BIBLICAL Horizons, No. 89
November, 1996
Copyright 1996 Biblical Horizons
Sermons are rarely more tiresome than when they strive for relevance. Drawing from the latest headlines transforms the preacher into a one-man MacLaughlin Group, a Crossfire without the cross though perhaps with some of the fire, and leave the congregation thinking, "If I wanted Meet the Press, I could have stayed in bed." I spent an hour or so recently searching for the source of the exhortation, "Preach with the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other." My search was unsuccessful, which is doubtless just as well, else I might be tempted to follow an uncharitable impulse to construct a contemporary Purgatorio in which the author of that statement was forced to listen, unto ages of ages, to some of the sermons he inspired.
To be sure, there are times when one wishes the preacher were a bit more up-to-date. On Easter, the preacher at King’s College Chapel insisted that the "scientific" question of the resuscitation of Jesus’ body was no big deal and that Jesus did not go about showing off his body to "prove" He had risen from the grave. One wonders if he ever read of how Thomas’s famous doubts were put to rest, but then "Thomas" was probably a product of the "Fourth Evangelist’s" or his "community’s" imagination anyway. One marvels too at the sheer intellectual dishonesty of such preaching; the unbeliever is far more honest, commonsensical, and, in fact, more Pauline when he says, "If the whole structure of Christian faith and practice is built upon a fabrication or delusion, chuck it." If only the preacher at King’s had spent the week before Easter reading Time and Newsweek instead of German theology, he would have known that this "scientific" question remains, even for theologians, a very important one indeed and is, for most ordinary Christians, the very heart of true religion.
Centered on recent events, preaching inevitably loses most of its transformative power. From apostolic times, the task of preaching has never been a matter of providing a "religious insight" into what’s going on, a new slant on what everyone already knows. The purpose of apostolic preaching was to announce an event that, according to Paul, no one could know without a preacher. The point of preaching is not to answer questions that are already circulating. The point is to challenge the entire worldview that gives rise to those questions, and to announce the reality of a new world in which all the old questions have to be reformulated or discarded altogether. Genuine sermons are necessarily application of Scripture to the world as it is; in that sense, as John Frame has argued, Scripture and the world are correlative. The question is, how does this application proceed? Do we start by finding the world full of square holes and search the Bible for appropriate pegs? Or do we let the Bible tell us what shape the holes are to begin with? At the same time, we should recognize the possibility that observation of the world will teach us something about the questions that the Bible asks and answers.
With a little sympathy, one can understand why preachers might prefer contemporary texts to the ancient ones. Let a modern preacher start talking about dead bodies rising from their graves, the sun standing still, seas splitting in two, prophets spending three days in the bellies of fish, and odds are the mental health folk will start sniffing around. By contrast, the modern world is quite content to let preachers offer pious commentary on current events, since such commentary assumes that what the Times says is real, is real. Preachers thus have a choice: They can preach the Biblical witness in all its fantastic oddity and be branded paleolithic if not insane, or they can preach from the newspaper in terms that modern elites can understand and be met with that mixture of pity, respect, and relief extended to those who are religious but not fanatical.
There is a larger point here, which goes to the heart of the church’s uneasy relation with modernity. From the beginning of the modern age, the church as a whole, and especially theologians, were presented with the same dilemma that faces the preacher. The scientific discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo and the historical implications of the discoveries of the age of exploration challenged traditional interpretations of the Bible’s cosmology and chronology. As in the period following the Aristotelian renaissance, the church was faced with the threat of a theory of "double truth," which implied that the Bible might be theologically but not historically and scientifically true. Thomas rescued medieval theology from this fragmentation, but no Thomas was to appear in the early modern period to synthesize the Bible with the new science and history. Instead, Descartes resolved the contest of faith and reason decisively in favor of reason. As Klaus Scholder tells the story in The Birth of Modern Critical Theology, orthodox Dutch theologians recognized at the time that what was finally at stake in the abstract discussion of the relation of philosophy and theology was the authority of God over man.
In this intellectual climate, what has come to be known as "higher criticism" offered a tempting bargain to theologians and to the church: By making the Bible accountable to "public" standards of rationality and historicity, the church could be saved from the obscurantism and marginality that would follow from continued insistence on the historical accuracy of Scripture and from idiosyncratic typological methods of interpretation. Public standards, however, are far from religiously neutral, and the triumph of Cartesianism meant that the public standards were profoundly rationalistic. In making the Bible accountable to standards of rationality whose assumptions were directly contrary to the standards of the Bible itself, higher criticism left Christians with a wrenching but often unrecognized dilemma: To accept this accountability was to concede the argument before it began but to refuse was to be condemned to the backwaters of intellectual life.
By no means were these narrowly hermeneutical or theological concerns. It is no accident that the major works of both Hobbes and Spinoza incorporated both a political theory and a biblical hermeneutics. In both cases, according to John Milbank’s account, the goal of the new hermeneutical method was to preserve the secularity of the public realm, and to achieve this both Hobbes and Spinoza launched pointed attacks on the traditional "Catholic" reading of Scripture that highlighted allegory and typology. The public presence of a Bible interpreted according to "subtle" and "private" canons meant the continuing presence of "divine communication into the process of human historical becoming," which must "forever escape from sovereign mastery." To preserve the secular as a realm of autonomous human reason, typology had to be replaced with a rationalistic reading of Scripture, a reading that, not incidentally, emphasized submission to political authorities. In attacking this "Catholic" hermeneutics, it must be emphasized, early modern theorists were in fact attacking the New Testament’s reading of the Old, not a method invented by Alexandrian or medieval neo-Platonists.
Seen in the light of this history, some ironic shadings and shadows emerge in the profile of the Religious Right. As one of the most anti-modernist sectors of American life, the Religious Right is engaged, in part, in trying to reassert the Bible’s position in the public square. I am strongly inclined to support this effort. I do not believe that Christians should feel compelled to translate the moral and political claims of Christianity into what Jeffrey Stout calls "moral Esperanto" when they enter the public arena. Indeed, the central moral and political claims of Christianity cannot be so translated. There is simply no way to translate away the offensive particularity of the apostolic claim, "There is another King, one Jesus." But there are forms of translation that tend to escape notice. Historically, Christian political theory grew out of a typological interpretation of Scripture. Gelasius’ theory of "two powers" was intimately linked to an elaborate typology, developed in various letters, between Melchizedek and Christ; Bernard likewise exhorted political leaders to protect the Pope by referring to the common notion that in Jesus the tribes of Levi and Judah, of priesthood and royalty, are united and mutually supportive. The Religious Right rarely deploys the Bible in this way, preferring a more straightforward and apparently commonsensical reading. Instead of reading the first chapters of Genesis in terms of the Pauline typology of the First and Last Adams, for example, those chapters become source material for family or environmental policy. It is not so much that all the conclusions that the Religious Right draws are wrong, or that the interpretations of the patristic and medieval political theologians were always right. Rather, the problem is that when the Religious Right brings the Bible into the public realm, it accepts the rules of the language game of modern politics that prohibits appeals to "irrational" typology in public discourse. Accepting the rules, the Religious Right perpetuates rather than challenging a subtle form of what D. A. Carson has recently called "the gagging of God." And, further, it was submission to these same rules that shaped destructive liberal interpretations of Scripture.
All of which suggests that if you scratch a preacher with a newspaper, you might well discover a higher critic lurking beneath.
BIBLICAL Horizons, No. 89
November, 1996
Copyright 1996 Biblical Horizons
From time to time, when I’ve lectured on how to read the Bible, I’ve used art-music as one example thereof. When we listen to a simple folk song, we hear the same melody over and over again, but this is not how composers write "high" music. Let me amplify.
A composer will put out a theme (melody) clearly and forthrightly. You can hear it without diffculty. And, from time to time that melody will come back, and without diffculty you will hear it again. But what you probably won’t hear, unless you are trained to listen to music, is that the melody is being used in more ways. It may be broken down, and parts of it used in various ways in the overall piece. It may be played in the bass line, or in an alto line, underneath a more prominent second melody or theme. You’ll hear the new melody, and not notice that the old melody is being used underneath. The melody may be stretched out into slower notes (augmented), or played twice as fast (diminished). It may be used like a round (canon; ricercar; fugue), coming in over and over again on top of itself. It may be inverted (switching high and low notes), or played cancrizans (backwards). (A good listener can hear an inversion, but it takes a really good one to notice when the melody runs backwards.) The melody may be taken from a minor key to a major one, or vice versa. A composer will introduce one theme, and then another, and then play them at the same time.
Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, which starts with the famous four note theme (motif) "da-da-da-DAHHH," actually uses that four-note motif and its inherent possibilities as the foundation for virtually everything in all four movements. We don’t notice it, however, until someone points it out to us, and shows us how it happens. And that’s okay. The symphony can be enjoyed either "naively" or "maturely."
Now, the Bible is certainly written this way. We have, for instance, the theme of God’s giving Adam a garden to dress and guard, and then Adam sins and is expelled. This theme comes up again, clearly, several times in the Old Testament: at the golden calf, with King Saul, with King David, etc. The theme reaches its great climax with Jesus, who is expelled for us. But the theme is also stretched out (augmented) as the story of Israel from Joshua to the Exile, and from the Restoration to AD 70. Moreover, there are places in the Bible where another theme is prominent, but we can see this original theme also playing along.
The study of these recurring themes goes under the general name "typology."
When I present this information, I usually get asked by someone understandably suspicious: Are you saying you have to be a musician to understand the Bible? There are three answers to that question.
Answer No. 1: No, because the basic facts of redemption and obedience are clear to any Christian reader of the Bible. Yet, it is the glory of God to conceal a matter, and the glory of kings to search it out (Prov. 25:2).
Answer No. 2: No, but it helps, because seeing the deeper things in the Bible, some of them at least, is like hearing music in a mature way.
Answer No. 3: Yes, because God indicates that His people are to be musicians.
Let’s ask: Does it help to be an athlete to understand the Bible? No. Does it help to be an engineer to understand the Bible. No. At least not in any obvious way.
But: Does it help to be a musician to understand the Bible? Yes, because the Bible indicates that this is so.
First, music is the God-appointed way of worshipping Him with His own words. The psalms are to be set to music and sung, and in fact a great deal of Western art music developed out of the complex ways in which psalms were set by art musicians. More than that, however, we find in the Masoretic Hebrew text of the Old Testament a whole system of pitch marks, which indicate the chanting lines for the text as it existed when the Masoretic text was produced. A French musical scholar named Haik-Vantoura has offered a decoding of these pitches, but whether she is right or not in her suggested system, there is no doubt but that the text was originally chanted in worship. Sung worship is typical of all pre-modern worship all over the world.
Second, the Spirit is given to help us understand the Word, and the Spirit is the Glorifier. He is the Breath, the sounding forth of the Word. Whenever words are said out loud, they are said musically. Your speech goes up and down, is loud and soft, is punctuated rhymically by consonants and emphasis, assumes various tones (timbres; such as rough, kind, whiny, etc.). In short, all speech is quasi-musical. The Spirit inspires music, and He is the Music of God, who is Author, Word, Music. Thus, being musical and learning about music should add to our ability to grasp the text.
Third, we find that the priests and Levites were established as the teachers of the Word in Israel; but they were also set up as the musicians in the Temple. By linking these two things, God was saying that a teacher of the Word would be wise also to be a musician. (Levites were also guards, and some familiarity with what that means is also good for a teacher/elder in the Church.)
Thus, we see that God programmed music into the minds and hearts of those set apart to interpret the Bible, and into the minds and hearts of all those in Israel who would encounter the text more generally.
In sum, if we want to train people in understanding the Bible more fully, it is good to train them in musical understanding. Music should be part of the educational preparation of anyone engaged in Biblical study and hermeneutics.
Why isn’t this done today? Because of the influence of Western rationalism, especially through the "science ideal" of the Enlightenment. Poetry, which used to be sung, is sung no longer. Many people don’t realize that even post-Renaissance poetry should be read out loud; it should be heard, if not actually sung. (I have a lot of hope for what may eventually develop out of rap music, despite its sorry beginnings today; it moves toward a restoration of the original form of poetry.) We read silently. We no longer sing or whistle while we work. Philosophy, which is contemplative rather than active and liturgical, has influenced theology and Bible study way too much.
Thus, we don’t live in a social and ecclesiastical context that would enable us to read and understand the Bible as well as we might. Restoring music to our lives will help.
Biblical Chronology
Vol. 8, No. 11
November, 1996
Copyright © James B. Jordan 1996
by James B. Jordan
The End of Jehoiakim’s Reign
We have seen that Jehoiakim rejected Jeremiah’s prophetic warnings at the beginning of his reign. Let us now make a year-by-year survey of his reign down to its end.
In the spring of 605 BC, Nebuchadnezzar defeated the Egyptians at Carchemish. In the summer, he conquered Palestine and Jerusalem, and took Jehoiakim and Daniel and his friends to Babylon. In the seventh month of that year (October), we enter the fourth year of Jehoiakim and the first year of Nebuchadnezzar by Jewish reckoning. After Nebuchadnezzar’s official crowning as King of Babylon, he took Jehoiakim back to Jerusalem and installed him as his vassal king. Also, this is the second year of Daniel’s education in Babylon, coming after his very brief partial first year. Meanwhile, Jeremiah told the people, and all the nations, that Nebuchadnezzar had been installed as world emperor by God, and that all should submit to him.
In the winter of 604 BC, Nebuchadnezzar completed his conquest of Palestine. In the summer of this year, Jeremiah was told by God to write up his prophecies and have Baruch read them to the people. At the beginning of Jehoiakim’s fifth year, in October, Baruch did so, and then Jehoiakim had the prophecies read to him. He rejected them and tried to arrest Jeremiah and Baruch. This year, beginning in October, is to be regarded as Jehoiakim’s first full year of servitude to Nebuchadnezzar, his first partial year apparently not being counted.
In the summer of 603 BC, Daniel and his friends graduated from their training. Soon after, God sent dreams to Nebuchadnezzar, which only Daniel could interpret. Daniel was elevated to power in the empire (Daniel 2). Consider the impact of this upon Israel. The political conservatives and nationalists would regard Daniel as a consummate traitor, while the faithful would rejoice that God had put a Godly man right next to the youthful king Nebuchadnezzar. Those who followed Jeremiah would see that God was righteous in putting the world under Nebuchadnezzar, because in effect the world was under the influence of the Godly Daniel. From this time forth, it was clear that to rebel against Nebuchadnezzar was to rebel against Daniel and God. In the fourth quarter of this year, we enter Jehoiakim’s 6th year of reign, and his second year of servitude to Nebuchadnezzar.
In 602 BC, in the fall, we move into Jehoiakim’s 7th year of reign and his third year of servitude.
Now we come to 601 BC. In the fall of that year, which begins the 8th year of Jehoiakim, Nebuchadnezzar was temporarily stalemated in a battle with Neco II of Egypt. Evidently this is when Jeremiah’s prediction that Egypt would take the Philistine city of Gaza was fulfilled. This disruption gave Jehoiakim the opportunity to rebel against Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel, and God. Shortly thereafter, God punished Jehoiakim by sending against him bands of "Chaldeans" (possibly Babylonian soldiers who had deserted the army and formed gangs), of Syrians, of Moabites, and of Ammonites (2 Kings 24:1-2). All of these groups were experiencing a brief freedom from Babylon.
Nebuchadnezzar spent the following year preparing for a return engagement. By the winter of the next year, 599 BC, we find Nebuchadnezzar conquering in the land of the Hittites. At the beginning of 598 BC, Nebuchadnezzar evidently returned to Babylon by way of Palestine, and carried away 3023 Jewish captives, reestablishing his dominance over Jerusalem. Meanwhile, Nebuchadnezzar recaptured all of Palestine as far as the River of Egypt (2 Kings 24:7). At this time, the Rechabites moved from the countryside to Jerusalem, where they continued to practice the strict code laid down by their ancestor, and for which Jeremiah praised them in Jeremiah 35.
In the fourth quarter of 598 began Jehoiakim’s 11th year. Shortly thereafter he died, and his son Jehoiachin became king on the 9th of December.
We have seen that Habakkuk accused Jehoiakim of reigning by oppression and violence from the beginning of his rule. We have also seen that Jehoiakim did not listen to Jeremiah’s warnings. 2 Kings 24:4 says that Jehoiakim filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, and the Bible tells us that shed blood cries out the Divine Avenger of Blood for vengeance. Now that vengeance had come.
Jeremiah 22:13-23 comments on the reign of Jehoiakim as follows: He built a great royal palace, but did not pay his servants their wages, unlike Josiah who lived in a smaller house and concentrated his energies on justice and righteousness. Jehoiakim was set on dishonest gain, the shedding of innocent blood, and on oppression and extortion. Therefore, no one would lament for him. He would be buried with a donkey’s burial, dragged off and thrown out of Jerusalem.
Let us now consider Jeremiah 52. Verse 12 says that Nebuchadnezzar conquered and burned Jerusalem in his 19th year. Verses 28-30 read as follows:
28. These are the people whom Nebuchadnezzar carried away into exile: in the 7th year 3023 Jews.
29. In the 18th year of Nebuchadnezzar 832 persons from Jerusalem.
30. In the 23rd year of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard carried into exile 745 Jewish people; there were 4600 persons in all.
Recent commentators routinely assume that the 7th year of Nebuchadnezzar, when he took 3023 Jews captive, is the same as the 8th year of Nebuchadnezzar, when he besieged Jerusalem and took Jehoiachin into captivity (2 Ki. 24:10-12); and that the 18th year of Nebuchadnezzar in Jer. 52:29 is the same as the 19th year of Nebuchadnezzar in Jer. 52:12 (!) and 2 Kings 25:8.
Now, just how credible is this interpretation? First of all, we have to assume that Jeremiah (or the "final redactor" of Jeremiah) was so stupid that he did not notice the contradiction between verses 12 & 29 of his final pericope; or if he did notice the contradiction, he did not care. He was using two "sources" that used two different calendars, one of which said 19 and the other of which said 18. But consider: If Jeremiah wrote this, would he not have in his own mind the calendar that he was accustomed to? How could he even make this mistake? Moreover, what need did Jeremiah have for "sources"? He was present on the scene throughout this history.
Moreover, as regards the 7th and 8th years, 2 Kings 24:14 says that Nebuchadnezzar carried away 10,000 people in his 8th year, while Jeremiah 52:28 says only 3023 in his 7th year. The usual explanation for this contradiction is that 3023 were nobility, or men, while the rest were non-nobility or women and children. 2 Kings 24:14-16, however, says that of the 10,000 captives 7000 were men of valor and 1000 were craftsmen and smiths. Certainly the 7000 were nobility, and all 8000 were men!
These explanations only make matters worse. The older explanation makes a whole lot more sense. We know that Jehoiakim served Nebuchadnezzar for 3 years, but then rebelled against him and realigned with Egypt. This is because Egypt had fought Babylon to a draw in 601 bc. Nebuchadnezzar was not able right away to put down this revolt. In the 7th year of Nebuchadnezzar, which was Jehoiakim’s 10th year, Nebuchadnezzar came up against Jerusalem and settled matters. This event is not mentioned in Kings, but is what Jeremiah 52:28 is speaking of. Apparently Nebuchadnezzar allowed Jehoiakim to remain on the throne.
The Reign of Jehoiachin
Jehoiachin was 18 when he came to the throne. He was as ungodly as his father Jehoiakim, and immediately rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar was apparently still near enough to come back to Jerusalem immediately and lay siege to it. He conquered the city after three months, and took 10,000 people captive, including Ezekiel and Mordecai (Jeremiah 52:29; Ezekiel 1:1-3; Esther 2:6-7). He took Jehoiachin into captivity also, and put his uncle Zedekiah, a younger and more faithful son of Josiah, on the throne.
Jeremiah 22:24-27 and 2 Kings 24:10-17 describe Nebuchadnezzar’s deportation. He took most of the royal family, all the men of valor, the smiths, and the craftsmen, leaving only the poor. Thus he granted a kind of Jubilee for the people, allowing the poor to inherit what had been taken from them by the rich. Jehoiachin stayed in captivity for the rest of his life. He would be regarded as childless (though he had children, who were ancestors of Jesus; Matthew 1:12), because his children would not sit on the throne of David.
The exile of Jehoiachin and the leaders of Israel was not a harsh one. From the book of Ezekiel, we find that the exiles lived in houses (Ezekiel 8:1). They were not dragged into captivity, but were escorted to a new location.
The Beginning of Zedekiah’s Reign
Zedekiah was 21 when he became king, and the Bible records that he continued the evil of his older brother Jehoiakim. Zedekiah, however, had been born in the year 618 BC, in the 21st year of Josiah, well after that king had instituted his reforms. He grew up in a Godly society, and knew Jeremiah from his earliest days. Thus, he was always rather ambivalent about Jeremiah and the word of the Lord. He would listen, tremble, and then disobey. As the Chronicler puts it, "He did evil in the sight of Yahweh his God; he did not humble himself before Jeremiah the prophet, the mouth of Yahweh" (2 Chronicles 36:12).
The first prophecy to come to Jeremiah after the exile of Jehoiachin is found in Jeremiah 24. The exiles are called good figs, which God will plant, nourish, and protect. They will eventually turn back to Yahweh. The leaders who have remained in Israel, however, are bad figs. God says that He will abandon them and destroy them. He also says that He will abandon any Jews who go to Egypt.
God dictated a letter for Jeremiah to send to the exiles, and we find it in Jeremiah 29. The letter was carried by a deputy of officials sent by King Zedekiah to Nebuchadnezzar. Evidently, therefore, Jeremiah had some standing with Zedekiah at this early stage of his reign. God said this: The exiles were to settle down, build houses, and plant gardens. They were to seek the good of the Babylonian empire. They were not to listen to the false prophets, who were saying that shortly they would return to Jerusalem, because the captivity was going to last 70 years. God also told them that He was going to destroy Jerusalem, and so they should not hold out any hope of an early return. In a second section of this letter (vv. 21-23), God stated that He was going to wipe out two false prophets who were prophesying an early return.
Another false prophet, Shemaiah (Shem-Yah, "Yah Is Fame"), was incensed by Jeremiah’s letter. He wrote to the High Priest, Zephaniah, and exhorted him to put Jeremiah in stocks, calling him a madman. We can be sure that letters also went to King Zedekiah, telling him that Jeremiah had predicted the destruction of Jerusalem. High Priest Zephaniah, however, who is not the Zephaniah who wrote the book by that name, read Shemaiah’s letter to Jeremiah. Jeremiah then sent another message from God to the exiles, saying that Shemaiah and his line would be wiped out for rebellion against Yahweh.
Jeremiah and Ezekiel
In the year 593 BC, in the 5th month (August) of Zedekiah’s fourth year, Jeremiah had a confrontation with Hananiah the prophet in the Temple (Hanan-Yah, "Yah Is Gracious"). The background is found in the preceding months (Jeremiah 27). Sometime in the spring of that year, evidently, messengers from Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre, and Sidon were visiting Jerusalem. It is clear from Jeremiah 27 that they were planning to revolt against Nebuchadnezzar. We don’t know exactly why, since the Babylonian records, as we presently have them, break off several years previously. Nebuchadnezzar was, however, controlling a very large empire, and from what we have seen already, every time he departed the scene his subject peoples began to plan revolt.
God told Jeremiah to send a message to the kings of Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre, and Sidon, reinforcing what he had sent earlier. All nations had been given to Nebuchadnezzar, and anyone who rebelled against him would be crushed. They would die not only by Nebuchadnezzar’s sword, but God would send them famine and plague as well.
God told Jeremiah to put a yoke upon his neck and say the same thing to Zedekiah. Jeremiah was to encourage Zedekiah to repent, indicating that it was still possible for God to change His mind about destroying Jerusalem. Jeremiah was to charge those inciting revolt with being false prophets, agents of Satan bent on destroying Israel and her witness among the nations.
Jeremiah wore his yoke day after day, until finally the false prophet Hananiah rose up against him (Jeremiah 28). Hananiah stated that Jeremiah was wrong, that God had told him that He had broken the yoke of Babylon, and that Jehoiachin was going to come back in two years and become king again. From this we see that Zedekiah was apparently not as popular with the people as Jehoiachin. Zedekiah was certainly legitimate, being a son of Josiah, but the people wanted Jehoiachin. It seems to me that this indicates that Zedekiah was waffling between Jeremiah and the wicked. The wicked did not think they could count on him, and so they looked for the exiled king to return.
In a sense, though, Hananiah was right to look to Jehoiachin. God had said that He would be with the exiles, and Jehoiachin was the king that was with them. They had left "Egypt" and gone into the "wilderness." Eventually, it would be Jehoiachin’s descendants who would return, and from him would come the Messiah. Jehoiachin was the true king of the true Israel, but that is not why Hananiah, who was not of the true Israel, looked to him. Hananiah was like Judas, who looked for Jesus to be a political leader, and did not perceive His real status.
Jeremiah sarcastically rebuked Hananiah, after which Hananiah attacked him physically and broke the yoke off his neck, saying that this action symbolized the breaking of Babylon’s yoke. At this point, Jeremiah withdrew from the crowd.
Jeremiah’s departure from the Temple anticipates Jesus’ departure from the Temple after His rejection just before His crucifixion (Matthew 23-24), after which He pronounced Jerusalem’s doom.
God told Jeremiah to go to Hananiah and tell him two things. First, God would replace the easy Babylonian yoke of wood with a severe yoke of iron. Second, God was going to kill Hananiah before the year was out. Hananiah died almost immediately, in the seventh month, the beginning of Zedekiah’s 5th year, in the fall of 593 BC. (Jeremiah 28:12-17. Evidently, Jeremiah did not warn Hananiah until after the turn of the year, in the seventh month.)
Jeremiah’s departure from the Temple and the death of Hananiah are the immediate background for Ezekiel 1, for there the prophet sees God arrive in Babylon in His chariot. Evidently, God had in some sense already begun to abandon the Temple and move over to be with the exiles.
Ezekiel (Y’heziqe-El, "God Is Strong") sees God’s chariot on the fifth day of the fourth month (July) of 592 BC. This is said to be in the fifth year of King Jehoiachin’s exile. Jehoiachin was exiled in March of 597 BC. His first full year of non-reign began in the fall of that year, which is also when Zedekiah’s Year 1 begins. Also, we know from Ezra 7:9 that the trip from Jerusalem to Babylon took about five months. Accordingly, the exiles arrived in Babylon in the fall, about the same time as the first full year of Zedekiah’s reign began. Thus, the years of King Jehoiachin’s exile are the same as the years of Zedekiah’s rule. This is also clear from Ezekiel 24:1, where the last siege of Jerusalem is said to begin on the 10th day of the 10th month of the 9th year, which is the correct date in the reign of Zedekiah (2 Kings 25:1). Thus, Ezekiel’s years of Jehoiachin, and his dating in general, are the same as the years of Zedekiah.
Ezekiel states that he received this vision and call "in the 30th year." Ezekiel does not say "in the 30th year" from what event, and so some commentators note that we cannot be certain of what he refers to. But this is making too great a difficulty out of the matter. As has been pointed out many times, priests were called to service at age 30 (Numbers 4), and so we can assume that this was Ezekiel’s age, for he was a priest (Ezekiel 1:3). It is also, however, exactly 30 years from 621 BC, the year Josiah repaired the Temple and held his great Passover. Since it was "in" the 30th year, we can assume that Ezekiel had already celebrated his 30th birthday, in which case it is likely that he was already born before this great Passover. And in that case, he would be equivalent to the firstborn sons saved by the first Passover at the exodus, who were dedicated to God (Numbers 3).
After his ordination by God, Ezekiel sat quietly for seven days (Ezekiel 3:15), fulfilling in this way the requirements of priestly ordination (Leviticus 8:35). At the end of this period, God told Ezekiel that his job was to rebuke the false hopes of the exiles. They hoped to go back to Jerusalem soon, but Ezekiel would prophesy the doom of Jerusalem to them, and challenge them to look to the future, to a new covenant and a new Jerusalem after 70 years of exile. Then God told Ezekiel that he was not to speak any words to anyone on his own account. He was to speak when and only when God told him expressly what to say. I don’t think Ezekiel was forbidden to speak to his wife about domestic matters, or haggle over prices in the bazaar, but he was not to preach any sermons. He was only to say what God dictated to him explicitly.
Thus, there is a sense in which Jeremiah throws a torch to Ezekiel. This is corroborated by the fact that Ezekiel’s prophecy begins with "and," connecting it to Jeremiah.
(to be continued)
Rite Reasons, Studies in Worship, No. 48
Copyright (c) 1996 Biblical Horizons
November, 1996
Part One: The Old Testament
“Drink is in itself a good creature of God, and to be received with thankfulness, but the abuse of drink is from Satan, the wine is from God, but the drunkard is from the Devil” � Increase Mather in Wo to Drunkards (1673).
1. The “wine” commended by God and used in moderation by the people of God in the OT is not “grape juice” but alcoholic wine and beer (Gen. 9:21; Ps. 104:14-15; Eccl. 9:7). Every word used to describe “wine” or “strong drink” (= beer) is used in contexts that connote their inebriating qualities (yayin, Gen. 9:21; tirosh, Hos. 4:11; `asis, Joel 1:5; shekar, Lev. 10:9). Alcoholic content in the ancient world varied from about 5% to 20%. The low end alcoholic “New wine” (aerobically fermented) and inferior aged wine (anaerobically fermented using poor yeast and low sugar content grapes) were relatively abundant and inexpensive. High quality aged wine or “the best” as the master of the banquet called it (John 2:10) was rarely enjoyed by the common people.
2. The OT makes no distinction between alcoholic and non-alcoholic wine, warning against the one and commending the other. If “wine” really meant grape juice, then the authors of the OT would have used the Hebrew word for “grape juice” (Num. 6:3). The fact is that the people of God drank the juice of the grape at all stages of its production � from the freshly pressed “must” and the aerobically fermented “new wine” to the anaerobically aged fine wine. It was all lawful for God’s people to drink, in moderation.
3. God not only allows believers to drink wine, He created it for them and commends it to them (Ps. 104:14-15; Eccl. 9:7). He promises to reward their obedience with the blessing of the abundance of wine (Dt. 7:13; 11:14; Prov. 3:10). The promised land is characterized as a land with the abundance of “grain and wine” (Dt. 11:14; 2 Ki. 18:32).
4. God is so far from discouraging the production of wine and strong drink that He commands that it be included as a necessary part of the sacrifices that his people offer to him (Ex. 29:38, 40; Lev. 23:13; Num. 15:5, 7, 10; 28:7). Every believer had to offer wine as a necessary part of the sacrificial system. If he didn’t produce it himself, then he had to purchase it from someone who did. There was no escaping complicity in the alcohol business in the Old Testament.
5. God not only permits his people to drink wine, He virtually commands that they do so at at least one of the feasts (Dt. 14:22-26). God encourages His people to purchase “wine and strong drink [beer]” in order to “rejoice in the presence of the Lord.”
One should note the social nature of biblical drinking. The purpose of wine and strong drink is to foster joyful fellowship. In the Bible no one drinks alone. In America alcohol has been removed from the Lord’s table and the family’s table. Americans drink alone in order to escape. This leads to a nation of individual alcoholics. The biblical model for drinking tends in the opposite direction, helping solidify community and family ties through festive gatherings around various “common” tables, the Lord’s table being at the center. (Once again, we read of the appropriateness of Israelites “purchasing” [Dt. 14:26] wine and strong drink in order make merry at this feast. There is nothing unlawful, suspicious, or dangerous about the alcohol business in the OT.)
6. The solemn fact that such alcoholic wine is liable to abuse, is never used as a practical reason for total abstinence. Wine and beer are good gifts of God given to cheer the hearts of men (Ps. 4:7; 104:14-15; Judg. 9:13). The one who drinks must do so giving thanks to God and without abusing God’s good gift (cf. 1 Tim. 4:1-5). The three examples of abstinence in the Old Testament (kings, priests, and Nazirites) were temporary restrictions.
7. Wine and strong drink are not to be consumed when priests and kings are engaged in their official capacities (Lev. 10:9; Num. 6:1ff.; Prov. 31:4; Is. 28:7). Wine and strong drink are not to be consumed at work, but after work when one relaxes and rejoices in what God has done through one’s labors (Gen. 9:21). The priests never drink wine in God’s presence for vocational and symbolic reasons, just as they are never allowed to sit down. Their work is never finished in the tabernacle and temple. Jesus completes the work and sits down in the Holy of Holies to celebrate the completion of the priestly work. His saints join with Him in this celebration when they sit and drink wine in the Lord’s special presence.
8. The OT portrays the coming joys of the messianic age in terms of the abundance of alcoholic wine (Is. 25:6; 27:2; 55:1; Jer. 31:12; Hos. 2:22; Joel 2:19, 24; Joel 3:18; Amos 9:13-15; Zech. 9:15, 17; 10:7).
9. When His people rebel against Him God withdraws the blessing of the abundance of wine (Dt. 28:39; 29:6; Is 1:22; 62:8; Jer. 48:33; Hos. 9:2, 4; Joel 1:10; Amos 5:11; Zeph. 1:13; Hag. 1:11).
10. Bread and wine are food and drink for kings: Royal fare (Gen. 14:18; Gen. 40; 2 Sam. 16:1-2; Neh. 1:11; Esth. 7:1, 2, 7, 8). When the Lord blesses Israel, a kingdom of priests, they can be found in abundance in the promised land.
11. Wine and strong drink are blessings of God, enjoyed by the people of God upon completion of their work and when the situation calls for the joy of feasting (Gen. 5:28-31; 9:21; Gen. 43:34; Dt. 14:21; Song 5:1; cf. John 2:10). Bread is Alpha food and wine is Omega food. You eat bread to strengthen you for the day’s work and you drink wine to rest and celebrate the completion of work.
12. As a punishment for corporate sin, God curses disobedient cultures with drunkenness (Jer. 13:13-14; Ezk. 23:28, 33; Nah. 1:9-10; Hab. 2:15-16; Lam. 4:21-22).
13. God’s solemn warnings against the abuse of wine and strong drink are not to be taken lightly. A life of drunkenness is a dangerous sin expressly condemned in the OT (Gen. 19: 32ff.; Is. 28:7; Ps. 78:65; Prov. 20:1; 23:20-21, 29-30, 33). (On the medicinal and anaesthetic use of alcohol, see Prov. 31:6-7. It would not be wrong to get a man drunk before performing surgery on him. We do the same today with anaesthetics.)
13a. Drunkenness distorts one’s perception of God’s world (Prov. 23:29-30; Jer. 25:16; Is. 28:7; Hos. 4:11; cf. Luke 21:34).
13b. Drunkenness destroys one’s vocational capacity (Prov. 23:20-21; 31:4-5; Is. 5:22-23).
13c. Drunkenness is in violation of godly social behavior (Is. 28:7-8; Jer. 25:27; Ps. 107:27; Prov. 20:1; 23:29-30).
13d. Drunkenness weakens the body (Prov. 23:30, 32; Hos. 7:5).
13e. Drunkenness distorts judicial and moral discernment (Gen. 19:32; Lam. 4:21; Joel 3:3; Is. 5:11-12). [These last few points on drunkenness have been taken largely from Kenneth Gentry’s book, The Christian and Alcoholic Beverages (Baker, 1986).]
14. These strong warnings against drunkenness notwithstanding, the OT never advocates the prohibition of the use wine or strong drink as a defense against the abuse of alcohol. There is a clear difference in the OT between the use and abuse of alcoholic beverages. Prohibitionists and abstentionists condemn the use of all alcoholic beverages, arguing that the liability to abuse alone ought to cause us to refuse to drink. The Bible never argues this way.
This kind of reasoning is fallacious. It necessarily leads to a dangerous form of legalism. The Bible also warns kings against spending their strength on women (Prov. 31:1-3). Therefore, kings should abstain from contact with all women? Gluttony is often condemned in tandem with drunkenness (Dt. 21:20; Prov. 23:21). Therefore, abstaining from all eating is the best choice for the believer? Sexual perversion is also condemned along with drunkenness (Rom. 13:13; 1 Peter 4:3). Therefore, better for the really spiritual Christian to abstain from sex altogether? Sex, food, and wine can be abused; but they nevertheless are good gifts from God that can be used by the people of God when they are enjoyed in accordance with the righteous requirements of God (1 Tim. 4:1ff.).
Part Two: The New Covenant
1. The New Covenant (which is not entirely new, but rather a transformation of the Old Covenant) radically changes only one aspect of the Old Covenant’s teaching on wine and beer. That change has to do with a major advance in the sacramental use of wine. But before that change is explained, I should briefly highlight the continuities between the Old and New Covenants. It should be noted that the New Testament corpus is not only about one fifth of the length of the Old Testament, but the NT also presupposes the ethical/legal foundation of the Old. If changes result in the transformation of the Old into the New Covenant, they are made explicit in the New Covenant documents (as in the book of Hebrews). As for wine and beer, there is no discernible change from the Old to the New Testament with respect to the following points:
1a. Just as in the Old Testament, the “wine” commended by God and used in moderation by the people of God is not “grape juice” but alcoholic wine and beer (cf. Lk. 1:15; 5:29; 7:33-34; Jn. 2:3, 9, 10; Acts 2:13; 1 Cor. 9:7; Eph. 5:18; 1 Tim. 3: 3, 8; 5:23). There is not a shred of evidence from the first century or from the NT itself to indicate that “wine” in the NT was anything but alcoholic wine.
1b. Every word used to describe “wine” or “strong drink” in the NT is used in contexts that connote their inebriating qualities (oinos, Lk. 7:33-35; 1 Tim. 3:8; Titus 1:7; 2:3; Eph. 5:18; gleukos, Acts 2:13; sikera, Lk. 1:15). The low end alcoholic “new wine” (aerobically fermented) and inferior aged wine (anaerobically fermented using poor yeast and low sugar content grapes) were relatively abundant and inexpensive (Jn. 2:10). High quality aged wine or “the best,” as the master of the banquet called it (Jn. 2:10), was rarely enjoyed by the common people. It was reserved for special festive occasions, like weddings and sacred feast days (Passover).
1c. Just as in the OT (shakar, Gen. 9:21; 43:34 or Jer. 48:26), the verbs used to described drinking can refer either to “getting drunk” or to “feeling merry” (i.e. methuo, Jn. 2:10 or Acts 2:15).
1d. The NT makes no distinction between alcoholic and non-alcoholic wine, warning against the one and commending the other. I have heard it argued that the wine in the NT was severely watered down so that it was almost impossible to get drunk, that it was not much different than grape juice. That can hardly have been the case. How could the Corinthian church get “drunk” on severely watered down wine (methuo, 1 Cor. 11:21)? True enough, the people in the ancient world would water down wine for many of its uses, but not so much that it ceased to be “wine.” Clearly, alcoholic wine (perhaps mixed with water) was used in the Lord’s Supper in the NT.
1e. Since the OT portrays the coming joys of the messianic age in terms of the abundance of wine (Is. 25:6; 27:2; 55:1; Jer. 31:12; Hos. 2:22; Joel 2:19, 24; 3:18; Amos 9:13-15; Zech. 9:15, 17; 10:7), it is not surprising that the NT portrays the fulfillment using the same symbolism in the Messianic ministry of Jesus (Mt. 9:17; 21:33-46; 22:2; 26:29; Jn. 2:1-11; Rev. 19:19).
1f. Jesus Himself drank alcoholic wine (Lk. 7:33-35).
1g. Jesus instituted the New Covenant communion meal with wine, not grape juice (see Westminster Confession of Faith chapter 29.3 and Westminster Larger Catechism questions 168 and 169). Christ transformed the Old Covenant Passover meal into the New Covenant memorial meal by continuing the use of wine (Mt. 26:29).
It is true, the text of all three Gospels says that Jesus took “the cup,” which was filled with “the fruit of the vine” (genema tes ampelou). The phrase “the fruit of the vine” is merely a poetic way of describing “wine.” This equivalence is firmly and unquestionably established in the literature of the times. The Jews never used mere grape juice in their Passover cups. Moreover, the phrase “the fruit of the vine” became for the Jews a technical description of alcoholic wine when it was used in sacred ceremonies like the Passover.
1h. God is so far from discouraging the production of wine that He commands that it be included as a necessary part of the New Covenant sacramental memorial offering (Mt. 26:29; Mk. 14:25; Lk. 22:18; 1 Cor. 11:21-22). Every believer has to offer wine as a necessary part of the New Covenant sacramental system. In the New Testament church the believer would not have been at liberty to abstain from alcohol entirely. At least one day a week he was commanded to partake of bread and wine in God’s presence with his brethren at church.
Once again, as in the OT so also in the NT, there is no escaping complicity in the alcohol business. No one ever even dreamed of using grape juice in the church’s communion until the late 19th century in America. Wine has been used in the Lord’s Supper by all orthodox Christians (Eastern and Western) until the 19th and 20th century temperance movement influenced many churches in America to change.
1i. As in the OT so also in the NT, the solemn fact that such alcoholic wine is liable to abuse (Eph. 5:18), is never used as a practical reason for total abstinence. Principled abstinence is never even mentioned in the NT save in the case of causing a brother to sin (Rom. 14:21). It is precisely the one who drinks who is “strong” and the one who mistakenly feels that drinking wine is sin who is called “weak.” Wine and beer are good gifts of God given to cheer the hearts of men (Jn. 2:10). The one who drinks must do so giving thanks to God and without abusing God’s good gift (1 Tim. 4:1-5).
2. In the Old Covenant the priests and people could indeed drink wine and strong drink (= beer) but only outside of God’s special presence in the tabernacle and temple. Priests and people were encouraged to rest from their labors and rejoice together with wine and strong drink in contexts outside of the sacramental worship instituted by God that took place within the tabernacle and temple. Wine and strong drink are not to be consumed when priests and kings are engaged in their official capacities (Lev. 10:9; Num. 6:1ff.; Prov. 31:4; Is. 28:7), and since no one who was not a priest was allowed into the tabernacle and temple’s sacred space, no Israelite laymen ever drank wine in the special presence of God.
2a. The best of the new wine and beer was tithed to the central sanctuary every year and given to the priests to use (Ex. 22:29; Num. 18:12, 29; Dt. 18:4; 1 Chron. 9:29).
2b. The best of the wine was poured out to God as a drink offering of food on his altar outside of the Holy Place (Ex. 29:40; Num. 15:1-10). But the best of the fermented grain beverages (beer) was brought into the Holy Place and poured out in jars beside (or on) the face-table (Num. 28:7).
2d. Nevertheless, neither the priests nor the people were ever allowed to enjoy any of that wine or beer within God’s tabernacle or temple where His special presence was manifest. In fact, it was strictly forbidden to the priests (Lev. 10:9), and the people had to pour out their offerings of wine at the altar (Ex. 29:40). Their festive covenant meals, which did include wine and strong drink, took place outside of the environment of the tabernacle and temple.
(to be concluded)
