The Egyptian Army

When the people of Israel left Egypt to go to Canaan, the land which the Lord had promised to Abraham for his descendants as an eternal inheritance, they were pursued by the mighty Egyptian army. The Israelite departure from Egypt was a hurried one. When Moses approached the King of Egypt asking permission to let the people go to worship Yahweh in the wilderness, the Pharaoh denied Moses' request and increased his oppression of the Israelites (Exodus 5:4-9).

Because of a series of calamities that plagued Egypt with disease, insects, and natural disasters that killed many Egyptians, the king of Egypt finally relented and gave his permission for the Israelites to leave his country (Ex. 12:31-33). However, Pharaoh had a change of mind. The Israelites were an important source of cheap labor, and their departure would cause a severe economic impact on the Egyptian economy. For this reason the Israelites fled in great haste because they feared that Pharaoh would change his mind again.

As soon as the people had left Egypt, "Pharaoh and his officials changed their minds” about allowing the people to depart Egypt (Ex. 14:5). Knowing that the departure of his slaves would cause a dramatic hardship on Egypt’s economy, Pharaoh began pursuing the escaping Israelites. He had his chariot made ready for battle and assembled his army in preparation to stop the people of Israel. Pharaoh’s army consisted of a group of professional soldiers who served under the command of army officers. Exodus 14:7 says that Pharaoh “took six hundred of the best chariots, along with all other chariots of Egypt, with officers over all of them."

To determine when the Israelites left Egypt is difficult. Two views dominate scholarly debate for the exodus date. The first view places the exodus in 1446 B.C. Those who accept the 15th century B.C. date for the exodus rely on 1 Kings 6:1 as the foundation for this early date. According to this text, Solomon began building the temple in the fourth year of his reign, exactly 480 years after the people of Israel left Egypt. Since this early view dates the construction of the temple in 966 B.C., the exodus occurred in the year 1446 B.C. The pharaoh of this period was Thutmosis III (1490-1435 B.C.). He was an able king who led several successful military campaigns in Canaan and Syria. Thutmosis III was able to use the power of his army to build a large empire in an area that extended as far as the Euphrates River.

Those who accept a late date for the exodus rely on the information provided in Exodus 1:11. This text declares that the people of Israel built the store cities of Pithom and Rameses for Pharaoh. Since the rebuilding of these cities is credit to Ramses II, whose reign began in 1290 B.C., the exodus then is placed in the 13th century. Ramses II is known as a builder of monuments. However, he came from a family of generals and conquerors. His many wars in Syria and Palestine give evidence of his prowess as a warrior. His most famous battle was against Muwatallis, king of the Hittites, near Kadesh on the Orontes, in which Ramses fought against an army of 30,000 soldiers.

Although to give a precise date for the exodus is difficult, the fact is that Israel was taken out of Egypt by God’s mighty power (Exod. 14:31) as He had promised Abraham and was pursued by the powerful Egyptian army, led by a pharaoh who was determined to prevent the people from escaping.

The Egyptian army assembled by Pharaoh to pursue the fleeing Israelites was a powerful professional army composed of "horses and chariots, charioteers and fighting men." In the Ancient Near East the horse was associated with war, and power for it was always associated with kings and armies and never with the common people. The horse was introduced in the Ancient Near East in the second millennium B.C. The use of chariots was widespread among the Hittites in Anatolia, the Hyksos in Syro-Palestine, and among the Kassites in Mesopotamia. The horse was introduced in Egypt by the Hyksos at the time they invaded and conquered Egypt. The Hyksos was a group of nomadic people who ruled Egypt for 150 years (1720-1570 B.C.). The Egyptian called them "Rulers of Foreign Land." This Hyksos was a coalition of Asiatic people with a predominant Semitic element. They controlled most of Egypt and established their capital at Avaris in the Nile Delta. They were a warrior people, fierce in battle. The Hyksos introduced the horse and the horse-drawn chariot in Egypt as a military weapon.

The early Egyptian chariots were not heavy. Egyptian chariots of the 15th century B.C. were built with two wheels and each wheel had four spokes. These military chariots were harnessed to two horses. They were made with a wooden frame and were partially covered with leather.

After the Hyksos were expelled from Egypt, the Egyptians continued to perfect the chariots as a military weapon. In a picture of Rameses II fighting against the Hittites at the battle of Kadesh, the king of Egypt is pictured on a chariot with six-spoke wheels drawn by two horses. Ramses is also pictured with his draw bow and with a quiver for his javelin and another for his arrows. Most Egyptian chariots carried a crew of two men: a driver, whose main duty was to control the horses and a fighting warrior whose concern was to fight the enemy. Other nations added a third person in the chariot, a person whose function was to carry a shield to protect the other two riders. The Israelites did not have any horses or chariots. Only during the united monarchy, in the days of David and Solomon, were horses and chariots introduced into Israel’s army.

The Egyptian army chariots were divided into units and each unit had its own officer (Ex. 14:7). The word for “officers,” shalishim, literally means “third.” This has been understood by some scholars to mean that the Egyptian chariot carried a third person. However, more likely the word represents the official title of a unit commander.

Exodus 13:18 declares that "the Israelites went up out of Egypt armed for battle." Although they had served as Egyptian slaves, possibly the people of Israel departed from Egypt equipped with some kind of weapons, either made, or bought, or taken from the Egyptians. But the size, organization, and the highly-disciplined personnel of the Egyptian army made whatever armament the Israelites had ineffective. This situation created panic among the fleeing Israelites. When the Israelites perceived that they were being pursued by the powerful Egyptian chariot forces, they were afraid. The people were "terrified" (Ex. 14:10) because they trapped between the desert and the sea and because they believed that their situation was hopeless.

Moses met the people’s hopelessness with the assurance that the Lord would fight for them. The mighty Egyptian army could not match the power God would display in defending His people. The God of Israel is portrayed as "a man of war" (Exod. 14:3 KJV), as "a warrior" (NIV) who protects and who fights to deliver His people. The idea that the Lord is a warrior comes from the ideology of the Holy War in which Yahweh Himself led the army of Israel in the war against the enemy's army. According to the exodus narrative, the Lord led his people by going before them by day in a pillar of cloud and by night in a pillar of fire (Ex. 13:21).

From the pillar of fire and cloud (Ex. 14:24) Yahweh came down against the Egyptian army and “made the wheels of their chariots come off so that they had difficult driving (Ex. 14:25). Another translation states that the Lord clogged the wheels of their chariots in the mud (see NIV note) and the Egyptian charioteers were unable to maneuver their chariots. When this happened, the Egyptians themselves recognized that the Lord was fighting for Israel. As a result of divine action, “the waters flowed back and covered the chariots and the horsemen–the entire army of Pharaoh that had followed the Israelites into the sea. Not one of them survived” (Ex. 14:28).

Thus the destruction of the powerful Egyptian army was accomplished by the mighty act of Yahweh. God fought against Egypt to save His people. Yahweh destroyed the mighty Egyptian army. By His power “the horse and its rider,” “Pharaoh’s chariots and his army" were hurled into the sea (Ex. 15:1,4). In its deliverance from Egypt and in the destruction of Pharaoh’s mighty army, Israel learned a great truth, that its salvation was accomplished “not by might nor by power” but by the Spirit of God, the Lord Almighty (Zech. 4:6).

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Note: This article was published in the Biblical Illustrator (Fall 1998), 46-49. To subscribe to the Biblical Illustrator visit www.LifeWay.com. To read the complete article, including the footnotes, visit www.claudemariottini.com.

Tags: Archaeology, Pharaoh , Egypt, Exodus , Chariots , Ancient War

Isaiah 7:14 and the TNIV

Christopher Heard has published a post in Higgaion in which he shows several problems with the TNIV translation. Several months ago, I wrote an article, “The NIV and the TNIV: Two Bibles with Contradictory Views” In which I studied the way the TNIV translated 2 Samuel 21:19.

In his post, Christ studies three passages: Jeremiah 7:22-23, Isaiah 7:14, and Isaiah 56:5-5. Below is Chris’ discussion of Isaiah 7:14:

(2) Isaiah 7:14
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the TNIV treats this one no better than the original NIV, but it’s still a pain when you’re trying to get your students into the mindset of the Syro-Ephraimite crisis (c. 735-732 BCE) and their translation makes them think of Christmas. The Hebrew text reads:

הנה העלמה הרה וילדת בן וקראת שמו עמנו אל

I should say that I have no objection to the evangelist Matthew (or “Matthew” if you prefer the “scare quotes”) quoting Isaiah 7:14 from the Septaugint and applying it to the birth of Jesus, but I do have a problem with translators acting as if the Hebrew text read the same as Matthew’s quotation. Again I will offer a more literalistic translation:

Look, the young woman has conceived and she will bear a son and she will call his name Immanu-El.

The TNIV reads:

The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.
There are two issues here. One is the translation of עלמה (‘almah), my “young woman,” TNIV’s “virgin.” I don’t want to be too dogmatic about the semantics of עלמה; whether or not the word actually had the sense “virgin” is debatable, although in some of the very few cases where the word is actually used in biblical Hebrew, the term applies to young women who are arguably virgins. You can probably make that argument in at least four of the seven instances where the term actually occurs in the Tanakh. I suspect that such a sense cannot really be sustained in the two instances where the Song of Songs uses the word עלמה, but maybe an argument could be made. Biblical Hebrew has another word, בתולה (bethulah), that specifically means “virgin” and draws attention to the virginity; in fact, בתולה is related to the abstract noun in Hebrew for virginity, בתולים. Certainly, by using the word עלמה instead of בתולה, Isaiah (or the author of the book who crafts Isaiah’s dialogue) declines to specifically emphasize a virginal state on the part of the young woman to whom Isaiah refers. An עלמה is not definitely or clearly a virgin simply by virtue of the term, but she is definitely and clearly a young woman, according to the semantics of עלמה.

But the noun עלמה by itself is not really the key to seeing that this particular עלמה is not a virgin; that key, rather, is the verb form הרה. To oversimplify matters a bit for those of you who don’t read Hebrew, Hebrew verbs have two “aspects,” perfect and imperfect. Perfect aspect is generally used for actions that are completed from the point of view of the narration, and imperfect for those that are not yet completed from the point of view of the narration. Each of these can be “converted” into the other by the use of the conjunction ו, a usage called the “waw consecutive” (it also goes by other names). There are much more sophisticated ways of explaining all this, but that’ll do for the moment. In this sentence, we have three key verbs. The first, הרה (harah), is a perfect aspect form of the verb “to conceive, to become pregnant.” Since the verb is in the perfect aspect, with no waw consecutive affixed, this indicates that the young woman in question is already pregnant—and hence, no doubt, not a virgin. She has not delivered the child yet, as indicated by the use of ילד (yalad, “to bear, to give birth”) in the imperfect aspect (the affixed ו, for those of you wondering, is not pointed in the Masoretic Text as a waw consecutive, but as a simple conjunctive waw). Thus, the young non-virginal woman is already pregnant but has not yet delivered. But the TNIV obscures all this—screwing up the entire point of the sign in the context of the Syro-Ephraimite crisis and making students think that the real point is about Jesus.

I strongly recommend that you visit Chris’ blog and read his post. After reading Chris’ post, you will discover the reason it is so important for translators not to allow their theological presuppositions influence the way a text is translated. To read Chris' post, click here.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Bible Translation, TNIV, Isaiah 7:14

Was Jesus Rich or Poor?

Was Jesus rich or poor? This issue was discussed in an article published in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on October 22. Several reasons are offered to prove that Jesus was rich and several reasons are presented to prove that Jesus was poor.

JESUS WAS RICH

The following are some of the reasons people believe Jesus was rich:

The wise men from the East made Jesus wealthy at his birth: The Rev. Creflo Dollar, senior pastor of World Changers Church International in College Park, says the Gospel of Matthew proves that Jesus was the recipient of wealth at his birth.

"In the book of Matthew in Chapter 2, the kings came to him, and they bought him gold, frankincense and myrrh."

Jesus had so much money that he needed a treasurer: The New Testament describes Judas as the "treasurer" for Jesus' disciples. "Why would a band of 12 men need a treasurer if they didn't have some treasures," says Bishop Johnathan Alvarado of Total Grace Christian Center in Decatur. "You need a treasurer when you have surplus."

Jesus wore expensive clothes: In the 19th chapter of John's Gospel, the Roman soldiers who crucified Jesus are depicted gambling for his "seamless" undergarment. Alvarado says Jesus wore garments that were a "nobleman's garments." "If his clothes were a poor man's clothes, why would centurions gamble for it?" Alvarado asks.

In a sermon titled “Jesus Was Not Poor,” published on the Web page of Harvest Church, it is written:

I call your attention to Mark 14:3-7. Jesus is dining in the home of Simon the leper in Bethany when a woman came with an alabaster vial of very costly perfume of pure spikenard and broke the vial and poured the contents over His head. There were some that were indignant and said, “Why has this perfume been wasted? For this perfume might have been sold for over three hundred pence, and the money given to the poor”. Jesus said, “Let her alone; why do you bother her? She has done a good deed to me. For the poor you always have with you , and whenever you wish, you can do them good: but you do not always have Me.” Jesus did not count Himself among the poor because Jesus was not poor! He was not necessarily wealthy (in natural terms) but Jesus Was Not Poor! — The Disciples Were Not Poor!

JESUS WAS POOR

The following are some of the reasons people believe Jesus was poor:

Roman soldiers gambled for the clothes of many condemned criminals.
"It was ordinary for prisoners to be stripped naked and looted by soldiers," says Sondra Ely Wheeler, an ethicist at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., and author of "Wealth as Peril and Obligation: The New Testament on Possessions" (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, $20). Wheeler says the soldiers also were gambling for the robe Herod placed on Jesus to mock him. "I'm sure that was expensive — he got it from Herod.

The text doesn't say that Judas was a treasurer, only that he held the common purse: Neither the King James nor the New International Version of the Bible calls Judas the "treasurer." The NIV calls him the "keeper of the money bag," and the King James says he "had the bag." Scholars say he held the money not for Jesus but for all the disciples, a common custom of the time for itinerant preachers. "To call Judas a treasurer is like looking at two kids who go to the movies and calling the one who holds the money the treasurer," Wheeler says.

Jesus did not have a lucrative occupation: Crossan says the Greek word in Matthew for Jesus' occupation has been translated into carpenter, but a more accurate translation would change the word to a laborer.

Jesus and his disciples were poor, according to archaeological evidence: Eric Meyers, a professor of archaeology at Duke University and editor of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East, says he has personally excavated the village of Nazareth where Jesus lived. He pointed out that the Bible says Jesus was so poor that he couldn't afford his own tomb for his burial. "There is no way to speak of wealth in that context," he says. “This is living at the margins of society, eking out an agricultural existence.”

Read the complete article published in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution by clicking here.

There is no doubt that the New Testament teaches that Jesus was poor and that he came from a family with limited wealth. At the time of his birth, Jesus was born in a cave. This may or may not indicate how wealthy Joseph and Mary were. However, when Jesus was presented in the temple, his parents sacrificed two turtle doves which, according to the Book of Leviticus (Leviticus 12:2-8), was the sacrifice offered by poor people.

When a scribe came to Jesus and declared his intentions to follow him, Jesus said to that man: “Foxes have dens to live in, and birds have nests, but I, the Son of Man, have no home of my own, not even a place to lay my head” (Matthew 8:20). Jesus did not have a home to call his own. As an itinerant preacher he probably depended on people like Lazarus and his family and well-to-do admirers to provide for him and his disciples.

In 2 Corinthians 8:9 Paul wrote that Jesus, “though he was very rich,” yet for our sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty he could make us rich. However, Paul is not speaking about finances but of spiritual matters. Jesus became poor by leaving his riches in heaven and by humbling himself and by becoming a servant of all.

The desire to prove that Jesus was rich is just an effort to justify a gospel of wealth and prosperity: If Jesus was rich then he desires his followers also to be rich.
Many years ago, one of my seminary professors said in class that Jesus was rich, or at least he was someone who belonged to the middle class. The reason for his view was that only someone who is rich or middle class could care and fight for the poor.

The idea that only the rich can liberate the poor and oppressed people represents an idealistic view that oppressed people are incapable of rising up to liberate themselves and others. A quick review of acts of liberation in history, I believe, will prove this theory wrong.

I think the text speaks for itself: Although Jesus was not destitute, he did not belong to the rich class of people who lived in Israelite society of the First Century A.D.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Jesus, Rich,Poor

The Suffering Servant and the Mission of the Church

John Bright, in his book The Kingdom of God: The Biblical Concept and Its Meaning for the Church, traces the theme of the Kingdom of God in the Old Testament and how it finds fulfillment in the message of Christ.

One of the greatest sections of the book is Bright’s description of the work and the mission of the Servant of God. Since few people have read this wonderful book, I have decided to quote part of Bright’s description of the work of the Servant. What follows is taken from The Kingdom of God, pages 150-155:

“The victory of [God’s] Kingdom, sure as God is sure, will be procured not by force or spectacular power, but by the sacrificial labor of God’s Servant. Here we learn of man’s resistance to the Kingdom, a resistance so bitter that it will cost the blood of the Servant. But here we see a God who provides as the instrument of man's redemption no ritual atonement or external law, but the suffering of that same Servant. God proposes to win his Kingdom through the vicarious sacrifice of his Servant. Here the Old Testament faith leaps quite beyond itself and walks arm in arm with the New.

But who is the Servant? Or, rather, what does he represent? That is far the most important question. And no problem of Old Testament exegesis is more difficult. The church has, of course, always seen in the Servant, particularly in ch. 53, a prophecy of Christ. That this is in a real sense true cannot be doubted; for Christ did, as we shall see, fulfill the pattern of the Servant. Yet it is hardly so simple as a mere prediction of the coming Redeemer. The figure of the Servant is a very fluid one; it seems to refer now to one thing, now to another; and any attempt to interpret it too rigidly will do violence to the evidence and almost certainly distort what the prophet wished to say.

The figure of the Servant oscillates between the individual and the group. In many places throughout the book the Servant is merely Israel (e.g., 41:8; 43:l0; 44:21; 45:4), so much so that the prophet can call the Servant blind and deaf (42: 19)-because that is exactly what Israel has been. In other places, although the Servant is still identified with Israel (e.g., 49:3), it is clear that he is something other than the visible people, because his first duty (49:5) is to lead Israel itself back to its destiny under God. Here it is plain that the Servant is not Israel itself but the righteous "Remnant" in Israel (e.g., 44:l; 51:1, 7), the true Israel which is obedient to God's calling and is a witness to his power in the world (49:l-6, 8-13; 42:l-7). But at all times the Servant is described in individual terms. And it is clear that sometimes this figure overshoots all that Israel, all that the true Israel, all that any individual in Israel ever was, and becomes a description of an ideal figure. He is the coming Redeemer of the true Israel who in his suffering makes the fulfillment of Israel's task possible; he is the central actor in the "new thing" that is about to take place; he is, we might say, the "new Moses" in the new Exodus now shortly to begin. The Servant? He is Israel; he is the true and loyal Israel; he is the great Servant who will be leader of the servant people--all in one!

But here is the most important point: however the Servant is pictured, even when conceived as the coming Redeemer, the Servant mission is always laid before Israel as her calling and destiny. It is not enough to describe the Servant; the call goes out: "Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the voice of his servant . . . ?" (50:10.)

Israel is to be the people of the Servant; only so will she be the people of God. As the Servant, prophetlike, proclaims the righteousness of God to the world, so must Israel; as the Servant, priestlike, mediates the salvation of God to men through his suffering, so must Israel. As the Servant gains a victory and a Kingdom through his sacrifice, so must Israel know no other royal path. Israel is to follow the Servant, take up the cross of the Servant, share in the Servant's redemptive mission. The Servant can no more be separated from Israel than Christ can from his Church, to which he said: "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross" (Mark 8:34). Israel is therewith forbidden ever to go back to the old lines. She is to take the road of missionary suffering in the footsteps of the Servant–for this alone is the pathway of the Kingdom.

Here at last is a word deep enough to reach down to the depths of the national humiliation and to speak to it. Here is a word, vast as the world was vast, capable of giving a people lost and astray destiny and direction. It is certainly a far deeper interpretation of suffering than any that had ever been heard before. Men have always wanted an explanation of tragedy, and those beaten Jews of that day must have needed it desperately. Prevailing Jewish belief would have tended to explain suffering as the punishment for sin (cf. 53:4b), as Job’s comforters did. The prophets had explained the national calamity in precisely those terms, and Second Isaiah had seconded the explanation (cf. 42:24-25). But it was obvious even then that this could not be a completely satisfactory answer. Deserts and awards did not always balance by any means, as Habakkuk saw on a national scale and Job on a personal one. It was easy for the Jew to feel that his people, sinful though they may have been, had been punished out of all proportion to their deserts. Israel had "received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins" (40:2). How is the overplus to be explained?

Now Israel's faith had, in fact, already reached far beyond an equation of suffering and sin, although small and dogmatic minds which liked neat explanations for everything clung to the equation stubbornly enough. It was plain that there was a suffering which came not from having sinned, but precisely from having done the will of God. The prophets had been living illustrations that to obey and to declare the Word of God costs exactly suffering. Jeremiah was a prime and recent example of the cost of choosing the Kingdom of God above the Kingdom of Judah.

He became like the Servant, to use his own words, ''a tame lamb led to the slaughter" (Jer. 11:19; cf. Isa. 53:7). Understanding men in Israel certainly knew this. But here is something far higher. For suffering is not merely the consequence of the Servant's task-it is the organ of it. His redemptive work and his world-wide victory will not only cost suffering as every battle costs casualties; it cannot be accomplished at all except by means of suffering. The victory of the Kingdom of God is achieved through the vicarious sacrifice of the Servant.

A more powerful summons to the people Israel could hardly be imagined. It was no less than an entire reinterpretation of their destiny as the people of God. It was a message of comfort, indeed, but not comfort as we are prone to understand that term. For here is no soothing syrup, no pink pills to be taken against fear, no technique for dealing with that frustrated feeling, no argumentation or answers to querulous questions. Here is a summons to stand again as the people of God and to take up a mighty task. It is the sort of summons that makes men into a people, for it calls them to the service of something greater than themselves.

The prophet addresses Israel as the people of the Servant. You have always, said he, thought yourselves a people chosen of God for a purpose, and so you were. But you forgot that destiny and were grievously punished, so grievously that you could not understand it and doubted all that you had believed in. Now, lift up your hearts! All is not ended! Before you is a new start and a greater destiny. God is calling forth for himself a true people, the people of the Servant. He is calling you to be that people and to serve his purpose. You are to be the vessels of his redemption, to bring Israel back to itself and to proclaim his salvation in the entire world. To be sure, you will find in this destiny no exemption from suffering, but precisely a summons to it. Yet suffering will be transfigured: no longer will it be to you brute agony without meaning, but the very instrument of redemption. In it you will enter into the very character of God's Servant and share in his redemptive purpose. Through your agony your original destiny in Abraham to be a blessing to all mankind is before you. And the victory is sure, for God is sure.

Clearly no profounder answer to suffering could be given than that. Suffering is not explained; it is transcended in destiny, as the people of the Kingdom of God.

But we must close with an anticlimax. There will be no apologies for this; for the anticlimax is not of our making, but is written in history. The Servant had few progeny. The light of the Servant was, we may suppose, too blindingly bright for human eyes, and men could not face it. To be sure, the great missionary message of the prophet was not lost. It finds its echoes in later writings (notably in the book of Jonah), and Judaism certainly did make proselytes. But Judaism never properly became a missionary religion. On the contrary, it tended to draw ever more tightly into itself. Nor did the Servant ever catch the popular fancy. True, the figure of the Servant was related to the sufferings of Israel; so much so that in later literature, notably in some of the psalms, the "poor and needy" have become virtually a synonym for the true people of God (we shall hear more of "the meek" who shall "inherit the earth; Matt. 5: 5). But Judaism could not see the Servant as Messiah. While there are a few hints of a lowly and suffering Messiah in later literature (e.g., Zech. 9:9; 12:10), they are very few. The Jews did not want a suffering Messiah. They, like ourselves, desired other things.

So the Servant went underground, as it were, and there lay dormant like seed under frozen soil. "In the fulness of time" there would come one who would say, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing" (Luke 421; cf. Isa. 61:l-2); who in his sacrificial labor, suffering, and death, quite literally "took upon him the form of a Servant" (Phil. 2:7 KJV). And when this same Jesus said to his disciples, "Go ye into all the world," he did no more and no less than lay upon them the Servant destiny.

And that, indeed, gives us to think. For as members of the Church of Christ our calling is that Servant calling. How seriously do we take it? Do we understand it at all? The world-wide mission of the Church we accept. We believe in one God; we declare that his Kingdom is over all the earth; we send missionaries to preach the gospel in far lands. Yet how little we have drawn the consequences of that great theology! Believing that one God is the God equally of all who call upon him, how often we seek to restrict the Kingdom along sectarian, or national, or racial lines--denying those beyond those lines comfortable fellowship with us in the Church of Christ How often, by the small righteousness we offer, we withhold vast areas of life from the domain of God's Kingdom, and even declare that the Word of God has no business to speak there! Over the centuries the Servant is speaking to us, demanding that we get this straight over the gunsights: the Kingdom of God knows no man-made limitations. The church which seeks, as did old Israel, to restrict the Kingdom to itself-whatever its official theology–simply does not hold a pure monotheism, but is worshiping a small, strange god made in its own image.

As for the cross of the Servant, it is not strange to us. We own to a crucified Saviour. In that we stand with the mainstream of Christian faith from the beginning onward, and we do well to do so. We enthrone that crucified Saviour in stained glass, wood, and stone-and in doctrine. To that cross we look for salvation. But we want that cross not at all. Indeed we would have it the chief business of religion to keep crosses far away. We want a Christ who suffers that we may not have to, a Christ who lays himself down that our comfort may be undisturbed. The call to lose life that it may be found again, to take up the cross and follow, remains mysterious and offensive to us. To be sure, we labor to bring men to Christ, and we pray, "Thy kingdom come." But our labor we see as a labor of conquest and growth, successful programs and dollars. Can it be that we are seeking to build the Kingdom of the Servant-without following the Servant? If we do so, we will doubtless build a great church-but will it have anything to do with the Kingdom of God?

Let us, then, be reminded that the task of the Church is not and cannot be other than the Servant task. We pray as we have been taught to pray, "Thy kingdom come." And the answer we get is the answer of the Servant: "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross." We renew our prayer, "Thy kingdom come," because we have no other prayer to pray. But we renew it with the deep at confession of sin: have mercy upon us, for we are unprofitable servants!”

I recommend this book to people who desire to gain a good understanding of how the concept of the Kingdom of God is developed in the Bible.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: John Bright, Kingdom of God, Suffering Servant, Isaiah 53, Suffering, Jeremiah

Did a Critic of Islam Go Too Far?

James Graff, in an article published in TIME.com, said that a  teacher in France is facing death threats because he wrote an article criticizing Islam and its prophet's emphasis on violence.

Graff wrote,

The French are always quick to quote Voltaire, but for the last week one of his bons mots has been particularly pertinent: "Even if I don't agree with what you say, I'm ready to fight to my death so you can say it."

What calls the phrase to mind is the plight of Robert Redeker, 52, a writer and high school philosophy teacher who has been under police protection and in hiding with his family since the newspaper Le Figaro published his op-ed piece about Islam on Sept.19. Entitled "Faced with Islamist intimidations, what should the free world do?," Redeker's article called the Koran "a book of extraordinary violence" that shows the prophet Mohammad to have been "a pitiless warlord, pillager, massacrer of Jews and polygamist." The very day the piece came out, Redeker started receiving e-mail death threats. In a letter to a friend published this week in Le Monde, Redeker wrote that one website condemning him to death included a map showing exactly where he and his family lived, along with photos of him and his workplaces. In the letter, published as part of an appeal of support signed by French intellectuals including Bernard-Henri Lévy, André Glucksmann and Elisabeth Badinter, Redeker writes that he and his family are being forced to move every two days. "I'm a homeless person," he complains. "I exercised a constitutional right, and I'm being punished for it right here on the territory of the Republic."

Redeker is only the latest in a lengthening list of Europeans who have been subjected to death threats from Muslims outraged by criticism of their faith and prophet. British writer Salman Rushdie survived the Ayatollah Khomeini's 1989 fatwa only by adopting a quasi-clandestine existence. Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was gunned down on the street two years ago in Amsterdam for insulting Islam. His co-filmmaker, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, frustrated at living under constant police protection, resigned earlier this year from the Dutch parliament and moved to the United States.

The outcry over Pope Benedict XVI's recent comments about Islam, Redeker wrote, underlined that the religion was trying to stifle "that which is most precious to the West and which doesn't exist in any Muslim country: liberty of thought and expression." He claimed that France was "more or less consciously submitting itself to the dictates of Islam" by such gestures as banning string bikinis during this summer's Paris Plage, the annual beach party in Paris; setting up times when only women can visit public pools; and allowing Muslim schoolchildren to get special food in school cafeterias.

Read the full article by clicking here.

Claude F, Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Simcha Jacobovici: The Naked Archaeologist

By now, everyone has heard of Simcha Jacobovici. His special program on the History Channel, The Exodus Decoded, has generated much discussion and controversy. In August 2006, I wrote a post, “The Exodus Decoded,” in which I gave a brief evaluation of Jacobovici’s view.

The best and the most comprehensive review of The Exodus Decoded was written by Christopher Heard. Chris has written 14 posts in Higgaion exposing the fallacies of Jacobovici ’s views. In addition to his comprehensive review, Chris also lists several other sites that are related to The Exodus Decoded.

But the question remains: Who is Simcha Jacobovici? Jacobovici is an award-winning Canadian documentary director and producer and also a well-published writer and lecturer. He has been called a modern-day Indiana Jones who brought together a little of skepticism, a penchant for archaeology, and the passion of an investigative journalist to produce The Exodus Decoded.

A recent article in UKTV.com. provides some biographical information about Jacobovici and his work. As for his view of the Bible and archaeology, the article says:

Jacobovici is not merely out to get stuffy archaeologists to call a spade a spade. He is probing some of the most controversial new theories in Biblical archaeology: that the invention of the alphabet contributed to the Biblical Exodus; that recently discovered Bronze Age ceramic penises may explain why Delilah fell for Samson; and that an African army rescued Jerusalem in the 8th Century B.C. That he can combine such pioneering investigation with more irreverent questioning such as “Where do you stop for a good falafel when you’re on your way to find the real Mount Sinai?” shows that there’s no reason why you can’t learn some amazing history while having a bit of fun at the same time.

Read the whole article by clicking here.

If you are desire to read more about many of the fallacies presented by Jacobovici in The Exodus Decoded, I highly recommend that you read Christopher Heard’s posts in Higgaion.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Archaeology, Exodus Decoded, Simcha Jacobovici

The Quest for the Lost Temple Treasure of Jerusalem

British archeologist Sean Kingsley is claiming that the gold and silver vessels of the Temple in Jerusalem are hidden in the caves under Mar Theodosius, a Greek Orthodox monastery on the edge of the Judean desert, in the village of Ubadiyah, about 6 miles east of Bethlehem.

In his new book, God's Gold: The Quest for the Lost Temple Treasure of Jerusalem, Kingsley writes that vessels of the temple disappeared from public view more than 1,500 years ago at the time Rome was sacked by the Vandals in 455 A.D. According to Kingsley, among the vessels hidden at Mar Theodosius include the seven-branch gold Menorah, the Table of the Presence, and a pair of silver trumpets.

Israeli officials deny Kingsley’s claims. Many people in Israel believe the Temple vessels are hidden in the Vatican. In fact, in 1996 the Religious Affairs Minister, Shimon Shetreet, acting on behalf of Israel, asked the Vatican to return the Temple vessels to Israel.

In a report published in YnetNews, Yaakov Lappin writes:

Despite the prospect that the Temple artifacts could be so close to home, Kingsley warns of the dangers of attempting to retrieve them. “So many dangerous dreams for messianic redemption hinge on this Jewish birthright that I believe it would remain far safer for humanity locked away in the cleansing soils of the Holy Land, dreamt over but not recovered," Kingsley says.

He adds: "The Temple Mount is the centre of world religion but also a seething volcano of human hatred in the Arab-Israeli conflict. It takes very little provocation for all hell to break loose in Jerusalem. The Temple treasure should today be a global treasure that unites people, not a political tool validating the construction of a Third Temple on the Haram al-Sharif. If the menorah's Diaspora over the centuries tells us anything then it is a wise lesson about the irrationality of religious fanaticism: every power that sought to imprison this icon eventually crumbled into dust."

Where is the Menora?

Kingsley says that the fate of the Temple Menora, the official symbol of the State of Israel, is likely tied to the other artifacts pillaged by Rome: "Most of the splendours of the Temple were eagerly liquidated into cash by the emperor Vespasian who needed 4,000 million sesterces (£2.25 billion) to get the (Roman) empire back on an even keel after civil war, anarchy and the great fire of Rome of AD 64 left the Eternal City looking worn out. The menora, silver trumpets and Table of the Divine Presence were acknowledged as key symbols of power. Control these and you controlled heaven, the seas and all between. Rome knew that the menora was a hotline to God and was keen to 'imprison' this divine power for its own benefit. The same held true for subsequent possessors - Vandals and Byzantines."

Kingsley is confident that the Menora is not, however in the Vatican vaults, as is widely suspected by many. "I have absolutely no political or theological axe to grind but my new research proves beyond doubt that the menora was never in Rome in the medieval period or later but by the seventh century AD was only a few miles away from Jerusalem in the West Bank."

Read the complete news release by clicking here and here.

Personally, I do not believe that the Temple treasure is hidden at Mar Theodosius. When the Romans destroyed the Temple at Jerusalem after a Jewish revolt, the Temple was looted and the Romans took the gold, the silver, and the sacred vessels to Rome. According to some historical accounts, the Temple treasure was on public display in the Temple of Peace in the Forum, in Rome between 75 A.D. and the early 5th century.

We may never know what happened to the Temple treasure.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Archaeology, Temple Treasure, Temple, Menorah, Sean Kingsley, Mar Theodosius

Yahweh and the Other Gods

“You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3).

The second commandment declares that in Israel no other god should be worshiped in addition to Yahweh. While the intent of the commandment may have included the idea of monotheism, the words of the commandment do not deny the existence of other gods. The truth of monotheism, that there was no other God besides Yahweh, came into existence late in the faith of Israel.

Henotheism is a word used to describe the worship of one god without denying the existence of other gods. The people of Israel believed in and worshiped Yahweh as their God, but they also acknowledged the existence of other gods.

Many people in the Ancient Near East were polytheists. Polytheism is a system of belief in which people worshiped many gods. In general, most polytheistic religions are associated with the various aspects of nature worship. Since primitive civilizations did not have a scientific understanding of the world in which they lived, most people in primitive societies associated natural phenomena with the realm of the gods.

Several gods are mentioned in the Old Testament. These gods were associated with people who lived in the various nations that composed the world of the Bible. Some of these gods were worshiped by the people of Israel. According to the biblical writers, the apostasy of Israel was the reason the people went into exile.

Below is a list of some of the gods mentioned in the Old Testament:

1. Adrammelech (2 Kings 17:31)

The name of one of the gods the people of Sepharvaim worshiped. The Sepharvaim were a group of people the Assyrians settled in Samaria after the fall of the Northern Kingdom.

2. Anammelech (2 Kings 17:31)

Another god of the people of Sepharvaim. The people of Sepharvaim worshiped their gods by sacrificing their children by burning them.

3. Ashima (2 Kings 17:30)

A god worshiped by the people of Hamath who settled in Samaria after the fall of the Northern Kingdom.

4. Ashtoreth (1 Kings 11:5)

Ashtoreth was the goddess of the Sidonians. Ashtoreth is the name by which the Canaanite goddess Astarte is called in the Old Testament. She was the consort of Baal, the Canaanite storm god.

5. Baal (Numbers 25:3)

Baal was the Canaanite storm god. Baal was also associated with the fertility of the land. The word “Baal” means “lord,” “husband.” Many people in Israel worshiped Baal in his different manifestations. The earliest mention of Baal in the Old Testament is in Number 25:3 when the people of Israel yoked themselves to the Baal of Peor.

6. Bel (Jeremiah 51:44)

The name by which Marduk, the god of the Babylonians, is called in the Old Testament. Bel appears in the Apocrypha, in the addition to the book of Daniel.

7. Chemosh (1 Kings 11:7)

The national god of the Moabites to whom Solomon built a temple in the mountains east of Jerusalem. The writer of Kings calls this god “the abomination of Moab.” The Moabites were called “The people of Chemosh” (Numbers 21:29).

8. Dagon (Judges 16:23)

Dagon appears in the Old Testament as the god of the Philistines. The nature and characteristics of Dagon are not very clear. Some scholars have identified Dagon as a “grain” god while others have identified him as a “fish” god. It seems that the Philistines adopted the cult of Dagon after they settled in the land of Canaan.

9. Kaiwan (NRSV) or Kiyyun (ESV; Amos 5:26)

Amos calls Kaiwan “your star-god.” Kaiwan was an astral god worshiped by some people of the Northern Kingdom after they became vassals of the Assyrians. This god is associated with the planet Saturn.

10. Milcom (1 Kings 11:5)

Milcom is known as “the abomination of the Ammonites.” He is also known as Molech. Jeremiah says that the Israelites offered their sons and daughters as a sacrifice to Molech by burning them. The meaning of the name is not clear. Probably, the meaning of the name is derived from the word “melek,” the Hebrew word for king.

11. Molech (Jeremiah 32:35)

Molech is the same god as Milcom above. The name Molech comes from the consonants of the word “melek,” “king” and the vowels of the Hebrew word “bosheth,” a word that means “shame.”

12. Nebo (Isaiah 46:1)

The name of a Babylonian god that appears only in Isaiah. The name of this god appears in the name of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon.

13. Nehushtan (2 Kings 18:4)

This was the bronze serpent worshiped by some people in Judah in the days of Hezekiah. This deity was associated with the serpent Moses made in the wilderness (Numbers 21:8-9).

14. Nibhaz (2 Kings 17:31)

The name of a god worshiped by the Avvites, a people brought to Samaria by the Assyrians.

15. Nisroch (2 Kings 19:37)

The Assyrian god worshiped by Sennacherib, king of Assyria. According to the biblical text Sennacherib was worshiping his god when he was killed by his sons.

16. Rimmon (2 Kings 5:18)

A Syrian god. After Naaman was cured from his leprosy and proclaimed his faith in the God of Israel, he recognized that he would still have to bow down to Rimmon because he served the king of Syria.

17. Sakkuth (NRSV) or Sikkuth (ESV; Amos 5:26)

A Babylonian deity associated with astral worship. In the book of Amos, Sakkuth appears together with Kaiwan.

18. Succoth-benoth (2 Kings 17:30)

The name of a god worshiped by the people of Babylon who lived in Samaria after the Assyrians conquered the city of Samaria in 722 B.C.

19. Tammuz (Ezekiel 8:14).

A Mesopotamian god whose cult has been associated with the cycle of the harvest. The weeping for Tammuz is a reference to the death of the god, which in turn was associated with the agricultural calendar

20. Tartak (2 Kings 17:31)

The god worshiped by the Avvites, a group of people brought to Samaria by the Assyrians after they conquered the Northern Kingdom.

21. The Queen of Heaven (Jeremiah 7:18).

The name of an unidentified goddess worshiped by the people of Judah in the days of the prophet Jeremiah (7th and 6th centuries B.C.). The Queen of Heaven appears only in the book of Jeremiah (7:18; 44:17, 18, 19, 25). This goddess has been identified with the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar and with the Canaanite goddess Ashtoreth, also known as Astarte.

In a future post I will discuss in more detail the raise of monotheism in Israel.


Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary


Tags: Exodus 20:3, Decalogue, Polytheism, Henotheism, Monotheism

Nebuchadnezzar: King of Babylon

Nebuchadnezzar II, the Neo-Babylonian Empire’s second king, was the most famous king of the Chaldeans, a people whom Jeremiah called “an ancient nation” (Jer. 5:15). As king, Nebuchadnezzar brought fame and prosperity to the Empire. Of all the foreign kings the Old Testament mentions, this Nebuchadnezzar is the most prominent and the one with which Bible students are most familiar. Nebuchadnezzar reigned from 605-562 B.C.

The Kingship of Nebuchadnezzar

Nebuchadnezzar had a reputation as a great builder. He boasted that Babylon was a “great” city that he built to be his royal city and the capital of his empire (Dan. 4:30). Nebuchadnezzar built the Ishtar Gate, a magnificent palace for himself; he rebuilt the ziggurat (a temple in the form of a pyramidal tower) and he built a temple for Marduk, the chief god of the Babylonian pantheon. His best-known project was Babylon’s Hanging Gardens, which he built for his wife, Amystis, the daughter of the king of Media.

According to Babylon texts, Nebuchadnezzar received praise as a lawgiver, a judge, and a king who was devoted to justice and who opposed injustice and corruption. His motivation for fairness was to please his god, Marduk, and to thus enjoy a long life:

“O Marduk, my lord, do remember my deeds favorably as good [deeds], may (these) my good deeds be always before your mind (so that) my walking in Esagila and Ezida–which I love–may last to old age.”

Nebuchadnezzar’s name appears in two different forms in the Old Testament. In the King James Version, “Nebuchadnezzar” appears 55 times–“Nebuchadrezzar” 33 times. Since the official Babylonian documents use Nebuchadrezzar to designate the king of Babylon, this must be the name’s original and official form. Traditionally, the name Nebuchadnezzar has been translated “Nabu protect the boundary.” Recent studies of Babylonian documents have produced another
possible translation, “Nabu protect the crown prince.”

Nebuchadnezzar’s father, Nabopolassar led a Chaldean revolt against the Assyrians and in 626 B. C. founded the Neo-Babylonian Empire. After establishing an alliance with the Medes, Nabopolassar and his allies besieged Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian Empire. After a three-month siege of the city, they conquered it in 612 B.C. The remnant of the Assyrian army retreated to Haran where they were defeated in 610 B.C. The Assyrians made a last effort to stop the Babylonian army, retreating to Carchemish to confront them one last time.

During the struggle between Assyria and Babylon, Neco ascended to the throne of Egypt and became king in 609. In an attempt to stop the advance of the Babylonian army, Neco prepared his army and went up to the Euphrates River to aid Assyria in their struggle against Babylon (2 Kings 23:29). On his way to Carchemish, Neco was confronted at Megiddo by Josiah, king of Judah, who had taken the side of Babylon. In the struggle that ensued, Neco killed Josiah (v. 29; 2 Chron.35:20-24). Neco was detained at Megiddo long enough to allow the Babylonians to defeat the remnant of the Assyrian army at Carchemish.

In 605 B.C., Neco returned to the area with ambitions of extending his rule in Mesopotamia. Nabopolassar, unable to fight because of the illness that eventually killed him, sent his oldest son Nebuchadnezzar to confront the Egyptians. At Carchemish the decisive battle between Nebuchadnezzar and Neco took place. Nebuchadnezzar soundly defeated Neco and subjugated Sidon, Tyre, the Philistia and other countries in Syro-Palestine (see Jer. 46:2; 47:2-7).

At this time Nebuchadnezzar received notice of his father’s death. Nebuchadnezzar left the army in the hands of his field commanders and returned to Babylon where he was crowned king of Babylon in 605 B.C.

Nebuchadnezzar in the Book of Kings

The Old Testament presented more than one view of Nebuchadnezzar. The book of Kings presents him as Jerusalem’s conqueror . After his victory against Egypt at the battle of Carchemish, Nebuchadnezzar made Jehoiakim, king of Judah, a vassal of Babylon. Jehoiakim submitted to Nebuchadnezzar for three years (604-601 B.C.). In 601 B.C., Egypt and Babylon met again with heavy losses on both sides. Nebuchadnezzar returned home to reorganize his army. Jehoiakim, counting on Egyptian help, revolted against the Babylonians (2 Kings 24:1).

Nebuchadnezzar did not campaign against Palestine from 600-598 B.C. Unable to fight against Judah, Nebuchadnezzar sent mercenary soldiers to fight against Jehoiakim (vv. 2-3). In 598 B.C., Babylon advanced against Judah. Egypt promised to help Jehoiakim, but Egypt's military help did not materialize (v. 7 ). Jehoiakim died at this time; Jeremiah 22:18-19 and 36:30 suggest that he was assassinated. Jehoiakim’s son, Jehoiachin was made the new king of Judah (597 B.C.), but three months later he submitted to Nebuchadnezzar–who then deported to Babylon the king of Judah, his mother, the royal family, the palace officials, the army officers, fighting men, craftsmen, and smiths. He also took all the men of substance and all the men who were capable of war. According to 2 Kings 24:12-16, 10,000 people were taken into exile. Nebuchadnezzar also took all the temple and palace treasures and broke all the golden vessels used in temple worship. Jehoiachin remained in a prison in Babylon for 37 years, until Evil-merodach, Nebuchadnezzar’s son, freed him (2 Kings 25:27-30; Jer. 52:31-34).

In 596 B.C., Nebuchadnezzar placed Zedekiah on Judah’s throne as the new king. Zedekiah served Nebuchadnezzar eight years, but in his ninth, maybe hoping for military help from Egypt (Jer. 37:5), Zedekiah rebelled against Babylon. In 588 Nebuchadnezzar came back to Jerusalem and once again besieged the city. Archaeology has confirmed the scope Nebuchadnezzar’s invasion of Judah. Archaeology has revealed that many of Judah’s fortified cities were destroyed. In March 586 B.C., the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem and burned the temple as well as the great houses of the city. At this time a second deportation took place. Judah’s most important people were taken into exile; only the poorest were left behind.

Nebuchadnezzar in the Book of Jeremiah

The book of Jeremiah differs somewhat in its interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar and his assault on Judah. Presenting a more than mainly-historical account of the book of 2 Kings, Jeremiah offers an expanded interpretation that affirms the sovereignty of God and His guidance of Judah’s destruction. In the past Jeremiah had proclaimed that God would send the “people of the north” to bring judgment upon Judah (Jer. 25:9 NIV). Now for the first time Jeremiah proclaims that the foe from the north was Babylon, under the leadership of Nebuchadnezzar (vv. 1-9).

In the book of Jeremiah, the Lord referred to “my servant” Nebuchadnezzar “ three times (Jer. 25:9; 27:6; 43:10). Old Testament writers generally used the title “Servant of Yahweh” to designate persons who had a special relationship with God and who were obedient to God’s will in the life of His people.

Jeremiah designated Nebuchadnezzar the “Servant” of God as a way to present Babylon’s king as the individual God appointed to have dominion over the nations and the one who would act as the instrument of God's justice (Jer. 25:8-11). Because Nebuchadnezzar was acting as God’s agent, Jeremiah declared to the people that rebellion against Nebuchadnezzar was rebellion against God. The Lord commands Jeremiah to write his oracles on a scroll as a warning to Judah (Jer. 36:1-4). According to Jeremiah, Nebuchadnezzar’s conquest and subjugation of the nations would happen with God’s approval:

“Now I will hand all your countries over to my servant Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon; I will make even the wild animals subject to him. All nations will serve him and his son and his grandson until the time for his land comes; then many nations and great kings will subjugate him (Jer. 27:6-7 NIV).

In Jehoiakim’s 5th year of (604 B.C.), the people of Judah held a fast to avert a possible Babylonian invasion (Jer. 36:9). At the time of the fast, Baruch, Jeremiah's scribe, read the words of the scroll to the people assembled in the temple (v. 10) and to the king (vv. 20-26). Jehoiakim refused to repent and burned Jeremiah’s scroll. In spite of the fast, Babylon invaded Judah and Jehoiakim submitted to Nebuchadnezzar in 604 B.C. (2 Kings 24:1).

In the book of Jeremiah, Nebuchadnezzar is God’s instrument to bring divine judgment to Judah. In the past, God had sent his servants the prophets to warn the people to repent of their evil ways, but they refused (25:4). Now, God is sending his “servant” Nebuchadnezzar to punish Judah for their wickedness. Judah and the nations of Syro-Palestine have to submit themselves to Nebuchadnezzar; refusal to submit means destruction (see 27:8).

Nebuchadnezzar and Yahweh

The picture that Jeremiah paints of Nebuchadnezzar reflects the prophet’s understanding of God’s work. Jeremiah understood that Yahweh had given Nebuchadnezzar the power and the authority to subjugate kingdoms and nations. As the instrument of God’s judgment, Nebuchadnezzar was God’s chosen agent, God’s servant who brought judgment over God’s rebellious people. In the end, the biblical tradition says that Nebuchadnezzar came to the realization that the God of Israel was the supreme God (Dan. 2:47; 3:28-29).

Jeremiah, portrayed Nebuchadnezzar as the servant of the God of Israel–a chosen individual who had “the responsibility of performing a designated function in Yahweh’s behalf.”

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Note: This article was published in the Biblical Illustrator 31 (Spring 2005) 19-23. The Biblical Illustrator is published by LifeWay (www.Lifeway.com).

Tags: Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon, Jeremiah, Exile, Neco, Egypt, Jerusalem

Rereading Isaiah 62:4: Beulah Land

One of my favorite hymns is Beulah Land, a hymn written by Edgar Page Stites and John R. Sweney:

I've reached the land of corn and wine,
And all its riches freely mine;
Here shines undimmed one blissful day,
For all my night has passed away.

Refrain

O Beulah Land, sweet Beulah Land,
As on thy highest mount I stand,
I look away across the sea,
Where mansions are prepared for me,
And view the shining glory shore,
My Heav'n, my home forever more!

My Savior comes and walks with me,
And sweet communion here have we;
He gently leads me by His hand,
For this is Heaven's border land.

The beauty of this hymn is that it speaks of the eternal glory prepared for believers. Beulah Land is “Heaven's border land,” a land where “shines undimmed one blissful day, For all my night has passed away.”

Today, this beautiful hymn is seldom sung in churches where praise songs and contemporary Christian rock music dominate the worship experience. But this phenomenon is not peculiar to contemporary churches. A brief survey of hymnals from several denominations reveals that this hymn is either unknown or no longer relevant to many churches.

The theme of Beulah Land appears in many Christian hymns but many people who know the hymn, sing its words, and love its message do not know the story behind Beulah Land.

The concept of Beulah Land comes from a passage found in Isaiah 62: 4. The reason many people are unfamiliar with the concept of Beulah Land is because the word appears only in older translations of Isaiah 62:4, including the King James Version and the American Standard Version of 1901:

Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken; neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate: but thou shalt be called Hephzibah, and thy land Beulah; for Jehovah delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be married (Isaiah 62:4 ASV).

The words of the prophet are words of encouragement: Never again will you be called the Godforsaken City (Isaiah 62:4 NLB). Because of its exile in Babylon, the people of Judah believed that God had forsaken his people: Zion said, “The LORD has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me” (Isaiah 49:14).

The people’s feelings were not completely without merit, for the Lord himself had affirmed that for a short moment he had actually forsaken them: I did forsake you for a brief moment (Isaiah 54:7). Even Israel’s enemies, in derision, mocked the people by calling their land “Desolate.”

After the Babylonian invasion under Nebuchadnezzar, the land became a waste and desolate, a land of ruins (Isaiah 49:19). The cities of Judah had become a “desolation” (Jeremiah 34:22).

But now, with the redemption of Israel and the return of the people to their land, things changed. The land that once was desolate has become like the garden of Eden; and the waste, desolate, and ruined cities are now fortified and inhabited, just as the prophet Ezekiel had proclaimed (Ezekiel 36:35).

From now on, with the restoration of Israel, the land will be called Hephzibah. This word literally means “My Delight Is in Her.” The land also will be Beulah. The word “Beulah” means “Married.”

The metaphor of marriage is used in the Old Testament to describe the relationship between God and his people. The concept of Yahweh as Israel’s husband appears in Hosea, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. This idea is clearly expressed in Isaiah 62:5: As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.

All the modern translations, contrary to the King James Version and a few other old translations, translate the word “Beulah,” rather than allow the word to remain untranslated. For instance, the ESV correctly translates Isaiah 62:4 as follows:

You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate, but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Married; for the LORD delights in you, and your land shall be married.

The correct interpretation of Isaiah 62:4 clearly shows that Beulah Land carries no idea of “Heaven's border land,” a land where “shines undimmed one blissful day,” where all our nights have passed away. If this is so, from where then, does the idea of Beulah Land as heaven’s border land come?

To the surprise of many, the idea of the land of Beulah as heaven’s border land comes from John Bunyan’s Pilgrim Progress. In his work, Bunyan says that “the Enchanted ground is place so nigh to the land Beulah, and so near the end of their race.” He also says that the land of Beulah is the place “where the sun shineth night and day.”

Bunyan’s concept of Beulah land as heaven’s border land entered into Christian hymns through the Holiness Movement in America. In his writings, Stites wrote the following words about Beulah Land:

It was in 1876 that I wrote `Beulah Land.' I could write only two verses and the chorus, when I was overcome and fell on my face. That was one Sunday. On the following Sunday I wrote the third and fourth verses, and again I was so influenced by emotion that I could only pray and weep. The first time it was sung was at the regular Monday morning meeting of Methodists in Philadelphia [Pennsylvania]. Bishop McCabe sang it to the assembled ministers. Since then it is known wherever religious people congregate. I have never received a cent for my songs. Perhaps that is why they have had such a wide popularity. I could not do work for the Master and receive pay for it.

My former student, Karen Roberts, who now serves as Chapel Coordinator at Northern Baptist Seminary, wrote a paper in which she traced the development of Beulah Land in Christian hymnody and the Holiness Movement in America.

Roberts’ paper, “Beulah Land in Christian Music Tradition: Isaiah 62:4 (KJV),” is a study of Isaiah 62:4 and how the concept of Beulah Land appears in Christian hymns. She lists 13 different hymns that use the Beulah Land metaphor. According to Roberts,

Many of these hymns used the Beulah Land metaphor both in the present and future sense. In these hymns is the expression of the present reality, “Praise God, I live in Beulah land, My house will all the storms withstand; It is not built on sinking sand, My home is on the rock,” and anticipation of the future, “Is not this the land of Beulah, Blessed, blessed land of light, Where the flowers bloom forever, And the sun is always bright?”

Karen Roberts’ paper is available on my web page. You can download and read the paper by clicking here.

To read the paper, you will need Adobe Reader. If you do not have Adobe Reader on your computer, click here and download a free copy of the Reader directly from Adobe.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: John Bunyan, Beulah Land, Holiness Movement, Edgar Stites, Pilgrim’s Progress, Isaiah 62:4

In The News: British Official Criticizes Muslim Veil

In a news article published in The Washing Post on October 6, it is reported that Jack Straw, the former Foreign Secretary in the Blair government, suggested that the veiling of Muslim women causes racial separation in British society.

In his  remarks, Jack Straw, who now serves as the leader of the House of Commons, criticized the Islamic custom of women wearing a full facial veil.  Straw urged Muslim women to remove the veil when talking to him.  According to Straw, the veil is “a visible statement of separation and of difference” which can put in jeopardy social harmony in British society.

The following is an excerpt of the news report published in The Washington Post:

Britain has been plunged into a debate over Islamic integration after revelations that former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw asks Muslim women visiting his office to remove their veils and a Muslim policeman was excused from guarding the Israeli Embassy.

The uproars have left many questioning whether Britain's multicultural ideals can withstand the strains of a cultural divide that is increasingly tormenting much of Europe.

Straw said in a newspaper column published Thursday that he believes the veils favored by some Muslim women inhibit communication and are a sign of division in society. At his constituency office, he said he asks that veiled women reveal their faces, adding that the women have always complied, and a female assistant is always present. On Friday, British media quoted Straw as going further _ saying that he would prefer that Muslim women not wear veils at all.

"I just find it uncomfortable if I'm trying to have a conversation with someone whose face I can't see," Straw told the British Broadcasting Corp.

Read the complete article by clicking here.

The veiling of women has already caused problems in American society.  In Florida, a judge has allowed Muslim women to wear the veil while taking their picture for their driver’s license.

What do you think about this issue?  Leave a comment and let us dialogue on this issue.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Pope to announce limbo does not exist

In a news report written by Daniel Patrick Sheehan and published in the Chicago Tribune on
October 6, 2006, Pope Benedict XVI is expected today to reject the Catholic doctrine of Limbo.  Sheehan writes:

To Catholics of generations past, baptism wasn't something to be deferred until a convenient time, because the souls of infants who died without it were thought to be consigned to something other than heaven. Limbo.

Not quite heaven, not nearly hell, it was regarded as a place of eternal happiness that fell just short of paradise, reserved for unbaptized children and righteous souls who lived before Christ.

It was a widespread and influential teaching for centuries. But Pope Benedict XVI is expected today to reject the concept, endorsing the conclusions of a theological commission that said unbaptized children who die before reaching the age of reason go to heaven.

St. Augustine, an influential church father, theorized the existence of limbo in the fifth century, when entry to heaven was thought to be restricted to baptized Christians. Nobody wanted to believe God would send innocent souls to hell, so the saint theorized the existence of limbo.

"I call it `Paradise Park,'" said Larry Chapp, a professor of theology at DeSales University in Center Valley, evoking a kind of gilded Disneyland as he described the concept of a haven on the fringe of heaven.

To read the remainder of the article, click here.

The doctrine of Limbo has never been a problem for non-Catholics since most Protestants in general believe that there are only two places where individuals go after death: either heaven or hell.

As for the salvation of children, most Protestants reject the concept of original sin, thus, affecting also their view about baptism.  For this reason, Protestants reject the concept of Limbo because they believe in the power of God to make provision for the salvation of infants through the death of Christ on the cross.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

The Great Judgment Day

Helmut Thielicke was a great theologian who taught in the theological faculty of the university of Hamburg where he served as a dean and professor. He was also a great preacher. Thielicke preached in the main church of Hamburg, St. Michaelis. For more biographical information on Thielicke, click here.

Many of the Thielicke(s sermons have been published in English. His sermons show the devout faith of a great theologian and his abilities as a preacher of the Gospel. Because of his preaching, he was dismissed from his university position by the Third Reich in 1940.

Some of my favorite sermons by Thielicke were published in Between God and Satan, The Waiting Father: Sermons on the Parables of Jesus and How the World Began: Man in the First Chapters of the Bible. The latter book is a collection of sermons on the first eleven chapters of Genesis.

In his sermons on (The Great Sabbath,( a sermon based on Genesis 2:1-3, Thielicke speaks of the Great Sabbath of God: Judgment Day. Thielicke wrote:

So, above all the restlessness of our human activity, above all the striving and devising, we must keep in sight the throne of God, where he calmly and peacefully observes the sabbath of creation. Only he who sees this throne of rest acquires the calm composure that enables him to look beyond the tumult to the world(s horizon, to the place where the enigmatical world is grounded in the higher thoughts of a heart that is thinking of us, and where the world is summoned into being by these higher thoughts. And he will also look to that other horizon where on the Last Day this would again return to him.

Then, in his creative imagination, the imagination of a theologian who truly understands the heart of God, Thielicke describes the last day of the world, the day when every individual must appear before the throne of God:

When on the last day of the world, at the Last Judgment, I am compelled to stand before the throne of God and he says to me, (Who are you?( then even before I can open my mouth the Accuser will answer and say, (Lord, I have the chronicle of his past in my hands. Here is the list of the secret things in his life that nobody knows about. Here are the words with which he maligned and hurt and killed. And here are noted the times, when he said and did nothing while his neighbor was hoping for his help. And this, Lord, is a profile of his jealousies, his hatreds, his envies, and his greeds. This is what he was, Lord, this is his past, as only I and none of his fellow men, for whom he put on an act, know it. This is what he is, because he is his past.(

And when the great Accuser has spoken a miracle will happen. For then God, the great Judge of the Last Judgment, will say: (Stop your attacks! When I ask who this is, I do not want to know what he has done. For his past has been canceled.(

And at that moment, I myself will be allowed to join in the proceedings before the throne and say:

(Yes, Lord, it is canceled. If you ask me who I am, I shall not tell you that I am the one who did these things. Instead I say to you: I am the brother of my Savior, Jesus Christ. He came to me, and I was not too base for him. And look, here he is beside me; he will vouch for me. It's not my sins, Lord, not this black list that will tell you who I am; that's out of date. I am . . . well, I am only the brother and companion of your Son and therefore I am also your child. That's what I am, dear God.

My feet are dusty, sure. But that comes from the far country where I strayed and erred. I have blots on my escutcheon and my record isn't clean. But what is that to you, Lord? You look at the heart. And this heart of mine has hungered and thirsted after righteousness. Even in the most terrible hours of doubt this heart has cried: (I believe, dear Lord, help my unbelief.( And sometimes this heart has seen, beneath the mask of the neighbor and in the midst of all contempt for men, the face of the secret Savior. This is all I have, Lord, only this. I have lost my past, because I have found him who carried it away for me and now is with me always, to the end of the world.(

Then God will say:

(Well done, good and faithful servant (I can hardly believe my ears((good and faithful((but that's what he says!); enter (into the joy of your Master.((

That's the way it will be on the last day of the world.

Will my knowing about the end change my life here and now? What do I really expect from life? Am I eagerly expectant to see what tremendous opportunities may still come my way? Or am I old and tired, looking ahead to nothing but death after a longer or shorter barren stretch of increasing loneliness and physical infirmity? Or am I worried about the atom bomb, the Red tide, or about the next night, which I dread because I cannot sleep? What am I waiting for?

Whatever it may be, a feverishly expectant hope of happiness or depressing dread, it is all changed, canceled, prevented, and transformed by something altogether new: the fact that someone is there, waiting for me, accepting me despite all my inadequacy, someone who leads me safely over the ridges and through the dark valleys to the place where out of the darkness comes a voice saying: (Ah, there you are, my good and faithful servant.(

The fact is that we are not on a journey whose outcome is uncertain. We walk in the blessedness of Advent. We walk through the storms of change unafraid, because there is One who makes all things new.

It's true: I can become a different person, a new man. I can lay down the luggage of my past. I can become an expectant person.

Therefore, let us stop looking nervously to the future, always wondering what is corning. For we know who is corning to us

And he who possesses the last hour need have no fear of the next minute.

Thielicke(s sermon is full of piety and theology. His sermons came out of the tragic days of World War II but not even the dreadful circumstance faced by Thielicke and his congregation could quench the flames of the Gospel.


Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Helmut Thielicke, Final Judgment, Sabbath, Genesis 2

Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel

Jon D. Levenson, Professor of Jewish studies at Harvard University, has written a new book on the concept of resurrection in Judaism.

According to Levenson, with the exception of a minority of Orthodox Jews, most Jews believe that the idea of resurrection is “a metaphor for how one’s good works live on.” Those Jews who reject the idea of resurrection believe that resurrection is “a minor and dispensable theme in Judaism.”

In a review of Levenson’s book written by Peter Steinfels and published on September 30, 2006 in The New York Times, Steinfels wrote:

Resurrection of the dead, it is argued, is a Johnny-come-lately notion, not found in the ancient texts of the Hebrew Bible, which treated mortality matter-of-factly. Instead, the doctrine was an innovation of the Maccabean period, found in the Book of Daniel, written between 167 and 164 B.C.E, when faithful Jews were being persecuted by the Hellenistic monarch Antiochus IV. With ideas borrowed from Zoroastrianism and other foreign sources, resurrection solved the puzzle of understanding divine justice when fidelity to the Law brought about not prosperity and length of years but martyrdom.

Professor Levenson’s new book, “Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life” (Yale University Press), is a frontal challenge to this account. But the reasons that it has become a staple of modern Jewish apologetics, he allows, “are not hard to find.”

On the one hand, the rejection or marginalization of resurrection offered a clear distinction between Judaism and a Christianity that celebrated the Resurrection of Jesus as the ground for human hope. On the other hand, it simultaneously aligned Judaism with the naturalistic and scientific outlook of modernity “of the sort that dismisses resurrection as an embarrassing relic of the childhood of humanity.”

Steinfels also discussed Levenson’s view about the concept of resurrection in Judaism and Christianity. He wrote:

Professor Levenson has written for an audience well beyond his fellow biblical scholars. He understands those who cannot accept this belief, he said in a recent telephone conversation, but he still feels that it is a “truncated Judaism that does not reckon with resurrection.”

And if a modern Jewish apologetic has contrasted a this-worldly and ethically minded Judaism against an otherworldly and superstitious Christianity, he said, many Christians have misunderstood Judaism because of their assumption that belief in resurrection is exclusively associated with Jesus.

“The stereotypes on both sides are destructive,” he said, “and destroy an important bond between Judaism and Christianity.” For all the differences between the two faiths — and Professor Levenson is not known for minimizing them — “early Christianity and rabbinic Judaism had no division on belief in eschatological resurrection,” he said.

To read the article on its entirety, click here.

There are several passages in the Old Testament that teach or intimate that a belief in resurrection existed in Israel. Even though this belief may not have been widely taught, these passages seem to indicate that the concept of resurrection developed late in the faith of Israel. The following are the most important passages that convey a hope, if not a belief, in the idea of resurrection:

As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness (Psalm 17:15).

But God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol, for he will receive me (Psalm 49:15).

You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory (Psalm 73:24).

Another text that has been cited to prove the concept of resurrection is Job 19:25-26: For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God. However, the textual problems with this passage have raised some questions about what the words mean.

Another text that may allude to the belief in resurrection in the Old Testament is found in the book of Isaiah, who compares the restoration of Israel to a resurrection from the dead:

Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a dew of light, and the earth will give birth to the dead. (Isaiah 26:19).

The same idea is also present in the book of Ezekiel, who, at the time of the exile, wrote about the restoration of Israel (Ezekiel 37).

The clearest reference to the concept of resurrection is found in Daniel 12:2:

And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.

Here the writer of Daniel affirms that those who have died will awake, some to eternal life, and others to everlasting shame and contempt.

In the New Testament, the belief in the resurrection and the idea of a future retribution was accepted by the Pharisees and the majority of the Jewish people. The Sadducees, however, did not believe in the idea of resurrection.

I have not read Levenson’s book yet, but if he desires to convince people about the reality of the resurrection, Paul’s words on the subject should convince them that a belief in the resurrection is important for people who believe in God:

If there is no resurrection of the dead . . . then . . . your faith has been in vain (1 Corinthians 15:13-14).

If there is no resurrection of the dead . . . then . . . your faith is futile and you are still in your sins (1 Corinthians 15:17).

If for this life only we have hoped Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied (1 Corinthians 15:19).

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Peter Steinfels, Jon D. Levenson, Resurrection, Restoration , Israel