The Divine Council in the Book of Job

An excerpt from Christopher D. Kou, “A Biblical Theology of the Divine Council,” Theopolis Institute, March 2017.

The most extensive biblical account of the Divine Council is found in the Book of Job. In Job 1, the “sons of God” ( הִ֔ים בְּניֵ֣ האֱָ bĕnê hāʾĕlōhîm) gather together in the heavenly council, and השַּׂטָָן֖) haśśāṭān) “the adversary” gathers with them. It is not explicitly told whether or not the  adversary is to be counted among the “sons of God,” but it is clear enough that he is part of the council proceedings, as Yahweh directly addresses him to point out Job’s faithfulness. While the word for “adversary” is the same word as that which refers to Satan, the great enemy, it is now common to consider the adversary to be a neutral, or even good, officer in the Divine Council—an angelic servant of Yahweh who does only his bidding, and in the Book of Job acts simply as Yahweh’s agent to test and confirm Job’s loyalty to God. To support this, many scholars note that haśśāṭān is properly translated as “the adversary,” with the definite article. Thus, it is argued, the role of adversary or accuser in early Hebrew conception is not that of the great cosmic enemy, but rather simply that of the courtroom prosecutor—a neutral role. Mullen observes that all uses of “Satan” as a name are post-exilic.¹Mullen, Divine Council, 276. As Michael Heiser puts it:

The satan in Job 1–2 is not a villain. He’s doing the job assigned to him by God. The book of Job does not identify the satan in this scene as the serpent of Genesis 3, the figure known in the New Testament as the devil. The Old Testament never uses the word saṭan of the serpent figure from Genesis 3. In fact, the word saṭan is not a proper personal noun in the Old Testament.²Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible, First Edition. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2015), 57-58. While pressing the currently popular notion that “the satan” is simply a generic term that is later adopted as a name, Heiser seems reluctant about coming down definitively on one side or another as to whether the divine being known as “the satan” in Job and elsewhere is that same individual who later earns the name. First he opens with the simple statement that “the saṭan in Job 1-2 is not a villain. He’s doing the job assigned to him by God.” But then he issues the far more ambivalent conclusion: “The dark figure of Genesis 3 was eventually thought of as the ‘mother of all adversaries,’ and so the label satan got stuck to him. He deserves it. The point here is only that the Old Testament doesn’t use that term for the divine criminal of Eden.” (emphasis mine). But while it is quite evident that the Hebrew authors don’t explicitly use the term śāṭān for the divine rebel, this far from establishes that the same individual is not being referred to. See also John H Walton, Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary (Old Testament): The Minor Prophets, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, vol. 5 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009), 251-252.

However, noting that in the Hebrew שׂטָָן֖ śāṭān is rarely used in the ordinary personal name form sidesteps the question of whether “the satan” or “adversary” in heaven is indeed the individual who is known by that proper name in later Scripture. That śāṭān is a functional noun simply demonstrates the role of that individual within the heavenly court. It does not necessarily follow that the individual known as “the adversary” must be some other person than the one called by the personal name Satan by later authors.

Heiser points out that in Numbers 22:22 when the Angel comes to stand against Balaam, he is referred to as śāṭān. However, it seems to me that this by itself proves very little. First, the identity of Balaam’s adversary is hardly ambiguous. It is the Angel of Yahweh. Second, it does not say that the Angel is השַּׂטָָן֖ haśśāṭān but rather יְהוָ֛ה . . . לְ שׂטָָן֣ לוֹ֑ וַיִּתְיַצֵּ֞ב מַלְאַ֧ wayyiṯyaṣṣēḇ malʾaḵ yĕhwâ . . . lĕśāṭān lô. That is, the Angel of Yahweh is not “the adversary,” but merely stood against Balaam “as adversary to him.” Even more than the definite article might, the prepositional prefix depersonalizes the word, making it attributive, and far more about an assumed function in this isolated case than haśśāṭān in the Book of Job, which speaks more of a specific individual holding a specific office.

As an example, on a naval vessel “the captain” is the commanding officer of the ship. Crewmen may indeed refer to him as “the captain” in many cases. But he may also be often addressed directly as “Captain,” sans definite article, or even referred to with his official rank of “Captain” attached to his personal name as if it were a part of it. There could hardly be any confusion about who was being spoken of were one crewman to say “Captain” and another “the captain.” They are obviously referring to the same person. Complexities and some confusion may ensue only when there are two individuals with identical rank aboard the same vessel.

Moreover, in the Hebrew, much as in English, the definite article may (though in admittedly few cases) be used with proper names that were originally appellative. Thus, the 144 occurances of the definite article in היַּ רְַדּןֵ֔ hayyardēn do not suggest to us that there are many rivers called Jordan and this is but one of them, but are references to a specific river by the name of Jordan or places associated with that river. Nor are the 25 attestations of הַלְּבָנוֹן hallĕḇānôn intended to imply to us that there may be other multiple Lebanons. Rather, these are descriptive identifiers which have become proper nouns while retaining the definite article. Jordan likely derives from ירד yrd, which means to “go down,”³“ירְַדּןֵ,” TDOT, 323. and Lebanon means “white mountain.”⁴“לְבָנוֹן,” HALOT, 518. The same may be the case with haśśāṭān, “the adversary.”

This is simply to say that the grammar is not conclusive either way. There is a lot of complexity we have to sort out with the title and name of “the satan.” Are they both referring to the same individual? Or are their multiple individuals with the same rank and role? Despite the use of the definite article for “the adversary,” it does not necessarily follow that the person known by the name Satan cannot be the same individual.

The claim that the adversary of Job is a mere innocuous agent of Yahweh’s commands does not hold up to a close reading of the book. The adversary is clearly privy to the council in Job 1, but he is also somewhat separate. The sons of God assemble, and the satan is also there. This doesn’t necessarily imply that he is not one of the assembly, but certainly he is singled out. Yahweh orders him to report, and then challenges him. Already we see that the satan is not merely the prosecutor of men in the divine court, but he is actually singled out because he is indeed the adversary of Yahweh himself. God therefore urges him to take note of the uprightness of Job, his servant. It is often suggested that the satan is the one who challenges God in the heavenly council scene of Job, but we do not find that here. Rather, we see God challenging the satan: “Isn’t my servant Job great?”

The answer of the satan to Yahweh is not “well, then, let us try and prove him to see if his loyalty is true,” which is what one might expect of a faithful agent of God, since it would be in line with God’s motivation revealed over the course of the book, and would even parallel God’s test of Abraham when he commanded him to sacrifice his son Isaac. Instead, the satan’s words are much more insidious. “Does Job fear God for no reason? Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has on every side? . . . But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.” As Boyd points out, “there is something sinister about the eagerness of the satan to destroy Job.”⁵Boyd, God at War, 147.  That there is a man as upright as Job is an affront to the adversary, and so he turns immediately to seek to tear him down.

In the second confrontation in the heavenly court, after Job does not curse God even in the face of tragedy, the sons of God again assemble to present themselves before Yahweh, but the focus is again on the interplay between God and the satan. Yahweh first reminds the satan, “He still holds fast his integrity, although you incited me against him to destroy him without reason.” This is not to say that Yahweh has no reason to test Job, for his reason becomes clear in the end. This is instead an indictment of the satan’s arbitrary desire for Job’s ruin. It is a rebuke and a yet renewed challenge from Yahweh to his traitorous council member. For while Yahweh’s purpose is for the testing of Job, the satan’s express goal is either to provoke Job to curse God or to leave him entirely crushed.

The satan’s tone at this second challenge from Yahweh now takes on an even more acerbic tone. “Skin for skin!” he exclaims. “All that a man has he will give for his life. But stretch out your hand and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face.”

Again, the goal of the satan is to provoke Job to sin (i.e. to curse his Creator). This encounter ends the dealings of Yahweh with the adversary, and from there on God deals with Job directly. But the character of the satan is established by this point. He is not merely a faithful servant of the Council or of God. Indeed, the context of the Divine Council brings the nature of the confrontation into stark relief. The contest is initiated by God, but is done in the sight of all the sons of God. Job’s loyalty to God vindicates not only Job, but it also vindicates Yahweh before the Council.

From here we can see that not all is well in the Divine Council. There is revolt within the very court of heaven. Is haśśāṭān of Job to be identified with the great enemy Satan? In light of the insidious character of the adversary here, I think there can be little doubt. What, then, is he doing in the court of heaven? It seems, under the Old Covenant, that Satan in fact has a place in the Divine Council. He actually has God’s ear in the court of heaven, and God allows his presence. His function in the court is as “the adversary” of Yahweh and of his people, but there is more to it than that. I believe the modus operandi makes it clear, this satan can be none other than “the accuser of the brethren” who has a place in the Council in the Book of Job, but is doomed to be cast down out of heaven in Revelation 12:10.

The Divine Council scenes of Job also serve to establish the term הִ֔ים בְּניֵ֣ האֱָ bĕnê hāʾĕlōhîm as referring to those who are seated in the heavenly court. In Job, at least, these are clearly angels. Job’s own friend and councilor Eliphaz poses the rhetorical question, “Have you listened in the council of God?” (Job 15:8). The obvious answer is no; Job has not. The heavenly council is portrayed as being closed to men. At the same time, the fact that this question appears here, in a book which describes the heavenly council, suggests to us in itself that more is determined for man where the council is concerned. Certainly, the author of the Book of Job, whether that be an older Job himself or some other writer, has been privy to the workings of the heavenly council, since he relates to us in the text exactly what has taken place there between God and the satan.

The complete paper is available at www.academia.edu.

“And as he prayed, the appearance of his countenance was altered, and his clothing was white and glistening.” (Luke 9:29, King James 2000 Bible)

The Tabernacle was covered in three layers: linen, red-dyed ramskin, and a third layer of tachash. What’s tachash? The word is a mystery, and there have been many suggestions concerning its meaning, from unicorn to dolphin. But perhaps that mystery has now been solved. And the glistening solution is nothing like you’d imagine in a million years.

This post has been slain and resurrected for inclusion in my 2015 book of essays, Inquietude.

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One way to describe the book of Job is as an extended argument between the book of Proverbs and the book of Ecclesiastes. Proverbs generalizes about the way the world works: fools are like this, wise people are like this, you do this and you’ll get blessed; you do that and you’ll get in big trouble. Ecclesiastes says that the world doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes you do what’s right, and you still get in trouble. Sometimes that other fellow does what is wrong, and he keeps getting blessed anyway. That’s in a nutshell a small version of those books, and much of the arguments in Job are concerned with these seemingly contradictory visions of life.

The three friends of Job seem to be reading their cues with mathematical precision from the book of Proverbs. They have logical proofs and diagrams, and their conclusions are something reminiscent of the disciples’ question to Jesus. “So who sinned, this man or his parents?” In this tidy-minded world there are only two options, and we might as well get down to brass tacks. However, Job sees through the veneer of piety in the so-called friends, sees their evil intentions, how they twist the principles of Scripture to their purposes, and at the same time he insists that the world is more complicated and challenging than they are willing to admit. In one sense, we can see Job as Proverbs and Ecclesiastes arrayed for battle…

…in the end we must insist that Proverbs and Ecclesiastes are actually very good friends. These books complement and explain each other. If Proverbs generally explores wisdom as a skill, Ecclesiastes explores wisdom as a very unique sort of skill. Wisdom is a skill, but it is both like and unlike many other skills… If the skills needed to live and build in God’s world are crucially centered on people, an entirely different sort of skill is needed than a simple, straightforward following of directions. People are messy, complicated, confusing, and frustrating. They have cultural differences, personality quirks, gifts, weaknesses, health problems, sin, and they frequently fail and let us down… In many ways it’s far easier to build a house out of bricks, wood, or stone, than to build a house out of people.

Available here.

“Jesus does what no medicine man
or witch doctor is able to do.”

And they came to Jesus and saw the demon-possessed man,
the one who had had the legion, sitting there,
clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid. – Mark 5:15

Rich Bledsoe’s old blog is a goldmine. Here’s an excerpt from The Dysfunctional Family of the Gadarene Madman.

A friend of mine who is a Christian clergyman, and is from India, and has demonstrated gifts of exorcism, tells me that the power of the witch doctor is the power of being able to command lesser demons to leave by the power of a greater demon. But the demons are never banished. They just transfer place or position. In the case of this text, the demons of the village were all put on this one poor man who became a representative demoniac, and bore the pain and agony of the entire community in himself.

There are four descriptors around the demoniac that we need to look at.

First, he is chained, but in his madness is so crazed that he breaks the chains and cannot be restrained. He is the recipient of the accusations of the demons of the village. The very character of the devil is that his is “an accuser” (Revelation 12:10, Zechariah 3:1). Accusation is the most galling of all experiences, and he is accused day and night by the devils who have taken possession of him who used to accuse the community. Now along with the demons, the whole village also accuse him.

Secondly, he is naked. (Luke 8:27, Mark 5:15) This is a symbol of shame, and he thus bears the shame of the entire community.

Thirdly, the text says that he cuts himself with stones (Mark 5:5). In the Greek, the term is “autolapsis”, which literally translated means “self stoning”. In other words, the madman executes himself by stoning, which in the ancient world was a ritual form of execution. Hence, he is executed on behalf of the community as well. Finally, he lives amongst the tombs, (Mark 5:2, 5) which as a fulfillment of the other curses on him means that he is already dead. He bears death and damnation in himself for the whole rest of the community.

The demons immediately begin to beg that they not be sent out of the country, and beg instead that they might be sent into a herd of swine that are nearby. Now, this is ambiguous. The swine are in fact a mirror image of the village. There are about 2000 pigs (Mark 5:13), and in fact the demons may be begging to be allowed to re-enter the people in the village, for whom the madman is a surrogate. To the demons, the people are as unclean as the pigs, and either allows for their occupation. But Jesus mercifully does not send them back to the village people, but instead sends them into the nearby pigs, and they, driven mad by the incursion into them, rush off of a cliff and into the Sea of Galilee.

To fall into the sea is to fall into the abyss. In doing this, Jesus does what no medicine man or witch doctor is able to do. He does not just exchange one demon for another from one place to another, and that in a temporary fashion, but Jesus banishes them forever, and sends them back to the abyss.

I recommend reading the entire article, and its sequel, The Gadarene Madman and the Modern World. Bledsoe demonstrates that the relationship between the demoniac and community are exactly the kind of “triangulation” observed by Edwin Friedman to be the problem in all dysfunctional relationships, whether personal, familial, institutional or corporate.

Of course, I have to tie this to the matrix, at least its “festal” strand. The first chapters of Matthew follow the Feasts, and place this event at Atonement. [1] This means that the communal dysfunction of scapegoating (as expounded by René Girard, particularly concerning the treatment of Job by his advisors [2]) is Man’s unjust, twisted method for obtaining corporate healing without reference to the mercy of God. It replicates the reaction of Cain to God’s atoning mercy (an event which also appears at Atonement within the narrative of Genesis 4). The scapegoat in the end was not Abel, although that was Cain’s intention. Abel himself became an acceptable offering. The scapegoat was Cain himself, who could not bear his shame and so rejected the mercy of God. The community he founded was a primeval “Gadara,” and Lamech continued to deal with its demons through bloodshed. The blame shifting continued until the entire culture was cutting itself. [3] The bloodletting continued and  increased until the Great Flood.

These primeval events were similar expressions of blame-shifting. “Shifting” is the work of the witch doctor. It’s a form of “cooking the books.” Rather than take the shame and blame and be forgiven, fallen corporate Man (Greater Eve) can’t take vengeance upon historical Adam, so she finds someone else to take the rap. Of course, the time came when the Man she found to vent her fury upon, in a demonic hysteria, was her One True Husband. This led to unfathomable mercy, but also to the avenging of all the scapegoats in the history of atonement, beginning with Abel, in AD70. The Revelation tells us the story of their enthronement.

In the end, it is God who cooks the books. Jesus is the Great Medicine Man, the White Witch Doctor. But He removes our sins from us as far as the East is from the West.

________________________________

[1] See Why Jesus Healed Some.

[2] James Jordan writes:

Job is clearly some kind of king. He is the leader of his community. He is the Chief Cornerstone, while Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar are his “three mighty men,” the other corners of the realm. It is because Job is the king that the other men arrive to try and force him to step down.

(The Hebrew word for “army commander” is “corner.” For other examples of chief corners and three other corners, consider David and his three mighty men, Daniel and his three friends, and Jesus with Peter, James, and John. On “corners” and “three mighty men,” see Biblical Horizons 121. Compare also Jesus with the Caiaphas, Herod, and Pilate, as discussed above.)

Job as king is the “greatest of the men of the east” (Job 1:3). He employed hundreds of people and fed the poor. The disaster that overcame his household was, thus, a disaster upon the entire realm. The poor were starving, and hundreds of people were either killed or out of work. The sores on Job’s body were a sign of the lesions on the body politic of which he was the head, a point no ancient reader would miss.

This realm or political “house” has fallen because the Chief Corner, Job, has fallen. The other three corners, thus, step in to try and repair it. Their fallacy is not in seeking to restore their society, but in the way they seek to do it. Their desire is for Job to step down by admitting fault, so that one of them can replace him. God’s intention, however, is to take Job and this society through judgment and resurrection, and to reconstitute a new and better society afterwards (as happens in chapter 42).

Job’s position as king or leader of his people has been skillfully analyzed by Rene Girard in Job: The Victim of His People, translated by Yvonne Freccero and published by Stanford University Press in 1987. Despite the many flaws in this book, it makes clear that the attack upon Job came not because he was an ordinary person, but because of his preeminent position in this community, which had fallen into chaos seemingly as a result of God’s judgment upon Job, their “king.”

The book of Job, then, is not just about the sufferings of a righteous man, though it is that in part, and can be preached that way. It is also about chaos in the body politic, and the position of the suffering king within that chaos.

James B. Jordan, Was Job an Edomite King?, Biblical Horizons Newsletter No. 130.

[3] The innocent victims in our society are most obviously the unborn. But perhaps this sheds some light on the growing problem of self-harm in our culture. Biblically, we should also remember the priests of Baal on Carmel cutting themselves. Paul ties this factor to the Circumcision in the first century, those who considered it to be somehow redemptive rather than simply signal.

Unfinished Business

6    For in Scripture it says: “See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame.”

The first mention of a cornerstone is in Job 38. The Lord sees the Land as the foundation of His Temple. The entire structure reflects the Covenantal nature of the act of Creation.

Then the LORD (Transcendence)
…..answered Job (Hierarchy)
……….out of the whirlwind,
……….and said: (Ethics 1 – Law given)
……………“Who is this who darkens counsel
……………(Ethics 2 – Law opened)
……….By words without [wisdom]?
……….(Ethics 3 – Law received)
…..Now [gird] yourself like a man; (Sanctions – Adam)
I will question [, and instruct]. (Day of God)

Where were you (Creation – Genesis)
…..when I laid the foundations (Division – Exodus)
……….of the [Land]? (Ascension – Leviticus)
……………[Divulge] (Testing – Numbers)
……….if you have understanding. (Maturity – Deuteronomy)
…..Who determined its measurements? (Conquest/Joshua)
Surely you know! (Glorification – Wise Judges)

Or who stretched the line upon it? (Day 1 – Ark)
…..To what were its foundations fastened? (Day 2 – Veil)
……….Or who laid its cornerstone?” (Day 3 – Altar)
……………When the morning stars (Day 4 – Lamps)
……….sang together, (Day 5 – Incense)
…..And all the sons of God (Day 6 – Mediators)
shouted for joy? (Day 7 – Rest)

Notice the cornerstone is the third line of the third stanza. Jesus is the true Land upon which everything rests.

This cornerstone is not only precious but the “choice” stone of the quarry. The permanent house of God is made of cut stones, like Solomon’s Temple. This means it is not an Adamic house (like a bloody altar) but an Evian house, where the sacrifice is praise. It is not a house of Knife but of Fire. It is a house of music. The sound of the chisel will not be heard in it.

“And the temple, when it was being built, was built with stone finished at the quarry, so that no hammer or chisel [or] any iron tool was heard in the temple while it was being built.” 1 Kings 6:7

7    Now to you who believe, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe, “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,”

Peter now quotes the second use of “cornerstone” in Scripture. We discussed that this stone was given to the Jews, who assessed it, and misclassified it. He was a precious stone, who required no cutting. But “men” has been replaced with “builders.” The reference is to the craftsmen of the Bible, like Aholiab and Bezalel, who could only successfully build the house of God according to the heavenly pattern if they were filled with the Spirit of God. It takes the Spirit to open our eyes to the quality of Jesus. He restores our sight, our judgment, and we recognise that He is righteous and we are sinners. Only by the Spirit can we be workmen who are not ashamed. [1]

8    and, “A stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall.”

The reference here is from Isaiah, and it is two-fold. There is a stone of stumbling and a rock that causes a fall.

Firstly, an altar is “raised up.” It has to do with the raising up of the Land, the Firstfruits and the Ascension Offering. These rites bring Man close to God. But instead of providing sanctuary, a covering for sin, an altar stone that raises the humble Man, it would bring proud Man down. The humble are exalted, but the proud are thrown down.

According to Isaiah 8, the source of Peter’s quote, this fall is due to a misplaced fear, a fear of men and their conspiracies instead of the fear of a holy God.

The LORD Almighty
is the one you are to regard as holy,
he is the one you are to fear,
he is the one you are to dread.

The passage refers to the Temple sanctuary, but makes a distinction between the man-made Temple and the true Temple, which is God Himself.

He will be a holy place;
for both Israel and Judah he will be
a stone that causes people to stumble
and a rock that makes them fall.
And for the people of Jerusalem he will be
a trap and a snare.
Many of them will stumble;
they will fall and be broken,
they will be snared and captured.”

Secondly, a stone that causes people to stumble is a stone on the ground. Adam is unable to stand. His heel is bruised and he limps like Jacob. But what is a rock that makes him fall? It may just be a bigger stone on the ground, but rocks were thrown by the ministers of God’s justice to atone for murder or adultery. The sound of a stoning was the sound of God’s chisel cutting an individual or family out of history. And the blood of the slain was atoned for by the blood of the slayer.

Perhaps the thought here is that the ground cursed by the unatoned sins of God’s people would bring about their fall, even if men failed to pick up stones and administer justice. God Himself can raise up stones to bring us down.

Israel often failed to administer such justice against the serpent and his offspring. When the Day of the Lord arrived, the “Day of Coverings,” God Himself turned up to administer the justice miscarried by unfaithful Adams. Men were suddenly face to face with the Lawgiver, and they actually called on the rocks and hills to cover them.

Those who stumble at God’s holy Law will fall under its curses, even when God’s ministers fail to carry out the Law. Of course, this Law has been slain and resurrected in Christ as the gospel, as Spirit-Law, yet curses remain, and they are eternal. But for those who believe, there is no further business, no further “trade” required. It is finished. There is still justice, but there is also justification.

Cut stones are holy. They are silent witnesses to the Law of God, whether they are the tablets of Moses or the Temple of Solomon, a reason for praise. But unfinished stones demand blood. They are the ground crying out as a witness against Cain.

Christ, as a stone cut out by God, was thrown at the feet of the edifice of the Gentile kingdoms and He brought them crashing down. He founded a fifth empire. His kingdom is growing into a great mountain, not a burning mountain like Sinai, but a bridal mountain like Zion. There are two mountains in Revelation: the burning mountain was thrown into the Sea. Jesus commanded His disciples to dismantle Moses by fulfilling Moses. God raised up children to Abraham from barren stones, [2] and the ministry of the apostles was both more life-giving, and more damning, to Israel than any stones raised up under Moses.

They stumble because they disobey the message—which is also what they were destined for.

Peter here refers to Paul’s words in Romans 6 concerning Herodian worship as a new Egypt, the Herods as Pharaohs. It was the unfaithful Jews who were destined to disobey the Law and be cursed–as high-handed sinners–that the blessing might come to the Gentiles. Israel’s destiny was always to sacrifice, to die as a nearbringing, for the life of the world. Since Abraham, as a substitute for the world, the altar of Israel was always the object of God’s wrath, that the nations might be the objects of His mercy. [3]

What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. For Scripture says to Pharaoh: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden… What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory—even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles?

9    But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

This verse follows the Feasts of Israel. There is much talk about “replacement theology.” But did the Church replace Israel? No more than the Temple replaced the Tabernacle, or the butterfly replaces the caterpillar — or Christ crucified was replaced by the resurrected Saviour. The Church is one new man, a body called not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles.

10    Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Peter now quotes Hosea, where God promises to restore Israel after the captivity. The condemned harlot would be redeemed and shown mercy. This supports the idea of transformation rather than replacement. Israel was slain under the Law and resurrected from Babylon, and the same process was happening in the first century.

John says that we are now the sons of God. Being a Jew was an office before God, in His holy court. That job has been transferred to the Church, the body of Christ. Anyone who thinks Jews are still God’s chosen people do not understand the Bible and how God works.

Israel was an unfaithful bride stoned to death — finished — under the perfect Law of the stony tablets of Moses. But she was also the daughter of a priest, whose remains, once stoned, were to be burnt with fire. This burning sounds hateful but it actually pictured a blessing, not a curse. It is Pentecostal. It pictured Spirit-filling and resurrection and ascension to God. The Herodian Temple became the altar of Baal. God slew the sorcerous, murderous Jezebel of Judaism and resurrected her in a new body — of Jews and Gentiles — as a holy Temple, a covering of fiery Pentecostal gemstones from the Land and shining pearls from the Sea.

Atonement by blood means justice is satisfied. Concerning the Law, the shedding of blood means business is finished. But with God, there is always a greater work to do. Business is not actually finished until the resurrection.

The final post will be an analysis of the structure of this passage.

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[1] See Unashamed Artisans.
[2] Yes, testicles are symbols of life-giving stones, hence the emphasis on their protection and rejection of eunuchs from the Old Covenant priesthood (Lev. 21:20; Deut. 23:1; 25:11-12). Priests had to be perfect offerings. Not only are there two stones in the Ark of the Covenant, there were “binary” stones in the ephod, the urim and thummim, black and white, X and Y, overshadowing Eve and deciding the future of the Land. See God’s G amble.
[3] Separating Israel from the nations as the focus of blessing and cursing avoided another “Creational” judgment like the flood. See World Stuff.

In Deep Comedy, Peter Leithart compares the Bible’s essentially comic and hopeful view of history with the Greco-Roman view, which is essentially and irredeemably tragic.

In Paul’s estimation, anyone who thought that the new life through Jesus pertained to some realm outside this history was simply an unbeliever. For the gospel says otherwise.

Certainly, discerning this new life at work in the world is an act of faith, but faith is not irrational or a leap into the dark against evidence. If the gospel is true, if new life was unleashed in the world on Easter morning, then we would expect there to be some signs that this is the case. And, as the church fathers were at pains to point out, we do.

Athanasius noted all the pagans turning from their idols, all the warring tribes become brothers, all the swords being beaten to plowshares, and used these things to expound the effects of the Incarnation. Paul, however, means exactly what he says, the coming of Jesus, and particularly the resurrection of Jesus, means that death and sin are themselves doomed, and life is already on the march to conquer death. Darkness is being dispelled because Light has come and the darkness could neither comprehend nor overcome it (John 1:5).

This account of the comic shape of biblical history and the gospel narrative has been challenged by a number of theologians and biblical scholars in recent years. Biblical scholars have attempted to show that the Bible’s stories fit into the generic categories of ancient drama or poetry, and have tried to show in particular that certain biblical narratives can be classified as tragedy. In my view, these are not successful efforts either in general or in detailed treatment of texts. In her Tragedy and Biblical Narrative, for instance, Cheryl Exum emphasizes the struggle against fate/gods/God as a key element of tragedy:

Tragic heroes have the hubris—sometimes in authentic greatness, sometimes in delusion—to defy the universe, not in a stoic defiance but in an insistence on their moral integrity (justified or not). Because they refuse, they will be broken … It is not that there is “no way out whatsoever,” as Jasper asserts, but that there is no way out without denying oneself. Saul refuses to acquiesce, he will hold on to the kingship at whatever the cost, rejecting the easy way out. There is a “way out” and Saul’s son Jonathan, by yielding his right to the throne to David, shows what it is, but at the cost of his identity, which as we shall see, becomes submerged into David’s.

It is true that Saul is tragic in the sense that Exum uses the term, but it is also clear that his tragedy is the result of his own intransigence. The story clearly endorses precisely the “easy way out”—the way of Jonathan, the way of self-denial—which is, of course, the very difficult way out, since it means effacing (but also eventually finding) one’s own identity before Yahweh and before the “rival,” David. Jonathan, characterized by self-denial and even “discipleship,” is manifestly the hero of the story.  One can say that the Bible presents Saul as “tragic,” but only if we are willing to give up calling him, in any sense, a “hero.” Again, as in Jeremiah and the gospels, Saul’s story leaves one with an intense sense of loss precisely because there was a way out, precisely because life was a real option.

Further, Exum emphasizes that the tragic hero struggles particularly to understand the fate that brings tragic consequences. Oedipus is a titanic figure because he relentlessly pursues the truth of his situation. Again, the Bible has a “tragic dimension” in the sense that it irecognizes the reality of this kind of struggle, yet the Bible does not reckon this as a heroic struggle—a struggle to be commended and supported. The titanic desire and need to know is the desire to be as God, to know as God, the lust to have the complete and finished story as God does.

Put differently, it is a refusal of faith, a refusal to trust that God, however random and wild He may appear and be, will do right. It is a refusal to learn the wisdom of Ecclesiastes. From a biblical perspective, the tragic hero is simply a character who refuses to trust that God knows what He’s on about with His universe, and will accept his “fate” only if he can see all its causes and ramifications. The tragic protagonist longs to live by sight. Job, faced with “tragic” suffering, demands to know the cause. Yahweh appears and answers no questions; the revelation of Yahweh in a whirlwind is sufficient to stop Job’s mouth. The tragic pursuit of knowledge is a refusal of Solomonic wisdom as expressed in Ecclesiastes, the wisdom that rejoices in limitation, rejoices precisely because this vaporous world is not under our control.

Peter J. Leithart, Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, & Hope In Western Literature, pp. 26-28.

Credo ut intelligam.

James Jordan has a great little commentary on Proverbs 30, the words of Agur (“sojourner”). Some believe the author of this chapter is Jacob. Jordan runs with this possibility and makes some wonderful observations.

The true son of God – or daughter of God – is a sojourner. That was true of Christ Jesus, and it is also true of us. For this reason, the proverbs of Agur the Sojourner are most relevant to us. These Sojourning Proverbs have a common theme, and that theme, announced in the opening paragraph, is humility. These are the proverbs of a man who learned wisdom by practicing humility…

The words of the Sojourner (Jacob?) the son of Yahweh,
blessed is He, the burden:
The man declares, “I have wearied myself, O God!
I have wearied myself, O God, and I have come to an end!
For I am more stupid than any man,
And I do not have the understanding of a man.”

Compare this with what Jacob said to Pharaoh: “The days of the years of my sojourning are 130; few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, nor have they reached the days of the years of the life of my fathers during the days of their sojourning” (Gen. 47:9).

I’m going to assume in these studies that these proverbs were written by Jacob. They were written at the end of his life, when he had “come to an end.” It is possible that there is a better solution to the puzzle of the opening verses of Proverbs 30, and if that is indeed the case, it will not change very much of what we shall find in the rest of the chapter. Whether Jacob wrote this chapter or not, it is certainly the case that Jacob’s life illustrates what we find here. The applications to us today will be the same in any event.

Notice Jacob’s [or Agur's] remarkable humility at the end of his life. Age and experience have not made him arrogant and proud. Rather, as Jacob considers things, he says that he is stupider than anyone he knows. He does not have the understanding that we can expect of any ordinary person. He has not learned wisdom (v. 3).

Have you ever felt this way? I believe that “the more you know, the more you don’t know.” The word “sophomore” means “wise fool,” or “sophisticated moron.” It is used of young people who think they have learned wisdom, but who obviously have not. In fact, the wiser we become, the more aware we are of how little we know. The more we learn about God, the greater is our awareness of the tremendous depth of His infinity. The older we grow in Christ, the more child-like we become-not childish in the sense of irresponsibility, but child-like in the sense of wonder and humility. Remember, the book of Proverbs is addressed to children (Prov. 1: 8).

But Jacob the Sojourner knows one thing that changes everything: “But I have knowledge of the Holy One” (v. 3; compare the old man’s knowledge in 1 John). Jacob may be worn out with living. He may feel defeated in his attempts to “exercise dominion.” He may be overwhelmed by his lack of personal wisdom; but there is one thing he does know: He knows God. And he knows that knowing God is the beginning of true wisdom (Prov. 1:7).

Knowing God makes for humility. Job 38-42 expand on what we find in verse 4 here. The questions Agur asks, such as “Who has gathered the wind in His fist?” are just like the questions God asks Job. As God humbled Job by revealing Himself, so Agur expresses humility before the knowledge of the God who created and reigns in heaven and earth.

What Job realized and what Agur realized, and what we must realize, is that we don’t need to understand everything. We don’t need to understand everything because we have God as our Father and He understands everything. Moreover, we don’t have to do everything. If we are tired, and can’t go any farther, it’s all right, because God is our Father, and He can do everything. The tired Sojourner can rest in the comfort of God’s Omnipotence.

James B. Jordan, Advice From a Sojourner, Humility and Dominion in Proverbs 30. Available from www.biblicalhorizons.com

or The Rapture is History

“And after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God.” Job 19:26

Full preterism leads logically to gnosticism. If death is already defeated, salvation has come to the world, and all is now perfect, then of necessity all three — death, salvation and perfection — have to be redefined. They are only Covenantal, “spiritual.” You can probably understand why doctrines like these don’t originate from the persecuted church. Some hope.

However, that said, I agree with 97.3963798475% of full preterism. Their take on the parousia texts is logical and contextual. Jesus actually did come back soon, as He promised, to rescue the persecuted firstfruits church. The textual ping-pong of the well-meaning partial preterists (who can’t agree between themselves on which parousia texts refer to the end of history) is a confusion of which our God could not possibly be the author. So what’s the answer?

The answer is structural, and it relates to the nature of God’s Covenants, and to the world as God’s Tabernacle. The final part of every Covenant concerns succession, or Continuity. It dictates the inheritance for the Covenant faithful. At the end of the Old Covenant in AD70, the faithful dead (the saints under the Altar) received a “heavenly country,” a heavenly Land. The earthly Land — the Bronze Altar — was broken in two. There is now a human government in heaven, a golden Altar of Incense. (For those new around here, this is what is going on in the Revelation. The Old Covenant angels retire in Rev. 4. Jesus takes over in Revelation 5. The firstfruits church is converted, then martyred by the corrupt Old Covenant vassals, the Herods, and finally all the martyrs follow Christ into heaven, calling down the Levitical and Deuteronomic Covenant curses upon the Temple. [Lev. 26; Deut. 28])

The 40 year overlap between the Old and New Covenants is what causes the confusion between preterists. Think of it this way. A Covenant is an administation by God’s vassal for a limited period of time. When a vassal violates the terms of the Covenant, for the good of those under the vassal’s authority, God organises “bridging finance.” He founds a new house for the faithful before He demolishes the Old. For the safety of the kingdom, many princes were anointed king before their fathers died. They were anointed when their fathers were no longer fit to rule. The Lord established Ezekiel as Israel’s High-Priest-in-exile, and Daniel as Israel’s king/vassal in exile, before He wiped out the old order. They represented man as a temporary Israel until the re-establishment of Temple worship under Ezra.

Just as the anointing of David spelled the end of Saul’s reign, the ascension of Christ as the mediator of a New Covenant spelled the doom of the Old. As with the reigns of Saul and David, there was an overlap. The parousia was indeed AD70. The Old Covenant ended with a physical resurrection. We know it was physical because it is described as a marriage. Jesus fulfilled Leviticus 1 in the first century. He ascended in the flesh as the Covenant Head. The firstfruits church was martyred and ascended in the flesh as Covenant Body. The marriage supper in heaven required both Head and Body to be flesh and blood, bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh – and Spirit of His Spirit as well. That’s marriage. All the promises to Israel were fulfilled.

But that wasn’t the end of the New Covenant, and this is where the full preterists go wrong. [1] It was only the coronation of Greater Solomon. There is another resurrection, and it is also physical, despite their desperate claims. This end is described in Revelation 20, and the New Covenant, like the Old, ends with a physical resurrection when all the New Covenant promises are fulfilled.

Just as the Old Covenant saints and the Firstfruits martyrs entered into heaven as a new administration – in the flesh (flesh finally justified before God), so the New Covenant saints will also be resurrected physically, in the flesh at the final judgment.

So the full preterists get it all right, except for Revelation 20. The so-called “partial” preterists get Revelation 20 right. But both sides tend to spiritualize one of the resurrections, which is an error. Except in type and prefigurement, resurrections by definition involve flesh and blood. [2] Both sides are guilty of gnostic interpretations when it comes to the promises, the blessings of the Covenant.

Also, as described in Bible Matrix, beginning with Jesus’ resurrection (and Matthew’s testimony that saints physically came out of their graves to testify), God reclaims the territory corrupted by Adam (Garden/Priest – AD30), Cain (Land/Kings – AD70) and the Sons of God (World – yet future). This triune pattern runs right throughout the Scriptures, architecturally, historically, and also in the literary structures. It is also the  pattern laid out in 1 Corinthians 15.

Finally, if Revelation 20 is basically the only text that remains to the partial (or orthodox) preterists to prove a final judgment and resurrection, is there much of a case? Yes, much in every way! The answers are structural, and built of extremely sturdy girders founded in the solid concrete of the Torah.

Revelation is a Covenant lawsuit, as Ray Sutton describes (although I disagree slightly with his breakdown of it. He puts the Trumpets and Bowls in the wrong place. The Trumpets are part of the Ethics, and the Bowls are the sanctions.) Revelation 1-19 also follow the Feast pattern, ending with Tabernacles, the marriage supper, Jew and Gentile in one new bridal body. But chapters 20-21 can’t be forced into this final feast. This section is a unit. It has its own chiastic “Tabernacle” structure. [3] There is a good reason for this.

Full preterists sometimes accuse partial preterists of being “futurists.” Well, the final chapters of the Revelation concern, briefly, the Continuity of the New Covenant, the succession arrangement made for the heirs of the Old contract. It is of necessity “futurist.” This is the only part of the Bible that is, for us, future. It is being fulfilled as the gospel spreads throughout the world during this new administration of “1000 years.” [4] The final section of every Covenant concerns the future. A Covenant is God’s means of bringing history to fulfilment, to maturity. At the end of every Covenant age there is  a combine harvester. The New Covenant is the same. [5]

So the rapture described by Paul is first century history. [6] It was imminent. It was the end of the old administration. But the second resurrection, the reckoning of the New Covenant, is still in our future. Like Job, Abraham and Paul in the first century, we shall also see Jesus in our flesh, flesh justified in His sight (!) through transfiguration in the fiery Spirit. We shall see Him because we shall be like Him: holy flesh, His body.

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[1] See A Chronic Hysteresis
[2] See Ten Days of Awe.
[3] See The Altar of the Abyss – 7
[4] See For a Thousand Years.
[5] One thing that amazes me about the Bible is God doing the same thing over and over and over, and yet in new and surprising ways every time. The Gospel really shouldn’t have been a surprise at all, but it was. It was just like everything that had gone before, and yet nothing like it. In any trade we ply, our best work is done at the end. The best wine is still to come.
[6] See That Which Is Perfect.

or The Ultimate Rip Off

“So Satan answered the LORD and said, ‘Skin for skin!
Yes, all that a man has he will give for his life.’” Job 2:4

NOTE: THIS POST HAS BEEN REMIXED AND INCLUDED IN GOD’S KITCHEN.

Part of allowing the Bible to interpret the world for us is to see the significance of things. Modern evangelicals generally pass off the weird references to things like bone, flesh and skin as though they were part of an outmoded worldview. But modern scholars are themselves still made of bone, flesh and skin. These things are significant in the created order. They communicate something to us. Bone is structure, flesh is life, and skin is glory. It is a three-level Tabernacle: Garden, Land, World, or Word, Sacrament, Government. [1]

There was some discussion recently on the BH forum about the “skin” that the Lord used to make “tunics” for Adam and Eve. The Hebrew word is singular, so James Jordan thinks it was a single animal, a single mediator picturing Christ. He is probably right, but I recently said that I thought it was likely a bull was killed for Adam and a goat or two for Eve, prefiguring the Day of Covering (Atonement). It would then have been the Lord as the Single Mediator, the High Priest making two approaches: one to cover the head, and another to cover the body. This means there would have been blood shed twice. Can this be linked to the death of Christ? Yes, it can, and in a way that few Bible expositors see because they won’t recognise repeated patterns.

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[1] Some thoughts: Just as Heaven has three levels, and its reflected glory in the Earth has three levels, so too does the Mediator. A human is mind (Word), body (Sacrament) and movement (arms and legs: Government). But the Body itself, as Mediator, has three levels, bone, flesh and skin. The Body is the Tabernacle mediating between Heaven and Earth. The Israelites were a nation of mediators of living Sacraments. Concerning priestly duties, even the purity of their skin mattered (Leviticus 13).
But there is the third level, Government, so we still require clothing. In the Bible, robes are the skin on the outer Government to others. They are signs to men, and our roles in the World of men in which we live and move. A robed man is a judge, a husband and a father.
[2] See Half the Blood
[3] See Healing in His… Tassels?
[4] See High as the Horses’ Bridles.
[5] See The Whole Bloody Bible

From John Barach’s blog:

In the introduction to the sixth volume of G. K. Chesterton’s Collected Works, while working toward some explanation of The Man Who Was Thursday, Denis Conlon quotes Chesterton’s Introduction to the Book of Job (1907):

“God comes in at the end, not to answer riddles, but to propound them. The other great act which, taken together with this one, makes the whole work religious instead of merely philosophical, is that other great surprise which makes Job suddenly satisfied with the mere presentation of something impenetrable. Verbally speaking the enigmas of Jehovah seem darker and more desolate than the enigmas of Job; yet Job was comfortless before the speech of Jehovah and is comforted after it. He has been told nothing, but he feels the terrible and tingling atmosphere of something which is too good to be told. The refusal of God to explain His design is itself a burning hint of His design. The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.” (Cited on p. 43).

For more on Leviathan, see SuperCroc.