02/21/10

Hebrews 7-10

In Hebrews 7, the author continues the comparison of Jesus with Melchizedek, the high priest of GOD and king of Salem who was mentioned in Genesis 14 and Psalm 110. He uses Melchizedek as a prototype for a high priest who is eternally just that, "without father or mother, without genealogy, without beginning of days or end of life...he remains a priest forever." And even Abraham "gave him a tenth of the plunder." He suggests that if perfection was possible through the Levitical law and priesthood, there would have been no need for a greater priest, but it was not, so Jesus came from the tribe of Judah. And he says that the law made nothing perfect but "Jesus has become the guarantee of a better covenant...he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them...the law appoints as high priests men who are weak; but the oath, which came after the law, appointed the Son, who has been made perfect forever."

In chapter eight, he makes clear that the entire point of the high priest discussion is to emphasis that there is a high priest, and he is a high priest not of the line of Aaron, but of Melchizedek, a priest who sat "at the right hand of the the throne of the Majesty in heaven, and who serves in the sanctuary, the true tabernacle set up by the Lord, not by man." Because of the sin of man, he goes on, GOD had to make a new covenant, because man did not keep the old covenant. Jesus serves as a new high priest in the "true tabernacle."

Chapter nine starts with discussion of the worship regulations of the first covenant, how they had specific places in the tabernacle. The high priest went into the Most Holy place "only once a year, and never without blood." But "the gifts and sacrifices being offered were not able to clear the conscience of the worshiper." "How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!" All of the things in the tabernacle, all of the regulations and rituals, are imitations of heavenly things. But "Christ did not enter a man-made sanctuary that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God's presence...Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him." In chapter 10, the writer emphasizes that Christ's sacrifice was made once for all. If the temple sacrifices had been able to truly cleanse the people and make them perfect, he suggest, they would not have needed to be made year after year. "But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins, because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins."

Thoughts, questions, issues

• The whole Melchizedek discussion is interesting, albeit a bit odd. At the time that his name appears in Genesis 14, he is said to be the King of Salem (that is, Jerusalem) and "a priest of God most high." I commented on reading that chapter that "it is difficult to know exactly what that would mean in the time before the birth of Israel." The only other Old Testament reference to him came a thousand years later, in Psalm 110. I still feel that it's hard to understand, but the author of this epistle uses him as a high priest who is an eternal high priest. High priest before Aaron, high priest still, and, therefore, a proxy for Jesus.
• Jesus said that not a jot or a tittle of the law would pass away, but the author of the epistle to the Hebrews says that the law has been superseded.
• One of the things that I think is hard for us to understand is the impact that the phrase "blood of Christ" would have in a society where sacrifice was a way of life. As I noted when discussing Leviticus, the overwhelming impression that book leaves on the modern reader is blood - its pages are drenched in it. But that was the backdrop to the incarnation. When we talk about about Jesus Christ dying as atonement for our sins, it's a use of language, a turn of phrase, that we are used to hearing. To the early Christians and particularly those of a Jewish background, the atonement for sins was a bloody business to which they were well accustomed. It had a particular meaning to them that is hard for us to fully understand. But all of Leviticus looks, in retrospect, as if it were preparation for a world in which the incarnation would be necessary. The rites and rituals, the sin offering and atonement rituals, all prepared a people to understand the atonement for sin which was achieved for all men by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the sin washed away in the blood of Christ.

Psalms 18:25-50

The martial imagery continues in the second half of the 18th psalm, but in more of a praise psalm. The LORD is said to "save the humble...his way is perfect; the word of the LORD is flawless. He is a shield for all who take refuge in him." The praise takes many forms, praise for victory and support and vanquishment of enemies, praise for faithfulness and keeping the lamp burning, turning darkness into light. "Therefore I will praise you among the nations, O LORD; I will sing praises to your name."

Psalm 18
For the director of music. Of David the servant of the LORD. He sang to the LORD the words of this song when the LORD delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul. He said:

25 To the faithful you show yourself faithful,
to the blameless you show yourself blameless,

26 to the pure you show yourself pure,
but to the crooked you show yourself shrewd.

27 You save the humble
but bring low those whose eyes are haughty.

28 You, O LORD, keep my lamp burning;
my God turns my darkness into light.

29 With your help I can advance against a troop;
with my God I can scale a wall.

30 As for God, his way is perfect;
the word of the LORD is flawless.
He is a shield
for all who take refuge in him.

31 For who is God besides the LORD ?
And who is the Rock except our God?

32 It is God who arms me with strength
and makes my way perfect.

33 He makes my feet like the feet of a deer;
he enables me to stand on the heights.

34 He trains my hands for battle;
my arms can bend a bow of bronze.

35 You give me your shield of victory,
and your right hand sustains me;
you stoop down to make me great.

36 You broaden the path beneath me,
so that my ankles do not turn.

37 I pursued my enemies and overtook them;
I did not turn back till they were destroyed.

38 I crushed them so that they could not rise;
they fell beneath my feet.

39 You armed me with strength for battle;
you made my adversaries bow at my feet.

40 You made my enemies turn their backs in flight,
and I destroyed my foes.

41 They cried for help, but there was no one to save them—
to the LORD, but he did not answer.

42 I beat them as fine as dust borne on the wind;
I poured them out like mud in the streets.

43 You have delivered me from the attacks of the people;
you have made me the head of nations;
people I did not know are subject to me.

44 As soon as they hear me, they obey me;
foreigners cringe before me.

45 They all lose heart;
they come trembling from their strongholds.

46 The LORD lives! Praise be to my Rock!
Exalted be God my Savior!

47 He is the God who avenges me,
who subdues nations under me,

48 who saves me from my enemies.
You exalted me above my foes;
from violent men you rescued me.

49 Therefore I will praise you among the nations, O LORD;
I will sing praises to your name.

50 He gives his king great victories;
he shows unfailing kindness to his anointed,
to David and his descendants forever.

01/15/10

Genesis 43-46

Genesis 43 starts with the continuing famine in Canaan.  Jacob's sons, other than Simeon, have returned, but the food they brought back is running out and Jacob implores them to go back to Egypt and buy more.  His sons resist, protesting that the overseer told them they would not see him again if they did not bring back their youngest brother.  Judah tells Jacob that he will stand as guarantor for Benjamin's safe return, and that he is willing to lay down his life if Benjamin does not come back.  Jacob relents, and the 10 brothers take the silver that was returned to them on their last trip and enough for purchase of more grain, and head to Egypt.  When Joseph sees them, he instructs his steward to prepare a meal for them at his residence.  They gather at Joseph's house, where Simeon is brought out to them.  Joseph sees Benjamin and inquires after their father, then retires to his private quarters to weep.  Then he came out and feasted with them. 

The story continues in chapter 44 when, following their feast, he has the stewards fill his brothers bags with grain.  He also has their silver placed back in the bags, and one of his own silver cups into Benjamin's bag.  His brothers head back to Canaan, but Joseph sends a his steward after them, and when he overtakes them, accuses them of having stolen a silver cup.  They deny it, and agree that if any one is found to have taken it, that one will become a slave to Joseph.  They all drop their bags and the steward finds the cup in Benjamin's.  They all go back to Joseph's house, where his brothers fall down and bow before him, acknowledging themselves as his slaves.  He says that only the one found with the cup is his slave, the rest are free to go.  Judah pleads with Joseph to keep him instead, as Benjamin is the youngest, the only remaining son of the wife their father loved, and the loss of him would kill their father.

Finally, in chapter 45, Joseph acknowledges his identity to his brothers.  He sends everyone else from the room, and tells his brothers who he is.  They are frightened, but he tells them not to be frightened and not to be angry, that they hadn't sent him into slavery, but GOD had sent him ahead into Egypt to prepare for the time of famine.  And after they all threw their arms around one another and wept, he told them to go back to Canaan and get their father.  Pharoah gave Joseph and his family the land of Goshen, so they took carts and donkeys and returned to Canaan where they told Jacob that Joseph was still alive and the ruler of Egypt.

In Genesis 46, we get a genealogy of Israel as it entered in to the land of Goshen at the behest of Pharoah.  After packing up, they headed towards Egypt.  At Beersheba, they stopped and Israel prayed to the LORD, who told him that he would bring him back out of Egypt.  The list of direct descendants of Israel, not counting sons' wives, is said to be 66, and, with Joseph and the two sons born to him in Egypt, 70.  They settle in, and tell Pharoah that they are shephards.

Thoughts, questions, issues
• I'm hesitant to call Joseph a jerk, and certainly they warranted some punishment for having sold their brother into slavery, regardless of how well it turned out, but his treatment of his brothers was cruel.  Keeping Simeon and then framing Benjamin were frightening and unpleasant acts.
• "Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him all the more.  He said to them, 'Listen to this dream I had: We were binding sheaves of grain out in the field when suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright, while your sheaves gathered around mine and bowed down to it.'" (Gen 37:5-7)
  "Joseph was still in the house when Judah and his brothers came in, and they threw themselves to the ground before him." (Gen 44:14)
• When he finally acknowledges his identity, Joseph does demonstrate that he has handled his experience well.  Rather than recriminations, he expresses to them that GOD has sent him in to Egypt, that what has happened in his life has been done for GOD's purposes.
• The entire story of Joseph's exile to Egypt, his reconciliation with his brothers, their return with Israel to him, is as easily understandable as anything in Genesis, and much more so than most of it.  Even the actions of his brothers, selling him, is understandable, albeit reprehensible.  This whole section (excluding the Judah/Tamar interlude) is straightforward history.
• I count 71 male descendants, three of which (Joseph, Manasseh and Ephraim) were already in Egypt and two of which (Er and Onan) were dead.  So that does make 66 that went down to Egypt.  And three makes 69, which is not exactly 70.

Proverbs 12:15-28

The last 14 verses in chapter 12 extol honesty, truthfulness and discretion, while condemning laziness, dishonesty and imprudence.  13 of the 14 are antithetical parallelisms.

01/13/10

Genesis 37-39

Genesis 37 begins with Joseph, now 17, working in the fields with his brothers (mostly half-brothers).  His brothers resent Joseph, for being his father's favorite, shown by, for one example, receiving a "richly ornamented robe."  He describes for his brothers a dream in which they are gathering sheaves in the field and his brothers' sheaves bow to his.  Later, out in the fields, his brothers decide to kill him, but Rueben convinces them to throw him into a cistern, thinking that he can be rescued later.  They throw him into a cistern, but see a group of Ishmaelites traveling and sell him into slavery.  They tear his robe, cover it with goat's blood, and return it to Jacob/Israel, who mourns his son.  Joseph reaches Egypt and is sold to Potiphar, captain of the Pharoah's guard.

In chapter 38, we get the story of Judah and Tamar.  Judah took a wife and fathered, over a period of years, three sons, Er, Onan and Shelah.  Er married a woman named Tamar, but "was wicked in the LORD's sight; so the LORD put him to death."  Judah told Onan that he needed to father children with Tamar, to "fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to produce offspring for your brother."  Onan lay with her but intentionally did not get her pregnant, "spill[ing] his semen on the ground...What he did was wicked in the LORD's sight; so he put him to death also."  Judah told Tamar to live as a widow in her father's house and that Shelah until Shelah grew up.

Some time later, after the death of Judah's wife, he traveled to Timnah to shear his sheep.  Tamar, hearing about this, put on a veil and went out to that part of the country, because, though Shelah was grown, he had not been given to her.  Judah, thinking her a prostitute, offered to pay a kid (goat) for sex.  As he didn't have the kid with him, he gave her his signet and staff as collateral.  When he later tried to pay, she, having dropped the veil and returned to her father's house, was not to be found.  No one knew anything about a prostitute having been there. 

Three months later, they came to Judah saying that his daughter-in-law Tamar was pregnant and, therefore, "guilty of prostitution."  He said that she must be burned.  She sent a message saying that she was pregnant by the man who had given her "these" and sent back the signet and staff.  He reacted that "she is more righteous than I, since I wouldn't give her to my son Shelah."  She later gave birth to twins, Perez and Zerah.

Genesis 39 returns to the story of Joseph, now living as a slave in Potiphar's house.  He is trusted by his master, as the LORD helps him and gives him success in all he does.  Potiphar's wife is attracted to him, and attempts to seduce him, but he refuses to violate his master's trust.  He flees the house, leaving his cloak behind.  When Potiphar returns, his wife presents the cloak as evidence in support of her story that Joseph tried "to make sport of" her.  Potiphar is furious and Joseph is thrown in to prison.  But even in prison, "the LORD was with him; he showed him kindness and granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden."  As in Potiphar's house, the LORD gave him success in all that he did.

Thoughts, questions, issues
• It says that Joseph was Israel's favorite because he was the child of his old age, but Benjamin was younger.  And there's no indication earlier that a) Jacob was (or was feeling) particularly old when Joseph was born, nor b) that there was any significant gap in age between Joseph and his older brothers.  What would seem a more likely source of favoritism is that Joseph was the first son born to Rachel, whom Jacob loved and chose to wife, rather than those wives imposed on him by circumstance.
• There are indicators that Joseph might have been a jerk as a young man.  "He brought their father a bad report about" his brothers.  He wore his lavish robe out to the fields.  He told them about his dreams of them bowing before him.  A favorite child can be one of the group or he can flaunt his status.  It sounds as if Joseph may well have done the latter.
• The story of Judah and Tamar predates any of the Levitical laws, and there has been no mention of brother's giving deceased brother wives children.  Is this a cultural imperative?  What is the source of the compulsion for Onan?
• The double standard is not new.  Judah bought Tamar, Tamar sold herself to Judah.  He thought that he'd done nothing wrong, and she deserved the death penalty.
• If Tamar was to be burned for presumably engaging in prostitution, how is it that proof that she had actually engaged in prostitution got her off the hook?  There are, presumable, class or caste distinctions, but [MSW] it's very hard for a layman to read this story and understand many of the motivations.
• The motivations in the story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife, on the other hand, are not that difficult for a modern man to follow.  She wants him.  He doesn't want to violate a trust.  She's scorned and furious.  Yeah, that one works.
• Tom Robinson = Joseph.  Mayella Ewell = Potiphar's wife.  (To Kill a Mockingbird)
• The key, I think to this story is that the LORD prospers Joseph.  Both as a slave and as a prisoner, he is guided/aided/supported, and everything he does succeeds.

Proverbs 11:16-31

This set of verses extols the virtues of kindness, generosity and discretion.

If there is some kind of overlying structure to this section of the book, I have not yet recognized it.  I do see a few verses in each set that are related to one another, but it's not at all clear to me that they're organized for that to be the case rather than just random.