Category Archives: Old Testament

Daily bread

Posted by on January 26, 2011 36 comments

In the Lord’s Prayer Jesus instructs his disciples to pray “Give us this day our daily bread.” From this one phrase a whole aura of sentimentality has been generated about “depending on God” for our food, a task that is ever so hard for middle class American Christians because, after all, we are so used to thinking that our food is something secure, that we provide for ourselves and we really don’t have to pray too hard about. Praying for “our daily bread” then, is little more than an exercise in reminding ourselves that, after all, ultimately God is in control and we need to not forget that.

In reading through Exodus last night it struck me how utterly wrong this whole way of thinking is in light of the biblical referent that is surely attached to “our daily bread.” What image could “daily bread” conjure up if not the daily gift of manna that God provided for Israel during their sojourn in the desert after leaving Egypt? The only “daily bread” that Israel has ever known was the daily allotment of bread that they received during those forty years wandering in the desert, bereft of any sort of landedness, security, or resources. There indeed, “daily bread” has real meaning. It is an utterly unproduced, unearned, insecure gift for which they can only hope in God’s promise.

When Jesus then instructs his disciples to pray for “our daily bread” ought we not — instead of thinking that this is just an injunction to remember God’s providential enforcement of that which we have already secured — realize that in calling his followers to pray in this way Jesus is calling us back into the desert with Israel. Out of the security of land, possessions, cultural production and into a life of sojourning in which we, once again, are given to depend, quite literally on God for the essentials of survival? Jesus envisions his community of followers, not as a restored Israel, or as Israel returned from exile. No, quite the opposite, he envisions his followers as a new Exodus community, a community liberated from slavery, and finding themselves so liberated (and often not knowing what to do with, or wanting that freedom) are now thrust into a complete loss of all securities save God and his unprecedented and unearned sustenance.

In short, it seems to me that for Jesus “daily bread” really means “daily bread,” not happy thoughts about how God is in control. He envisions his followers as a new band of post-Exodus nomads who possess nothing but hope in God for daily sustenance.

An ecclesial gloss on Isaiah 1:10-17

Posted by on February 1, 2010 10 comments

Hear the word of the Lord,
you rulers of Rome and Constantinople!
Listen to the teaching of our God,
you people of Grand Rapids and Wheaton!
What do I care about the multitude of your Eucharists?
says the Lord;
I have had enough of your broken bread
and piously drunk wine;
I do not delight in your baptisms,
of children, or of adults.
When you come to worship before me,
who asked you to do this?
Stop making the gathering of my people a sham;
bringing eloquent homilies is futile; expository preaching is an abomination to me.
Your Sunday mornings and and your liturgical calendars—
I cannot endure your ecclesial practices when there is idolatry.
Your Christian year and your holy feast days
my soul hates;
they have become a burden to me,
I am weary of bearing them.

When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers,
I will not listen; your hands are full of blood.
Repent! Change how your are living;
get your idolatry out of my sight;
cease to do evil,
learn to do good;
seek justice,
rescue the oppressed,
defend the orphan,
plead for the widow.

Give beer to beggars!

Posted by on January 20, 2010 14 comments

One of the foremost reasons I ever hear for why Christians don’t give to beggars is the claim that said beggars will undoubtedly use the money for buying alcohol. Thus any act of monetary giving is not only unnecessary (despite Matt 5:42 which seems pretty friggin clear), but possibly morally wrong. Well, like I always wonder, what does the Good Book say about this line of thinking?

Give strong drink to one who is perishing, and wine to those in bitter distress;  let them drink and forget their poverty, and remember their misery no more. (Prov 31:6-7)

Now obviously proverbs are proverbs. But let me just say a couple things. First, most Christians I know who don’t like giving to beggars on the basis of the logic mentioned above tend to love the book of Proverbs. All the stuff about being wise, taking care of yourself, disciplining children with rods, etc. So if that stuff is wise guidance, clearly we can’t just throw this out, right? (Note also that this passage comes right before the eternal evangelical favorite passage about “the virtuous woman” which is always considered the unadulterated voice of God.)

Second, regardless of the particulars of how we approach wisdom literature, doesn’t it matter that the only verse in the Bible that directly speaks to this issue tells us that helping the distressed forget their troubles over some booze is a good thing? I mean, it seems like that would tilt the scales a little, right? Since that’s the only direct reference in Scripture that we have and all . . .

So, be biblical! Give to beggars and don’t try to weasel out of it by blowing smoke about how you don’t want them buying alcohol with it. And if you want to be even more biblical, you could just go ahead and buy them the beer yourself.

For the sake of ten

Posted by on January 14, 2010 26 comments

So, yet again one of Satan’s favorite sock puppets (thanks, Gene!) has turned an incident of natural disaster into yet another instance of God “judging” nations for their sins. I find this curious and horrifying as I’m sure most people do. However, I think sometimes Christians who cringe at these comments don’t really have a response to them because, deep down they think that they don’t really have a biblical argument against this sort of stuff. After all, in the Bible doesn’t God send all kinds of natural disasters as judgments?

The problem here is  quite complex and I don’t intend to offer a master solution it, tout court. However, pretty early in the canon we’re given some pretty good evidence about how God approaches destroying pockets of human civilization as a form of judgment against sin. Witness Abraham’s discussion with God about Sodom and Gomorroah:

Then Abraham came near and said, “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; will you then sweep away the place and not forgive it for the fifty righteous who are in it?  Far be it from you to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” And the Lord said, “If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will forgive the whole place for their sake.” Abraham answered, “Let me take it upon myself to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes. Suppose five of the fifty righteous are lacking? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five?” And he said, “I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there.” Again he spoke to him, “Suppose forty are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of forty I will not do it.” Then he said, “Oh do not let the Lord be angry if I speak. Suppose thirty are found there.” He answered, “I will not do it, if I find thirty there.” He said, “Let me take it upon myself to speak to the Lord. Suppose twenty are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of twenty I will not destroy it.” Then he said, “Oh do not let the Lord be angry if I speak just once more. Suppose ten are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of ten I will not destroy it.” (Gen 18:23-32)

Does anyone really think that there weren’t ten honest to goodness Bible-believing Christians (and thus=”righteous” according to evangelical theology) in the whole country of Haiti? Well, according to first friggin book in the Bible God refuses to sweep away the righteous with the wicked, right?

So, just to be clear. No Christian who hold the Bible to be “the inspired Word of God” can believe that this event was a divine judgment unless they are prepared to argue that there were less than ten true Christians in all of Haiti.

These are facts.

Jealousy vs. Envy

Posted by on October 1, 2009 4 comments

Scot McKnight has some helpful thoughts on the nature of God’s jealousy inspired  by reflections on the second commandment:

God is “jealous” for his love and that is why idol-making is wrong. A little lesson: “I’m sooo jealous” is a commonplace expression today, but it’s an erroneous one most of the time. Most of the time it means “I’m so envious.” We envy what others have; we are jealous of what we have. God is not envious of us and what we are doing. God’s honor is wounded, his glory is clouded, and his love is broken when any of us decides to focus our love and our worship and our allegiance to anyone but God. God is Jealous for his love and for his glory and for his honor.

That the point of idol-making has to do with God’s Jealous love complements what Jesus said: the laws are about either loving God or loving others. The 2d Commandment is about loving God and we don’t love God if our loyalty is split.

I’m not so sure about the language of God’s “honor” being “wounded” but the distinction between envy and jealousy is quite important and helpful.

God as Mourner

Posted by on August 13, 2009 3 comments

Its not often thought about as a key mark of God, but in the Old Testament, one of the key images of God is that of a co-mourner with Israel in her distress and suffering. Ezekiel 19, for example is quite striking in God’s command to the prophet to take up a lamentation for Israel. Verse 18:32, which immediately precedes the lamentation reads “For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, says the Lord God. Turn, then, and live.” God’s own longing for people to flourish rather than suffer is what occasions the lament, clearly implying that the lament reflects God’s own feelings on the matter.

The book of Jeremiah is even more rife with examples of God being portrayed as a mourner, and most strikingly, God is often seen to mourn not for Israel but for the foreigner:

We have heard of the pride of Moab— he is very proud— of his loftiness, his pride, and his arrogance, and the haughtiness of his heart. I myself know his insolence, says the Lord; his boasts are false, his deeds are false. Therefore I wail for Moab; I cry out for all Moab; for the people of Kir-heres I mourn. More than for Jazer I weep for you, O vine of Sibmah! Your branches crossed over the sea, reached as far as Jazer; upon your summer fruits and your vintage the destroyer has fallen. Gladness and joy have been taken away from the fruitful land of Moab; I have stopped the wine from the wine presses; no one treads them with shouts of joy; the shouting is not the shout of joy. Heshbon and Elealeh cry out;  as far as Jahaz they utter their voice, from Zoar to Horonaim and Eglath-shelishiyah. For even the waters of Nimrim have become desolate.  And I will bring to an end in Moab, says the Lord, those who offer sacrifice at a high place and make offerings to their gods. Therefore my heart moans for Moab like a flute, and my heart moans like a flute for the people of Kir-heres; for the riches they gained have perished. (Jer 48:29-36)

What is interesting about this, and similar passages is that even when God is portrayed as the agent of judgment, that is coupled with God’s own anguish about the suffering of those involved. What this means is obviously an important theological issue, but my point here is that the language of the prophets portrays God as one who laments and mourns over suffering.

Perhaps the most explicit of these sorts of passages is found in Jeremiah 9:17-19:

Thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider, and call for the mourning women to come; send for the skilled women to come;  let them quickly raise a dirge over us, so that our eyes may run down with tears, and our eyelids flow with water.  For a sound of wailing is heard from Zion: “How we are ruined! We are utterly shamed, because we have left the land, because they have cast down our dwellings.”

What is portrayed so beautifully here is that the expansion to the first person plural, “we” is clearly meant to include God along with the mourners. It is God’s eyes no less than ours that overflow with tears over the calamity at hand.

The point of all this is just to say that folks who get suspicious about people who speak of God mourning with those who suffer or sharing the in the sorrow of those in pain is at variance with the biblical prophetic tradition. According the prophets, God is not detached form the suffering of God’s people, and indeed the suffering of all people. Rather God weeps and mourns over suffering and death. Saying so is not some limp-wristed attempt at sentimentalizing God, but merely following in the footsteps of Jeremiah.

Note: For more on this theme, read Terence Fretheim’s The Suffering of God: An Old Testament Perspective.

Bit of Bonhoeffer

Posted by on March 31, 2009 1 comment

“There is in the Holy Scriptures one book that differs from all other books of the Bible in that it contains only prayers. That book is the Psalms. At first it is something very astonishing that there is a prayerbook in the Bible. The Holy Scriptures are, to be sure, God’s Word to us. But prayers are human words. How then do they come to be in the Bible?  Let us make no mistake: the Bible is God’s Word, even  in the Psalms. Then are prayers to God really God’s own Word? That seems difficult to understand. We grasp it only when we consider that we can learn true prayer only from Jesus Christ, and that it is, therefore, the word of the Son of God, who lives with us human beings, to God the Father who lives in eternity. Jesus Christ has brought before God every need, every joy, every thanksgiving, and every hope of humankind. In Jesus’ mouth the human word becomes God’s Word. When we pray along with the prayer of Christ, God’s Word becomes again a human word. Thus all prayers of the Bible are such prayers in which Christ includes us, and through which Christ brings us before the face of God. Otherwise there are no true prayers, for only in and with Jesus Christ can we truly pray.”

~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Psalms: The Prayerbook of the Bible (DBW5), 156-57.

The Bible and Meat: Sweet, Delicious Meat.

Posted by on February 24, 2009 43 comments

It is often claimed these days by Christians with a vegetarian bent that, in the scope of the biblical narrative, meat-eating occurs because of the Fall, and, as such should not be practiced by Christians who are called to live as a foretaste of the new creation. This is completely and utterly wrong and I’ll tell you why.

In contrast to the standard assumption that the Fall unleashed upon the world an era of murderous meat consumption, the actual point in the biblical narrative that animals are given by God to the human race for food is after the Noahic flood (Gen 9:3). In fact, the proclamation on the part of Yahweh that animals were now a source of food for humankind occurs in the context of God’s covenantal promises to humanity and the world as a whole. Indeed, the context for the remark is God’s own remembrance and care for animals themselves (cf. Gen 8:1). The rationale for eating meat, then, is not the rationale of fallenness, but of covenant. In biblical perspective then, meat is given to us to remind us of the contingency of our existence and of the world’s existence. It exists as a symbol, a sacrament if you will, of God’s promise of peace and preservation.

So in conclusion: Hah! That’s right, the Bible is pro-meat. There you go. It’s in there. Take that vegetarians. Now we not only have the best-tasting food, we also have the word of God to back us up.

The Not-So-Dangerous Theology of Walter Brueggemann

Posted by on February 4, 2009 21 comments

I’ve read and deeply enjoyed Walter Brueggemann’s works on the Old Testament for quite some time now. Brueggemann is nothing if not a rigorous and creative reader of biblical texts. Indeed, his early book, The Prophetic Imagination will always continue to be one of my favorite books. Central to Brueggemann’s whole attempt to read Scripture is his insistence that the text not be allowed to be domesticated, flattened out, or synthesized in a way that would blunt its cutting and decisive edge.

Now, this claim is clearly right and good and should be affirmed. However, one of my problems with the way this all plays out in Brueggemann relates to his skittishness to see anything other than cacophony in the Scriptures. He is so intent that in allowing the texts to “explode” and “linger” in all of their otherness that he never gets about the business of allowing various texts otherness to confront or inform one another. In short, by opting for a sort hermeneutic of disintegration, Brueggemann appears to be allowing texts to speak with their own voice, but this ultimately happens at the expense of the texts really ever entering into conversation with each other at all.

Brueggemann’s main hermeneutical goal often seems to be that of preserving rather than ironing out tensions, discontinuities, and disequilibration in our encounter with the biblical text. However, his overarching hermeneutic of disintegration actually has the opposite effect. In allowing the distinctness of texts to just sit there on their own, as discrete integers, his attempt to preserve the tensions in Scripture actually becomes a way of dissolving all tension by hermetically closing them off from one another in the name of avoiding a totalizing or flattening hermeneutic.

In other words, while to be sure it is wrong to simply try to harmonize the Bible in a facile manner, Bruggemann’s allegedly pluralistic approach does essentially the same thing. It allows the differences to stand, so long as we don’t try to actually struggle with the differences and attempt to bring them into conversation. As such, the truly daring, truly dangerous mode of engagement with the Bible is neither one that offers an integrative hermeneutic for everything, not a disintegrative hermeneutic that hermetically seals texts off from encountering one another for the sake of preserving their distinctness. A truly daring and dangerous hermeneutic is one that actually enters into the hard work of dealing with text as a whole, and yet does so in such a way that it does not assume, in advance the sort of whole that the Bible is and what that will mean for how we read and how we live.

Greatest 20th Century Biblical Theologians

Posted by on May 28, 2008 29 comments

Who do you consider to be the greatest Biblical Theologians of the 20th Century, and why?  If you wish, you may nominate one person for New Testament and one for Old Testament.  For my money, I think the work of Brevard Childs may be the most significant work in biblical theology to be done this century.  But what say you all?

The Hilarity of Dispensationalism

Posted by on February 11, 2008 10 comments

Over my desk at work I have a nearly 60-year-old chart by Finis Jennings Dake entitled “The Plan of the Ages”.  It’s one of those classic charts of how old-school dispensationalists used to divide up the Bible.  This one, however is the mother of all dispensationalist charts.  It has literally everything on it.  The subtitle of the chart is “the Bible on canvas”.  Whenever I need a good laugh I just look at the chart.  The cross is located in the middle of the timeline, but it is carefully tucked into a tiny little corner between the dispensation of the law and the dispensation of the church.  (Which, incidentally includes a little cartoon in it that shows us “the river of death”, its various tributaries being things like gambling, drunkenness, uncleanness, variance, and revelling – and the river pours into Sheol of course.)  However, my current favorite part of the whole thing is the little section where Noah’s Ark is located.  There’s the Ark floating on the water, and down in the water are a couple hapless sinners who didn’t listen to Noah, helplessly waving their hands at the Ark, all to no avail.  The sub-texts of violence throughout the whole chart are interesting to say the least.  Here’s a graphic of part of the chart:

The Plan of the Ages by Dake by Finis Dake

The Psalms as Inter-Trinitarian Dialogue

Posted by on January 30, 2008 9 comments

A while back I posted a Christological Theology of the Psalms.  At the end of that post I suggest that the Psalms can be read fruitfully as a an inter-trinitarian dialogue, that is as a conversation between the Son and the Father in the Spirit.  This has a prima facie plausibility to me in light of the simple fact that the Psalms, more than any other book of the Old Testament are found on the lips of Jesus throughout the Gospels.  Jesus finds in the Psalms his own prayers and speaks them as his own prayers to the Father.

If it is indeed the case that the Psalms can legitimately and fruitfully be read in this figural way, I wonder what we might glean from them in terms of trinitarian doctrine.  In other words, if the Psalms are a discourse, a conversation between the Son and Father in their common Spirit, how might these Scriptures reshape and nurture our affirmations about the being of the triune God?  I have two thoughts about where such reflections might lead us.

First, if the discourse between the Psalmist and Yahweh in the Psalms is reflective of the eternal conversation of Jesus and the Father, we are forced to think of the divine life in an intensely personal and dynamic manner.  The pleas throughout the Psalms for divine help, even a prayer as radical as “take not your Holy Spirit from me!” (Ps. 51:5), if read trinitarianly propels us to think about the divine life of communion between the Father and Son, not a static given, but a dynamic being given.  The Son does not posses the Father but stands ever in need of the Father.  The Father likewise stands in need of the Son, without whom he will be without praise, love, and adoration.  Without the living Son, there is none to behold the Father’s radiance or declare his reality to the world (cf. Ps. 30:9).  We could say, on the basis of the Psalmic discourse that the Son is the visibility of the Father, without whom the Father cannot be himself.  One of the fascinating (and perhaps ontologically radical) implications of the Psalms for trinitarian doctrine is that essential neediness is not foreign to the life of the Trinity.  The sort of vulnerability, instability, and dependence that we experience as creatures is not a reality that is foreign to the life of God.  Rather, in God the reality of ontological neediness is embraced in an overabundant life of gift.  In the Trinity, being is not a given, but a dynamic being given which can only be received through the embrace, rather than the eschewal of need and dependence.

Second, if the Pslams reflect the eternal trinitiarian conversation, they testify to the irreducible historicality of God’s way of being God.  The eternal trinitarian conversation includes the history of Israel, the church, and the world.  God’s eternal discourse between the Son and the Father in the Spirit includes, grounds, and sustains the world of chance and change.  Indeed, on the basis of the Psalms we can say that God’s way of being God is identical with his being God for us.  The immanent, eternal discourse between the Son and the Father includes, embraces, and upholds creaturely reality.  God’s immanent life is found, not above, but profoundly within history, or rather history itself is found within the triune discourse.  The self-abnegating hesed of Yahweh, and the kenosis of Jesus are the elocutions of the triune discourse through which creation finds its being as an inflection, a rhythm, a non-necessary participant within the eternal conversation that is the triune God. 

There is certainly much more that could and must be said about a Christological and trinitarian reading of the Psalms.  What other vistas and horizons of discovery might there be for theological interpretation if we approach the Psalms as inter-Trinitarian discourse?  If people have thoughts, I want to continue such a conversation.  Who knows, such a conversation might even catch and experience a few of the inflections within the historical and eternal triune discourse!

A Christological Theology of the Psalms

Posted by on November 8, 2007 6 comments

In reading through the Psalms yesterday, I was struck by what it might mean to read them Christologically as Dietrich Bonhoeffer recommends in his books Psalms: The Prayerbook of the Bible and Life Together.  His proposal, simply stated is that it ultimately Christ himself who prays the psalms.  This is, in part a brilliant way of reading the imprecatory psalms with it’s shockingly violent imagery: ”Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!” (Ps. 137:8)

For Bonhoeffer, it is Christ himself and Christ alone who is able to pray this prayer for God’s judgment, and in so praying it he causes it to fall, not on those deserving wrath, but on himself.  Thus, we cannot pray such prayers, rather we can listen to Christ pray them and make them his own, bringing about the curses on his own head for us and in our place.

However, such a way of reading the pslams is not just a handy way to deal with rough texts.  It also helps to make sense of a great many of the psalms of David.  Beginning always with the epitaph לְדָוִד ( “to David” or “in reference to David”), a great many of these psalms make little sense if we simply try to situate them within the historical life of David as narrated in Samuel and Kings.  One could, of course cite radical poetic hyperbole as the reason for the language of these psalms: “O LORD, you brought up my soul from Sheol, restored me to life from among those gone down to the Pit” (Ps. 30:3).  And, I certainly don’t dispute that the Psalms could be read on that level.  However, in reading through them it seems that the text of the psalms invites a theological reading that extends far beyond simply the emotional and historical situations of the life of David.

First of all throughout the first book of the Psalms (1-42), which are all ascribed to David (except for the first two Psalms, which I would argue serve as an introduction to the book as a whole and which should in fact be read as a unity rather than two separate songs) there are references to Israel’s exile and a longing for redemption (see e.g. Ps. 14:7; 25:22).  Moreover, the superscriptions of many of the psalms speak to these psams being composed for occasions that could not have historical reference to David (“for the memorial offering”: Ps. 38 or, more definitively, “A Song at the dedication of the temple”: Ps. 30).

My point in all of this is that the psalms seem to invite a level of theological interpretation that goes beyond simply the historical.  The weaving together of rich poetic language of suffering and vindication, descent and ascent, desolation and consolation seems to point beyond the historical origins of the individual psalms towards a broader situatedness within the history of Israel in exile, and more importantly, within the all-encompassing history of Jesus.  Read canonically, I think the the bulk of the psalms just make more sense if we read them as coming from the mouth Jesus himself.  The dialectic of death and resurrection, desolation and joy, abandonment and praise seems to long for a Christological interpretation.

Consider for example, Psalm 30:

I will extol you, O LORD, for you have drawn me up
  and have not let my foes rejoice over me.
O LORD my God, I cried to you for help,
  and you have healed me.
O LORD, you have brought up my soul from Sheol;
  you restored me to life from among those who go down to the pit.

Sing praises to the LORD, O you his saints,
  and give thanks to his holy name.
 For his anger is but for a moment,
  and his favor is for a lifetime.
 Weeping may tarry for the night,
  but joy comes with the morning.

As for me, I said in my prosperity,
  “I shall never be moved.”
By your favor, O LORD,
  you made my mountain stand strong;
you hid your face;
  I was dismayed.

To you, O LORD, I cry,
  and to the Lord I plead for mercy:
“What profit is there in my death,
  if I go down to the pit?
Will the dust praise you?
  Will it tell of your faithfulness?
Hear, O LORD, and be merciful to me!
  O LORD, be my helper!”

You have turned for me my mourning into dancing;
  you have loosed my sackcloth
  and clothed me with gladness,
that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent.
  O LORD my God, I will give thanks to you forever!

In a psalm such as this I cannot help but hear the voice of Jesus of Nazareth at prayer with the one he called Father.  Here we here the voice of the one who “offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the One who was able to save him from death” who “although he was a Son, learned obedience through what he suffered” (Heb. 5:7, 8).  One is hard pressed to find a more appropriate poetic articulation of the agonies of Gethsemane and the ecstasy of Galilee.

The psalms string together, in a beautiful symphony the longing of Israel for redemption in exile, the Davidic memory and covenant, the cries of the faithful for vindication, and the firm resolve to praise the God of Israel.  All of these themes coalesce and cohere in Christ, and truly I think, nowhere else.  So, after reading the psalms through again, I find my self more convinced than ever that the best way to read them is through a historically and eschatologically oriented Christology.  Or, to put it another way, the pslams can fruitfully be read as a sort of inter-trinitarian dialogue between Jesus and his Father.  And it is within that trinitarian conversation, through the rhythms of descent and ascent, death and resurrection that Israel and the Church are found and redeemed.  What this might for the reading of the psalms as a whole is an interesting, and I think, exciting prospect. 

Switch to our mobile site