerpts we observe one of the remarkable distinctives of Isaiah’s thinking and writing: his use of “Zion” or “mountain of God” imagery. Remember when we first talked about kings and prophets, we observed that they had two very different – and often conflicting – ways of looking at life, religion, and current events? One way of summarizing those viewpoints is the contrast between two mountains: SINAI and ZION. SINAI is the mountain of prophets, a lost location where God showed up briefly to deliver a message through his servant Moses. For prophets, God is transcendent, elusive, and always thwarting man’s expectations. ZION, on the other hand, is Jerusalem, the mountain of the palace and the temple, where God “permanently” established his authority on earth. For kings, God is present, immovable, and predictable.

And yet we find in Isaiah a prophet who frequently invokes ZION and refers to Israel’s God as “YHWH tsava’ot,” “LORD of hosts” – that is, the God who leads our armies to victory against our enemies. Isaiah is an extremely royal prophet, and his vision of Israel’s future doesn’t involve the dissolution or abandonment of Israel’s monarchy. The monarchy itself will be at the center of the nation’s rescue. More of that anon.

In chapter six we come to a very different sort of text, and something we might have expected at the beginning of the book. It’s the closest we get to an origin story for Isaiah. Give it a listen:

[6:1] In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. [2] Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. [3] And one called to another and said:

“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts;
his presence fills the whole earth!”

[4] And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. [5] And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”
[6] Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. [7] And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”
[8] And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.”

Each of the major prophets gets what is referred to a “calling” episode, a description of the events which began their careers as God’s messengers. Isaiah’s is a strange vision with unearthly beings flying around the throne of Israel’s God. This is very much a precursor to the apocalyptic texts, in which outrageous symbolic images are employed to present ideas and realities which could not otherwise be communicated. In this case we have “seraphim,” which is the Hebrew word for “flames,” and so we strain to imagine beings made of flames, flitting around with six wings.

By the way, nitpicky side note: These are not angels. Angels in the bible, whatever else they are, are humanoid beings who are never said to have wings. Medieval European artistic interpretation has given us the ubiquitous image of little winged, naked baby angel, but that’s a messy mutation and cross-pollination of several distinct biblical images, with a little linguistic error thrown in for good measure. The word “cherub,” for example, was unknown to medieval rabbis who decided it must be Hebrew, che-ruv, “like a child,” and artists just ran with it. In truth the word derives from Akkadian and Babylonian, and describes a winged lion, the symbol of royal power in the ancient Near East. All of this should keep us humble as we attempt to affirm or dismiss any particular interpretation of the bible. OK, end of rant.

So Isaiah is enlisted to act as God’s messenger to Judah, and his “unclean lips” are purified by a piece of coal. Strange as it sounds to us, there is actually evidence of this very practice from the cultures surrounding ancient Israel. And what is the message Isaiah is to carry? Turns out it’s a very specific one for a very specific crisis. We discussed this is in great detail in our Christmas episode, because this is source of the famous “Immanuel” passage, wherein Isaiah heralds the birth of an important child. You can listen to that other podcast for an in-depth discussion of the New Testament treatment of this passage. Right now we just want to see how it works here in context.

Chapter 7 presents Isaiah’s words to King Ahaz, a confrontation described in 2 Kings 16. Judah is at war with Israel, which is in league with the neighboring state of Syria. Desperate and afraid, Ahaz seeks protection from the brutal and growing empire of Assyria. Isaiah insists that Judah must remain unaligned, and entreats Ahaz not to make a foolish alliance with a huge enemy just to stave off a small one. Here are Isaiah’s words to the king:

[13] And he said, “Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary men, that you must weary God also? [14] Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. A virgin is with child and is about to bear a son, and will call him Immanuel. [15] By the time he knows to reject the bad and choose the good, the people will be eating curds and honey. [16] For before the boy knows how to refuse the bad and choose the good, the land whose two kings you dread will be deserted.”

Isaiah says, “don’t get in bed with these bad guys, just be patient and God will deal with them.” The image he employs to announce a hopeful future is the birth of a child, an image he picks up several times in the book. “A virgin is going to have a baby” is most likely a reference to a maiden of the court, to the imminent birth of a new king. Once more, Isaiah’s royal theology is showing. There is hope in a new king, hope that he won’t be as cowardly and reckless as Ahaz.

And lest we have trouble believing that Isaiah’s prophecy is meant primarily for his own day, he repeats it again in similar language in chapter 8:

[3] I was intimate with the prophetess, and she conceived and bore a son. And the LORD said to me, “Call his name Maher-shalal-hash-baz [which means ‘make haste to the plunder’]; [4] for before the boy knows how to cry ‘my father’ or ‘my mother,’ the wealth of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria will be carried away before the king of Assyria.”

And, wouldn’t you know it, Isaiah is proven to be right, according to the accounts of 2 Kings. The next king is Hezekiah, a sensible and faithful king, and in his lifetime Israel and Syria are both devastated by Assyria, and yet Assyria fails to conquer Judah.

Isaiah goes on to proclaim, in a famous passage in chapter 9, more hope for the future of Israel, once more employing the hopeful spectre of childbirth:

[2] The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light;
those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone.
[3] You have multiplied the nation; you have increased its joy;
they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as they are glad when they divide the spoil.
[4] For the yoke of his burden, and the staff for his shoulder,
the rod of his oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian.
[5] For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult and every garment rolled in blood
will be burned as fuel for the fire.
[6] For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and authority shall be on his shoulders,
and his name shall be called
“Mighty God is a Wonderful Counselor, The everlasting father is a peaceable ruler.”
[7] Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end,
on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it
with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore.
The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.

This is another popular “messianic” text, and we’ll have a few words to say about “messiah” later in the podcast. For now, this is more typical Isaiah. God is going to rescue Israel, and turn things around. And he will not do this in spite of Israel’s throne, he will accomplish through the monarchy itself.

The rest of Isaiah’s “first” book consists of sharp warnings against wayward Judah AND its enemies (like Assyria, Babylon, Philistia, Moab, and others), peppered with hopeful anticipation of the vindication of David’s family – the rightful kings of Judah. Isaiah even predicts (or perhaps responds to) the Assyrian defeat and exile of the northern kingdom of Israel, promising that “a remnant shall return.” At the same time, he predicts a similar fate for Jerusalem, should its current kings not change their ways.

Then, in chapter 40, something happens. There is a palpable change in tone and orientation. The historical backdrop and the central message of Isaiah himself seem to shift. This is why we are identifying two “books” of Isaiah (though our Jewish and Christian bibles do not make any such division). While chapters 1-39 overflowed with warning and hope in the face of the eighth century crisis of Assyrian aggression, chapters 40-66 seem to bear a different message for a different time. This is from chapter 40:

[40:1] Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.
[2] Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her
that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned,
that she has received from the LORD’s hand double for all her sins.
[3] A voice cries:
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD;
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”

It becomes clear as we read on that the crisis behind these chapters is no longer the fear of Judah in the face of the Assyrian threat, but the sorrow of the citizens of Judah who have been dragged off to exile in Babylon. Isaiah is preaching comfort to the people after the fall of Jerusalem, some two hundred years AFTER the Assyrian threat dissolved. This presents a potential problem for our reading of the book. Did Isaiah, after addressing the crisis of his own day, look into the future and predict the rise of Babylon, the destruction of Jerusalem, and the exile? Or did someone else write the Babylon material under his name?

This is only a huge problem if we have an overly simplistic and anachronistic notion of prophets and authorship; if we insist that a man named Isaiah must have sat down and wrote this entire book on a Tuesday afternoon in the presence of a notary public. The reality is that Isaiah the man, whoever he really was, did not necessarily write any of this material. It is possible – perhaps likely in his case, according to scholarship – that Isaiah’s words and ideas were captured and recorded by a group of students, personal disciples of the prophet. Is it possible that Isaiah gained some insight into Judah’s future? Absolutely. But it’s also possible that there was an “Isaianic” school of prophecy which preserved his ideas and his message for subsequent generations, and that this group is responsible for the message of hope found in the “second” book of Isaiah.

And what is that message of hope? Well, remember Isaiah’s response to the Assyrian crisis: hope would spring from the line of David. God would use the monarchy and kings like Hezekiah to rescue Judah. Well, that was at a time when Judah inhabited the land and Jerusalem stood secure. Now, Jerusalem has been razed to the ground and the people of Judah are scattered throughout the pagan world in exile. Appeals to Zion and kings and Jerusalem are tragically pointless. The author of Isaiah must find new and innovative words of hope in these devastating new circumstances. Among the words of comfort and encouragement, an interesting new thread develops. Chapter 42 begins like this:

[42:1] Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.

Isaiah imagines a mysterious “servant” who becomes a central presence throughout the rest of the book. This is chapter 53:

[3] He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
[4] Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.
[5] But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we were healed.

Instead of a victorious king, Isaiah now envisions a lowly, suffering nobody. A “man of sorrows” who seems to embody Israel itself and all of its troubles. His suffering, which is their suffering, will be the means by which God rescues and restores his people. This is one of the foundational strands of what will be known as “messianic” expectation (though the word “mashiach” does not appear in the Hebrew Bible). We’ll have a lot more to say about messianic expectation when we examine the New Testament gospels and their frequent appeals to Isaiah. For now it’s sufficient to observe that the “suffering servant” of Isaiah, like the humble “son of man” we’ll meet in Daniel, is the embodiment of the hope that Judah’s exile will be ended, and Jerusalem be restored.

And the return from exile is what Isaiah’s message is all about. Here’s one last passage, from chapter 55:

[10] “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
[11] so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
[12] “For you shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing,
and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
[13] Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle;
and it shall make a name for the LORD, an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.”

Verse 11 here – the bit about “my word shall not return to me empty” – is often used today as a sort of self-authorizing defense of the bible, since many Christians refer to the bible as “the word of God.” Not only is that anachronistic, it misses the point of the whole passage. The “word of God” here is not “the bible,” but the actual word, the will of Israel’s God, specifically his plan to bring Israel back from exile. The restoration of the nation is depicted in agricultural terms: God will plant Judah back in the land like a seed, and it will grow and prosper. The weeds of destruction will die and the foliage of new life will spring up.

There’s a lot more we could say about Isaiah, but let’s wrap up our discussion with some concluding observations. Questions about authorship and New Testament invocations have dominated modern discussions about Isaiah. I hope in our overview we’ve allowed the original voice of the text to be heard. Whatever else Isaiah – or his students – might have been saying about the near or the distant future, the primary message is clear: hope for right now. Hope for those quivering in the shadow of a violent empire. Comfort for those dragged from their home into forced exile. We do well to remember that texts like Isaiah were not written to fuel theological debates in future millennia, but to answer true human suffering in the present.

Next we’ll look at two other “major” prophets of Israel, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, both offering their own response to the horrors of exile, one at home in devastated Jerusalem, and one in the strange land of Babylon. The literature they produced is harrowing and beautiful.

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Tags: ahaz, assyria, bible, exile, hezekiah, isaiah, israel, judah, kings, prophet

December 18, 2012 0

Supplement – Christmas Special!

By JoshWay in Blog, Podcast

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Hello, and welcome to a BOOK podcast supplement. I’m Josh Way. Today: it’s our first Christmas Special! Now, what could a non-denominational podcast like this one have to say about this quasi-Christian-pagan holiday celebration? Well, we’re interested in the text of the Judeo-Christian bible, and that’s where we’ll be interacting with Christmas. And first let me just say on a personal note that I am a big fan of Christmas, that it has always been a big part of my life experience as both a religious observance and a secular tradition. I say that now so that some of the points I’m going to put forth today won’t be taken in the wrong spirit.

So: where is Christmas in the bible? Well, the simple answer is that it’s not there. The events of Jesus’ birth are there, of course. But it’s quite surprising given the church’s intense focus on the Christmas “season” how little physical space the Christmas events occupy in the gospels, and how completely absent is any evidence that the early church celebrated the birth of Jesus. Jump cut to our day, when most American Christians regard Christmas as a central and load-bearing pillar of their faith. The history of the Christmas holiday is (thankfully) outside the scope of this podcast, so instead I’d like to take a brief survey of the Christmas material in the bible, and then highlight a few peculiarities which open up some interesting discussions.

Again, it might surprise you just how light the “Christmas” material in the gospels is. All in all, we get eight short verses in Matthew’s gospel, and a chapter and a half in Luke’s. That’s it! The gospels of Mark and John begin with an adult Jesus launching his prophetic campaign. The birth of Jesus is not mentioned anywhere else in the gospels OR in the epistles which comprise the rest of the Greek New Testament. You would think the virgin birth of the holy infant would be an important piece of the theological argument put forth by Paul and the other authors of scripture, but it’s just not there. All of this is kind of shocking when you consider the cultural repercussions of Christmas in our time.

Of course, we’ll discuss the four gospels in great detail on future podcasts, but in terms of today’s topic, we can see why and how Matthew and Luke incorporated the nativity material into their writings. Luke is the most “investigative” of the four gospel writers, and he presents material culled from interviews with the surviving witnesses to Jesus’ life, including Mary his mother. This probably explains why Luke offers the most detailed account of the Christmas story, and why so much of that story is about the experience and reaction of Mary. Meanwhile, Matthew’s gospel is a Jewish work through and through, and every word of it is part of a program to prove Jesus of Nazareth as the Jewish meshiach, messiah, in Greek the “christ.” And so that is his only thought in presenting his very brief account of the virgin birth. This is where we engage in a rather delicate discussion. But first, here is the entirety of Matthew’s nativity account:

[18] Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. [19] And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. [20] But as he considered these things, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. [21] She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” [22] All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet:

[23] “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and they shall call his name Immanuel”

(which means, God with us). [24] When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, [25] but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.
(Matthew 1:18-25 ESV)

We’ll have more to say about the format and argument of Matthew’s gospel later on, but today I want to focus on his use of the Hebrew Bible, specifically his quotation of Isaiah Chapter 7: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel.” There is no mistake that Matthew is claiming that Jesus’ birth was miraculous. What is frequently called into question is whether or not the Isaiah passage constitutes a prediction of that miracle.

This is a debate that won’t go away, and it is typically reduced down to a debate about a single word: the word translated “virgin” in the Isaiah text. “Liberal” interpreters on one side indicating that the Hebrew word almah can be translated “young woman” as easily as “virgin,” and “conservatives” on the other side insisting it MUST mean “virgin.” What drives me bonkers about the whole discussion is that both sides act as if the broader context of Isaiah (and for that matter Matthew) was unavailable or irrelevant. It is both available AND relevant. So let’s do some homework!

The very LEAST we can do is take a serious look at what is really going on in Isaiah chapter 7. And so, we shall. In Isaiah 7, the prophet confronts Ahaz, a wicked king of Judah who is about to make a very foolish alliance. The full details of this can be found in 2 Kings 16, but the bottom line is that the kingdom of Israel is split in two, and Israel to the north has joined forces with Syria against the southern kingdom of Judah. Frightened and impatient, Ahaz looks to pay a protection tribute to the massive empire of Assyria. Assyria was a formidable force which was becoming a superpower. Isaiah warns Ahaz against this cowardly alliance which betrayed a lack of trust in Israel’s God, and which would surely make political trouble for Judah down the road.

And that’s the history behind the exchange in question. This is Isaiah 7 and verse 10:

[10] Again the LORD spoke to Ahaz,

That is, through the prophet Isaiah.

[11] “Ask a sign of the LORD your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven.” [12] But Ahaz said, “I will not ask, and I will not put the LORD to the test.”

Ahaz hides behind a mask of religious piety: “I wouldn’t dare put God to the test by asking him to protect us!”

[13] And [Isaiah] said, “Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary men, that you weary God also? [14] Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name God-with-us [Immanuel].

This is the bit quoted by Matthew. Remember, this is in response to a very imminent crisis faced by Judah at this particular moment. Isaiah wants to convince Ahaz that he does not need to buy the protection of Assyria, that God will protect Judah. And how do we know he will protect us? Because a baby is going to be born. Not some far off future baby, but the next king. “The virgin” here likely refers to one of the virgins of the court – one of the young maidens designated to bear offspring for the king. Isaiah is talking about Hezekiah, the next king of Judah. As for the name “Immanuel,” this is a typical prophetic device employed repeatedly by Isaiah, who likes to give children meaningful names (eg. his own children “A Remnant Shall Return” and “The Child of the Sign.”).

He continues:

[15] “By the time he has learned to reject bad and choose good, people will be feeding on curds and honey. [16] For before the boy knows how to refuse the bad and choose the good, the land whose two kings you dread will be deserted. [17] The LORD will bring upon you and upon your people and upon your father’s house such days as have not come since the day that Ephraim [that is, Israel] departed from Judah.”

“Before this kid can tie his shoelaces,” the prophet says, “the people will be feasting on the spoils of the land again.” By the time this kid grows up, your enemies will be defeated and God will restore our fortunes. Down to verse 20:

[20] In that day the Lord will shave with a razor that is hired beyond the River—with the king of Assyria—the head and the hair of the feet, and it will sweep away the beard also.

This is weird language, but basically Isaiah says that God is already planning to use Assyria’s treachery to wipe out Judah’s enemies, and Ahaz need only wait patiently and keep the faith. The remarkable thing about this entire prophecy is that it ALL CAME TO PASS. Hezekiah was born, he wasn’t cowardly like Ahaz, and in his lifetime Assyria destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel. Because he was faithful, says 2 Kings 18, King Sennacherib and the armies of Assyria were not able to defeat Judah, and were themselves defeated at the hands of Babylon.

Now let’s get something straight before we go any further: We’ll examine Isaiah in detail eventually on BOOK, and his writing is chock full of messianic prophecy, claims and expectations about a future king who would one day deliver all of Israel and usher in “God’s new age.” Chapters 9 and 53 are famous examples. However, in light of what we’ve just read, I don’t think we can call Isaiah 7 an explicitly “messianic” passage. It’s a word from a prophet about an urgent crisis, one that was fulfilled within its own time.

So now what do we do with Matthew? Is he a crackpot? A liar? is he twisting Hebrew scripture for his own agenda? I don’t think so. I think he’s smart. I think he knows exactly what’s going on in the Isaiah passage, and I think WE’RE the ones who’ve been missing the forest for the trees (or rather, for that one tree).

Remember earlier I said that Matthew’s gospel is all and only about Jesus being the messiah. It’s an argument. We’ll go into much more detail about what exactly a messiah is and isn’t in later shows, but for now here’s the thing: we (meaning, Christians and modern Westerners) have defined “messiah” backwards from Jesus, so we think it means one who is born miraculously of a virgin and who dies on a cross. But, working forward from the Hebrew Scriptures, we see that “messiah” meant neither of those things. “Messiah” meant “the coming king who will usher in God’s new age and save Israel and thus the world.”

If this is Matthew’s starting point, then what he’s doing with Isaiah becomes easier to decipher. “Virgin” is his entry point into the prophecy, but I don’t think it’s the sum of his argument. I think Matthew is saying this: As in the days of Isaiah, Judah lives in the shadow of great evil, from Rome and from within, and there’s a new king in the belly of a virgin who faces a choice – be a coward like Ahaz and get in bed with the bad guys, or be like Hezekiah and trust God to rescue us and deal with our so-called enemies. Says Matthew, not only will Jesus take the righteous path, he will be the true “Immanuel,” the true king who brings about God’s ultimate purposes.

Matthew DOES insist that Jesus was born of a virgin who had miraculously conceived. That’s not in question. This is really an issue about the fulfillment of prophecy. And I think that allowing the Isaiah passage its full, original context takes us deeper into Matthew’s overall agenda than we might otherwise have wandered. I understand why Christians are resistant to this line of thinking. It’s much easier to deal with Isaiah as a sound bite and a proof text than as a living, breathing text with its own context and agenda. But given the choice I’d always rather dig deeper and let the text breathe than dash through it with my fingers in my ears.

OK, let’s put that can of worms back on the shelf and look at just a couple more items. These are not nearly as provocative, just some nativity-related factoids. I have to give credit on this first one to my seminary professor and mentor R. Bryan Widbin, who first presented it to me. We all know this familiar plot point from the nativity story (from Luke chapter 2):

And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

The image is ubiquitous: Mary and Joseph, weary from the long journey to Bethlehem and desperately in need of a place to deliver their baby, knock on the innkeeper’s door only to be told there’s no vacancy, and they are forced to stay out in back with the animals in the stable. That always struck me as a little strange, that a crowning woman would be denied a warm place to deliver her baby. Well, our interpretation of a verse may, in THIS CASE, boil down to a single word.

The Greek word kataluma, traditionally translated “inn” or “lodging place,” is actually a much more specific word, and is better translated “upper room.” This is the same word which describes the dining room where Jesus takes his disciples for a final Passover meal in Luke Chapter 22. This isn’t a public place to rent a room, it’s a room in a family home. A room for special meals and visiting guests.

Mary and Joseph are said to be visiting Joseph’s hometown of Bethlehem during a Roman census, and scholarship suggests that it was also the time of sukkot, the feast of tabernacles. This means that all of Joseph’s family would have been coming home for the holiday and government mandated headcount, and it makes sense that the kataluma would have been full of aunts and uncles who got there first. But surely their own kin wouldn’t have kicked them out into the cold to have their baby! So what’s up with the manger? Turns out, this word also has a more nuanced connotation.

A “manger” in this setting would likely have been a hewn stone trough INSIDE the house, where the “special” sacrificial animals were kept. Beasts of burden and flocks would have been tied up and penned outdoors, but spotless, consecrated animals set apart for sacrifice were kept close to the family. If this is correct, Mary and Joseph weren’t left out in the cold, they were actually invited into the first floor dwelling where the nuclear family lived with their special animals. And, of course, the placement of the newborn Jesus among these critters carries a certain theological weight…

One last topic. Another standard issue Christmas trope is the visit of the “wise men” from foreign lands. This account only appears in Matthew’s gospel, immediately following his short nativity text. Here it is from Matthew 2:

[2:1] Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, [2] saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” [3] When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him; [4] and assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. [5] They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet:

[6] “‘And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for from you shall come a ruler
who will shepherd my people Israel.’”

[7] Then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared. [8] And he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word, that I too may come and worship him.” [9] After listening to the king, they went on their way. And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was. [10] When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. [11] And going into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. [12] And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.
(Matthew 2:1-12 ESV)

This story is so familiar that we have lost sight of how completely WEIRD it is! The meshiach, promised of old is said to be born on Judean soil, but instead of throngs of Israelites coming to his crib to bow down and welcome him, he is visited by three pagan astronomers. The “wise men from the East” are not only foreigners from outside the covenant, they are – according to the covenant – practitioners of wickedness, reading the stars as they do. In this story, they are portrayed as the righteous ones, while Herod the king and the priests and scribes are plotting and scheming against the child.

I don’t have any real insight or a surprising revelation about this story. All we need to do is look at it and think about it to see what Matthew is doing. He is making his case against the current Judean administration, the Roman puppet-king Herod and the corrupt religious establishment, and saying something radical about the life of Jesus: If Israel won’t recognize him, says Matthew, pagan astronomers will get the job done. This is a story of sharp condemnation on the one hand, and subversive inclusivity on the other. Like Rahab and Ruth, another instance of the “righteous pagan” who swoops in to get the job done when Israel fails. We’ll see a whole lot more of this type of thing when we take a complete look at Matthew’s scroll later on.

And that’s our Christmas special, friends. I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks so much for listening to BOOK in 2012, and hope you’ll continue to join me in 2013. We have a lot more text to read, and a lot more to discover about history, literature, and the world and stuff.

Merry Christmas, Belated Happy Hanukkah, and Happy New Year to you all.

This has been BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody. Find more at book.joshway.com. See you soon, pals!

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Tags: bible, christmas, holiday, isaiah, kataluma, magi, nativity, virgin birth, wise men

December 16, 2012 0

Episode 19 – Song of Songs

By JoshWay in Blog, Podcast

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

[TRANSCRIPT:]

Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex. Now that I have your attention, BOOK.

[intro music]

Hello, and welcome to BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody. I’m Josh Way. Those unfamiliar with the bible might be surprised to learn that there is an entire book in it about sex. Perhaps even more surprising is that this book is not a collection of prudish warnings about the dangers of sex, nor a screed against adultery, nor an ode to the wonders of procreation. It’s a collection of erotic poetry about two young lovers enjoying each other. It’s called Shir Hashirim in Hebrew, “The Song of Songs.”

Historically Song of Songs is another hot potato. It bears the inscription “shir hashirim asher leshlomo,” “The Song of Songs which is of Solomon.” And as with those Psalms which are “of David,” we are left to wonder what exactly it means. Did Solomon write it? Traditional interpretation says yes. Case closed. Was it written FOR Solomon, or perhaps ABOUT Solomon? Scholarship leans more in this direction.

The Semitic literary tradition is full of books written in the names of famous figures. It is neither controversial nor a stretch to suggest that Solomon is being invoked here by a later author cashing in on his reputation as an international playboy. Solomon is only mentioned a couple of times in the text, and not in the most flattering light. There is also the issue of the actual Hebrew text, which appears to be from an era much later than Solomon’s (somewhere around 900 BCE). Conclusion: authorship unknown.

Because, like Job and Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs is not a traditional historical or biographical narrative, we do best not to force any particular context onto it. It is an ancient Israelite poem, or perhaps a short drama, and it is about erotic love. In form it looks very much like Egyptian love poetry, which is fascinating given Solomon’s betrothal to a daughter of Pharaoh, but there we go with the authorship debate again.

The short book, divided in modern bibles into eight chapters, is a back-and-forth flirtation and profession of erotic intent between a young woman and a young man with occasional references to the “girls of Jerusalem.” Here are the opening exchanges. The young woman says:

O give me the kisses of your mouth,
For your love is more delightful than wine.
Your ointment yields a sweet fragrance,
Your name is like the finest oil -
Therefore virgins love you.
Draw me after you, let’s run!
The king has brought me to his chambers.
(1:1-4)

The reference here to the young man as “king” is most likely a playful tease. When the real king is mentioned in a couple chapters, we’ll see that he is a distant figure. The young man responds:

I compare you, my love,
To a mare from Pharaoh’s chariots:
Your cheeks are lovely with ornaments,
Your neck with strings of jewels.
(1:9-10)

She answers:

While my king was on his couch,
My perfume gave forth its fragrance.
My beloved is to me a bag of myrrh
Lodged between my breasts.
My beloved is to me a spray of henna blossoms
From the vineyards of En-gedi.
(1:12-14)

The lovers exchange compliments and confess their attraction for each other, and things begin to heat up in chapter two, when she says this:

His left hand was under my head,
His right arm embraced me.
I adjure you, O girls of Jerusalem,
By gazelles or by the does of the field,
Do not wake or rouse
Love until it pleases!
(2:6-7)

After what sounds like a rather intimate encounter, the tone of the poem shifts:

Hark! My beloved! Here he comes,
Leaping over mountains,
Bounding over hills.
My beloved is like a gazelle.
Or like a young stag.
There he stands behind our wall,
Gazing through the window,
Peering through the lattice.
(2:8-9)

Suddenly the lovers are not together, but she is anticipating his swift approach. By chapter three, however, he is off the scene, and she is left to pine for her beloved:

Upon my couch at night I sought the one I love –
I sought, but found him not.
“I must rise and roam the town,
Through the streets and through the squares;
I must seek the one I love.”
I sought but found him not.
(3:1-2)

The lovers are reunited, and once again the young woman implores the girls of Jerusalem, “Do not wake or rouse Love until it pleases!” Then we come to the appearance of King Solomon:

There goes Solomon’s couch,
Encircled by sixty warriors
Of the warriors of Israel,
All of them trained in warfare,
Skilled in battle,
Each with sword on thigh
Because of terror by night.
King Solomon made himself a carriage
Of wood from Lebanon.
He made its posts of silver,
Its back of gold,
Its seat of purple wool.
Within, it was decked with love
By the girls of Jerusalem.
O girls of Zion, go forth
And gaze upon King Solomon
Wearing the crown that his mother
Gave him on his wedding day,
On his day of bliss.
(3:7-11)

There’s a heading in my Christian Bible over this section that says “King Solomon arrives for his wedding.” That’s part of an interpretive scheme we’ll discuss more later, but basically it presumes that Solomon himself is the young man in the poem and is now seen arriving at his wedding. But that’s not the explicit tone of the passage, and there’s another way to read this. As the young woman is enthralled in passion with her lover, she tells the silly “girls of Jerusalem” to go ahead and gawk at the king with all of his pomp and riches, while she will remain in the arms of her beloved. In this there are echoes of Qoheleth, with its message that wisdom and riches are but vanity, and the enjoyment of love is the only real pursuit.

Chapter four finds the lovers pouring out more flattery upon each other:

Your eyes are like doves! [4:1]
Your teeth are like a flock of ewes! [4:2]
Your lips are like a crimson thread! [4:3]
Your neck is like the tower of David! [4:4]
Your breasts are like two fawns, twins grazing in the lilies! [4:5]

In chapter five, the cycle of chapter two repeats: the young man leaves and she must search for him. In chapter six she finds him in his garden, which becomes a metaphor for their love. In chapter seven the young man describes how he intends to express his love for the young woman:

How fair you are, how beautiful!
O Love, with all its rapture!
Your stately form is like the palm,
Your breasts are like clusters of fruit.
I say: Let me climb the palm,
Let me take hold of its branches;
Let your breasts be like clusters of grapes,
Your breath like the fragrance of apples,
And your mouth like choicest wine.
Let it flow to my beloved as new wine
Gliding over lips and teeth.
(7:7-10)

In the final chapter, various metaphors are employed to describe the passionate love at the center of the book:

Let me be a seal upon your heart, Like the seal upon your hand.
For love is fierce as death, Passion is mighty as Sheol;
Its darts are darts of fire, A blazing flame.
(8:6)

Says the poet, love is an unstoppable force like death itself, and it deserves the same reverence.

Vast floods cannot quench love, Nor rivers drown it.
If a man offered all his wealth for love, He would be laughed to scorn.
(8:7)

Once again there are shades of Qoheleth. All the wealth (and work, and wisdom, and stature) in the world cannot begin to approach the value of this love. And here is perhaps the most interesting metaphor, at the very close of the book:

Solomon had a vineyard
In Baal-hamon.
He had to post guards in the vineyard:
A man would give for its fruit
A thousand pieces of silver.
I have my very own vineyard:
You may have the thousand, O Solomon,
And the guards of the fruit two hundred!
O you who linger in the garden,
A lover is listening;
Let me hear your voice.
“Hurry, my beloved,
Swift as a gazelle or a young stag,
To the hills of spices!”
(8:11-14)

Solomon had a vineyard so desirable that he had to post guards, and people would pay premium prices for just a taste. I have my own vineyard, says the young woman, my sexuality, and there’s no price high enough to let anyone but my lover in.

And that’s the Song of Songs. All that’s left is to examine the peculiar problem it has presented to interpreters in both the Jewish and Christian traditions. Both have struggled with its very appearance within the canon of scripture. What do we do with a book that is, on the surface, completely and exclusively about sexuality? For many, the answer was NOTHING, and attempts were made in Jewish and Christian circles to exclude Song of Songs from the canon. Defenders appeared on both sides, however, and solutions were proposed.

On the Jewish side, a renowned rabbi named Akiva ben Joseph declared in the first century C.E. that Song of Songs should not be rejected but embraced by Jews and celebrated as an extended metaphor for the love of God for his people Israel. His suggestion was taken to heart, and Song of Songs became a popular scripture reading at weddings and certain feasts.

Later, Protestant Reformer Martin Luther would make his own defense of Song of Songs, using the text’s Davidic connotations to put forth a messianic reading that turned it into a celebration of Jesus and his love for the church. This is now the default Christian interpretation of the book. Of course, this means that the text has to be read in a very specific way. Solomon MUST be the author, and the intimate interludes described in the book MUST be understood within the context of a marriage. Hence the headings in my ESV bible: “The Bride Confesses Her Love”, “Solomon Arrives For The Wedding,” and so on.

We already discussed the reasons that Solomonic authorship is doubted. As for the “wedding night” context for the poem, I have two comments: On the one hand, an Israelite love poem is very unlikely to depict sex outside of a marital situation. On the other hand, we must be honest and acknowledge that there isn’t a word in the text that suggests such a context. And even if Martin Luther had his druthers, a wedding of King Solomon is hardly the place to celebrate biblical sexual ideals.

Personally, I have no issue with the idea of Song of Songs as a metaphor for divine love, but I must insist that we first and foremost recognize what it is at face value: an exploration and celebration of human sexuality. That’s it. That’s square one. The rush to place it in some other context betrays an unhealthy squeamishness with the very idea of sex. For myself, I find it endlessly reassuring that the bible is so forthcoming and candid on topics like this.

OK, personal story time:

As a young kid I went to a private Christian school, and once a group of us got into trouble on the playground for reading Song of Songs and giggling at the “naughty” parts. A few months later, the school was ravaged by a sex scandal involving a pastor and a secretary, and I was mercifully rescued and released into the public school system. Now that I look back, the irony of the situation is not lost on me. We kids were told that we shouldn’t read Song of Songs because it was inappropriate for us, that we couldn’t grasp the sexual material in the holy way in which it was intended. Meanwhile, the sexual politics among the adults at the school was rotting it all away from the inside. Now, look, BOOK isn’t about preaching or moralizing, so I won’t get into it too deep, but suffice to say the honest take on human sexuality and commitment found in Song of Songs was exactly what all of us needed – kids and adults alike. We all needed to know that sex isn’t some dirty, shameful secret OR some holy, neutered metaphor. It’s real, and it’s not absent from the portrait of humanity sketched out by the bible. OK, this has gotten way too personal and way too preachy…

Well, that’s gonna do it for us today. Next week is Christmas, so I’ll be taking a short break to enjoy the holiday. You do the same, whatever holidays you intend to celebrate. For Jesus, it was Chanukah (in John 10:22-23).

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Tags: bible, erotic, love, poetry, sex, solomon, song of songs

December 10, 2012 0

Episode 18 – Wisdom Part 2: The Book of Job

By JoshWay in Blog, Podcast

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

[TRANSCRIPT:]

[south park clip]

The story of Job perplexes modern readers perhaps more than any other part of the bible, with the possible exception of Revelation. Where and how does this outrageous story fit into the rest of the bible, and is its message really the one most religious teachers today insist it is? If you would like some pithy, scripted answers to these and other questions about Job, you have downloaded the correct podcast. This is BOOK.

[INTRO MUSIC]

Hello, and welcome to BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody. I’m Josh Way. I was earnestly excited to get to this particular episode, until it came time to actually research and write it. Then I remembered: oh yeah, Job is a difficult book. It’s long, the subject matter is grim, the scholarship surrounding it is murky, and traditional readings tend to either whitewash it or throw it in the trash. And then there’s the whole “satan” thing. OK, here we go…

If you’re unfamiliar with Job, the South Park clip we heard at the top is actually a pretty faithful summary. A “righteous” man named Job becomes the pawn in a bet between God and “the satan,” to see how much suffering it would take to make a good man curse God. Job’s family, his herds, and his property are destroyed, and he himself is stricken with painful sores. After a lengthy ordeal and seemingly endless discussion between Job and his friends, God relents and restores the poor man’s health and property. He even gives him some new children. Happy ending, right? I guess…?

But that’s exactly how I have been taught to read Job all of my life. I have sat through many sermons and lessons about Job that go like this: “Job suffered, as we all will, but he never cursed God and so God blessed him in the end. Let us do likewise.” Not only is that conclusion deeply unsatisfying, but that reading of the story is downright suspect. Can a new family really be considered a replacement for a dead one? What about the shocking implications of God making a wager with “satan?” And is it true that Job never curses God? Was the point of the whole thing? We’ll see.

So, we’ve got some homework to do. As usual, our goal is to understand the book of Job through the lenses of HISTORY and LITERATURE. Unfortunately, in this case, neither is easy or clear cut, but here’s what we have to work with. In terms of HISTORY, Job is not tethered to any known time or place in ancient Israel. We don’t even know if Job was an Israelite. There is no genealogy nor any biographical information, no “in the time of the judges” or “during the reign of Jehoiachin…” All it says is this:

There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job, and that man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.

“The land of Uz” is all we get, and it’s not very helpful. “Uz” is not a known place in ancient Israel, though it may be a family designation (Abraham had both ancestors AND descendents named “Uz”). Unlike all the historical narratives in the Hebrew Bible, we have no specific time, no specific place. And scholars can’t even agree on the general timeframe for the book’s writing. The text of Job, which borrows words from other ancient languages like Akkadian, was once thought to be the oldest in the bible. But today a growing consensus says that Job was actually written very late in Israel’s national history. At the end of the day, we just don’t have very much to go on.

Traditional religious readings haven’t considered this a problem, since it’s enough for most people that Job is a character in a bible book. But the lack of historical or covenantal context is a big deal for us as we struggle to unlock the text. The biggest ramification of this, in light of the book’s problematic content, is that we are not necessarily obligated to read this as a “literal” or “historical” text. Or – to put it another way – we are not obligated to fit Job into the covenantal history of Israel. This story about “a man” could very well be a parable or a drama of some kind, an exercise in wisdom. And now we’re moving into our second sandbox, that of LITERATURE.

The lack of historical nuance is enough to raise questions, but the issue of genre really gets us moving in the right direction. The problem for modern readers of Job is that we’re distracted and placated by the short, somewhat trite little narrative bits at the beginning and end of the scroll, but we don’t so much care for the many long chapters of discourse which comprise the bulk of it. And this isn’t simple conversational dialog, it is verse. Job is a long poetic debate framed by a simplistic narrative which sets the parameters for the discussion. This is an ancient genre which is unfamiliar to us: a debate drama, in which characters who represent different philosophical points of view come together to meet minds on a certain topic. And in Job, the central question has to do with suffering and the character of God.

Here’s the big idea: Job is one of the few biblical explorations of something called THEODICY. Theodicy is the question of justifying God and his character or actions. You’d expect that there would be much more of this in the bible, but it’s actually rather rare. And in fact, we’ll see that Job isn’t exactly a traditional theodicy, for reasons we’ll explore. Job takes the problem of human suffering – exemplified by the central character – and subjects it to the full scrutiny of Israel’s wisdom. The conclusions are unexpected and disconcerting, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

We can’t talk about the Job debate without properly setting the stage, and we can’t do that without talking about “the satan.” Here’s what the scroll says, in chapter 1 and verse 6:

[6] Now there was a day when the sons of the elohim came to present themselves before YHWH, and the satan also came among them. [7] YHWH said to the satan, “From where have you come?” The satan answered YHWH and said, “I have been roaming all over the earth.” [8] And YHWH said to the satan, “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?” [9] Then the satan answered YHWH and said, “Does Job fear God for no reason? [10] Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. [11] But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.” [12] And YHWH said to the satan, “Behold, all that he has is in your hand. Only against him do not stretch out your hand.” So the satan went out from the presence of YHWH.

I’ve been very careful in the translation of the names and titles in this passage to help us sort it all out. One day the “sons of the elohim” came before YHWH, Israel’s God. “Elohim” you may recall is a flexible word in Hebrew which can sometimes refer to God himself, sometimes to a host of “gods,” or – as in this case – to the “council of God,” the divine beings which serve YHWH and accomplish the work of heaven, whatever it may be. Presumably, the first readers of this text would have understood this idea more clearly, whether it was a mythological trope or a literal interpretation (or revelation!) of what was actually going on in heaven. This particular language is not used frequently in the bible, so we are left somewhat in the dark. The sons of the elohim are accompanied by “the satan,” about whom we must now say a few words.

When modern readers hear the word “satan,” they immediately think of something very specific: the Devil, the Serpent, Pitch, Old Gooseberry, the personal enemy of God. But the reality is that the concept of hasatan, “the accuser” in Hebrew, has undergone an evolution through time, and even from one end of the bible to the other. We haven’t talked about the satan on BOOK to this point, simply because it hasn’t been mentioned in the text (except for one little bit we passed over in Chronicles).

Here in Job, hasatan is one of the elohim, a member of God’s council, who has been “roaming the earth.” He is not God’s equal and opposite adversary, not the master of hell and the underworld. He’s just a heavenly staff member, the “accuser,” whose job is apparently to dole out trouble on the earth. In that capacity he has an audience with God himself and they have a chat. Indeed, they make a wager, and Job’s troubles begin. A host of troubles are visited upon Job. Invaders destroy his herds and kill his servants, fire destroys his flocks, and all of his ten children are killed when the house they are feasting in collapses. This is his reaction:

[20] Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. [21] And he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD has given, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.”
[22] In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong.

YHWH announces that he has won the bet, but hasatan insists that Job will break if the next tragedy befalls his own body. God agrees, as long as the man is not killed. Job is stricken with painful sores and sits in misery, scratching his boils with a piece of broken pottery. His wife offers him some helpful advice:

[2:9] Then his wife said to him, “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die!” [10] But he said to her, “Spoken like a shameless woman! Shall we receive good from God, and not receive the bad?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

Next (and this is where that South Park clip and most religious lessons about Job bail out), three of Job’s friends arrive to give him comfort, as was the custom in the ancient world. The writing style changes and the rest of the long book consists of flowery statements and increasingly flowery rebuttals. This is the part we are tempted to skip over, but which is surely the real meat and potatoes of the book. Job kicks things off with this cheery little plea:

[3:11] “Why did I not die at birth,
come out from the womb and expire?
[12] Why did the knees receive me?
Or why the breasts, that I should nurse?
[13] For then I would have lain down and been quiet;
I would have slept; then I would have been at rest,
[14] with kings and counselors of the earth
who rebuilt ruins for themselves,
[15] or with princes who had gold,
who filled their houses with silver.
[16] Or why was I not as a hidden stillborn child,
as infants who never see the light?
[17] There the wicked cease from troubling,
and there the weary are at rest.
[18] There the prisoners are at ease together;
they hear not the voice of the taskmaster.
[19] The small and the great are there,
and the slave is free from his master.

From here the debate begins, and I will do my best to summarize each of the friends’ statements and Job’s responses with brief quotes. The first to lecture Job is Eliphaz the Temanite, who says (in chapters 4 and 5):

Remember: who that was innocent has ever perished? [4:7]
As for me, I would seek God! [5:8]

This is basically an appeal to old-school Israelite wisdom. The good prosper, and the wicked perish. If you’re innocent, you have nothing to worry about! If you’re suffering, it must be because of some wickedness in your life. Job isn’t exactly moved. From chapters 6 and 7:

The arrows of the Almighty are in me; my spirit drinks their poison. [6:4]
He who withholds kindness from a friend forsakes the fear of the Almighty. [6:14]
I loathe my life. I would not live forever. [7:16]

Job rejects the implicit premise of Elihaz’ statement, that Job must be personally responsible for his suffering per the machinations of wisdom. His implied premise is that he is suffering innocently. Next up, in chapter 8, is Bildad, who has this to say:

If you are pure and upright, surely he will rouse himself for you. [8:6]
God will not reject a blameless man. [8:20]

Bildad’s gist is the same as Eliphaz, but he has a helpful suggestion: try being more righteous! If you’re really really good, God will have no choice but to bless you! Once again, Job’s not buying it, and responds in chapters 9 and 10:

How can a man be in the right before God? [9:2]
He destroys both the blameless and the wicked [9:22]
Are not my days few? Then cease, and leave me alone! [10:20]

Job is basically taking a page out of Qoheleth, and reaching the same conclusion as that book: The so-called righteous AND the wicked are both destined for the grave, so show me the actual advantage of being righteous! Zophar is up next, in chapter 11:

Know then that God exacts of you less than your guilt deserves. [11:6]
If iniquity is in your hand, put it far away. [11:14]

Zophar sounds like a modern day Protestant Christian. He says, “you think your suffering is bad? It’s not half as bad as what you deserve because your heart is so black and sinful. Repent and get right with God!” Job fires back:

I am not inferior to you! [12:3]
The hand of the LORD has done this! [12:9]
You whitewash with lies; worthless physicians, all of you! [13:4]
If a man dies, shall he live again? [14:14]

“How dare you!,” says Job. “You’re supposed to be comforting me, not sitting in judgment!” Job reiterates that he is innocent, that God did this to him, and muses that life is short and pointless. Now that everyone’s had a turn to speak, we’ll speed up the rest of our summary with one-line exchanges:

ELIPHAZ: You are neglecting the fear of God. [15:4] Your own mouth condemns you! [15:6]

JOB: Miserable comforters, all of you! [16:2] [God] has torn me in his wrath and hated me. [16:9] Where then is my hope? [17:15]

BILDAD: Why are we stupid in your sight? [18:3] The light of the wicked will be put out. [18:5]

JOB: How long will you torment me? [19:2] I call for help but there is no justice. [19:7] I know that my Redeemer lives! [19:25]

ZOPHAR: The joy of the godless is but for a moment. [20:5] This is the wicked man’s portion from God. [20:29]

JOB: Why do the wicked live… and grow mighty in power? [21:7]

ELIPHAZ: Can a man be profitable to God? [22:2] Is not your evil abundant? [22:5] Agree with God and be at peace! [22:21]

JOB: My complaint is bitter. [23:2] I go forward but he is not there! [23:9]

BILDAD: Dominion and fear are God’s. [25:2] How can he who is born of woman be pure? [25:4]

JOB: I hold fast to my righteousness and will not let it go. [27:6] But where shall wisdom be found? [28:12] It is hidden from all the living. [28:21] I am a brother to jackals. [30:22] If I have walked with falsehood… let me be weighed in a just balance. [31:5] Oh that I had one to hear me! [31:35]

The words of Job are ended. [31:40]

Thus ends Job’s debate with his friends, and ultimately Job sticks to his guns: he is righteous, innocent but made to suffer, and it is up to God to recognize and reward his righteousness. Before the shocking events that conclude the book can commence, another dude named Elihu shows up to berate Job and the three friends. He is mad at Job because “he justified himself and not God,” and he is mad at the friends because “they had found no answer.” He goes on for six whole chapters saying things like:

I will declare my opinion…[32:17] You say “I am pure” [33:9] In this you are not right… God is greater than man! [33:12] Far be it from God that he should do wickedness. [34:10] The Almighty will not pervert justice. [34:12] Job speaks without knowledge. [34:35] He adds rebellion to his sin! [34:37]

If you are righteous, what did you give to [God]? [35:7] Surely God does not hear an empty cry. [35:13] Behold, God is mighty and does not despise anyone. [36:5] But you are full of judgment on the wicked! [36:17]

Elihu takes everyone to task, not least Job for the arrogance of judging himself righteous and others wicked. He makes a solid point, and yet at this point he just seems like a loudmouth, wagging his finger and drawing out an already interminable debate. If only there was someone more authoritative who could chime in, someone relevant to the discussion who could provide some insight… Oh, right – how about God himself? Chapter 38:

[38:1] Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind and said:
[2] “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
[3] Dress for action like a man;
I will question you, and you make it known to me.
[4] “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
[5] Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
[6] On what were its bases sunk,
or who laid its cornerstone,
[7] when the morning stars sang together
and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
…
[16] Have you entered into the springs of the sea,
or walked in the recesses of the deep?
[17] Have the gates of death been revealed to you,
or have you seen the gates of deep darkness?
[18] Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth?
Declare, if you know all this.”

God’s perspective is, “Did you ever create a walrus? No? Then why do you even bother sitting around and debating my ways?!” Job’s response is a solid little nugget of wisdom:

[40:3] Then Job answered the LORD and said:
[4] “Behold, I am of small account; what shall I answer you?
I put my hand over my mouth.
[5] I have spoken once, and I will not answer;
twice, but I will proceed no further.”

God issues a final challenge to Job:

I will question you. [40:7] Will you condemn me that you might be in the right? [40:8] Can you draw out Leviathan with a fish hook? [41:1] Who has first given to me that I should repay him? [41:11]

And Job falls down in repentance:

You can do all things and no purpose of yours can be thwarted! [42:2] I have uttered what I did not understand! [42:3] Now my eye sees you and I repent in dust and ashes. [42:5-6]

In the end, only God comes out on top. Job’s friends were wrong for judging him and utterly failing to comfort him, and Job was wrong to insist that he was righteous and innocent. The implications of the whole thing are actually kind of staggering, but first we need to wrap up the narrative. The book of Job ends with two small narrative bits: 1) God rebukes Job’s friends and tells them to go make atonement sacrifices for having been such numbskulls, and 2) God “restored the fortunes of Job,” giving him new crops, new herds, new servants, and great wealth. “Twice what he had before.” Job even gets new offspring, ten children to replace those lost. THE END.

If we insist on reading Job as a simple, literal, narrative story, then the brief happy ending here is the climax and it’s up to you what lesson, if any, you take away from it. But if we recognize the unique style and format, and the fact that – as with most Hebrew writing – it’s not the ending but what comes in the middle that matters most, then we begin to appreciate what Job really is and what it’s really saying.

Theodicy is all about putting God on trial to see whether or not he meets the standard, whether or not he is just. Job sets out to conduct such a trial, with human suffering as the damning exhibit A. In the end, however, the book turns the tables, and wisdom, religion, and theodicy itself are in the dock. Job questions the old easy answers about righteous and wicked, good and bad, innocent and guilty, and then questions its own questions. In the end, God chastises everyone involved for bringing it all up in the first place! That’s why I say this isn’t exactly a theodicy, as the question of God’s justness is never answered.

As a piece of wisdom literature, Job is more innovative even than Qoheleth. Qoheleth looked at Proverbs and called its easy answers and platitudes into question. Job goes a step further and calls the questioning into question. This is one of the amazing things about the bible that is sadly overlooked: that it almost constantly re-examines and scrutinizes itself, asking the big questions over and over and coming up with new answers (or at least poking holes in the old ones). So many people have read Job as a one-dimensional promise that good people will be rewarded that the real message – a prickly and challenging one – is lost.

In the coming weeks we’ll look at the literature that came out of Israel’s experience in exile in Babylon and Persia. The exile forced a violent re-evaluation of everything Israelite, and the literature that was born out of that period is extraordinary. I hope you’ll continue to join me.

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Tags: job, south park, suffering, theodicy, wisdom

December 2, 2012 0

Episode 17 – Wisdom Part 1: King Solomon’s Mind (Proverbs & Qoheleth)

By JoshWay in Blog, Podcast

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[TRANSCRIPT:]

Hey, kids! Put on your thinkin’ beanie and stroke your long grey beard, it’s ancient wisdom day here on BOOK!

[INTRO MUSIC]

Hello, and welcome to BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody. I’m Josh Way. We’re taking a break from the historical narrative of the bible to look at some of the specialized genres in the Hebrew literary canon. Last time we looked at the psalms, and we now turn our puzzled gaze unto the wisdom literature. This week we’ll look at the writings associated with Israel’s King Solomon, and next time we’ll talk about Job, one of the juiciest and most-oft-mangled books in the bible. Join us, won’t me?

The wisdom tradition of Israel, like most of its national attributes, was similar to and yet distinct from wisdom traditions throughout the ancient world. And within Israel’s unique expression of wisdom, we observe an intriguing evolution. As Israel’s religion, geography, and sociology stretched and changed through prosperity, war, famine, and exile, so too the literature changed and “grew up.” Our brief look at the Solomon writings will testify to this. Our first job is to define wisdom in the ancient sense, then examine the specific Israelite notion more closely, and, of course, look at the literature.

Today “wisdom” denotes a quality or state of mind. Wisdom isn’t something you can pin down or catalog, it’s something one possesses or does not possess. It’s discernment, the ability to instinctively make sound judgments. While this definition is most certainly related to the ancient one, there’s another dimension to ancient wisdom we have to acknowledge. Wisdom, in the near eastern world of the bible, was a special and practical KNOWLEDGE – a KNOWLEDGE of how the universe works. We’ll see how this plays out in the literature in a moment, but by way of introduction this is the key: the ancient “wise one” was (believed to be) gifted with special knowledge that he or she would then teach to others, usually children.

In Israel, there were three major “offices” which defined leadership: priest, king, and prophet. Priests managed Israel’s relationship with her God, kings were supposed to unite and inspire Israel, and prophets spoke urgent words of truth at times of crisis. A fourth office, sometimes called “sage,” represents the influence of wisdom. But the relationships between these offices are a bit convoluted. It’s something like this: A priest can be a prophet (like Samuel), but a prophet wouldn’t be king. Kings get into trouble for acting as priests (like Saul), but any of these could be a sage. There were professional teachers and sages, and then there were those in other positions who were gifted with wisdom. The most famous of these is the presumed author of today’s material, King Solomon.

The first scroll of Kings says this about Solomon in chapter 4 verse 29:

[29] And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding beyond measure, with understanding as vast as the sands on the seashore. [30] Solomon’s wisdom surpassed the wisdom of all the Kedomites and all the wisdom of the Egyptians. [31] He was the wisest of all men, wiser than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, Calcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol, and his fame was in all the surrounding nations. [32] He composed 3,000 proverbs, and his songs numbered 1,005.

The bible scroll called simply “Proverbs” is a collection of some portion of Solomon’s 3,000 proverbs, though it appears to have been compiled much later during the reforms of King Hezekiah, and it contains collected sayings from other sages as well. Scholarship always calls biblical authorship into question for one reason or another, but in this case it is reasonable to think that Solomon (or perhaps a school or fanclub he established) is responsible for these writings, which make up the bulk of the scroll. The first few verses present the proverbs and state their purpose:

1 The proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel:
2 For learning wisdom and discipline; For understanding words of insight;
3 For acquiring the discipline for success, Righteousness, justice, and equity;
4 For endowing the simple with shrewdness, The young with knowledge and foresight.
5 The wise man, hearing them, will gain more wisdom; The discerning man will learn to be adroit;
6 For understanding proverb and epigram, The words of the wise and their riddles.
7 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; Fools despise wisdom and discipline.

The purpose of wisdom is made explicit at the start: “for acquiring the discipline for success.” The proposal is straightforward: this material is the truth, and if you align yourself with the truth you will be successful. The proverbs aren’t meant to inspire or encourage better behavior, they are meant to tell you how to live. And while the wisdom tradition overall is more general and universal than, say, the law or the psalms, we can see from verse 7 that the context here is still covenant Israel. “Fear YHWH” isn’t a generic call to believe in God, it’s a specific instruction to keep the law of the covenant.

And here is the key which unlocks the Proverbs. Whereas today our tendency would be to read these saying as suggestions or ideals, they were intended as axioms, as immutable truths from God’s own mind. This becomes clear in the text itself, in chapter 3:

[3:19] The LORD by wisdom founded the earth;
by understanding he established the heavens;
[20] by his knowledge the deeps broke open,
and the clouds drop down the dew.
[21] My son, do not lose sight of these—
keep sound wisdom and discretion,
[22] and they will be life for your soul
and adornment for your neck.
[23] Then you will walk on your way securely,
and your foot will not stumble.

The wisdom of the proverbs, says the author of Proverbs, is YHWH’s own wisdom, the wisdom he used to shape and order the universe. Therefore, if you listen to this wisdom, and live accordingly, you are guaranteed success – “they will be your life and your soul.” They aren’t just good ideas, they’re the capital-tee Truth. To the early Israelite sage, the wisdom sayings are like gravity or photosynthesis – they are natural laws, descriptions of how the world works. That’s how we have to read this material. Whether or not it pans out that way in “real life” is another issue we’ll explore as we proceed.

The first section of proverbs consists of several poems about the nature and importance of wisdom before the actual proverbs begin in (what we call) chapter ten. Most of the poems are framed as appeals from a father to a son, and a recurring image is that of a woman, or rather two women, embodiments of wisdom and folly. This is from chapter 8:

[8:1] Does not Lady Wisdom call?
Does not understanding raise her voice?
[2] On the heights beside the way,
at the crossroads she takes her stand;
[3] beside the gates in front of the town,
at the entrance of the portals she cries aloud:
[4] “To you, O men, I call,
and my cry is to the children of man.
[5] O simple ones, learn prudence;
O fools, learn sense.
[6] Hear, for I will speak noble things,
and from my lips will come what is right,
[7] for my mouth will utter truth;
wickedness is an abomination to my lips.
[8] All the words of my mouth are righteous;
there is nothing twisted or crooked in them.
[9] They are all straight to him who understands,
and right to those who find knowledge.
[10] Take my instruction instead of silver,
and knowledge rather than choice gold,
[11] for wisdom is better than jewels,
and all that you may desire cannot compare with her.”

…and this is from chapter 9:

[13] The Woman Folly is loud;
she is seductive and knows nothing.
[14] She sits at the door of her house;
she takes a seat on the highest places of the town,
[15] calling to those who pass by,
who are going straight on their way,
[16] “Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!”
And to him who lacks sense she says,
[17] “Stolen water is sweet,
and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.”
[18] But he does not know that the dead are there,
that her guests are in the depths of the grave.

This kind of didactic, either/or instruction is the bread and butter of wisdom teaching, and it becomes downright formulaic in the proverbs themselves. Solomon’s proverbs take the form of simple couplets, presenting an A/B idea that sums up a “wisdom law.” Here are several examples. (See the accompanying blog post for the bible references.)

[10:1] A wise son makes a glad father,
but a foolish son is a sorrow to his mother.
[2] Treasures gained by wickedness do not profit,
but righteousness delivers from death.
[3] The LORD does not let the righteous go hungry,
but he thwarts the craving of the wicked.
[4] A slack hand causes poverty,
but the hand of the diligent makes rich.

[14] The wise lay up knowledge,
but the mouth of a fool brings ruin near.
[15] A rich man’s wealth is his strong city;
the poverty of the poor is their ruin.
[16] The wage of the righteous leads to life,
the gain of the wicked to sin.

[11:9] With his mouth the godless man would destroy his neighbor,
but by knowledge the righteous are delivered.
[10] When it goes well with the righteous, the city rejoices,
and when the wicked perish there are shouts of gladness.
[11] By the blessing of the upright a city is exalted,
but by the mouth of the wicked it is overthrown.

[12:21] No ill befalls the righteous,
but the wicked are filled with trouble.
[22] Lying lips are an abomination to the LORD,
but those who act faithfully are his delight.

[22:4] The reward for humility and fear of the LORD
is riches and honor and life.
[5] Thorns and snares are in the way of the crooked;
whoever guards his soul will keep far from them.
[6] Train up a child in the way he should go;
even when he is old he will not depart from it.

[11] He who loves purity of heart,
and whose speech is gracious, will have the king as his friend.
[12] The eyes of the LORD keep watch over knowledge,
but he overthrows the words of the traitor.
[13] The sluggard says, “There is a lion outside!
I shall be killed in the streets!”

That last one about the sluggard is unique and kind of hilarious. Instead of two contrasting ideas, it’s just a singular joke making fun of a man who refuses to get a job because, “hey, there might be a lion outside!” Read properly, the bible can be quite funny. We’ve picked out a few funny bits along the way, but before too long we’ll look at an entire book that I believe is intended as a dark comedy. You probably won’t be able to guess which one…

If Solomon’s proverbs were meant to be suggestions, little nudges in the right direction, they wouldn’t be controversial at all. The righteous ought to prosper, and the vain and foolish ought to suffer the consequences of their folly. But that’s not what Proverbs says. It says “the righteous WILL and MUST prosper, because that’s how the universe has been structured. The wicked WILL and MUST fail, because that’s how the world works. In so-called “real life,” that’s a bit more difficult to swallow. Those who live humble and righteous lives often suffer, and those who lie and cheat and oppress often prosper. The Proverbs seem from this perspective to be at best naive, and at worst demonstrably untrue.

Now, a common religious answer to that objection is that the bible is talking about eternity, where righteousness and wickedness are fully repaid and justice done. But the paradigm of Proverbs is life in Israel, not the afterlife. And, before we dismiss or shoot down the objection, we ought to acknowledge the fact that the bible itself gives voice to the very same protest. And so, we move on to Qoheleth.

Called “Ecclesiastes” in English (by way of Greek), Qoheleth is the name of the book’s author, or more likely his or her title, probably “Teacher.” The scroll’s inscription reads:

[1:1] The words of Qoheleth, son of David, king in Jerusalem.

This has led to the traditional belief that Solomon himself was the Qoheleth in question. And, though “son of David” is a vague designation indicating any king from the tribe of Judah, it’s hard to think of another king whose wisdom and life experience would qualify him to write such a text. Whether it was written by Solomon himself or by some other royal Israelite, the book reflects a very different view on wisdom. Put these excerpts from just the first chapter in your philosophical pipe and smoke them:

[2] Utter futility, says Qoheleth,
Utter futility! All is futile!
[3] What real value is there for a man in that
at which he toils under the sun?
…
[9] What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.
[10] Is there a thing of which it is said,
“See, this is new”?
It has been already
in the ages before us.
[11] There is no remembrance of former things,
nor will there be any remembrance
of later things yet to be
among those who come after.

[12] I Qoheleth have been king over Israel in Jerusalem. [13] And I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. [14] I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is futility and a chasing after wind.
[15] What is crooked cannot be made straight,
and what is lacking cannot be counted.
[16] I said in my heart, “I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me, and my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.” [17] And I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a chasing after wind.
[18] For in much wisdom is much frustration,
and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.

What we have in Qoheleth – basically in its own words – is a world-weary sort of anti-wisdom, a refutation of the cut-and-dry axioms of the proverbs. Qoheleth says, “I tried that, I pursued wisdom, and – like everything else in real life – it turned out to be a sham.” The book decries many vain pursuits such as wealth, hard work, and love, but the most surprising critique is the one reserved for wisdom itself. This is from chapter 2:

[12] So I turned to consider wisdom and madness and folly. For what can the man do who comes after the king? Only what has already been done. [13] Then I saw that there is more gain in wisdom than in folly, as there is more gain in light than in darkness. [14] The wise person has his eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. And yet I perceived that the same fate awaits them both. [15] Then I said in my heart, “What happens to the fool will also happen to me. To what advantage, then, have I been so very wise?” And I said in my heart that this also is futility. [16] For of the wise as of the fool there is no enduring remembrance, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. How the wise dies just like the fool! [17] So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is futility and a chasing after wind.

Qoheleth looks back on a life of great wisdom and success, and concludes that wisdom itself is a kind of folly. At this point, we wish we knew a little more about the Qoheleth. Is this an older, wiser Solomon, world-weary and ashamed after his descent into apostasy and moral failure? Or is this a later king of Israel, reflecting on the sad state of the nation and the covenant? Whatever the case, the scroll is a refreshing dose of humanity and candor after the inspiring but often frustrating proverbs. One of the most famous passages from Qoheleth is this bit about seasons and the balance of life experience from chapter 3:

[3:1] For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
[2] a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
[3] a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
[4] a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
[5] a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
[6] a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
[7] a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
[8] a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

Not unlike Proverbs, this is an appeal to the design of creation. It says, there is a system that works and we can participate in it. But unlike Proverbs, it does not insist that the good things are part of the design, and the bad things must be your fault. Both good AND bad are part of the design, says Qoheleth. It’s simultaneously kind of depressing and comforting. The honest humanity of it all is refreshing, anyway.

Qoheleth isn’t all gloom and doom. The author does prescribe a way of living, and in fact it’s a very orthodox Israelite way of living and keeping the covenant. But the presentation of wisdom in Qoheleth has a much different tone, a much more realistic and less idealistic tenor. This is the scroll’s conclusion:

[12:8] Utter futility, says Qoheleth; Utter futility!
[9] Because Qoheleth was a sage, he continued to instruct the people, weighing and studying and arranging many maxims with great care. [10] Qoheleth sought to find words of delight, and uprightly he wrote words of truth.
[11] The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings; they are given by one Shepherd. [12] My son, against these be warned! Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
[13] The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. [14] For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or bad.

Qoheleth didn’t abandon wisdom, nor did he even abandon the use of proverbs. But his closing message is this: don’t choke on wisdom! Don’t let the burden of wisdom ruin your enjoyment of life. “Fear YHWH and keep the covenant,” that part of the message never changed. But a man who lived his life by the letter of wisdom is back to report that it can be just as stifling and deadly as vanity and folly. Let God make the judgments of right and wrong, just do your part to live your life and make your contribution. These words from chapter 9 put it succinctly:

[9:7] Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God approved of your behavior long ago.
[8] Let your clothes always be clean, and your head never lacking ointment.
[9] Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the fleeting days of your life that have been granted to you under the sun, for that alone is what you can get out of life and out of the means you acquire under the sun. [10] Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in the grave, to which you are going.

That’s from THE BIBLE!

Proverbs and Qoheleth: another biblical conversation that thwarts our expectations and challenges our view of the entire canon. Once again I stress the humanity that underlies these texts, and I urge you – whatever your affiliation or your interest in the bible – to do your best to allow the very real witness of these ancient words another hearing. It might be easier if the bible were the single-minded instruction book so many on all sides imagine it to be, but it wouldn’t be nearly as wonderful and relatable as it really is.

Next time we’ll see where the book of Job took the wisdom tradition. I hope it will be as surprising and challenging for you as it has been for me and many others.

This has been BOOK, a bible podcast for everybody, and I have been Josh Way. If you enjoyed this podcast, I encourage you to share, like, tweet, blog, tumbl, stumble, and chumble it to your online friends and family. If you have any comments, questions or constructive feedback, email me at book@joshway.com. You can also leave a voicemail at 801-760-3013, and maybe I’ll answer it on the podcast. Read the BOOK blog and find more content at BOOK.JOSHWAY.COM. That’s it for me, Bible pals. I’ll catch you next time.

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Tags: bible, mashal, proverbs, qohelet, solomon, wisdom

Episode 25 – Daniel

Episode 24 – Esther

Episode 23 – Jonah and the Fish and the Plant and the Worm

Episode 22 – Ezekiel’s Magical Mystery Tour

Episode 21 – Jeremiah: The Man Who Was Very Sad

Episode 20 – Isaiah

Supplement – Christmas Special!

Episode 19 – Song of Songs

Episode 18 – Wisdom Part 2: The Book of Job

Episode 17 – Wisdom Part 1: King Solomon’s Mind (Proverbs & Qoheleth)

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