40 Years a Son, Living With the Word

29 May 202429 May 2024 by theparacleteshammer, posted in Biblical Studies/Exegesis

I was reading something in the biblical text this evening and I had a bit of something like a revelation.

Sometimes the one thing the King wants to emphasize, is the one thing we as translators and the writers of the original canon treated as an afterthought. We treat things as an afterthought because of the way they are phrased. And simply because of the smallness of the word, maybe the original writers did, too, if we take the words in the text at face value.

Allow me to explain.

It was Genesis 1, and always with the Fourth Day, there is something with the Fourth Day the King likes to highlight for me, and it is a kiss from him. It is a small phrase, only three words, and I have never heard the phrase emphasized, thus it seems to me most people do not treat it with emphasis when the read it, because it takes up such a small percentage of the text.

Maybe the original writer of the Creation Narrative, whether you call him Moses, or JEDP (ahem), or anyone else, just wrote this one phrase and gave it no further thought, but I would like to think it meant something, especially since these entities feature prominently elsewhere in the Tanakh, and in the Revelation and the First chapter of James.

So, here is the text for the Fourth Day of Creation:

And G-d said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. And G-d made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. And G-d set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And G-d saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.
Genesis 1:14–19 ESV

Did you see it?

And the Stars

I wonder, gang. I wonder if we know of this in this way. For He is the G-d of the Seven Stars, Who Walks Among Them, and knows the starways, and walks among the starlight.

And it is the stars as the Sons of G-d that shout for joy in the book of Job, and the Father of Heavenly Lights that gives every good and perfect gift from above as He walks among the stars, which are themselves heavenly lights.

With rain, with sun
With much, with less
With joy, with pain
With life, with death

The only things that satisfy come from You
They come from You

Everything that’s beautiful
Everything that’s wonderful
Every perfect gift comes from You

Your grace, Your heart
Your voice, Your touch
Your word, Your peace
Your hope, Your love

A thousand words could not explain
A thousand worlds could not contain
Every perfect gift comes from You

It comes from the Father of Lights
It comes from the Giver of Life
It comes from the Heavens above
It’s coming straight from Your heart
To the people You love
“Everything” by Chris Tomlin

When I was 18, the very first time I got to see the starways and the pitchblack of the heavens, I was in ROTC in college, and we were in Camp Blanding in Northeast Florida. My batallion was on a night march, and that was the very first time I was able to identify more than 12 constellations just based on patterns I had seen in books as a kid. And it was radiant, though not radiant like the sun. Sparkly.

And on the Fourth Day, as with other things pertaining to the Redemptive Gift of Exhorter, G-d usually highlights things in patterns of threes.

The nature of G-d

The Three major Exhorters of Scripture: Moses, Solomon, Paul.

The Sun, the Moon, the Stars

For me this highlights something that I wish to give to you as a gift in the arena of how I do hermeneutics, and precisely why the tagline of TPH is “Into all truth by the Spirit of G-d”.

It’s not the whole of scripture, written with a 1-to-1 mindset, with each word having and sharing equal weight with all the others. Sometimes, the Holy Spirit is going to highlight or lowlight certain words of phrases, depending on what is going on with you, and where He wants to point you in a given matter.

Sometimes, a phrase waits 10-30 years to emerge and glow off the page.

And this phrase “and the stars” just hits me in all the right places, moreso now I have seen stars and auroras and other entities with proper telescopes.

I put to you, as me reader, that, when you are reading, that you allow Holy Spirit the lattitude to highlight or emphasize something differently than you have allowed Him previously. If you allow Him to guide you along the river, you have no idea where He will pull the canoe up so He can take you exploring. Reading the text, as with other parts of our life, should be an adventure that is completely life-giving.

He may emphasize a piece of the text you never thought He would.

For example, when was the last time you heard there were three “veyahavtas” (the Hebrew Phrase translated as “You shall love”) in the text of the Torah.

And for you who are Torah haters, how many know the heart of the bible is the law, and the heart of the law is Deuteronomy, and for those who want to get intimate with how blessings and curses operate, you have to be intimate with how Deuteronomy operates?

I know we are not under the law and G-d abolished the law completely without exception, but maybe there is something of value in reading the law.

Just some thoughts. And yes, some of what I wrote above is a bit tongue-in-cheek.

But seriously, maybe it would behoove us to see, instead of a bipolar book, where the G-d on the Right Hand Side of the Book apologizes for the acts of the G-d on the Left Hand Side of the Book, perhaps we are dealing with the outworking of a very complex WHOLE COVENANT.

Perhaps there is life and fathering that will break the bastard curse off of us, if we will begin to obsessively hunt for the Father in the Tanakh, and in the Torah.

It’s not a list of rules and regs, gang, appended by Talmuds and Mishnahs and Gemaras. It is a arkload of principles and relationships available to anyone with the cojones to hunt for Dad’s mind AND heart within its pages.

For example, the first time “Father” is specifically implied in the pages of the Biblical Text is Exodus 4:22.

“Thus says the L-RD, ‘Israel is my firstborn son’.”
From Exodus 4:22 ESV

I wonder if one problem with too many of us that want to run from the Torah and the Tanakh and Whole Covenant into Better Covenant/Worser Covenant is that our relationships with our own earthly dads were so messed-up that we cannot bear the thought of beginning a relationship with G-d the Father in His fullness without a social worker present. And truly, if we were abused by our fathers, we might need someone who will take that role in the spirit for a season.

But, really, the gems are in the Torah for us to find if we are willing. The fat of the land, all of the fat of the land, is present for those of us who look to be transformed from disobedient to obedient, with hearts that are FILLED with the earnest of the Kingdom.

His heart is for us to know all of Him, and not just the parts with which we are comfortable.

The starsong….proclaiming the justice of G-d….

“And the stars”

May the King give light in strange and unexpected places for His kids to walk.

Just some thoughts.

From the Desk of Peter Lee, Concerning Esther

14 January 2019 by theparacleteshammer, posted in Uncategorized

The Book of Esther: A Silence so Loud, it is Deafening

In recent days I have spent a good amount of time studying the Book of Esther and I have fallen in love with this amazing book once again. It is regularly treated like the annoying younger sibling who constantly tags along when we want to hang out with our friends. Regrettably, the value and even the canonicity of Esther is regularly called into question. According to Karen Jobes, not one commentary was written on Esther during the first seven centuries of the Christian church. Some biblical interpreters, like Martin Luther, wish out loud that the book had not come to us at all. John Calvin himself did not write a commentary on Esther nor apparently did he ever preach from it. I wonder how often the book is preached from pulpits today.
Perhaps the neglect is somewhat understandable. After all, the book presents significant problem in the fact that he God is not mentioned explicitly anywhere in its story. The divine name (YHWH) does not occur, nor does the Hebrew word for God ’elohim, nor do any other names of God. He is not addressed formally in prayers, praise, or dedications. In fact, there are no prayers in the book of Esther at all (though, to be sure, there is a fast in Est. 4:16). The absence of God is even more glaring when we examine other ancient versions of this book. The version that we have in our English Bibles is based upon the Hebrew text of Esther found in the Masoretic Text (MT). There are, however, Greek versions of this book, in which God is not only mentioned by name but is directly involved as an active participant.
So why is explicit mention of God noticeably absent from our canonized version of the book? Why is God incognito?
The answer to that question can be illusive. Perhaps, it has something to do with the fact that the narrative takes place in foreign land, a Persian urban center, and not in the normal dwelling place of God in the temple, in Jerusalem. Perhaps, the establishment of Purim as a new Jewish festival cannot be too closely associated with God since Purim is not regulated in the legal texts of the Old Testament? We cannot be too confident in any answer since all are highly speculative. We can, however, safely assume that any Jewish text, even one that does not mention God overtly, in the post-exilic era would have some theological significance. For a people living during this period of restoration, who were so cognizant of the Lord and His covenantal promises (Chronicles) and concerned with a return to Mosaic orthodoxy and orthopraxy (Ezra/Nehemiah), to adopt a literary work that did not have some theological significance strains credulity.
Consider also the events in the book. The Jewish people are threatened with genocide due to the manipulative deceit of Haman, “the enemy of the Jews” (Est. 3:10; 9:24). Had Haman’s malicious plan succeeded, the theological, not to mention human, impact would have been catastrophic. Recall that since the days of the garden, the Lord promised that a “seed of the woman” would come to crush the head of the serpent (Gen. 3:15). The history of salvation traces the line of that seed through the line of Seth (Gen. 5:3), Noah (Gen. 5:28-29), Abraham (Gen. 15:3-5), and the Judean king David (2 Sam. 7:12). Simply put, the blessed “seed of the woman” would come through the line of the Jews. If there are no Jews, then the line of descendents would be cut off. If that line is cut off, then there is no “seed of the woman,” no coming son of Abraham, no future son of David. No Messiah, no Jesus! If there was ever a time for the Lord to be directly involved in the affairs of His people, it is now. Yet, He is never mentioned!
We expect God to be mentioned constantly and persistently, but he never is. Given the significance of the narrative in the history of salvation, the need for the presence of God and reminders that He is in divine control of matters is overwhelming. Too much is at stake. The author of the Book of Esther easily could have written a literary work where direct references to God can be found in every sentence on every page in abundance, or the author could take the radically opposite approach to communicate the exact same message—which is what we have here. We expect God to be actively and explicitly involved in the account, which is what makes the author’s silence in this regard so loud, so deafening. The expected theological bomb-blast is heard in its overwhelming, unexpected silence. In other words, the author of Esther creates an awe-inspiring sense of the presence of God by not mentioning the overt presence of God at all.
This may also be the reason for the name of the Jewish heroine, Esther. Some have suggested that the name “Esther” (whose Hebrew name is Hadaasah) is based on the Persian word for “star” or possibly (though unlikely) the Egyptian goddess Ishtar. Consider another alternative, one made by my dear friend Stephen Fix in his personal studies of the book. The Hebrew consonants for “Esther” ?str are the same consonants as a Hebrew verb form which means “I am hiding” (for you students of Hebrew, it’s the first person common singular of the imperfect form, niphal stem, see Gen 4:14; Job 13:20). Thus it is possible that the name “Esther” creates a double entendre for the verb “I am hiding.” If this is so, God is implicitly saying to the readers, “I know it may be hard not to read about me in a direct and obvious way, but do not be discouraged. I would not leave you at a time when you need me the most. I am still here, orchestrating all these events for the good of my people.”
Read this way, the Book of Esther has more in common with the life of Christians today than any other book of the Bible. After all, we do not live in a day when God brings fresh manna that falls from the heavens (Exod 16) or supernaturally provides life-giving water from a rock (Exod 17). We don’t see the dividing of large bodies of waters (Gen 1; Exod 14; Josh 3; 2 Kings 2) nor do we see the Lord riding on a glory-chariot (Ezek 1). Although our day is without these extraordinary visuals of God’s presence, we should not be discouraged. The absence of any direct reference to God does not equal a true theological absence of God. The Lord works in the life of His people in subtle yet still powerful ways. It is more like the days of Esther. He is there. He is always there, even if we don’t see Him. During those times in life when it is difficult to discern the presence of God and thus we wonder about His providence in our lives, remember the Book of Esther and remember what it teaches us—He is there, He is always there, and He is always working for our well being, even if you can’t see Him.
As I ponder Esther, I am reminded of another time in the history of salvation when God seemed absent. Like Esther, we would have expected the complete opposite. When God’s only begotten Son hung innocently on the cross, he was silent. Was He present? Absolutely!
Just as foolish as it would be to say that God was not there at the cross of Christ, so it would be to say that God was not there with His people in the book of Esther. God was silent in both times….a silence so loud, it was deafening. But God was actively involved and faithfully working for the redemption of His people. For this reason, not only is this book meaningful for the Jews as it describes their preservation (thus the Jewish philosopher Maimonides ranks it equal to the Pentateuch), so it is meaningful for Christians as it describes the providence of God in preserving an ethnic line that would ultimately give birth to the Savior of the world.
I thank God for the Book of Esther because it reminds me that He is constantly behind the scenes in every aspect of every day of my life, even when I can’t tell that He is there. And He is working for my good.

Peter Lee, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Old Testament
Reformed Theological Seminary, Washington, D.C.

Link to the original article here.

Some thoughts as I read this article, specifically where I agree and disagree. First of all, that G-d works behind the scenes is absolutely true, even when He is not explicitly mentioned. The lack of the mention of G-d’s name does not mean G-d is incapable of working. To be sure, it is precisely when He works and we don’t have to necessarily point it out at every moment, but rather, when unbelievers are able to point it out, that they are brought face-to-face with Him, and must give an account.
Secondly, where I disagree explicitly is specifically where Lee dives off into a cessationist, Reformed rage, as with others of his ilk. It is unfortunate, because so many Reformed theologians are exceptionally deft at handling the text until it comes to the point where they separate how G-d used to behave in terms of miraculous acts from how He behaves now (Hebrews 13:8). Namely when the argument turns to water not being supernaturally provided from a rock, or other miracles.
G-d can and does still work in a boatload of ways. He wants to provide, and he wants to do so in a supernatural fashion. He wants to multiply bread, and he wants to remind us that we will still do greater miracles than the ones he did.
Just saying…