Craig wrote an article on the historical reliability of the Bible for the Exploring God website, focusing on the periods of Abraham and the patriarchs, 2 Kings, and the Gospels. (The available historical evidence to examine these passages in the Bible increases from one discussion to the next.)
The article is available at:
http://www.exploregod.com/is-the-bible-reliable-paper
Category Archives: Old Testament
Ignoring injustice–Proverbs 24:12
Genocides have often happened while the world turned its eyes away. It was not that no one knew what was going on. It was that some did not want to know. The twentieth century saw genocides against Armenians, Jews, Roma people, in Cambodia, Rwanda, Congo-DRC, and the Sudan, among others–what are we ignoring now?
See the full article at: http://www.evangelicalsforsocialaction.org/we-cannot-say-we-did-not-know/
Ironies in Esther
Although God is not named in the Book of Esther, the book’s delicious ironies imply his sovereign activity. Unlike most of Israel’s prophet-historians, the author of this book communicates theology more subtly—though attentive eyes will see it woven throughout the narrative’s fabric.
Vashti’s misfortune underlines Esther’s favor. Queen Vashti loses her crown by refusing to come before King Ahasuerus (NIV, Xerxes) despite his order (Esther 1:12, 19). Esther comes before the king despite this action being prohibited, and receives royal favor (5:2). Vashti loses her position in the context of the king’s banquet (1:3, 12); Esther is crowned at a banquet (2:17-18) and receives extravagant favor at two more banquets (5:6; 7:2).
The wicked Haman brings about his own destruction (cf. Prov 1:18). Haman seeks the death of Mordecai, who saved the king’s life (2:22; 7:9). Haman plots against the Jews, unaware that the queen is Jewish. Indeed, even as queen of Persia, Esther is still obeying the direction of Mordecai who raised her (Esther 2:20)! What Haman seeks for his own honor instead honors Mordecai (6:6-10); what Haman plots as Mordecai’s public execution becomes his own (7:10; 8:7); what Haman plots against the Jews comes on their enemies (9:1-5). Esther ends up with Haman’s property (8:7); Mordecai ends up with Haman’s position (8:2, 7, 15; 9:4).
It can be no coincidence that the king decides to honor Mordecai just as Haman is coming to request his execution (6:3-6), not long before Esther exposes Haman (6:14). The narrative shows how close the empire’s new Jewish vizier came to dying just before he was appointed; the call was too close for coincidence, implying (for monotheistic listeners) divine favor behind the scenes.
In one of the most striking ironies of all, the narrative invites us to laugh at the expense of the chauvinism of the empire’s ruling male elite. I recognize that not all readers of this blog necessarily share my egalitarian perspectives, but I believe that all of us today would regard the king’s court as excessively androcentric. The king wants to show off his wife’s beauty to his inebriated male guests (1:10-11); she defends her honor. That the king dispatches eunuchs to bring her reminds us that the only men normally trusted near the royal harem were castrated men—ironically highlighting his shocking wish to display her to his guests.
Further, the king’s advisors fear that if the queen’s disobedience is permitted, other wives of nobles will also feel free to disobey their husbands (1:18)—presumably including in such dishonorable circumstances. Afterward, and perhaps most offensive to modern readers, the king’s attendants stock his harem with virgins (who will never be allowed to marry anyone else after the king tries them out) in order to find a replacement for Vashti (2:2-4).
Yet Vashti acts more respectably according to ancient custom than does Ahasuerus. By refusing to come, she followed the respected Persian custom of feminine modesty, a matter of honor that was normally a matter of life-and-death for the queen. King Ahasuerus, who wants to show her off, is drunk (1:10), and when he recovers from his anger he has reason to regret the matter (2:1). (That his advisors have him divorce her and also suggest a method for choosing a new queen further illustrate the extent to which this powerful king is himself limited in this narrative.)
Ahasuerus dethrones Vashti lest her personal disobedience subvert male rule over their wives (1:17-18); her position is given to someone “more deserving” (1:19) to show that men must be rulers (the Hebrew term can mean chief, ruler, prince, and the like) of their homes (1:20, 22). Yet here is the irony: Esther ends up influencing the empire’s public policy, even to the point of her cousin Mordecai becoming second in the kingdom (10:3), like Joseph had been in Egypt.
The many ironies in the book highlight God’s sovereignty. Even when we do not see what God is doing, God is at work to protect his long-range purposes. In the process, he often subverts the intentions of human rulers. God also raises up key individuals in particular roles for the sake of his purposes; as Mordecai warned Esther, God may have raised her to her role to be an agent of his deliverance in this very crisis. Had she refused to cooperate, God would have still found a way to protect his long-range purposes for his people, though she and other Jews in Susa would have died (Esth 4:14).
God’s wise plan is not always evident to us, but when times of choices come, may we, like Queen Esther, choose to embrace his plans.
Job’s faith, his friends’ fear
Has anyone ever hurt you more deeply while claiming to comfort you? For example, someone “comforted” a friend of mine who had lost his daughter by suggesting, “Well, just think how bad it would have been had you lost all your family.”
When Job is suffering, some friends come to comfort him yet end up debating him. They insist that because God is just, Job must be suffering for a good reason. He must have done something wrong, so if he makes it right God will bless him again.
Job’s innocence
In spite of themselves, Job’s friends sometimes speak wisdom, the sort of wisdom found in the Book of Proverbs. Proverbs includes general principles, such as God blessing the righteous and punishing the wicked. But what happens when the righteous suffer? Job’s friends badly misapply their inherited wisdom; they assume that if Job is suffering, God must be punishing him. “Like a thornbush in the hand of someone drunk,” Proverbs warns, “is a wise saying in a fool’s mouth” (Prov 26:9).
Job defends himself insistently, and sometimes Job complains that God has struck him even though he is innocent. He wants to plead his case before God (Job 13:15-23; 23:3-4; 31:35), knowing that God will agree with Job’s innocence (23:5-7). Sometimes Job cannot seem to get God’s attention (23:8), protesting that God has taken away his access to a hearing (19:6; 27:2). Nevertheless, at times he seems to recognize that God will ultimately vindicate him (16:19-21; 23:10).
Job is sure that he has not done anything wrong to cause this suffering, and he is right. Nevertheless, some of Job’s protests could be understood as reflecting the same misconception held by his friends: the righteous should not suffer. God must be just, yet Job is righteous, and this poses something of a conundrum to everyone.
Mysteries of suffering
Job does not know what the book’s audience knows: God himself had praised Job’s righteousness, and Satan had been the one who wanted to strike him (Job 1:8-12). Although Job is right in a sense that God has done it (12:9; 17:6; 23:16), he does not know the entire story. Yet at the end of the book, when God challenges humans’ questions, he does not bother to inform Job or his friends about Satan’s role in accusing Job in the heavenly court.
This observation suggests at least two principles. First, Satan cannot touch God’s servant without God’s permission. In fact, God earlier protected Job’s health (1:12), and afterward his life (2:6), from Satan. If we are God’s servants, we can trust that God knows every hair on our heads; he may not directly initiate our suffering, but he still cares and has a purpose even when we suffer. Suffering may test us (cf. 23:10); it is not always a punishment.
Second, Job did not really need to know what went on in heaven. We do not need to understand the cosmic mechanics behind suffering; we just need to know that God is trustworthy. It is God and not Satan with whom we ultimately must deal in times of trouble, and Job was right to appeal to God.
In the book’s closing chapters, God asks Job whether he understands the mysteries of nature or has wisdom to rule the world (Job 38—41). “Were you around when I founded the earth? Tell me who arranged its boundaries?” (cf. 38:4-6). “Are you the one who watches over animals until they bear?” (cf. 39:1-4). “Is it by your wisdom that hawks fly and eagles build their nests?” (cf. 39:26-30). In God’s presence, Job recognizes that the larger scheme into which he fits is beyond his ability to understand (40:3-5). God asks Job if he must make God seem unjust to protest his own innocence (40:8). Job confesses that God’s wisdom is right though beyond Job’s understanding (42:2-6).
We don’t have all the answers; neither can we, but neither do we have to. We just need to remember that the one who watches over us does have the answers. Job was afterward vindicated in this life; that often happens after our testing, too, although our mortality means that we do not always live to see vindication. Although Job’s faith may have glimpsed the possibility of life beyond his death (cf. 13:15; 19:25-27), today we have a fuller and clearer hope than he because of what Jesus has done for us. In the cross we understand that God embraced our deepest suffering, and by Jesus’s resurrection we learn of certain hope beyond that suffering.
Wrong answers
At the end of the book, God reproves Job’s friends. “You have not been speaking what is true about me, as Job my servant has” (42:7). Job’s understanding of God, like that of any of us, was imperfect. Nevertheless, he rightly understood that God has the right and wisdom to do as he recognizes best—he is not obligated to always honor the righteous by others’ standards. Thus Job, in contrast to his friends, was also right that his suffering was not because of his sin. (Against some who suggest that Job invited judgments by fearing them, 3:25, which they cite, might refer to his fear after suffering; more clearly, Job elsewhere [30:26] says that he expected good things. The right object of faith is God, not speculations about the future, good or bad.)
Further, laments are ways to express pain; they are not always intended literally. Job’s friends pick apart his words for theological accuracy, but his are words of pain. (This might be the point of 6:26, although that is debatable.) Remember that Job has not simply had a bad day. He has lost all his wealth, all his honor, and worst of all, all his children; his friends have become his accusers. Yet God says that Job spoke rightly. Here God accepts the bitter (though not cursing) words of a man in pain rather than the theological arguments of those who think they are defending God’s honor. Job’s friends should have come to listen to his lament rather than to critique his speech.
Then again, Job’s friends may have been defending something besides God’s honor. Their theological system was at stake. “You see me and are afraid,” Job accused (6:21). If the righteous can suffer, then the sort of disaster that struck Job can also strike them. Their theology protects them against that dreadful thought.
My wife’s country was fairly stable when she was growing up, and she did not know what to think of Ethiopian refugees when she saw them there. She never imagined that, years later, she herself would become displaced in a war in her own country. When we learn of heartbreaking news around the world, do we have ways to explain why such sufferings could never happen to us? Perhaps, like Job’s friends, we need to rethink our theology at that deep level. Those who feel secure can despise others’ suffering (12:5), but the roles could have been reversed (16:4).
Job’s example
During the exile Israel remembered Job’s righteousness (Ezek 14:14, 20). This book was undoubtedly also a comfort to Israel returning from exile. Israel had faced the ridicule of Edomites (Ps 137:7; Obad 10-11), just as Eliphaz the Temanite (Teman was Edom’s capital) ridiculed Job. (For wise sages of Edom, cf. Jer 49:7; Obad 8.) Israel faced grave shame during their exile, yet God restored them from captivity—wording used for God restoring Job’s fortunes at the end (42:10, Hebrew). Later, James uses Job as an example of endurance (James 5:11).
Job undoubtedly did not feel like an example as he expressed his anguish. In our deepest darkness, however, when all we can do is cling to God for dear life, sometimes God counts that enough. He knows the depth of the suffering. He has not forgotten. In the end, he will vindicate those who look to him.
Blessing Pharaoh—Genesis 47
Although we often retell the stories in Genesis, sometimes we neglect an important detail. When the aged shepherd Jacob came into Pharaoh’s presence, he blessed him (Gen 47:7). Of course, hailing rulers with blessings was not unusual, but Genesis is emphatic. Jacob blesses Pharaoh again at the end of his visit (47:10), framing this interview with Pharaoh. Genesis expends six verses on this short interview, far more than it offers, for example describing Abraham’s death, so the interview and blessings are important. The sort of blessing (cf. 14:19; 27:23; 28:6; 32:29; 48:15) or prayer (20:7, 17; cf. 25:21; Exod 8:28) that appears here is the sort offered by one with special divine favor.
Pharaoh’s respect for the patriarch
We might expect one with special favor before the gods to offer such a blessing, but pharaohs themselves were considered divine. Would not Jacob’s emphatic act thus seem presumptuous to both of them (cf. Heb 7:7)? I do not think so. Pharaoh was in awe of the special wisdom that Joseph had from God (Gen 41:38), and might well wonder about the kind of family in which he grew up. Age was respected in antiquity and longevity was seen as a divine blessing; Pharaoh thus asks the age of Joseph’s obviously aged father (47:8).
Jacob reinforces Pharaoh’s awe by mentioning (indeed, complaining) that his old age of 130 years so far was small compared with the longevity of his ancestors (47:9). Truly this family was divinely blessed! After all, 110 was considered an extremely blessed old age for Egyptians (and this is the longevity later ascribed to Joseph, 50:26). By pointing to the greater longevity of his ancestors, therefore, Jacob merely increases for Pharaoh the mystique of this holy family of Joseph that has great power with the living God.
That Pharaoh would be awed by someone less renowned than himself is not surprising. In my own life I think of some people, often obscure in the eyes of the world, whose divine insights for me have proved accurate, or who seem gifted and eager to pray for me. Grateful and impressed with their walk with God, I count it a blessing to learn from what they have learned from God himself, and to receive their prayer support. This pharaoh (in utter contrast to the later pharaoh who tries to prevent Israel’s exodus from Egypt) recognizes a divine blessing on Joseph’s household and is pleased to honor it. Yet even the later Pharaoh, when God humbles him, will ask for Israel’s leaders Moses and Aaron to bless him (Exod 12:32).
Perhaps it is especially important for us to recognize that blessing Pharaoh is something God wanted Jacob to do. Jacob is now fulfilling his divinely appointed role: the nations are blessed in Abraham and his seed (Gen 18:18; 22:18; 26:4; 27:29), and Jacob, like his son Joseph, becomes a conduit of God’s blessing to Egypt. Sometimes Christians see our role in the larger culture as adversarial, sometimes because of conflicts forced upon us; but ultimately we must seek to be a blessing to the cultures where God has placed us.
Jacob’s restored confidence
We can also learn from how Jacob’s behavior here contrasts with some of his behavior earlier. (Against what some scholars have argued, it is valuable to learn from biblical characters’ behavior; Paul felt that how God worked among people, and how they responded, offers examples for believers of subsequent eras; 1 Cor 10:11.)
After Joseph’s disappearance, Jacob grew anxious about risking his remaining son of his favorite wife. He had lost Rachel and Joseph, so he was terrified about losing Joseph’s full brother Benjamin (Gen 42:36, 38; 43:14; 44:20)—a fear that nearly kept him from getting Joseph back. Despite the passage of years, Jacob’s determination to keep mourning for Joseph (37:35) continued to shape his behavior. The one whom he would have most hoped to bless (48:15-22; 49:22-26) is now gone, and those who knew him best felt that the loss of Benjamin would kill him (44:22, 30-31, 34).
Today we might speak of Jacob having posttraumatic stress syndrome or something similar. We should sympathize with Jacob’s broken heart, not condemn him for his lack of omniscience. But whereas Abraham had been willing to relinquish his beloved son at God’s command yet received him back (22:2-3, 10-12), Jacob cannot let go of the son whom he lost—whom, by God’s grace, he will nevertheless get back.
But now that Jacob has learned of Joseph’s survival and even flourishing, he regains the hope that God’s past promises had always offered him. God speaks to him, assuring him that it is all right to go down to Egypt for now (46:2-4). This assurance was important. Jacob would have passed on to his children God’s affirmations to the patriarchs that God had called them to the promised land. He would have also communicated the warning that Abraham received that his descendants would be abused in a foreign land (15:13-14). Jacob will soon bless and prophesy some of the future for each of his children (48:19; 49:1-32). Now that he recognizes how much God is with him, Jacob acts in his true identity as an intermediary of God’s blessing.
Are we like Jacob?
Many of us are like Jacob. Too often we put more faith in our past experiences of suffering or in others’ opinions than we do in our identity shaped by God’s promise of our destiny. God has called us to be his children, in whom he will delight forever. He has promised us an inheritance in his kingdom forever. He has made us new in Christ, if we depend on Christ as our savior and lord. Like Jacob, I sometimes let past sufferings shape my fears. Yet I do often find it easier to remember my identity when I am encouraged.
The truth was the truth all along, however; all the time that Jacob was mourning for Joseph, God was preparing to fulfill his promise for Jacob’s line precisely through Joseph. This observation is not meant to condemn Jacob or ourselves; Jacob had every reason to grieve, given his limited knowledge of the situation. People in the Bible died just as people die today, and God fulfills his promises in a wide variety of ways. As Paul says, “we know in part” (1 Cor 13:9); our perspectives, like Jacob’s, are incomplete. The observation is simply meant to remind us that God’s perspective, unlike ours, is perfect. God’s perspective toward us is based on our identity in Christ and destiny with him, and God invites us to share his perspective toward us (Rom 6:11; Col 3:1-3).
Jacob’s blessing
At one time, Jacob had lost much of his hope. He had loved Joseph for seventeen years (Gen 37:2), and then lost him (37:32-35). But not only does God provide sustenance for Jacob and his entire household through this temporary loss (47:7-8), but God graciously grants Jacob seventeen more years with Joseph at the end of Jacob’s life (47:28). In the end, Jacob experiences God’s faithfulness. If we serve God truly, we will also experience his faithfulness, some in this life, and certainly fully in the world to come.
Those nations who blessed God’s servants would be blessed; but those who cursed God’s servants, such as the Pharaoh whom Moses later confronted, would be cursed. God freely offers blessings to peoples, but many choose curses instead. Because we are spiritual children of Abraham, we too should be conduits of his blessing to the peoples among whom we live in this age.
Craig Keener, Professor, Asbury Seminary
The unexpected deliverer—Exodus 2
Often we wonder why God does not seem to be answering our prayers. But I learned an important insight from some older members in African-American churches that I was a part of: “God may not come when you want him to, but he’s always right on time.”
As Israel cried out for deliverance in Exodus 2:23, they may have wondered why deliverance took so long. They could not know the irony that God had already been preparing a deliverer even when Pharaoh was killing their children. Moses’s future role as deliverer is already foreshadowed in Moses’s survival in Exodus 2:3. Moses’s mother rescued him from Pharaoh by putting him in something like a basket—the Hebrew term is used elsewhere in the Bible only for Noah’s ark. Then she placed it among the reeds—a Hebrew term that is later used in connection with the place where God brought his people through the sea. The narrative looks back to Noah and God’s rescue of a remnant to perpetuate all humanity; it looks forward to Israel’s deliverance at the sea.
Surprisingly, God chooses to use Moses as an outsider rather than when he was a prince of Egypt. The narrative prepares us for that outsider role not least by leaving the Pharaoh unnamed, yet subverting his evil purposes by comparatively less powerful women. These women include the named Hebrew midwives who protected children (1:15-21), Moses’s mother and sister who rescued him (2:2-4), one of Pharaoh’s own daughters (2:5-10), and in a sense even Zipporah and the other female Midianites who were Moses’s first contacts in Midian.
Israel’s expectations of a deliverer may be shaped by how God raised up Joseph generations before. But God does not always do things the same way, and we see some contrasts between Joseph and Moses:
• Whereas Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery, Moses’s sister helped him escape slavery
• Whereas Midianites sold Joseph into Egypt, Midianites welcomed Moses when he fled Egypt
• Whereas Joseph became like a “father” to Pharaoh (Gen 45:8), Moses became a son of one of Pharaoh’s daughters
• Whereas God exalted Joseph from slavery to rule Egypt, Moses abandoned his royal position on behalf of slaves
• Whereas Joseph made Egypt Pharaoh’s servants (Gen 47:19), God uses Moses to free Pharaoh’s slaves
• Whereas God used Joseph to deliver Egypt economically, God used plagues through Moses to devastate Egypt economically
• Whereas God used Joseph to bring Israel to Egypt, God used Moses to return them to Canaan
Nevertheless, there are important parallels between these figures, for example:
• Joseph married the daughter of an Egyptian priest; Moses, fleeing Egypt, married the daughter of a Midianite priest
• Both Joseph and Moses gave their first son names recalling that they were staying in a foreign land
Both these factors underline a deeper parallel: both deliverers were initially rejected by their own people. Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery; one of Moses’s fellow Israelites complained, “Who made you ruler and judge over us?” (Exod 2:14). Many prophets and deliverers, and ultimately the Lord himself, faced the same resistance.
God did not act in the way his people would have expected, and they did not initially recognize the one who would be their deliverer. In fact, many complained about his leadership even during their forty years in the wilderness. Sometimes we don’t recognize that God is at work even when it is right in front of our eyes, because he is not working the way that we expected.
Nevertheless, God’s deliverance did come, and it sent a clear message when it did. Israel had suffered for a generation in bondage, but God’s purposes are often worked out over the long run. Too close to our sufferings and our daily life in the present to see beyond, we often miss the larger picture of God’s faithful work over time.
Yet how much clearer could the message finally be? Pharaoh drowned Israel’s babies in the Nile; the first plague later turned the Nile to blood. Pharaoh drowned Israel’s babies in the Nile; the last plague struck Egypt’s firstborn. Pharaoh drowned Israel’s babies in the Nile; God drowned Pharaoh’s army in the sea.
Those wise older believers who had been through much yet had seen God’s faithfulness were right about how God works in the long run. “God may not come when you want him to, but he’s always right on time.”
The Bible and rape
Steve and Celestia Tracy travel from the U.S. each year to provide ministry to women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo who have endured rape and sometimes sexual mutilation at the hands of militias there. Some of these women were young girls; some were mothers violated in front of their own children. The heartbreak that Steve and Celestia report is overwhelming, but they endure malaria and other hardships because the need for counseling and healing is so great.
Democratic Republic of Congo has one of the world’s highest reported rates of rape; one study in 2011 even suggests 400,000 rapes occurring there per year, or more than 45 per hour. According to this study, about 12 percent of the women in Congo have been raped by outsiders; 22.5 percent suffered sexual violence from partners. Although rape is more common in the war-torn east, it is reportedly common throughout the country; although the majority of victims are female, males are also sexually assaulted. Fearing HIV, a number of husbands have abandoned their wives when the wives were violated by soldiers.
Not only in Congo, but elsewhere in the world many, especially women and children, suffer traumatic sexual abuse, sometimes at the hands of those closest to them (for example, in the case of children suffering incest). Although the proportion is lower than in Congo, rape happens often in the United States as well.
It is important for victims of these crimes not to be left to feel alone; most of all they need to be reminded that God is on their side. What they have suffered is not their fault. God is near the broken but far from the proud.
Although God is on the side of the rape victim, some rape victims have been made to feel the opposite. Nearly two decades ago, when I was a fairly new seminary teacher, a student told me about a teenager in her congregation who had been gang-raped. Aside from the trauma of physical and psychological violation, this young woman had been saving herself for marriage and felt devastated morally. At the time, we were studying in class the story of Amnon’s rape of Tamar, and my student went back to assure the young woman that she remained a moral virgin in God’s sight.
That the Bible sets a high standard for sexual purity should motivate the Bible’s readers to take sexual violence all the more seriously—and to leave the blame only with the responsble party.
The Bible offers a few examples of rape, always portraying it as a horrendous crime. In 2 Samuel, David’s sin unleashed suffering on his household, beginning with Amnon’s rape of his half-sister, after which he despised her (2 Sam 13:1-17). Tamar so lamented her virginity that she never married (13:18-19), though as a king’s daughter she would have retained many suitors. Tamar’s brother Absalom avenged her by killing Amnon; while Absalom went too far (and may have had additional motives: his older brother Amnon stood one step closer to the throne than Absalom was), the narrative portrays graphically the devastation of rape.
Earlier, Dinah’s brothers had avenged her rape by killing the rapist and (to avoid retaliation) all the men in his community (Gen 34:1-31). Again, this went too far (see Gen 49:5-7), but it illustrates how seriously siblings took the responsibility to provide their sisters protection from sexual predators.
Jesus tells us that Israelite law fell short of God’s eternal ideals (Mark 10:5); those laws nevertheless at least limited some abuses for ancient Israelite society. In Israel, if a man violated a virgin, and her family refused marriage, the man had to pay a dowry equal to that of virgins (Exod 22:17). This helped to provide for her future marriage to someone else (in a society where most men preferred to marry virgins) and helped to restore some of her honor. Because she had not invited what happened to her, she remained a moral virgin. Likewise, if one could not know either way whether the woman was forced or not, she was to be given the benefit of the doubt and the case treated as rape (Deut 22:25-27). There are many elements of Israelite law that we would view as inadequate for us today, but at the least this principle may be safely inferred from it: a person who is raped is recognized as a terribly violated, innocent victim who deserves protection and support.
The good news of Christ liberates from sin. But Christ is also good news to those who have been sinned against, because Jesus suffered not only for us but with us. When he was unjustly executed, his death pronounced judgment on the miscarriages of justice and the oppression of the innocent in this world. To those who have been wounded against their will, he reminds you: It was not your fault. His own nail-pierced hands offer healing and new life.
Craig Keener is author of Paul, Women & Wives: Marriage and Women’s Ministry in the Letters of Paul, and an article, from which this post is adapted, in the Missionary Seer. With his wife Médine, who is from the smaller Congo, he coauthored a pamphlet on this subject used among rape victims in Francophone Africa.
A big fish story—Jonah 4:1-11
It has been said that God is not responsible for billions of people not knowing about his wonderful love for them; we are. He gave us the Great Commission, yet many of us are more consumed by other passions than by passion to live for Christ and his commands.
The Bible tells us about someone who ran from God’s call. When we think of Jonah, we usually think of him being swallowed by a large marine creature, but sometimes miss the fuller message of the book’s 48 verses (such as God’s concern for all people). We also often focus more on Jonah than on another major character: God.
Sometimes we get proud of our gifts or God working through us, but forget that gifts are given, not merited. God worked through Jonah in spite of himself. Jonah was not trying to evangelize the sailors carrying him to Tarshish, yet they repented (despite his example of disobedience, Jonah 1:10-16). Jonah certainly was not hoping for Nineveh’s repentance, yet they repented. God did not use Jonah because he was godly. The sailors in the ship, who worshiped other gods, showed more compassion on Jonah (1:13-14) than Jonah showed toward Nineveh. Jonah, who earlier praises God for saving his life (2:2, 6), decides that he would rather die than see Nineveh spared (1:12; 4:3) or, for that matter, than suffer heat (4:8). Jonah is not the story’s hero; God is.
God fulfills his purpose, despite Jonah. He sends the storm that ultimately converts the sailors and (in a different way) Jonah. More significantly, the narrative four times uses the verb “appoints,” or “prepares,” with regard to God (8 percent of the Hebrew verb’s uses appear just in this little book). God “appointed” a large sea creature to swallow Jonah (1:17), both to persuade him and to get him back to land, so he could go to Nineveh. Once Nineveh was converted, God set to work converting Jonah more fully. God “appointed” a plant for his shade (4:6); then “appointed” a worm to kill the plant (4:7); and finally “appointed” a hot east wind to make Jonah value his previous shade (4:8).
God’s compassion includes not only warnings of impending judgment (such as Nineveh received) but actual discipline (such as Jonah received) to correct our attitudes and turn us to the right way. If it seems that Nineveh got off lighter than Jonah, we should remember (as the Veggie Tales version also reminds us) that Jonah was a prophet: God’s standards are higher for those who ought to know better.
The book especially teaches us about God’s character. When God spares Nineveh, Jonah complains that he expected as much, because he knew that God was “gracious and merciful” and “slow to anger” (4:2). Jonah knew that this was a description that God offered about himself in his covenant relationship with Israel (Exodus 34:6). Jonah did not feel that God should squander his grace on pagans, indeed, the enemies of Jonah’s people. Jonah was happy for mercy when he received it himself (Jonah 2:1-9), but unhappy to see it applied to others. God reminds Jonah that there were in Nineveh many people (and animals) innocent of the city’s crimes (4:11). The reason God acts the way he does in the Book of Jonah is his unchanging character of compassion.
When we think there are groups of people undeserving of God’s mercy, we act like Jonah. When we find ourselves frustrated by God’s ways, as if they are unfair, we act like Jonah. When we are reluctant to obey God, we act like Jonah. When we hesitate to commit ourselves to God’s calling—which at the least for all Christians includes the Great Commission—we act like Jonah. God will probably not send a large sea creature to swallow us, and may not even destroy our shade; yet in his care for us and those to whom he has called us, maybe he will do something else. How much better, though, to obey without needing extra persuasion.
This is adapted from an article Craig wrote for the Missionary Seer in 2006.
Near the broken, far from the proud—1 Samuel 1:1-2, 6-20
Often in history, revival flourishes among the lowly and the broken and spreads from there. Sometimes we get comfortable or even proud, but a pervasive biblical principle is that God is nearest the humble. One could provide many examples, but one illustration is the story of Hannah and Eli.
Hannah was unable to have children in a culture where many viewed inability to have children as God’s curse. Moreover, her husband had another wife, who was jealous and mocked her. My wife, whose parents each grew up in polygamous households, recounted the different kinds of relationships the wives could have with each other. Often in her culture, and always in biblical narratives about ancient Israel’s culture, they proved difficult. In 1 Samuel, the “other woman” helped make Hannah’s life miserable.
In a culture in which many evaluated a woman’s worth by her childbearing, a matter that Hannah could not control, she was powerless and marginalized. She had nowhere else to turn except God. Sometimes we need to recognize that our chief battle is a spiritual one. Jacob recognized that when he struggled with the angel the night before he faced Esau; Elisha helped his assistant recognize that when only Elisha could see the armies of heaven around them. In a different way, Abraham had to realize this when he sent away Ishmael; only God could protect his son. Prayer as a regular discipline is valuable, but Hannah couldn’t afford to simply go through the motions of prayer. She poured out her heart to God, the only one who could help her.
Hannah was desperate. She was so passionate, in fact, that Eli the high priest, seeing her emotional state, accused her of being drunk (1:13). Sometimes, when directed toward God, our desperation counts as faith: putting our trust nowhere else, we throw ourselves completely on God. God has the right to say, “No,” and sometimes does so. (This is true even in the matter of childbearing; we know this firsthand, having been through a number of miscarriages.) But sometimes in Scripture obstacles are there for us to surmount, not to invite us to give up.
This pattern appears often in Scripture, in a variety of cases. One thinks of the woman with the flow of blood; she was so desperate to touch Jesus that she violated cultural protocol to do so. One thinks of the paralytic’s friends willing to damage a neighbor’s roof to get their friend to Jesus for healing. One thinks of the Shunnamite woman whose son died, who would not let anything deter her from getting Elisha’s help in restoring him. One also thinks of the woman whose daughter was demonized, willing to humble herself before Jesus despite his initial refusal of her plea. I think of my own wife, Médine, who, when told by a doctor in Africa that she must abort the child or it would die anyway, refused. The doctor ridiculed her and promised that her child would die. Normally one should trust a doctor’s medical wisdom, but Médine refused to give up on the child. At the time of my writing, he is fourteen.
In contrast to powerless Hannah, Eli was the respected high priest. When he blessed Hannah, she expected that God heard her prayer, and went away happy (1 Sam 1:17-18). She respected his office, and God did answer her faith. But Eli, though a follower of God, was not as pure-hearted for God as Hannah was. Friends have told me of people they knew who were miraculously healed when ministers prayed for them, ministers who were soon discredited for moral failings. But it is God who does the miracles, and he can answer the faith of the recipient as well as that of the minister, or just act directly for his name’s sake.
The contrast between Hannah and Eli fits the contrast between her son Samuel and Eli’s sons Hophni and Phinehas. It also fits the book’s later contrast between David and Saul. Hannah dedicated her son to the Lord; Eli, by contrast, put his sons before God (1 Sam 2:29). They dishonored the Lord and the priestly office by their greed and sexual immorality (not unlike a few ministers today), yet Eli refused to remove them from office. He valued the personal tie of fatherhood more than his responsibility to keep the priestly office pure.
Hannah was not praying for revival. She was praying only for a son, but she prayed from a pure heart. Yet God used her prayer from a sincere heart to bring change to all of Israel. People were not hearing from God much in those days (1 Sam 3:1), but by the time her son was himself an elder, the land was full of prophets who listened to God (10:5, 10; 19:20). Eli’s sons were not leading Israel in a true relationship with God that brought God’s blessing; Hannah’s son Samuel led his generation in a different way.
We often respect the public leaders of religion; they are the ones we all know about. Yet when God judges hearts, it is often the people that barely anyone knows about, who simply have humble and sincere hearts before God, who make the greatest difference behind the scenes. Those are the people whose prayers have an impact for all of us. May we respect the humble and learn from them, for God is with them in a special way. As Hannah recognized, God brings down the exalted, but raises up the lowly (1 Sam 2:3-8).
God owns the cattle on a thousand hills
Some people insist that God can supply all our needs because, after all, He “owns the cattle on a thousand hills” (Ps. 50:10); some go beyond God supplying all our needs to suggest that He will supply anything we want. It is in fact true that God can supply all our needs, but there are other texts that explicitly make that point. Psalm 50:10, by contrast, does not address the issue of God supplying our needs (and certainly not all our wants); rather, it declares that God does not need our sacrifices.
The figurative setting of Psalm 50 is a courtroom, where God has summoned His people to respond to His charges. He summons heaven and earth as His witnesses (50:1-6)–as witnesses of the covenant (see Deut. 32:1; cf. Ps. 50:5), they would be witnesses concerning Israel’s violation of that covenant. Israel has some reason to be nervous; God is not only the offended party in the case, but the Judge (Ps. 50:4, 6), not to mention the accusing witness! Testifying against them, God declares, “I am your God” (50:7)–reminding them of the covenant He had made with them. They had not broken faith against Him by failing to offer sacrifices (50:8)—in fact, God has little concern about these sacrifices. “I don’t need your animal sacrifices,” he declares, “for all the animals belong to Me, including the cattle on a thousand hills. I don’t eat animal flesh, but if I did, would I tell you if I were hungry? Since I own these creatures, wouldn’t I just take them if I wanted them?” (50:9-13). The sacrifice which He really requires is thanksgiving and obedience (50:14-15; cf. 50:23). But He would prosecute (50:21) the wicked who broke His covenant (50:16-20).
Most ancient near Eastern peoples believed that their gods depended on them for sacrifices, and if their gods were overpowered, their nation would be overpowered as well. The God of Israel reminds them that He is not like the pagan gods around them. Unlike Baal of the Canaanites (whose temples included a bed), Zeus of the Greeks (whom Hera put to sleep so her Greeks could win a battle), and other deities, the God of Israel neither slumbered nor slept (Ps. 121:3-4). God does not mention the cattle on a thousand hills to promise us anything we want (as a song pointed out some years ago, many of us don’t need any cows at the moment anyway); He mentions the cattle to remind us that He is not dependent on us, and we are not doing Him a favor by serving Him.