Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • God is in Creation (Psalm 19/Lent 3B)

    I have always loved Psalm 19, and I also regard it as a unified Psalm even though it is divided into two parts.  Those two parts, however, convey a unified central message.  God is the creator and this is why he is also the lawgiver.

    In the ten commandments, also part of this week’s reading, God addresses Israel and starts by saying who he is and what his claim is on them in particular.  This is one reason that it is important to remember that the ten commandments were not initially addressed universally, but rather specifically to the Israelites who were fleeing Egypt.  God addresses them and announces that he is the God who has freed them.  That is the basis for that particular piece of legislation.  But while “the” Torah, or the first five books of the Bible, is addressed to Jews, “Torah” (instruction in general) is addressed to everyone.  I would read “Torah” in Psalm 19 as this wider instruction.

    So why is God the one who can give Torah to the entire world, indeed, the entire universe?  Because he is the creator, and creation tells us of him.  If we were to address a “ten commandments” to the world, it might begin “I am your God, who created everything, and specifically created you.”

    But as Christians we hear the “brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage” in a very special way.  Jesus has brought each and every one of us out of our own spiritual house of bondage, and led us to this place, wherever “this place” may be.  So he can address us much as he does the Israelites in combining these two passages:  “I’m both your creator and your redeemer.”

    In the study Bibles I read on this passage this morning, often a fairly random selection, I was met with a contrast.  The Orthodox Study Bible reads Psalm 19 as an incarnational Psalm.

    Psalm 18 [OSB follows LXX numbering] reveals God the Word (the End, v. 1) becoming Man in the womb of the most holy Mother of God.  For on His Nativity, all creation bore witness to the glory of God revealed in His Incarnation (vv. 1-5). … (p. 693 on Psalm 18, emphasis in the original)

    Now my first reaction is that this Psalm is not about incarnation at all.  It’s about how all creation reveals God at any time and place, not in a particular instance.  But my second thought is that the incarnation isn’t “a particular instance.”  It is the ultimate representation of who God is and how he works.  The limited reflection I see of God in sun, moon, stars, trees, flowers, and animals, to mention just a few things, is made fully clear in the incarnation.

    So it is not inappropriate to treat Psalm 19 as an incarnational Psalm, though I think the Psalmist was thinking about those ordinary reflections of God in creation.  I think it is also possible for us to undervalue what we can learn of God in the natural world.  If God is the creator, as I believe he is, then what is created and how it is created tell us something about God.  I find this an uncomfortable thought from time to time, but my comfort does not seem to be shared by the Biblical writers.

    In modern Christian theology we tend to emphasize how God’s reflection in nature and his image in humankind have been diminished through sin.  Is it not possible that we spend so much time talking about how diminished it is that we fail to see how strongly God’s light still shines?

     

  • Leviticus 6:8-13

    Baker takes a series of short sections here, and I’m not grouping them into any larger passage, because I’m under some pressure and these short sections are working for me right now.

    Let me note also that while the electronic edition of Rahlf’s LXX that I’m using today (GnomeSword) follows the English verse divisions, the print edition of Rahlf’s follows the Hebrew division.  So the passage there is 6:1-6.

    The idea of having a fire from sacrifice going on 24 hours a day doesn’t sound much like modern worship, but there are really two key elements in this passage that I think can be applied to modern worship:

    1. The fire burns continuously.  Three times in the LXX text we read that it is never to go out.
    2. There is a continuing ritual for keeping it clean.  There is care taken in carrying out this command as with every other one in Leviticus.

    There appears to be an error in the notes of the Orthodox Study Bible, which bases the notes on the English verses, and thus the notes on our passage for today indicate they are about 6:9.  But they are interesting, and connect this daily sacrifice with the continual offering of Christ in heaven.  The continuous worship provides an “open door for uninterrupted worship of God and fellowship with Him” only now this is through the sacrifice of Jesus.

    Milgrom adds an interesting note.  With Baker, I have emphasized the continual worship, and I think this is an important point.  But Milgrom points out:

    … The sacrifices offered up at the inauguration of the public cult were consumed miraculously by a divine fire (9:24), and it is this fire which is not allowed to die out so that all subsequent sacrifices might claim divine acceptance… (p. 389, emphasis in original)

    This raises another point to me for the modern church.  How careful are we with the spiritual fires that God lights?  We have waves of revival and then for various reasons we let them die out or treat them with contempt.  There’s a “fire” that was lit in Christianity back with Jesus and then at Pentecost.  But we often neglect one end or the other, either the connection back to that original flame, or the need to keep it actively burning in our modern world.  Both are necessary to keep up the continuing fire.

    Abbreviations:

    OSB – Orthodox Study Bible

    NISB – New Interpreter’s Study Bible

    Milgrom – Milgrom, Jacob.  Anchor Bible:  Leviticus 1-16.

    Baker – Leviticus portion written by David H. Baker, of the Cornerstone Biblical Commentary on Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

    Chapter 6 deals with sacrifices for sins that appear to be quite deliberate.

  • The Ten Commandments in a Secular Society (Lent 3B/Ex. 20:1-17)

    I find it very interesting to watch the way Christians handle the ten commandments. On the one hand, they have become an icon of our Christian culture, so that nobody wants to claim that they don’t keep them. They’re regarded as a foundational and basic icon, so we keep trying to make them the firm foundation of something, even if we’re not sure what. Indeed, many Christians are certain they keep all the commandmenst, but are not sure just what those commandments actually are.

    The problem is that very few, if any Christians keep the commandments in the way that they were intended.  I grew up as a Seventh-Day Adventist.  Adventists have one of the best claims to actually keep the commandments, yet still they are somewhat less strict than Orthodox Jews would be, and probably less strict than ancient Israelite priests would have been.  Most importantly, we probably all fail through the use of religious imagery.  Our use of pictures of Jesus, for example, would have looked much too much like idolatry to that early generation.

    I think it is important to remember that the ten commandments were given to a group of Israelites escaping slavery and beginning to learn about God.  If you read the Pentateuch carefully–something few Christians do–you’ll find that the ten commandments are quite fundamental, but they are neither the constitution of the government of Israel, nor are they designed to express a fundamental moral law in a broad sense.  Those elements are scattered through the Pentateuch, and are reflected in the ten commandments.  Of those two elements, the fundamentals of morality are most reflected, while the constitution of the nation is reflected only in the key statement of the theocracy.  How this functions is left for other places.

    Thus from the start, the ten commandments cannot directly provide the foundation for a secular government.  Rather, they provide a moral foundation for living well.  This moral foundation is set in a particular set of cultural circumstances.

    Now some will think I’m trying to diminish the value of the ten commandments or dismiss them in this way.  But recognizing what something actually is, and also what it is not is not to dismiss it.  Rather, it provides us an opportunity to apply it successfully.  Christians worship on Sunday, for example.  Why?  I frequently hear this expressed as “keeping the fourth commandment.”  But the fourth commandment doesn’t tell you that.  It doesn’t say you should go to church on Sunday.  It doesn’t even say you should go to church–or even the Synagogue–on Saturday.  What it tells you to do is to rest and refrain from labor on the seventh day.

    I used “you” there, but that is another point of understanding.  The fourth commandment was first expressed to those Israelites.  It is quite proper to ask just how it applies to you and me as opposed to them.  One starting place is to note that, by connection with creation, the fourth commandment expresses God’s sovereignty over time.  That means over your time–over all your time!

    The earlier commandments express exclusive worship of one God, and ask us not to misrepresent that one God.  (I’m not going to expand on this today, but I might later in the week.)  This orders that we don’t portray God as an idol.  When I read the ten commandments in their historical context, I know this means that the Israelites are not to make idols and bow down to them.  One reason is that God is much bigger than this.  In your normal temple of the ancient near east when you got to the inner sanctum you would find an image of the God.  In Israel’s temple, you found an empty space.  God could not be so portrayed.

    Might this say something about some of our confident systematic theologies?  I’m not calling systematic theology idolatry.  But overconfidence in one’s theology might well be idolatry.

    But finally, when we try to portray the ten commandments as a sort of constitution, we show that we either don’t know what a constitution is, or we don’t know what the ten commandments are.  The basic law of Israel was already established at the time.  God is in charge.  Period.  Over time we see different ways of that rulership being expressed, and the elements of a constitution do occur in the Pentateuch.  But only that one element is expressed in the ten commandments, and that one element is not an element of a secular constitution.

    At the same time, it can be the fundamental moral statement of God’s people living in a secular society, and in fact I would suggest it should be.  But first we’re going to have to know what it actually is.  Let me suggest something:  Narrow the principle, then broaden the application.  Try to find the key to what is being taught in the commandment, defined narrowly.  Extract the basic principle(s) from it.  Then apply it broadly.

    God is in charge of time.  There is one authority in the universe, not many.  The family is a fundamental unit.  Those are things we can use in life, as God’s people living in a secular society.

    Note: I’m presenting a series on this topic on my Participatory Bible Study Blog, starting here.

  • Sources and Repetition (Genesis 17/Lent2B)

    In dealing with source criticism there are two broad questions for the Biblical exegete, as opposed to the actual source critic.  The first is whether there are identifiable sources at all, or at least in any substantial sense, and the second is how important these sources are for exegesis.  Though I’m not going to go into detail here, for me it is very clear that there are, in fact, extended sources in the Pentateuch, and I’ll go along with the identification of the Yahwist, Elohist, Priestly, and Deteronomist sources.  I’m a little more hesitant on identifying a Holiness source in what used to be regarded as Priestly material, but there is some pretty good evidence for it.

    One of the places we identify such sources is in stories that repeat.  For example, why do we have Abraham’s call in Genesis 12, a presentation of the covenant in Genesis 15, and another covenant story in Genesis 17.  Much of the data in the latter two especially overlap.  Without sources, we may look either to advancing revelation of the covenant, or to repetition for purposes of teaching.  The covenant might indeed be forgotten.  Such explanations are quite workable for much material, and if the repetition of the covenant was the only source of evidence, it would not be adequate to present sources.

    But in fact we do have some differences in these stories.  I’m indebted to Gerhard von Rad in his Genesis commentary, pages 197-203 for much of the following.  The major difference is the focus of the Priestly source on theology.  The Yahwist tends to focus on Abraham’s human situation.  For the priests the major concern was God, what he was going to do for Abraham and what his ultimate purpose was.  Note that in Genesis 15 we have several verses of Abraham talking.  He enters into conversation with God, and part of God’s assurance of the covenant results from Abraham’s fear.  In Genesis 17, God speaks, Abraham falls on his face (v.3), and God continues speaking and pretty much takes up the rest of the chapter.  Abraham finally gets involved again when he pleads for Ishmael in verse 18.

    I think there is a good likelihood that we have two sources relating essentially the same experience.  You may differ–demonstrating my conclusion would go well beyond the space I intend to use here.  But the second question is just how much does knowing about the sources, if you accept them, help you in understanding the passage?

    I find a little bit of help in knowing who’s telling the story each time.  The Yahwist is a great teller of folk tales, and he and his sort likely entertained people around the campfires of early Israel.  They are telling a human story, and it is more story than history.  They ignore chronology and deep theological questions for the most part.  The priests like to keep things straight.  They’re more interested in God than in people, and they’re more interested in historical details, such as chronology.

    But in the end, while it’s important to realize that there are two stories, and that their perspective is different, you can get the same emphasis whether you see them as two incidents reported by the same narrator or as the result of different sources.  We can tell the story of God’s interaction with us and with our community from the perspective of people, or from our best try for a divine perspective, yet it still is the story of God with us.  We may have one incident told twice, giving us a more complete picture, or we may have two incidents in which God gave Abraham a bigger picture.

    The result is similar, and its available to the student who takes the time to look back and forth, to gather in all the elements of the context, and ask just why such a thing may be there.

     

  • The Confession and other Gospels (Mark 8:31-38/Lent 2B)

    Some of my readers who know that I employ historical-critical methodologies in my Bible study may be surprised to know that one of my most useful books on the gospels is Darrel Bock’s Jesus according to Scripture: Restoring the Portrait from the Gospels.

    There is a simple reason for this.  I believe that before you can properly understand a critical view of a passage, you have to understand the passage in relation to others, and know how it has been interpreted in the past.  Many people reject views of scripture without understanding them.  They reject chronologies based on the early geneaologies of Genesis 5 & 11, but have often never read them.  On the other hand, people reject source theories of the Pentateuch without actually being able to state the theories themselves.  In the gospels, many reject a reconciling approach to the various synoptic passages without every trying to do it.

    Now in the end, I think the reconciliation of these passages tends to fail.  There’s no complete reconstruction that is actually historically probable, even if one allows miracles.  At the same time there are two benefits at least to checking out how passages are reconciled.  First, the church has used this approach for centuries, and it’s worthwhile understanding how it was done.  Second, attempting reconciliation helps fill out the complete picture of how a set of passages can relate.  Before you have done that, you are on questionable ground if you choose a particular understanding of the history of the passage in question.

    So having spent that much time on why I want to do this occasionally, what does Bock have to say about this passage?

    There are two elements that I’d like to mention. To get all the details you’ll need the book as he outlines the items where Matthew, Mark, and Luke differ on this passage. These differences are not that great.

    The first issue is the authenticity of the story. For many historical Jesus scholars, it is a basic criterion of authenticity that Jesus never claims to be the Messiah during his lifetime. I think this is not so much a criterion as a conclusion, and it is a conclusion that is questionable at best. So I wouldn’t reject the authenticity of this saying on that basis. It clearly comes from a single source, i.e. all three gospels are working from the same material.

    Bock notes three reasons to regard this as authentic (p. 232):

    1. There is already a pattern of response that shows opposition. I would note that this indicates that Jesus was something more than an innocuous teacher; he roused opposition.
    2. There is the precendent of John the Baptist. In other words, it is not unreasonable for Jesus to expect that such a fate might await him if he continued his activity.
    3. The prediction itself presents an ambiguity. If you were creating a prediction after the fact, would you not make it a bit more ironclad?

    While none of Bock’s reasons for regarding this as authentic are absolutely conclusive, they are suggestive, and again tend to make me question the certainty with which some scholars maintain that Jesus never made such a claim but that it was made for him after the fact.

    The second area of interest is in the prediction that some there would not taste death. Bock points out the differences in the predictions. Mark says “the kingdom of God has come with power.” Luke simply says “the kingdom,” while Matthew says “Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” There is ambiguity here as well, though I think most hearers would interpret this as saying that there might be suffering now, but eventually the son of man would come in his kingdom. The disciples would have heard it as an early inkling that there would be a second appearing. There must be some other way to handle the meaning of the passage, such as the conditional nature of prophecy (Jonah, Jeremiah 18).

  • Leviticus 5:14-6:7

    I’m still following the division of David W. Baker’s commentary on Leviticus in the Cornerstone Biblical Commentary on Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.  Today’s passage equates to Leviticus 5:14-26 in the Hebrew text, and the Hebrew text is indeed better divided than the English or the LXX.

    While the section is indeed properly grouped together, the priests have snuck in a pretty major doctrine into the passage.  The first part deals with violation of holy things (through 5:19), along with the possibility that one has done so but doesn’t know.  I think there’s good reason to believe, with Milgrom and others, that this also involves that horrible sense of guilt that has no known source; one feels that one has done something very wrong, but can’t be sure.  The early part of this passage provides an opportunity to deal with that guilt.  One can pity the bank account of someone who had a guilt complex, however!

    Some call this a guilt offering.  I prefer “reparation” offering, again following a number of commentators.  The offering accompanies a reparation.  It is this reparation portion that presumably connects the violation of sacred things at the end of chapter 5 with the violation of one’s neighbor at the beginning of chapter 6.

    I recall quite vividly how I encountered this chapter when reading Leviticus with Milgrom’s AB commentary.  I read the passage ahead in Hebrew before reading the commentary and so I had studied through the previous chapters and noted the sacrifices for inadvertent sins, but no sacrifices for intentional sins.  There was no statement that these sins were intentional, but it’s hard to imagine finding someone’s property and then lying about it as “inadvertent.”

    Baker notes this, but the best discussion comes from Milgrom (373-378) in a section titled “The Priestly Doctrine of Repentance.”  In his words, “…The Priestly authors took a postulate of their own tradition, that God mitigates punishment for unintentional sins, and empowered it with a new doctrine, that the voluntary repentance of a deliberate crime transforms the crime itself into an involuntary act.”  NISB emphasizes the voluntary part of this repentance, i.e. one must repent without being caught.

    The passage also provides the elements of repentance:

    1. A realization of feeling of guilt; one acknowledges that what was done was a wrong.
    2. Payment of reparation
    3. Confession
    4. Desire for atonement and sacrifice
    5. Forgiveness

    These days we frequently forget the first part and often the second.  I doubt one gets to #5 without going through those elements.

    The OSB notes that the sacrifices here for damage done to another are not gradated, unlike the previous sacrifices.  The poor must offer the same thing as the rich.  Being poor, they note, does not provide the right to steal (p. 124 on 5:15, 21, 25).

    Abbreviations:

    OSB – Orthodox Study Bible

    NISB – New Interpreter’s Study Bible

    Milgrom – Milgrom, Jacob.  Anchor Bible:  Leviticus 1-16.

    Baker – Leviticus portion written by David H. Baker, of the Cornerstone Biblical Commentary on Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

    Chapter 6 deals with sacrifices for sins that appear to be quite deliberate.

  • Biblical, Convinced, and Wrong! (Lent 2B)

    The story in Mark 8:31-38 fascinates me because the disciples were, in one sense, so right, yet they were so wrong.  What we often forget is that there was good reason for the disciples to expect the Messiah to take over the throne of David immediately, to rescue their nation from the Romans, and to become the ruler of the world.  He would not be divine, as such, but he would be divinely anointed.  If Jesus was the Messiah, they would be standing next to power.

    And what was wrong with that?  Shouldn’t patriots want to be involved in freeing their country from foreign rule, unjust taxation, and foreign rule?

    Though there is debate on the background of the use of “son of man”  as a title for Jesus, I tend to suspect it comes from Daniel 7:13-14:

    13I saw in the night visions, and behold, there came with the clouds of the sky one like a son of man, and he came even to the ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. 14There was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and languages should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.  (WEB)

    So here is their quite Biblical view of who the Messiah would be and what he would do.  And Jesus is telling them that they have got it wrong.  He’s telling them to give up on one whole set of proof texts and take hold of another.  Why?  Because they knew from being with him that he must be the Messiah, the anointed one.  He, in his person, would reveal God to them, and therefore God’s plans and what the real future would be like.  And it wouldn’t be pretty or easy.

    Now consider this:  How truly convinced must those disciples have been that they didn’t just say, “Well, I guess you’re really not the one.  I didn’t sign up for this, and I don’t think that’s what the Bible says.”  No!  They stuck around and let Jesus convince them.  While they ran in fear at the crucifixion, they came back, confused, yes, but ready to hear the new message–“He is risen!”

    We often focus on the negative, how slow the disciples were to believe, and how cowardly they were during the trial and the crucifixion.  I have to confess that I’m pretty sure I would have been slower and more cowardly than the twelve.  If I had been a disciple, I’m not sure how bad the story would have gotten, but it would have been pretty bad.

    Consider this:  When you’re convinced of something what does it take to change your mind?  Are you too quick, blown about by every wind, or are you stuck in concrete when you really should be flexible?

     

  • Romans 4:13-25 – Abraham and God (Lent 2B)

    There are two questions I think will prove very much worth some meditation time.  This is a rich passage, so obviously there are more, but let me emphasize just two.

    First, Paul uses Abraham a great deal.  In an excursus on page 2015, amongst the notes on chapter 4, the New Interpreter’s Study Bible notes that “Abraham is cited more frequently in Paul’s letters than any other historical figure except Jesus.”  What is it about Abraham that makes him such an excellent example?  Paul uses him, James uses him in a seemingly contradictory manner, though one that I think is quite reconcilable.

    Abraham is “caught” by God outside of God’s community.  Though he is a descendant of the patriarchal line, he is known for worshiping other Gods (Joshua 24:2).  He has done no works to earn God’s favor.  God simply selects him and takes action.  Paul uses this to illustrate how God’s salvation is grace based, and I would reemphasize that it was always based on grace.  While there are distinctions in the way God interacted with those who had been saved by grace, there was never a time when one could earn a place in relationship to God.

    Don’t take the word “relationship” lightly.  We sometimes here this as a sort of “casual dating” relationship.  Not at all!  A relationship with God is a covenant relationship, a complete reordering of who one is.  This is a relationship that defines one’s identity.  There are works done “in” relationship, and works done to gain a relationship.  The latter will not work.  To me it seems pretty clear and obvious.  If God is the creator, he can not only create a million of me if he wants, he can create millions of planets with millions more of me.  So there is no way to make myself necessary to God.  It won’t work.

    God chooses to love me!  That is the amazing story of grace.  Thus Paul is right that Abraham is “made right” by faith, apart from works (Galatians 2:16), yet James can be quite correct, looking at this from a few moments forward when he says we are made right by works (James 2:24).  Part of the complete reorientation is the simple fact that works done in the relationship with Christ are completely different from works done outside.

    The second question is this:  How is it that Abraham gets treated as an unblemished character of faith?  As I mentioned previously, Paul ignores the negatives, and our lectionary passage cuts out Abraham’s laughter.

    I like to call this the faith view.  Compare all the heroes of the faith as described in Hebrews 11 with their stories in the Old Testament.  You’ll find that there are rose colored glasses involved here.  There are two views of heroes.  One encourages us by seeing them as real people with failings.  The Bible provides clear and honest stories in this sense.  The other encourages us by seeing them as extraordinary.  In a spiritual sense, I believe, both are true.

     

  • Interpreting the Bible VII – Christians Contribute to Confusion

    In reality I’m going to discuss framing the questions on the test passages I quoted last time, but in doing so, I need to highlight the way Christians contribute to a misunderstanding of one another, and by non-Christians who don’t understand how many of us use the Bible.

    There is, of course, that vocal group of Christians who claim that they take the Bible literally and follow all of it. Their loud voice tends to drown the rest of us out. But one can easily debunk any claim to follow all of the Bible, unless that claim is properly defined by a tradition or method of interpretation.

    But non-fundamentalists contribute to the idea that the really, truly holy and most valid Christian approach to the Bible is Biblical literalism. We do so primarily in two ways:

    1. We use the claim that we don’t take the Bible literally as an answer to anything.
      This is not so much a liberal thing as a mainline thing. In this case by “mainline” I mean those old and established denominations to which so many people belong just to be known as church-going people. When confronted by almost any Biblical claim that is counter to their tradition, they will say: “We don’t take the Bible that literally around here.” Or something like that.

      But that may not be the point at all. One may be hearing a passage that was intended quite literally. For example, if you are reading Leviticus and it commands animal sacrifice, the point is not that you don’t take it literally; it’s a literal command to do a literal thing. As Christians we don’t do that because of a number of passages such as Acts 15. I will probably spend a whole post on Acts 15 before I’m done.

      The reason for this kind of abuse of the word “literal” is simply that many Christians are quite unaware of what the Bible actually says, and so they feel the need of an easy way to dismiss any claim regarding what they do or don’t do in church.

    2. They discount passages without admitting it.
      Now let me be clear here. Many of these passages need some sort of discounting in order to apply in the modern world.

      I discussed this in my essay Facing the Proof-Text Method, in which I called it “text trimming.” The problem is not that the texts are trimmed; the problem is that they are trimmed without consideration to any consistent style of interpretation.

      I use as an example Exodus 21:15 & 17 which call for the death penalty for cursing one’s parents. I recall one class in which numerous members were willing to accept this as a command that should be applied today. I was a bit surprised and asked them if they would then take their children out to be stoned to death should they utter a curse against their parents. They were shocked and told me that wasn’t what they meant. “We mean that you should discipline your children properly!”

      They really didn’t even see the text itself until well into the discussion. They’d discounted it so quickly on reading they were hardly aware that they were worlds away from that in which the command was given. For them, this meant corporal punishment. For others, it might well be discounted more. And I’m happy that it should be discounted. It is not, however, a figurative command.

    Now how does this apply to my test passages? I want to make clear here that the problem with the passages I cited is not that I don’t like what they say. My feelings about what a passage says do not impact what it’s now dead author meant to say. The ancients said many things that I don’t like. God is represented as saying things that I don’t like in scripture. My dislike of the statement doesn’t alter the intent of that statement.

    When we phrase the problem in that way we open things up for non-Christians to point out that we are simply taking what we like from scripture, for more conservative Christians to suggest that we are discarding passages at will, and for those more liberal to suggest that we haven’t moved far enough.

    So when Numbers 31:17 says, “Now kill every male among the children, and kill every woman who has had sexual relations with a man” I don’t like it. But that is not a problem for interpretation. The meaning is clear. You can read it in context. This is a command. Moses did not like the fact that the people preserved the women and the boys alive and he is now ordering them to be killed. He will exempt virgin girls, who may be taken as spoil. There’s no problem figuring out what the command would mean at the time.

    So what does constitute a problem for interpretation? If I were working strictly within Judaism I would have to look eventually at the prophetic statements regarding eventual salvation for the gentiles. At a minimum I would have to ask when and why the attitude changed. If the Israelites were to treat the aliens living among them as their own (Lev. 19:33-34), why the difference here? I’m skipping over numerous answers to those questions because here I’m simply wanting to point out what does create a question that must be answered, however easy it may be.

    Finally, if you represent God as a God of love, who does not desire the death of anyone (Ezekiel 18:32), then how can God command all of these deaths? Again, I’m using the Old Testament, and one closely tied to the priestly tradition, in order to keep the two viewpoints close. Again, I’m not continuing into attempts to answer these questions. Some readers are going to see obvious answers, but I’m not ready to go there.

    Thus what I believe constitutes a genuine issue of Biblical interpretation is not my dislike of a text, but rather the fact that I am presented with at least two pictures in the Bible which seem not to be wholly consistent. The interpretation of the passage for its time and place may be clear, but what it means for me or what it meant for other generations of believers who used it as scripture becomes less clear because of apparently conflicting pictures.

    Procedural Notes: I’m going to try to write these a bit shorter, though it will take me several more posts at least to get where I’m going. I also need to do an excursus (or more) showing the prevalence of non-literal interpretation throughout Christian history.

    Continued from Interpreting the Bible VI

  • Leviticus 4:1-5:13

    It is not entirely helpful to include these two sections under the same heading, but there is certainly a break between 5:13 and 5:14, so the division is understandable as Baker does it.

    We’re moving here to sacrifices that are required, first for inadvertent acts in chapter 4, and then for acts of omission that result in prolonged impurity (Milgrom: 307ff), only some of which are inadvertent in chapter 5.  Milgrom maintains, I think convincingly, that the distinction in chapter 5 is that the acts in question result in prolonged impurity, and prolonged impurity gets worse.

    Baker does well in presenting the major lesson I think we can take from these chapters, that wrongs are not just a personal thing, but they have a lasting impact on others.  We have a tendency to think that if something was a mistake there is no real guilt attached.  “I goofed,” is supposed to forgive all.  Here errors, most notably amongst the leadership, even if inadvertent, are highlighted as damaging the entire congregation and particular as polluting the sanctuary, and thus the congregation’s relationship with God.

    There is a secondary point, in that chapter 5 provides gradated levels of offerings and includes one even the poorest could bring–a grain offering.  I think this should be discussed in terms of atonement, in which we regularly quote Hebrews 9:22, which in turn quotes Leviticus 17:11.  Perhaps while blood provides the strongest metaphor for atonement, it is not the absolute requirement that some make it.  An exception to the blood sacrifice as in Leviticus 5:11-13, would not in that case be a minor point.  I’ll discuss this further when we get to Leviticus 17:11.

    The OSB emphasizes the difference between the sins of the priesthood and the laity, and quotes St. John Chrysostom thus:

    Wishing to show that sins receive more serious punishment by far when they occur in the case of the priest than in the case of the laity, Moses enjoins as great a sacrifice to be offered for the priest as for the whole people, and this amounts to a proof on his part, that the wounds of the priesthood need more assistance, that is, as great as those of all the people together.”

    OSB further applies this to the modern priesthood as well.  I could wish they would both quote the fathers more and would indicate the particular work.  In this case I have been unable to find the reference by search at CCEL–I’m probably doing something wrong.

    Again, I commend Baker for providing the elements that a preacher would need quickly and with the minimum of fuss.  You will frequently find you want to know more, but there are other reference works for that purpose.

    Abbreviations:

    OSB – Orthodox Study Bible

    NISB – New Interpreter’s Study Bible

    Milgrom – Milgrom, Jacob.  Anchor Bible:  Leviticus 1-16.

    Baker – Leviticus portion written by David H. Baker, of the Cornerstone Biblical Commentary on Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.