First Sunday of Lent: 40 Days of Exoduses Summary

Posted on February 17, 2013 by Alastair Roberts

Day 1: Noah’s Exodus

Judgment on the antediluvian world – Ark as embryo of new creation – Deliverance of Noah – Confirmation of God’s covenant with Noah – Rest and the fall that followed.

Day 2: Terah and Abram’s Exodus

Imperial building project at Babel – Terah’s departure from Ur – Abram’s call from Haran – Conquest through worship

Day 3: Abram’s Exodus from Egypt

A nation summed up in one man – Reading the patriarchs typologically – Abram’s deception – Capture of the bride – Plaguing Pharaoh – Release of the slaves – Return to the land – Military victory

Day 4: Abraham, Lot, and the Flight from Sodom

Cutting off the flesh before the judgment – Promise of a son – Angel of YHWH and the two witnesses – Elevation to membership in the Heavenly Council – Sodom as Egypt – Exodus from Sodom – Tragedy of Lot

Posted in Bible, Exodus, Genesis, Lent, OT, OT Theology, Theological, Theology | 4 Comments

Abraham, Lot, and the Flight from Sodom – 40 Days of Exoduses (4)

Posted on February 16, 2013 by Alastair Roberts

The Cutting Off of Flesh

In Genesis 17, twenty-four years after leaving Haran, YHWH gives Abram circumcision, the sign of the covenant, and a new name, Abraham – Father of a Multitude. All males in Abraham’s household must be circumcised. The rite off circumcision involves the cutting off of flesh. There are two forms that this excision. First, the foreskin of the males must be removed (17:10-13). Second, any males who are not circumcised must be cut off from his people (17:14).

This cutting off of the flesh should remind us of the previous cutting off of flesh, when all flesh was cut off at the flood (9:11). It is important that we recognize the connection between these two events. Circumcision is an act that occurs in preparation for the coming of God in judgment. By cutting off the flesh in circumcision, one can be protected from the cutting off of flesh in divine destruction.

The timing of the institution of circumcision is significant in this regard, as we shall see, coming immediately before the arrival of the angels who will bring judgment upon the land, with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. With the arrival of the Angel of YHWH, the entire land becomes holy, and holy ground is a deadly place for the unclean to be. Circumcision is introduced in part as protection against this judgment, a mark to set apart the righteous and preserve them from the coming divine wrath when YHWH comes down.

A number of other stories of circumcision exhibit this same pattern. In Exodus 4:24-26, Moses’ son has to be circumcised under threat of death as they encounter the Angel of YHWH at the night camp. The Passover is closely associated with circumcision (Exodus 12:43-49). Uncircumcised males were not permitted to eat it. It was also something instituted in a situation of peril, with those who did not observe its proper preparations being ‘cut off’ from the people (Exodus 12:15, 19). The cutting off of Egypt’s leaven seems to function as a corporate circumcision for Israel, leaven presumably being associated with a potent and virile life principle, like the male genitals or the firstborn sons. It was preparation for the arrival of the Angel of YHWH bringing death to all of the firstborn males of Egypt.

Circumcision and the removal of leaven and the cutting off of those who fail to do so from the people serve to divide the people of YHWH from the objects of future judgment. A combination of these themes can also be observed in Joshua 5, where a corporate circumcision and celebration of the Passover precedes Joshua’s encounter with the Angel of YHWH, who comes as the Commander of the army of YHWH to bring divine vengeance to the land. The land is a very dangerous place to be when the Angel of YHWH arrives. Circumcision is YHWH’s mark upon the righteous, in preparation for the time when he sends the avengers out to slay the wicked (cf. Ezekiel 9; Revelation 7, 14).

In the New Testament, John the Baptist’s ministry plays a similar role, preparing the people for the coming of Christ, the Angel of YHWH incarnate (cf. Malachi 3:1).

The Promised Son

An important theme in both Genesis 17 and 18 is the promise of a firstborn son for Abraham and Sarah (17:15-19; 18:9-15). This shouldn’t surprise us, given the accumulation of exodus themes in the near vicinity. As I have argued elsewhere, in a theme that I will touch upon at various points in this series, the Exodus is a story of new birth, of the opening of wombs. It is a story of death brought to formerly fertile places, and of new life to the barren or those struggling to give birth.

The naming of the promised child is given significance (17:19), a name associated with the laughter (or ‘Isaac-ing’) of both Abraham (17:17) and Sarah (18:12). The mourning of the barren will be turned to laughter. Significantly, Sarah is standing in the tent door when she hears this news, the doorway being associated with birth elsewhere in Scripture (Genesis 18:10; cf. 1 Samuel 1:9; 2 Kings 4:15; 1 Kings 14:6-17).

As part of this exodus event, new life is promised to Abraham and Sarah. The death and barrenness brought to the formerly fruitful land of Sodom and to Lot and his family is contrasted with the opening of the womb and renewed vitality that Abraham and Sarah will experience. These need to be seen as two sides of the same event.

The Angel of YHWH and the Two Witnesses

In Genesis 18, after circumcision has been given and Abraham and his sheikhdom have been prepared for the coming judgment, three men appear to Abraham (v.2). One of the three men is presumably the Angel of YHWH, who is seen as a manifestation of God’s own presence (many Christians have, rightly I believe, regarded the Angel of YHWH as a pre-incarnate manifestation of Christ). This fact can be seen from the fact that YHWH appears to Abraham in 18:1, in an event obviously related to the three men of verse 2. YHWH remains to speak with Abraham, while the other men turn away and go to Sodom (v.22). In 19:1, ‘the two angels’ arrive in Sodom.

The Angel of YHWH is, as Meredith Kline observes, the paradigmatic prophet. YHWH’s name and authority is in him (Exodus 23:20-23) and he acts as the chief representative of the Heavenly Council, enacting its judgments and effecting its deliverances. To be a true prophet is to be a member of the Heavenly Council, serving as a representative within it, participating in its deliberations, and delivering its messages and judgments. When the Angel of YHWH comes on the scene, the chief messenger of the Heavenly Council, something momentous is afoot.

In Genesis 18 we see the Angel of YHWH accompanied by two witnesses, witnesses who will later enter into Sodom itself. Later, in Exodus, the Angel of YHWH will appear to Moses and commission him and Aaron as the prophetic witnesses and emissaries of the Heavenly Council to Pharaoh. Up to this point, the Heavenly Council carries out its own deliberations, without the involvement of men. We see the pattern of the Council’s deliberation, followed by coming down to enact sentence in the judgment on Babel (Genesis 11:7), where the decision of the Heavenly Council parodies that of the council of the builders of Babel (11:4). The pattern of divine seeing or a rising outcry, followed by the coming down of the Angel, is also seen in Exodus 3:7-8.

A notable development occurs in Genesis 18 as YHWH includes Abraham in his deliberations concerning Sodom (vv.17-33). Up until this point we have seen Abraham as a priest establishing true worship within the land and as a king-type figure, gaining military victories over other kings. However, now he is raised even higher, to the level of a prophet. Later on, in Genesis 20:7, YHWH will explicitly refer to Abraham as a prophet to Abimelech.

The Exodus from Sodom

A connection between Sodom and Egypt has already been made in Genesis 13:10 (cf. Revelation 11:8). Like Egypt, the land of Sodom is a fertile and well-watered land. Lot had chosen the land of the plain for himself: right after leaving Egypt, he had chosen to return to a place like Egypt (13:11). Lot had obviously gained prominence in Sodom, becoming one of the judges in the gate (19:1, 9). However, like Egypt will one day be, Sodom is utterly destroyed and rendered barren by YHWH.

The Exodus themes accumulate rapidly in Genesis 19. I have remarked on these before:

The angels are ‘passing by’ (Genesis 18:3, 5), just as they would later do with Egypt. There is a threat to life at the doorway, and the doorway becomes a site of angelic protection and judgment upon those outside. There is the pressing call to leave the city with all relatives and possessions and the notion that the ‘outcry’ against a city or the voice of the oppressed has reached the ear of YHWH. An evening meal of unleavened bread is eaten. The angels seize the hands of Lot and his family to get them to escape (cf. Jeremiah 31:32). Lot is instructed to flee, literally, to The Mountain (not ‘the mountains’). A witnessing pillar/heap is established (as God judges Lot’s wife by turning her into a pillar of salt).

Once again, the doorway is a significant theme. It is the threshold dividing those to be judged from those to be protected (Genesis 19:9-11; cf. 7:16; Exodus 12:22-23). The doorway is the site of birth and death.

The decisive judgment or transition occurs just after sun rises. We may return to this theme at a later point, but we see the same transition from darkness to light and the completion of divine judgment in other Exodus events. For instance, the darkness, the anticipation of the coming of the dawn, and the sun rise, when the dénouement occurs is a pattern to be seen in Jacob’s wrestling at the Jabbok in Genesis 32:22-32 and also in the crossing of the Red Sea in Exodus 14:19-31.

Lot’s exodus takes a tragic turn, an ironic reversal of Abraham’s experience. In wanting to return to a place like Egypt, he lost almost all that he possessed to the judgment apportioned to Egypt. Abraham’s doorway becomes associated with new birth and life; Lot’s doorway becomes a place of threat and death. The angels’ news of Isaac’s birth is met with laughter and Isaac is named for this laughter, a laughter of disbelief that will be transformed into the laughter of joy with the birth of a son. Lot’s warning to his sons-in-law is thought to be mere mockery (‘Isaac-ing’), something that will lead to their death. Abraham’s wife will be miraculously transformed into a fruitful mother; Lot’s wife becomes as barren as a pillar of salt. Rather than going to the mountain and joining with Abraham, as the angels instructed him, Lot decides to go to Zoar instead. Abraham ends up on the mountain, while Lot finally ends up in a cave (19:20), a place associated with death and the grave.

Lot’s story takes one last horrible twist. The apocalyptic tone of the narrative of Lot – the man who wanted to return to Egypt – continues as his daughters speak as if there were no men left on the earth (19:31). In an event with echoes of Genesis 9:20-27, Lot is made to drink wine on two successive evenings, while his daughters sleep with him. The father who was prepared to surrender his daughters to a crowd of rapists (v.8) was himself raped by his daughters (vv.30-38). Through these incestuous relationships, two people groups arise: the Moabites and the Ammonites. Incest, the turning of history back on itself, is the sad terminus of Lot’s story.

Conclusion

In these chapters we see God’s preparation of Abraham as a prophetic member of the Heavenly Council. The barren wife is promised fruitfulness and the impotent body of Abraham assured of future virility. A history that seemed closed off opens up, producing a brimming laughter. Against this backdrop, we see the preference of Lot for Egypt and his abortive exodus of Lot from Sodom. Death, barrenness, and the collapse of the future into an incestuous relationship with the past is the portion of Lot and his family. Stripped of possessions, Lot is left for us as a tragic warning of the consequences of turning back.

Posted in Bible, Exodus, Genesis, Lent, OT, OT Theology, Theological, Theology | 11 Comments

Abram’s Exodus from Egypt – 40 Days of Exoduses (3)

Posted on February 15, 2013 by Alastair Roberts

A Nation in One Man

Immediately following Terah and Abram’s exodus from Ur, we encounter one of the most striking exoduses of all. Following a famine in the land, Abram goes down into Egypt and prophetically lives out the later history of the Exodus. As we will see, the parallels with the later Exodus are quite remarkable.

Abram’s experience of the later history of the Israelite nation in his own life provides us with a great example of the way in which the Exodus pattern serves to connect Israel with the lives of the patriarchs (we will later see how this principle extends to our own relationship to the life of Christ). The children of Abraham have their experience conformed to that of their father or, alternatively, Abram’s experience is always prefiguring and anticipating its fuller realization in the life of his offspring (James Jordan suggests a detailed and expansive relationship here).

When YHWH promises to make Abram a great nation (12:2), this isn’t just fulfilled in Abram’s having many descendants: it is also fulfilled as Abram is made into a prototype and paradigm for those who are descended from him. Abram’s own life is blown up to the size of a great nation, his life like a small scale model of a mighty edifice. As we see the development of the Exodus theme in Scripture, it is akin to a line of Russian dolls of increasing size being lined up next to each other on a table. Not only do these dolls look similar, they also fit inside each other, exhibiting an internal unity. As we see the dolls fitting into each other, we see how a single figure such as Abram is able to sum up the entire nation of Israel in himself and how Israel’s identity arises out of his.

The Apostle Paul teaches this same principle in regard to our relationship to Abram. YHWH’s accounting of righteousness to Abram in Genesis 15:6 is not merely an accounting of righteousness to Abram as an individual, but an imputing of righteousness to all of his seed who share the same faith (Romans 4:20-25).

Different Forms of Reading

A common approach to the reading of such passages as Genesis 12:10-20 focuses our attention upon figures such as Abram as examples of faith and unbelief. This passage supposedly manifests Abram’s unbelief in leaving the land of Canaan that had been promised to him and going into Egypt. Abram was fearful, lacking faith and, rather than telling the truth, he sinned by lying to Pharaoh about Sarai being his wife. From this we learn that we need to be people of faith, unlike Abram was in this narrative, trusting God, even in the ‘famines’ of our lives.

While this reading may appear to be a natural one, it tends to gloss over the troubling details in the passage. Rather than punishing or rebuking Abram for his lack of faith, God makes him rich and plagues Pharaoh and his household. Peter Leithart writes:

While one can mine nuggets of moral instruction from the depths of the text, the Bible’s apparent lessons are difficult, and not infrequently troubling. Abraham goes to Egypt, deceives Pharaoh about his relationship to Sarah, and leaves Egypt richer than ever. What’s the lesson—that lying pays? What moral do we draw from Moses’ killing of the Egyptian, or Joshua’s slaughter of everything that breathed at Jericho? The more we read the Bible, the clearer it becomes that the book isn’t a Hebraic Aesop’s fables.

While we do need to read the stories of the patriarchs as examples of faith and occasional examples of wavering unbelief, for the most part, such an exemplary role for our ethical reflections is not their chief purpose. Also, as we shall see, in this case, Abram’s actions were not sinful, nor did they spring from the lack of faith that many suppose.

The purpose of such passages becomes clearer when we begin to recognize the typological character of biblical narrative. The story of Abram is given to us as a deep source for our identity as his children and as an anticipation of our destiny as the people of God. As we read the story of Abram’s exodus from Egypt, we are supposed to recognize that this is a ‘Russian doll’ that looks forward to and fits inside the great Exodus accomplished by Christ, in whom we have been caught up. Abram’s story is thus a story in which we need to be able to see both Christ and ourselves, the children of Abraham in the promised Seed.

Abram’s Deception

In Genesis 12:10-20 Abram leaves Canaan for Egypt on account of a famine in the land. Before entering Egypt, he asks Sarai to tell the Egyptians that she was his sister. This, of course, was technically true, as we see in 20:12, although an extremely partial truth. This may seem to be a purely self-interested action on Abram’s part, but there were good reasons for it. Abram, we must remember, was not a solitary pilgrim, accompanied only by his wife, but was at the head of several hundred persons. If anything happened to Abram, they would all be under threat too. Abram’s safety was of paramount importance.

Abram’s plan hinged on the custom of the brother having the duty of protecting his sister and vetting suitors (Genesis 24:29-31, 50-51, 60; 34). If Pharaoh thought that Sarai was Abram’s wife, Abram would have to be killed. However, if Pharaoh thought that Abram was her brother, he wouldn’t be perceived as an insurmountable obstacle. In such a situation, Abram would be able to hold off on giving permission and stall for time.

Abram’s plan doesn’t really work: Pharaoh just takes Sarai, although he does treat Abram well for her sake. At this point, Abram’s plan having failed, Abram and Sarai and the many other persons with them are cast entirely upon God’s protection.

In Scripture we see many examples of righteous deception, where the righteous mislead tyrants to save their lives and the lives of others, or to defeat evil persons. The Hebrew midwives deceive Pharaoh, Rahab deceives the men of Jericho, Jael deceives Sisera, Michal deceives Saul, Esther deceives Haman, etc. The serpent is the great deceiver, but the righteous are as shrewd as serpents and can outwit him. As the righteous deceive tyrants, poetic justice is delivered upon the serpent who first incited mankind to fall.

The Exodus

Several features of the story of Abram in Egypt mark it out as akin to the story of the Exodus.

Abram leaves Canaan for Egypt on account of a severe famine (12:10), something that his descendants will one day do (45:9-11). Egypt is a place where the men of Israel will be threatened with death, while the women risk being taken as captive brides, in Abram’s day as in Moses’. In both cases, shrewd deception is used as a means of protection from the tyrant.

The description of the Egyptians seeing that Sarai was beautiful, taking her, and commending her to Pharaoh should remind us of the pattern of the Fall, a pattern that we see repeated on several occasions in Genesis. The sons of God seeing the beauty of the daughters of men and taking them in Genesis 6, the sin and judgment of Ham in Genesis 9, and Abram, Sarai, and Hagar in Genesis 16 are further examples of such allusions.

The account of the beautiful woman being taken to Pharaoh’s house might also remind us of the story of the beautiful infant Moses (cf. Exodus 2:2), where the woman’s seed is taken to Pharaoh’s house. Behind both of these stories we should hear Genesis 3:14-15: there is enmity between the serpent and the woman and her seed. The serpent will seek to capture the woman and her child and resist or destroy their guardians. In later studies, we shall see more of the importance of the woman within the exodus pattern.

While Sarai is in the house of Pharaoh, Abram prospers for her sake. The multiplication of population or possessions while in captivity is a common exodus theme, as we shall see. Leithart notes Jerome Walsh’s observation of the chiastic (ABCBA) structure of the passage.

A. Abram in Egypt to escape famine, 12:10
B. Sarai taken to harem, 12:11-15 (Sarai poses as sister)
C. Pharaoh treats Abram well, 12:16
C’. Yahweh strikes Pharaoh with plagues, 12:17-19a
B’. Pharaoh returns Sarai, 12:19b (“She is my sister”)
A’. Pharaoh expels Abram, 12:20

At the centre of this chiasm we see the list of the gifts that Pharaoh gave to Abram (v.16). This list is also chiastic in structure, with male and female servants at its centre. This is significant. Just as Moses enters Egypt from Midian as a small number, but leaves with a host of former Hebrew slaves of Pharaoh, so Abram leaves Egypt with many former slaves of Pharaoh (we may presume that Hagar was one of these – 16:1).

There is good evidence to suggest that these servants experienced a genuine form of liberation as they became part of Abram’s sheikhdom. Abram’s servants were covenant members (17:12-13) and, at this point in time, one of Abram’s homeborn servants was his heir (15:2-3). As they were adopted as members of Abram’s household, they would share in the promises made to him, eventually going on to become members of the tribes, each belonging to the company of one of the tribes. We will return to the theme of the liberation of slaves and servants at a later point and will comment on it in far more detail, so I won’t go into much detail on this point here.

The parallels with the Exodus continue as God plagues Pharaoh for refusing to let the bride/seed go (v.17). When Pharaoh realizes the cause of the plagues and that Sarai is Abram’s wife, he accuses Abram of mistreating him – why didn’t Abram tell him that Sarai was his wife? Far too many commentators side with Pharaoh’s assessment of Abram here. However, a careful reading of the story should show that Abram was in the right. Pharaoh and his men had disregarded custom in taking Sarai, without properly asking Abram’s permission. Although Pharaoh had given Abram gifts, he hadn’t honoured Abram’s role as the brotherly guardian of Sarai. Pharaoh suggest that he might just have taken Sarai as his wife, unaware that she was Abram’s wife (vv.18-19). The problem with Pharaoh’s claim is that it just presumes Abram’s permission, which hadn’t been granted.

As we look through Scripture, we will see that the wicked continually accuse the righteous of wronging them and play the innocent wounded victim. Abimelech blames Abraham (Genesis 20:9), Abimelech blames Isaac (Genesis 26:10), Esau blames Jacob (Genesis 27:36), Laban blames Jacob (Genesis 31:26), Pharaoh blames Moses (Exodus 10:28), Saul blames David (1 Samuel 20:31), Ahab blames Elijah (1 Kings 18:17), the city mobs blame the apostles (Acts 16:20). The unrighteous still love to paint the righteous as aggressors and offenders against the peace. If we have been paying attention to the pattern in Scripture, we should know better than to take such claims at face value.

The Israelites will one day be driven out of Egypt by Pharaoh. Here Abram and his people are told that they must leave. Like the Israelites after him (Exodus 12:35-36), Abram leaves with great possessions, having received great gifts from the Egyptians and become rich during his sojourn.

Return to the Land

On Abram’s return to the land, he re-established the altar at Bethel and proclaimed the name of YHWH again. By this point, Abram’s sheikhdom has grown so large that the land couldn’t support both him and Lot and there was conflict between their herdsmen (13:7). Lot and Abram go their separate ways, Lot moving towards the plain of Jordan (vv.12-13). God promises the land to Abram, instructing him to walk the length and width of the land (v.17). Abram surveys the land as he walks through it, claiming ownership of it. He establishes another altar at Hebron.

In chapter 14, following the capture of Lot, we see Abram playing a role that he hadn’t played before. While Abram’s initial role had been the priestly one of establishing new worship within the land, after Lot’s capture we see him playing the role of a king, gaining victory over other kings within the land. Following his exodus from Egypt, Abram advances to becoming a prototype Joshua, the commander of an avenging army within the Promise Land. By this stage Abram, who left Haran no more than ten years earlier (cf. 12:4; 16:16), already had over three hundred military trained and ready homeborn servants (14:14). One presumes that the larger body of servants – including those who were given to him by Pharaoh in Egypt – were left behind with the women, children, flocks, herds, and possessions, suggesting that Abram really was a force to be reckoned with within the land.

Abram’s victory over the kings ends with an encounter with Melchizedek, King of Salem (cf. Psalm 76:2), who gives Abram bread and wine, as tokens of victory and kingly rest. Having previously remarked upon the connection between wine and kingly rule and rest, this is significant.

Conclusion

In Genesis 12:10—14:24, we see Abram experience an exodus from Egypt, foreshadowing the future Exodus of the children of Israel. The bride is captured and later released. The foreign tyrant is plagued and then accuses the righteous man. Abram prospers and delivers many slaves with him when he is told to depart. Returning to the land he walks throughout the land, surveying it, as the spies will later do during the Exodus (Numbers 13:17-25). In Genesis 14 we see Abram as the first Joshua, a shrewd military leader and tactician, gaining victory over kings within the land. Finally, we see him enjoying the fruits of victory and Noahic rest from the hands of the priest king of Salem.

Abram is the man who encapsulates and anticipates the later history of the nation within himself. When the Israelites leave Egypt and enter into the land, they will be following in the footsteps of their faithful father Abram. As they go proceed by faith, they will manifest themselves as his children and discover their destiny within him.

So it is for us, those who are in the true Seed of Abraham, Jesus Christ. In him we find the source of our identity and the realization of our destiny. In the Church the name of Jesus Christ is made great, and the one Man is made into a mighty nation.

Posted in Bible, Exodus, Genesis, Lent, OT, OT Theology, Theological, Theology | 11 Comments

Terah and Abram’s Exodus – 40 Days of Exoduses (2)

Posted on February 14, 2013 by Alastair Roberts

The Imperial Building Project

Genesis 11 begins with the development of a great building project, under the rule of the mighty empire-founder, Nimrod (10:8-12). This great city and the tower that reached up to heaven were designed as a means to arrest the drive of history and to protect man against YHWH’s judgment. The strong tower reaching to heaven would serve as protection against any future flood. Secure against YHWH’s judgment, man would be able to pursue their designs, without fear of being scattered over the face of the earth, as the command to fill the earth and subdue it entailed.

They were all of one language and one ‘lip’, or ideology (11:1), committed to the same rebellious project and worship system – a single pagan world religion and imperial endeavour. Like the descendants of Cain before them, these men were violent city and empire-builders, seeking to dominate the world. If YHWH did not stand in their way, like the thorny sons of Cain prior to the Flood, their thorny coalition would stifle the growth of the world. YHWH confuses their language and scatters them, shattering their ideological and political unity, a process which, reading between the lines of the text, happened over the course of a century or more. By preventing the rise of the hegemony of the wicked, YHWH preserves the world for the righteous.

The Babelic building project should bring to mind a number of other accounts of great building projects. It should recall the city-building of Cain (Genesis 4:17). It should also remind us of Noah’s great ark construction project, where the building ingredients are also described. Finally, and significantly for our purposes here, it should recall the Egyptian building project, another occasion where we see Shemites serving a Hamite imperial construction project. In the run up to the Exodus from Egypt, the Egyptians are seeking to establish a civilization that is secure against the assault of time, safe from divine judgment and scattering. Like Nimrod, they build great cities out of brick and mortar on the back of oppression and injustice (Exodus 1:11-14).

It is also a story of apostasy, as descendants of Shem rebel against YHWH. The builders of Babel are the Shemites described in Genesis 10:21-31. It is the Shemites who are journeying from the east in 11:2 (cf. 10:30). The civilization that Abram came from was one that was committed to Nimrod’s rebellious Babel venture. In a similar manner, the Israelites prior to the Exodus served Egyptian gods (Joshua 24:14).

A key dimension of the Exodus is a divine thwarting of the evil empire and the humiliation of its false gods. YHWH ‘sees’ the rebellion and oppression and ‘comes down’ to assess, to judge, and to crush the rebellious and oppressive empire before it expands. We will see this in due time in the story of Sodom, much as we see it at the start of the Exodus (Exodus 3:7-8). The Exodus is not merely a deliverance of Israel from the clutches of Pharaoh, but also a breaking down and scattering of Pharaoh’s evil Babelic project. Much as the plagues served as a decreation of the land of Egypt, so YHWH’s deliberation, ‘let Us go down’ (11:7; cf. 1:26), suggest that a decreation is occurring here too. Man’s evil creative ‘gathering together’ (cf. 1:9-10) will be broken apart and scattered.

Terah’s Departure

Against the background of the tearing down of this anti-YHWH civilization, we see a Shemite, Terah, and his descendants preparing to leave Ur of the Chaldees. One of Terah’s sons, Haran, the father of Lot, dies before they leave Ur. Sarai, Terah’s daughter-in-law is also described as being infertile and childless. The civilization of Ur is framed for us as a place of death and barrenness.

Terah’s family were obviously powerful and influential figures. Sarai’s name means ‘princess’ and as we go through Genesis we will see that both Lot and Abram had considerable wealth and large numbers of people and sizeable flocks and herds with them. In Genesis 14:14, we see that Abram had 318 trained fighting men, which suggests that he was the leader of a sheikhdom of at least two thousand persons. The movement of a large people group from one place to another with their flocks and herds is a staple exodus theme, which we see here.

Terah and his family set out for Canaan (11:31), but don’t make it the entire way. They end up settling in the Haran, presumably named after the son who died in Ur. Terah dies in Haran, never having made it to Canaan. The settlement named after the dead son suggests that the death associated with Ur still attaches itself to Terah and his people.

The fact that the exodus of Abram occurs in two stages is significant, but often is unnoticed. The exodus begins with the older generation of Terah, an exodus that does not arrive at its destination of Canaan. The final part of the exodus only begins with the call of Abram himself in Genesis 12:1. As in the later Exodus, the older generation dies out in the wilderness, before the land is entered.

The Call of Abram

While Abram was in Haran, YHWH called him to leave his father’s house and to complete the journey started by Terah, entering into the land that YHWH would show him. YHWH promised to make him a great nation, to bless him and to make him a blessing. The calling to make a break with the land of one’s father’s dwelling and to journey to a land of promise should be familiar to us from the narrative of the Exodus. Abram is being called to undertake this journey, in faith that YHWH will make a great people of him.

A departure from the land of one’s father for such an uncertain venture from a human perspective was a serious move to make. However, on the strength of YHWH’s promise, Abram does so. Like the Israelites at the Exodus, Abram had to throw himself upon divine provision and protection and act by faith. The Israelites were led by YHWH out of Egypt: they were not to chart their own course. In a similar manner, Abram won’t discover the promised land for himself, but must go where YHWH shows him.

Yesterday we saw that YHWH confirmed his covenant with Adam with Noah. In Genesis 12, YHWH promises that Abram is the heir of the Adamic blessing. He will be fruitful and multiply and be blessed upon the earth. Just as in the later Exodus, there are themes of ironic reversal here. The men of Babel had sought to make a great name for themselves by gathering together and rooting themselves firmly in a single place to resist divine scattering (11:4). In contrast, YHWH uproots Abram and sends him away from the place of security and certainty, yet it is through this that YHWH will make Abram a great name and nation (12:1-3). While the various nations arising out of Babel were born from a curse, Abram’s people are born out of a divine blessing.

Genesis 12:5 speaks of the ‘people’ or ‘souls’ that Abram, Sarai, and Lot had ‘acquired in Haran’. While one could read this purely as Abram’s acquisition of servants, I would suggest that during his time in Haran, Abram, like Noah, seems to have acted as a ‘preacher of righteousness’, declaring YHWH’s promise and, through his faithful commitment to leave the security of the settlement of Haran for a land yet to be shown to him, inspiring many others to join him. While Noah’s message seems to have met with no success, Abram and Lot gather a large group around them, so that, when the time came for them to depart, they were accompanied by a large group of persons. Understanding that Abram was a leader of a significant body of people is an important detail if we are to make sense of the story of Genesis. Abram was a Moses figure, a figure who, having received a call from YHWH, summoned a body of people to leave the realm of their fathers and to journey to a place yet to be shown to them. We also see the Exodus theme of the multiplication of the righteous here. Just as Jacob’s children and flocks were multiplied during his stay with Laban and the children of Israel multiplied in Egypt, so Abram and Lot were greatly multiplied during their sojourn in Haran.

Conquest of the Land

The story of Babel was one of rebellious religion, of a single apostate ‘lip’ (see my discussion of the theme of the ‘lip’ here). The story of Abram is one of the restoration of a pure ‘lip’ or worship. Abram’s conquest of the land isn’t a military conquest, but a spiritual conquest. Abram arrives at the land of Canaan and passes through the land, while the Canaanites are still living there. YHWH promises to give Abram and his descendants the land that he is walking in. In his itinerations, Abram is acting as a Joshua-figure, claiming the land for YHWH.

Abram claims the land through worship. Where YHWH promises Abram the land, Abram builds an altar to YHWH, establishing true worship within the land (12:7). Abram’s journey through the land reaches its end when he arrives at the mountain between Bethel and Ai (12:8). As we shall see, the journey to ‘the mountain’ – typically Mount Sinai or Mount Zion – is a key exodus theme. On this mountain, Abram built an altar and called upon – or, rather, proclaimed – the name of the Lord (11:8).

Like Christ journeying through Israel, forming communities of faithful disciples, who would later become members of the Church following his death and resurrection, Abram journeyed through Canaan, proclaiming the true worship of YHWH and presumably summoning many of the Canaanites to join him and his people, or to give their allegiance to YHWH. Abram’s altars weren’t just private places of worship, but were sites established for new religious worship. Abram wasn’t just worshipping for himself and his family, but was probably a religious leader of thousands, whose presence would have drawn considerable attention.

Conclusion

In this exodus of Terah, Abram, and Lot from the Babelic civilization of Ur, we see YHWH’s overthrow of wicked civilizations and the gracious foundation of a new people, founded upon his true worship. We see the faith of those who set out as pilgrims, following the calling and leading of God, not knowing where they are being led, but trusting entirely on the one who summons them. We see the spread and expansion of the people of God through conversion and faithful witness.

Posted in Bible, Exodus, Genesis, Lent, OT, Theological, Theology | 7 Comments

Noah’s Exodus – 40 Days of Exoduses (1)

Posted on February 14, 2013 by Alastair Roberts

For Lent this year, I have decided to blog on the subject of exoduses in the Bible, leading up to the great Exodus that Christ accomplished in his death and resurrection. The more that we recognize the development, scope, and nature of the theme, the richer our understanding of any particular exodus will be.

As we shall see, the exodus theme is an absolutely crucial and highly prominent theme, found throughout the biblical text. Within this overarching theme are found many lesser motifs. Tracing the exodus pattern is akin to listening to the development of a great symphony, recognizing how themes are developed and unpacked, how they are inverted, parodied, expanded, played off, or strengthened.

Over the period of Lent, I hope to explore the Exodus theme and discuss many of these motifs. While these studies will follow a chronological order for the most part, there will be a degree of moving backwards and forwards within the text. This isn’t a very systematic or exhaustive exploration, but will often have more of an occasional character to it. My hope is that as we progress through it, the picture will begin to take clearer shape.

A World Overrun with Thorns

While it could be argued that the creation itself takes the form of an exodus and that there are other exoduses to be seen in the earliest chapters of Genesis, I plan to begin this account of the exodus theme in Scripture with the Flood, the greatest of the early exoduses that we find in the book of Genesis.

The background for the Flood is provided for us in the story of the Fall and the curse. In the chapters following the Fall in the Garden we see an extension of sin throughout the world, spreading like ink dropped on cloth. In Genesis 4 we see Cain, banished from the Garden with his parents, but still within the land, killing his brother and being exiled to the wider world. Cain and his descendants develop a pagan civilization, a civilization whose ethics were typified by the vengeful and domineering Lamech (Genesis 4:19-24 – the existence of polygamy at this stage suggests that many males were either losing their lives to growing violence or being oppressed). In Genesis 6, we see the sons of God taking the daughters of men as wives. The seed of rebellion planted in Eden has proliferated to the point that the wickedness of man has overrun the earth and man is so driven by sin that ‘every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually’ (6:5).

Not only does sin exhibit a territorial expansion in the earth, it also undermines all sorts of relationships and compromises all types of persons. What began with the sedition of the serpent, the wilful rebellion of Adam against God his Father, and Adam’s shameful treatment of his wife, spread into the fratricidal violence of Cain, the cruel vengeance of Lamech, and then further into the breakdown of the relationship between the angelic guardians and humankind as the sons of God (which I understand to be angels – cf. 1 Peter 3:18-20; 2 Peter 2:4; Jude 6). The entire world order became corrupt and was filled with violence, from the angels in the heavens to men and women upon the earth.

The judgment on Adam spoke of the ground bringing forth thorns and thistles to him (Genesis 3:17). Read carefully in its context, recognizing the parallels with the judgment on Eve, it should be seen that this was not merely a judgment upon Adam’s agricultural labours, but also a judgment on his fathering of offspring. Rather than bringing forth righteous sons and daughters, he would find himself raising thorns and thistles – wicked and violent offspring. The world of Genesis 6 is a world overrun by these thorns.

Like most other exodus stories, the story of the Flood begins with the righteous being oppressed by the wicked, calling upon the name of the Lord and seeking deliverance.

The Child of Promise and the Preacher of Righteousness

In the antediluvian world there were righteous men and women. We hear of people calling on the name of the Lord in the days of Seth’s son Enosh in Genesis 4:26. In Genesis 5 we read of faithful Enoch, who walked with God and was taken by God.

At Noah’s birth, his father Lamech gave him the name ‘Rest’, a prophetic testimony to the fact that God would give rest to the righteous and to the earth through him. The future deliverer given a significant or divinely chosen name as a child is an important biblical theme. We see it in the case of Moses, Samuel, Jesus, and John the Baptist. Like these other figures, Noah is set apart from birth for a unique calling. The connection between the exodus and themes of childbirth and multiplication or with the theme of the child prophetically destined to save the people is a common one. We will see this on a number of occasions over the next few weeks. Exodus stories can begin, not with the deliverance itself, but with the birth of the one who will later bring that deliverance, emphasizing the priority of God’s hand and also the importance of the faith of fathers and, more particularly, mothers as means by which God brings deliverance.

God hadn’t left the antediluvian world without testimony. Enoch is described as prophesying judgment in Jude 14-15. In 2 Peter 2:5, Noah is spoken of as a ‘preacher of righteousness’, condemning the world by his life of godliness and trust in God’s promise in an age of violence (Hebrews 11:7). The world was given at least two powerful witnesses of its coming fate.

Building the Ark

Declaring to Noah his intention to flood the earth, God instructs him to build an ark, giving him very precise directions of how to go about it. The recording of the measurements of the ark is significant, not as a mark of narrative verisimilitude, but as an indication that the ark is intended to be a world model, akin to the tabernacle. The ark has three storeys, like the creation (the deep, the earth, and the heavens). The ark is a microcosm of the new world being formed in the midst of the old, the embryo of the new creation.

It is not at all surprising that Peter should speak of the ark as a type of baptism into Christ (1 Peter 3:20-21). The resurrected Christ is the embryo of the new heavens and the new earth, the one in whom we pass through the judgment on this old creation and become part of the new. In the story of Moses, as we shall later explore in more detail, we also see the destined child, a person rescued through the waters of death in an ark covered with pitch (Exodus 2:3; cf. Genesis 6:14), and a microcosm of a new creation, as the Exodus is precapitulated in Moses’ experience, into which the Israelites will later be baptized (1 Corinthians 10:1-2).

Just as Adam was brought into the Garden sanctuary at some point after his creation, where the animals were brought to him for naming and Aaron was installed in the tabernacle, where animals were brought to him, so God brings two of every kind of animal to Noah, with seven of the clean animals. The presence of the clean animals suggests that a sacrificial significance is already operative. Noah is the one who will be the priest of the new world, upholding the relationship between God and humankind.

The Flood

Just as the story of the Passover, the story of the Flood involves people being called to go inside doors, while God judges the world outside. Moses and the Israelites close the doors of their houses, with blood on the doorposts and lintel: Noah and his family and the animals enter into the ark and God closes the door on them. As in the later plagues on Egypt and the Exodus, the Flood is a time when God makes a great distinction between his people and the wicked.

The relationship between the Flood and the Red Sea crossing are also significant. In both cases we see God’s people passing through and the wicked being swallowed up by the ‘deep’. In both cases the deliverance involves a strong wind (Genesis 8:1 – notice the possible allusion to Genesis 1:2; Exodus 14:21). On the seventeenth day of the seventh month, the ark lands on Mount Ararat (Genesis 8:4). In light of the fact that the year was generally reckoned with Tishri as the first month prior to the Exodus (cf. Exodus 12:2), the landing of the ark was probably on 17 Nisan, around the time of the offering of the first fruits, a feast around the time of the Red Sea crossing and the resurrection of Christ. Like the Red Sea crossing, the story of Noah involves waters below and waters above – the deep of the flood beneath and the divine war bow in the heavens above.

As Gordon Wenham has observed, the story of the Flood turns upon God’s remembering of Noah in 8:1, much as the story of the Exodus arises from God’s remembering of his people in Egypt.

A Confirmed Covenant

Noah and his family are granted safe passage through the waters of death that drown the wicked and are led to the mountain where God establishes his covenant with Noah. Noah receives a new law, new rule, new dietary rules, a new covenant sign, and enters into promised rest. Ararat is Noah’s Sinai.

In the ascension offerings sacrificed after the Flood, Noah offers the creation up to God and receives God’s blessing in return. God promises that he will not add to the curse on the ground, perhaps also suggesting that the effects of the judgment on Adam will be mitigated. God confirms the Adamic covenant and vocation with Noah, giving him a greater level of authority and rule than Adam enjoyed. God places his war bow in the sky as a sign of his covenant with Noah and as an assurance that he will bless Noah.

Noah is given a new level of rule over the animals and over other human beings. Whereas man had previously been vegetarian and animals had only been ‘consumed’ by God, now God allows Noah to consume animals as he does, sharing in a greater level of divine rule over the creation. No longer a naked ‘infant’ as Adam and Eve, Noah is permitted to eat meat and to drink wine, having attained to a greater degree of maturity. As the righteous covenant ruler, Noah is entrusted with the rule of the sword, called to exercise capital judgment on the manslayer (Genesis 9:5-6). In the confirmation of the covenant with Noah we see a development beyond the earlier creation into a new degree of maturity.

Promised Rest (and Fall)

Like Adam was originally called to, Noah takes up the role of a gardener, planting a vineyard (Genesis 9:20). Grapes and wine are symbols of rest, completion, and rule. Wine is the eschatological drink. Priests were forbidden to drink wine on the job, but the person who has completed his work can sit down and drink wine. The Promised Land was associated with wine and luscious grapes (Isaiah 5; Numbers 13:23-24). While in the wilderness, the children of Israel didn’t drink any wine (Deuteronomy 29:6). However, when they arrived, God gave them wine to drink, as they inherited the vineyards of their enemies (Joshua 24:13).

Noah’s vineyard is a new Garden of Eden and a new Promised Land. It is a place of rest, the rest that was prophesied at his birth. Noah’s vineyard, however, like the Garden of Eden before it, and the Promised Land after it, becomes the site of a fall. In an account with numerous echoes of the Fall account – taking fruit (v.21), the seeing of nakedness (vv.22-23), clothing (v.23), the realization of knowledge (v.24), a curse on the seditious tempter (v.25), a (positive) judgment on the two other protagonists (v.26-27) – Genesis describes the first major rebellion of the Noahic order.

Conclusion

As we read the story of Noah and the Flood, we should see numerous anticipations of the story of the Exodus within it. The same God who drowned the old creation in the Flood and saved his people through water, bringing them to the mountain where the covenant was confirmed, will later drown the Egyptians in the Red Sea and save his people through the waters of death, bringing them to Mount Sinai, where the covenant will be established. In Christ we see the child of promise who brings deliverance to his people. We see the one who is the embryo of the new creation, the one who brings us through the waters of death to the resurrection of the new heavens and the new earth. We see the one who judges the wickedness of the old world, while offering deliverance to all who will enter into the new world of the resurrection through him. We see the one who brings promised rest and rule, the one who offers us the wine that signifies a work completed.

Posted in Bible, Exodus, Genesis, Lent, OT, Theology | 14 Comments

The Cup of the Adulteress: Understanding the Jealousy Ritual of Numbers 5

Posted on February 9, 2013 by Alastair Roberts

The ritual of jealousy in Numbers 5:11-31 is a law that disturbs and perplexes many people. Many regard it as if it were some bizarre and ridiculous process lying somewhere between a superstitious magical ceremony, a Jeremy Kyle paternity test, and a Monty Python trial by ordeal. Others are troubled by the seemingly blatant misogyny of the passage. Purely on the basis of a husband’s jealousy, a wife can be submitted to such an ordeal, an ordeal for which no corresponding rite seems to exist for husbands. The woman, if found guilty, also faces serious consequences, though nothing is said of any consequences faced by the man with whom she committed adultery.

Within this post I don’t expect to provide a completely satisfactory resolution of all of these questions. However, I hope to place the passage within a broader frame within which many of these problems are considerably relieved and those which remain are rendered more manageable.

Clarifications

At the very outset, there are a number of points that must be made.

First, the primary cause for the performance of the rite is jealousy. Since this jealousy is the husband’s it can easily be assumed that the rite existed principally for the sake of the accusing party. However, a little caution is in order here. One doesn’t have to envisage the extremes illustrated by such a character as Othello to recognize that a husband’s jealousy can be a profoundly destructive and vengeful force. As Proverbs 6:34 declares: ‘For jealousy is a husband’s fury; therefore he will not spare in the day of vengeance.’ The ritual of jealousy served to arrest the cycle of jealousy before it could be expressed in a husband’s abuse or the violence of the lynch mob. The jealous party had to surrender judgment into God’s hands, thus preventing the escalation of jealousy into violence or the utter and final annihilation of all marital trust.

The ritual of jealousy, by preventing the unhalted rise of jealousy, protected vulnerable parties from violence, took judgment out of human hands, and served to vindicate the innocent. The falsely suspected party could call the jealous party to ‘put up or shut up’, receiving divine vindication through the rite and being delivered from any stain on their character. For anyone who has been falsely accused or suspected, the benefit of such a rite should be immediately apparent. In such a manner, the jealousy rite served both parties, by providing a way to avoid the destructive cycles of jealousy.

Second, the efficacy of the rite of jealousy depended upon the divine deliverance of a decisive verdict. By itself, drinking the bitter water, while unpleasant, could not produce the terrible effects associated with the guilty verdict. The rite involved no human judgment whatsoever, put everything into God’s hands, and would only operate through divine action. Our ability to accept the rite is closely related to our preparedness to accept that God might provide decisive judgment in such a manner.

Third, strictly speaking it was not an ‘ordeal’. Typically trial by ordeal involves undergoing a dangerous and/or painful trial, such as plunging your hand in boiling water, or carrying a heated iron across a room. On the basis of one’s survival of or condition after such an ordeal, a human court would judge you innocent or guilty. Such ordeals were often at high risk of producing ‘false positives’ (although, for a counterbalancing defence of the effectiveness of trial by ordeal, see this). The rite of jealousy in Numbers 5, however, involved little risk of false positives: the rite itself, while not a pleasant experience, wasn’t very dangerous or painful in and of itself. Also, as noted earlier, it involved no human judgment at all subsequent to the ordeal, but left the judgment and punishment entirely in God’s hands.

Fourth, the rite of jealousy served to resolve a crisis situation in the law, where a lack of knowledge could lead to the breakdown of all trust in marriage and a vulnerable party suffering under a false accusation. It promised divine vindication or judgment in a way that arrested these negative processes.

At this point a crucial detail of the Mosaic Law should be noticed: the Mosaic Law is underpinned by divine sanction for both individual and nation. No one can escape divine justice, even though they may escape human justice. Evildoers can be directly punished by God and this judgment is typically presumed to come in this life. Even though it might be delayed, the person who ‘bore their iniquity’ was liable to receive direct punishment from God (e.g. Exodus 28:43). Secret sinners were subjected to a terrible series of curses and were not presumed to escape judgment for their sin, merely because they evaded human detection (Deuteronomy 27:11-26).

The entire Law was underwritten by this assurance. It seems to me that the question that we should be asking is why the case of the woman suspected of adultery was treated differently from other cases, where punishment of unknown guilty parties could be left in God’s hands and waited for patiently. It seems to me that the three key reasons for this are: 1. The destructive force of unchecked jealousy within marriage, a force that makes it much harder to go on than suspicions in any other context; 2. The vulnerability of the suspected party to the violence of her husband or the mob; 3. The fact that the unfaithfulness of the wife was a greater threat to the order of the family than that of the husband, as it threw the legitimacy of the children into question (a woman always knows whether a child is hers, which is one reason why the stakes are often so much higher for female unfaithfulness). The rite of jealousy was a petition for immediate divine judgment that would bring matters to a head in a situation where continued unresolved suspicion could prove deeply destructive. It could assure a man that children were his and grant both the children and the mother the security that comes with that clearly defined status.

Some Notes on the Rite Itself

1. The wife is said to ‘commit a trespass’ against her husband (vv.12, 27), language that is more typically used of mankind’s relationship with God. The analogous relationship between spiritual unfaithfulness to YHWH and unfaithfulness to a human husband is an important one and will be revisited later.

2. The husband brings his wife to the priest along with an offering, which seems to be related to the meal offering substituted for the sin offering in the case of the poor in Leviticus 5:12. Rather than directly identity this offering with the poor person’s sin offering, I would suggest that the logic is found in the fact that bread offerings are typically remembrance or memorial offerings, designed to bring something to God’s mind in a petition for divine action on that basis. However, since in this case of the ritual of jealousy (as in the substitute sin offering) it is possible sin that is being memorialized, the elements of frankincense and oil cannot be included.

3. The priest takes holy water in an earthen vessel, presumably drawn from the laver of cleansing, and holy dust, from the ground of the tabernacle, which is then placed in the water (v.17). This might be an image of the human being, formed of dust and water (notice that the New Testament also refers to us as ‘earthen vessels’ – 2 Corinthians 4:7). Also, as we shall later see, this action alludes to a particular event within the Exodus narrative and, much as other sacrificial rituals were related to – whether being prefigured by or microchronically recapitulating – past events, so this ritual might allude to the event that it resembles.

4. The woman’s head is uncovered in God’s presence, letting her hair loose (v.18). Perhaps, in such a manner, she is symbolically removed from the representation and protection of her husband (cf. 1 Corinthians 11). Whether this symbolizes her possible past unfaithfulness, places her before God for immediate and personal judgment apart from his representation (my preferred interpretation), or does something different entirely, I am unsure.

5. The memorial offering is placed in her hands (v.18). When it is later offered, it will bring her to God’s mind and judgment will be cast in her case. The connection of the memorial offering with the meals of communion is important to notice in this context. There may also be a connection here with vocational rites, where offerings were placed in the hands and presented as wave offerings (Leviticus 8:25-27; Numbers 6:19). In all of these cases the worshipper is offering up their labour or work for divine approval or judgment.

6. The woman is placed under a self-maledictory oath, calling down judgment upon herself if she has been unfaithful (vv.19-22). Her cooperation is expected, as her preparedness to undergo the rite is an act of pleading innocence before the divine court and petitioning God for public vindication.

7. The priest writes up the self-maledictory curses in a book and then wipes or ‘blots them out’ into the bitter water (v.23). I wonder whether this should be seen as the water bearing the two chief prosecutors of the divine order – the Law and the land (the dust that mediated God’s curse upon mankind). The Law condemns the guilty and the land spits them out. In drinking the bitter water, the woman will take these two witnesses into her insides and their effect will determine her case one way or another.

8. The woman must drink the water and the priest offers the wave offering and burns its memorial portion (vv.24-27). If she is guilty, the bitter water shall become bitter inside her and its curses shall make her a curse. If she is not, it will have no effect. The efficacy of the rite arises from the memorial bread offering, which invokes God’s judgment upon the one who offered it. The bitter water is the means of the punishment or vindication.

9. If the woman is guilty, there will be a marked and visible effect, presumably accompanied by considerable pain or severe discomfort – her belly will swell and her thigh will rot (v.27). This is probably a prolapsed uterus.

10. The guilty woman will ‘bear her iniquity’ through this rite, but her husband shall be ‘free from iniquity’ (v.31). This strikes me as a significant detail, as it suggests that the husband is also being exposed to judgment, even though he is not being publicly vindicated or condemned in the rite in quite the same way as his wife. The jealousy of the husband who has also been unfaithful will presumably not be vindicated in the rite of jealousy, even though they will both bear their guilt in such a case. God will punish unfaithful husbands in his own time, but the openness of his judgment on adulteresses frees faithful wives from unjust suspicion or accusation.

Spiritual Adultery and the Rite of Jealousy

Like much of the rest of the Old Testament Law, the purpose and meaning of the rite of jealousy exceeds the limited and immediate use it proposes. In the past I have discussed this principle in relation to the commandment that one should not muzzle the ox that treads out the grain. Once again, in the case of the rite of jealousy, if we look at it more carefully in the light of the broader biblical narrative, several other significant details come into view.

The first thing that we should notice is just how seriously sexual sin and infidelity were viewed under the Mosaic Law (and continue to be viewed within the New Testament). Coming from the culture that we come from, with its rampantly materialist or emotionalist/expressivist approach to sexuality, we can find it difficult to understand a culture in which consensual acts between two adults who may love each other very much should be treated as worthy of death in some instances. We will only begin to understand this when we realize that, in Scripture, mankind’s being is symbolic at its deepest root. And the image of God is especially focused upon a particular relationship, the fruitful marital bond between man and woman. Given its symbolic importance, a distortion or violation of this bond is an act of idolatry and, indeed, a monstrous crime against human nature itself, often suffering the punishment of death. Consequently, anything that perverts, parodies, undermines, attacks, violates, replaces, or distorts the sexual fidelity appropriate to marriage between a man and a woman is seen to strike at the very heart of biblical religion.

This close biblical connection between sexual faithfulness and spiritual faithfulness (see also Numbers 25 in this context), already noted in the use of the unusual expression ‘commit a trespass’ of the wife’s unfaithfulness (vv.12, 27), should help us to recognize that Numbers 5 must refer to something more than sexual behaviour alone, because sexual behaviour always symbolizes realities greater than itself. By teaching the testing of the unfaithful wife at the instigation the jealous husband, this passage highlights a prominent biblical theme, that of the testing of the faithfulness of the people of God, as his bride, by the jealous divine husband (cf. Exodus 20:5; 34:14; Deuteronomy 4:24). Israel will go on to fail the divine test of jealousy in the book of Numbers.

The rite of jealousy is particularly related to an event recorded in the Exodus narrative. In Exodus 32, while Moses was up on Mount Sinai, the children of Israel committed spiritual adultery against YHWH, who brought them up out of Egypt, worshipping a gold calf and eating communion meals with Egyptian idols (Exodus 32:6). Moses came down the mountain with the stone tablets of the Testimony, to see the Israelites sinning in this manner. He responded by breaking the tablets of stone, burning and grinding the calf to powder, scattering it on water and forcing the Israelites to drink it. The Levites were then instructed to kill 3,000 of their Israelite brethren, after which Moses interceded for the nation and the people were plagued.

The Numbers 5 rite of jealousy can be seen to be closely related to the rite of jealousy that God performed on his adulterous bride, Israel, by the hand of Moses. The relationship between the two events becomes even clearer if, as we might suspect, the broken stone tablets of the Testimony in Exodus 32:19 are added to the powdered calf that is scattered on the waters in the following verse. The curses of the Law represented by the broken tablets of stone and the prosecution of the land/dust represented by the powdered calf would correspond to the dust from the tabernacle floor and the blotted out writing of the curses in Numbers 5 (the holy water of the tabernacle corresponds to the brook that descended from God’s presence on Mount Sinai – Deuteronomy 9:21).

A further interesting linguistic connection between the two passages can be found in the use of the expression ‘blotted out’. In the Numbers 5 rite of jealousy the words of the curse were blotted out and placed into the water, which was then drunk by the woman. If she had sinned, the curses would take their full effect and she would be ‘blotted out’ herself as she was rendered barren and a byword. If she had not sinned, the curse would have no effect and there would no longer be any handwritten curses standing against her – she would have a completely clean slate relative to the accusation of the Law.

The idea of ‘blotting out’ occurs in various contexts in Scripture, most notably contexts of judgment. Judged nations or people are ‘blotted off’ the face of the earth or land (e.g. Genesis 6:7; 7:4, 23; Deuteronomy 25:19). The land is like a palimpsest, a manuscript from which an old text has been scraped or washed off, so that a new one can be written. The curse being washed – or blotted out – into the water and drunk precipitates its taking effect, leading to the ‘blotting out’ of the person who has rebelled against God.

This logic can be seen very clearly in Deuteronomy 29:14-29. The person who secretly rejects YHWH to commit spiritual adultery with foreign gods will find that ‘every curse that is written in this book would settle on him, and the Lord would blot out his name from under heaven’ (v.20). Such a person would be separated from others for calamity, for plague, and for sickness and wiped out from the land. The reference in verse 18 to ‘a root bearing bitterness or wormwood’ is significant, and we shall return to this detail at a later point. The rite of jealousy is the major instituted process by which secret sins are brought to light by divine judgment. However, it is merely a ritual precipitation of the general process, by which the secret sins of the unfaithful are exposed by divine punishment, something which Deuteronomy 29 illustrates.

In Exodus 32:30-35, after the golden calf and Moses’ performance of the rite of jealousy upon Israel, he speaks with God, requesting that he be ‘blotted out’ of God’s book for the sake of adulterous Israel. However, God declares that he will blot out the sinners from his book, but not Moses. The guilty people are then plagued for their sin (v.35). The association of this ‘blotting out’ with Moses’ performance of the rite of jealousy is incredibly suggestive. The curses of the stone tablets of the Testimony being ‘blotted out’ into the brook at the foot of the mountain and then taken into the Israelites, leading to the wicked being blotted out likewise, suggests a further connection between Moses’ performance of a rite of jealousy upon Israel. Perhaps yet another connection can be found in the vocational ‘filling of the hands’ of the Levites (associated with the remembrance offering) in the immediate context (v.29).

Subtle allusions to the ritual of jealousy may also be found in various points in the prophets, such as in Zechariah 5.

The Ritual of Jealousy in the Gospels

The ritual of jealousy is alluded to on a couple of key occasions in Jesus’ ministry. The first of these occasions is in John 4 (as we shall see in due course, this connection is strengthened when we appreciate the typological connection between the woman of Samaria and the whore of Babylon).

The context of the encounter between a man and a woman at a well is heavily symbolically freighted. The patriarchs ‘typically’ met their wives at wells (Genesis 24; 29:1-14; Exodus 2:16-22). The well or enclosed source of water symbolized the womb, fertility, and purity of the woman (Song of Solomon 4:12-15). Faithfulness to one’s spouse was spoken of in terms of not spreading your own waters around and drawing and drinking solely from your own well (Proverbs 5:15-20). The prostitute is compared to a ditch collecting filthy water and the adulteress to a narrow well (Proverbs 23:27). God compares himself to a fountain of living waters for his people, whom they have adulterously rejected for broken and dry cisterns (Jeremiah 2:13). Unfaithful Jerusalem itself is akin to a polluted well of wickedness (Jeremiah 6:7).

We should keep this symbolic subtext in mind when reading the passage itself. The conversation focuses on the giving of drinks. Jesus begins by asking the woman for a drink. After she questions his motives, Jesus points out that, if she knew who it was, she would have asked him for a drink and then speaks of living water, which the woman requests from him.

Jesus’ words in verse 16 might seem to ignore the woman’s request entirely. However, it is through his answer that Jesus gives the living water that the woman requests. Little does the woman know that, in requesting water from Jesus, she has initiated a form of the ritual of jealousy. Jesus begins by asking the woman to call her husband. When she declares that she has no husband, Jesus points out the truth of statement, bringing to light the fact that she is an adulteress (she has quite probably been significantly wronged in the process, but this is her status).

The exposure of adultery and the bringing of secret sins to light through the offered water connects the John 4 incident with the ritual of jealousy. Yet the water offered is not bitter water, but living. In place of the water bringing a curse, there is the offer of water bringing eternal life. This water ritual of jealousy still brings secret sins and adultery to light, but in a life-giving rather than a death dealing fashion.

A further possible allusion to the ritual of jealousy occurs in John 8:1-11, where the woman caught in adultery is brought to Jesus for judgment. This (disputed) text, frequently grossly misinterpreted as an argument against the casting of appropriate judgment on others’ sins, needs to be handled carefully. I have argued in the past that Jesus applies the Mosaic Law in his treatment of the woman’s case, showing that there are no qualified witnesses against her.

However, there is another dimension of the text, which is less commonly appreciated. The scribes and the Pharisees bring the woman forward to be tried according to the regular adultery law, which required the death penalty for both of the adulterous parties. Jesus demonstrates that this law is inappropriate in this case and that those bringing the woman forward are disqualified as witnesses. Jesus does more than show the inapplicability of the regular adultery law to the woman’s case, though. He follows the law that does apply to the case of a woman suspected of adultery without qualified witnesses: the Numbers 5 ritual of jealousy.

When the scribes and Pharisees bring forward the woman, asking Jesus how she should be dealt with, Jesus pretends not to hear them and stoops down and writes on the ground. While feigning not to have heard them, Jesus is already putting the appropriate law for the woman’s case into effect. When the scribes and Pharisees are insistent, he shows that they are disqualified as witnesses according to the adultery law. However, his legal response is ongoing.

Jesus spends a considerable amount of time writing, enough time for the scribes and Pharisees to ask him several times to respond to their question, enough time for each one of the accusers gradually to leave one by one, and even seemingly for some time after they have all departed. This action isn’t incidental to the narrative, but is absolutely essential to what is taking place.

The significance of this writing becomes clearer in the context of the Numbers 5 ritual of jealousy, the only rite of its kind to involve lengthy writing as part of its process. These events take place in the temple (v.2), just as the ritual of jealousy had to take place in the tabernacle, before the presence of the Lord (Numbers 5:16). The ritual of jealousy involved dust from the ground of the tabernacle floor (v.17), a process of writing (v.23), and holy water (v.17). Its effect was the revealing of secret sin through the deliverance of divine judgment, typically involving a curse and condemnation coming upon the guilty party.

In the story of the woman caught in adultery, we see these elements. Jesus performs the writing ritual with his finger, on the dust of the ground of the temple. Only a few verses earlier, he has described himself as the ‘earthen vessel’ bearing the holy, living water (John 7:37-38). In the cycle of creation days in John’s gospel, John 8:1-11 seems to belong to the third day, the day of the cereal offering (note the many references to bread and the cereal offerings in John 6), just before the fourth day begins with the light of John 8:12 and the various references to light in the chapters that follow. This connection with the cereal or bread offering represents a further connection between the rite of jealousy, which had an bread offering for remembrance at its heart.

The effect of Jesus’ practice of the ritual is related to that of the Old Testament ritual. Hidden sins are revealed as the conscience-stricken accusers slink away. The sin of the woman is also openly acknowledged (John 8:11). The judgment is delivered, but no condemnation is given. It should be seen that Jesus is not merely playing the role of the priest in the ritual, but the role of God himself. It is Jesus’ words that bring the hidden sins to light and bring future judgment into the present. Jesus claims the prerogative of God in the ritual – that of condemning or acquitting. The ritual of jealousy was the ritual of judgment in which all human judgment was put to one side and God alone declared and enacted the sentence. Finally, there is only one other occasion in Scripture where writing with a finger is mentioned: God’s writing of the stone tablets of the Testimony (Exodus 31:18; Deuteronomy 9:10 [edit: in the comments, Stephanie has reminded me that writing fingers are also mentioned in Daniel 5:5]). Those broken stone tablets were most likely crushed to become part of the ritual of jealousy that Moses performed upon Israel in Exodus 32. Here again, in John 8, we see the finger of God writing the words to be used for the ritual of jealousy.

Why is neither the Samaritan woman nor the woman caught in adultery condemned through the ritual of jealousy? I believe that the answer to this will be found in a study of some further appearances of the theme in the New Testament.

The Bridegroom Drains the Cup

In Colossians 2:14 we read that Christ has ‘blotted out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us’ and has removed it from out of the way, nailing it to his cross. There are various ways that this can be read, but I think that there are suggestive clues here of a connection with the jealousy rite. Let me list a few.

First, the language of ‘blotting out’ handwriting finds it most immediate parallel in the procedure of the jealousy ritual. Second, the Greek verb that is employed is the same as that which we find in the LXX of Numbers 5. Third, the reference to ‘handwriting’ is noteworthy, suggesting that it is not merely the words that are significant, but the process by which they were written. The jealousy rite is the only one in which a process of handwriting plays such an important part. Fourth, hostile handwriting implies written curses, in keeping with the jealousy ritual.

If this connection is indeed justified, what we see in Colossians 2:14 is that the bridegroom drains the cup of the jealousy rite that belongs to the adulterous bride for her, taking the full bitterness of the curse inside himself.

Within the gospels we see Jesus referring to his sufferings and death on a number of occasions in terms of the drinking of a cup (Matthew 20:22-23; 26:39, 42; John 18:11). The cup is something that contains and precipitates judgment. Within the prophets we see references to an adulterous nation being fed ‘wormwood’ and given bitter water to drink (Jeremiah 9:15; 23:14-15). It is also commonly spoken of as containing wine or something with wine-like effects in the psalms and prophets (e.g. Psalm 60:3; Isaiah 29:9-10; 51:17, 21-23; 63:6; Jeremiah 25:15-29; Habakkuk 2:16). Wine is the gift of wisdom and judgment, testing hearts, confounding the wicked, but gladdening the hearts of the righteous. The drinking of the cup effects a division between the righteous and the wicked in much the same way as the drinking of the bitter water of the jealousy rite served to expose hearts and divide the sinners from the righteous.

Perhaps we should see something in the fact that Jesus is given vinegar – bitter wine – to drink right before he died. In Psalm 69, in which this is foretold (v.21), we also see a reference to the ‘blotting out’ of certain people, to be rendered barren and have their ‘loins shake continually’ (vv.22-28). In such details, it may be possible to hear echoes of Numbers 5.

In drinking of the bitter wine of God’s wrath, Jesus takes upon himself the testing and the fate of the spiritually adulterous nation, suffering the fierce anger of divine jealousy, so that all that are members of his bride may be freed from the judgment appropriate to adulterers and adulteresses.

Eschatological Judgment

The jealousy ritual can also be seen in Revelation. In Revelation 2:20-23, Christ, the One who brings the secrets of the heart and mind to light, promises that he will judge the false prophetess, ‘Jezebel’. Her children will die and she will be cast into a bed of sickness on account of her adultery. This would seem to be an allusion to the jealousy test of Numbers 5.

Unsurprisingly, given that the whole of Revelation is focused upon and climaxes in judgment upon an adulteress, we find themes of the jealousy rite of Numbers 5 at various other points. In 8:10-11 the star ‘Wormwood’ falls from heaven and poisons the seas, rendering them bitter, causing many men to die as a result. The end of the adulterous woman is associated with bitterness and wormwood (Proverbs 5:4) and she suffers the testing of the bitter drink. The judgment of the third trumpet is a sort of jealousy rite (the third bowl also involves a poisoning of the drinking water – 16:4-7).

The full jealousy rite, however, does not occur until later. The adulterous Whore of Babylon is to be given the bitter wine of the cup of testing and fierce wrath of the jealous husband (Revelation 16:19). The fact that this is mentioned as the climax of the judgment of the seven bowls might suggest that the pouring out of the contents of the bowls is to be associated with the drink. The judgments of the third trumpet and the third bowl are the preparation for drink of the Harlot – the waters are made bitter and then turned to a wine of blood.

John has previously been given the word of judgment against the Harlot, a book which he ingested, sweet as honey in his mouth, but bitter in his stomach (note the parallel with the description of the adulterous woman in Proverbs 5:4). The prophetic words of eschatological cursing borne by the Church are ‘blotted out’ or washed into the cup of the Harlot as she spills their blood. As the bitter judgment cup of blood wine is then drained by the Harlot, her plagues instantly come upon her (Revelation 18:6-8).

All of this exists in a close parallel with passages from John’s gospel. These parallels, as I have argued in detail in the past, show that the spotless Bride of Revelation was formerly associated with the Harlot. In the great eschatological jealousy ritual that the book of Revelation describes, the Bride is given living water to drink, while the Harlot is given the bitter and bloody wine, a cup that is full of filthiness (Revelation 17:4), much as the bitter water of the jealousy ritual in Numbers 5. This transformation is only possible because the Bridegroom has blotted out the handwriting of the curses against his formerly adulterous Bride into the cup of God’s jealousy and drained the entire cup himself.

The Jealousy Ritual and the Church

The jealousy ritual continues to have a place within the life of the Church. As the Church we are to be presented as a chaste virgin to Christ and godly ministers are called to guard us with a godly jealousy (2 Corinthians 11:2).

In 1 Corinthians 11:27-34 we see a rite that precipitates future judgment, leading to people suffering illness or even dying if they are unfaithful as they participate of it. Those who take the Lord’s Supper in an unworthy manner eat and drink judgment to themselves. The Lord’s Supper can be a means of precipitating the judgment upon spiritual adultery. It invokes divine remembrance and action.

If we understood the logic of the sacrificial system, we should see the relationship between the Lord’s Supper and the bread/meal and drink offerings. Those offerings memorialized the past sacrifice and called for divine action on the basis of it. The meaning of Jesus’ words ‘in remembrance of me’ has been dulled in many people’s consciousness to a mere subjective reminder of Christ’s death. However, biblically speaking, the meal offering was a memorializing offering invoking divine attention. The memorializing meal offering could also play a ‘vocational’ purpose, as the offering called for divine approbation or condemnation on the person and their labours (hence the connection between the communion elements and the offertory).

In worship, we are performing a sort of jealousy ritual (among many other meanings of the Lord’s Supper). The divine testimony, with all of its blessings and curses is declared to us, we give our ‘Amen’, and then, in conjunction with the memorializing meal offering, the testimony is taken inside of us, to discern our faithfulness. We drink the cup of testing, the cup of Christ’s blood which testifies against or for each heart, with all of the blessings and curses of the new covenant. While all spiritual adulterers call for the most bitter of consequences, a rich blessing is given to all of those who are depending upon the faithfulness and forgiveness of Christ, the cup-draining Bridegroom.

Posted in Bible, NT Theology, Numbers, OT, OT Theology, Sacramental Theology, The Atonement, The Atonement, The Sacraments, Theological, Theology, Worship | 59 Comments

Exodus as New Birth

Posted on February 3, 2013 by Alastair Roberts

I just wrote a guest post for the Big Bible Project, presenting a reading of the Exodus as new birth. Take a look – it is extremely short, as my posts go. I would love to hear people’s thoughts!

Posted in Bible, Exodus, Guest Post, On the web, OT, OT Theology, The Blogosphere, Theological | 3 Comments

Virginity and the Gospel

Posted on January 30, 2013 by Alastair Roberts

About six months ago, I blogged on the subject of chastity and pre-marital virginity. Over the last few days, I have seen the issue of Christian teaching on the subject of virginity becoming a live one again. Following a long discussion with a friend on Twitter on the subject, I thought that I would post a few further thoughts, tackling some issues that weren’t sufficiently addressed in the original post.

The current conversation is focused on the poisonous character of much Christian teaching around the subject of virginity. Young people are caught in a sense of worthlessness and guilt on account of past sexual sins. The glass filled with polluted water, the petal-less rose, the sticky tape that has been used so many times that it has lost all adhesive power, the ‘damaged goods’, the ‘sloppy seconds’: these powerful images and many more shape young Christians’ perceptions of themselves and their sexuality. Unlike other actions, one’s sexual history is regarded as having a power to define who you are and your personal worth. Anyone who has committed sexual sin can feel a crippling sense of shame, a sense that they have irreversibly decreased their value as persons. Others can reinforce this sense of shame, by treating them as defiled.

The person trapped in shame has a sense of the loss of their integrity as a person and of their dignity and glory. Shame can be no less real, even on occasions that have nothing to do with our own sin. The person who has been raped can feel profound shame, even if they feel no guilt. The person whose body is mocked by their peers can feel shame, even though there is no guilt. Bodily integrity has been violated and the glory proper to their body has been robbed or denied them. Shame can cling much closer to us than guilt and is much harder to free ourselves from. Shame is about the exposure of nakedness and the stripping away of glory.

Shame can be virtually unparalleled in its demotivating power. The person who feels shame feels that they have been devalued as a person and will often start to live in terms of this sense of worthlessness, feeling powerless, forgoing agency, and despising themselves. Shame is a prison for the self, preventing the self from knowing the freedom appropriate to it.

When a sense of shame does motivate people, it can drive them to extreme lengths to shake it off. They feel naked and frantically try to cover themselves up. They can be drawn into a desperate quest for pride and honour. People who have been shamed will often try to restore honour by forming communities around themselves, dedicated to attacking or shaming the communities that shamed them, by seeking revenge, by shaming others, by denying their sins. They can even end up ‘shamelessly’ glorying in the very thing that should be causing them to be ashamed (Philippians 3:19).

The discourse surrounding the topic of sexuality in many Christian churches is a discourse of shame. It is a discourse that leaves many people feeling that their bodies are devalued and worthless. The power of shame, set loose in churches, is a defining presence in the lives of many Christians throughout their lives. It is something that imprisons people and makes them feel that they lack true value. The person who feels that they have been devalued by shame is more, not less, likely to engage in shameful practices, as they have lost sense of their true dignity. If we think that we can motivate others, or ourselves, to lives of holiness with the power of shame, we may find ourselves to have been sorely misguided.

Many people have sought to escape the shame associated with churches’ teaching on the subject of sexuality. In place of biblical terms such as ‘fornication’, we may speak only of ‘premarital sex’ or ‘abstinence’, hoping thereby to decrease any stigma associated with it. Attention is drawn to the fact that a majority of Christian young people will have premarital sex (distinctions between pre– and extra-marital sex might be helpful here, although both come under the biblical condemnation of ‘fornication’), the commonality of the sin suggesting that it cannot be so serious. Young people are assured that it isn’t that big of a deal: God doesn’t care anywhere near as much as many churches do about chastity, so we should cut ourselves a bit more slack.

And yet, the language of shame in association with sexuality is not unbiblical. Sexual sin is presented as defiling on occasions. Contrary to those who would suggest that we should regard sexual sin as just like all other sins, in order to detach them from their peculiar attachment with shame, Paul presents sexual sin as a unique kind of sin in 1 Corinthians 6:18:

Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body.

The significance of sexual sin is also clear from the prominent focus on sexual sin in biblical lists of vices and practices that can exclude people from the kingdom of God (e.g. Romans 1:18-32; 1 Corinthians 6:9-10; Galatians 5:19-21; Ephesians 5:5; 1 Timothy 1:9-11). In keeping with the seriousness of sexual sin in the Old Testament, the New Testament treats sexual sin, not as the victimless crime that we tend to treat it as, but as a defiling and perversion of the image of God in mankind – something focused on marriage between man and woman – and a sin against human nature.

It would seem that we have a problem. If shame can be so hard to shake and so devaluing, why would Scripture speak in such a manner? Despite seeming commonalities, the contrast between the way that the Scripture speaks about sexuality and our bodies and the way that these subjects are spoken of in many churches couldn’t be starker.

The way that we speak about the subject of sexual sin, perhaps more than any other moral issue, says an awful lot about the sort of gospel that we believe. It is in sexual sin that we can feel most powerfully defined by our rejection of God’s way. Only the true gospel – a gospel powerful enough to free us of the most persistent stains – enables us to speak with unflinching honesty on such a subject, without being destroyed by the resulting knowledge.

It is in a legalistic approach to virginity, an approach that locates our value in our ability to keep ourselves pure that a false gospel emerges in the lives of many Christians and churches. When our personal worth is made entirely contingent on what we do with our bodies, we should not be surprised to find people imprisoned in self-righteousness, guilt and shame, the denial of sin, and judgmentalism. To tell the truth about yourself within such a gospel is to destroy yourself. Those who do are racked with debilitating guilt and shame. However, for every such person there are many others who are caught in sin-denial, self-delusion, and self-righteous judgmentalism. Even those who are seeking to escape the shame of this false gospel are often not escaping the false gospel itself, merely moving in the direction of sin-denial and self-delusion. This false teaching can hit people on an existential level that a merely ideological gospel-teaching from the pulpit, divorced from a practical form, cannot reach.

In these areas there are too many people being destroyed by knowledge of seeming ‘unforgivable’ sin on one side and too many people not speaking seriously enough about the sinfulness of sin on the other. This can be especially dangerous for virgins who, believing that they have avoided the ‘unforgivable’ sin, fall straight into a self-delusory self-righteousness, failing to attend to the lust and pride that may be bound up in their sexuality. One side has no real forgiveness or redemption to offer. The other side all too often has a cheap presumptive ‘forgiveness’, which renders the sin ‘no big deal’.

Part of the reception of forgiveness is the full acknowledgment of our sin, as we concur with the divine judgment upon it implicit in the offer of forgiveness. This is why a presumptive forgiveness, which does not fully acknowledge the seriousness of sin, is not forgiveness at all. It is only in the light of forgiveness, redemption, and glorification that we can speak with utter truthfulness about sin, as it is only through these things that we are released from its crushing weight. If this is true about sin in general, it is so much more true about sexual sin in particular. By believing that we can abstract our discourses about sexuality from the gospel, we produce a poisonous and deadly culture, a culture in which the truth cannot be told or borne.

In the true gospel we learn that the value of our bodies does not derive from our virginity, nor is their value lost if our virginity were lost outside of marriage. As Christians, the value of our bodies derives from the fact that they have been redeemed by God. In fact, God cares so much about these ‘damaged goods’ that he is going to raise them up on the last day.

And all of us are ‘damaged goods’. Virgin bodies must be redeemed too. They too are defiled and polluted by the sin that dwells within them. Shame is exposure and nakedness, which can only truly be acknowledged where covering is offered. This is what we find in the gospel. These bodies, weak and rendered shameful by sin, will be raised and clothed in glory, their mortality swallowed up in life (2 Corinthians 5:4). The value of our bodies does not lie within our bodies themselves. It does not lie in our sexual histories, but in the value that God places upon them and the glory that he has prepared for them. It lies in the fact that he has taken bodies corrupted by sin and death and fashioned them into temples for his Holy Spirit. It lies in the fact that our bodies, notwithstanding all of their sexual history, will be resurrected in the new heavens and the new earth, objects of divine delight. Every Christian, virgin or not, derives the value or his or her body from the same place.

And this is the point where Christian sexual ethics begins – with the realization that our bodies are ‘redeemed goods’, with immense value in God’s eyes and an incredible destiny. It begins with the realization that we can speak with a complete honesty about sexual sin as that discourse occurs within the context of forgiveness, grace, and redemption, a context that frees us from the devastating burden of the shame appropriate to sexual sin. In Christ and the sanctification, justification, and glorification that we receive in him, we are freed from the legalistic yoke of securing the value of our own bodies, whether through sexual sinlessness or physical appearance. We are freed from self-loathing, anxiety, and shame. We can name the bondage in the light of the freedom. The sexual ethics of the gospel are concerned with how to live embodied lives in liberty, no longer returning to the slavery of guilt and shame, but joyfully pursuing the good bodily ends for which we were created, glorifying God in our bodies and spirits, which are his.

Posted in Christian Experience, Controversies, Culture, Ethics, Sex and Sexuality, Theological | 32 Comments

Orthodox Alexithymia and Unorthodox Sentimentalism

Posted on January 26, 2013 by Alastair Roberts

The issue of ‘orthodox alexithymia’ has resurfaced in a number of contexts online over the last few days. Richard Beck describes what he means by this term:

What I’m describing here might be captured by the tag “orthodox alexithymia.” By “orthodox” I mean the intellectual pursuit of right belief. And by “alexithymia” I mean someone who is, theologically speaking, emotionally and socially deaf and dumb. Even theologically sociopathic.

(Alexithymia—etymologically “without words for emotions”—is a symptom characteristic of individuals who have difficulty understanding their own and others’ emotions. You can think of alexithymia as being the opposite of what is called emotional intelligence.)

I think that Beck is naming something real here. There are ‘sociopathic’ forms of religion, forms of religion that are completely disconnected from any sense of feeling, forms of religion that only engage the head, but never the heart. There is a sort of logical theology that can exist apart from any deep existential and emotional engagement and embeddedness on the part of its practitioners in the realities of which they speak.

However, while agreeing with Beck in his identification of a problem, I am less convinced by the solutions that have been advanced by some. The following are a few rough thoughts on the subject, some of which are culled from comments beneath Beck’s original post (Andrew Fulford has posted one of my comments in full here).

1.

When talking about the relationship between reason and emotion, we need to proceed with clarity. Emotion is primarily a state of consciousness and is related to a faculty of feeling. Reason, however, comprehends more than just our faculty of thinking, but generally includes the critical, external, and objective norms to which this faculty is ordered. Our minds are made subject and conformed to reason and to truth. Our minds must also submit to and be formed by communal practices of deliberation, debate, discourse, and disputation. An irrational mind, a mind preoccupied purely with its own fancies, or a mind untrained by the disciplines of public or communal discourse is of little use to anyone, least of all its owner.

In saying that reason is privileged over emotion, what many people are actually objecting to is the fact that a trained, disciplined, focused, and formed faculty is privileged over one that is untrained, unformed, unfocused, and undisciplined. For many, emotion and desire are treated in terms of entitlement: instant entitlement to attention and immunity from challenge, criticism, or disagreement. Emotion (and the oft-demanded ‘empathy’) can be used to blackmail communities, shut down challenging conversation, render people or positions immune to criticism or disagreement, and halt any process of discipline. Any suggestion that emotion and desire ought to be conformed to an external truth, reality, or norms, or that one person’s emotions may be more valid, significant, or appropriate than another person’s emotions is greeted with horror.

When it comes to emotion and desire, for some people ‘self-expression’ and ‘authenticity’ are the only norms recognized. While our emotions should always be our own, and we should not have an alien set of emotions and desires forced upon us unnaturally, or all emotion and desire stifled and crushed within us, we do need to develop and submit our selves and emotions to a process of formation that would mould them into more godly forms.

2.

This is one of the purposes of true worship. Good liturgy and ritual guides and shapes our emotions into fitting responses to God’s self-revelation. An approach to worship focused on undisciplined spontaneity and individual self-expression can be problematic on this front, as the emotions can become feral. One of the benefits of singing and praying lots of psalms is that they are full of spiritually formed emotion. As we bring our emotion to them, our emotions are shaped by them. Our emotions are not crushed, but are house-trained. Such training is especially valuable for a society that can often be emotionally incontinent.

The real problem that many in this generation are facing is that Christian traditions have generally valued passions too highly to leave them uncultivated, unformed, undisciplined, immune to criticism, and subject to no external constraints or communal practices. Like reason, formed passions are immensely valuable. However, the means whereby true and valuable passions are formed involves the learning of healthy emotional processes, the invalidation of certain emotional expressions, the loss of emotional entitlement, and the subjection of our emotions and desires to processes of communal discernment, criticism, formation, expression, and judgment. This process of emotional growth and discipline, though painful, creates deep, rich, and powerful passions. Unsurprisingly this rankles with many.

3.

All of the above is to suggest that there is such a thing as ‘emotional orthodoxy’ (or perhaps, ‘psychological orthodoxy’). The heart must be engaged by our faith, by the heart is also submitted to a process of formation by our faith. The solution to orthodox alexithymia is not mere empathy or compassion per se, but a rich depth and breadth of feeling that has been shaped by the fullness of God’s revelation.

With the neglect of the full breadth of the psalter and an overreliance on upbeat and frothy worship songs, much of the contemporary Church is utterly unprepared for ‘weighty’ and difficult emotions. It should not surprise us that such a Church will often struggle to reconcile itself with the judgment of God and with the fierce jealousy of God’s love, as coming to emotional terms with such truths requires a much deeper emotional engagement with divine truth than such sentimental brands of Christianity can muster.

4.

There is a huge danger of confusing sentimentalism with true passion. Sentimentalism is all surface and no depth. Sentimentalism is feeling for the sake of feeling. It is narcissistic and self-absorbed. It is what happens when feeling becomes a self-justifying end in itself. Sentimentalism is the love of being in love. Sentimentalism loves to display itself, in extreme empathy, in teary sorrow, in ecstatic joy, in passionate outrage. However, sentimentalism is little more than display: it manifests these emotions but does not pay their cost. There is no long term commitment of action accompanying them, no difficult devotion, no deep and lasting passion beneath the ephemeral expressions of emotion. Sentimentalism can flit lightly from one emotion to another without the deep and painful transitions.

Perhaps one of the greatest distinguishing features of sentimentalism is its lack of a profound commitment to its supposed object, or of devotion to the reality to which it claims to be responding. For sentimentalism, the supposed object is merely a pretext for self-absorbed emotion, for the individual’s love of feeling something. The sentimentalist will speak with gushing emotion about the latest charity cause and forget about it entirely within a month. The sentimentalist will be in tears at the news of a celebrity’s death, without ever having had or sought any meaningful connection with them while they lived. The sentimentalist will speak with extreme outrage concerning some atrocity, but will never bother to commit themselves to some long term action that might change it.

Sentimentalism produces self-indulgent art, art designed primarily to give us the titillation of feeling, without ever really having to feel. Sentimental works of art tickle but never deeply challenge our emotions. The characters of sentimental literature are limpid pools in which we are to see our reflection. As Roger Scruton observes, such works are vague, ‘schematic, stereotyped, smoothed over by the wash of sentiment, deprived of the concrete reality that would show the cost of really feeling things.’

Being easy emotion detached from its object, sentimentalism is particularly drawn to distant objects, to general principles, vague causes, to strangers, to passing events, to the sorts of things that will disappear from the radar soon. Sentimentalism is decidedly unattracted by the sorts of causes that would require long term commitment from it, especially the sort of commitment that cannot easily be displayed or that would not whip up gushy feelings. The supposed object of sentimental feeling is always replaceable.

5.

There is such a thing as sentimentalist morality. This is the morality characteristic of much ‘bleeding heart liberalism’, for instance [or also of much nostalgic conservatism, for that matter]. Sentimentalist morality is preoccupied with itself and its own feelings of morality. Sentimentalist morality is obsessed with being ‘nice’. Sentimentalist morality is detached from reality and seeks to retain a measure of detachment. Too much reality makes sentimentalist morality squeamish. The sentimentalist doesn’t care so much what actually happens, provided that the ugliness of reality is not something that he has to be exposed to for any length of time. He can often fairly happily live with evil, provided that it takes a sanitized form and doesn’t offend him by taking too visible a character.

The sentimentalist will not commit himself to long term painful and demanding action on behalf of those in need. Sentimentalist attitudes towards the poor, for instance, all too typically involve moral outrage that someone else isn’t doing something, usually the government. The sentimentalist would prefer not to have too much direct contact with the poor himself. It is also much easier to feel nice feelings towards the poor as a vague sentimental abstraction than it is to the actual poor person who comes across your path.

The sentimentalist longs for a world where we are all nice to each other in a way that realizes the narcissistic dream, where we are no longer confronted with the uncomfortable reality of the other’s existence and of a reality that resists us, but can all bask in the warm feeling of being compassionate and accepting. This world is one of ‘tolerance’, of niceness that does make the sort of discriminations and take the sort of committed action that love does.

Sentimentalist morality lacks nerve. Sentimentalist morality is indiscriminately nice, because within its airbrushed ersatz rendering of reality there are no sharp moral lines, nor is there any responsibility to pursue any common good or the good of any neighbour that may firmly oppose their will. Sentimentalist morality is all about empathy. Sentimentalist morality hates the way that another person’s discomfort makes it feel, irrespective of whether this discomfort is merited or not, or whether this discomfort will cause the person good in the long term. The sentimentalist is like the parent who cannot bear to see their child cry, allowing them to be easily manipulated by them. The sentimentalist doesn’t really care about the other person, or they would take painful and unsentimental action to seek their good. The only deep concern here is the sentimentalist’s own narcissistic feelings. Such sentimentalism lacks both conviction and conscience.

In response to the identification of the evil of orthodox alexithymia, all too often it is such sentimentalist morality and theology they are presented as if they were the solution.

6.

By contrast, true worship is designed to produce the sort of deeply rooted passion that is fixed upon and committed to God. This sort of committed love is manifested primarily in action rather than in sentiment. A person who truly loves will manifest a commitment to the object of that love over many years in the ways that they act towards and concerning it. This love will generally be extremely understated by comparison to sentimentalism, which is pure surface and display.

This passion is not just in love with the general feeling of loving or being in love – and how good this makes us feel about ourselves. It is absolutely committed to a particular object of love. As it is not in love with the feeling of love, it is able to act in a devoted way to its object that will produce feelings that are not so pleasant. Sentimentalism only simulates the sort of feelings that others admire and feelings that we can feel good about ‘feeling’. Sentimentalism cannot easily produce the deep jealousy of love or other difficult feelings characteristic of true attachment.

God, as the object of true Christian devotion, is not sentimentally drawn. The god of sentimental worship is the sort of god who can serve as a suitable canvas for our projections of value and feeling. The god of sentimental worship is a convenient reflection of or projection of the worshipper’s own values, whose worship redounds to the worshipper himself. The god of sentimental worship is a god who could never do anything that truly troubled, disturbed, or upset us. The worship of sentimentalism is no more emotionally engaged with reality than the sociopathic worship of orthodox alexithymia.

Quite unlike the god of sentimentalism, the God of Scripture reveals himself in ways that shock, surprise, and even appal us. God is very, very far from being nice. He instructs his people to kill other people. He wreaks judgment and destruction on the earth. He chooses some people and doesn’t choose others. One can love this God or one can hate him: one cannot sentimentalize him.

7.

One of the great characteristics of sentimentalist Christianity is the glorification of things such as ‘love’. However, the love of sentimentalist Christianity is an indiscriminate love, largely because its object was never really an external one to begin with. The love of sentimentalist Christianity is one that is ‘nice’, one which makes us feel good about ourselves. The love of true Christian worship is one that orients itself towards all other objects in terms of their relationship to the primary object of its love and commitment. The love of true Christian worship is defined by its object, not by its ‘feelings’ of love. Actually loving is something that completely eclipses the mere feeling of love and our love for that feeling.

8.

As the love of God is defined by its object, it is discriminate and focused. It is a love that can involve God hating other things. It is a love that is characterized by an unrelenting practical commitment to its object, the sort of commitment that will involve the judgment of anything that would continue without repentance to oppose and seek to destroy its object. God’s love is not a general toothless benevolence, but a dreadful (in an older sense of the word) devotion to its object.

Sentimentalist Christianity’s ignorance of a love defined by and committed to its object and celebration of an undirected and indiscriminate feeling in its place needs to be answered by a recognition of the ‘grammar’ of the divine love. As we better understand the ‘grammar’ of God’s love, so we will begin to discover a love that transcends mere feeling.

God loves his Son first and foremost. God loves those within his Son with a love that is grounded in his love for his Son. God also loves the world more generally, for the sake of his Son, into whom he desires all creation and all persons to be drawn. This includes a love for or goodness towards those who are the enemies of his people. God’s love and goodness towards the wicked is shown with the end that they repent (Romans 2:4).

God’s love is not directed to each person in the same way. The word ‘love’ is not used univocally to speak of all of these relationships. God does not love his enemies in the way that he loves his people. Understanding the ‘grammar’ will help us to understand how this works.

God’s love is long-suffering, giving enemies time to turn and to bring them to repentance. However, God’s love is also a jealous love, with a jealousy ‘as cruel as the grave’ (Song of Songs 8:6). God’s terrible commitment to his people in his Son is not something that one can lightly oppose. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a God who loves this strongly. God’s love for his Church means that he will avenge it and finally destroy those who seek to oppose it and continue to reject his loving and long-suffering appeals for repentance.

God’s love for his enemies is different in character from his love for his Son and his people. It is the latter that is primary and it is in loving God and his people that we directly love the Son. We don’t love Christ in our enemy (in the way that we love our Christian brothers and sisters), but we love our enemy for the sake of and like Christ, with the end of their repentance.

9.

Both in Beck’s original piece and in a number of the pieces that have followed on from him, attention has been drawn to the emotionally discomforting teachings of Scripture, to such things as sanguinary judgment, hell, curses in the Psalms and elsewhere, and to the killing of the Canaanites. An emotionally engaged Christian will not find such teachings easy. However, the more that we engage with Scripture, the more that we will see that a love that is not just a sentimental feeling, but is something passionately, actively, and unremittingly devoted to its object, will entail such things as hatred, anger, and even, on extreme occasions, cursing.

This is one of the things that a psychology informed by regular singing through the psalter will give us. The psalter does not merely contain the feelings and expressions that appeal to the sentimentalist. As well as being a place of rejoicing, love, thanksgiving, and blessing, it is also a place of deep sorrow, depression, anger, and imprecation. Within it we are taught, for instance, that there are appropriate occasions to seek God’s curse and judgment upon people and that the downfall and destruction of the wicked is a cause for thanksgiving.

The New Testament makes very clear that cursing and calling for judgment is not the Church’s standard policy – we bless and don’t curse – calling for a greater degree of love for and longsuffering with our enemies than that present in the Old Testament. However, we still find curses on the mouths of the apostles and even on Jesus’ mouth, as in cursing the fig tree he symbolically curses Israel to its destruction in AD70. We are also told that the saints call for God to avenge their blood (Revelation 6:10).

Love with a clear object, unlike vague sentimentalism, is a complicated thing and works itself out in complicated ways. While the love of Christ for his faithful people led him to curse Israel, which was filled with the blood of the saints and prophets, that same love led him to weep over the impenitent city and its coming destruction. The love of David for God, his people, and his covenant led him to show mercy, forgiveness, and goodness, time and again to Saul, who continued to seek his life, while praying for God’s judgment upon Saul and his supporters in the psalms.

As John Day puts it, ‘in circumstances of sustained injustice, hardened enmity, and gross oppression, it has always been appropriate for a believer to utter imprecations against enemies or to appeal for the onslaught of divine vengeance.’ This is only applied in the most severe of situations and takes the form of a petition that God would either convert or destroy the most bitter and brutal enemies of his Church (cf. Psalm 83:16b) and that in overcoming his enemies, his name would be recognized by all.

Sentimentalist Christianity cannot handle such things. Sentimentalism is detached both from reality and from objects of love. The sentimentalist shies away from the actual reality of suffering and persecution. Suffering and persecution can force us to attach ourselves to objects of love. When one is suffering and being persecuted for one’s faith one cannot easily detach oneself from the proper object of Christian love. The focusing and clarifying of love that can occur in such contexts is alien to the sentimentalist. The world of the sentimentalist is viewed through a soft focus lens, with all sharp edges blurred: the idea that love for Christ would entail such fearful opposition to something else is not understandable to it.

10.

One does not solve orthodox alexithymia with unorthodox sentimentalism, a narcissistic form of faith obsessed with the dimensions of Christian faith that feel ‘nice’. The only answer is to become people with a deep love for Christ, a love that surpasses all sentimentalism, a love that takes hold of us and won’t let us go, a love that drives us to live committed and unwavering lives of service. This love is not nice, nor is it vague, nor is it indiscriminate, nor is it sentimental. This love is directed towards One who confronts us, who disturbs and unsettles us, who forms us into the sort of people who will have enemies. This love is a love that is revealed in Christ’s profoundly unsentimental death on the cross. The reward of such love is immense: instead of a projected idol of self, it presents us with God himself.

Posted in Ethics, Society, Theological, Theology, Worship | 36 Comments

‘Year of Biblical Womanhood’ Review – Part 5

Posted on January 21, 2013 by Alastair Roberts

It is a cause of considerable rejoicing and relief to me finally to finish this ridiculously long review and conversation around the themes and issues raised by Rachel Held Evans’s book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood. Unfortunately, as she is currently in the process of a move, Rebecca was not able to join me on this part as she has for the previous ones. However, I gave her a clear idea of what I was going to say beforehand and she suggested certain additions. She might add her own thoughts at some later point.

Within this final (very, very) lengthy discussion, I take a step back from the particular claims of the book to focus more attention upon the way that we frame discourse on theological questions in general, the cultural framing of our conversations on the vocation of women. I comment at length upon feminist accounts of history, patriarchy, gendered vocations in Scripture, the nature of biblical society (answering points raised about such practices as the bride price, polygamy, and the domination of men), and the relationship between specific cultural forms of practice in Scripture and modern application of biblical principles. I comment on feminism’s roots, methods, and tendencies. I suggest some ways in which more comprehensive recasting of the debate could lead to a very different set of solutions to the genuine and pressing problem of women’s marginalization within society and the Church.

Much was left out of my account, even though I scrapped several pages’ worth of dense notes about the relationship between biblical gendered vocations and the natural capacities of the sexes and a number more on the subject of an alternative theory of patriarchy and rather awkwardly dodged many of the questions around these issues in my recorded discussion. I threw several hostages to fortune, and I can already think of glaring flaws (more will occur to me in the morning). I considered not posting any of this at all.

However, since the goal of these reviews and discussions has never been to provide a definitive treatment of the innumerable issues that are raised (I am definitely not sufficient for such a Herculean task and feel those insufficiencies keenly), but rather to steer the conversation in a more profitable, illuminating, and fruitful direction, one that will hopefully engage with concerns of all sides to some extent, without comfortably coming down on the side of any, it is not necessary to get everything right first time. While we have been highly critical of Rachel Held Evans’s approach, our fundamental purpose has also been to encourage the greater opening up of the question of Christian womanhood in contexts that are generally inclined to close questioning down on this subject.

Although we have tried to shut down certain cases completely, I hope that these reviews are not taken to ‘settle’ anything: ideally they should shake all of us up, as they identify ‘Christian womanhood’ as a question that is still largely awaiting its practical answer. Also, in sketching the sort of form that such a solution would have to take, they suggest that seismic social change, rather than individually prescribed commandments are what is required of us.

I would appreciate people’s interactions in the comments here, or elsewhere online. Rebecca and I would both like to see challenging, critical, constructive, and self-aware analysis and interaction with the issues that we have raised over the course of this series. Ideas need to prove their mettle and be sharpened through disputation and ideological sparring, so we both particularly welcome alternative viewpoints that are open to receptive but spirited disagreement here. Unfortunately, I probably won’t have time to respond to comments much or at all over the next week, but I will hopefully return to them at some later point.

Thank you all so much for the time and thought that you have given to listening to and engaging with these podcasts!

Listen here!

Listen to the other parts of the review here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Posted in Audio, Bible, Controversies, Culture, My Reading, Reviews, Sex and Sexuality, Society, Theological, What I'm Reading | 25 Comments