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Left Behind?

As new Left Behind movie hits the screens on October 3. If it gets people thinking about our Lord and about being ready for his coming, that is a very good thing. Nevertheless, there is a theological premise behind the Left Behind series that is problematic biblically. It is a premise that I was taught soon after my conversion, but as I read the supporting verses in context I quickly became convinced that every one of them was being used out of context. (Apologies to my dear friends who still hold this view.)

This is a doctrine widely held today, yet not a single text explicitly supports it, and no one in history articulated this view before 1830. I comment on this problem briefly in the blog post I wrote for a wider audience at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-s-keener/left-behind_2_b_5883062.html

In addition, Huffington Post’s religion editor also interviewed me, along with two other scholars from varying perspectives, regarding this issue in the audio postcast (27 minutes) at:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/03/all-together-left-behind-_n_5926750.html

Dr. Michael Brown and I also discussed the issue on his Line of Fire broadcast (http://www.lineoffireradio.com/) on Oct. 8, 2014.

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Loyal to the death—John 13:34-35

When Jesus commands us to love one another as he has loved us, why does he call this a “new” commandment (13:34)? Did not God command all believers to love one another already in the Old Testament (Lev 19:18). What makes this commandment a new commandment is the new example set by the Lord Jesus.

The immediate context makes this example clearer. Jesus takes the role of a humble servant by washing his disciples’ feet (13:1-11)—a role normally performed by servants or those adopting their posture. Then Jesus calls on his disciples to imitate his servanthood (13:12-17). In the same context, we understand the degree to which he became a servant for us by noting what he would suffer: Jesus and the narrator keep talking about Jesus’ impending betrayal (13:11, 18-30). Jesus explains that he is being “glorified” (13:31-32), i.e., killed (12:23-24); he is about to leave the disciples (13:33), and Peter is not yet spiritually prepared to follow Jesus in martyrdom (13:36-38).

This is the context of loving one another “as” Jesus loved us. We are called to sacrifice even our lives for one another! As 1 John 3:16 puts it explicitly (my paraphrase), “This is how we recognize love: He laid down his life on our behalf. [In the same way], we also owe it to him to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters in Christ.” The next verse (1 John 3:17) suggests that if we can lay down our lives for one another, certainly we can seek to meet one another’s needs in less demanding ways.

The rest of the Gospel of John illustrates more fully Jesus’ example of love and servanthood, which culminate in the cross.

In many places in the world our brothers and sisters are suffering. Indeed, many even near us may be hurting. What would Jesus do? Now that his Spirit is active within us (John 14:23), what would he have us do?

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Slaughtering the Benjamites II: merciless anarchy—Judges 20:29—21:25

(Continued from Part I, http://www.craigkeener.org/slaughtering-the-benjamites-i-benjamins-depravity-judges-191-2028/)
Judges goes on to narrate the Israelites’ unbridled vengeance against the Benjamites and the continuing, sinful consequences of their overkill. Because Benjamin refused to hand over those who gang-raped a woman to death, the other tribes of Israel make war on the Benjamites. Up till this point, the Benjamites, equipped with long-distance weapons, have been winning the battles. They have consistently repelled the larger forces arrayed against them. Now, however, Israel has a divine promise of victory from the Lord (Judg 20:28).

Total war against Benjamin

In Judges 20:29, 33, 36-38, the Israelite allies set an ambush against the Benjamites. They borrow this strategy most clearly from Joshua’s earlier destruction of the nearby hostile Canaanite town of Ai (Josh 8:2-21), applying this strategy against Benjamin. This time they succeed, putting the Benjamites to flight. Throughout history, cutting down retreating warriors from behind proves much easier than having to face their weapons. Thus in 20:45 the Israelite warriors “caught” and killed five thousand fleeing Benjamite warriors on the road; the verb for violent catching here appears only one other time in the Book of Judges, where the Benjamite rapists forced themselves on the Levite’s concubine (19:25).

To forestall future conflicts, the law earlier prescribed herem—the utter destruction of total war—against enemy Canaanites (Deut 7:2). Israel carried out little of this in the Book of Judges, yet the vengeful Israelites now get so carried away with their victory that they practice herem against Benjamites! The law did prescribe this fate for apostate cities that followed other gods (Deut 13:12-18). But what about for an entire tribe that simply came to the aid of such a city because of clan allegiances? Common as it was in antiquity to kill all males who might grow up to avenge their fathers, the law prohibited killing children for their fathers’ crimes (Deut 24:16). Further, wiping out women and children was herem, not normal punishment.

In the heat of the moment, many hardened warriors, some of whose compatriots have been killed, now slaughter everyone in sight. Only six hundred Benjamite men escape, taking refuge for the next four months (20:47). After these months pass, however, Israelite tempers cool (cf. 20:47). Now many of the Israelites, whose warriors had earlier slaughtered the Benjamites, lament that God has destroyed one of the tribes of Israel (21:3, 15)! (Blaming God for human acts of depravity is not a new invention.) Granted, God is sovereign, but again his involvement here is at a more distant remove, not a direct action. In this narrative, God has ultimately delivered the Benjamite warriors into the other Israelites’ hands (Judg 20:28, 35); but the narrator never says that he commands or approves of this mass slaughter.

Much of Israel, in fact, themselves regretted their actions, as the narrator twice mentions (21:6, 15, two of the only three uses of this term in Judges). Israel’s leaders now need a way to replenish the tribe of Benjamin, but the six hundred surviving Benjamite men cannot reproduce without women. Israel has slaughtered all the Benjamite women, as well as taken an impulsive oath before God not to let Benjamites intermarry with them (21:1).

Seizing more innocent women

The leaders, however, reach a solution that prevents them from breaking their oaths. Now they will execute herem against another Israelite town, Jabesh Gilead! Judges 21:11 is in fact one of only two uses of the Hebrew verb related to herem in the Book of Judges. (Later Saul, who fails to execute herem against Amalekites in 1 Sam 15:3-23, essentially executes it against God’s priests in 22:19!)

Again Israel keeps their word: they had promised to kill anyone who did not come to help them with the battle (21:5). These oaths were may not have been a good idea; they certainly cannot justify the wholesale action that now follows. The virgin daughters of Jabesh Gilead are now seized, just as the Levite’s concubine was seized. Meanwhile, wives and concubines are slaughtered—just as the Levite’s concubine was killed. (Probably Benjamites later repopulated their maternal ancestor’s town. Later Saul as a Benjamite has natural ties with Jabesh Gilead, evident in 1 Sam 11:5-9 and 31:11-12.)

Thus Israelites again slaughter their own people. The intensity of lethal and sexual violence here readily reminds us of the sorts of atrocities that some Islamic extremists have committed in the Middle East or northern Nigeria, or genocidal actions elsewhere. The spirit of violence in the world is not new, even if modern technologies have provided increasingly efficient means of killing.

The decimation of Jabesh Gilead, however, did not supply enough young women for the Benjamites: just four hundred young wives for six hundred men. (Given the average likely age of marriage, most of these women were probably sixteen or younger—perhaps many in their early teens.) So what did the Israelites do? They went and kidnapped some other Israelite girls. They chose a convenient location that did not require much travel—their host town, Shiloh, just a day’s march from devastated Gibeah (21:12). (They had earlier gathered at another centrally located site, Mizpah, fewer than five miles from Gibeah; Judg 20:1, 3; 21:1, 5, 8.) At some point (perhaps later) Shiloh became the place of the tabernacle (18:31).

So—at a feast for the Lord (Judg 21:19)—the Israelites invited the two hundred Benjamites who were still single to capture two hundred single young women from Shiloh. The Hebrew text of 21:20 suggests that they “ambushed” them, the same terminology used for the recent attack against the Benjamites (20:29, 33, 36-38). (An attentive reader of Judges in Hebrew might recall that, in this book, apart from that recent attack only the wicked “ambush” or “lie in wait”; Judg 9:25, 32, 34, 43; 16:2, 9, 12.)

Although the strategy of ambush made sense against the opposing army, here it is carried out against unarmed, young teenage girls; the law prohibited ambushing or lying in wait (the same Hebrew term) for a neighbor to harm them (Deut 19:11). Each one “catches” a wife for himself (Judg 21:21), a Hebrew term elsewhere applied to violence (Ps 10:9). The other Israelites explain to the girls’ fathers in Shiloh that since they did not give their daughters in marriage to the Benjamites, they have not violated Israel’s oath. How much would this consolation have reduced the horror for the families now rent apart?

The Israelite actions began as a quest for justice, a call for vengeance on behalf of an unnamed women who was mercilessly gang-raped to death. Yet the quest ended up as the slaughter of men, women and boys, along with the seizure of preadolescent girls and unmarried teenage women.

Everyone did what was right in their own eyes

Recounting the acts without inserting moral comment so far, the narrator lets the horror of the story strike with its own graphic force. Only the book’s concluding comment sheds light on its perspective: there was no king in Israel, and everyone did what they personally viewed as right (21:25). This horrible story is a story of moral anarchy, the kind of violent lawlessness we sometimes might associate with the old frontier in the western United States, war-torn Somalia, or other unstable regions. It could well be the story of unbridled human hearts anywhere that lacks means of civil restraint, where the strong are free to prey on those socially or physically weaker than themselves.

Why do the final chapters of Judges begin and end with a refrain about moral anarchy associated with lack of kingship (17:6; 19:1; 21:25)? Although in this book God periodically raises up judges, Israel as a whole has no stable government here, no provision for continuing moral leadership.

As the subsequent story of Israel in Samuel through Kings illustrates, however, a continuing government without obedience to God was ultimately no less liable to fail. The first part of that story elaborates Saul’s failure and David’s success, quickly followed by David’s failure and its consequences for his kingdom. Within a generation, we witness the fraying of the delicate tribal unity often achieved under David and particularly achieved in the early part of Solomon’s reign. When there was a king in Israel who did only what was right in his own eyes (or in the eyes of others not obeying God), the nation was also led astray.

It fell to prophets to repeatedly call God’s people back to his Word. True prophets (as opposed to the corrupted ones) provided a conscience for Israel, some moral leadership. But prophets can influence only those willing to heed them.

Ultimately neither judges nor kings could provide more than stopgap measures (though stopgaps are safer than anarchy). Through the prophets, God ultimate promised Israel a more permanent solution: the coming of his own kingdom, when he would reign through his appointed vizier, the promised descendant of David. Yet what would a kingdom of righteousness mean for a sinful people, the sort of people we encounter in Judges? Fortunately for us, the promised kingdom has already made its first entrance into more gently our world; the king came first not to avenge, but to offer justice and righteousness a different way. Jesus’ way was not to kill sinners but to transform them. As followers of Jesus, we must work for the peace and justice that our king requires, even in this world of incredible tragedy and pain, until he returns to consummate his promise of that new era.

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Slaughtering the Benjamites I: Benjamin’s depravity—Judges 19:1—20:28

If biblical texts about slaughtering the Canaanites rightly make us uncomfortable (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/), biblical texts about Israel’s wholesale slaughter of fellow Israelites (Judg 20:48; 21:10-12) may with good reason make us sick.

Judges 19—21 is a tale of horror, and no one should try to understand it otherwise. After narrating the exploits (and failures) of many of Israel’s judges, Judges frames its closing chapters with an ominous refrain: “In those days there was no king in Israel; each person did what was right in their own eyes” (Judg 17:6; 21:25). The accounts between these two bookends illustrate the horror of that moral anarchy even more hideously than most earlier events in the Book of Judges. Half the refrain also appears in Judg 19:1, at the beginning of the book’s closing story, signalling the special unity of the single story in chs. 19—21. It is this story, and especially the climax of its broadest violence, that I survey here.

A fatal gang rape

A Levite seeking to regain his concubine experiences excessive hospitality in Bethlehem (Judg 19:4-9) but the epitome of inhospitality in Gibeah of Benjamin (Judg 19:15, 22). (The one hospitable person there was a sojourner, a fellow Ephraimite, not a local; 19:16.) This story may thus have been of special interest early in David’s reign, since David was from Bethlehem, whereas Saul, his rival predecessor, was from Gibeah!

What highlights all the more starkly the contrast between hospitable Bethlehem and murderous Gibeah is the reason that the travelers chose to rest in Gibeah to begin with, rather than a somewhat nearer town. The Levite chose to trust the hospitality of Gibeah more than that of Jebus—the future Jerusalem—because Gibeah was an Israelite town and Jebus wasn’t (Judg 19:11-12). Yet Gibeah soon acted like a pagan town—like Sodom, in fact. (Israel’s prophets often later compared Israel’s wickedness to Sodom more explicitly—e.g., Isa 3:9; Jer 23:14; Lam 4:6; Ezek 16:46-56.)

Local thugs want to gang-rape the Levite visitor just as Sodom’s thugs wanted to violate the angelic visitors in Genesis 19. Likewise, the Levite’s host in Gibeah offers two women instead of his male guest, just as Lot in Sodom offered his daughters. (Like Lot, the Levite’s host was not from, and had not fully absorbed the attitude toward strangers in, the wicked town. But both Lot and the Levite’s host reflected some of their cultures’ values in other ways.)

Yet here, in contrast to the story of Lot and Sodom in Genesis 19, there is no divine intervention; God seems silent, and events follow their natural course with no deliverance. The Levite saves himself, his servant and his host’s household by forcing his concubine outside to the insistent criminals in the street. But God does not intervene in this tragedy, in contrast to his intervention in Sodom (just as Jephthah’s daughter is not delivered in Judg 11:34-40, in contrast to Abraham’s son in Gen 22:10-14).

Whereas in Genesis the angels “seized” Lot’s family to rescue them (Gen 19:16), here the Levite “seizes” his concubine to substitute her for himself (Judg 19:25, a matter perhaps conveniently omitted in the Levite’s retelling of the events in 20:5). He later seizes her violated body to cut it apart (19:29). (That the term used for “cutting” here often refers to cleaving meat or sacrifices may drive home the horror even more harshly.)

A war to avenge injustice

Many Israelites rightly took rape seriously, especially when someone violated their sister (Gen 34:27; 2 Sam 13:32), though the counterviolence sometimes killed the innocent alongside the guilty (cf. Gen 49:6-7). Gang-raping the concubine to death, however—an atrocity perhaps underlined all the more graphically by her subsequent dismemberment—stunned Israel’s sensitivities even in this anarchic period (Judg 19:30). Thus the rest of the tribes of Israel gather to demand justice, perhaps determined to prevent further atrocities caused by the continued disintegration of public morality.

The Benjamites, however, refuse to hand over the perpetrators (Judg 20:13). Were they simply unable to locate them and unwilling to admit it? The language of Judges probably instead suggests more deliberate refusal. Most likely, ethnic and family ties prove stronger here than ethical ones, as in the case of the Shechemites’ earlier murder of Abimelech’s brothers (9:1-6). Nepotism, racism, nationalism and other self-centered systems of group loyalties can blind us to moral truth. Not only the other men of Gibeah, but the other Benjamites join them, preemptively preparing for Israel’s attack (20:14).

By refusing to punish those responsible, the Benjamites embrace corporate responsibility for the murder (cf. Deut 21:1-9). Israel, which in the Book of Judges was often notably unable to unite against foreign aggressors without a divinely-empowered judge, now unites to battle the Israelite tribe of Benjamin (Judg 20:8-11, a paragraph that begins and concludes by noting Israel’s unity “as one”).

The Israelites heavily outnumbered the Benjamites (20:15-17), though the terrain probably prevented them from deploying their numbers all at once and the Benjamites had the advantage of distance “artillery” (20:16). Like all ancient peoples, Israel consulted its god before battle; yet God allows Israel to suffer heavily in it (20:21). Again the Lord remains largely silent in the background, the first few times apparently speaking only through the casting of lots that decides which tribe will go to battle (Judg 20:18) or whether they should keep engaging the battle (20:23, 28). Only after many losses does God promise victory (20:28), and unlike the stories in Joshua when God was with his people, this victory still comes at a cost of many Israelite warriors’ lives (20:31; cf. Josh 7:5, 11-12).

The suffering of many individuals before a common objective is achieved fits much of our present existence in this world; both in Scripture and today, suffering comes to both the righteous and the unrighteous. Still, there may also be another reason for God’s relative silence in this narrative, a silence that allows even more innocent people to suffer. Benjamin is not the only tribe in Israel that is sinning. God knows the rest of Israel’s moral state, as becomes clear later in the narrative, the part treated in Part II (to keep any one post from running too long), to be posted tomorrow (http://www.craigkeener.org/slaughtering-the-benjamites-ii-merciless-anarchy-judges-2029-2125/).

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How the background commentary came to be

In a recent audio podcast, Logos interviews Craig concerning how the background commentary came to be (and, more briefly, the miracles book).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yln39__aaLo

(The link here can be opened most easily after you click into this post.)

The link below should have the same interview.

https://soundcloud.com/logos-bible-software/m-ed-podcast-07-31-2014

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No weapon formed against you will prosper—Isaiah 54:17

Scripture contains many promises about protection, including this one. It is appropriate to remember such promises in prayer, looking to God for protection.

Sometimes, however, God’s people suffer. In fact, some texts warn us to expect this (2 Tim 3:12). So while we can trust that not a hair from our head will fall to the ground apart from our Father’s plan for us, this does not mean that we will not face attacks—only that God has everything under control and the final outcome is his.

The context of this passage focuses on God’s people. Israel had sinned, been judged, but now would be restored, and those who had tried to oppose Israel would be crushed. God would fulfill his promises to his people; he judged them when they sinned but now that they had turned back to him, he would restore them, and nothing could stop his plan.

There is a principle here that God vindicates his people; but it is not an ironclad guarantee for every circumstance in the short run for each individual. (For example, though God often does provide protection for Christians, he does not do so all the time; many Christians have died as faithful martyrs.)

It does encourage us, however, that God will ultimately vindicate his servants and his plans for history. So whatever we must face in the short run, in the long run we can be sure of God’s faithfulness and vindication if we remain faithful to him.

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The banquets of two kingdoms—Matthew 14:1-21

Matthew’s narratives often concretely illustrate his teachings elsewhere. In Matthew 14:1-12, Herod Antipas executes John the Baptist. In so doing, he also violates at least four of Jesus’s six specific examples of sins in Matthew 5:21-48! (Herod Antipas was a son of Herod the Great, who tried to kill Jesus as a baby in Matthew chapter 2; unlike his father, however, Antipas ruled only Galilee and Perea.)

Herod Antipas had arrested John because John’s criticism of Antipas’s behavior embarrassed Antipas. Antipas had concluded an affair with his brother’s wife by marrying her, and Herodias, his new wife, wanted to get rid of John for criticizing them. In addition to the embarrassment, John’s preaching risked political complications for Antipas, though John’s own interest was primarily moral. To marry Herodias, Antipas had to agree to divorce his first wife—but she was a Nabatean princess, and Antipas’s action made him an enemy of Aretas, the Nabatean king. Many ethnic Nabateans lived in Antipas’s territory of Perea, and the last thing Antipas thought he needed was a prophet running around there criticizing Antipas’s behavior.

It was politically dangerous to execute someone the people considered a prophet, yet it was also too dangerous to let him keep publicly denouncing Antipas’s behavior. Thus Antipas took John out of public circulation by imprisoning him in his Perean palace of Machaerus. This imprisonment was not enough for Herodias, however; she wanted him silenced for good. At Antipas’s birthday banquet, she used Antipas’s lust for her own very young daughter Salome to get John out of the way.

Driven by lust, Antipas swore to Salome that she could have whatever she asked; she asked for John’s head on a platter. Think of Jesus’s examples in Matthew 5:21-48: Whoever wants to kill is like a murderer (5:21-22); whoever wants to sleep with another woman is like an adulterer (5:27-28), as is whoever divorces a faithful wife (5:31-32). Jesus also warns against swearing oaths (5:33-37) and Jesus demands loving and serving one’s enemies and oppressors (5:38-48). Antipas treats John as an enemy whom he wants to kill (14:5); Antipas further betrays his wife and becomes a prisoner to his own lust and oaths.

History tells us that Herod Antipas’s choices cost him the very honor and kingdom he tried to preserve. Remember Antipas’s concern about the Nabateans? The Nabatean king, Aretas, defeated Antipas in battle and would have taken his territory from him had Rome not intervened. Galileans murmured that this humiliating defeat was God’s judgment on Antipas for executing John, shaming Antipas even more.

Nor was that defeat the only trouble that Antipas’s marriage to Herodias cost him. In Mark, a drunken and lustful Antipas offered to give away his kingdom cheaply; in the end, his lust did historically cost him his kingdom. Herodias not only insisted on John’s death; she also insisted that her husband petition Rome for the official title of “king.” (Although the Bible sometimes loosely calls him a king, his role as far as most Galileans were concerned, his official title was merely “tetrarch,” as in 14:1.) Finally Antipas petitioned for the title, and the emperor deemed that request treason. Herod Antipas and Herodias lost their rule and spent the rest of their lives in exile.

This narrative about Antipas’s deadly banquet opened with Antipas hearing about Jesus and comparing him with John (14:1-2)—a comparison that warns the reader of the hostility that awaits Jesus. The next narrative, by contrast, opens with Jesus hearing what Antipas has done (14:13), and thus withdrawing further from Antipas’s domain. But whereas Antipas’s banquet led to the murder of a prophet, Jesus offers a different sort of banquet in 14:14-21. Jesus feeds far more people at his banquet than Antipas had—indeed, more than five thousand. Eating with others was like an act of covenant that brought people into a permanent relationship (that was why many religious people criticized Jesus for eating with “sinners” and collaborators with the occupying kingdom; cf. 9:10-11). Antipas’s guests were of high status and he had food (and a head) served on platters; by contrast, Jesus reached out to whoever was willing to become part of his kingdom (cf. 22:9-10).

Jesus fed his followers through a miraculous act like manna in the wilderness or like Elijah or especially Elisha multiplying food. In so doing, Jesus offered a foretaste of a different kingdom, one nothing like Antipas’s. All who hunger and thirst for that kingdom will ultimately be satisfied (5:6).

When we eat and drink together in memory of Jesus’s final meal with his first disciples, we remember that he promised to drink with us again in his Father’s kingdom (26:29). We also remember how much that promised kingdom cost him: “This is my body,” and “This is my blood of the covenant” (26:28). Lustful Antipas abused power at his banquet, killed a man of God, and lost his kingdom. By contrast, our Lord came to serve and to give his life on behalf of others (20:28)—and he will reign forever.

Craig Keener is professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary and author of The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament (revised edition, InterVarsity, 2014).