Misunderstanding Jesus’s kingship—Mark 15:16-20

“And the soldiers led Jesus away inside the courtyard of the palace (i.e., the governor’s headquarters), and they called together the rest of their unit. And they draped him in a purple robe, and weaving together a garland of thorns, they placed it on him. And they began applauding him: “Hail, King of the Jews!” They struck his head with a reed, spat on him, and knelt down as if to honor him as king. And when they were done mocking him, they stripped the purple robe from him and put his own clothes back on him. Then they led him out to crucify him.” (Mark 15:16-20)

In Mark 15, the kind of king the soldiers mock—one who flaunts power—is not the kind of king that Jesus is. Instead, his kingship corresponds to his very submission to suffering at their hands. This was a suffering to which his heavenly rank did not require him to submit; he submitted not out of obligation but on our behalf. Jesus models a different kind of authority than his mockers expected, an authority reliant entirely on God, and not from human rank.

This model fits the Lord’s mission throughout Mark’s Gospel. Jesus makes the lowly feel welcome, meeting their needs. But just as we would resent one child who bullies another, Jesus views harshly those who exploit or look down on the rest of his people. He challenges the wealthy priests, the proud leaders who run the temple, those who consider themselves intellectually or morally superior, those who revel in receiving respectful greetings, and so forth. Jesus ultimately pronounces judgment on the temple and its establishment, but with a wounded, broken heart.

Just as in the Hebrew Bible God laments the appointed shepherds who abuse his people (Ezekiel 34), Jesus confronts the religious and social leaders, who are the antithesis of what he is about. Their thinking, however, fits the way the world views status. Jesus’s heart breaks when even his own disciples, who are supposed to carry on the mission after him, don’t yet understand humility/servanthood.

Jesus wants to make sure, before he leaves, that his disciples won’t share his enemies’ valuations of power. He models living simply. He explains how the least are the greatest, and uses himself as an example (Mark 10:42-45). In the Gospel’s climax, he goes to the cross, submitting to persecution and death at others’ hands. Finally, after his resurrection, his disciples get it. Power over others is not something to seek! Rather, we must make ourselves servants, and depend on God’s power to use us.

How might our Lord’s model challenge those of us who are Christian leaders today? Jesus invites us to lead by looking out for the interests of the sheep, not our own interests.

Cf. Ezek 34:2, 11 (NET): “Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy, and say to them–to the shepherds: ‘This is what the sovereign LORD says: Woe to the shepherds of Israel who have been feeding themselves! Should not shepherds feed the flock? … I myself will search for my sheep and seek them out.”

Mark 12:38-39 (NRSV): “As he taught, [Jesus] said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets!”

Mark 6:34 (NRSV): “As [Jesus] went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd”

Two kinds of leaders—Mark 10:42-45

I’m going to talk about two kinds of leaders in Mark 10:42-45, but the discussion will make fullest sense if I spend some time in the rest of Mark’s Gospel setting the stage for this.

Jesus throughout Mark’s Gospel displays one kind of leadership. Some scholars like to play Jesus’s “Messianic secret” (his invoking silence regarding much of his ministry) off against his signs or glory. But they are envisioning the wrong dichotomy. Throughout the Gospel, Jesus is healing and delivering others, even at risks to himself. (His times with the marginalized would not commend him to the elite.) He is not seeking his own honor; his acts of healing are part of his being a servant to others. Jesus spent time with the disabled, and moral and social outcasts—he’s not looking to get the powerful to back his cause.

There are also other kinds of leaders in Mark’s Gospel. These include some of the scribes and Pharisees, whose confrontations with Jesus show them more committed to their stringent interpretations of Scripture than they are to the desperate human needs Jesus is meeting. Still more unlike Jesus are the Jerusalem elite, who flaunt and sometimes abuse their honor and power. Like tenants in the vineyard in the parable Jesus tells in Mark 12, these leaders forget that God allowed them to be caretakers. They do not want to relinquish their power over the vineyard of God’s people.

We should expect the disciples to be different. Jesus is training these relative nobodies to be leaders in his kingdom. Most of them are from modest or poor backgrounds; most of them were also probably not well-educated (although at least the tax collector should have had basic writing literacy). They were Galileans, whom Jerusalemites sometimes viewed as country bumpkins. They should understand that Jesus is about helping those in the greatest need, not about self-exaltation.

But soon the disciples, expecting places of honor in Jesus’s kingdom, begin looking like the other kinds of leaders rather than like Jesus. They try to protect Jesus from being bothered by children (10:15); other followers want to protect him from a blind beggar (10:48). After the disciples try to keep away the children, Jesus has to repeat a lesson he had already given his disciples about receiving children (9:36-37; 10:14-15)!

And before the lesson of 10:42-45, they become even deafer to Jesus’s message. After a rich man refuses to surrender his wealth for the kingdom, Jesus again reminds his disciples that the first will be last (10:31) and that Jerusalem’s elite will precipitate his death (10:33-34). Instead of contemplating this sobering warning, James and John immediately ask to be greatest in the kingdom (10:35-40). (After all, they were just on the Mount of Transfiguration with him and Peter, while the other disciples were failing in an exorcism below the mountain.) This ploy makes angry the other ten: James and John are butting ahead of them in line (10:41)! The disciples had already been debating among themselves who was the greatest, and Jesus had already responded that the greatest would be like a child (9:33-35). His message, however, has obviously not yet sunk in.

So Jesus gives the lesson in 10:42-45. Here he contrasts two forms of leadership. For the first, he speaks about the world’s way of power, exemplified by the “rulers of the gentiles” (10:42). (Keep in mind that, for Jesus’s Galilean disciples, gentiles did not exactly epitomize moral ideals.) This was the sort of raw power that allowed Pilate to hand Jesus over for execution or for the Jewish tetrarch Herod Antipas to have John beheaded (though both Pilate and Herod succumbed to others’ demands in these cases). By Galilean standards, Herod even seemed a “king” (6:14, 22, 25-27).

This differed from the ideal kind of rulership, the reign of God, his kingdom, proclaimed by Jesus (1:15). This divine kingship would someday be manifested in the glory that God’s people were expecting (14:25; 15:43), but it first came in a hidden way—the humble “secret” or mystery of the kingdom I’ve already mentioned (4:11-12). It is a kingdom that belongs to children (10:14-15), inimical to power based on wealth (10:23). And the language of king, besides the pseudo-king Herod, clusters in Mark 15, when his enemies mock Jesus as king of the Jews (15:2, 9, 12, 18, 26, 32) and crown him with thorns (15:17).

The rulers of the gentiles exercise authority in self-seeking, abusive ways (10:42). By contrast, Jesus exercises authority not like the scribes (1:22), but for driving out demons (1:27) and forgiving sins (2:10). He delegates this authority to his disciples—also to drive out demons (3:15; 6:7), waging war against the enemy kingdom of Satan (3:24-27).

In contrast to the power of gentile rulers (10:42), Jesus offers a contrasting paradigm (10:43-44). “This way of the gentiles—that’s not how it must be among you. Instead, whoever wants to be great among you will be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you will be slave [doulos] of all” (10:43-44).Jesus uses power to heal the sick (5:30), not to help himself (15:30, 32; cf. Matt 4:2-4).

Unfortunately, this is not the first time Jesus had had to offer this lesson: he has to keep reminding them! In 9:33-34, the disciples had been discussing who was the greatest among them. Jesus then warned them in 9:35 that whoever wants to be first will be last and servant of all. Now again James and John had sought to be highest in the kingdom, and Jesus has had to repeat the lesson. Our habit of competing for honor or attention dies hard.

Yet Jesus is not offering mere abstract instruction. He is offering himself. And insofar as he is our hero, our model of greatness, humbling ourselves must become our ambition! Our Lord is greatest of all, having humbled himself most of all: though being divine, he humbled himself, taking on him the form of a servant, and became obedient to death, even the particularly shameful death on a cross—the ultimate humiliation. Yet God has exalted Jesus Christ as Lord of the universe! (Phil 2:5-11).

And so Jesus gets specific, in 10:45 essentially adding another passion prediction that brings them back to the subject that preceded the quest for greatness (10:33-34): Jesus, the Lord himself, must die. “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.”

Mark’s entire Gospel shows Jesus serving, a servanthood that climaxes in Mark’s lengthy passion narrative. “Ransom” (10:45) often meant the price used to buy someone from slavery. Jesus by his own life offers himself as a slave (10:44) to free us from slavery. We could not have saved our own lives for eternity, but Jesus does. In 8:37, Jesus asks what a person can give in exchange for their soul (antallagma psuchê). Here Jesus says that he gives his own life (psuchê) in the place of (anti) many. He gives his life in exchange for ours.

We whom God had graciously appointed as leaders—some of us from lowly backgrounds like the disciples—have a special privilege and opportunity to serve all the more. May we always remember our Lord’s model: for how can we ever serve as humbly as he has served us?

Jesus was a Refugee—Matthew 2:13-15

Among some, the claim that Jesus was a refugee has become politically divisive these days, so I should point out that the title used in this analogy predates the controversy; it was my own observation, published in my IVP Matthew commentary in 1997 (pp. 69-70). How that should apply to details of contemporary political debates may be a legitimate question. Whether Christians should care about refugees and try to help them is not. Whether Jesus and his family actually had to leave their country because of political oppression is a debate only among those who question the historical authenticity of Matthew’s report. Having prefaced my comments with these remarks, I turn now to the pre-controversy Bible study I wrote back in the early 1990s and have only slightly updated.

Persian Magi were known for using stars and dreams to predict the future, and it appears that on this one occasion in history, God spoke to the Magi where they were looking. Although Scripture forbade divination, in this period many people believed that stars could predict the future, and rulers anxious about such predictions sometimes executed others to protect their own situation. (One ruler, for example, is said to have executed some nobles to make sure that they, rather than he, fulfilled a prediction about some leaders’ demise!)

So large was the Magi’s caravan in Matthew 2 that they could not escape notice; Matthew says that all Jerusalem was stirred by their arrival. The Magi had every reason to assume that a newborn king would be born in the royal palace in Jerusalem; but despite Herod’s many wives, he had sired no children recently. Herod’s own wise men sent these Gentile wise men off to Bethlehem, just six miles from Jerusalem and in full view of Herod’s fortress called the Herodium. They later fled Bethlehem by night, but the disappearance of such a large caravan would not go unnoticed for very long.

Herod acts in this narrative just like history shows us Herod was: he was so paranoid and jealous that he had executed two of his sons on the (false) charge of plotting against him, as well as his favorite wife on the (false) charge of infidelity. On his deathbed, he would execute another son, and leave orders (happily unfulfilled) to execute nobles (so there would be some mourning when he died; cf. Prov 11:10). A probably apocryphal report attributes to the Roman emperor the opinion that it was safer to be one of Herod’s pigs than one of his sons.

Contrasting the different characters in this account reveals striking ironies. Fitting a theme in Matthew’s Jewish Gospel, these Gentiles come to worship Jesus. By contrast, Herod, king of the Judeans, acts like a pagan king: like Pharaoh of old (and another pagan king more recently), he orders the killing of male children. Most astonishing to us, though, should be Herod’s advisors, the chief religious leaders and Bible teachers of the day: they knew where the Messiah would be born, but unlike these Gentiles they did not seek him out. Merely knowing the Bible is no guarantee that we will obey its message. (We should note, however, that the Sanhedrin, whom Herod uses here as advisors, was not very independent in this period; he had executed his opponents and replaced them with his political lackeys.) As in the parable of the sower, we ought to sow on all kinds of soil; sometimes God has plans for the people we least expect.

But notice also the other characters. The narrative repeatedly emphasizes “the child and his mother” as the objects of Herod’s hostility. Though this powerful king will soon be dead, he feels threatened by those who were at the time politically harmless. Undoubtedly able to use the resources provided by the Magi, however, Joseph’s family found refuge in Egypt, like an earlier biblical Joseph. Probably they settled in the massive city of Alexandria, where according to some estimates nearly a third of the city was Jewish.

Years ago, when I wrote my first commentary on Matthew, I wrote at this point that Jesus was a refugee: a baby in a family forced to flee a corrupt dictator, just like so many political refugees in different parts of the world today.

As I wrote it, I grieved for my dear friend Médine, whose country, Congo-Brazzaville, was at war. Later I learned that her town had been burned down, and did not know for eighteen months if she was alive or dead; if she was alive, however, she was undoubtedly a refugee, along with perhaps as much as a quarter of her nation. Still later I discovered that she had fled the town carrying a baby on her back and joining others in pushing her disabled father in a wheelbarrow.

When Médine read in my Matthew commentary that Jesus was a refugee, she found meaning in what she had experienced; Jesus had suffered what she had suffered. Médine is now my wife, and we have a happier life. But we cannot easily forget those who, like our Lord two millennia ago, face suffering because of others’ injustice.

The story of Craig and Médine together appears in Impossible Love: The True Story of an African Civil War, Miracles, and Love Against All Odds (Chosen Books, 2016). Craig S. Keener is author of a smaller commentary on Matthew with InterVarsity Press and a larger one with Eerdmans (The Gospel of Matthew: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary, 2009), as well as The Historical Jesus of the Gospels (Eerdmans, 2009) and Christobiography (Eerdmans, 2019).

The children’s bread and dogs’ crumbs—Mark 7:24-30

Jesus had taken his disciples into Gentile territory to get away from the crowds (Mk 7:24). Even if Jesus temporarily escaped the paparazzi and the tabloids, however, he was too popular to fully evade notice; he could not even take his disciples on a private retreat without someone finding him. A woman had a desperate need, so desperate that she didn’t care that Jesus was on vacation; she needed deliverance for her daughter.

Aside from the fact that she was interrupting Jesus’s down time, she was, worst of all, a Gentile. And not just any Gentile: she was a Syrophoenician. Jesus was in the region of Tyre in Phoenicia; Jesus’s disciples would know Phoenicia as the region where wicked Jezebel was from—though also the region of a woman who had received the prophet Elijah. Mark identifies this region as Syrophoenicia, to distinguish it from the Phoenician colonies in north Africa (founded after the time of Jezebel).

Jesus had just been teaching his disciples that outward ritual purity is not what matters (7:1-23). That theme sheds some light on his interaction with the Gentile woman here.

Mark also tells us that the woman was a “Greek” (literally in Mark 7:26, though some translations more blandly proclaim her a “Gentile”). That is, she not only lived among descendants of the ancient Phoenicians, but she also belonged to what had been the ruling citizen class since the time of Alexander the Great. She belonged to the privileged class that often maintained its wealth by exploiting the poorer farmers in outlying areas, both Phoenician and Jewish.

Now, however, this elite woman is desperate. Another Gospel indicates that the disciples wanted Jesus to send her away (Matt 15:23), just as they tried to keep young children or others tried to keep a blind beggar from imposing on Jesus (Mark 10:13, 48), just as a disciple once tried to protect Elisha from interruptions (2 Kgs 4:27). But this woman remains persistent. Although we cannot read too much into verb tenses, it is possible that the Greek imperfect verb tense might indicate that she not only asked Jesus to deliver her daughter, but kept pestering him. Certainly, Matthew is clear that she refuses to be put off (Matt 15:22-25).

Jesus, however, puts her off, insisting that his mission is to the “children” first, i.e., to God’s people; the children’s bread should not be thrown to the dogs. This woman belonged to a social class that had been consuming other people’s bread, taking food from other children’s mouths, for a long time. Now desperation had forced this member of the elite to humble herself and plead for help from a Jewish teacher—and he humiliates her even more! Calling someone a dog back then, whether of the male or female variety, meant essentially what it means today. It was one of the most grievous insults of antiquity, and while Jesus does not directly call her a dog (he simply makes a comparison), she could have taken offense and left.

She, however, is too desperate to give up. She humbles herself yet further, and construes Jesus’s image the way it could be applied in her Gentile environment. In her Gentile setting, people sometimes had pet dogs, and of course messy children dropped crumbs. She doesn’t need to be treated as an Israelite; Jesus’s power is so great that even the leftover crumbs from the table will be enough to deliver her daughter (Mark 7:28). Jesus counts her persistence and humility as faith, and answers her request (7:29-30).

The way Jesus treats this woman fits many of Mark’s surrounding narratives. Desperate to get help from the only one who can heal their friend, four men tear up a roof to get their friend to Jesus. Jesus calls this insistence “faith” (Mark 2:5). A woman with a flow of blood can make ritually impure anyone she touches or anyone whose clothes she touches (Lev 15:25-27). Nevertheless, yet she has to get to Jesus. She presses her way through the crowds and touches Jesus’s garment, with an expression of scandalous faith (Mark 5:25-34). Jesus invites her to testify publicly of her healing, even though in the eyes of the crowd, her act had made Jesus impure for the rest of that day. Jesus is not ashamed to be identified with us in our brokenness, so that he might make us whole. People try to keep blind Bartimaeus from Jesus, but he will not let anything keep him from Jesus (Mark 10:47-48).

Do you see the pattern? Many of the people who needed help from Jesus faced one barrier or another. But when they faced the barriers or things went wrong, they did not give up. Like the Syrophoenician woman, they recognized that Jesus was the only answer to their need, and they would not let anything keep them from getting to Jesus. Like the farmer or merchant in Jesus’s parables of the treasure in the field or the pearl of great price (Matt 13:44-46), they recognized that Jesus was worth so much that they would give up everything else to have him and what he offers.

When things go wrong, do we simply shrug and give up, feeling like God is far away? Or do we persist in faith, trusting God no matter what? Even if his answer is delayed, or even if we do not get the particular blessing we seek, there is a blessing for those who hold firm in faith. Jesus is worth everything. Do not let any problem, anyone’s disapproval, or even what seems a divine rebuff itself, distract you from pressing in and seeking God with all your heart.

Craig S. Keener is professor at Asbury Theological Seminary and the author of many books, including Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts (Baker Academic), and two commentaries on Matthew’s Gospel.

How much is eternal life worth?—Mark 8:34-38

“If anyone wants to follow after me, let one deny oneself and pick up one’s cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it; but whoever will lose their life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it! For what good is it for someone to gain the whole world at the expense of one’s life? For what should someone give in exchange for their life? For whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of that person the Son of Man will be ashamed when he comes in his Father’s splendor with the holy angels!”—Mark 8:34-38

Toward the beginning of his Gospel, Mark provides what looks like a model (1:16-20) of embracing Jesus’s preaching about the kingdom (1:15). Prospective disciples abandon their livelihoods and leave behind families to follow Jesus. So far, so good: they count Jesus and his kingdom as worth more than possessions and other relationships. But whether they truly value Jesus and the kingdom more than their own lives (cf. Luke 14:26) remains to be seen.

Jesus’s disciples immediately (euthus)“abandoned” (aphientes) their nets to follow him (Mark 1:18); though not using the same Greek term, others also left behind their livelihoods to follow Jesus (2:14; cf. 10:50-52). Peter reaffirms that they left everything to follow Jesus (10:28-29). But in 14:50, when following Jesus may entail sharing his cross, they all abandon (aphentes) Jesus and flee. They are in such haste to flee that, despite Judean abhorrence of nakedness, one leaves his outer cloak in his potential captors’ hands in haste to escape (14:51-52). They were willing to forsake other things, but not life itself (8:34-38).

Jesus had warned them; his disciples would stumble (skandalizô, 14:27); Peter, however, insisted that he would not stumble (skandalizô, 14:29). Jesus warned that true disciples must deny themselves (8:34), but that Peter would deny Jesus (14:30; fulfilled in 14:72). Peter insisted that he would never deny Jesus (14:31), but perhaps underestimated the power of the fight-or-flight response of his nervous system; he and his colleagues had been afraid before (4:41; 6:50; 9:32; 10:32), a reaction that should have been tempered by faith (cf. 5:36). Those who abandon other things for Jesus will receive rewards—but also persecutions (diôgmoi, 10:30).

Simon Peter, who insisted that he would never deny Jesus, should have been ready to take up Jesus’s cross (8:34); but his triumphalist theology that militated against suffering (8:31-33) left him unprepared, and Rome had to draft another Simon to carry Jesus’s cross (15:21). (Simon was the most common Judean male name, so this could be coincidence, but Mark might play on it anyway.)

Peter, whose name means “rocky,” acted, with the other disciples, like the rocky (petrôdes) soil in 4:16-17, who immediately (euthus)embrace the kingdom message joyfully—but when hardship (thlipsis) or persecution (diôgmos) comes, they immediately (euthus)stumble (skandalizô) from the way (4:16-17). Mark may use this as a warning for coming tribulation (thlipsis; 13:19, 24).

Disciples might be ready to fight the world’s way (14:47) or even follow “from afar” (14:54), but are we ready to follow to the cross? Do we design our theology for what we can get from Jesus, or are we loyal to our Lord for himself? Are we rocky soil, like the first disciples? Thorny soil, like the rich young ruler? Or will we be good soil, through whom the seed multiplies many times over through making other true disciples?

This would not be those disciples’ last chance (16:7), and we may still have other opportunities to show that we will be loyal to Jesus even in the face of a world that despises him (8:34). Insisting that we will never deny him is no guarantee that we will not. By contrast, learning to temper our fear with faith, with confidence in Jesus, helps prepare us for potential harder times ahead.

Good News about Jesus Christ and the introduction to Mark’s Gospel—Mark 1:1

Mark titles either his Gospel or its opening words with,“the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, God’s Son.” So even a previously uninformed reader knows Jesus’s identity from the start, even as it unfolds only gradually in the narrative. It’s no surprise when the Father honors Jesus as his Son in Mark 1:11. What is more of a surprise for the uninformed reader will be how little his human contemporaries recognize him, and how the Gospel will climax in and elaborate the crucifixion of God’s Son.

“Good news,” or euangelion, applied to all sorts of things in Greek, but given Mark’s signaled interest in Isaiah in v. 2, it probably evokes the promised good news of Israel’s restoration emphasized there. In v. 3, Mark will note the herald of Isa 40:3 who prepares the way for YHWH, who leads his people through the wilderness in a new exodus, bringing them back to their land from exile and restoring them. Many Jews had resettled in the land, but they still awaited the full restoration of their people, along with the renewed creation God had promised (such as new heavens and new earth, Isa 65:17; 66:22). Isaiah goes on to speak of this way-preparing herald in terms of the remnant of God’s people, announcing good tidings to the rest of them (Isa 40:9, the standard Greek translation twice using the verb euaggelizô).

The next use of this verb in standard Greek translation of Isaiah appears in Isa 52:7, speaking of the messenger who “brings good news” (euangelizomenou) about peace for God’s people, who brings good news (euangelizomenos) involving salvation and God’s reign. In this context in Isaiah, this is good news that judgment has ended, and God is restoring his people. Isaiah 52:7 speaks of this as the good news, or gospel, of peace, of salvation, and of God’s kingdom.

That Mark wants to emphasize good news is clear because it frames Mark’s introduction. Mark treats John the Baptist as the optimum model of this herald, this way-preparer for YHWH, as he prepares the way for Jesus. (This should also let the biblically informed reader of Mark know something further about Jesus’s identity: he is YHWH.) But after John the Baptist’s arrest in 1:14, Jesus begins the public ministry that Mark’s Gospel addresses. Mark describes it this way: “Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming God’s good news, by saying: ‘The time has been fulfilled! God’s kingdom has drawn near! Turn your lives around and depend on the good news!” (Mark 1:14-15).

That Mark’s understanding of this good news evokes Isaiah is also clear because of the mention of God’s kingdom, or God’s reign, as part of this good news (1:15). Remember Isa 52:7: part of this good news is, “Our God reigns.” Other Scripture praised God’s kingship as most evident in the conspicuous day of God’s justice (e.g., Ps 93:1; 96:10; 97:1; 99:1). It would be the kingdom that would shatter temporary earthly kingdoms with an eternal one (Dan 2:44), the kingdom of the Son of Man (Dan 7:14) and his people (7:18, 27). Jesus, too, places no trust in such temporary kingdoms and rulers (Mark 13:8-9).

Jesus uses “kingship” language to describe the content of his parabolic teaching (Mark 4:11, 26, 30; 9:47); it contrasts with the pseudo-royal governor of Galilee (6:14, 22-27) who executes God’s herald (6:27). Disciples see a foretaste of kingdom glory (8:38—9:1) in Jesus’s transfiguration (9:2). As Jesus enters Jerusalem, the crowds hail the promised kingdom of the Davidic king (11:10)—although they may overplay the Davidic part (12:37). Jesus announces to his disciples that they will share in the expected messianic banquet with him in God’s kingdom (14:25)—though separation between them must intervene.

Here we can begin to catch the irony of this “kingdom” from a human vantage point. But Jesus declares that this kingdom belongs to children (10:14-15) and to those who love their neighbor (12:34). He brings it not to prestigious and powerful people such as Herod Antipas, Jerusalem’s high council, Pilate, or to those proud of their wealth (10:23-25), but to people who are disabled (such as blind beggars), who are socially marginalized (such as tax collectors), and to others who are the antithesis of social prestige. (One prestigious person, Joseph of Arimathea, does somehow get the kingdom message closer to right than his colleagues; 15:43.)

But from here on out, Mark’s Gospel uses royal language almost exclusively in one way: for Jesus as the rejected king of his people, crowned with thorns and enthroned on a cross (Mark 15:2, 9, 12, 18, 26, 32, 43). We should have suspected as much, when already in the introduction the kingdom herald John was arrested (1:14), and in the last verse about “king” Herod Antipas Mark gets beheaded (6:27). The kingdom of this world was not ready to give up its worldly power.

Yet Jesus will return to Galilee to meet his disciples (16:7), so the preaching of the good news will start again, and spread among all nations (13:10), even in the face of hostility (13:9-11).

The fulness of the kingdom will come. Jesus’s signs of and teaching about the kingdom will prevail. But Mark is realistic about this world. This world’s kingdom’s will not surrender until the Son of Man returns (8:38; 13:26; 14:62). In Daniel, the reign of the Son of Man (the human one [Dan 7:13-14], contrasted with the preceding kingdoms depicted as beasts [7:3-8]) is linked with the triumph of the consecrated ones of the Most High (7:22, 27)—after suffering (7:21, 25). Let no one deceive you: suffering continues in this present age. But also let no one deceive you that this age is all there is. The fullness of our promised home is yet to come.

Sleeping with a prostitute part 2: Genesis 38:15-26

Judah and Tamar

In payment for Tamar’s services Judah offers her a young goat (38:17). The expression, “kid from the goats” here is idiomatic Hebrew, but the mention of a goat may recall how Judah and his brothers slaughtered a goat (in that case, belonging to their father’s livestock) to cover Joseph’s disappearance (37:31). No goat, however, will cover Judah’s sin here. That Tamar asks a pledge to guarantee Judah’s promise may have taken him aback (38:17), but Tamar has good reason to secure evidence. Judah has already shown his promises to be unreliable on even more urgent matters by not providing Shelah to Tamar (38:14). (It’s always prudent to be able to document abuse.)

When Judah sends the kid and his friend does not find the prostitute (38:20-22), Judah lets her keep his staff and seal, which would be worth less to her (though not necessarily to him) than the goat. He fears being ridiculed if they keep looking (38:23). It is possible that Judah’s fear of ridicule is partly embarrassment that the prostitute tricked him into giving her his identifying marks. It is also likely, however, that he does not want it to be widely known that he had slept with a prostitute, evidence of which act she now possesses. Even though Judah does not share the scruples articulated later in Scripture, he recognizes the shame in his behavior. Meanwhile, Tamar has taken a big risk. She now had his signet, cord and staff but if she does not conceive and bear a son her ruse will fail. Yet even her pregnancy will constitute a large risk: can she shame her father-in-law into responding justly?

Tamar does conceive, and when Judah learns that his daughter-in-law is pregnant, he demands that she be burned for her offense (38:24). Her death would conveniently resolve his obligation to send his son Shelah to her, but it also probably upheld an honor code (cf. later burning of a priest’s daughter for desecrating his ministry by prostitution, Lev 21:9). Judah wanted no one to know about his own escapades (38:23), but he was especially ashamed to learn of escapades by a female member of his household.

Tamar had, after all, married into his household; that was why he had sent Onan to raise up an heir for his older brother, so that Tamar’s son would receive the firstborn’s inheritance. Undoubtedly Judah and Er had paid a steep bride price for this woman, and she was a woman of status, making alternative arrangements difficult. Yet Judah, though disposing of her like a member of his household, had sent her back to her father’s household (38:11), undoubtedly shaming her. The rest of the narrative will underline the hypocrisy of Judah’s gender-based double standard.

Thus Tamar sends to Judah his staff, cord and signet ring, thereby revealing that he was the one who had impregnated his daughter-in-law, believing her to be a prostitute. Tamar’s invitation to Judah to “examine” the tokens in 38:25 may evoke for the reader Jacob’s sons callously inviting him to “examine” Joseph’s bloodied robe in 37:32. Because Judah, who participated in deceiving his father, experiences deception, he is confronted with his own sin (38:26). Such painful confrontations, however, can help make us better people: Judah does change (see 44:33-34). Judah’s sexual sin contrasts starkly with Joseph’s refusal to sin in the next chapter of Genesis, the subject of our next lesson. (See also http://www.craigkeener.org/judahs-punishment-in-genesis-38/.)