BIBLICAL Horizons, No. 7
October, 1989
Copyright 1989, Biblical Horizons
Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979) was one of the most remarkable women of the 20th century. A devout Christian, she was the master teacher of composition at the American Conservatory in ainebleau, France. She taught music and composition to two generations of students, and is regarded as one of the most influential musicians of our age. Virtually every American composer of serious music studied with her.
Some of her aphorisms and reflections on creativity and work are found in Don G. Campbell, Master Teacher Nadia Boulanger (Washington: Pastoral Press, 1984). Here are a few of them.
"Novelty is what perishes quickest."
"It is one thing to be gifted and quite another thing to be worthy of one’s own gift."
"There are dangers in atonal music. There is nothing to surprise one."
"What is important is not to define, but to act. One must try to do one’s work with enough love and enough care to make it represent one’s very best. The whole joy of being a human being is to realize the difficulty in reaching one’s aim. The higher the aim, the greater the difficulty, and the greater our humility and joy. As for beauty — is it not mainly through beauty for service, of which there is no material reward or punishment, that we reach the spiritual art of our life, which is the whole purpose of existence and its only goal?"
"There is nothing boring in life except ourselves. The most humble work does not have to be boring. I remember the old woman who cleaned the floor in my place in Gargenville. She died a few years ago. Every day I think of her with the most profound respect and with greatest reverence. She was eighty years old. One day she knocked at my door and said, `Mademoiselle, I know you don’t like to be disturbed, but the floor, it shines in such a way. Come and see.’ Now I think of her always. In my mind, Stravinsky and Madame Duval will always appear before the Lord for the same reason. Each has done what he does with all his consciousness. When I said to Mme. Duval the same thing, she did not know exactly what I meant. But when I said it to Stravinsky, who knew her, he said, `How you flatter me, for when I do something, I have something to gain. I have something. But she, she has only the work to be well done.’"
BIBLICAL Horizons, No. 7
October, 1989
Copyright 1989, Biblical Horizons
When Ronald Reagan was elected to office in 1980, Christians were hopeful that there would be a real change in our national affairs. Reagan was known to be strongly anti-abortion — he even wrote a book against it. He was a fiscal conservative. He believed in Biblical morality. He was going to turn things around.
After eight years we were asking, "What happened?"
When Reagan appointed C. Everett Koop as Surgeon General, Christians were really excited. Here was a strong, self-conscious Christian who had teamed up with Francis Schaeffer to sound the alarm against abortion in our country. Surely this man would take a strong stand against corruption. Nobody figured that under his administration public tobacco smoking would be regarded as more dangerous than homosexual acts!
Again we wound up asking, "What happened?"
Some believe that Reagan and Koop were not really conservatives at all, but pawns of the Establishment. They were plants of the "conspiracy." Once they came to power, they threw sops to the Christians, and then did whatever the Power Brokers wanted them to do.
Others believe that these men, and others like them, simply lacked the moral fibre to stand for what they knew was right. They capitulated and compromised. They chose to listen to bad counsel.
I don’t wish to join the ranks of the Koop-baiters. I am not privy to all the facts, and I cannot make a full assessment of the reasons for his decisions, or those of Ronald Reagan. I believe, though, that the Bible sheds significant light on what we have seen these past few years. I cannot judge these men too severely when I open my Bible and find this in 2 Samuel 24:1, "Now again the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and He moved David against them to say, `Go, muster Israel and Judah.’"
Perhaps you remember this story. David took a sinful census — actually a military muster — of Israel and Judah. It was wrong to muster God’s host in a time of peace. As a judgment on this sin, God sent plagues upon the nation.
What a bad leader David showed himself to be! How could he have made such a terrible mistake? Well, we’ve seen the reason: God was angry at the nation and caused David to make this mistake. David was a man after God’s own heart. Yet in order to punish the nation, God withdrew His restraint on David’s sinful nature, and allowed him to sin.
This chilling story reminds us that "the king’s heart is like channels of water in the hand of the Lord; He turns it wherever He wishes" (Proverbs 21:1). If He decides to bless a nation, God can take a sinful ruler like Pharaoh or Nebuchadnezzar — or Constantine (or Gorbachyoff?) — and convert him (Genesis 41:37-45; Daniel 4). But if God decides to send judgment upon a wicked nation, He can take a good man and cause him to do foolish things by withholding His restraint.
I sometimes imagine that in a couple of years, Reagan and Koop will think back over their years in office and suddenly say, "How could I have let all these opportunities pass me by? How could I have been so foolish?" The answer is in 2 Samuel 24.
Christian activists need to bear these truths in mind. We can elect Christian after Christian to high office, but until God becomes pleased with us as a Church, those Christians will make one foolish decision after another. It is only "when a man’s ways are pleasing to the Lord" that "He makes even his enemies to be at peace with him" (Proverbs 16:7).
I am not arguing against Christian involvement in politics. After all, who knows when God will choose to bless us? And also, political action can do a little good in restraining the tide of evil, if God blesses it.
But by far the most necessary Christian work is the rebuilding of the Kingdom of God. We have "bad" rulers because we are a bad people, and judgment starts at the house of God. Rebuilding the Church and the lives of Christians will do more to ensure good government than all the political activism in the world. When our ways please God, He will give us good rulers — and not until then.
BIBLICAL Horizons, No. 7
October, 1989
Copyright 1989, Biblical Horizons
The story of Hezekiah’s illness and recovery is familiar to every child who has attended Sunday School. Informed that he would die, faithful King Hezekiah pleaded in tears for a longer life. God heard his prayers and saw his tears, and promised fifteen more years. As a sign that He would keep His promise, God made the shadow retreat ten steps (2 Kings 20:1-11).
Before this episode, however, Hezekiah had already received another sign, one that is less familiar. In the fourteenth year of Hezekiah, Sennacherib of Assyria attacked the fort cities throughout Judah. Hezekiah gave him gold from the temple as a bribe. But Sennacherib was unsatisfied. He sent Rabshakeh and several others to Jerusalem to demand Hezekiah’s surrender. To intimidate the people of Jerusalem, Rabshakeh announced that the city was doomed, that the Lord would not be able to withstand the Assyrian armies (2 Kings 18:26-37).
The words of Rabshakeh were blasphemous, and when Hezekiah heard them, he tore his robe and went to the house of God to pray and to spread out a letter from Rabshakeh before the Lord. Through Isaiah, God revealed that He would deliver Jerusalem from the terrifying Assyrian army: "Because of your raging against Me, and because your arrogance has come up to My ears, Therefore I will put My hook in your nose, and My bridle in your lips, and I will turn you back by the way which you came" (2 Kings 19:28).
To confirm His promise, God gave a sign: "Then this shall be the sign for you: you shall eat this year what grows of itself, in the second year what springs from the same, and in the third year sow, reap, plant vineyards, and eat their fruit. And the surviving remnant of the house of Judah shall again take root downward and bear fruit upward. For out of Jerusalem shall go forth a remnant, and out of Mount Zion survivors. The zeal of the Lord shall perform this" (2 Kings 19:29-31). My purpose in this essay is to determine the meaning of this sign, and its relevance to Hezekiah’s circumstances.
There is some disagreement about the meaning of the sign. E. J. Young, commenting on the parallel passage in Isaiah 37, says that "the people had been hindered from carrying out the regular occupation of sowing, for the Assyrian was present in the land." The Judahites were therefore compelled by circumstances to eat the saphiach, "what had been poured out or spilled accidentally and so springs up of itself." Young admits that this interpretation has difficulty explaining why the Israelites would not be able to sow and reap in the second year, since Sennacherib apparently left the land in haste. He concludes, "Even though the humiliation of Sennacherib might take place very soon . . . the condition of devastation and suffering brought about by the Assyrian’s presence would continue for a time." The sign boils down to this: God promises to sustain His people through the immediate crisis, and in the third year they would resume their normal eating, their normal course of life. (Young, The Book of Isaiah [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1969] 2:498ff.)
Young mentions other scholars, however, who "have held that the year during which Isaiah spoke this prophecy was a sabbatical year, to be followed by the year of Jubilee." Against this suggestion, Young argues that "there is no evidence that this was a sabbatical year" and "if Isaiah were speaking during a sabbatical year, he would simply be telling the people what they knew already."
It is possible, however, to reconcile Young’s view with the one he dismisses. The context, Young rightly insists, forces us to connect the sign to the devastation of the invasion. But the circumstances imposed on Israel two de facto sabbatical years, during which the people would "have the sabbath of the land for food" (Lev. 25:6). This two-year sabbath occurs at the time of the Jubilee, the fiftieth year that follows the seventh sabbatical year.
If we take the sign in this sense, fresh light is shed on the following verses. Isaiah’s immediate concern in verses 30-31 is that the people who survive Sennacherib’s invasion will again take root and produce fruit. That this is the immediate concern is indicated by the language of verse 31: Isaiah prophesies that the people would return again to the land "out of Jerusalem" and "out of Mount Zion," where they had found shelter during the Assyrian raid.
Yet, it is difficult to read verses 30-31 without being reminded of the return of Israel from exile. The reign of Hezekiah overlaps with the reign of Hoshea, the last King of the Northern Kingdom. Thus, the threat of Assyrian conquest and exile is part of the background of Hezekiah’s reign. Moreover, the word "remnant" is used, as it is in many of the prophecies of the return (e.g., Is. 10:20-22). Isaiah uses the imagery of replanting, imagery that is used elsewhere to describe the post-exilic community (e.g., Ezk. 17). The connection of Hezekiah’s sign to the return from exile is strengthened when we understand the sign in sabbatical terms. Jeremiah prophesied that the Judahites would remain in exile for 70 years, until the land had been given rest (Jer. 25:11-12; 2 Chron. 36:21). Thus the pattern is the same in both events: God replants His people after forcing them to observe His sabbaths.
If we are to understand the double-sabbath year as a reference to the Jubilee, the links between Hezekiah’s sign and the return from exile are strengthened. The Jubilee year was the year of return to ancestral land, and makes a fitting symbol of Israel’s return to their inheritance.
In this way, the sign to Hezekiah, without diminishing in its immediate relevance to Hezekiah himself, is transfigured into a prophecy of the New Exodus, the return from Babylon. So also, it is transfigured into a prophecy of the coming of the New Covenant. Christ was raised on the third day, the firstfruits of the new creation. He plants us in a heavenly land, permits us to eat the fruit of the vine, and enables us to bear fruit a hundredfold. He announces and inaugurates "the favorable year of the Lord." Having clothed His disciples with power from above, Jesus then sends them from Jerusalem into the uttermost parts of the earth.
BIBLICAL Horizons, No. 7
October, 1989
Copyright 1989, Biblical Horizons
In our first essay in this series (Biblical Horizons , No. 4), we saw that Proverbs 30 opens with a puzzle, a cryptic sentence that challenges the reader to search out a matter in order to gain understanding. "It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter" (Prov. 25:2). Proverbs was written for a king’s son, but all of us are sons and daughters of the King of kings, so it is our glory to work on God’s wisdom-inducing puzzles.
Many matters in the Bible are very clear, so that salvation is free and open for all who wish it. Other matters, however, are concealed so that we as God’s children can grow in wisdom and understanding as we work on them. (Using theological jargon, we can say that this is one of the ways in which God’s apprehensibility and incomprehensibility work together.)
Based on the work of several scholars I suggested the following solution to the puzzle of verses 1 and 2 of Proverbs 30: "The words of the Sojourner (Jacob?) the son of Yahweh, blessed is He, the burden: The man declares, `I have wearied myself, O God! I have wearied myself, O God, and I have come to an end! For I am more stupid than any man, and I do not have the understanding of a man.’" Based on several considerations, I decided to work through Proverbs 30 on the assumption that it was written by the patriarch Jacob.
The Sojourner states in verse three that he has not learned wisdom, "But I have knowledge of the Holy One." In other words, he sees that his wisdom is nothing compared to that of God, and even though he himself understands little, he can live in confidence because he knows that God understands everything. The believer can relax in the face of the many puzzles of this world, because even if we cannot figure them all out, we know that God understands them all.
Then the Sojourner asks a riddle about God. This riddle has to do with wisdom, since it is God who has true wisdom. Wisdom is not simply knowledge or even common sense. In the Biblical sense, wisdom has to do with making things and controlling things. Wisdom is practical. Thus, in Proverbs 8:30, wisdom is a "master workman." Wisdom "knows how" as well as "knows what."
He asks us five questions in verse 4. First, "Who has ascended into heaven and descended?" This carries us back to Jacob’s experience at Bethel, where he saw heaven opened and angels ascending and descending on a ladder (Gen. 28:10-17). He saw the true ladder to heaven, of which the Tower of Babel was but a crude counterfeit. In John 1:51, Jesus identified Himself as the True Ladder to heaven, but the idea in Proverbs 30:4 is slightly different. Here it is God who ascends and descends the ladder, bringing the two into relationship and making the heavenly blueprints available to us on earth. (On heaven as blueprint, see my book Through New Eyes, available from Biblical Horizons for $9.95.)
Second, "Who has gathered the wind in His fists?" Clearly the only One who can do this is God. We should take the "wind" here in the full Hebraic sense, for "wind" not only means atmospheric breezes but also angelic powers (Heb. 1:7; etc.). The angels run the world for man under God’s control, and it takes infinite wisdom to run the world. Only God has the wisdom to control the "winds."
Third, "Who has wrapped the waters in His garment?" God is pictured as dwelling within a created "structure" called a cloud of glory. In most ways, this cloud is like a cloud of bees rather than a cloud of water, because the cloud is made up of the heavenly host dancing around God (cf. Dan. 7:10; Rev. 5:11). At the same time, however, the cloud is associated with water, so that baptismal rain falls from it, and so that it is seen as a sea of glass around His throne (Rev. 4:6). Jacob asks us to consider the skill it takes to cause a sea of water to clothe you and stick to you wherever you go. Such a skill requires wisdom man does not have, but God does.
Let’s summarize so far: At the practical level, men cannot fly up to heaven and down to the earth; men cannot grab zephyrs of air in their hands; and men cannot wrap water around themselves as a garment. Beyond this, it is not men who can act as intermediaries between God and man; only God can be a ladder to heaven. It is not men who can run the whole creation; only God can gather the angelic winds in His fist. Men cannot organize the whole of creation around themselves; only God can wrap the waters of all creation as His garment.
Now fourth, "Who has established all the ends of the earth?" Again, practically speaking the act of establishing the physical cosmos requires more skill and wisdom than any man possesses. Beyond this, it is only God who can create the world from nothing.
These four ideas summarize wisdom in four ways, by pointing to God as the Ultimate Archetype of Wisdom. Wisdom creates and establishes things, and wisdom brings things to their appointed conclusion. Thus, God created the world and brings it to Himself as His garment. Wisdom relates things to each other, and controls things for their proper purpose. Thus, God relates heaven and earth together, and controls all the processes of the world.
The Sojourner provides four dimensions to wisdom:
Let us apply these principles to carpentry, as our Lord must have done. To make a cabinet, He had to know how this piece would fit in with other pieces of furniture in a given house or in a given style. He also had to interrelate various kinds of wood, and various shapes of wood, in order to make the cabinet. Second, He had to exercise control over all the various tools and pieces of wood involved. This required mental and muscular skill and control. Third, He had to know how to bring the raw materials involved in the project to their proper goal: the cabinet. Finally, He had to be able to initiate the project properly, by gathering the proper materials, curing the wood, and so forth.
Finally, the Sojourner asks, "What is His name or His son’s name? Surely you know!" Well, in verse one we have found concealed the name of God in the word "Jakeh": "Yahweh, blessed is He." The son’s name is Agur the Sojourner. Every man is God’s son, to exercise wisdom in working with this world. Beyond this, of course, we can see an allusion to Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God. It is only the Eternal Son who fully images the Father, and only the Eternal Son who can do the things listed in verse 4.
The Sojourner says that he is stupid, lacks understanding, and has not learned wisdom. That is how he feels because he is face to face with God, who alone possesses the fullness of wisdom. God is the One who sees the interrelationships among all things, who controls all things, who gathers all things to Himself, and who established all things in the beginning.
What does this have to do with us? Just this: If we want to gain wisdom we need to study God’s works. Because we are God’s sons, our labors are analogous to His. By tracing out His wisdom, we acquire wisdom.
Let’s now try and relate this somewhat to Jacob. Though Jacob has gotten a lot on bad press in recent centuries, the Bible does not consider him a rat or a cheat. Instead, as I have pointed out at some length elsewhere (Primeval Saints, available from Biblical Horizons for $10.00), Jacob’s shrewdness is regarded as exemplary. Jacob is a model of wisdom. Jacob managed to stay out of serious trouble even though many people were trying to kill him. He managed to hang onto God’s covenant despite the attempts of almost everyone around him to destroy the Kingdom of God. He managed to obtain wealth for the Kingdom in spite of being surrounded by brutal thieves.
The secret of Jacob’s wisdom was that he had gotten past the sophomoric stage of thinking he knew everything. He knew that he was lacking in wisdom, and thus he committed his ways to God. He acted as wisely as he knew, and then left things in the hands of the Fountain of Wisdom. In this respect he is a model for us.
