Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Bible Books

  • Lectionary Notes

    One of my devotional practices is to keep track of the weekly lectionary texts (not the daily and often not special days during the week), and read them through daily using different versions and different reference sources.

    I keep notes online when I have time.  I haven’t publicized this very much because I have been quite irregular, but I really like to get some kind of a note from these passage on a daily basis, so I’ve added the feed to the far right sidebar.

    Today I posted on another passage where I think the lectionary cuts off in an unfortunate way.

  • Choosing Bible Reading

    I was reading an excellent post by Martin LaBar (Sun and Shield) today about our reading choices.  He’s commenting on a study that shows that we tend to select reading that confirms our already existing views.

    Now I suspect there’s nothing terribly surprising about that.  At least most of us assume that other people only read to support their own prejudices.  We, of course, just choose to read only the truth!

    This idea connected with some current reading.  My daughter and her family, who obviously know me well, sent me a gift card for Barnes and Noble for my birthday, and I used it to get a commentary I’ve been wanting, Frank J. Matera’s commentary on II Corinthians.  I’ve been reading it for part of my devotional time.

    In the exceptional introduction to the book, Matera finds a common theme for the book that connects the gospel to apostolic ministry. To summarize and paraphrase (a fuller explanation of this is on page 14), Paul preaches God who raises the dead, but to participate in this resurrection, one must participate in Christ’s suffering and affliction.  Paul becomes part of Christ’s suffering through his suffering in his ministry to the church.

    Thus the book presents a picture of ministry that is almost entirely the opposite of the waythe world–and often the modern church–see it.  We like to think of great leaders, strong and capable people, called to carry their natural gifts into service, for which they get due reward.  That is not New Testament, Christ-like service, however.

    While we quote a text or two in 2 Corinthians, on topics like new creation, imputation, and cheerful giving, that is only a tiny portion of the theme–the theme of the book is a defense of Paul’s apostolic minsitry as a fragile, weak vessel used by God.

    So what does this have to do with reading choices?

    Ask yourself how much time we spend studying various books of the Bible.  I recall, for example, that books like Romans and Galatians were pretty popular in the seminary where I studied.  Second Corinthians?  Not so much.

    Indeed, we didn’t really get the whole books of Galatians and Romans.  I took a class titles Exegesis of Romans in Greek in my undergraduate program, and we never got past chapter 8.  Chapters 9-16?  The professor mentioned them a few times, but I had to work on those on my own later.

    In graduate school I took a course in Galatians.  With effort we got through chapter 4.  We missed chapters 5 & 6.

    But one of the things 2 Corinthians does is provide us with the application of salvation by faith to ministry–ministry by faith.

    Perhaps we ought to spend some serious time on the portions of the Bible that are a bit less popular.

  • A Thought on Leviticus 16:13

    I was struck by the wording of Leviticus 16:13 tody. There is a long list of instructions, followed by the clause “that he may not die.” It’s just 2 words in Hebrew.

    It seems to me that the Israelites approached the issue of God’s judgment against them very differently than we do. Rather than seeing contact with God as essentially safe activity and death or harmful results as requiring explanation, approaching God is seen as deadly. It’s survival that requires explanation.

    This is hardly a new thought, and one should note some other differences, for example that the word “judgment” can be misleading in this context.

    I’m posting from my Palm Centro, so I’ll be brief and probably miss a large number of nuances!

    Tags: Leviticus

  • Leviticus Study

    I’ve been following through the Cornerstone Biblical Commentary in my study of Leviticus for the last few weeks.  Unfortunately, the way I like to study these passages involves reading the text in Hebrew, reading and annotating the commentary, reading the text in the LXX, hunting down materials in other commentaries and translations, and so forth.  Considering that one of the commentaries on my shelf is Jacob Milgrom’s three volume set (well, it’s usually on my desk, not the shelf!), that involves a great deal of time.

    The kind folks at Tyndale House sent me a complimentary copy of the commentary volume with the idea that I would review it, and they deserve a review sooner than I’m likely to finish the book .  So I’m going to pause the detailed study, read the commentary through, and then return to having fun with the texts.  I may post notes along the way and will definitely post a review of the whole volume.

  • Leviticus 9:1-24: Eternity in Liturgy

    I have had very little time to post on Leviticus over the last few weeks because of my business, in which I’ve been working on three books simultaneously. But Leviticus has not been very far from my mind.

    The more I read Leviticus, the more I like it. I’ve read through it with a variety of commentaries, generally reading it in Hebrew along with whatever commentary I’m currently working through. Each time I get more. In the case of the commentary I’m using presently, the Cornerstone Biblical Commentary on Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, the particular focus is on the connection to Christian themes.

    While one can argue that there isn’t any forward looking sense in Leviticus, I think it is close to impossible to argue that Christians did not look back to Leviticus and use its themes as the learned how to speak of the experience of Jesus and what his life, death, and resurrection meant to them. I’m going with that theme in looking at the book with specifically Christian eyes.

    I’m rambling a bit, but stay with me. One of the neglected aspects of Christianity today is, I believe, a neglect of liturgy. Now I don’t have some sort of detailed checklist as to how liturgy should be conducted. What I do believe is that liturgy should bring us into the presence of God, i.e. bring us into the presence of eternity in some way. Most of our worship services do not function in this way at all.

    At about the same time I read this chapter and this particular commentary on it I heard a sermon titled “The Eighth Day” in which the speaker suggested that we are to be living in the 8th day, somehow in the kingdom even though it’s not here yet. There’s a bit of a theme based on that in the appearances of Jesus in the book of Luke. I believe that we are to be living in eternity, and both our liturgy and our teaching needs to reflect that.

    The liturgy in this passage reflects that full sense of history as we go from inauguration to glory and then to celebration of the glory in one pass.

    The worship here involves everyone. It is emotional. It is educational. It is enthusiastic. It is also rewarded.

    David W. Baker, author of this section of the commentary notes (p. 66):

    … the people could not keep silent before a God who responded to their worship, so they joined their voices to those of the priests (9:24). God can and should be approached at times in stillness (Ps 46:10), but exuberance can also be appropriate. Everyone, young and old, male and female, was represented by the priests and leaders in the rituals; they each witnessed God’s response, and each responded appropriately in worship.

    Just so!

  • Psalm 107 and Artificial Divisions

    I did the Old Testament/Psalms portion of my lectionary reading today from the Jewish Study Bible.  The notes draw attention to the difficulty in separating Psalm 107 into the next book.  The division between books 4 and 5 of the Psalms occurs between Psalm 106 and 107.  But these divisions are later than the text itself.

    One should be aware that the Psalms are a collection, and that they are individually composed.  This makes their context within the book somewhat different in nature than the context of a particular chapter in another book.  For example, when I look at a chapter in Samuel-Kings, I look for it’s place in the overall scheme of the history presented.  In Isaiah or Jeremiah, while I realize that individual oracles were written at different times, I look for some sort of thematic arrangement.  The Pslams are a bit looser than that, or at least we are less certain of just why the collection was arranged.  Certainly, it is a collection of material by more than one author.

    The Jewish Study Bible points out that Psalm 107 fits into the theme of Psalms 103-106, and indeed resembles them more than it does Psalm 108.  They also suggest moving the word “Hallelujah” from the end of Psalm 106 to the beginning of Psalm 107.  I would need to look at this further, but I am less impressed with that suggestion, even though I suggested that the Hallelujah at the end of Psalm 104 be moved to the beginning of Psalm 105 when I wrote on it in graduate school.

    That change would result in an envelope of Hallelujah around Psalm 105 and again around Psalm 106, while Psalm 103 and Psalm 104 have an envelope of “Bless the LORD, O my soul.”  I think that single move I suggested back then works very well.

    The thematic difference is more impressive, but I do see some thematic ties that point in both directions.  I’m not certain this division should actually be changed, though we should realize it’s later than the original collection, if “original collection” is even valid in reference to the Psalms.

    I’m going to link to Bob McDonald at Bob’s Log,who has done much more work on the Psalms than I have (and that’s an understatement!), in the hopes that he will comment.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Leviticus 3: Fellowship Offering

    I’m moving through this fairly quickly, paced by the Cornerstone Biblical Commentary: Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.  (See the last entry.)  The pace of reading is an interesting issue.   In order to study Leviticus with Milgrom’s Anchor Bible commentary, I spent time nearly daily for more than a year.  Now I’m covering about a chapter a day. [Note:  Links to all sources are at the end of the post.]

    The temptation, after having spent the longer period of time, is to be a bit dismissive of the faster reading, but I’ve found that various levels of detail in study are very helpful.  In the Pentateuch or Torah, I have read it through with individual major volumes, such as Milgrom’s.  Well, there really isn’t another commentary such as Milgrom’s in my experience.  That one remains a high point of all my studies.  But at least I have used commentaries that dedicate a full volume to a book.  I have also read along with commentaries that cover the whole Torah at once.  Each pass through has its own blessings.

    As I read chapter 3 and the comments on it in the three sources I’m reading through right now I was again impressed by the difference in viewpoint of the person whose focus is Biblical studies as opposed to the person whose focus is pastoral or on daily living.  I could easily get stuck on the technical terms.  Today I was playing around with the Greek words used to translate Hebrew technical terms.  I didn’t go far, as I quickly remembered my purpose, but I could cheerfully spend some hours playing with that topic.

    Ordinary church goers, including very intelligent and educated people, are often not going to be very interested in such things unless they are specialists.  What they want to hear is what connects and applies.  That seems to be the strength of Baker’s commentary.  Given two and a half pages of comment, I’m sure you can tell he doesn’t detail the technical terms.  What he does is bring the material home.

    Now I’ve used the term “fellowship offering” which, like pretty much every other term, is a bit weak as a translation.  It will do, however.  The fellowship offering again emphasizes how much of the sacrificial system did not have to do with atonement for specific sins.  Rather, it had to do with all aspects of worship, such as praise, celebration, thanksgiving, community, reconciliation, and indeed fellowship.

    Now while Baker is more Christological than your average critical commentary, he is not quite so much so as the OSB, which unabashedly connects everything with Jesus.  In this case, the fellowship offering illustrates the freely offered fellowship with God and connects to the service of communion in a different way than the preceding grain offerings.  We often ask why Jesus had to die.  One of many good answers is that he became one of us, like us, in fellowship with us, and that fellowship was complete.

    I think western evangelicalism often manages to be both excessively Christological, and not Christological enough.  What do I mean by such a contradictory statement?  First, in the west we try to connect rationally between specific predictions in the Old Testament and events in Christ’s life.  If we can’t rationally connect them, and assume that they were in the mind of the original writer (and not just in the mind of God), we don’t really want to assert them.  In this rational connection, prediction and accomplishment sense, we are often too quick to draw the connection, and we force the rational explanation.

    On the other hand, concepts like “sacrifice” and events like the Eucharist were formed by people who were well acquainted with passages such as the ones I’m reading right now.  Their minds were fertilized by these words and ideas.  There were connections in the way they understood these things that we will miss if we don’t have the same concepts fertilizing our own minds.  To say that Jesus is our fellowship offering does not necessarily mean that Moses or the Priestly writer were thinking, “Wow!  This points to the future Messiah who will die on the cross.”  What it does mean is that the two ideas are related.  Both are part of God’s interaction with his people in history, and both show these various principles.  How much you think God planned it all out may differ, but the ideological connection can be real in any case.

    All of my sources write in similar ways on this passage.  The NISB does not make the Eucharistic connection.  The OSB makes that most strongly.

    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.

  • Leviticus 2 – Offering Food

    There’s a bit of a change of gears in the second chapter of Leviticus, which contains only food sacrifices.  (See Leviticus 1.  Abbreviations at the end of the post.)  These sacrifices are most commonly not offered because of some sin or impurity, but rather as sacrifices of thanksgiving or for some celebration.

    I think that if most Christians were asked to do a word association, they would think of “animal” very quickly in relation to “sacrifice.”  That’s because they are very much used to the link between animal sacrifice, sin, and the sacrifice of Jesus.  That link is not without merit, but the temple services were so much more than animal sacrifices for sin.

    Baker gets less new out of this chapter than out of the first one, though he does mention the meticulous directions for the sacrifices because “it’s human nature for people to wriggle their way out of any obligation that might cost them something.”  That’s a good point about people in general, though I’m not sure it’s a major point to be drawn from this chapter.

    The difficulty for anyone trying to teach from these passages is that especially these first few chapters are much like notes for priests and presumably worshipers, though the latter might have gotten the answers indirectly.  Supposing you took all the liturgical directions for your church for a year and put them in a book.  This would probably be quite useful to the next worship leader, but it wouldn’t make engaging reading for most church members.

    Nonetheless, one could learn a great deal about liturgy by reading such a book.  But if you were going to use a portion as a text for a lecture on liturgy, what would you assign?  Doubtless the instructions for various weeks would contribute to the topic.

    This is similar to the problem of teaching from Leviticus.  You have quite a number of cryptic instructions, and many of the lessons don’t come through until you have the broader picture.  I’m thinking as I go through this book about using a more visual approach to teaching.  Certainly many people use tabernacle models and so forth, and that would help, but perhaps a study could start with an overview of key points, trying to produce a general picture of a year of worship, then focusing on individual aspects, and finally drawing lessons for specific aspects of worship, such as atonement and forgiveness, thanksgiving and celebration, characteristics of the worship experience, living in a way that is conscious of God’s presence, and connecting worship with history.

    I’ll continue to comment on these ideas as I continue to write, but there are a couple of thoughts from the resources I’m using that I’d like to mention.

    First, Baker comments that “the major difference between this sacrifice and the previous was that here there was no blood shed, and as a result, there was no atonement (1:4; Heb 9:22)” (p. 27).

    I find this rather interesting in consideration of Lev. 5:11-13, which provides an alternative of a grain offering for animal sacrifices, which clearly refers to both atonement and forgiveness.  I’ll discuss this more when we get to that chapter, though I did look ahead and did not see any discussion of the matter in Baker.  NISB notes that grain offerings could substitute for animal sacrifices for the poor with equally little discussion.

    Milgrom does discuss the issue of blood in atonement and various other uses and I will include some of his comments at the appropriate time.

    The OSB was quite interesting, with its unabashedly Christological interpretation.  The grain offering “pictures Christ as the totally acceptable grain offering to God” (p. 119), paralleled with John 12:24.  In addition, the grain offering is related to the faithful in Christ and their service.  Metaphors are wonderful that way–multiple meanings!  The oil is the Holy Spirit, and the salt represents the “whole spiritual meditation of the scriptures” (p. 120).

    While I would hardly see this passage as pointing forward in that sense, looking back I can see that the grain offering might will provide an excellent background for understanding some of the bread passages in the gospel of John.

    I also note for the record that again the OSB works out much better when I don’t read the translation!

    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.