Ezekiel 28:16: Satan? Adam? Who?

I read four Bible verses each day in Hebrew and Greek.  Right now, I am in the Book of Ezekiel.  I have been reading the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint for that book.  I read it on my BibleWorks, which is less time-consuming because I do not have to plow through lexicons.

I came across something interesting today.  In Ezekiel 28:12-17, the King of Tyre is being addressed, but he is being likened to someone in Eden, the Garden of God.  This figure in Eden was beautiful, until iniquity was found in him.

The view that I got growing up and in churches is that this figure in Eden was Satan.  According to this view, Satan was once an angel named Lucifer, but he rebelled against God and became Satan.

The view that I heard in biblical scholarship was that the figure in Eden in Exodus 28:12-17 was Adam.

In terms of this difference of opinion, a lot hinges on the meaning of Ezekiel 28:16.  The King James Version and the New Revised Standard Version translate this verse differently.

The KJV has:

"By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned: therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God: and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire."

Here, the figure in Eden is called a "covering cherub."  That is more consistent with the "Satan" interpretation.

The NRSV, by contrast, has:

"In the abundance of your trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned; so I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God, and the guardian cherub drove you out from among the stones of fire."

Here, the figure in Eden is not the cherub.  Rather, the figure is cast out by a cherub.  This is more consistent with the "Adam" interpretation.  It may be an allusion to Genesis 3:24, in which cherubim guard the Garden of Eden and the Tree of Life.

Which translation is correct?  Well, each seems to follow a specific version.

The KJV appears to follow the Masoretic Text.  The MT has "and I will destroy you, cherub, the one covering, from the midst of stones of fire" (my translation).

The NRSV, however, follows the Septuagint, which has "and the cherub led you from the midst of fiery stones" (my translation).

A reason that many scholars may shy away from the "Satan" interpretation is that they do not want to read later ideas about the fall of Lucifer into the Hebrew Bible.  Perhaps, though, a case can be made for some version of the "Satan" interpretation, from a historical-critical standpoint.  Maybe the figure in Eden in Ezekiel 28:16 is the serpent in the Garden of Eden, not Adam.  A serpent in the ancient world could have been considered a cherub.  J.J.M. Roberts, in his comments on Isaiah 6:2 in the HarperCollins Study Bible, states that the seraphim in that verse are "winged cobras (14.29; 30:6) often represented in Egyptian art, in association with Syro-Phoenician thrones, and on Israelite seals with wings outstretched to protect the deity."

The author of Ezekiel 28 could have regarded the serpent in Genesis 3 as that: a beautiful serpent cherub who decided to oppose the will of God by tempting Eve in the Garden of Eden.  The author of Ezekiel 28 may be comparing the prideful King of Tyre with the serpent.

That does not mean that one should read too much about Satan into Ezekiel 28.  The author of Ezekiel 28 did not necessarily regard the serpent as a long-standing archenemy of God throughout history.  That kind of picture hardly ever appears in the Hebrew Bible, and it may have entered Judaism in Israel's exilic or post-exilic period, under the influence of Zoroastrian dualism.  Plus, the Satan in the Hebrew Bible is considered by many biblical scholars to be a prosecuting attorney rather than God's arch-enemy.  Still, Ezekiel 28 may be referring to a renegade cherub who strayed from the will of God.

Ramblings on Reading Different Perspectives

When I was a teenager, I would mostly read one side of an issue.  On the rare occasions that I did venture forth to read another side, my mind would be in defensive mode: I would try to refute what I was reading.

Why was I like this?  One reason was that I liked the perspective that I held, and I did not want to change.  Another reason may have been my Asperger’s, which I did not know about at the time, but which still played a significant role in who I was.  I one time heard that people with Asperger’s like for things to be monochromatic: for example, they prefer a room that is mostly one color, or plain, or simple, rather than one that is complex.  When I was in college, a student saw my room and remarked that it looked “plain.”  His room had all these posters and pictures and bumper stickers and what not, whereas my room did not have those things; mostly, it was a white wall.  I guess that I was similar when it came to my worldview, back when I was an adolescent, that is: I wanted it to be simple.  I wanted to know what I believed.  And maybe that wasn’t so bad a thing back then, when I was a teenager.  My beliefs gave me an identity.  They were a place of refuge for me.  Maybe I did not need a lot of uncertainty in my life back then.

In college, I got rather bored with my certainties, and so I branched elsewhere.  Complexity can be interesting.  It can be more entertaining than thinking that one already has all the answers.  In college, I needed more of an intellectual adventure than I had in high school.  This specifically played out in my religious studies, as I sought out other ways to read the Bible, ways that differed from my fundamentalist Christian mentality.

I was thinking of something a couple of days ago.  I was reading the Book of Ezekiel for my daily quiet time.  Ezekiel says a couple of times that, when the Israelites return to their land, they will loathe themselves on account of their sinful deeds (Ezekiel 20:43; 36:31).  I thought of a book that I read as a teenager: John MacArthur’s Vanishing Conscience.  MacArthur is a Christian pastor, and in that book he was arguing against Christians who preach self-esteem—-preachers like Norman Vincent Peale and Robert Schuller.  MacArthur referred to those Ezekiel passages.  As a teenager, I loved to read John MacArthur.  I liked his writing style and his glib arguments against those with whom he disagreed.  One of his books, Anxiety Attacked, helped me whenever it was time for finals, and I was anxious about taking the tests.  But I wondered: suppose that I, as a teenager, had branched a bit beyond reading MacArthur?  Suppose that I had actually read Robert Schuller and Norman Vincent Peale?  Maybe I would have had a more balanced view of God and the Christian life—-one that was not so negative.

“But why ask ‘What if?’, James,” some may ask.  “You can read Norman Vincent Peale and Robert Schuller now!”  Indeed, I can.  Some of their books are actually on my bookshelf.  The thing is, where I am right now, I crave deeper books.  And I want to make the most of my reading time.  I may still read Peale and Schuller someday, though.  Something about me: I have a whole lot of head knowledge, but there is not a whole lot of wisdom, specifically knowledge about how exactly I should see myself, life, and other people, in a manner that is helpful and productive, that is.  Maybe some fluffy Christian living or positive thinking books are an answer!

Ramblings on Jeremiah 31:29-30 and People Being Punished for Their Own (Not Their Ancestors') Sins

I’m reading the Book of Jeremiah for my daily quiet time.  Something from Jeremiah 31 jumped out at me.  Vv 29-30 say:

“In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.  But every one shall die for his own iniquity: every man that eateth the sour grape, his teeth shall be set on edge” (KJV).

“In those days” refers to the time after Israel’s restoration from exile, for what is what Jeremiah 31 is about.  The passage is saying that, after God has punished Israel and later restored her to her land, made her populous, and blessed her, God’s policy will be that each Israelite will be punished (die) for his or her own sin, not the sins of his or her ancestors.

Ezekiel had the same idea (Ezekiel 18:2), only he took it in a different direction from Jeremiah.  Ezekiel was telling the Judahites—-prior to the Babylonian conquest of Judah and destruction of Jerusalem in 587 B.C.E.—-that God’s policy is to punish Israelites for their own sins, not the sins of their ancestors.  If the Israelites fall to foreign invaders, as far as Ezekiel is concerned, then it is their fault, and they are not suffering for what their ancestors did.  Jeremiah in Jeremiah 31:29-30 is saying, by contrast, that this (individual punishment) will be God’s policy after Israel’s eschatological restoration.

Does Jeremiah believe that God’s policy before then was to punish Israel for the sins of her ancestors?  Well, Jeremiah acknowledged that Israel’s ancestors were sinful (i.e., Jeremiah 7:23-27), so ancestral sins probably played some role in God’s punishment of Israel, as far as Jeremiah was concerned.  At the same time, Jeremiah lambasted Israel’s current sins, and Jeremiah said that God would relent from God’s planned punishment if Israel repented (Jeremiah 18; 26).  My impression is that, for Jeremiah, God was punishing Israel both for the sins of her ancestors and also for her own sins.

Of course, I can’t be too dogmatic about what Jeremiah thought.  Some have argued that not all of the Book of Jeremiah is by Jeremiah but had Deuteronomistic influence, and this includes not only narrative parts but some of the prophecies as well.  See my post here from a while back.  For example, whereas the Pentateuch depicts Israel in the wilderness quite negatively—-as stiffnecked, stubborn, faithless, and sinful in her relationship with her God—-Jeremiah 2:2 romanticizes Israel’s following of God into the wilderness.  Jeremiah 2:2 arguably differs, not only from the Pentateuch, but also from what Jeremiah 7 says about Israel soon after the Exodus refusing to listen to God.  Can those thing be reconciled?  That’s open to debate, I guess.  Still, if we were to rip away everything non-Jeremian from the Book of Jeremiah, my hunch is that we would still see Jeremiah condemning the sins of his Israelite contemporaries, believing that his contemporaries’ sins would play some role in their coming downfall.  Why else would Jeremiah prophesy to them?

In all honesty, I do not know why Jeremiah 31:29-30 stresses that Israelites, after Israel’s restoration, will be punished only for their own sins.  Is the point that they are getting a new beginning, that they do not have to worry about ancestral baggage, that they can go forward freely, appreciating that they are responsible for themselves and themselves alone?  Maybe.  Of course, they were responsible for themselves before the Babylonian captivity, but there were voices that were saying that their ancestors’ sins were hanging over their head, that their repentance could perhaps postpone God’s wrath but not totally eliminate it.  I think of II Kings 23:25-26, which affirms that, righteous King Josiah’s reforms notwithstanding, God’s anger was not turned away from Judah, for a previous king of Judah, Manasseh, had so provoked God with his horrible sins.

I should note something else: Jeremiah seems to be acknowledging that, after Israel’s eschatological restoration, there will still be sinners.  This, even though Jeremiah goes on in Jeremiah 31 to say that God will write God’s laws on Israelites’ minds and hearts, and everyone will automatically know the LORD.  How will there be sinners—-and not only sinners, but sinners bad enough to deserve death (as Jeremiah 31:30 appears to imply)—-if God will spiritual transform Israelites and yield them to righteousness?  Does there have to be a willingness on their part to be transformed, otherwise the transformation does not take effect?  I wrote some posts a while back on a similar topic, only I was focusing on Ezekiel.

Going Out on Your Own

I recently read Numbers 32, in which the tribes of Reuben and Gad prefer to settle in the Transjordan rather than the land of Canaan.  They agree, however, to assist the rest of Israel in conquering Canaan.

The first time that this story became solidified in my mind was when I was a student at Harvard Divinity School.  I did a lot of private quiet times while I was there, and there was a time when I was going through the Book of Numbers.  But I think that I might have heard the story before, when I was a child.  If so, then it was probably in a sermon by David Antion or Ron Dart, because they actually touched on some of the lesser known stories in the Hebrew Bible.

But, as a child, if my memory serves me correctly, I didn't know exactly what to do with the story.  Why's that?  Because it's not entirely clear what is right and what is wrong within it.  In many of the Bible stories that I heard as a child, there were good guys and there were bad guys, or (since the good guys didn't always do good) there was at least God's standard about what was right and what was wrong.  But my vague recollection is that the story in Numbers 32 struck me as different.  We're not explicitly told what God thinks about the desire of Reuben and Gad to locate in the Transjordan.  Reuben and Gad don't seem to be malicious in their request: they just like the Transjordan for its pastureland.  But I had the impression that there was something wrong with what they were doing, only I wasn't being told what that was.  And, as a child with Asperger's (though Asperger's wasn't exactly on my family's radar at the time), I liked to be told things explicitly rather than shown.

Years later from my childhood, I heard plenty of preachers who would tell me (well, not me personally, but me as a listener or as someone in their audience) what they thought was wrong with the request by Reuben and Gad: that Reuben and Gad were pursuing an alternative to God's plan for Israel to inherit the Promised Land, or that Reuben and Gad were cutting themselves off from the larger body of God's people by striking out on their own.  Points of application for Christians were drawn from the story.  For example, one claim that preachers made was that, in the same way that Reuben was taken out early by Assyria, so Christians who cut themselves off from the church body are especially vulnerable to Satanic attack.  (Never mind the attacks that Christians may receive inside of the church walls----judgmentalism, authoritarianism, etc.)  Another claim made was that Reuben and Gad, by separating themselves from the larger body of Israel, were missing out on the glorious things that God was doing for his people.  Similarly, I was told, Christians who forsake the assembly of the brethren miss out on seeing and hearing about what God is doing in people's lives.  (This may be a valid point, but God is everywhere, not just in the church.)

The thing is, though, that God tolerated what Reuben and Gad did.  I don't think that it was considered to be ideal within the larger story of the Bible, for it's interesting to note that Ezekiel 48's prediction about the division of Israel gives Reuben and Gad land in the Cisjordan, not the Transjordan.  But God tolerated Reuben and Gad's preference for the Transjordan.  That didn't make much sense to my Aspie mind when I was a child: that there is not always black and white, but there is often better and worse.  Come to think of it, I'm not sure to what extent a number of religionists would be comfortable with shades of gray, as they seek in the Scriptures clear rules of what is right and what is wrong for all time.

I found that my latest reading of Numbers 32 was different from some of my previous readings, and I mean as an adult.  During my previous readings, I somewhat identified with Reuben and Gad because I myself was a lone-ranger Christian.  Even though I went to church and a small group in the past, I recoiled from Christian community, since I had a hard time fitting into social settings, plus I felt more at ease when I was reading the Bible by myself.  Part of this was my Asperger's, and part of it was my religious heritage, for I came from a family and associated with people who felt disconnected from church and decided to avoid the trap of organized religion by reading the Bible on their own, or with their families.  And that was considered to be all right.  It was mainly when I entered evangelicalism that I heard that it was not all right (though even evangelicalism had stories of people finding God alone in their hotel rooms as they read a Gideon's Bible, or similar occurrences).

But, this time around, when I read Numbers 32, I felt sad, especially by v 22, in which Moses tells Reuben and Gad that, after they fight the Conquest, they will be exempt from their obligations to the LORD and to Israel.  Moses may have meant that they didn't have to fight the Conquest anymore, but perhaps he meant that Reuben and Gad didn't have to serve the larger body of Israel at all after the Conquest, if they chose not to do so.  (And Judges 5:16-17 may suggest that Reuben didn't feel an obligation to Israel after the Conquest and sat out of Israel's war against Sisera.)  For some reason, it saddens me that Reuben felt so disconnected from the rest of Israel----as if it could care less about what happened to the LORD's people.

I wonder if Reuben and Gad felt marginalized within Israel even before they chose to settle in the Transjordan.  I can't really speak about Gad, for I don't know much about that tribe, but Reuben in the Hebrew Bible is criticized because Reuben slept with Jacob's servant-girl (Genesis 35:22; 49:3-4; I Chronicles 5:1), and Reubenites led a revolt against Moses and Aaron (Numbers 16:1).  The Reubenites were once a prominent tribe within Israel, for Reuben was called Jacob's firstborn, but Reuben declined in number, according to Numbers 26 (if one compares the census there and the census in Numbers 1) and perhaps Deuteronomy 33:6.  Did Reuben get to the point where it did not feel that it had a home within Israel----that it was not valued, and so it might as well go off on its own rather than have a second-class status within the larger Israelite community?

In terms of where I am now, I still value having an individual faith----of believing that God has a relationship with me personally and loves me, whether or not I fit into a Christian community (and, right now, I have an excellent church home).  For me, it's important for my faith to be my own, not something that group-think imposes on me.  But I also think that it's good to be connected with other people, on some level----to care about them, to be invested in them and their success, to care about the LORD's cause and whether or not people's lives are being improved for the better (as people come to know a loving God, or the poor are fed).  Unlike a number of evangelicals, I don't make this into some iron-clad rule about how to please God, for there are many people who have difficulty finding a church community where they fit in----and beating them up with self-righteous platitudes like "Well, you need to reach out to people, too" (when an outsider reaching out to people in church may then be looked on as a freak by the in-crowd) or "You need to be the change that you want to see" does not really help matters.  In my opinion, they can find comfort in a one-on-one relationship with God, and God does not look down on them for going that route.

John and Realized Eschatology

For my write-up today on Lee Harmon's John's Gospel: The Way It Happened, I'll use as my starting-point something that I wrote in a post a while back, when I was blogging through volume 4 of John Meier's A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus.  I was talking about the issue of realized eschatology, and what I said referred to an example of what that means.  I said:

"I enjoyed Meier’s discussion of the Gospel of John.  The way Meier tells it, the Gospel of John differed from the synoptics on the issue of the coming of the Son of Man...The synoptics thought that the Son of Man would come in the future as a judge, after the resurrection of Jesus Christ...In the Gospel of John, however, the belief is that the coming of the Son of Man occurred at Jesus’ first coming, which is why John has a realized eschatology in which Jesus is acting as judge while he is on earth, and people are judged already according to how they view Jesus...Meier may be on to something, but I don’t treat his description as absolute...[T]he Gospel of John contains a concept of futurist eschatology, not just present judgment (John 5:28-29; 6:40)."

Realized eschatology has been a prominent theme in my reading thus far of Lee's book, and I'm sure that it will be prominent in the rest of the book, as well.  Lee, like many scholars, maintains that the Gospel of John has a realized eschatology.  Eternal life is something that people can enjoy now, for "It is to be lifted up above this base existence into the joy and peace that belong to God" (page 77), an idea that overlaps with things that the first century Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria affirmed.  Today, Ezekiel's promises that people would be washed in the Spirit and that Israel would be resurrected are being fulfilled, as people are "created anew" and are "embracing the meaning of life intended by God" (page 70).  The promise that God will dwell in people's midst has been fulfilled in the incarnation of the Word in Jesus Christ.  People were judged already while Jesus was on earth, based on their view of Jesus.  And the new Temple and new Jerusalem are present now, as the Spirit dwells within a church that consists of Jews and Gentiles, who fellowship with God and with each other.

But what about the passage that I cited in my post----John 5:28-29, which affirms that there will come a resurrection, as those who did good deeds are resurrected unto life, whereas those who did evil deeds are resurrected unto judgment?  Lee states on page 113:

"Does Jesus teach realized eschatology, future eschatology, or some combination of the two?  Verses 28 and 29 appear to undermine the rest of the Gospel's teachings, particularly its this-worldly life just promised in [John 5:26-27], so much so that some scholars conclude verses 28-29 must be a later addition...But is it possible that no contradiction exists at all...?  Put another way, how quickly does Jesus' proclamation of the future ('an hour is coming') become John's past ('and now is')?  At the hour of Jesus' death?  At his Resurrection?"  Lee appears to be arguing that John could have envisioned John 5:28-29 being realized at Jesus' death or resurrection.  Jesus' death is important in John's Gospel, according to Lee.  On pages 56-57, Lee says that, when Jesus tells his mother in John 2:4 that his hour is not yet come, he means Jesus' "appointed death", which is when Jesus is glorified and victorious over the world and is a prerequisite for the rebuilding of the Temple.

According to Lee, even Paul, Matthew, and other Christians who had a futurist eschatology maintained that, in a sense, eschatological promises were being realized in their own time.  Paul, according to Lee, believed that Jesus' resurrection indicated that "the general resurrection has begun, and the new age is upon us" (page 78).  Lee says regarding I Corinthians 15, particularly the verse that says, "if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised": "Try to rid your mind of the misconception that Paul argues for a future resurrection.  He does not say 'if you do not believe the dead will someday rise' but rather 'if you do not believe the dead are raised.'" But did Paul lack a futurist eschatology?  I do not entirely know how Lee addresses this question, but one can point to such things as Paul's references to the Second Coming of Christ (I Thessalonians 4) and the renewal of the cosmos (Romans 8) to argue that Paul indeed had a futurist eschatology.  But he may have believed that the end was near because, already in his time, an eschatological fulfillment of promises was occurring, and in some cases had occurred. 

Regarding Matthew, Matthew in Lee's book for some time agreed with John the Revelator's view that Christ would soon return and overthrow evil, and yet, as John reminds Matthew, even Matthew presented graves being opened and people rising from the dead soon after Jesus' death and resurrection (Matthew 27:51-53), and Matthew in Lee's book regarded that as a fulfillment of Ezekiel's prophecy about the opening of graves (Ezekiel 37).  Perhaps Matthew had both a realized and also a futurist eschatology: he believed that eschatological promises were being fulfilled, and yet he anticipated a fuller fulfillment.

My impression is that Lee and many biblical scholars believe that John took realized eschatology further, to the point that it eclipsed or even supplanted any futurist eschatology.  On pages 94-95, the character Ruth says something that's quite intriguing: "When John dies, everything will change.  He is the final apostle, the last living person to have walked with Jesus.  And Jesus hinted that John would live to see him return.  Once John dies, we can get on with being Christians, no longer peering up at the clouds, waiting for the Messiah to light up the skies.  Our appointed deacons can finally exercise their authority without John's overbearing presence.  Those who have lost heart can finally let go."  In a sense, the picture I get is that a realized eschatology----one that focuses on the here-and-now rather than eagerly expecting for a cataclysmic end to come from right around the corner----is necessary for people to heal from their disappointed hopes, and for the church to be the church.

The question that I have is this: What hope does a realized eschatology actually provide?  If this is all there is, then that's pretty sad!  Moreover, if Jesus through the incarnation fulfilled the promise that God would dwell among us, where does that leave us now, when God is no longer incarnate among us?  Perhaps that's why Jesus' promise in John's Gospel about sending the Spirit is so important.

I one time took a Greek New Testament class on the Gospel of John, and the professor said that John believed in an afterlife, only he envisioned Christians going to heaven right after their physical death.  I have questions about that.  First of all, would that count as a resurrection, since the soul leaving the body has been argued to be different from a resurrection (at least according to N.T. Wright)?  Second, what exactly did Jesus bring that was new?  Wasn't there already a belief that souls would go to heaven----by Philo and others within Second Temple Judaism?  Perhaps Jesus moved the afterlife for the righteous into heaven, whereas before that all souls went to Hades, according to a certain strand of thought.

Musings on Jeremiah 33:14-16 and Prophecy

At church this morning, the pastor preached about Jeremiah 33:14-16, which states (in the King James Version):

"(14) Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will perform that good thing which I have promised unto the house of Israel and to the house of Judah. (15) In those days, and at that time, will I cause the Branch of righteousness to grow up unto David; and he shall execute judgment and righteousness in the land.  (16) In those days shall Judah be saved, and Jerusalem shall dwell safely: and this is the name wherewith she shall be called, The LORD our righteousness."

The pastor was applying this to Jesus, but was it Jesus at his first coming, or Jesus at his second coming?  I don't entirely remember.  On the one hand, the pastor suggested that Israel's return from exile occurred in 1948, with the re-establishment of Israel as a nation, and I think that would coincide with applying Jeremiah 33:14-16 to Jesus' second coming----the exiles return to Israel in 1948, and several years later Christ comes back and rules Israel in righteousness while enabling Judah to dwell in safety.  On the other hand, the pastor also seemed to think that v 15's reference to the Davidid as a branch was predicting that Jesus would be a humble Messiah, not the conquering king that many Jews in the first century were expecting.  That appears to hold that Jeremiah 33:14-16 concerns Jesus' first coming. 

Perhaps one could combine the two views:  God caused the Davidic branch to sprout during Jesus' first coming, in the person of Jesus, and years later Jesus would come back and rule Israel in righteousness, save Judah, and enable Jerusalem to dwell in safety.  Speaking for myself, I'm skeptical about applying Jeremiah 33 to Jesus, for I think that what Jeremiah was saying was that the Jews would return from exile in seventy years, and then God would restore the Davidic dynasty and the Levitical priesthood (see vv 18-22, and Jeremiah 25:11-12; 29:10).  Even if you go the route of saying that the prophecy is consistent with saying that the Jews would return from exile under Cyrus, and years later God would re-establish the Davidic dynasty through Jesus, who would rule years after that, there's still the problem of what to do with the prophesied restoration of the Levites.  Don't many Christians believe that Christ nullified the Levitical priesthood?  Is that inconsistent with Jeremiah 33:18-22's prediction that God would not only restore the Levites, but that they would be before him perpetually?

Christians can probably go a variety of routes here.  First, they can say that God did restore the Levites, in Israel's historical post-exilic period.  But Jeremiah 33:18-22 appears to describe the Levitical priesthood as perpetual, whereas the historical service of the Levites in the Temple came to an end, as did the Temple.  Second, Christians can say that Jesus as high priest fulfills the function of the Levitical priesthood, and that Jeremiah 33:18-22 is symbolic of this.  I can't really refute that, but I do think that interpreting prophecies symbolically is quite arbitrary and allows people to read back into the prophecies their desired conclusions rather than allowing the prophecies to speak for themselves.  Third, Christians can say that Levites will offer sacrifices before God during the millennial reign of Christ.  Perhaps that would work.  When I read Jeremiah's prophecies about restoration, though, it seems to concern what Jeremiah expected to happen in seventy years, not something that would be partially fulfilled in seventy years, while other parts would be fulfilled later in the future.  But many Jews and Christians believe that the prophecies could be partially fulfilled in the past while also having a later fulfillment, and the reason has been that they want for the prophecies to have continued relevance rather than being an expectation on the part of Jeremiah that did not fully pan out.

I should note something else: Jeremiah 33:18 states that "Neither shall the priests the Levites want a man before me to offer burnt offerings, and to kindle meat offerings, and to do sacrifice continually."  So the Levites are offering sacrifices?  That appears to be inconsistent with Leviticus-Numbers, in which the Aaronic priests perform the sacrifices, while the Levites are responsible for transporting and guarding the sanctuary, and possibly other services.  Deuteronomy, however, does not present the Aaronides as a higher class of priests than the other Levites, and it just says that the Levites minister before God (Deuteronomy 18:7).  Jeremiah appears to agree with Deuteronomy, whereas Ezekiel depicts the Zadokites as the priests who will offer sacrifices (Ezekiel 43:19; 44:15).  Of course, I suppose that you could say that the Aaronides and the Zadokites were Levites (Ezekiel 40:46), which is true.  Still, it's interesting that Jeremiah does not explicitly distinguish the sons of Aaron from the other Levites, but rather says that the Levites will offer sacrifices to God.

I was intrigued by what my pastor was saying about the branch, for that made me wonder why the Davidid in Jeremiah 33 was called the branch.  Does it have to do with lowliness and humility, as my pastor was suggesting?  I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case, for there was an expectation that the coming king of Israel would be humble----Zechariah 9:9 presents him peacefully entering Jerusalem on a donkey, for example.  But I think the passage probably means that there will come a king who will have Davidic ancestry, which means that God will restore David's dynasty.  In short, a branch will come from the Davidic tree.

Psalm 85

For my weekly quiet time this week, I will blog about Psalm 85.

I think that Psalm 85 was composed after Israelites had returned to the land of Israel from exile.  Their captivity was turned, which may mean that it was reversed.  They believed that their sins were forgiven by God.  And yet, they did not feel fully restored.  They wanted to be turned even more (vv 4, 6), perhaps implying that their turning thus far was incomplete.  And they hoped that God would stop being angry at them.  They wanted to hear a message of peace from God----whether that was through a cultic prophet, the Torah, prophetic messengers, or whomever (it's debated).

There would be restoration, and the restoration somehow coincides with certain attributes or principles: mercy, truth, righteousness, and peace.  What results is the prosperity of the land.

It's unclear to me if the message of Psalm 85 is that Israel's restoration follows her practice of righteousness, or if righteousness is the result of God favoring Israel (grace, if you will).  In favor of the former view, v 13 says that righteousness prepares the way for him, presumably God, which may imply that Israel's righteousness is prior to God's activity on Israel's behalf and presence in Israel.  V 8 affirms that God will speak peace and yet exhorts people not to turn (there's that word again) to folly.  Does that mean that God desires to bless God's people, and yet that will be contingent on Israel's practice of righteousness?  V 9 says that God's salvation is close to people who fear God.  Does that indicate that the path to salvation is fearing God and practicing righteousness?

Or does the practice of righteousness flow from God's grace?  Do vv 10-12 describe what happens when God is near: righteousness, truth, and peace are the fruit?  Peter Craigie and Erhard Gerstenberger present a picture in which agents from God work together for the community's well-being, which (in my opinion) regards the righteousness, truth, and peace as a divine work, not so much as something that humans conjure up.  Moreover, vv 10-12 appear to describe a paradise in which the people hold to truth and righteousness looks down from heaven with approval.  Could human beings attain this sort of paradise by pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps, or does God bring it about?

Within the Hebrew Bible, we see both sorts of concepts, often in the same books.  In Deuteronomy 30, Israel takes the initiative of turning to God, and God then restores her to her land and circumcises her heart.  In Jeremiah 4:4, Judah is told to circumcise her hearts, yet Jeremiah 31:33 foresees God writing God's law on the hearts of Israel and Judah.  Ezekiel 18:31 exhorts Israel to get a new heart and a new spirit, but Ezekiel 11:19 and 36:26 show God promising to give Israel a new heart that is yielded to God's commandments.

Perhaps grace----which means God's forgiveness and transformation----coincides with some willingness on our part.  But God is eager to speak peace to us.

Not Just a Belief of the Marginalized

I'm continuing my way through Stephen Cook's Prophecy and Apocalypticism: The Postexilic Social Setting. In my reading today, Cook does two things:

First, he looks at believers in apocalypticism throughout history---Native American and African tribes, Jewish Messianism in Europe, the Puritans, even Ronald Reagan---and he notices that there are many cases in which apocalyptic sentiments come from powerful elements of society, casting doubt on the scholarly claim that apocalypticism is solely a view held by the disenfranchised, or that it originated among people who felt powerless and marginalized. Why do the powerful embrace apocalypticism? Some believe that they must enact an agenda to prepare the way for the eschaton. Some become insecure as a result of revolutions or wars. Some (such as the Jainist aristocrats) are disgusted by their own social status. In the case of Ronald Reagan, perhaps he just found end-times prophecy to be interesting, an intriguing way for him to view the world. (Cook doesn't say this about Reagan, but that's my guess.) And, having grown up in an apocalyptic movement, and knowing people who experienced a more authoritarian version of it, I can add another reason: social control. Threatening people that God won't preserve them in the eschaton but will punish them unless they adhere to a particular authority structure can scare people into submission.

Second, Cook argues that Ezekiel 38-39 and Zechariah 1-8 are examples of apocalyptic from the establishment. Cook argues that both of these are apocalyptic, appealing to such factors as a belief in God's direct intervention to effect a new creation, and other things. Ezekiel 38-39 present God defeating Gog and Magog, and Zechariah 1-8 depict God's heavenly forces having some effect on the earth, as well as despairs about earthly effort (although Cook discusses apocalypticisms that acknowledge a human role, in warfare, for example). Cook contends against Paul Hanson's argument that Zechariah 1-8 is non-eschatological and primarily supports a practical program that exalts the Zadokites and the Davidids. Cook's view is probably that Zechariah 1-8 may have supported the Zadokites and the Davidids, but it had an apocalyptic view regarding God's direct intervention in the course of human events.

I have not yet read Cook's argument about Zechariah 1-8 being an establishment piece, but I doubt that he has to work too hard in supporting that point, since Zechariah 1-8 endorses Joshua the high priest and Zerubbabel the governor. Regarding Ezekiel 38-39, Cook argues that it is from the Ezekiel school, against those who say it was a later apocalyptic insertion into Ezekiel, and he maintains that it comes from a priestly perspective. Cook sees verbal and theological correspondences between Ezekiel 38-39 and the rest of Ezekiel, and he believes that Ezekiel 38-39 fits into Ezekiel quite well: within the book, Ezekiel 38-39 is about God protecting Israel from her enemies, after she has been restored from an exile that commenced when God delivered her into the hands of her enemies. Ezekiel 38-39 also manifests a priestly concern for the purity of the land of Israel after God's defeat of Gog and Magog.

But Cook's treatment of Ezekiel 38-39 is not just synchronic, for he does believe that the chapters contain stages. One stage marked apocalyptic intensity, and Cook says this occurred when restoration appeared to be an impending reality and the Zadokites had high hopes. A second stage was more realistic, if you will, and it projected the battle of Gog and Magog into a more distant future, while supporting practical attempts to deal with the present.

Peckham on Zephaniah and Ezekiel (and Their Editors)

For my write-up today of Brian Peckham's History and Prophecy, I have two items:

1. On page 472, Peckham states that "Zephaniah saw the whole known world being swept away and creation reverting to indiscriminate origins." But did Zephaniah have any hope of a new beginning? Not that I can tell, from Peckham's description---though Zephaniah does exhort Judahites to repent while there is still time. But, according to Peckham, a later editor of Zephaniah applied Zephaniah's vision of cosmic destruction primarily to Judah and Jerusalem, as well as predicted that a remnant would be spared, that Israelites would return from the Diaspora, that a pious and humble community of worship would be formed, and that God would be relaxed in the midst of Zion.

2. Peckham also maintains that the Book of Ezekiel manifests at least two layers. On pages 470-471, he summarizes Ezekiel himself as follows:

"He set himself out from the beginning as a son of Adam who had seen what seemed to be the glory of God in the likeness of Adam...He ends up in a city that has no name but has all the characteristics of Eden and that is centered on a mountain inhabited by the glory of God...He starts in exile, where he imagines the siege and capture of Jerusalem and understands it as the end of the world...He comes to realize that the land will flourish again and that life will follow on death and sees the dead bodies of the slain rise out of their graves...He begins with the desecration of the temple, the departure of the glory of God, and the sorry flight of the king...He sees in the end, in the image of Egypt and Tyre, that the glory of Adam has departed and the kings lie limp in Sheol...He knows that life and death are individual, in the instance of the lover, the king, the innocent son, but he comes to a resolution when he realizes that the whole nation must die to be brought back to life..." Moreover, on page 272, Peckham states that Ezekiel did not believe that the new Israel would be centered on Jerusalem.

Peckham affirms that Ezekiel wrote late in exile, and his vision in Babylon enabled him to conceptualize exile and restoration. But his vision was not deemed to be all that practical by the survivors of the catastrophe, specifically those who wanted a specific program about how they could rebuild their society. Ezekiel's vision of the death of the old and the rebirth of the new was too abstract for them, as was his appeal to mythological concepts, such as Adam, avenging angels, and kings in Sheol. Peckham does not use the word "mythological", but his argument seems to be that a Jerusalem establishment updated Ezekiel so that his person and the reference-points of his visions could be securely anchored within historical events, and also so that the existence of survivors would be acknowledged. More importantly, the Jerusalem editors sought to develop a specific program for a restored cult.

Prophecy-After-the-Fact

Source: J.J. Collins, "The Sibylline Oracles," Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period, ed. Michael E. Stone (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984) 374.

"The assumption of Geffcken and Rzach that the conquest of Mesopotamia could only be prophesied after the fact is not justified. The Parthians were a menance to Roman power in the East in the first century B.C.E. and their subjection might well be prophesied by any one sympathetic to Rome."

This quote interested me because it talks about prophecy-after-the-fact--"prophecy" that "predicts" events that already occurred. Liberal scholars believe that chapters of Daniel fit into this category: events that were occurring in the second century B.C.E. were said to be prophesied centuries before by an earlier figure, Daniel.

According to Collins here, the prediction of the Sibylline Oracles that Mesopotamia (Parthia) would fall was not prophecy after the fact. It could have been wishful thinking, like the false prophets telling Ahab that he would win the battle, or those who told Judah that Babylon wouldn't conquer her, notwithstanding her sins.

It could have been a realistic forecast of what would happen, based on the situation at the time. Some have asserted that there are biblical prophecies that fall into this category. I read a liberal Christian article a while back, and it tried to explain away the prophecies that did not come to pass. For instance, Ezekiel predicted that Tyre and Egypt would be destroyed by Babylon, but that didn't exactly happen. The author of the article states that the prophet was interpreting the events of his time in light of his knowledge of God's will--how he believed God would act. He was like a religious pundit, commenting on world events.

I have a hard time seeing all of the biblical prophecies as statements of what was likely to happen, for there are some of them that are out-of-the-ordinary. When Isaiah said that Syria and Israel would fall rather than conquer Judah, that looked pretty unlikely! Isaiah even had to give Ahaz a sign--his prophecy looked that unbelievable! But prophecy isn't always a prediction based on where the trends seem to be going, for God can work in unexpected ways.

Child Sacrifice, Part 2

Source: Michael Fishbane's Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (New York: Oxford, 1988) 185.

Ezekiel 20:25-26 states:

"Moreover I gave them statutes that were not good and ordinances by which they could not live. I defiled them through their very gifts, in their offering up all their firstborn, in order that I might horrify them, so that they might know that I am the LORD" (NRSV).

According to Fishbane, many scholars believe this passage is saying that God gave laws that could be miscontrued as commanding child sacrifice.

Are there such laws in the Torah? Fishbane cites Exodus 13:13 and 34:20:

Exodus 13:13: But every firstborn donkey you shall redeem with a sheep; if you do not redeem it, you must break its neck. Every firstborn male among your children you shall redeem.

Exodus 34:20: The firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it you shall break its neck. All the firstborn of your sons you shall redeem. No one shall appear before me empty-handed.

For Fishbane, the word translated "you shall redeem" can also be rendered "you may redeem." After all, the redemption of the donkey is optional, right? So why not the monetary redemption of a human firstborn? According to Fishbane, there were Israelites who decided to go above and beyond the call of duty, showing God they were serious by sacrificing their firstborn.

Fishbane speculates that Numbers 18:15 was a response to such a horrible interpretation. Vv 15-16 affirm:

"The first issue of the womb of all creatures, human and animal, which is offered to the LORD, shall be yours; but the firstborn of human beings you shall redeem, and the firstborn of unclean animals you shall redeem. Their redemption price, reckoned from one month of age, you shall fix at five shekels of silver, according to the shekel of the sanctuary (that is, twenty gerahs)."

According to Fishbane, Numbers 18:15 is more emphatic in Hebrew, clearly stating that the Israelites must redeem their firstborn rather than sacrificing them.

Ezekiel 20 may be referring to the law in Exodus 34:20, but I doubt it has Exodus 13 in mind. The reason is that Ezekiel 20 says that God gave Israel the bad laws after she trangressed the Sabbath and worshipped false gods. Exodus 34 occurs after Israel's transgression of the Sabbath in Exodus 16, and the golden calf incident in Exodus 32.

At the same time, one could argue that Exodus 13 was inserted into the Exodus story at a later time. If that is the case, then its place in the story is not exactly relevant.

Blood on Your Hands

Over the past few days, I've been blogging about Christian universalism, the belief that God will save everyone in the end. I've discussed this issue before, specifically when I interacted with Zondervan's More Than One Way? Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic World (search under "More than One Way" if you're interested in my thoughts). What inspired my latest round of universalism posts was Bryan's Universalism Tendencies, in which he asks if people believe in universalism because they don't like to witness.

In prominent strands of evangelicalism, Christians are told that they need to witness in order to save people from hell. The Book of Romans is clear that the wrath of God is against all unrighteousness. Because all have sinned, everyone is subject to divine judgment, which means that they're on their way straight to hell. But God has provided a solution, for Jesus Christ experienced God's wrath in place of sinners when he died on the cross. And sinners need to receive Christ's sacrifice on their behalf in order to be forgiven of their sins.

But, in order to believe in Christ's sacrifice, they first need to know about it. As Paul asks in Romans 10:14, "But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him?" (NRSV). And that's why Christians need to witness--people are going straight to hell, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only thing that can save them.

But what if you don't share the Gospel with someone and he goes to hell as a consequence? Will God hold you responsible because you didn't witness? There are Christians who answer with an unequivocal "yes." Their reason is Ezekiel 3:18:

"If I say to the wicked, 'You shall surely die,' and you give them no warning, or speak to warn the wicked from their wicked way, in order to save their life, those wicked persons shall die for their iniquity; but their blood I will require at your hand."

According to this passage, God holds the prophet responsible if he doesn't warn the Israelites of divine judgment. And Christian exclusivists apply that passage to all Christians: God has declared that he will judge each and every human being for sin. If we don't warn them and give them an opportunity to repent, then they will experience eternal torment (or annihilation, if you're an Adventist). And God will hold us responsible for their fate.

But what exactly will God do when he holds us responsible? Will he send us to hell? A lot of evangelicals will say "no," even if they're the ultra-conservative exclusivist types. The reason is that Paul talks a lot about salvation by grace through faith, apart from works (Romans 4; Ephesians 2:8-9). Evangelicals take that concept pretty seriously (to say the least), so they deny that a failure to witness can disqualify a believer from heaven. The believer believes, after all, and that's the only requirement for salvation.

One person in a Bible study group said that God will make us confront every single person we should have shared the Gospel with, but didn't. And so God will sentence the unbeliever to eternal hell for his sins, and the unbeliever will look at us with shock: "Why didn't you tell me about this?," he'll say.

Some may assert that we won't get certain rewards if we fail to witness. One evangelical friend called them "jewels in his crown." According to him, all believers will receive a crown because they're saved by grace through faith. But they'll get jewels in their crowns if they do good works. Wow, that's something to anticipate! I guess it beats roasting in a fire forever and ever!

And then some think that they'll be in heaven for all eternity with literal blood on their hands. I once read a "testimony" by a fundamentalist who became an atheist. She said that she was afraid to witness in her fundamentalist days, so she envisioned herself in heaven, trying to hide her hands from everyone else because of the blood that was on them.

Ezekiel explains more of what he means in Ezekiel 33:1-9. V 9 is crucial: "But if you warn the wicked to turn from their ways, and they do not turn from their ways, the wicked shall die in their iniquity, but you will have saved your life." For Ezekiel, the prophet who fails to warn others will die in the destruction that God sends. Ezekiel doesn't wrestle with the issue of "How will God hold a saved person accountable for not witnessing to others?" because he's not talking about eternal judgment and salvation. He's discussing God's temporal, historical punishment of Judah.

But do Christians still have a responsibility to warn everyone about hell? A lot of evangelicals would say "yes." At the Adventist church I attended in Massachusetts, one of the pastors said that, if a man is going down a road that is dangerous, we have a moral responsibility to warn him. It's just the right thing to do.

Radio personality Harold Camping is about as fire-and brimstone as you can get, yet he denied that God will punish us for not witnessing. Rather, he interpreted Ezekiel 3:18 to mean that, if we do witness, God wants us to mention hell. None of this "God loves you and has a plan for your life" stuff, as far as Camping is concerned. For him, the Gospel is about salvation from judgment.

But telling people about hell is hard to do. We don't want to appear closed-minded. We don't like being offensive. It's a matter of social skills! As I've said, I attend a Jewish school that has a lot of evangelicals. I'll bet you money that the evangelicals there do not tell the Jewish students that they're going to hell! If they do witness, they do so by being nice people, or by talking about how God works in their lives, or whatever.

Plus, a lot of people don't put warning others about hell in the same category as warning them about a bad road. A bad road is tangible and verifiable, whereas Christian beliefs about hell are often viewed as one perspective about the afterlife amidst a sea of multiple perspectives. Why should people believe in our view as opposed to (say) reincarnation, or a religion that posits other requirements for entering the good afterlife (e.g., a generally righteous life)?

The evangelical exclusivist view places the weight of people's salvations on our itty-bitty shoulders. In a coming post, I'll wrestle more with that.

A Clean Altar

Those who read me regularly probably get the impression that I'm reacting against my evangelical background. When I was in the evangelical movement, there was a part of me that got bored with reading the Bible. The evangelicals I knew made almost everything in the Bible about the substitutionary atonement or justification by grace through faith. If there was an sacrifice on an altar or an animal got killed in a covenant ceremony, watch out! The evangelicals would make it a type of Christ's death on the cross. I just got tired of the same predictable evangelical interpretations, explanations, and understandings. I became fascinated with Jewish and historical-critical readings because they offered me something new, or at least they exposed me to views I had not heard before.

Today, I'm going to be an evangelical. In Ezekiel 43, Ezekiel continues his discussion of the new temple, and, in vv 13-27, he describes the altar. For Ezekiel, before the altar can be used, it must be purged through the sacrifice of a goat as a sin offering.

Why? What did the altar do wrong? Well, nothing specifically, I suppose. But this is not the first time that an inanimate object needed to be purged. Check out Leviticus 16:16: "And he shall make an atonement for the holy place, because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of their transgressions in all their sins: and so shall he do for the tabernacle of the congregation, that remaineth among them in the midst of their uncleanness." The tabernacle needed to be purged every year because of the sins of the people. When the Israelites sinned or became ritually impure, they defiled the sanctuary. God did not want to dwell amidst moral or ritual filth, so the Israelites needed to cleanse the sanctuary of defilement so that God would continue to dwell in their midst.

The reason that Ezekiel 43's description of the altar stands out to me is that it demonstrates the importance of blood atonement. There are many within Judaism, Islam, and maybe even mainline Christianity who act as if blood is not necessary for God to forgive sins. They assume that all one has to do to be forgiven is repent: be sorry for your sins, and start serving God. But, in Ezekiel 43, the restored Israelites could not simply build an altar and start worshipping God. They had to take care of their past. The altar needed to be cleansed of the effects of their past sins, and that cleansing was to occur through blood. Without this purification ceremony, God would not accept their worship on the altar. Only after blood atonement would God receive their attempts to please him.

As a Christian, I believe that people must accept the sacrifice of Christ on their behalf in order to be acceptable before God. Non-Christians can do good things and try to engage in worship, but those things do not lead to their acceptance by God, since they are still sinners. Their altars must be cleansed before God will be pleased with their worship and good deeds.

There is one passage that seems (on first sight) to militate against what I just said. In Acts 10, an angel tells the Gentile centurion, Cornelius: "Thy prayers and thine alms are come up for a memorial before God" (v 4). This was before Cornelius heard the Gospel and was saved. God seemed to accept Cornelius' prayers and good deeds, even when he was not a Christian! What do I do with this? I don't have a perfect answer, but I believe that God honors those who seek him. Cornelius' deeds by themselves were not enough to save him, since he still needed to hear the Gospel and become cleansed through faith (Acts 15:9). But God recognized that Cornelius was a sincere seeker of truth and righteousness, so he gave him more light, the light of the Gospel.

While I'm on the topic of the cleansed altar, I want to address a popular argument among Jews who don't believe in Jesus. Hebrews 9:22 says that there is no remission of sin without the shedding of blood. Jewish counter-missionaries have argued that the author of Hebrews is simply wrong, since the Torah presents a non-blood sacrifice that can remove sin. Leviticus 5:11-13 says, after all, that a very poor Israelite can offer some flour as his sin offering. But my response is that the poor Israelite is offering his flour on an altar that has been cleansed through blood. Otherwise, his flour would not be acceptable. So, in a sense, even the poor Israelites' sins are removed through the shedding of blood.

Why Wasn't It Built?

I've been reading Ezekiel for my daily quiet time, and I'm on the part about the new temple. In Ezekiel 43:11, God tells Ezekiel to tell the people of Israel the dimensions and features of the proposed temple so that they will build it after their return from exile.

But why didn't they build it? Here was a command, and they didn't follow it. Why not?

I've not combed through the writings of modern biblical scholars on this issue, but I have a hunch about what they might say. I can picture them saying that Ezekiel was not necessarily seen as the infallible word of God immediately after the exile, at least not in the way that many Christians and Jews have traditionally viewed it. Rather, there were a variety of post-exilic voices with their own versions of what God wanted the Jews to do. Some expected God to restore the Davidic dynasty, while others called Cyrus the Messiah. Over time, their writings became authoritative within Jewish and Christian circles, but they were not necessarily accepted as such soon after they were written. So why didn't the post-exilic community build Ezekiel's temple? One proposed explanation is that not everyone believed in Ezekiel's message.

Another possibility is that the post-exilic community did not see its restoration as the subject of Ezekiel's prophecy. Ezekiel associated certain events with the Jews' restoration, such as the renewal of the Davidic dynasty and the defeat of Israel's enemies, most notably Gog of Asia Minor. These things did not happen under Cyrus of Persia, for Israel was "restored" to become a subjugated puppet of the Persians, without a Davidic monarch. As a result, many Jews probably concluded that the restoration predicted by Ezekiel was not what occurred under Cyrus, but was rather to be fulfilled in the future. So the Ezekiel temple was postponed until the time of real restoration.

Rashi has an interesting explanation of Ezekiel 43:11. He says: "The second aliyah [to the Holy Land] through Ezra was merited to be like the first entry through Joshua, to come about by force and through a miracle, as expounded (Ber. 4a, Exod. 15:16): 'until… pass.' This Building would then have been fit for them as of then, when they emerged from exile, to an everlasting redemption. But [their] sin caused [this not to happen] for their repentance was not suitable, [i.e.,] they did not resolve to stop sinning. [Therefore,] they emerged to freedom [only] through the sanction of Cyrus and his son. Some say that in Babylon they stumbled regarding gentile women." For Rashi, God wanted to restore the Jews of the sixth-fifth centuries B.C.E. in a glorious fashion, which would have included Ezekiel's temple, but the Jews hindered God's plan through their sins.

I'm not sure if I buy this explanation entirely. The Jews' sins were not a problem for God, since Ezekiel predicted that God would give them new hearts and turn them away from sin. At the same time, perhaps God expected them to make the first move through repentance before he circumcised their hearts. But that goes back to my Ezekiel and Monergism series.

Musical Sacrifice

I heard an interesting lecture today by a scholar named Michael Swartz. He was talking about fifth century piyyutim, which are Jewish liturgical poems. The title of his lecture was "From Prayer to Sacrifice: Rethinking the History of Jewish Ritual in Late Antiquity." He was trying to challenge the popular scholarly idea that Judaism emphasized prayer as a replacement for the temple service, including animal sacrifices. Rather, he argued that the piyyutim were attempts to recreate the Yom Kippur temple ritual for congregants through elaborate (and sometimes exaggerated) descriptions of the priest and the service. Swartz also contended that the poems were considered to be actual sacrifices, not mere substitutes.

Consequently, according to Swartz, the composers of the piyyutim (who may have been priests) saw their work as the preparation of a sacrifice, for they offered their time, talent, and energy to fashion for God the perfect poem, which was to be as flawless as an animal sacrifice without blemish. An argument that Swartz used for his position was the content of the Mishnah, which devotes entire sections to temple ritual. Indeed, this is strange, since the Mishnah dates after the temple's destruction in 70 C.E. Swartz's argument seems to be (if I understood it correctly) that post-70 Judaism aimed to recreate the temple service, not replace it with something else.

This lecture coincided rather well with my daily quiet time. I am on Ezekiel 40, which is about the new temple. In v 44, there is a reference to the chambers of singers. I was reminded that music plays an important role in the worship of God. Indeed, the attempt to associate praise or prayer with sacrifice predates rabbinic times, for we see it even in the Bible. Hosea 14:2 talks about offering the calves of our lips. Jeremiah 33:11 mentions bringing a sacrifice of praise, a motif that also appears in Hebrews 13:15. So the song "We bring a sacrifice to praise into the house of the Lord" has biblical roots.

Why does God like music? Does he have aesthetic sensitivity? Perhaps, but I don't think that he is interested so much in hearing a concert of quality music. After all, he commands everyone to sing praises, and that includes people like me who can't carry a tune. But I won't rule out that music adds a majestic or joyful element to worship, as it appeals to our aesthetic sensitivities.

One thing that Michael Swartz was apparently struggling to explain was how composing or singing a piyyut could be a sacrifice. I could be wrong, but I got the impression that he was trying to show that a piyyut took effort. But I don't see the animal sacrifices as that much of a sacrifice, in the sense that they severely cost the offerer in resources. Many sacrifices were voluntary, and people could keep the vast majority of their animals for their own use. Sacrifices were gifts to God. They were attempts to invoke God's presence and to make him happy. They were opportunities to honor the Lord through giving.

So that is how I see music. When I sing praises, I am giving to God and making him happy. Most of us like to be praised, but God does not want adoration out of ego. Psalm 50 says that God does not need animal sacrifices because he already owns all animals, so I believe that his desire for praise does not reflect a deficiency or insecurity on his part. Rather, we become better when we praise and honor a being who is better than ourselves. Otherwise, we make the imperfect (ourselves, other people, objects) into an idol, and the result is disastrous. But don't get me wrong. God's command for us to praise him is not only to help us out. It is a sin for us not to praise God, since that is a path to moral degeneration. But, going further on this point, God does not want to be worshipped so that we can live moral lives, as if God is a means to an end. He wants to be acknowledged as supreme because he truly is supreme.

But what if a person doesn't love God? Can God command a person to praise him, when he or she really does not have a desire for God? How can God tell someone to love him? I struggle with this issue. Maybe God wants us to start where we are. Whether or not I appreciate God's every attribute, I can still confess that I have much for which I can be thankful. A good start is to thank God for the people and things he has given us to enjoy: nature, good food, friends, etc. Hopefully, we can then get to the point where we appreciate God's goodness, majesty, power, justice, etc.

But doesn't the sacrifice have to be perfect? I suppose so, yet I do not know what perfection is, and I would hardly call my prayers or praise times "perfect." My mind can easily wander, and my motivations are not always pure. I think that it is important to recognize God's majesty, and that was what the laws about perfect sacrifices were designed to impress upon worshippers. Moreover, since Christ is the perfect sacrifice, perhaps his atonement makes our imperfect acts of worship acceptable before God. After all, Romans 8:26 acknowledges that we do not pray as we ought, yet the Holy Spirit still intercedes on our behalf.

When Were They Bad?

I'm struggling to understand Ezekiel 34. vv 3-6 say the following about the bad shepherds:

"You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep. You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd; and scattered, they became food for all the wild animals. My sheep were scattered, they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill; my sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with no one to search or seek for them."

Throughout the chapter, God contrasts himself with the bad shepherds. The bad shepherds fed themselves and hogged up most of the good things, but God will feed his people. The bad shepherds allowed their sheep to be scattered, but God will restore them to their land. In the process, God will do other things that the bad shepherds neglected, as he strengthens the weak, heals the sick, binds up the injured, brings back the strayed, and seeks the lost. The bad shepherds let their people become prey for wild animals, but God will protect his restored children from such beasts.

So where is my struggle? The chapter seems to be saying that the bad shepherds did something with regard to the exile that made them derelict in their duty. What exactly did Ezekiel expect Judah's leaders to do? Did he want them to return the exiles? Did he think that they should search for them? Did Judah's leaders take economic advantage of the exile, which is why Ezekiel accuses them of feeding themselves?

My impression is that Judah's leaders tried to protect their people, only not as the prophet desired. King Zedekiah didn't want his nation to be conquered. That's why he made an alliance with Egypt: he was trying to prevent a Babylonian invasion. I wouldn't call him a bad shepherd who didn't care about his people.

And I wonder what would have satisfied Ezekiel. How could Zedekiah track down the exiles? Google didn't exist in those days. And could Judah's leaders have taken economic advantage of the Babylonian invasion and exile? Not really. What would they do? Would they try to possess the empty land that existed now that the exiles were gone? The leaders themselves were on the run when the Babylonians invaded. Plus, most people realized that trying to get land at that time was a ridiculous endeavor. That's why Jeremiah's purchase of a field looked so strange.

Of the commentaries that I read, most of them tried to project the bad shepherding practices onto the time before the Babylonian invasion and exile. In some cases, this works. In other cases, it is quite a stretch. The leaders of Judah certainly did oppress their people. We read about that in the other prophets. In exchange for a bribe, they often judged in favor of rich oppressors, who scattered people by forcing them off their land. This led to the exile because God punished Judah for that practice. The stretch comes into play in two ways. One is a theological problem that I have: if this interpretation is true, why is God punishing the poor for something the rich did? I mean, the leaders and the rich are the ones who hurt the poor, and yet the poor go into exile. Another stretch is what such interpreters try to do with the mountains part of vv 3-6. In their eagerness to relate the passage to the pre-exilic situation, they apply the mountains reference to the Israelites worshipping at the high places. I don't think it's about that at all, since v 6 elaborates that the sheep were scattered over the face of the earth. The issue is exile, not high places.

One interpreter, John Gill (I know, I should get some modern commentaries), actually applies the passage to the exile. He says that the kings of Judah should have tried to ransom those who were exiled to Babylon. Gill may be pointing out that there were exiles before the Babylonian invasion in 586 B.C.E., since King Jehoiachin and other Jews were taken to Babylon into exile. This makes some sense. I mean, Ezekiel 34 seems to say that God will punish the shepherds of Israel, which may imply that a worse calamity, the Babylonian invasion, is yet to come when Ezekiel writes the chapter. But could leaders ransom people from exile in those days? I'm sure anything was possible for the right price. A reservation I have about Gill's interpretation is that the exile of Jehoiachin consisted of mostly rich people, or so I have heard. Ezekiel 34 discusses the exile of the poor and oppressed, however. Moreover, Ezekiel 34 also says that the Jews are scattered over the face of the earth, which is not really the case with Jehoiachin's exile.

I'd still like to work with Gill's interpretation. Maybe the leaders' oppression of the people made them weaker and more vulnerable to Babylonian invasion. When the Babylonians invaded, they could have easily taken the people who were hungry and without property. Also, did the leaders actually profit from Judah's relationship with Babylon? If so, then that situation could be the context for Ezekiel's statement that they cared more about themselves than the people. And there was a possibility that some leaders tried to take over the vacant land once it was abandoned after Jehoiachin's exile.

I'll probably order the Word Commentary on CD-Rom to tackle some of these questions. In the meantime, does anyone have some thoughts that can help me out?

"But That's Not Fair!"

In "What Were They Feeling?" and "The Other Side's Voice", I discussed the views of most Judeans in the time of Ezekiel. By and large, the Judeans did not accept Ezekiel's message, often for contradictory reasons, and they expressed their thoughts through catchy, popular slogans that the prophet tried to refute. Well, I keep encountering more slogans as I go through Ezekiel. Ezekiel 33 has a strange one, along with a refutation of a puzzling Israelite opinion.

In v 10, we read, "Now you, mortal, say to the house of Israel, Thus you have said: 'Our transgressions and our sins weigh upon us, and we waste away because of them; how then can we live?' (NRSV)." God responds in v 11 that he has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but he wants them to repent, do good deeds, and live. The Israelite people reply that the way of the LORD is unjust (v 17).

Again, the Israelites have contradictory responses to Ezekiel's message. Sometimes, they blow it off, thinking that nothing bad will happen to Israel. We see this in v 24, where they say that they will continue possessing the land, as Abraham did. In v 10, however, they acknowledge that disaster is coming their way.

The commentaries I read had different thoughts about the motivation behind the slogan. All of them agree that the slogan is a response to vv 1-9, where God tells Ezekiel to warn the people and give them an opportunity to repent and live. Some think that the people's reaction in v 10 is, "Oh, we've done so wrong! We don't even deserve to be forgiven! How can God forgive rotten worms like us?" In effect, they believe that v 10 reflects genuine sorrow. Others argue, however, that the people are trying to poke holes in Ezekiel's message, looking for any inconsistency they can find so they can invalidate it. Instead of seeing the jailer who asked what he might do to be saved, proponents of this position treat the Israelites like the village atheist who is criticizing the Bible.

I tend to go with the second interpretation, since Ezekiel's opinion of Israel is usually not that positive. I think their slogan reflects a belief that existed in the early stages of Israelite religion (according to many scholars), which says that God punishes all people for their sins, regardless of repentance or the absence thereof. According to this belief, there is a debt that people owe when they sin, and they pay that debt through experiencing punishment. After that process, they are clean. This perspective most likely underlies the "That's not fair!" comment in v 17. "What do you mean that God forgives sinners?" they are asking. "That's not fair! A just God punishes sinners, not forgives them."

Their response is puzzling, since they're basically condemning themselves out of their own mouths. I mean, do they actually want to endure the horrors of destruction and exile? They should be happy that God gives them second and third chances and is eager to wipe the slate clean.

They remind me of atheists or other non-believers who criticize the substitutionary atonement (Christ dying for our sins). I've heard non-believers say, "That doctrine is not fair--one person dying in place of another! Shouldn't people pay for their own sins?" When I hear that, I'm puzzled. "Do you actually want to go to hell?" I think in my mind. But then I realize that, on one level, they don't take the doctrine seriously. Or they're trying not to. They want to refute it so that they don't have to deal with it.

There are two lessons that I get from this. First, we should take the word of God seriously. There's a temptation for me as a Bible student or amateur theologian to treat religion as an abstract topic of discussion. We look at different perspectives and interpretations and possibilities and spins, and we evaluate their strengths and weaknesses according to rules of argumentation. The whole process is rather entertaining! But we should remember in all this that we are discussing truth, which relates to weighty, life-and-death issues. We exist under the authority of God, for better or for worse, and we shouldn't forget that as we debate Scripture or theology. We shouldn't be like that professor in C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce, who enjoyed discussing theological possibilities (e.g., What would Jesus have contributed had he lived?) and missed the boat in the end. Let's make sure we don't neuter the Word of God in our lives by merely treating it as an entertaining topic of discourse or debate.

And, yet, let's still discuss! That's the second lesson I get out of this. God recognizes that the Israelites are asking their questions out of impure motives, but he still condescends to answer their questions. He wants them to understand him, and he is willing to meet people where they are.

I'm reminded of something I heard in Park Street Church in Boston. The pastor, Gordon Hugenberger, was giving the sermon, and he told us his conversion story. When he was a kid, he was at a camp, and a Christian counselor was witnessing to him. Young Gordon saw the whole thing as an intellectual exercise. He enjoyed his discussions with the counselor, who tried to answer his questions and objections. One day, the counselor was telling Gordon about the second coming of Christ, and Gordon said, "Maybe I'm Christ come back!" At that point, the counselor broke down crying. The counselor thought he was making progress, and then Gordon said THIS! Gordon was surprised. He had never seen a grown man cry before. He realized that Christianity was more serious than he thought, for it concerned his soul.

So let's discuss these issues rigorously, and yet let us remember what we're discussing. And praise God that he gives us second chances and meets us where we are.

God the Shepherd

In Ezekiel 34, God condemns the shepherds of Israel, accusing them of caring more for themselves than the Israelite people. To correct this problem, God promises to come himself and assume the role of Israel's shepherd. God will replace Israel's corrupt leadership with his own personal rule.

Is there anything new or revolutionary about God being Israel's shepherd? Does God promise in Ezekiel 34 to be personally involved with Israel in a way that he was not in the past? What does the concept of God as shepherd mean? In this post, I will approach this issue on three fronts: (1.) the immediate context of Ezekiel 34, (2.) other prophets, such as Isaiah and Jeremiah, and (3.) the New Testament.

Let's look at the immediate context of Ezekiel 34. In this chapter, God is shepherd in the sense that he will gather the Israelite exiles, return them to their land, give them strength and prosperity, and feed them with justice. The prior shepherds of Israel were unjust and did not care for the exiles, but God is not like them. And God's role as shepherd involves an intermediary, for vv 23-24 say that God will install David in the position of shepherd. So, although my spine tingles when I get to v 15, "I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep," I'm not sure if Ezekiel is predicting anything new. In Ezekiel 34, God will take care of Israel as he has in the past, and he will use an intermediary in the process. As far as I can see, his involvement with Israel does not seem more personal than it was before.

In Isaiah and Jeremiah, however, God's involvement with Israel after her restoration is more personal than it ever was in Israel's history. Isaiah 20:20-21 says that the Israelites will actually see their Teacher and hear, "This is the way; walk in it." Isaiah 2:3 predicts that the nations will go to Zion to learn from God. Isaiah 54:13 foresees the day when God will teach the children of Israel. Jeremiah 3:16-17 says that there will no longer be an Ark of the Covenant, for Jerusalem will be God's throne, implying that God will dwell directly in Jerusalem. And, in Jeremiah 31:34, the prophet affirms that people will no longer need to tell each other to know God, for everyone will know him. Is the implication that God will directly teach people about himself?

For both prophets, God will still have intermediaries after Israel's restoration, for both Isaiah and Jeremiah discuss the restored kingdom of David, and Jeremiah predicts that the Levites will resume their role in the Temple (Jeremiah 33:21-22). But God is directly involved with Israel in a way that he was not before. Prior to Israel's eschatological restoration, God spoke to Israel through Moses, the prophets, the Torah, and priests. After the restoration, God will be present with Israel and will guide her directly. For Isaiah and Jeremiah, God will indeed come and be Israel's shepherd.

The New Testament alludes to these concepts from the prophets. For Jesus, the Jews of his day were like sheep without a shepherd (Matthew 9:36). They were broken, sick, and oppressed, both physically and spiritually. And their religious leaders, the priests and the Pharisees, were more interested in feeding themselves than the sheep (Matthew 21:13; 23). According to the New Testament, Jesus said that God would deal with this issue in two ways. First, in Matthew 21:31-46, he prophesies that God will take the kingdom of God from the Jewish religious leaders and give it to a people producing the kingdom's fruits. He seems to be saying that God will remove the stewardship over his people from the corrupt priests and Pharisees and give it to the church, whose leaders will be shepherds (see Hebrews 13:7). This was fulfilled in 70 C.E., when the Romans destroyed the Jerusalem priesthood. Second, the New Testament presents a scenario in which God will personally come and be the shepherd of his people. Jesus is God in the Gospel of John (John 1), and yet he is also the Good Shepherd (John 10:11, 14).

In the New Testament, the eschatological promises of the prophets were (and are) fulfilled in part through Jesus' first coming. For example, Isaiah 54:13, where God predicts that Israelites will be taught by God, appears in John 6:45 and I Thessalonians 4:9. In John 6:45, Jesus says that everyone who has learned from the Father comes to him. For John, Jesus' sheep are those who hear his voice because God the Father has personally taught them about his Son. In I Thessalonians 4:9, Paul tells the church that he does not need to tell them to love one another, since God has already done the job. In the New Testament, the eschatological promise that God will personally shepherd his people is in the process of being fulfilled, for God guides Christians personally through the Holy Spirit.

Yet, there is a fulfillment that is yet to come. Revelation 7:16-17 foresees a day when the Lamb will shepherd his people and wipe away their tears. God is our shepherd today in the sense that he cares for us and guides us directly, but he will be even more so after Christ's return, when he will remove all of the things that hurt us. As Stephen (aka Q) has argued, the kingdom is already and not yet.

Although God directly guides us, however, he still uses intermediaries, namely, the leaders of the church. And Ezekiel 34 assures us that God is watching to make sure that they are doing their job. Just because the church has replaced the Jewish priesthood, that does not mean that church leaders have a free hand to do whatever they want. Romans 11:21-22 tells those who were grafted into God's people that God will not spare them if they fail to continue in his kindness. I like the way that Peter Kirk applies Isaiah's condemnation of bad leaders to the church. Many supersessionists act as if the blessings of the Old Testament are for the church, while the curses were for physical Israel. Wrong! The curses are a warning to the church as well. Judgment must begin with the household of God (I Peter 4:17). God does not turn a blind eye to selfish and unjust leaders, wherever they are.

Praise God that he personally loves and guides every believer. Praise God that he will do so even more when he returns. And praise God that he values us so much that he wants us to have loving and righteous spiritual shepherds.

The Refugee

Someone should make a movie about Ezekiel 33:21-22. In that passage, a refugee from Jerusalem comes to Ezekiel and tells him that the city has fallen. When Ezekiel hears the refugee's message, he is suddenly able to speak. Before that, Ezekiel was mute, due to divine influence.

There are a lot of questions that I have about this refugee. Who was he? How did he know Ezekiel? Was he acquainted with Ezekiel when the prophet lived in Judah? Did he know him by reputation? Or did God tell him to go to the prophet?

What happened on the refugee's journey? Did he have to go through deserts? Did he encounter villains who hindered his mission? How long did he travel? What did he eat or drink? How did he feel about his own city being destroyed? Did he have family? Did he know what happened to his friends and loved ones?

What is strange is that this guy escaped when the Babylonians invaded Jerusalem, and yet he was going to the very country that was taking Jerusalem captive: Babylon, the place of Ezekiel's exile. Was he putting his liberty at risk when he went to Babylon? I mean, he had escaped. He wasn't like King Zedekiah, who thought he was home free right before the Babylonians captured him (how disappointing!). This guy was actually a free man. He was able to start anew, whatever his previous life was like in Jerusalem. He could have gone someplace and set up a fairly comfortable existence. He wasn't an exile, and he didn't have to remain in Jerusalem to eat children. But, despite his freedom, something inside (or outside) of himself compelled him to go to Babylon. Either he went out of his own volition, or God told him to go. Whatever his motivation, he played a role in the divine drama that was unfolding.

I think about Paul's statements about freedom in his epistles. Paul says in Romans 14 and I Corinthians 8 that people are free to eat certain meats, but that they should try not to be a stumbling block to their Christian brothers. He asserts in I Corinthians 7:22 that Christian slaves are God's freemen, whereas Christian freemen are God's slaves. And he tells Gentiles in Galatians 5 that God has set them free, right before he enumerates the characteristics of a righteous believer.

There is something about freedom that makes me feel good. It's like a breath of fresh air. I think about Zedekiah's unsuccessful escape, and what goes through my mind is "Bummer!" Maybe that's because I have dreams in which I fly away from danger. When I think of freedom or escape, I remember Tim Robbins getting out of that dull, dreary prison in the Shawshank Redemption and going to Mexico. Remember how he looked when he finally broke out? I was afraid that the cops would catch him again, but they didn't. He was home free.

Yet, there is more to life than freedom. There is righteousness. There is having a purpose beyond oneself. One can have a lot of free time and be miserable. Paul reminds us that our purpose in the Christian story is more important than our freedom, as much as we should celebrate our liberty in Christ.

As I said, Ezekiel 33:21-22 would make a good movie. But I would want it to be made by competent movie-makers, meaning I probably wouldn't hire the people who make those corny Revelation movies on TBN (though, I will admit, even those movies have a certain charm). My idea sounds like The Nativity Story, in which Joseph and Mary were refugees on a journey, but I wouldn't want my movie to be that boring.

Any movie-makers out there?

How Will They Know?

Throughout the Book of Ezekiel, God says that various people shall know that God is the LORD. Usually, the context is God's wrath. In Ezekiel, the ones who will know God's identity include the people of Judah and other nations, such as Moab, Edom, Philistia, Tyre, and Egypt.

I can understand how Judah would recognize that God is the LORD, especially after her calamity. After all, Judah had a tradition of Yahwism. Once Judah fell and asked how she got into her mess, one possible answer would be that she displeased her national god. Her answer would be based on elements of her own national tradition, which was her filter for interpreting events.

But why would the other nations know that God is the LORD after their calamities? If Babylon invaded them, wouldn't they have their own way of interpreting the events? They may say that Babylon was stronger, or that the Babylonian god was too powerful, or that they displeased their own national deities. Why should they conclude that they fell through offending the LORD, the god of another nation that fell? Why did Ezekiel believe that the nations would interpret history as he did?

One reason may be that the other nations had a history with Israel's God. Throughout the Bible, nations such as Egypt, Moab, and Philistia experience God's power. They see God's supremacy as they suffer or lose battles at the hands of the Israelite deity. And they were Israel's neighbors, so Israel's relationship with the LORD did not exist in a vacuum. Consequently, when these nations fell, one explanation that may have entered their minds was that they had offended the God of Israel. And they could point out examples in which that was the case. The Ammonites, the Edomites, the Moabites, and the people of Tyre actually rejoiced at the destruction of Jerusalem and the LORD's temple, and they tried to take advantage of the situation. That made God angry. At their own destruction, the nations may have thought, "I think we're being punished for hurting Israel. You've heard the stories about their powerful God. Well, I guess those stories are true. Scratch that! I KNOW that they are."

Another possible reason is that Ezekiel expected the people of other nations to hear God's message. Ezekiel 26 is actually directed to Tyre. I doubt that Ezekiel actually went there, but could he have sent a representative? Jeremiah had his representative, Baruch. Plus, some prophets, such as Jonah, went to foreign countries. When the Gentiles heard the prophetic message in the name of the LORD and experienced its fulfillment, they would hopefully conclude that the God behind the message was the true God.

Or maybe Ezekiel thought that the nations would hear God's message after their destruction. Babylon may have taken Israel into exile with other nations, meaning that Jewish exiles could have interacted with exiles from other countries. In Ezekiel 12:15-16, God says that he will scatter the Israelites among the nations. According to the passage, the result will be that Israel will testify to them about her punishment at the hand of the LORD. Afterwards, they (presumably the nations) will know that God is the LORD. In exile, the Jews may have said to the exiles of other countries, "We were destroyed for offending the LORD, and so were you." Why would the nations believe them? I don't know. Maybe they would be more inclined to believe the Jews after Israel's national restoration. Or perhaps God would confirm in their hearts the truth of the Jews' message.

One last possibility: the nations would know that God is the LORD in the afterlife. Ezekiel 26:20 says that God will send Tyre to the pit, to the people of long ago. Isaiah 14:9-11 has similar imagery, as former mighty men taunt fallen Babylon in Sheol. In the afterlife, maybe people knew the truth about the true God's identity and other matters. Or at least Ezekiel may have thought that to be the case.

Any other possibilities that come to your mind?