Job 16-17 and Epistle of Ignatius to the Trallians 11-13

Job 16 – Job continues in anger: “I have heard all this before. What miserable comforters you are! Won’t you ever stop blowing hot air? What makes you keep on talking? I could say the same things if you were in my place. I could spout off criticism and shake my head at you. But if it were me, I would encourage you. I would try to take away your grief” (16:2-5).

Times when people are going through profound suffering and grief are not the times to get philosophical or analytical with others. They are times to stand by others, help them cope, give them support and love. If analysis and self-examination are needed as sometimes they are, THEY must bring that to the task.

It seems to Job that God has showed him no mercy – “My face is red with weeping; darkness covers my eyes for no injustice on my part” (16:16-17).  He begs that earth may not cover his blood so that his “witness” may reach to heaven. (16:19).  And he refers to an advocate he has in heaven: “He who can testify for me is on high . . . Let Him arbitrate between a man and God as between a man and his fellow” (16:19-21).

Job 17 – Job continues: “My spirit is crushed, and my life is nearly snuffed out. The grave is ready to receive me. “I am surrounded by mockers. I watch how bitterly they taunt me. You must defend my innocence, O God, since no one else will stand up for me” (17:1-3).

The graveyard awaits him. Who will stand up for him? Where then is his hope?

Epistle of Ignatius to the Trallians

11 – Ignatius believes that these gnostic teachings are “poisonous growths with a deadly fruit” (81). “They are none of the Father’s planting” (81).

“It is by the Cross that through His Passion He calls you, who are parts of His own Body, to Himself. A Head cannot come into being alone, without any limbs; for the promise that we have from God is the promise of unity, which is the essence of Himself” (81). I love these words.

12 – The churches of “Asia” that have come to visit Ignatius join with him in this message to the Trallians.

“These chains, which I wear for Jesus Christ’s sake in my constant entreaty to reach the presence of God, utter their own appeal to you to continue in unity and prayerfulness with one another” (81).

More than anyone else, the clergy of the church should “see that the bishop enjoys peace of mind” (81). He begs that they heed his advice.

13 – He sends love and greetings to them from Smyrna and Ephesus, and asks that they keep him “Syrian church” in their prayers.

“Love one another, all of you, with a heart above all divisions. My spirit offers itself on your behalf, not only now but also which I shall stand in the presence of God. Whether that will happen is still in hazard; but the Father may be trusted in Jesus Christ to grant my supplications and yours. May you be found faultless in Him” (82).

Daily Bible Reading: Ezekiel 29-30 and Epistles 2 and 3 of John

Ezekiel 29  – The year is 588-587 BC. Ezekiel goes on to prophesy against the Pharaoh of Egypt, the “great crocodile wallowing in [the] Niles” (29:3). God is going to “put hooks through [his] jaws,” pull him out of the Nile, drop him in the desert and give him “as food to the beasts of the earth and the birds of heaven, so that all the inhabitants of Egypt may learn that I am Yahweh” (29:6).

He is disappointed that they have not been more supportive to the House of Israel: “Whenever they grasped you, you broke in their hands and cut their hands all over. Whenever they leaned on you, you broke and left their loins shaking” (29:7).

           

God intends to reduce Egypt to a desert and scatter its inhabitants for 40 years, and the Babylonians – agents of God’s wrath – will be reward by being able to loot the Egyptians. But the suffering of Egypt will not be forever either. Like the “chosen people,” Egypt will be restored. They will be weak at first, and they will not dominate others, but they will be restored.

Lawrence Boadt’s book on the Old Testament notes that Ezekiel 29:17-21 is about Nebuchadnezzar giving up on the 13 year siege of the island city of Tyre in 572 BC. Ezekiel 29:1-9 refers to the Egyptians sending a relief column to help Jerusalem escape the Babylonia attack of 588-586 (did not help).Tyre and Egypt are most condemned as promoters of pagan gods: Baal in Tyre and Egypt’s idea of their pharaoh being divine.

Ezekiel 30 – Again, Ezekiel is addressed by Yahweh – “Howl: Alas the day! For the day is near, the day of Yahweh is near; it will be a day dark with cloud, the end of an epoch for the nations. The sword will come on Egypt, and terror will visit Ethiopia when the slaughtered fall in Egypt, when her riches are carried away, when her foundations are destroyed” (29:3-4). These consequences will show the nations that the fate of all nations is in His hands. There is a plan, a will behind all that happens, however empty it may seem to those who suffer it.

Introductory Information on 2 and 3 John: These two epistles were written presumably by John the Apostle, thought at this time to be residing in Ephesus. He designates himself as “the Elder” of the church communities of Asia Minor. “The Lady” is a figurative title for the churches over which he is head. The challenge to John’s teaching that Jesus was “the Word made flesh” is seen as a danger and not a doctrine that was there from the beginning (Brown 397). This challenge might have been coming from local Jewish synagogues “that rejected as irreconcilable with monotheism the Johannine Christian confession of Jesus as God” (Brown 404-405).

On the “treatment proposed in 2 John 10-11 that false teachers should not be received into peoples’ houses or greeted as friends, Brown thinks this was not necessarily directed at all visitors of this persuasion but rather only those who came specifically with an intention to teach their erroneous doctrine.

2 John – This epistle is addressed to “the Lady, the chosen one, and to her children” (2 John 1), the church under his care. He says he is writing “not to give you any new commandment, but the one which we were given at the beginning, and to plead: let us love one another” (2 John 5). This is it in its simplest form: “this is the commandment . . . live a life of love (2 John 6).

But John is concerned that there are “many deceivers about in the world, refusing to admit that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh” (2 John 7). These deceivers are the “Antichrist.”

“Watch yourselves, or all our work will be lost and not get the reward it deserves. If anybody does not keep within the teaching of Christ but goes beyond it, he cannot have God with him: only those who keep to what he taught can have the Father and the Son with them” (2 John 8-9).

“If anyone comes to you bringing a different doctrine, you must not receive him in your house or even give him a greeting. To greet him would make you a partner in his wicked work.” (12)

3 John – Here John thanks his friend Gaius for receiving missionaries he has sent and helping them. But he complains that one Diotrephes,, “who seems to enjoy being in charge of [the church]” (3 John 9), refuses to receive the missionaries John has sent to them.  He advises Gaius not to follow this example. Demetrius, presumably one of the missionaries John has sent, “has been approved by everyone” (2 John 12), and John assures Gaius that he vouches for him too.

He says there are other things he would like to discuss but does not want to “trust them to pen and ink” (2 John 14).

Both of these letters do certainly help us to recognize that divisions in the Christian community – the church – were there from the beginning. I think that they should give Friends pause too because the error John sees in some of the early interpreters rejection of the “doctrine” that Jesus Christ had come in the flesh, is rarely seen as an essential part of the Johannine gospel Quakers usually find so attractive.

Daily Bible Reading: Jeremiah 30 and 2 Corinthians 11:16-33

Jeremiah 30 – Here towards the end of the Book of Jeremiah, the lack of historical continuity becomes a bit of a problem for readers. Chapter 30 begins what my Jerusalem Bible calls The Book of Consolation; it was written sometime between 622 BC and the death of Josiah in 609, at the very beginning of Jeremiah’s “career” as a prophet. The Assyrian Empire was in decline and Josiah made an attempt to retake the lands of Samaria and Galilee that had been lost at the end of Solomon’s reign in 922 BC. There was a sense of optimism that a unified kingdom faithful to the monotheistic vision of the prophets might come to pass after centuries of turmoil.  Jeremiah here gives voice to this optimism. The tables will be turned, Jeremiah assures the people. Those who oppressed Judah and Israel will now be oppressed. “The Lord says, ‘I will restore my people to their land and have mercy on every family; Jerusalem will be rebuilt, and its palace restored” (30:18).

2 Corinthians 11:16-33 – This next part of the letter is interesting in that Paul pretty much confesses that he is just angry, not speaking from what the Lord has prompted him to say but just from his own gut. These other “apostles” are apparently charging money for their preaching and making people feel they are getting something of greater value than what Paul delivered to them? Paul preached for free, supported by the congregation in Macedonia. They apparently are claiming to be more “Jewish” than Paul, for he reasserts his “Jewish” credentials here.  They may also be claiming to have worked harder, but he here boasts of his on-going ordeal in service of the Gospel. He has been in prison more, been whipped more, been stoned and shipwrecked. He has endured dangers of all kinds, sleepless nights, hunger, thirst and exposure (11:25-29). Lastly he tells them of his amazing escape from the hands of the governor of Damascus, “let down in a basket through a window in the wall” (11:33).

There is a lot of emotion in this letter about the rivalries, divisions, boasts of superiority and travails suffered in these early days. So, the divisions in the church are from the beginning. Still, we must try to settle them, overcome them. If Paul anguished over this, it is something still worth working on.

It is also interesting that this reading from the New Testament is so similar to the reading from Jeremiah that is part of the day’s reading. Paul anguishes over the destructive influence of “false apostles” as Jeremiah does over that of the “false prophets.”

Daily Scripture and Thoughts On It

The Scripture readings I am doing right now are all from the letters of Paul. I am reading his letters and trying to put them into the context of the story told by Luke in Acts. I am presently re-reading 2 Corinthians. Any commentary I make is in italics:

2 Cor. 10 - Paul describes himself as one who bullies them only when he is away (in his letters). But he fancies he will have to do so in person to people who accuse him of “ordinary human motives” (3). He does not fight with fleshly weapons. They are assailing his authority – he defends it as given to build them up, so he won’t neglect to use it. He resolves to be more like the man of his letters when he is with them. He returns to the theme of boasting [see Jeremiah 9] urging them to come off believing in pretensions others have made and to recognize that Paul’s position of authority--his boast--derives from a commission from God.

The amount of time Paul devotes to this theme—of boasting, of seeing himself in conflict with others who are trying to denigrate his authority or puff up their own status in the church—indicates that there must have been some pretty caustic words going around and challenges among those preaching and teaching as to their relative status in the leadership.

2 Cor. 11 - Paul’s “jealousy” for them is from God. He arranged for their marriage to Christ. But as in the Genesis story, the serpent turned them [Christ’s Eve], away from simple faithfulness to a fallen condition and fallen relationship with God.

Paul has a little irony in his tone here. He asks them to “put up” with his foolishness; they “put up” with it when others preach a different message. Again, he refers to competing “apostles,” men who call themselves or make other feel they are “super-apostles” (5). Are they charging money for their preaching and thus making people feel they are getting something of greater value? Paul preached for free (supported by brothers from Macedonia). There are counterfeit apostles, “Satan going about as an angel of light.” They apparently are claiming to be more “Jewish” than Paul, for he reasserts his “Jewish” credentials here. They may also be claiming to have worked harder, but he here boasts of his many sufferings in Christ—39 lashes at the hands of the Jews (5 times); beatings with rods (3 times); a stoning; a shipwreck; dangers of all kinds; sleepless nights, hunger and thirst; fastings; exposure (25-29). He tells of his escape from the hands of the governor of Damascus, “let down in a basket through a window in the wall” (33).

There is a lot of emotion in this letter about the rivalries, divisions, boasts of superiority and travails suffered in these early days. So, the divisions in the church are from the beginning. Still, we must try to settle them, overcome them. If Paul anguished over this, it is something still worth working on.