Not Just a Belief of the Marginalized

I’m continuing my way through Stephen Cook’s Prophecy and Apocalypticism: The Postexilic Social Setting.  In my reading today, Cook does two things:

First, he looks at believers in apocalypticism throughout history—Native American and African tribes, Jewish Messianism in Europe, the Puritans, even Ronald Reagan—and he notices that there are many cases in which apocalyptic sentiments come from powerful elements of society, casting doubt on the scholarly claim that apocalypticism is solely a view held by the disenfranchised, or that it originated among people who felt powerless and marginalized.  Why do the powerful embrace apocalypticism?  Some believe that they must enact an agenda to prepare the way for the eschaton.  Some become insecure as a result of revolutions or wars.  Some (such as the Jainist aristocrats) are disgusted by their own social status.  In the case of Ronald Reagan, perhaps he just found end-times prophecy to be interesting, an intriguing way for him to view the world.  (Cook doesn’t say this about Reagan, but that’s my guess.)  And, having grown up in an apocalyptic movement, and knowing people who experienced a more authoritarian version of it, I can add another reason: social control.  Threatening people that God won’t preserve them in the eschaton but will punish them unless they adhere to a particular authority structure can scare people into submission.

Second, Cook argues that Ezekiel 38-39 and Zechariah 1-8 are examples of apocalyptic from the establishment.  Cook argues that both of these are apocalyptic, appealing to such factors as a belief in God’s direct intervention to effect a new creation, and other things.  Ezekiel 38-39 present God defeating Gog and Magog, and Zechariah 1-8 depict God’s heavenly forces having some effect on the earth, as well as despairs about earthly effort (although Cook discusses apocalypticisms that acknowledge a human role, in warfare, for example).  Cook contends against Paul Hanson’s argument that Zechariah 1-8 is non-eschatological and primarily supports a practical program that exalts the Zadokites and the Davidids.  Cook’s view is probably that Zechariah 1-8 may have supported the Zadokites and the Davidids, but it had an apocalyptic view regarding God’s direct intervention in the course of human events.

I have not yet read Cook’s argument about Zechariah 1-8 being an establishment piece, but I doubt that he has to work too hard in supporting that point, since Zechariah 1-8 endorses Joshua the high priest and Zerubbabel the governor.  Regarding Ezekiel 38-39, Cook argues that it is from the Ezekiel school, against those who say it was a later apocalyptic insertion into Ezekiel, and he maintains that it comes from a priestly perspective.  Cook sees verbal and theological correspondences between Ezekiel 38-39 and the rest of Ezekiel, and he believes that Ezekiel 38-39 fits into Ezekiel quite well: within the book, Ezekiel 38-39 is about God protecting Israel from her enemies, after she has been restored from an exile that commenced when God delivered her into the hands of her enemies.  Ezekiel 38-39 also manifests a priestly concern for the purity of the land of Israel after God’s defeat of Gog and Magog.

But Cook’s treatment of Ezekiel 38-39 is not just synchronic, for he does believe that the chapters contain stages.  One stage marked apocalyptic intensity, and Cook says this occurred when restoration appeared to be an impending reality and the Zadokites had high hopes.  A second stage was more realistic, if you will, and it projected the battle of Gog and Magog into a more distant future, while supporting practical attempts to deal with the present.    

Peckham on Zephaniah and Ezekiel (and Their Editors)

For my write-up today of Brian Peckham’s History and Prophecy, I have two items:

1.  On page 472, Peckham states that “Zephaniah saw the whole known world being swept away and creation reverting to indiscriminate origins.” But did Zephaniah have any hope of a new beginning?  Not that I can tell, from Peckham’s description—though Zephaniah does exhort Judahites to repent while there is still time.  But, according to Peckham, a later editor of Zephaniah applied Zephaniah’s vision of cosmic destruction primarily to Judah and Jerusalem, as well as predicted that a remnant would be spared, that Israelites would return from the Diaspora, that a pious and humble community of worship would be formed, and that God would be relaxed in the midst of Zion.

2.  Peckham also maintains that the Book of Ezekiel manifests at least two layers.  On pages 470-471, he summarizes Ezekiel himself as follows:

“He set himself out from the beginning as a son of Adam who had seen what seemed to be the glory of God in the likeness of Adam…He ends up in a city that has no name but has all the characteristics of Eden and that is centered on a mountain inhabited by the glory of God…He starts in exile, where he imagines the siege and capture of Jerusalem and understands it as the end of the world…He comes to realize that the land will flourish again and that life will follow on death and sees the dead bodies of the slain rise out of their graves…He begins with the desecration of the temple, the departure of the glory of God, and the sorry flight of the king…He sees in the end, in the image of Egypt and Tyre, that the glory of Adam has departed and the kings lie limp in Sheol…He knows that life and death are individual, in the instance of the lover, the king, the innocent son, but he comes to a resolution when he realizes that the whole nation must die to be brought back to life…”  Moreover, on page 272, Peckham states that Ezekiel did not believe that the new Israel would be centered on Jerusalem.

Peckham affirms that Ezekiel wrote late in exile, and his vision in Babylon enabled him to conceptualize exile and restoration.  But his vision was not deemed to be all that practical by the survivors of the catastrophe, specifically those who wanted a specific program about how they could rebuild their society.  Ezekiel’s vision of the death of the old and the rebirth of the new was too abstract for them, as was his appeal to mythological concepts, such as Adam, avenging angels, and kings in Sheol.  Peckham does not use the word “mythological”, but his argument seems to be that a Jerusalem establishment updated Ezekiel so that his person and the reference-points of his visions could be securely anchored within historical events, and also so that the existence of survivors would be acknowledged.  More importantly, the Jerusalem editors sought to develop a specific program for a restored cult.

Prophecy-After-the-Fact

Source: J.J. Collins, “The Sibylline Oracles,” Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period, ed. Michael E. Stone (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984) 374.

“The assumption of Geffcken and Rzach that the conquest of Mesopotamia could only be prophesied after the fact is not justified. The Parthians were a menance to Roman power in the East in the first century B.C.E. and their subjection might well be prophesied by any one sympathetic to Rome.”

This quote interested me because it talks about prophecy-after-the-fact–”prophecy” that “predicts” events that already occurred. Liberal scholars believe that chapters of Daniel fit into this category: events that were occurring in the second century B.C.E. were said to be prophesied centuries before by an earlier figure, Daniel.

According to Collins here, the prediction of the Sibylline Oracles that Mesopotamia (Parthia) would fall was not prophecy after the fact. It could have been wishful thinking, like the false prophets telling Ahab that he would win the battle, or those who told Judah that Babylon wouldn’t conquer her, notwithstanding her sins.

It could have been a realistic forecast of what would happen, based on the situation at the time. Some have asserted that there are biblical prophecies that fall into this category. I read a liberal Christian article a while back, and it tried to explain away the prophecies that did not come to pass. For instance, Ezekiel predicted that Tyre and Egypt would be destroyed by Babylon, but that didn’t exactly happen. The author of the article states that the prophet was interpreting the events of his time in light of his knowledge of God’s will–how he believed God would act. He was like a religious pundit, commenting on world events.

I have a hard time seeing all of the biblical prophecies as statements of what was likely to happen, for there are some of them that are out-of-the-ordinary. When Isaiah said that Syria and Israel would fall rather than conquer Judah, that looked pretty unlikely! Isaiah even had to give Ahaz a sign–his prophecy looked that unbelievable! But prophecy isn’t always a prediction based on where the trends seem to be going, for God can work in unexpected ways.

Child Sacrifice, Part 2

Source: Michael Fishbane’s Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (New York: Oxford, 1988) 185.

Ezekiel 20:25-26 states:

“Moreover I gave them statutes that were not good and ordinances by which they could not live. I defiled them through their very gifts, in their offering up all their firstborn, in order that I might horrify them, so that they might know that I am the LORD” (NRSV).

According to Fishbane, many scholars believe this passage is saying that God gave laws that could be miscontrued as commanding child sacrifice.

Are there such laws in the Torah? Fishbane cites Exodus 13:13 and 34:20:

Exodus 13:13: But every firstborn donkey you shall redeem with a sheep; if you do not redeem it, you must break its neck. Every firstborn male among your children you shall redeem.

Exodus 34:20: The firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it you shall break its neck. All the firstborn of your sons you shall redeem. No one shall appear before me empty-handed.

For Fishbane, the word translated “you shall redeem” can also be rendered “you may redeem.” After all, the redemption of the donkey is optional, right? So why not the monetary redemption of a human firstborn? According to Fishbane, there were Israelites who decided to go above and beyond the call of duty, showing God they were serious by sacrificing their firstborn.

Fishbane speculates that Numbers 18:15 was a response to such a horrible interpretation. Vv 15-16 affirm:

“The first issue of the womb of all creatures, human and animal, which is offered to the LORD, shall be yours; but the firstborn of human beings you shall redeem, and the firstborn of unclean animals you shall redeem. Their redemption price, reckoned from one month of age, you shall fix at five shekels of silver, according to the shekel of the sanctuary (that is, twenty gerahs).”

According to Fishbane, Numbers 18:15 is more emphatic in Hebrew, clearly stating that the Israelites must redeem their firstborn rather than sacrificing them.

Ezekiel 20 may be referring to the law in Exodus 34:20, but I doubt it has Exodus 13 in mind. The reason is that Ezekiel 20 says that God gave Israel the bad laws after she trangressed the Sabbath and worshipped false gods. Exodus 34 occurs after Israel’s transgression of the Sabbath in Exodus 16, and the golden calf incident in Exodus 32.

At the same time, one could argue that Exodus 13 was inserted into the Exodus story at a later time. If that is the case, then its place in the story is not exactly relevant.

Blood on Your Hands

Over the past few days, I’ve been blogging about Christian universalism, the belief that God will save everyone in the end. I’ve discussed this issue before, specifically when I interacted with Zondervan’s More Than One Way? Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic World (search under “More than One Way” if you’re interested in my thoughts). What inspired my latest round of universalism posts was Bryan’s Universalism Tendencies, in which he asks if people believe in universalism because they don’t like to witness.

In prominent strands of evangelicalism, Christians are told that they need to witness in order to save people from hell. The Book of Romans is clear that the wrath of God is against all unrighteousness. Because all have sinned, everyone is subject to divine judgment, which means that they’re on their way straight to hell. But God has provided a solution, for Jesus Christ experienced God’s wrath in place of sinners when he died on the cross. And sinners need to receive Christ’s sacrifice on their behalf in order to be forgiven of their sins.

But, in order to believe in Christ’s sacrifice, they first need to know about it. As Paul asks in Romans 10:14, “But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him?” (NRSV). And that’s why Christians need to witness–people are going straight to hell, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only thing that can save them.

But what if you don’t share the Gospel with someone and he goes to hell as a consequence? Will God hold you responsible because you didn’t witness? There are Christians who answer with an unequivocal “yes.” Their reason is Ezekiel 3:18:

“If I say to the wicked, ‘You shall surely die,’ and you give them no warning, or speak to warn the wicked from their wicked way, in order to save their life, those wicked persons shall die for their iniquity; but their blood I will require at your hand.”

According to this passage, God holds the prophet responsible if he doesn’t warn the Israelites of divine judgment. And Christian exclusivists apply that passage to all Christians: God has declared that he will judge each and every human being for sin. If we don’t warn them and give them an opportunity to repent, then they will experience eternal torment (or annihilation, if you’re an Adventist). And God will hold us responsible for their fate.

But what exactly will God do when he holds us responsible? Will he send us to hell? A lot of evangelicals will say “no,” even if they’re the ultra-conservative exclusivist types. The reason is that Paul talks a lot about salvation by grace through faith, apart from works (Romans 4; Ephesians 2:8-9). Evangelicals take that concept pretty seriously (to say the least), so they deny that a failure to witness can disqualify a believer from heaven. The believer believes, after all, and that’s the only requirement for salvation.

One person in a Bible study group said that God will make us confront every single person we should have shared the Gospel with, but didn’t. And so God will sentence the unbeliever to eternal hell for his sins, and the unbeliever will look at us with shock: “Why didn’t you tell me about this?,” he’ll say.

Some may assert that we won’t get certain rewards if we fail to witness. One evangelical friend called them “jewels in his crown.” According to him, all believers will receive a crown because they’re saved by grace through faith. But they’ll get jewels in their crowns if they do good works. Wow, that’s something to anticipate! I guess it beats roasting in a fire forever and ever!

And then some think that they’ll be in heaven for all eternity with literal blood on their hands. I once read a “testimony” by a fundamentalist who became an atheist. She said that she was afraid to witness in her fundamentalist days, so she envisioned herself in heaven, trying to hide her hands from everyone else because of the blood that was on them.

Ezekiel explains more of what he means in Ezekiel 33:1-9. V 9 is crucial: “But if you warn the wicked to turn from their ways, and they do not turn from their ways, the wicked shall die in their iniquity, but you will have saved your life.” For Ezekiel, the prophet who fails to warn others will die in the destruction that God sends. Ezekiel doesn’t wrestle with the issue of “How will God hold a saved person accountable for not witnessing to others?” because he’s not talking about eternal judgment and salvation. He’s discussing God’s temporal, historical punishment of Judah.

But do Christians still have a responsibility to warn everyone about hell? A lot of evangelicals would say “yes.” At the Adventist church I attended in Massachusetts, one of the pastors said that, if a man is going down a road that is dangerous, we have a moral responsibility to warn him. It’s just the right thing to do.

Radio personality Harold Camping is about as fire-and brimstone as you can get, yet he denied that God will punish us for not witnessing. Rather, he interpreted Ezekiel 3:18 to mean that, if we do witness, God wants us to mention hell. None of this “God loves you and has a plan for your life” stuff, as far as Camping is concerned. For him, the Gospel is about salvation from judgment.

But telling people about hell is hard to do. We don’t want to appear closed-minded. We don’t like being offensive. It’s a matter of social skills! As I’ve said, I attend a Jewish school that has a lot of evangelicals. I’ll bet you money that the evangelicals there do not tell the Jewish students that they’re going to hell! If they do witness, they do so by being nice people, or by talking about how God works in their lives, or whatever.

Plus, a lot of people don’t put warning others about hell in the same category as warning them about a bad road. A bad road is tangible and verifiable, whereas Christian beliefs about hell are often viewed as one perspective about the afterlife amidst a sea of multiple perspectives. Why should people believe in our view as opposed to (say) reincarnation, or a religion that posits other requirements for entering the good afterlife (e.g., a generally righteous life)?

The evangelical exclusivist view places the weight of people’s salvations on our itty-bitty shoulders. In a coming post, I’ll wrestle more with that.

A Clean Altar

Those who read me regularly probably get the impression that I’m reacting against my evangelical background. When I was in the evangelical movement, there was a part of me that got bored with reading the Bible. The evangelicals I knew made almost everything in the Bible about the substitutionary atonement or justification by grace through faith. If there was an sacrifice on an altar or an animal got killed in a covenant ceremony, watch out! The evangelicals would make it a type of Christ’s death on the cross. I just got tired of the same predictable evangelical interpretations, explanations, and understandings. I became fascinated with Jewish and historical-critical readings because they offered me something new, or at least they exposed me to views I had not heard before.

Today, I’m going to be an evangelical. In Ezekiel 43, Ezekiel continues his discussion of the new temple, and, in vv 13-27, he describes the altar. For Ezekiel, before the altar can be used, it must be purged through the sacrifice of a goat as a sin offering.

Why? What did the altar do wrong? Well, nothing specifically, I suppose. But this is not the first time that an inanimate object needed to be purged. Check out Leviticus 16:16: “And he shall make an atonement for the holy place, because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of their transgressions in all their sins: and so shall he do for the tabernacle of the congregation, that remaineth among them in the midst of their uncleanness.” The tabernacle needed to be purged every year because of the sins of the people. When the Israelites sinned or became ritually impure, they defiled the sanctuary. God did not want to dwell amidst moral or ritual filth, so the Israelites needed to cleanse the sanctuary of defilement so that God would continue to dwell in their midst.

The reason that Ezekiel 43′s description of the altar stands out to me is that it demonstrates the importance of blood atonement. There are many within Judaism, Islam, and maybe even mainline Christianity who act as if blood is not necessary for God to forgive sins. They assume that all one has to do to be forgiven is repent: be sorry for your sins, and start serving God. But, in Ezekiel 43, the restored Israelites could not simply build an altar and start worshipping God. They had to take care of their past. The altar needed to be cleansed of the effects of their past sins, and that cleansing was to occur through blood. Without this purification ceremony, God would not accept their worship on the altar. Only after blood atonement would God receive their attempts to please him.

As a Christian, I believe that people must accept the sacrifice of Christ on their behalf in order to be acceptable before God. Non-Christians can do good things and try to engage in worship, but those things do not lead to their acceptance by God, since they are still sinners. Their altars must be cleansed before God will be pleased with their worship and good deeds.

There is one passage that seems (on first sight) to militate against what I just said. In Acts 10, an angel tells the Gentile centurion, Cornelius: “Thy prayers and thine alms are come up for a memorial before God” (v 4). This was before Cornelius heard the Gospel and was saved. God seemed to accept Cornelius’ prayers and good deeds, even when he was not a Christian! What do I do with this? I don’t have a perfect answer, but I believe that God honors those who seek him. Cornelius’ deeds by themselves were not enough to save him, since he still needed to hear the Gospel and become cleansed through faith (Acts 15:9). But God recognized that Cornelius was a sincere seeker of truth and righteousness, so he gave him more light, the light of the Gospel.

While I’m on the topic of the cleansed altar, I want to address a popular argument among Jews who don’t believe in Jesus. Hebrews 9:22 says that there is no remission of sin without the shedding of blood. Jewish counter-missionaries have argued that the author of Hebrews is simply wrong, since the Torah presents a non-blood sacrifice that can remove sin. Leviticus 5:11-13 says, after all, that a very poor Israelite can offer some flour as his sin offering. But my response is that the poor Israelite is offering his flour on an altar that has been cleansed through blood. Otherwise, his flour would not be acceptable. So, in a sense, even the poor Israelites’ sins are removed through the shedding of blood.

Why Wasn’t It Built?

I’ve been reading Ezekiel for my daily quiet time, and I’m on the part about the new temple. In Ezekiel 43:11, God tells Ezekiel to tell the people of Israel the dimensions and features of the proposed temple so that they will build it after their return from exile.

But why didn’t they build it? Here was a command, and they didn’t follow it. Why not?

I’ve not combed through the writings of modern biblical scholars on this issue, but I have a hunch about what they might say. I can picture them saying that Ezekiel was not necessarily seen as the infallible word of God immediately after the exile, at least not in the way that many Christians and Jews have traditionally viewed it. Rather, there were a variety of post-exilic voices with their own versions of what God wanted the Jews to do. Some expected God to restore the Davidic dynasty, while others called Cyrus the Messiah. Over time, their writings became authoritative within Jewish and Christian circles, but they were not necessarily accepted as such soon after they were written. So why didn’t the post-exilic community build Ezekiel’s temple? One proposed explanation is that not everyone believed in Ezekiel’s message.

Another possibility is that the post-exilic community did not see its restoration as the subject of Ezekiel’s prophecy. Ezekiel associated certain events with the Jews’ restoration, such as the renewal of the Davidic dynasty and the defeat of Israel’s enemies, most notably Gog of Asia Minor. These things did not happen under Cyrus of Persia, for Israel was “restored” to become a subjugated puppet of the Persians, without a Davidic monarch. As a result, many Jews probably concluded that the restoration predicted by Ezekiel was not what occurred under Cyrus, but was rather to be fulfilled in the future. So the Ezekiel temple was postponed until the time of real restoration.

Rashi has an interesting explanation of Ezekiel 43:11. He says: “The second aliyah [to the Holy Land] through Ezra was merited to be like the first entry through Joshua, to come about by force and through a miracle, as expounded (Ber. 4a, Exod. 15:16): ‘until… pass.’ This Building would then have been fit for them as of then, when they emerged from exile, to an everlasting redemption. But [their] sin caused [this not to happen] for their repentance was not suitable, [i.e.,] they did not resolve to stop sinning. [Therefore,] they emerged to freedom [only] through the sanction of Cyrus and his son. Some say that in Babylon they stumbled regarding gentile women.” For Rashi, God wanted to restore the Jews of the sixth-fifth centuries B.C.E. in a glorious fashion, which would have included Ezekiel’s temple, but the Jews hindered God’s plan through their sins.

I’m not sure if I buy this explanation entirely. The Jews’ sins were not a problem for God, since Ezekiel predicted that God would give them new hearts and turn them away from sin. At the same time, perhaps God expected them to make the first move through repentance before he circumcised their hearts. But that goes back to my Ezekiel and Monergism series.

Musical Sacrifice

I heard an interesting lecture today by a scholar named Michael Swartz. He was talking about fifth century piyyutim, which are Jewish liturgical poems. The title of his lecture was “From Prayer to Sacrifice: Rethinking the History of Jewish Ritual in Late Antiquity.” He was trying to challenge the popular scholarly idea that Judaism emphasized prayer as a replacement for the temple service, including animal sacrifices. Rather, he argued that the piyyutim were attempts to recreate the Yom Kippur temple ritual for congregants through elaborate (and sometimes exaggerated) descriptions of the priest and the service. Swartz also contended that the poems were considered to be actual sacrifices, not mere substitutes.

Consequently, according to Swartz, the composers of the piyyutim (who may have been priests) saw their work as the preparation of a sacrifice, for they offered their time, talent, and energy to fashion for God the perfect poem, which was to be as flawless as an animal sacrifice without blemish. An argument that Swartz used for his position was the content of the Mishnah, which devotes entire sections to temple ritual. Indeed, this is strange, since the Mishnah dates after the temple’s destruction in 70 C.E. Swartz’s argument seems to be (if I understood it correctly) that post-70 Judaism aimed to recreate the temple service, not replace it with something else.

This lecture coincided rather well with my daily quiet time. I am on Ezekiel 40, which is about the new temple. In v 44, there is a reference to the chambers of singers. I was reminded that music plays an important role in the worship of God. Indeed, the attempt to associate praise or prayer with sacrifice predates rabbinic times, for we see it even in the Bible. Hosea 14:2 talks about offering the calves of our lips. Jeremiah 33:11 mentions bringing a sacrifice of praise, a motif that also appears in Hebrews 13:15. So the song “We bring a sacrifice to praise into the house of the Lord” has biblical roots.

Why does God like music? Does he have aesthetic sensitivity? Perhaps, but I don’t think that he is interested so much in hearing a concert of quality music. After all, he commands everyone to sing praises, and that includes people like me who can’t carry a tune. But I won’t rule out that music adds a majestic or joyful element to worship, as it appeals to our aesthetic sensitivities.

One thing that Michael Swartz was apparently struggling to explain was how composing or singing a piyyut could be a sacrifice. I could be wrong, but I got the impression that he was trying to show that a piyyut took effort. But I don’t see the animal sacrifices as that much of a sacrifice, in the sense that they severely cost the offerer in resources. Many sacrifices were voluntary, and people could keep the vast majority of their animals for their own use. Sacrifices were gifts to God. They were attempts to invoke God’s presence and to make him happy. They were opportunities to honor the Lord through giving.

So that is how I see music. When I sing praises, I am giving to God and making him happy. Most of us like to be praised, but God does not want adoration out of ego. Psalm 50 says that God does not need animal sacrifices because he already owns all animals, so I believe that his desire for praise does not reflect a deficiency or insecurity on his part. Rather, we become better when we praise and honor a being who is better than ourselves. Otherwise, we make the imperfect (ourselves, other people, objects) into an idol, and the result is disastrous. But don’t get me wrong. God’s command for us to praise him is not only to help us out. It is a sin for us not to praise God, since that is a path to moral degeneration. But, going further on this point, God does not want to be worshipped so that we can live moral lives, as if God is a means to an end. He wants to be acknowledged as supreme because he truly is supreme.

But what if a person doesn’t love God? Can God command a person to praise him, when he or she really does not have a desire for God? How can God tell someone to love him? I struggle with this issue. Maybe God wants us to start where we are. Whether or not I appreciate God’s every attribute, I can still confess that I have much for which I can be thankful. A good start is to thank God for the people and things he has given us to enjoy: nature, good food, friends, etc. Hopefully, we can then get to the point where we appreciate God’s goodness, majesty, power, justice, etc.

But doesn’t the sacrifice have to be perfect? I suppose so, yet I do not know what perfection is, and I would hardly call my prayers or praise times “perfect.” My mind can easily wander, and my motivations are not always pure. I think that it is important to recognize God’s majesty, and that was what the laws about perfect sacrifices were designed to impress upon worshippers. Moreover, since Christ is the perfect sacrifice, perhaps his atonement makes our imperfect acts of worship acceptable before God. After all, Romans 8:26 acknowledges that we do not pray as we ought, yet the Holy Spirit still intercedes on our behalf.

When Were They Bad?

I’m struggling to understand Ezekiel 34. vv 3-6 say the following about the bad shepherds:

“You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep. You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd; and scattered, they became food for all the wild animals. My sheep were scattered, they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill; my sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with no one to search or seek for them.”

Throughout the chapter, God contrasts himself with the bad shepherds. The bad shepherds fed themselves and hogged up most of the good things, but God will feed his people. The bad shepherds allowed their sheep to be scattered, but God will restore them to their land. In the process, God will do other things that the bad shepherds neglected, as he strengthens the weak, heals the sick, binds up the injured, brings back the strayed, and seeks the lost. The bad shepherds let their people become prey for wild animals, but God will protect his restored children from such beasts.

So where is my struggle? The chapter seems to be saying that the bad shepherds did something with regard to the exile that made them derelict in their duty. What exactly did Ezekiel expect Judah’s leaders to do? Did he want them to return the exiles? Did he think that they should search for them? Did Judah’s leaders take economic advantage of the exile, which is why Ezekiel accuses them of feeding themselves?

My impression is that Judah’s leaders tried to protect their people, only not as the prophet desired. King Zedekiah didn’t want his nation to be conquered. That’s why he made an alliance with Egypt: he was trying to prevent a Babylonian invasion. I wouldn’t call him a bad shepherd who didn’t care about his people.

And I wonder what would have satisfied Ezekiel. How could Zedekiah track down the exiles? Google didn’t exist in those days. And could Judah’s leaders have taken economic advantage of the Babylonian invasion and exile? Not really. What would they do? Would they try to possess the empty land that existed now that the exiles were gone? The leaders themselves were on the run when the Babylonians invaded. Plus, most people realized that trying to get land at that time was a ridiculous endeavor. That’s why Jeremiah’s purchase of a field looked so strange.

Of the commentaries that I read, most of them tried to project the bad shepherding practices onto the time before the Babylonian invasion and exile. In some cases, this works. In other cases, it is quite a stretch. The leaders of Judah certainly did oppress their people. We read about that in the other prophets. In exchange for a bribe, they often judged in favor of rich oppressors, who scattered people by forcing them off their land. This led to the exile because God punished Judah for that practice. The stretch comes into play in two ways. One is a theological problem that I have: if this interpretation is true, why is God punishing the poor for something the rich did? I mean, the leaders and the rich are the ones who hurt the poor, and yet the poor go into exile. Another stretch is what such interpreters try to do with the mountains part of vv 3-6. In their eagerness to relate the passage to the pre-exilic situation, they apply the mountains reference to the Israelites worshipping at the high places. I don’t think it’s about that at all, since v 6 elaborates that the sheep were scattered over the face of the earth. The issue is exile, not high places.

One interpreter, John Gill (I know, I should get some modern commentaries), actually applies the passage to the exile. He says that the kings of Judah should have tried to ransom those who were exiled to Babylon. Gill may be pointing out that there were exiles before the Babylonian invasion in 586 B.C.E., since King Jehoiachin and other Jews were taken to Babylon into exile. This makes some sense. I mean, Ezekiel 34 seems to say that God will punish the shepherds of Israel, which may imply that a worse calamity, the Babylonian invasion, is yet to come when Ezekiel writes the chapter. But could leaders ransom people from exile in those days? I’m sure anything was possible for the right price. A reservation I have about Gill’s interpretation is that the exile of Jehoiachin consisted of mostly rich people, or so I have heard. Ezekiel 34 discusses the exile of the poor and oppressed, however. Moreover, Ezekiel 34 also says that the Jews are scattered over the face of the earth, which is not really the case with Jehoiachin’s exile.

I’d still like to work with Gill’s interpretation. Maybe the leaders’ oppression of the people made them weaker and more vulnerable to Babylonian invasion. When the Babylonians invaded, they could have easily taken the people who were hungry and without property. Also, did the leaders actually profit from Judah’s relationship with Babylon? If so, then that situation could be the context for Ezekiel’s statement that they cared more about themselves than the people. And there was a possibility that some leaders tried to take over the vacant land once it was abandoned after Jehoiachin’s exile.

I’ll probably order the Word Commentary on CD-Rom to tackle some of these questions. In the meantime, does anyone have some thoughts that can help me out?

"But That’s Not Fair!"

In “What Were They Feeling?” and “The Other Side’s Voice”, I discussed the views of most Judeans in the time of Ezekiel. By and large, the Judeans did not accept Ezekiel’s message, often for contradictory reasons, and they expressed their thoughts through catchy, popular slogans that the prophet tried to refute. Well, I keep encountering more slogans as I go through Ezekiel. Ezekiel 33 has a strange one, along with a refutation of a puzzling Israelite opinion.

In v 10, we read, “Now you, mortal, say to the house of Israel, Thus you have said: ‘Our transgressions and our sins weigh upon us, and we waste away because of them; how then can we live?’ (NRSV).” God responds in v 11 that he has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but he wants them to repent, do good deeds, and live. The Israelite people reply that the way of the LORD is unjust (v 17).

Again, the Israelites have contradictory responses to Ezekiel’s message. Sometimes, they blow it off, thinking that nothing bad will happen to Israel. We see this in v 24, where they say that they will continue possessing the land, as Abraham did. In v 10, however, they acknowledge that disaster is coming their way.

The commentaries I read had different thoughts about the motivation behind the slogan. All of them agree that the slogan is a response to vv 1-9, where God tells Ezekiel to warn the people and give them an opportunity to repent and live. Some think that the people’s reaction in v 10 is, “Oh, we’ve done so wrong! We don’t even deserve to be forgiven! How can God forgive rotten worms like us?” In effect, they believe that v 10 reflects genuine sorrow. Others argue, however, that the people are trying to poke holes in Ezekiel’s message, looking for any inconsistency they can find so they can invalidate it. Instead of seeing the jailer who asked what he might do to be saved, proponents of this position treat the Israelites like the village atheist who is criticizing the Bible.

I tend to go with the second interpretation, since Ezekiel’s opinion of Israel is usually not that positive. I think their slogan reflects a belief that existed in the early stages of Israelite religion (according to many scholars), which says that God punishes all people for their sins, regardless of repentance or the absence thereof. According to this belief, there is a debt that people owe when they sin, and they pay that debt through experiencing punishment. After that process, they are clean. This perspective most likely underlies the “That’s not fair!” comment in v 17. “What do you mean that God forgives sinners?” they are asking. “That’s not fair! A just God punishes sinners, not forgives them.”

Their response is puzzling, since they’re basically condemning themselves out of their own mouths. I mean, do they actually want to endure the horrors of destruction and exile? They should be happy that God gives them second and third chances and is eager to wipe the slate clean.

They remind me of atheists or other non-believers who criticize the substitutionary atonement (Christ dying for our sins). I’ve heard non-believers say, “That doctrine is not fair–one person dying in place of another! Shouldn’t people pay for their own sins?” When I hear that, I’m puzzled. “Do you actually want to go to hell?” I think in my mind. But then I realize that, on one level, they don’t take the doctrine seriously. Or they’re trying not to. They want to refute it so that they don’t have to deal with it.

There are two lessons that I get from this. First, we should take the word of God seriously. There’s a temptation for me as a Bible student or amateur theologian to treat religion as an abstract topic of discussion. We look at different perspectives and interpretations and possibilities and spins, and we evaluate their strengths and weaknesses according to rules of argumentation. The whole process is rather entertaining! But we should remember in all this that we are discussing truth, which relates to weighty, life-and-death issues. We exist under the authority of God, for better or for worse, and we shouldn’t forget that as we debate Scripture or theology. We shouldn’t be like that professor in C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce, who enjoyed discussing theological possibilities (e.g., What would Jesus have contributed had he lived?) and missed the boat in the end. Let’s make sure we don’t neuter the Word of God in our lives by merely treating it as an entertaining topic of discourse or debate.

And, yet, let’s still discuss! That’s the second lesson I get out of this. God recognizes that the Israelites are asking their questions out of impure motives, but he still condescends to answer their questions. He wants them to understand him, and he is willing to meet people where they are.

I’m reminded of something I heard in Park Street Church in Boston. The pastor, Gordon Hugenberger, was giving the sermon, and he told us his conversion story. When he was a kid, he was at a camp, and a Christian counselor was witnessing to him. Young Gordon saw the whole thing as an intellectual exercise. He enjoyed his discussions with the counselor, who tried to answer his questions and objections. One day, the counselor was telling Gordon about the second coming of Christ, and Gordon said, “Maybe I’m Christ come back!” At that point, the counselor broke down crying. The counselor thought he was making progress, and then Gordon said THIS! Gordon was surprised. He had never seen a grown man cry before. He realized that Christianity was more serious than he thought, for it concerned his soul.

So let’s discuss these issues rigorously, and yet let us remember what we’re discussing. And praise God that he gives us second chances and meets us where we are.