Old Testament – Page 9

On Reading Jonah, Part 2

November 13, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Last time we looked at the recurring theme of “greatness” in this brief biblical book. This time I’d like to notice a couple more literary features.

Have you noticed the parallel structure?

In chapter 1, unbelieving Gentiles (the sailors), fearing the wrath of Jonah’s God, seek deliverance by responding to the prophet’s word—and throwing Jonah into the sea, with prayers that God would accept the obedience they offer.
In chapter 2, Jonah prays to God, praising him for his deliverance.

In chapter 3, unbelieving Gentiles (the Ninevites), fearing the wrath of Jonah’s God, seek deliverance by responding to the prophet’s word—and repenting of their sin, with hope that God would accept the obedience they offer.
In chapter 4, Jonah prays to God, raging at him for his deliverance.

Two episodes, in exact parallel.

And here’s the odd thing—while the unbelieving Gentiles are moving in the right direction, the allegedly believing prophet is moving in the opposite direction—against what he already clearly knows.

In chapter 1, Jonah seeks to “flee from the presence of the Lord” (Jon 1.3, 10) despite the fact that he knows that the Lord “made the sea and the dry land” (Jon 1.9), and despite the fact that he knows God can and will send a great storm in response to his disobedience.

In chapter 4, Jonah knows that the Lord’s nature is to show mercy to those who repent (Jon 4.2), yet he hardens his heart against the Lord’s will.

The irony is strong in this one.

Something else to notice—in the previous post I referred to Jonah as “the character for whom the book is named.” That may have struck you as awkward. Why not call him “the hero,” or “the main character,” or, to use the more academic term, “the protagonist”?

Simple. Because he is none of those things. He not the main character; as I noted last time, he’s a foil. There I said that he’s a foil for the other prophets; in many ways the book of Jonah is a study in contrasts with all the other prophetic writings. But here I’ll note that within the book itself, he’s a foil as well—a foil for the true main character.

And who is that?

It’s not the fish.

And, perhaps contrary to our expectations, it’s not the king of Nineveh, as positive a character as he is. (And if you know anything about the Assyrians, you’re as surprised as I am that I just called an Assyrian king a “positive character.”)

Who’s the main character? Who’s the protagonist?

It’s God.

He the one doing all the things—

Calling the prophet and specifying his message
Sending a great storm—and calming it when the sailors obey the words of the prophet
Appointing a great fish—and graciously delivering the disobedient prophet, through regurgitation, when he prays
Responding with grace to the repentance of a deeply evil people by reversing his earlier pronouncement of judgment—even taking pity on the Assyrian cattle (Jon 4.11).

The book itself doesn’t note this, but we know from later history that this repentance was short-lived. It wasn’t long before the Assyrians were at it again, perpetrating cruelty and violence all across the region, crushing any who opposed them, extorting the wealth of their neighbors, being in general just the big bully of the known world.

And a bit more than a century later, God sent another prophet—Nahum—with a similar message of doom for Nineveh, and this threat would certainly be carried out; by the end of the century—605 BC, to be precise—near a town called Carchemish on what is now the Turkish-Syrian border, the Babylonian armies crushed the Assyrians, who in their desperation had even sought help from the Egyptians. And just like that, Assyria was history.

As I say, God knew all that, from the beginning of time.

But when Nineveh repented, ever so briefly and ever so imperfectly, God forgave them. And spared them.

That’s the kind of person he is.

You know, you are of much more worth than an Assyrian cow. Even though you can’t repent worth a nickel, God will forgive you, too.

That’s the kind of person he is.

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On Reading Jonah, Part 1

November 11, 2019 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Every so often I’ve been posting my thoughts on reading various biblical books. There’s no formal plan; I just comment when I have something to say about a particular document. Along the way I’ve posted on Leviticus, Numbers, and Job—sometimes taking just one post, sometimes two. In this post and the next one, I’d like to notice some things about Jonah. (I note that so far these have all been Old Testament books. There’s no particular reason for that.)

Everybody knows the story of Jonah and the whale; we all learned about it in Sunday school. A lot of people note that the Bible doesn’t actually call it a whale—it calls it a “great fish” (“huge fish” NIV), and as we all know, whales aren’t fish.

Well, wait a minute. Of course it’s true that whales bear live young and breathe through a blowhole, while fish have scales (um, not instead of live young, but you know what I mean) and use gills to extract oxygen dissolved in water. Fair enough.

But the zoological taxonomic system, including its definitions of words like fish, was developed long after the Bible was written. (And accusing the Bible of “scientific error” for this is to apply an ex post facto law, which is specifically forbidden in the US Constitution, Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 3. So there.)

The Old Testament cultures called marine creatures “fish,” just as they called flying creatures “birds,” even if a specific flying creature (e.g. the bat [Lev 11.19]) was later to be classified with mammals, for very mammalian reasons.

So maybe it was a whale. Or maybe it was a really big fish of some kind—maybe even a special fish created just for the occasion. The point is that it was there at that moment, and that God had directed it to be. A “great fish.”

Speaking of which, have you ever noticed how often the word great is used in this short book?

Jonah is sent to “Nineveh, that great city” (Jon 1.2; 3.2, 3; 4.11).
God sends “a great wind” (Jon 1.4) and “a great storm” (Jon 1.4, 12) before he sends “a great fish” (Jon 1.17).
The sailors “feared greatly” (Jon 1.10, 16).
The people of Nineveh repented, “from the greatest to the least” (Jon 3.5), and the repentance proclamation was issued “by the king and his great ones” (Jon 3.7).
When they repented, Jonah was “greatly displeased” (Jon 4.1)—but when the Lord sent a plant to bring him shade, he was “greatly happy” (Jon 4.6).

This is a book of extremes. God does extreme things to see that his will is accomplished, and the characters respond extremely to what they see going on around them. God’s actions greatly humble a great city and its great people.

But the character for whom the book is named is the most extreme of all—oddly extreme. He goes to great lengths to disobey the great One whose message he is appointed to deliver. He delivers it with no compassion for his hearers—compassion that is clearly the motive of the One who sent him (Jon 4.11). Jonah’s actions and reactions are extreme, like those of the other characters, but they are ironically extreme—the opposite of what we expect.

Other prophets take on difficult assignments and deliver their messages in the spirit in which God sent them—and often no one listens to them (Isa 6.8-13; Jer 13.10-11; Ezk 2.3-7). Jonah delivers the message only when he is forced to—and the people repent en masse. And then, to our astonishment, Jonah is angry at their repentance, revealing himself to be an unreconstructed bigot.

Jonah is a foil for all the rest of the prophetic writings. He is the unprophet.

Have you ever heard it said that God can’t use a dirty vessel? Oh, yes he can. And with such a small and weak messenger, he can bring a great city, filled with great men, to great repentance, and he can show them great mercy.

He’s that great.

Part 2

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On Fear

October 31, 2019 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

It’s October 31—the day my Presbyterian friends call Reformation Day, but pretty much everybody else calls Halloween. Some
Christians think it’s OK to celebrate Halloween, and others don’t. I’m not going to enter that discussion in this post, but I do want to use the occasion to do a little biblical investigation.

In our culture Halloween is typically associated with fear—haunted houses, goblins, and so on. I suppose an outside observer would find it odd that we humans like to be scared, as long as we know it’s safe—and for some, even because we know it’s not safe.

More seriously, I see a lot of fear in the world around me, fear that seems to come from every direction. In politics, fear of the other guy winning. In health, fear of this or that environmental concern. In parenting, fear of this or that factor hurting my child. Any number of my newsfeed friends comment on a post with a single word: “Scary!”

I’d like to lay out a theology of fear from a single biblical book.

Deuteronomy is at the heart of Scripture. It’s the climax of the Constitution that God himself drew up for his chosen nation. Scholars have noticed that it’s in a specific legal form common in its day, called a “suzerainty covenant.” It establishes a relationship between an emperor and his people, laying out the terms of the relationship—and this covenant is unusually gracious to the conquered people. It puts the lie to the nonsense about the “angry God of the Old Testament.”

And it talks a lot about fear. This very common Hebrew word appears 39 times in 32 chapters in the book—31 times as a verb, 6 times as an adjective, and twice as a noun. And its usage pattern is very interesting.

Did you know that the book says both that we should fear, and that we shouldn’t?

The difference is in the objects.

Here’s what God’s people shouldn’t fear—

The
wilderness (Dt 1.19; 8.15)
The
Canaanites, with whom they’re about to do battle (Dt 1.21, 29; 3.22; 7.18; 20.1,
3; 31.6), specifically
- The
  king of Bashan (Dt 3.2)
- Occupying
  the land (Dt 31.8)

So there’s no need for us to be afraid of our circumstances, or the people who stand in opposition to us.

Hmm. That’s pretty much everything that we fear, isn’t it?

Don’t be afraid.

Not about politics, not about health, not about the environment, not about people.

Let me anticipate an objection. I’m not suggesting that these things aren’t significant, or that they aren’t important. A nation’s political leadership can make life miserable (Pr 28.15), and disease is so devastating that Jesus was moved to heal it (Mk 1.41), and God has given us responsibility to care for creation (Gn 1.28), and sin causes unimaginable grief to God himself.

But we shouldn’t be afraid. We have a heavenly Father, and he is working his plan, and he cares for us (Lk 12.22-32).

God even told his people that the very people they were afraid of were going to be afraid of them (Dt 2.4, 25; 11.25; 28.10). How about that.

But perhaps surprisingly, we’re not supposed to be fearless.

Here’s what God’s people should fear—

There’s only one entry on that list. But Deuteronomy emphasizes this fact far more than the fact that we shouldn’t fear anything else. It gives us lots of information about fearing God—

How should we fear him?

All our days (Dt 4.10; 6.2; 14.23)
Intergenerationally (Dt 4.10; 6.2; 31.13)
By
- keeping his commandments (Dt 5.5, 29; 6.2, 24;
  8.6; 10.12; 13.4, 11; 17.13, 19; 19.20; 21.21; 28.58; 31.12)
- worshipping him (Dt 6.13)
- swearing by his name (Dt 6.13; 10.20)
- loving him (Dt 10.12)
- serving him (Dt 10.12, 20; 13.4)
- clinging to him (Dt 10.20; 13.4)

Why should we fear him?

Because he is “fearsome” (Dt 7.21; 10.17) and
does “awesome” things (Dt 10.21; 28.58)
Because it results in
- Things being well with us (Dt 5.29; 6.24)
- Prolonged days (Dt 6.2, 24)

My natural tendency is to get all this just exactly backwards. I fear temporary and empty stuff, and I find my heart lacking in fear toward the only one who matters.

But here’s the thing.

Fearing God isn’t like fearing everything else. It’s liberating; it’s beneficial; it’s joyous. It’s what we were designed to do.

It fits.

Oh that they had such a heart as this always,
to fear me and to keep all my commandments,
that it might go well with them and with their descendants forever! (Dt 5.29)

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The Really Important Bible Story that Hardly Anybody Knows About, Part 5

November 29, 2018 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

December 18, 520 BC, has been a pretty good day so far; Haggai’s third sermon has given us a lot to chew on.

But he’s not done yet.

Later the same day, Haggai delivers his fourth and final sermon, and it goes far beyond any of the others.

This sermon is different from the others; for starters, it’s delivered not to the crowd of onlookers or the workers themselves, but to just one man—the governor, Zerubbabel (Hag 2.21).

And it’s brief and to the point.

And cryptic.

Haggai talks about the shaking that’s coming (Hag 2.21b-22). He’s mentioned that before, in his second sermon (Hag 2.6-7). And in that day, he says to Zerubbabel, I’m going to make you a signet ring!

And that’s it. End of sermon, end of book.

What on earth does that mean?

Zerubbabel would know very well what it means. I’ve mentioned that he’s the grandson of the last Davidic king. This statement is about his grandfather.

His grandfather went by several names. Jehoiachin. Jeconiah. Or just Coniah.

And in his reign of just three months (2K 24.8), he was an evil, evil king. So evil, in fact, that God had placed a special curse on him through Jeremiah: he would be cut off, the royal signet ring pulled off of God’s finger and cast aside (Jer 22.24-27). And worse, none of his descendants would ever sit on the throne of David (Jer 22.30).

How about that. God just cursed the Messianic line. To all appearances, his promise to David (2Sam 7.4-17) was over. No eternal Messianic king after all.

The end of hope.

And now, to Zerubbabel, two generations later, he speaks again of the signet ring. What does it mean? Will Zerubbabel become king again?

Not until the shaking (Hag 2.21-23). When would that be?

Well, Zerubbabel never becomes king, so not in his lifetime. And not for the next 400 years, through all of Zerubbabel’s royal descendants (Mt 1.12-16). And along about 5 BC, the royal heir—cursed—is a carpenter in Nazareth.*

He will never be king. Nor will any biological son.

I think he knew that. The very existence of the genealogy in Matthew 1 testifies to the fact that the Jews kept track of such things.

And now he learns that his fiancée—a woman whose character he had never questioned—is with child, and he knows he’s not the father.

Anguished, he ponders his next step. In the dark of night, a heavenly messenger appears to him. The situation is not what you think, he says. Marry the woman. Adopt the baby.

Joseph’s reputation will be ruined if he does what the messenger says. It will cost him everything.

But he does it anyway. Does he know? Does he realize that this is God’s remarkable way of keeping an apparently broken promise? Or does he just figure that you ought to do what a heavenly messenger says?

He adopts the baby.

And in that instant, it all comes together. The adopted child becomes the legal heir to all the promises of God to David. He becomes the eternal king, the child born to bear all government on his shoulders. Yet he is not heir to the curse on Coniah. He can reign.

How much do we owe to this Joseph, the man who sacrificed everything to follow God’s hard command and then disappeared entirely from history? What if he had said, “No, let the next generation do it!”?

There can be no next generation. Daniel predicted the death of Messiah around AD 30 (Dan 9.24-26). This is the time. If Joseph doesn’t do it, the promises are all broken, and it all falls apart.

Back to Haggai’s day. Does Zerubbabel understand any of this? Can he make sense of the prophecy of the signet ring?

We’re not told. Maybe Haggai explained it to him. Maybe he never knew. Maybe he thought, “And this is the thanks I get?!”

But the theme of the sermon is clear to us. God keeps his promises.

He has made plenty more. And he keeps them all.

Walk in the light of that trust.

* What follows assumes that Matthew’s genealogy is the royal line of David culminating in Joseph, while Luke’s genealogy is a non-royal Davidic line culminating in Mary. No space to defend that view here, but it’s common and justified at length in standard reference works and commentaries.

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The Really Important Bible Story that Hardly Anybody Knows About, Part 4

November 26, 2018 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

So far we’ve seen Judah return from Babylonian Captivity and re-establish themselves in the land. We’ve seen them respond, 16 years later, to Haggai’s urging that they rebuild the Temple. We’ve seen God encourage them that his blessing would be on this Temple, in a special way.

And so the work continues.

But now there’s a new problem.

Routine sets in. The workers go to work every day at the Temple site, and they begin to lose appreciation for the special character of the work they’re doing. And not in the way you’d expect—they don’t say, “Ho-hum, let’s get this job done and move on to the next one.” No, the distortion in their thinking is much more pernicious than that. While continuing their appreciation for the significance of the work itself, they twist its purpose. They begin to make it about themselves rather than the God of heaven.

“I’m working on the Temple!” they think. “I’m a cut above!”

And if “I’m special!” then I suppose I have certain privileges, don’t I? If God appreciates my work for him, then I probably don’t have to care all that much about the details of my own thinking and my own living. That’s for the little people. I’m special. My work makes me so.

On December 18, three months into construction, Haggai trudges up to the Temple site once again.

“I have a question for you,” he says. “It’s about the Law. Call the experts; I want to get their opinion” (Hag 2.11).

If someone is carrying some sacrificial meat, he says, and he rubs up against something, does the holy meat make the other thing holy (Hag 2.12a)? In other words, does holiness rub off?

No, the priests—the experts—say (Hag 2.12b). Holiness doesn’t rub off.

OK, next question.

If someone has touched a dead body, he’s unclean, right (Lev 22.4)? Now, if this unclean person touches something else, does he make the other thing unclean (Hag 2.13a)? Does corruption rub off?

Yes, they say (Hag 2.13b). Corruption pollutes.

So holiness doesn’t rub off, but unholiness does?

Right.

You already knew that, didn’t you? When you wash your hands, rubbing them on a dirty surface doesn’t make the surface clean; it makes your hands dirty again. My pastor from years ago* once said, “When you put on white gloves and play in the mud, you don’t made the mud glovey; you make the gloves muddy.”

These men thought that working on the Temple construction was making them clean. On the contrary, when they showed up every day, they were dragging their corrupt hearts onto the site and defiling it by their very presence (Hag 2.14).

They were undoing with their hearts what they were doing with their hands.

And as a result, God’s judgment on their land continued despite their (merely) external obedience (Hag 2.15-18).

But if they would trust and obey, if they would believe his word, despite the desolation all around them, the blessing would come (Hag 2.19).

So what’s the theme of Haggai’s third sermon? Love first, then obedience.

And so it is with us. We think that our association with other believers, with churches, with institutions, our work for God, enables us to cut corners in our love for him.

But it doesn’t.

God doesn’t want your stuff. He doesn’t even want your frenetic activity—he really doesn’t need your help to advance his kingdom—so much as he wants your heart. Mary knew that, and Martha, I suspect, eventually learned it (Lk 10.38-42).

So stop a minute, rethink, reorient.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Put the important stuff first.

And then, sure, get back to work. With a reoriented heart, the work takes on a whole new perspective.

* That was Chuck Swindoll, Waltham (MA) Evangelical Free Church, 1966-67.

Part 5

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The Really Important Bible Story That Hardly Anybody Knows About, Part 3

November 19, 2018 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1 Part 2

It’s October of 520 BC, and the returned exiles from Babylon have begun construction on the new (Second) Temple under the leadership of their governor, Zerubbabel, in response to the urging of the prophet Haggai. But just a month into the effort, discouragement has set in.

It appears that there are some older folks watching as the young bucks do the heavy lifting. They’re old enough to remember the First Temple, Solomon’s Temple, now gone for 66 years. Let me tell you, that was quite a piece of work, they say. The gold. The silver. The ivory. And those two columns on the front porch. Six feet in diameter. Three stories tall. Bronze four inches thick around a hollow core. Now that was a temple. This one? Not so much. Ah, well. I guess you can do only so much with rubble.

On the 17^th of October, Haggai returns to the deflated construction workers with another message from God. He confronts the problem directly.

The old men are right—as far as they go, he says. This one isn’t going to have all the gold and silver and ivory of Solomon’s Temple (Hag 2.3). But this time is different. This one isn’t going to be about gold and silver. Gold and silver are trivial; if you need gold and silver to make this Temple great, I can get you all the gold and silver you need. I put the ore in the hills, and I know exactly where it all is. I can get it for you if I want to (Hag 2.8).

But this time I’m doing something much, much bigger than mere shiny things. This Temple is going to be different.

The day is coming, he says, when I’m going to turn the whole world upside down (Hag 2.6-7). I’m going to do something unprecedented, unimaginable. And when I do, the eyes of the entire world are going to be focused on this Temple, the one you’re building—and it will shine with a glory that gold and silver could never approach (Hag 2.7).

You see, what the construction workers couldn’t possibly know is that in a little more than half a millennium, a little baby boy would be brought into this Temple to be dedicated to the Lord, and a prophet named Simeon would be among the first to know that this was a baby like no other (Lk 2.25-35). And a dozen years later, the same boy would sit in this Temple and confound the rabbis there with the wisdom of his questions (Lk 2.41-50). And as a man he would stride into this Temple—“My Father’s house!”—and drive out those who had filled the courtyard with abusive money-making schemes, robbing God’s people in the very place God had designed to be their sanctuary (Jn 2.13-17). Twice! (Lk 19.45-46). And there he would teach (Jn 10.22-38).

And one day—one dark Friday afternoon—as the priests were going about their normal duties in the Holy Place in this very Temple*, with a horrifying crack, the veil of this Temple would be torn in two, from the top to the bottom, without hands, leaving the way open into the very presence of God for everyone.

Gold and silver? Trivial stuff.

This is about eternal things, life-changing things, world-shaking things.

So keep working, the Lord says. Your work matters, even if it doesn’t look like it to the folks looking on. This is really, really big.

What’s the theme of this second sermon?

It’s God who makes the work great.

Any work done for him, in obedience to his commands, is infinitely great, because the one for whom it’s done is infinitely great.

Labor on, my friend.

* Of course I’m aware that by Jesus’ time Herod the Great had massively renovated the Temple, with the effect that it was significantly greater and more impressive than was the one Zerubbabel’s workers constructed. But Haggai doesn’t make that distinction, and neither will I. The building they were beginning work on would eventuate in world-shaking developments.

Part 4 Part 5

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The Really Important Bible Story That Hardly Anybody Knows About, Part 2

November 15, 2018 by Dan Olinger Leave a Comment

Part 1

In my last post I introduced the story of Haggai, one of two prophets who preached to the Jews who had returned from captivity in Babylon. As I noted there, they had rebuilt the altar and reinstituted animal sacrifice, so as to address their most pressing need, a right relationship with God. And they began to rebuild the Temple until local opposition stopped them.

It’s now 16 years later, and the Temple remains in ruins, with a functioning altar standing amidst the rubble. On August 29, 520 BC, the word of Yahweh comes to Haggai. The Lord directs the message to Zerubbabel, the governor, and to Joshua, the high priest. (Obviously, this is not the Joshua we know best; he’s been dead for nearly a thousand years.)

Haggai begins by telling the hearers to “Consider your ways” (Hag 1.5)—in other words, to rethink what they’re doing. Something is wrong with their priorities.

What could that be? Well, they’re living in nicely decorated houses—well beyond what’s functionally necessary—and the Lord’s house still lies in ruins (Hag 1.4, 9b).

And for at least the most recent of these past 16 years, God has been nudging them toward dependence. He has withheld the rain that would provide bountiful crops (Hag 1.10)—something the Lord had promised them if they would but serve him (Dt 7.12-13). Every sector of the economy has been affected—the grain, the grape, the olive, and all the other agricultural products; and the suppression of this key element of the economy has exerted downward pressure on even the wages for labor (Hag 1.11).

And the judgment has not been limited to decreased income. Cash outflow has been increased at the same time:

You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes (Hag 1.6).

Does that sound at all familiar? Have you ever seen the bills increasing just at the times that you need to cut expenses to match your income? Frustrating, isn’t it?

Now, I’m not saying that when that happens to you, God is judging you, and you need to go out and build a temple—or even put more money in the offering plate. God has many reasons other than judgment to take us through deep waters and fiery trials, and in fact Christ has endured all of the judgment that God has ever had for us.

But at least this common experience helps us understand a little bit of what Judah was going through.

And what does the Lord prescribe as the solution to the problem?

Get some wood. Build the house. Glorify God (Hag 1.8).

I don’t think the solution to divine displeasure is to work harder; the Scripture pictures God as a God of grace, of love, of care. And that is the key to what he’s asking for here.

The problem is not their failure to build the Temple; that’s the symptom. The problem is that they don’t care about their God as much as they care about themselves. And so God tells them, yes, to get wood and build the house—and most important, in that to glorify him, to make him look big, to demonstrate by their actions that they hold him close and hold him reverently, that they value him above all else.

Like every good sermon, this one has a theme, a key takeaway idea. How would you state it?

I’d put it pretty simply: God comes first.

We put him first. In everything—in our thoughts, in our plans, in our labors, and especially in our affections—because if he is first there, he will be first everywhere else.

The account tells us that Zerubbabel, and Joshua, and all the people responded to Haggai’s words as they should have. With the promise of the Lord’s presence and empowerment (Hag 1.13), they get wood, and they begin to build the house. Construction begins just 23 days later (Hag 1.15).

This is a great first step. But as we’ll see, setting off down the path of obedience does not mean that the path will be straight, or level, or free of danger. In less than a month, God’s people will need another sermon.

Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

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The Really Important Bible Story That Hardly Anybody Knows About, Part 1

November 12, 2018 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

There’s a standard set of Bible stories that we grow up hearing in Sunday school. In the Old Testament, Adam and Eve; Noah; Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph; Moses and Joshua; maybe a judge or two; David and Solomon; Elijah and Elisha; Daniel.

We know that Judah went into captivity in Babylon, and we hear how Nehemiah rebuilt Jerusalem’s walls afterwards, but everything in between is kind of fuzzy.

It shouldn’t be.

Ezra begins with the story of Cyrus, who had conquered Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians, announcing that any peoples conquered and displaced by the Babylonians could return to their homeland. Apparently he figured that conquered peoples might be less prone to rebellion if they were happy. Quite an enlightened despot, he was.

Well, that meant that the Jews could go home.

Relatively few of them did (42,360 [Ezra 2.64]). That seems surprising until you realize that most of the Jews in Babylon by that time had been born there; the last deportation had been 50 years earlier, in 586 BC. No reason to go to a city they’d never seen—which, incidentally, was in ruins and had been for 50 years.

The leader of those who did return was named Zerubbabel, the grandson of the last Davidic king, Jechoniah, who had been cursed by God (Jer 22.34ff) along with his descendants. So Zerubbabel is not going to be king, even if Cyrus would hear of such a thing. He’s the governor.

The returnees arrive in Jerusalem (Ezra 1.11), and the first thing they do is rebuild the altar (Ezra 3.2). It’s easy to see why they did this; their Law said that there was no forgiveness of sins without blood sacrifices (Lev 17.11), and it also said that sacrifices could be offered only at the Temple site, where God had placed his name (Dt 12.11). For the 50 years since the Temple had been destroyed, there had been no blood sacrifice, and thus, as far as they knew, no forgiveness of sin.

So they build the altar first, on the site of the old Temple, and the blood flows once again. There is peace with God.

Then they begin reconstruction of the Temple itself (Ezra 3.8). But they’ve gotten no further than laying the foundation when they run into political opposition from the locals (Ezra 4), and the work stops (Ezra 4.24) until the second year of Darius—a 16-year hiatus.

So for 16 years the priests lead animals out into the center of the vacant lot where the Temple used to be, and on the altar, under the open sky, amid the rubble, they slaughter and sacrifice them. The proper place, all right, but hardly a fitting one for sacrificing to the God of heaven.

During those 16 years the residents of Jerusalem aren’t idle. They rebuild their houses, plant their gardens, and do all the other work necessary to establishing a normal life in the long-abandoned land. They even have time to raise their standard of living by paneling their houses and decorating them far beyond simple functionality.

While dust swirls, and rain falls, and animals crawl over and around the naked altar where God meets his people.

After 16 years of this—God is patient—two prophets come to Jerusalem to reorient the people’s priorities. Their names are Haggai and Zechariah. We know little of either of them beyond their names and the fact that they prophesied. Haggai’s brief book consists of four sermons he preached in 520 BC, sermons that led to the reconstruction of the Temple and the refocusing of the spiritual life of Judah.

The sermons are preached over a period of just less than 4 months. The specific date for each sermon is given—which means that Haggai is the only book of the Bible for which we know the precise date(s) of its writing.

Every good sermon has a clear and concise theme, or what you might call a thesis statement, that the hearers can take away and put into action immediately. Haggai’s sermons are no exception.

The next 4 posts will explicate each of these four sermons—and you’ll find that their themes, their directives, are as timely today as the day they were preached.

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

On the Theology of Temporal Power

November 8, 2018 by Dan Olinger 1 Comment

A while back I posted on the contrast between the weapons of political combat and those of spiritual combat. I argued the obvious point that the latter are more effective than the former, even in political combat. And along the way I stated that political power disappears rapidly and often unexpectedly.

That’s borne out repeatedly and pervasively in Scripture by both assertion (in Proverbs and often elsewhere) and example (throughout the stories of the kings, both Israelite and pagan). Shelley’s Ozymandias taught us nothing new.

A passage that particularly drives home this point is Isaiah 14. The chapter appears toward the beginning of a section on God’s sovereign plan for the nations with whom Judah regularly dealt: Babylon and Assyria, the Big Ones (13-14), Philistia (14.28ff), Moab (15-16), Syria (17-18), Egypt (19-20), Babylon again (21), Edom (21.11ff), Arabia (21.13ff), Israel (22), and Tyre (23).

After describing the military defeat of Babylon in chapter 13, Yahweh turns Isaiah’s prophecy toward the fate of Babylon’s king in chapter 14. His power having been broken, all his old enemies will join in celebrating his collapse (Isa 14.6-8). All the dead will come to mock his arrival at the gates of hell (Isa 14.9). Great and mighty kings, once unimaginably powerful on their earthly thrones, now effete in the realm of the dead, sarcastically welcome his “royal procession” from power to irrelevance (Isa 14.10-11). He who had once sent insufficiently powerful enemies to the grave (Isa 14.6) is now there himself, food for worms (Isa 14.11).

Verse 12 begins a paragraph that many interpreters see as having a double reference, describing the fall of Satan from heaven. I’m not convinced of that. I don’t see anything in the passage that couldn’t be accurate of the king of Babylon. Some point to the words “I will be like the Most High” in v 14, but my response is to ask, “Have you never talked to a politician?” There’s nothing in the reported words of the king that any US Senator hasn’t thought.

I think many interpreters are influenced by the fact that God here calls the king “Lucifer,” an accepted name for Satan. But I note that this is the only use of the name in Scripture—Satan is never called that anywhere else—and so to use it as evidence that this is Satan is circular reasoning. Since the name simply means “Light-bearer” (as the name Christopher means “Christ-bearer”), there’s no reason it has to apply to Satan. If the king of Egypt thought he was the sun god—as did Louis XIV—it’s not difficult to imagine that the king of Babylon might have called himself the Morning Star, the planet Venus.

So I don’t think “Lucifer” is actually a biblical name for Satan, and I’m inclined to think that what we’re reading here says nothing of Satan but lots about the king of Babylon and, by extension, all earthly kings. (For the detail-obsessive reader, let me answer the question hovering in your mind: I do think Ezekiel 28, addressed to the king of Tyre, has a double reference to Satan, since the context supports that.)

The upshot of all this is that those who hold political and military power also hold highly exalted opinions of themselves because of that power—opinions that are short-sighted and completely unfounded. Kings, emperors, presidents, and prime ministers all go the way of all flesh. Representative rulers lose their power when their terms expire, and even autocrats and dictators-for-life inevitably die, and regardless of the expense of the state funeral, someone else will take their place, and life will certainly go on for the people over whom they had so much power.

Is this the man that made the earth tremble—that shook kingdoms?! (Isa 14.16).

How shortsighted it is to worship at that altar! How foolish to look there for deliverance!

Come instead—boldly—to the throne of grace (Heb 4.16), to the one seated high upon a throne, whose train fills the temple, a house filled with smoke! (Isa 6.1; Jn 12.41). Come to the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, who was, and is, and is to come! (Rev 1.8).

His kingdom lasts forever, and his will is done to all generations.

Now that’s power.

Photo by Kutan Ural on Unsplash

On Beginning at Moses

October 25, 2018 by Dan Olinger 3 Comments

… with a nod to my former Greek teacher and colleague Dr. Mike Barrett.

One of my favorite experiences is gaining an insight into biblical material that has never occurred to me before.

That happens to me fairly frequently, and yesterday it happened right in the middle of class, thanks to a student question.

We know that the entire Scripture is about Christ. Jesus himself made that point in a conversation he had with two disciples on the road to Emmaus after his resurrection (Lk 24.13ff). (And that passage, Lk 24.27 precisely, is where Dr. Barrett got the title for his book.) Boy do we wish Luke had seen fit to include a transcript of that conversation in his Gospel!

I suspect it was pretty much like Paul’s standard synagogue sermon, recorded in Acts 13.14ff, but with a lot more prophecies included.

Those two disciples said that their hearts burned within them when they heard these things (Lk 24.32). It’s easy to see why. Here they were realizing that the Tanakh (the Old Testament)—a document they had studied all their lives and thought they knew well—was filled with meaning that they had completely missed. It was like the old book had become completely new again; they were starting over as neophytes, going over long-familiar words and seeing completely new things in them.

It’s also easy to see why the early church became really taken with the idea of finding Christ in the Old Testament, looking under every bush—burning or not—to see if he was there. They found a lot of good examples, but sometimes they found things that weren’t even there—for example, when they decided that Solomon’s personification of wisdom in Proverbs 8 was actually talking about Christ. The heretic Arius was able to turn that unfounded interpretation against them by citing Prov 8.22 as proof, then, that Jesus was created by God “in the beginning.”

Oopski.

Mistakes like that have made more recent interpreters, including yours truly, a little wary of suggesting that Christ is somewhere in the OT where he hasn’t been widely recognized before.

So it’s with some trepidation that I share my “insight.”

[Deep breath.] Here goes.

The New Testament tells us repeatedly that Jesus, the Son, is in fact the creator of all things (Jn 1.3; Col 1.16; Heb 1.2). I take that to mean that the Father is the visionary, the designer, in creation, while the Son is the active agent, actually doing the work of creating, while the Spirit hovers over and tends to what is created (Gen 1.2). (So far, that’s a fairly standard, common interpretation.)

And I take that to mean that Elohim (“God”) in Gen 1 and the first paragraph of Gen 2 is actually the person of the Son. (Many others would argue that the name refers to the united Godhead, the essence rather than any one of the persons. That’s not a hill I’m interested in dying on, but bear with me here.)

In Gen 2.4 the name changes from Elohim to Yahweh Elohim (“the LORD God”). Does that indicate a change of person, or is the protagonist still the Son? Well, if “God” created man in Gen 1.27, and in the theological retelling of the story “the LORD God” created man in Gen 2.7, then it seems reasonable to continue to see the Son as the protagonist in the account.

Now, “the LORD God” continues as the main character through the end of Gen 3; Gen 4 begins to use the name Yahweh (“the LORD”). (Eve uses that name in Gen 4.1, and the narrator—Moses—begins using it in Gen 4.3.)

All of this serves as a reasonable basis for seeing Jesus as the one acting in Genesis 3. An additional evidence of that is that “the LORD God” is described as “walking in the garden in the cool of the day” (Gen 3.8)—and the Son is the only person of the Godhead described as physically embodied in Scripture. (But is Rev 5.6-7 an exception? Hmm.)

So, finally, here’s the thought I had in class today.

Is it actually Jesus who utters the prophecy of Gen 3.15?

Is it Jesus who, perhaps with an animated glint in his eye, tells the serpent that one day, the seed of the woman will crush the serpent’s head?

Wouldn’t that put quite an edge on those words? Wouldn’t it be a lot like the time David gave Goliath a list of all the things he was going to do with Goliath’s various body parts (1Sa 17.45-47), but exponentially more fearsome, and exponentially more consequential?

The Son and the Serpent, standing in the Garden, face to face, making an appointment for a battle to the death, thousands of years into the future?

I’m going to have to think about that.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash