Friday, May 17

John 17:1-13: Here begins the prayer in which Jesus makes petition for himself (“Glorify Your Son”), for the disciples who are with him (“Keep through Your name those whom You have given me”), and for the whole People of God, those who “believe in me” through the testimony of the Apostles.

We may observe that the three-fold structure of this prayer of Jesus corresponds to the triple concern of the officiating priest on Yom Kippur, as prescribed in Leviticus 16: First—and second—the priest makes the sin offering (hahatta’th), “which is for himself, and to make atonement (kipper) for himself and for his household” (Leviticus 16:6, 11). Third, having sprinkled the blood of the victim on the mercy seat (kapporet), the priest offers another victim, “which is for the people” (16:14-15)

Exodus 40: Moses thus did “everything that the Lord commanded him” (verses 16,19,21,23,25,27,29,32).

The Israelites have now been at the base of Sinai for about nine months (verse 17) and have already received, as we saw earlier, their marching orders (33:1). They are nearly ready to depart.

Everything is to be anointed with consecratory oil (verses 9-15). The Christian will read these verses in the awareness that the tabernacle itself is a prefiguration of Christ, the Anointed One. The Son of God, anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows, is the permanent presence of God to humanity.

The glory of the divine presence descends into the tabernacle (verses 34-38). This glorious cloud, associated with both the passage through the Red Sea and the giving of the Law on Sinai, is now a feature of God’s ongoing presence with His people. Both events become permanent and “institutionalized” in the Mosaic tabernacle. The divine overshadowing will in due course be transferred to the Solomonic temple at Jerusalem (1 Kings 8:10-11), as well as to the second temple (Haggai 2:6-9).

All of these manifestations of the divine presence, as well as the rabbinical speculations regarding the cloud (shekinah), are properly taken as prophetic of the Incarnation, in which God’s eternal and consubstantial Word definitively “pitched His tent (eskenosen) among us” (John 1:14). Thus, all of the earlier overshadowings are but prefigurations of that by which the Holy Spirit effects the mystery of the Incarnation within the Woman who served as the tabernacle of God’s presence in this world (cf. Luke 1:35).

Saturday, May 18

John 17:14-26: The priestly quality of Jesus’ prayer is apparent in its references to consecration. Here the verb hagiazo, to “sanctify” or “consecrate,” appears three times in immediate succession: “Consecrate them in truth. . . . And for their sakes I consecrate myself, that they themselves, likewise, may be consecrated in truth.”

In the traditional Greek translation (Septuagint) of the Torah, the verb hagiazo (along with its nominal cognates) is frequently found in references to the consecration of the priests and of the appointments of the priestly ministry (for instance, twelve times in Exodus 29 and six times in Leviticus 22). The use of this same verb in Jesus’ prayer summons to mind those priestly associations in the Torah. The verb’s concentrated appearance in this prayer amply explains why Christians have long referred to it as “high priestly.”

The faith of the first Christians included the perception that the priestly self-consecration of Jesus was an essential component of our Redemption. That is to say, they believed that Jesus knew himself to be the priest and that, as the priest, he offered himself in sacrifice in an intentional way.

Leviticus 1: Because the English noun “sacrifice” is commonly employed to translate several quite different Hebrew words, readers of the Bible in English may not suspect how varied and complex is the Bible’s treatment of this subject.

For instance, the sacrifice treated here in the first chapter is quite distinct. One would not suspect just how distinct from its common English translation (King James, for example), “burnt sacrifice.” Since just about all sacrifices in the Bible, with the obvious exception of libations, were burnt, the expression does not tell us very much.

The Hebrew word employed for the sacrifices in this chapter is ‘olah, a participle meaning “ascending.” This term may originally have been connected with the ascending smoke released by the fire that consumed the victim. In the ancient Greek translation (the Septuagint), this term was rendered holokavtoma, which indicated that the whole victim, not just part of it, was consumed in the fire. This Greek word became the Latin holocaustum, whence is derived our English “holocaust.” Because it consumed the entire victim, the holocaust—the sacrifice envisaged in this opening chapter of Leviticus—was the most complete form of sacrifice.

The six steps involved in such a sacrifice are described in verses 3-9, which treat of a bovine sacrifice. Nearly identical steps were followed for the holocaust of sheep (verses 1-13) and birds (verses 14-17).

It is clear that a holocaust always involves the sacrifice of a living animal, not grain or any other form. Those other sacrifices are treated in the next chapter.

Sunday, May 19

Acts 2:1-21: It has long been the custom for the Church, during the season following Pentecost, to adorn herself in green, preeminently the color of life and hope. It is the color of chlorophyll. Indeed, this very interesting word is the combination of two Greek words, the adjective chlorós, which means “green,” and the noun phyllos, which means “leaf.” It is a normal sign by which we recognize plant life. Because this chlorine pigment, called chlorophyll, most strongly absorbs the red and blue wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum, it looks green. At Pentecost each year the Church puts on her chlorophyll. And she does so in order to absorb light in order to produce food.

This is, after all, what chlorophyll does. It is a catalyst for a process called “photosynthesis,” another Greek word that literally means, “joining things by means of light.” A major function of chlorophyll molecules is to absorb light and transfer the energy of light to the photo-systems of the living plant. It is by means of this light energy that the plant converts carbon dioxide into organic compounds, especially sugars. This process is the primary food source of all living things.

The Holy Spirit is the chlorophyll of the Church. He is the living principle that draws the diving light into the living structure of this true Vine, of which we are the branches. The Holy Spirit thus feeds us by uniting the components of our lives through a process of light.

The light of the sun is a resource of life only for plants—those creatures that are blessed with chlorophyll. The sun does not give life to rocks or dirt or even animals. That is to say, nothing receives life from the sun except those creatures endowed with chlorophyll.

The same is true of Christ our Lord, the true Sun that has arisen in our hearts. The light of Christ is life giving by reason of the presence of the Holy Spirit. It is through the agency of the Holy Spirit that the light of Christ joins together the sundry components of our existence in order to feed us.

This happens, first of all, by the Holy Spirit’s transformation of the processes of our thought and consciousness. In the Holy Spirit we are given a new atmosphere of self-consciousness. We are internally different by reason of the Holy Spirit’s presence as a cognitive principle in our minds.

Leviticus 2: The sacrifice treated in this chapter is the minhah, or grain offering. In this sacrifice, only part of the grain was burned, the remainder being reserved for the household of the priest (verse 2). In addition, the grain could be baked into bread (verses 4-13).

In these latter cases it was important not to use yeast in the baking process, probably because yeast produces fermentation, which was considered a form of corruption. There was the perceived need to remove all suggestion of corruption from the sacrifice offered to God. Salt, on the other hand, because it is a preservative, was a normal part of this form of sacrifice. Indeed, this aspect of salt rendered it an excellent symbol of the permanence and incorruptibility of God’s covenant with Israel. It was, in truth, a “covenant of salt” (Numbers 18:19). Holy Scripture contains a number of references to this symbolic value of salt (cf. Ezekiel 16:4; 2 Kings 2:20-22; Matthew 5:13; Mark 9:49; Colossians 4:6).

Monday, May 20

Matthew 11:25-30: According to this text, what Jesus shares with us is his personal knowledge of the Father. This is, I submit, the font of Sacred Theology. It is an introduction, through the grace of the Holy Spirit, into the mind of Christ, a participation in his perception and understanding. Sacred Theology must embrace—yes, even begin with—the experienced reception of the knowledge of the Father into the human mind of Christ. Christ understood Holy Scripture from within his relationship to the Father.

This means that Holy Scripture, which is the stuff of Revelation, is not simply a record of what was divinely disclosed in the past. It is the energetic Word—the Son’s communicated knowledge of the Father—in the here and now. Sacred Theology is communion with God in His present and living Word, as we grasp it in the mind of Christ.

Leviticus 3: What most English translations of the Bible call the “peace offering” is, in the Hebrew text, known as the zebah shelamim, a term indicating an oblation which harmonizes or makes perfect. It is an offering in which there is some sort of communion through the shared eating of part of the victim. Hence, unlike the holocaust, the entire victim in this kind of sacrifice is not destroyed by fire; parts of it are eaten by the priests who offer it and by those individuals for whom it is offered.

The sacrificial victims offered in this sort of oblation were the ox, the sheep, and the goat; animals of both sexes were acceptable. The sacrifice of the ox is described in verses 1-5, in which special attention is given to the animal’s blood. Because blood especially symbolizes life, it could not be ingested. It had to be sprinkled on the altar, as a sign that all life belongs to God. Similarly, those internal organs more especially associated with the processes of life, such as the intestines, the liver, and the kidneys, were burned in the sacrificial fire. Much the same procedure was followed for the offering of the sheep (verses 6-11) and the goat (verses 12-17).

For reasons that are not clear, the fat of these sacrifices could not be eaten, though there are no proscriptions against eating fat outside of the sacrificial context.

Tuesday, May 21

Leviticus 4: The “sin offering” of this chapter is an expiatory sacrifice that could be made for the priest (verses 1-12), the whole congregation (verses 13-21), the leader (verses 22-26), or any individual who might need it (verse 27 to 5:23).

The Hebrew name for this sacrifice, ’attata’t, literally means “sin,” but the meaning is extended to include the consequences of sin and, hence, the sacrifice offered to expiate sin (this noun, in the priestly code, always meaning offenses against God), and thus signifying even the victim offered in that sacrifice. Here in Leviticus the normal meaning of ’attata’t is “sin offering.”

With the term understood in this specific way and special sense, we can see that when the Apostle Paul said that God made Jesus “sin for us” (2 Corinthians 5:21), he meant that Jesus became the victim of that expiatory sacrifice by which atonement was made for our sins. Jesus Himself became the ’attata’t, the “sin offering,” fulfilling the prophetic dimension of the sacrifices with which this chapter deals.

Here in Leviticus the verb used to “make” this sin offering is ‘asah (three times in verses 8-9), which is a normal verb connoting the performance of many sacrifices (cf. 5:10; 6:15; 8:34; 9:7,16,22; 14:19; 15:15,30; 16:9,15,24; 19:9; 22:23; 23:12,19). In the Greek text of the Septuagint this ‘asah is translated as poiein. This is the verb used by St. Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:21, where he says that God “made [Jesus] a sin offering” (hamartian epoiesen).

It should be further noted that these particular sacrifices, although expiatory, are not substitutionary (in contrast to the sacrifice of the Paschal lamb, which was substitutionary but not expiatory). The Bible invariably distinguishes between substitutionary and expiatory sacrifices. It is a fact that the Old Testament system of sacrifice prescribed no substitutionary mactation of a sacrificial victim to atone for a sin that deserved death. That is to say, in the sacrificial system of the Bible, no animal is ever sacrificed to atone for the sin of someone who, because of that sin, deserved to die.

With respect to the death of Jesus on the Cross, we say that He died to atone our sins. In this regard His death was an expiatory sacrifice. When we speak of His death, however, as a substitutionary sacrifice, we indicate that He acted as the true Paschal Lamb, of which those earlier lambs were but symbols and types. Thus, the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross was both expiatory and substitutionary; He fulfilled both of these sacrificial types, each in a way proper to itself. The death of this “Lamb of God” did what the substitutionary sacrifice of the ancient Paschal lambs was never intended to do — namely, take away the sins of the world.

Thus, Jesus fulfilled all of these ancient sacrifices of the Old Testament: the ‘olah, or holocaust (Chapter 1), by being a complete sacrifice; the minhah, or grain sacrifice (Chapter 2), by granting us, in the breaking of the Bread, to “proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes” (1 Corinthians 11:26); the zebah shelamim, or “peace offering” (Chapter 3), by sharing with us his own communion with God; and the ’attata’t, or sin offering (the present chapter), by taking away the barrier that human sins created between God and the human race.

The sprinkling (hizzah) of the blood purifies the curtain (paroketh that covers the Holy of Holies (verses 6,17). This verb, (hizzah), is also used in Isaiah 52:15 with reference to the Suffering Servant: “So shall He sprinkle many nations,” meaning that the blood of the Servant cleanses the sins of the nations.

Wednesday, May 22

Leviticus 5: For the forgiveness of sins it was necessary to “confess” what one had done (verse 5). In context this confession was made to the priest, who was then charged to offer the sacrifice specific to the offense (verses 1-4). Thus, even in the Old Testament, priests were already “father confessors.” Such confession of sins pertained to the regular liturgical worship of God’s people (Psalms 32[31]:5).

These sins, being confessed, were then forgiven through the Old Testament sacrament of the sin offering. The priest thus made “an atonement for him concerning his sin” (verse 6). The expression “concerning his sin” (mehatta’to was translated into the Septuagint Greek as peri hamartias. This same Greek expression is later found in Paul’s description of the sacrifice of Jesus, concerning whom he wrote, “what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin (peri hamartias): He condemned sin in the flesh” (Romans 8:3).

Thus, in Leviticus, through the rite of the sin offering God “forgives” the sins of those for whom the sacrifice is offered. There are three points to be made about this verb salah, “to forgive.”

First, it is the very purpose of this sacrifice for sin, which is offered “so that they may be forgiven” (4:20). This formula appears only in connection with the sin offering (verses 10,13; cf. 4:26,31,35; Numbers 15:25,28) and the peace offering (verses 16,18,26; cf. 19:22).

Second, in the Bible the meaning of salah is never legal, forensic, or judicial. Unlike the corresponding English verb, salah is used only of God—not of a human judge or court. The term is theological in the strict sense and means a release from punishment.

Third, in Leviticus salah is not used apart from certain liturgical, sacrificial rites. That is to say, without the shedding of blood, there is no remission. Through these sacrifices the people were restored to communion with God, thus enabled to share in the divine worship. Otherwise the worship would be defiled by their participation.

Acts of unintentional desecration of something holy or the inadvertent violation of an oath were not covered by the sin offering, but by a separate sacrifice traditionally called a “guilt offering,” ’asham (verses 15-26 in the Hebrew text, 5:15—6:7 in most English translations). Of necessity this offering was for an individual, not the congregation. It bore something of the character of a reparation or compensation, a feature that explains why the prescriptions for this sacrifice, unlike the others, take note of the value of the sacrificial victim (verses 15-16,20,24-25). Some authors prefer to translate ’asham as “reparation offering.”

With respect to the holy things covered by these prescriptions, we observe that Sacred Scripture distinguishes degrees of consecration (21:22; Numbers 18:8-19). The “most holy things,” consecrated by actual physical touch (6:18,27; Exodus 29:37; 30:29), could be handled only by the priests.

We likewise bear in mind that the desecrations covered in these laws were unintentional offenses. Deliberate sacrilege carried the death penalty (Numbers 4:19-20).

Inadvertent or unintentional perjury was also covered by the legislation in this chapter (verses 20-26; 6:1-7 in most English translations), inasmuch as it involved desecration of God’s name. Intentional perjury was covered by very different legislation (Exodus 20:7; Deuteronomy 5:11).

The fulfillment of the Old Testament’s ’asham is, of course, the sacrifice of the Cross, where the Suffering Servant gave his soul (nephesh) as an ’asham for our sins (Isaiah 53:11; cf. Matthew 20:28; 26:28).

Thursday, May 23

Ruth 2:1-23: The brief conversation of Boaz and Ruth in this chapter serves to outline the man’s character, which the reader perceives to be gracious, concerned, generous, and kind. He is also subtle in his generosity. The tone and wording of the conversation also suggests that Boaz is significantly older than Ruth.

In this dialogue, Boaz uses the word “wing” in 2:12. The underlying Hebrew word here is kanaph, which can also mean “skirt,” which is how the word will be translated in 3:9. In both cases it indicates protecting care, as though God is permitting Boaz to fulfill his own prayer on behalf of Ruth.

When Ruth returns home with so much grain at the end of her first day at work, Naomi immediately becomes suspicious about her good fortune. The reader observes that the conversation between the two women that night was about Boaz, not barley. It becomes clear that Naomi perceives forces at work beyond the human; a plan slowly begins to take shape in her mind. By the end of the chapter, the story has moved into the month of June, but nothing further has happened. Naomi begins to consider that perhaps some bolder move is required.

Leviticus 6: These next two chapters treat of the sacred food by which the Israelites shared in various prescribed sacrifices. The verb ’akal is found five times in these chapters.

This participation, an integral part of Old Testament religion, is correctly thought of as sacramental, inasmuch as it was a physical means, established by God, by which His people communed with Him in grace. In the history of salvation, this participation prepared God’s people for the sacraments of the New Testament, chiefly the Holy Eucharist.

The five sacrifices treated in these two chapters include both daily offerings and sacrifices prescribed for special occasions. The daily offerings of participation were the burnt offering (verses 8-13) and the grain offering (verses 14-23). The special sacrifices of participation were the sin offering (verses 24-30), the guilt (or reparation) offering (7:1-10), and the peace offering (7:11-36). These five sacrifices give structure to these two chapters.

Because of the nature of the subject, the style in these two chapters abandons the case law procedure of the previous chapters and adopts that of instruction, or torah. Indeed, each of these five instructions is called a torah (verses 9,14,25; 7:1,11), giving us, as it were, a small Pentateuch. It is not surprising, therefore, that there are also five “speeches” given to and through Moses (verses 8,19,24; 7:22,28).

Friday, May 24

Ruth 3:1-18: According to Israel’s ancient levirate law, the brother-in-law of a widow was obliged to take her to wife in order to beget children in the name of his deceased brother. An extension of this law to “next of kin” is obviously operative in Naomi’s thinking in the bold project narrated in this chapter. She contrives a plan for Ruth to make this matter unavoidable in the mind of Boaz, in circumstances that will heighten a romantic interest that Naomi suspects to reside in Boaz’s heart. The execution of her plan is the stuff of one of the most sensitive stories in the Bible.

In the course of this account, we then learn that Naomi was correct in her suspicion. Indeed, he is already one step ahead of his future “mother-in-law”; he has researched the matter and learned that he is not, in fact, the next of kin. Thus, nothing happens that night. There is still one more step that Boaz must take.

In this second dialogue between Boaz and Ruth, we detect certain delicate features of both of the man: Boaz’s sensitivity to the age difference between him and Ruth, his consequent reluctance to initiate any previous advance toward her, his gratitude for her interest in him, his continued solicitude for her well-being by not obliging her to walk home in the dark, his discreet concern for her reputation, the shrewdness of his ability to read the mind of Naomi. As he lies there on the granary floor that night, Boaz realizes that he has been “set up” by Naomi; this proceeding had not been Ruth’s at all. So Boaz ttells her, “Do not go empty-handed to your mother in law.”

Naomi’s response, in turn, shows that she perfectly understands the thoughts of Boaz. It is a marvelous account of two very shrewd individuals who comprehend one another perfectly.

Leviticus 7: All the blood sacrifices in this chapter (and 6:24-30) have the identical ritual structure, consisting in the mactation of the animal, the use of the sacrificial blood for atonement, the burning of the animal’s flesh on the altar, and the subsequent ritual meal of meat and grain. It is significant that the meal, since it is a means of communion with God in grace, follows the rite of blood atonement.

The Christian reader will see in this ritual the outline of theological truth. These ritual sacrifices, all fulfilled as prophecy in the sacrifice of Christ (Hebrews 7:27; 10:12), indicate that communion with God in Christ requires the shedding of His blood for atonement. The sacrifice of the cross, that is to say, and Christ’s entrance into the holy place with His sacrificial blood are necessary required for our sharing in His Eucharistic meal.

Whereas in the Old Testament sacrifices of communion a strict distinction was made between priests and other Israelites with respect to this participation, no such distinction is made in the Eucharist of the New Testament. All Christians participate in the same Sacred Food. Through this Eucharistic meal, believers become the holy people of God. The Food itself is the means of this communion in grace. It is through this physical Food of this sacrificial meal that the Church is rendered holy.

Friday, May 10

Exodus 33: Now comes the order to depart from Sinai (verse 1). It is the second month of the second year of Israel’s journey (Numbers 10:11-12). The Israelites had arrived at the mountain during the third month after their crossing of the Red Sea (Exodus 19:1), so they have been in this site for almost a year.

The Lord’s angel will continue to lead them to the Promised Land (verse 2; cf. 23:20). The reason given for this “mediation,” however, is the Lord’s displeasure with the Israelites; He wants to keep some distance from them, as though He could not trust Himself not to destroy them! (verse 3) Learning this, the people put away their jewelry, lest the sight of it remind Lord of the incident with the golden calf (verse 4). One may also note that, by not wearing it, the Israelites will more readily part with it when the time comes for this jewelry to be employed in the adornment of the tabernacle.

There follows a story of Moses’ regular visits to speak with the Lord of a new tabernacle (verses 7-11), which is not so much a liturgical shrine as a sort of oracular place. In short, it is a place where Moses can confer with God.

Unlike the earlier tabernacle, which was placed at the center of the camp (25:8), this one is set up outside the camp. Moses goes there from time to time, to speak with the Lord in great intimacy (Numbers 10:4-8; 17:7-9). When he arrives, he awaits the coming of the Lord in the cloudy pillar, which first appeared at the time of the exodus. The other Israelites observe these encounters of the Lord and Moses from the entrances of their own tents.

This new tabernacle becomes the permanent dwelling of Joshua the Ephraemite who in due course succeeds Moses in the leadership of Israel.

Speaking to the Lord in this new tabernacle, Moses now asks something for himself (verses 12-22), confessing that the coming journey may be simply too much for him to endure unless the Lord gives him sufficient light to make coherent sense of it.

God answers this prayer by granting him a special experience of the divine presence—described as a sort of oblique glance at God, catching sight of the Lord’s glory as it passes by. This description is as close as Moses can come to telling of this fleeting and indirect experience of God’s presence, which has been granted to many of the saints in all ages.

St. Augustine (Questions on the Heptateuch 2.154) interprets “I will pass before you” as a reference to the Resurrection of the Lord. No man has ever seen God, except the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father. To the rest of us is given to perceive the glory of God shining on the face of Christ (cf. John 1:14-18; 2 Corinthians 3:7 — 4:6; 2 Peter 1:16-19).

Saturday, May 11

Exodus 34: We observe that the Israelites, notwithstanding the command to depart from Sinai at the beginning of the previous chapter, are still at the site (verse 2), and it is clear that they will remain there for some time yet.

Moses, we recall, had broken the original tablets of the Decalogue when—in anger because of the golden calf—he had flung them on the ground (32:19). That physical “breaking” of the Law symbolized the true breaking of the commandments by the idolatrous Israelites. Now these stone tablets must be replaced (verse 1).

It is to be remarked that the two stone tables in verses 1-9, though lifeless and hard they seem to the naked eye, actually embody the awesome personal experience of Moses described in these verses. Regarded in faith and in the context of the covenant, these stones are alive with the grace of that experience. They are “God’s word written.”

Verses 10-28 are joined by the common theme of the purity required for an exclusive fidelity to God.

The Christian theological meaning of verses 29-35 is explained by St. Paul in 2 Corinthians 3:7—4:6. This is our earliest Christian commentary on the scene here in Exodus:

But if the ministry of death, written and engraved on stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of the glory of his countenance, which glory was passing away, how will the ministry of the Spirit not be more glorious? For if the ministry of condemnation had glory, the ministry of righteousness exceeds much more in glory. For even what was made glorious had no glory in this respect, because of the glory that excels. For if what is passing away was glorious, what remains is much more glorious. Therefore, since we have such hope, we use great boldness of speech– unlike Moses, who put a veil over his face so that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the end of what was passing away. But their minds were blinded. For until this day the same veil remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament, because the veil is taken away in Christ. But even to this day, when Moses is read, a veil lies on their heart. Nevertheless when one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.

Sunday, May 12

Exodus 35: The final chapters of Exodus (35—40) tell of the execution of the sundry directions given in chapters 25—31. Moses simply repeats, mostly verbatim, the directions he had received on the mountain, and the Israelites strive to comply.

This section of Exodus seems to have undergone extensive editing, an impression strengthened by the great divergence of order between the inherited Hebrew text and the ancient Greek version handed down in the ancient manuscripts of the Christian Church. The traditional Greek version was clearly based on a Hebrew text greatly at variance with the Hebrew text handed down from the Middle Ages, the Massoretic Text.

Although the instructions in this chapter are given quickly and all at once (verses 1-19), one should probably think in terms of several months for their accomplishment (verses 20-29). There was evidently a great deal of hustle and bustle in progress at the foot of Mount Sinai.

After the instructions, the building and proper appointing of the tabernacle must begin with the gathering of the materials. As we shall see in due course, something in the neighborhood of eight tons of precious metals and stones would be required in this work. In addition, there would need to be wood and various kinds of expensive cloth. The present chapter describes how this vast array of materials is assembled by the generosity of the people. This tabernacle would be the consecration of their own material resources, the fruit of their labor.

Because the tabernacle and its appointments were to be modeled on Moses’ vision of the heavenly and eternal tabernacle of heaven, the construction of all these things was dependent on the grace of the Holy Spirit, who would inspire and guide the minds and hands of the artisans (verse 31).

John 15:9-17: Whereas the Synoptic Gospels repeatedly affirm the individual believer’s obligation to love his neighbor—the imperative verb is normally singular—in the Johannine writings the dominant expression is, “love one another,” with the verb is in the plural. Although it is wrong to seek a contradiction between these two imperatives, John’s emphasis expresses a practical consideration; the “one another” indicates the community of believers, who share a common life in the Sacraments, the Scriptures, and the grace of the Holy Spirit. That is to say, the neighbor to be loved is the tangible brother or sister actually at hand.

Monday, May 13

Ephesians 4:1-16: Paul begins the list of the gifts in Ephesians 4 with the Persons of the Holy Trinity, speaking of “one Spirit . . . one Lord . . one God and Father (4:4-6).

Then, he narrows the ascription of the gifts, not to the Holy Spirit, but to the triumphant Christ: “to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift” (4:7). This Christological emphasis is related to Paul’s new awareness of Christ as the “head” of the Church. Since we do not find this idea in his thought until the Captivity Epistles—Colossians and Ephesians—I have always believed that the Apostle adopted this image from his discussions with Luke during the period of his imprisonment at Caesarea (cf. Colossians 4:14). From his beloved physician, he learned a new medical discovery: the head is the governing part of the body, the ruling principle of its unified activity.

The gifts listed in Ephesians were given “for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ” (4:12). Through them Christ governs the teaching and pastoring of His people. By reason of His Ascension the Lord not only reigns over the saints in heaven; He also rules over the saints on earth.

Exodus 36: In the account of the gathering of the various materials for the tabernacle, considerable stress is laid on the people’s generosity. Over the course of history, it is a rare thing that God’s people have to be told, as they are told here, to “stop giving!” (verses 5-7) One suspects that this eager generosity in the present instance was in part prompted by the people’s shame and fear at the recent defection and the divine punishment that ensued.

One may compare the generosity shown here with the unselfishness of the Christians in Philippi in Macedonia who, during the three weeks that St. Paul spent in neighboring Thessaloniki (cf. Acts 17:2), twice sent offerings for the maintenance of his ministry (cf. Philippians 4:16). The Apostle would be speaking about that Macedonian generosity for years to come (cf. 2 Corinthians 8:1-5).

Particularly to be noted in this chapter of Exodus is the use of the “veil” in all of Israel’s worship. Even as God “reveals” (a word that literally means “unveils”) Himself, He is manifested, not as an object open to direct regard, but as supreme Mystery, chiefly to be adored.

When God and man are finally reconciled by the death of Jesus on the Cross, this symbolic veil of the Old Testament is rent asunder (Matthew 27:51). The sacrificed Jesus Himself enters behind the veil of the heavenly tabernacle (Hebrews 6:19). In another sense of the same image—because it houses His divine person—the very flesh of Christ is also called the veil of the divine presence (Hebrews 10:20).

Tuesday, May 14

Psalm 97 (Greek & Latin 96): This is one of those Old Testament texts explicitly interpreted for us in the New Testament. The Epistle to the Hebrews, telling how “God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son,” went on to tell of the reverence and service shown to this Son by the holy angels as He entered into the world through the Incarnation: “But when He again brings the firstborn (prototokos) into the world, He says: ‘Let all the angels of God worship Him’” (1:1, 2, 6). This quotation is, of course, from Psalm 97, which the author of Hebrews here interprets with reference to that ministry of the angelic hosts to the incarnate Lord. The relationship of the angels to Christ is the dominant motif of the first chapter of Hebrews.

Exodus 37: This chapter narrates that the ark, the table of the presence bread, the lamp stand, and the incense altar were constructed according the specifications Moses received in his Sinai vision of the heavenly sanctuary.

This distinction between the earthly and heavenly sanctuaries was important to the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, who made it the framework for his soteriological exposition. He speaks of the same elements we find in the present chapter of Exodus: the Ark of the Covenant, the table for the Showbread, the golden lamp stand, the altar of incense. He disappoints us (if one may be completely frank) by finishing his description with the comment: “Of these things we cannot now speak in detail” (Hebrews 9:5). One so wishes he had gone on to speak of these things at much greater length!

The author’s point in the Epistle to the Hebrews, however, is not to satisfy our curiosity with respect to the tabernacle that Moses made. He is interested, rather, in directing our attention to that heavenly sanctuary, “the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation” (9:11). It was into this heavenly tabernacle that Christ entered, unto the fulfillment of our redemption.

This heavenly sanctuary is the one that Moses, in mystic vision, saw on the mountain. It is the one that St. John saw when the door opened into heaven (Revelation 4:1). It is to this eternal and heavenly sanctuary that Christians, in their prayer, have eternal access, because Jesus entered into it as the culminating act of our redemption.

Thus, the various appointments in Moses’ tabernacle corresponded to heavenly models. The seven-branched candlestick (verses 17-24) is modeled on that which John beheld in his vision on the isle of Patmos (Revelation 1:12). There are also the altar of incense (verses 25-28 and Revelation 8:3-4) and the Ark of the Covenant (verses 1-9 and Revelation 11:19).

Wednesday, May 15

Ephesians 5:1-14: The life in Christ is fruitful; it yields results, Paul says here. Jesus declared, “a tree is known by its fruit.” It is of extreme importance that we stress this point, because many Christians seem not to know about it. Jesus tells us to look for the fruit.

This is important, I say, because some Christians imagine that they will be judged by their roots, not by their fruits. They pride and preen themselves that they belong to the true Church. They fancy that this circumstance is enough to be pleasing in God’s sight—simply because they have the proper spiritual ancestry. They may look down on, and pass judgment on, other Christians who cannot boast that same spiritual ancestry.

To Christians such as these I say, with John the Baptist, “bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not think to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as father.’ For I say to you that God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham” (Mt 2:9). We must not be deceived on this matter: No one has entered into everlasting life because he belonged to the true Church. That is to say, no one is in heaven because of his roots. Those who have entered into everlasting life have done so because of their fruits.

Exodus 38: We come now to the construction of the sacrificial altar (verses 1-7), the basin for washing (verse 8), and the outer court (verses 9-20).

When, at their departure, the Israelites “borrowed” silver, gold, and precious stones from their Egyptian neighbors, the text (11:2) did not indicate just how large was the amount. Now we begin to gain a staggering idea of it (verses 21-31). Although the measurement of the ancient talent varied somewhat, it has been reasonably approximated at over 75 pounds, with three thousand shekels to the talent.

Thus, even on the most conservative estimate, we are dealing here with an enormous amount of precious metal: more than a ton of gold, three and a half tons of silver, nearly three tons of bronze. Moreover, if the weight is being computed according to the later temple measurements, these figures may need to be adjusted up to 20% higher.

We surmise that some of this treasure came from the head tax mentioned earlier (verse 26).

Thursday, May 16

Ephesians 5:15-33: the life in Christ is wise. That is to say, it is a life characterized by discernment. Paul writes in this text, “See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise,”

The Apostle here contrasts the wise man with the fool, a contrast elaborated at great length in the Wisdom books of the Bible. In the Book of Proverbs the wise man is described as circumspect, honest, industrious, obedient, vigilant, cautious, and self-controlled. He is contrasted with the fool, who is described as mentally lazy, dishonest, slothful, rebellious, imprudent, and undisciplined. These are the qualities that Paul mentions in the present text as “the unfruitful works of darkness.”

Wisdom is a quality of the mind and heart. Wisdom is a high quality of thought, and those who avoid thinking will never become wise, because God is to be loved “with the whole mind.” There is no fruitful life in Christ without the use of the mind. Therefore Paul says in the present text, “have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness. . . do not be unwise, but understand.”

Exodus 39: The text moves now to the vestments of Aaron and his priestly sons. Worthy of particular notice among the priestly vestments is the ornate “breastplate” to be worn by the high priest for purposes of divining (verses 8-21). Its twelve polished stones are arranged according to the marching order of the twelve tribes they represent. Thus, when he appears before God, the high priest is adorned in such a way as to represent the whole chosen people. These stones are themselves symbolic, of course, of the great foundational stones of the heavenly city, that final company of the redeemed (Revelation 21:19-20).

The construction of this tabernacle out in the desert of Sinai was a feat of mammoth and nearly unparalleled difficulty. Aside from all the vestments, hangings, instruments, etc., the metal for the construction of the tabernacle apparatus alone has been estimated to weigh around eight tons. Recalling that it was to be carried through the desert for the next forty years gives one enhanced respect for the Levites who were to carry it!

The completion of this work provides an occasion to list an inventory of all of it (verses 32-43).

This chapter’s final verse, in which Moses “looked over all the work, and indeed they had done it; as the Lord had commanded, just so they had done it,” is strikingly reminiscent of the end of Creation itself: “Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good.”

Indeed, the following comment, “And Moses blessed them,” puts the reader in mind of the blessing that follows the completion of Creation: “Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.”

Friday, May 17

John 17:1-13: Here begins the prayer in which Jesus makes petition for himself (“Glorify Your Son”), for the disciples who are with him (“Keep through Your name those whom You have given me”), and for the whole People of God, those who “believe in me” through the testimony of the Apostles.

We may observe that the three-fold structure of this prayer of Jesus corresponds to the triple concern of the officiating priest on Yom Kippur, as prescribed in Leviticus 16: First—and second—the priest makes the sin offering (hahatta’th), “which is for himself, and to make atonement (kipper) for himself and for his household” (Leviticus 16:6, 11). Third, having sprinkled the blood of the victim on the mercy seat (kapporet), the priest offers another victim, “which is for the people” (16:14-15)

Exodus 40: Moses thus did “everything that the Lord commanded him” (verses 16,19,21,23,25,27,29,32).

The Israelites have now been at the base of Sinai for about nine months (verse 17) and have already received, as we saw earlier, their marching orders (33:1). They are nearly ready to depart.

Everything is to be anointed with consecratory oil (verses 9-15). The Christian will read these verses in the awareness that the tabernacle itself is a prefiguration of Christ, the Anointed One. The Son of God, anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows, is the permanent presence of God to humanity.

The glory of the divine presence descends into the tabernacle (verses 34-38). This glorious cloud, associated with both the passage through the Red Sea and the giving of the Law on Sinai, is now a feature of God’s ongoing presence with His people. Both events become permanent and “institutionalized” in the Mosaic tabernacle. The divine overshadowing will in due course be transferred to the Solomonic temple at Jerusalem (1 Kings 8:10-11), as well as the second temple (Haggai 2:6-9).

All of these manifestations of the divine presence, as well as the rabbinical speculations regarding the cloud (shekinah), are properly taken as prophetic of the Incarnation, in which God’s eternal and consubstantial Word definitively “pitched His tent (eskenosen) among us” (John 1:14). Thus, all of the earlier overshadowings are but prefigurations of that by which the Holy Spirit effects the mystery of the Incarnation in the Woman who served as the tabernacle of God’s presence in this world; cf. Luke 1:35.

Friday, May 3

Exodus 26: The construction of the Tabernacle is described in the first part (verses 1-14) of this chapter. It had four coverings, divided into workable sections. The first covering was made of linen, over which were coverings of goats’ hair, rams’ skins dyed red, and dugongs’ skins. Two things are noteworthy about this last: First, the dugong, or sea cow, is a native of the Indian Ocean. The availability of this product indicates the extensive trade carried on through the Red Sea. One speculates that the sea-going power of Sheba was the medium by which this product reached Egypt. Second, the skin of the dugong, which sat uppermost over the Tabernacle, rendered it rainproof.

Next are described the wooden side-frames of the Tabernacle (verses 15-30), indicating that this shrine stood about 14 feet high, was 62 feet long, and measured over 42 feet wide.

Finally comes the internal division of the Tabernacle between the holy place and the Holy of Holies (31-37), the latter measuring about 14 feet square. It contained the Ark of the Covenant and the tablets of the Decalogue (cf. Hebrews 9:3-4).

The division within the tabernacle was later duplicated and further developed within the Jerusalem temple. Indeed, the sense of separated space is intrinsic to the very notion of a “temple,” a word derived from the Greek temno, meaning “to divide.” A shrine of any kind is already a section of space devoted to the things of God, and divisions within a shrine are related to the ordered structure of the community that worships there. The building reflects the congregation’s conception of itself. In the case of Israel and the Christian Church, the ordered structure of the worshipping community is “hierarchical,” meaning that its organizational structure is holy and reflects a divinely-appointed order.

This hierarchical aspect of biblical worship, that is to say, is enacted even in architecture. (Indeed, if one looks closely, both “hierarchy” and “architecture” are formed of a common root, a Greek word meaning, roughly, “a principle that gives structure and explanation to reality.”)

Saturday, May 4

Exodus 27: We come now to the sacrificial altar, the court in which the Tabernacle stood, and the perpetual flame that was to burn before the Holy of Holies.

The frame of this hollow altar, which was, of course, portable, was to be made of light wood overlaid with bronze (verses 1-2). Its construction was to be large: its top about 7 feet square and its height about 4 feet. The corners of the altar were to be extended into horns. Although we can say that these adornments, like all horns, signified strength, their more precise meaning is now lost to us. We do know, however, that similar fixtures adorned many altars in antiquity, from Assyria to Greece. In Israel they took on a social and even political significance (cf. 1 Kings 1:50; 2:28). In the ritual itself, these horns were smeared with the blood of the sacrificial animal.

It is possible that stones were placed on this altar, to provide a surface on which to burn the sacrificial victim. Otherwise it is uncertain how the bronze could withstand the fire of the sacrifice.

Under and around the altar was a bronze grating for the purpose of receiving the ashes from the fire (verses 4-5). Inasmuch as the altar was portable, staves were provided, with which to carry it.

The Tabernacle stood in a court area that measured roughly 142 by 71 feet (verse 18). This area too was set apart by a system of linen partitions (verses 9-17). This was a consecrated area, separated from profane use.

A perpetual flame, fed of olive oil and cared for by the sons of Aaron, was to burn before the Holy of Holies (verses 20-21). The idea behind a perpetual flame is very old and has symbolic value immediately understood by almost all men. As a symbol of the human spirit standing in vigilance against the forces of darkness, it is found in world literature from Homer to the novels of William Golding. As a religious symbol of man’s standing in prayer before God, it is nearly universal. A sustained flame has burned near the altar in Christian churches virtually from the first day they were built.

Sunday, May 5

Exodus 28: This chapter is chiefly concerned with the vesting of the priests. The design and production of these vestments are not arbitrary. While their number and fundamental design are explicitly prescribed, their final elaboration is effected through the inspiration of the “spirit of wisdom” (ruah hokmah–verse 3), an expression the Septuagint translates as “esthetic spirit” (pnevma aistheos). The numbered list of them is explicit in the Torah itself—to wit, a tunic, over which was draped a shawl with a hole for the head and neck, a sash, and an ephod (or apron), over which was hung a breastplate suspended from the shoulders. The head was adorned with a miter. One easily recognizes in this description some of the standard Eucharistic vestments traditional in the Christian Church, both east and west.

The ephod, or apron, was a piece of apparel not unexpected on a person that offered blood sacrifices (verses 6-7). To it was attached a linen box, which hung from the shoulders, its suspending cords adorned with two onyx stones, on which were inscribed the names of Israel’s 12 tribes (verses 9-12).

Inside this box were the divining tokens by which God’s will was discerned in certain specific questions. For this reason the device was called “the breastplate of judgment” (hosken mishpat–verses 15,30).

The front of this box was adorned with rows of twelve precious stones, representing the tribes of Israel. This design signified that the priest, when he entered into the presence of God, carried with him in symbol the whole of God’s people. Their names are borne over his priestly heart unto their remembrance before the Lord (verse 29).

The high priest’s robe was adorned with bells, which tinkled when he walked (verse 35).

While its basic design is prescribed in verses 27-31, the priestly robe actually became more elaborate over the years and, in some respects at least, more symbolic. Eventually the robe of the high priest was adorned with stars and various pictures of objects from the whole earth, symbolizing the cosmic proportions of Israel’s intercessory mediation before God. When the high priest thus entered into the Holy of Holies, he represented all the created world.

Just as the crown was the particular sign of the king, a specially designed miter or turban was the distinguishing mark of the priest (verses 32-35). This adornment of the head is especially appropriate, because each office involves a ministry of “headship.” In the case of the priest, the miter bears a small golden plate with an inscription on that may be translated “sanctuary of the Lord” or “consecration of the Lord” (hagiasma Kyriou). In early Christian literature this word hagiasma is used to designate church buildings, altars, the relics of the saints, holy water, oil lamps, and a variety of sacred objects, including (in Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory the Wonderworker, and John of Damascus) the Holy Communion.

Monday, May 6

Exodus 29: This chapter covers two subjects: the priestly ordination (1-9), including the sacrifices attendant on that ordination (verses 10-37), and the daily sacrifices of evening and morning (verses 38-46).

Although in the Old Testament membership in the priesthood was determined by bloodlines, the proper exercise of the priesthood also depended on an elaborate ordination. The priest was a consecrated person, and in the Bible virtually all acts of consecration are celebrated and effected in the context of an appropriate ritual. In the case of the Old Testament priests, the consecration lasted one week—as long as God’s act of Creation (verses 35-37). A more ample account of the ordination is found in Leviticus 8:1-38.

The first sacrifice of the ordination was the immolation of a bull as a sin offering (verses 1-14; Leviticus 4:1-12). This was a substitutionary sacrifice, in which the sins of the new priests were symbolically transferred to the animal by the imposition of hands (verse 10). Most of the animal was burned outside the camp (verse 14).

As Christians believe, Jesus is the fulfillment of the prophetic dimension of the Old Testament sin-offering, as he is of all the Old Testament sacrifices. In this case, the burning of the sin-offering “outside the camp” was seen in the early Church as particularly symbolic, inasmuch as “the bodies of those animals, whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin, are burned outside the camp. Therefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered outside the gate. Therefore let us go forth to Him, outside the camp, bearing His reproach” (Hebrews 13:11-13). Historically, of course, Jesus was executed outside the city because that was the prescribed place of execution (cf. Leviticus 24:14; Numbers 15:35f; 1 Kings 21:13; Acts 7:58), but the author of Hebrews saw that—whatever His executioners intended—this circumstance of Jesus’ death was the fulfillment of biblical prophecy (cf. also Matthew 21:39; Luke 20:15; John 19:20).

The sacrifice of a ram followed suit (verses 15-18). Unlike the sacrifice of the bull, this was a holocaust, meaning that the fire of the altar consumed the entire victim. Once again, hands were first imposed on the animal as a symbol of substitution.

There followed the sacrifice of a second ram, the blood of which was used for anointing the priests and their vestments (verses 19-21). Then comes a description of those parts of the sacrifice that were normally eaten (verses 22-34). It was through that sacred meal that those consuming the sacrifice communed with the holiness of God’s altar. Those sacrifices are properly thought of as “Old Testament sacraments.”

Especially to be noted in verses 15-21 is the consecratory anointing with sacrificial blood. This ancient rite is the prophetic background for the powerful biblical image of being “bathed in the blood of the Lamb” (Hebrews 9:12-14; 1 John 1:7; Revelation 1:5; 7:14).

The sacrifices of morning and evening (verses 38-46) eventually contributed to the structure of the daily life of prayer. They are the historical background of what eventually came to be called Matins (or Orthros) and Vespers (or Evensong) in the Church, the two major “canonical hours” of daily Christian worship. It is important to observe, however, that already in Judaism these two times of prayer became joined with another at noon (cf. Psalms 55[54]:17; Daniel 6:10-13; 8:26; 9:21).

Tuesday, May 7

Exodus 30: The use of incense (verses 1-10,34-38) in connection with sacrificial worship may originally have served the purpose of disguising the very unpleasant aroma of the burning flesh of the sacrificial animals. In due course, however, the heavenward rising of the smoke gave the burning of incense an independent meaning as a symbol of man’s prayer rising to God (cf. Psalms 140:2; Luke 1:8-11; Revelation 8:3-5).

Thus, even in places as remote as India and Tibet, worshippers have continued to burn incense as a common religious symbol long after animal sacrifice was discontinued. The use of incense in man’s worship is as universal as the raising of the hands in praise and supplication. Indeed, when used often in prayer, the smell of incense, as of aromatic oils, has been known to work on the deeper stores of one’s memory in order to put the worshipper into a prayerful disposition, even before the prayer begins. Not surprisingly, the ritual burning of incense in Christian worship is at least as old as the construction of church buildings.

The collection of money to support the divine worship (verses 11-16) is not something alien or extraneous to the worship. It is itself a dimension of the proper worship of God. Indeed, whether used directly for the worship, for the general support of the ministry, or for the relief of the poor, tithes and offerings are always an important component of our worship (cf. Philippians 4:18; Hebrews 13:16). Theognostos of Alexandria speaks of the “sacrifice of almsgiving.”

The use of aromatic oils in connection with worship (verses 22-33) was already so old that its significance is presumed in the text. First, the oil was consecratory. Serving the several purposes of nourishment, healing, and light, oil provides one of the richest symbols in human experience. Kings, prophets, and priests are all anointed with it to indicate and effect their consecration to service in God’s name. (In the twelfth century, Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux, preaching on the text “Thy name is as oil poured out” from the Song of Solomon, gave his monks a remarkable meditation on this threefold purpose of oil as symbolizing the invocation of the holy name of Jesus: the name of Jesus nourishes, it heals, it enlightens.)

Second, the oil smelled sweet and pungent. Like certain sights (icons, stained-glass windows, etc.), sounds (psalmody, hymnody, etc.), and tastes (the Holy Communion, the blessed bread, etc.), certain smells can be deeply associated in the human psyche with past memories of worship. Ironically, man’s sense of smell can provide one of the most stable and enduring experiences of his religious memory. The worshipper worships God with his whole being and all his senses, including his olfactory sense.

Wednesday, May 8

Exodus 31: The manifold gifts of the Holy Spirit include the special charism that enables certain chosen individuals among the saints to adorn the instruments of the divine worship. Two of these, one from Judah and the other from Dan, are remembered here.

The Holy Spirit did not stop granting that charism at the end of the Old Testament period, and even today God’s people very much depend on the enhancement of divine worship by architects, ikonographers, precious metal workers, book binders, glass blowers, wood and stone sculptors, designers of vestments, needle workers, and other artificers of God’s temple.

There seems to be no end of the number of times that God must remind the Israelites about the Sabbath (verses 12-17; see also 35:1-3 presently). Someone remarked that the people of the Bible manifested such devotion to work that they could be kept from it only by the threat of death!

While this remark may be only a witticism, it does indicate that the love of work—philergeia—and the respect for honest labor that are such distinguishing features of Western Civilization (and the major explanation of its superior material prosperity) come chiefly from the Bible. It must be said that, with the exceptions of Hesiod in Greece and Virgil in Rome, love and respect for work were not features of our pagan classical heritage. In that culture physical labor was chiefly regarded as demeaning and the proper function of slaves.

The Sabbath is the sign (’oth) between God and Israel (verses 13,17). More specifically it is the sign of the “perpetual covenant” (berith ‘olam–verse 16). This descriptive vocabulary with respect to the Sabbath is similar to, even virtually identical with, that which describes the sign of the covenant between God and “all flesh” in Genesis (9:9-12,5-17). The sign, the ’oth, in that case was the rainbow (Genesis 9:12-17), which signified the “perpetual covenant” (berith ‘olam–9:16).

It is instructive to observe three points with respect to these similarities between Genesis 9 and Exodus 31:

First, they are intentional and deliberately invite a theological comparison between the two covenants as they appear in the history of salvation: the covenant with mankind at the conclusion of the Flood and the covenant with Israel at the conclusion of the exodus.

Second, both “signs” in these covenants are built on the structure of nature itself. This is true not only of the rainbow, but also of the Sabbath. It is clearly the teaching of Genesis 2:2-3 that the Sabbath pertains to the natural structure of that creature known as “time.” Thus, each of these covenants is signified (that is to say, is “marked by a sign”). These signs are components that God placed in created nature: the rainbow and the day of rest.

Third, in the case of the covenant with Noah following the Flood, God Himself preserves the sign of the covenant. He places His bow in the heavens (Genesis 9:13). According to the Mosaic covenant, in contrast, the maintenance of the covenant sign depends on Israel. It is Israel that is charged to preserve the Sabbath. Thus, the similarities between these two covenants introduce a contrast.

The two tables of the covenant (verse 18), written with the finger of God, were to be preserved in the Ark of the Covenant. In writing His law on tables of stone, God was also answering a deep need in the human spirit, because the stone inscription symbolizes the permanence of the established moral norm. There are numerous historical parallels testifying to this basic human need, such as the ethical inscriptions of Asoka in ancient India, and the precepts carved into the walls of the temple of Apollo at Delphi.

Thursday, May 9

Exodus 32: Chapters 32-34 return to the sequence left off in 24:14-18, where Moses (with two companions) had ascended to the top of Mount Sinai. It was during his time on Sinai that there occurred the incident of the golden calf, to which we come in this chapter.

This was the setting where Moses prayed for sinful Israel in these words: “Yet now, if You will forgive their sin—but if not, I pray, blot me out of Your book which You have written!” That fervent prayer was more than a bare intercession; it was Moses’ generous self-offering by an association himself with the people’s guilt. It was Moses’ prayer that made the “atonement” (verse 30).

The context of that prayer is worth a detailed examination. There is, to begin with, a two-leveled scene: Moses is on top of Mount Sinai with God, while Aaron is down in the valley with the Israelites. Just prior to the prayer, two things have been transpiring simultaneously, both of them having to do with Aaron. On the mountain Moses has been receiving from the Lord a series of ordinances and statutes governing the consecration, vestments, liturgical instruments, and other matters concerning the Aaronic priesthood (Exodus 25-31).

Meanwhile, however, Aaron was down in the valley proving himself unworthy of that priesthood, for the Bible describes his complicity in the construction and cult of the golden calf. At the people’s first idolatrous impulse, Aaron acceded to their wishes. “Break off the golden earrings,” he instructed them, “which are in the ears of your wives, you sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” And when they did so, “he received the gold from their hand, and he fashioned it with an engraving tool, and made a molded calf.” (verses 2-4).

In this whole episode Aaron is portrayed as craven and double-minded, a hireling and no shepherd. Though very much involved in the people’s sin, he would never admit this association in their guilt. He becomes, rather, a classical example of rationalizing an infidelity, not regarding his action as the apostasy it was, but rather (as the saying goes) as “accepting people where they are.” “You know this people,” he would tell Moses, “they are set on evil” (verse 22). Refusing thus to assume responsibility, Aaron attempts to disentangle himself from the people’s sin.

In a line that the biblical author must have regarded as a kind of mockery, the irresponsible and cowardly Aaron endeavors, moreover, to minimize his own considerable role in the matter, claiming that when the Israelites gave him the gold, “I cast it into the fire and this calf came out!” (verse 24)

Actively taking part in their apostasy, Aaron did not love the people enough to resist them. His attitude is described as the very opposite of that of Moses, whose prayer united him to the guilt of the people, even though he himself had not shared in their sin.

The self-sacrificing prayer of Moses, in which he deliberately associates himself with the guilt of the people, demonstrates an important quality of intercessory prayer in Holy Scripture. The biblical intercessor never stands apart from the state of those for whom he prays. Moses’ wish to be blotted from God’s book rather than see the Israelites perish is clearly repeated in the soul of St. Paul who wrote of those same Israelites: “I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh” (Romans 9:3).

The Bible’s supreme and defining example of this sacrificial intercession is that of the Suffering Servant who “was wounded for our transgressions” (Isaiah 53:5), and “was numbered with the transgressors” (53:12), and who, though He knew not sin, became sin for us, “that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Those guilty of the sin of apostasy will perish in a plague (verses 34-35). It was in reference to this plague that the Apostle Paul speaks of 23,000 casualties (1 Corinthians 10:7).

Friday, May 10

Exodus 33: Now comes the order to depart from Sinai (verse 1). It is the second month of the second year of Israel’s journey (Numbers 10:11-12). The Israelites had arrived at the mountain during the third month after their crossing of the Red Sea (Exodus 19:1), so they have been in this site for almost a year.

The Lord’s angel will continue to lead them to the Promised Land (verse 2; cf. 23:20). The reason given for this “mediation,” however, is the Lord’s displeasure with the Israelites; He wants to keep some distance from them, as though He could not trust Himself not to destroy them! (verse 3) Learning this, the people put away their jewelry, lest the sight of it remind Lord of the incident with the golden calf (verse 4). One may also note that, by not wearing it, the Israelites will more readily part with it when the time comes for this jewelry to be employed in the adornment of the tabernacle.

There follows a story of Moses’ regular visits to speak with the Lord of a new tabernacle (verses 7-11), which is not so much a liturgical shrine as a sort of oracular place. In short, it is a place where Moses can confer with God.

Unlike the earlier tabernacle, which was placed at the center of the camp (25:8), this one is set up outside the camp. Moses goes there from time to time, to speak with the Lord in great intimacy (Numbers 10:4-8; 17:7-9). When he arrives, he awaits the coming of the Lord in the cloudy pillar, which first appeared at the time of the exodus. The other Israelites observe these encounters of the Lord and Moses from the entrances of their own tents.

This new tabernacle becomes the permanent dwelling of Joshua the Ephraemite who in due course succeeds Moses in the leadership of Israel.

Speaking to the Lord in this new tabernacle, Moses now asks something for himself (verses 12-22), confessing that the coming journey may be simply too much for him to endure unless the Lord gives him sufficient light to make coherent sense of it.

God answers this prayer by granting him a special experience of the divine presence—described as a sort of oblique glance at God, catching sight of the Lord’s glory as it passes by. This description is as close as Moses can come to telling of this fleeting and indirect experience of God’s presence, which has been granted to many of the saints in all ages.

St. Augustine (Questions on the Heptateuch 2.154) interprets “I will pass before you” as a reference to the Resurrection of the Lord. No man has ever seen God, except the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father. To the rest of us is given to perceive the glory of God shining on the face of Christ (cf. John 1:14-18; 2 Corinthians 3:7 — 4:6; 2 Peter 1:16-19).

Friday, April 26

Exodus 19: The Book of Exodus, having treated of Israel’s deliverance, now speaks of Israel’s election and the Covenant. Over the next six chapters two sections will emerge as especially prominent—the Decalogue (20:1-17) and the Book of the Covenant (20:22—23:19), the latter containing a detailed, practical application of the rules of the Covenant.

The things narrated in these chapters are not naked events, but events that received theological and liturgical elaboration reflected in the narrative. It is arguable that Israel devoted more attention to these events than to any other in its history.

The people have now arrived at Mount Sinai, where the rest of the Book of Exodus, and all of the Book of Leviticus, will take place. Indeed, the Israelites will not move from Sinai until Numbers 10:33.

The stories begin with Moses’ scaling of Mount Sinai (verse 3), still known among the local Arabs as Jebel Musa. This peak, 7467 feet high, can be climbed in under two hours. When Moses ascends to speak with God, the people wait below at the base of the mountain, the plain of er-Raha (verses 2,17).

God’s election of Israel (verses 5-6) is an invitation to become His chosen people, an invitation that marks Israel’s history until the end of the world, because God will never reject the descendents of those with whom He made Covenant at Mount Sinai (cf. Romans 11:1). What God proposes, however, is only an invitation, requiring Israel’s ratification of His choice and the resolve to abide by its conditions and strictures (verses 7-8). Moses mediates this Covenant (verses 9,25).

The people of God are to be a “royal priesthood, a holy nation” (verse 6). Both the kingship and the priesthood of the Old Testament are prophetic preparations fulfilled in Jesus. Like Melchizedek of old, Jesus Christ is both king and priest (cf. Hebrews 7:1-3). Moreover, because of their awareness of sharing in the royal and priestly dignity and ministries of the risen Jesus, the early Christians were prompt to see this Exodus promise as fulfilled in the Church (cf. 1 Peter 2:9; Revelation 1:6; 5:10; 20:6).

The subsequent terrifying scene on Mount Sinai (verses 9-25 and 20:18-20) is contrasted with the invitation to Christians to “draw near” to God (Hebrews 12:18-24). The theme of a bold “drawing near to” or “approaching” the divine presence is an important one in the Epistle to the Hebrews, serving as part of its sustained contrast of Christ with Moses (cf. Hebrews 4:16; 7:19; 10:1,22).

Saturday, April 27

Exodus 20: We come now to the Decalogue, or Ten Commandments, a code the Bible contains in two forms: the one here and the other in Deuteronomy 5:6-21. Unlike the earlier legal codes of ancient civilizations, the Decalogue uses the apodictic form, simply stating the laws, not explaining them. Thus, each component is treated as an absolute principle.

Inasmuch as the latter part of the Decalogue contains elements from Natural Law (the right to life, the right to property, etc.), it is not surprising that these have their parallels in other ancient legal codes.

More to the point, however, is the entirely new theological foundation, on which all the elements of the Decalogue are based—namely, God’s self-revelation in the first commandment: “You shall have no other gods in My stead” (verse 3). This commandment is not the “first” simply in the sense of being the earliest in the sequence. It is not as though the order within the Decalogue could be switched around, so that it might begin with the prohibition of murder, say, or the injunction of the Sabbath. This lex prima is not prima inter pares.

The first of the Ten Commandments is the first, rather, in the sense that it is the source and fountainhead of the other nine. The commandments are not equal, and the first is formally different from the others. Its priority, that is to say, is not just material but qualitative. Its “firstness” pertains to its essence, not merely to its assigned place in the Decalogue’s sequential disposition. It is not only first, but the first.

The first commandment of God’s Law is analogous to the way that the number “one” is the first of the numbers. “One” is not simply the numeral that precedes “two”; “one” is, rather, the number out of which, and by reason of which, that second number comes. “One” is the cause and necessary condition of “two” and all the subsequent numbers. “One” is logically one, then, before it is first. “One” becomes “first” only by the emergence of a second.

One (to hen) is the root and font determining the identity of two and the subsequent numbers. “One” is what we call a principle, an arche. The principle of something is that which confers its qualitative and identifying form. In this sense, there is a formal, and not merely material, disparity between the “one” and all other numbers.

Analogously, the first commandment of the Decalogue is the arche, the principle of the other commandments. Perhaps this truth will be clearer if we examine that commandment in its entirety: “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods in My stead.”

Unlike the other commandments, this first commandment commences with God’s self-identification; only then does there follow the immediate prohibition against idolatry.

Sunday, April 28

Exodus 21: The material in these next three chapters is often called “the book of the covenant,” a term suggested by Exodus 24:7. In substance this code is largely identical with the core section of the Book of Deuteronomy (and hence the name of the latter, which means “second law”).

Whereas Chapter 20 enunciated universal legal principles, Chapter 21 commences a series of specific “judgments” (mishpotim — verse 1), or “case laws.” The latter are particular applications of the earlier legal principles. Thus, the judgments in the present chapter are concrete applications of the established principle, “You shall not steal” (20:15).

The prescriptions in these chapters come under the heading of “case laws” or casuistry, because they deal with the practical applications of laws to certain hypothetical cases. This is the legal style we find in our most ancient legal codes, such as the formulations of Ur-Nammu, composed in Sumerian about 2050 B.C. and named for the ruler of Ur in southern Mesopotamia (cf. Genesis 11:31).

The accumulation of such case laws serves to indicate certain directions in which future ethical cases—not specifically covered by these laws—might be appropriately judged, by rational recourse to comparison and analogy. The study of such case laws is also intended to give a proper contour to our moral sentiment, a certain “feeling” about moral situations that may arise. By the sustained examination of God’s judgments (mishpotim) in the various hypothetical situations described in these passages, the moral imagination is given a godly shape in order to make proper moral decisions in the future.

The laws in these next few chapters are civil (21:1—22:14), liturgical (20:22-26; 22:28-30; 23:10-19), and moral (22:16-27; 23:1-9).

The present chapter begins with slavery (verses 1-11), the state from which the Israelites have just been delivered. The functioning principle here, through all the hypothetical cases reviewed, is that no man may be enslaved against his own will beyond six years.

In verses 22-36 we have what is the Bible’s first and perhaps clearest enunciation of the legal principle of equity, quid pro quo. Thus, “eye for eye, tooth for tooth,” and so on (cf. Leviticus 24:17-20; Deuteronomy 19:21). All such laws are founded on the perception of proportions. Justice, that is to say, has something to do with the principles of mathematics (symbolized in the scales that often appear in artistic representations of Justice), a proper conformity to correct measure. Moral truth is perceived like mathematics or any other truth, by the correct application of the properly reasoning mind.

Monday, April 29

Exodus 22: This chapter begins with some more applications of the commandment, “Thou shalt not steal.” Whereas Chapter 21 presumed situations in which the harm inflicted was unintentional, and thus involved only commensurate restitution, the present chapter looks more closely at situations in which the harm inflicted is deliberate and intentional. In this chapter, then, we are dealing, not only with laws of compensation but also with punitive laws. The penalties in these latter, one will notice, are quite a bit harsher. They are obviously designed to discourage certain sorts of behavior!

The Bible takes very seriously the concept of ownership, a fact that explains the serious penalties imposed for theft. These include a manifold restitution for stolen or damaged property, and the lack of a guaranteed protection for a thief taken in the act (verses 1-4).

Whereas modern philosophy tends to distinguish public from private property, the Bible is more interested in what we may call family property—property as a family’s substance of labor and inheritance. That is to say, in the Bible property is more closely associated with the experience of tradition, including respect for the labor of one’s ancestors. Property is regarded as an extension of family; it is that component that binds the generations of a family together.

For this reason there is a close alliance between “Honor thy father and thy mother” and “Thou shalt not steal.” It is hardly surprising, then, that those who disregard the claims of tradition are more likely to be thieves. Of this latter phenomenon we have a good illustration in the case of Ahab and Jezebel in the instance of Naboth’s vineyard (1 Kings 21).

Family property, moreover, is a community concern, over which the newly appointed judges (18:13-26) have jurisdiction and the right of determination (verse 9).

Community concern is also directed to another important dimension of social life: sexuality. In the present context, however, this concern pertains to the (consensual) defilement of a virgin (verses 16-17), a situation in which the offense directly affects the financial worth of the father of the girl. This is the reason for its inclusion in the present section of Exodus.

This brief consideration of a sexual matter, however, prompts the inclusion of another sexual offense, bestiality (verse 19). Perhaps even this inclusion is prompted by the consideration of property, inasmuch as the animal must be slain.

By an association difficult to follow, the subject of bestiality leads in turn to rules about sorcery and idolatry (verses 18,20). Perhaps the common element in all these rules is the prescription of the death penalty.

There next follows a concern for sojourners and others deprived of a normal domestic life (verses 21-24)—those with whom the Israelites, remembering their own sojourn, are to commiserate (cf 23:9; Leviticus 19:33-34; Deuteronomy 1:16; 10:17-19; 14:28-29; 16:11-14; Jeremiah 7:6). Sins in violation of this concern are included in this section because of their social nature.

Laws concerning pledges and usufruct are characterized by a concern for the disadvantaged party (verses 25-27).

Tuesday, April 30

Exodus 23: Pursuant to the Decalogue’s prohibition against false witness (20:16), the present chapter opens with directions about judicial proceedings (1-3,7-8).

Because it appeared unlikely that a poor man (dal), in ancient times, would be favored in court, some textual historians suspect that verse 3 has been corrupted in the transmission. They suggest a slight emendation (the supply of one letter in Hebrew), causing this verse to read, “Thou shalt not favor a great man (gadol) in his cause.” This appears to be a responsible emendation that renders the text more understandable in the historical context.

Nonetheless, in more recent times we have seen the rise of political ideologies that have tended in exactly the opposite direction, favoring the poorer, disadvantaged classes as a matter of principle, sometimes at the expense of specific determinations of justice. It is not unknown, in modern times, for the courts to be used in an activist way, to rectify general social inequities, instead of simply adjudicating individual cases on their just merits. It is not the business of the courts to rectify social ills, but to punish evildoers. This is the reason that Justice is portrayed as blindfolded.

The sacred text moves on to treat of the effective charity a believer owes even to his enemies, out of an elementary sense of humane compassion (verses 4-5; Leviticus 19:17-19). This motive also prompts concern for the stranger and sojourner (verse 9), the same motive given earlier (22:21-24).

In conformance with the stated solicitude for the poor and disadvantaged, attention is given to the “Sabbath rest” of the cultivated fields, because this practice, too, serves a kind and humane purpose (verses 10-11, Leviticus 25:2-5; Deuteronomy 15:1-3; Nehemiah 10:31; 1 Maccabees 6:49,53).

From this metaphorical application of the Sabbath rest, the text takes up the literal Sabbath rest, enunciated in the Decalogue (20:8-11). Once again the motive given here is more humane than theological (verse 12).

Continuing the theme of consecrated time, Exodus goes on to treat the three annual feasts (verses 14-17), Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles. Each of these is here briefly explained, not in relation to its specific meaning in salvation history (deliverance, covenant, and desert journey), but with respect to its place in the annual agrarian cycle. Both aspects of these feast days remain in something of a tension throughout the Old Testament.

Transferred to the Christian Church these three feasts became Easter, Pentecost, and the Exaltation of the Holy Cross; but one notices that Christians too are reluctant to separate these feast days from an agrarian setting in the calendar. They became the occasion for the Ember Days, at which it was customary to bless the fields and harvests.

The recent mention of unleavened bread (verse 15), leads to more reflection on the same subject (verses 18-19). This prohibition of leaven in the sacrificial rites is analogous to the exclusion of polished stones in the construction of the altar (20:25). That is to say, in both cases there is a concern to preserve the elements of the worship in their more primitive and undeveloped state, in keeping with the sparse conditions of the exodus itself. It seems likely that this liturgical concern (for simplicity) was inspired by a reaction against certain features of Canaanite religion.

Thus ends “the book of the covenant,” which is now followed by a general exhortation that fills the rest of the chapter.

Verse 20 is one of our earliest texts to introduce that spiritual presence that an ancient Christian litany calls “an angel of peace, a faithful guide, a guardian of our souls and bodies.” Indeed, among the many blessings given to men by God to guide their sojourn in the world, the Liturgy of St. Basil lists the ministry of the guardian angels, a traditional doctrine supported by such texts as Matthew 18:10, Acts 12:15, several passages in Daniel, and the entire Book of Tobit.

Early Christian liturgical texts identify Israel’s guardian angel during the Exodus as St. Michael. In the context of the exodus and wandering, this guardian angel is portrayed as the specific enemy of idolatry (verses 23-24), and surely this danger of the idols (1 John 5:21) remains the reason why God links a guardian angel to the lives of those who, at the exodus of their own baptism, have renounced the false gods. These enemies of the true God are served by the nations that are to be driven out of the Promised Land itself.

With respect to the dimensions of the original Promised Land, it is worth noting that not until the tenth century (1 Kings 4:24), and never afterwards, did it assume the vast dimensions indicated in verse 31.

Wednesday, May 1

Exodus 24: As we have considered in our comments on Exodus 19, God does not impose the Sinai covenant on Israel. He does not force them to become His elect people; rather, He invites them. The covenant is to be ratified by Israel, and in the present chapter, which follows the Decalogue and the Book of the Covenant, we come to Israel’s ratification (verse 7).

This narrative seems to be derived from two accounts of the event, joined, but not entirely reconciled, with respect to some details. For instance, it is not entirely clear which actions take place on the mountain and which on the plain. The ratification itself is marked by both a sacrificial meal and by the sprinkling of sacrificial blood (verses 8,11). We find references to this ratification in Zechariah 9:11 and Hebrews 9:18-20.

Indeed, our earliest Christian reflection on verses 3-8 is found in the Epistle to the Hebrews 9:16-23, in a context emphasizing that the deep significance of the sacrificial blood in the Old Testament is its prophetic reference to the redeeming blood of Jesus, shed on the cross for the salvation of mankind. The blood of Jesus is called the “blood of the covenant” also in Hebrews 10:29 and Mark 14:24.

Moreover, in quoting Exodus 24:8, the Epistle to the Hebrews (9:20) slightly, but very significantly, alters the wording of it. Whereas Exodus reads “Behold (idou) the blood of the covenant,” the author of Hebrews wrote: “This (touto) is the blood of the covenant.” There is no doubt that his wording reflects the traditional words of Jesus with respect to the cup of His blood at the Last Supper (cf. Matthew 26:28).

Moses ascended the mountain with three men (verses 9-18), two of whom were brothers, and there was a six-day delay. Compare the remarkable parallel to both points in Mark 9:2. In the scene of the Lord’s Transfiguration, He is joined by the two figures most clearly associated with revelations given on Mount Sinai/Horeb: Moses and Elijah (cf. 1 Kings 19:8-18).

Moses is again summoned to ascend the mountain in order to receive the stone tablets and certain liturgical regulations (verse 12). The engraving of laws on stone was characteristic of many ancient legal codes, all the way from the Decree of Hammurabi to the inscriptions on the walls of the temple of Apollo at Delphi. Law, that is to say, represents inheritance, binding one generation to the next. Hence, it is appropriate to write laws on stone, a substance that does not quickly pass away.

The chapter ends with Moses on the mountain for forty days and nights.

Thursday, May 2

Exodus 25: Here begin lengthy and detailed orders about the construction of the tabernacle, the instruments of worship, the ordination and vestments of the priests, and so forth (chapters 25-31). Meanwhile, as all of this important instruction is taking place, Aaron and the Israelites do a bit of liturgical experimentation on their own (chapters 32-34)! The juxtaposition of these two scenes will constitute one of the great examples of narrative irony in the Bible. After the story of the golden calf, the narrative of Exodus will continue in chapters 35-40 with the enactment of the earlier prescriptions.

Chapters 21—31 are composed of seven prescriptive oracles (“the Lord spoke unto Moses, say . . .”), each with its own introduction (25:1; 30:11,17,22,34; 31:1,12). In some of these oracles we recognize points of correspondence with the different days of creation. Thus, the first oracle, which speaks of the candelabrum and of Aaron’s custody of the sacred fire, corresponds to the creation of light on the first day. The third oracle (30:17-21), which describes the brazen sea in the tabernacle, corresponds to the third day’s creation of the seas. The fourth, which prescribes the oil for the lamps (30:22-33), is parallel to the fourth day of creation, when the various lights were placed in the heavens. Thus, finally, this “sabbath” of oracles ends with the Sabbath itself and appeals to God’s own rest after the works of creation (31:12-17; cf. Psalms 89 [88]:21).

Prior to describing all of these matters in detail, the author outlines the subjects that will be treated in the ensuing chapters (verses 3-8). Then Moses is given a vision of the archetypal tabernacle (verse 9,40)—that tabernacle not made with hands—the everlasting holy place into which, in due course, the eternal high priest and one mediator between God and men will enter, having obtained eternal redemption for us (cf. Hebrews 8:1-5).

The ark’s dimensions (verses 10-15) are about 45 inches long, and 27 inches in height and depth. The permanent poles indicate that it must always be ready to travel, and it did move around quite a bit even after the Israelites settled in the Promised Land. Eventually it came to rest in Jerusalem, where Solomon built his temple around it. The ark was lost when the temple was destroyed. Originally it contained the tables of the Decalogue, but it seems to have been the receptacle of other sacred objects at certain periods (cf. Hebrews 9:2-4).

The hylasterion (translated variously as “propitiatory” or “mercy seat”) in verses 16-17 will be the place where the high priest sprinkles the expiatory blood on Yom Kippur, thus symbolizing the reconciliation between God and man. As the meeting place of God and humanity, it is a symbol of the Incarnation, where God and humanity are bound together forever. Jesus Himself is called the hylasterion (cf. Romans 3:25). Israel came to think of this hylasterion, overshadowed by the cherubic wings (verses 18-20), as God’s throne in this world (cf. Psalm 79.1; Hebrews 9:5). One is reminded also of the two angelic figures seated on the empty resting place of the risen Lord, suggesting that the empty tomb is the great symbol of the reconciliation of God and man (cf. John 20:12).

Twelve loaves of fresh bread, representing the full assembly of Israel, are to be kept on the table in God’s presence in the tabernacle (verses 23-30). This “holy bread” (1 Samuel 21:4)—“bread of the presence” (21:6)—and “continual bread” (Numbers 4:7) was a type of the Holy Eucharist, the mystical bread of God’s presence, contained in all the tabernacles of the Church throughout the world, until the end of time.

Friday, May 3

Exodus 26: The construction of the Tabernacle is described in the first part (verses 1-14) of this chapter. It had four coverings, divided into workable sections. The first covering was made of linen, over which were coverings of goats’ hair, rams’ skins dyed red, and dugongs’ skins. Two things are noteworthy about this last: First, the dugong, or sea cow, is a native of the Indian Ocean. The availability of this product indicates the extensive trade carried on through the Red Sea. One speculates that the sea-going power of Sheba was the medium by which this product reached Egypt. Second, the skin of the dugong, which sat uppermost over the Tabernacle, rendered it rainproof.

Next are described the wooden side-frames of the Tabernacle (verses 15-30), indicating that this shrine stood about 14 feet high, was 62 feet long, and measured over 42 feet wide.

Finally comes the internal division of the Tabernacle between the holy place and the Holy of Holies (31-37), the latter measuring about 14 feet square. It contained the Ark of the Covenant and the tablets of the Decalogue (cf. Hebrews 9:3-4).

The division within the tabernacle was later duplicated and further developed within the Jerusalem temple. Indeed, the sense of separated space is intrinsic to the very notion of a “temple,” a word derived from the Greek temno, meaning “to divide.” A shrine of any kind is already a section of space devoted to the things of God, and divisions within a shrine are related to the ordered structure of the community that worships there. The building reflects the congregation’s conception of itself. In the case of Israel and the Christian Church, the ordered structure of the worshipping community is “hierarchical,” meaning that its organizational structure is holy and reflects a divinely-appointed order.

This hierarchical aspect of biblical worship, that is to say, is enacted even in architecture. (Indeed, if one looks closely, both “hierarchy” and “architecture” are formed of a common root, a Greek word meaning, roughly, “a principle that gives structure and explanation to reality.”

Friday, April 19

Exodus 12: There are four features especially to be noted about this important text that interrupts the narrative sequence in order to place the whole into a more theological and liturgical context:

First, the paschal lamb is an example of “substitutionary” sacrifice; like the ram that had replaced Isaac on Mount Moriah in Genesis 22:13, the paschal lamb’s life is given in place of the lives of Israel’s first-born sons.

Second, there is nothing in the text to suggest that this sacrifice is “expiatory.” That is, unlike certain other biblical sacrifices, such as those associated with Yom Kippur, the sacrifice of the paschal lamb is not made in reparation for sins. Moreover, the Old Testament provides not a single example of an animal being sacrificed in place of a human being whose sin was serious enough to merit death.

Third, the blood of this paschal lamb is sprinkled at certain points of the houses of those who are “redeemed.” This sprinkling is explicitly said to be a “sign” of covenant protection, parallel to the rainbow in the covenant with Noah in Genesis 9:12-17 and circumcision in the covenant with Abraham in Genesis 17:19-27.

Fourth, because this paschal lamb was a type or symbol of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross (cf. 1 Corinthians 5:7), it was fitting that the meal celebrating the new covenant in His blood should be inaugurated in the setting of the paschal Seder (cf. Luke 22:15-20).

The “this day” of verse 14 is the fifteenth day of the month Nisan, but it includes the night of Pascha. Pascha itself was to be the first liturgical day of an entire “week of Sabbaths,” that is, seven days of rest and festival continuing the celebration, during which Israel could eat unleavened bread as on Pascha itself. More regulations relative to this weeklong feast are to be found in 13:3-10. In the New Testament the two terms, Pascha and the Feast of the Unleavened Bread, are used almost interchangeably.

After the lengthy and detailed instructions that prepare for it, the tenth plague is narrated very succinctly, to great dramatic effect. The Exodus itself follows at once. In the writings of the New Testament, the event especially served as a prefiguration and type of redemption, including all of the events narrated of that great week, both His death for our sins and His rising again for our justification.

So important was the liturgical observance of Pascha to the life of the early Christians that one of the major and most heated controversies of the second century Church concerned the proper dating of the feast. In spite of a venerable tradition held in Ephesus and the other churches of Asia Minor, it was finally determined that Pascha would always be celebrated on a Sunday, a rule that has been maintained by all Christians since the fourth century.

In verses 43-50 we find more regulations relative to the preparation of the Seder of Pascha. As was noted above, there was no disagreement among the early Christians with respect to the deeper meaning of the paschal lamb. Indeed, verse 46 here, about not breaking the bones of the paschal lamb while preparing it, was seen by St. John as a prophecy of the body of Jesus on the cross, in that the soldiers did not break His legs (cf. John 19:36).

Saturday, April 20

Exodus 13: By the regulations contained in these sections, Israel would be reminded of the Exodus every time a first-born son came into the world. Each such son would have to be “redeemed” by the sacrifice of a lamb. Elsewhere we learn that, for poorer families that could not afford the price of a lamb, the redemption could be made by sacrificing two pigeons or turtledoves (cf. Leviticus 12:8). We are familiar with one very notable family that took advantage of that humane and gentle provision (cf. Luke 2:22-24). This particular “Firstborn” would, by his sacrificial death, be the redemption of all humanity.

In verse 17 the inspired author gives us a picture of what line of reasoning is taking place in the mind of God. It is intimated here that God has a plan yet to unfold. This marvelous detail in verse 19 ties our story back to Genesis 24-25 and forward to Joshua 24:32 (cf. the comment in Hebrews 11:22).

John 6:1-14: We observe how Jesus engages Philip at the time of the multiplication of the loaves:

Jesus lifted up his eyes, and seeing a great multitude coming toward him, he said to Philip, “Where shall we buy bread, that these may eat?” But this he said to test him, for he himself knew what he would do (John 6:5-6).

What, then, was accomplished by this question to Philip, since Jesus already “knew what he would do”? His question here served the purpose of evoking the assistance of the apostles in what was about to take place.

Jesus did not ask that question for Philip’s sake, I believe, but for Andrew’s. They were a pair. He knew that wherever you saw Philip, Andrew must be nearby (cf. Mark 3:18; John 12:22). The question was apparently meant to be overheard by Andrew, who promptly replied, “There is a lad here who has five barley buns and a couple of dried fish” (John 6:9). Now, they could get started!

Thus, by putting to Philip a question to which he already knew the answer, Jesus transformed these apostles from mere spectators to active participants in the experience of the multiplication of the loaves. It is they who will seat the people for the meal (John 6:10). It is they who will distribute the bread and fish (6:11). In this scene, then, Jesus’ question both commences the event and provides for its participatory structure.

Sunday, April 21

Exodus 14: In the previous chapter (13:17) we already learned that God had a plan. Now it will be enacted. Pharaoh is being “set up.” As if the destruction of the first-born sons had not been enough, Pharaoh is coming back for more punishment. On the other hand, God intends this encounter, as He knows what Pharaoh is thinking. If Pharaoh is rash enough to do battle with the Lord, he will simply have to take his chances. Meanwhile, God’s plan remains a secret, even to Moses.

Pharaoh does not know that his own plan has already been subsumed into God’s larger plan (verses 5-9). Thus his very strategy against Israel becomes a component of his own destruction. Compare this with the way the New Testament pictures the plan of Satan being subsumed into Christian redemption (cf. John 13:2; 1 Corinthians 2:8).

The command to “stand” (verse 13) is more than a matter of posture. It is a summons to steadfast faith; cf. Psalm 5:3 — “In the morning I will stand before You, and I will see.” The Lord portrays Himself as a warrior for Israel (verse 14), something to which the Egyptians themselves will testify in 14:25. The image of God as a “fighter” for Israel will appear again in Deuteronomy 1:30; 3:22; 20:4, and it will be taken up again in the narratives of the conquest; cf. Joshua 10:14,22; 23:3. The people must, therefore, “be silent.” When God is in the act of saving, it is best that man refrain from making comments about it, which will inevitably be distracting or even worse.

Although by now Moses is aware that God has a plan, he does not yet know what that plan is. God does not explain Himself; He simply gives an order that must be obeyed in faith (verses 15-18). Indeed, God rather often does this (cf. John 2:8; 6:10; 9:7; 11:39). Few things are more arrogant in a religious person than the refusal to obey orders that one does not understand; we are dealing with God, after all, whom we shall never “understand.”

God has told Moses what to do; now God provides His own part in the plan. The text is clear that the mysterious quality of the cloud comes from an angelic presence (cf. Exodus 23:20; 32:34; Numbers 20:16). The traditional liturgical texts of the Church identify the angel here as Michael, who battles for God’s people; cf. Daniel 10:13,21; 12:1; Revelation 12:7. The cloud follows the people right into the sea, shrouding them in darkness; cf. Joshua 24:6f. St. Paul explains for Christians the meaning of this double experience of the cloud and the sea; cf. 1 Corinthians 10:1f.

Monday, April 22

Exodus 15: The people of God have been hymn-singers right from the beginning. The singing of hymns is the Bible’s normal response to the outpouring of salvation; cf. Judges 5, 2 Samuel 22, Judith 10, many Psalms, etc. This particular canticle, which has been sung by Holy Church at her Paschal vigil from time immemorial, celebrates the Lord’s victory over the oppression inspired of idolatry. It should be thought of as the song of the newly baptized, standing at their baptismal waterside, their demonic enemies drowned in its depths.

It is not only the song of Moses and Miriam, but it is also the song of the Lamb, a prefiguration of that heavenly chant sung by the “sea of glass mingled with fire,” sung after the “last plagues,” sung by those who, with “harps of God,” “have victory over the beast”: “Great and marvelous are Your works, Lord God Almighty! Just and true are Your ways, O King of the saints!” (Revelation 15:1-3)

The encounter of Israel with God on Mount Sinai, which begins in chapter 19, will be bracketed between two sequences of desert stories, which provide a narrative frame in which the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai forms the center. We begin the first of these two sequences now, and the second will commence in Numbers 20. These two desert sequences contain some striking parallel narratives: the peoples’ murmuring (Exodus 15, 16, 17; Numbers 14, 16, 17), the manna and the quail (Exodus 16; Numbers 11), and the water from the rock (Exodus 17; Numbers 20).

The murmuring we find at the end of this chapter and into the next is nothing new, of course; the people have been murmuring since the Book of Exodus began, and we will be noting more about it as the account progresses. Here the murmuring is heard with respect to thirst, which is notoriously a problem in the desert.

The murmuring is rebellious, for the people’s anger is turned on Moses and is recalcitrant to his authority. They no longer “believed the Lord and Moses His servant” (14:31). This story is taken up in John 6, where the “murmuring in the desert” is directed against Jesus. The descendents of the murmurers in Exodus, immediately after the feeding of the people by miraculous bread in the desert, begin to murmur and ask for a sign (John 6:30). Then begins the Lord’s Bread of Life discourse, in which He contrasts the ancient manna with the superior bread of His own Eucharistic flesh (John 6:48-58).

Meanwhile, the rebels continue to murmur (John 6:41,43). Just as the people murmured against the authority of Moses, now they murmur against the authority of Jesus. It should also be remembered that it was precisely in the context of the Holy Eucharist that St. Paul warned against the sin of murmuring (1 Corinthians 10:10).

Tuesday, April 23

Exodus 16: The bitter water is sweetened and made potable by the tree placed in it, this tree often being interpreted in Christian history as symbolic of the Lord’s cross, that salvific tree that sweetens many of our bitter experiences in the desert of our Christian journey.

The manna is spoken of much more than the quail. There are two reasons for this: (1) On only two occasions does the Bible speak of the quail, whereas the manna will remain the people’s staple food for the next forty years. And (2) The manna received far more theological attention during the course of Israel’s long history. Speculations about the nature of the manna continued in Israel well into Talmudic times.

Similarly, in the memory of the early Church it is obvious that, with respect to the miraculous feeding with the loaves and fishes, the loaves were the element chiefly remembered, inasmuch as the bread was understood—like the manna—as a prefiguration of the Holy Eucharist.

This is “daily” bread, in the sense that God’s people must trust Him each day to provide it. They are to leave tomorrow to His care. The bread, then, becomes the daily occasion of faith in God’s providing. It is the bread for which Jesus commanded us to ask God, “give us, this day” (Matthew 6:11; Didache 8.2), or “day by day” (Luke 11:3). As long as our pilgrimage lasts—until the other side of the Jordan (cf. Joshua 5:12)—this bread will be supplied to God’s people, so that they must not fear nor fret for the morrow (cf. Matthew 6:25-34).

First Corinthians 11:17-34: According to our earliest Evangelist, Mark, Jesus himself testified to the identification of the Messiah with the redemptive Sufferer in Isaiah 53. Not only does Mark trace this testimony to Jesus; he also places in a specific setting—the Last Supper—the solemn historical event that virtually defined what the early Christians called paradosis, “tradition.” (1 Corinthians 11:23). In the Eucharistic institution Jesus invoked both Isaiah 53 and Exodus 24:8 with respect to the libation of his own blood: “This is my covenant blood, which is shed for many.” Thus, proclaiming himself to be the Suffering Servant, Jesus identifies the Atonement blood as his own.

Let us bear in mind that Mark is not our earliest literary witness to this ascription. Nearly a decade before the composition of Mark’s Gospel, Paul had written to the Corinthians on this very point, declaring that Jesus took “the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” Paul went on to complete this theology somewhat later in the same epistle by reminding the Corinthians, ”I handed over (paredoka) to you, as of first importance, what I also received: that Christ died for our sins” (1 Corinthians 11:25 and 15:3).

Wednesday, April 24

Exodus 17: Like the other events associated with the Exodus, the stream of water miraculously struck from the rock was adopted by the early Christians for its spiritual significance. Drawing on this inspiration, 1 Corinthians 10:4 says that the people “drank of that spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ.”

Two remarks should be made with respect to this latter text:

First, in calling the rock “spiritual,” St. Paul did not intend to deny that it was a physical rock. He had in mind, rather, to say that the physical rock possessed a spiritual significance, both as the medium of God’s special intervention, and as a symbol of Jesus the Lord, who provides us with the water of eternal life (cf. also John 4:10-14; 7:37-39). Thus, St. Paul said, “that rock was Christ.”

Second, the somewhat surprising detail that the rock in the desert “followed them” is derived from rabbinical reflection on the rock. After all, is this not the same rock as in Numbers 20, from which water miraculously flowed at Kadesh?

Rabbinical texts speak of this as a kind of rocky fountain from which water poured as through a sieve, and they describe it as traveling up and down the mountain ranges while the people wandered in the desert. This rabbinical speculation about the moving rock is witnessed in an ancient targumic (Aramaic paraphrase) version of Exodus, known as the Targum Onkelos, probably inspired by Isaiah 48:21. The rabbinical scholar Paul was completely at home in these traditions.

The Bible remembers Moses as preeminently a man of intercessory prayer, as we see here in verses 8-13. Moses thus became a model for all men of prayer. Stories of this sort very much impressed St. Symeon the New Theologian. “I know a man,” he wrote, “who desired the salvation of his brethren so fervently that he often sought God with burning tears and with his whole heart, in an excess of zeal worthy of Moses, that either his brethren might be saved with him, or that he might be condemned with them. For he was bound to them in the Holy Spirit by such a bond of love that he did not even wish to enter the kingdom of heaven if to do so meant being separated from them” (Book of Divine Love, 54.1).

For Christian interpreters the picture of Moses praying on the mountain with outstretched arms (verses 8-13) became a type of Jesus praying for mankind with outstretched arms on Mount Calvary. Moreover, the 3rd century commentator, Origen, wrote that this passage in Exodus “is fulfilled whenever we pray in the power of the Cross of Christ.”

Thursday, April 25

Exodus 18: The story of Jethro (verses 1-12) and the institution of the judges (verses 13-27) represent a chronological departure, it appears, from the historical sequence. There are two indications of this departure: First, Israel is still encamped at Rephidim (17:1 and 19:1), whereas the events in chapter 18 take place at Mount Sinai (verse 5). Second, there is the testimony of Deuteronomy 1 that the institution of the judges took place after the Sinai Covenant.

There is no theological or exegetical difficulty, of course, in discovering here a departure of the story from the historical sequence. After all, there is no a priori necessity requiring the biblical narrative to follow the historical sequence. However, if we look more closely at the accounts in chapter 18, there seem to be two reasons that prompted the biblical author to put the stories in chapter 18 before describing the Sinai Covenant.

First, this arrangement is less disruptive to the narrative. Placing these events in chapter 18 before the Sinai narrative permits the biblical author, when he comes to treat of the Covenant, to concentrate attention on the particulars of the Law, without the relative distraction of these other matters. The author reasonably preferred to tell this story earlier than it happened.

Second, a story about the sacrifice of the pagan Jethro at Mount Sinai would be most unseemly if it were told after the institution of the priesthood and sacrifice in the prescriptions of the Covenant (Leviticus 8-10).

What, then, are we to make of chapter 18?

To this point all of the great burden of leadership has fallen on Moses, though we did begin to see the gradual emergence of some other leadership, especially that of Joshua, in the previous chapter. In the present chapter, however, Moses accepts the counsel of Jethro and lays a broader foundation for the leadership of the people. It is particularly striking that this counsel comes from “outside” the chosen people. Indeed, it is the advice of a pagan priest! The willingness of Moses to accept the prudent counsel of an “efficiency expert” from outside the community, even in regard to his prophetic and pastoral ministry, seems to be a useful precedent for God’s people to bear in mind. This response of Moses to the suggestion of Jethro is thus of a piece with Israel’s earlier “despoiling” of the Egyptians.

Friday, April 26

Exodus 19: The Book of Exodus, having treated of Israel’s deliverance, now speaks of Israel’s election and the Covenant. Over the next six chapters two sections will emerge as especially prominent—the Decalogue (20:1-17) and the Book of the Covenant (20:22—23:19), the latter containing a detailed, practical application of the rules of the Covenant.

The things narrated in these chapters are not naked events, but events that received theological and liturgical elaboration reflected in the narrative. It is arguable that Israel devoted more attention to these events than to any other in its history.

The people have now arrived at Mount Sinai, where the rest of the Book of Exodus, and all of the Book of Leviticus, will take place. Indeed, the Israelites will not move from Sinai until Numbers 10:33.

The stories begin with Moses’ scaling of Mount Sinai (verse 3), still known among the local Arabs as Jebel Musa. This peak, 7467 feet high, can be climbed in under two hours. When Moses ascends to speak with God, the people wait below at the base of the mountain, the plain of er-Raha (verses 2,17).

God’s election of Israel (verses 5-6) is an invitation to become His chosen people, an invitation that marks Israel’s history until the end of the world, because God will never reject the descendents of those with whom He made Covenant at Mount Sinai (cf. Romans 11:1). What God proposes, however, is only an invitation, requiring Israel’s ratification of His choice and the resolve to abide by its conditions and strictures (verses 7-8). Moses mediates this Covenant (verses 9,25).

The people of God are to be a “royal priesthood, a holy nation” (verse 6). Both the kingship and the priesthood of the Old Testament are prophetic preparations fulfilled in Jesus. Like Melchizedek of old, Jesus Christ is both king and priest (cf. Hebrews 7:1-3). Moreover, because of their awareness of sharing in the royal and priestly dignity and ministries of the risen Jesus, the early Christians were prompt to see this Exodus promise as fulfilled in the Church (cf. 1 Peter 2:9; Revelation 1:6; 5:10; 20:6).

The subsequent terrifying scene on Mount Sinai (verses 9-25 and 20:18-20) is contrasted with the invitation to Christians to “draw near” to God (Hebrews 12:18-24). The theme of a bold “drawing near to” or “approaching” the divine presence is an important one in the Epistle to the Hebrews, serving as part of its sustained contrast of Christ with Moses (cf. Hebrews 4:16; 7:19; 10:1,22).

Friday, April 12

Exodus 5: “Thus says the Lord” (cf. also Exodus 32:27) places Moses squarely in the prophetic tradition. This is, in fact, the Bible’s first great encounter of a prophet with a king, an encounter that will be repeated with the likes of Nathan and David, Elijah and Ahab, Isaiah and Ahaz, Amos and Jeroboam II, Jeremiah and Zedekiah, Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar, John the Baptist and Antipas, Paul and Agrippa. It is instructive to remember that, on the sole occasion when Abraham was called a prophet, it was in connection with a local ruler in the Negev; cf. Genesis 20:7.

The source of Pharaoh’s problem is that he does not “know the Lord” (verse 2). Before much longer, nonetheless, he will have ample opportunity to make the Lord’s acquaintance; cf. Exodus 8:22; 9:29. Moses’ encounter with such a man may be compared to David’s confrontation with Goliath, who also did not “know the Lord”; cf. 1 Samuel 17:45-47.

Pharaoh reacts “that same day,” taking the initiative away from Moses and Aaron, thereby making them look inept in the eyes of the Israelites (verses 4-9). “Thus says the Lord” now becomes “thus says Pharaoh” (verses 10-14). Here there is a series of complaints: the overseers to the foremen, the foremen to Pharaoh, Pharaoh to the foremen, the foremen to Moses, Moses to God. Pharaoh’s tactic is to divide the people that he wants to oppress. He does not discredit Moses directly; he acts, rather, in such a way that the people themselves will turn on Moses.

The scene in verses 15-21 will be repeated many times in the next 40 years. On each occasion when things do not go well, the people will blame Moses. And when the people blame Moses, Moses will often enough blame God, as he proceeds to do now.

Pharaoh is already beginning to harden his heart, as the Lord permitted him to do. Even though Exodus several times ascribes Pharaoh’s hardening of the heart to the Lord Himself (cf. 7:3; 9:12; 10:1,20,27; 11:10; 14:4,8), this ascription is only an ironic way of declaring that the entire development, the growing suspense of the conflict, is under divine direction. As the Lord, through the course of the plagues, provides less and less excuse for Pharaoh’s mounting stubbornness, He is pictured as making Pharaoh’s heart ever harder by giving him further occasions for repentance. In order to resist God, that is to say, Pharaoh’s heart must become progressively hardened.

Saturday, April 13

Exodus 6: Here commences God’s response to Moses’ complaint in chapter 5, and the major message is one of reassurance. God recalls his covenant with the patriarchs, to whom He was also obliged to give reassurance from time to time. God’s covenant with them has now been perfected by the revelation of God’s mysterious Name (cf. Ezekiel 20:5-7). Everything that Moses is to tell the people is summed up in the revelation of the Divine Name.

In verses 14-27 we find another genealogy, of which there were so many in Genesis, and many more of which will be found in the rest of Holy Scripture. Although modern readers may be disposed to skip such passages as uninteresting, they were certainly important to the biblical writers, not least because they helped give structure to the continuity of the narrative. In this case the genealogy serves to relate the founding of Israel’s priestly family, the established priesthood being one of Israel’s principal defining institutions.

In biblical thought, salvation is not a purely individual thing; it is intimately linked, rather, to certain prescriptive institutions and authoritative ministries, and priesthood, as one of these, involves a proper succession. Proper succession is also a requirement of Christian ordination, a point that was argued strongly before the end of the first century; cf. Clement of Rome, Epistle to the Corinthians 40-44.

John 4:1-26: The Evangelist John surely knew that woman’s name, just as he knew the names of the paralytic at the pool and the man born blind, because he narrates all of these one-on-one encounters with details that he could only have obtained from the individuals themselves. So John most certainly knew their names. His omission of those names in the stories, then, has literary significance, and Celano is probably right to suppose that we are dealing here with anonymity for the sake of reader identification. That is to say, each of us, as we ponder the text prayerfully, becomes that paralytic, that blind man, and that woman at the well, encountering the Lord in the power of His Scriptures. As an “every Christian” account, the story of the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well serves to illustrate certain distinct stages in the path of conversion.

When the woman first meets Jesus, He is called simply “a Jew” (4:9). This is important to the story as a whole, of course, because the Lord Himself will presently declare that “salvation is of the Jews” (4:22). On the woman’s lips, nonetheless, the designation “Jew” indicates two things:

First, it says that Jesus is at first assessed only within a certain class of people. He is not yet a distinguishable person, important on His own account. And second, the word “Jew” indicates the woman’s sense of separation from Jesus, because “Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.”

Next, Jesus is addressed as “Sir” (4:11; presumably the Aramaic Mar).
This term of respect is a great step for the woman to make, indicating her change of attitude toward Jesus. But then, within four verses “Sir” becomes “prophet” (4:19), when the Lord directs the woman’s attention to her own sins. Then Jesus takes the initiative in His own identification, calling Himself the Messiah.

Sunday, April 14

Exodus 7: Moses will be the wonderworker, and Aaron the speaker. (As a matter of irony, however, we will find Moses doing almost all the talking, while Aaron extends the wonderworking rod.) Deed and word go together in the Bible, as in any fine drama. Speaking and doing are the two components of God’s revelation. Indeed, these two things sum up the whole activity of Jesus and the Apostles (cf. Mark 6:30; 1 Thessalonians 1:5).

What is described in verses 8-13 is not one of the plagues, but it is the beginning of a prolonged test of wills and skills. Pharaoh is not much impressed with Moses, since his own people demonstrate comparable skills. After his initial retaliation, however, Pharaoh will never again be in a position to retaliate. Moses and Aaron will keep him on the defensive, with his hands full of trouble. The most he can hope for from any encounter is to break even, and gradually this too will be taken from him.

The first plague is most serious, because the Nile has always been the foundation of the entire Egyptian agricultural and mercantile economy. Pharaoh’s response is very humorous. After all, the last thing Pharaoh needs right now is another display of water-into-blood skills in Egypt!

Psalm 150: Originally crafted by a descendant of Cain (cf. Gen. 4:21), musical instruments do not, perhaps, look very promising when first we learn of them. Moreover, there has often been something a bit problematic about such music, morally considered. When King Nebuchadnezzar employed “the sound of the horn, flute, harp, lyre, and psaltery, in symphony with all kinds of music” (Dan. 3:5) for his idolatrous purposes, it was not the last instance when instrumental music served to deflect men from the worship of the true God.

Yet, in fact, God rather early designated musical instruments as appropriate to His own worship in the tabernacle and the temple. And, once again, in the final book of the Bible we find heaven to be a place resonating with the sounds of trumpet and harp.

John 4:25-35: When the Samaritan woman leaves the well, she has a question in her mind, a question about the identity of Jesus. It is the fundamental question that would in due time be addressed by the Ecumenical Councils: “Who do you say that I am?” Just exactly who is Jesus? “Come,” she invites her friends, “see a Man who told me all things that I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” (4:29). Everyone in John’s Gospel seems to be asking such questions: “‘This is the Prophet.’ Others said, ‘This is the Christ’” (7:40, 41).

Monday, April 15

Exodus 8: There are several obvious connections among the various plagues. Here, for instance, there is a great multitude of frogs, because their natural habitat, the water, has become contaminated.

Even though this second plague is not as harmful as the first, we will see Pharaoh begin to weaken. Obviously this second plague has gotten his attention. For all that, it may be thought of a “nuisance plague,” perhaps putting one in mind of Elijah’s mocking of the prophets of Baal prior to doing them the real damage (1 Kings 18:20-40).

Once again Pharaoh’s magicians, still a bit “unclear on the concept,” demonstrate that the bringing forth of frogs is also within their power—as though Egypt was suffering a shortage of available frogs!

Pharaoh’s reaction is new; he is starting to recognize that Moses is not a nobody. Pharaoh is going to test if Moses is really a spokesman for God. As will be very much the case later in the Exodus narrative, Moses is presented as a man given to intercessory prayer. Here he tells Pharaoh to “pick the time,” and, remembering that the previous plague lasted a week, he wisely picks the next day! In this plague (verses 9-10), as in the previous one, mention is made of the outrageous stench afflicting the nation. The third and fourth plagues are clearly related to the death of all the frogs, which are the natural predators of insects.

Although Pharaoh will once again harden his heart, we at last see in him some disposition to negotiate. He starts to make some concessions that Moses will reject as inadequate. Since the Israelites and the other Semites were accustomed to sacrifice certain animals unacceptable to the Egyptians, however, Moses insists that the people be allowed to leave Egypt to perform these sacrifices. Moses still has a “hidden agenda,” of course, as does Pharaoh. There is no reason that either man should trust the other.

John 4:46-54: At the end of the woman’s story, the designation “Christ” is embraced by her Samaritan friends, who promptly complete it with another important Christological title: “We know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world” (4:42).

The lady from Samaria has now come all the way. Starting out that day, hardly suspecting what lay ahead, she laboriously carried her sins to the well, where she met a Jew, who asked her for a drink of water. The Jew presently became a Sir, and then a prophet who reminded her that she was a sinner. No matter, though, because this prophet was also the Christ, who, because he was the Savior of the world, knew exactly what to do with her sins. Seeking her He sat down weary, and to redeem her he would, in due course, endure the cross.

Tuesday, April 16

Exodus 9:16 is quoted as part of St. Paul’s famous treatment of the dialectic of salvation history; cf. Romans 9:17. It is one of the greatest misfortunes of theological history that some later commentators, abstracting this passage from its context and inserting it into philosophical speculations about divine predestination and foreknowledge, reached certain conclusions unwarranted by the Scriptures—at odds with the traditional teaching of the Church, and unknown to the earlier, classical commentators on Romans (such as St. John Chrysostom). It is important to insist that the argument in Romans 9 is not about individual salvation; it is about the historical relations of Israel to the Church. There is nothing in this passage to infer that Pharaoh (or Esau) was predestined to be damned.

Since verse 6 said that all the cattle of the Egyptians had perished anyway, some question may arise with regard to the cattle mentioned in verse 19. Obviously the inspired biblical writer is not interested in problems like this, a fact perhaps suggesting that we shouldn’t be, either.

While some of the other plagues, such as insect infestations, visit Egypt occasionally even in normal times, a hailstorm in northeast Africa is a truly rare thing (verse 23). Accompanied by a frightening display of lightning and thunder, this one proves too much for Pharaoh, and for the first time he admits his sin. Alas, his repentance does not outlast the plague that inspired it.

Verses 31-32 are our only indication with respect to the time of the plagues, suggesting the month of January, before the appearance of the winter wheat.

John 5:1-15: Although our Lord evidently cured a number of people from various kinds of paralysis (cf. Mark 4:24; 8:6), the Gospels narrate only two such instances in much detail: the paralytic lowered through the roof (Mark 2:1–12; Matthew 9:1–8; Luke 5:17–26), and the man lying at the pool of Bethesda (John 5:1–15). It also happens that these are the only two occasions of physical healing in which Jesus refers to the sins of the person whom He heals. Thus, He says to the man lowered through the roof, “Your sins are forgiven you” (Mark 2:5), and after restoring the man at the pool of Bethesda the Lord exhorts him, “Sin no more” (John 5:14).

This seems to be the point, then, of the question Jesus puts to the man: “Do you want to be healed?” Perhaps, in his deeper heart, he does not want to be healed—not really—and perhaps that is the sin to which Jesus is referring when He tells him, “See, you have been made well. Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you” (5:14).

Wednesday, April 17

Exodus 10: To an agricultural economy, few things are more frightening than a visitation of locusts, which can reduce all plant life, over many square miles, to absolute ground level in a matter of hours (cf. the first chapter of Joel).

In three respects this is the most effective of the plagues to date: (1) Pharaoh’s servants, who had begun in support of him, and had come to see themselves bested (8:15), and had then retired from the combat (9:11), now come out to make a common plea with Moses against Pharaoh; (2) Pharaoh, for the first time, offers to release the Israelite men even before the plague starts; (3) Pharaoh himself asks for forgiveness. Even though the king’s heart is still hardened, the inspired author takes note of the progress.

In Egypt the sun god, Re, held a special prominence, so this plague of darkness is freighted with special theological significance; the Lord is in earnest doing battle with the gods of Egypt. The three days of darkness here should be seen as a type of the three hours of darkness that covered the earth on that afternoon when the new Moses did battle with the most ancient of the pharaohs of our slavery, himself the Prince of Darkness (Mark 15:33). There on Calvary, as here, the plague of darkness immediately precedes the death of the Firstborn Son.

Psalms 38 (Greek & Latin 37): This is not the happiest of psalms, but it is exceedingly salubrious to the spirit. If its message can be summed up in one line, that line may well be David’s response to Nathan: “I have sinned against the Lord.” These words make all the difference, because, as another psalm insists, “a broken and contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.” Over and over the tax collector “beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’” (Luke 18:13).

Sin is also the great solvent of our relationships to one another. As is clear in the accounts of the first sins (Gen. 3:11–13; 4:12), sin means isolation and alienation. Sin separates us, not only from God, but also from one another. Our psalm speaks of this isolation: “My loved ones and my friends stand aloof from my plague. And my relatives stand afar off.”

We are not talking about morbidity here. Contrition and sorrow in this psalm are accompanied by repeated sentiments of longing: “I groan because of the turmoil of my heart. Lord, all my desire is before You; and my sighing is not hidden from You. My heart pants, my strength fails me. . . . For in You, O Lord, I hope; You will hear, O Lord my God.”

Finally, there are the enemies. The demons are the only enemies of the man who correctly prays the Book of Psalms. Nowhere does Holy Scripture exhort us to forgive or pity the demons. They are the only true enemies that our prayer recognizes. Unlike human enemies who are to be prayed for, the demons are always to be prayed against. Our fight with them is unsleeping, as is their fight with us, plotting our ruin: “Those also who seek my life lay snares for me; those who seek my hurt speak of destruction, and plan deception all the day long.”

Thursday, April 18

Exodus 11: Commenting on this “borrowing” from the Egyptians by Israel, the Fathers of the Church display two preoccupations: (1) Lest anyone think that this action on Israel’s part was to be copied as a moral example, some of the Fathers took care to point out that the Israelites were, in fact, slaves and, as such, entitled to just remuneration for their coerced labor; (2) The silver and gold that the Israelites took from the Egyptians was understood allegorically, as representing the philosophical and cultural riches of Egypt. Thus, they used this example to justify the Christian use of classical pagan philosophy, law, and cultural ideals.

This allegorical interpretation is not farfetched; indeed, it is rooted in historical fact. Israel did, indeed, take from Egypt a massive inheritance of philosophy, law, literature, and other cultural wealth. Their own Semitic culture had become enormously enriched by their extensive sojourn in northeast Africa, surrounded by one of the oldest and richest civilizations the world has ever seen. Alas, however, so many of these trinkets, of which the text speaks, would eventually be used in the construction of the golden calf, a fact indicating the dangers inherent in any “borrowing” from the world.

In some sense, Moses and Aaron will now be “out of the picture.” This final and decisive plague will involve no activity on their part. This work will be accomplished without human mediation of any kind; the Lord will use only the angelic ministry. The chapter ends by saying that Moses and Aaron had done all they could do to prevent what was about to befall Egypt.

Doubtless this is what accounts for the anger of Moses as he leaves Pharaoh’s presence for the last time. Sign after sign had been ignored by an inveterately stubborn man seemingly intent on his country’s destruction, and the inspired biblical author stands amazed at such hardness of heart. (Compare St. John’s bewildered comments on the later hardness of heart that could not be softened by the many “signs” done by Jesus; cf. John 12:37-41.)

Psalm 37 (Greek & Latin 36): This psalm appears at first to challenge the very notion of the psalms as prayers, inasmuch as not a single word of it is explicitly addressed to God. It speaks about God, of course, but never to Him, at least not overtly.

Clearly this psalm has close ties to the Bible’s Wisdom tradition. If it were not part of the Psalter, we would expect to find it in Proverbs or one of the other Wisdom books. It appears to be a kind of discourse given by a parent to a child, or a wise man to a disciple. It is full of sound and godly counsel: “Fret not thyself because of evildoers . . . Trust in the Lord and do good . . . Cease from anger and forsake wrath . . . Wait on the Lord and keep His way,” and so forth. Such admonitions, along with the psalm’s allied warnings and promises, are stock material of the Wisdom literature.

Friday, April 19

Exodus 12: There are four features especially to be noted about this important text that interrupts the narrative sequence in order to place the whole into a more theological and liturgical context:

First, the paschal lamb is an example of “substitutionary” sacrifice; like the ram that had replaced Isaac on Mount Moriah in Genesis 22:13, the paschal lamb’s life is given in place of the lives of Israel’s first-born sons.

Second, there is nothing in the text to suggest that this sacrifice is “expiatory.” That is, unlike certain other biblical sacrifices, such as those associated with Yom Kippur, the sacrifice of the paschal lamb is not made in reparation for sins. Moreover, the Old Testament provides not a single example of an animal being sacrificed in place of a human being whose sin was serious enough to merit death.

Third, the blood of this paschal lamb is sprinkled at certain points of the houses of those who are “redeemed.” This sprinkling is explicitly said to be a “sign” of covenant protection, parallel to the rainbow in the covenant with Noah in Genesis 9:12-17 and circumcision in the covenant with Abraham in Genesis 17:19-27.

Fourth, because this paschal lamb was a type or symbol of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross (cf. 1 Corinthians 5:7), it was fitting that the meal celebrating the new covenant in His blood should be inaugurated in the setting of the paschal seder (cf. Luke 22:15-20).

The “this day” of verse 14 is the fifteenth day of the month Nisan, but it includes the night of Pascha. Pascha itself was to be the first liturgical day of an entire “week of Sabbaths,” that is, seven days of rest and festival continuing the celebration, during which Israel could eat unleavened bread as on Pascha itself. More regulations relative to this weeklong feast are to be found in 13:3-10. In the New Testament the two terms, Pascha and the Feast of the Unleavened Bread, are used almost interchangeably.

After the lengthy and detailed instructions that prepare for it, the tenth plague is narrated very succinctly, to great dramatic effect. The Exodus itself follows at once. In the writings of the New Testament, the event especially served as a prefiguration and type of redemption, including all of the events narrated of that great week, both His death for our sins and His rising again for our justification.

So important was the liturgical observance of Pascha to the life of the early Christians that one of the major and most heated controversies of the second century Church concerned the proper dating of the feast. In spite of a venerable tradition held in Ephesus and the other churches of Asia Minor, it was finally determined that Pascha would always be celebrated on a Sunday, a rule that has been maintained by all Christians since the fourth century.

In verses 43-50 we find more regulations relative to the preparation of the Seder of Pascha. As was noted above, there was no disagreement among the early Christians with respect to the deeper meaning of the paschal lamb. Indeed, verse 46 here, about not breaking the bones of the paschal lamb while preparing it, was seen by St. John as a prophecy of the body of Jesus on the cross, in that the soldiers did not break His legs (cf. John 19:36).

Friday, April 5

Luke 24:13-35: For a few minutes the risen Jesus playfully concealed his identity from Mary Magdalene on Easter morning, but in the afternoon he carried this play much further, remaining unrecognized during a prolonged and detailed conversation with two other disciples:

Now behold, two of them were traveling that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was sixty stadia from Jerusalem. And they talked together of all these things which had happened. So it was, while they conversed and reasoned, that Jesus himself drew near and went with them.” But their eyes were restrained, so that they did not recognize him (Luke 24:13-16).

Jesus listens to their conversation for a while and then asks, “What kind of conversation is this that you have with one another as you walk and are sad?” This “ignorance” on his part persuades the pair that he must be “a stranger in Jerusalem,” who has managed to miss the things everybody else has been talking about.

Jesus asks a second question, again feigning ignorance: “What things?” He listens while they inform him about his own death, their shattered hopes, and the very dubious report from the women who had been at the tomb that morning.

The reader is, of course, amused by the irony of this discourse. What I want to suggest here is that Jesus is amused by it, as well. He strings these men along. He will reveal himself to them in due course, but he first leads them through a process of learning:

Then he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not the Messiah to have suffered these things and to enter into his glory?” And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, he expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

The meaning of these Scriptures has been a preoccupation of Luke’s Gospel from the start. It was the burden of Jesus’ first sermon at the synagogue in Nazareth. It was the subject of his conversation with Moses and Elijah on the mount of the Transfiguration. In the present scene, Jesus feigns ignorance precisely with a view to teaching these two disciples—and through them, all Christians to the end of time—his own understanding of the biblical text.

All of Christian doctrine is rooted, I believe, in Jesus’ paschal discourse to the two disciples on the way to Emmaus. The timing of that discourse is likewise significant, for it took place on the very day of His rising from the dead; on that day “the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David,” demonstrated that He “was worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals.” He was worthy to do this because He was slain and had redeemed us to God by His blood (Revelation 5:5, 9). Jesus interprets Holy Scripture—indeed, he is the interpretation of Holy Scripture—because he “fulfills” Holy Scripture through the historical and theological events of his death and Resurrection. His blood-redemption of the world is the formal principle of Christian biblical interpretation.

As for the two disciples on the way to Emmaus, Jesus continues to act his play to the end: “Then they drew near to the village where they were going, and he indicated that he would have gone farther.” This is at least the third time, since the trip started, that Jesus teases these men in order to take the conversation in the direction he wants it to go. As though reluctantly—and only at their explicit invitation—“He went in to remain with them.”

At last, Jesus’ points of instruction having been made,

He took bread, said the blessing, and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they knew him; and he vanished from their sight.

The two disciples promptly turn around and head back to Jerusalem. As they returned, they reflected that their hearts had burned within them as the Stranger had spoken to them on the way and had interpreted the Scriptures.

Luke does not say so, but one hopes they also apologized to Mary Magdalene and the other women for their unbelief.

Saturday, April 6

First Corinthians 1:1-17: Toward the end of the year 49 Paul began his mission at the city of Corinth, where he ministered for the next 18 months (Acts 18:11). The beginnings of the Corinthian congregation were not promising. Indeed, there seems to have been confrontation and animosity associated with that parish from the very beginning. It was founded in strife.

Paul had started by teaching in the local synagogue each Sabbath, sharing the Gospel not only with the Jews, but also with the local Gentiles that were attracted to many features of Judaism (18:4). When the Jews at the synagogue opposed and cursed what Paul was saying, he finally broke off any further discussion with them. He left the synagogue in a huff, saying, “Your blood be upon your own heads; I am clean. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.”

From that point on, along with a few Jews, such as Crispus and Sosthenes, the Gentiles gathered separately under Paul’s tutelage (18:8-17). This was hardly the end of the strife, because the Christians met in a home that was right next door to the synagogue! (18:7)

We may take this theme of strife as the point in our reflections, because there is an atmosphere of conflict in everything we know about the origins of the Corinthian church. Paul’s two letters to that congregation are full of references to discord and dissension, and so is the letter that St. Clement, the third bishop of Rome, wrote to the Corinthians near the end of the first century.

Paul’s first eighteen months at Corinth were very hard on him as the founding pastor. During that whole time he took no salary for his labors, working instead as a tent maker to earn his living. Paul became so discouraged with the strife at Corinth that the Lord gave him a special revelation to keep him going. St. Luke tells us, “Now the Lord spoke to Paul in the night by a vision, ‘Do not be afraid, but speak, and do not keep silent; for I am with you, and no one will attack you to hurt you; for I have many people in this city’” (18:9).

If the Apostle Paul needed reminding on this score, perhaps all Christians do. The story of the founding of the Corinthian church stands in the Bible to teach us that the presence of conflict does not invalidate the experience and claims of a congregation. This account testifies that God does not abandon a Christian congregation just because it has a bit of conflict and an occasional locking of horns. Christ did not abandon the church at Corinth.

There are those who believe that the experience of a Christian congregation must be nothing but light and peace. Indeed, we all know of people who stay away from church because they believe churches to be inhabited by sinners. That is something on the order of staying away from grocery stores in order not to associate with the hungry, or refusing to enter a hospital for fear there may be sick people present.

If the Church of Jesus Christ is a refuge for sinners—if it is really true that He came to call sinners, not the just—then there is no logic to the expectation of finding only nice and upright people at church.

Saint Thomas Sunday, April 7

John 20:24-31: Thomas was the first among the Apostles to embrace the imperative of the Cross. Unlike Peter (“Get behind Me, Satan!”), Thomas put up no resistance to the news. When Jesus declared his intention of going to south to “wake up” Lazarus, the other Apostles expressed their fear at the prospect. “Rabbi,” they answered, “lately the Jews sought to stone You, and are You going there again?” It was Thomas who accepted the tragedy of thing: “Let us also go, that we may die with him” (John 11:8, 16).

Thomas may also have been something of a loner, which would explain why, when the risen Lord paid his first visit to the assembled Apostles, Thomas “was not with them when Jesus came” (20:24). One speculates that he may have gone off to get a better grip on himself. It had been a very tough week, after all. Just as Thomas had suspected it would, Jesus’ life ended in tragedy. This, the Apostle was sure, was the biggest tragedy he had ever seen.

Yet he was coping with it, somehow. Years of an inner docility to inevitable fate had schooled him in the discipline of endurance. Yes, he would get through this too. He was a man who could deal with misfortune and sorrow. Just don’t disturb Thomas with hope.

He returned to the other Apostles in the “upper room” that evening, having wrestled his soul into a quiet acquiescence. It was the first day of a new week. Thomas had faced down the disaster, and his control over his nerves was starting to return.

What Thomas had not anticipated, however, was that the other Apostles, during his absence, would completely lose their minds. “Well, Thomas,” one of them announced, “fine time to be gone. We have seen the Lord, and you just missed him!”

A whole week the risen Lord would make him wait, sharing that room with the ten other men to whom he had hurled his challenge:

Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe” (John 20:25).

As each day passed, the case for skepticism was strengthened.

But then it happened. The room was suddenly filled with a great light. New evidence had arrived and stood now undeniable on the scene. Thomas sensed that his long-established pessimism was about to be shaken. He rose and faced the entering light. He saw the familiar face and recognized the familiar voice: “Peace to you!”

We do not know if Thomas felt, at that moment, some urge to hide behind the other Apostles. He was not given the chance. Turning to Thomas, the risen Jesus fully appreciated the irony of the hour. Nor would we be wrong, I think, to imagine a smile coming over the glorious face of the one who said to his beloved pessimist: “Reach your finger here, and inspect my hands; and reach your hand here, and place it into my side.”

Monday, April 8

Exodus 1: The political situation has changed a great deal since the end of Genesis. Israel had gone down into Egypt during the 15th Dynasty (1663-1555), but now the biblical account has apparently reached the 19th Dynasty, the first Pharaoh of which was Ramses I (1293-1291).

As Exodus begins, we seem to be in the reign of the next Pharaoh, Seti I (1291-1278). If so, the Exodus itself occurred during the reign of Ramses II (1279-1212). If, as seems to be the case, the Pharaoh here was Set I, there was indeed a great deal of construction in process. Archeological evidence from this period testifies to a new hall for the temple of Amun at Karnak, two new temples at Abydos, a large tomb in the Valley of the Kings and yet another temple at Thebes.

The “shrewdness” of Pharaoh here ties this story to two other examples: First, to the account of the serpent, “more cunning than any beast of the field,” in Genesis 3:1. Each of these two books, Genesis and Exodus, commences with a wily enemy who endeavors to deceive God’s people.

Second, this theme is related to the later stories of Pharaoh’s attempts to outwit Moses. This early verse of Exodus, then, introduces a major motif of our book: the “matching of wits,” in which the sinful wisdom of the world encounters the baffling wisdom of God. As this first chapter progresses, Pharaoh’s shrewdness is quickly outwitted by the Hebrew midwives, who are thus to be contrasted with the gullible Eve at the beginning of Genesis. Ultimately, of course, Pharaoh will be defeated by his own shrewdness, a process the Bible calls hardness of heart.

For the first time in this book, the Israelites “pull a fast one” on Pharaoh, thus demonstrating a superior wisdom that ties this story back to the Joseph narrative at the end of Genesis. The midwives “feared the Lord,” and this was the source of their wisdom; cf. Psalm 110:10. Whereas the enemy outsmarted Eve at the beginning of Genesis, the women here in Exodus outwit the enemy.

The endeavor to kill the male children places this text in a parallel with Matthew 2:16. Beginning with the dreams of two Josephs in Genesis 37 and Matthew 1, there are many striking correspondences between the opening chapters of Matthew and the long account of the Chosen People in Egypt. This verse also introduces two major symbols of the Exodus story: water in general and the Nile River in particular.

Tuesday, April 9

Exodus 2: The Hebrew word tevah is found in only two passages of the Old Testament. It appears, first, in Genesis 6–9, where the term is usually translated as “ark.” It refers to the boat-like structure that Noah and his sons construct for the saving of a new humanity.

In Exodus 2, the only other place in the Old Testament where we find the same word, it is more normally translated as “basket,” referring to the receptacle that floated on the Nile River and held the baby Moses. In each case, likewise, the tevah, made watertight by the application of bitumen, is the means of salvation in the midst of the waters.

The Bible’s use of the word in these two instances suggests an intentional literary, as well as theological, relationship between the two stories. This account of Moses, therefore, serves to parallel the Exodus story with the narrative of the Flood, and Moses with Noah. Moses becomes the deliverer of the Hebrews, much as Noah was the deliverer of the human race.

Both the Flood and the Exodus, of course, are symbols of Baptism; cf. Hebrews 11:7; 1 Peter 3:18-22. Moses’ very name “drawn from the water” is a foreshadowing of the salvific event at the Red Sea. The people of God is the community “drawn from the water,” most particularly, of course, the water of Baptism.

Just as Pharaoh was outwitted by the midwives in the first chapter, so his policy is thwarted by the sister and mother of Moses in this chapter. There is the added comical dimension that Moses’ mother becomes probably the only woman in history to be paid for nursing her own child!

Moses is now introduced as the rescuer of the Hebrews; cf. Acts 7:20-29. Already we have a foretaste of his activity against the Egyptians; before Moses is finished, many more Egyptians will die.

One observes especially that he chooses solidarity with rather the Hebrews than the Egyptians; cf. Hebrews 11:24-26. On the other hand, the zest and spontaneity with which Moses throws himself into this action is to be contrasted with his great reluctance to respond, later on, when God gives him the difficult task of actually delivering His people. As was observed by Clement of Rome near the end of the first century (Epistle to the Corinthians 4), the animosity shown toward Moses in this passage is paralleled by the animosity shown toward Joseph by his brethren in Genesis.

Wednesday, April 10

Exodus 3: In Holy Scripture, this same mountain is called both Sinai and Horeb, the former name being more favored in the traditions of Judah, the latter name being more common among the northern tribes. The story of the Burning Bush here requires two chapters, being the longest “call story” in the Bible. The medieval Jewish commentator Rashi speculated that the event took an entire week! As the story begins, Moses is curious. As usual, he is taking the initiative. He will attempt to approach the divine presence on his own!

Moses covers his face but bares his feet, such being the proper response to the presence of holiness, particularly at a “holy place.” Holiness is not abstract; it is revealed in concrete physical experiences. The removal of the sandals in this context is found with regard to Joshua (Joshua 5:13-16) and the veiling of the face with regard to Elijah (1 Kings 19:13).

In 2 Corinthians 3:18—4:6, St. Paul explains the deeper significance of the veiling of the face: Paul’s reference to the glory of God shining on the face of Christ, which perfectly expresses what the evangelists describe in the Transfiguration, is even more striking by reason of its immediate context. Just a few verses earlier Paul had written, “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transfigured (metamorphoumetha) into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord” (3:18). That is to say, Paul’s reference to the glory of God on the face of Christ is set in the context of our own transfiguration in Christ. The verb he uses here, metamorphomai, appears in only three other places in the New Testament, two of them descriptive of the Lord’s Transfiguration on the mount (Matthew 17:2; Mark 9:2).

As in Luke’s account of the Transfiguration, Paul’s development lays special stress on the Christian understanding of the Old Testament. Indeed, he introduced this subject of transfiguration by treating of biblical interpretation. The Jew, Paul wrote, understands only the “letter” (gramma) of the Old Testament, whereas the Christian understanding penetrates more deeply to “the Spirit” (to Pnevma). The first kind of biblical understanding leads to death, he affirmed, the second to life (2 Corinthians 3:6-7). That is to say, Paul’s preoccupation here is the orthodox understanding of the Bible.

God identifies Himself here as the same God who spoke of old to the patriarchs, and this description of God’s meeting with Moses bears comparison to some similar patriarchal narratives (cf. Genesis 17:1-3; 28:16-19; 32:31.

The divine commission distinguishes Moses from all that went before. From time to time the patriarchs had been told to do certain things (cf. Genesis 12 and 22, for instance), but they were never, strictly speaking, given some task to which they were to devote their entire lives. Moses is the first and prototype of the man called to the exclusive service of God and ministry to God’s people. After him the Bible will describe many such calls.

Beginning at verse 11 we observe Moses’ reluctance to accept his arduous prophetic call. Indeed, this will become a normal response of several of the prophets and other leaders at the time of their call; cf. Judges 6:14-18; Jeremiah 1:4-8; Jonah 1:1-3; Luke 5:4-10.

Thursday, April 11

Exodus 4: All through this chapter Moses anticipates getting resistance from the chosen people, as had been the case back in 2:14. Popular resistance to the prophetic word was to remain a common biblical theme; cf. Amos 7:10-13; Hosea 9:7; Acts 26:24, etc. In the case of Moses this disposition to disbelieve him was to continue to the very end of his career. Indeed, in the New Testament there is the sustained complaint that the Israelites were still not taking Moses seriously; cf. John 5:45-47; 7:19; Acts 7:30-39.

These “signs” serve more than one function. Moses says that nobody will believe him, but it appears that the first unbelief to be overcome is that of Moses himself. Secondly, the Israelites must be convinced. Thirdly, the Egyptians must be convinced.

Moses objects that he has never had “a way with words.” Truly so; although at this point in the story he is 80 years old, the Bible records only one sentence from him prior to this time, and that one sentence had been totally ineffective (Exodus 2:13). God reminds him that he won’t be speaking for himself; cf. Mark 13:11. Jeremiah will also use an alleged speech deficiency in attempting to escape the prophetic call; cf. Jeremiah 1:4-8.

Time has run out for Moses, but in response to his pleading, God makes the concession that the new prophet is to receive some help, and for the first time we learn that Moses has an older brother. Aaron will do the talking, but Moses is not relieved of his own responsibility. Aaron will be his spokesman, but Moses himself will continue to be God’s spokesman. This extended dialogue between Moses and God reveals the prophet’s ability at haggling, which is a normal part of business transactions in that part of the world. In fact, one is reminded of Abraham as someone who “drove a hard bargain” with God; cf. Genesis 18:24-32. Later on in the Exodus account, much will be said about Moses’ ability as an intercessor with God; on one occasion the people will be saved from swift destruction solely by reason of Moses’ ability to “haggle” with the Almighty.

Verses 24-26 are one of the most obscure passages in all of Holy Scripture, and it is possible that even the inspired author was not entirely certain what it meant. Indeed, we can say that the story was recorded here quite simply because it happened, and various interpretations of it can be traced back to pre-Christian times. What is clear about the passage, however, is this: that Moses’ son had to be circumcised before his prophetic commission could be undertaken. This detail places Moses once again in the tradition of the patriarchs. The insertion of this story, which has to do with a specific ritual act, at the beginning of the Exodus drama tends to place the whole narrative of the Exodus in a liturgical and initiatory context, indicating an important relationship between circumcision and the Exodus.

Friday, April 12

Exodus 5: “Thus says the Lord” (cf. also Exodus 32:27) places Moses squarely in the prophetic tradition. This is, in fact, the Bible’s first great encounter of a prophet with a king, an encounter that will be repeated with the likes of Nathan and David, Elijah and Ahab, Isaiah and Ahaz, Amos and Jeroboam II, Jeremiah and Zedekiah, Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar, John the Baptist and Antipas, Paul and Agrippa. It is instructive to remember that, on the sole occasion when Abraham was called a prophet, it was in connection with a local ruler in the Negev; cf. Genesis 20:7.

The source of Pharaoh’s problem is that he does not “know the Lord” (verse 2). Before much longer, nonetheless, he will have ample opportunity to make the Lord’s acquaintance; cf. Exodus 8:22; 9:29. Moses’ encounter with such a man may be compared to David’s confrontation with Goliath, who also did not “know the Lord”; cf. 1 Samuel 17:45-47.

Pharaoh reacts “that same day,” taking the initiative away from Moses and Aaron, thereby making them look inept in the eyes of the Israelites (verses 4-9). “Thus says the Lord” now becomes “thus says Pharaoh” (verses 10-14). Here there is a series of complaints: the overseers to the foremen, the foremen to Pharaoh, Pharaoh to the foremen, the foremen to Moses, Moses to God. Pharaoh’s tactic is to divide the people that he wants to oppress. He does not discredit Moses directly; he acts, rather, in such a way that the people themselves will turn on Moses.

The scene in verses 15-21 will be repeated many times in the next 40 years. On each occasion when things do not go well, the people will blame Moses. And when the people blame Moses, Moses will often enough blame God, as he proceeds to do now.

Pharaoh is already beginning to harden his heart, as the Lord permitted him to do. Even though Exodus several times ascribes Pharaoh’s hardening of the heart to the Lord Himself (cf. 7:3; 9:12; 10:1,20,27; 11:10; 14:4,8), this ascription is only an ironic way of declaring that the entire development, the growing suspense of the conflict, is under divine direction. As the Lord, through the course of the plagues, provides less and less excuse for Pharaoh’s mounting stubbornness, He is pictured as making Pharaoh’s heart ever harder by giving him further occasions for repentance. In order to resist God, that is to say, Pharaoh’s heart must become progressively hardened.

Good Friday, March 29

Philippians 2:1-11: The contrast between Christ and Adam, found in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15, does not appear to have been original with Paul. We already find that contrast in what is apparently an ancient hymn verse cited by St. Paul in the Epistle to the Philippians:

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (2:5-11 RSV).

Relative to Good Friday, two points should be made about this passage:

First, its rich doctrinal character is surprising in a context where we would not expect it. The context is not doctrinal. It is, rather, a moral exhortation, in which Paul describes how Christians are to be humble and obedient in their regard and behavior toward one another (2:1-4,12-16). Settled in the middle of that context, the Christological passage quoted above has the feel of an insertion. It takes the reader in a specifically doctrinal direction. It appears that Paul, wanting to hold up the example of the obedience of Christ, reminds them of a text that he expects his readers to recognize. Familiar texts like this are frequently taken from well-known hymns, and a close reading of the passage suggests a strophic structure.

Second, at least part of the content of this hymnic insertion clearly relies on a contrast between Christ and Adam. Adam, we recall, was disobedient in trying to become like God. This is implied in what the serpent told Eve with respect to the forbidden fruit: “For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God” (Genesis 3:5). That is to say, disobedient Adam “regarded equality with God a thing to be grasped” (harpagmon egesato to einai isa Theo).

God’s Son, in contrast, being “in the form of God” (en morphe Theou), was already “equal to God” (isa Theo). He had not need to grasp it. Yet He emptied Himself and assumed “the form of a servant” (morphen doulou), becoming obedient to death on the Cross. This is the model of obedience that Paul holds out to Christians, telling them, “Have this mind (touto phroneite) among yourselves.” Believers are to abandon the example of Adam and pursue the standard of Christ. This is the moral message of Good Friday.

Holy Saturday, March 30

God Rests From His Labors: The Presbyterian theologian Alan Lewis liked to describe Holy Saturday as a “boundary.” His use of this literary metaphor (invented by Karl Jaspers and made popular by Paul Tillich) meant that Holy Saturday served as a sort of dividing line between the Lord’s suffering and death on Good Friday and His triumphant Resurrection on Easter Sunday, thereby shaping the entire sacred “Three Days,” or Triduum. One function of a boundary, obviously, is to define something, in the etymological sense of conferring a finis, a “limit” that gives it form.

A real boundary, moreover, confers shape on two things, namely, those realities on either side of it. Like the god Janus, a boundary must cast its regard in both directions. A border unites two entities even in the act of segregating them. Ironically, they are disjoined by what joins them. They are put apart by what they share. What distinguishes them is what they have in common. I suggest that Alan Lewis was right in this respect. The image of the boundary really is a useful way of looking at Holy Saturday, and I believe that the theological insight of Holy Church respects the unique place of this day in her traditional liturgical customs.

Going beyond Lewis, however, let me further suggest that in Holy Saturday—the middle of the sacred Triduum—we recognize in Good Friday and Easter Sunday, somewhat as in the Lord’s two natures, twin realities placed “without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.” Holy Saturday ‘hypostatically’ holds together, as it were, the two extremes of the Triduum.

To grasp what I mean here, it may be useful to recall that when the events of those days originally took place, the Apostles and Myrrh-bearers did not know that Holy Saturday was the central day in the sacred Triduum. They had no concept of the matter. For them it was simply the day after the tragic climax. They did not realize what was to come on the next day, as we see in their incredulous response when it did come. For Peter and Mary Magdalene, therefore, Holy Saturday was not a recognized interval (or “valley in between”). It was not the prelude of a victory but only the aftermath of a catastrophe.

Holy Saturday thus conveys the sense that Good Friday was not “confused or changed” by Easter Sunday. The other two days of the Triduum were not mingled, so to speak, so that each or either lost its identity. The gall of the earlier day was neither less bitter nor its stripes less severe. The great calamity of the Cross was not mitigated in the tiniest degree. This is Good Friday’s union with Holy Saturday.

At the same time, nonetheless, regarded from the perspective of the triumphant Third Day, Holy Saturday is Good Friday’s link to the Resurrection, and this link was “without division, without separation.” That is to say, only in Easter is revealed the full significance of the Cross. When Christ rises from the dead, bestowing life on those in the tombs, the Church knows that He tramples down death by death.

In addition, Holy Saturday is also the most mysterious day of the Triduum, in the sense that Sacred Scripture says less about it. Whereas we know in some detail what the first Christians witnessed on Good Friday and what they subsequently learned on Easter Sunday, we are told about Holy Saturday almost nothing except that “they rested on the Sabbath according to the commandment” (Luke 23:56).

And just where was our Lord during the Church’s time of rest? A rather full answer to this question is given in the liturgical prayer, I suppose, which describes Him as “in the tomb with the body, in Hades with the soul, in Paradise with the thief, and on the throne with the Father and the Holy Spirit.” Now this was surely more than the original Christians knew. They had seen, of course, that His body was in the tomb, and they knew that His soul was in Hades, but they were not yet familiar with the whole story even about this second point.

Certain disturbing developments, you see, had already begun in Hades, and the place would never again be what once it was. It was already the site of an invasion. Death was even now in the process of being trampled down by a death. A Champion had appeared on the scene and was making a royal havoc of the neighborhood. The ancient gates, those everlasting doors, had been lifted from their hinges, the iron bars were rent asunder, and the King of glory had entered in. The reign of death was over.

What came to pass in Hades that day was later described by Dante, who claimed to have received the information from Virgil. More likely, we suspect, Dante learned about it in the Exultet sung by the deacon on the evening of Holy Saturday: Haec nox est, in qua destructis vinculis mortis Christus ab inferis victor ascendit—”This is the night in which Christ comes up victorious from Hell, having destroyed the chains of death.”

Easter Sunday, March 31

First Corinthians 15:1-11: The permanence of the soul, its continued life after death, was not in contention among the early Christians. Indeed, thanks in part to Plato, some form of belief in a spiritual afterlife was quite in fashion in the Greco-Roman culture where the Apostles proclaimed the Gospel.

The Apostle Paul, for his part, certainly anticipated an afterlife immediately following death. This persuasion prompted him to “desire to depart and be with Christ” (Philippians 1:23). This immediate afterlife was not, however, the true goal of Paul’s striving, which was to “attain to the resurrection from the dead” (3:11). Anyway, no early Christians—as far as we can tell—contested the expectation of an immediate afterlife.

When the Apostles proclaimed Jesus as risen, however, they did not mean that he had somehow survived in a spiritual state after his death on the Cross. They meant, quite plainly, “he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:4). It was an event, not a static condition.

Also, it was emphatically physical, not in the sense of induced by physical forces, but in the sense that it happened to the body. Had this not been the case, the Resurrection of Jesus would not have happened according to the Scriptures. The Resurrection-hope held out by Holy Scripture had to do with the body. When Isaiah prophesied, “Your dead shall live,” he went on to specify, “their corpses will arise” (Isaiah 26:19).

It was this physical quality of the Christian hope that proved to be too challenging for some of the brethren at Corinth. They summarized their argument with the sarcastic query, “How are the dead raised up? And with what body do they come?” (1 Corinthians 15:35)

What those individuals contested was not a belief in an afterlife, but the physical cosmology implicitly contained in the thesis, “the God of our fathers raised up Jesus” (Acts 5:30). They were unable to grasp that the Gospel proclaimed this truth as a vindication of the whole created order.

Holy Scripture, after all, had not declared, “God approved of all the spiritual things He had made,” but, “God saw everything (kol) that He had formed, and indeed it was very good.” (Genesis 1:31).

It was in refuting the skeptics at Corinth that the Apostle Paul came to understand the Resurrection of Christ as God’s historical act for the purpose of rectifying the evils inflicted on the created order by Adam’s Fall. The Resurrection had to be physical, because death and corruption were physical.

Although it was a single event in history, the “logic” of the Resurrection implied that the whole physical world, starting with the bodies of Christians, was destined for restoration and transformation through the risen and glorified flesh of Christ. This meant that the true and ultimate afterlife anticipated by Christians was not based on the immortality of the soul, but on the resurrection of the body.

Monday, April 1

First Corinthians 15:12-19: In answering the Corinthian skepticism, Paul established the “logic” of the Resurrection in a chain of short hypothetical syllogisms. Within 1 Corinthians 15:12-19, the word “if” appears nine times, leading to the final inference, “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable.”

A common complaint against the proclamation of our Lord’s Resurrection is the claim that this story is only a variant of the ancient fertility myths about dying and rising gods. According to this objection, the risen Christ is just a Galilean version of Osiris, as it were.

It is convenient to this argument, of course, that both Jesus and Osiris rose again in the spring, and their celebrations make endless references to vernal themes like renewal and rebirth; they are reasonably regarded, therefore, as variations of a common and nearly universal motif. Of course, usually those that make this point also mean to imply that Jesus is to be taken no more seriously than Osiris.

This argument is very far off the mark. In fact, the Paschal Mystery is not about the death and resurrection of a god. The Church proclaims the Resurrection of Jesus as the resurrection of a dead man. According to the Christian faith, it is as a human being that Jesus was raised from the dead. He arose in His humanity, just as He died in His humanity. It is a human being, then, who is transformed and glorified by victory over death.

Consequently, the first time the world heard the proclamation of the Resurrection, no mention was made of the pre-existing divinity of the One who rose. St. Peter did not say, “Well, He was God, after all, and there was no way to keep Him down.” On the contrary, he proclaimed, “Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ”(Acts 2:36).

With respect to the dying and rising of pagan divinities no one ever announced, “of which we are all witnesses” (2:32). Strictly speaking, no one ever testified to the death and rising of some historical character named Osiris, and no one was ever invited to believe in Osiris. And it is very certain that no one ever laid down his life for preaching about Osiris.

In contrast, the Resurrection of Jesus was proclaimed as an historical fact, which involved a real man, a person recently deceased, someone whom everyone knew to have died. “This Jesus” was the One who rose.

The difference between these two cases is important, not only as a point of apologetics, but also as a concern of theology. In the man Jesus the human race commenced its journey through death to life. In the “faith of Jesus Christ” (Romans 3:22,26), “the author and finisher of faith,” humanity passed from the power of death to eternal life. It was this Jesus “who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2).

As “forerunner” (prodromos), Jesus became our high priest and mediator (6:20; 9:15; 12:24). Opening the way for us, He was the first to pass through every stage of human existence and experience, including the stage of death resultant from the fall of Adam, and to attain mankind’s new and definitive stage, the Resurrection. Rising from the dead He became the true and efficacious Head of the human race.

Tuesday, April 2
First Corinthians 15:20-34: At this point, Paul is ready to move from apologetics to theology, and he marks the transition with a formal “now”: “But now Christ is risen from the dead and has become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep” (15:20).

To speak theologically means to address truth through the categories, the images, the questions, and the declarations of Holy Scripture. The Resurrection of Christ was not just a bare fact; it was a theological revelation. It happened “according to the Scriptures.” Because this was so, Paul consulted Holy Scripture, in order to grasp what the Resurrection meant.

It is most significant that the first Scripture he consulted on this matter was Genesis. Whereas St. Peter consulted the Book of Psalms for this purpose (Acts 2:24-36), Paul went back to one of the earliest episodes of biblical history, the account of the Fall: “For since death came through a man, through a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:21-22).

Adam’s reign over the rest of Creation was seriously impaired by the Fall inasmuch as this introduced into human experience an alien component—death!—over which man had no authority at all:

Cursed is the ground for your sake; / In toil you shall eat of it ?/ All the days of your life. / Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, / And you shall eat the herb of the field. / In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread? / Till you return to the ground (Genesis 3:17-19).

What, then, does Paul assert by this allusion to Adam in reference to the Resurrection from the dead? He is declaring that Christ’s fulfillment of the prophecy in Psalms 110—“Sit at My right hand until I subject your enemies as a footstool under your feet”—also will restore the primordial state of human sovereignty over the created order. When death will be completely conquered in the final Resurrection, the crowned Messiah will also, as the Second Adam, vindicate human history.
In doing so, he will likewise restore the proper structure of Creation. The final “subjection” of all things to God, which is integral to the Resurrection, means the complete restoration of the created order, inasmuch as man’s bondage to death and corruption subverted that order.
All Creation, therefore, looks forward until this will be accomplished. A couple of years later, Paul elaborated this theme, when he wrote:

For the earnest expectation of Creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the Creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because Creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God (Romans 8:19-21).

Wednesday, April 3
First Corinthians 15:35-49: When Paul answered the skeptics at Corinth—those so-called Christians who denied the Resurrection—he became a bit agitated at one point. As he answered this denial, his language was unusually harsh. “Fool!” he said (aphron—1 Corinthians 15:36).

It is significant, I believe, that the noun here is in the singular, not the plural. If Paul intended simply to address the Corinthian skeptics, we would expect him to write, “Fools!” Let me suggest the reasons he didn’t:

First, I believe Paul would not have felt comfortable addressing fellow Christians with such a term of opprobrium. After all, Jesus had warned against this very thing (Matthew 5:22). Paul probably came closest to doing it when he reproached the Galatians: “Oh thoughtless Galatians”—O anoetoi Galatai(Galatians 3:1).

Second, at the point when Paul used the word “fool” in 1 Corinthians, he had already answered the skepticism of those Corinthians who denied the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:12-19). Paul’s mind had moved on.

Third, the expression “fool” was addressed, nor directly to the Corinthians, but to a hypothetical interlocutor: “But someone will say.” Paul did not accuse the Corinthians of asking, ““How are the dead raised up? And with what body do they come?” The person posing this question was imaginary; he was a conjectural “someone” (tis) Paul introduced as a partner in his argument.

The Greeks referred to this form of argument as a diatribe; literally a “wearing away,” in the sense of a pastime. The term was often used of arguments based on hypothetical objections. At this point, in other words, Paul was going beyond the mere unbelief of the Corinthian skeptics. He was pushing the question of the Resurrection in a new direction, for the purpose of clarifying it.

The hypothetical skeptic, who pretended to dismiss the resurrection by asking what sort of body the dead rise in, is a fool, said Paul, because he contradicted the sovereign power of the Creator: “God gives a body as He pleases” (15:38). To deny God’s ability to raise the dead was to affirm that death lies beyond the reach of God’s power. This was an irrational, or foolish, claim.

Jesus, we recall, argued the same case when the Sadducees questioned him about the woman who had been married seven times. They, too, had raised a hypothetical objection to resurrection: “Now there were seven brothers. . . . Therefore, in the resurrection, when they rise, whose wife will she be? For all seven had her as wife” (Mark 12:18-23). In answering the Sadducees, Jesus put his finger on the lack of logic in their denial. It was based in part, he said, on their unfamiliarity with “the power of God” (12:24; cf. Acts 23:7).

The sovereign power of God over death also served the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. When he wrote of Abraham’s resolve—in obedience—to sacrifice his son Isaac, Abraham took this step of faith, he said, “considering that God is able to raise from the dead”—ek nekron egeirein dynatos ho Theos (Hebrews 11:19).

We find the same presumption in all three of these sources: If there is an almighty God, then there can be no a priori argument against the Resurrection.

For Paul, this power of the Creator was manifest in the great variety of bodies He had already brought into being (1 Corinthians 15:39-41). The God who could bring a large living plant from a puny seed—a seed which did not even slightly resemble the plant—will certainly not be taxed to transform a mortal body into a body filled with glory (15:37).

Paul went on to elaborate this agricultural illustration, in which the dead body, “sown” in the earth, represented the seed from which will spring the harvest of immortality. The dead body and the resurrected body are numerically the same body, but what a difference:

What is sown in corruption is raised in incorruption. Sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. Sown in weakness, it is raised in power. Sown a psychic body (soma psychikon), it is raised a spiritual body (soma pnevmatikon) (15:42-44).

To me it seems likely that Paul derived and extended this agricultural analogy from a metaphor in the treasury of the apostolic preaching. It preserved a parable of Jesus: “Amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain” (John 12:24).

Thursday, April 4

First Corinthians 15:50-58: The Lord’s victory over death is the demonstration, not only of His power, but also of His compassion. Given the full human trauma of death, both remedies are required.

Death, after all, entails not only the collapse of the personal human structure (the separation of soul and body, the physical decay of the latter, and the eternal loss of the former), but also the radical dissolution of society, the decomposition of human relationships, the severing of those ties of love that bind us mortal beings together. If the power of Christ can be said to remedy the problem of personal corruption, perhaps we can say that the compassion of Christ is directed against our dilemma of social dissolution. Having considered the power of the risen Christ with respect to the one, therefore, it is time to reflect on His compassion with respect to the other.

When God’s holy Word portrays the compassion of Jesus in the presence of death, our attention is directed chiefly at the obvious social consequence of death, the separation that it creates among loved ones. This perspective is clear, for instance, in the story of the widow of Nain, who had lost her only son. “When the Lord saw her,” we are told, “He had compassion on her and said to her, ‘Do not weep.’ Then He came and touched the open coffin, and those who carried him stood still. And He said, ‘Young man, I say to you, arise’” (Luke 7:13-14, emphasis added).

In this text we observe that nothing is said about the Lord’s concern for the dead man; it speaks only of his compassion for the mother. It is to her grieving heart that Jesus directs His attention. Indeed, our Lord exercises here His power over death in order to express His compassion over sorrow, and this priority is conveyed by Luke’s remark that Jesus “presented him to his mother” (7:15).

The same perspective is also clear, I think, in the story of the raising of Lazarus. As our Lord approaches the tomb of His deceased friend, He first encounters the two sorrowing sisters, both of whom say, “If You had been here, my brother would not have died” (John 11:21,32). This near-reproach by the sisters gives voice not only to a fact but also to a feeling. Consequently, John goes on to portray the compassion of Jesus as He comes to the tomb. Prior to manifesting His power with respect to the dead man (“Lazarus, come forth!”), Jesus first displays His compassion for the grieving sisters (“And Jesus wept.”) That is to say, Jesus first addresses the feeling before He deals with the fact. Indeed, it is the prior depth of His mercy that prompts the ensuing display of His might.

In both these cases the Lord’s first attention is directed, then, not to the persons that have died, but to those that are left behind, the dear ones that death has touched and deeply wounded. For death is not only decay; it is also bereavement at the loss of loved ones. Just as the power of Christ prevails in the first, so His compassion prevails in the second, because victory over death means both things. Consequently, when “there shall be no more death,” we are assured, there shall also be “no sorrow nor crying” (Revelation 21:4).

Significantly, our extant literature’s first reference to the resurrection of the dead was addressed to Christians suffering bereavement at the loss of loved ones. In A. D. 50 Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, “I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13, emphasis added). The apostle then went on to expound the doctrine of the Resurrection as the foundation of Christian comfort, and he finished by exhorting the bereaved, “Therefore comfort one another with these words” (4:18). That is to say, Paul wrote those expressions of hope in order to address, not the problem of despair, but the pangs of sadness.

What the resurrection promises to Christians, then, is not only their personal integrity recovered and transfigured in glory but also the final and transformed restoration of their community, all those loving tendrils that tie them together and comprise a “we.” Thus, Paul uses entirely corporate language to describe this foundation of the Christian hope: “we shall always be with the Lord” (4:17). And again, “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable” (1 Corinthians 15:19). For this reason, the hope of believers is necessarily a shared expectation of comfort, when “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (Revelation 7:17).

Friday, April 5

Luke 24:13-35: For a few minutes the risen Jesus playfully concealed his identity from Mary Magdalene on Easter morning, but in the afternoon he carried this play much further, remaining unrecognized during a prolonged and detailed conversation with two other disciples:

Now behold, two of them were traveling that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was sixty stadia from Jerusalem. And they talked together of all these things which had happened. So it was, while they conversed and reasoned, that Jesus himself drew near and went with them.” But their eyes were restrained, so that they did not recognize him (Luke 24:13-16).

Jesus listens to their conversation for a while and then asks, “What kind of conversation is this that you have with one another as you walk and are sad?” This “ignorance” on his part persuades the pair that he must be “a stranger in Jerusalem,” who has managed to miss the things everybody else has been talking about.

Jesus asks a second question, again feigning ignorance: “What things?” He listens while they inform him about his own death, their shattered hopes, and the very dubious report from the women who had been at the tomb that morning.

The reader is, of course, amused by the irony of this discourse. What I want to suggest here is that Jesus is amused by it, as well. He strings these men along. He will reveal himself to them in due course, but he first leads them through a process of learning:

Then he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not the Messiah to have suffered these things and to enter into his glory?” And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, he expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

The meaning of these Scriptures has been a preoccupation of Luke’s Gospel from the start. It was the burden of Jesus’ first sermon at the synagogue in Nazareth. It was the subject of his conversation with Moses and Elijah on the mount of the Transfiguration. In the present scene, Jesus feigns ignorance precisely with a view to teaching these two disciples—and through them, all Christians to the end of time—his own understanding of the biblical text.

All of Christian doctrine is rooted, I believe, in Jesus’ paschal discourse to the two disciples on the way to Emmaus. The timing of that discourse is likewise significant, for it took place on the very day of His rising from the dead; on that day “the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David,” demonstrated that he “was worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals.” He was worthy to do this because He was slain and had redeemed us to God by His blood (Revelation 5:5, 9). Jesus interprets Holy Scripture—indeed, he is the interpretation of Holy Scripture—because he “fulfills” Holy Scripture through the historical and theological events of his death and Resurrection. His blood-redemption of the world is the formal principle of Christian biblical interpretation.

As for the two disciples on the way to Emmaus, Jesus continues to act his play to the end: “Then they drew near to the village where they were going, and he indicated that he would have gone farther.” This is at least the third time, since the trip started, that Jesus teases these men in order to take the conversation in the direction he wants it to go. As though reluctantly—and only at their explicit invitation—“He went in to remain with them.”

At last, Jesus’ points of instruction having been made,

He took bread, said the blessing, and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they knew him; and he vanished from their sight.

The two disciples promptly turn around and head back to Jerusalem. As they returned, they reflected that their hearts had burned within them as the Stranger had spoken to them on the way and had interpreted the Scriptures.

Luke does not say so, but one hopes they also apologized to Mary Magdalene and the other women for their unbelief.

Friday, March 22

Proverbs 31: Destined someday to be the king of Massa, a small realm in northern Arabia (cf. Genesis 25:14; 1 Chronicles 1:30), Lemuel was grateful to a wise mother for several verses of practical instruction that would serve him well in the years ahead. That instruction, being brief, could be inscribed on a single small sheet of vellum or papyrus, and Lemuel probably had a number of copies made for his friends. As gifts, those copies he also shared with other kings in the region, so that his mother’s instructions made the rounds of various royal courts, carried by emissaries otherwise dispatched to attend to the diplomatic and mercantile concerns of Massa.

In due course, one of those emissaries came to Jerusalem to arrange some commercial treaty or other with King Solomon. Lemuel, well acquainted with Solomon’s universal reputation for wisdom (cf. 1 Kings 4:31), had sent along a copy of his mother’s instructions as a personal gift.

Now it happened that Solomon was in the process, just then, of editing a collection of traditional wisdom proverbs. Gladly receiving Lemuel’s little scroll, therefore, he read it promptly and was so impressed that he incorporated the maternal instructions verbatim into his collection. Thus now, three thousand years later, we read those brief instructions of Lemuel’s mother in Proverbs 31:1–9.

Perhaps significant also is the context in which Solomon placed the instructions of Lemuel’s mother in the Book of Proverbs. Namely, immediately in front of the famous description of the ideal wise woman (31:10–31). Was Solomon thereby paying the Queen Mother of Massa a compliment, suggesting that she herself exemplified that description? I doubt that I am the only reader who has entertained this thought.

Although the Book of Proverbs several times recommends that a young man pay attention to the teaching of his mother (1:8; 6:20; 15:20), these verses from Lemuel’s mother are the only example of maternal teaching explicitly contained in Proverbs.
And, on reading this material, we gain the impression that it is not, on the whole, much different from the instruction that a young man received from his father. There are warnings against lust (31:3) and drinking alcohol (31:4), along with an exhortation to take care of the oppressed and the poor (31:5–9).

Some of the material here resembles that in other ancient collections of teaching intended for future rulers. For example, “The Instruc- tion of King Meri-Kare,” an Egyptian manuscript preserved (as Papyrus Leningrad 1116A) in St. Petersburg, contains a collection of such teaching from near the end of the third millennium before Christ.

Lemuel’s royal mother obviously embodied a traditional form of wisdom, heavily accented with good sense and moral responsibility. In this respect her instruction is of whole cloth with the rest of the Book of Proverbs.

The most ancient form of the wisdom tradition, of which Lemuel’s mother and the Book of Proverbs are good representatives, was not much concerned with the kinds of thorny speculative questions that preoccupied Ecclesiastes and the Book of Job. It did not normally raise theoretical reflections about the meaning and purpose of life. It contained nothing suggestive of the “cutting edge” of new ideas that might distract from the serious business of getting on with a good and useful life.

The inherited wisdom tended to ask “how” a person should live in a difficult world rather than “why” he should go on living in a difficult world. Instead of inquiring “Why do the innocent suffer?” it suggested ways of avoiding those sufferings that a man might bring upon himself by not living wisely.

The wisdom of Proverbs and Lemuel’s mother may be called conservative and traditional, a wisdom proved repeatedly in the experience of previous generations. It would certainly discourage a young man from “marching to a different drummer” or “doing his own thing.” It emphasized such themes as fidelity to inherited standards of responsibility, respect for the teachings of parents and elders, hard work, fiscal conservatism, sobriety, virtue, principled judgment, prudence in one’s business affairs and matters of state, personal discipline in the use of time, money, and other resources, strict marital fidelity, and the consequent joys of home and family.

Although history has left us no other record of Lemuel, we are probably justified in thinking of him living to an old age on the throne of the kingdom of Massa, dying secure in the memory of grateful citizens who recalled his wise and benevolent reign. It should not surprise us, either, if some archeologist should someday uncover his tomb and find the inscription: “Here lies Lemuel, King of Massa, whose final words were, ‘I owe it all to Mom.’”

Lazarus Saturday, March 23

John 11:1-44: We come now to Jesus’ final journey to Jerusalem, the place of the culminating events effective of our redemption. This chapter, the last in the “book of signs,” narrates the greatest of these signs: the raising of Lazarus. This event, foreshadowing the resurrection of Jesus, was a literal fulfillment of His prophecy in 5:28-29: “The hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth.”

This sickness of Lazarus, Jesus declares, will not finish in death—death will not have the final word—-but in “the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it” (verse 4). The theme of the divine glory in this chapter (verse 40) ties the raising of Lazarus to the first of Jesus’ Signs, the miracle at Cana (2:11).

The implied request from the two sisters (verse 3) is strikingly similar to that of Jesus’ mother in 2:3. In both cases we discern petitions made to Jesus with a quiet deference, but also with a firm faith.

Moreover, Jesus’ reactions in the two cases are strikingly similar: an apparent rejection followed by an effective compliance. As these two instances are the first and last signs in the “book of signs,” their similarity is noteworthy. In both cases the sign is said to manifest Jesus’ glory (verses 4,11; 2:11; cf. 9:3).

In seeking the intervention of Jesus, the sisters of Lazarus simply state the gravity of the situation (verse 3). Their restraint closely resembles that of the Mother of Jesus at Cana (2:3), and just as Jesus at first showed an apparent indifference on that earlier occasion (2:4), so here He delays His response to the sisters’ request (verse 6). The manifestation of the divine glory will not be rushed.

At the same time, the evangelist emphasizes Jesus’ love for this family at Bethany (verse 5), whose faith He is putting to trial (verse 26).

The Greek of the verb “loved” in verse 5 (“Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus”) is in the imperfect tense, indicating Jesus’ sustained, habitual affection for this family (egapa; Vulgate diligebat). The wording of verse 6 suggests that the Lord’s delay in going to Bethany was intended to demonstrate (hos oun; Vulgate ut ergo) that love!

The delay of two days (verse 6) puts the reader in mind of the time span in Jesus’ resurrection.

The imperfect tense of “were seeking” (ezetoun—verse 8; Vulgate quaerebant) indicates the constant danger to Jesus in Jerusalem: “Then the Jews took up stones again to stone Him. . . . Therefore they sought again to seize Him” (10:31,39).

Jesus’ pronouncements about the light in verses 9-10 continue a theme introduced in 9:4: “We must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; the night is coming when no one can work.” The conflict between light and darkness is John’s interpretation of the events and confrontations in the several preceding chapters. In the present story Jesus tells the disciples that the time has now arrived for determined action in that conflict. He brings the discussion abruptly back to Lazarus, whom he knows (without explanation) to be dead.

When Jesus at length discloses his resolve to return to Jerusalem (verses 12-13), the disciples, understandably alarmed, remind Him of the dangers to His life (cf. 5:16-18; 7:19,25; 8:59; 10:31,39). Ignoring this concern, Jesus refers to the work yet to be accomplished before the darkness falls (cf. 9:4; 13:30).

Following a pattern pervasive in John (3:4; 4:15,33; 6:52; 8:18,33), the disciples misunderstand the Lord’s reference to the “sleep” of Lazarus (verses 11-13; Mark 5:19; 1 Thessalonians 4:14). The Christian reader will recognize, nonetheless, that their misunderstanding expresses as the very thesis of the story, as of the Gospel itself: “If Lazarus has fallen asleep, then he will be saved”—sothesetai.

Jesus views the death of Lazarus as another occasion—like Cana (2:11)—to bring the disciples to faith in Him (verse 15). Such faith is the very purpose for which John writes (20:30-31).

Thomas’s comment—“ “Let us also go, that we may die with Him”—is prompted by the danger awaiting them at Jerusalem. The detail, “die with him,” in which Thomas apparently meant Lazarus, ironically points also to the death of Jesus. Thomas thus gives voice to a fundamental thesis of the Christian faith, according to which we die and rise with Christ (cf. Galatians 2:19-20).

John heightens the extraordinary nature of what Jesus does by mentioning that Lazarus has been in the tomb four days (verse 17). Such a long period—-beyond the three days that Jewish lore believed the soul to hover near a corpse—rendered it probable that the body of Lazarus had begun to rot (verse 39).

These four days, combined with the earlier two (verse 6), also evoke the completion of Creation. It is in the raising of Lazarus that the Lord finishes “all His works” (Genesis 2:3).

Crucial to the understanding of this event is the dialogue that explains it, the discussion in which Jesus tells Martha (verses 21-27) that He is the Resurrection and the life of those who believe in Him. The raising of Lazarus is the demonstration—the revelation event—of that truth.

Does Martha’s expression “even now” (kai nun) convey a request for the Lord to raise her brother right away? I believe it does, but the meaning is subtle and implicit. She does not press Jesus overtly, but her hint opens the dialogue to the experience of immediacy. Jesus fills this immediacy by His claim to be, “even now,” the Resurrection and the life. That is to say, the root of the final resurrection is planted in the here and now of faith (verses 25-26; cf. 6:40).

Martha, invited to confess that faith, gives voice to the answer of the Church with respect to the identity of Jesus: “I believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God, who is to come into the world” (verse 27; cf. 6:69). The dialogue ends with this declaration, and Martha must get busy on the basis of it.

Martha’s summons to her sister (verse 28) is described with a delicacy of detail suggesting an immediate eyewitness. Jesus is identified simply as the didaskalos, “teacher,” doubtless a translation of rabbi.

Evidently to avoid the crowd at the family’s home, Jesus remains on the outskirts of the village, nearer the tomb (verses 29-30). The crowds, nonetheless, follow Mary out, observing that her departure is abrupt (verse 31).

Prostrating herself before the Lord, Mary repeats the view just expressed by her sister, with obvious disappointment and perhaps with a sense of bewilderment that that Jesus had tarried his journey to Bethany. We may wonder if this statement of the sisters—dismayed at Jesus’ delay in coming—may reflect a sentiment of the early Christians, many of whom believed that the Lord would come back quickly: ““How long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” (Revelation 6:10; cf. Matthew 24:45—25:28).

Jesus does not even answer Mary, but he is deeply moved by her sorrow. Jesus sees her tears (verse 33). When this verb, “sees,” is ascribed to Jesus in John’s Gospel, it is normally to inaugurate an outpouring of grace. Thus does Jesus see Nathaniel (1:47), the paralytic at the pool (5:6), the hungry multitude in the wilderness (6:5), the woman taken in adultery (8:10), the man born blind (9:1), and His Mother and the Beloved Disciple at the foot of the Cross (19:26).

Jesus’ emotional response in the present case is described as ebrimésato to pnevmati, which I have translated as “groaned in the spirit.” In the LXX, as in classical Greek (cf. also Mark 14:5), this verb normally indicates indignation or anger. If anger is John’s intended meaning here, the evangelist is describing Jesus’ stance toward death.

In Holy Scripture, death is no friend of man. Death is the enemy! It is death that has stolen this brother away for the sisters who loved him. It is death that fills Mary’s heart with sorrow. Death is the enemy that Jesus prepares Himself to confront. He will not deal gently with death. According to the faith of the Church, Jesus “tramples down death by death.”

The bystanders, perceiving Jesus’ emotional response to the moment, remark on his affection for Lazarus (verse 34-35). Others in the crowd, nonetheless, express the same bewilderment as the two sisters (verses 36-37).

John briefly describes the tomb (verse 38), and Jesus directs it to be opened (verse 39). This command, delivered without explanation, is the Lord’s usual modus operandi throughout this gospel:

John 2:7-8—“Fill the pots with water. . . . Draw some out now, and take it to the master of the feast.”
John 5:8—“ Rise, take up your bed and walk.”
John 6:10— “Make the people sit down.”
John 9:7— “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam.”

The obedience required by Jesus is not based on human reasoning, but on trust in Him. That is to say, Jesus does not appeal to empirical evidence or rational deductions, but on our personal relationship to Him and the knowledge of His love for us.

Martha, ever the practical one, raises an objection. This objection is, of course, quite opposed to her earlier profession of faith (verse 27). The command given by Jesus is based on that profession, and Jesus makes this point (verse 40).

Jesus’ brief prayer before the tomb is not a petition, but a confession of thanks, following a standard Hebrew formula of benediction (verse 41). The Father has already heard Him!

Palm Sunday, March 24

Matthew 21:1-11: Those of us raised in Christian homes very likely have sharply defined memories of walking in Palm Sunday processions when we were children. I recall that my parents made a great deal of this with me and my siblings, and I rejoice now—in old age—to see my grandchildren, from the time they can barely walk, take hold of their palms and other branches to join the congregation out into the warm spring sun to process behind the Cross in the traditional procession of the day. This experience, repeated year by year, confirms my impression that Palm Sunday is supremely a day for children. It has been so from the beginning:

But when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that He did, and the children crying out in the temple and saying, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant and said to Him, “Do You hear what these are saying?” And Jesus said to them, “Yes. Have you never read, ‘Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants. You have perfected praise?’”

Jesus cites this line from Psalm 8 to refute His enemies, exactly as the psalm indicated: “Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have perfected praise because of Your enemies, that You may silence the enemy and the avenger.”

It is in the mouths of children, Holy Scripture tells us, that praise is made perfect. In what sense is this true? What is their about praise in the mouths of children that makes it perfect? It means that the praise of God has been successfully handed on to the next generation, the new generation, the young people still in their formative years. The first responsibility of Christian evangelism is to make sure that our children effectively receive the faith from us. Before we dare preach the Gospel to anyone else, we must make absolutely certain we have shared it with our children. This must be a determining principle in every Christian home.

This experience of “perfecting praise” was of primary importance in the early Church. We recall that many of the first generation of Christians believed they would be the last generation. Indeed, the sense of the imminent return of Christ was so strong that even in the mid-50’s Paul appealed to it as a reason for not getting married (1 Cor 7).

As the Church grew, however, and Jesus did not return, a major question facing the early Church was how to transmit the Gospel to a new generation, the children who had no direct exposure to the Apostles. Could that new generation—another step removed from the origins of the Church—share the vision of their parents? Could they be truly orthodox Christians?

Take, for example, the grandchildren of that Philippian jailer in Acts 16. Would they be disposed to raise their voices in praise, as Paul and Silas had done? We now know the answer, of course—because the original congregation at Philippi is still—but it may not have been so clear to the jailer and his wife on that night when their tiny children were baptized by Paul and Silas.. The praise of God is perfected when it is passed to children. (This is perhaps the major objection against professional choirs in church: their music is often too complicated for children to sing.)

It is essential to the being of the Church that her praise is perfected in the mouths of children. It means that the children are growing into the faith of their parents and grandparents. They are taking their places, waving leafy palms in the air, with the children who surrounded Jesus riding on his donkey. These children are learning to experience the promise of the Kingdom.

Monday, March 25

Matthew 21:12-27: I propose to examine this story—the purging of the Temple—by considering it at three historical levels: First, we will reflect on the meaning of the event when it happened. Second, we will look at the meaning of the event in the narrative tradition of the early Church. Third, we will examine the features of the story that are particular to Matthew.

First, let us reflect on our Lord’s action in the Temple in its own immediate context. What significance did it have for those who were witnesses to its original setting?

We should begin by recalling that the coming Messiah was expected to purge the Temple. Earlier suggestions of this idea include Isaiah 56:7, which is quoted by the Gospels as a prophecy fulfilled on this occasion:

Even them I will bring to My holy mountain, / And make them joyful in My house of prayer. / Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices /Will be accepted on My altar; / For My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations.

In this text the Temple is “purged” in the sense of being rebuilt after its destruction by the defiling Babylonians. Our Lord also indicates His fulfillment of prophecy on this occasion by justifying His action with a reference to Jeremiah 7:11: “‘Has this house, which is called by My name, become a den of thieves in your eyes? Behold, I, even I, have seen it,’ says the Lord.”

Perhaps even more to the purpose, however, were the words of Malachi, referring to the Messiah’s coming to the Temple in order to purge it:

Behold, I send My messenger, / And he will prepare the way before Me. / And the Lord, whom you seek, / Will suddenly come to His temple, / Even the Messenger of the covenant, / In whom you delight. / Behold, He is coming,’ / Says the Lord of hosts. / ‘But who can endure the day of His coming? / And who can stand when He appears? / For He is like a refiner’s fire / And like launderers’ soap. / He will sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver; / He will purify the sons of Levi, / And purge them as gold and silver, / That they may offer to the Lord / An offering in righteousness. / Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem / Will be pleasant to the Lord, / As in the days of old, / As in former years” (Malachi 3:1-4).

The context of this purging foreseen by Malachi was the sad state of Israel’s worship, to which he was witness (1:6-10,12-14).

The Temple’s expected “purging” by the Messiah had mainly to do with ritual and moral defilements, much as those Judas Maccabaeus had cleansed from the Lord’s house after its defilement by Antiochus Epiphanes IV. This purging was completed with the Temple’s rededication on December 14, 164 B. C. (1 Maccabees 4:52).

As described in the New Testament, however, the physical “defilement” does not appear to have been so severe. It apparently consisted of the noise and distractions occasioned by the buying and selling of sacrificial animals necessary for the Temple’s ritual sacrifice. John describes the scene in greater detail:

And He found in the temple those who sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers doing business. When He had made a whip of cords, He drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers’ money and overturned the tables” (John 2:14-15).

Hence, what the Lord did in this respect was more symbolic than practical. There is no evidence that this action of Jesus amounted to more than a slight disturbance in the daily activity of the Temple, nor does Jesus seem to have persisted in it. He intended, rather, to enact a prophecy, much in line with sundry similar actions by the Old Testament prophets. Those who were witnesses to the event discerned this significance, recognizing it as a “Messianic sign.” This recognition explains the menacing reaction of the Lord’s enemies (Mark 11:18; Luke 19:47).

Second, with respect to the later historical context of the first century, let us consider the circumstances in which this story was conveyed in the preaching of the Church prior to finding a place in the canonical Gospels. In this context it is reasonable to suppose that the Christians related this event of the Temple’s purging to that definitive “purging” of the Lord’s house when Titus destroyed it in A.D. 70. In fact, in the Synoptic accounts this story of the Lord’s action is placed near His predictions of that later catastrophe. If what Jesus did on that day did not actually disrupt the daily routine of ritual sacrifice, the later action of the Romans most certainly did. Jesus’ prophetic act, therefore, foreshadowed the Temple’s destruction and the cessation of Israel’s sacrificial cultus, which has never been restored.

Third, let us consider the components of this story that are proper to Matthew and peculiar to his interpretation of it. These consist chiefly in appeals to two Old Testament texts that Matthew perceives to be “fulfilled” in what the Lord did in the Temple.

In the first of these instances, Matthew says, “Then the blind and the lame came to Him in the temple, and He healed them” (verse 14). Matthew alone includes this striking detail, which is full of theological significance and advances the Messianic theme that dominates his version of the story. The background of this detail is 2 Samuel 5, which tells the story of David’s taking of Jerusalem from the Jebusites in 992 B.C. When the king and his army laid siege to the city, the Jebusites taunted David that their blind and lame would suffice to defend it (2 Samuel 5:6). This taunt led to David’s enemies being metaphorically referred to as “the blind and the lame,” and this metaphor in turn led to a popular proverb, “the blind and lame must stay outside.” More literally, the proverb ran, “the blind and the lame may not come into the house.”

The Septuagint augmented this proverb by a single word, Kyriou, so that it ran, “the blind and the lame shall not come into the house of the Lord.” It is possible that the LXX’s version of the proverb reflects a later rule against begging inside the Temple, so as not to disturb the people who went there to pray. Many of the mendicants, if not most, were either blind or lame, and such a rule would have obliged them to stay outside the Temple gates in order to do their begging (cf. Acts 3:12).

Matthew’s account, therefore, is seen to reverse this exclusion of the blind and the lame. The blind and the lame, once the symbols of David’s enemies, are now received in the Temple by David’s Son, who heals them. This detail is an ironical Messianic sign. The Messiah, having entered His Temple and purged it, brings in those who had been excluded, and this, too, is an ironic fulfillment of Holy Scripture.

In the second instance of biblical fulfillment, Matthew’s Gospel refers to Psalm 8, which is seen to be fulfilled in the shouting of the children at the Lord’s entry into the city (verses 15-16). Jesus cites this psalm in reference to Himself, a point on which He is followed by the authors of the New Testament (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:27; Hebrews 2:6-8).

In short, Matthew’s account of the purging of the Temple lays special emphasis on the fulfillment of the Old Testament Scriptures.

Bridegroom Tuesday, March 26

Matthew 25:1-13: The difference between the five foolish maidens and the five prudent maidens is that the latter have prepared themselves to deal with the prolonged passage of time. Not considering the possibility of delay, the foolish maidens have not provided oil for their lamps. They are unable to “go the distance” with God.

In context, then, the prudence required is a kind of thoughtfulness, the habit of critical reflection, a cultivated ability to think in terms of the passage of time, a sensitivity to the movement of history. These wise maidens are not creatures of the moment. Consequently, they carry along their little jugs of oil, to make sure that their lamps will not be extinguished. They are able to “go the distance,” because they have thoughtfully made provision.

Time is the test of all these women, because the Bridegroom is “delayed”–chronizontos tou Nymphiou. This is the same verb, chronizo, previously used of the wicked servant: “My master is delayed”–chronizei mou ho Kyrios (24:48).

We also observe that the prudent maidens are unable to help the foolish (verse 9). They are not being cruel or insensitive in this refusal. They are simply recognizing the limitations that come with responsibility. It is a plain fact that there are some things that one Christian cannot do for another. This limitation pertains to the structure of reality, and the foolish maidens have brought their problem upon themselves.

The prudent, thoughtful maidens enter into the wedding festivities, and the door is closed (verse 10). This closing of the door represents the end of history; the deed represents finality. In an earlier parable Matthew had narrated the exclusion of a man from a wedding festival because of his failure to take it seriously (22:11-14).

This is a study in contrasts. It portrays the antithesis between those who think wisely and those who don’t think at all. This contrast indicates an essential component of the life in Christ, because wise reflection is necessary to “going the distance.” Critical, reflective thought is not optional in the Christian life; it is a moral imperative.

It is important to observe that all ten of these maidens are Christians. Some will be saved, and some will not. The difference between them is somewhat analogous to the difference between the wheat and the tares in Matthew 13:24-30,36-43. It is bracing to consider that some will be reprobate: ”Amen, I say to you, I never knew you” (verse 12). These are very harsh words to be directed to Christians who have been waiting for their Lord’s return. They waited, but they did not do so wisely, and everything had to do with vigilance through the passage of time: “Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming” (verse 13). Five of these Christians failed the test of perseverance.

Spy Wednesday, March 27

Matthew 26:1-16: We now come to Wednesday of Holy Week. There are four brief scenes in these sixteen verses. These scenes alternate back and forth between Jesus’ friends and Jesus’ enemies.

The first verse of this chapter indicates that Jesus has now finished “all” five of the great discourses in Matthew (Compare 7:28; 11;1; 13:53; 19:1). Matthew’s wording here (“when Jesus had finished all these sayings”) puts the reader in mind of the end of the five books (Chumash) of Moses: “When Moses finished speaking all these words” (Deuteronomy 32:45).

This first section (verses 1-2), unlike the other gospels, includes a fourth prophecy of the Passion, specifying that it will happen “after two days” (verse 2). Since our Lord has already prophesied the Passion on three earlier occasions (16:21; 17:22-23; 20:18-19), He can preface this fourth prophecy with, “You know.” This is the only prophecy of our Lord that links His Passion with the Passover.

In the second scene (verses 3-5) the action shifts to a conspiracy of Jesus’ enemies assembled in the courtyard of the high priest (verse 3)–the very place where Peter will soon deny knowing Jesus (verse 69). Caiaphas was the high priest from A.D. 18 to 36. His whole family was involved in opposition to Jesus and the Church (Acts 4:6).

In spite of their decision to wait until after the Passover before arresting Jesus (verse 5), the Lord’s enemies will take advantage of an opportunity provided for them by Judas Iscariot (verses 14-16). Matthew and Mark demonstrate how the betrayal of Judas was associated with an event, which both evangelists next proceed to describe; this is the third scene, Jesus’ anointing at Bethany (verses 6-13; Mark 14:3-9; cf. John 12:1-8).

In the story of the anointing in Bethany, it is clear that our Lord’s disciples were not completely “with” Him. Failing to grasp the implications of this most recent prophecy of the coming Passion, they are unable to grasp the dramatic significance of what transpires at Bethany (verses 8-12).

Currently abiding at Bethany, about two miles east of Jerusalem, Jesus is invited to dine in the home of Simon, whom He had apparently cured of leprosy (verse 6). The dinner itself was sponsored by the family of Lazarus (John 12:2), whom Jesus had just raised from the dead. One speculates that the meal was moved to the home of Simon, who could provide a larger and more convenient setting for the guests.

Neither Mark nor Matthew identifies the woman who pours out the precious myrrh on the flesh of Jesus, but John (12:3) tells us it was Mary of Bethany, the sister of Lazarus.

John speaks of the feet of Jesus being anointed, while Matthew and Mark say the myrrh was poured on Jesus’ head. There is no need to decide the question, because Mary could easily have anointed both. The detail is not important to any of the evangelists.

They draw our attention, rather, to the negative reactions of Jesus’ disciples (verses 8-9). These, especially Judas Iscariot (John 12:4-6), are indignant at what they regard as a waste of resources. Clearly they are insensitive to the drama unfolding before their eyes. For them the Gospel has been reduced to a social ministry aimed at caring for the poor. It is obvious that the person of Jesus—Jesus Himself–is not central to their view of things. They are anxious to serve Christ in the poor, evidently in response to the final parable of the previous chapter—the parable of the Last Judgment—but they forget about the more immediate Christ right in front of them. They separate the message of Jesus from the person of Jesus.

Consequently, in His response to the disciples, Jesus makes the matter “personal”: “She has done a beautiful thing for Me . . . You do not always have Me.” Jesus “knows” (gnous–verse 10) what these men are made of; He is aware of the weakness of their loyalty to Him.

Jesus then explains the meaning of what has just transpired: This woman has done a prophetic thing—she had prepared His body for burial (verse 12). It is worth noting that Matthew, thus understanding the event at Bethany, will later omit mention of the anointing of Jesus’ body in the tomb (Contrast 28:1 with Mark 16:1).

This deed pertains to the “Gospel,” says Jesus (verse 13). The Gospel, after all, is about Jesus; it is not about social concerns separable from His own person. The woman in this story is concentrated on Jesus, and such concentration pertains to the essence of the Gospel.

Judas, at least, seems to understand this, and in the fourth scene he makes his move (verses 14-16). He has stayed with Jesus as long as it has been to his advantage (cf. John 12:6). Judas is very sensitive to his own advantage. His surname, “Iscariot,” means “man (’ish of Kerioth–cf. Joshua 15:25). Those early Gospel readers familiar with Latin may have noticed the name’s similarity to the noun sicarius–literally “knifeman,” or assassin. Perhaps having heard of the plot of Jesus’ enemies, Judas goes and makes them an offer (verse 15).

Alone among the New Testament writers, Matthew names the actual price of the transaction: thirty silver pieces, the price of a slave (Exodus 21:32), the low wages of the shepherd in Zechariah 11:12 (cf. Matthew 27:3-10).

This deal, says Matthew, was a turning point (verse 16). There was now a traitor among the disciples, waiting for his opportunity. It would come on the following night.

This section of Matthew is a story of irony and contrasts. The irony, worked out in four short scenes, consists in the antithesis between the intention of Jesus’ enemies and what they actually accomplished. Not wanting to provoke a riot by arresting Jesus during the Passover, they set in motion a train of events that would in due course lead to the destruction of their Holy City. Hoping to dispose of a troublesome religious teacher, they unwittingly implemented a divine determination to supplant their own religious authority. Judas, complaining of the loss of 300 coins from his purse, sells Jesus for one-tenth of that number.

The chief contrast in the story is between the gracious anointer on the one hand and all the cruel, or insensitive, or treacherous individuals on the other.

Maundy Thursday, March 28

Matthew 26:17-56: To the three Synoptic accounts of the Holy Eucharist we must add that in 1 Corinthians 11, which is at least a decade older than the earliest of the four gospels. Indeed, this narrative recorded by St. Paul links the institution of the Eucharist explicitly to the betrayal by Judas: “I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the night in which He was betrayed took bread . . .” This text provides clear evidence that the traditional narrative contained in the Eucharistic prayer, as it was already known to Paul when he founded the Corinthian church about A.D. 50, made mention of Judas’s betrayal.

The Church’s testimony on this point is remarkable. It is as though some deep impulse discourages Christians from celebrating the Holy Communion without some reference to the betrayal by Judas. This reference serves to remind Christians of the terrible judgment that surrounds the Mystery of the Altar:

Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body” (1 Corinthians 11:27-29).

There is a particular poignancy in the setting of Judas’s betrayal: the Passover meal, the Seder. Judas has just passed from the ranks of Israel to the service of Pharaoh. Our Lord’s identification of the betrayer (verse 25), missing in Mark and Luke, is also found in John (13:26-27).

In the Greek text Judas’s question to the Lord is worded so as to expect a negative reply: “Surely not I, Rabbi?” Judas is, among other things, a hypocrite, and as such he receives a “woe” appropriate for hypocrites (cf. 23:13,14,15,23,25,27,29). Jesus’ answer to him—“You have said it”—is identical to His reply to Caiaphas (verse 64) and Pilate (27:11).

The reader knows that, while Jesus shares the Seder with His disciples, final preparations for his impending arrest are being conducted at the house of Caiaphas. The arresting party arms itself and waits the return of Judas Iscariot, who will lead them to where Jesus will be. Judas leaves the Seder early: “Having received the piece of bread, he then went out immediately. And it was night” (John 13:30).

While the plot is in progress, Jesus comes to that part of the Seder where the Berakah, the blessing of God, is prayed at the breaking of the unleavened loaf. Jesus, after praying the traditional Berakah, breaks the loaf and mysteriously identifies it as His body: “Take, eat; this is My body” (verse 26).

Because the Greek noun for “body,” soma, has no adequate equivalent in Aramaic or Hebrew, we presume that Jesus used the noun basar (sarxs in Greek), which means “flesh.” Indeed, this is the noun we find all through John’s Bread of Life discourse (6:51-56). In the traditions inherited by St. Paul and the Synoptic Gospels, the noun had been changed to “body.”

Then, when Jesus comes to the blessing to be prayed at the drinking of the cup of wine, He further identifies the cup: “Drink from it, all of you. For this is My blood of the covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins” (verses 27:28).

Good Friday, March 29

Philippians 2:1-11: The contrast between Christ and Adam, found in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15, does not appear to have been original with Paul. We already find that contrast in what is apparently an ancient hymn verse cited by St. Paul in the Epistle to the Philippians:

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (2:5-11 RSV).

Relative to Good Friday, two points should be made about this passage:

First, its rich doctrinal character is surprising in a context where we would not expect it. The context is not doctrinal. It is, rather, a moral exhortation, in which Paul describes how Christians are to be humble and obedient in their regard and behavior toward one another (2:1-4,12-16). Settled in the middle of that context, the Christological passage quoted above has the feel of an insertion. It takes the reader in a specifically doctrinal direction. It appears that Paul, wanting to hold up the example of the obedience of Christ, reminds them of a text that he expects his readers to recognize. Familiar texts like this are frequently taken from well-known hymns, and a close reading of the passage suggests a strophic structure.

Second, at least part of the content of this hymnic insertion clearly relies on a contrast between Christ and Adam. Adam, we recall, was disobedient in trying to become like God. This is implied in what the serpent told Eve with respect to the forbidden fruit: “For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God” (Genesis 3:5). That is to say, disobedient Adam “regarded equality with God a thing to be grasped” (harpagmon egesato to einai isa Theo).

God’s Son, in contrast, being “in the form of God” (en morphe Theou), was already “equal to God” (isa Theo). He had not need to grasp it. Yet He emptied Himself and assumed “the form of a servant” (morphen doulou), becoming obedient to death on the Cross. This is the model of obedience that Paul holds out to Christians, telling them, “Have this mind (touto phroneite) among yourselves.” Believers are to abandon the example of Adam and pursue the standard of Christ. This is the moral message of Good Friday.

Friday, March 15

Proverbs 24: Material prosperity and the blessings of a stable life are founded on, and in some measure guaranteed by, the quest of wisdom (verses 3-4). Prudent choices and circumspect behavior, most especially in the time of youth when prudence and circumspection are not yet solid habits, will determine a man’s course for many years, perhaps even for his whole lifetime (verse 27). The failure at such application also brings about its own results (verses 30-34).

A first step toward wisdom is to turn away from evil. It is a matter of elementary experience that the evil-doer seems sometimes to prosper more than the just man. Whereas in the Book of Job the observation of this latter phenomenon spawns a philosophical discussion about its cause, here in Proverbs it represents only a distracting temptation. Instead of wondering how to interpret the prosperity of the wicked, the young man in Proverbs is simply warned against becoming deceived by it through envy (verses 1-2,8-9,19-20; 3:31; 23:17). Also to be eschewed, as a distraction at best, is the pursuit of revenge (verse 29). The wise man must avoid such temptations and get on with life.

True righteousness, however, is not a matter of looking good to men, nor is true prosperity attained simply by being regarded as prosperous. God sees and judges the heart. In particular, God recognizes the difference between brave and cowardly hearts. He knows whether or not a man is inwardly acquiescing in evil and oppression (verse 11-12). God is not impartial. He takes the side of the righteous man (verses 15-16). This is the thesis put to trial in the Book of Job.

God’s reading of the heart also discerns the smug gloating one feels at the failure of an enemy (verse 17-18). God does not respect the self-righteousness contained in such sentiments. Justice on the earth has nothing to do with smug emotions.

Matthew 18:21-35: This passage also has to do with real offenses, such as theft, cheating, or lying. Peter does not ask, “How many times must I permit my brother to annoy me or get on my nerves.” Some more serious offense is envisioned in this mandate to forgive.

The response of Jesus can be translated as either “seventy-seven” or “seventy times seven.” The point of the mandate is not the precise number, whether 77 or 490. It means, rather, that there must be no limit to our forgiveness. Forgiveness cannot be allowed to become a quantitative commodity in limited supply.

Jesus’ response to Peter alludes to Genesis 4:24: “If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, then Lamech seventy-sevenfold.” This line from Lamech is a sort of culmination of the growing violence that followed man’s fall in the Garden. That fall led immediately to the murder of Abel (4:8), which led immediately to the prospect of vengeance (4:14) and then greater vengeance (4:15), leading in Lamech’s case to the equivalent of total warfare. Jesus’ response to Peter indicates that the Gospel must go in the opposite direction, placing no limits on forgiveness.

Saturday, March 16

The eighth century scribes of King Hezekiah, evidently as part of the general spiritual renewal associated with that godly monarch (cf. 2 Kings 18-20; 2 Chronicles 29-32), compiled the collection of maxims that begins here (Chapters 25-29). It has been observed that this collection contains 126 maxims, the very number indicated by the numerical value of the Hebrew letters in Hezekiah’s name. Given the courtly context of this collection, it is scarcely surprising that it begins with certain considerations of kingship (verse 1-7). We recognize that verse 7 is repeated in Luke 14:7-11.

Various maxims indicate the value of good and intelligent speech (verse 11-13,15,25), while others exhort the reader to moderation even in good things (verses 16,27). The counsel for how to deal with one’s enemies (verses 21-22) is taken up by St. Paul in Romans 12:20-21 as an important component of practical Christian ethics.

A very weighty concern in the pursuit of wisdom is the acceptance of limitations. “The sky is the limit” is the philosophy of someone with no sense of personal identity. Identity, after all, is a defining notion, and definition is always a matter of limitation (“this, and not that”). A larger ego is not necessarily more a blessing than a larger nose. To refuse to recognize limitations is a marker along the path to loss of identity. Consequently, this practical chapter ends with the absolute necessity of self-control, which is one of the most practical applications of the acceptance of limitation (verse 28). King Hezekiah himself, who witnessed the downfall of the Northern Kingdom to the Assyrians 722 B.C., was well adjusted to this acceptance and was obliged, in his own pursuit of wisdom, to bear it in mind continually. Had he failed to do so, he would not likely have survived the very taxing geopolitical circumstances in which history placed him.

Matthew 19:1-10: Matthew introduces this section by mentioning the end (etelesen–verse 1) of Jesus’ previous discourse—namely, the preceding chapter on life in the Church. Each of Jesus’ five large discourses is ended in the same way (cf. 7:28; 11:1; 13:53; 26:1).

Jesus, moving south, goes somewhat eastward across the Jordan, avoiding a trip through Samaria. He is followed by “large” crowds (contrast with Mark 10:1), “to follow” being the normal expression for discipleship.

In Mark’s parallel account (10:1), it is said that Jesus taught these crowds, whereas Matthew says that He “healed” them (etherapeusen–verse 2).

The significance of this change is to be found in the light it sheds on the teaching that immediately follows. The following section deals with matters we may call “domestic,” in the sense of having to do with the home (domus in Latin). This subject will include sex, children, and money, and on these matters Jesus will “heal” the people of common but fallacious opinions. These subjects—sex, child-raising, and finances—are the ones on which the views of the world are likely to be sick and in want of healing. Each of these three subjects is introduced by certain individuals or groups who approach Jesus: the Pharisees, the mothers bringing their children, and the wealthy inquirer.

It seems Matthew has arranged this material in a sequence usual and expected in the catechetical practice of the Christian Church. In fact, these three subjects are treated together by St. Paul (cf. Ephesians 5:22—6:9; Colossians 3:18-25). The similarity of the sequence in Matthew and Paul suggests these dominical sayings have been organized according to a standard and recognizable format.

Sunday, March 17 Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everybody!

Proverbs 26: A major problem of being a fool is that one does not normally know he is a fool. Indeed, among the conspicuous characteristics of the fool is his inability to reflect on his own intellectual and moral shortcomings, which, left unattended over the years, tend to become progressively shorter. The fool is usually a proud, sullen, independent man, recalcitrant to instruction and correction from the outside, so that he is hardly in a position to help himself very much from the inside (verses 1-12; 28:26).

We may note in passing that nowhere in Proverbs do we find compassion for a fool. This is not to say that the fool should not be pitied, and other parts of Holy Scripture, such as the Sermon on the Mount, would surely prompt us to pity him. Proverbs, however, is rather short on compassion, on the whole, restricting that blessing pretty much to those who are poor for reasons besides their own fault. If one wants to be instructed on the ways of compassion, Proverbs is probably not the book to start with.

Rather early in his career, the fool discouraged those who tried to help him, and such discouragement reinforced the negative aspects of his social relationships. Leaving aside the particulars of physical appearance, we may recognize the biblical fool in the character of Bentley Drummle in Great Expectations, of whom Charles Dickens tells us that he,

was so sulky a fellow that he even took up a book as if its writer had done him an injury, did not take up an acquaintance in a more agreeable spirit. Heavy in figure, movement, and comprehension—in the sluggish complexion of his face, and in the large awkward tongue that seemed to loll about in his mouth as he himself lolled about in a room—he was idle, proud, niggardly, reserved, and suspicious. He came of rich people down in Somersetshire, who had nursed this combination of qualities until they made the discovery that it was just of age and a blockhead. Thus, Bentley Drummle came to Mr. Pocket when he was a head taller than that gentleman, and half a dozen heads thicker than most gentlemen.

Not far from being fools are the merely lazy (verses 13-16), the habitually contentious (verses 17-22; 28:25), and the flattering (verses 23-26; 28:23; 29:5; cf. Sirach 27:25-28).

Monday, March 18

Proverbs 27: Nothing is more burdensome than anger (verse 3). As the human soul (according to Aristotle) possesses no passion that is directly contrary to the passion of anger, we have nothing emotional in our constitution that directly counterbalances anger. We can only control it rationally, with no help from the other passions. Hence, anger is the passion most likely to get out of hand; it is also the passion that tends most to become unbalanced. Fortunately, unless deliberately cultivated, anger also tends to diminish over time; otherwise, it would crush our spirits.

But suppose a state of constant anger, an eternal wrath, an ire without end. Suppose an anger that will not dissipate with time, for the simple reason that time is no more. Such would seem to be the quality of eternal damnation, the state in which a man is perpetually and without end crushed by his anger. He teeth will forever continue to grind and gnash in the endless darkness (cf. Matthew 8:12; 13:42,50; 22:13; 24:51; 25:30). The anger of the fool, described in verse 3, is a sort of calisthenics preparatory for his coming state.

Verse 19 uses the metaphor of a visual reflection to describe the sensation of the heart finding itself mirrored in another heart. This experience accompanies certain intense friendships, such as that in which “the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul” (1 Samuel 18:1).

The chapter ends with maxims respecting the industrious and sustained stewardship of one’s resources (verses 23-27). The possession of family property, guaranteed by the provisions of the Mosaic Law, is regarded in Holy Scripture as a medium of tradition, binding each generation to those both before and after it. Property is supposed to be handed down in the family along with sound counsel for how to preserve and enhance it.

Matthew 19:16-22: The third subject in this chapter—money—is introduced by a man that comes to our Lord, seeking counsel on how to attain eternal life (verse 16). This scene is paralleled in Mark 10:17-22 and Luke 18:18-23.

If we are to look for another link between this section and the preceding theme of children, perhaps we find it in the fact that the question is asked by a “young person” (neaniskos). Indeed, this feature is unique to Matthew. Both Mark and Luke suggest, in fact, that the man may not be young, because he claims to have kept all the commandments “from my youth,” an expression Matthew’s account does not contain.

Tuesday, March 19

Proverbs 28: Among the characteristics of the righteous man is one not often mentioned in Proverbs, perhaps because it is too obvious—bravery (verse 1). The bravery mentioned here is the fruit of a righteous life, not the mere exertions of a strong will. Such bravery will be manifest in a variety of actions, not the least of which is the refusal to approve of wickedness or those who practice it (verses 4,21). Indeed, even the ability to recognize the difference between good and evil comes from being good; this distinction is lost on those who are not (verse 5).

Although prosperity is the expected fruit of a good, wise, and industrious life (verse 19), this is not invariably the case. Ultimately, it is not prosperity that is essential, but the righteousness that would deserve prosperity if life in this world were perfect (verses 6,11). Indeed, Proverbs warns against the inordinate desire for prosperity (verse 22), and no man may seek prosperity to the neglect of the poor (verse 27; 29:7).

The worst fate that can befall a nation is to be ruled by a fool (verses 2,15-16; 29:2), and the biblical histories of Judah and Israel prove the point.

Matthew 19:23-30: Matthew omits the initial wonderment of the disciples mentioned by Mark (10:24), but he does include the Lord’s elaboration of the theme in the hyperbole of the camel and the eye of the needle.

As an image of “great difficulty,” this seems an unlikely hyperbole. It strikes the reader, rather, as a simple metaphor for impossibility. Indeed, there is a clear parallel to it in rabbinical literature, which speaks of the impossibility of passing an elephant through the eye of a needle (Babylonian Talmud, Berakoth 55b). Does Jesus mean, then, “”very difficult” or “utterly inconceivable”?

Since there appear to be no circumstances in which it is humanly possible for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, various fanciful interpretations have been advanced to explain away the toughness of the text. One of these, manifestly invented by someone who had no idea what he was talking about, refers to a small gate in the wall of Jerusalem. There is not the faintest evidence of such a gate.

On the other hand, since the Lord’s hyperbole contains a bit of metaphor-mixing, others have tried their hand at “correcting” Him. After all, why would anyone try to pass a camel, to say nothing of an elephant, through the eye of a needle? What purpose would it serve? You can’t sew with either a camel or an elephant. It was apparently to address this difficulty that a tenth-century copyist devised a very slight textual change in Luke’s version of the parable. He altered kamelos (camel) to kamilos (rope). A rope, after all, has an obvious affinity to a thread, whereas camel clearly does not. One can actually imagine an attempt, if the fabric were large enough, to sew with a rope.

This reading of “rope” for “camel,” first found in a manuscript penned in A.D. 949 and copied into a few other manuscripts, is clever, even ingenious, but it also appears too late in history to be taken seriously. One should be very cautious about biblical interpretations, much less biblical readings, that don’t appear at all in the first thousand years of Christian history!

What, then, about the impossibility implied in the Lord’s saying? The subsequent verse, in fact, confirms it. Yes, says Jesus, the salvation of the rich man is humanly impossible. This does not mean, however, that there is an impossibility on God’s side. God can pass a camel through the eye of the needle (verse 26). Let the rich man take care, however. Let him reflect that he is asking God for a miracle.

This metaphor of the camel and the needle, therefore, is something of a parallel with the moving of mountains. Both parables have to do with the power of faith in the God. Salvation is ever a gift of God, not a human achievement.

Wednesday, March 20

Proverbs 29: Here are more maxims about the blessings of wise government (verses 2,4,8,14) and the curse of its opposite (verse 12), along with warnings about unnecessary contentions (verses 9,22). As we know from the wrangling of partisan politics, these two concerns are not unrelated (verse 8). A wise society requires not only righteous citizens, but also prophetic visionaries (verse 18; cf. Hosea 12:11; Isaiah 29:7) and wise and righteous rulers. These latter, it is hoped, will come from the ranks of truly humble men (verse 23), self-controlled individuals who know exactly how long to hold their tongues (verses 11,20; James 1:19). Alas, we are forewarned, they will not be respected by the wicked (verse 27).

These latter are described as having stiff necks (verse 1), a metaphor for the stubbornness of the scofflaw (Exodus 32:9; 33:3,5; Deuteronomy 9:3). Stiff necks, however, may get themselves broken. There is no parity between the fear of God and the fear of man (verse 24). The latter leads to compromise and infidelity. The only way to avoid the fear of men is to cultivate the fear of God.

Matthew 20:1-16: The parable about the day-workers is probably found in this place because it tells a narrative about the last called being the first paid, thus illustrating, as it were, the final verse of Chapter 19: “But many who are first will be last, and the last first.” The parable ends with the repetition of the theme of reversal (verse 16).

It is obvious, nonetheless, that this parable, found only in Matthew, is easily separable from that verse, and it touches only one aspect of the parable—namely, the reversed order in which the payment to the workers is made. In fact, the parable itself is just as comprehensible without that theme.

The parable of the day workers was doubtless remembered among the early Christians because it did, in fact, address one of their early theological questions — How to regard the Gentiles who were “late-comers” to the Church. The earlier comers to the field are all given a work contract, which may be interpreted as God’s established covenant with His people. Those that come last, however, work without a contract; that is to say, they have been promised nothing specific. They are outside the ancient covenant (Ephesians 2:12).

But God’s generosity rewards them anyway, and this parable is more descriptive of the Owner of the vineyard than of the workers. The Owner, of course, is God, who is described as merciful and generous with those who work for Him, as well as firm with those who contemn His generosity. The vineyard is, of course, the People of God (cf. Isaiah 5:1-7; Jeremiah 12:10).

The grumblers, who are reprimanded at the end of the parable, are not rebuked for dissatisfaction with what they have received, but for their dissatisfaction with what the other people have received. These grumblers may also become the enemies who have already commenced plotting against the Son of the field’s Owner (21:33-46).

Thursday, March 21

Proverbs 30: This chapter contains the first of the book’s three final collections of wisdom maxims, a collection called “the words of Agur, the son of Jakeh.” The Hebrew text further identifies Agur and Jakeh as “of Massa,” the same place in northern Arabia (Genesis 25:14; 1 Chronicles 1:30) as King Lemuel in the next chapter.

Agur, the son of Jakeh, is not called a king, however, nor is he otherwise identified. It is reasonable to suppose, therefore, that he must have been a figure of some renown among the readers for whom the Book of Proverbs was intended, requiring no further introduction.

What we have in this chapter is a philosophical discourse delivered by Agur and recorded by his two disciples, otherwise unknown, named Ithiel and Ucal (verse 1). Ancient history from places as diverse as China, India, Egypt, and Greece provides other examples of such discourses given by masters and transcribed by their disciples. One thinks, for instance, of the “Deer Park Sermon” of Siddhartha Gautama.

Unlike Siddhartha, however, whose recent enlightenment (Bodhi) enabled him to discern a relentless Chain of Causation in existence and to devise an ascetical system for dealing with it, Agur of Massa confessed himself completely bewildered by the whole thing: “Surely I am more stupid than any man, and do not have the understanding of a man. I neither learned wisdom, nor have knowledge of the Holy One” (verses 2-3).

Such a sentiment makes Agur resemble Socrates more than Siddhartha. Socrates, we recall, once identified by the Delphic oracle as the world’s wisest man, spent his life trying to prove the oracle wrong. Socrates finally concluded, however, that the oracle must be correct because he discovered all reputedly wise men to be just as ignorant as himself, except that they were not aware of being ignorant. Socrates concluded that it was as though the oracle had declared, “Among yourselves, oh men, that man is the wisest who recognizes, like Socrates, that he is truly nobody of worth (oudenos axsios) with respect to wisdom.” Socrates and Agur, then, both associate the quest of wisdom with a humble mind.

Whatever his resemblance to that wise Athenian, nonetheless, Agur more readily puts us in mind of the Psalmist, who confessed to God, “I was so foolish and ignorant, I was like a beast before You” (Psalms 72 [73]:22) and “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it” (138 [139]:6).

Whereas the philosophical humility of Socrates was spawned of epistemology—that is, the accepted limitations of the human being’s ability to know—that of Agur was inspired, rather, by cosmology; he considered the sheer vastness of the varied things to be known: “Who has ascended in heaven, or descended? Who has gathered the wind in His fists? Who has bound the waters in a garment? Who has established all the ends of the earth?” (verse 4) Agur’s are the sorts of reflections we associate with God’s final answer to Job (Job 38-39).

With scant confidence in his own intelligence, then, Agur began the quest of wisdom by trusting in “every word of God” (kol ’imrath ’Eloah), which word he described, exactly like the Psalmist, as “pure,” seruphah (verses 5-6; Psalms 17 [18]:31). He then turned to prayer—the only explicit prayer in the whole Book of Proverbs—in which he begged God for a modest life, free of falsehood. The life that Agur craved from on high would be neither wealthy nor poor, in order to avoid both arrogance and desperation, either of which might lead him into sin (verses 7-9).

Agur did not think very highly of his contemporaries, whom he described as disrespectful of authority and tradition, morally dissolute and socially irresponsible, insatiable in their appetites, and entertaining too high an opinion of themselves (verses 11-14). If one looks closely at the criticism, it is clear that Augur’s complaint had a fourfold structure. In fact, he was especially fond of maxims based on the number four: four things that are never satisfied (verses 15-16), four things too hard to understand (verses 18-19), four things the world cannot endure verses 21-23), four small but wise animals from whom men can learn useful traits (verses 24-28), and four things “which are stately in walk” (verses 29-31).

Agur’s was, in short, the simple, observant philosophy of a humble man, content to live in this world by the purity of God’s word and a prayerful reliance on God’s gifts, offending the Almighty by neither the food he put into his mouth nor the words he caused to come forth from it.

Friday, March 22

Proverbs 31: Destined someday to be the king of Massa, a small realm in northern Arabia (cf. Genesis 25:14; 1 Chronicles 1:30), Lemuel was grateful to a wise mother for several verses of practical instruction that would serve him well in the years ahead. That instruction, being brief, could be inscribed on a single small sheet of vellum or papyrus, and Lemuel probably had a number of copies made for his friends. As gifts, those copies he also shared with other kings in the region, so that his mother’s instructions made the rounds of various royal courts, carried by emissaries otherwise dispatched to attend to the diplomatic and mercantile concerns of Massa.

In due course, one of those emissaries came to Jerusalem to arrange some commercial treaty or other with King Solomon. Lemuel, well acquainted with Solomon’s universal reputation for wisdom (cf. 1 Kings 4:31), had sent along a copy of his mother’s instructions as a personal gift.

Now it happened that Solomon was in the process, just then, of editing a collection of traditional wisdom proverbs. Gladly receiving Lemuel’s little scroll, therefore, he read it promptly and was so impressed that he incorporated the maternal instructions verbatim into his collection. Thus now, three thousand years later, we read those brief instructions of Lemuel’s mother in Proverbs 31:1–9.

Perhaps significant also is the context in which Solomon placed the instructions of Lemuel’s mother in the Book of Proverbs; namely, immediately in front of the famous description of the ideal wise woman (31:10–31). Was Solomon thereby paying the Queen Mother of Massa a compliment, suggesting that she herself exemplified that description? I doubt that I am the only reader who has entertained this thought.

Although the Book of Proverbs several times recommends that a young man pay attention to the teaching of his mother (1:8; 6:20; 15:20), these verses from Lemuel’s mother are the only example of maternal teaching explicitly contained in Proverbs.
And, on reading this material, we gain the impression that it is not, on the whole, much different from the instruction that a young man received from his father. There are warnings against lust (31:3) and drinking alcohol (31:4), along with an exhortation to take care of the oppressed and the poor (31:5–9).

Some of the material here resembles that in other ancient collections of teaching intended for future rulers. For example, “The Instruction of King Meri-Kare,” an Egyptian manuscript preserved (as Papyrus Leningrad 1116A) in St. Petersburg, contains a collection of such teaching from near the end of the third millennium before Christ.

Lemuel’s royal mother obviously embodied a traditional form of wisdom, heavily accented with good sense and moral responsibility. In this respect her instruction is of whole cloth with the rest of the Book of Proverbs.

The most ancient form of the wisdom tradition, of which Lemuel’s mother and the Book of Proverbs are good representatives, was not much concerned with the kinds of thorny speculative questions that preoccupied Ecclesiastes and the Book of Job; it did not normally raise theoretical reflections about the meaning and purpose of life. It contained nothing suggestive of the “cutting edge” of new ideas that might distract from the serious business of getting on with a good and useful life.

The inherited wisdom tended to ask “how” a person should live in a difficult world rather than “why” he should go on living in a difficult world. Instead of inquiring “Why do the innocent suffer?” it suggested ways of avoiding those sufferings that a man might bring upon himself by not living wisely.

The wisdom of Proverbs and Lemuel’s mother may be called conservative and traditional, a wisdom proved repeatedly in the experience of previous generations. It would certainly discourage a young man from “marching to a different drummer” or “doing his own thing.” It emphasized such themes as fidelity to inherited standards of responsibility, respect for the teachings of parents and elders, hard work, fiscal conservatism, sobriety, virtue, principled judgment, prudence in one’s business affairs and matters of state, personal discipline in the use of time, money, and other resources, strict marital fidelity, and the consequent joys of home and family.

Although history has left us no other record of Lemuel, we are probably justified in thinking of him living to an old age on the throne of the kingdom of Massa, dying secure in the memory of grateful citizens who recalled his wise and benevolent reign. It should not surprise us, either, if some archeologist should someday uncover his tomb and find the inscription: “Here lies Lemuel, King of Massa, whose final words were, ‘I owe it all to Mom.’”