I used to think I understood the famous passage where Jesus says, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's" (Matt. 22:15-22 | Mk 12:13-17 | Lk 20:19-26). Then I had to explain it to third graders.
As most of you know, Jesus' enemies sought to put him on the horns of a dilemma. By asking him, "Are we allowed to pay taxes to Caesar?" they thought he would have two choices. He could say, "No!" and promptly be arrested by the Herodians who had come along with the Pharisees for just this purpose. Or, he could say, "Yes, you must pay taxes to the hated, ungodly Roman government," and be understood by his people as a traitor. In their view, he would be not merely a traitor to his people, but to God, because any kingdom that sets itself up against God's anointed must be an enemy of God. How could one who hopes in Yahweh's promise ever think that there could be peace with the Romans?
This part is easy to understand. What is not so easy to understand is how Jesus got out of the dilemma.
The usual way of understanding this passage (which dates back to Justin Martyr, one of the very earliest church Fathers) is that when Jesus said, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesars," he meant, "Yes, you must pay taxes." But if this is the correct understanding of the passage, didn't Jesus do exactly what they were hoping he would do? Didn't he fall into their trap? Why did they walk away amazed?
For this reason, there is actually considerable confusion in the interpretation of this passage. Some (e.g., Marcus Borg) have said that Jesus' answer was really no answer at all--it was a deliberately confusing answer which confounded his opponents by its obscurity. Jesus, after all, never defined by "what belongs to Caesar" and "what belongs to God". The reason they went away amazed had nothing to do with Jesus' answer, but with a clever ad hominem argument that he made along the way (see below).
Similarly, some have argued that although Jesus never defined "what belongs to God," it ought to be obvious. Everything belongs to God--there is nothing left over for Caesar. Hence, some have taken this passage as justification for not paying taxes under some circumstances. (A carefully reasoned and nuanced discussion of this viewpoint, which also combines elements of the "Jesus wiggles out by being obscure" viewpoint as well, is here.) This sort of answer is particularly popular with pacifists who seek justification for not paying taxes that go toward the military machinery (just do a google search on "render to Caesar" to see what is out there).
So, if either of these is correct, why then did they walk away amazed? If Jesus answer was deliberately obscure, why wouldn't they just force him to clarify? And if Jesus' answer is that you need not pay taxes, why didn't they arrest him? One reason may have been Jesus' clever request for the coin. The coin itself was a Roman denarius, presumably with a picture of the then-current emperor Tiberius on it. And the inscription, when translated, reads, "Tiberius Caesar, worshipful son of the god Augustus." It is tantamount to a claim to divinity. Before Nero, the emperors did not make overt claims to divinity during their lifetimes, but as this coin shows, Augustus was deified when he died, and Tiberius is claiming some right of worship.
This coin, therefore, is brazenly against Jewish claims of the one true God, and deeply offensive to sincere Jews. Yet Jesus' questioners seem to have one handy, even right there in the temple, while Jesus has to ask for one. Some have therefore argued that Jesus' request to see the coin was basically a cheap debaters trick, essentially an ad hominem argument. It shows that his opponents are merely masquerading as champions of Jewish orthodoxy, but have no problem in practice collaborating with Rome. And they stupidly fell into his trap.
I find this a little unsatisfying. It is not the fact that this is basically an ad hominem argument that bothers me. In fact, the whole tenor of the discussion in the temple during the last week before the crucifixion is very personal and bitter, and Jesus takes his opponents' character to task in no uncertain terms. The issue really is character: are the Jewish leaders of that time worthy, or are they the sort of bad shepherds that God is about to remove? Hence, an ad hominem argument is in fact appropriate.
But is the ability to produce a Roman coin really so damning? We know that only the most extreme of the zealots refused to handle Roman money. Furthermore, the Herodians accompanied the Pharisees, and they would have no qualms about producing a denarius. No one had any doubt where their loyalties lay. The text does not say that it was the Pharisees who produced the idolatrous coin; if it was the Herodians, then the whole argument about the character of the leaders being revealed by their production of the coin falls flat on its face. Surely, if the gospel writers meant the argument to hinge on this sudden revelation of the cravenness of the Jewish leaders, they would have made it clear that it was some unsuspecting Pharisee who pulled it out of his pocket before he realized what he was doing. Nowhere else are they shy about pointing out the faults of the Pharisees.
Furthermore, the idea that Jesus is triumphing over his opponents by dodging the issue is unlikely in this literary context. Imagine the gospel writers, ardent admirers of Jesus, writing pro-Jesus propaganda, telling the story of when Jesus is asked a deep and important question. All eyes are focussed on him, and then he says, "Mumble mumble mumble." Here we see the great wise man, most skilled sage in all Israel, triumphantly dodging a dangerous question. It just seems out of character. The gospels are largely composed of short narratives (called "pericopes") with a short concluding word from Jesus that is the main point, and that short concluding word is always climactic and pithy, full of meaning. Hence, I think they were not astounded by his ability to evade the question, and thus these interpretations are misguided. We have to understand the episode of the coin differently.
So why does he ask to see the coin, instead of simply giving an answer? "Whose image and inscription are on it?" The natural way of reading this, and the traditional reading in the church, is that Caesar's picture and writing on it shows that it belongs to Caesar, and therefore taxes ought to be payed to Caesar. The image and inscription are a sign of ownership of the money, and therefore Caesar can do what he wants with it.
Now if all that Jesus wanted to do was to say you must pay your taxes, I think he would not make some dodgy, almost poetic argument about the picture on the coin. I mean, I have never in my life heard or read anyone saying that you must pay taxes in the U.S. because George Washington's picture is on our currency. Yes, I know that the fact that Caesar's image is on the coin shows that Caesar minted it, and therefore Caesar is in control of the money supply, and therefore Caesar has the right to control the economy, and so on. But if you really want to make that argument solid, you would not start with the picture on the coin. There are many other reasons for paying taxes; Paul and Peter discuss them in the epistles, and they do not use the argument from the picture on the coin. Neither does anyone else, in ancient literature or modern, as far as I know. After all, does Caesar's picture on the coin mean that we give to Caesar every coin in our pockets? Jesus must be leaving out big parts of the argument about taxes. He wants to direct our attention to something else more important than taxes, and he is using a not-entirely-logical argument about taxes to make a very logical argument about something else.
"Render to Caesar the things that are Caesars, and to God the things that are God's." If we know that the coin is Caesar's because his image and inscription are on it, then how do we know what is God's? Well, what has God's image and inscription? You do, of course, and so do I; so does everyone listening to Jesus. This understanding of the passage is at least as old as Tertullian. Contra the viewpoints expressed above, Jesus does define what belongs to God--that is the whole point of the question about the coin. "Render to God the things that are God's" is a call for those in the image of God to submit themselves to God.
(In this statement, Jesus also repudiates the emperor's claim to quasi-divine status. Worship is to be rendered to God, not the emperor. Jesus clearly does not accept the Roman propaganda on the coins, and no listener could possibly conclude that Jesus has abandoned Jewish monotheism, even if he does advocate paying Roman taxes with idolatrous Roman money. But this seems to be a side issue.)
Jesus' response, then, leads us away from money back to loyalty to God. This story is not primarily about taxes, and we miss the point entirely if we are looking only for an answer to that question. This is a typical move by Jesus: he takes a practical question, reformulates in in terms of love for God, and turns it back on the questioner, who is supposed to realize he was asking a trivial question when a more fundamental issue is at stake. Give to Caesar these worthless bits of metal he wants, and give the truly valuable things to God.
Remember that the Jews saw only two possible options in dealing with the Romans. You could be loyal to Judaism and to God's kingdom here on earth by opposing the Romans; or you could support the Romans and be a traitor to Judaism, to the covenant, and to God. What Jesus has done with this answer is to advocate a third option: you can pay taxes to Caesar and still be loyal to God. He never advocates disobedience to the Romans, but he unquestionably is devoted to God as well. This is consistent with the kind of kingdom Jesus has been advocating throughout his whole ministry (see my previous post), but decidedly inconsistent with the understanding of the kingdom that first century Jews shared. This is how he escapes being a traitor to God while still arguing for paying taxes.
It is not only his argument for a new kind of kingdom that saves Jesus from the dilemma they tried to force him onto. Jesus is now standing in the very temple which only few days earlier he had cleaned of sacrilegious buying and selling, sanctioned by other Jewish leaders who had most decidedly not been rendering to God what belonged to him. Furthermore, he had just accused all of the Jewish leaders, the Pharisees included, of not rendering to God the things that are God when he told the parable of the tenant farmers earlier that day. God wanted the fruit from his vineyard (Israel; see Isaiah 5), but these tenants refused to yield a reasonable rent to the landowner when asked, and in fact killed the landlord's son so that ownership of the fields would revert to the tenants (as prescribed by Jewish law). Everyone understood that he told this outrageous, shocking story about the Jewish leaders who refused to render to God the things that belonged to God--specifically, they were unwilling to give up Israel to her lord when he showed up, because they wanted it for themselves.
As with every other narrative in this section, Jesus has taken their accusatory question, and turned it into an accusation against his enemies. But as with the other encounters, he takes a dated, pedantic question, and turns it into a life-giving answer about the core of life. Jesus' response about Roman taxes in the first century still forces us to examine today whether we are rendering to God the things that are God's.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Sunday, March 20, 2011
How Jesus made everyone mad: inaugural address in Nazareth
How, within the space of a few minutes, did the opinion of the people of Nazareth about Jesus turn from apparent approval to murderous rage? Kenneth Bailey (in Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes, in a chapter called "The Inauguration of Jesus' ministry") discusses this question in a fresh way.
There are few extra-biblical references to Nazareth, but we do know that after the failed Bar Kochba revolt in AD 135, Nazareth had become one of the towns inhabited by the 24 courses of priests. This suggests that it was an overwhelmingly Jewish town, devoted to Jewish ideals--a priestly course would not have chosen it if it were a mixed Jewish-Gentile town. It appears that Nazareth was a town which had originally been settled as part of a plan to take over Galilee and turn it into Jewish territory, much like modern day Jewish settlers in debated areas in Israel. By settling in Galilee, they hoped to change it from Gentile territory to Jewish territory. (One theory for the origin of the name "Nazareth" is that it comes from a Hebrew word meaning "watch, guard, keep": such a name might be appropriate for an advance outpost in the war between Jewish and Gentile culture.)
For this reason, everyone in the town would have grown up with the Jewish hope of conquering the godless Gentiles and ultimately bringing in the glorious kingdom. This hope is expressed in many places, including Isaiah 61 (note particularly verses 7-11):
1The Spirit of Yahweh God is upon me,because Yahweh has anointed me2to bring good tidings to the poor;he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,3to proclaim liberty to the captives,and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;4to proclaim the year of Yahweh's favor,and the day of vengeance of our God;5to comfort all who mourn;to grant to those who mourn in Zion--to give them a garland instead of ashes,the oil of gladness instead of mourning,the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit;6that they may be called oaks of righteousness,the planting of Yahweh,that he may be glorified.7They shall build up the ancient ruins,they shall raise up the former devastations;they shall repair the ruined cities,the devastations of many generations.8Aliens shall stand and feed your flocks,foreigners shall be your plowmen and vinedressers;9but you shall be called the priests of Yahweh,men shall speak of you as the ministers of our God;10you shall eat the wealth of the Gentiles,and in their riches you shall glory.11Instead of shame you shall have a double portion,instead of dishonor you shall rejoice in your lot;therefore in your land you shall possess a double portion;yours shall be everlasting joy.
This sort of passage is the whole reason for existence of towns like Nazareth, and undoubtedly they knew it well. So when Jesus, a son of the town, comes to talk in their synagogue and begins reading this passage, they know what to expect: in their understanding, God will ultimately turn the tables and allow them to treat the Gentiles as slaves, or worse (they will do to the Gentiles what the Gentiles have done to them).
But much to their surprise, he stops reading in the middle of verse 4. Everyone knew that the next phrase was "the day of vengeance of our God," the day they are all hoping for, when God takes vengeance on their enemies. In the original passage, "the day of vengeance of our God" is parallel to "the year of Yahweh's favor", so where Jesus stopped is very unnatural: he deliberately broke the poetic parallelism of the passage. To those who know the passage well, it is as jarring as if someone were singing the Star Spangled Banner to a United States audience and stopped after "and the rockets' red glare" and didn't include "and the bombs bursting in air." Why did he stop here, just before he got to the good part about God killing lots of Gentiles and making the rest our menial servants?
He also makes several other minor changes, the most important of which is that he inserted a phrase from Isaiah 58: "to let the oppressed go free." (Synagogue readers were allowed to insert other passages or perform minor edits that were consistent with the sense of the passage. The reader would read in Hebrew, and someone translated into Aramaic. So after the reader read a phrase, he had a few seconds while the translation was occurring. The custom was that a reader was allowed to insert a passage from a nearby source, as long as the passage was near enough that he could turn the scroll to it without creating a delay.) Isaiah 58 is a passage calling people to show compassion to the oppressed; fasting and the sabbath are not so much markers of holiness and devotion to God, as a chance to show kindness to the homeless on the street, and the migrant farm workers (what Is. 61 says the Gentiles will become). You are wondering why God does not bless you, but you have not been a blessing to others, you have oppressed them.
The addition of this phrase, and stopping before "the day of vengeance of our God," makes this passage go against the hopes of a town like Nazareth. They naturally emphasized the promise of how they would be able to enslave or abuse their enemies; Jesus deliberately ignores the promise of the day of vengeance, and instead reminds them that God's blessing is for those "who let the oppressed go free," not those who wish to oppress.
Well, this certainly got everyone's attention. "He rolled up the scroll and handed it back to the attendant. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were on him." Suddenly no one was sleepy. He then says, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing," and goes on to preach some unrecorded words, apparently about God's mercy and grace to those whom they thought God had rejected, using as evidence the healings that he had done earlier in Capernaum. (Apparently these healings were unrecorded, or else Luke has reported things out of chronological sequence; either is possible.)
Since people of that day often considered sickness and infirmity as a punishment of sin, Jesus' healings were understood as offering forgiveness, and indeed at times Jesus explicitly makes this connection himself. But forgiveness to those who had violated the covenant is not the sort of thing that the Nazerenes wanted to hear: their whole religion was bound up in hopes of the messianic age being a golden age for them and a time of vengeance for everyone else, whether Gentile or traitor to the covenant. It would be somewhat like announcing in the middle of a anti-gay Christian political rally that God will heal the homosexual AIDS victims. In the minds of the most rabid partisans (who are unfortunately the most vocal), these people should not be healed. But God freely gives healing to the unworthy, whether we like it or not.
"And they all witnessed about him, and were amazed at the words of grace that came out of his mouth, and they said, 'Is this not Joseph's son?'" Here there is a translation question: "witnessed about him" in Greek is fundamentally ambiguous, and usually in English versions it is translated "spoke well of him", implying some sort of positive feeling toward him which later turned into murderous rage. But it could equally well be translated "murmured against him", which would not be surprising given how he just deliberately cut what they hoped for most out of one of their favorite passages. How dare he turn a message about our dominance into a message of God's grace to those we hate! This translation makes more sense of the passage: they were amazed and angry that he preached a message of grace.
"And they all witnessed about him, and were amazed at the words of grace that came out of his mouth, and they said, 'Is this not Joseph's son?'" Here there is a translation question: "witnessed about him" in Greek is fundamentally ambiguous, and usually in English versions it is translated "spoke well of him", implying some sort of positive feeling toward him which later turned into murderous rage. But it could equally well be translated "murmured against him", which would not be surprising given how he just deliberately cut what they hoped for most out of one of their favorite passages. How dare he turn a message about our dominance into a message of God's grace to those we hate! This translation makes more sense of the passage: they were amazed and angry that he preached a message of grace.
He then makes them even more angry by citing two examples of those hated Gentiles. The widow of Zaraphath is a Gentile woman, a Sidonian, from the same country as Jezebel, the evil queen of Elijah's time who did more than anyone else to destroy the worship of Yahweh in Israel. Nevertheless (and starkly contrasting to Jezebel) the Sidonian widow showed more faith than any widow in Israel by giving her very last meal to an Israelite prophet. Naaman the Syrian was a general from an oppressive foreign power (a power acting very much like their current enemy Rome), and God healed him. The implication is very clear: even in the Old Testament, God showed grace and mercy to those whom the first century Nazarenes hated and wanted to oppress if they could. God never has endorsed their hope.
They respond by rising up and trying to throw him over the cliff. This is not a random act of impulsive violence. Throwing someone off a cliff was the first part of the official punishment for blasphemy recorded in the Mishnah: if the person survives the fall, they were to rain heavy stones upon him until he died. They regard Jesus as a blasphemer because he has just trampled on their hope, and they regard that as blasphemy against God. This episode in Luke is a foreshadowing of what will happen to Jesus, and why. This time they didn't get him, but in three years they will.
Why does Jesus deliberately antagonize them in this way? Why doesn't he try to win them over first, and then slowly try to change the things that are wrong about their belief in God? If nothing else, this seems like a terrible strategic mistake in his ministry. He apparently never was able to go back to Nazareth, making his home in Capernaum.
Jesus' goal is to prepare his own people for the kingdom. Jesus consistently saw the real enemy as sinfulness within the people of God, not sinfulness of others outside. Instead of emphasizing the evil of the Romans and God's certain vengeance on them, Jesus instead called the Jews themselves to repent. (Jesus certainly did not think that what the Romans were doing was ok, by any means; after all, he calls them "evil", even here in the sermon on the mount. But he in his ministry did not attempt to call the Romans to repentance.) Anyone who calls an oppressed people to repent for their sins, instead of calling the oppressor to repent, is going to be unpopular. Imagine what would have happened if Martin Luther King Jr. stopped speaking against white oppression of blacks in the United States and instead called black people to repent for the things they had done wrong, or if Bishop Desmond Tutu had done the same thing in South Africa. (See Kenneth Bailey's book, cited above, for further discussion on this.)
It is not just that Jesus called the oppressed Jews to repent. He called them to repent of wanting vengeance on their enemies. He does this here, and perhaps more explicitly in the sermon on the mount (see my earlier blog post on this).
The sinful attitudes of racism and Jewish superiority had become central to the first century Jewish identity and world view. Jesus knew his people could never be the true kingdom of God unless they repented of those attitudes, and so he consistently spoke against them every chance he had. When an attitude forms the core of our identity, any attack will necessarily produce anger. It is not possible to convince someone to change everything they think about the world and themselves without stirring up deep emotions, so any attempt to get on their good side first before talking about these issues would be doomed to fail anyway. Furthermore, my experience has been that it is simply impossible for me even to understand that someone wants me to change such a deep-held belief unless they confront it openly and forcefully. Otherwise, since it is part of the lens through which I view the world, I will not even understand that they are saying it is wrong. For these reasons, I think, Jesus did not bother to be subtle about it. It was more important, and probably more effective in the long run, for him to anger them--at least then they understood what he stood for, and what he was talking about.
Why does Jesus deliberately antagonize them in this way? Why doesn't he try to win them over first, and then slowly try to change the things that are wrong about their belief in God? If nothing else, this seems like a terrible strategic mistake in his ministry. He apparently never was able to go back to Nazareth, making his home in Capernaum.
Jesus' goal is to prepare his own people for the kingdom. Jesus consistently saw the real enemy as sinfulness within the people of God, not sinfulness of others outside. Instead of emphasizing the evil of the Romans and God's certain vengeance on them, Jesus instead called the Jews themselves to repent. (Jesus certainly did not think that what the Romans were doing was ok, by any means; after all, he calls them "evil", even here in the sermon on the mount. But he in his ministry did not attempt to call the Romans to repentance.) Anyone who calls an oppressed people to repent for their sins, instead of calling the oppressor to repent, is going to be unpopular. Imagine what would have happened if Martin Luther King Jr. stopped speaking against white oppression of blacks in the United States and instead called black people to repent for the things they had done wrong, or if Bishop Desmond Tutu had done the same thing in South Africa. (See Kenneth Bailey's book, cited above, for further discussion on this.)
It is not just that Jesus called the oppressed Jews to repent. He called them to repent of wanting vengeance on their enemies. He does this here, and perhaps more explicitly in the sermon on the mount (see my earlier blog post on this).
The sinful attitudes of racism and Jewish superiority had become central to the first century Jewish identity and world view. Jesus knew his people could never be the true kingdom of God unless they repented of those attitudes, and so he consistently spoke against them every chance he had. When an attitude forms the core of our identity, any attack will necessarily produce anger. It is not possible to convince someone to change everything they think about the world and themselves without stirring up deep emotions, so any attempt to get on their good side first before talking about these issues would be doomed to fail anyway. Furthermore, my experience has been that it is simply impossible for me even to understand that someone wants me to change such a deep-held belief unless they confront it openly and forcefully. Otherwise, since it is part of the lens through which I view the world, I will not even understand that they are saying it is wrong. For these reasons, I think, Jesus did not bother to be subtle about it. It was more important, and probably more effective in the long run, for him to anger them--at least then they understood what he stood for, and what he was talking about.
The wedding theme in the gospel of John
The ideal marriage gives a new, richer life brimming over with joy. John uses this as a metaphor for eternal life, the new kind of life that comes through relationship with Jesus. I think this metaphor is much more tightly woven into the tapestry of the gospel of John than most people have realized. This attempts to lay out some of the connections. Probably not everyone will agree with everything in here.
The first place where the wedding theme crops up is in John 2, when Jesus is invited to a wedding. The wine has run out. It was the responsibility of the groom to provide the wine (we know this from external evidence, and also from 2:10). Providing the wine was a large responsibility, because a wedding feast could go on for days and involve the whole town. His mother, who is probably there in some semi-official capacity, perhaps because she is a relation, asks him to help solve the problem. It is not clear from the text exactly what she was expecting, but I think it is unlikely that she was asking him to perform a miracle (though many interpreters have thought she was). More likely, she was assuming he would go somewhere to fetch more wine and would need the servants' help to bring it back.
What is particularly interesting is Jesus reply to her: "My hour is not yet come." If it were not for the use of that phrase in the rest of the gospel of John (see below on this), we would probably assume that he was saying, "This isn't my wedding--it's not my time to provide the wine." It is the bridegroom whose hour has come. Despite this, however, he does provide the wine, of surpassingly good quality. What are we to make of this?
The point of the story is not just that he performed a miracle. Note that the miraculous nature of it is de-emphasized--the miracle is buried in a dependent clause in 2:9, and apparently it is not at all dramatic; it reveals Jesus' glory only through later reflection. John calls it a "sign", and signs in the gospel of John are never merely demonstrations of power. In every case, they point to something beyond the act itself, and the kind of power exerted reveals something about who Jesus is. (For example, he makes physical bread and then says, "I am the bread of life"--the miraculous physical bread is intended to be a picture of the spiritual bread that he is always giving.) Here, I think that the sign is that by providing the wine, he is acting in the role of the bridegroom. Jesus is the true bridegroom, the one who will provide the best possible wine and the most satisfying relationship. This is how he reveals his glory.
In case the allusions in the story of the wedding at Cana are too subtle and a reader misses it, in 3:29 John tells us flat out that Jesus is the bridegroom of the people of Israel. (Note that this happens in the context of a discussion about water for baptism and purification, probably intended as a link to the water for purification that Jesus turned into wine.) In the Old Testament, Yahweh himself is the husband of his people (Is. 49-50, 54, various other passages; Jer. 2; Ezek. 16; Hos. 1-3). The relationship went tragically wrong through Israel's infidelity, and Yahweh distanced himself. But those same prophets promised a time when he would no longer be distant. For over six hundred years the faithful among his people waited. Then Jesus walked on the earth, and the people flocked to him. 3:29 explains this as the bride following the bridegroom. Finally the time has come.
The image of the bridegroom takes an unexpected twist, however, in the next chapter. An important Old Testament image, deeply ingrained into Jewish thinking, is the picture of a man meeting his future wife at a well in the heat of the day and drawing water. Abraham's servant meets Rebecca; Jacob meets Rachel; Moses meets Zipporah. This boy-meets-girl-at-well picture probably had a strong grasp on the imagination because water from a well in an arid land is like the refreshment that the marriage relationship brings. (See Prov. 5:15-20 as an example of this imagery.) Like these Old Testament characters, Jesus also meets a woman at a well at noon, and as in those stories, there is an exchange of water. Primed by this Old Testament motif, and by John's statements about the bridegroom in the previous chapter, we are thinking of a marriage. But the woman here is a shockingly unsuitable bride for a Jewish rabbi: she is a Samaritan, married five times, living currently in adultery. And that is the point: the bride of Christ, the bride of Yahweh, will consist not only of the people who were thought to be suitable, but all the people who come. Jesus offers her living water (probably the same symbolic idea as the better wine at the wedding of Cana), which is what she has really been seeking all along through her failed attempts at marriage relationships. Just like the people of Israel who John says are flocking to the bridegroom (3:26), all the Samaritans came out to him (4:30). He is happy to stay with the Samaritans (4:40) as he did with his disciples after the earlier wedding (2:12). The story concludes with the Samaritans saying that Jesus truly is the savior of the world (not just Israel).
The picture of the wedding is probably also behind Jesus' words in John 14, "I go to prepare a place for you. In my Father's house are many rooms.... and I will come again to take you back to myself." A young man would often add an additional room on to his father's house when he was about to be married, and only when the place was prepared would he come and get his bride. The upper room discourse goes on to talk about how the disciples will bear fruit only so long as they remain in relationship with him--probably an allusion to fruitfulness in marriage, an idea that Paul uses more explicitly in Romans 7.
The wedding and the hour
Later that night, Jesus prays, "Father, the hour has come! Glorify your son, that your son may glorify you." (John 17:1) These words echo key phrases from the story of the wedding at Cana (2:4 and 2:11). Given how carefully the gospel of John is constructed, this is unlikely to be a coincidence. Everywhere else in the gospel of John, "the hour" refers unambiguously to his death; why does he use that phrase in talking to his mother at the wedding?
Jesus left his Father to become one with his bride, as it says in Genesis, "A man shall leave his father and mother, and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh." A man starts out as one flesh with his parents, and becomes one flesh with his wife. This is what he is praying for in chapter 17: that he and his disciples may be one, as he and the father are one. His "hour" is the time when the union with his people is accomplished. It is both his wedding (which ch. 2 suggests) and his death, because his death accomplishes the union.
It seems rather grisly to connect the crucifixion to a marriage, but I think that is precisely what John is doing with a number of ironic symbols. He says, "I am thirsty," just as he said to the Samaritan woman. He drinks sour wine, not the good wine that he provided at the wedding. He is wearing a crown, which the bridegroom would do at a Jewish wedding--but it is not a garland, it is a crown of thorns.
At his death, blood and water flow out of his side. Commentators stumble over what to do with this emphatic assertion; sometimes it is taken to mean that he clearly died, a form of medical evidence. (Though it is by no means clear--just what precisely does it mean that the blood had separated into two parts? And would most readers in the first century have understood that?) But it would be out of character for John, in his highly symbolic and theological gospel, at the very high point of the narrative, to suddenly forsake his theological mind and emphasize purely medical facts. The medical facts are there, perhaps, but are unlikely to exhaust the significance.
I think the blood and water flowing out of his side is a symbolic, pictorial fulfillment of the better wine and the living water that Jesus promised. The argument here is a bit technical, so bear with me or just skip ahead. I think we are supposed to link together most of the references to water, wine, and blood in the gospel of John; the author is careful about his symbolic references, and is not throwing out symbols willy-nilly. These all refer to the new quality of life that comes through relationship with him--more specifically, through the Spirit that he gives, as 7:37 makes clear. There is an interesting translation issue in 7:37, having to do with where punctuation is placed in the sentence (there was no punctuation at all in the original manuscripts, so where punctuation is placed is a translator's decision). Most English translations of 7:37 follow the eastern fathers: "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the scripture has said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water." Here the water flows from the believers. But by changing the location of the period, we have the western Fathers' understanding of the verse: "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me. And whoever believes in me, let him drink. As the scripture has said, 'Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.'" In this case, water flows from Jesus, which I think is a much more natural way of understanding the passage. 7:38 clarifies that this water is referring to the Spirit that was going to come when Jesus was glorified--which in John's gospel happens on the cross, the ultimate glorification of Jesus. Only with this interpretation of 7:37 is John's emphatic insistence on the water that flowed from Jesus' side understandable (19:35--he repeats it three times). It is a physical sign of the spiritual reality that because of his death, the Spirit is now available to believers. This is the time, at least in a picture, when he provides the better wine that he promised back at the wedding of Cana, and the living water that he promised to the Samaritan woman.
In our lives, marriage is the only thing that can change a person's family after he is born. John makes it clear in several places that after the cross, the disciples are part of Jesus' family in a way that they were not before. Interestingly, Jesus mother appears in only two places in the gospel: at the wedding, and at the cross. In both places, he addresses her with the same title ("Woman", a not-entirely-common way of talking to a mother, something which commentators stumble over). At the cross, he makes a point of bringing the disciple Jesus loved (despite all the arguments over this, I still think this is John himself) and his mother together into the same family. Perhaps the most common view of Jesus' words here is that they show the extent of Jesus' love: even in his extremity, he could still think about his mother's well-being. This may be true, but I am fairly certain it does not exhaust the meaning. John is primarily thinking theologically rather than psychologically. I think what we are supposed to gather from this is that the disciple whom Jesus loves is now part of his family--just as the woman a man loves becomes a part of his family. John uses this concrete picture of changed family relations to show what is happening spiritually.
There is probably another allusion to marriage in the scene with Mary Magdalene in the garden. Once again, a garden scene with a man and a woman is a rich picture for a Jewish audience, with overtones of the original garden. Mary goes so far as to grab him and hug him (20:17), definitely overstepping the bounds of propriety. This does not mean that they had some kind of physical relationship, contra the silly speculations that have recently become popular; but the text really does have hints of something romantic. I think that John is using the suggestive image to point out that Jesus and Mary now have a kind of relationship which in some ways is a marriage (though not a physical marriage), a relationship which they did not have before the cross. In the next verse, he calls his disciples "my brothers" and he calls God "your father"; never before had he done either of these in the gospel of John. It is only after the cross that they are his brothers, and they have a common father in this sense--they have been brought into Jesus' family.
Finally, the gospel concludes with Jesus asking Peter if he loves him. This is the only suitable attitude if we are the bride of Christ.
The first place where the wedding theme crops up is in John 2, when Jesus is invited to a wedding. The wine has run out. It was the responsibility of the groom to provide the wine (we know this from external evidence, and also from 2:10). Providing the wine was a large responsibility, because a wedding feast could go on for days and involve the whole town. His mother, who is probably there in some semi-official capacity, perhaps because she is a relation, asks him to help solve the problem. It is not clear from the text exactly what she was expecting, but I think it is unlikely that she was asking him to perform a miracle (though many interpreters have thought she was). More likely, she was assuming he would go somewhere to fetch more wine and would need the servants' help to bring it back.
What is particularly interesting is Jesus reply to her: "My hour is not yet come." If it were not for the use of that phrase in the rest of the gospel of John (see below on this), we would probably assume that he was saying, "This isn't my wedding--it's not my time to provide the wine." It is the bridegroom whose hour has come. Despite this, however, he does provide the wine, of surpassingly good quality. What are we to make of this?
The point of the story is not just that he performed a miracle. Note that the miraculous nature of it is de-emphasized--the miracle is buried in a dependent clause in 2:9, and apparently it is not at all dramatic; it reveals Jesus' glory only through later reflection. John calls it a "sign", and signs in the gospel of John are never merely demonstrations of power. In every case, they point to something beyond the act itself, and the kind of power exerted reveals something about who Jesus is. (For example, he makes physical bread and then says, "I am the bread of life"--the miraculous physical bread is intended to be a picture of the spiritual bread that he is always giving.) Here, I think that the sign is that by providing the wine, he is acting in the role of the bridegroom. Jesus is the true bridegroom, the one who will provide the best possible wine and the most satisfying relationship. This is how he reveals his glory.
In case the allusions in the story of the wedding at Cana are too subtle and a reader misses it, in 3:29 John tells us flat out that Jesus is the bridegroom of the people of Israel. (Note that this happens in the context of a discussion about water for baptism and purification, probably intended as a link to the water for purification that Jesus turned into wine.) In the Old Testament, Yahweh himself is the husband of his people (Is. 49-50, 54, various other passages; Jer. 2; Ezek. 16; Hos. 1-3). The relationship went tragically wrong through Israel's infidelity, and Yahweh distanced himself. But those same prophets promised a time when he would no longer be distant. For over six hundred years the faithful among his people waited. Then Jesus walked on the earth, and the people flocked to him. 3:29 explains this as the bride following the bridegroom. Finally the time has come.
The image of the bridegroom takes an unexpected twist, however, in the next chapter. An important Old Testament image, deeply ingrained into Jewish thinking, is the picture of a man meeting his future wife at a well in the heat of the day and drawing water. Abraham's servant meets Rebecca; Jacob meets Rachel; Moses meets Zipporah. This boy-meets-girl-at-well picture probably had a strong grasp on the imagination because water from a well in an arid land is like the refreshment that the marriage relationship brings. (See Prov. 5:15-20 as an example of this imagery.) Like these Old Testament characters, Jesus also meets a woman at a well at noon, and as in those stories, there is an exchange of water. Primed by this Old Testament motif, and by John's statements about the bridegroom in the previous chapter, we are thinking of a marriage. But the woman here is a shockingly unsuitable bride for a Jewish rabbi: she is a Samaritan, married five times, living currently in adultery. And that is the point: the bride of Christ, the bride of Yahweh, will consist not only of the people who were thought to be suitable, but all the people who come. Jesus offers her living water (probably the same symbolic idea as the better wine at the wedding of Cana), which is what she has really been seeking all along through her failed attempts at marriage relationships. Just like the people of Israel who John says are flocking to the bridegroom (3:26), all the Samaritans came out to him (4:30). He is happy to stay with the Samaritans (4:40) as he did with his disciples after the earlier wedding (2:12). The story concludes with the Samaritans saying that Jesus truly is the savior of the world (not just Israel).
The picture of the wedding is probably also behind Jesus' words in John 14, "I go to prepare a place for you. In my Father's house are many rooms.... and I will come again to take you back to myself." A young man would often add an additional room on to his father's house when he was about to be married, and only when the place was prepared would he come and get his bride. The upper room discourse goes on to talk about how the disciples will bear fruit only so long as they remain in relationship with him--probably an allusion to fruitfulness in marriage, an idea that Paul uses more explicitly in Romans 7.
The wedding and the hour
Later that night, Jesus prays, "Father, the hour has come! Glorify your son, that your son may glorify you." (John 17:1) These words echo key phrases from the story of the wedding at Cana (2:4 and 2:11). Given how carefully the gospel of John is constructed, this is unlikely to be a coincidence. Everywhere else in the gospel of John, "the hour" refers unambiguously to his death; why does he use that phrase in talking to his mother at the wedding?
Jesus left his Father to become one with his bride, as it says in Genesis, "A man shall leave his father and mother, and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh." A man starts out as one flesh with his parents, and becomes one flesh with his wife. This is what he is praying for in chapter 17: that he and his disciples may be one, as he and the father are one. His "hour" is the time when the union with his people is accomplished. It is both his wedding (which ch. 2 suggests) and his death, because his death accomplishes the union.
It seems rather grisly to connect the crucifixion to a marriage, but I think that is precisely what John is doing with a number of ironic symbols. He says, "I am thirsty," just as he said to the Samaritan woman. He drinks sour wine, not the good wine that he provided at the wedding. He is wearing a crown, which the bridegroom would do at a Jewish wedding--but it is not a garland, it is a crown of thorns.
At his death, blood and water flow out of his side. Commentators stumble over what to do with this emphatic assertion; sometimes it is taken to mean that he clearly died, a form of medical evidence. (Though it is by no means clear--just what precisely does it mean that the blood had separated into two parts? And would most readers in the first century have understood that?) But it would be out of character for John, in his highly symbolic and theological gospel, at the very high point of the narrative, to suddenly forsake his theological mind and emphasize purely medical facts. The medical facts are there, perhaps, but are unlikely to exhaust the significance.
I think the blood and water flowing out of his side is a symbolic, pictorial fulfillment of the better wine and the living water that Jesus promised. The argument here is a bit technical, so bear with me or just skip ahead. I think we are supposed to link together most of the references to water, wine, and blood in the gospel of John; the author is careful about his symbolic references, and is not throwing out symbols willy-nilly. These all refer to the new quality of life that comes through relationship with him--more specifically, through the Spirit that he gives, as 7:37 makes clear. There is an interesting translation issue in 7:37, having to do with where punctuation is placed in the sentence (there was no punctuation at all in the original manuscripts, so where punctuation is placed is a translator's decision). Most English translations of 7:37 follow the eastern fathers: "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the scripture has said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water." Here the water flows from the believers. But by changing the location of the period, we have the western Fathers' understanding of the verse: "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me. And whoever believes in me, let him drink. As the scripture has said, 'Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.'" In this case, water flows from Jesus, which I think is a much more natural way of understanding the passage. 7:38 clarifies that this water is referring to the Spirit that was going to come when Jesus was glorified--which in John's gospel happens on the cross, the ultimate glorification of Jesus. Only with this interpretation of 7:37 is John's emphatic insistence on the water that flowed from Jesus' side understandable (19:35--he repeats it three times). It is a physical sign of the spiritual reality that because of his death, the Spirit is now available to believers. This is the time, at least in a picture, when he provides the better wine that he promised back at the wedding of Cana, and the living water that he promised to the Samaritan woman.
In our lives, marriage is the only thing that can change a person's family after he is born. John makes it clear in several places that after the cross, the disciples are part of Jesus' family in a way that they were not before. Interestingly, Jesus mother appears in only two places in the gospel: at the wedding, and at the cross. In both places, he addresses her with the same title ("Woman", a not-entirely-common way of talking to a mother, something which commentators stumble over). At the cross, he makes a point of bringing the disciple Jesus loved (despite all the arguments over this, I still think this is John himself) and his mother together into the same family. Perhaps the most common view of Jesus' words here is that they show the extent of Jesus' love: even in his extremity, he could still think about his mother's well-being. This may be true, but I am fairly certain it does not exhaust the meaning. John is primarily thinking theologically rather than psychologically. I think what we are supposed to gather from this is that the disciple whom Jesus loves is now part of his family--just as the woman a man loves becomes a part of his family. John uses this concrete picture of changed family relations to show what is happening spiritually.
There is probably another allusion to marriage in the scene with Mary Magdalene in the garden. Once again, a garden scene with a man and a woman is a rich picture for a Jewish audience, with overtones of the original garden. Mary goes so far as to grab him and hug him (20:17), definitely overstepping the bounds of propriety. This does not mean that they had some kind of physical relationship, contra the silly speculations that have recently become popular; but the text really does have hints of something romantic. I think that John is using the suggestive image to point out that Jesus and Mary now have a kind of relationship which in some ways is a marriage (though not a physical marriage), a relationship which they did not have before the cross. In the next verse, he calls his disciples "my brothers" and he calls God "your father"; never before had he done either of these in the gospel of John. It is only after the cross that they are his brothers, and they have a common father in this sense--they have been brought into Jesus' family.
Finally, the gospel concludes with Jesus asking Peter if he loves him. This is the only suitable attitude if we are the bride of Christ.
Monday, September 6, 2010
How Jesus made everyone mad: first century politics and the sermon on the mount
What Jesus' first hearers probably most remembered from the sermon on the mount was Jesus' unambiguous repudiation of the political ideals of virtually all of his contemporaries. His references to first century politics probably provoked the same sort of emotional responses as Vietnam war protesters caused in conservative Americans.
Politics, theology, and moral issues have always been tightly intertwined in the middle east, and political opinions were determined by theology. Most of us are aware that Jews of that day believed that God would achieve his purposes by reestablishing a kingdom very much like David's. Most of the first century Jews probably thought that this had almost happened with the Maccabees in the second century BC. After the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV attempted to exterminate the Israelite religion, there was a revolt in which the Jews repeatedly defeated apparently superior Greek forces, and eventually created an independent kingdom and restored worship in the temple. However, within a generation or two, it became clear that the Hasmonean rulers (the successors of the Maccabees) were not reestablishing God's kingdom, despite God's evident blessing on the Maccabees' military operations; they were just as corrupt as any non-Jewish rulers. (Besides, they never even pretended to be from the line of David.) A century after the creation of the Jewish state, it was ended when the Roman general Pompey intervened in a Jewish civil war between the Saducees and the Pharisees (each favored a different Hasmonean brother; the Pharisees were fighting against blatant Hasmonean corruption).
But of course the dream of the kingdom lived on, because God's promises could not be false. If the Maccabees were not God's kingdom builders, then someone like them would come and do the job right. In first century Judaism in Palestine, you could either (1) compromise with the Romans and abandon the Jewish hope of the kingdom, or (2) you could live in expectation of the time when God would call his people to fight against the Romans. Option 1 (abandoning the kingdom) was chosen by those Jews who abandoned the covenant entirely (some even tried to remove the marks of circumcision). Others like Herod and his followers did not go so far as to embrace paganism fully, but lived as if God had no plan that had any bearing on the present. Others perverted the Jewish hope into something more acceptable to the pagan world; for example, the renegade Jew Josephus in his later years argued that God had decided that his kingdom would be brought about through Roman rule. All of these were considered traitors to the people and the covenant. Option 2 (living in expectation of the kingdom) also had many variations (Essenes, Pharisees, hard-core Zealots); there was much disagreement about how the kingdom would come and who would lead it, but there was no disagreement that the eventual solution would be military. Some of these groups were already preparing for war, while others were just praying and waiting expectantly. At that point in history, there was no third option--until Jesus.
The sermon on the mount is Jesus' kingdom agenda, where he announces in systematic form what his plan for the kingdom is. Jesus gives the sermon "on the mountain", which is a clear reference to Moses receiving the law on the mountain. What we have here is a new giving of the law. The old law started with the "ten words", which are nine commandments; there are nine statements of blessing in the sermon on the mount. (Why nine, you may ask, when everyone always is talking about 10 commandments? In Hebrew, the decalogue is never called the "ten commandments", it is called the "ten words". It is really one introductory word--"I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt"--and 9 commandments. Christians have misunderstood this, and attempted to divide them so that there are 10 commandments; but we don't even agree on the divisions. Catholics and some Lutherans treat "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife" (Deut. 5:21a) as a different commandment from "You shall not covet your neighbor's house, or field, or ..." (Deut. 5:21b), which feels like an arbitrary distinction. Also it is not supported by the text; the account in Exodus 20 does not permit this division since the order of things we are not to covet is different. Non-catholics treat "You shall have no other gods before me" as a separate commandment from "You shall not make for yourself an idol," which in the ancient world would have been indistinguishable.) Jesus says, "You have heard that it was said to them of old... but I say to you...". The old law concluded with blessings and curses (Deuteronomy 27-28); the new law also concludes with blessings and curses (7:24-27). At the end, the people are amazed because Jesus speaks as one with authority, unlike the other Jewish teachers of his day (7:28-29), who were always citing earlier sages, trying to be faithful to the oral tradition which they believed came from Moses. Jesus does not respect the oral tradition (and in fact in other places in the gospels he plainly says that pieces of it are wrong); he is the new lawgiver, and does not need to appeal to Moses' authority filtered down through the stream of tradition.
In the rest of the sermon, Jesus emphatically affirms the Jewish hope in the promises to Abraham, but just as emphatically he rejects the plan of the Zealots, too. Using the words of Psalm 37:11, Jesus reaffirms God's promise to give the land to his people--but not to the Zealots who were fighting for it: "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." (Note that in the New Testament, the "land" has turned into the whole earth--see for example Romans 4:13. This is not inconsistent with the Old Testament, since the giving of the land and Israel's authority over the nations was understood even then as a beginning of the restoration of the entire creation, which is to be ruled by a descendant of Adam who would faithfully carry out the commission to Adam to rule.) Jesus reaffirms God's mercy on the Jews--but not on those whose ambition was to kill the Romans: "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." Jesus reaffirms God's special relationship with Israel ("Israel is my firstborn son," Exodus 4:22-23; speaking of Israel's king, he says, "I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son," 2 Samuel 7:14)--but not with those who are for waging war against the Romans: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God." This is again in line with Old Testament teaching. In discussing the promise of sonship for David's descendants, 1 Chronicles 22:8-10 says that David was not allowed to build the temple because he was a man of blood, but his son Solomon, whose name means "man of peace", would build it.
Other parts of the sermon touch on the same theme. "Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.... And if anyone forces you to go with him one mile, go with him two miles." This is a clear reference to the Roman rule that soldiers could compel natives to help them carry their pack (which could weigh 70 lbs) for one mile. "Judge not, that you be not judged." "Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun to shine on the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust." This does not sound like what the heroic Maccabees did, or what most Jews in the first century were hoping to do. Jesus has a different conception of God than they had. He tells us that we can infer from God's actions that God must be patient and kind to his enemies, so we ought to be the same way. No one else before him seems to have drawn this conclusion from God's behavior, though it is hinted by some Old Testament passages such as the book of Jonah.
Jesus demanded that they choose between his concept of the kingdom, and theirs; and they did choose. They chose the way of the insurrectionist Barabbas rather than Jesus' way. So, ironically, they worked together with the evil Roman oppressors to eliminate him. They were hoping that crucifying him would completely discredit him as Messiah (that's why they did not just lynch him, as they did to Stephen).
What was ultimately discredited, however, was the first century Jewish concept of the kingdom. Within forty years of Jesus' death, God confirmed Jesus' judgment of the Jewish revolutionary movements, when the Romans crushed the Jewish revolution by A.D. 70. Even if you did not believe Jesus, you could not possibly argue that God supported the revolutionary movement which had ended in such a fiasco. Still the Jews clung to the hope of a physical kingdom that dominated the Gentiles, so God apparently showed the same thing again, more emphatically, in A.D. 135. In A.D. 132, Simon bar Kokhba led a full scale revolt, triggered by Emperor Hadrian's plans to rebuild Jerusalem as a Roman (pagan) city. It took the Romans 3 years of very difficult fighting, but they eventually crushed the Jews even more brutally than in A.D. 70. The majority of the Jewish population in Judea was killed, enslaved, or deported. Hadrian prohibited the Torah and the calendar and attempted to execute Jewish scholars, and Jews were not permitted even to enter Jerusalem until 438 AD. He changed the name of the province from "Judea" to "Palestine" (Latin for "Philistia", after the Philistines, the ancient enemies of the Jews). The center of Jewish learning and culture was no longer in Judea; it was in Galilee for a while, and, ironically, it later shifted back to Babylon, where there was still a thriving Jewish community. Given the history of the covenant, it was hard not to see the destruction of the temple and the ejection from the land as a second exile, caused by the revolutionaries. Thus until modern Zionism, Judaism abandoned the concept of literal possession of the land, and turned instead to other markers of the covenant (keeping the law).
Jesus said as the conclusion to the sermon on the mount, "Everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them is like a foolish man who built his house upon the sand. The rain fell, the flood came, and the winds beat against that house, and it collapsed; it was utterly destroyed." They attempted to build a kingdom on something other than Jesus' words, and so the house they were trying to build did come down with a great crash.
So what exactly was wrong with the first century Jewish view of the kingdom? Wasn't it written in the scriptures that the Jews were to have the land, and to dominate the nations? What could be wrong with wanting that to be fulfilled? Isn't that exactly what Joshua did in the conquest? And why does Jesus choose to antagonize his hearers by speaking so directly about this? I hope to deal with these questions in a subsequent post.
Politics, theology, and moral issues have always been tightly intertwined in the middle east, and political opinions were determined by theology. Most of us are aware that Jews of that day believed that God would achieve his purposes by reestablishing a kingdom very much like David's. Most of the first century Jews probably thought that this had almost happened with the Maccabees in the second century BC. After the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV attempted to exterminate the Israelite religion, there was a revolt in which the Jews repeatedly defeated apparently superior Greek forces, and eventually created an independent kingdom and restored worship in the temple. However, within a generation or two, it became clear that the Hasmonean rulers (the successors of the Maccabees) were not reestablishing God's kingdom, despite God's evident blessing on the Maccabees' military operations; they were just as corrupt as any non-Jewish rulers. (Besides, they never even pretended to be from the line of David.) A century after the creation of the Jewish state, it was ended when the Roman general Pompey intervened in a Jewish civil war between the Saducees and the Pharisees (each favored a different Hasmonean brother; the Pharisees were fighting against blatant Hasmonean corruption).
But of course the dream of the kingdom lived on, because God's promises could not be false. If the Maccabees were not God's kingdom builders, then someone like them would come and do the job right. In first century Judaism in Palestine, you could either (1) compromise with the Romans and abandon the Jewish hope of the kingdom, or (2) you could live in expectation of the time when God would call his people to fight against the Romans. Option 1 (abandoning the kingdom) was chosen by those Jews who abandoned the covenant entirely (some even tried to remove the marks of circumcision). Others like Herod and his followers did not go so far as to embrace paganism fully, but lived as if God had no plan that had any bearing on the present. Others perverted the Jewish hope into something more acceptable to the pagan world; for example, the renegade Jew Josephus in his later years argued that God had decided that his kingdom would be brought about through Roman rule. All of these were considered traitors to the people and the covenant. Option 2 (living in expectation of the kingdom) also had many variations (Essenes, Pharisees, hard-core Zealots); there was much disagreement about how the kingdom would come and who would lead it, but there was no disagreement that the eventual solution would be military. Some of these groups were already preparing for war, while others were just praying and waiting expectantly. At that point in history, there was no third option--until Jesus.
The sermon on the mount is Jesus' kingdom agenda, where he announces in systematic form what his plan for the kingdom is. Jesus gives the sermon "on the mountain", which is a clear reference to Moses receiving the law on the mountain. What we have here is a new giving of the law. The old law started with the "ten words", which are nine commandments; there are nine statements of blessing in the sermon on the mount. (Why nine, you may ask, when everyone always is talking about 10 commandments? In Hebrew, the decalogue is never called the "ten commandments", it is called the "ten words". It is really one introductory word--"I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt"--and 9 commandments. Christians have misunderstood this, and attempted to divide them so that there are 10 commandments; but we don't even agree on the divisions. Catholics and some Lutherans treat "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife" (Deut. 5:21a) as a different commandment from "You shall not covet your neighbor's house, or field, or ..." (Deut. 5:21b), which feels like an arbitrary distinction. Also it is not supported by the text; the account in Exodus 20 does not permit this division since the order of things we are not to covet is different. Non-catholics treat "You shall have no other gods before me" as a separate commandment from "You shall not make for yourself an idol," which in the ancient world would have been indistinguishable.) Jesus says, "You have heard that it was said to them of old... but I say to you...". The old law concluded with blessings and curses (Deuteronomy 27-28); the new law also concludes with blessings and curses (7:24-27). At the end, the people are amazed because Jesus speaks as one with authority, unlike the other Jewish teachers of his day (7:28-29), who were always citing earlier sages, trying to be faithful to the oral tradition which they believed came from Moses. Jesus does not respect the oral tradition (and in fact in other places in the gospels he plainly says that pieces of it are wrong); he is the new lawgiver, and does not need to appeal to Moses' authority filtered down through the stream of tradition.
In the rest of the sermon, Jesus emphatically affirms the Jewish hope in the promises to Abraham, but just as emphatically he rejects the plan of the Zealots, too. Using the words of Psalm 37:11, Jesus reaffirms God's promise to give the land to his people--but not to the Zealots who were fighting for it: "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." (Note that in the New Testament, the "land" has turned into the whole earth--see for example Romans 4:13. This is not inconsistent with the Old Testament, since the giving of the land and Israel's authority over the nations was understood even then as a beginning of the restoration of the entire creation, which is to be ruled by a descendant of Adam who would faithfully carry out the commission to Adam to rule.) Jesus reaffirms God's mercy on the Jews--but not on those whose ambition was to kill the Romans: "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." Jesus reaffirms God's special relationship with Israel ("Israel is my firstborn son," Exodus 4:22-23; speaking of Israel's king, he says, "I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son," 2 Samuel 7:14)--but not with those who are for waging war against the Romans: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God." This is again in line with Old Testament teaching. In discussing the promise of sonship for David's descendants, 1 Chronicles 22:8-10 says that David was not allowed to build the temple because he was a man of blood, but his son Solomon, whose name means "man of peace", would build it.
Other parts of the sermon touch on the same theme. "Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.... And if anyone forces you to go with him one mile, go with him two miles." This is a clear reference to the Roman rule that soldiers could compel natives to help them carry their pack (which could weigh 70 lbs) for one mile. "Judge not, that you be not judged." "Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun to shine on the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust." This does not sound like what the heroic Maccabees did, or what most Jews in the first century were hoping to do. Jesus has a different conception of God than they had. He tells us that we can infer from God's actions that God must be patient and kind to his enemies, so we ought to be the same way. No one else before him seems to have drawn this conclusion from God's behavior, though it is hinted by some Old Testament passages such as the book of Jonah.
Throughout the rest of his career, Jesus consistently poured cold water on the dreams of the zealots. This can be seen in many places in his teachings and parables, if we look for it. (The best discussion of this I have seen is scattered through N.T. Wright's series of books beginning with The New Testament and the People of God.) Several short examples of this:
If I had imbibed from early childhood the Jewish hope of finally being free from Roman rule, restoring self rule, and reestablishing the kingdom promised to David, I would think that Jesus was being a traitor to the Jewish cause. He was advocating compromise with the Romans! He was unpatriotic! He was undermining Jewish resistance! He proclaimed God's forgiveness to the traitors! He said that God would destroy the temple, the most important symbol of God being with his people!- In his debates with the Pharisees, he says, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." This passage has a number of subtleties, but no one could possibly miss the message that he endorsed paying taxes to Rome.
- When they tell him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices (Lk. 13:1-5), he tells them, "You must repent, or you will likewise perish." By "likewise", he presumably means by falling masonry (like those on whom the tower of Siloam fell) and Roman swords (the ones whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices)--which is what happened. Here Jesus calls his countrymen to repent of their sinful attitudes which would lead to the disastrous revolution.
- In his discourse on the destruction of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives (Matt. 24 and parallels), he warns his followers not to follow the false messiahs in revolt against Rome. Instead, he says, when you see the armies coming, run, don't stay and fight.
- In Gethsemane, when Peter starts attacking the soldiers, Jesus renounces this kind of violence to further his kingdom, and tells Peter, "He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword." In other words, if you act like the Zealots, you will die like them.
Jesus demanded that they choose between his concept of the kingdom, and theirs; and they did choose. They chose the way of the insurrectionist Barabbas rather than Jesus' way. So, ironically, they worked together with the evil Roman oppressors to eliminate him. They were hoping that crucifying him would completely discredit him as Messiah (that's why they did not just lynch him, as they did to Stephen).
What was ultimately discredited, however, was the first century Jewish concept of the kingdom. Within forty years of Jesus' death, God confirmed Jesus' judgment of the Jewish revolutionary movements, when the Romans crushed the Jewish revolution by A.D. 70. Even if you did not believe Jesus, you could not possibly argue that God supported the revolutionary movement which had ended in such a fiasco. Still the Jews clung to the hope of a physical kingdom that dominated the Gentiles, so God apparently showed the same thing again, more emphatically, in A.D. 135. In A.D. 132, Simon bar Kokhba led a full scale revolt, triggered by Emperor Hadrian's plans to rebuild Jerusalem as a Roman (pagan) city. It took the Romans 3 years of very difficult fighting, but they eventually crushed the Jews even more brutally than in A.D. 70. The majority of the Jewish population in Judea was killed, enslaved, or deported. Hadrian prohibited the Torah and the calendar and attempted to execute Jewish scholars, and Jews were not permitted even to enter Jerusalem until 438 AD. He changed the name of the province from "Judea" to "Palestine" (Latin for "Philistia", after the Philistines, the ancient enemies of the Jews). The center of Jewish learning and culture was no longer in Judea; it was in Galilee for a while, and, ironically, it later shifted back to Babylon, where there was still a thriving Jewish community. Given the history of the covenant, it was hard not to see the destruction of the temple and the ejection from the land as a second exile, caused by the revolutionaries. Thus until modern Zionism, Judaism abandoned the concept of literal possession of the land, and turned instead to other markers of the covenant (keeping the law).
Jesus said as the conclusion to the sermon on the mount, "Everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them is like a foolish man who built his house upon the sand. The rain fell, the flood came, and the winds beat against that house, and it collapsed; it was utterly destroyed." They attempted to build a kingdom on something other than Jesus' words, and so the house they were trying to build did come down with a great crash.
So what exactly was wrong with the first century Jewish view of the kingdom? Wasn't it written in the scriptures that the Jews were to have the land, and to dominate the nations? What could be wrong with wanting that to be fulfilled? Isn't that exactly what Joshua did in the conquest? And why does Jesus choose to antagonize his hearers by speaking so directly about this? I hope to deal with these questions in a subsequent post.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Isaiah 40:12-31: Who can measure the Spirit of the LORD?
In my previous post on the first few verses of Isaiah 40, I suggested that in the exile, Jews in Babylon would be severely tempted to lose their faith in the promises of Yahweh. After all, everything that he promised was taken away. They were gone from the land, they were not numerous, there was no king, God did not live with them in any obvious way.
Maybe the Babylonian gods had won. Maybe Yahweh did not have the power to do what he said he would do. It looked like the Babylonian armies had triumphed through the superior power of their gods, and there was no end of their power in sight.
Or maybe Yahweh had just given up on the Jews. His plan to bless the nations through them had failed; perhaps he would find another people, or maybe he had just given up entirely. The descendants of Abraham were harassed, hopeless, powerless, worn down, and sinful; nothing good would ever come from them again, certainly not blessing to all nations.
Isaiah 40-55 is God's word to this situation. Nowhere here is there an exhortation to try harder, nor even to repent. The answer is Yahweh himself: his character, his power, and his plan.
Maybe the Babylonian gods had won. Maybe Yahweh did not have the power to do what he said he would do. It looked like the Babylonian armies had triumphed through the superior power of their gods, and there was no end of their power in sight.
Or maybe Yahweh had just given up on the Jews. His plan to bless the nations through them had failed; perhaps he would find another people, or maybe he had just given up entirely. The descendants of Abraham were harassed, hopeless, powerless, worn down, and sinful; nothing good would ever come from them again, certainly not blessing to all nations.
Isaiah 40-55 is God's word to this situation. Nowhere here is there an exhortation to try harder, nor even to repent. The answer is Yahweh himself: his character, his power, and his plan.
Who can measure Yahweh?
12Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand,and marked off the heavens with the spanenclosed the dust of earth in a measure,and weighed the mountains in a scale,and the hills in a balance?13Who has measured the spirit of Yahweh,or as his counselor has taught him?14Whom did he consult for enlightenment,and who taught him the path of justice,and taught him knowledge,and showed him the way of understanding?
The key idea here is contained in v. 13a: "Who has measured the spirit of Yahweh?" In English versions, v. 13a is unfortunately often translated in a way that obscures its connection with v. 12. E.g., KJV, RSV: "Who has directed the spirit of the LORD?" NIV has "Who has understood the mind of the LORD?" which is somewhat better. The Hebrew verb here is exactly the same as the word in 12b, "Who has marked off the heavens with a span?" (Translations in other languages, such as German, say the equivalent of, "Who has measured the Spirit of Yahweh?")
No one can measure the spirit of Yahweh--he is beyond anything that humans can measure. I suppose that the reason English translators have not drawn attention to the repeated word is because 13a should be parallel to 13b, and at first glimpse the immeasurability of God seems not to be parallel with his wisdom. But I think it is (see below).
No one can measure the spirit of Yahweh--he is beyond anything that humans can measure. I suppose that the reason English translators have not drawn attention to the repeated word is because 13a should be parallel to 13b, and at first glimpse the immeasurability of God seems not to be parallel with his wisdom. But I think it is (see below).
All the rhetorical questions in both v. 12 and v. 13 have the same answer. The assumed answer to the rhetorical questions in v. 12 is therefore not "God," as it might initially appear, but "no one." No one can measure the ocean by taking up one palmful, then another, then another; the ocean is too vast to be measured that way. No one can measure the sky by the spreading out his hand (a "span" is the distance between the tip of the thumb and the tip of the little finger when the hand is stretched out). No one can measure the earth by filling up a basket again and again--the amount of dirt that can be measured that way does not compare to the size of the earth. Such quantities are beyond the reach of our measuring tools. Similarly, Yahweh cannot be measured or limited by any standard we have. In every way, he is on a completely different scale from anything we might compare him to.
The limitlessness of God is summarized by the word holiness, one of the most important words in the book of Isaiah (used here in 40:25, the "Holy One"). Sometimes we treat "holiness" as synonymous with "righteousness", but that is a secondary meaning of the word, and is not normally the way it is used in the Old Testament when referring to God. "Holy" means literally "set apart", i.e., "different", on a different plane of existence--meaning primarily that the holy God does not have human limits. The pagans called their gods holy (e.g., Daniel 5:11) and meant that their gods were a different order of being. For this reason, "holy" is often a synonym for "powerful" (e.g., Ex. 15:11), and this is normally the case in Isaiah. But God is also unlimited in other ways, too. He has unlimited wisdom to formulate his plans. He is also without limits in his moral attributes (unlike the pagan gods), and for this reason "holy" for a Hebrew also means "perfectly righteous".
v.14 introduces another important theme in this section of Isaiah, the plan and counsel of Yahweh. The author does not elaborate much on Yahweh's plan in this chapter, but it is the central theme of some of the chapters to come. No human would have thought to do the things Yahweh is about to do to bring about justice in the earth, especially the work of the Servant in chapter 52:11-53:12. Yahweh does not do what we expect (see below on chapter 55). It is Yahweh's plan that drives history, a plan he began long ago in creation, without any advice from us. His plan was partially revealed it to his people through the covenants, which were made at his initiative and not ours: he will bless the world through the descendants of Abraham.
Yahweh's plan and his wisdom are called into question by the exiles, since it looks like Yahweh has failed. The next chapters go on to demonstrate that this is not the case. Here we only have a glimpse at his plan, but its importance is suggested by the fact that in the two halves of v. 13, the measurelessness of Yahweh is put in parallel not with his unlimited power but his plan which had no human advice.
Yahweh's plan and his wisdom are called into question by the exiles, since it looks like Yahweh has failed. The next chapters go on to demonstrate that this is not the case. Here we only have a glimpse at his plan, but its importance is suggested by the fact that in the two halves of v. 13, the measurelessness of Yahweh is put in parallel not with his unlimited power but his plan which had no human advice.
15Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket,and are accounted as the dust on the scales.behold, he takes up the isles like fine dust.16Lebanon would not suffice for fuel,nor are its beasts enough for a burnt offering.17All the nations are as nothing before him,They are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.
"The nations" here summarizes all of the enemies of Israel: Babylon and its clients, Egypt, Moab, Edom, etc. Those of us from a large country like the United States do not have a gut-level appreciation of what it must have been like to be a citizen of a small country surrounded by many aggressive neighbors with large countries lurking in the distance. And in the exile, there were only a few thousand Jews scattered throughout the huge empire, a truly insignificant minority with absolutely no power, at least early in the exile. It would be hard not to fear the nations; but they are nothing compared to Yahweh. The nations which seemed so large in human estimation are so insignificant they are like the dust on the scales that no one bothers to brush off--it has no measurable influence on the outcome.
Lebanon used to be famous for its forests, though that is certainly not what we think first of it today. The forests were eliminated by centuries of wars (where trees were cut down for sieges or as a punitive measure) and bad government policies (the Turks had a tax on trees).
18To whom then will you liken God,or what likeness compare with him?19The idol! A workman casts it,and a goldsmith overlays it with gold,and casts for it silver chains.20He who is impoverished chooses for an offeringwood that will not rot;he seeks out a skillful craftsmanto set up an image that will not topple.21Have you not known?Have you not heard?Has it not been told you from the beginning?Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?22It is he who sits above the circle of the earth,and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in;23who brings princes to nought,and makes the inhabitants of the earth as nothing.24Scarcely are they planted,scarcely sown,scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth,when he blows on themand they wither,and the tempest carries them off like stubble.
There is no need to fear the idols, no matter how impressive they are. The best that idol makers can do is to make something that does not fall flat on its face ("does not topple"); the idol is lucky if it stays upright. In contrast, God is above the heavens.
The exiles of Israel might fear the princes, the rulers of Babylon; but these too are nothing before God. As he has blown on Israel and made it wither (40:7-8), so he will blow on them and they too will wither.
25To whom then will you compare me,that I should be like him? says the Holy One.26Lift up your eyes on high and see:who created these?He who brings out their host by number,calling them all by name;by the greatness of his might,and because he is strong in power,not one is missing.
One of the things the Babylonians were most proud of was their astrology. (Modern astrology comes from the Babylonians through the Greeks.) They were famous throughout the ancient world for their knowledge of the stars, and their supposed ability to predict the future from them. The planets and stars were thought to be deities; their regularity was evidence of their divine power (nothing on earth is so precise and unblemished). It would be natural in that environment to fear the power of the star-gods.
The text here turns that on its head. The stars are not in control of the future; Yahweh is in control of the stars, and Yahweh's plan controls the future. The stars only come up every night because he calls them. And he never accidentally drops one of them. Their very regularity is evidence not of their own power but of Yahweh's perfect sustaining power, which will sustain you too.
27Why do you say, O Jacob,and speak, O Israel,"My way is hid from Yahweh,and my right is disregarded by my God"?28Have you not known?Have you not heard?Yahweh is the everlasting God,the Creator of the ends of the earth.He does not faint or grow weary;his understanding is unsearchable.29He gives power to the faint,and to him who has no might he increases strength.30Even the youths shall faint and be weary,and young men shall fall exhausted;31but they who wait for Yahweh will renew their strength,they shall mount up with wings like eagles,they shall run and not be weary,they shall walk and not faint.
The questions in v. 27 use the singular "you", in contrast to the similar questions in v. 21 which use a plural. In this context, the contrast makes the question to Israel more emphatic: "Have you not known?" Perhaps the nations might not know, but you certainly should.
The tired, defeated, worn out people in the exile will be given new strength by trusting in Yahweh God. This is made emphatic by the structure of vv. 30-31:
faintbe wearyfall exhaustedthose who wait for Yahweh will renew strengthmount up with wingsnot be wearynot faint
This kind of structure, where the first element corresponds to the last element, and the second element to the second-to-last, and so on, is often called a chiasm because it looks like the left half of the Greek letter chi (which looks like our X). The main point is usually in the center (those who wait for Yahweh will renew their strength), not at the end where modern readers would expect it. What comes before the middle is often transformed into what comes after by reflecting through this main point (here, "waiting on Yahweh" tranforms "falling exhausted" into "mounting up with wings like eagles", and so on). This is a fairly common structure in both the Old and the New Testaments. In this case, it explains why this passage seems to end in something of an anticlimax: any modern western writer would have put "mounting up with wings like eagles" at the end as a grand finale, instead of "walking and not fainting". But ancient readers were trained to look for the point at the center of the chiasm instead of at the end.
Yahweh carried his people on eagles' wings through the Exodus (Ex. 19:4); now he will do the same in a second exodus, the return from Babylon.
What comes next
Isaiah 40 is merely the introduction to one of the grandest sections of the Bible, sometimes called "The Consolation of Israel". The next chapters continue to address the same issues, resoundingly affirming Yahweh's incomparable superiority to anything that might be compared to him, and his unfailing care for his people and his plan to save the whole world through them. As in the exodus, the gods of the nations will be judged and Yahweh will vindicate his people, and all the nations will know that salvation is only in Yahweh. The people will return from exile and will once again, as in the time of David, be by far the greatest of the nations. This is accomplished by the strange work of the Servant of Yahweh, who accomplishes forgiveness for Israel and establishes justice in the earth.
This section of Isaiah concludes with a final statement about the limitlessness of Yahweh in ch. 55:
6Seek Yahweh while he may be found,call upon him while he is near;7let the wicked forsake his way,and the unrighteous man his thoughts;let him return to Yahweh, that he may have mercy on him,and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.8For my thoughts are not your thoughts,neither are your ways my ways, says Yahweh.9For as the heavens are higher than the earth,so are my ways higher that your waysand my thoughts than your thoughts.10For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,and return not thither but water the earth,making it bring forth and sprout,giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,11so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth;it shall not return to me empty,but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,and prosper in the thing for which I sent it.12For you shall go out [from Babylon] in joy,and be led forth in peace....
vv. 8-10 are often cited in discussions of the incomprehensibility of God; but in context, they are about his incomprehensible forgiveness that is totally foreign to humans. No one can measure the Spirit of Yahweh; no one would have expected such forgiveness. No one would have expected it of God, based on what we know of people; but his ways are far higher than ours, and therefore his forgiveness is too.
This forgiveness is summarized in the words of promise (v. 11). God's promise to forgive and reestablish will not be empty words, nor are his previous promises in ancient times somehow void. They will accomplish what he always intended to accomplish, to redeem the whole world through the descendants of Abraham, despite their sinfulness. Israel's hope, and indeed the hope of the whole world, is in the word of Yahweh.
The book of Isaiah, and especially chapters 40-55, is a dramatic summons to renewed faith in Yahweh and hope in his purpose. The historical situation may not have looked promising, but Yahweh has not given up on his people, and he never will. Yahweh has not been defeated; he has been in control of history all along. Yahweh's plan for the redemption of the world is unchanged.
References
See my previous post.
The book of Isaiah, and especially chapters 40-55, is a dramatic summons to renewed faith in Yahweh and hope in his purpose. The historical situation may not have looked promising, but Yahweh has not given up on his people, and he never will. Yahweh has not been defeated; he has been in control of history all along. Yahweh's plan for the redemption of the world is unchanged.
References
See my previous post.
Monday, May 3, 2010
"Comfort my people": Isaiah 40:1-11
What does God say to people who are defeated and discouraged, who have given up hope?
The latter half of the book of Isaiah, starting with chapter 40, was written for Jews in the exile, who lived in Babylon. This is very clear from passages like chapter 48, where the Jews are told to leave Babylon; there are no more threats of exile, only promises of return.
Before the exile, the nation of Israel was given its charter by the promises that God made:
Every single thing God promised was systematically taken away in the exile. No visible sign of God's promises remained. They were no longer in the promised land. They were not numerous; only a few thousand Israelites were actually taken to Babylon, and we know from archaeology and from various passages in the Bible that the land of Israel was greatly depopulated at that time, so that much formerly cultivated land was left wild. Apparently most people died during the Babylonian invasions. There was certainly no evidence of curse on the Babylonians who had cursed and mocked them. The Israelites were not a great people; apart from some notable exceptions in the Babylonian court, they were mocked and looked down on (and there are numerous predictions of this in the pre-exilic prophets). There was no king. The city that God chose for his name lay in ruins.
Perhaps most importantly, God no longer lived with them. Ezekiel had the vision of the glory cloud departing from the temple; and anyway, it was obvious to anyone who looked at the ruins of Solomon's temple that there was no glory there any longer. God had left his people.
The people themselves were living in Babylon. Inside an impregnable wall that was fifty feet thick (as wide as a freeway in Los Angeles), enormous palaces and temples were everywhere. Even now these ruins are impressive; in their own day, before skyscrapers and modern earth moving equipment, they must have been awesome. Everything about this city was designed to impress with the glory of Babylon and its king and its gods. It looked like nothing could ever challenge Babylon and its gods.
It is not hard to imagine how the Jews in Babylon must have felt about this. Some, no doubt, thought that God had been defeated by the Babylonian gods; that, after all, was the normal ancient way to understand defeat in war. (Even the Bible takes this viewpoint, especially when it was Yahweh who was victorious; for example, the Exodus is described as punishing the gods of Egypt.)
Others would remember the promises that God gave to Abraham and David, and would conclude that God had simply been unfaithful. Still others, knowing that Yahweh had after all been warning about this disaster for several centuries before it happened, probably concluded that God had given up on the Jews for good, and that he had no more plan for them. He was still ruling but their place in his plan had been forfeited by their stubborn refusal to obey him. No longer would the descendants of Abraham play any role in God's plan to bless the world. There was no more hope for Israel. Maybe he would find some other people and redeem the world through them; or maybe he would just abandon the world to its fate.
The word of Yahweh
Into this bleak situation, Yahweh speaks again.
The phrase "Comfort my people" is actually a plural command; Yahweh gives an order, and then three voices carry it out with messages of comfort in vv. 3, 6, and 9. The scene is something like the divine council in ch. 6, where the terrified Isaiah sees Yahweh in his glory giving his messengers a charge to proclaim Israel's destruction for her sinfulness. Here, however, the decree of Yahweh is for forgiveness and consolation and rebuilding.
Some commentators have understood the wilderness and desert as the terrain that must be traversed by the exiles, with Yahweh at their head, on their return journey from Babylon as a second exodus. The image of a second exodus is indeed prominent in this section of Isaiah, but here I think it is better to see the wilderness and desert as the land of Israel itself. We know that the land was greatly depopulated and much formerly cultivated area became wild, and this is repeatedly discussed in various passages in this book (see for example the end of Isaiah 7). One of the great promises of this book is that the devastated land will once again become habitable.
In any case, the glory of Yahweh will be revealed to all people (not just to Israel). The glory cloud had left the temple, but God's glory was coming back! Yahweh's glory is an important theme in this book. The glory that Isaiah saw in the temple will become visible to all, in a way yet to be described. (Later we find that the glory will be revealed through his saving actions, through the return from exile under Cyrus, and culminating in the work of the Servant.)
"For the mouth of Yahweh has spoken" means that the proclamation of comfort to his people is an official pronouncement, a final decree of Yahweh that no one can reverse. Yahweh has said it; he will do it, no matter what.
Yahweh's reward is what he gives to his people, and his recompense is what he gives to his enemies for the way they treated his people. (Part of the promise to Abraham was to bless those who bless him, and curse those who curse him.) In the period before the exile, God's own people became his enemies and he destroyed them. Now they are no longer his enemies; he will be their shepherd and will care gently for them again.
Yahweh, the shepherd of Israel, will once again pasture his flock in their land. How exactly this happens is the subject of the rest of Isaiah 40-55.
New Testament uses of Isaiah 40
This part of Isaiah, and other prophets as well, predict a glorious return from the exile and the establishment of eternal peace and prosperity for Israel. The actual return from exile was, in comparison with the prophecies, quite a disappointment. The Jews were back in the promised land, true, but nothing else that had been promised had come to pass. They were poor, not prosperous. There was no king in the line of David. They were an insignificant part of a vast empire, called merely "the province beyond the River [Euphrates]," far from where anything important was happening. Large numbers of gentiles were not bringing their wealth in to worship Yawheh. The temple was disappointingly small, and more importantly, God's glory had not come back. (Rabbinic sources talk about this: one of the things that was missing from the second temple was the glory cloud.) The primary problem the post-exilic prophets Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi had to address was discouragement and doubt at the disparity between the situation then and the earlier promises of God. These prophets affirmed that God was still in control, that the glory would return someday to the temple, and that Israel would again be vindicated and significant.
The faithful Jews concluded that the exile was not truly over yet. Any other way of looking at it would mean that the earlier prophets were simply wrong, and God had no intention of keeping his word (or maybe Yahweh was not really the true God). So in the first century, even Jews living in the land of Israel were still hoping for return from exile, that Yahweh's gracious words of forgiveness and restoration would come in their time. Apparently God had not yet forgiven the sins of the nation, because he had not restored the people, and the two are inseparable in the prophets.
When John the Baptizer used the words of Isaiah 40 to describe his own ministry, everyone knew what he was talking about. (All four gospels use the words from Isaiah 40--Mk. 1:2-3, Matt. 3:3, Lk. 3:4-6, John 1:23--so evidently that is important.) John was proclaiming that the long wait was over, that what Isaiah had predicted was finally here. John offered "a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins," and he proclaimed that one was coming who would restore Israel. The time of national forgiveness was here!
Jesus and the writers of the New Testament continually draw our attention to prophecies of return from exile and claim that they are fulfilled or are being fulfilled in Jesus. The glory of God returned in the person of Jesus. The temple was rebuilt in the form of the church, with the Spirit living in it. The nations were gathered into the people of God through the missionary work of the church. The glory of Yahweh was revealed; all flesh saw it together in Jesus on the cross and will see it in the glorified Christ.
References
In my opinion, Isaiah 40-66: A Commentary by Klaus Westermann (in the Old Testament Library series) conveys more effectively than any other the drama of the text and the significance of the historical context, though he fails to connect many of the passages together because of his source-critical approach. The Book of Isaiah: Chapters 40-66 by Oswalt (in the NIV Application Commentary series) is also extremely good and makes a better attempt to connect the pieces of the text together into a systematic whole.
N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, has an excellent section on the New Testament appropriation of Isaiah 40.
The latter half of the book of Isaiah, starting with chapter 40, was written for Jews in the exile, who lived in Babylon. This is very clear from passages like chapter 48, where the Jews are told to leave Babylon; there are no more threats of exile, only promises of return.
Before the exile, the nation of Israel was given its charter by the promises that God made:
- They would live in the land.
- They would be numerous (as many as the sands by the sea, or the stars in the sky).
- They would prosper economically (they would be blessed).
- Those who cursed them would be cursed.
- They would "rule over the gates of their enemies", i.e., they would be militarily dominant. A king from the line of David would rule over them.
- They, or especially their king, would be honored and have a great name, "like the great ones of the earth," i.e., like the greatest of the kings of the nations.
- They would be a blessing for all peoples. In fact, they would be the vehicle that brings God's intended blessing in creation to all the world.
- God would live with them. This was symbolized by the tabernacle and later the temple, the palace of the great king.
Every single thing God promised was systematically taken away in the exile. No visible sign of God's promises remained. They were no longer in the promised land. They were not numerous; only a few thousand Israelites were actually taken to Babylon, and we know from archaeology and from various passages in the Bible that the land of Israel was greatly depopulated at that time, so that much formerly cultivated land was left wild. Apparently most people died during the Babylonian invasions. There was certainly no evidence of curse on the Babylonians who had cursed and mocked them. The Israelites were not a great people; apart from some notable exceptions in the Babylonian court, they were mocked and looked down on (and there are numerous predictions of this in the pre-exilic prophets). There was no king. The city that God chose for his name lay in ruins.
Perhaps most importantly, God no longer lived with them. Ezekiel had the vision of the glory cloud departing from the temple; and anyway, it was obvious to anyone who looked at the ruins of Solomon's temple that there was no glory there any longer. God had left his people.
The people themselves were living in Babylon. Inside an impregnable wall that was fifty feet thick (as wide as a freeway in Los Angeles), enormous palaces and temples were everywhere. Even now these ruins are impressive; in their own day, before skyscrapers and modern earth moving equipment, they must have been awesome. Everything about this city was designed to impress with the glory of Babylon and its king and its gods. It looked like nothing could ever challenge Babylon and its gods.
It is not hard to imagine how the Jews in Babylon must have felt about this. Some, no doubt, thought that God had been defeated by the Babylonian gods; that, after all, was the normal ancient way to understand defeat in war. (Even the Bible takes this viewpoint, especially when it was Yahweh who was victorious; for example, the Exodus is described as punishing the gods of Egypt.)
Others would remember the promises that God gave to Abraham and David, and would conclude that God had simply been unfaithful. Still others, knowing that Yahweh had after all been warning about this disaster for several centuries before it happened, probably concluded that God had given up on the Jews for good, and that he had no more plan for them. He was still ruling but their place in his plan had been forfeited by their stubborn refusal to obey him. No longer would the descendants of Abraham play any role in God's plan to bless the world. There was no more hope for Israel. Maybe he would find some other people and redeem the world through them; or maybe he would just abandon the world to its fate.
The word of Yahweh
Into this bleak situation, Yahweh speaks again.
1Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.The first words bring to mind the ancient summary of the covenant, "I will be your God, and you shall be my people." God still regards them as his people! These words are also a sharp contrast with the opening words of the book of Isaiah, where in chapter 1 Yahweh calls together his witnesses and accuses Israel in a courtroom scene of violating her covenant with him. The verdict from the first half of the book has been carried out. Now she has paid the penalty ("double" is probably meant to be understood as a standard fine for wrongdoing that a court would assess).
2Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her
that her hard service is ended,
that her iniquity is pardoned,
that she has received from Yahweh's hand
double for all her sins.
The phrase "Comfort my people" is actually a plural command; Yahweh gives an order, and then three voices carry it out with messages of comfort in vv. 3, 6, and 9. The scene is something like the divine council in ch. 6, where the terrified Isaiah sees Yahweh in his glory giving his messengers a charge to proclaim Israel's destruction for her sinfulness. Here, however, the decree of Yahweh is for forgiveness and consolation and rebuilding.
3A voice cries:When a king comes to visit, it was customary to fix up all the roads for him. When Yahweh comes back, this must be done on a grand scale; even the mountains will be leveled to make a road. The mountains and valleys are to be understood metaphorically, like the similar reference to "threshing the mountains" in ch. 41.
"In the wilderness prepare the way of Yahweh,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
4Every valley shall be exalted,
and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.
5And the glory of Yahweh will be revealed,
and all flesh shall see it together.
For the mouth of Yahweh has spoken."
Some commentators have understood the wilderness and desert as the terrain that must be traversed by the exiles, with Yahweh at their head, on their return journey from Babylon as a second exodus. The image of a second exodus is indeed prominent in this section of Isaiah, but here I think it is better to see the wilderness and desert as the land of Israel itself. We know that the land was greatly depopulated and much formerly cultivated area became wild, and this is repeatedly discussed in various passages in this book (see for example the end of Isaiah 7). One of the great promises of this book is that the devastated land will once again become habitable.
In any case, the glory of Yahweh will be revealed to all people (not just to Israel). The glory cloud had left the temple, but God's glory was coming back! Yahweh's glory is an important theme in this book. The glory that Isaiah saw in the temple will become visible to all, in a way yet to be described. (Later we find that the glory will be revealed through his saving actions, through the return from exile under Cyrus, and culminating in the work of the Servant.)
"For the mouth of Yahweh has spoken" means that the proclamation of comfort to his people is an official pronouncement, a final decree of Yahweh that no one can reverse. Yahweh has said it; he will do it, no matter what.
6A voice says, "Cry out!"I have put the quote marks in different places than most English translations, following the suggestion of Westermann, because to me the end of verse 6 and v. 7 sound more like the prophet's complaint than the response of the voice that is speaking for God. (The quote marks are not in the original Hebrew, so anyone is free to put them wherever seems best.) v.8 is Yahweh's answer to the complaint. Wherever you put the quote marks, the comparison is clear: the breath of Yahweh has blown on Israel and withered it, but from the mouth of Yahweh also comes the word which rebuilds it eternally. The hope of frail humans in the face of the judgment of God is the promise of God himself.
And I said, "What shall I cry out?
All flesh is grass,
and the goodliness thereof is like the flower of the field.
7The grass withers,
the flower fades,
when the breath of Yahweh blows on it;
surely the people is grass."
8"The grass withers, the flower fades;
but the word of our God will stand forever."
9Get you up to a high mountain, O ZionThe Lord is returning to Jerusalem and that city is to give the exciting news to all the other cities that God once again is visibly with them. "Fear not" means that Zion need not fear being wrong about this and raising false hopes. The proclamation should be bold and audible to everyone, because there is no chance that it will not happen.
lift up your voice with strength,
O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings;
lift it up, fear not;
say to the cities of Judah, "Behold your God!"
10Behold, the Lord Yahweh comes with might,
and his arm rules for him;
behold, his reward is with him,
and his recompense before him.
11He will feed his flock like a shepherd,
he will gather the lambs in his arms,
he will carry them in his bosom,
and gently lead those that are with young.
Yahweh's reward is what he gives to his people, and his recompense is what he gives to his enemies for the way they treated his people. (Part of the promise to Abraham was to bless those who bless him, and curse those who curse him.) In the period before the exile, God's own people became his enemies and he destroyed them. Now they are no longer his enemies; he will be their shepherd and will care gently for them again.
Yahweh, the shepherd of Israel, will once again pasture his flock in their land. How exactly this happens is the subject of the rest of Isaiah 40-55.
New Testament uses of Isaiah 40
This part of Isaiah, and other prophets as well, predict a glorious return from the exile and the establishment of eternal peace and prosperity for Israel. The actual return from exile was, in comparison with the prophecies, quite a disappointment. The Jews were back in the promised land, true, but nothing else that had been promised had come to pass. They were poor, not prosperous. There was no king in the line of David. They were an insignificant part of a vast empire, called merely "the province beyond the River [Euphrates]," far from where anything important was happening. Large numbers of gentiles were not bringing their wealth in to worship Yawheh. The temple was disappointingly small, and more importantly, God's glory had not come back. (Rabbinic sources talk about this: one of the things that was missing from the second temple was the glory cloud.) The primary problem the post-exilic prophets Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi had to address was discouragement and doubt at the disparity between the situation then and the earlier promises of God. These prophets affirmed that God was still in control, that the glory would return someday to the temple, and that Israel would again be vindicated and significant.
The faithful Jews concluded that the exile was not truly over yet. Any other way of looking at it would mean that the earlier prophets were simply wrong, and God had no intention of keeping his word (or maybe Yahweh was not really the true God). So in the first century, even Jews living in the land of Israel were still hoping for return from exile, that Yahweh's gracious words of forgiveness and restoration would come in their time. Apparently God had not yet forgiven the sins of the nation, because he had not restored the people, and the two are inseparable in the prophets.
When John the Baptizer used the words of Isaiah 40 to describe his own ministry, everyone knew what he was talking about. (All four gospels use the words from Isaiah 40--Mk. 1:2-3, Matt. 3:3, Lk. 3:4-6, John 1:23--so evidently that is important.) John was proclaiming that the long wait was over, that what Isaiah had predicted was finally here. John offered "a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins," and he proclaimed that one was coming who would restore Israel. The time of national forgiveness was here!
Jesus and the writers of the New Testament continually draw our attention to prophecies of return from exile and claim that they are fulfilled or are being fulfilled in Jesus. The glory of God returned in the person of Jesus. The temple was rebuilt in the form of the church, with the Spirit living in it. The nations were gathered into the people of God through the missionary work of the church. The glory of Yahweh was revealed; all flesh saw it together in Jesus on the cross and will see it in the glorified Christ.
References
In my opinion, Isaiah 40-66: A Commentary by Klaus Westermann (in the Old Testament Library series) conveys more effectively than any other the drama of the text and the significance of the historical context, though he fails to connect many of the passages together because of his source-critical approach. The Book of Isaiah: Chapters 40-66 by Oswalt (in the NIV Application Commentary series) is also extremely good and makes a better attempt to connect the pieces of the text together into a systematic whole.
N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, has an excellent section on the New Testament appropriation of Isaiah 40.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Is God proud?
What does it mean to be God? What is the most important aspect of deity that sets it apart from non-deity? What does God think about himself?
What is the defining characteristic of God? Most people throughout history would have answered immediately, "Power." God is set apart from us because he can do things that we cannot do. The Bible certainly agrees that God has power, but this is not the definition of what it means to be God. Orthodox Christian theology teaches that Jesus did not cease to be God even though he surrendered the independent exercise of his power, and was weak as we are. While we may shy away from the implications, the incarnation showed us something remarkable and unexpected about God that we never would have understood any other way: that power is not the essence of divinity. Of course, this statement is derived from later trinitarian formulas, not the New Testament; what does the Scripture itself say?
Probably the clearest answer comes from Philippians 2:5-11 (a passage which figured prominently in the formation of trinitarian theology). Here is this short poem in its entirety (NRSV translation):
Perhaps the key phrase here is what is translated by the NRSV "did not consider equality with God something to be exploited" in v. 6. Most older translations have something slightly different (KJV "thought it not robbery to be equal with God"; NIV, NAS "did not consider equality with God something to be grasped"). The reason for the diversity is that a key Greek word, harpagmon, occurs only here in the New Testament, and in the writings of the church fathers only when discussing this passage, so its meaning was not clear. More recent philological research (see references in the article by Wright cited below) indicates than harpagmon means something to be exploited rather than something to be grasped or seized or held on to. "Something to be exploited" makes much better sense of the passage. Jesus possessed equality with God (he did not have to grasp for it)--but he did not exploit that for selfish ends.
Instead, Jesus did nothing from selfish ambition or conceit and regarded others as better than himself--that is the implication of v. 3, since we are to be that way in imitation of him. The whole Roman world was devoted to doing things to gain honor, more so than our culture; it is hard for us to understand the extravagant lengths people in a shame-based culture go to gain honor for themselves. Honor in such a society tends to be like a currency: if you gain it, someone else loses it, and that's how politics and just about everything else was played out in all the cultures around the Mediterranean world. Striving for honor in that culture, perhaps more than in our own, meant putting down other people, the opposite of "being in full accord and of one mind". The ultimate honor, of course, was payed to the gods, who were as jealous of their praise as any human would be.
But Jesus was not like that: Jesus did not consider equality with God something to be exploited to gain honor and praise, unlike, for example, the Roman emperors who even at this time were beginning to be worshiped in the eastern parts of the empire as gods. What did Jesus consider equality with God to mean? Jesus thought equality with God meant emptying himself for us.
Instead of demanding reverence and homage as God, he humbled himself and took on the form of a human. More than that, he humbled himself further to the point of death on a cross. Crucifixion was not only a painful way to die; it was the most humiliating death possible, designed to take every last vestige of honor from the victim; and that's why the Romans did it. (Remember that taking honor from someone else, it was thought, would bring you honor; in our culture, which has lived in the shadow of the cross for a millenium and a half, such actions might discredit you rather than bring you honor, but people did not think that way in the ancient world, or even in some cultures in the modern world.) Victims were nailed to a cross naked, in full view of everyone. This was usually done at the gates to cities, where as many people as possible would pass by, to show their absolute powerlessness to avoid even the most agonizing of suffering, and thereby to glorify the conqueror.
The poem says several times that Jesus took on the form of a slave, or servant. On its own, the Greek is probably better translated "slave", but "servant" correctly alludes to the Old Testament figure called the "Servant of Yahweh". The Servant of Yahweh endures humiliation, and everyone around him thinks that it is for his own sins (Isaiah 52:12-53); but this is not so. He suffers out of obedience to Yahweh, because it was necessary for redemption of the people. Following the outline of Isaiah's climactic poem on the work of the Servant (Is. 53), the text in Phillipians also shows how God highly honored the Servant for his obedience.
God did not have the same opinion as people. "Therefore God also highly exalted him, and gave him the name above every name...." To a Jew like Paul, there is only one "name above every name": the tetragrammaton YHWH, "Yahweh", "I am who I am". Because of his obedience as a servant, and his humility for our sake, God points to Jesus and says, "This is who Yahweh is. This is what it means to be Yahweh."
Lest we miss the idea that Jesus in his humiliation for us is the truest possible vision of Yahweh, he goes on to quote unmistakably from one of the most monotheistic passages in the Old Testament about Yahweh (Isaiah 45:23). In its context, it is part of a challenge to the Babylonian gods to present evidence, any evidence at all, that they can save:
Referring to this passage, Paul says, "At the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." The passage from Isaiah was speaking of men confessing Yahweh to be the true God; Paul has taken this and changed in into a confession that "Jesus is Lord." "Lord" is an ambiguous word in Greek. It can mean a polite "Sir"; it can mean "Master" or "Caesar"; or it can mean Yahweh (it is the translation into Greek of "Yahweh" in the Old Testament). Given the context, it seems clear here that "Jesus is Lord" means here that "Jesus is Yahweh." Everyone will eventually confess that Jesus in his humility is exactly what Yahweh God is like.
This confession is "to the glory of God the Father." How does the greatness of Jesus glorify God the Father? Because understanding that Jesus is Yahweh shows us what God the Father is really like: he is just like Jesus, not proud, willing to endure anything for the redemption of those he loves. The greatest glory of God is not primarily in his power, it is in the love that he shows, and Jesus is the ultimate proof of that.
This is not an entirely new idea in the Bible. Moses had seen the incredible power of God in the exodus, but then he prayed to see the glory of God. What did God show him? "Yahweh passed before him and proclaimed, 'Yahweh, Yahweh, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness....'" (Exodus 34:6) The power of God is glorious; but the greatest glory of God is in redemption, in his love and forgiveness.
Other places in the New Testament affirm that the glory of God is found in his love and humility, not primarily in his power. This is particularly evident in the writings of John, where perhaps the most frequently emphasized idea in the gospel is that Jesus reveals the Father by his actions. This is first developed explicitly in John 5:19-20: "The Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise. The Father loves the Son, and shows him everything that he himself is doing...." In the context there, Jesus sees that the Father is raising the dead, so he raises a dead man (metaphorically at that point, literally later); in the next chapter, Jesus sees that the Father is providing spiritual bread, so Jesus provides physical bread; later Jesus sees that the Father is opening the eyes of the blind, so he does it too. Everything Jesus does is an imitation of his Father.
Jesus' imitation of his Father does not stop after his last sign. "Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him." (John 13:3-5) Washing feet was about the lowest of jobs that could be given to a slave. A Rabbi's disciples would do many menial tasks for him, but they were explicitly not required to wash his feet. Here the Rabbi, knowing his divine origin and destiny, washes his disciples' feet.
What does this say about God? God the Father acts as a servant, just like the best of human parents. After all, Paul says, all fatherhood derives its name from its archetype, God the true Father, Eph. 3:15. A good human parent humbles himself to clean the baby's diapers, and God the Father will do no less for his children. We need that kind of humble service from God, and God is not averse to providing it.
This was not very easily visible before the incarnation, though the Old Testament hints in that direction. For example, Hosea shows God to be suffering and humble (only a humble person can forgive the insult of adultery and accept his erring wife back). But the incarnation has shown much more clearly what God is really like.
In John's first epistle, he twice makes a remarkable statement about the nature of God: "God is love." (1 John 4:8,16) The one thing that we have to understand about God, before anything else, is that the essence of God's nature is love. Pride, arrogance, vengefulness--anything that conflicts with this fundamental part of God's nature is excluded. John says that if you do not understand that about God, you do not know God--you have missed the most important fact about the being of God.
Now the point of the passage in Phillipians, as well as the footwashing passage in the gospel of John and the "God is love" statement in his epistle, is that we are to think the same way: we are to have the same mind in us as was in Christ, and we are to wash each other's feet. We, who are made in the image of God, ought to behave as God did. Unlike Adam and Eve, who sought to be like God to enhance themselves, we are to seek to be like God in that we empty ourselves for others. Jesus, the one who was not only God but also fully human, has showed us the way of true humanity; we are "being renewed in knowledge according to the image of our creator" (Col. 3:10).
References
A detailed relatively recent discussion of the philology and the theological significance of the Phillipians passage is "Jesus Christ is Lord: Philippians 2.5-11" in The Climax of the Covenant by N.T. Wright.
I first understood this from a really excellent sermon by Darrell Johnson, then at Glendale Presbyterian church a number of years ago, but I have been unable to find any links to anything he has written or spoken on this.
What is the defining characteristic of God? Most people throughout history would have answered immediately, "Power." God is set apart from us because he can do things that we cannot do. The Bible certainly agrees that God has power, but this is not the definition of what it means to be God. Orthodox Christian theology teaches that Jesus did not cease to be God even though he surrendered the independent exercise of his power, and was weak as we are. While we may shy away from the implications, the incarnation showed us something remarkable and unexpected about God that we never would have understood any other way: that power is not the essence of divinity. Of course, this statement is derived from later trinitarian formulas, not the New Testament; what does the Scripture itself say?
Probably the clearest answer comes from Philippians 2:5-11 (a passage which figured prominently in the formation of trinitarian theology). Here is this short poem in its entirety (NRSV translation):
3Do nothing from selfish ambition of conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. 4Let each one of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. 5Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,Paul says that Jesus was "in the form of God" (v. 6) and it is hard not to take this in the same sense that Plato used the word "form", meaning that Jesus is the eternal, perfect ideal of God. (There is some debate about whether we can attribute a Platonic sense to "form" here, but Paul says pretty much exactly that Jesus is the ideal of God later in this passage, so I see no reason not to interpret the phrase that way here.)
6who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,
7but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
8he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death--
even death on a cross.
9Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
Perhaps the key phrase here is what is translated by the NRSV "did not consider equality with God something to be exploited" in v. 6. Most older translations have something slightly different (KJV "thought it not robbery to be equal with God"; NIV, NAS "did not consider equality with God something to be grasped"). The reason for the diversity is that a key Greek word, harpagmon, occurs only here in the New Testament, and in the writings of the church fathers only when discussing this passage, so its meaning was not clear. More recent philological research (see references in the article by Wright cited below) indicates than harpagmon means something to be exploited rather than something to be grasped or seized or held on to. "Something to be exploited" makes much better sense of the passage. Jesus possessed equality with God (he did not have to grasp for it)--but he did not exploit that for selfish ends.
Instead, Jesus did nothing from selfish ambition or conceit and regarded others as better than himself--that is the implication of v. 3, since we are to be that way in imitation of him. The whole Roman world was devoted to doing things to gain honor, more so than our culture; it is hard for us to understand the extravagant lengths people in a shame-based culture go to gain honor for themselves. Honor in such a society tends to be like a currency: if you gain it, someone else loses it, and that's how politics and just about everything else was played out in all the cultures around the Mediterranean world. Striving for honor in that culture, perhaps more than in our own, meant putting down other people, the opposite of "being in full accord and of one mind". The ultimate honor, of course, was payed to the gods, who were as jealous of their praise as any human would be.
But Jesus was not like that: Jesus did not consider equality with God something to be exploited to gain honor and praise, unlike, for example, the Roman emperors who even at this time were beginning to be worshiped in the eastern parts of the empire as gods. What did Jesus consider equality with God to mean? Jesus thought equality with God meant emptying himself for us.
Instead of demanding reverence and homage as God, he humbled himself and took on the form of a human. More than that, he humbled himself further to the point of death on a cross. Crucifixion was not only a painful way to die; it was the most humiliating death possible, designed to take every last vestige of honor from the victim; and that's why the Romans did it. (Remember that taking honor from someone else, it was thought, would bring you honor; in our culture, which has lived in the shadow of the cross for a millenium and a half, such actions might discredit you rather than bring you honor, but people did not think that way in the ancient world, or even in some cultures in the modern world.) Victims were nailed to a cross naked, in full view of everyone. This was usually done at the gates to cities, where as many people as possible would pass by, to show their absolute powerlessness to avoid even the most agonizing of suffering, and thereby to glorify the conqueror.
The poem says several times that Jesus took on the form of a slave, or servant. On its own, the Greek is probably better translated "slave", but "servant" correctly alludes to the Old Testament figure called the "Servant of Yahweh". The Servant of Yahweh endures humiliation, and everyone around him thinks that it is for his own sins (Isaiah 52:12-53); but this is not so. He suffers out of obedience to Yahweh, because it was necessary for redemption of the people. Following the outline of Isaiah's climactic poem on the work of the Servant (Is. 53), the text in Phillipians also shows how God highly honored the Servant for his obedience.
God did not have the same opinion as people. "Therefore God also highly exalted him, and gave him the name above every name...." To a Jew like Paul, there is only one "name above every name": the tetragrammaton YHWH, "Yahweh", "I am who I am". Because of his obedience as a servant, and his humility for our sake, God points to Jesus and says, "This is who Yahweh is. This is what it means to be Yahweh."
Lest we miss the idea that Jesus in his humiliation for us is the truest possible vision of Yahweh, he goes on to quote unmistakably from one of the most monotheistic passages in the Old Testament about Yahweh (Isaiah 45:23). In its context, it is part of a challenge to the Babylonian gods to present evidence, any evidence at all, that they can save:
21Who told this [that Cyrus the Great would conquer] long ago?
Who declared it of old?
Was it not I, Yahweh?
There is no other god besides me,
a righteous God and Savior;
there is no one besides me.
22Turn to me and be saved,
all the ends of the earth!
For I am God, and there is no other.
23By myself I have sworn,
from my mouth has gone forth in righteousness
a word that shall not return [void]:
"To me every knee shall bow,
every tongue shall swear."
24Only in Yahweh, it shall be said of me,
are righteousness and strength;
all who were incensed against him
shall come to him and be ashamed.
Referring to this passage, Paul says, "At the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." The passage from Isaiah was speaking of men confessing Yahweh to be the true God; Paul has taken this and changed in into a confession that "Jesus is Lord." "Lord" is an ambiguous word in Greek. It can mean a polite "Sir"; it can mean "Master" or "Caesar"; or it can mean Yahweh (it is the translation into Greek of "Yahweh" in the Old Testament). Given the context, it seems clear here that "Jesus is Lord" means here that "Jesus is Yahweh." Everyone will eventually confess that Jesus in his humility is exactly what Yahweh God is like.
This confession is "to the glory of God the Father." How does the greatness of Jesus glorify God the Father? Because understanding that Jesus is Yahweh shows us what God the Father is really like: he is just like Jesus, not proud, willing to endure anything for the redemption of those he loves. The greatest glory of God is not primarily in his power, it is in the love that he shows, and Jesus is the ultimate proof of that.
This is not an entirely new idea in the Bible. Moses had seen the incredible power of God in the exodus, but then he prayed to see the glory of God. What did God show him? "Yahweh passed before him and proclaimed, 'Yahweh, Yahweh, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness....'" (Exodus 34:6) The power of God is glorious; but the greatest glory of God is in redemption, in his love and forgiveness.
Other places in the New Testament affirm that the glory of God is found in his love and humility, not primarily in his power. This is particularly evident in the writings of John, where perhaps the most frequently emphasized idea in the gospel is that Jesus reveals the Father by his actions. This is first developed explicitly in John 5:19-20: "The Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise. The Father loves the Son, and shows him everything that he himself is doing...." In the context there, Jesus sees that the Father is raising the dead, so he raises a dead man (metaphorically at that point, literally later); in the next chapter, Jesus sees that the Father is providing spiritual bread, so Jesus provides physical bread; later Jesus sees that the Father is opening the eyes of the blind, so he does it too. Everything Jesus does is an imitation of his Father.
Jesus' imitation of his Father does not stop after his last sign. "Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him." (John 13:3-5) Washing feet was about the lowest of jobs that could be given to a slave. A Rabbi's disciples would do many menial tasks for him, but they were explicitly not required to wash his feet. Here the Rabbi, knowing his divine origin and destiny, washes his disciples' feet.
What does this say about God? God the Father acts as a servant, just like the best of human parents. After all, Paul says, all fatherhood derives its name from its archetype, God the true Father, Eph. 3:15. A good human parent humbles himself to clean the baby's diapers, and God the Father will do no less for his children. We need that kind of humble service from God, and God is not averse to providing it.
This was not very easily visible before the incarnation, though the Old Testament hints in that direction. For example, Hosea shows God to be suffering and humble (only a humble person can forgive the insult of adultery and accept his erring wife back). But the incarnation has shown much more clearly what God is really like.
In John's first epistle, he twice makes a remarkable statement about the nature of God: "God is love." (1 John 4:8,16) The one thing that we have to understand about God, before anything else, is that the essence of God's nature is love. Pride, arrogance, vengefulness--anything that conflicts with this fundamental part of God's nature is excluded. John says that if you do not understand that about God, you do not know God--you have missed the most important fact about the being of God.
Now the point of the passage in Phillipians, as well as the footwashing passage in the gospel of John and the "God is love" statement in his epistle, is that we are to think the same way: we are to have the same mind in us as was in Christ, and we are to wash each other's feet. We, who are made in the image of God, ought to behave as God did. Unlike Adam and Eve, who sought to be like God to enhance themselves, we are to seek to be like God in that we empty ourselves for others. Jesus, the one who was not only God but also fully human, has showed us the way of true humanity; we are "being renewed in knowledge according to the image of our creator" (Col. 3:10).
References
A detailed relatively recent discussion of the philology and the theological significance of the Phillipians passage is "Jesus Christ is Lord: Philippians 2.5-11" in The Climax of the Covenant by N.T. Wright.
I first understood this from a really excellent sermon by Darrell Johnson, then at Glendale Presbyterian church a number of years ago, but I have been unable to find any links to anything he has written or spoken on this.
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