Daily Old Testament: Nehemiah 12-13 and My Own Article on "Genesis and John" (Part 2)

Nehemiah 12 – The names of the priests and Levites who came up with Zerubbabel are listed. In verse 31, it goes back to first person narration. Nehemiah says he brought all the leaders up onto the wall and they went in procession, one company to the right with musicians and the whole regalia; the other to the left. Again, particular people are mentioned and their place along the wall. It was a great affair. “They offered great sacrifices that day and rejoiced, for God had made them rejoice with great joy; the women and children also rejoiced. The joy of Jerusalem was heard far away” (12:43).

Nehemiah 13– On that day “they read from the book of Moses in the hearing of the people; and in it was found written that no Ammonite or Moabite should ever enter the assembly of God, because they did not meet the Israelites with bread and water, but hired Balaam against them to curse them—yet our God turned the curse into a blessing. When the people heard the law, they separated from Israel all those of foreign descent” (13:3).

One of the priests, Eliashib, is related to Tobiah (an Ammonite) and prepared him a large room in the temple. Nehemiah was not in Jerusalem when this was done. When he returns and discovers the wrong, he was angry. He threw the household furniture of Tobiah out of the room, gave orders that they be cleansed and brought back the other things that had been stored there.

He also discovers some other problems. He prays that his work may not go to waste. He also tries to get a stricter observance of the Sabbath. He commands that the doors be shut at dusk on the Sabbath. He refuses even to permit them to wait in front of the city gates. He contends with some Jews who intermarry with Ammonite or Moabite women. He also “curses and “beats” some of them and pulls out their hair (13:25). “Thus I cleansed them from everything foreign, and I established the duties of the priests and Levites, each in his work; and I provided for the wood offering, at appointed times, and for the first fruits. Remember me, O my God, for good” (13:31).

“Genesis and John”

Part 2

This vision of Christ as the Second Adam was pivotal for George Fox. The overturning of "the fall" as a condition that weighed us down made "perfection" possible - moral perfection. It made possible ALL the testimonies Friends made and have continued to make to this day: equality of male and female – restoration of the original equality, the peace testimony, the ability to love as Christ loved, the end of all worldly obsession with position and power.

I knew the importance Quakers had associated with this vision of Christ’s work. I remember asking the leader of my Catholic Study Group [Emmaus] why Catholics did not seem to give much weight to the “Second Adam” idea: Why was there still an assumption that mankind lived in “the fallen state” that Adam and Eve’s disobedience had led us to? It seemed like Christ’s redemption should be at least as potent in shaping the reality we all lived in as Adam’s “fall”. He responded that as the Church sees it, we have a choice – about accepting Christ and his being the Second Adam or not, but it didn’t change the underlying reality we lived in to start with. I didn’t pursue it, but inside I did feel that somehow something wasn’t right about this. If Christ was in fact that Second Adam shouldn’t we be dealing with a world fundamentally transformed? Please know, by the way, that I know I am dealing with a spiritual reality and not a simple historical reality when I speak of these parts of the narrative. This is a complex thing. There has always been choice.

Daily Old Testament: Nehemiah 5 and My Own Article on "Friends and Scripture" (Part 10)

Nehemiah 5 – There are community grievances. Jews complain about other Jews who have taken advantage of those who were in need of food. The poor have had to pledge their fields and vineyards to stay alive. The rich are charging interest and taking their brothers and sisters into servitude. These things make Nehemiah very angry. He brings charges against the rich nobles and officials, saying they were unlawfully taking interest from their own people. “The thing that you are doing is not good. Should you not walk in the fear of our God to prevent the taunts of the nations our enemies?” (5:9)

He asks them to stop charging interest to restore their lands and houses and any interest already charged (5:11). They agree. He makes the priests also promise to do likewise. “I also shook out the fold of my garment and said, ‘So may God shake out everyone from house and from property who does not perform this promise. Thus may they be shaken out and emptied.’” (5:13). In these things, Nehemiah performs the role of prophet in the land, preventing the rich from exploiting the poor, reminding the wealthy of their obligations under the law, even his “acting out” the message he wants them to have from their God.

For the twelve years Nehemiah serves as governor in Judah, he never took advantage of the food allowance he was given to use. Other governors had exacted heavy burdens but he did not “for fear of God” (5:15). And this even though he often entertained 150 people or more at his table—Jews, officials and visitors from other nations. Here he also demonstrates the virtues of the good shepherd and leader of his people.

“Friends and Scripture”

Introduction: This article is one I wrote some years ago and it was eventually part of the book I wrote called Leadings: A Catholic’s Journey Through Quakerism. My plan here is just to include a few paragraphs of the chapter each day.

Part10

It is the spirit of repentance that is brought forth by that pure law, which the prophets and John the Baptist testify to; and it must be passed through before one can come to a participation in the cross of Christ.  Going through the judgment due under the pure law of God is a painful time for Fox as it is for all men, but as he permits God to exercise his just judgment over all that denies or kills his spirit, he passes through the ministration of the law to the ministration of the prophets and of John the Baptist, who sees to the fulfillment promised in Christ:

“I saw this law was the pure love of God which was upon me, and which I must go through, though I was troubled while I was under it; for I could not be dead to the law but through the law which did judge and condemn that which is to be condemned.  I saw many talked of the law, who had never known the law to be their schoolmaster; and many talked of the Gospel of Christ, who had never known life and immortality brought to light in them by it . . . as you are brought into the law, and through the law to be dead to it, and witness the righteousness of the law fulfilled in you, ye will afterwards come to know what it is to be brought into the faith, and through faith from under the law.  And abiding in the faith which Christ is the author of, ye will have peace and access to God” (Fox’s Journal 17).

In this passage, we see one of the difficulties Fox’s approach sometimes engenders; for even though he sees the ministrations as leading only gradually to the knowledge of Christ, he tends to mix and mingle Old Testament references with New Testament Christology throughout – as did the earliest Christian writers!!

The reason is because having passed through all the ministrations himself, Fox sees in all of them the Johannine Christ who is with God in the beginning and active throughout the entire story even when his face is hidden: He is in the promise to Eve in Genesis 3: 15--the seed of the woman who will bruise the head of the serpent; he is the voice that leads Abraham away from his ancestral land; the manna that feeds the Israelites in desert and the law Moses transmits to his people.  Finally he is the Word that speaks through the prophets and prepares the way for the incarnated Christ. Fox was not really a systematic thinker or writer either, so that one must also admit that the boundaries between the various ministrations sometimes blur in Fox’s retelling.  But these elements of potential confusion do not detract from the power of Fox’s insights when we remember that he was trying to communicate about things not really susceptible to clear and logical explanation.

Daily Bible Reading: Amos 9 and John 5:24-47

Amos 9 – In another vision, the prophet sees the Lord standing by the altar asking that the building be reduced to rubble so that no one can escape. God has led not only the Jews. He has led the Philistines and the Aramaeans too. The Israelites cannot just rest on their laurels, thinking God will always be by them. But his anger will not strike all. There will be a remnant, “For now I will issue orders and shake the House of Israel among all the nations, as you shake a sieve so that not one pebble can fall on the ground. All the sinners of my people are going to perish by the sword, all those who say, ‘No misfortune will ever touch us, nor even come anywhere near us’” (9:9-10).

The book ends with a vision of restoration – possibly added on. “’The days are coming now—it is Yahweh who speaks—when harvest will follow directly after ploughing, the treading of grapes soon after sowing, when the mountains will run with new wine and the hills all flow with it. I mean to restore the fortunes of my people Israel; they will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them, plant vineyards and drink their wine, dig gardens and eat their produce. I will plant them in their own country, never to be rooted up again out of the land I have given them, says Yahweh, your God’” (9:13-15).

John 5:24-47 - Jesus goes on to speak more broadly of the “life” – “the eternal life” – he offers us. I will use the simplest English translation: “I am telling you the truth: those who hear my words and believe in him who sent me have eternal life. They will not be judged, but have already passed from death to life . . . the time is coming – the time has already come – when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear it will come to life” (5:24-25). 

Then he speaks again, this time just a little bit differently, of this life-giving power: “[T]he time is coming when all the dead will hear his voice and come out of their graves: those who have done good will rise and live, and those who have done evil will rise and be condemned” (5:28-29).

It seems on the surface as if he is speaking of two separate times – a spiritual resurrection that can happen NOW and a resurrection to judgment and separation of good and evil that will come at the end of time. It is mysterious!

The main power Jesus has in John, the power that makes him one with the Father, is his power to bring life out of death. And it is not just a promise of life after our physical death; it is a promise of a life we are not fully living NOW. We think we are living, but the natural state of man on this earth is not real life – the life God meant us to live when He created us - but merely a physical (or fleshly) semblance of life.  In saying this, John is continuing to place his gospel message in the context of the Genesis narrative. In Genesis 2, the second creation narrative in the redacted text, God tells Adam, “’You may eat indeed of all the trees in the garden. Nevertheless of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you are not to eat, for on the day you eat of it you shall most surely die’” (Gen.2:18). When Eve and Adam violate this “word” or commandment, they do not die physically – not immediately – but they do die spiritually; and this spiritual death, which we all partake in, is the death John’s gospel wrestles with. It is this death we are already in that Christ can bring us out of.

TS Eliot also put this Johannine vision into powerful words:

But to apprehend
The point of intersection of the timeless
With time, is an occupation for the saint—
No occupation either, but something given
And taken, in a lifetime's death in love,
Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender (Eliot’s “Dry Salvages” V, 16-21)

This is the dimension where Christianity reveals its unique truth – at the crossroads of timelessness and time where the incarnation happens, where we can become joined with our eternal Father through love of His Son.

I think George Fox and early Friends understood this dimension of the gospel in a unique and powerful way.  That’s why they placed such urgent emphasis upon hearing the voice of God, experiencing the judgment of Christ inwardly, and clinging to that inward presence so it would bring you into life.

Returning to the text, Jesus goes on to speak about John the Baptist.  He says that John was “a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. But I have a testimony greater than John’s” (5:35-36). Then Jesus speaks of ALL the signs or testimonies that have pointed to him, to Jesus. John the Baptist testified to Jesus’ coming; the works Jesus performs testify to his truth, and the ancient scriptures too testify to Jesus, but the people still do not want to believe. Jesus tells them it will not be he who accuses them of unfaithfulness. They say they believe in what Moses has taught, but Moses too has testified to Jesus and they do not SEE it (Deut. 18:15).

Daily Bible Reading: Jeremiah 15-19 and 2 Corinthians 1-2

Jeremiah 15 – The Lord tells Jeremiah that things have gotten so bad, even Moses and Samuel would not be able to convince Him to take these people back.  “I will make them an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth because of what Manasseh, son of Hezekiah, king of Judah, did in Jerusalem” (15:4).

In 2 Kings 21, Manasseh was 12 when he become king and reigned 55 years.  He rebuilt the high places his father had destroyed; he erected altars to Baal and a sacred pole, altars in the temple for the whole host of heaven.  He immolated his own son by fire, practiced soothsaying and divination, reintroduced the consulting of ghosts and spirits. His son Amon did more of the same for two years.  But then Josiah came to the throne at the age of eight. 

It is more obvious from the passages in this chapter that, though the disgraces and sufferings brought upon Judah are seen as from the Lord -- “I was weary of sparing you” 15:6 -- there is definitely a sense here that these are sufferings that have come about “naturally” as we would say, “historically” from the wrong choices and stupidity of a people who have lost their way morally. 

           

The prophet is in anguish: “Woe to me, mother, that you gave me birth! A man of strife and contention to all the land! I neither borrow nor lend, yet all curse me” (15:10). “Why is my pain continuous, my wound incurable, refusing to be healed?  You have indeed become for me a treacherous brook, whose waters do not abide!” (15:18) The Lord tells Jeremiah that he too must repent and be a pure “mouthpiece.” (15:19).

Jeremiah 16 - The prophet is told he should not marry, for the “sword and famine will make an end” of the children of this generation.  And Jeremiah is told he must not grieve for his people because “I have withdrawn by peace from this people” (16:5).

He must not rejoice with them either, for God will stop their joy.  When they ask why, he is to tell them it is because both previous generations and this generation too have forsaken the Lord.  But Jeremiah also prophesies a restoration that will be equated with Israel’s first redemption from the slavery of Egypt. The restoration of the people when they repent will be a new story of liberation like the one of Moses (16:14-15).

Jeremiah’s prophesy extends also to the “heathen.”  Someday they too will realize the gods they worship are “empty idols of no use” (16:19), and they too “shall know that my name is Lord” (16:31).

Jeremiah 17 - Jeremiah tells them they will be enslaved. “A curse on the man who puts his trust in man, who relies on things of flesh, whose heart turns from Yahweh.  He is like a dry scrub in the wastelands: if good comes, he has no eyes for it, he settles in the parched places of the wilderness, a salt land, uninhabited. A blessing on the man who puts his trust in Yahweh, with Yahweh for his hope, he is like a tree by the waterside that thrusts its roots to the stream: when the heat comes it feels no alarm, its foliage stays green; it has no worries in a year of drought, and never ceases to bear fruit” (JB 17:5-8)

           

Then more deep words: “More tortuous than all else is the human heart, beyond remedy; who can understand it? I, the Lord, alone probe the mind and test the heart, to reward everyone according to his ways. . .” (NAB 17:9-10)

The man who puts his trust in human beings, into the kind of shallow values and pursuits that are characteristic of human striving, shall be like a barren bush.  But the man who trusts in God, in things of the spirit, he shall be like a tree planted beside the waters.  For the life of the person rooted in the stream will endure hardship.  As far as why the human heart seems so inclined to put his trust in superficial, material and passing things, this is a mystery “beyond remedy” he says.

 “Heal me, Yahweh, and I shall be really healed; save me and I shall be saved. . .” (17:14).

The chapter ends with prayers for justice (as between Jeremiah and his enemies) and reminders about the importance of the Sabbath.

Jeremiah 18 - Yahweh is likened to a potter who finds flaws with his work and refashions it to perfect his creative intention.  God does change his mind if people repent and changes his mind too if we enter apostasy.  “Sometimes I threaten to uproot and tear down and destroy a nation or a kingdom.  But if that nation . . .turns from its evil, I also repent of the evil which I threatened to do” (18:7-8). Blessings are not guaranteed. The passage is interesting for its universality; it is not directed to Israel alone.  Yahweh says, “my people have forgotten me!  They burn their incense to a nothing.  They have lost their footing in their ways, on the road of former times, to walk in tortuous paths, a way unmarked.  They will make their country desolate.” (JB 18:15).

The men of Judah plot against Jeremiah, seeking to destroy him by using his own words against him (perhaps those words which could be interpreted as disloyal to the nation – his advice on surrender, for example).  Jeremiah looks to God to keep him in mind (JB v18:8-20).

Jeremiah. 19 – He continues preaching his message of doom. A plot is devised to silence Jeremiah.  He calls God’s wrath down on them.  He uses the breaking of the jug as a symbol of what God, the potter, will do.

2 Corinthians 1 - In his opening and thanksgiving, Paul refers to God as the “God of all encouragement, who encourages us in our every affliction, so that we may be able to encourage those who are in any affliction with the encouragement with which we ourselves are encouraged. . .” (1:3).  We are strengthened by God that we may be equipped to pass on that strength to others, to make them feel that there is a source of strength and comfort for every affliction in our God. He tells them something they apparently already know—that he had to pass through some severe affliction in Asia, an affliction that “utterly weighed” him down; but he was delivered.

He speaks of knowing that he has conducted himself toward them “with the simplicity and sincerity of God” through God’s grace (1:12).  He had planned to come to them on his way to Macedonia and then to return through Corinth again back to Judaea.  But apparently he had to change plans and go from Troas (NW Anatolia]; they are disappointed, but he isn’t coming so as not to inflict pain on them.  He wrote scolding them, not to cause them pain but to show his love. 

2 Corinthians 2 - He urges them to show love to “wrong-doers” they may have in their community. He will not argue with them for having forgiven them (2:10). He speaks of the opportunities that are created for the gospel - just by the “odor” or aroma believers give off—“an odor of life that leads to life” (2:16). 

George Fox refers to this as well—see page 27 of his Journal where he says, “All things were new, and all the creation gave another smell unto me than before, beyond what words can utter.”  Everything that touches the salvation work of God has this aroma.