12:11–13 Sarai Is My Sister?

12:11–13 Sarai Is My Sister?

treated as “Scripture” and as being from God is remarkable. This predates any councils by either the Jewish community or the church in the matter of what was canonical and what was inspired.

God is the God who spoke his word to his people and who made it clear to his prophets. Of this fact, the prophets bear consistent and constant witness.

9

Are Old Testament Prophecies Really Accurate?

The argument from fulfilled prophecies of the Bible is essentially an argument from omniscience—that God is able to both know and foretell the future. That, indeed, is the claim that Isaiah 41:22–23 makes:

Bring in your idols to tell us what is going to happen. Tell us what the former things were, so that we may consider them and know their final outcome. Or declare to us the things to come, tell us what the future holds, so we may know that you are gods. Do something, whether good or bad, so that we will be dismayed and filled with fear.

That is why the test for a prophet in Deuteronomy 18:22 was:

If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously.

Do not be afraid of him.

Nevertheless, the arguments against prophecies in the Bible have continued unabated down to the present era. The complaints have been that the language is often too vague, the prophecies are artificially fulfilled, the prophecies were written after the events they were alleged to have predicted, their fulfillments are all a matter of misinterpretation and the same phenomenon occurs in other religions.

But all of these complaints are without justification. For example, what is termed

“vague” is certainly sharpened in the progress of revelation and fully by the time of its fulfillment. And to claim that it was an artificial fulfillment takes more faith to believe in than to trust the claims themselves, for how can one prophet arrange events as complex as that of a Babylonian captivity? How can one person, or even a group of persons, arrange for a child to be born in Bethlehem, in the line of Judah, of the house of David, to be announced by a John the Baptist, to do the works that Jesus performed in accordance with the predictions of Scripture, and to die on the cross and rise again on the third day?

Likewise, to claim that these prophecies were vaticinium ex eventu, “prophecy after the event,” means that the one complaining must be very confident in his or her own ability to date events such as the prophecies of Isaiah 40–66, Daniel or the Olivet Discourse of Matthew 24–25!

But there is something else that is at work here, illustrated by the recent commentary by W. S. Towner on Daniel 8:

We need to assume that the vision as a whole is a prophecy after the fact. Why?

Because human beings are unable accurately to predict future events centuries in advance and to say that Daniel could do so, even on the basis of a symbolic revelation vouchsafed to him by God and interpreted by an angel, is to fly in the face of the certainties of human nature. So what we have here is in fact not a road map of the future laid down in the sixth century b.c. but an interpretation of the events of the author’s own time, 167–164 b.c.1 [1 W. S. Towner. Daniel: Interpretation (Atlanta: John Knox, 1984), p. 115.

Emphasis mine.]

Towner’s distrust of Daniel’s prophecy is based in his “certainties of human nature.”

This is a clear discounting of the power of God and his ability to communicate his word to his servants the prophets, while trusting in “human nature” as being more

“certain”! There could not be a clearer example of the way one’s presuppositions and hermeneutical circle strongly affect the outcome of any work in predictive prophecy.

Others resort to a misinterpretation thesis, claiming that what is called fulfilled prophecy is often a mere coincidence of language. True, there are some allusions made to the Old Testament by the New Testament precisely because the language is the vehicle they wish to use to carry the freight of their meaning. But these cases are rare and never in a claim about fulfilled prophecy. Those who would cite Hosea 11:1, “Out of Egypt I called my son,” as a case of misinterpretation in Matthew 2:15 fail to notice that it is quoted when Jesus and his parents entered Egypt, not when they exited it.

The reason Matthew quoted this text from Hosea was not the often stressed “out of”

Egypt, but because of the corporate solidarity of “my Son” with those who crossed over the Red Sea.2 [2 For a more detailed defense of this position, see Walter C. Kaiser Jr., The Uses of the Old Testament in the New (Chicago: Moody, 1985), pp. 43–53.] Thus God’s marvelous deliverance on one occasion was used to serve as a reminder of another deliverance—this time not from Pharaoh’s hand, but from Herod’s hand!

Finally, to claim that the same phenomenon occurs in other religions is to ask,

“Where?” While the histories of pagan nations abound in stories of auguries, oracles and detached predictions, the distance between the dignity and credibility of the prophecies in the Bible and those in the sacred books of other religions is enormous.

They form little or no part in any enduring divine plan that embraces the history and redemption of the world; instead, they function as mere curiosities that satisfy particular inquiries or aid the designs of a military or political leader in an immediate and personal predicament. Absent are all global, universal and salvific linkages.

Since the nineteenth century it has been popular to point to the following examples of prophecies that were not fulfilled in Scripture:

1. The prophecy of the ruin of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar (Ezek 26:7–14; 29:17–20).

2. Jonah’s prophecy of the destruction of Nineveh (Jonah 3:4).

3. Elijah’s prophecy against King Ahab for murdering Naboth (1 Kings 21:17–29).

4. Isaiah’s prophecy of the destruction of Damascus (Is 17:1).

The so-called nonfulfillment of prophecies is to be explained on the basis of the threefold classification of biblical prophecy; that is, prophecy may be unconditionally fulfilled, conditionally fulfilled or sequentially fulfilled.3 [3 All of these options are given in greater detail in Walter C. Kaiser Jr., Back Toward the Future: Hints for Interpreting Biblical Prophecy (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1989).]

All three types are commonly used by the prophets and are accompanied by textual indicators that aid the reader and interpreter in distinguishing them.

The list of unconditional prophecies is not long, but they are central, for they concern, for the most part, our salvation. They are called unconditional because they are made unilaterally by God without any requirements on the part of mortals to maintain their side of the bargain. Just as God alone passed through the pieces in Genesis 15, implying that an oath of self-imprecation would fall on him if he did not accomplish what he promised Abraham in the Abrahamic covenant, so it follows that the same one-sided obligation rests with the other covenants that fall in this same category. They are God’s covenant with the seasons (Gen 8:21–22), his promise to Abraham (Gen 12:2–3; 15:9–21), his promise to David (2 Sam 7:8–16), his promise of the new covenant (Jer 31:31–34) and his promise of a new heavens and a new earth (Is 65:17–

19; 66:22–24).

The majority of the prophecies, however, were of the conditional type. They contain a suppressed “unless” or “if you keep my commandments” type of conditionality.

Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28, with the alternative prospects for obedience or disobedience, were quoted or alluded to by the sixteen writing prophets literally hundreds of times. It is this provisional nature to the threat or promise delivered by the prophet that explains such a famous case as that of the prophet Jonah. While it is true that he was only to warn the people that in forty days destruction would come from the Almighty, the people extrapolated, apparently, from Jonah’s own case of deliverance (Did not Jesus say that Jonah himself was a “sign” to the Ninevites? A sign of what? Mercy?) that God might be merciful and relent from his announced judgment.

They presumed that such a God must have a suppressed “unless” or “if” in the threat of absolute disaster. They were correct, much to Jonah’s deep chagrin. This principle received formal articulation in Jer 18:7–10:

If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it.

This relenting from an announced judgment (or deliverance) by God based on the condition of repentance and change was effective not only in dealing with whole nations but in dealing with individuals as well. That is exactly what took place with regard to Ahab in 1 Kings 21:25–29 after he “humbled himself” before the Lord for what he and Jezebel had done in arranging the murder of Naboth. After noting that

“there was never a man like Ahab who sold himself to do evil in the eyes of the Lord”

(1 Kings 21:25), the Lord instructed the prophet Elijah to reverse the threat he had just delivered against Ahab, saying, “Because he has humbled himself, I will not bring this disaster in his day, but I will bring it on his house in the days of his son” (1 Kings 21:29). This is a classic example of conditionality in prophecies working at the level of individuals. Presumably if his son also repented, the threatened judgment would likewise be removed from his son and that generation because of the same merciful provision of God.

But there are some prophecies that do not fit comfortably in either the unconditional or conditional category. These are the sequentially fulfilled prophecies, a subcategory of

the conditional type. The prophecy in Ezekiel 26:7–14 falls into this third category: For this is what the Sovereign Lord says: From the north I am going to bring against Tyre Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. … He will ravage your settlements on the mainland; … he will set up siege works against you. … He will direct the blows of his battering rams against your walls and demolish your towers with his weapons. His horses will be so many that they will cover you with dust. … He will kill your people with the sword, and your strong pillars will fall to the ground. They will plunder your wealth and loot your merchandise; they will break down your walls and demolish your fine houses and throw your stones, timber and rubble into the sea. (emphasis mine) According to many critics of biblical prophecy, Ezekiel in 29:18–20 admits that his prophecy was not fulfilled:

Son of man, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon drove his army in a hard campaign against Tyre. … Yet he and his army got no reward from the campaign he led against Tyre. … I have given him Egypt as a reward for his efforts because he and his army did it for me, declares the Sovereign Lord.

Is this, indeed, an example of nonfulfillment? What has usually gone unnoticed is the shift in pronouns from the third person singular pronouns pointing to Nebuchadnezzar to the third person plural, “they,” pointing to some other force beside that of Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar did indeed take the mainland city of Tyre after a long siege, only to have the Tyrians slip through his grasp as they simply moved out to the island a half mile out in the Mediterranean Sea. It was Alexander the Great, some two hundred years later, who came and attempted to capture the island fortress of Tyre. Frustrated in his attempts at first to float a navy that could compete with these masters of the sea, Alexander finally resorted to scraping up the dust, timbers, stones and rubble of the former mainland city, and dumping it into the Mediterranean Sea to form a causeway out to the island. Thus in the 330s b.c. Alexander took the city that Nebuchadnezzar had failed to take in the 570s b.c.

In this manner the prophecy was fulfilled. There was an indicated sequencing of events denoted by the sudden shift in the middle of the prophecy from the repeated references to the third person singular pronoun to the third person plural.

In like manner, Elijah’s prophecy about Ahab’s punishment for murdering Naboth and stealing his property was fulfilled. The threatened doom was carried out, after Ahab’s sudden repentance, on his son a decade later in 2 Kings 9:25–26. Joram’s corpse was cast onto Naboth’s ground; indeed, the very spot that had been predicted in 1 Kings 21:19.

Isaiah 17:1 has also been used as an example of nonfulfillment: “An oracle concerning Damascus: ‘See, Damascus will no longer be a city but will become a heap of ruins.’”

But what is missed here is that Damascus, as the capital of the nation, stands for the whole Syrian nation. Furthermore, there is a play on the similar sounding words of

“city” and “ruin” ( m÷<éÆr and mƒ<éÆ). A careful reading of the rest of the prophecy will indicate that Damascus is not facing a permanent and full eradication of its existence from off the face of the earth. The other thing to note is that this prophecy is put in the final eschaton, “in that day” (Is 17:4, 7, 9).

Thus we conclude that the prophecies of the Bible were fulfilled just as they were predicted. When one considers the enormous amount of predictive material in the Bible and that it involves some 27 percent of the Bible, it is truly a marvel that it remains so accurate.4 [4 J. Barton Payne estimated that there are 8,352 verses (out of a total for the whole Bible of 31,124 verses) with predictive material in them. Out of the Old Testament’s 23,210 verses, 6,641 (or 28.5 percent) contain predictive material, while the numbers for the New Testament are 1,711 out of 7,914 verses (for 21.5 percent). See Payne’s Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy: The Complete Guide to Scriptural Predictions and Their Fulfillment (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), pp. 631–82.]

10

Why Doesn’t the New Testament Always Quote the Old Testament Accurately?

In many places the New Testament quotations of the Old Testament do not match up with what we have in our English Old Testaments. There are a number of reasons why this is so.

First, our Old Testaments are generally translated from the Masoretic text, the traditional Jewish text, the earliest manuscripts of which are from around a.d. 900.

Naturally, none of the New Testament writers had this text. If they knew Hebrew (as Paul did), they cited an earlier version of the Hebrew text, translating it into Greek themselves. This text was not necessarily identical with the text that we have.

Second, we have tried to get our printed Hebrew Bibles as close to the original as possible by comparing the Masoretic Text with manuscripts found among the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran and the early translations of the Hebrew text into Aramaic and Greek. None of the New Testament writers had this luxury. They simply accepted whatever Hebrew text they had. In fact, it is unlikely that many of them owned any parts of the Scripture personally, so they were happy whenever they managed to get their hands on a copy of some part of the Scriptures.

Third, even when a New Testament writer knew Hebrew, he did not necessarily use that text. He often used the text that his readers would be familiar with. For example, Paul sometimes quotes the Greek version of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, even though he knew Hebrew and had probably memorized the Old Testament in that language.

Fourth, not all New Testament writers knew Hebrew. The writer of Hebrews, for example, never quotes from the Hebrew text, so if he knew Hebrew, he has kept the fact well hidden. Thus when we come to Hebrews 1:6, which quotes Deuteronomy 32:43, we discover that the New Testament quotation does not agree with our English Old Testaments (translated from the Hebrew), but it does agree with the Septuagint. In many cases the Septuagint is so close to the Hebrew that we cannot tell if an author was using it or translating the Hebrew himself into Greek, but in this passage there is enough difference that we can tell that our author must have been using the Septuagint.

Fifth, sometimes New Testament writers chose a particular version because it made the point they wanted to make, much as preachers today sometimes choose to quote from translations which put a passage in such a way that it supports the point they want to make. For example, when we read Ephesians 4:8 we discover that it reads differently than Psalm 68:18 in English. This is not because Paul used the Septuagint, for in this case that translation agrees with our English Bibles. Instead, Paul appears to have used

one of the Aramaic translations (called a Targum). In many Jewish synagogues the Scriptures were first read in Hebrew and then translated into Aramaic, for that is the language the people actually spoke. Paul would have been familiar with both versions, and in this case he chose to translate not the Hebrew but the Aramaic into Greek. The Hebrew text would not have made his point.

Sixth, we must remember that New Testament writers rarely if ever had the luxury of looking up passages they wanted to quote. Normally they quoted from memory. They were satisfied that they had the general sense of the Old Testament text but would not know if they were not exact in their quotation.

Seventh, in quoting the Old Testament an author at times combines more than one passage in a general paraphrase. For example, Paul in 1 Corinthians 2:9 is probably making a loose paraphrase of both Isaiah 64:4 and 65:17. In James 2:23 the author joins Genesis 15:6 with the general sense of either 2 Chronicles 20:7 or Isaiah 41:8.

When one is moving along full speed in dictation and is concerned about some issue in the church, a general paraphrase of the Old Testament often did the job without stopping to remember just how the text went.

Finally, we must remember that there are some cases in which the New Testament author did not intend to quote the Old Testament, but his mind was so filled with it that it flowed out almost as if it were his own words. In these cases no quotation formula (“it is written”) occurs, but we may think that our author is quoting because it is so close to the Old Testament text.

So what are we saying? We are noticing that New Testament authors were people just like us, but lacking the scholarly tools which we have. They sometimes quoted their favorite version or the version that fit what they were saying, just as we do. They sometimes paraphrased and quoted from memory, just as we do. They sometimes had limited resources available to them, just as is the case with some modern Bible readers.

Finally, many of them did not know Hebrew and so had to be satisfied with whatever translation of the Hebrew they could read, just as is the case with many of us. In this we see that God used quite normal human individuals to write the New Testament.

They did not have supernatural knowledge of the Old Testament text but lived within the limitations of their own culture and abilities.

Yet it is the New Testament documents they wrote that the church has held to be inspired. The teachings of the New Testament are not inspired because they can prove from the Old Testament that what they say accords with that Scripture; they are inspired because the Spirit inspired what they themselves wrote. None of them are giving their readers lectures on the proper text of the Old Testament. In fact, they are not even giving teaching on Old Testament theology. What they are doing is teaching New Testament truth and showing that the Old Testament supports the point that they are making. In general this is true, even though they did not have the relatively accurate and carefully researched texts of the Old Testament that we have today.

When they appear to be “wrong” (allowing that they interpreted the Old Testament differently then than we do now), we must remember (1) that it could be that they may indeed have a better reading for the text in question than we have in our Bibles and (2) that the Spirit of God who inspired the Old Testament text has every right to expand on its meaning.

The point is that while we may understand why the New Testament writers cite the

Old Testament as they do, it is the New Testament point that they are trying to make that is inspired in the New Testament document. Thus, while we may enjoy understanding what is happening and why our Old Testament quotations differ from what we expect, the real issue is whether we are obeying the New Testament teaching.

11

Are the New Testament Accounts of Demons True?

Clearly the New Testament refers to demons. According to the Gospels Jesus “cast out” many of them, and they appear to be personal beings who make requests, react in fear and take other actions that characterize personal beings. But are they real? Are demons not a prescientific way of talking about what we would now call psychoses (or some other mental problem)? Are there really spiritual beings in this world that can affect human beings?

It is true that in the Middle Ages and even today in some Christian circles much, if not all, of what we call psychological dysfunction was and is attributed to demons. The results of this misdiagnosis in the Middle Ages were often grotesque and rightly deserve the censure of Christians committed to expressing the love of Christ. Also, demons are rarely mentioned in the Old Testament, and most of the Old Testament texts in which they are mentioned are controversial. They certainly are not called

“demons,” for that is a Greek word. And it is true that many of the symptoms attributed to demons in the New Testament could also be indications of such dysfunction as hysteria or epilepsy. This in itself makes one want to question the reality of demons. Yet this is not the whole story.

First, the belief in demons is part of a development in doctrine within Scripture. In the Old Testament there is very little said about any spiritual being other than God until after the exile. There is the enigmatic figure of “the serpent” in Genesis 3, but it has no other name and does not appear again in the Old Testament text. There are also indications that at least some of the Old Testament people believed in the reality of the gods of the nations around them, even though they were themselves true worshipers of Yahweh. Still, that is not the official teaching of the Old Testament. The thrust of the Old Testament is that the gods of the nations were helpless idols, simply wood or stone (Is 44:9–20). To whatever extent they existed, they were helpless before Yahweh, the living God of Israel. This, of course, is in keeping with God’s persistent emphasis up to the exile that he is One and that he will not accept both/and worship (such as worshiping both Yahweh and the Baals). It is therefore only late in the Old Testament period that we get references to Satan (and even then “Satan” may be more a name for a heavenly prosecutor than for an evil being) and only in the intertestamental period that we get significant references to demons (see, for example, Tobit). The New Testament is in line with this development of doctrine. The simplicity of the Old Testament view of the universe gives way to a greater complexity in the New. Thus it is not surprising to find references to demons in the New Testament where there are none in the Old.

Second, the Bible as a whole and the New Testament in particular witness to the existence of nonphysical beings and a spiritual realm. Besides God the Father, there is Jesus, who according to John once existed completely in this realm and then became flesh (Jn 1:14). The ascension refers to his return to the spiritual realm, but as a

physical being (that is, he remains a human being with a body). Then there are angels, which are referred to 176 times in the New Testament, mostly in the Gospels and Revelation. These holy beings point to the existence of a spiritual realm, which, the New Testament says, also contains a dark side. This dark side includes Satan (or the devil), referred to in the New Testament more than 65 times, spiritual forces that Paul calls “powers and authorities” (Rom 8:38; Eph 3:10; 6:12; Col 1:16; 2:15), and of course demons, mentioned 52 times (and “demon” is only one of the terms used for them; they are also called “unclean spirits” some 23 times). In other words, demons fit into a New Testament picture of a nonphysical or spiritual world surrounding human beings. In this context they are not strange but part of a normal biblical worldview. If one were to deny the possibility of the existence of such beings, the logical extension would be to deny the existence of all spiritual beings, most likely including God.

Third, while demons do cause symptoms which we might at first interpret as psychological dysfunction, it is not true that such problems are all that they cause.

Such diseases as epilepsy (Mt 17:14–18), paralysis similar to that caused by some forms of malaria (Lk 13:10–13) and probably fever (Lk 4:38–39) are all attributed to demons. Therefore, many forms of physical disease were attributed to demons, although not all physical disease was attributed to them, for the Gospels differentiate between healing diseases and casting out demons. The key is whether those physical diseases attributed to demons really disappeared when Jesus cast out the demon. If so, his claim that a demon was causing the problem and that it took casting out rather than a healing word would be confirmed.

Fourth, there is a good reason for the emphasis on demons in the New Testament and especially in the Gospels (which is the only place that they receive emphasis). Jesus came announcing the reign or kingdom of God. When that “kingdom” came in a more physical form in the Old Testament, there was a conflict between God (Yahweh) and the gods of Canaan (and before that of Egypt). This ended with God’s demonstrating his power over these gods and often with the destruction of the idols. Now in the New Testament the kingdom comes and it is opposed by Satan, as seen in the temptation narratives and other references to Satan throughout the Gospels. Lesser powers associated with Satan (the exact relationship between Satan and the various other dark spiritual forces is never described in detail) would naturally be involved in this opposition. If the kingdom of God is going to come to individuals, the power of the kingdom of darkness is going to be broken and the demons may end up being destroyed (see Mk 1:24; 5:7–8). Thus the demons are part of the cosmic or spiritual conflict going on behind the outward actions of preaching, teaching and healing.

Demons fit into the New Testament picture of what the reign of God means and the fact that salvation is not simply deliverance from physical sickness or political oppression or poverty, but at root a deliverance from final judgment, from spiritual sin and from the oppression by evil spiritual forces connected to these things.

Therefore, if one believes that the New Testament picture of the world and the human situation is accurate, it is quite normal and logical to believe in demons as real personal beings. It would also be quite normal to believe that where the kingdom of God is expanding one might run into such beings. However, only spiritual discernment can reveal when words of comfort and counsel, when healing and when a command to expel a demon are needed. Where such discernment is present, the results will be good, as in the case of Jesus and the apostles. Where it is lacking, we will see either the rejection of the existence of demons (with the result that a certain number of people

who could be healed will not be healed) or a fascination with them in which people either withdraw in fear or else try to “cast out” what is really a disease and by so doing violate other human beings.

The New Testament teaches us about the reality of demons. It also teaches us not to fear them or to go looking for them, but to recognize that if and when they are encountered, there is more than sufficient power in Christ to expel them.

12

Why Are There Four Different Gospels?

It is clear to any reader of the Gospels that they are different. Sometimes the events are in a different order (John has the cleansing of the temple at the beginning of Jesus’

ministry and Mark has it at the end). Sometimes they differ in their details (such as the names of the apostles or the names in the genealogies in Mt 1 and Lk 3). Sometimes there are differences in what they cover (so many of the events in John are not in any of the other three). Why is this the case?

Our tendency in approaching the Gospels is to think of them as modern biography. We want them to give us all of the facts about Jesus and especially to get the chronology of his life right. We in our culture have a tremendous interest in order and detail.

Judged by these standards, the Gospels fare poorly indeed.

Yet the Gospel writers did not set out to write modern biography. They did not even know about it or realize that people would be interested in such issues in hundreds of years. What they did know about was ancient biography. The point of such works was not to give a chronology of a life but to present selected facts so as to bring out the significance of the person’s life and the moral points that the reader should draw from it. One would see this quickly if one read, for example, Plutarch’s Lives. Each life is so presented as to bring out a moral for the reader. This ancient literature is closer to what the Gospel writers were doing than what we now call biographies. The way the Gospel writers wrote was quite understandable to the readers of their time.

Thus the Evangelists set about to present selected events from the life of Jesus with a purpose. John makes his purpose quite plain: “Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (Jn 20:30–31). Of the other Gospels, Mark and Luke have a similar purpose of evangelism. Matthew, as part of his purpose, also appears to include church instruction, for he arranges the sayings of Jesus into five large discourses on topics useful for the church.

Each Gospel was aimed at a different audience. If tradition is correct, Mark records the preaching of Peter in Rome. That is, it is directed to a largely Gentile audience.

Luke addresses his Gospel to a person who appears to be a Gentile official (Lk 1:1–4).

Nobody knows who this person was (or whether Theophilus [lover of God] is a generic name for any God-loving person who would read the book), yet the two-volume Luke-Acts appears to have as part of its purpose the defense of the Christian faith before Gentile leaders (perhaps even the defense of Paul). This is not the same type of general audience that Mark addresses. Matthew, on the other hand, appears to have a Jewish-Christian or Jewish audience in view. John speaks to yet another

audience. Naturally, even the same preacher does not use the same “sermon” for different audiences.

Furthermore, the writers of the various Gospels were different people. The writer of John takes a Judean perspective on Jesus and mentions only a few events that took place in Galilee, while the other Gospels focus far more on Galilee and other non-Judean locations. The writers also had different interests. Luke is very much concerned about issues such as the use of money and possessions, the acceptance of women by Jesus, and prayer. Matthew, on the other hand, is quite interested in Jesus’ relationship to the Jewish law. Mark includes very little teaching of Jesus, so his focus is more on what Jesus did. Some of these were personal interests of the author, and some of these were concerns they had because of their intended audiences.

It is also important to look at the length of the Gospels. Matthew, Luke and John are long enough that if they were any longer they would have to go to two volumes.

Scrolls only came in certain lengths, and they are at the maximum length. Thus when they use material from Mark they must at times abbreviate if they are not going to have to leave other material of their own out.

The rules of biography writing at that time did not dictate that one had to put everything in chronological order. Mark may have a rough chronology, but the others feel free to group things together by other rules of organization. Luke puts much of the teaching of Jesus within the context of a trip from Galilee to Jerusalem (Lk 9:51–

19:10, the so-called “travel narrative”). Yet he also has the Sermon on the Plain in Luke 6. Matthew groups much of this same teaching into his Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5–7, including both material found in the Sermon on the Plain and material found in Luke’s “travel narrative.” These two Gospels have two different frameworks for presenting some of the same material. They are shaped by concerns of the respective authors. Luke is quite interested in geographical movement, Galilee to Jerusalem (and then in Acts, Jerusalem to Rome), while Matthew is more interested in Jesus’ fulfillment of Moses imagery. Interestingly enough, both Matthew and Luke use Mark, but they tend to use Mark in blocks. Luke edits Mark more than Matthew (partially because Luke is more concerned with Greek style and Mark is fairly rough in that regard).

John is different. He does not tell so many stories about Jesus. Instead he selects seven signs to present, seven specific miracles (although he knows that Jesus worked many other miracles). He does not give a lot of short sayings of Jesus, but groups what Jesus said into longer discourses in which it is difficult to tell where Jesus leaves off speaking and where John begins speaking (in the original manuscripts there were no quotation marks or other punctuation or even word divisions).

The point is that, as was the case in ancient biography, the Gospels are not photographs of Jesus but portraits. In a portrait it is important to bring out an accurate likeness, but the painter can also put in other things he or she sees in the person: perhaps some feature of their character will be brought out or some deed they did or office they held. Perhaps the person sat for the portrait in a bare studio, and then the painter painted a scene surrounding them that would bring out this feature of the person. We do not say that the portrait is inaccurate. We know that that is what a portrait is supposed to do. In fact, in some ways it is more accurate than the photograph, for it allows us to see things that could never be shown in a photograph

(such as character), but are very much part of the person.

In the Gospels, then, we have four portraits of Jesus. Each of the four writers is concerned with different aspects of his life and person. This was symbolized early in church history when the Gospels were identified with different images. John was identified with the eagle, while Luke was identified with a human being. Mark was identified with an ox, and Matthew with a lion (for royalty). (The images are drawn from Rev 4:7.) We are therefore not limited to one perspective on Jesus, but have the richness of four.

This is why it is important to read each Gospel for itself rather than combine them into a harmony. A harmony tries to put all of the four Gospels together to make one story, but in doing this it loses the perspective of the Gospels. It is like taking bits and pieces out of four portraits and trying to make one collective portrait from them. The harmony satisfies our desire to get everything in order, but in doing this it often distorts the Gospels. In the end, the harmony is not what God chose to inspire. God chose to inspire four Gospels, not one single authorized biography. In other words, God appears to have wanted four pictures of Jesus, not one, four messages for the church, not just a single message.

It is not that the four portraits are contradictory. They are just different. If four painters sat and painted the same sunset, each would have a different picture. Each would leave out or put in different details. Each would have a different perspective and perhaps select a different phase of the setting sun to emphasize. None of them would be “wrong,” for each was portraying the same sunset.

Thus when we come to the Gospels the differences are important. When we find a difference we need to ask why this Gospel is different. Some differences are quite insignificant. For example, Mark 6:39 mentions that the grass was green and none of the other Gospels have this detail. They could leave out such a detail and save space.

Others are significant. When Matthew reports Jesus’ word on divorce (Mt 19:9), he only speaks of a man divorcing a woman, for in Jewish law only men could divorce.

When Mark speaks of this (Mk 10:11–12), he speaks of both men divorcing women and women men, for in Rome either sex could divorce. Each reflects the same truth Jesus was saying (probably in Aramaic, not Greek) in tune with the legal system their audience lives under. Each accurately portrays Jesus’ concern for the permanence of marriage. Likewise Matthew reports the order of the temptations so that they end up on a mountain, in accordance with his interest in Jesus as the new Moses (Mt 4:1–11), and Luke puts them in an order so Jesus would end up in Jerusalem, in harmony with his Galilee to Jerusalem interest (Lk 4:1–13). Neither claims to have their material in chronological order, so maintaining such an order is not an issue.

Each of the Gospels is trying to deliver a particular message to us. The important issue for us as readers is not that we get the life of Jesus figured out with each event in order, but that we get the message the Gospels are trying to communicate, that we hear their call to faith, that we submit to the teaching of Jesus, and that we live in the discipleship that they are trying to call us to. In the end, we are not called to be art critics, but to fill our homes with the “glow” that comes from these four portraits.

Genesis

1–2 Elohim or Yahweh?

Why does Genesis 1 refer to God exclusively by the Hebrew title Elohim, “God,” while the second chapter of Genesis, beginning in the second half of Genesis 2:4, speaks exclusively of Yahweh Elohim, that is, “the Lord God”? So striking is this divergence of the divine names that it has been common in critical circles of biblical scholarship to conclude that the writer, or, as those in the critical school prefer, the redactor (a sort of copyeditor) used basically two different sources for the two creation accounts found in the two chapters.

The person who paved the way for this theory of dual sources was Jean Astruc (1684–

1766), the personal physician to Louis XV and a professor on the medical faculty of the University of Paris. While he still held to the Mosaic authorship of all of the Pentateuch, his volume on the book of Genesis published in 1753 offered the major clue that the names Elohim and Yahweh were the telltale traces that Moses used two sources to compose this material—material that obviously recorded events occurring before his time.

This explanation as to how Moses had access to material far beyond his own lifetime and the reason for the use of the dual names, however, was too facile; it failed to note that the variation in the employment of these two divine names in the book of Genesis was subject to certain rules that could be described rather precisely. First of all, the name Yahweh, “Lord,” (notice the English translation convention of rendering this name in large and small capital letters, as opposed to “Lord,” which renders another word meaning something like “master”) is a proper noun used exclusively of the God of Israel. Elohim, on the other hand, is a generic term for “God” or “gods” that only subsequently became a proper name.

Yahweh is used wherever the Bible stresses God’s personal relationship with his people and the ethical aspect of his nature. Elohim, on the other hand, refers to God as the Creator of the whole universe of people and things, and especially of the material world: he was the ruler of nature, the source of all life. This variation of divine names can be seen most dramatically in texts like Psalm 19. In this psalm Elohim is used in the first part, which describes God’s work in creation and his relationship to the material world. But in the middle of the psalm the psalmist switches to the topic of the law of the Lord and the relationship the Lord has with those who know him; there the name Yahweh appears.

A further complication occurs because Exodus 6:3 notes that God says, “I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name the Lord I did not make myself known to them.” The resolution to this apparent contradiction to some 150 uses of the name Yahweh during the patriarchal period is to be found in a technical point of Hebrew grammar, known as beth essentiae, in the phrase “by my name.” This phrase meant that while Abraham, Isaac and Jacob heard and used the name Yahweh, it was only in Moses’ day that the realization of the character, nature and essence of what that name meant became clear. “By the name” is better translated

“in the character [or nature] of Yahweh [was I not known].”

Thus the name Yahweh is used when the Bible wishes to present the personal character of God and his direct relationship with those human beings who have a special association with him. Contrariwise, Elohim occurs when the Scriptures are

referring to God as a transcendent Being who is the author of the material world, yet One who stands above it. Elohim conveys the more philosophically oriented concept that connects deity with the existence of the world and humanity. But for those who seek the more direct, personal and ethically oriented view of God, the term Yahweh was more appropriate.

Accordingly, Genesis 1 correctly used the name Elohim, for God’s role as Creator of the whole universe and of all living things and all mortals is what the chapter teaches.

The subject narrows immediately in Genesis 2–3, however; there it describes God’s very intimate and personal relationship with the first human pair, Adam and Eve. God is depicted as walking and talking with Adam in the Garden of Eden. Therefore Yahweh is appropriately joined to Elohim to indicate that the Elohim of all creation is now the Yahweh who is intimately concerned to maintain a personal relationship with those who will walk and talk with him.

1–2 Poetic? Figurative? Historical?

Is the creation account in Genesis 1 and 2 in the mythic, poetical style of most ancient Near Eastern stories of the origin of the world, or is it of some other type of literary genre? What are we to make of the repetitious nature of a number of its phrases and of what appears to be a certain stereotyped form to each of the creative acts of God?

What is more, look at the way God is depicted with hands, nostrils and the like. Isn’t that enough to convince any thinking person that this is not a straightforward natural account of what happened in the creation?

There can be no debate on the fact that there are a large number of figures of speech in these chapters. In fact, one major work, Figures of Speech in the Bible by E. W.

Bullinger, lists over 150 examples of such in Genesis 1:1–11:32. That is not the issue, for all speech of all literary types will include some, if not many, forms of figurative language. Speaking of God as having human body parts is just one such figure of speech, anthropomorphism.

But the issue of literary types is a separate matter. To declare that since figurative language is present we can assume that the material of Genesis 1–3 is less than a straightforward presentation of real events is to jump to conclusions. Certain other categories can, however, be ruled out because they fail to meet the fairly uniform criteria that are normative in such decisions.

First of all, the biblical account of creation does not exhibit the forms or substance of myth. All attempts to see an allusion to the goddess Tiamat in the Hebrew word tƒhoÆm, “the deep” (Gen 1:2) were marked with failure from the beginning since such an equation violated the rules of morphology and equivalency in cognate languages. No reputable scholar today appeals to this as evidence that the Bible once was in the form of a myth. Neither is the reference to the Spirit of God “hovering over the waters” in that same verse seen as being a covert allusion to the Phoenician myth of the world being hatched from some type of cosmic egg. In short, nothing has been found in the biblical narrative of creation to tie it to the mythical ancient Near Eastern cosmogonies.

Neither can we say that Genesis 1 or 2 is poetic in form. The Hebrew form of the verb is exactly the same as is routinely used for Hebrew narratives. Furthermore, Hebrew

poetry seldom if ever uses the Hebrew indicator for the direct object, whereas Genesis 1 and 2 do. There are additional grammatical and syntactical forms in Genesis 1 and 2

that can only be found in prose literary genre, not in poetry. Thus these accounts may not be listed under poetry.

What we do find, however, is a carefully and closely reasoned narration of events that in Genesis 1 are set in almost a dry didactic form. Emphasis is laid on definition, naming, evaluating and a general ordering of events. As such, the accounts have more in common with narrative prose than anything else.

While the Genesis narrative cannot be called “historical” in the usual sense of the word, in that most use the term to indicate facts independently verifiable by two or more sources or witnesses, it certainly appears to be claiming to record actual events in the stream of happenings in our kind of space-time world.

1:28 Exploiting Nature?

Does the blessing pronounced by God in Genesis 1 encourage us, the human race, to treat the environment in any way we choose? Is the present ecological imbalance observed in so many parts of the world the result of our orthodox Christian arrogance toward nature, as Lynn White Jr. charged in his famous article, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis” ( Science 155 [1967]: 1203–7)?

At long last, it is generally accepted that Western scientific and technological leadership must find its roots in the biblical revelation of the reality of the visible world and the fact that the world had a beginning. (The idea of a beginning was impossible within the framework of the previous cyclical notions of time.) Moreover, the Judeo-Christian heritage fosters such science-advancing concepts as uniformitarianism, a concept that was instrumental in the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century and the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth century. But the academic community has given this recent recognition very grudgingly.

No sooner had this battle been won than an accompanying charge was leveled, which is to say that the Bible taught that “it was God’s will that man exploit nature for his own proper ends” (White, “The Historical Roots,” p. 1205). What we had lost, ecologically, according to White, was the spirit of pagan animism that says that every tree, spring, stream and hill possesses a guardian spirit which has to be placated should any intrusion be made into the environment by cutting down trees, mining mountains or damming brooks. Christianity overcame primitive animism, so White argued, and made it possible to exploit nature with an attitude of indifference for all natural objects.

Genesis 1:28 could be cited as the Christian’s license to do just that.

However, this schema is a distortion not only of this verse but of Scripture as a whole.

Indeed all things are equally the result of God’s creative hand; therefore nature is real and has great worth and value. The only difference between humanity and all the rest of creation is that God placed his image in men and women and thus gave them extra value and worth and set the whole creative order before them for their stewardship.

The gift of “dominion” over nature was not intended to be a license to use or abuse selfishly the created order in any way men and women saw fit. In no sense were humans to be bullies and laws to themselves; Adam and Eve were to be responsible to

God and accountable for all the ways in which they did or did not cultivate the natural world about them.

True, the words subdue and rule over do imply that nature will not yield easily and that some type of coercion will be necessary. Because the created order has been affected by sin just as dramatically as the first human pair were, the natural created order will not do our bidding gladly or easily. We must exert a good deal of our strength and energy into our efforts to use nature.

But such an admission does not constitute a case for the rape of the land. It is a twisted use of this authorization to perform such a task with a fierce and perverted delight.

Only when our iniquities are subdued by God are we able to exercise this function properly.

God is still the owner of the natural world (Ps 24:1), and all the beasts of the forest and the cattle on a thousand hills are his (Ps 50:10–12). Mortals are mere stewards under God. Under no condition may we abuse and run roughshod over the natural order for the sake of quick profits or for the sheer fun of doing so. Indeed, even Job was aware that the land would cry out against him if, in God’s eyes, Job abused it (Job 31:37–40).

Not even in the renovation of the new heavens and the new earth is there a total break and a complete disregard for the present heavens and earth. Instead, the final fire of judgment will only have the effect of purifying because “the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare” (2 Pet 3:10). Even so, the earth will not be burned up!

Lynn White felt we would be better off if we asserted, as did St. Francis of Assisi, the equality of all creatures, including human beings. This would take away from human beings any idea of a limitless rule over creation.

But such an equity fails to comprehend the concept of the image of God in persons.

Trees, ants, birds and wildlife are God’s creatures, but they are not endowed with his image; neither are they responsible to God for the conduct and use of the creation.

What limits humanity is the fact that each must answer to God for one’s use or abuse of the whole created order.

Should you ask, “What, then, happened to the cultural mandate given to the human race in Genesis?” we will respond by noting that the mandate is intact. However, it is found not here in Genesis 1:28 but rather in Genesis 2:15. There Adam is given the task to “work” the Garden of Eden and to “take care of it.” That is the cultural mandate.

2:16–17 An Unfair Test?

Why would God test Adam by placing the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden and then urging him not to eat of it—especially when, according to his divine foreknowledge, he knew he would do just that? What is the point of this whole exercise? What would it prove in the end?

The Creator saw fit to set a special test of obedience for the man (and eventually the woman) he had formed. Since Adam and Eve were formed perfect from the hand of

their Maker, they were bound by the very laws of their natures to love, honor and obey the One who so endowed them. However, this love, honor and obedience were an untested set of gifts. Therefore, it was necessary to make a trial or test of their obedience if they were to be free moral agents.

The test, however, could not be a violation of a moral obligation like those in the Decalogue; it had to be an easy prohibition that would be a suitable test of their fidelity. When free indulgence had been given to them to eat the fruit of all the other trees, the infringement of this injunction would be an act of direct rebellion against a command given by God. The method God chose had to be one of violating what is known as a Positive Law (that is, one that was true merely because God said it was true), or one that appeared to be an arbitrary enactment. The advantage of using a test of such modest means and methods was that, if the mortals had stood some greater test and come out steadfast, they might have expected rewards proportioned to the conflict and have argued that they had earned their own salvation. But the test was simply one of heeding a command from God. It would vindicate God’s subsequent actions as well as demonstrate that mortals from the hand of God did possess a certain freedom, for which they would also be responsible.

As such, there is nothing absurd or derogatory to the Supreme Being in this test. The perfections of God demand the same from his creatures. But when those perfections are provisionally granted by right of creation, this goodness of God must be further tested before it can be said to exist permanently from that point on.

2:17 Why Didn’t Adam and Eve Die at Once?

Why did not Adam and Eve drop dead the same day that they disobeyed God and ate of the forbidden fruit? Adam lived to be 930 years old according to Genesis 5:5. Was Satan’s word in Genesis 3:4—“You will not surely die”—a more accurate assessment of the real state of affairs than what God had said in Genesis 2:17—“When you eat of it you will surely die”? Is Satan more scrupulously honest than God himself?

This hard saying calls for an examination of at least three different concepts embraced within the quotation from Genesis 2:17—(1) the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; (2) the meaning of the phrase “when [more literally, in the day] you eat of it”; and (3) the meaning of the phrase “you will surely die.”

First the tree. There are no grounds whatsoever for believing that the tree was a magical symbol or that it contained a secret enzyme which would automatically induce a wide body of knowledge that embraced the whole gamut of good and evil. Instead it is safer to assume that the tree functioned much as the New Testament ordinance or sacrament of the Lord’s Supper or Eucharist does. The tree was a symbol embodied in an actual tree, just as the bread and wine of the Eucharist are symbols embodied in real bread and wine. In a similar way the tree of life was also a real tree, yet it symbolized the fact that life was a special gift given to individuals from God. That is also why participants are warned not to partake of the elements of the Lord’s Supper in an unworthy manner, for when the elements are eaten and drunk in a flippant manner and when a person has not truly confessed Christ as Savior, the unworthy partaking of these rather ordinary elements (ordinary at least from all outward appearances) will cause illness and, in some cases, death (1 Cor 11:30).

In the same way, the tree was a symbol to test the first human couple’s actions. Would they obey God or would they assert their own wills in opposition to God’s clear command? To argue that the tree had magical power to confer knowledge of good and evil would be to miss the divine point: the tree was a test of the couple’s intention to obey God. That men and women can attain the knowledge of good and evil is not in itself either undesirable or blameworthy; knowledge per se was not what was being forbidden here. The tree only represents the possibility that creatures made in God’s image could refuse to obey him. The tree served as the concrete expression of that rebellion.

It is just as naive to insist that the phrase “in the day” means that on that very day death would occur. A little knowledge of the Hebrew idiom will relieve the tension here as well. For example, in 1 Kings 2:37 King Solomon warned a seditious Shimei,

“The day you leave [Jerusalem] and cross the Kidron Valley [which is immediately outside the city walls on the east side of the city], you can be sure you will die.”

Neither the 1 Kings nor the Genesis text implies immediacy of action on that very same day; instead they point to the certainty of the predicted consequence that would be set in motion by the act initiated on that day. Alternate wordings include at the time when, at that time, now when and the day [when] (see Gen 5:1; Ex 6:28; 10:28; 32:34).

The final concern is over the definition of death. Scripture refers to three different types of death. Often only the context helps distinguish which is intended. There are physical death, spiritual death (the kind that forces guilty persons to hide from the presence of God, as this couple did when it was time for fellowship in the Garden, Gen 3:8) and the “second death” (to which Rev 20:14 refers, when a person is finally, totally and eternally separated from God without hope of reversal, after a lifetime of rejecting God).

In this case, spiritual death was the immediate outcome of disobedience demonstrated by a deliberate snatching of real fruit from a real tree in a real garden. Death ensued immediately: They became “dead in … transgressions and sins” (Eph 2:1). But such separation and isolation from God eventually resulted in physical death as well. This, however, was more a byproduct than a direct result of their sin. Spiritual death was the real killer!

See also comment on romans 5:12.

2:18 A Helper for Man?

Are women inferior to men, merely designed to be their helpers? Is it consistent with the biblical text to view men as the initiators and women as their assistants? Is this what makes women suitable matches for men?

The Creator regarded Adam’s situation as incomplete and deficient while he was living without community or a proper counterpart. The Creator judged Adam’s situation quite negatively: “It is not good.”

Ecclesiastes 4:9–12 expresses this same opinion about aloneness. The wise writer Solomon advised:

Two are better than one. … If one falls down, his friend can help him up. … Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone?

Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves.

True, in Jeremiah 16:1–9 the prophet Jeremiah is commanded by God to remain alone, but this is meant to be a sign that God’s judgment on the people is so near that it will not be worthwhile to get married. Nevertheless, the full life is a life that finds its fulfillment in community with another person or group of persons.

In the Genesis story we find that God created a woman after he had created the man.

This would end Adam’s loneliness and the state that God judged to be “not good.” She was to be his “helper”—at least that is how most of the translations have interpreted this word. A sample of the translations reads as follows: “I shall make a helper fit for him” (RSV [RSV Revised Standard Version] ); “I will make a fitting helper for him”

(New Jewish Publication Society); “I will make an aid fit for him” (AB [AB Anchor Bible] ); “I will make him a helpmate” (JB [JB Jerusalem Bible] ); “I will make a suitable partner for him” (NAB [NAB New American Bible] ); “I will make him a helper comparable to him” (NKJV [NKJV New King James Version] ).

However, the customary translation of the two words >eµzer kƒneg÷doÆ as “helper fitting him” is almost certainly wrong. Recently R. David Freedman has pointed out that the Hebrew word >eµzer is a combination of two roots: >-z-r, meaning “to rescue, to save,” and g -z-r, meaning “to be strong.” The difference between the two is the first letter in Hebrew. Today that letter is silent in Hebrew, but in ancient times it was a guttural sound formed in the back of the throat. The g was a ghayyin, and it came to use the same Hebrew symbol as the other sound, >ayin. But the fact that they were pronounced differently is clear from such place names which preserve the g sound, such as Gaza or Gomorrah. Some Semitic languages distinguished between these two signs and others did not; for example, Ugaritic did make a distinction between the >ayin and the ghayyin; Hebrew did not (R. David Freedman, “Woman, a Power Equal to a Man,” Biblical Archaeology Review 9 [1983]: 56–58).

It would appear that sometime around 1500 b.c. these two signs began to be represented by one sign in Phoenician. Consequently the two phonemes merged into one grapheme and what had been two different roots merged into one, much as in English the one word fast can refer to a person’s speed, abstinence from food, his or her slyness in a “fast deal” or the adamant way in which someone holds “fast” to positions. The noun >eµzer occurs twenty-one times in the Old Testament. In many of the passages it is used in parallelism to words that clearly denote strength or power.

Some examples are:

There is none like the God of Jeshurun, The Rider of the Heavens in your strength ( >-

z-r), and on the clouds in his majesty. (Deut 33:26, my translation) Blessed are you, O Israel! Who is like you, a people saved by the Lord? He is the shield of your strength ( >-z-r) and the sword of your majesty. (Deut 33:29, my translation)

The case that begins to build is that we can be sure that >ezer means “strength” or

“power” whenever it is used in parallelism with words for majesty or other words for

power such as >oz or >uzzo. In fact, the presence of two names for one king, Azariah and Uzziah (both referring to God’s strength), makes it abundantly clear that the root

>eµzer meaning “strength” was known in Hebrew.

Therefore I suggest that we translate Genesis 2:18 as “I will make a power [or strength] corresponding to man.” Freedman even suggests on the basis of later Hebrew that the second word in the Hebrew expression found in this verse should be rendered equal to him. If this is so, then God makes for the man a woman fully his equal and fully his match. In this way, the man’s loneliness will be assuaged.

The same line of reasoning occurs in the apostle Paul. He urged in 1 Corinthians 11:10, “For this reason, a woman must have power [or authority] on her head [that is to say, invested in her].”

This line of reasoning which stresses full equality is continued in Genesis 2:23, where Adam says of Eve, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” The idiomatic sense of this phrase

“bone of my bones” is a “very close relative,” “one of us” or in effect “our equal.”

The woman was never meant to be an assistant or “helpmate” to the man. The word mate slipped into English since it was so close to Old English meet, which means “fit to” or “corresponding to” the man. That all comes from the phrase that I have suggested likely means “equal to.”

What God had intended then was to make a “power” or “strength” for the man who would in every way “correspond to him” or even “be his equal.”

See also comment on genesis 2:20–23; 1 corinthians 11:7; ephesians 5:22; 1 timothy 2:11–12.

2:20–23 Why from a Rib?

Whereas Adam was formed “from the dust of the ground” (Gen 2:7), the text describes Eve as being formed from “one of the man’s ribs.” Why this difference? Is there any significance to these two separate materials being used by God in the formation of the first human pair? If so, what is it? If not, why the distinction?

It has become customary for many in recent years to point to the Sumerian “Dilmun poem” as being the best way to explain this association of Eve with a rib. The Sumerian name for “rib” is téÆ (pronounced tee). But the Sumerian word ti also means “to make alive.” These two facts are necessary background information to understand the myth that was told in Sumer.

It happened that the Sumerian water-god, Enki, fell sick, with eight of his organs or bodily parts being affected. A fox promised, if properly rewarded, to bring back the great mother-goddess Ninhursag, who had disappeared after an argument with Enki.

Upon her reappearance she brought into existence eight corresponding healing deities, and Enki was restored in time. In order to heal Enki’s rib the goddess created Nin-ti,

“the lady of the rib,” which may also be translated as “the lady who makes alive.”

Now it is true that Adam called the woman that God had formed from his rib “Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living” (Gen 3:20). Samuel Noah

Kramer commented, “It was this, one of the most ancient of literary puns, which was carried over and perpetuated in the biblical paradise story, although here, of course, it loses its validity, since the Hebrew word for ‘rib’ [ tseµlaµ> ] and that for ‘who makes alive’ [ hoveh] have nothing in common.”1 [1 Samuel Noah Kramer, From the Tablets of Sumer (Indian Hills, Colo.: Falcon’s Wings Press, 1957), pp. 170–72.]

The association of Eve with a “rib” and the “living” appear to be the common features in both the Sumerian and the biblical accounts. In that regard, the Sumerian myth may well be a garbled record of the same oral tradition about the inception of the human race. But the explanation in Sumer, of course, is set in an account with numerous deities and with petty quarrels and misadventures.

But no real explanation has been achieved as yet. It is not necessary to assume that the Hebrew wanted to promote the same pun that the Sumerian Dilmun poem did. The point of the Hebrew story actually takes off in another direction. In fact, Genesis 2:19

had just noted the animals had also been formed “out of the ground.” This only emphasized the fact that Adam lacked the kind of companion he needed.

In order to teach the close connection that woman has with man, the text does not say that God also created her from “the ground” or “the dust of the ground”; instead, she came from one of Adam’s ribs. Thus the phrase “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” pointed not only to the woman’s origin, but also to the closeness of her marriage relationship and the partnership she was to share with her mate.

It is not without significance that the Hebrew word for “rib” appears nowhere else with this meaning in the Hebrew Bible; its usual meaning is “side.” Thus, as some of the Reformers put it, woman was not taken from man’s feet, as if she were beneath him, or from his head, as if she were over him, but from his side, as an equal with him.

Some have tried to relate “rib” to the space or cavity of the body of Adam on the strange assumption that man was originally bisexual. The attempt is then made to substitute the word for female sex organs in place of “rib.” But this attempt is foiled from the start, for what will we make of “one of the man’s ribs”?

The point is that man and woman together share a commonality and partnership observed nowhere else in the created order. To emphasize this closeness, God actually took a real part from the side of the man as he brought to life for the first time this new creation called woman.

See also comment on genesis 2:18; ephesians 5:22.

3:5 Become like God?

Was the serpent more honest with Adam and Eve than God was? The serpent had explained God’s prohibition against eating from the fruit of the tree from the motive of divine envy: “you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” What knowledge did the man and woman attain?

Some have seen parallels in this passage to the Babylonian flood story, called the Gilgamesh Epic, in which the wild man Enkidu, who is finally civilized by spending six days and seven nights with a prostitute, sees the animals flee from him, and the woman congratulates him: “You are wise, Enkidu. You have become as a god.” But the two

sentences from Genesis 3:15 and Gilgamesh are totally different, and Enkidu sheds no light on this passage, contrary to undemonstrated assurances from a number of leading scholars.

There are five passages in which the antithetical pair good and evil and the verb to know occur: Deuteronomy 1:39; 2 Samuel 14:17; 19:35; 1 Kings 3:9; and Isaiah 7:15.

These passages help to dismiss certain theories that have been proposed. Certainly we cannot say that Adam and Eve attained premature sexual union due to the aphrodisiac qualities of the fruit on these trees. The only argument in favor of this dubious interpretation is the awakening of shame (Gen 3:7) and the punishment on the woman, which was placed in what some construe as the area of her sexuality (Gen 3:16).

However, even while the disturbance affected the sexual aspect of personhood, the text makes it clear that the knowledge of good and evil is a divine prerogative (Gen 3:5, 22). The extension of a sexual interpretation to God is obviously grotesque and unwarranted.

This would mean that humankind could become like God either by attaining total knowledge or by having autonomy, particularly moral freedom. Such wisdom “to know good and evil” can be seen in 2 Samuel 19:35, where Barzillai as an eighty-year-old man doubts his ability to exhibit the knowledge between good and evil needed from the king’s counselor. Likewise, the woman from Tekoa likened David to an angel who was able to discern good and evil (2 Sam 14:17). Solomon asked that God would also give him “a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong” (1 Kings 3:9).

The lure of the serpent, then, did not imply that humanity would have infinite knowledge like God’s knowledge or even that there was some aphrodisiac in the fruit that would open up sexual or carnal relations as an option until then unknown. Instead, the lure of the serpent was an invitation to experience that perpetual quest of human autonomy and freedom. Unfortunately for all, that autonomy turned out to be illusory and actually ended up in a sense of alienation, which has been studied so often since Freud introduced the concept to the modern world.

3:16 Is Childbearing a Curse or a Blessing?

If bearing children was declared a blessing from God in Genesis 1:28, why did God totally reverse this blessing as a result of the Fall? Indeed, the “pains,” a word which reappears in verse 17 in the curse on man as well, are said to have increased. But no pain had been mentioned previously; only a blessing.

There is no doubt that this term refers to physical pain. Its root lies in a verb that means “to injure, cause pain or grief.” Whether the pain would lie in the agony of childbirth or in the related grief that accompanies raising that child cannot be finally determined; the text would seem to allow for both ideas.

Katherine C. Bushnell, in God’s Word to Woman, suggests that verse 16 be translated differently since the Hebrew text could support such a reading. She noted that some ancient versions attached the meaning of “lying in wait,” “an ambush” or “a snare” to the word generally read as “multiply.” This idea of a snare or a lying in wait, however, may have been moved back to Genesis 3:15 from its more normal position in Genesis 3:16. Bushnell would render the opening words of verse 16 this way: “Unto the

woman he said, ‘A snare has increased your sorrow and sighing.’”

This translation is not all that different in meaning from the more traditional “I will greatly multiply … ” The difference between the two readings is found wholly in the interlinear Hebrew vowel signs which came as late as the eighth century of the Christian era. The difference is this (using capital letters to show the original Hebrew consonantal text and lowercase to show the late addition of the vowel letters): HaRBah AaRBeh, “I will greatly multiply,” and HiRBah AoReB, “has caused to multiply (or made great) a lying-in-wait.” The participial form ARB appears some fourteen times in Joshua and is translated as “ambush” or “a lying in wait.”

If this reading is correct (and some ancient versions read such a word just a few words back in verse 15, probably by misplacement), then that “lier-in-wait” would undoubtedly be that subtle serpent, the devil. He it was who would increase the sorrow of raising children. This is the only way we can explain why the idea of “a snare” or

“lying-in-wait” still clings to this context.

But another matter demands our attention in verse 16, the word for conception. This translation is difficult because the Hebrew word HRN is not the correct way to spell conception. It is spelled correctly as HRJWN in Ruth 4:13 and Hosea 9:11. But this spelling in Genesis 3:16 is two letters short, and its vowels are also unusual. The form is regarded by lexical authorities such as Brown, Driver and Briggs as a contraction or even an error. The early Greek translation (made in the third or second century before Christ) read instead HGN, meaning “sighing.” The resultant meaning for this clause would be “A snare has increased your sorrow and sighing.”

What difference does such a rendering make? The point is simply that this curse cannot be read to mean that the right to determine when a woman will become a mother is placed totally outside her will or that this function has been placed entirely and necessarily in the hands and will of her husband.

Furthermore, it must be remembered that this statement, no matter how we shall finally interpret it, is from a curse passage. In no case should it be made normative. And if the Evil One and not God is the source of the sorrow and sighing, then it is all the more necessary for us to refuse to place any degree of normativity to such statements and describe either the ordeal of giving birth to a child, or the challenge of raising that child, as an evil originating in God. God is never the source of evil; he would rather bless women. Instead, it is Satan who has set this trap.

The next clause strengthens the one we have been discussing by adding “in sorrow [or pain] you will bring forth children.” Once again note that bearing children in itself was a blessing described in the so-called orders of creation of Genesis 1:28. The grief lies not so much in the conception or in the act of childbirth itself, but in the whole process of bringing children into the world and raising them up to be whole persons before God.

3:16 How Was the Woman Punished?

The meaning of the second part of the woman’s penalty centers around two very important words that have a most amazing translation history, “desire” and “will rule.”

Seldom has so much mischief been caused by a translation error that became

institutionalized.

Is it true that due to the Fall women naturally exhibit overpowering sexual desires for their husbands? And if this is so, did God simultaneously order husbands to exercise authority over their wives? In one form or another, most conservative interpreters answer both of these questions emphatically yes and point to Genesis 3:16 as the grounds for their answer. But will the text itself bear the weight of such important claims?

The Hebrew word tƒsûuÆqaÆh, now almost universally translated as “desire,” was previously rendered as “turning.” The word appears in the Hebrew Old Testament only three times: here in Genesis 3:16, in Genesis 4:7 and in Song of Songs 7:10. Of the twelve known ancient versions (the Greek Septuagint, the Syriac Peshitta, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Old Latin, the Sahidic, the Bohairic, the Ethiopic, the Arabic, Aquila’s Greek, Symmachus’s Greek, Theodotion’s Greek and the Latin Vulgate), almost every one (twenty-one out of twenty-eight times) renders these three instances of tƒsûuÆqaÆh as “turning,” not “desire.”

Likewise, the church fathers (Clement of Rome, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, Epiphanius and Jerome, along with Philo, a Jew who died about a.d. 50) seem to be ignorant of any other sense for this word tƒsûuÆqaÆh than the translation of

“turning.” Furthermore, the Latin rendering was conversio and the Greek was apostropheµ or epistropheµ, words all meaning “a turning.”

With such strong and universal testimony in favor of “turning,” how did the idea of desire ever intrude into the translator’s agenda? Again, it was Katherine C. Bushnell who did the pioneer research on this problem. She traced its genesis to an Italian Dominican monk named Pagnino who translated the Hebrew Bible. Pagnino, according to the infamous biblical critic Richard Simon, “too much neglected the ancient versions of Scripture to attach himself to the teachings of the rabbis.” Pagnino’s version was published in Lyons in 1528, seven years before Coverdale’s English Bible. Now except for Wycliffe’s 1380 English version and the Douay Bible of 1609, both of which were made from the Latin Vulgate, every English version from the time of Pagnino up to the present day has adopted Pagnino’s rendering for Genesis 3:16.

The older English Bibles, following Pagnino, rendered this verse as “Thy lust [or lusts]

shall pertayne [pertain] to thy husband.” Clearly, then, the sense given to the word by Pagnino and his followers was that of libido or sensual desire. The only place that Bushnell could locate such a concept was in the “Ten Curses of Eve” in the Talmud.

It is time the church returned to the real meaning of this word. The sense of Genesis 3:16 is simply this: As a result of her sin, Eve would turn away from her sole dependence on God and turn now to her husband. The results would not at all be pleasant, warned God, as he announced this curse.

Nowhere does this text teach, nor does nature confirm by our observations, that there would now be a tendency for a woman to be driven by a desire for sexual relationships with her husband or with other men. This is both a misrepresentation of the text and a male fantasy born out of some other source than the Bible or human nature. Even if the word is tamed down to mean just an inclination or a tendency, we would be no further ahead. These renderings would still miss the point of the Hebrew. The Hebrew reads,

“You are turning away [from God!] to your husband, and [as a result] he will rule over

you [take advantage of you].”

Though this text only predicts how some husbands will take advantage of their wives when the wives turn to their husbands after turning away from God, some argue that this second verb should be rendered “he shall rule over you.” This would make the statement mandatory with the force of a command addressed to all husbands to rule over their wives.

The Hebrew grammar once again will not allow this construction. The verb contains a simple statement of futurity; there is not one hint of obligation or normativity in this verb. To argue differently would be as logical as demanding that a verb in verse 18 be rendered “It shall produce thorns and thistles.” Thereafter, all Christian farmers who used weed killer would be condemned as disobedient to the God who demanded that the ground have such thorns and thistles.

The often-repeated rejoinder to this will rule/shall rule argument is to go to Genesis 4:7: “Sin is crouching at the door; unto you is its turning, but you will [or shall in the sense of must] rule over it.” There is no doubt that both the word tƒsûuÆqaÆh (“turning”) and the verb to rule are found in both contexts. But what is debated is the best way to render the Hebrew.

Several suggestions avoid the traditional interpretation that insists on an obligatory sense to the verb to rule. One way predicts that Cain, now governed by sin and pictured as a crouching beast at his door, will rule over him (his brother, Abel). This, however, does not appear to be what the author meant.

A preferred way of handling this phrase would be to treat it as a question. (The absence of the particle introducing questions is a phenomenon witnessed in about half of Hebrew questions.) Hence we would render it “But you, will you rule over it?” or

“Will you be its master?” (This interpretation is also favored by H. Ewald, G. R.

Castellino and, to some extent, Claus Westermann.)

Even though many hold to the belief that 1 Corinthians 14:34 refers to Genesis 3:16

when it records, “Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says,” I cannot agree. When the Corinthians referred to the law (it seems that Paul is answering a previous question they wrote to him), it was to the Jewish law found in the Talmud and Mishnah that they referred. There it was taught that a woman should not speak and that she must be silent, but that is not taught in the Old Testament!

The only conceivable way a person could link up Genesis 3:16 with 1 Corinthians 14:34–35 would be if the Genesis passage said husbands must rule over their wives.

Since such a wording of the verse has been proven impossible, this reference should be surrendered. We should lay no stronger burden on God’s people than what is warranted in God’s Word.

Later on in God’s revelation, our Lord will affirm a job subordination within the marriage relationship, and the husband will be answerable to God for the well-being of his wife and family. However, Genesis 3:16 does not carry any of those meanings.

We may conclude, then, that tƒsûuÆqaÆh does not refer to the lust or sexual appetite of a woman for a man. Neither does the verb to rule over her express God’s

order for husbands in their relationships to their wives.

See also comment on ephesians 5:22; 1 peter 3:6; 3:7.

4:3–4 Did God Favor Abel over Cain?

Does God have favorites? Does he show partiality for one over another—in this case, Abel over Cain? And does God prefer shepherds to farmers? If not, what was the essential difference between these first two sacrifices in the Bible?

The traditional interpretation says that the difference between Cain and Abel is that one offered a bloody sacrifice and the other did not. If this understanding is correct, why are neither we nor they given any specific instructions to that effect? Up to this point, that distinction had not been made. And even if a distinction between the use and absence of blood was in vogue at this early date, why are both sacrifices referred to throughout this whole narrative with the Hebrew term minh\aÆh, a “gift” or “meal offering”?

The answers to these questions are not as difficult as they may appear. There is only one point on which there can be legitimate puzzlement: nothing in this episode indicates that this is the inauguration of the sacrificial system. While it does appear that this is the first time anyone ever sacrificed anything, the text does not specifically say so. That will remain, at best, only an inference.

Actually, the supposition that Cain and Abel’s father, Adam, originated sacrifices may be closer to the truth, since no command authorizing or requesting sacrifices appears in these first chapters of Genesis. The whole subject of the origins of sacrifice is one that scholars have debated long and hard, but the subject remains a mystery.

Even with this much caution, we must be careful about importing back into the times of Adam and Eve the instructions that Moses was later given on sacrifices. The word used to describe “sacrifice” throughout this episode of Cain and Abel is the word used in the broadest sense, minh\aÆh. It covers any type of gift that any person might bring. Consequently, the merit one gift might have over another does not lie in the content or type of gift—including the presence or absence of blood.

Of course, there was a problem with Cain’s “gift”— he was the problem. Genesis 4:3

describes how Cain merely brought “some” of the fruits of the field. Nothing can be said about the fact that he, as an agriculturalist, naturally brought what farmers have to give. But when his offering is contrasted with Abel’s, a flaw immediately shows up.

Abel gave what cost him dearly, the “fat pieces”—in that culture considered the choicest parts—of “the firstborn” of his flock. Abel could very well have rationalized, as we might have done, that he would wait until some of those firstborn animals had matured and had one, two or three lambs of their own. Certainly at that point it would have been possible to give an even larger gift to God, and Abel would have been further ahead as well. But he gave instead what cost him most, the “firstborn.”

The telltale signs that we are dealing here with a contrast between formalistic worship and true worship are the emphasis that the text gives to the men and the verb it uses with both of them. In Genesis 4:4–5 there are four emphatic marks used with reference to the two brothers.

Literally, the Hebrew of verses 4 and 5 says, “And Abel, he brought, indeed, even he, some of the firstlings of his flock and some of the fat portions belonging to him. And the Lord regarded with favor Abel and [then] his offering. But unto Cain and [then]

unto his offering, he did not have regard.”

Clearly the focus of this passage is on the men. There are four emphatic elements in the text that mark this emphasis: first, the man’s name; then the verb for “bringing” with the pronominal suffix; then the emphasizing particle gam; and finally the personal independent pronoun. It is difficult to see how the writer could have made it any more pointed that it was the men, and their hearts’ condition, that was the determinative factor in God’s deciding whose sacrifice was to be accepted. The text almost stutters:

“And Abel, he, he also, he brought.”

The verb shaµ>aÆh means “to gaze,” but when it is used with the preposition <el (“unto” or “toward”), as it is here, it means “to regard with favor.” Ever since Luther, commentators have noticed that God’s favor was pointedly directed toward the person first and then, and only then, toward the offering that person brought. Accordingly, this became the determinative factor in all worship: the heart attitude of the individual.

If the heart was not found acceptable, the gift was likewise unacceptable.

It is true that an old Greek translation of this text rendered shaµ>aÆh in Greek as enepyrisen, “he kindled.” Apparently the translator wanted to say that on some occasions God did kindle acceptable sacrifices. But since there is a double object for this verb, namely, Abel and his sacrifice, this translation is unacceptable, for it would set the man on fire as well as the sacrifice!

That Cain’s heart and not his offering was the real problem here can be seen from the last part of verse 5: “So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast”—literally,

“it burned Cain greatly [or, to the core] and his face dropped.”

God’s displeasure with Cain revealed the sad state of affairs in Cain’s heart. Instead of moving to rectify his attitude, Cain let it harden into murder. For the moment, however, anger hid itself in Cain’s eyes—he avoided looking anyone in the eye.

Averting his own gaze, he kept others from seeing (through the eye gate) what was in his heart.

Hermann Gunkel—who unwisely called this episode a myth—was truly unjustified in claiming this story taught that God loved shepherds but not farmers. Despite others who have followed Gunkel’s lead, there is no proven connection between this narrative and any parallel stories in the ancient Near East of rivalries between shepherds and farmers.

Sacrifice in the Old Testament is not a “preapproved” way of earning divine credit.

The principle behind it remains the same as it does for all acts of service and ritual in the Christian faith today: God always inspects the giver and the worshiper before he inspects the gift, service or worship.

See also comment on 1 samuel 15:22; psalm 51:16–17, 19.

4:17 Where Did Cain Get His Wife?

Up to this point in Genesis we only know about Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel.

But the most obvious answer to this common question must be that Adam and Eve had other children, including daughters. Indeed, Genesis 5:4 plainly says as much, “[Adam]

had other sons and daughters.”

Cain must have married his sister. But to admit this is to raise a further difficulty: was he thereby guilty of incest?

At least two things can be said in response to this reproach. First, if the human race was propagated from a single pair, as we believe the evidence indicates, such closely related marriages were unavoidable. The demand for some other way of getting the race started is an unfair expectation.

In the second place, the notion of incest must be probed more closely. At first the sin of incest was connected with sexual relationships between parents and children. Only afterward was the notion of incest extended to sibling relationships.

By Moses’ time there were laws governing all forms of incest (Lev 18:7–17; 20:11–12, 14, 17, 20–21; Deut 22:30; 27:20, 22, 23). These laws clearly state that sexual relations or marriage is forbidden with a mother, father, stepmother, sister, brother, half brother, half sister, granddaughter, daughter-in-law, son-in-law, aunt, uncle or brother’s wife.

The Bible, in the meantime, notes that Abraham married his half sister (Gen 20:12).

Therefore, the phenomenon is not unknown in Scripture. Prior to Moses’ time, incest in many of the forms later proscribed were not thought to be wrong. Thus, even Moses’ own father, Amram, married an aunt, his father’s sister, Jochebed (Ex 6:20). In Egypt, the routine marriage of brothers and sisters among the Pharaohs all the way up to the second century made the Mosaic law all the more a radical break with their Egyptian past.

The genetic reasons for forbidding incest were not always an issue. Close inbreeding in ancient times was without serious or any genetic damage. Today, the risk of genetic damage is extremely high. Since the genetic possibilities of Adam and Eve were very good, there were no biological reasons for restricting marriages to the degree that it became necessary to do later.

5:3–5 How Could Adam Live 930 Years?

Everyone who reads the list of the ten antediluvians in Genesis 5 and the list of ten postdiluvians in Genesis 11 is immediately struck by the longevity of these patriarchs.

How is it possible that these people were able to live so long?

Moreover, we are awed by the ages at which they were still able to father children.

Noah became a proud father at a mere 500 years (Gen 5:32)!

The question of the possible reconciliation of the results of scientific inquiry and the claims of Scripture could not be more challenging. The claims for the long lives and the ages at which these men were able to sire children is enough to lead to a distrust of the Scriptures almost from the very first chapters of the Bible.

In fact, so notoriously difficult are the problems presented by the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 that they have been paraded for centuries as prime examples of

chronological impossibilities in the Bible. A resolution for the kinds of issues raised here are found, however, in an understanding of the writer’s method.

In April 1890, William Henry Green of the Princeton faculty wrote an article in Bibliotheca Sacra pointing to some clear principles used by the writers of Scripture in the construction of genealogies. Those principles include the following: 1. Abridgment is the general rule because the sacred writers did not want to encumber their pages with more names than necessary.

2. Omissions in genealogies are fairly routine. For example, Matthew 1:8 omits three names between Joram and Ozias (Uzziah); namely, Ahaziah (2 Kings 8:25), Joash (2

Kings 12:1) and Amaziah (2 Kings 14:1). In verse 11, Matthew omits Jehoiakim (2

Kings 23:34). In fact, in Matthew 1:1 the whole of two millennia are summed up in two giant steps: “Jesus Christ, the son of David [about 1000 b.c.], the son of Abraham

[about 2000 b.c.].”

3. The span of a biblical “generation” is more than our twenty to thirty years. In Syriac it equals eighty years. Often in the Exodus account a generation is 100 to 120 years.

4. The meanings of begat, son of, father of and even bore a son often have special nuances, as the context often indicates. To beget often means no more than “to become the ancestor of.” To be the father of often means being a grandfather or great-grandfather. The point is that the next key person was descended from that male named “father” in the text.

The most instructive lesson of all can be gleaned from Kohath’s descent into Egypt (Gen 46:6–11) some 430 years (Ex 12:40) before the exodus. Now if Moses (one in the Kohath line) was 80 years old at the time of the exodus (Ex 7:7), and no gaps (such as are suggested by the above-mentioned principles) are understood (as we believe the evidence above now forces us to concede), then the “grandfather” of Moses had in Moses’ lifetime 8,600 descendants. Amazing as that might seem, here is the real shocker: 2,750 of those 8,600 descendants were males between the ages of 30

and 50 (Num 3:19, 27–28, 34; 4:36)! It is difficult to believe that the writers of Scripture were that naive.

The form that Genesis 5 and 11 use, with few exceptions, is a stereotypic formula giving the age of the patriarch at the birth of his son, the number of years that he lived after the birth of that son, and then the total number of years that he lived until he died.

It is the question of the function of these numbers that attracts our attention here.

Since Zilpah is credited with “bearing” ( yaµlad÷_) her grandchildren (Gen 46:18) and Bilhah is said to “bear” ( yaµlad_) her grandchildren as well (Gen 46:25), it is clear that a legitimate usage of these numbers in the genealogies might well mean that B was a distant relative of A. In this case, the age of A is the age at the birth of that (unnamed) child from whom B (eventually) descended.

The ages given for the “father” when the “son” was born must be actual years, as we shall presently see. The conflation takes place not at the point of supplying the actual years at which the father had a child; it is instead at the point where the name of the next noteworthy descendant is given instead of the immediate son. The ages given function as an indicator of the fact that the effects of the Fall into sin had not yet affected human generative powers as seriously as they have more recently. The same

point, of course, is to be made with regard to human longevity. The fact that the record wishes to stress is the sad mortality of men and women as a result of the sin in the Garden of Eden. The repeated litany “and he died” echoes from the pages like the solemn toll of a funeral bell.

Attempts to make the numbers more palatable have been crushed by the internal weight of their own argumentation or from a failure to care for all the data in a single theory. One abortive attempt was to treat the names as names of tribes rather than as names of individuals. This would seem to work until we meet up with Enoch, who was taken to heaven. It hardly seems fair to imply that the whole Enoch tribe was taken to heaven, so we are left with the idea that these really are meant to represent individuals.

Another, equally unsuccessful, rationalization was that the “years” here represented a system of counting months, or something of that sort. In this view, the years would be reduced by a factor of 10 or 12. Accordingly, Adam’s total of 930 years could be reduced to the more manageable and believable 93 or 77 years. This theory runs into trouble when Nahor becomes the father of Terah at 29 years of age in Genesis 11:24.

This would mean that he actually had a child when he was 2.9 or 2.4 years old! In that case we jump from the pan into the fire. Unfortunately for this theory, there are no known biblical examples of the word year meaning anything less than the solar year we are accustomed to in general speech.

One final warning might be in order: do not add up the years of these patriarchs in Genesis 5 and 11 and expect to come up with the Bible’s date for the birth of the human race. The reason for this warning is clear: the Bible never adds up these numbers. It is not as though the Bible never gives us sums of years—there are the 430

years of Egyptian bondage in Exodus 12:40 and the 480 years of 1 Kings 6:1. But in Genesis 5 and 11 the writer does not employ his numbers for this purpose; neither should we.

Some who have violated this simple observation have seriously argued that the human race was created on October 24, 4004 b.c., at 9:30 a.m., 45th Meridian time. Being careful scholars from Cambridge, the cynic William Brewster quipped, they did not dare say with any more precision when humankind was born!

The earliest definite date we can fix for any biblical person is around 2100 b.c. for the birth of Abram. The Julian calendar dates for anything before that are impossible to set with the present sets of data at our disposal.

The creation of the universe is dated in Genesis 1:1 as being “in the beginning.” Of that we can be as certain as we are of revelation itself. The creation of Adam came six

“days” later, but one must be warned that right there in the first chapters of Genesis the Bible uses the word day with three different meanings: (1) daylight (Gen 1:5), (2) a twenty-four-hour day (Gen 1:14) and (3) an epoch or era, as we use the word in speaking of the “day” of the horse and buggy or Abraham Lincoln’s “day” (Gen 2:4; compare the RSV [RSV Revised Standard Version] ’s “In the day” with the NIV [NIV

New International Version] ’s “When”). I would opt for the day-age theory, given all that must take place on the sixth “day” according to the Genesis record. Incidentally, this day-age view has been the majority view of the church since the fourth century, mainly through the influence of Saint Augustine.

So Adam did live a real 930 years. The sons attributed to him may have been his direct

sons or they may have been from two to six generations away, but in the same line.

See also articles on “Why Don’t Bible Genealogies Always Match Up?” and “Aren’t Many Old Testament Numbers Wrong?”

5:4 Where Did the Wives of the Antediluvians Come From?

See comment on genesis 4:17.

5:23–24 What Happened to Enoch?

Too many people assume that there is no uniform and sure doctrine on the subject of life after death in the Old Testament. Only one reference in the Old Testament is counted as a clear and undisputed reference to the resurrection of the dead by most Old Testament scholars, Daniel 12:2: “Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.”

Unhappily, however, even those who concede this point incorrectly place Daniel in the second century b.c.

A few scholars are willing to add Isaiah 26:19 to the Daniel 12:2 passage and count it as a second passage supporting the idea of resurrection of the dead in the Old Testament. It reads, “But your dead will live; their bodies will rise. You who dwell in the dust, wake up and shout for joy. Your dew is like the dew of the morning; the earth will give birth to her dead.”

Nevertheless, it is amazing to see how many learned men and women will deny even these two texts and argue that the Old Testament teaches virtually nothing about resurrection or life after death.

The truth of the matter is that ancient peoples were more attuned to the subject of life after death than moderns suspect. The peoples of the ancient Near East wrote at length about what life was like after one left this earth. One need only consult such representative pieces as the Gilgamesh Epic, The Descent of Ishtar into the Netherworld, the Book of the Dead and the Pyramid Texts. Indeed, the whole economy of Egypt was geared to the cult of the dead, for all who wished a part in the next life had to be buried around the pyramid of the Pharaoh. What these Egyptians could expect in that afterlife was depicted in the scenes on the walls of their mortuaries: eating, drinking, singing and all the joys of this life. Each joy, of course, would be magnified and still enjoyed through a body.

By the time Abraham arrived in Egypt, such concepts had been emblazoned on their walls in hieroglyphics, murals and models made of clay, to make sure no one missed the point. Life after death was not a modern doctrine developed by an educated society that began to think more abstractly about itself and its times. Instead it was an ancient hunger that existed in the hearts of humanity long before the patriarchs, prophets and kings of the Old Testament began to function. Why should we attribute this idea to the second and third centuries b.c. if already in the third and second millennium b.c. there is strong evidence to support it?

The earliest biblical mention of the possibility of a mortal’s inhabiting the immortal realms of deity can be found in Genesis 5:24. There we are told that a man named

Enoch lived 365 years, all the while “walking with God.” Suddenly, “he was no more, because God took him away.”

Enoch, whose name means “beginner,” must have been unusually godly—not that he achieved this distinction by removing himself from the world and contemplating only the presence of God. In fact, he fathered the famous Methuselah (the man who lived the longest that we know about on planet Earth, 969 years!). And he had other sons and daughters. This man was hardly removed from the daily grind and the problems of life. Nevertheless, he was able to walk with God.

Since this quality of “walking with God” is ascribed only to Enoch and Noah (Gen 6:9), it is significant that Malachi 2:6 shows that the concept involved having a most intimate communion with God. What a tribute to a mortal who is also a sinner! On the other hand, since Exodus 33:20 teaches that “no one may see [God] and live,” the possibility of an outward, physical meeting with God is ruled out.

Many think that only since New Testament times have such nearness and inner communion with God become possible. But here was one who found such uninterrupted consciousness of the living God that it appears to match what we in the post-New Testament era experience.

After 365 years of intimacy with the Almighty, suddenly the Lord “took” Enoch. What can it mean that he “took” him?

The Hebrew root for the verb to take is used over a thousand times in the Old Testament. However, in two contexts—this Genesis 5 passage and the account of Elijah’s assumption into heaven in 2 Kings 2:3, 10–11—it refers to a snatching of a person’s body up to heaven.

In light of these two cases of physical assumption, are there other cases where the verb is used in the Old Testament with a similar meaning?

There are two additional contexts in which more is intended than a mere rescue from dying or distress. Psalm 49 presents a stark contrast between the end of the lives of the wicked and the end of the lives of the righteous. The wicked are like “the beasts that perish” (Ps 49:12, 20) without any hope that they “should live on forever” (Ps 49:9).

However, the righteous have the triumphant expectation that “God will redeem [them]

from the grave [Hebrew Sheol]; he will surely take [them] to himself” (Ps 49:15). The idea is the same as that of Genesis 5:24: God will snatch, take or receive us to himself when we die. If the psalmist had in mind the fact that he would be rescued from death for a few years, though he knows he still must eventually die like the beasts, then the psalm has very little, or no, point.

Psalm 73:23–25 makes a similar contrast between the wicked and the righteous. Once again there is faith that reaches beyond this life, and it centers on this verb to take (Hebrew laµqah\). Says the psalmist, “You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory” (Ps 73:24).

Accordingly, it can be argued on very strong linguistic and conceptual grounds that the

“taking” of a person from this earth implies that mortals are capable of inhabiting immortal realms. For the believer in Yahweh in Old Testament times, death did not end it all. There was life after death, and that life was to be in the presence of the living God.

While Enoch did not experience “resurrection,” he did experience glorification. He did, along with Elijah, transcend this mortal life and go in his body to be with God. Since Enoch had not died, he could not be resurrected.

Such a view of an immediate access into the presence of God would also close down all speculation on any kind of intermediate state, receptacle or location as unscriptural.

To say that Old Testament believers stayed in a separate compartment in Sheol or in a kind of purgatory runs directly counter to the fact that God snatched Enoch and Elijah away “to himself.”

To say that the Old Testament offers the hope of personal fellowship with God beyond the grave with a real body is not outlandish or incorrect. That hope is a teaching of the text itself.

See also comment on genesis 25:8; job 19:23–27; psalm 49:12, 20; ecclesiastes 3:19–

21.

6:1–4 Who Married the Daughters of Men?

Few texts in the history of interpretation have aroused more curiosity and divergence of opinion than Genesis 6:1–4. It is at once tantalizing and deeply puzzling.

What is most difficult is the identification of the main participants in this short narrative—the “sons of God,” the “daughters of men” and the “Nephilim” (or

“giants”). An impressive array of scholars has lined up for each of the three major positions taken on the identification of these three groups of participants. The three positions may be labeled “the cosmologically mixed races view” (angels and humans),

“the religiously mixed races view” (godly Sethites and worldly Cainites) and “the sociologically mixed races view” (despotic male aristocrats and beautiful female commoners).

By all odds, the view that may perhaps claim the greatest antiquity is the cosmologically mixed races, or the angel theory, view. The pseudepigraphal and noncanonical 1 Enoch, dating from around 200 b.c., claims in 6:1–7:6 that two hundred angels in heaven, under the leadership of Semayaz, noticed that the humans had unusually beautiful daughters. These they desired for themselves, so they took a mutual oath to go down to earth together, and each took a wife. They taught these wives magical medicine, incantations, the cutting of roots and the care of plants. When the women became pregnant, they gave birth to giants that reached three hundred cubits. The giants in turn consumed all the food, thereby arousing the deep hatred of the earthlings. The giants turned to devouring the people along with the birds, wild beasts, reptiles and fish. Then it was that the earth, having had enough of these huge bullies, brought an accusation against them.

The famous Jewish historian Josephus (born 37 b.c.) also appears to follow this angel theory. He wrote, “Many angels accompanied with women, and begat sons that proved unjust” ( Antiquities 1.3.1). Likewise, the Greek translation of the Bible of the third century b.c. reads “angels of God” for the phrase “sons of God” in Genesis 6:2. In spite of the antiquity of the cosmologically mixed races view, there are such overwhelming problems with it that it is not recommended as the solution to this problem. While it is true, of course, that the term “sons of God” does occur in Job 1:6,

2:1 and 38:7 with the meaning “angels” (and that the phrase “sons of the mighty”

appears in Ps 29:1 and 89:7 with the meaning “angels”), it does not fit well here for several reasons.

Nowhere else in Scripture are we told that angels married humans. In fact, our Lord specifically stated that angels do not marry (Mk 12:25). And though the Septuagint translated the expression as being equivalent to “angels,” it is in fact only the Alexandrian manuscript that does so. The critical edition by Alfred Rahlfs does not reflect the angelic interpretation.

Even more serious is the problem of why judgment should fall on the humans and on the earth if the angels of heaven were the cause of the trouble. God should have flooded heaven, not earth. The culprits came from above; the women seem to have been doing nothing except being beautiful!

Some, however, will appeal to the New Testament passages of 1 Peter 3:18–20, 2

Peter 2:4 and Jude 6–7 for further support of the angel theory. But these passages do not say anything about angelic marriages. To argue from the phrase “in a similar way”

in Jude 7 that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah is the same as the sin of Genesis 6:1–4

claims too much, for the sin of sodomy is not the same thing as marrying a wife from another part of the universe! In fact, “in a similar way” does not compare the sin of the angels with the sin of the men of Sodom and Gomorrah; instead, it compares the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah with the sins of “the cities about them” (that is, Admah and Zeboiim; see Deut 29:23 and Hos 11:8). Thus the sins of Jude’s angels (Jude 6) and the sins of the five cities of the plain (Jude 7) are held up as warnings of the judgment that could come to others. The fall of the angels that Jude mentions is that which took place when Lucifer fell. To connect this fall with the time of the flood because of the proximity of the references in Jude 4–7 would demand that we connect the flood with the overthrow of the five cities of the plain. But the events listed in Jude are successive, not simultaneous: (1) the fall in eternity of Satan (Jude 4), (2) the preaching of Noah prior to the flood (Jude 5) and (3) the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah (Jude 6).

To allege that “giants” were the results of such sexual unions is once again to go beyond any data we possess in Scripture. Did the angels procreate without the use of natural bodies? Or did they already possess natural bodies? Or did they create for themselves natural bodies by the use of some mysterious, intrinsic, but rebellious power? Any and all answers to such questions would be purely speculative. To use extracanonical evidence such as 1 Enoch as a witness against or even for Scripture would be unprecedented.

The religiously mixed races view identifies the “sons of God” as the godly line of Seth.

Given the sin they committed, they are generally looked on as the apostate line of Seth.

“The daughters of men” are equated with the ungodly line of Cain. The sin condemned, then, would be the sin of being “unequally yoked”—that is, the marriage of believers to unbelievers.

This view also fails to meet the test of consistency with the biblical data and context. It uses the term men in verses 1 and 2 in two different senses: in verse 1 “men” is used to indicate humanity generically, while in verse 2 it is understood to refer to the Cainite line specifically. Suggesting such an abrupt change in meaning without any indication in the text is unwarranted.

But even more alarming is the problem of the offspring. Why would religiously mixed marriages produce nƒpnéÆlm-gibboÆréÆm (or, as some translate this Hebrew expression, “giants”)? Does the mixture of pagan and godly genes assure that the offspring’s DNA will be wild and grotesque?

This religiously mixed view should be abandoned as well as the cosmologically mixed view. Neither one can stand the weight of the evidence of the passage.

The preferable interpretation of this passage is the sociologically mixed view. “Sons of God” is an early, but typical, reference to the titularies for kings, nobles and aristocrats in the ancient Near Eastern setting. These power-hungry despots not only lusted after power but also were powerfully driven to become “men of a name” (or “men of renown”—Gen 6:4).

In their thirst for recognition and reputation, they despotically usurped control of the states they governed as if they were accountable to no one but themselves. Thus they perverted the whole concept of the state and the provision that God had made for some immediate amelioration of earth’s injustices and inequities (Gen 6:5–6; see also Gen 10:8–12). They also became polygamous, taking and marrying “any of [the women] they chose” (Gen 6:2).

What evidence can be produced for the correctness of this view? There are five lines of evidence. (1) The ancient Aramaic Targums render “sons of God” as “sons of nobles”

(Targums of Onkelos), and the Greek translation of Symmachus reads “the sons of the kings or lords.” (2) The word gods (Hebrew ƒloµhéÆm) is used in Scripture for men who served as magistrates or judges (“Then his master must take him before the judges

[ ƒloµhéÆm],” Ex 21:6; see also Ex 22:8; Ps 82:1, 6). (3) Structurally, the account of the Cainite Lamech (Gen 4:19–24) and that of the “sons of God” in Genesis 6:1–4 are very much alike. In each there is the taking of wives, the bearing of children and the dynastic exploits. The former passage ends with a boast of judgment by Lamech, and the other ends with God’s decree of judgment. Lamech practiced bigamy (Gen 4:19), and he enforced his policies by using tyranny. The portraits are parallel and depict states of tyranny, corruption and polygamy. (4) Near Eastern discoveries have validated the pagan use of all sorts of gods’ and goddesses’ names in order to give more clout and prestige to the governments of Egypt and Mesopotamia—hence the title “sons of God.”

The fifth and final line of evidence concerns the nƒpéµléÆm/ gibboÆroÆm of Genesis 6:4. The word nƒpéµléÆm occurs only here and in Numbers 13:33, where it refers to the Anakim, who were people of great stature. The root meaning of the word nƒpéµléÆm is “to fall.” However in Genesis 6:4 the nƒpéµléÆm are associated with the term gibboÆroÆm. The word gibboÆroÆm comes from gibboÆroÆm, meaning “a mighty man of valor, strength, wealth or power.” Nimrod, in Genesis 10:8, was such a gibboÆroÆm. He also was clearly a king in the land of Shinar. Hence the meaning of nƒpéµléÆm/ gibboÆroÆm is not “giants,” but something more like

“princes,” “aristocrats” or “great men.”

Genesis 6:1–4, therefore, is best understood as depicting ambitious, despotic and autocratic rulers seizing both women and power in an attempt to gain all the authority and notoriety they could from those within their reach. Their progeny were, not surprisingly, adversely affected, and so it was that God was grieved over the increased wickedness on planet Earth. Every inclination of the hearts and thoughts of humanity

was evil. Thus the flood had to come to judge humankind for the perversion of authority, the state, justice and human sexuality.

6:6 Does God Change His Mind?

In Malachi 3:6 God affirms, “I the Lord do not change.” This is why Christian doctrine teaches that God is immutable—that is, unchangeable. The promise of this constancy and permanence in the nature and character of God has been deeply reassuring to many believers down through the ages. When everything else changes, we can remember the living God never fails or vacillates from anything that he is or that he has promised.

For this reason many are legitimately startled when they read that the Lord “was grieved” or “repented” that he had ever made man and woman upon the earth (Gen 6:6). How can both the immutability and the changeableness of God be taught in the same canon of Scripture?

Scriptures frequently use the phrase “God repented.” For example, Exodus 32:14 says,

“Then [after Moses’ intercession for the Israelites] the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.” Or again in 1 Samuel 15:11, “I am grieved that I have made Saul king, because he has turned away from me and has not carried out my instructions.” Again in Jeremiah 26:3, “Perhaps they will listen and each will turn from his evil way. Then I will relent and not bring on them the disaster I was planning because of the evil they have done.” (See also Jer 26:13, 19; Jon 3:10.) The Hebrew root behind all the words variously translated as “relent,” “repent,” “be sorry” and “grieve” is nh\m. In its origins the root may well have reflected the idea of breathing or sighing deeply. It suggests a physical display of one’s feelings—sorrow, compassion or comfort. The root is reflected in such proper names as Nehemiah, Nahum and Menehem.

When God’s repentance is mentioned, the point is not that he has changed in his character or in what he stands for. Instead, what we have is a human term being used to refer—rather inadequately—to a perfectly good and necessary divine action. Such a term is called an anthropomorphism.

When the Bible says that God repented, the idea is that his feelings toward some person or group of persons changed in response to some change on the part of the objects of his action or some mediator who intervened (often by God’s own direction and plan). Often in the very same passages that announce God’s repentance there is a firm denial of any alteration in God’s plan, purpose or character. Thus 1 Samuel 15:29

reminds us that “he who is the Glory of Israel does not lie or change his mind; for he is not a man, that he should change his mind.” Yet Samuel made that statement the day after the Lord told him that he was grieved he had made Saul king (1 Sam 15:11).

From our human perspective, then, it appears that the use of this word indicates that God changed his purpose. But the expression “to repent,” when used of God, is anthropopathic (that is, a description of our Lord in terms of human emotions and passions).

In Genesis 6:6 the repentance of God is his proper reaction to continued and unrequited sin and evil in the world. The parallel clause says that sin filled his heart with pain. This denotes no change in his purpose or character. It only demonstrates

that God has emotions and passions and that he can and does respond to us for good or ill when we deserve it.

The point is that unchangeableness must not be thought of as if it were some type of frozen immobility. God is not some impervious being who cannot respond when circumstances or individuals change. Rather, he is a living person, and as such he can and does change when the occasion demands it. He does not change in his character, person or plan. But he can and does respond to our changes.

See also comment on 1 samuel 15:29; jonah 4:1–2.

6:9 Was Noah Perfect?

Genesis 6:9 is a hard saying because it appears to imply that Noah attained moral and spiritual perfection. How could Noah have achieved such an elevated status of perfection when he came after the Fall? Did he not partake of the sinful nature and the bent toward depravity that all the race had inherited? If he did, as most will affirm, in what sense could it be said that he was “righteous” and “blameless”?

Noah, Daniel and Job are remembered for their righteous lives (Ezek 14:14, 20). But they did not as humans set the standard for others. The standard they shared is still the same today: it is the Lord himself who sets the standard. His nature and will compose the ethical and moral measuring stick for all others to follow.

The Hebrew word s\adéÆq (which shares the same root as the Hebrew word s

\ed_oeq) basically connotes conformity to the standard. The original idea may well have been “to be straight.” From this came the idea of a “norm” and of being “in the right.” The bureau of standards for what was morally and ethically right was to be found only in God himself. “The Lord is righteous [ s\adéÆq] in all his ways and loving toward all he has made” (Ps 145:17). Therefore, the standards and judgments set out in his Word are righteous (Ps 119:144, 160, 172).

Some of the earlier usages of the word occur in connection with the Israelite judges’

carrying out of their functions and decisions. They were warned, “Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly” [ s\ed_oeq] (Lev 19:15). This same type of “righteousness” applied to scales and weights: “Use honest [ s\ed_oeq] scales and honest weights, an honest ephah and an honest hin” (Lev 19:36). Thus, the righteousness of God opposed commercial or judicial fraud and deception.

Righteousness applied to three areas of personal relationships: the ethical, the forensic and the theological. None of these three areas depended on current norms or practices; the righteousness that God wanted could be found only in the standards set forth in his Word. The ethical area dealt with the conduct of persons with one another. The forensic aspect required equality before the law for small and great, rich and poor. The theological aspect demanded that God’s covenant people live a life of holiness, following the path laid out by God’s righteousness.

In the case of Noah, he conformed to the standard set by God. When all the people around him were immersing themselves in evil and earning the wrath and judgment of God, Noah set his heart to follow the path found in the person and character of God.

He stood his ground and remained uninfluenced by all that was happening around him.

The word righteous simply meant that he accepted and used the righteous standard for his living and acting. It does not imply perfection. The term does not in itself establish total approbation of his actions, any more than it does in connection with Tamar in Genesis 38:26. The text expresses an estimate of the comparative rightness of Tamar and Judah. When Judah was exposed as the adulterer by whom Tamar had become pregnant, he said, “She is more righteous than I”—that is, she was more within her rights to act as she did than Judah was in what he did. This can hardly be a complete endorsement of Tamar or her actions. Neither is the use of the same term a total endorsement of Noah.

Noah met the basic requirement set by the norm God had erected, and his conduct proved it. This can also be seen from the parallel clause “and he walked with God”—

the same wording that was used of Enoch (Gen 5:24).

But this still leaves the problem of Noah’s being called “blameless” or “perfect.”

Scripture has one preeminent example of the “perfect” man: Job. It is said that he was

“blameless” (Job 1:1). He too claimed that he was “blameless” or “perfect” in Job 9:21–22, 12:4 and 31:6. Even under heavy assault to the contrary, he held fast to his

“integrity” (same root—Job 27:5). And he was not alone in this opinion, for his wife ascribed “integrity” to him (Job 2:9). Even Yahweh in heaven agreed that Job was indeed “blameless” or “perfect” (Job 1:8; 2:3).

In spite of all these high accolades for Job, he knew that he was a sinner, for he queried, “How can a mortal be righteous before God?” (Job 9:2). He further acknowledged his sin (Job 10:6; 14:16–17). Accordingly, the use of the word blameless or perfect does not imply that one has attained perfection or a state in which one no longer sins. Even the creature in Eden (probably Lucifer) that was created

“perfect” was found to be capable of sin (Ezek 28:13–15).

The Hebrew root of the word perfect involves the idea of completeness. Thus we conclude that Noah conformed to the standard set by God and that his life was

“complete,” with no essential quality missing.

The modifying phrase “among the people of his time” indicates all the more clearly that Noah’s righteousness and blamelessness stood out against his contemporaries’

sinfulness.

Just as Job had to admit his sin, so the same Scripture that tells us that Noah was righteous and blameless also tells us that he became drunk from the fruit of the vine (Gen 9:21). Clearly then there is no case for perfection and sinlessness in these words righteous and blameless. Instead, this is a case of someone who walked with God and delighted in following what he had said and living by the standards he had established.

6:19–20; 7:2–3 How Many Animals Went into the Ark?

During the last century and a half, the prevailing nonevangelical interpretation of the Noah story has been that this is not one story but at least two separate stories poorly patched together in an attempt to make them one unified whole. Evidence offered for the existence of two original stories is the fact that Noah is first told to take two of

each kind of animal on board the ark and then to take seven of each clean kind.

In the final analysis, according to one eminent critical scholar, there is only one piece of evidence for the disunity of the Noah story, and that is repetition or repeated occurrence. The repetition, he reasoned, makes no sense unless two or more narratives have been conflated.

Repetition can sometimes be a sign of divergent traditions and of an editor having welded together several versions of the same story, or even different stories. But there are other explanations for this same phenomenon. Repetition is one of the most fundamental tools of the literary artist. Its presence does not necessarily indicate that the literary piece is a composite hodgepodge reflecting heterogeneous elements of mixed sources, oral or written.

To claim, as many have done, that Genesis 6:19–20 came from a priestly source around 450 b.c. and that Genesis 7:2–3 came from an earlier Yahwistic source around 850 b.c. is to say that the editor of the material let the contradiction stand. There is no need for such extravagant theories of origins, especially since we have a second-millennium flood story from Mesopotamia, the Gilgamesh Epic, with many of the same details. The Gilgamesh Epic, only unearthed in this century, could hardly have incorporated the so-called priestly and Yahwistic sources from the fifth and ninth centuries b.c., having been written and buried long before then. Why then must we suppose that Genesis incorporates such allegedly later sources?

The truth is that there is no inherent incompatibility between the two texts as they presently stand. Genesis 7:2–3 is just more precise than 6:19–20 on the question of the types and numbers of animals and birds that would board the ark.

Noah’s first instruction was to admit pairs of all kinds of creatures on the ark to preserve their lives (Gen 6:19–20). That was the basic formula. Then he was given more specific instructions about admitting seven pairs of each of the clean animals and seven pairs of each kind of bird. The purpose of this measure was to become clear only after the flood. Birds would be needed to reconnoiter the earth (Gen 8:7–12), and the clean animals and birds would be offered in sacrifice to the Lord (Gen 8:20). If Noah had taken only one pair of each and then offered each of these pairs in sacrifice, these species would have become completely extinct.

The simplest and most adequate explanation is that chapter 6 of Genesis contains general summary directions—take two of each. After Noah had understood these general instructions, God spoke more specifically about the role the clean beasts and birds were to play.

Scripture does not indicate how the distinction between “clean” and “unclean” arose.

Later on the Mosaic law would sanction this distinction and formally define it. But we are left without any indication of the origin of the distinction, just as we are left in the dark regarding how and when the whole idea of sacrifices started. Cain and Abel both sacrificed, but a formal declaration inaugurating this ritual is not recorded.

If some analysts still wish to excise the clean animals from the so-called priestly account of the Genesis flood story, they only introduce into what they are calling the Yahwistic account the very sort of repetition that they had earlier taken as a sign of divergent sources. This is too high a price to pay just to avoid admitting that perhaps the accounts of the boarding of pairs of unclean animals are connected with the

boarding of seven pairs of clean animals. Genesis 7:6–15 does not support a Yahwistic-and-priestly-source explanation; indeed, it causes unusual trouble for such an analysis of the material.

7:19 A Worldwide Flood?

How widespread was this flood geographically? If it covered all the high mountains under the entire heavens, then it must, on present-day topographies, have amounted to some six miles of water clinging to all sides of the globe for the better part of a year. Is this possible without some real permanent effects such as observable disturbances in the realm of astrophysics and the pollution of the freshwater systems around the world?

If, however, the final judgment of the whole earth with fire is likened to the Noachian flood in 2 Peter 3:3–7, is that not final proof that Noah’s flood was also universal in its geographical extent? The flood was extensive enough to wipe all living humans on earth except the eight persons who were on board the ark (Gen 7:23; 1 Pet 3:20). That is the main point of the biblical narrative and the one nonnegotiable argument in the whole discussion. Scripture is adamant on this point. Genesis 6:17 clearly says that the flood destroyed all life under the heavens—except, of course, the fish and the eight who were on the ark. Moreover, it lasted 371 days, something a whole lot worse than some local flood!

It is clear that we must proceed carefully in order to give due weight to all the evidence from all sides. All of that cannot be listed here, for some have taken full volumes to do it—with much still left unsaid. Nevertheless, here are some of the salient facts that help place this question into perspective.

First, the word translated “earth” is also rendered equally well at times as “land” or

“country.” The common word for “world,” teµb÷el, does not occur anywhere in the flood narrative. Elsewhere in Genesis, even the word “earth” (Hebrew <eres÷\) has the same ambiguity, for “the famine was severe in all the world [ <eres÷\]” (Gen 41:57), but it is not necessary to conclude that this was a seven-year global famine.

This manner of speaking is similar to Luke 2:1, where “all the world” (Gk) went to be taxed, when it meant only the Roman world (see NIV [NIV New International Version] ), or Colossians 1:23, where Paul rejoices that the gospel “has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven.” Thus it is possible that some of the phrases used in the flood account may be conscious exaggerations, that is, hyperboles, in order to make the point that indeed this was no ordinary flood, for it wiped out all human life except for the eight persons on board the ark.

But if the flood may not have reached geographically around the entire globe, how then were all persons except eight wiped out by the flood? The answer to that question depends on how far mortals had migrated at that time and what was the exact date for the flood. Both of these questions are unknowns. However, one may legitimately posit one of the pluvial phases (melting periods) from the glaciers, which would have had the effect of driving those on the Euro-African-Asian continents down into the Mediterranean climes and south. But when it comes to answering the question about those from the Americas or from Australia and related areas, we simply do not know enough to state anything with any confidence.

The fact that the waters rose above all the high mountains to a depth of at least twenty feet (Gen 7:19–20) is probably taken from the draft or the waterline that was seen on the ark by those who emerged and saw it after the waters had receded. And the fact that the ark had drifted perhaps some five hundred miles from the place where it had been built (as judged from parallel accounts of the flood in the ancient Near East) and that it had landed high up on the side of Mount Ararat legitimately gave rise to this way of presenting the enormity of this flood.

Our conclusion is that the jury is still out on this question. The strongest arguments for a worldwide flood (“all” life destroyed, 6:17; waters rise to over twenty feet above the high mountains, 7:19–20; flood lasts 371 days; and the fiery final judgment affecting all the earth just as Noah’s flood did, 2 Pet 3:3–7) can all be met with (1) comparison with other similar biblical expressions and (2) the fact that this judgment of God did involve all mortals except the eight on the ark. But the fact that all these expressions can be explained this way does not necessitate that the writer of this text meant to use them in a hyperbolic way.

Similar questions can be raised for those who hold to a local flood. If the flood was merely a local phenomenon, why did the ark land somewhere on Mount Ararat (Gen 8:4)? Why was it necessary to bring a pair from each of the unclean animals on board the ark and seven of each of the clean animals (for use in sacrifices) if they could have been obtained by going just beyond the confines of the flood after they emerged from the ark?

Some believe that the flood was spread over the whole earth, while others insist that it was limited to the Mesopotamian basin or some other defined geographical area in the Near East. The point is that Scripture is anxious only to teach that it was God’s judgment on all mortals living on earth except the eight on the ark. On the other matters we must await more information.

9:6 Capital Punishment Mandated by God?

Can Genesis 9:6 properly be used to answer modern questions about capital punishment? The debate is one of no small proportions, and the consequences both for the condemned murderer and for society are great indeed.

Genesis 9:5–6 is the simplest statement mandating society to punish their fellow beings for murder. However, its very simplicity and lack of any development allow opponents of capital punishment to question the passage’s relevance. Missing, they claim, are all references to civil government, due process, exceptions and distinctions between various degrees of murder.

Genesis 9:5–6 is part of the covenant God established with Noah following the flood.

Involved in this covenant were the animals’ fear of people, permission to eat meat that did not contain the lifeblood and the delegation of the death penalty for murder into the hands of men and women. But more than this was involved, and this tends to demonstrate the enduring nature of the provisions of this covenant. Seasons were instituted as part of the enduring natural order (Gen 8:22), the rainbow would serve as a continuing pledge that the earth would not be flooded again (Gen 9:13) and the image of God provided the rationale for exacting the extreme penalty (Gen 9:6). The covenant established with Noah is therefore one that involves his representing “every

living creature” (Gen 6:18–19; 9:10–11, 12, 15–17).

The text has a clear statement on capital punishment. God requires a “reckoning” of both the person and the beast who shed anyone’s blood. But since both are held responsible, even though the beasts cannot make moral discriminations or act intentionally, how can advocates of capital punishment use this text to sort out the issue?

One could argue that Exodus 21:28–36 supplies the principle of animal liability while the Mosaic law makes a distinction between manslaughter and murder, or between first, second and third degree murder. Opponents would contend, however, that the Mosaic law was made between God and Israel while the Noachian covenant was between God and every living creature.

This distinction, however, is most curious, because it makes a sharper dichotomy between law and grace than what Scripture intends. For even when the civil code of the Mosaic law demonstrates a particularistic and distinctively cultural relevancy, which is limited to the period for which they were written, these same laws have behind them eternal principles as enduring as the character of God. That is the point so clearly made by the recent discovery that the Ten Commandments, with their moral code, set the agenda for both the Covenant Code of Exodus 21–23 and the specifications of Deuteronomy 6–26. I have argued this case in some detail in Toward Old Testament Ethics (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1983).

But let us settle the matter on the textual grounds of Genesis 9:6 itself. First, it is clear that the text is giving us a command and not just a suggestion or permission. Verse 5

states that God demands a punishment: “I [God] will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man.” Moreover, the reason given for this action is one that remains in force for as long as men and women are made in the image of God.

This matter of the image of God brings us to the heart of the issue: “for [because] in the image of God has God made man.” The word for cannot be rendered “although”

here, as in Genesis 8:21 or Joshua 17:13—as if the fact that a person was made in the image of God was no impediment to the sentence of death. The clearest reading is that the murderer had to suffer for his or her actions because it was a fundamental denial of the image of God in the harmed individual. The person who destroyed another being made in God’s image in fact did violence to God himself—so sacred and so permanent was the worth and value that God had invested in the slain victim.

Some interpreters connect the causal conjunction not with the shedding of blood, but with everything that preceded it—verses 1, 2 and 7. On these grounds, the reason given in the last part of verse 6 is instead the reason that God saved a remnant of the human race through Noah and why he protects people from the threats of wild animals.

But all of this is too distantly related. Furthermore, it is based on the alleged excuse that verse 6 has a peculiar structure (chiastic). This seems more like special pleading than solid exegesis. Ordinarily, one takes the nearest expression when seeking the expression or word that the for or because clause modifies. More indicators are needed to prove that a chiastic word order is unusual in this situation. This happens in poetry regularly.

Others object to transferring this demand for capital punishment in Genesis 9:6 to the

law books as a universally binding law without including Genesis 9:4–5—“You must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it” and “I will demand an accounting from every animal.” This can be partially answered by recognizing that the New Testament forbids Gentiles from eating blood or things that have not been properly bled (Acts 15:20, 29; compare with Lev 3:17; 17:14; Deut 12:16, 23). And Exodus 21:28–36

does enforce the principle of animal liability.

It is likewise too much to assert that “the shedding of blood” be taken merely as a metaphor for death. Most frequently the concept of pouring was a physical act; its metaphoric usages were reserved for such ideas as the pouring out of the wrath of God or the pouring out of one’s heart or soul. But when blood was poured out in a violent way, that outpouring was said to pollute the land (Num 35:33; 2 Kings 24:4; Ezek 22:3–4). It is this pouring out of blood that constitutes the single most frequent use of this verb. It is hardly a metaphoric usage. No picture of violent death could be more graphically depicted.

Later in the sixth commandment, one word is chosen to depict first degree murder out of the seven possible verbs in Hebrew for kill. Raµs\ah\ became restricted to deliberate and premeditated murder (Ps 94:6; Prov 22:13; Is 1:21; Jer 7:9; Hos 4:2; 6:9). This verb was not used for killing beasts for food (Gen 9:3), defending oneself in a nighttime attack (Ex 22:2), accidental killings (Deut 19:5) or even manslaughter (Num 35:16, 25). What joins murder with manslaughter is that both incur blood guilt and both pollute the land. What differentiates the two is that there is no substitute allowed for death which comes by the hand of a murderer (that is to say, for one who premeditates his act), but the text implies that for every other of the sixteen to twenty death penalty crimes in the Old Testament a substitute is permitted (Num 35:31). It is with this concept that the shedding of blood would appear to be linked.

Nowhere does the text introduce the political state as the one that demands that life from the murderer. While this is true, it is only another evidence of the phenomenon of progressive revelation. No one passage supplies all the details. Even the statement in Romans 13 on the state does not include the caveat raised in Acts 4:19–20 that circumscribes the authority of the state over a Christian when obeying human government would exclude obeying God.

Jesus himself seems to have accepted the principle of capital punishment when he reminded Pilate that government was divinely conferred (Jn 19:11). The same position is elsewhere supported in the New Testament by Romans 13:4 and Acts 25:11.

However, the major argument for capital punishment still rests in the image-of-God argument given in Genesis 9:6. This can hardly be bypassed by any who take Scripture seriously.

But if a society persists in refusing to take the life of those conclusively proven to have deliberately and violently taken others’ lives, then that society will stand under God’s judgment and the value, worth, dignity and respect for persons in that society and nation will diminish accordingly. It is self-defeating to argue on the one hand for civil and women’s rights and to turn around on the other and deny them to the one struck down by a murderous blow.

Of course this principle must be applied with such reluctance that where “reasonable doubt” exists, we err on the side of mercy and waive the death penalty. In an imperfect judicial system not all defendants will be treated equally or fairly because economic

status, social standing, race or political and legal connections will place some “above the law.” However, we will warn that such cheating does not escape God’s notice, nor does it change his laws. It only becomes another divine indictment on that society that dares to exercise unevenly the divinely ordained demand for justice. That nation is going to be judged for such a cavalier attitude toward God’s mission.

See also comment on exodus 20:13; leviticus 20:1–7; numbers 35:21.

9:24–25 What Was the Curse on Canaan?

One of the saddest moments in the history of interpretation was when advocates of slavery decided to use this text as a justification for their inhuman treatment of dark-skinned people. It was asserted that this divine prophecy given by Noah after the flood legitimized slavery for a group of people who had been cursed perpetually. Supporters of slavery argued that the Arabic version of Genesis 9:25 reads “Cursed be the father of Canaan” instead of “Cursed be Canaan.” A vehement allegiance to the misapplication of this text has continued among some groups to the present day.

But the oppression of blacks by whites cannot be justified from this story. What happened is that Noah, a righteous and blameless man, had been drinking wine (Gen 9:21). That in itself was not the issue here, for in Scripture wine is viewed as one of God’s gifts to humankind (Ps 104:15). Every burnt offering and peace offering was accompanied by a libation of wine (Num 15:5–10), and the drinking of wine at festivals was acknowledged (Deut 14:26). One of the symbols for Israel was the vine (Is 5:1–7; Mk 12:1–11).

But the Bible also warns about the dangers of wine. Nazirites were to abstain from all alcohol and wine (Num 6:3–4), and priests were forbidden to drink prior to officiating in the sanctuary lest they die (Lev 10:9). The laity were also warned that drinking too much wine was dangerous to people and offensive to God (Prov 21:17; 23:20–21, 29–

35; Is 5:22). Drunkenness was especially reprehensible when it led to self-exposure (Hab 2:15; Lam 4:21). The exposure of one’s nakedness was not only publicly demeaning but also incompatible with the presence of the living God (Ex 20:26; Deut 23:12–14).

Because Noah drank to excess, he became drunk. The heat generated by the alcohol in his bloodstream led the patriarch to thrust off his covering involuntarily as he lay in his tent. The reflexive form of the verb makes it clear that he uncovered himself (Gen 9:21).

Noah’s youngest son, Ham, entered the tent, and there he was confronted with the situation I have just described (Gen 9:22). Apparently his gaze was not a mere harmless notice or an accidental glance. The verb used here has such force that some say it means “he gazed with satisfaction.”

What exactly Ham did has been the subject of much speculation. The most bizarre of all suggestions is that Ham castrated his father in a struggle for family power. But there is no evidence to support this idea other than the precedent of some Greek and Semitic stories with the motif of paternal castration. A second suggestion is that the expression “to see a man’s nakedness” is an idiomatic phrase for sexual intercourse with that man’s wife. But this expression is quite different from the idiom “to uncover

the nakedness” of Leviticus 18 and 20. Leviticus 20:17 is the only place where the verb

“to see” is used, but it is not in a parallel construction with “uncover.” The view that Ham had an incestuous relationship with his mother is an impossible explanation. Even if Ham had committed incest with his mother, he would hardly have told his brothers!

Thus, Ham could be faulted simply for this: he failed to cover up his father’s nakedness and chose rather to make fun of his father to his brothers. Such an act was serious enough to prompt Noah to utter his curse on Ham’s descendants, who would be guilty of the kinds of sexual perversions that many suspected Ham of carrying out. To lie exposed meant that one was unprotected, dishonored and at risk of exploitation. Ham had transgressed a natural and sacred barrier. His disgusting ridicule of his father before his brothers aggravated the act and perhaps betrayed a moral weakness that had established itself in his personality.

Who, then, was Canaan? And why was he cursed if Ham was the culprit? Since the law of God insists that God deals with all people justly, this curse of Canaan is all the more puzzling.

Genesis 10:6 lists the sons of Ham as Cush (basically Ethiopia), Mizraim (Egypt), Put (generally taken to be one of the North African countries) and Canaan (of the country of Palestine/Canaan). We are not talking about Africans or blacks here, but the Canaanite peoples who inhabited ancient Palestine.

Canaan was not singled out for the curse because he was the youngest son of Ham, nor was it a random selection. Apparently Noah saw in the youngest son of Ham the same tendencies and perversions that had been evidenced in Ham. When Noah had fully recovered from the effects of his drunkenness, he uttered this curse against Canaan.

Noah could not have cursed his son, for he and his brothers, along with Noah, had been the objects of a blessing in Genesis 9:1. Neither Noah nor anyone else could reverse such a blessing with a curse. Balaam the son of Beor learned this the hard way in Numbers 22–24.

Still, there may well have been an element of “mirroring” punishment here, especially if Canaan was to exhibit the outworkings of the tendencies already present in Ham’s failure to cover Noah’s nakedness. Finally, it is a matter of historical record that the Canaanites were notoriously deviant in their sexual behavior. Almost everywhere the archaeologist’s spade has dug in that part of the world there have been fertility symbols accompanying texts explicit enough to make many a modern pornographic dealer seem a mere beginner in the trade of deviant sexuality. Sodom left its name for the vice these people practiced. Even the Romans, so depraved in their own practices, were shocked by the behavior of the Phoenicians at the colony of Carthage (the last vestige of the Canaanite race).

Why was this story included in the biblical narrative? It tells the reader that unless there was some moral change in the Canaanites, they were slated for removal from their land. That God is long-suffering and slow to anger is attested by the fact that this judgment did not fall on that group of descendants until the time of Joshua’s conquest of Canaan. It is impossible to date Noah’s times, but it is known that Joshua lived around 1400 b.c. At a minimum this would mean that the grace of God was extended to the Canaanites for several millennia. Surely God was most generous with these people, giving more than adequate time for sinners to repent.

See also comment on exodus 21:2–11; 1 samuel 15:18; ephesians 6:5–8.

11:1–9 One Language Before Babel?

Genesis 11:1–9 is the record of the departure from one language and common speech to a plurality of tongues in the human race. This event took place at the tower of Babel, where mortals had decided that they would “make a name for [them]selves [lest they be] scattered over the face of the whole earth” (Gen 11:4). A recently discovered Sumerian tablet also tells for the first time from an extrabiblical perspective the story of a time when all languages were one on the earth.2 [2 Samuel Noah Kramer, “The Babel of Tongues: A Sumerian Version,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 88 (1968): 108–111. See also Nahum M. Sarna, Understanding Genesis (New York: McGraw Hill, 1966), pp. 63–80.]

The problem therefore is this: why does Genesis 10:5, 20, 31 describe each of the descendants of Noah’s three sons as having differing languages when this was not supposed to have happened until the next chapter? Isn’t this a mistake (called by scholars an anachronism) on the part of the writer of Scripture, in that it is a misplacement in time and space?

The Bible does not represent itself as always desiring to present its material in a strictly chronological sequence. Often it prefers to present it in a topical sequence. For example, the three temptations of Jesus in the Gospels are found in three different arrangements because the aim of the author was to present them so as to make the preaching and teaching point of theology that each had in mind. Likewise, the writer of Genesis jumps ahead of himself for the moment to describe what happened to the descendants of Noah’s three sons, even though it outdistanced the story that he would resume in chapter 11. This technique is typical of the writer of Genesis.

There is another clue in the text itself that demonstrates that this is so. In Genesis 10:25 it mentions “one [who] was named Peleg, because in his time the earth was divided.” Here is a clear allusion to the confusion of languages at the tower of Babel that will be described in the next chapter (Gen 11:8–9). Since Peleg in Hebrew means

“to divide” or “to split,” it is more than likely that he received his name in memory of this event.

12:11–13 Sarai Is My Sister?

This incident is puzzling not only because of the subterfuge involved but also because the same kind of episode occurs three times (here and in Gen 20:1–3; 26:7–11). In all three episodes the plot is essentially the same. A patriarch visits a foreign land, accompanied by his wife. Fearing that his wife’s beauty will become a source of danger to himself, he resorts to the subterfuge of pretending that his wife is his sister.

The recurrent wife-sister theme in Genesis has provoked an unusual number of comments and speculative solutions. Interpreters have been puzzled about why father and son should have fallen back on this ploy so frequently.

The old explanation, the documentary source hypothesis, was that there was a single story told in different parts of the country at different times with different heroes.

When these various traditions were welded together, the rough edges of the original sources were left for more intelligent moderns to detect. Hence Genesis 12:10–20

came from the Yahwistic writer of the “J” document, offering a Judean or southern viewpoint, and a written source coming from around 850 b.c. The Isaac parallel likewise came from the “J” document, but it featured another protagonist, Isaac.

Genesis 20:1–18 was attributed to the “E” document, since it favored a northern or Ephraimite viewpoint and was committed to writing about a century later than “J.”

Even though critical scholars concerned themselves with determining which story was the original and how the others developed from it, there is no compelling reason to doubt that all three incidents occurred. But why did the writer find it necessary to include all three stories?

Such an attitude betrays a lack of feeling for Hebrew rhetoric, in which repetition was a favorite device. Yet more is at work here. The two protagonists of these stories, Abram—or as he was later renamed, Abraham—and Isaac, were at the center of the promise-plan by which God was going to bless the very nations they were coming in contact with. Moreover, the means by which God was going to bless these Gentile nations was to be carried in the womb of the very woman to whom these potentates were being attracted. Each of these stories, then, sets up a moment of real suspense for divine providence and for the patriarchs, who, in spite of all their blundering, lying and mismanagement, were still the means through whom God was going to bless the world.

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