Category Archives: Old Testament

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Seek the common good (89-second video)

The video appears here; the text follows if you prefer to read it

https://youtu.be/X7o_IJe-GHM

Sometimes religious people, like some other people, have wanted to be in charge of society. Of course, in a democracy we’re all responsible for public welfare and should work for our society’s good, including in working for justice and truth in the public square. We should intelligent articulate and advocate for values that will help people, and the more people who share these values, the healthier society can be. But theocracy like existed at times in ancient Israel is not the model God has given us for our period in salvation history. Instead, Paul asks in 1 Cor 5:12, “What do I have to do with judging those outside?” Moreover, as many ethicists point out, New Testament writers speak of us as resident aliens, harking back to the Israelites’ experience in exile. God’s people in the Persian empire were a minority in a pluralistic society; although some hated them (consider the book of Esther), God often blessed them with favor and wisdom. As the Lord commanded his people in Jer 29:7, “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (NRSV).

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Beating a tyrant at his own game—Exodus 1:15-22

The unscrupulous Pharaoh, determining to act shrewdly (NRSV, ESV) with God’s people, planned to kill their infants through the Hebrews’ own midwives. The chief midwives, however, prove shrewder than he, delaying Pharaoh’s extermination policy and so in the meantime saving the lives of many babies.

That Exodus names the midwives but leaves the Pharaoh anonymous (much to the chagrin of modern critics wanting to date the exodus) may say something about God’s priorities. Indeed, women, who usually lacked political power (though there were exceptions in Egypt), subvert Pharaoh’s purposes at every turn. As the Jewish Exodus commentator Nahum Sarna observes, God works through the female characters in the narrative, most of them seemingly in the background of the main action, to preserve the future deliverer: the midwives; Moses’s mother and sister; Pharaoh’s daughter; and finally the Midianite priest’s daughters who provide Moses’s connection with a place of refuge.

Because of the posture in which women gave birth on the “stones” that functioned as birth stools, the midwives could have killed some of the babies and pretended that they were simply stillborn. Midwives were positioned beneath the birthing mother to catch the baby when it emerged; they would immediately see the gender and could twist the neck without the mother seeing the action (although this would be impossible when other women were present, and a pattern of male “stillbirths” would quickly arouse suspicion).

Because Hebrew men could practice polygamy, killing male babies was not so much a long-term population deterrent as it was meant to prevent the Israelites from being strong enough to strike the Egyptians in battle in the rising generation (Exod 1:10). Pharaoh may have been concerned with a particular external threat on the horizon at that time. Using Hebrews to kill Hebrews (1:15-16) also minimizes potential repercussions for Pharaoh at this point (just like the later Roman and British empires often ruled through local elites).

Given Pharaoh’s power and his obvious willingness to exercise deadly force, the midwives were courageous to disobey Pharaoh’s decree. They disobeyed because they feared God (1:17)—a valuable deterrent against wrongdoing, and sometimes the only deterrent against wrongdoing in which one cannot get humanly caught.

Yet they were also not suicidal; they were cunning enough to offer Pharaoh a plausible explanation as to why they failed to execute his orders. Physically strong women could sometimes give birth quickly. For example, although it was surely very difficult on them physically, we read of some African-American slave women who gave birth in the field where they were working and then went back to work. Given the large number of Israelites (however we interpret the exact numbers), it is not hard to imagine that the midwives would have trouble reaching many women giving birth in Goshen if they gave birth quickly.

How could Pharaoh respond to them? He had already claimed that the Israelites were stronger than the Egyptians (1:9, though he meant this more numerically). If Hebrew women were especially strong, it was probably because Pharaoh himself was working the Israelites so hard (either all of them, or the men who therefore left more work at home for the women). Pharaoh may have suspected that they were lying, but if he chose to execute and replace the midwives, this would openly reveal his complicity in any subsequent infant deaths at the hands of new midwives. This means that if he wants to do away with Hebrew babies, he is going to have to do the dirty work himself and not expect Hebrews to do it for him (1:22). Ironically, the midwives’ claim that the Hebrew women differed from Egyptian women may portend the coming difference that God will make between Israel and the Egyptians (9:4; 11:7).

Yet the midwives are plainly lying. Exodus declares that they did not obey Pharaoh (1:17). God blessed the midwives not for lying but for refusing to kill the children; yet they would not have been alive to bless had they defied Pharaoh more openly instead of lying. God did not punish them for lying under these circumstances. Because the midwives acted from the fear of God rather than Pharaoh, God blessed them with families (1:21); they refused to harm others’ children, so God gave them their own.

(For other posts on Exodus, see http://www.craigkeener.org/category/old-testament/exodus/.)

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Be fruitful, multiply—and expect opposition—Exodus 1:8-14

Although being fruitful and multiplying (Exod 1:7) is a good thing, it can also provoke opposition from those who wrongly feel us threatening. Instead of treating Joseph’s benevolent legacy as a blessing for Egypt, a new Pharaoh was about to persecute Joseph’s people. Joseph had great favor with the Pharaoh of his day, but eventually a new Pharaoh, and probably a new dynasty of Pharaohs, arose who did not know Joseph or care about his legacy. Joseph had amassed grain in cities to provide for Egypt in the time of need (Gen 41:35, 49), but this new Pharaoh, forgetting Joseph’s benevolence, forces the Israelites to build “storage cities” (Exod 1:11; what the Hebrew designation seems to mean elsewhere).

If Joseph entered Egypt in the time of, or was otherwise somehow associated with. the Asian Hyksos dynasty, the later Egyptian reaction against the Hyksos would have carried over into a reaction against the Israelites. The fear that the Israelites might join Egypt’s enemies in a war would make some sense after the Hyskos were driven out, since they, like the Israelites, were from Asia.

Verse 7 says that the Israelites became very, very strong; in verse 9 the new Pharaoh warns that the Israelite people had become stronger than his own people. (God had promised to make Israel a mighty nation, Gen 18:18; later another enemy fears that Israel is too mighty, Num 22:6; and God promises to drive out mightier nations before Israel, Deut 4:38; 7:1; 9:1; 11:23.) Pharaoh thus wants to repress them, lest they multiply, fight the Egyptians, and go up from the land (Exod 1:10). The divine irony is that Israelites were already multiplying, the repression multiplied them still more (1:12), and that God would fight the repressers and take Israel up from the land.

The term for Israel “joining” Egypt’s enemies in 1:10 is the same root [ysf] for “Joseph” and might constitute a play on words. The term for the masters “oppressing” the Israelites in 1:11-12 (what God had predicted for Israel in Gen 15:13) does not appear again in Exodus until Exod 10:3—where the Lord demands that Pharaoh “humble” himself before the Lord. Israel suffered because Pharaoh imposed “servitude” on them (Exod 1:14; cf. the same term in 2:23; 5:9; 6:6, 9); but God exchanged that servitude for a better one, the service or worship of God (using the same term, 12:25-26; 13:5; 27:19; 30:16; 35:21, 24; 36:1-5; 38:21; 39:32, 40, 42). That is, the Lord made them his own servants instead of Pharaoh’s. But in contrast to Pharaoh, the Lord did not approve of treating servants ruthlessly (the term for ruthless rule in 1:13-14 appears elsewhere in Scripture only in Lev 25:43, 46, 53; Ezek 34:4).

God was even now preparing a deliverer through whom he would liberate his people. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., pointed out, paraphrasing Theodore Parker, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” We cannot always see God’s activity in the short term. But while God sometimes works in hidden ways at first, the ultimate future belongs to him.

(For other posts on Exodus, see http://www.craigkeener.org/category/old-testament/exodus/.)

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Getting too comfortable in Egypt?—Exodus 1:1-7

Exodus opens where Genesis leaves off: Jacob and his family settled in Egypt (Exod 1:1-5), and Joseph and his generation died (1:6). Although Joseph’s generation died, their descendants were fruitful and multiplied and filled the land (1:7), far beyond all normal, natural expectations.

In so doing, they were fulfilling the ancient mandate and pattern offered in creation: God commanded his creatures to be fruitful, multiply, and fill their spheres of existence (Gen 1:22), including humans (1:28). God reiterated these commands after the flood (8:17; 9:1, 7). God promised Abraham that he would make him fruitful and multiply his descendants (17:6; cf. 22:17), a promise also reaffirmed to Ishmael (17:20), Isaac (cf. 26:4, 24), and Jacob (28:3; 35:11; 48:4). Their multiplication is already noted in Gen 47:27, and now reaffirmed here in the opening lines of Exodus. God will reaffirm this promise again in Lev 26:9.

As for “filling the land” (Exod 1:7), Jacob’s descendants are again fulfilling the mandate at humanity’s creation; the Hebrew term for “land” is the same Hebrew term for “earth” in Gen 1:28. Paul later apparently applies this biblical principle of multiplication to spiritual progeny. As believers today, we want to be fruitful and grow (Col 1:6, 10, using a word for “grow” from the most common Greek translation of Gen 1:28). We can do this in part by raising children in the faith (cf. Gen 18:19; Deut 6:7) but also by evangelism (Acts 6:7; 12:24; 19:20; which uses the same term for “grow” as in the description of the Israelites growing in Egypt in Acts 7:17).

The Israelites were becoming comfortable in their new homeland. Yet God had promised them a different land, and the time would be coming when they would need to be happy to leave, despite the difficulties of translocating an entire people and their livestock. A new pharaoh, and possibly a new dynasty of pharaohs, was about to shake things up for Jacob’s descendants (Exod 1:8-14).

(For other posts on Exodus, see http://www.craigkeener.org/category/old-testament/exodus/.)

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A Mother’s Courage—Exodus 2:1-6

Moses’s mother was courageous to hide him for three months (Exod 2:2), but how long can one hide a baby who cries and needs to be breastfed? Rather than endanger the family any longer, his mother Jochebed (named in 6:20; Num 26:59) finally complied with Pharaoh’s orders for newborn males to be cast into the Nile (Exod 1:22). If parting with a newborn would be difficult, one imagines that parting with one’s child that one had nursed for three months would be even more difficult.

Instead of simply casting the child unprotected into the river, however, Jochebed patches a papyrus container for him and leaves him in the reeds by the bank of the Nile (2:3). Moses’s big sister, Miriam, undoubtedly also very attached to him by now, watches from a distance to see what will happen (2:4). Anyone who found the container could simply take it; more frighteningly, crocodiles can smell flesh from a distance even on land, and might find in the container a convenient meal. (Still, the container may have fully enclosed, 2:6.) If nothing else happened, the child would die of dehydration.

Yet the language used here suggests more than a mere attempt to prolong the infant’s life a bit longer. Jochebed waterproofs the papyrus container, and the Hebrew term for the container, which probably derives from an Egyptian word for a chest or coffin, appears only one other place in the Hebrew Bible. It appears repeatedly in Gen 6 through 9—for Noah’s ark. Jochebed probably knew the story of Noah’s ark; Exodus’s audience surely knew the account. As God kept alive the future of humanity and other creatures, this ark was now meant to protect the baby—who was also a promise for the future.

Moses’s location among the reeds (Exod 2:3, 5) would also prove striking for repeated hearers of the story, as members of Exodus’s first audiences undoubtedly were. The term recurs later in the exodus narrative—and always elsewhere in the Pentateuch—in the phrase typically translated into English as the “Red Sea.” Literally, in Hebrew, this is the “sea of reeds.” (Such a designation does not mean that its water was shallow; it could have acquired the name locally from reeds growing on its banks.) Moses is preserved among the reeds by the Nile; later, he will lead his people to safety from the Egyptians through the “sea of reeds.”

Miriam soon recognizes God’s providence. No crocodile or ordinary visitor finds her brother; it is the daughter of Pharaoh, surrounded by her entourage of young ladies, walking by the river. (One should not exaggerate the status of Pharaoh’s daughter, as movies that must simplify the story naturally do; Pharaohs typically had many wives and many children, so she was not likely Pharaoh’s only daughter.) One of her slaves brought the container to Pharaoh’s daughter, and when she opened it, the baby was crying. Sometimes we can look the other way or feel overwhelmed and helpless when we hear reports about injustices. But whose heart can resist the cry of a truly needy baby? (And what baby long separated from its mother’s milk and enclosed in such a container would not cry if it were awake?)

It’s no surprise, then, that Pharaoh’s daughter was moved. Yet Pharaoh’s daughter knew precisely what she had found: she recognized that this was one of the Hebrew children, presumably because she knew that Hebrew children were to be cast into the Nile. Miriam seized the moment, with a boldness and sense of impunity that might have eluded an adult. She offered to find a Hebrew nurse to breastfeed the child (2:7), and Pharaoh’s daughter, still knowing full well what she was doing, regularly agreed. Her father’s decree would not affect her own choices.

Contracting out even one’s own children to peasants or slaves for breastfeeding was not uncommon, and nursing a child of Pharaoh’s daughter would put Moses in a different category from the infants being thrown into the Nile. (If Pharaoh’s daughter had not had babies of her own—she may remain young and unmarried at this point—she would not be able to produce milk in any case.) Moreover, Moses would be returned almost immediately to the breast he longed for, the family would be safe, and Jochebed would even be rewarded for her efforts. It was customary to pay wages to poor but free wetnurses. To be paid to nurse one’s own baby, however, was clearly a remarkable turn of events. (It’s something like getting paid to study and teach the Bible—those of us who have that privilege ought to be very grateful for it!)

Through three different young women—Moses’s mother, his sister and Pharaoh’s daughter—God was subverting Pharaoh’s plans. Pharaoh would not mind allowing an exception here and there, such as for his daughter; but this exception would bring freedom to God’s people, and the drowning of Pharaoh’s army in a sea of reeds.

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Was it cruel for Abraham to send Hagar and Ishmael away?—Genesis 21:14

In Genesis 21:14, Abraham sends Hagar and Ishmael away into the desert. Yet Abraham was not sending them to die of thirst there. He gave them a skin of water (21:14); vegetation could grow in that region, and it was habitable (21:30-33; 22:19; 26:23, 33). Unfortunately, Hagar and Ishmael apparently got lost before finding water or any habitation and so ran out of water (21:14-16).

Nevertheless, Abraham had God’s promise concerning Ishmael (17:20), including at this time (21:13), and so could trust God for Ishmael as he could trust God for Isaac when offering him on Mount Moriah in the next chapter. And sure enough, the angel of the Lord again appeared to Hagar, reaffirmed the promise, and pointed her to nearby water (21:17-19). God heard Ishmael’s cries (21:17).

People often blame their own cruel choices on God. That issue merits discussion in its own right, but it is not a discussion of the message of this passage. This passage instead celebrates Abraham’s continued faith and obedience. He knew God’s voice and had witnessed God act miraculously with Sarah’s pregnancy and Isaac’s subsequent birth. This is another step of obedient faith that brought him closer to being ready to sacrifice what will then be his only son, trusting God’s faithfulness no matter what.

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Abraham obeys Sarah—Genesis 21:10-12

Hagar knew that the God of Abraham and Sarah was a powerful God; she herself had met and obeyed the angel of the LORD (Gen 16:7-11). Indeed, Abraham and Sarah believed what the angel told her, for her son was named Ishmael (16:11). She also could not but recognize that Sarah’s elderly birth (21:1-5) indicated God’s action, divine favor, and the fulfillment of God’s promise. She could not, therefore, have assumed that her son would supplant Isaac’s role even though her son was born first.

There was, however, a Mesopotamian custom that complicated matters. If a slaveholder acknowledged as son one born through a slave, that son would be reckoned as son, affecting the inheritance. Yet God’s promise and plan was for Isaac to be the heir. The only way to secure that fully now, especially if Abraham and Sarah did not survive until Isaac reached maturity and secured the loyalty of their followers, would be to liberate Hagar and Ishmael and send them away. (Abraham also sent later sons away to avoid any competition with Isaac; 25:6.)

Sarah demands that Abraham protect Isaac and God’s promise, by sending Hagar and Ishmael away (21:10). Abraham loved his son Ishmael too much to have considered the idea on his own, but Ishmael was not Sarah’s son, and she was closer to her newborn Isaac. Abraham was naturally distressed about sending away his son (21:11); they had bonded for years, when Abraham expected Ishmael to be his only son and heir (17:17-18) for Ishmael’s first thirteen years (17:25).

But Abraham discovers that Sarah’s advice is not mere jealousy or rivalry, but wisdom. God instructs Abraham to “heed” Sarah’s voice (21:12); this is the same verb used for Adam wrongly heeding Eve’s voice (3:17) and Abram heeding Sarai’s voice in taking Hagar as a concubine to begin with (16:2). Heeding one’s spouse can be good or bad, depending on the content of their advice! (Think how much trouble Isaac would have saved his family had he listened to Rebekah’s word from the Lord; 25:23.) In this case, however, Sarah has spoken wisely, and God instructs Abraham to heed her. (Sarah called Abraham “my lord” [18:12], a familiar title for husbands in that era; 1 Pet 3:6. But, as Gen 21 illustrates, her valuable example of respect does not mean that godly husbands should not also heed their wives!)

God confirms her warning: the concubine’s son will not share Abraham’s line of promise or the inheritance of Sarah’s son (21:12). God would nevertheless take care of Ishmael (21:13). Next post: Was it cruel for God or Abraham to send Hagar and Ishmael away?—Genesis 21:14.

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What did Ishmael do wrong to Isaac?—Genesis 21:9

What provoked Sarah to ask Abraham to send away Hagar and Ishmael in Gen 21:10? The text tells us only that Sarah saw Hagar’s son doing something (I leave “something” ambiguous for the moment, since the verb has a range of meaning). The term might mean “laughing,” since a few verses (and a few years) earlier Sarah has announced that everyone will laugh with her, sharing her joy (21:6).

But if the verb has anything to do with Sarah’s reaction (that is, if Sarah is not simply reacting to seeing Ishmael at the feast for Isaac’s weaning), it may suggest something more malevolent. Maybe instead of laughing with Sarah he was laughing at Isaac.

This was a feast for Isaac’s weaning; he was past the most physically dangerous period of infancy. If Isaac was weaned around age two, Ishmael would now be a young man of about sixteen. Because Paul, like most ancient Jewish interpreters, understood “play” negatively here (Gal 4:29-30), I will explore some of the negative possibilities. (I borrow this material from my forthcoming Galatians commentary, which at the time of this post is merely a rough draft, which will also incorporate my present study on this passage.)

The verb that can be translated as innocently as “play” in Genesis also has other meanings in less innocent contexts. It can mean to scorn or mock, or treat lightly; historically some interpreters have inferred this, viewing this as ridicule opposing God’s promise (so e.g., Calvin). Perhaps Ishmael showed contempt as his mother once had for Sarah (Gen 16:3); perhaps, given Sarah’s strict response in 21:10, his disdain included Isaac’s birthright (so the Reformer Rudolf Gwalther). (At least later in life, Ishmael became hostile toward many people; 16:12.)

Negatively, the verb does refer to Abraham (Gen 17:17) and Sarah (Gen 18:12-15) laughing at God’s promise. Most negatively, Lot’s sons-in-law laughing at his warning from God, leading to their destruction (Gen 19:14). The typical Greek translation of Gen 21:9 uses the word paizô. This verb can be positive, but also applies to young men competing and dying in 2 Sam 2:14 and to the abuse of Samson in Judg 16:25. In the Pentateuch this verb appears only at Gen 26:8—Isaac caressing Rebekah—and Exod 32:6. Paul seems to interpret the latter passage sexually in 1 Cor 10:7, his only use of the Greek term.

The masculine singular piel participle of this verb, however, the form here, appears only three times in the OT, all within five chapters of this verse. One is for Lot’s sons-in-law, noted above (19:14); the other is Isaac fondling his wife (26:8). The other biblical uses, also in the piel, are these: Gen 39:14, 17, where it claims that a foreign slave “made sport” of Potiphar’s household by trying to rape his wife; Exod 32:6, where it may (as just noted) have sexual connotations; and Judg 16:25, where Samson’s Philistine captors summon him as foreign slave to “entertain” them. It is reasonable to suppose, then, that Ishmael is taunting from a position of superiority, and that possibly Genesis employs a euphemism here for some sexual innuendo.

Physical molestation is highly unlikely at a public feast (Gen 21:8). (Some scholars find a euphemism for sexual activity in Gen 9:22, possibly for voyeurism; but the writer of Genesis was also capable of being much less euphemistic, as in 19:31-36.) It is not impossible, however, that the adolescent Ishmael, still learning social propriety, could have taunted his just-weaned half-brother as sexually inferior or finally graduating from seeking his mother’s breast.

Whatever the specific action that raised the concern at this point, Sarah’s primary concern is Isaac’s line being Abraham’s heir (21:10; cf. 21:12). The next two posts will explore this concept, including the propriety of Abraham sending Hagar and Ishmael away.

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Joseph’s faith beyond his lifetime—Genesis 50:22-26

The Book of Genesis concludes with expectation for the future; expectation is part of what faith is. Faith isn’t limited to our relationship with God now. By faith we can prepare for events beyond our mortal lives; our faith can outlive us. In this case we readers know what comes of that faith because we also have Exodus and the rest of the Bible; Joseph’s expectation was rewarded in later generations. Yet for many of our own expectations—expectations concerning the Lord’s return, the triumph of justice and righteousness in the world, and so forth—we are in a situation like Joseph was at the end of his life: looking to God’s promises before they have come to pass.

Like his father Jacob, Joseph looked to God’s long-range future promise. As his father declared that he was about to die and made Joseph swear concerning his burial in the holy land (47:29-31; 48:21; 49:29-32), Joseph now makes his relatives swear to carry his bones to the promised land when God would bring them up, as he surely would (50:24-25). (“His brothers” in 50:24 does not indicate that his older brothers all outlived him; the Hebrew expression that we translate “brothers” simply means relatives.)

In the short run, Joseph died and was buried in Egypt (50:26). Although 110 years (50:22, 26) was a very full life (Egyptians praised this longevity), humans in God’s story do not “live happily ever after” (in this life); God’s human servants share the common fate of all other mortals. Joseph, however, looked beyond the short term to God’s longer-range promises for his people.

Although English translations do not always translate the verses the same way, Joseph’s wording indicates that the promised exodus would be a scale of divine activity no less extraordinary than God enabling Sarah to bear; God would “visit” his people (50:24-25; cf. Exod 3:16; 4:31; 13:19) in a special way in God’s special time, just as he had “visited” Sarah (Gen 21:1) in enabling her to have Isaac.

Joseph trusted the promises of God that were part of his legacy, just as we must trust the biblical promises to which we are now heirs. No less than Joseph keeping the oath he had sworn to his father (50:5-6) or his relatives observing the oath they swore to Joseph (cf. 50:25), God would keep the oath he had sworn to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to bring them into the land of promise (50:24).

Joseph’s plans for his body’s future rested on his confidence in God’s promise, and thus showed faith (Heb 11:22). When we plan our lives based on God’s call and promise, whether for ourselves or for God’s people more generally, we show faith in his promise. Genesis reminds us over and over again that God is truly worthy of our trust. In the traditional African-American Church, we have a saying: God may not come when you want Him to—but He’s always right on time.