13:14 Is Death Conquered?
God now sits in judgment of these magistrates, for all they do goes on before his eyes.
The question from on high is “How long will you defend the unjust and show partiality to the wicked?” This is the great assembly over which our Lord presides and the ones he now questions for their shabby handling of the complaints of the oppressed. But there is no hint of a belief in many gods or goddesses. Nor does God thereby imply they have the divine nature exclusive to the Trinity. It is simply a case where one term,
<ƒloµhéÆm, must do double duty, referring not only to God but also to his special servants appointed for the unique tasks described in these contexts.
102:25 Poetic? Figurative? Historical?
See comment on genesis 1–2.
105:23–25 Is God the Author of Evil?
See comment on exodus 9:12.
106:28–31 Why Was Phinehas Praised?
See comment on numbers 25:7–13.
106:34 Completely Destroy Them!
See comment on 1 samuel 15:18.
109:6–12 A Prayer for Vengeance?
See comment on psalms 137:8–9; 139:20.
Many tenderhearted believers have read these words with shock and chagrin. They are frankly at a loss to explain how one could speak with what appears to be such malice, vindictiveness and delight of the sufferings of others, especially children. How can the gentleness of the opening verses of this psalm be harmonized with the call for such brutal revenge in the last verses?
In all, there are only eighteen psalms that have any element of imprecation or cursing about them. These eighteen psalms contain 368 verses, of which only 65 of those verses have an element of cursing. This psalm is just one of six psalms that are generally classified as imprecatory psalms. These are Psalms 55, 59, 69, 79, 109 and 137. There is no author or title to Psalm 137; however, the scene is pictured as taking place “by the rivers of Babylon.” Psalm 79 is ascribed to Asaph; the remaining four are from David’s pen, according to the ancient titles. The label imprecatory may be misleading if it is not understood as the invocation of judgment, calamity or curse in an appeal to God who alone is the just judge of all beings.
But how can it ever be right to wish or pray for the destruction or doom of others, as is done in at least portions of these psalms? Could a Christian ever indulge in such a prayer?
These invocations are not mere outbursts of a vengeful spirit; they are, instead, prayers addressed to God. These earnest pleadings to God ask that he step in and right some matters so grossly distorted that if his help does not come, all hope for justice is lost.
These hard sayings are legitimate expressions of the longings of Old Testament saints for the vindication that only God’s righteousness can bring. They are not statements of personal vendetta, but utterances of zeal for the kingdom of God and his glory. The attacks that provoked these prayers were not just from personal enemies; rather, they were rightfully seen as attacks against God and especially his representatives in the promised line of the Messiah. Thus, David and his office bore the brunt of most of these attacks, and this was tantamount to an attack on God and his kingdom!
It is frightening to realize that a righteous person may, from time to time, be in the presence of evil and have little or no reaction to it. But in these psalms we have the reverse of that situation. These prayers express a fierce abhorrence of sin and a desire to see God’s name and cause triumph. Therefore, those whom the saints opposed in these prayers were the fearful embodiments of wickedness.
Since David was the author of far more imprecatory psalms than anyone else, let it also be noted that David exhibited just the opposite of a vindictive or revengeful spirit in his own life. He was personally assaulted time and time again by people like Shimei, Doeg, Saul and his own son Absalom. Never once did he attempt to effect his own vindication or lift his hand to exercise what many may have regarded as his royal prerogative.
In fact, in some of these very psalms where he prays for God to vindicate his own honor and name, David protests that he has kind thoughts toward these same evildoers. Thus in Psalm 35:12–14 David mourns, “They repay me evil for good and leave my soul forlorn. Yet when they were ill, I put on sackcloth and humbled myself
with fasting. When my prayers returned to me unanswered, I went about mourning as though for my friend or brother. I bowed my head in grief as though weeping for my mother.”
Finally, these imprecations only repeat in prayer what God had already stated elsewhere would be the fate of those who were impenitent and who were persistently opposing God and his kingdom. In almost every instance, each expression used in one of these prayers of malediction may be found in plain prose statements of what will happen to those sinners who persist in opposing God. Compare, for example, such expressions in Psalms 37:2, 9–10, 15, 35–36, 38; 55:23; 63:9–11; and 64:7–9.
But let us apply these principles to the special problems of Psalm 137:8–9, which many regard as the most difficult of all the imprecatory psalms. First, the word happy is used twenty-six times in the book of Psalms. It is used only of individuals who trust God. It is not an expression of a sadistic joy in the ruin or destruction of others.
The words “dashes [your infants] against the rocks” are usually regarded as being so contrary to the teachings of the New Testament that here is little need to discuss the matter any further. Curiously enough, these very same words are repeated in the New Testament by no one less than our Lord (Lk 19:44). In fact, the verb in its Greek form is found only in Psalm 137:9 (in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew text) and in the lament of our Lord over Jerusalem in Luke 19:44. This is the clearest proof possible that our Lord was intentionally referring to this psalm. Moreover, our Lord found no more difficulty in quoting this psalm than he did in quoting the other two psalms most filled with prayers of imprecation, namely, Psalms 69 and 109.
God “shattered the enemy” at the Red Sea (Ex 15:6) and will continue to do so through the triumph of his Son as he “will rule them with an iron scepter” and “dash them to pieces like pottery” (Rev 2:26–27; 12:5; 19:15).
The word translated “infant” is somewhat misleading. The Hebrew word does not specify age, for it may mean a very young or a grown child. The word focuses on a relationship and not on age; as such, it points to the fact that the sins of the fathers were being repeated in the next generation.
That the psalmist has located the site of God’s judgment in Babylon appears to denote this psalm as being composed while Judah was in exile in Babylon and also that there are figurative elements included in the psalm. One thing Babylon was devoid of was rocks or rocky cliffs against which anything could be dashed. In fact there were not any stones available for building, contrary to the rocky terrain of most of Palestine. All building had to depend on the production of sun-dried mud bricks and the use of bituminous pitch for mortar. Therefore when the psalmist speaks of “dashing [infants]
against the rocks,” he is speaking figuratively and metaphorically. Close to this metaphorical use of the same phrase is that of Psalm 141:6, “Their rulers will be thrown down from the cliffs.” But that same psalm adds, “And the wicked will learn that my words were well spoken [the literal rendering is ‘sweet’].” If the rulers had literally been tossed over a cliff, they surely would have had a hard time hearing anything!
What, then, does “Happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us—he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks” mean? It means that God will destroy Babylon and her progeny for her proud assault against God and his kingdom.
But those who trust in God will be blessed and happy. For those who groaned under the terrifying hand of their captors in Babylon there was the prospect of a sweet, divine victory that they would share in as sons and daughters of the living God. As such, this is a prayer Christians may also pray, so long as it is realized that what is at stake is not our own reputation or our personal enemies, but the cause of our Lord’s great name and kingdom.
See also comment on psalm 139:20.
138:1 Before the Gods?
See comment on psalm 82:1.
139:20 Are We to Hate Our Enemies?
Are we to actually hate certain people at certain times? Especially if they are hating the Lord and rising up against him?
Just as a cry goes out from the martyrs in heaven for God’s vengeance for what has been done against them (Rev 6:10), so we too may cry out for God’s action against all the workers of iniquity. In fact, that is what the return of the Lord will signal: a time when God’s vindication of all his people will take place. To see evil and not be alarmed by it is a sign that there is something terribly wrong with us.
But indiscriminate hatred is also wrong. The concern must be for God’s character and name, not personal vendetta. The hatred, then, is aimed at the evil deeds that are done, not primarily at the persons who do them.
But this distinction is an arbitrary one, claimed C. S. Lewis at one time. Later, however, he noticed one day that that is how he treats himself: he hated what he did at times while affirming himself as a person. Said Lewis, if I can make this distinction, why do I object to the saying that God loves the sinner but hates his sin? God does—
just like I do, but on a much different scale!
Even though these workers of iniquity are regarded as one’s enemies and as the objects of one’s hatred, yet this kind of ultimate causation must be mitigated by the same psalmist’s statements elsewhere. For David, the author of Psalm 139, as he was of almost all of the psalms of imprecation or cursing, showed how reluctant he was to take things into his own hands when his enemy Saul was pursuing him and falsely charging him with things that just were not true. The whole conclusion to the book of 1 Samuel contains one illustration after another of how David treated his enemy. Note, for example, the touching “Song of the Bow” that David composed at the death of Saul and Jonathan. He did not express glee that his former enemy was killed. In fact, he executed the Amalekite for rejoicing over Saul’s death and lying about killing him (2 Sam 1).
But that did not mean that David did not hate evil and its workers with a dedicated passion. That is where the difference was. Love for one’s enemies was an obligation in the Old Testament (Ex 23:4–5; Lev 19:17–18). Moreover, the so-called high ethical stance of the New Testament found in Romans 12:20, about feeding one’s enemy when he is hungry, is actually a citation from Proverbs 25:21. Incidentally, it should be
noted that there are imprecations in the New Testament as well—Galatians 5:12, 2
Timothy 4:14 and Revelation 6:10.
Thus while some room must be left for Eastern poetry that loves hyperbole (as when David moans, groans, yea does weep so much that he makes his bed to float!), nevertheless, these impassioned utterances are longings of the Old Testament believers for God’s righteousness to be vindicated. They are utterances of zeal for God and his kingdom. They are expressions of an abhorrence for sin, for sinners who practice such deeds are God’s enemies (Ps 5:10; 10:15; 139:19–22).
Finally, it must be realized that there is hardly a single expression of imprecation which cannot be found elsewhere in the Bible as a simple statement of the fate of the wicked (for example, Ps 5:10 = 5:6 and 9:5; 28:4 = 9:16; 10:15 = 37:17 and 72:4). That is why the people of God were required to say “amen” to the curses of God on evildoers, just as they were to say “amen” to his blessings (Deut 27:15–26). And if these psalms of imprecation seem to be somewhat off the main track of New Testament spirituality, then let it be remembered that no other psalms are quoted more frequently in the New Testament, with the exception of Psalms 1, 22, 110 and 118. Thus, Psalm 69 is quoted in five New Testament passages.
See also comment on psalms 5:5; 137:8–9.
Proverbs
1:7 Love God or Fear Him?
Wouldn’t it be better if the author just said that we are to love God rather than commending our fear of him? Why is fearing God mentioned so frequently in the Bible? The phrase is used so frequently that cross-referencing all the instances here has been avoided in the interests of space.
The term to fear can describe everything from dread (Deut 1:29) or being terrified (Jon 1:10) to standing in awe (1 Kings 3:28) and having reverence (Lev 19:3). When used of the Lord, it encapsulates both aspects of the term, a shrinking back in recognition of the difference or holiness of God and the drawing close in awe and worship. To fear the Lord is not to experience a dread that paralyzes all action, but neither is it just a polite respect. It is an attitude of both reluctance and adoration that results in a willingness to do what God says. The fear of the Lord, then, is absolutely necessary if we are even to begin on the right foot in learning, living or worshiping.
The problem with saying that loving God is enough is that this informs us as to what the proper emotion should be, but it says nothing, in and of itself, as to what we should do about expressing that love. It also leaves the important aspect of the holiness and difference of God’s nature and character untouched and without a response.
But with the fear of the Lord there is a foundation for wisdom, discipline, learning and life. It expresses itself in a hatred of evil (Prov 8:13) and demonstrates its presence by its willingness to be obedient (Gen 22:12).
5:15–21 Drink Water from Your Own Cistern?
Proverbs 5:15–21 is usually classified as an allegory. As such, it bears the same relationship to a metaphor as a parable does to a simile. Parables use words in their natural sense, while allegories use words metaphorically. The temptation in interpreting allegories is to overinterpret, finding too many minute meanings by making all the details of the imagery significant in and of themselves.
Proverbs 5 appears to be talking about the conservation of water. But then we are baffled by verse 17’ assertion that water should be for oneself, not shared with strangers. Why would the writer suddenly express such a selfish attitude about sharing water from his well?
When Proverbs 5:18 interjects “and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth,” it is our first real clue that this may be an allegory whose point is not the conservation of water.
One of the rules for interpreting allegories is to note the context. The entire first part of this chapter is a warning against the loose woman. Given that context, along with this reference to rejoicing in the wife of one’s youth, it slowly dawns on us that what is being extolled in this allegory is the enjoyment and fidelity of marital love over against illicit intercourse. That teaching is strikingly brought out in Proverbs 5:19, where one’s own marriage partner is described as “a loving doe, a graceful deer”—a most appropriate pair of metaphors for the beauty found in one’s own wife as opposed to the adulterous woman depicted in the earlier part of the chapter.
But what about the particulars in the interpretation of this beautiful allegory (which was probably written by Solomon and serves as an introduction to the themes of the Song of Songs)? Five different words or phrases are used here for the source of water: cistern, well, springs, streams of water and fountain. Attempts to isolate some special metaphorical meaning in each and every one of these terms would prove fruitless.
Remember, we must not try to make everything in the allegory a symbol of something else. In any case, the form of Hebrew parallelism used with these terms assures us that different meanings are not intended; these are synonymous terms used for the sake of variety and effect.
The wife is a cistern, well, spring, stream or fountain because she is able to satisfy the desire of her husband. In the ancient Near East, a spring on one’s property was regarded as very valuable and significant.
The idea, then, is this: be content with marital relations with your own wife. Find your delight and satisfaction in her rather than going elsewhere to taste the wells and springs of others. Faithfulness to your own wife is so natural and so pleasant that the question must be asked, Why would you ever be attracted to anyone else? What is more, remember that all of your life is directly viewed by God—and that includes the bedroom!
Some confusion has existed over whether Proverbs 5:16 should be translated in the affirmative (“Your springs will overflow in the streets”), the imperative (“Let your springs overflow in the streets”) or the interrogative (“Should your springs overflow in the streets?”). Some, believing that the affirmative and imperative renderings made the writer contradict himself, inserted a negative particle in the text, but this was without any warrant from preserved Hebrew texts. Those who adopted the affirmative and
imperative renderings understood them to indicate numerous progeny. But this concept of the passage breaks the unity of the image of marital fidelity and does not fit with Proverbs 5:17.
All these difficulties are avoided if we take it as an interrogative. The meaning, then, would be “Why would you let your wife go about the streets as a harlot? On the contrary, let her be for yourself only, and not for strangers. Likewise, the husband should drink from his own well. His wife should be the only person to satisfy him.”
The Scriptures do much to foster marital fidelity and to lift high this loyalty as the best road to fulfillment and happiness. In fact, the Lord continues to inspect all of a person’s ways, for everything is open and plain before the God who has called us to be holy to him and faithful to our marriage vows.
See also comment on 1 corinthians 7:1.
16:33 Casting Lots Encouraged?
See comment on jonah 1:4–5, 7.
17:8 Is Bribery Permitted?
See comment on proverbs 21:14.
21:14 Is Bribery Permitted?
At first blush, this proverb appears to commend bribery. It reads as if bribery is God’s approved way of dealing with certain, or even most, adverse circumstances. But this first reading cannot be sustained, for the proverb does not commend bribery but, rather, good sense. The point is this: when someone is angry with you, sue for peace as quickly as possible. At that time, genuine peace is more important than how it is cloaked or the form it comes in. Pacifying the angry person is often one’s first duty, and the price of peace is much smaller than the cost of anger and constant strife.
This is borne out in everyday life. Often, logical arguments are not half as effective in winning the day as some token of esteem or appreciation. Consider the person who has quarreled with his or her spouse and decides to give up arguing about who was right and who was wrong in favor of offering a gift of appreciation. At times this strategy wins the peace and effects more harmony than acting like a collegiate debater.
In the same way Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount encouraged his followers to give a cloak or an additional mile of service when coerced to give the first. Certainly such acts could well be interpreted as offering a gift to assuage the wrath of those with jurisdiction over them. This kind of gift is not what we would call a bribe. It is a gift given in good conscience to achieve a righteous end.
Of course we are dealing with a proverb. Therefore, this statement must not be absolutized, for if it were, it could be made to teach the false conclusion that we must sue for peace at any price and under any conditions. The book of Proverbs, instead, picks up the largest number of cases and puts its teaching in the broadest perspective
possible. However, we would be scandalized to hear a pastor from an American pulpit urging believers to bribe state officials under certain circumstances.
How, then, can we resolve this apparent conflict of interests? Some suggest that the Bible condemns only the taking of bribes, since it is assumed that the godly person will carry out God’s law without needing to be prodded by payoffs. This argument would disallow accepting bribes for one’s own personal profit, especially for perverting justice or administering justice that the public already deserves. With that part of the argument we can agree.
But some may further claim that the Bible nowhere condemns giving bribes to impede the progress of apostate governments. Here we must proceed with caution. If this type of bribery is grouped with treason, or spying under conditions of war or enemy occupation of one’s native land, it should be treated separately from a general statement on bribery for personal ends. It could be wrong or it could be permissible, depending on whether it is being used as a weapon against evil or against righteousness. The most basic teaching of bribe-taking is found in Exodus 23:8, “Do not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds those who see and twists the words of the righteous.” That same warning is repeated for rulers in Deuteronomy 16:18–19:
“Appoint judges and officials … [who] do not pervert justice or show partiality [or who] do not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the righteous.” The point is clear: bribery perverts justice for the sake of personal gain.
Solomon made the same point in Proverbs 17:8, “A bribe is a charm to the one who gives it; wherever he turns, he succeeds.” Again in Proverbs 17:23 it warns, “A wicked man accepts a bribe in secret to pervert the course of justice.”
This perversion is well illustrated in the lives of Samuel’s sons in 1 Samuel 8:3: “But his sons did not walk in his ways. They turned aside after dishonest gain and accepted bribes and perverted justice.” And that was the sin mentioned by Isaiah (Is 1:23), Amos (Amos 5:12) and the psalmist (Ps 26:10). The evil side of bribery lies in the perversion of justice—taking gifts for personal gain when justice and leadership should be granted without them. When Jehoshaphat warned the newly appointed judges to
“judge carefully, for with the Lord our God there is no injustice or partiality or bribery
[‘taking of gifts’]” (2 Chron 19:7), he was not excluding all gift-giving, as 2 Chronicles 32:23 shows. He was condemning gifts meant to pervert judgment.
Thus gifts, like all gain from this world, can carry with them great danger when they threaten to rearrange a person’s general scale of values and purposes for doing things.
But they are highly acceptable when they are used in a responsible way and given without any implied or explicit demand for a favor in return. They even are commended when used to cool down the wrath of an enemy, a foe or a relative who may be temporarily out of control. These gifts could avoid great wrath, yet they would also be called bribes in Scripture.
22:6 Train a Child
What makes this text a hard saying is not the meaning of the words as they stand; they are plain and easy to translate. Instead, the problem centers in the differing views of the central phrase, “the way he should go,” and in the fact that the verse doesn’t
Readers often assume this verse is a promise given to all godly parents: Raise your children as moral, God-fearing believers, and they will turn out all right in the end. But what about children raised in just such Christian homes who appear to abandon their faith or lapse into immorality?
To answer this extremely important question it is best to start with an analysis of the text itself. The verb translated “train” means to dedicate something or someone for the service of God. The verb is found in Deuteronomy 20:5 and in the parallel passages on the temple dedication in 1 Kings 8:63 and 2 Chronicles 7:5. In its noun form it is the name of the Jewish feast of Hanukkah.
The resulting range of meanings for this act of dedication includes: to prepare a child for service, to dedicate a child to God or to train a child for adulthood. Parents are urged to dedicate and begin training each child as an act of dedication to the living God.
But interpretation problems emerge as soon as we look for an antecedent for the pronoun in the phrase “according to his way,” translated above as “in the way he should go.” Literally, the phrase is “according to the mouth of,” which has led some to suggest “in accordance with the training he received at his ‘beginning.’” However, the use of the word mouth for this concept instead of the word beginning would be strange indeed. Or it could be rendered more generally as “after the measure of, conformably to” or “according to his way.”
What is the “way”? It could mean the way that the child ought to go according to God’s law; the proper way in light of God’s revelation. It could also mean the way best fitting the child’s own personality and particular traits.
Which is correct? There is no doubt that the first presents the highest standard and more traditional meaning. However, it has the least support from the Hebrew idiom and seems to be a cryptic way of stating what other proverbial expressions would have done much more explicitly.
Therefore we conclude that this enigmatic phrase means that instruction ought to be conformed to the nature of the youth. It ought to regulate itself according to the stage of life, evidence of God’s unique calling of the child and the manner of life for which God is singling out that child. This does not give the child carte blanche to pick and choose what he or she wishes to learn. It does, however, recognize that the training children receive must be as unique as the number of children God has given to us.
The result will be, as the second line of the proverb underscores, that even “when he gets old he will not turn from it.” The “from it” refers to the training of youth which was conformed to God’s work in the child’s very nature and being. This training was so imbued, inbred and accustomed that it became almost second nature.
As with many other moral proverbs of this sort, the question often comes from a distraught parent: “Does this proverb have any exceptions to it, or will it always work out that if we train our children as this verse advises, we can be sure they won’t turn from the Lord?”
No, this verse is no more an ironclad guarantee than is any other proverb. Like many
other universal or indefinite moral prescriptions (proverbs), it tells us only what generally takes place, without implying there are no exceptions to the rule. The statement is called a proverb, not a promise. Many godly parents have raised their children in ways that were genuinely considerate of the children’s own individuality and the high calling of God, yet the children have become rebellious and wicked.
There is, however, the general principle which sets the standard for the majority. This principle urges parents to give special and detailed care in the awesome task of rearing children so that the children may continue in that path long after the lessons have ceased.
24:11–12 Whom Are We to Rescue?
This text had remained largely unnoticed until it came into national prominence as a theme verse to ground Operation Rescue’s project of blocking access to abortion clinics. The question we must pose, then, is this: Does this text provide grounds for actively opposing those who are involved in evil?
These two verses belong to a section of Proverbs (Prov 22:17–24:22) that shares many similarities with the Egyptian wisdom piece known as Instruction of Amenemope.
Whether the Egyptian book is dependent on the biblical book of Proverbs, as Robert Oliver Kevin has argued,1 [1 Robert Oliver Kevin, “The Wisdom of Amen-em-apt and Its Possible Dependence upon the Book of Proverbs,” Journal of the Society for Oriental Research 14 (1930): 115–57.] or the book of Proverbs is dependent to some degree on the Egyptian work, as Adolf Erman argued in 1924 in a German work, or both Proverbs and the Egyptian piece are dependent on a third unknown Semitic source, as argued by W. O. E. Oesterley,2 [2 W. O. E. Oesterley, “The ‘Teaching of Amen-em-Ope’ and the Old Testament,” Zeitschrift für alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 45 (1927): 9–24.] is too difficult to say from the evidence at hand. The Egyptian work had some thirty “chapters” or sayings. Given that the Hebrew text of Proverbs does not organize its collection according to this scheme, it is difficult to avoid the question of Proverbs 22:20, “Have I not written thirty sayings for you?” Following such a scheme, on purely hypothetical and internal grounds some have divided these verses into twenty-five sayings.
It would appear that this text warns against negligence and a general lack of concern for those of our neighbors who are threatened with danger. Since the particular danger is not defined in this passage, we must infer that the warning applies to all cases when our neighbor is in danger.
Two literal demands are made here: rescue the person who is in prison awaiting death, and also rescue the person on the way to execution. This presumes that those whose lives are threatened are innocent and have been condemned unjustly.
Some take the words death and slaughter to be metaphors for the oppression of the poor. Nothing in the text, however, supports a metaphorical interpretation.
According to Proverbs 24:12, to claim that one was unaware of the issues or the consequences is not adequate to negate one’s responsibility to help. In fact, this verse strengthens the religious character of the call to action in Proverbs 24:11. Disclaimers and feigned ignorance will not divert from us the eye and gaze of God. Surely he knows what is right and wrong, and what we could and could not have done. To whine that it was no business of ours, when we were in the presence of wrong, will not
satisfy the Judge of the universe. God will weigh our hearts—not like the Egyptian god of wisdom, Thot, who allegedly placed the heart of an individual on one side of a scale and a feather of truth on the other side to see whether the hearts of Egyptians were true or false—but with the righteousness of his own divine character and the witness of his all-seeing eyes.
These texts do call for an active involvement where we might have wished to excuse ourselves. Whether it authorizes all “rescue” actions is a question that goes beyond our purview here. It certainly does not mean that believers should become vigilantes, taking the law into their own hands, or opposing the state because they think it is evil.
But there will come times when we must take a stand and do all that is rightfully within our power to rescue the one who has been left bereft of scriptural justice.
25:21–22 Burning Coals?
See comment on romans 12:20.
29:18 What Vision?
For many years this proverb has been misinterpreted, probably because the KJV [KJV
King James Version] translates it “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” One can infer from that translation that wise groups must have a five-, ten- or twenty-year plan for the future if they do not wish to become defunct as an organization. And many have taken just that meaning from this text.
However, the word vision does not refer to one’s ability to formulate future goals and plans. Instead, it is a synonym for the prophetic word itself. It is what a prophet does.
It refers to the prophetic vision, revelation which comes as the word of God.
Israel endured times when the prophetic word was silent. When Samuel was a young boy, “in those days the word of the Lord was rare” (1 Sam 3:1). For all the times Israel rejected the word, God sent a famine on the earth; not a famine of food and water, but an even more damaging famine: a famine of the word of God (Amos 8:12; see also 2
Chron 15:3; Ps 74:9).
Besides vision, a second key word has been misunderstood in this verse: the word perish. This does not refer to the perishing of churches with inactive planning committees (a fact which may be true on grounds other than those presented here in this text). Nor does it mean the perishing of the unevangelized heathen who will die in their sin if someone does not reach them quickly (a fact which is also true on other grounds).
The word translated in the KJV [KJV King James Version] as “perish” has a very impressive background to it. It means “to cast off all restraint.” It clearly warns that where the word of God is silenced so that it no longer comments on the local situation, the results are terrifying. The populace becomes ungovernable as they cast aside all that is decent and civil for whatever their own baser appetites wish to indulge in.
The best picture of how this takes place can be found in Exodus 32:25. While Moses was absent for a mere forty days on Mount Sinai receiving the law of God, the people began to fear that he would never return. Without the input of the prophetic word, the
people began to get out of control. They cast off all restraint and began to dance about a newly made golden calf. They ate and drank and indulged in open immorality, apparently recalling what they had seen in Egypt.
Without the announcement of the word of God, teaches this text, the people will become unrestrained, disorderly and grossly obscene in their manner of life. The verb means to “let loose,” that is, “to let one’s hair down,” whether literally or figuratively (see also Lev 13:45 and Num 5:18).
On the other hand, this proverb continues, “Blessed is he who keeps the law.” Thus, on the one hand, people are in an untenable position when the voice of the preacher ceases, because they let loose and nothing is left to restrain them; but, on the other hand, they are only truly happy when they have the good fortune of possessing the word of God and then place themselves under the hearing and doing of that word.
31:6–7 Give Them Beer?
Some have been startled by these two verses and have had trouble fitting them in with the rest of scriptural teaching. The problem here is to determine who are those who are
“perishing” and “in anguish.” And why do they need a drink to lessen the pain of their misery and to help them forget their poverty? The reference is cryptic, to say the least.
If we are to construct a response, Proverbs 31:6–7 must be set in its larger context. At the very minimum, the section comprises Proverbs 31:4–7. A contrast is set up between kings, who are advised against drinking lest they be incapable of responding justly when the oppressed come to them for legal relief, and those who are perishing and who carry no responsibilities such as the king carries.
Thus this proverb begins by warning us that wine and beer could cause the king to compromise his integrity. If the king were to become addicted to alcohol to escape the rigors of his office and the burdens of his responsibilities, he would be expressing cowardice, a loss of nerve for the tasks set before him (Prov 31:4–5). A drinking sovereign would have his vitality sapped; his mind would not be clear, but unpredictable, irresponsible and inconsistent.
On the other hand, the king is urged to give wine and beer to those who need respite from the intolerable weight of their burdens. Whether these individuals were only criminals who had been condemned to die or whether a much larger group is meant cannot be determined from this text.
It is true that condemned convicts were given a potion just prior to their execution.
Perhaps it was on the grounds of this proverb that the noblewomen of Jerusalem prepared a sop for Jesus as he hung on the cross, but Jesus rejected it, apparently because he wished to be sensitive to the pain for which he was giving his life (Mk 15:23; also note the Talmud: Sanhedrin 43a).
All who have read the Bible carefully are quite aware that it makes a case for moderation, not total abstinence. It is only because of the failure of many to control their drinking that many believers have advocated total abstinence; they are objecting to the large numbers of people who are abused, injured or killed each year as a result of drunkenness. Alcohol abuse has become a major moral problem in our day, and more than Mothers Against Drunk Driving should be protesting the carnage that takes
Yet there is the other side of the coin for those who are able to be moderate in their alcoholic intake: wine can make the heart happy (Ps 104:15) and lift one’s spirits above sorrow and poverty. But lest Proverbs 31:6–7 be viewed as emphatically endorsing the use of alcohol by those who are poor and miserable, it must be remembered that the proverb aims at making a comparative judgment, not an absolute one. Ordinary men and women may drink sometimes to forget their poverty and their perplexities; the king, on the other hand, would be in danger of forgetting the law and cheating those who needed help if he adopted a similar lifestyle. The proverb is more concerned about drunken kings than it is about giving instructions for the general populace.
Furthermore, it must be kept in mind that those who are contrasted with the king may well be prisoners on death row who need something to assuage their terror in the final moments before the state takes their lives in punishment for their crimes.
See also comment on 1 timothy 5:23.
Ecclesiastes
1:1 Is “The Teacher” Solomon?
Even though the heading for this book of Ecclesiastes does not name the author of this book, can we assume from the fact that he is the “son of David” and a “king in Jerusalem” that he is Solomon? Or is there a certain genre of writing that allows for such attributions without intending them to be taken literally?
The main speaker in this book of Ecclesiastes is called qoµhelet_, meaning “teacher”
or “preacher,” a feminine participle from a verbal root meaning “to assemble.” But at that point the agreement ceases.
The well-known conservative scholar of the nineteenth century, Franz Delitzsch, declared in a much-quoted opinion, “If the book of Koheleth were of old Solomonic origin, then there is no history to the Hebrew language.”1 [1 Franz Delitzsch, Commentary on Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes (1872; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1950), p. 190. Earlier a similar type of argument had been mounted by the Catholic scholar Mitchell Dahood, “Canaanite-Phoenician Influence in Qoheleth,” Biblica 33 (1952): 201–2 and Gleason L.
Archer Jr., “The Linguistic Evidence for the Date of Ecclesiastes,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 12 (1969): 171.]
However, Fredericks devoted a careful inspection of all the linguistic arguments for dating the book late and concluded that they were unpersuasive.2 [2 D. C. Fredericks, Qoheleth’s Language: Re-evaluating Its Nature and Date, ANETS 3 (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen, 1988).] The other approach to show that the book is late is to try to show affinities in thought between Hellenistic thought and Ecclesiastes. This would mean that the book originated in the Greek period, but this method also has been beset by problems. These so-called affinities can be shown to be just as easily related to far earlier thought and literary forms than the late Greek period.
So this leaves us with deciding if indeed the text could have come from Solomon.
Evangelical scholars such as Moses Stuart, Hengstenberg, Delitzsch, Young and Kidner have all challenged the view that Solomon wrote the book. But much of that was on the strength of the allegedly late language and concepts. Now that that obstacle
has fallen, at least since Fredericks’s study in 1988, it is worth looking at the idea of Solomonic authorship one more time.
The only immediate son of David who was also king over Israel in Jerusalem would be Solomon. But against his authorship it is argued that in Ecclesiastes 1:12 the king is represented as saying, “I … was king over Israel in Jerusalem.” But far from declaring that he was no longer king, Solomon is saying “I have been king,” for the action of the Hebrew verb begins in the past and continues up to the present. The argument shifts to Ecclesiastes 1:16, where the writer compares himself advantageously to “anyone who has ruled over Jerusalem before me.” Since David was the only Hebrew ruler to precede him in Jerusalem, the words hardly seem appropriate in Solomon’s mouth. The reference could very well be to the line of Canaanite kings who preceded Solomon in Jerusalem, such as Melchizedek (Gen 14:18) and Adonizedek (Josh 10:1).
But the most convincing telltale signs that Solomon is “the Teacher” are the allusions to circumstances that fit only Solomon’s life and experience: (1) his unrivaled wisdom (Eccles 1:16; compare 1 Kings 3:12); (2) his unsurpassed wealth (Eccles 2:4–10, compare 1 Kings 7:1–8); (3) his huge retinue of servants (Eccles 2:7–8, compare 1
Kings 9:17–19); (4) “there is no man that does not sin” (Eccles 7:20, compare 1 Kings 8:46); (5) not a god-fearing woman in a thousand (Eccles 7:28, compare 1 Kings 11:1–8); and (6) his weighing, studying and arranging proverbs (Eccles 12:9, compare 1 Kings 4:32). This forms a very convincing case that Solomon is “the Teacher.”
2:24–26 Eat, Drink and Be Merry?
All too often the writer of Ecclesiastes has been blamed for all too much. For example, with regard to the text before us, it is not uncommon to hear charges of Epicureanism, the philosophy that advises us to eat, drink and be merry for we only go around once and then we die!
But this charge is false on several counts. For one thing, the text has not been translated correctly. For another, it misses the point that death is not the natural sequel to eating and drinking. Instead, the text insists that even such mundane experiences as eating and drinking are gifts from the hand of a gracious God.
But let us begin with the translation issue. Literally rendered, the text here affirms,
“There is not a good [inherent?] in a person that he [or she] should be able to eat, drink or get satisfaction from his [or her] work. Even this, I realized, was from the hand [or ‘the power’] of God.” This translation avoids the phrase “there is nothing better.” Even though such a comparative form does exist in a somewhat similar formula in Ecclesiastes 3:12 and 8:15, it does not appear in this context.
Scholars uniformly assume that the word for better has dropped out of this context, but there is no evidence to back up that assumption. Furthermore, the writer is not saying at this point that no other options exist for the race other than to try calmly to enjoy the present. This indeed would be a hedonistic and materialistic philosophy of life that would effectively cut God off from any kind of consideration.
The Preacher’s point is not one of despair—“There’s nothing left for us to do than the basically physical acts of feeding one’s face and trying to get as many kicks out of life as we can.” Rather, his point is that whatever good or value is to be found, its worth
cannot be determined merely by being part of the human race.
We mortals must realize that if we are to achieve satisfaction and pleasure from anything in life, even things as base and mundane as eating and drinking, we must realize that it all comes from the hand of God. The source of pleasure, joy and goodness does not reside in the human person, as humanism or idealism would want us to believe.
Ecclesiastes 2:25 is more adamant on this point. Who will be able to find any enjoyment unless they first find the living God who is the only true source of all joy, satisfaction and pleasure? The text assures us that “without him” such satisfaction is a lost search.
The ground for the distribution of this joy is carefully set forth in Ecclesiastes 2:26: it is a matter of pleasing God first. The opposite of pleasing God is “one who continues to live in sin.” This same contrast between pleasing God and being a sinner is found in Ecclesiastes 7:26 and 8:12–13. Another way to define the one continually choosing sin is “one who does not fear God.”
Such a call to please God as a basis for realizing joy, pleasure and satisfaction is not, as some claim, too cheery a note for such a pessimistic book. The truth of the matter is that all too many have missed the positive note that is deeply rooted in the repeated refrains in Ecclesiastes.
God will grant three gifts to those who please him: wisdom, knowledge and joy. But to the sinner who persists in trying to remake God’s world, there is also an outcome: “a chasing after the wind.” This reference to the chasing of wind is to the frustrating activity in which the sinner works night and day to heap things up only to find in the end that he must, and as a matter of fact does, turn them over to the one who pleases God.
If only the sinner would come to know God and please him, then he too would receive the ability to find joy in all of life just as the one who fears God has found it.
3:19–21 Man’s Fate Like the Animals?
If ever there were a hard saying in the Scriptures, this would surely be among the most difficult! It is bad enough that death seems to unfairly level all humans—young or old, good or bad. But this saying casts a grim shadow that appears to say that all hope is lost after death as well—a startling statement indeed! Is it true that men and beasts have about the same hope for any kind of life after death? Is it really only a matter of
“fate”? These are some of the questions this text raises.
First, the word fate is an overtranslation. The word that appears here is merely the word happening. Thus, no references are made to chance, luck or ill fortune. It is solely the fact that one happening, one event—namely, death—overtakes all things that share mortality.
The text then affirms that “all go to the same place.” But the place that is intended here is not oblivion or nonexistence; it is the grave. Both men and beasts are made out of dust, and therefore it is to the dust that they will return. In that sense, as one dies, so dies the other. Death is no respecter of persons or animals!
But most disturbing about those who insist on this hopeless view of death in the Old Testament is the way they translate some texts in order to substantiate their own views. In the clearest tones possible in the Hebrew, Ecclesiastes 3:21 states that “the spirit of man rises upward, and the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth.” The verbs to go upward and to go downward are active participles with the sign of the article. There is no need to say that Hebrew has confused the article with a slightly different reading for the interrogative.
Furthermore, had not Solomon already argued in this very context that the unjust judges would face the living God at the last judgment (Eccles 3:17)? How could they do this if it was all over when they died? And did not Solomon warn just as forcibly that the final judgment of God would bring every earthly deed into the light of his justice (Eccles 12:7, 14)? But if it were the end of existence, who would care about such idle threats that warned about a later judgment?
The concept that people could and did live after death is as old as Enoch himself. That man, it is recorded in Genesis 5:24, entered into the eternal state with his body!
Likewise, the patriarch Job knew that a person would live again if he died, just as a tree would sprout shoots after it had been cut down (Job 14:7, 14).
Nor should we stress too much the words “Who knows,” as if the text gives us a question for which there is no answer. In the nine places where this expression occurs in Scripture, only three are actually questions (Esther 4:14; Eccles 2:19; 6:12). In the two passages that are similar to this text, it is followed by a direct object. The statement is a rhetorical remark that calls for us to remember that it is God who knows the difference between persons and beasts, and that the spirit or soulish nature of one is immortal (and hence “goes up” to God) while the spirit of the other is not immortal (and hence “goes down” to the grave just as the flesh disintegrates into dust).
The final verse of the chapter reiterates this same rhetorical question. “Who can bring him to see what will happen after him?” From the context the answer is abundantly clear, even if the answer is not immediately verbalized: it is God who will make the final evaluation on life in its totality. Men and women should not live as if God were not to be faced in eternity and as if there were nothing more to mortal humans than their flesh, which will turn to dust in the grave just as the flesh of animals will. There is more. The undertaker cannot and does not get everything when he calls for the remains. The spirit has gone already to be with God in the case of those men and women who fear him and who wish to please him.
Therefore, I would translate Ecclesiastes 3:19–21 as follows:
For what happens to humanity also happens to the beast; one and the same thing happens to both of them; as the one dies, so the other dies: the same breath is in both of them; there is no advantage [based on this one event of death] of the man over the beast. Both go to one place, that is, the grave. Both are [made out] of the dust and both return to the dust. Who knows the spirit of an individual? He [or she] is the one that goes upward [to God], but the spirit of the beast is the one that goes downward to the earth.
See also comment on psalm 49:12, 20.
7:16–18 Don’t Be Too Righteous or Too Wise?
Too many people have seen Solomon’s advice as the golden mean. It is as if he had said, “Don’t be too holy and don’t be an outright criminal; just sin moderately!”
But this reading of these verses is indefensible. The Preacher (as the writer calls himself) is not cautioning against people being “Goody Two Shoes” or possessing too much religion or consistency in their faith. There was an altogether different danger occupying his mind. It was the danger not of how men and women are perceived by others, but of how men and women perceive themselves. The danger was that individuals might delude themselves through the multiplicity of their pseudoreligious acts that were nothing more in reality than ostentatious pieces of showmanship.
The real clue to this passage is to be found in the second verb of Ecclesiastes 7:16, to be wise. This form must be rendered reflexively according to the Hebrew verb form: to think oneself to be furnished with wisdom. As such, it makes the same point as the famous text in Proverbs 3:7 does, “Be not wise in your own eyes” (RSV [RSV
Revised Standard Version] ). Thus it was not the case of having too much righteousness or wisdom; rather, it was the problem of self-delusion and the problem of having a superego that needed to have large doses of humility added. When people become too holy, too righteous and too wise in their own eyes, then they become too holy and too wise for everyone—not in reality, of course, but in their own estimation!
Since Ecclesiastes 7:17 follows the pattern of verse 16, and since the two verses are part of the same thought, the resulting translation would be:
Do not multiply [your] righteousness and do not play the part of the wise [in your own eyes]—why destroy yourself? Do not multiply [your] wickedness and do not be a
[downright] fool—why die before your time?
The fact that this interpretation is the correct one can now be tested by its contextual compatibility with Ecclesiastes 7:18. It is good, urged Solomon, that women and men take hold of “the one” (namely, true wisdom that comes from the fear of God and not that which comes from braggadocio), rather than grasping “the other” (that is, the folly of fools). In the end, it is the person who fears God who will be delivered from all these extremes. That is what protects God’s people from absurdity. Neither folly nor conceited righteousness will serve well as a guide or as a guise to mask the real need of the heart. True wisdom can only be found in coming to fear God.
But no one is ever going to be able to stand before a just and holy God based on a so-called middle way of the golden mean which attempts to counterbalance opposites in moderate doses. Such self-imposed estimates of what God desires are fruitless and of no spiritual benefit. It is impossible to claim to have arrived morally while maintaining a middle path based on acting sometimes virtuously and sometimes viciously.
The Preacher, then, is not suggesting something that is immoral; he is, on the contrary, an enemy of false righteousness as well as an exposer of false pretensions to wisdom.
12:13–14 What Does Ecclesiastes Teach?
Many modern readers of the book of Ecclesiastes cannot believe that the book originally ended on such a high ethical and theological note. Therefore, the conventional wisdom of many scholars is to attribute these final verses of the book to a late manuscript addition intended to ensure that the book would be adopted into the canon of Scriptures.
Could a book that could very well have come from the hand of Solomon have been capable of such elevated theology as to conclude that fearing God was the main task of men and women and that obeying God was the most excellent way? Could it argue that one day each person would give an account of all he or she had done in life before God, from whom it was impossible to hide anything? First, we must note that there is no manuscript evidence to suggest that this alleged pious ending was dropped into place by some late redactor wanting to make sure Ecclesiastes remained in the scriptural canon. All available manuscripts reflect the present ending, so the supposition of its being an addition must remain just that: a supposition.
On the other hand, this brief text might well supply one of the keys for understanding the book, for it purports to be the summary of the whole book.
The warning that everything done on earth is reviewable in the final day was not meant to scare people, but to put a holy restraint in them. If God will judge all these acts, then it would follow that those being judged are capable of being resurrected, or at least able to appear personally and consciously before the living Lord for his verdict.
The implication is that death is not a final end for the author of this book—though many who have studied Ecclesiastes have assumed that it is.
Injustice in this world is so objectionable that God has provided avenues for immediate amelioration of wrongdoing through human courts of law. However, final relief must come in the future, when the ultimate Judge, the Lord himself, comes to rectify all wrong. This theme of the need for a final judgment is raised several times in the course of the book (Eccles 3:17; 9:1; 11:9), as well as in the conclusion in Ecclesiastes 12:14.
Obviously, the Preacher believes in a judgment after death and expects that all that has not been set right on earth will be set right in that day by God.
This interpretation of the last two verses is in harmony with the rest of the epilogue (Eccles 12:8–14). The writer concludes by restating the theme he had announced in Ecclesiastes 1:2: “ ‘Meaningless! Meaningless!’ says the Teacher. ‘Everything is meaningless.’” In other words, how futile it is to have lived life without having known the key to life.
But that is not the end of the matter; the writer has a solution. He quickly adds his qualifications for giving such heady advice in Ecclesiastes 12:9–10. He laid claim, by virtue of revelation, to being “wise”; therefore, he “imparted knowledge to the people”
with a caring attitude and a deliberateness that elicited his audience’s serious attention.
His words were “pleasant” ones or “words of grace.” His was not a haphazard spouting of negativisms, nihilisms or an eat-drink-and-be-merry philosophy. Rather, he taught “right words … upright and true.” Any interpreter of this book who fails to take these claims seriously is not listening patiently enough to what is being said. So useful are the words of this whole book that they can be used as goads to proper action or as nails on which you can hang your hat (Eccles 12:11). These teachings are not
experiential or autobiographical; they come from “the one Shepherd.” This can be no one but the Shepherd of Israel (Ps 80:1), the Shepherd of Psalm 23:1. The ideas in Ecclesiastes do not come from cynicism, skepticism or worldly wisdom, but from the Shepherd.
The grand conclusion to this book is that we are to fear the living God and heed his Word. This is no legalistic formula, but a path for happiness. In coming to know God we come to know ourselves, for believing faith opens us up to the riches of the treasures of God, humankind and the world.
Since God is a living being and since men and women live forever, every deed, even what has been secret, is reviewable in that final day by the Lord who knows us so well.
The apostle Paul echoes this teaching in 2 Corinthians 5:10. Humans are responsible beings, and one day each will personally face the Lord to give an account of the deeds done in the flesh.
Song of Songs
8:6–7 Love Is As Strong As Death?
Song of Songs has long been a closed book to many people because of the difficulty they have had in interpreting it. If the book is teaching on what true marital love is all about from a divine perspective, which is certainly what it seems to be, why is the chief character Solomon? Most of us hardly consider Solomon a paragon of monogamous marriage!
Furthermore, where do we find the proper key to make a good entry into the book? Is there any place where the narrative, play, drama or poem (whichever it really is) comes to some kind of focus and gives the reader a clue as to its interpretation?
The answer, I believe, is to be found in Song of Songs 8:6–7. The pronominal suffixes of the Hebrew text here are all clearly masculine; hence the speaker is the Shulamite maiden. She is addressing her beloved one, the man to whom she has sung praises and whom she has courted with affection.
Not all scholars are agreed on who this man is. Most, in recent times, take him to be the same one who composed Song of Songs under the inspiration of God—Solomon.
But I believe a better case can be made for the presence of a third character to whom this young woman had pledged her love some months before. In the interim, Solomon had seen her and had attempted to woo her to be a part of his growing harem. The Shulamite maiden refused, in spite of the persistent urging of the other women of the court. They thought she would “have it made” if only she would give in to the king’s offers of love.
But the maiden could not forget the shepherd boy to whom she had been pledged and for whom she had great love. It is to him she addresses these lines. And the love the two of them had for each other was the means by which Solomon learned, with the help of the Spirit of God, about true marital love. He who had loved and lost so much was now the recipient of God’s normative pattern for love, sex and marriage.
These verses mark the conclusion of the book and thus indicate to us the purpose for
which it was written. Addressing her beloved as the one she had met under the apple tree and who had awakened love in her for the first time, she requests to be placed as a seal on a cord about his neck and as a signet ring on his arm, to be his wife forever.
The signet ring was worn either on the hand (Gen 41:42; Esther 3:12; Jer 22:24) or around the neck with a string through it (Gen 38:18). The seal was a mark of ownership and authority. The typical Israelite name seal was made out of stone, often pierced with a hole and worn about the neck on a cord, or occasionally on the finger as a ring. A few personal seals have been found in Israel inscribed with the words “wife of
… ” Thus the Shulamite woman pleads for a unique relationship, to be chosen by him and to belong to him forever.
The love she describes has five elements that make it distinctive. First, it is as strong as death. Its power is as unbreakable and as irresistible as death itself. One cannot withstand it or deny it, so that it can be compared only with death—who has ever successfully withstood that power?
Second, its jealousy is as unyielding and as obdurate as the grave. The word jealousy has both positive and negative meanings in the Bible. When used positively, in reference to God (Ex 20:5; 34:14; Deut 5:9), it suggests an undivided devotion to its object, an ardent love that brooks no rival and demands undivided attention in return.
It is used in this sense in Song of Songs, pointing to a love that is jealous for someone, not of someone. Thus it is a manifestation of genuine love and protective concern. It is
“cruel” or “hard” too—unyielding and resolute in its desire to be with the loved one. In the lengths to which this love will go, it is as deep, inexorable and hard as the grave.
Third, this love burns flames of fire given by the Lord himself. The word “flames” has, in Hebrew, the suffix yaÆh, which must be understood as the shortened form of the name of Yahweh, the Lord (which is why I have followed the NIV [NIV New International Version] marginal reading in the translation above). This love, then, does not originate solely from some carnal instinct; it emanates from the Lord himself! He is the true source of marital love. The flames of love in the heart of a man or a woman are lit by the Lord who made them. Within the bounds of marriage, the flame of love comes from the Lord.
Fourth, it is impossible to drown out this love with much water or even with a flood.
Solomon had to forget trying to woo the Shulamite maiden, for all his promises of position, jewels, wealth and leisure could not drown her love for that shepherd boy back home.
Finally, such love is beyond any purchase price offered anywhere. This is the victorious side of love, and it comes from God; it cannot be bought or sold. This was not intended to condemn the custom of paying a “bride price.” Such a payment was never construed as a payment “for love,” nor was it used to gain love. The point, instead, was that true love from God for a man or a woman was beyond any kind of price.
Thus this text celebrates physical love within the bounds of marriage for its strength, its unquenchable nature and its source—the Lord himself.
Isaiah
1:11–15 Does God Desire Sacrifices?
See comment on psalm 51:16–17, 19.
6:1, 5 Did Isaiah See God?
See comment on exodus 33:18–23.
6:9–10 Is God the Author of Evil?
See comment on exodus 9:12; isaiah 45:7; lamentations 3:38–39; mark 4:11–12; 2
corinthians 3:14.
7:14 A Virgin Shall Conceive?
Why do many claim that “virgin” in Isaiah 7:14 should be rendered “young woman,”
“damsel” or “maiden”? Would not these renderings effectively negate the force of this word as being a prophecy about Jesus’ miraculous birth?
It is important to capture the occasion for which this prophecy was given in order to understand it. The setting begins with Ahaz, king of Judah, refusing to join Rezin, the king of Aram (Syria) in Damascus, and Pekah, the king of the northern ten tribes of Israel in Samaria, against the Assyrians, who had subjugated most of the Near East.
For Ahaz’s resistance to their overtures, Pekah and Rezin marched against Judah with the intent of overthrowing the Davidic dynasty and placing the son of Tabeel (Is 7:6; Tabeel is probably a distortion from a name meaning “God is good” to something like
“Good for nothing!”) on the throne in Jerusalem.
In order to reassure Ahaz that nothing like this was going to happen, God sent the prophet Isaiah to join King Ahaz as he was out inspecting the water reserves for the city of Jerusalem, apparently calculating how long he could hold out against these two firebrands from the north. Isaiah’s instructions from God were to invite king Ahaz to request from God any “sign” (that is, miracle) that he wished, for that miracle would be God’s promise to the king that Pekah and Rezin would not have their way. God’s word to Ahaz was “If you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all” (Is 7:9).
Ahaz refused, protesting that Scripture (presumably Deut 6:16) did not allow him to tempt/test God. But, Isaiah explained, this was not the same as testing God, for God himself invited the request. It appears, however, that Ahaz had in the meantime sent off a secret message with financial encouragements to the king of Assyria with the request that he attack either or both Rezin and Pekah, thereby forcing them to withdraw from Ahaz’s doorstep.
Despite Ahaz’s reluctance to cooperate, Isaiah proceeded to give a “sign” from the Lord himself that would be for all the house of David. Isaiah 7:14 begins with a therefore, indicating that what precedes is the reason for what follows. So the divine word is not unattached to all that we have just described. Isaiah began: “The Lord
[ <‡d_oµnaµy, the name signifying that he is the one who is master over everything]
himself will give you [plural, thereby referring to the whole Davidic house] a sign”
(even though Ahaz had refused to request such in his unbelief). “Behold [untranslated in the NIV [NIV New International Version] , but a term that calls special attention to a particular fact] the virgin [ haµ>almaÆh] will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel [that is, ‘God with us’].”
The word haµ>almaÆh has caused much debate. The Septuagint translated it by the Greek noun parthenos, a word that has the specific meaning of “virgin.” But what does the Hebrew mean? When all the passages in the Old Testament are investigated, the only conclusion one can come to is that the word means “virgin.” To date, no one has produced a clear context, either in Hebrew or in the closely related Canaanite language from Ugarit (which uses the cognate noun g lmt), where >almaÆh can be applied to a married woman. Moreover, the definite article with this word must be rendered “the virgin”—a special one God had in mind. Added to this is the question of what would be so miraculous (“sign”) about a “young woman” having a baby?
Nevertheless, this message must have some significance for Ahaz and the people of his day, rather than it being only for an event that turns out to be more than seven centuries away! What significance could it hold for Ahaz and his generation if this event pointed solely to something over seven hundred years away? There was simultaneously a near as well as a distant fulfillment, and the prophecy simultaneously pointed to both a near and a distant future. Rather than a son of Tabeel taking over the throne of David, through whom God had promised to send his Messiah, a son was born to Ahaz: Hezekiah. It may well have been that the prophet pointed to a “young woman” standing nearby, who at the time was unmarried and a virgin (the two were assumed to go together). The son born to them, then, would be Ahaz’s son, Hezekiah.
But this interpretation raises at least two major problems: (1) Hezekiah’s birth was not the result of a miraculous conception, and (2) Hezekiah, according to most chronologies, was about ten years of age at the time. To the first objection, we respond that this misunderstands the connection between the near and the distant fulfillments in prophecy. Rarely does the “now,” or near fulfillment, meet most, much less all, the details and expectations that the ultimate event completes. For example, John the Baptist came in the “spirit and power” of Elijah (Lk 1:17), and he was in that regard Elijah who was to come; but Elijah would still come again before the great and notable day of the Lord (Mal 4:5). Likewise, many antichrists have already come, but they are a small kettle of fish compared to the person and powers of the final antichrist (1 Jn 2:18). Again, five prophets in four centuries declared in five different crises that they were undergoing the “day of the Lord,” yet they in no way experienced what the final day of the Lord would be like. Similarly, “now we are the children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known” (1 Jn 3:2; emphasis mine). Here is that same tension between the “now” and the “not yet.” So Hezekiah did not fulfill all that the prophet had in mind, especially since he spoke of “you” as a plurality of the house of David.
What about the chronological problem? There is one remaining synchronism in the kings of Israel and Judah that has not been resolved: it is a ten-year problem in the years of Hezekiah. A reexamination of the date of the Syro-Ephraimite War, I believe, will show that the prophecy is properly aligned for the announcement of the pending birth of the next resident on the throne of David, thereby providing an unbroken string of occupants leading up to the grandest of them all.1 [1 For a more elaborate discussion of this point and passage, see my article “The Promise of Isaiah 7:14 and the Single-Meaning Hermeneutic,” Evangelical Journal 6 (1988): 55–70.]
Therefore, the word >almaÆh was deliberately used because it always referred to a young woman who was a virgin. God promised that there would be something miraculous about the birth, and if that promise was not completed in the near fulfillment, then it would be in the final fulfillment. That One would be Immanuel,
“God with us.”
10:5–6 Assyria Punished for Obedience?
See comment on 2 kings 9:6–10.
14:12–14 Lucifer: Satan or the King of Babylon?
In a prophecy of Isaiah addressed to the king of Babylon, there is a sudden shift from this world to a realm outside it. It describes a being with a hubris that will brook no rival who wishes to challenge God himself for position, authority and power.
Some of the early church fathers, such as Tertullian, along with Gregory the Great and scholastic commentators, linked this prophecy in Isaiah with Luke 10:18 and Revelation 12:8. As a result, they applied the passage to the fall of Satan or Lucifer.
The expositors of the Reformation era, however, would have no part of this exegesis, which they regarded as a popular perversion. The passage, in their minds, discussed human pride, not angelic—even though the pride was monumental, to be sure. Which interpretation, then, is correct? Is this passage a record of the time when Satan fell like lightning from heaven? Or is it a description of the Babylonian king only?
The key word for resolving this problem is heÆleµl, rendered at first as an imperative of the verb signifying “howl” (“Howl, son of the morning, for your fall”). Then it was connected with the verb to shine and made a derivative denoting “bright one,” or more specifically “bright star,” the harbinger of daybreak. The Latin term for it became Lucifer.
In Canaanite mythology from Ugarit, the god Athtar seems to be connected with the morning star. At one point, the gods attempted to replace Baal with Athtar, but he declined, as he found that he was unsuited for the position. The throne was too large for him. Athtar was the son of the Ugaritic god El and his wife Asherah. Athtar was the chief god in the South Arabic pantheon, known there as an astral deity, the planet Venus. In the Ugaritic world he was known as “the terrible, awesome one” or as “the lion.” Some have translated the first epithet as “a flash [of lightning].” The Ugaritic text 49, column 1, tells how his greed for power caused him to ascend the vacant throne of Baal, who had been dealt a death blow by the god of death, Mot. Assisted by his mother, he attempted to fill the vacuum left by Baal, but he was unable to do so.
His feet did not reach the footstool, and his head did not clear the top of the throne. So he descended from the throne of Baal, stepping down so that “he might rule over the grand earth.” Like Isaiah’s Lucifer, he had aspired to ascend to a throne above the heavens but suffered a fall.
While there are a number of similarities between the Ugaritic myth and Isaiah’s account, no great interpretive advantage seems to be gained by following this lead.
“The mount of assembly” is parallel with Mount Zaphon or Mount Cassius in North Syria, where the gods assembled. Whether the story Isaiah tells came first or the
Ugaritic myth cannot be decided from this text. Normally one would expect the real event to have been told before the mythmakers took up the tale and made secondary applications of it.
So is the story referring to the king of Babylon in hyperbolic terms, or does it refer to Satan? Normally the rules of sound interpretation demand that we assign only one interpretation to every passage; otherwise the text just fosters confusion.
In this situation, however, the prophet uses a device that is found often in prophetic texts: he links near and distant prophecies together under a single sense, or meaning, since the two entities, though separated in space and time, are actually part and parcel of each other.
Isaiah saw the king of Babylon as possessing an enormous amount of disgusting pride and arrogance. In cultivating aspirations that exceeded his stature and ability, he paralleled the ultimate ruler with an exaggerated sense of his own accomplishments: Satan.
Just as there was a long messianic line in the Old Testament, and everyone who belonged to that line was a partial manifestation of the One to come and yet not that One, so there was an antimessianic line of kings in the line of antichrist and Satan. The king of Babylon was one in a long line of earthly kings who stood opposed to God and all that he stood for.
This would explain the hyperbolic language, which while true in a limited sense of the king of Babylon, applied ultimately to the one who would culminate this line of evil, arrogant kings. In this sense, the meaning of the passage is single, not multiple or even double. Since the parts belonged to the whole and shared the marks of the whole, they were all of one piece.
Just as the king of Babylon wanted equality with God, Satan’s desire to match God’s authority had precipitated his fall. All this served as a model for the antichrist, who would imitate Satan, and this most recent dupe in history, the king of Babylon, in the craving for power.
A similar linking of the near and the distant occurs in Ezekiel 28, where a prophecy against the king of Tyre uses the same hyperbolic language (Ezek 28:11–19). In a similar fashion the prophet Daniel predicted the coming of Antiochus Epiphanes (Dan 11:29–35); in the midst of the passage, however, he leaps over the centuries in verse 35 to link Antiochus Epiphanes to the antichrist of the final day, since they shared so much as members of the line of the antimessiah. Thus this prophetic device is well attested in the Old Testament and should not cause us special concern.
See also comment on ezekiel 28:11–19.
24:21–23 Millennium in the Old Testament?
This prophecy belongs to the section in Isaiah’s collection of messages known as the
“Little Apocalypse” or “Little Book of Revelation” (Is 24–27). Here the prophet tells of a time designated as “that day.” This “day” is probably the same as the “day of the Lord,” referred to so frequently in the Old Testament. The “day of the Lord” is a period of time that is to close our present age; it is the time of the Second Coming of
Christ, in judgment for all who have refused to accept him and in deliverance for all who have believed in him.
In what ways, if any, does Isaiah 24:21–23 accord with what we know from other texts about our Lord’s Second Coming—especially from the New Testament? What is meant by the “prison” into which the celestial powers and the kings of the earth are to be herded? And why would they be “punished,” or “released,” after “many days”?
The vision of this chapter, which has already included the whole earth, is here enlarged further still to encompass the powers of heaven and earth. The term translated
“powers” is sometimes used merely of heavenly bodies (Is 34:4; 40:26; 45:12), but at other times it is used of armies of angels (1 Kings 22:19; 2 Chron 18:18). In this case it seems to refer to the fallen angels who rebelled along with Satan and were thrown out of heaven.
Isaiah 14 depicted the king of Babylon descending to Sheol itself in an act of rebellion.
Here, both the heavenly and the earthly potentates have rebelled against God, and as a result they are to be confined to a prison (see also 2 Pet 2:4; Jude 6; Rev 20:1–3).
The time of shutting out Satan and his hosts from access to the heavenly regions is also mentioned in Revelation 12:7–17, where the dragon, in great rage, makes war with the woman and “the rest of her offspring—those who obey God’s commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus.”
It has been argued that “after many days” in Isaiah 24:22 refers to the same period of time that Revelation 20:1–7 labels the “thousand years.” According to John in the book of Revelation, Satan will be released from his prison at the end or conclusion of the thousand years, but just for a brief season. This would seem to correspond to the
“punishing” or “releasing” of Isaiah 24:22. The word has the basic idea of “visiting,”
but it is a visitation for judgment; the word is used in the same way in Jeremiah 27:22.
Thus, the loosing of Satan is only a prelude to his total destruction (Rev 20:10).
In this chapter Isaiah shows four judgments: (1) the judgment on the earth and the plagues that will come on humankind in the end time (parallel to the opening of the sixth seal in the book of Revelation); (2) the judgment on the world-city, or Babylon of the future; (3) the final judgment on Jerusalem and all who have dealt treacherously with Israel’s remnant; and (4) the judgment that God will hold “in that day” of his Second Coming for all the powers of heaven and earth that have opposed him. It is this fourth judgment that is dealt with in the verses selected here (Is 24:21–23).
The heavenly and earthly powers that have deceived mortals into apostasy will be visited with punishment in one and the same “day.” They will be cast into the pit, only to be “visited” once more “after many days”—the millennium. Their release will not last long, for after a brief conflict, the eternal kingdom of God will come in its full glory. The millennium that has preceded this kingdom will only have prepared men and women for its majesty and glory.
25:8; 26:19 Life After Death in the Old Testament?
See comment on genesis 5:23–24; 25:8; 2 samuel 12:21–23; job 19:23–27; hosea 13:14.
28:13 Do and Do, Rule on Rule?
This translation appears to be little more than nonsense. What is the prophet really saying, and what is the meaning of “Do and do, do and do, rule on rule, rule on rule; a little here, a little there”?
The problem here is with the translations of the Hebrew. They fail to take into account that what follows in this meaningless chatter are the impressions and mocking representations of those drunken listeners of the prophet. The words are no doubt slurred by virtue of their inebriated states, mockingly going back to their childhood rubrics for memorizing the alphabet. But they also are represented in the Hebrew by means of an abbreviation, where the first letter is the letter for the alphabet and the second consonant is the letter waw, here used as a sign for an abbreviation. The Masoretes added an unnecessary “a” class vowel to make it appear that it was some type of Hebrew word, but no exact fit for such a word is usually identified.
The words rendered in the NIV [NIV New International Version] as “do” and “rule,”
or in the older versions as “precept upon precept,” “line upon line,” misunderstand the fact that the Hebrew is representing letters of the alphabet: “s\aµdeÆ upon s
\aµdeÆ, s\aµdeÆ upon s\aµdeÆ, qoÆp÷ upon qoÆp÷, qoÆp÷ upon qoÆp÷,”
approximately where p and q come in the English alphabet.2 [2 This interpretation was first proposed in 1753 by Houbigant in Biblical Hebrew IV (1753): 73–74. See now W. W. Hallo, “Isaiah 28:9–13 and the Ugaritic Abecedaries,”
Journal of Biblical Literature 77 (1958): 324–38. The translation “do” or “command” supposes that s\aw is a deliberately shortened form of mis\waÆh, meaning “commandment,” and qaw, “line,” represents a measuring line, which with a plumb line determines if a building is in line or not. But a rubric from a line that was used to teach the alphabet, given in a singsong manner by drunken men, would fit best the stupor the listeners were in and their regard for the words that came from the prophet.] They are mocking the prophet’s preaching by sneering, “The word of the Lord amounts to
‘Watch your p’s and watch your q’s; watch your p’s and watch your q’s.’ That’s all it is—one rule after another.” With that, they stagger and reel, and then vomit on the tables where they are drinking (Is 28:7–8), laughing over the words with which the prophet has wounded them, but without any evidence of change.
Our expression “mind your p’s and q’s,” of course, comes from the similar saying that one must watch his “pints and quarts” of liquor. But these rascals had turned it around and aimed it at the prophet for having what they deemed too many rules and injunctions against sin.
The result, however, is that they themselves fall backward, are injured, snared and finally captured, both figuratively and actually in the Assyrian invasion that was to come.
45:1 Did the Pagan King Cyrus Believe in the God of Israel?
See comment on ezra 1:1–2.
45:7 Is God the Author of Evil?
The assertion in this passage is so bold that Marcion, an early Christian heretic, used this text to prove that the God of the Old Testament was a different being from the God of the New. Thus the nature of this hard saying is simply this: Is God the author
Numerous texts flatly declare that God is not, and could not be, the author of evil. For example, Deuteronomy 32:4 declares that “his works are perfect, and all his ways are just. [He is] a faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he.” Similarly, Psalm 5:4 notes, “You are not a God who takes pleasure in evil.” If we read the Bible in its total canonical setting, it would seem that God is without evil or any pretense of evil.
The text in question refers to physical evil. As does Lamentations 3:38, it contrasts prosperity and adversity. Thus the good is physical goodness and happiness, while the evil is physical distress, misfortune, calamity and natural evil, such as storms, earthquakes and other disasters.
Even though much of the physical evil often comes through the hand of wicked men and women, ultimately God permits it. Thus, according to the Hebrew way of speaking, which ignores secondary causation in a way Western thought would never do, whatever God permits may be directly attributed to him, often without noting that secondary and sinful parties were the immediate causes of the disaster.
The evil spoken of in this text and similar passages (such as Jer 18:11; Lam 3:38 and Amos 3:6) refers to natural evil and not moral evil. Natural evil is seen in a volcanic eruption, plague, earthquake and destructive fire. It is God who must allow (and that is the proper term) these calamities to come. But, one could ask, isn’t a God who allows natural disasters thereby morally evil?
To pose the question in this manner is to ask for the origins of evil. Christianity has more than answered the problem of the presence of evil (for that is the whole message of the cross) and the problem of the outcome of evil (for Christ’s resurrection demonstrates that God can beat out even the last enemy and greatest evil, death itself).
But Christianity’s most difficult question is the origin of evil. Why did God ever allow
“that stuff” in the first place?
Augustine taught that evil is not a substance. It is, as it were, a byproduct of our freedom, and especially of our sin. The effects of that sin did not fall solely on the world of humans. Its debilitating effects hit the whole natural world as well.
Nevertheless, it is not as if God can do nothing or that he is just as surprised as we are by natural evil. Any disaster must fall within the sovereign will of God, even though God is not the sponsor or author of that evil. When we attempt to harmonize these statements we begin to invade the realms of divine mystery.
What we can be sure of, however, is the fact that God is never, ever, the originator and author of evil. It would be contrary to his whole nature and being as consistently revealed in Scripture.
See also comment on exodus 9:12; lamentations 3:38–39.
45:17 Israel Will Be Saved?
See comment on romans 11:26.
63:10–11 The Indwelling Holy Spirit?
We are startled to find two explicit references to the Holy Spirit in this Old Testament text. Why would he be mentioned here when the New Testament seems to place his coming after the Son returned to his Father in heaven?
All too frequently interpreters have repeated the traditional adage that the Holy Spirit came on certain Old Testament leaders temporarily, but he did not dwell permanently in people until the New Testament period. But here an Old Testament text clearly teaches that the general class of people “rebelled” and “grieved” the Holy Spirit. The text does not refer only to the leaders; all the people were involved in an act which reminds us of the New Testament warning “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God”
(Eph 4:30).
Even more amazing, this text appears to contain a reference to all three persons of the Trinity. Isaiah 63:9 refers to the Father who shared Israel’s distress in Egypt, the wilderness and Canaan. But it was “the angel of his presence” (or “his face”) that delivered them (Is 63:9). This is the One in whom the Father had put his name (Ex 23:20–21). That is tantamount to saying that he had the same nature, essence and authority as the Father. That surely was no ordinary angel. It had to be the second person of the Trinity, the Messiah.
Having referred to the Father and the Son, the passage then mentions the Holy Spirit (Is 63:10–11). Yahweh, the angel of his presence (that is to say, Jesus, the Messiah) and the Holy Spirit are distinguished as three persons, but not so that the latter two are altogether different from the first. They in fact derive their existence, as we learn from other texts, from the first, and they are one God, forming a single unity. The Holy Spirit was known to the individual believers in the Old Testament, and they could and did rebel against the Holy Spirit individually just as New Testament believers often did, and as we do today.
See also comment on psalm 51:11.
63:17 God Hardens Israel’s Heart?
Such modes of expression seem rough and harsh. Why would God harden the hearts of Israel? Would he still hold the Israelites responsible for what happened as a result of this hardening?
Some have thought that unbelievers were being introduced here, since the words are so harsh and rough. But the connection of the words will not allow such an interpretation, for the prophet will affirm that as a result of their infirmities, they were made ashamed and acknowledged their faults.
But why then do they blame God? John Calvin put it just right. He said: And indeed when they trace their sins to the wrath of God, they do not intend to free themselves from blame, or to set aside their guilt. But the prophet employs a mode of expression which is of frequent occurrence; for in the Scriptures it is frequently said that God drives men into error (2 Thess ii. 11); “gives them up to a reprobate mind,”
(Rom i. 28); and “hardens them.” (Rom ix. 18). When believers speak in this manner, they do not intend to make God the author of error or of sin, as if they were innocent,
or to free themselves from blame; but they look higher, and rather acknowledge that it is by their own fault that they are estranged from God and deprived of his Spirit, and that this is the reason why they are plunged into every kind of evil.
Those who say that God leads us into error by privation, that is, by depriving us of his Spirit, do not perceive the actual design; for God himself is said to harden and to blind, when he gives up men to be blinded by Satan, who is the minister and executioner of his wrath. Without this, we would be exposed to the rage of Satan; but, since he can do nothing without the command of God, to whose dominion he is subject, there is no impropriety in saying that God is the author of blinding and hardening, as Scripture also affirms in many passages (Rom ix. 18). And yet it cannot be said or declared that God is the author of sin, because he punishes the ingratitude of men by blinding them in this manner.3 [3 John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries, vol. 3, Isaiah (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Associated Publishers and Authors Inc., n.d.), pp. 843–44.]
See also comment on exodus 9:12; 2 corinthians 3:14.
65:20 Death in the New Earth?
This strange verse is found within one of the two Old Testament passages speaking of
“the new heavens and the new earth,” Isaiah 65:17–25. (The other passage is Is 66:22–
24.) Both Peter (2 Pet 3:13) and John (Rev 21:1) must have had the first Isaiah passage in mind, for they borrowed its wording.
The problem comes when we examine Isaiah 65:20–25 in light of what John had to say in the Apocalypse about the new heavens and the new earth. In Isaiah 65:20 death is possible, but in Revelation 21:4 death is no longer a feature of that new estate. John assures us that God “will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
John depicts the new order of things in the new heavens and the new earth as conditions in which absolute perfection has been reached and where sin, death and sorrow are no more. Jesus mentioned that there would be no begetting of children at that time (Lk 20:36). Why then does Isaiah depict what appears to be the same period of time as one in which death, begetting of children (Is 65:23) and “sinners” are present? True, the power of death may be limited, but the very fact that it is at all present is the embarrassing issue in this text.
The only suggestion that seems to make sense treats Isaiah 65:20–25 as a distinct subparagraph within the topic of the new heavens and the new earth. Verses 17–19
may be paraphrased in this manner: “I will make new heavens and a new earth in which the former troubles will be forgotten, but Jerusalem will not be forgotten. Jerusalem will be completely free of any blemish. Sin may be forgotten, but God’s people and the city of Jerusalem will not be forgotten.”
Within this subparagraph form, the Jerusalem of Isaiah 65:17–19 pertains to the new Jerusalem of the new heavens and the new earth. The Jerusalem of Isaiah 65:20–25, however, is the Jerusalem of the millennial kingdom of Christ. Such an interpretation recognizes that the writers of Scripture often arranged their materials in a topical rather than a chronological order.
In the eternal state, when the new heavens and the new earth will have arrived, there will be no sin, sorrow and death. But when Christ reigns on earth, just prior to this eternal state, some of these burdens will remain, even if only in limited forms. So unexpected will death be that if people die after only living one hundred years, they will be regarded as having died as infants. Isaiah 65:20–25 breaks the chronological order expected in the chapter and interjects a related note about Jerusalem during the millennium.
Almost universally the early church believed Revelation 20:1–6 to represent a period of time, roughly corresponding to a thousand years, which would begin and conclude with two resurrections (the first of the righteous dead in Christ and the second of all the dead) and would be the time when, at the end of this period, Satan would be loosed for one last fling at opposing God before being finally and forever vanquished.
It is to this same time period, then, that we would assign the strange collection of facts stated by Isaiah 65:20–25.
Since the millennium is part of the eternal state it introduces, “this age” could be expected to overlap with “the coming age.” Thirty times the New Testament uses the dual expressions “this age” and “the coming age.” “This age” is the current historical process. But with our Lord’s casting out of the demons (Lk 11:20), and especially with the resurrection of Christ from the dead, “the powers of the coming age” (Heb 6:5) had already begun and overlapped this present age’s historical process. Thus in the “now” believers were already experiencing some of the evidences and powers to be experienced in the “not yet” inbursting of Christ into history at his Second Coming.
In Isaiah 65:25 the prophet repeats the word from Isaiah 11:6–9. The description of that age to come again closes with a description of peace in the world of nature. In the new age the patriarchal measure of life will return, death will be the anomaly and then no more, and the hostility between man and undomesticated animals will be exchanged for peace.
Some may argue that the prophet could not have handled such a sharp distinction between the two periods in the age to come. I concede that the prophet may not yet have distinguished and separated these into two separate periods. In the foreshortening of horizons, which was so typical in prophecy, this indeed may have happened. But the resolution here mapped out would have been needed, since death could not have been abolished and continued to exist at one and the same time. That alone would have been enough to suggest that a subplot had developed within the main theme of God’s new age to come.
Jeremiah
6:20; 7:21–23 Does God Desire Sacrifices?
See comment on 1 samuel 15:22; psalm 51:16–17, 19.
20:7 Is God the Author of Falsehood?
See comment on 1 kings 22:20–22.
22:24, 30 None of Jehoiachin’s Line to Rule?
Did Jesus the Messiah come from Jehoiachin’s line? If so, how could he claim the throne of David through a line cursed by God?
According to 1 Chronicles 3:16–17, Jehoiachin had seven descendants. These, however, were hauled off into Babylon and there, according to an archaeological finding on a Babylonian tablet in the famous Ishtar Gate, all seven were made eunuchs.
In this manner, Jehoiachin became “as if childless,” as no man of his seed prospered, nor did any sit on David’s throne.
David’s line through his son Solomon abruptly ended. However, the line of David did continue through one of Solomon’s brothers, Nathan (not to be confused with Nathan the prophet).
By the best reconstructions possible from the evidence on hand, Jehoiachin adopted the seven sons of Neri, a descendant of David through Nathan. Neri’s son Shealtiel died childless and so his brother Pedaiah performed the duty of levirate marriage (Deut 25:5–10), and as a result Zerubbabel was born.
Accordingly, Zerubbabel, the postexilic governor of Judah during the days of Haggai and Zechariah, was the legal son of Shealtiel, the actual son of Pedaiah, and thus the descendant of David on two counts. First Chronicles 3:19 informs us that Zerubbabel was the son of Pedaiah, brother of Shealtiel. Luke’s genealogy states that Shealtiel was a descendant of Neri (Lk 3:27).
We conclude, therefore, that Jehoiachin’s line did come to an end and that God in his wisdom provided for another branch of David’s line to continue the promise made to David which led to the coming of Christ the Messiah.
23:6 Israel Will Be Saved?
See comment on romans 11:26.
31:29–30 Children Pay for Their Parents’ Sins?
See comment on deuteronomy 24:16; joshua 7:1, 10–11; 2 samuel 21:1–9.
36:30 A Failed Prophecy?
King Jehoiakim had personally taken his knife and cut off the scroll with the words of the Lord from Jeremiah the prophet, section by section, as it was being read. Each piece was then tossed into the fire. For this, Jeremiah had a new oracle of doom when he rewrote the scroll: No descendant of Jehoiakim would sit on the throne of David.
Was this prediction fulfilled? As it turned out, when Jehoiakim died in 597 b.c., his son Jehoiachin took over for a mere three months, apparently without any official coronation ceremony, for Jerusalem was under siege from the king of Babylon.
Jehoiachin was not allowed to remain on the throne; instead, his uncle Zedekiah was
installed by the Babylonians in his place, as Jehoiachin and his sons were carted off to exile, where he remained until he died (see 2 Kings 24:6 and 2 Chron 36:9).
The Hebrew verb yaµsûab_ “to sit [on the throne],” when used of a king, carries with it a certain sense of permanence and stability, which a short reign of approximately ninety days hardly appears to properly signify. Jehoiakim’s son was not allowed to remain on the throne, if he ever could properly be said to occupy it: he was unceremoniously removed.
Thus the king who “cast” the Word of God into the fire that was burning in the palace on that cold day would himself be “cast” (the same Hebrew word) out so that his dead body would be exposed to the heat by day and the frost by night.
See also comment on “Are Old Testament Prophecies Really Accurate?”
Lamentations
3:38–39 Calamities Come from God?
This text involves the problem of evil being linked with God as its sponsor or author.
Judah faced the destruction of every clear evidence it had ever had that God’s promise to the patriarchs and David was valid. Jerusalem and God’s own dwelling place, the temple, had been destroyed. Was not God the author of these events?
An alphabetic acrostic (a means of presenting ideas by beginning each line or group of lines with successive letters of the alphabet) marks Lamentations 3:37–39 as the strophe unit (that is to say, poetic paragraph) in which this hard saying occurs.
The preceding strophe, Lamentations 3:34–36, forms one long sentence. Each of its three members opens with an infinitive that depends on the main verb, which comes last, in verse 36. Thus the sentence asks the question, Has not the Lord seen the three injustices mentioned in the three infinitives? Indeed, he had! He knew about the cruel treatment of war prisoners (Lam 3:34), the disregard of basic human rights (Lam 3:35) and the malpractice in the halls of justice (Lam 3:36).
Abuse of prisoners outrages God, as we are also told in Psalms 68:6, 69:33 and 107:10–16. Likewise, God is offended when a person receives no justice in the halls of government (Ex 23:6; Deut 16:19; 24:17; Prov 17:23; 18:5). God never approves of such distortions, and he has noted the sources of our grief (Lam 3:36). This is the context of the strophe in Lamentations 3:37–39. Whatever successes evil persons may have are only temporarily permitted by God for his wise purposes.
Lamentations 3:37 appears to have Psalm 33:9 in mind: “He spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.” Everything must be permitted by the hand of God.
However, woe betide the individual, the institution or the group by which evil comes!
Though God may permit temporary success of such evil and even use it for his glory, that does not negate the responsibility of wicked people for what they do and how they do it.
Accordingly, God used Assyria as the rod of his anger against Israel (Is 10), as he later used the Babylonians to chastise Judah (Hab 1–2), but he also heaped harsh words on
both these foreign nations for the way they did the task. God judged them with a series of woes (see, for example, the end of Hab 2).
Note that Lamentations 3:38 does not contrast moral good and evil but calamity and good. Furthermore, it does not ascribe these calamities directly to God but says that they cannot occur without God’s permission. Those claiming that this is unfair should look at Lamentations 3:39, “Why should any living man complain when punished for his sins?” As the theme of this section declares, “Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail” (Lam 3:22). Thus, the Israelites’
very existence bore evidence that God still cared for them.
God, however, is angry with mortals for their sin. This whole question of divine anger has been sharply debated over the centuries. It became known as the debate over divine passibility (the quality or aptness in God to feel, suffer or be angry).
Marcion, a second-century Gnostic heretic, demanded that his God be impassible, incapable of taking offense, never angry, entirely apathetic and free of all affections.
Though the early church expelled Marcion and anathematized his doctrines in a.d. 144, the struggle continued over whether God could be angered by sin and unrighteousness.
The cause of anger, according to Aristotle, is our desire to avenge harm done to us.
Thus anger came to have a connotation of a “brief madness” and lack of self-control.
This definition did not fit our Lord’s anger or any righteous anger, and it was rejected by the church.
Late in the third Christian century the church father Lactantius wrote a classic book entitled De Ira Dei, “The Anger of God.” For Lactantius, emotions and passions were not inherently evil if they were controlled. But it was evil for someone to be in the presence of evil and not to dislike it or be angered by it. To love the good was by definition to hate the evil. Contrariwise, not to hate the evil was not to love the good.
That is why we affirm that God’s anger is never explosive, unreasonable or unexplainable. It is, instead, a firm expression of displeasure with all wickedness and sin. In God, anger is never a ruling force or passion; it is merely the instrument of his will—an instrument he handles with deftness and care. But however he may use his anger to punish or teach, he will never shut off his compassion from us (Ps 77:9).
See also comment on 2 kings 9:6–10; psalms 5:5; 11:5; isaiah 45:7.
Ezekiel
14:9 Is God the Author of Falsehood?
See comment on 1 kings 22:20–22.
18:1–20 Should Children Die for Their Fathers’ Sins?
See comment on deuteronomy 24:16; ezekiel 21:4.
20:25 Statutes That Were Not Good?
How could a law of God issued to give life to its followers instead cause their deaths?
And why would God deliberately admit, as this text appears to make him say, that he gave Israel laws that were not good for them and impossible to live by?
Some attempt to explain this text by saying Ezekiel 20:25–26 are the blasphemous words of the people. However, the Lord is clearly the speaker in these verses, not the people. Neither is Ezekiel 20:25 a reference to Ezekiel 20:11, as many have thought in both ancient and modern times. Nor is it an allusion to some aspect of the Mosaic law.
Some may attempt to argue that this verse foreshadows Paul’s recognition of the intrinsic deadliness of the law, which he explains in Romans 5:20, 7:13 and Galatians 3:19. But in fact Paul holds the opposite point of view: he denies that the law, which was inherently good, became evil for some through their disobedience (Rom 7:13).
Furthermore, in Ezekiel 20 there is the clear echoing of the sentiment in Leviticus 18:5,
“Keep my decrees and laws, for the man who obeys them will live by them. I am the Lord.” That same thought is repeated in Ezekiel 20:11, 13 and 21. God’s statues were such that men and women were expected to “live in them,” not die from them.
Therefore the statutes mentioned in Ezekiel 20:25 cannot be statutes from the Mosaic code, some part of that law, such as the ceremonial law, or even the threats contained there. Certainly God’s ceremonial commandments were good and came with promises.
And the threats were never called “statutes” or “judgments” by Moses.
Ezekiel 20:26 makes clear what these statutes were. Israel had been defiled by adopting the Canaanite practice of sacrificing their firstborn children to the god Molech. Indeed, there is a quasi-allusion to the commandment given in Exodus 13:12:
“You are to give over to the Lord the first offspring of every womb.” However, the Israelites perverted the practice by offering the children to Molech instead of dedicating them to the Lord as he had prescribed. Israel also confused their perversions with another law of God, Exodus 22:29: “You must give me the firstborn of your sons.”
In this manner, God sent them “a powerful delusion” (2 Thess 2:11) and “gave them over to the worship of the heavenly bodies” (Acts 7:42). In a sense, all this was a type of hardening in which all who did not renounce idolatry were given up to its power and control. That is why we find the verse concludes with the dreadful note “that I might fill them with horror so they would know that I am the Lord.”
Isaiah 63:17 asks, “Why, O Lord, do you make us wander from your ways and harden our hearts so we do not revere you?” In the same way, God is said here to have given death-bringing statutes to the Israelites when he saw their perverse behavior toward his ordinances and commandments. To punish their unfaithfulness, he subjected them to influences that accelerated their already clear departure from the truth. They wrongfully thought they were observing the law of God. However, they had so distorted their thinking that they could no longer discern God’s law from the law of the pagan land.
Likewise, when Ezekiel 20:26 says, “I polluted them in their gifts,” or as the NIV
[NIV New International Version] has it, “I let them become defiled through their gifts,” this text also speaks as if God himself polluted them so he might return them more quickly to their spiritual senses. Thus in both cases God’s participation is dramatically stated to jar the consciences of a blinded populace. God identifies himself
with the instruments of his wrath and of his providential chastisements as an answer to Israel’s sin. Sin became its own punishment (Ps 81:12; Ezek 14:9; Rom 1:24–25).
Without stopping to acknowledge the presence of secondary, and culpable, causes, what God permitted and allowed is directly attributed to him. But on no account was there the least hint that the Mosaic law was to be faulted or judged beyond anyone’s ability to live by.
21:4 Judgment for Both the Righteous and the Wicked?
How could the Lord indiscriminately send judgment on both the righteous and the wicked when in Ezekiel 18:1–20 he had stated that each person would be responsible for his or her own sin? Isn’t this a reversal of policy?
Ezekiel 18 focuses on the responsibility of the individual for individual guilt. That is one side of the coin. But the Bible also recognizes the reality of the concept of corporate responsibility when it comes to accounting for the effect of some individual sins. The case of Achan in Joshua 7:1–26 is the best example of corporate solidarity, for when Achan sinned, it was said that all Israel had sinned as well.
We can understand how one traitor can sell a whole army into major trouble, but we forget how the effects of some sins fall on whole communities, nations or assemblies of persons. In the case in Ezekiel 21, the sword would cut both the righteous and the wicked. That is because in war often both the good and the bad fall. But that was not to say that everyone was individually guilty; no, it was the effect that reached and impacted all.
Ezekiel’s main purpose here was to alarm sinners, who were boasting of their security; but the distinction between the righteous and the wicked must not be thought of as being no longer in existence. It was. The fact remained, however, that the sword would not be put back into the scabbard until everything that had been predicted had been accomplished. The wicked were guilty, but many people, including some righteous, would suffer because of the sins of the wicked.
See also comment on joshua 7:1, 10–11.
28:11–19 The King of Tyre or Satan?
Is this simply bold, exaggerated, metaphorical language describing the king of Tyre, or is it an allegory or a straightforward statement about Satan? If it is the latter, then why is it addressed to the king of Tyre?
The historic fall of Satan, otherwise not directly described in the Bible but alluded to in a number of passages, supplied the background terminology and metaphor for this text, just as it did for Isaiah 14. His fall from heaven back, apparently, before time began will supply the model for the fall of the king of Tyre, as it had for the king of Babylon.
But in keeping with the concept of inaugurated eschatology, in which both the near and the distant future are brought together in one horizon, the fall of the king of Tyre will be but a small indication of what the fall of Satan will be like in the final day.
The king of Tyre was compared to the Evil One himself, who was in the Garden of Eden, the garden of God. But this exalted one became corrupt and lost his position in heaven. Similarly, the king of Tyre is about to lose his position for the same reasons: he exalted himself above God. Thus the description seems to shift back and forth from the king of Tyre to Satan himself, but that fluidity of language can be seen elsewhere as the near fulfillments of many prophecies do not embrace the totality of the language as the final fulfillment does.
Thus, the mastermind behind God’s enemies is not always recognized, but here it is clearly the devil himself. He is the one that finally must suffer a fiery judgment, thereby appalling the nations who knew him, just as the nation of Tyre will suffer a fiery judgment from God, prior to God’s dealing with their sponsor.
See also comment on isaiah 14:12–14.
37:1–14 Who Is the Old Testament Holy Spirit?
See comment on psalm 51:11.
38:1 Who Are Gog and Magog?
Who is Gog? And where is the land of Magog? Where is Meshech and Tubal? Do any of these places or person(s) have anything to do with the events that are to take place in the end times? If so, what are these events?
Gog is called the prince of Meshech and Tubal, provinces of Asia Minor. However, the geographical area that these would have embraced would be comparable to what we today would label as parts of Iran, all of Turkey and the southern provinces of the C.I.S. (formerly the U.S.S.R.).
But who is Gog? The locations of Gog’s allies do not help us to identify who Gog is.
One interesting suggestion is that Gog is a cryptogram for Babel or Babylon,1 [1 I suppose this would have to be a strange variation of an “atbash” formation, where, instead of folding the alphabet in half on itself and using the corresponding letter on the other half as the one really intended, it folds the alphabet in half, but in the case of “Magog,” it uses the letter to the left of it on the bottom half and the letter to the right of it on the top half: m=l; g [gimel]=b; g=b. Then the word must be turned around to read Bbl, that is, Babel. It is possible, but strange.] since Babylon was omitted from the nations mentioned in the prophecies against the nations in Ezekiel 25:1–32:32. That fact is strange, in that it omits the one nation that was at that time holding Judah captive. Why omit the nation that is most on their minds at that time? So Babylon as Gog or Magog is one good guess.
When does this all take place? Nothing described in these chapters has ever taken place in history. All views that would place the events of Ezekiel 33–48 in an allegorical or spiritual type of interpretation fall significantly short of explaining the plethora of detail that is found in these chapters. The setting for these chapters is in the end times, where a conflict between God and evil is consummated and the wickedness of this present age is replaced by peace, righteousness and the divine presence, such as has previously been unknown to mortals.
There are seven messages about what Gog, the enemy of Israel, is destined to face: (1) The Lord will bring Gog and his allies against Israel (Ezek 38:1–9; compare Rev
16:13–14; 20:7–8); (2) Gog will invade Israel (Ezek 38:10–13); (3) Gog will invade Israel from the north (Ezek 38:14–16); (4) God will unleash tremendous judgment against Gog (Ezek 38:17–23); (5) it will take seven years to gather up the spoils and seven months to bury the dead from Gog’s army (Ezek 39:1–16); (6) Gog will be eaten by the birds of the air and the beasts of the field in a great supper (Ezek 39:17–
24); and (7) this will conclude the salvation of God and the restoration of Israel(Ezek 39:25–29).
Ezekiel 38–39 describe one of the most devastating conflicts in the prophecies of the end times. It sees an inevitable judgment of God coming at the climax of history with the forces of evil completely decimated. The older guesses that this was a picture of the U.S.S.R. have never been sustained by adequate lexicographical work, but at least the southern part of the republics that make up the new C.I.S. may still be involved.
The real identities of most of the participants remain unknown.
History is the final interpreter of prophecy, for as Jesus said, “I am telling you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe that I am He” (Jn 13:19). And prophecy ultimately points to the fact that Christ was right, not we or our charts!
Daniel
1:17–2:23 Is Astrology Biblical?
See comment on matthew 2:1–2.
7:9 Did Daniel See God?
See comment on exodus 33:18–23.
9:24–27 A Prophecy of Christ?
Was Daniel’s prophecy about the coming “Anointed One,” that is, the Messiah, accurate? Or has the text been wrongly interpreted and is there a Messiah who comes at the end of the first set of seven sevens, that is, at the end of 49 years, and another Messiah who comes at the end of the sixty-two sevens, that is, after another 434 years?
If there are two Messiahs spoken of in this text, then the text has been doctored to make it seem that there was only one who came at the end of the sixty-nine weeks, or 483 years after the decree went forth to rebuild and restore Jerusalem. And in that case, it cannot be a prophecy about Jesus.
Originally the 1611 edition of the KJV [KJV King James Version] of the Bible rendered it this way:
Know therefore and vnderstand, that from the going foorth of the commandement to restore and to build Ierusalem, vnto the Messiah the Prince, shall be seuven weekes; and threescore and two weekes, the street shall be built againe, and the wall euen in troublous times. And after threescore and two weekes, shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himselfe, and the people of the Prince that shall come, shall destroy the citie,
and the Sanctuarie, and the ende thereof shall be with a flood. (Dan 9:25–26) The reason the 1611 edition put “Messiah the Prince” (Hebrew: maµsûéÆah\ naµg÷éÆd_) at the end of the “seven sevens” was because the Hebrew text has an athnach at the end of this clause, which sometimes indicates a break in the thought.
But neither a comma nor an athnach is sufficient in and of itself to require the conclusion that Daniel intended a break in thought at this point and a radical separation of the seven sevens from the sixty-two sevens, thus making two appearances of Messiah, one at the end of 49 years and the other at the end of 434 years. Of course there is always the possibility that the sixth-century Jewish scholars, the Masoretes, who supplied the vowel points to the original consonantal text as well as the accents that serve as a form of punctuation at times, were in error. But if the Masoretic athnach be retained, it may serve not to indicate a principal division of the text, as the 1611 edition of the KJV [KJV King James Version] took it (which translation was in vogue up until 1885), but to indicate that one was not to confuse or to absorb the seven sevens into the sixty-two sevens. The point is that a violent separation of the two periods with a projection of two Messiahs is out of harmony with the context.
Therefore, we contend that only one Anointed One is being addressed in this passage.
But what led Daniel to start talking about groups of sevens anyway? Daniel had been having devotions in the recent writings of Jeremiah (Dan 9:2) when he realized that Jeremiah’s predicted seventy years of captivity in Babylon had almost expired. Thus it happened that while he was praying, confessing his sin and the sin of his people, God answered his inquiry as to what was going to happen in the future. There would be an additional seventy sevens for Daniel’s people and for the holy city in order to do six things: (1) “to finish transgression,” (2) “to put an end to sin,” (3) “to atone for wickedness,” (4) “to bring in everlasting righteousness,” (5) “to seal up vision and prophecy” and (6) “to anoint the most holy [place?]” (Dan 9:24). That would embrace everything from Daniel’s day up to the introduction of the eternal state. What an omnibus plan!
But first the seventy sevens must take place. Now the Hebrew people were accustomed to reckoning time in terms of sevens, for the whole sabbatical cycle was laid out that way; accordingly, to equate the “sevens” with years was not a major problem for Jewish listeners. But these seventy sevens were divided up into three segments: (1) the first seven sevens were for the rebuilding of Jerusalem, which was consummated forty-nine years after the decree to rebuild the city was announced; (2) sixty-two additional sevens bring us to the time when Messiah the Prince will come; and (3) a remaining seven concludes the full seventy sevens as they were given to Daniel.
While the first two segments appear to be continuous, making up the first sixty-nine (7
+ 62 = 69), Daniel 9:26 describes a gap after the first sixty-nine sevens. In this gap, Messiah will “be cut off,” a reference to the death of Messiah around a.d. 30, and the city and sanctuary of Jerusalem will be destroyed, a prediction of the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in a.d. 70. Given the forty-year spread between these two events, it is enough to indicate that the final seven in the seventy will not come in sequence with the other sixty-nine.
When was this “decree” or “word” to restore and rebuild Jerusalem issued? This constituted the terminus a quo, or the beginning point for this prophecy. One of three
points has been variously adopted by interpreters for this terminus a quo, with a slight edge going to the third one. First, the decree was the one Cyrus issued in 538/37 b.c.
(Ezra 1:2–4; 6:3–5). Second, the decree was the one Artaxerxes announced in 458
b.c., when Ezra returned to Jerusalem (Ezra 7:11–26). Third, it was the decree that the same Artaxerxes proclaimed in 445 b.c., when Nehemiah returned. Since it was Nehemiah who rebuilt the walls, while Cyrus’s decree focused on rebuilding the temple and Ezra focused on reestablishing proper services at the temple, 445 b.c. is favored as the terminus a quo.
The terminus ad quem (ending point) of the first sixty-nine sevens is usually put during the life of the Messiah; some preferring his birth (5/4 b.c.), others the beginning of his ministry at his baptism (a.d. 26/27) and some his triumphal entry into Jerusalem (a.d.
30).
So is this prophecy accurate in what it said about the coming Messiah, given in the sixth century b.c. to Daniel? Yes it was. It correctly said that Messiah the Prince would come and that he would die. Some have argued that it was possible to give the exact date for the announcement of Messiah’s kingdom by supposing that a “prophetic year”
consists of 360 days (instead of 365 days of the solar year). This is based on the fact that during Noah’s flood, the 150 days equaled five months. There is no need, however, to make such an extrapolation. It is enough to know that there are some 483
years (69 x 7 = 483 years) from 445 b.c. to a.d. 30–33, when Christ was crucified.
11:29–35 Antiochus or Antichrist?
See comment on isaiah 14:12–14.
12:8–10 Clarity of Prophecy?
It has been argued that the prophets who wrote Scripture often did not understand what they wrote. Daniel’s plain assertion, “I heard, but I did not understand,” is used to prove that prophets often “spoke better than they knew.”
But this conclusion is too simplistic. It fails to ask the question, What was it that Daniel did not understand? Was it the meaning of his scriptural writings?
Not at all! The incomprehensible words were not his own, but those of the angel who had been speaking to him (Dan 12:7). Moreover, the angel’s words were never clarified. They were to be “closed up and sealed until the time of the end.” This expression echoes Isaiah 8:16, “Bind up the testimony and seal up the law.” In both of these texts, the “sealing” of the testimonies referred to the certainty of their predictions, not their mysteriousness to the prophet to whom they had been disclosed or unveiled (as the word revelation means).
In this case, Daniel’s question was a temporal one, “What will the outcome of all this be?” Daniel wanted to know the state of affairs at the close of the “time, times and half a time” (Dan 12:7). But to this question, as with most temporal questions arising from prophecy, God gives no further disclosure. Even the Son of Man did not know the time of his own Second Coming.
Failure to know the temporal details of prophecy is hardly a basis for asserting that
“the prophets wrote better than they knew.” Unfortunately this dubious principle has gained widespread popularity. The obvious rejoinder is “Better than what?” What could be meant by the term better? Since our Lord has disclosed all that can be classified as Scripture, how then could he know less than he recorded? And if it is argued that this phrase means that the writers sometimes wrote things down but had little or no knowledge of what they had said or meant, then I will counter that a case for automatic or mechanical writing must be proven. The only biblical cases for mechanical writing are the Ten Commandments and the writing on the wall during Belshazzar’s feast in the book of Daniel. But these cases hardly set the pattern for all the other texts.
Because the “sealing up” of the prophecy indicated its certainty, not its hiddenness, Daniel was at times overcome by the meaning of his prophecies. On one occasion he lay sick for days (Dan 8:27).
I conclude, then, that Daniel knew all but two aspects of the prophecies revealed to him: (1) the temporal aspects (an exclusion we share even today, as noted in 1 Pet 1:10–12) and (2) additional information beyond that revealed to him. No prophet claimed omniscience, only an adequate, God-given knowledge of a limited topic of importance.
Let us acknowledge, of course, that we often are better able than the prophets themselves to understand the implications of prophecies because we can now see many different streams of history and prophecy coming together. This is similar to one person’s accurately describing a country he or she has never visited versus another person’s not only reading this author’s account but visiting that country as well.
Nevertheless, our historical advantages cannot diminish the value of the original contributions by God’s earthly spokesmen.
Hosea
1:2–3 Marry an Adulteress?
If we were to take this narrative at face value, we would assume God was commanding something he had forbidden. Exodus 20:14 had clearly prohibited adultery. Moreover, God had forbidden priests to marry harlots in Leviticus 21:7. If that was God’s will for priests, his will for prophets could hardly be less demanding.
So we are shocked to hear the Almighty commanding Hosea to “go, take to yourself an adulterous wife.” Was this meant literally?
Several matters must be carefully observed. First is the matter of Hosea’s writing style, which was very pointed, concise and laconic. In fact, Hosea is so brief and elliptical at times that he borders on obscuring several points, since many allusions escape readers unfamiliar with the ancient context.
In the second place, Hosea obviously wrote this text many years after the fact. The phrase “In the beginning when Yahweh spoke” or, as the NIV [NIV New International Version] has it, “When the Lord began to speak through Hosea,” refers back to the time when the prophet began his work. This cryptic notice suggests the story has been foreshortened and the author may leap ahead to tell us what this woman would
become, a fact unknown to Hosea but which God, in his foreknowledge and omniscience, could see. This assertion is not as arbitrary as it may first appear, as we will attempt to show.
Let me emphasize that the events described here really took place and are not merely an internal vision or an allegory, as a long list of interpreters have argued. Placing these events in a dream world or making them purely illustrative would not overcome the implied moral problem on God’s part.
I assert that Hosea was told by God to marry Gomer, but that she was not a harlot at that time. The telltale signal of this is the figure of speech known as zeugma, which occurs whenever one verb is joined to two objects but grammatically refers only to one of them. In this case the zeugma involves the double verbs Go, take to yourself, a Hebrew idiom for “get married” (Gen 4:19; 6:2; 19:14; Ex 21:10; 34:16; 1 Sam 25:43). However, though these verbs apply only to Gomer, the text links them to the children as well. There is an ellipsis (that is to say, a dropping out) of a third verb which normally would have been inserted before the noun to read “and beget children.”
Thus the children are given the same odious name (that is, “children of harlotry”—
“children of unfaithfulness” [NIV [NIV New International Version] ]), even though two were males—apparently being stigmatized because of their mother’s unsavory reputation.
The very fact that Gomer “bore to him a son” proves that the eldest child was not born out of wedlock of an unknown father through Gomer’s loose living (Hos 1:3). It is not stated, as it was of the first child, that Gomer bore her next two children “to him.”
However, since Hosea named them, a function normally left for the father, there is a strong implication that these children are his as well. Thus the evidence would show that the secondary label “children of adulteries” or “unfaithfulness” is given to the children not because they are products of adultery but because of their mother’s subsequent activity.
But what about the label put on Gomer? Must we regard her as a soliciting prostitute?
No, the term used in the Hebrew text is too restricted to mean that. The Hebrew text does not say zoÆnaÆh, as if it were the intensive form. Instead it uses the plural abstract form of the same word, zƒnuÆnéÆm, thus referring to a personal quality and not to an activity.
So distinctive is this abstract plural that it could describe a personal trait that might have been recognizable prior to the marriage, even though it had not shown itself in actual acts of unfaithfulness. According to this interpretation, the Lord directed Hosea to marry a woman who was imbued with a propensity for sexual liaisons. Gomer, of course, represented Israel, who was frequently depicted as being pure when God first met her, though filled with a desire to go off into spiritual whoredoms. This interpretation would explain the “children of whoredoms” as well. The term would refer to Israel’s apostasy, not her sexual activity.
This type of construction, where the result is put for what appears to be the purpose, is common in other writings from Israel. For example, in Isaiah 6:9–12, it first appears that Isaiah must preach in order to blind the eyes of the people and to stop their ears, but this is actually the result rather than the purpose of his preaching, as Jesus and the apostles later clarified.
I conclude, then, that Hosea’s children were not born out of wedlock from adulterous unions and that Hosea was initially unaware of what God discerned in the heart of Gomer, that she had an adulterous predisposition and a bent toward sexual promiscuity.
Speaking of this same woman, the Lord told Hosea to “go, show your love to your wife again” (in Hebrew the word again goes with the verb go, according to the ancient suggested punctuation of the Hebrew Masoretes, and not with the verb The Lord said) in Hosea 3:1. It is for this reason that the book of Hosea has been called the Gospel of John of the Old Testament and the book that shows the heart and holiness of God. The apostatizing Israelites were just as undeserving as Gomer was.
In conclusion, this hard saying must be understood to be a combination statement. It contains both the original command and additions reflecting a later perspective. To sort out the two parts of the verse, I will place square brackets around the additions to show they were not technically part of the original command but were later revealed as the divine reason God chose this wife for Hosea and allowed him to go through such a trying experience. The verse then reads: “Go, take to yourself a[n adulterous] wife and (beget) children [of unfaithfulness, because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the Lord.]” Thus the earlier divine command was combined with the subsequent realization of his wife’s moral lapses. When fitted together, both word and deed, they constituted the total claim and call of God on Hosea’s life.
1:4 Jehu Punished for Doing as He Was Commanded?
See comment on 2 kings 9:6–10.
6:6 Does God Desire Sacrifices?
See comment on psalm 51:16–17, 19.
11:8–9 Ephraim Pitied
The surprise in this passage is the fact that God is reluctant to give up on the northern ten tribes. While judgment had been exercised by God in the past (as in the destruction of the five cities of the plain—Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim and Zobah), he definitely would not act with such fierceness here. The question is why. What made God change?—for that is exactly what he had done in choosing not to impose the judgment that was richly deserved by Ephraim.
A number of texts in the Pentateuch reiterate that death and destruction will be the results of all continued disobedience. Leviticus 26:38 warns, “You will perish among the nations; the land of your enemies will devour you,” and the next verse adds,
“Those of you who are left will waste away.” “You will quickly perish from the land”
(Deut 4:26). The people would “come to sudden ruin” until they were “destroyed …
from the land” and had “perish[ed]” (Deut 28:20–22). The perpetually disobedient could expect death (Deut 30:19), and God would “blot out their memory from mankind” (Deut 32:26).
In light of such serious threats, the gracious words of Hosea 11:8–9 are totally unexpected. How are we to reconcile the two?
The sudden shift in Hosea 11:8–9 signals new hope for Israel. The main reasons for the shift from a message of judgment to one of hope are to be found in two facts: (1) Israel would suffer a full punishment for disloyalty and would go into exile under the Assyrian conquest, and (2) the character of God, like the faces of a coin, has two sides: judgment and compassion.