Category Archives: Old Testament

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Civil discourse on the internet?–Proverbs 18:2

Sometimes the comments people append to articles tell us more about the commenters than about anything else. Trolling betrays the antinomian spirit of the trolls.

Proverbs 18:2, NRSV:

“A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing personal opinion.”

NIV:

“Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions.”

NASB:
“A fool does not delight in understanding, But only in revealing his own mind.”

Comments on Comments

Comments sections are good for free speech and good to invite readers to engage ideas. Unfortunately, sometimes the engagement is at a level of intellectual discourse that requires very little cerebral capacity.

For laughs, on the few occasions when I used to have some spare time, I sometimes would read comments sections. Such sections often reveal more about the commenters than the articles on which they comment, since the articles may be labeled either too conservative or too liberal depending on the commentator.

Some have been surprisingly well-reasoned (including some with whom I disagreed), and in these cases I often learned to consider angles I had not thought about. Those who offer thoughtful comments should by no means be discouraged from doing so. Some comments, however, reflect astonishing immaturity. I would complain how many appear to be written by adolescents, but I don’t want to offend my daughter or other positive representatives of that age group.

On one YouTube video, where a young woman was simply trying to share a song, a comment below said something like, “You’re ugly. You should kill yourself.” If an adolescent mind gets away with such a comment because it is anonymous, one still is left to wonder what kind of person thinks and speaks this way. For those of us with kids in high school, it is scary to think that some such people may lurk their halls.

Civil Discourse

Candy Gunther Brown, a leading expert on prayer studies, wrote a balanced, concise article for a major outlet. Some suggested that she was ignorant because such-and-such a study had demonstrated the opposite of her conclusion. In a book published by Harvard University Press, she had shown the error of the study that this person cited, but apparently it was the only study with which her critic was familiar, so he assumed that he knew more than she did. Meanwhile, she was concisely synthesizing material from hundreds or thousands of sources, as I also often do.

Academic discourse at its best allows a range of interpretations on the table and then uses evidence to seek to find the interpretation(s) that best fit the data. At least in its ideal form (often observed in the breach), academic discourse refuses dismiss others’ positions without consideration; it also refuses to denounce its interlocutors with ad hominem labeling or with guilt by association. It explores evidence, weighs various options, and (again, ideally) respectfully engages those with whom the author disagrees.

Partisan political discourse, however, has seeped into everything else. Even in academia, discourse is often coarsened today, and every discipline has its share of rude and arrogant voices. But the ideal gives us something to strive for, even if some circles (say, British academia, minus, say, Richard Dawkins) tend to do it better than some others.

Free speech provides the right to say (almost) anything (explicit exceptions include yelling, “Fire!” in a crowded theater). But one can exercise rights responsibly and intelligently, or not. Just because one is allowed to say (almost) anything does not mean that it reflects well on one’s intellectual character. (I do not have in mind here comments that are simply playful or humorous, but those that are dismissive.) Just because one can speak anonymously, without fear of personal consequences, does not mean that one is making a helpful contribution. We live in a society, and if we contribute to the coarsening of public discourse, we ultimately share in the larger consequences.

Proverbs 18:2 remains all too relevant today.

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The Sin of Achan (2 minutes)

Achan’s sin risked destroying what God was doing in Israel. It brought judgment against his people, and others died because of his sin. He contrasts starkly with the figure of the Canaanite Rahab. See the brief discussion in:

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Believe whatever you want, but—what if it’s wrong?

I might sound like a grumpy sourpuss in this post, but please feel free to balance it with my more upbeat ones.

Too often we believe things because they are things we simply want to believe. That does not make them wrong, but it does mean that we don’t know whether they’re right. Most people know better than to drink something labeled poison just because they want it to believe that it might be Diet Sprite. Here are some doctrines some people like to believe that merit further investigation. I note just a couple verses for consideration after each, though these could be multiplied.

  • Sufficient faith can keep us from experiencing persecution (contrast 2 Tim 3:12, though of course God does deliver)
  • Everyone will always get healed if we have enough faith (contrast 2 Kgs 13:14; 2 Tim 4:20; though of course God does heal)
  • Everyone will always become materially prosperous if we have enough faith (contrast Luke 6:20; James 2:5; though of course God does provide)
  • God sends only pleasant prophecies about society, never judgment (contrast Jer 6:14; 8:11; James 5:1-6; Rev 17—18; though of course prophecies can also comfort)
  • God sends only pleasant prophecies to the church, never reproofs (contrast Rev 2:4-5, 14-16, 20-23; 3:1-3, 15-19; though of course prophecies can also comfort, including in Rev 2—3; plus a culture of honor, gentleness and sensitivity should be privileged, especially by those just starting in prophecy and correction; even for severe circumstances, cf. 2 Tim 2:23-26)
  • God would never reprove our behavior through teaching in the church (contrast 2 Tim 3:16; 4:3; though his reproof, when needed, is gentle for the humble)
  • A person who has professed Christ can never turn away from the faith and be lost (contrast Gal 5:4; Heb 6:4-8; though of course God helps believers persevere)
  • Everything in the Bible about grace is for the church, whereas everything about obedience or judgment is only for Israel (contrast 1 Cor 10:1-11; Gal 5:13—6:10; though of course grace preempts judgment and also enables obedience through faith)
  • Christians will be raptured before suffering great tribulation (contrast 2 Thess 1:5—2:4; 2 Pet 3:9-13; though of course God often protects his children, as in Goshen)
  • The world will get nicer and nicer until Jesus comes back (contrast 2 Thess 2:8-12; Rev 16:12-16; 20:4; though of course God can use us to make many things better)
  • God expects us to write our own destinies (contrast Prov 16:1, 9; 19:21; though of course we should embrace God’s vision for us in faith)
  • Everybody will be saved (contrast Matt 25:46; Jude 10-13; Rev 3:5; 14:9-11; 20:15; though the gospel saves hundreds of millions of people—may we make it available to everyone, no matter what it costs us)

That’s probably enough for now—I don’t want to get anyone in a bad mood. And I confess that some of the above, such as everyone getting healed in this life and everyone getting saved, I wish with all my heart to be true. But it’s better to know what’s really true so we can make some things better than to go into trouble blindly (Prov 22:3; 27:12). If a tornado’s coming, I’d rather believe it and take shelter than simply confess, “That tornado is not coming.” The odds usually favor it missing you, but the stakes are quite high if you’re wrong.

Of course, there are some things that seem too good to believe and yet are true—especially the good news that our creator died for us and guarantees us eternal life with him if we trust him. Before I met God, when I was an atheist but starting to question my certainty about that, I thought that the most wonderful thing in the world would be if there was an infinite being who was not only infinite but even cared about us (and especially me, messed up as I was). That seemed too much to hope for … until I met him and discovered that he does care about us. (Otherwise he wouldn’t have bothered to make us.) How true is the phrase, “amazing grace”!

We need to search Scripture with an open mind and heart. We need to read with the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom, so that we find the message that God really has to communicate to us. That means hearing the message that God inspired, rather than just what we want to find.

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Why Does God Take So Long?—Exodus 6:9

In Exodus 6:6-8, God not only promised liberation from slavery, but also a land of their own in which they could be free. From the start, then, God’s promise had envisioned the completion of their deliverance. What he began in their deliverance, he would complete. (The New Testament later depicts our present experience along the lines of a new exodus: God has redeemed us through Jesus’s death at his first coming, and now we await our promised full inheritance at his return.)

But in 6:9, the Israelites didn’t believe these promises. This was because they had suffered so long, and they hadn’t yet seen the deliverance that Moses had already promised. So why should they trust the promise now? The answer is that God is trustworthy; but their hardships were so severe, and their most influential experiences with God so distant in the past, that they could not see past what they were experiencing.

Sometimes we don’t know why some promises take so long to fulfill; why did Israel suffer so long in slavery? Sometimes reasons for delay, including perhaps in our future inheritance, might lie with us (cf. Matt 24:14; Rom 11:25-26; 2 Pet 3:9, 12). Sometimes, however, they lie also in the fact that God is orchestrating matters on a wider scale. In the case of the exodus generation, the land that was going to be theirs belonged to somebody else; only after generations of mercy was God terminating the other peoples’ right to it (Gen 15:16). (See http://www.craigkeener.org/slaughtering-the-canaanites-part-i-limiting-factors/; http://www.craigkeener.org/slaughtering-the-canaanites-part-ii-switching-sides/; http://www.craigkeener.org/slaughtering-the-canaanites-part-iii-gods-ideal/.) Some complain that God is slow concerning his promises (2 Pet 3:4), when sometimes he is patient for the sake of delaying judgment (3:9).

Moses conveyed God’s promise to his people, but because of their suffering they did not listen (Exod 6:9). In today’s language, their hardship seemed to them more real than his promise. God does understand that hardships can break our spirits (cf. Prov 18:14; Mark 14:38; Luke 22:45), and he is near the brokenhearted (e.g., Ps 51:17; Matt 5:4). But Israel was starting on a path of unbelief and ingratitude in which they kept persisting even after seeing his signs that would deliver them. Eventually this would lead to discipline and would nearly lead to God abandoning them (e.g., Exod 32:10). At this point, however, he remains patient.

Often it’s hard for us to see far beyond our pain. God is faithful, however. As we often say in the Black Church, “God may not come when you want him to, but he’s always right on time.” God’s promises don’t always happen when we want them to. God’s blessings often don’t come the way we want them to. But God is worthy of our trust, and we can be sure that, in the end, he always has his people’s best interests at heart.

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The Reason for the Promised Land—Exodus 6:8

Without the promised land, deliverance from slavery would have been incomplete. Former slaves could not maintain their freedom in Egypt, and apart from direct divine sustenance could not survive in the wilderness. They needed a land of their own.

Thus, after announcing his people’s deliverance from slavery in Exodus 6:6-7, God announces a way for them to live independently, promising their own land (6:8). In contrast to their seminomadic, patriarchal ancestors, the Israelites were now too many to subsist on their own only as pastoralists grazing their flocks on the countryside. But whether pastoralists or farmers, they needed land; and for their agrarian society, land would be capital.

In my country, we saw the limitations of officially ending slavery without providing former slaves a means to work. Originally they were promised “forty acres and a mule,” but that promise was not kept. After the official end of U.S. slavery, many former slaves were kept in perpetual bondage as sharecroppers because ultimately they did not own their own land. In an agrarian economy, one must own land or depend on others for work. God was not just ending the Israelites’ official enslavement and then leaving them impoverished and subject to oppression, what many former slaves “freed” in the United States initially experienced.

From the start, then, God’s promise had envisioned the completion of their deliverance. What he began in their deliverance, he would complete. Today there is much debate about the Israelite conquest (more about Israel’s period of conquest than about conquests by ancient empires, because Israel’s is better known to us). (See limiting factors; switching sides; God’s ideal.) But the exodus without the conquest would have been what the Israelites themselves feared after the exodus: “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” (Exod 17:3). God planned a full deliverance for his people, although in the ways used among nations in that day, not in the ways to be used by Jesus’s followers today.

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Not just what God saved us from—Exodus 6:6-7

What usually gets our attention is that God delivers us out of trouble. But God has a bigger destiny for his people than just getting us out of trouble. He brings us into relationship with himself. As part of his covenant with Israel, God said, “I will take you for myself for a people, and you will know that I am YHWH your God” (6:7). The covenant relationship meant that YHWH was their exclusive God and they were YHWH’s exclusive people.

The Hebrew expression translated “take for oneself” was often (though not exclusively) used in relation to taking for oneself or for one’s son a wife (e.g., Exod 6:20, 23, 25, in this context; Gen 11:29; 12:19; 21:21; 24:3-4; 38:6), with whom the husband would become one flesh, a new family unit (Gen 2:24). The term for “knowing” here was used for many things, but among them was marital intimacy, something later prophets deemed a fitting image of the covenant relationship with his people that God desired (Hos 2:20). Israel’s greatest privilege would be a special relationship with the living God.

They would know God specifically as the God who delivered them from their hardship in Egypt (Exod 6:7). We don’t know God just in an abstract way, but as the God we have met in our experience with him, especially in foundational acts he has performed. When the now-famous mathematician Blaise Pascal had a dramatic encounter with God, he described it this way: “FIRE! God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, and not of the philosophers and savants!”

Nothing against philosophers and savants, but if I had to choose between studying about God and meeting him in person like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, I would definitely go for the latter. They were most likely illiterate in terms of the writing of the time, which was mostly confined to scribes. If you’re reading this, you’re not illiterate, and since I typed this myself (I didn’t use voice recognition software), neither am I. We can study and have a personal experience with God. But again, if I had to choose, I would choose with Blaise Pascal. Nothing matches the experience of God.

The Israelites experienced God’s dramatic deliverance in the exodus. God’s self-revealing acts in history didn’t stop there. God has now revealed himself climactically in the cross and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, a specific, concrete act in redemptive history. We who entrust ourselves to Christ have his Spirit working in our hearts, enabling us to call God, “Father!”

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God reaffirms his promise—Exodus 6:1-8

Moses complains that the Lord has not kept his promise (5:22-23; note last week’s post); the Lord responds that now Moses will see what the Lord will do to Pharaoh, forcing him to drive God’s people out of Egypt (6:1)! If Moses is already doubting God’s promise, this renewed promise may not sound very encouraging. (Promises! Promises! And now the promise that the Egyptians wouldn’t even want them there anymore.)

But the Lord reaffirms his promise to bring his people out of Egypt not only in 6:1 but also in 6:6-8. In the intervening verses, God explains why Moses can trust this promise. The Lord had not tricked Moses and the people, promising something and then hiding, as it appeared to Moses (5:22-23). He was the God of their ancestors, who appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob just as he had appeared to Moses (6:3). He had covenanted with those ancestors to give Canaan to their descendants (6:4), so he could be trusted to fulfill that promise now (6:8). The Lord had already spoken much about being the God of the patriarchs (3:6, 15-16; 4:5). But although Exodus already tells us that God had remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (2:24), this is the first time that the text tells us that Moses heard that essential detail.

Moreover, the Lord was doing something even greater now than he did in the time of their ancestors. He had revealed himself to the patriarchs as El Shaddai, but only now was he revealing himself by his personal name YHWH (6:3). Theologians are right when they point out that God’s self-revelation in Scripture is progressive. Some might want to complain about new revelation with the coming of Jesus and what we call the New Testament, but new revelations happened periodically through the history of God revealing himself to his people.

More problematic is what precisely this passage means by the Lord not revealing himself by this name to the patriarchs. After all, the Lord does use this name for himself earlier; particularly noteworthy, compare Gen 15:7, where God says to Abram, “I am YHWH, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess it,” just as now God would bring them out of Egypt to possess the promised land (Exod 6:6-7). Likewise, compare Gen 28:13, where the Lord declares to Jacob, “I am YHWH, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac,” and again promises the land to his people. (Certainly the phrase, “I am YHWH,” does recur much more frequently after this point; see Exod 6:6, 7, 8, 29; 7:5, 17; 10:2; 12:12; 14:4, 18; 16:12; 20:2; 29:46; 31:13; and still more frequently in Leviticus, in 11:44-45 and regularly in 18—26.)

Scholars thus have long debated what Exodus 6 means by YHWH not using this name for himself with the patriarchs. From a narrative perspective (that is, understanding the narrative in its final form), at least two options in particular commend themselves. One is that the stories in Genesis where YHWH identifies himself by this name were updated in light of this new revelation; after all, almost no one argues that the stories were written down before Moses’s day. They use the language of the fuller revelation available to them, the way Christian preachers today might speak of Jesus in the Old Testament.

Another option is that in Moses’s day YHWH is now revealing what it means for him to be YHWH: as “I am” (ehyeh; Exod 3:14), YHWH is eternal, and so does, in his time, fulfill his promises made generations earlier.

Not only had YHWH made a promise to their ancestors, but now was the time that he was revisiting that covenant. He was acting not only because of his covenant with their ancestors, but because he had heard his people’s groaning (6:5). The Lord acts both because of his covenant faithfulness and because he is compassionate and gracious, moved by the needs of his people and their cries. Thus he is compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, and full of covenant love (chesed) and covenant faithfulness (emeth, 34:6).

The Lord had already told Moses that he had heard his people’s suffering (3:7), but in 6:5 he reiterates this point. Often (thankfully for us), God encourages us with reminders of his faithfulness, even before we get to see the fulfillment of all his promises. (Those of us who get discouraged can hear his reaffirmations as often as we choose, provided we have Bibles and hear its message in context.) The ultimate consummation of his promises await Jesus’s return, but we have enough testimony from the past, and often signs in the present, to keep us going.

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Crisis of young faith—Exodus 5:22-23

Moses had anticipated that his people might not believe him (Exod 4:1), so God had provided signs so they would believe him (4:5, 8-9). Yet now, even despite the signs, they certainly were not believing him. Moses had not wanted this mission anyway, and had obeyed only under this God’s duress (4:14-17, 24-26). Now he felt like God had let them all down.

Moses had been there only a little while, but now he complains that things had not gotten any better since he had been there (5:23). He observes that Pharaoh was mistreating God’s people—as if this were a new situation! Sometimes we get discouraged because God does not act on our schedule or because of suffering along the way.

Happily, God does not need to depend on our faith, contrary to what some well-meaning teachers today appear to insist. While God does respond to our cries to him (2:24) and especially to our dependent faith in him, there are also settings in which God initiates and calls and in these cases we may learn faith along the way. (The faith of Abraham in God’s promise seems to have been enough for God to fulfill this promise centuries later.) God will show himself faithful in fulfilling his plan—although not always our imagined version of it.

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When Caesar demands what is God’s—Exodus 5:14-21

Pharaoh requires the slaves to meet their daily quota of brick-making although he is no longer supplying some of the raw materials they need to make the bricks. He deliberately sets them up to fail, so he can pretend that their failure is their own fault. When they fail, their overseers get beaten.

In response to the overseers’ reasonable protest, Pharaoh mocks the Israelites’ request (not made by the overseers themselves) to go sacrifice to the Lord (5:17). Clearly the authority of the Lord and the authority of Pharaoh are on collision course; Pharaoh’s service is now conflicting with serving the Lord. Indeed, as a jealous God the Lord allows them to serve no other gods (20:5)—including Pharaoh, who thought he was one. Although Pharaoh did not likely demand that Israelites serve Egyptian gods, his demand for their service was now conflicting with the demand of YHWH.

And between the Lord and Pharaoh, these Israelite overseers are currently caught in the middle. Moses had promised liberation; instead, in the short run, they are beaten. When the abused overseers left Pharaoh they confronted Moses and Aaron who were waiting to meet them (5:20)—and laid into them (5:21). Moses and Aaron seemed like false prophets with false promises, who had simply made matters worse with Pharaoh, who reigned over them. They blamed not God but Moses and Aaron: “May the Lord judge you” (5:21; cf. Gen 16:5; Judg 11:27; 1 Sam 24:12). “You made us stink to Pharaoh and his servants,” they protested. The term for “stink” usually refers to the aroma of a sacrifice pleasant to God, but here it is a bad smell. Moses’s words had given Pharaoh an excuse to harm them worse, though they were probably too useful to Pharaoh for him to literally “kill” them as they insisted.

Sometimes we give up too quickly on God’s promises or God’s call, the vision he has given us to serve him. Conflict usually precedes victory, and suffering precedes triumph. Rarely do God’s victories come to us cheaply, and what does come cheaply is usually quickly forgotten (cf. Deut 6:10-12; 32:15). Suffering does not mean that God is not faithful; in fact, his path usually leads through hardship at the beginning. God has promised us the world to come, but in the present we still share in that promised world’s birth pangs.

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Whom will we serve?—Exodus 5:10-14

After Moses demands that Pharaoh release the Israelites from slavery, Pharaoh cracks down with even harsher servitude. Now the Israelite state slaves must gather their own straw to make the bricks. Their taskmasters (the Hebrew texts literally calls them oppressors, or those pressing them to labor) still demand the daily quota.

To subsequent Israelites, who heard this story over and over, the slaves’ daily quota may provide a fitting contrast to what comes after Israel’s deliverance from slavery. When God freed Israel from slavery, they discovered a very different sort of master, a father who cared for them (Exod 4:22). The idiom for their “daily quota” in making bricks could be translated more woodenly, the “matter of a day in its day” (5:13, 19). The next time the same idiom is used, its other use in Exodus, is when God provides the people’s daily needs by manna (16:4). (Elsewhere, the idiom can apply to daily sacrifices in Lev 23:37, 2 Chron 8:13 and Ezra 3:4 daily worship regulations in 1 Chron 16:37, 2 Chron 8:14 and Neh 11:23; and daily provision in Dan 1:5.) The slave-drivers exploit God’s people for labor; God, who delivered his people from slavery, gave them food for which they did not need to labor. The contrast highlights the folly of the Israelites in the wilderness complaining about God’s provision (and in Num 11:5-6 even preferring their food in Egypt!)

When the Israelite slaves cannot meet their quota, the Egyptian slavedrivers beat the Israelite overseers whom they appointed to oversee the other Israelite workers. The beaten overseers protest to Pharaoh, calling themselves Pharaoh’s “servants” (5:15-16). Such a self-designation is a mandatory sign of respect given their situation with Pharaoh, and Pharaoh uses the cognate verb to order them to go “work,” or act as servants, in 5:18. Nevertheless, one should note that God is calling his people to come aside and “serve” or “worship” him (the cognate verb in 4:23; 7:16; 8:1, 20; 9:1, 13; 10:3, 26). When danger arises and the people forget God’s power, they remain ready to serve Pharaoh’s purposes (14:12).

The God who freed his people from tyranny and fed them in the wilderness is the one master who will look out for us better than we can look out for ourselves. Everybody serves someone or something. The question that leaves us is: whom shall we serve?