Friday, March 8

Proverbs 17: Wisdom is learned and practiced in the home and the community. It has to do with simple, quotidian experiences, both domestic and immediately social. Consequently, a number of these maxims are concerned with man’s life in his home and in society: the blessings of a quiet household (verse 1), the raising of children (verses 21,25), dependable servants (verse 2), reverence for the younger and older generations (verse 6), the maintenance of friendships, even the friendships of others (verses 9,17), the resolution of conflicts (verse 14), and respect for the poor (verse 5).

The perfect man, we are told, is the one who “does not stumble in word” (James 3:2). Because a man’s speech is his chief means of associating with his family and his community, his ability to govern his tongue will chiefly determine the quality of his social relationships. It is a man’s speech that will make or break him in the moral and social orders. Without proper control of his tongue, a man is of no decent use to either God or his fellow men. It is not surprising, therefore, that this chapter on man’s domestic and social life should contain several references to the power of speech, not only good speech (verse 7) and controlled speech (verses 27-28), but also perverse speech (verse 20) in a number of forms, such as mendacity (verses 4,7), ridicule (verse 5), and gossip (verse 9).

Matthew 14:13-21: The great significance of the multiplication of the loaves among the early Christians may be discerned from the fact that: (1) outside of the events of Holy Week, it is one of the very few scenes recorded in all four gospels; (2) aspects of it are depicted numerous times in the earliest Christian iconography; (3) normally recorded in language identical to, or at least reminiscent of, that of the Last Supper, it is clearly one of the events of Jesus’ life perceived to be weighted with the greatest theological significance. This is clearest in John, where it is accompanied by the lengthy and elaborate Bread of Life discourse.

This miraculous event brought to the minds of those present the expectation that the coming Messiah would renew the events of the Exodus, including the feeding of the people with miraculous bread in the wilderness. This sense of expectation and fulfillment accounts for the considerable emphasis on Messianic themes in early Eucharistic texts of the Christian Church.

Saturday, March 9

Proverbs 18: Many commentators have spoken of the “pragmatic” motive in much of the Book of Proverbs. That is to say, very often what are recommended in this book are things that have been proven to work; these things get good results. Or, to borrow the expression of William James, they have “cash value.” Such things have been tried for generations, and only a fool would abandon them.

We should be cautious about this approach to Proverbs, however, because the pragmatic motive in this book is not identical to that of William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, John Dewey, and their kindred spirits. The pragmatism of these men rested on a fundamental agnosticism with respect to ultimacy. Persuaded that the correct answers to ultimate questions (“Does God exist?” “Is man’s willed activity free?”) must remain unknown to the human mind, these pragmatists recommended that human endeavor, including human thought, should follow only such lines of action as would prove to be useful and productive, such lines of action as would “get good results.” That is to say, human beings should do and think only such things as really work. If a thing or a thought does not work—if experience shows a thing or a thought to be unproductive—prudence dictates that it should not be pursued. (Thus, for instance, William James rejected the theory of atheism because it does not lead anywhere. It does not have what James calls “cash value.” Atheism promises nothing, and it delivers nothing. It is not a useful idea. The idea of God’s existence, on the other hand, has proved itself a very useful and productive idea, providing a solid basis for other human decisions.)

The problem with this American brand of pragmatism is that it separates human activity from human knowledge. It is based on agnosticism with respect to the most important philosophical questions ever posed to the human mind, and it attempts to formulate a manner of life and thought divorced from real answers to those very real questions. How, after all, can I know whether something really “works,” if I have no idea what it is supposed to do? If I do not know the purpose of a wrench, for instance, how do I know if it is useful. How can I know whether or not I am making “progress” (John Dewey’s favorite word), if I do not know where I am going? How can I seek the human good, if I have no idea what “good” means or the purpose of human existence?

Quite different is the pragmatism of the Book of Proverbs. It does not rest on agnosticism about the fundamental questions in life, but on discerned and solid answers to those questions. For Proverbs it is not the case that (to use William James’s expression) “truth happens to an idea.” Truth abides, rather, in the structure of reality, and a truthful idea is not the creation of the human mind at all. It is an idea created in the mind by the very truth that inheres in reality. Men are said to live wisely if their minds and activities are shaped by the truth that God placed in the structure of reality.

At the same time, this discernment of truth in the structure of reality does not come solely from theorizing about reality. Sometimes, and perhaps frequently, it comes from the godly effort to deal with the concrete exigencies of human life. For this reason, perhaps, the deepest insights into the reality of life in this world often come to very practical men as they grapple with the shape of history by making godly decisions in difficult and trying circumstances. It may be the case that sometimes a philosopher/king must first be a king in order to become a philosopher.

Sunday, March 10

Proverbs 19: Circumspection, not haste, is the way of correct action (verse 2); this is a warning against precipitous and impassioned reactions (cf. 18:13; 21:5; Romans 10:2). When swift action is called for in circumstances that do not permit the taking of adequate counsel, such action will be more safely and prudently taken by the man who normally does not act precipitously. That is to say, a person who normally takes adequate counsel before acting on his decisions is the one most likely to react wisely when he does not have opportunity to take counsel. He is the one who will not lose his head under pressure. He will keep his emotions at bay and not act on the basis of them (verse 11), knowing that acting on passion tends to become a habit (verse 19).

Verse 7 should not be understood in a sense that would treat all friendships with skepticism. It is simply a realistic warning that not all friends, after all, can be relied upon all the time. The person who believes otherwise will soon be embarrassed (cf. 25:19).

A gift given to the poor is a loan to God (verse 17; cf. 14:31; 17:5; 22:9; Matthew 10:42). We do well to bear in mind that God pays a generous interest on such loans.

Perhaps the Book of Proverbs contains no more important a sentiment, a conviction strongly to be maintained in the heart, than “a prudent wife is from the Lord” (verse 14; cf. 18:22).

Matthew 15:1-20: When Jesus finished the Sermon on the Mount, it was remarked that “He taught as one having authority, and not as the scribes.” It did not take long for the scribes to take note of this, so there soon began a series of debates about Jesus’ interpretation of the Torah (9:10-15; 12:1-4). The series continues here.

This material is largely taken from Mark 7:1-23, but Matthew does not share Mark’s perceived need to explain Jewish purification rituals to his readers. Matthew’s readers, apparently having much closer social ties to Judaism, do not need such information. Consequently, this section of Matthew is much less detailed than the corresponding text in Mark 7.

The use of the expression “this people” to designate the Jewish opponents of Jesus reflects the actual situation at the time Matthew wrote. Alone among the four Evangelists, Matthew habitually refers to “their synagogues” (43:23 9:35; 10:17; 12:9, 13:54), a usage that testifies to the situation after the destruction of the temple in A.D. 70. After that date, the Jewish Christians, expelled from the synagogues controlled by the Pharisees, were obliged to establish synagogues of their own. It is striking that the only time James uses the word “synagogue” (in 2:2), he is referring to a Christian gathering.

The question about washing hands before eating bread (verse 2), we observe, follows closely on the story of the miraculous bread (14:13-21). In addition, it is soon followed by Jesus’ reference to the “children’s bread” (verse 26), a second account of miraculous loaves (verses 29-37), and another discussion about bread (16:5-12).

Monday, March 11

Proverbs 20: This chapter contains sound counsel about the avoidance of useless problems. It is folly, for example, to provoke those in authority (verse 2). It is equally imprudent and useless to engage in unnecessary strife (verse 3).

Especially to be avoided is the exacting of revenge (verse 22; cf. 25:21-22). Of all human pursuits, revenge is the most unprofitable, seldom or almost never to the advantage of the one who exacts it. There is, moreover, a distinct likelihood that the one seeking revenge may be putting himself secretly in the place of God. This truth does not deny, of course, the valid claims of justice, exacted by proper legal authority. Still, the wrath of man is not to be identified with the justice of God (James 1:20). The Bible’s condemnation of revenge pertains less to the valid claims of legal and civil justice than to the emotional sense of satisfaction derived from inflicting personal retribution. The latter, let it be said, is a pursuit devoid of blessing. Much better is it to leave all vengeance to the God who neither deceives nor can be deceived (verse 24). For this reason, vengeance is strictly discouraged in both the Old Testament (24:29; Sirach 28:1) and the New (Matthew 5:39; Romans 12:17,19; 1 Peter 3:9).

This chapter also devotes attention to the importance of steady labor and the sustained application of effort (verses 4,13), as well as to integrity in commercial dealings (verses 10,23).

Matthew 17:14-21: When the man approaches Jesus (verse 14), he kneels down—gonypeton, literally “bending the knee”—before Jesus. That is to say, he assumes before Jesus the posture of prayer (contrast Mark 9:14-17). Like Solomon at the dedication of the Temple, he kneels before Jesus in prayer. This is the second time in two consecutive scenes in Matthew where kneeling is the proper posture in the presence of Jesus. In Matthew, then, the scene is one of worship and prayerful petition. And what does the man say to Jesus when he kneels down? Kyrie, eleison! — “Lord, have mercy!”

This kneeling down, or prostration, in prayer is not simply a generic act of worship. It is specified by its Christological reference. And in kneeling down he addresses Jesus as “Lord”–Kyrios. We should contrast this with Mark’s account of the scene, which addresses Jesus here as “Teacher”–Didaskalos. Matthew, that is to say, uses the full confessional word of the Christian faith (cf. Philippians 2:11; 1 Corinthians 8:6; 12:3).

Tuesday, March 12

Proverbs 21: A wise man will learn, not only when he submits to reprimand, but also when he sees others appropriately chastised (verses 11-12). This truth points us to one of the great advantages of studying history, because history is, among other things, the chronicling of God’s judgments against fools and scorners, and a wise man will take these lessons of history to heart.

We recently learned that a prudent woman is a gift from the Lord (19:14); a contentious wife, on the other hand, is a curse beyond human endurance (verses 9,19; cf. 25:24; 27:15).

God’s assessment of a man’s heart is not to be identified with a man’s assessment of his own heart (verse 2; cf. 16:2). “Feeling good about yourself” (Also known as “It works for me) is the most deceptive of feelings and keeps the soul forever immature and self-centered.

The “king” in verse 1 is any king. Since kings, holding sway over nations, are in an excellent position to influence the paths of history, God may be said to follow a certain economy of effort by using the decisions of kings to bring about His own purposes. God does not have to do this, obviously, but Holy Scripture indicates that He does.

On the other hand, while kings have their own projects and programs that affect the lives of many, the Bible (including Proverbs) is persuaded that God’s plans are not identical with those of the king, even when He employs the king’s decisions to bring them about. Ultimately, then, it is not the great men of the earth who determine the destinies of nations, but the Lord, who sees and knows all things, even those events that lie in the contingent future. God’s will prevails (verses 30-31).

Matthew 17:22-27: This story, found only in Matthew, once again shows a special solidarity between Jesus and Peter, inasmuch as the taxes of both are paid by the same coin. In spite of his being called “Satan” by the Lord, then, Peter did not really fall from the Lord’s favor; the Apostle was warned and reprimanded, not rejected. Indeed, even after those stern words in chapter 16, Peter was still chosen as one of the three disciples who witnessed the Lord’s transfiguration at the beginning of this chapter.

This text also serves to instruct on the obligation of believers to pay taxes to the government.

Wednesday, March 13

Proverbs 22: The shared humanity of the rich and the poor (verse 2) is the basis of our moral obligation to care for the poor (verses 9,22; cf. 29:13), and the Lord is the avenger of their neglect (verse 16; 23:1-11). This chapter’s subsequent exhortation not to oppress the poor resonates with the voices of the prophets (cf. Isaiah 5:8-9; Jeremiah 22:13-19; Micah 2:1-5; Habakkuk 2:6-17).

At verse 17 a new collection of maxims begins, in which the independent and impersonal couplets are replaced by a return to personal address: “my son.” The section, which continues through 24:22, commences with an exhorting call to wisdom (verses 17-18). A man must begin the quest of wisdom by putting his trust in God (verse 19) and the remembrance that there is no wisdom apart from truth (verses 20-21).

A good reason for not associating with an angry man is that one may start to imitate him (verses 24-25), but one can think of other reasons as well.

The warning against imprudent economic entanglements (verses 26-27) is an echo of several passages in Proverbs (6:1; 11:15; 17:18; 20:16).

Verse 28 is the classic principle of conservative philosophy, which will be repeated in the next chapter (23:10).

Matthew 18:1-14: Here begin the sayings that form the fourth great dominical discourse in Matthew; this one is devoted to what may be called “rules for the congregation.” It begins by the memorable scene in which Jesus holds up the faith of children as a model for adults. Far from refusing children access to Jesus until they arrive at the explicit and doctrinal faith of adults, Jesus admonishes adults to model their own faith on the more elementary faith of the child. Because children are the most in danger of being scandalized, this topic of children leads naturally into the subject of scandal, and in this connection come the Lord’s statements about millstones and self-mutilation. The latter are certainly to be understood by way of hyperbole.

Going through in more detail, we begin with the question of which of the disciples is the greatest (verses 1-5). In the parallel text in Mark 9:33-37, the disciples themselves argued which of themselves was the greatest. Matthew not only changes the question, then, he changes also the context of the question. It is no longer a debate among competing apostles; it is a question put to Jesus, as though a point of speculation. The question becomes spiritual and theological; it pertains to the Kingdom of Heaven. When the question is answered in verse 4, it is still about the Kingdom of Heaven.

Thursday, March 14

Proverbs 23: The greatest conceit a man can cultivate is a trust in “his own” wisdom (verse 4), because true wisdom is the shared inheritance of human experience. Therefore, it is no proper goal of education that a student should be taught “to think for himself.” Any idiot can learn that on his own. (The Greek word for “his own” is idios.) It is a proper goal of education, rather, that a student should learn to think the thoughts of Plato, of Aristotle, of Amen-em-Opet, of Ahikar, of Confucius, of the other great minds whose ideas have fed and sustained entire civilizations. A true education, an introduction to wisdom, comes from hearing the instruction of those who are truly wise (verse 12). Idiosyncratic isolation is arguably the greatest enemy to the acquisition of wisdom.

Verses 15 to 28 take up again some of the motifs of the first part of Proverbs, encouraging the fear of the Lord (verse 17), custody of the heart (verse 19), sobriety and self-restraint (verses 20-21), respect for tradition (verses 22,24-25), and chastity (verses 27-28). This chapter closes with a colorful and amusing description of drunkenness (verses 29-35).

Matthew 18:15-20: we perceive Matthew’s conviction that the Church is a house of redemption and reconciliation. To be redeemed, for Matthew, and to be reconciled, means to be at peace with the Church.

This message, once again, is obscured by copyist’s insertion of the words “against you” (eis se) in verse 15, an insertion that makes the offense appear to be a private matter between two Christians. This insertion, unknown to Origen in the third century and missing in the two oldest codices of the Sacred Text, seems to have been made under the influence of Peter’s question in verse 21, “How often shall my brother sin against me?”

The questionable insertion alters the sense of the passage rather dramatically. If the reading “against you” were original, the sense of the text would indicate a private offense involving only me and my brother. Without that insertion, however, the text refers to any sin that I see my brother committing. In all such cases, he remains my brother, for whom I am responsible, and his sin is, therefore, my business. I have an obligation in charity to consult with my brother on the matter.

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 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.

Friday, March 1

Proverbs 10: We now come to the central core of this book (Chapters 10-22), the 375 aphorisms gathered by Solomon (verse 1). In this respect, it is surely significant that 375 is exactly the numerical value of the Hebrew letters that make up the name “Solomon.”

This central core of Proverbs is divided into two parts, a division based on both literary style and philosophical outlook.

In the first section, Chapters 10 through 15, most of the aphorisms (10:19, for instance, is an exception to this rule) are structured on an antithetical couplet, in which there is a contrast between components in the first and second lines: just/wicked, prudent/foolish, wealth/poverty, accept/refuse, and so forth. In this first section the outlook of the aphorisms is not openly religious, as a rule, but simply “true to life.”

In the second section, Chapters 16 through 22, the couplets are synthetic and complementary, not antithetical, as a rule. In each couplet, rather, the second line completes or extends some component in the first line: the refinement of silver/the testing of souls, loving friend/constant brother, and so on. In this second section, likewise, the outlook or tone is “preachy,” or exhortatory, and more explicitly religious.

Within each section, smaller groups sometimes bind the aphorisms together by either theme or by some rhetorical device. These latter include, for instance, simple expressions common to each maxim, even though the maxims themselves deal with different subjects.

Considerable stress is laid throughout on the control of the tongue (for instance, verses 19-21,31-32), in terms that will remind us of James 1:9 and 3:2-12.

Matthew 13:18-23: We have already reflected that the Parable of the Sower follows the outline of the Shema. Accordingly, the parable’s interpretation begins with the command, “Hear!” (verse 18) In the Greek wording, in fact, this command carries an emphatic pronoun, unusual with an imperative verb: “You!” This pronoun serves to emphasize the distinction between Jesus’ followers and the “others.”

The first group in this parable, symbolized in the seed sown by the wayside (verse 19), fails in the matter of the “heart” (a detail missing in Mark 4:15). These do not love God with their whole heart, a condition that renders them vulnerable to attack from the Evil One. Their hearts, which have grown dull, have no understanding (verses 14-15).

The second group, symbolized in the rocky ground, is shallow, so the Word cannot take root (verse 20). These will fall away at the first sign of trouble (verse 21). Matthew had already witnessed such trials in his own lifetime (10:18,21-23). Those who thus falter have failed to love God with their whole soul.

The third group, symbolized by the sowing among the thorns, permits the care for wealth and worldly concern to strangle the life from the Gospel (verse 22). They have failed to love God with all their might.

The fourth group, symbolized in the good ground that receives the seed, has the grace of “understanding,” because of which they bring forth fruit (verse 23). They have fruitful lives. They are later symbolized in the two productive servants in the Parable of the Talents (25:16-17).

In Matthew’s version of this parable-interpretation, we note his special emphasis on “understanding” in verses 19 and 23. According to Matthew, a special type of understanding is characteristic of true discipleship. Thus, Matthew omits both references to a failure of understanding on the part of the disciples in Mark 4:10, 13.

And at the end of the parables, in Matthew 13:51, the disciples admit that they do understand what the Lord has been saying. For more evidence of Matthew’s emphasis on understanding as a characteristic of discipleship, one may compare Mark 9:9-13 with Matthew 17:9-13; and Mark 9:30-32 with Matthew 17:22-23.

Saturday, March 2

Proverbs 11: In the midst of this practical, somewhat secular wisdom, we find some maxims of a religious nature (verse 20; cf. also 10:3,22; 12:2; 15:3,8,33; 16:1-7,9). Because the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, even secular prudence in the Bible has a religious basis (verse 1). Biblical practicality, however, is not the same thing as modern pragmatism, which is intrinsically skeptical and essentially selfish. Skepticism and selfishness are really not very practical.

The wisdom of the Book of Proverbs comes from outside this world, but it is not other-worldly. It is this-worldly, in the sense that God formed the structures in this world, according to which man must live. The divine law is written into the composition of this world, so that those who live in accordance with the divine law are the ones who are most in touch with the reality of this world itself. Since the whole world is founded on the wisdom of God, those who live in accord with this wisdom will be the world’s most practical people.

Among the themes touched on in this chapter are commercial honesty (verse 1; cf. 16:11; 20:10; Leviticus 19:35-36; Deuteronomy 25:13-16; Amos 8:5-6; 12:8; Micah 6:10-11), the dangers of pride (verse 2), integrity as a guide (verse 3), the salvific fruit of righteousness (verses 4-9,18-19), control of the tongue (verses 12-13), the importance of a breadth of views (verse 14), and the value of a generous spirit (verses 24-26).

Matthew 13:24-30: Matthew replaces the parable in Mark 4:21-25 with this parable of the Wheat and the Weeds, which is proper to his own gospel. It is joined to the parables that follow by the common image of growth. So much is this the case that Matthew postpones the explanation of the Wheat and the Weeds until after the parables of the Mustard Seed and the Leaven.

As we shall see in that delayed explanation, the first of these parables is about judgment, and in cases of judgment there is usually the danger of misjudging. The difficulty of distinguishing the weeds from the wheat is that, in their early stages, they look very much alike. So the Lord commands that both be allowed to grow to maturity, because only in maturity are they easily distinguished. Thus, the point of the parable is that finality in judgment should be delayed until “all the facts are in.” Indeed, by delaying the explanation of this parable until verses 36-43, Matthew is illustrating its point.

Sunday, March 3

Proverbs 12: The chapter continues the series of couplets containing contrasts: love/hate (verse 1), good/wicked (verse 2), wickedness/righteousness (verse 3), virtuous wife/shameful wife (verse 4), and so on.

Such sustained emphasis on contrasts and distinctions should put to rest the recent idea that biblical teaching is non-analytical and non-critical. For several generations some of those who dislike classical philosophy have pretended that “Semitic thinking” is unlike “Greek thinking” in this respect. They have told us that the Greeks applied critical distinctions to dissect ideas and look at them in an objective, detached way that separated the knower from the known. On the other hand, the Semites (so the story goes) took a unitive approach to knowledge, in which the knower became identified with what was known.

This version of the matter, however, involves an oversimplification that does justice to neither the Semites nor the Greeks. While it is true that the common Semitic verb for knowing, yada‘, implies union rather than division (as in “Adam knew his wife”), another common Semitic verb for knowing, bin, means knowledge of a discursive, critical sort. Both aspects of knowledge, that is to say, are contained in Semitic epistemology. Similarly, with respect to the Greeks, the application of critical, objective distinctions, of the sort characteristic of dialectics, should not be taken as the goal of classical Greek philosophy. Dialectics is a means, rather, of arriving at metaphysical contemplation, gnosis (the Sanskrit jnana), in which the knower and the known are united.

In short, the differences between Greek and Semitic approaches to knowledge cannot be reduced to the elementary distinction between analytical and contemplative knowledge. Nor can either approach be reduced to a single, simple description.

Matthew 13:31-35: The Parable of the Mustard Seed (verses 31-32) is also about growth. Unlike the previous parable, it is found in the other Synoptics (Mark 4:30-32; Luke 13:18-19).

This parable and the one that follows it—the Leaven in verse 33—address the second part of the Parable of the Sower; to wit, the seed that falls on rocky ground (verses 5-6). That rocky ground, we recall, symbolized those shallow folk unable to love God with the whole soul. The seed that fell there, unable to bring forth fruit, is now contrasted with the growth of the mustard seed and the leaven.

The mustard seed is sown, says Matthew, “in his field,” an expression not found in this place in Mark and Luke. It appears that this field represents the world, into which God’s Son entered, along with His missionaries who continue to sow the seed. This image of the field also ties the present parable back to the one before it (verses 24,27).

Monday, March 4

Proverbs 13: Wisdom is not something that a young man can discover on his own. He either has the good sense to receive it as instruction or he will never have it. He must, therefore, listen and pay attention. It will be difficult, however, to listen and pay attention if he is forever running his mouth (verse 3). Custody of one’s tongue, then, is absolutely required for the attaining of wisdom.

This habit of guarding one’s tongue, in order the better to hear and learn instruction, can become a life-long habit, a distinguishing characteristic of the wise man even when he grows older. We see this phenomenon in a special way in the traditions of ancient Egypt, where the “silent just man” became a moral ideal of Egyptian culture, exemplified in The Instructions of Ani in the second millennium before Christ all the way to the ascetical literature of the Christian monks of the Egyptian desert. The “silent just man” maintained strict control over his tongue, and in order to maintain control over his tongue he was obliged to keep guard also over his emotions. His speech, when he did speak, would bear wise counsel and insight. Such a man could be trusted. To him could be given responsibilities over serious matters, even the destiny of nations.

It was proverbial in antiquity—and not only in Egypt—that no man could safely govern anything outside of himself until he had learned to govern his own soul (16:32). And a man began to learn this discipline in his youth, by not opening his mouth except to ask questions and to seek instruction.

Matthew 13:36-43: Like the parable that it explains, this explanation is proper to Matthew. As in the case of the Parable of the Sower (verse 10), the explanation of the Wheat and the Weeds is given to the disciples in private—“in the house,” eis ten oikian. As an interpretation of history, it pertains to the divine mysteries; therefore, it is not shared outside the household of God. It is strictly “in-house.”

This distinctive feature of “the mysteries of the Kingdom of heaven” points to an important distinction of Christian theology, a distinction readily detected in the New Testament. Certain aspects of the Gospel are shared with the world at large, because they pertain to the kerygma, the message of God to the world, in order to bring the world to faith. These include the Lordship of Jesus, repentance from sin, justification by faith, Baptism and the rites pertinent to it, the return of Christ at the end of history, and the final judgment.

Tuesday, March 5

Proverbs 14: Wisdom is the foundation of homes and households (verse 1). This is the inherited wisdom of the ages, conservatively handed down in the tradition of “families and villages” (to borrow Aristotle’s coupling).

Since the experience of family necessarily involves the transmission of identity, the tradition or inherited wisdom is not peripheral to family life. Unassailable tradition, based on perceived absolutes, is not something with which a family can dispense. It is of the essence, and it is this sense of tradition’s essential character that injects a note of urgency into the rhetoric of the Book of Proverbs. The exhortations in Proverbs are matters of life or death. Hence, this sense of urgency goes far to account for the toughness of discipline inculcated throughout the book.

Consequently, moral indifference or relativism, based on skepticism and an overly critical spirit, spell the death of wisdom and therefore the death of family life (verse 11). Nowhere does the Bible tolerate the relativism and despair (including a sympathy for suicide) that characterized some primitive writings of Mesopotamia, such as the ancient Dialogue of Pessimism. The latter work, written over three thousand years ago, reads today like a work of recent Existentialism. If such attitudes were characteristic of the philosophy of Mesopotamia, it is no wonder that Abraham insisted that Isaac should not go back there (Genesis 24:5-6).

The Book of Proverbs, in mighty contrast, represents the voice of moral and metaphysical absolutes, a wisdom based on the sense of the scrutiny and presence of God (verses 2,26-27; cf. 13:14; 15:39,11,29).

Matthew 13:44-52: This remaining section of the Parables of the Kingdom is completely proper to Matthew. It contains three parables: the Hidden Treasure (verse 44), the Pearl (verses 45-46), and the Dragnet (verses 47-50). These are followed by a brief exchange between Jesus and the disciples with respect to their understanding of the parables (verses 51-52).

The parables of the Hidden Treasure and the Pearl pertain to the third seed sown in the Parable of the Sower—the seed sown among thorns (verse 7). That seed, we recall, was strangled by “the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches” (verse 22). This preoccupation with wealth is addressed in the parables of the Hidden Treasure and the Pearl; in each case the man who finds the treasure or pearl gives up all that he has in order to obtain the desired prize. Following the outline of the Shema, such a one loves God with all his strength.

Wednesday, March 6

Proverbs 15: This chapter contains several references to the acceptance of correction (verses 5,10,12,31,32). Among a young man’s worst enemies is his innate resistance to correction, a resistance spawned of rebellion and an independent spirit. Giving in to such a spirit generally produces three results, all of them bad: First, it strengthens a man’s spirit of rebellion. (A rebel’s spirit is useful in the face of oppression; otherwise, it is a counterproductive trait in a man. A sustained spirit of rebellion, a spiritual chip on the shoulder, renders a man useless for any purpose.) This leads to hardness of heart and self-absorption.

Second, refusal to accept correction deprives a man of instruction about some point on which at least one other person thinks he needs instruction. Third, it discourages that same person from making some attempt at correction and instruction in the future. Thus, many valuable lessons will be lost if the young man does not early recognize and deal with these inner impulses of rebellion. Following such impulses is not the path to wisdom.

A Christian reading of this theme in Proverbs should see more in the Sacred Text, not less, than a merely Jewish reading of it. Even the simplest, plainest reading of Proverbs, based on the most literal sense of the Text, shows the importance of being open to correction. The Christian reader, however, reading the Scriptures through the lens of Christ, will recognize God the Father as the True Parent who speaks in these lines.

Thus, the submission that all children owe to the discipline of their parents becomes the symbol of a greater docility that God’s children owe to their heavenly Father. That is to say, the Christian reader should see more in the meaning of Proverbs in this regard: “Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid them reverence. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live?” (Hebrews 12:9)

Matthew 13:53-58: Nazareth’s negative response to Jesus indicates a new level of resistance among the Jews with respect to the Gospel. We will see this resistance intensify through chapters 14-16.

This section begins with the normal formula that ends each of the five dominical discourses in Matthew (verse 53; cf. 7:28; 11:1; 19:1; 26:1): “When Jesus had ended these sayings . . .”

The reaction of the Nazarenes is expressed by their wonder at Jesus’ unexpected authority. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount the wonder of the people expressed a positive tone (7:28-29), but now it becomes an expression of skepticism (verse 56), scandal (verse 57), and unbelief (verse 58). They do not even refer to Jesus by name but speak contemptuously of “this man” (verses 54,56).

Thursday, March 7

Proverbs 16: Proverbs deals with more than human effort. This book shares, rather, the conviction of the Bible’s historians and prophets (including the author of Job) that God reigns over human history and has plans of His own with respect to human destiny (verses 1-4,9,25,33). Man is not in charge of history. The “big picture” is not man’s responsibility. Consequently, God does not generally let him see the big picture. God’s governance of history is unfathomable. (Even those prophets to whom the Lord gives a panoramic view of history are often unable to see even one step ahead in matters of their own lives. Jeremiah is an example.)

This is not to say, of course, that human choices count for nothing in the course of events. It means only that man should restrict his concerns to those aspects of life that he can actually do something about, and these are determined largely by the circumstances in which Divine Providence places him. Each man must do his duty, as determined by those responsibilities, leaving to God the outcome of events. Man must be content to do right “as God gives us to see the right” (Abraham Lincoln).

At the same time, God’s loyal and obedient servant takes strength from the remembrance that God holds governance over the whole historical process. Even as men struggle to remain faithful, while not seeing the larger picture of which their own efforts are but a part, faith in a ruling God offers the proper basis for a sane, holy, and rational hope. This truth has special pertinence for those charged with the rule of nations (verses 10,12-15).

Matthew 14:1-12: Matthew now returns to the sequence in Mark 6, to narrate the beheading of John the Baptist, the multiplication of the loaves, the walking on the water, and so on.

He begins with the martyrdom of John. Like the other Evangelists, Matthew clearly expects his readers already to be familiar with the identity of this Herod. Modern readers, however, need to be informed that he was Herod Antipas, whom the Romans had made tetrarch (ruler over a quarter of a Roman province, the province here being Syria) over Galilee and Perea after the death of his father, Herod the Great (cf. Matthew 2). Sharing his father’s insecurity and superstition, Antipas imagines that the slain John has somehow returned in Jesus to haunt him for his crime. It is at this point that Mark and Matthew insert the story of that crime.

Whereas Mark uses the story of Herod’s execution of John the Baptist as a sort of interlude between the sending out and return of the Twelve (Mark 6:6-31), Matthew has already employed that setting back in Chapter 10. Consequently, his account of the execution of John the Baptist fits into a slightly different sequence. Otherwise, his version of the event is simply a shortened form of Mark’s.

Friday, March 8

Proverbs 17: Wisdom is learned and practiced in the home and the community. It has to do with simple, quotidian experiences, both domestic and immediately social. Consequently, a number of these maxims are concerned with man’s life in his home and in society: the blessings of a quiet household (verse 1), the raising of children (verses 21,25), dependable servants (verse 2), reverence for the younger and older generations (verse 6), the maintenance of friendships, even the friendships of others (verses 9,17), the resolution of conflicts (verse 14), and respect for the poor (verse 5).

The perfect man, we are told, is the one who “does not stumble in word” (James 3:2). Because a man’s speech is his chief means of associating with his family and his community, his ability to govern his tongue will chiefly determine the quality of his social relationships. It is a man’s speech that will make or break him in the moral and social orders. Without proper control of his tongue, a man is of no decent use to either God or his fellow men. It is not surprising, therefore, that this chapter on man’s domestic and social life should contain several references to the power of speech, not only good speech (verse 7) and controlled speech (verses 27-28), but also perverse speech (verse 20) in a number of forms, such as mendacity (verses 4,7), ridicule (verse 5), and gossip (verse 9).

Matthew 14:13-21: The great significance of the multiplication of the loaves among the early Christians may be discerned from the fact that: (1) outside of the events of Holy Week, it is one of the very few scenes recorded in all four gospels; (2) aspects of it are depicted numerous times in the earliest Christian iconography; (3) normally recorded in language identical to, or at least reminiscent of, that of the Last Supper, it is clearly one of the events of Jesus’ life perceived to be weighted with the greatest theological significance. This is clearest in John, where it is accompanied by the lengthy and elaborate Bread of Life discourse.

This miraculous event brought to the minds of those present the expectation that the coming Messiah would renew the events of the Exodus, including the feeding of the people with miraculous bread in the wilderness. This sense of expectation and fulfillment accounts for the considerable emphasis on Messianic themes in early Eucharistic texts of the Christian Church.

Friday, February 22

Proverbs 3: Since the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (1:7; Psalms 111 [Greek 110]:10), something must be said rather early about a man’s relationship to God (verses 1-12). Because the Book of Proverbs has often been regarded as (and criticized for being) a work of selfish interest, motivated by secular concerns, it is important that we stress this matter of the fear of the Lord as wisdom’s beginning. This fear of the Lord is crucial, in fact, to the entire enterprise envisaged in Proverbs.

The fear of the Lord is that quality of mind and soul called reverence, and in biblical thought the quest of Wisdom is inseparable from the cultivation of reverence. The wise man of the Bible is not an arrogant, self-made man who lives by his own lights (verse 5). The wise man is most emphatically NOT the man who “marches to the beat of a different drummer.” He does not make up the rules as he goes along and as they suit him. The wise man lives, rather, in the sight of God at all times, holding his conscience as open as possible to the divine gaze. He trusts in God with all his heart (verses 6-7,26).

This attitude of reverence determines two other things: First, it is the basis of the wise man’s stewardship over the resources that God puts into his hand (verses 9-10). Second, it directs the way a wise man meets the trials of life, namely, for his correction and the refinement of his character (verses 11-12; Hebrews 12:5-6). The sufferings of life, for the man keen in the pursuit of wisdom, are pedagogical.

The second section of this chapter (verses 13-35) is part of a longer meditation (through 4:9) about the merits of wisdom. These merits are considered in detail, lest the young man become discouraged by the recent mention of suffering and trial.

In this description of wisdom’s merits, wisdom is again personified as “Wisdom” and this time more closely associated with God Himself (verses 18-20). The teaching, however, still seems more moral than metaphysical. That is to say, the abiding interest in these verses is not the structure of the universe, but the kind of behavior that places a man in accord with the rules of the universe. Nonetheless, these verses do anticipate the metaphysical considerations that will be presented in 8:27-31.

From his relationship to God, the wise man goes on to consider his social duties to his fellows (verses 27-30; cf. 11:24-26; 14:21,31; 21:13). Above all, the wise man must not be shaken in his resolve when he beholds the prosperity of the wicked (verses 31-35). Even the admission that the wicked may prosper in this world goes strongly against the philosophical current of the Book of Proverbs and touches, however lightly, the moral dilemma faced squarely in the Book of Job.

Saturday, February 23

Proverbs 4: The Book of Proverbs does not claim to contain the fullness of Israel’s wisdom tradition. It only serves as a guide, rather, and a bulwark of that tradition; the larger body of wisdom was contained and transmitted chiefly through oral delivery (verses 1-9). Consequently the Book of Proverbs is constantly indicating a larger historical context beyond its own text. (In this respect, Proverbs resembles the New Testament, another literary collection that presupposes and addresses a larger social and doctrinal context. Though that larger context is always present in the New Testament, it is sometimes referred to explicitly, as in 2 Thessalonians 2:15; 1 Corinthians 10:23; 15:1.)

The chief thing a man must teach his son is the Torah (verse 2; Deuteronomy 6:7). Indeed, throughout this chapter we note that the wise man speaks of Wisdom in much the same terms Deuteronomy uses to describe the Law.

Wisdom must become a man’s bride (verses 7-13; cf. Sirach 14:20-27; 51:13-22; Wisdom of Solomon 8:2).

The theme of the “two ways” (verses 10-27) is common in our inherited pedagogy, both Jewish (Deuteronomy 30:15; Jeremiah 21:8; Sirach 15:7; the Qumran Manual of Discipline 3:13—4:26; 2 Enoch 30:15) and Christian (Matthew 7:13-14; Colossians 1:12-13; Didache 1.1—6:2; Pseudo-Barnabas 18.—21:9). Especially stressed is custody of the heart (verse 23; cf. Matthew 12:34; 15:19; 16:23).

Matthew 12:22-37: The Lord’s work of driving out demons is once again (cf. 9:32-34) the object of controversy, as His enemies allege that this power comes from Jesus’ collusion with the dark forces themselves. Among the Synoptic accounts of this controversy (cf. Mark 3:20-30; Luke 11:14-23) only Matthew records a healing from blindness in the context. This liberation of a man from satanic darkness is contrasted with the example of those who remain steadfast in their own blindness of heart. Having made up their minds to destroy Jesus, they become ever more inveterate in their sins. Hence, this story leads immediately to the theme of the unforgiven sin, the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.

Strictly speaking there is no “unforgivable” sin (verses 31-37), because God’s mercy stands ready to forgive any sin of which men repent. The whole business of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is that it is, by definition, the sin of which men do not repent. It is total and inveterate blindness of heart, in which men can no longer discern the difference between light and darkness. Such appears to be the sin of which the Lord’s enemies are guilty in these texts where we find them plotting His death.

For a pastoral perspective it may be said that those Christians who fear they may have committed such a sin should be take courage from the thought that their very fear is strong evidence that they have not done so. Those who are approaching the unforgiven sin are those who no longer even think about repentance and feel no need for it.

Sunday, February 24

Proverbs 5: Except for consecrated celibates like the prophet Jeremiah and the apostle Paul, the godly and productive life of a man normally requires the proper governance of his home. It is the teaching of Holy Scripture, however, that a man cannot govern his home unless he can govern himself. Self-control and discipline, therefore, are among the primary requisites of a good husband and father, and these are qualities to be developed from an early age. Consequently the Book of Proverbs is emphatic on the prohibition of sexual activity outside of marriage. Sex outside of marriage is also outside of God’s will.

A man’s marriage, in fact, can be damaged long before the marriage takes place. Sex before marriage almost always involves exploitation and disrespect, irresponsibility, selfishness, and rebellion. These are bad habits to learn, not qualities that will make a man a good husband and father.

The present chapter of Proverbs, accordingly, warns a young man against the wiles of the adventurous woman. With keen psychological perception the Sacred Text indicates that the attraction of such a woman most often has as much to do with vanity as with lust; the young man feels flattered by the woman’s attention (verse 3); it causes him to “feel good about himself,” and it is a simple fact of experience that most of us are disposed to befriend, like, and cultivate those who make us feel good about ourselves. It is our great and abiding weakness.

Hence, the young man is warned chiefly against the deceptive nature of flattery (verses 4-5). The flattering, adventurous woman has no idea where she is going, so it is very unsafe to follow her (verse 6). Indeed, a sensible man will put as much distance as possible between himself and such a woman (verse 8), for she is Big Trouble (verses 9-14).

In very figurative and flowery language, reminiscent of the Song of Solomon, the young man is exhorted to find joy in his wife (verses 15-20).

Monday, February 25

Proverbs 6: This chapter begins with four short poems that depict the qualities of folly. The first poem (verses 1-5) warns against financial irresponsibility in the form of unwise generosity towards one’s friends. Financial entanglements have spoiled many a friendship, and exhortations on this matter appear rather often in the Book of Proverbs (11:15; 17:18; 20:16; 22:26-27).

The second poem (verses 6-11) is directed against laziness. Like Aesop, the author sends us to the animal world for moral lessons (24:30-34). The Septuagint version adds a consideration of the bee to that of the ant.

The third poem (verses 12-15) depicts the ne’er-do-well schemer, full of plans for his own quick profit at the disadvantage of his fellow men. Avoid him, is the counsel.

The fourth poem (verses 16-19) is the first of the “numerical proverbs” in this book. These are found in all parts of the Old Testament (cf. Deuteronomy 32:30; Amos 1—2; Micah 5:4; Job 5:19; 40:5; Sirach 25:7; 26:5,19), and Proverbs will later give a series of them (30:15-31).

In verses 20-23 Wisdom is described very much the way that Deuteronomy describes the Law. Indeed, the two things are nearly identified here (cf. especially verse 23, which may remind readers of Psalms 19 and 119).

The last part of the chapter (verses 24-35) returns to the theme of the adventurous woman, who would lure the young man to an early destruction. She is more dangerous than a thief (verses 30-35). Although the earlier penalty for adultery in Israel was stoning to death (Deuteronomy 22:22), the punishment envisaged here seems to be the humiliation of a flogging (verse 33).

Romans 13:1-7: Jesus begins this sermon by sitting down (verse 1)—the posture of the teacher—just as when He began the Sermon on the Mount (5:1; cf. 24:3). A close reading of this text discloses a striking parallel with Revelation 7:9-12, where a great multitude stands before God seated on the throne beside the sea (4:6).

This first parable, in which most of the sown seed is lost, summarizes Jesus’ own experience, as Matthew narrated in the previous chapter. So terribly little of the Gospel, it seems, has fallen on fertile ground. As directed to the Church, this parable urges a sense of modesty about “success” in fruitful preaching. A great deal of the sown Word will simply be wasted.

Tuesday, February 26

Proverbs 7: The Book of Proverbs’ sustained warnings against sexual aberration, especially adultery, which directly attacks the institution of the family, argue that one of man’s chief areas of stewardship is sex. Moreover, the book’s several warnings about adulteresses should be viewed as integral to the image of wisdom as Lady Wisdom, which a wise man is said to take as a bride. And just as Lady Wisdom becomes personified in a man’s own wife, Dame Folly is personified in the adulteress. The entire present chapter is devoted to this theme.

Mockery and sarcasm, rhetorical forms used in both the prophetic and sapiential literature of the Bible with some frequency, enjoy the advantage that comes of not taking someone or something as worthy of serious consideration. This chapter illustrates the advantage. The adventurous woman is held up to considerable ridicule, and so is the young fool who falls for her. Indeed, the young man is here given the very words and gestures that she will employ to seduce him. She commences with flattery (verses 5,21); that is to say, she gives the young man “a positive self-image.” (A man who builds his self-confidence on a woman’s approval already demonstrates his immaturity. Prior to the present age it was taken as axiomatic that a young man should not even seek a woman’s approval, and had no right to expect it, until he had proven himself among men in manly pursuits.)

We see the young man walking down the street, dripping with inexperience, a virtual lamb ambling toward the slaughter (verses 6-7). The very fool, he is strolling aimlessly after dark (verse 6-7; Sirach 9:7), unaware that, even if he is not looking for trouble, trouble is certainly looking for him (verses 10-12). The restless lady comes along and promises him a rollicking good time (verses 13-18), mentioning that her husband will be out of town for a while (verses 19-20). (One thinks of Mrs. Potiphar approaching Joseph in Genesis 39.) Thus is the young fellow suckered into sin (verses 21-23).

The chapter ends with the exhortation to be on guard, especially keeping custody of the heart (verse 25). What is to be eschewed is the path to death (verse 27), the other of the Two Ways.

Wednesday, February 27

Proverbs 8: In this chapter personified Lady Wisdom herself speaks. Like the adulteress in the previous chapter, she too goes seeking the young man in the streets of the city (verse 2). She too appeals to the heart (verse 5). We observe, however, that she does not use flattery. The young man really needs her, and he has nothing to commend him without her.

In the biblical view, God has first loved us, not we God. Man can seek for wisdom, only inasmuch as wisdom seeks for man. And it is all men that she seeks (verse 4), not merely the Jews.

Wisdom teaches truth, the opposite of which is not merely error, but wickedness (verse 7), and truth is identified with righteousness (verse 8). Wisdom is the highest good, the treasure buried in the field, for the sake of which a man will sell all that he has to purchase that field (verses 10-11).

Wisdom is the source of order and justice (verses 12-16). Hence, it is exactly what is required for a man to bring his life into a just order. What a man must have in his heart is the “love of wisdom” (verse 17), an expression called philosophia in Greek. All other gifts come from wisdom (verse 18-19).

Wisdom is the creating companion of God (verses 22-29; Sirach 1:4,8; Colossians 1:15). As such, wisdom is older and more substantial than the physical world (Sirach 24:1-21; Wisdom of Solomon 7:22-28). Indeed, wisdom was the Creator’s architect (verses 27-30).

Such is the wisdom concerned in the chapter’s final exhortation (verses 32-36), which is best read as the verso of the exhortation that closed the previous chapter (7:24-27).

Thursday, February 28

Proverbs 9: This chapter illustrates a contrast between two vastly different meals. From the “highest places of the city” (verses 3,14), both wisdom and folly invite “whoever is simple,” the man who “lacks understanding,” to “turn in here” (verses 4,16), which is to say, to their respective “houses” (verses 1,14). Their respective meals are quite different; the meat and wine of wisdom (verse 2) are contrasted with the bread and water of folly (verse 17). The former meal brings nourishment, whereas the latter is lethal (verse 18). (The contrast between the two women, Wisdom and Folly, in this chapter may be compared with the contrast between the two women, Babylon and Jerusalem, the Whore and the Bride, in the closing chapters of the Book of Revelation.)

If the young man thus admonished is a “scorner,” wisdom’s warning will go unheeded (verse 6), because wisdom is wasted on a fool (cf. Matthew 7:6). Once again, the beginning of wisdom is reverence (verse 10).

The “seven pillars” of the house of wisdom (verse 1) became the trivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric) and quadrivium (arithmetic, music, geometry, astronomy) of the medieval university. Seven, as the number of fullness, was important to the very concept of a university, or house of universal knowledge.

Matthew 13:10-17: In the Gospel dialogue immediately following the parable of the sown seed, only Matthew quotes at length the long text from Isaiah found in verses 14-15. This text well fits the pattern of growing obstinacy on the part of Jesus’ enemies, a theme that has been growing steadily since 11:16. The argument the Lord uses in these verses is obscure, for the plain reason that hardness of heart is an obscure and mysterious subject.

If the workings of divine grace are difficult to comprehend, even more difficult to grasp is man’s willful refusal of that grace. Because a choice is both an effect and a cause, there is a tautology in human choice, and like all tautologies it can only be expressed by what seems a circular argument. That is to say, we choose because we choose. This is what is meant by “free” choice.

Mysteriously, then, the refusal to believe is also the punishment for the refusal to believe. These verses are also a sort of explanation of the following section, particularly verses 19 and 23, which contrast the “understanding” and “non-understanding” of God’s Word.

Friday, March 1

Proverbs 10: We now come to the central core of this book (Chapters 10-22), the 375 aphorisms gathered by Solomon (verse 1). In this respect, it is surely significant that 375 is exactly the numerical value of the Hebrew letters that make up the name “Solomon.”

This central core of Proverbs is divided into two parts, a division based on both literary style and philosophical outlook.

In the first section, Chapters 10 through 15, most of the aphorisms (10:19, for instance, is an exception to this rule) are structured on an antithetical couplet, in which there is a contrast between components in the first and second lines: just/wicked, prudent/foolish, wealth/poverty, accept/refuse, and so forth. In this first section the outlook of the aphorisms is not openly religious, as a rule, but simply “true to life.”

In the second section, Chapters 16 through 22, the couplets are synthetic and complementary, not antithetical, as a rule. In each couplet, rather, the second line completes or extends some component in the first line: the refinement of silver/the testing of souls, loving friend/constant brother, and so on. In this second section, likewise, the outlook or tone is “preachy,” or exhortatory, and more explicitly religious.

Within each section, smaller groups sometimes bind the aphorisms together by either theme or by some rhetorical device. These latter include, for instance, simple expressions common to each maxim, even though the maxims themselves deal with different subjects. An example is 10:16-17.

Considerable stress is laid throughout on the control of the tongue (for instance, verses 19-21,31-32), in terms that will remind us of James 1:9 and 3:2-12.

Matthew 13:18-23: We have already reflected that the Parable of the Sower follows the outline of the Shema. Accordingly, the parable’s interpretation begins with the command, “Hear!” (verse 18) In the Greek wording, in fact, this command carries an emphatic pronoun, unusual with an imperative verb: “You!” This pronoun serves to emphasize the distinction between Jesus’ followers and the “others.”

The first group in this parable, symbolized in the seed sown by the wayside (verse 19), fails in the matter of the “heart” (a detail missing in Mark 4:15). These do not love God with their whole heart, a condition that renders them vulnerable to attack from the Evil One. Their hearts, which have grown dull, have no understanding (verses 14-15).

The second group, symbolized in the rocky ground, is shallow, so the Word cannot take root (verse 20). These will fall away at the first sign of trouble (verse 21). Matthew had already witnessed such trials in his own lifetime (10:18,21-23). Those who thus falter have failed to love God with their whole soul.

The third group, symbolized by the sowing among the thorns, permits the care for wealth and worldly concern to strangle the life from the Gospel (verse 22). They have failed to love God with all their might.

The fourth group, symbolized in the good ground that receives the seed, has the grace of “understanding,” because of which they bring forth fruit (verse 23). They have fruitful lives. They are later symbolized in the two productive servants in the Parable of the Talents (25:16-17).

In Matthew’s version of this parable-interpretation, we note his special emphasis on “understanding” in verses 19 and 23. According to Matthew, a special type of understanding is characteristic of true discipleship. Thus, Matthew omits both references to a failure of understanding on the part of the disciples in Mark 4:10, 13.

And at the end of the parables, in Matthew 13:51, the disciples admit that they do understand what the Lord has been saying. For more evidence of Matthew’s emphasis on understanding as a characteristic of discipleship, one may compare Mark 9:9-13 with Matthew 17:9-13; and Mark 9:30-32 with Matthew 17:22-23.

Friday, February 15

Jacob in Egypt: While God’s direction of events in the Joseph saga consists in the providential oversight of all human activity, we also note a special emphasis on the divine management, as it were, of man’s sinful activity. This story is a fine illustration of God’s ability to bring good from evil. So the wise and forgiving Joseph can announce to his sinful brothers, “Now therefore, do not be grieved or angry with yourselves because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to save life” (45:5; also verse 7), and later, “But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good” (50:20).

The literary climax of the Joseph cycle has already occurred in the previous chapter. Now, for a while, the story simply becomes a chronicle. All that remains is for Jacob and Joseph to die, thus finishing the narrative thread that had been relatively unattended for several chapters. This final part of Genesis chiefly prepares for Exodus.

God reveals Himself to Jacob at Beersheba (verses 1–4), as He has done each time Jacob moved, at Bethel (ch. 28) and at Peniel (ch. 32). God had likewise revealed Himself at Beersheba to Abraham (ch. 21) and Isaac (ch. 26). In that latter passage, as here in chapter 46, the message had to do with the great number of the promised posterity. Jacob now goes down into Egypt with few people, but they will be greatly multiplied over time. This is the latest in the series of migrations in Genesis: from Ur to Haran, from Haran to Canaan, from there to Mesopotamia, back down to Canaan, and finally to Egypt (verses 5–7).

There ensues a long list of those who went down into Egypt, their names preserved because these are the families who will form the company of the Exodus. These are, in short, the “first families” of the race. The list commences with the children of Leah (verses 8–15), of which Levi’s sons are of special importance, for theirs will be the genealogy of Israel’s priesthood, including Moses and Aaron (verses 11–12). The sons of Leah’s handmaiden are listed next (verses 16–18), followed by Rachel’s children (verses 19–22) and those of her handmaiden (vv. 23–26). The number “seventy” is a round number (cf. Acts 7:9–11).

Joseph is at last reunited to his father (verses 28–30). The children of Israel were never to become sedentary in Egypt (verses 31–34). They would never regard the place as home.

Saturday, February 16

Joseph & the Famine: The reader discerns three stories in this chapter: (1) the movement of Jacob’s family into Egypt (verses1–11); (2) Joseph’s career as an Egyptian official (verses 12–26); and (3) Jacob’s burial request (verses 27–31).

The first story has two scenes: First there is a scene involving Joseph’s meeting Pharaoh with some of his brothers (verses 1–5), and then a scene with Pharaoh and Jacob (verses 5–11). In the first scene, care has been taken to relate the settlement of the family in Goshen to the earlier accounts of their nomadic life. The Egyptians, as the Sacred Text reminds us, were not fond of shepherds, an attitude reflecting the frequent strife between sedentary and nomadic peoples (a strife that goes back to Cain and Abel).

The reference to Rameses in the second scene is anachronistic (like saying “Columbus discovered America,” a country that did not even exist in the time of Columbus). The city did not acquire this name until the early thirteenth century before Christ, when Rameses II named it after himself.

In verse 10 the verb “bless” should be preserved, as it is the best translation of the Hebrew barak. One recalls that “the lesser is blessed by the greater” (Hebrews 7:7). The patriarch really did bless the pharaoh; Jacob did not, as the New American Bible has it, simply “pay his respects” to Pharaoh. Barak is the same verb that will be used in the next chapter when Jacob blesses his grandsons.

In the second story (verses 12–26) we see Joseph alter the entire economic and political structure of Egypt, not only saving the people during the famine, but also greatly strengthening the throne of Pharaoh. Indeed, it is not an exaggeration to say that what Joseph produced was a kind of servile welfare state, in which the government owned everything and taxes were high (20%). The people even thanked him for it. (This detail is probably meant to be humorous. The writer is making fun of a people who, after being reduced to abject penury, are grateful for being taxed 20%. One also observes that Joseph, who has married into a clergy family, puts a clergy exemption into the tax code.)

Eventually this economic and political situation would come back to haunt the Israelites, who would resent being slaves in a slave state. It would appear that Joseph himself created the servile conditions that would lead eventually to the Exodus.

In the third story (verses 27–31), Jacob, making it clear that Egypt is not the family’s real home, arranges to be buried in the Promised Land (cf. Hebrews 11:21). The exact meaning of the text, with respect to Jacob’s gesture, has been unclear almost from the beginning. Originally it may have meant only that he nodded assent on his pillow.

Sunday, February 17

Genesis 48: Because of his special role in saving the family, Joseph receives something like the blessing of the firstborn—that is, a double portion; he became the father of two of Israel’s tribes. That meant that his descendants would settle twice the amount of the Promised Land as any of his brothers. Ephrem and Manasseh became, as it were, the sons of Israel himself (verses 1–7).

When Jacob is introduced to the two boys (vv. 8–11), his poor eyesight reminds us of aging Isaac, of whose blindness Jacob had taken advantage. The irony is striking. In that earlier case too the larger blessing had been given to the younger son. What Isaac had done by mistake, however, Jacob will do on purpose (verses 12–15). A Christian reader will take note of Jacob’s crossing of his hands in the act of blessing. It is noteworthy that at least one Christian reader of this text referred to this action as an act of “faith” (Hebrews 11:21, the only example of faith that this epistle ascribes to Jacob).

In the blessing itself (verses 15–16), Jacob reaches back two generations in order to reach forward two generations. Joseph, though he governs Egypt, is unable to govern his old father (verses 17–20). Jacob, let it be said, knew a thing or two about blessings: “I know, my son, I know.” Jacob has been reversing everything since the day he was born, right after tripping up his older brother as the latter emerged from the womb (25:22–23). Right to the end of his life he continues to take the side of the younger man. It is a trait of Jacob’s personality.

First Sunday of Lent: Originally the word Lent, now associated exclusively with the observance of the liturgical year, was simply the Anglo-Saxon for “spring” and had no directly religious significance. In English usage, however, its reference was gradually limited to mean the season of preparation for Easter that does, in fact, occur in spring.

In many other languages of Western Christianity the word for Lent is some variant of “forty,” derived from the Latin quadragesimale. Traditionally this is a period of 40 days of fasting in imitation of the Lord himself, who observed exactly that length of time in fasting prior to the beginning of his earthly ministry. It was also associated with the 40-day fast of Moses on Mount Sinai and of Elijah as he journeyed to that same mountain.

As early as the second century we already find Easter being the preferred time for the baptism of new Christians. The reasons are rather obvious. It is in the Sacrament of Baptism, after all, that Christians are mystically buried and rise with Christ (cf. Romans 6:4; Colossians 2:12).

It was important to earlier believers that some period of prayer and fasting, by way of preparation, should precede the ritual of baptism. Even the Apostle Paul prayed and fasted for three days prior to being baptized (Acts 9:9,11,18).

Monday, February 18

Blessing the Patriarchs: It has long been noticed that some of the imagery in chapter 48 seems to be based on imagery from the Babylonian zodiac. The number of Jacob’s sons, twelve, lent itself readily to the imagery of a zodiac. (This will also be true of the Bible’s last book, where the symbolisms of Jacob’s twelve sons will be combined with the symbolisms of the twelve apostles. Zodiacal imagery is found everywhere in the Book of Revelation.)

That Babylonian zodiac, like all zodiacs, had twelve “signs,” some of which were identical to the later Greek and Roman zodiacs. Indeed, in the present chapter we find the images of Aquarius (verse 4), Gemini (verse 5), Leo (verse 9), and Sagittarius (verse 23). Other images in this chapter are not found in the later zodiacs, however, such as the ass, the serpent, the hind, the colt, and the wolf.

Reuben does not fare too well in the blessing (verses 3–4), because of his sin (35:22). His tribe evaporated, as it were, rather early in Israel’s history, absorbed by the other tribes and by the Syrians. In the final list of the tribes it will appear second, after Judah (Revelation 7:5). Like Reuben, Simeon and Levi (verses 5–7) would cease to exist as political entities. Simeon would be absorbed by Judah, and Levi, as the priestly tribe, would be divided up among all the others as a special class without specific tribal territory. Neither tribe will show up in the roll in Judges 5, and in the final blessing of Moses, in Deuteronomy 33, Simeon is not mentioned at all. In short, a certain cloud hangs over Jacob’s three oldest sons, whose tribes are displaced in seniority by the royal tribe, the family of Judah (vv. 8–12).

Flavius Josephus tells us that Jacob lived seventeen years in Egypt (Antiquities 2.8.1). The biblical description of Jacob’s death vv. 28–33) is remarkable for its failure to mention death! Jacob simply goes “to his people.” That is to say, as Jacob had become Israel, Israel becomes a people. Hence, it was deemed inappropriate to come right out and say that Jacob had died. Jacob was Israel, and Israel was still very much alive.

Tuesday, February 19

The Death of Joseph: Genesis 50 has three parts: (1) the burial of Jacob (verses 1–14), (2) the reconciliation of Joseph and his brothers (vv. 15–21), and (3) the death and burial of Joseph (verses 22–26).

Egyptian embalming was one of the great curiosities of the ancient world, a feature that made Egypt famous. Whereas modern techniques of embalming are designed to disguise the effects of death for only a short time, Egyptian mummification was an attempt to resist the effects of death as much as possible, an endeavor to defy permanently the decay and corruption of the body. Jacob’s embalming required forty days (verses 1–6). By Egyptian standards, this was pretty short. Ancient Egyptian texts suggest something closer to seventy days, which is the number of mourning days indicated in verse 3.

The large retinue of Jacob’s funeral cortege (verses 7–9) serves to stress his prestige and importance. The site of his burial (vv. 10–14) ties this story back to the earlier accounts in the patriarchal narrative. This property had been “in the family” ever since Abraham purchased it in chapter 23 as the family burial plot. Sarah, we recall, was the first to be buried there.

This later account of Joseph and his brothers (verses 15–21) continues a theme from chapter 45. We contrast the magnanimity of Joseph with the pettiness of the pitiful brothers, who were trying to save their necks with a very thin fabrication. Josephus places this story up in the land of Canaan, immediately after Jacob’s burial. He says that the brothers were fearful of returning to Egypt with Joseph.

The reference to Joseph’s “brothers” at his burial (verses 22–26) should be interpreted simply to mean his relatives, which is the normal meaning of the word “brother” in Holy Scripture. Joseph was, after all, younger than most of his blood brothers. Stephen’s sermon seems to indicate that all of Jacob’s sons were buried at Shechem (Acts 7:16). In the rabbinical tradition, however, that site was Hebron (cf. Josephus, Antiquities 2.8.2).

Matthew 11:25-30: Because of its similarity to the Gospel and Epistles of St. John in the very terms of its expression, this text from Matthew is often referred to as the locus johanneus. This custom is perhaps unfortunate, for it conveys the impression that these verses in Matthew would fit the Fourth Gospel better than they fit Matthew.

In fact, however, these verses may be taken as the very key to the proper understanding of Matthew as a whole. They are the explanation of the Father’s voice in 3:17 and 17:5. God has hidden this revelation from the “wise and prudent,” such as the citizens of Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum.

Matthew’s use of these expressions, “babies and little ones,” to describe Christians themselves, accentuates his emphasis on the humility necessary to receive the divine revelation of the Father; hence, the invitation to learn of Jesus, for He is meek and humble of heart, modeling the meekness of those who will inherit the earth (5:5).

In these words Matthew indicates the proper path to Wisdom. This is the subject of the readings from Proverbs, which we will begin tomorrow.

Wednesday, February 20

Proverbs 1: Proverbs is an educational work, designed to lay down certain insights of prudence, or practical wisdom, in the form of short, pithy sayings, or “proverbs” (mishlim). The wisdom (hokma) conveyed in these sayings has to do with the practical moral assessments that a man must make to lead a godly, just, and productive life (verse 2). This teaching, therefore, pertains to discipline (musa), or self-mastery, as well as to the ability to make moral distinctions based on discernment (bina).

Therefore, the wise person (verse 3) will be “cautious” in the conducting of his life (hashkel), acquainted with the requirements of righteous living (sedeq), able both to make sound judgments (mishpat) and to do what is honest (mesharim). If someone learns such things when he is young (verse 4), his wisdom will increase, as he grows older (verse 5; cf. 4:18).

This instruction of the young person will be grammatical, rhetorical, and imaginary (verse 6), but its principle is moral (verse 7), and its transmission comes from parental tradition (verses 8-9). Hence, a certain religious docility to tradition is absolutely required for the attainment of Wisdom.

One of the first things to be acquired is the courage to resist peer pressure (verses 10-19). The clear presumption in this respect is that a young man is surrounded by other young men equally ignorant, who, left to their own devices, will simply pool their ignorance for some common and ill-conceived venture. Therefore, the young man is first of all warned against the nefarious influence of his contemporary companions. All through this book we see an insistence on this point: Wisdom is to be learned from one’s elders, not from one’s buddies.

This initial chapter closes with the first discourse of Wisdom (verses 20-33), an expression formulated by the feminine plural noun (hokmoth). This is Wisdom as it comes from the mind of God (cf. also Proverbs 8; Sirach 1 & 8; Wisdom of Solomon 6-9). The Christology of the New Testament will show this literary personification to be, in fact, a historical Person (Luke 11:31; John 1:1-18; Colossians 1:15-20).

Thursday, February 21

Proverbs 2: This chapter is a poem of six stanzas on the blessings of wisdom. It begins by enumerating the conditions necessary for attaining wisdom (verses 1-5).

In this text we start to observe here a difference of tone or new voice in the Book of Proverbs, especially if we compare it with the Bible’s prophetic literature. In the prophets the voice is vertical, so to speak; it comes down “from above”: “Thus says the Lord!” In Proverbs, on the other hand, the voice is linear, or horizontal; it comes “from the past”: “Listen, my son.” This is one of many rhetorical differences between the Bible’s prophetic and sapiential books.

Wisdom is a gift of God, first of all (verse 6). It is religious before it is practical (verse 5), and it has to do with holiness (verse 8), which is the source of understanding (verse 9). Real wisdom abides in the heart (verse 10; cf. 4:23). Once again the young man is warned against bad companions (verses 12-15).

But now, for the first time, the young man is also warned against a certain sort of woman (verses 16-19). In context she is any young woman besides his wife, and the young man is told to avoid her. If she approaches him, he knows she is up to no good; he should eschew her as something lethal.

Just as God’s Wisdom is personified as a lady solicitous for man’s wellbeing (1:20-23), so folly will be personified, in due course, as a loose woman who will bring a man to destruction. It is thematic in the Book of Proverbs that wisdom is not attained without the strenuous discipline of the sexual passion, of which the proper expression is found only in marriage. (The monogamous ideal portrayed in the Book of Proverbs is rather strong evidence of an authorial hand other than that of Solomon!)

Matthew 12:9-14: The narrative in Matthew continues the theme of the Lord’s relationship to the Sabbath. Rabbinical theory permitted acts of healing on the Sabbath only in danger of death; otherwise such actions had to be postponed. In this text—and generally throughout the gospels—Jesus ignores this distinction.

In the present instance Jesus’ enemies are completely frustrated, because he does not do anything with which they can directly accuse him. We observe, for instance, that he does not touch the afflicted man; he does not speak a single word that could be interpreted as an act of healing. He simply tells the man to extend his impaired hand—and immediately the hand is healed! In their frustration the Lord’s enemies take the action to which most of the narrative has been building: they resolve that he must die.

Friday, February 22

Proverbs 3: Since the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (1:7; Psalms 111 [Greek 110]:10), something must be said rather early about a man’s relationship to God (verses 1-12). Because the Book of Proverbs has often been regarded as (and criticized for being) a work of selfish interest, motivated by secular concerns, it is important that we stress this matter of the fear of the Lord as wisdom’s beginning. This fear of the Lord is crucial, in fact, to the entire enterprise envisaged in Proverbs.

The fear of the Lord is that quality of mind and soul called reverence, and in biblical thought the quest of Wisdom is inseparable from the cultivation of reverence. The wise man of the Bible is not an arrogant, self-made man who lives by his own lights (verse 5). The wise man is most emphatically NOT the man who “marches to the beat of a different drummer.” He does not make up the rules as he goes along and as they suit him. The wise man lives, rather, in the sight of God at all times, holding his conscience as open as possible to the divine gaze. He trusts in God with all his heart (verses 6-7,26).

This attitude of reverence determines two other things: First, it is the basis of the wise man’s stewardship over the resources that God puts into his hand (verses 9-10). Second, it directs the way a wise man meets the trials of life, namely, for his correction and the refinement of his character (verses 11-12; Hebrews 12:5-6). The sufferings of life, for the man keen in the pursuit of wisdom, are pedagogical.

The second section of this chapter (verses 13-35) is part of a longer meditation (through 4:9) about the merits of wisdom. These merits are considered in detail, lest the young man become discouraged by the recent mention of suffering and trial.

In this description of wisdom’s merits, wisdom is again personified as “Wisdom” and this time more closely associated with God Himself (verses 18-20). The teaching, however, still seems more moral than metaphysical. That is to say, the abiding interest in these verses is not the structure of the universe, but the kind of behavior that places a man in accord with the rules of the universe. Nonetheless, these verses do anticipate the metaphysical considerations that will be presented in 8:27-31.

From his relationship to God, the wise man goes on to consider his social duties to his fellows (verses 27-30; cf. 11:24-26; 14:21,31; 21:13). Above all, the wise man must not be shaken in his resolve when he beholds the prosperity of the wicked (verses 31-35). Even the admission that the wicked may prosper in this world goes strongly against the philosophical current of the Book of Proverbs and touches, however lightly, the moral dilemma faced squarely in the Book of Job.

Friday, February 8

Genesis 39: In the story of Joseph the theme of Wisdom is explicit and pronounced (cf. 41:39; Psalms 104 [105]:22). In the present chapter Potiphar’s wife serves as the very incarnation of Dame Folly, that quintessential adventuress trying to seduce the inexperienced young man (Proverbs 5:3–6, 20; 6:29–40; 7:5–6).

As Joseph learned to his considerable hurt, it was in reference to Potiphar’s wife and residence that the wise man was warned, “Make your way distant from her / And do not come near the doors of her house” (Proverbs 5:8).

The ongoing history of Joseph is staged in symbolic ways. For example, Joseph’s different changes of fortune are symbolized in his clothing. His famous and elaborate tunic, which focuses the hatred of his brothers in 37:3-4, is dipped in blood in 37:23–32, thus symbolizing Joseph’s alienation from his family. Then, in verses 12–18 of the present chapter, his ill-fated encounter with Potiphar’s wife is imaged in the loss of the cloak used as evidence to imprison him. His eventual release from prison will again involve a change of clothing in 41:14, and finally a whole new wardrobe symbolizes his new state in 41:42.

Another element of staging and cohesion in the story is introduced by Joseph’s two dreams in 37:5–10, in each of which his brothers bow down before him. This double prostration is prophetic, inasmuch the brothers bow before him on each of their trips to Egypt (42:6; 43:26; 44:14; 50:18), and Joseph specifically remembers the dreams on the first of these instances (42:9).

The Joseph narrative is one of the Bible’s first examples of a story happening in two places at once. The introduction of the Judah episode in chapter 38, right after Joseph’s departure for Egypt, serves to suggest a lengthy passage of time, but it also establishes what will become a mounting “geographical” tension between dual centers of activity, Canaan and Egypt. The journeys of the brothers to Egypt and their returns to Canaan will eventually provide the setting for the two conflicting aspirations of Joseph and Jacob, the former resolved to bring Benjamin to Egypt, and the latter determined to keep him in Canaan.

Saturday, February 9

More Dreams: The climax of the Joseph story will be his revelation of himself to his brothers. Everything in the story is arranged to set up that event. Thus, Joseph must go to jail. If he does not go to jail, he will not meet the king’s cupbearer. If he does not meet the king’s cupbearer, he will not come to the attention of Pharaoh. If he is not brought to the attention of Pharaoh, he will not encounter his brothers. And so on. The narrative is very carefully pieced together. Because the events themselves were integrally related.

Meanwhile, Joseph is in jail. Indeed, he is pretty much running the place after a while (39:23), when two other prisoners are brought in (verses 1–4). Already introduced to the reader as a man of dreams in chapter 37, Joseph now appears as an interpreter of dreams (vv. 4–8).

A royal cupbearer was a great deal more than a table servant. He was, rather, a high official of the court, normally ranking right after the royal family itself. Such men were obliged to be very careful, for they served autocratic masters and were perpetually in danger of offending them (cf. Nehemiah 1:11—2:6).

Somehow or other, this cupbearer had managed to offend Pharaoh. Thrown in jail, he had done a lot of brooding, and this brooding led to a dream about his fate (verses 9–11). Joseph’s interpretation of the dream, however, is rather encouraging (verses 12–13). The Hebrew in this passage says that the cupbearer’s head will be “lifted up.” In this instance, to “lift up the head” means to exalt, to restore to honor. Even as Joseph gives the cupbearer his interpretation of the dream, he senses that this gentleman may someday provide his own way out of prison (verses 14–15).

Encouraged by Joseph’s interpretation of the cupbearer’s dream, the royal baker decides to tell his own dream (verses 16–17). The images in each dream are related to the professions of the dreamers, pressed grapes and cup for the first man, baskets of bakery goods for the second. In each case, the number “three” is important. This second dream, nonetheless, introduces a disturbing note: Birds come and peck at the baked goods. This is alien element represents a common symbol of frustration in dreams.

Joseph sees right away that this is not a good sign (verses 18–19). In the Hebrew text, there is a rather grim play on words here, a feature not adequately conveyed in the Septuagint translation. “Lifting up the head” no longer implies restoration and exaltation as it did in the cupbearer’s dream. The baker’s head will be “lifted up,” rather, in the sense that he will be decapitated. Understandably, we observe that the baker neglects to thank Joseph for this interpretation of his dream!

The important point is that Joseph’s interpretations of the two dreams are prophetic (verses 20–23). The next chapter will tell us, however, that the cupbearer will not remember Joseph for another two years.

Sunday, February 10

Genesis 41: We now come to the third discussion of dreams in the Joseph story. Pharaoh has a dream. Indeed, it becomes something of a nightmare, causing Pharaoh to wake up, which is perhaps why he can recall the dream so vividly (vv. 1–4). Going back to sleep, he has another dream (verses 5–7).

It is interesting that the Greek historian, Herodotus (2.136), provides us with a story that parallels the present instance. It concerns the dream of an Ethiopian pharaoh named Shabaka, of the twenty-fifth dynasty (725–667). Egyptian literature itself is full of such dreams. In antiquity dreams were regarded as among the ways that gods revealed practical truths to kings and other leaders. We find another instance of it in the case of Solomon (1 Kings 3; 2 Chronicles 1).

Pharaoh’s two dreams have left him very upset, and at last the cupbearer remembers Joseph (vv. 8–13). After all, kings could become very upset if no one could be found to interpret their dreams (cf. Daniel 2:1–6). Evidently the cupbearer sensed danger, since Pharaoh’s dream had not yet an interpreter. The fear serves to jog his memory; he recalls how he himself had gotten out of jail two years earlier. At this point he apparently does not even recall Joseph’s name (verse 12).

Joseph is summoned (verses 14–16). We note that this is the third reference to a change in Joseph’s clothing.

Joseph has no doubt that this dream comes from God. God speaks to man in dreams (compare Job 33:15–18; Numbers 12:6). Pharaoh, then, tells his dreams (verses 17–24). We observe that these dreams are not predictions; they are a diagnosis and a warning. Thus, Joseph is able, not only to interpret the dreams, but to instruct Pharaoh what to do about them. His wisdom, in other words, is not just speculative, but practical (verses 25–32).

Pharaoh’s dreams have to do with the Nile River, the annual flooding of which is essential to Egyptian agriculture. The Nile’s failure to flood over a seven-year period would be catastrophic indeed. In fact, there is a stone inscription found near the first cataract of the Nile, on the island of Siheil, which indicates that a seven-year drought was not unthinkable.

Joseph does not even pause (verses 33–36). He immediately supplies the practical remedy for the problem, not even waiting for Pharaoh to question him. One has the impression that he has already worked out the details in his mind while he was giving Pharaoh the interpretation. There is no time to be lost (verse 32). The work will require centralized control. This is no work for a committee, and there is no leisure for a discussion. The only efficient course will require a strong, swift, executive hand (verse 33).

We have already seen Joseph as a take-charge kind of fellow, managing Potiphar’s estate as soon as he arrived, put in charge of the jail as soon as he became a prisoner, and so forth. Pharaoh knows that he has before him the right man for the job (verses 37–43), recognizing that this wisdom comes from the Holy Spirit (verses 38–39).

Joseph again changes clothes (v. 42) and starts a new life (verses 44–46), with new responsibilities (verses 47–49). His plans are successful (verses 53–57).

Joseph becomes the father of two Israelite tribes (verses 50–52). According to Origen and other ancient interpreters, he is now about thirty years old.

Monday, February 11

Back and Forth: As Joseph predicted, famine also hits the land of Canaan, at which point the Joseph story is tied back to its earlier period (verses 1–5). We learn right away that Jacob, having lost Joseph, has become excessively protective of his youngest son, Benjamin. This detail is inserted early in the narrative sequence, because it will become an important component in the development of the story.

These next few chapters will be sustained by a tension between Egypt and Canaan, between Joseph and Jacob, with Joseph trying to get Benjamin down into Egypt, while Jacob endeavors to keep him in Canaan.

When the other brothers come into Egypt (verses 6–7), Joseph starts his game, which begins with a bit of fun at their expense. As we have seen, this kind of thing runs in the family: Abraham had deceived Pharaoh by claiming to be Sarah’s brother. Isaac had deceived Abimelech by pretending to be Rebecca’s brother. Jacob deceived Isaac by pretending to be Esau. Leah pretended to be Rachel, thereby deceiving Jacob. The Bible obviously revels in these deceptions. Indeed, our eternal salvation itself will involve a massive act of deception, in which the Wisdom of God deceives Satan (1 Corinthians 2:6–8).

Without recognizing who he is, the brothers prostrate themselves before Joseph (verses 8–17), who discerns in their act the fulfillment of dreams he had shared with them two decades earlier.

Even while deceiving his brothers, Joseph manages to catch up on the news back home. He learns that Jacob and Benjamin are still alive. He plays his big card when they mention Benjamin; on the pretense of checking out their story, he insists that Benjamin be brought down to Egypt. He then throws them all into jail for three days to think about it.

What Joseph is trying to learn is whether or not his brothers have really changed. Are they still the same villains who tried to get rid of him years before, or have they altered in their minds and hearts? He puts the pressure on them. He must find out. He finally shows them a bit of mercy (verses 18–26).

In these encounters of Joseph with his brothers, there are two features to bear in mind: First, Joseph understands everything they are saying among themselves, but the brothers, imagining that they are dealing with an Egyptian, do not know this. From their conversations, Joseph ascertains that they are still trying to deal with their ancient sin.

Joseph is joking at their expense. At the same time, however, he is hard hit by his own feelings as he sees what is happening to his brothers. Overcome with emotion, he must retire from the scene in order to weep.

Second, unlike his brothers, Joseph is aware how long the famine will last. He knows, therefore, that they will be back eventually. In order to guarantee it, he seizes Simeon, the second oldest. Joseph has just learned that the oldest, Reuben, had tried to save him at the time of his abduction; Reuben is spared.

Joseph puts a new twist on the game (verses 27–28). His return of their money may seem like generosity on his part, but his brothers are terrified by it. It may appear, they fear, that they have run off without paying for their food, and this governor of Egypt is obviously no man to mess with. How could they ever explain how they had neglected to pay? We observe that Joseph does everything he can to keep his brothers off-balance. Within three chapters he will reduce them to quivering bundles of insecurity. Whatever arrogance or unrepentance or hardness of heart is still in them will be completely gone before Joseph is finished.

When the nine brothers arrive home (verses 29–34), the whole story is told again, as a literary sort of “instant replay.” This allows the reader to savor the irony of their situation. The brothers finish their account by breaking the really distressing news that Benjamin must accompany them on the next trip. This is too much for old Jacob (verses 35–38), and now everybody is off-balance. Very protective of Benjamin, Jacob almost seems resigned to the loss of Simeon.

At this point, Reuben loses his mind, as it were, offering up Jacob’s two grandsons. Joseph has certainly succeeded in throwing the whole family into a spin. Meanwhile, no matter what Jacob says, Joseph is quite certain that they will be back. After all, he knows just how long the famine will last; they don’t. He holds all the good cards.

Tuesday, February 12

Benjamin in Egypt: Eventually the family again runs short of food, so Jacob asks his sons to return to Egypt to procure some. The old man appears to be in a state of denial, giving the order as though there were no complications involved (verses 1–2). It will be up to one of the older sons to remind him that things will not be so easy.

In the previous chapter it was Reuben who served as spokesman for the brothers, both to Joseph and to Jacob. As we saw, he had not been terribly successful, so this time Judah takes over the task (verses 3–5), giving Jacob an ultimatum: Either risk Benjamin or the whole family will starve.

In response, Jacob goes from denial to blame (verse 6). His line of argument is, of course, futile. The point of no return was long ago reached. Jacob is dealing with a situation that no longer exists. Like many older people whose memories of the past are far more pleasant than the realities of the present, Jacob resists being reminded of the facts.

The problem is that he is the one who must make the decision. His sons are powerless to do anything apart from his authority. They too, once again accused, become defensive (verse 7). Joseph had outwitted them; how could they have known? We readers understand, of course, but none of the participants up in Canaan have a clue.

Judah puts his foot down. Enough of this guilt, denial, and blame (verses 8–10)! In his executive action, we perceive the attitude and skills of the kings to whom Judah will become the father: David, Solomon, Hezekiah, Josiah, Joseph of Nazareth. Judah obliges Jacob to give in (verses 11–14), and the latter makes very practical suggestions about taking gifts to the Egyptian official and returning the money. Judah also assumes responsibility for Benjamin. Finally, he prays, not really knowing what he is praying for (though the reader knows), and not knowing that his prayer has already been answered.

The brothers return to Egypt (verses 15–17). In their prior trip, Joseph had been rough with them. Now he is kind. What can it mean? So long receptive of bad news and not expecting anything different, the brothers are disposed to put an evil interpretation on the circumstances (verses 18–22). The author of the passage is obviously relishing this description of their mounting anxiety. The brothers have wandered into the “big leagues,” as it were. Faced with the grandeur of the Egyptian court, they fairly come undone. This “man” in Egypt is by far the most powerful person with whom they have ever dealt.

They take their case to the head-steward who is able to speak to them in their own native tongue (verse 23). They never imagine that Joseph has understood everything they have said hitherto.

Once again, when the brothers meet Joseph, the prophecy in the ancient dream is fulfilled (verses 24–26). Two dreams, two fulfillments. The reader begins to wonder how long Joseph can sustain this ongoing farce (verses 27–30). He controls himself, however, for he still has one big test in mind, a final test. For a second time, nonetheless, Joseph is overcome with emotion.

During the meal, Joseph goes from this pathos to some more light kidding (verses 31–34), placing his brothers at the table according to their ages, a fact that causes them some more consternation. Could this be an accident? This “man” in Egypt is most uncanny and mysterious. He holds them in the palm of his hand, as it were.

Ash Wednesday, February 13

Genesis 44: We come now to the final test. As we saw in the two previous chapters, Joseph is hard put to control his emotions. He longs to reveal himself to his brothers. He must control himself, however, because there is a practical task to be accomplished. Being a practical man, Joseph listens to his head more than his heart and prepares the final test (verses 1–6).

After the departure of his brothers, he causes them to be pursued (verses 6–13). The brothers plead their innocence. With great confidence they offer the life of the guilty party if there be such a one among them. This is exactly what Jacob had said to Laban when the latter had complained about the theft of his household god (31:32). Once again the process goes by the oldest to the youngest, a procedure that permits the gradual build-up of suspense, reaching the climax of the scene in the discovery of the cup in Benjamin’s sack.

The brothers at this point are struck silent. There is not a word, not an excuse, not a protestation. They now return to the city in silence, each man dealing privately with his own desperation. According to the terms of the steward, all of them may return safely home except Benjamin, but then they must face their father without Benjamin. Joseph has them exactly where he wants them. The trapdoor is closed. The brothers have run out of options. Now Joseph will learn what they are made of.

Joseph bears down on his brothers in inexorable, unbearable terms (verses 14–17). At this point the author no longer speaks of “the brothers,” but of “Judah and his brothers,” a significant detail that serves to introduce Judah’s lengthy speech that forms the second half of this chapter. We saw earlier that Judah has become the spokesman for the sons of Israel, their natural leader. It was he who endeavored to rescue Joseph in chapter 37, and the entire following chapter was devoted to him. He emerges now as the leader, who will become the father of Israel’s kings.

As he begins his discourse (verses 18–24), Judah stresses Jacob’s special fondness for Benjamin. The reader notices that something has changed. Back when Joseph had been the favorite son, the rest of the brothers had been jealous. Now, however, they are not jealous of Benjamin. Now they are concerned with the welfare of their father, not their own.

Judah continues (verses 25–29), emphasizing how the old man would be distressed by the loss of his youngest son. He especially sets in parallel the earlier loss of Joseph and the now potential loss of Benjamin. This is the key. This is what Joseph must learn from his brothers: Will they treat Benjamin as they had, many years before, treated him? Will they permit Benjamin to become a slave, as they had, many years before, sold him into slavery? Will that great betrayal be repeated?

Judah himself perceives that this is exactly his own moral situation. Will he repeat the former offense to their father? After all, the idea of selling Joseph into slavery had been Judah’s idea (37:25–27).

Judah makes his final appeal, offering himself in slavery in place of
his youngest brother (verses 30–34). Judah will be the “substitute.” Like his distant Descendant centuries later, he will make the atonement in the place of his brother. He will take upon himself his brother’s offense, becoming the sacrificial victim to redeem the rest of the family. And he will do these things, like his distant Descendant many centuries later, out of love for his father. This is Judah’s ultimate and compelling plea before the Throne: “The world must know that I love the Father” (John 14:31).

Thursday, February 14

Joseph Revealed: The tension has been mounting for several chapters, as Joseph has—step by step—put to the test the spiritual state of his brothers. He has now utterly reduced them, forcing them to face their guilt and to assume responsibility for their plight. They are completely hopeless and limp before him.

At the same time, Joseph has been obliged to place very tight, unnatural restraints on his own emotions, and now the latter have mounted to flood stage behind the restraining wall of his will. The time has come, then, to bring everything out into the open. No good will be served by further delay. Joseph speaks (verses 1–3).

The brothers are not able to come to grips with the situation. This powerful stranger has suddenly started speaking to them in their own language. The veil is removed. If the brothers were vulnerable and despairing in the previous chapter, now things have become infinitely worse. They are now faced with a reality that they had not even slightly suspected. Joseph must repeat who he is (verse 4), and for the first time he mentions a certain incident that happened in Dothan many years before.

This reference can hardly provide comfort for the bewildered brothers, and Joseph must attempt to lessen their stark terror and anxiety (verse 5), for God’s providence works even in sin (Philemon 15). God commands us always to meet evil with good, and God Himself models that commandment. Anyone can bring good from good. Divine activity is chiefly manifest in bringing good out of evil. Joseph must repeat the lesson to be learned (verses 6–8).

Joseph alternates between practical concerns (verses 9–13, 21–24) and more emotional outbursts stirred by the moment (verses 14–15). If the brothers actually said anything at this point, it was probably incoherent.

They become extremely passive and obedient. As long as they are in Egypt, chapter 45 will record not a single word from them. The entire impression from this chapter will be bewilderment to the point of stupefaction.

Joseph’s single question to them has to do simply with his father. Like Judah in the previous chapter, Joseph’s concern is for his father. This is entirely proper, because Jacob, on learning what had transpired, is overwhelmed with emotion (verses 25–28). Some news is just too good to believe (compare Luke 24:37–38; Mark 16:9–13).

Friday, February 15

Jacob in Egypt: While God’s direction of events in the Joseph saga consists in the providential oversight of all human activity, we also note a special emphasis on the divine management, as it were, of man’s sinful activity. This story is a fine illustration of God’s ability to bring good from evil. So the wise and forgiving Joseph can announce to his sinful brothers, “Now therefore, do not be grieved or angry with yourselves because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to save life” (45:5; also verse 7), and later, “But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good” (50:20).

The literary climax of the Joseph cycle has already occurred in the previous chapter. Now, for a while, the story simply becomes a chronicle. All that remains is for Jacob and Joseph to die, thus finishing the narrative thread that had been relatively unattended for several chapters. This final part of Genesis chiefly prepares for Exodus.

God reveals Himself to Jacob at Beersheba (verses 1–4), as He has done each time Jacob moved, at Bethel (ch. 28) and at Peniel (ch. 32). God had likewise revealed Himself at Beersheba to Abraham (ch. 21) and Isaac (ch. 26). In that latter passage, as here in chapter 46, the message had to do with the great number of the promised posterity. Jacob now goes down into Egypt with few people, but they will be greatly multiplied over time. This is the latest in the series of migrations in Genesis: from Ur to Haran, from Haran to Canaan, from there to Mesopotamia, back down to Canaan, and finally to Egypt (verses 5–7).

There ensues a long list of those who went down into Egypt, their names preserved because these are the families who will form the company of the Exodus. These are, in short, the “first families” of the race. The list commences with the children of Leah (verses 8–15), of which Levi’s sons are of special importance, for theirs will be the genealogy of Israel’s priesthood, including Moses and Aaron (verses 11–12). The sons of Leah’s handmaiden are listed next (verses 16–18), followed by Rachel’s children (verses 19–22) and those of her handmaiden (vv. 23–26). The number “seventy” is a round number (cf. Acts 7:9–11).

Joseph is at last reunited to his father (verses 28–30). The children of Israel were never to become sedentary in Egypt (verses 31–34). They would never regard the place as home.

Friday, February 1

Wrestling With God: After taking leave of Laban, Jacob must think about how to approach Esau, for Esau represents the tricky aspect of Jacob’s homecoming (verses 4–7). Esau, meanwhile, has moved south to the land of Edom, a dry and inhospitable land that lucidly explains the words of God, “Esau I have hated, and I have appointed his borders for destruction and made his heritage as dwellings of the wilderness” (Malachi 1:3).

If Jacob is feeling threatened by Laban, he now feels even worse from the information that his older twin is coming to meet him with four hundred armed men. That last part is hardly the sort of detail calculated to allay anxiety. Indeed, a certain sense of anxiety may be exactly what Esau wants to inspire in Jacob. If so, the maneuver is successful.

Jacob does two things (verses 8–13). First, he prepares for the worst, taking certain practical steps with a view to at least a partial survival of his family. Second, he takes to prayer, certainly the most humble prayer he has made so far.

Ultimately, after all, this is a story of Jacob’s relationship to God. Up to this point, God is still Isaac’s God, the “God of my fathers” (verse 9). Jacob has not yet done what he promised at Bethel—take God as his own (28:21). God had also made certain promises to Jacob at Bethel, and Jacob now invokes those promises.

He continues his preparations for meeting the brother he has not seen in twenty years (v. 14–23). He sends delegations with gifts, which are intended to impress Esau. Jacob, after all, knows that Esau has four hundred men, but Esau does not know how many Jacob may have. Jacob’s gifts, including five hundred and eighty animals, verge on the flamboyant.

Jacob approaches the ford of Jabbok, at a place called Peniel, or “face of God” (v. 30). The Hebrew text of verses 17–31 uses the word “face” (paneh) no fewer than six times. Jacob knows that Esau will soon be “in his face.” He must “face” Esau, which is why he is going directly toward him. Up to this point, Jacob has been a man of flight, flight from Canaan, flight from Haran, flight from Esau, flight from Laban. This all must change. No more flight; Jacob cannot face his future until he has faced his past.

Even before he can face Esau, however, Jacob must face Someone Else (verses 23–33). This encounter with God, which apparently Jacob has not anticipated, is far more significant than his encounter with Esau. A millennium later the prophet Hosea would meditate on this scene. This wrestling match is Jacob’s decisive encounter with God.

Everything changes: First, his name is changed to Israel (verse 29), as
Abram’s was changed to Abraham in a parallel encounter with God (17:3–5, 15). Second, God is no longer simply “the God of my fathers.” He is now “the God of Israel” (verse 20). Third, Jacob will limp from this experience for the rest of his life (verses 26, 32–33). No one wrestles with the living God and afterwards looks normal and well-adjusted. There is a further irony here. Jacob began life by tripping his brother as the latter exited the womb. Now Jacob himself will be permanently tripped up by a limp.

Jacob has remained on the near side of the river all night long, not fording the Jabbok with the rest of his family. When he rises in the morning, he must limp across alone. Esau and his four hundred men are just coming into view.

Saturday, February 2

Genesis 33: One is struck by Jacob’s great deference to his older brother, whom he had severely wronged a couple of decades earlier (verses 1–4). As it turned out, however, it was not necessary for Jacob to appease Esau. Even without his primogeniture inheritance and the blessing of the firstborn, Esau had done very well for himself and appeared not to hold a grudge against his brother. Evidently the blessing Isaac pronounced over Esau was very potent (27:39).

Esau meets the rest of the family (verses 4–7), and all manner of politeness is exchanged (verses 8–11). Stress is laid on the great wealth of each of the brothers, in terms that may remind the reader of Solomon later on (1 Kings 10:14–25).

Esau is concerned for Jacob’s safety as he travels with considerable wealth but with no adequate military escort. Jacob moves on, however, and settles down for some time at Succoth (vv. 12–17).

He eventually goes to Shechem (the modern Nablus, a corruption of the Greek neapolis or “new city”), where he builds a shrine (verses 18–20).

Comparing the present account with Jacob’s earlier prayer at Bethel in chapter 28, we observe in him a new level of spiritual maturity. Whereas in that earlier scene the Lord had identified Himself as “the Lord God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac” (28:13), in the present text the shrine is dedicated to El Elohe Israel, “God, the God of Israel.” The God of Jacob’s fathers has now truly become his own God. This designation reflects Jacob’s experience at Peniel, where he wrestled with the Almighty and received a new name. The Bible’s next story will find Jacob still at Shechem.

So far we have found the patriarchs associated with most of the great cultic centers of the Holy Land, such as Hebron, Beersheba, Bethel, and Shechem.

Haggai 2:1-9: This oracle from Haggai was given on October 5, 520 B.C.

The twentieth day of the month Tishri was the fifth day of the week called the Feast of Tabernacles (cf. Leviticus 23:34), an autumnal harvest celebration (cf. Deuteronomy 16:13). In the year 520 that festival was especially significant, because God’s people had begun to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem, a replacement for the temple destroyed by the Babylonians sixty-six years earlier.

As they rebuilt it, however, a very disappointing fact was becoming clear to the people—namely, that this new structure, when finally completed, was going to be pretty small, because the people had nowhere near the financial resources available to Solomon when he had constructed the first temple four centuries earlier. Like the men who were building it, this new temple would be poor (verse 3; cf. Ezra 3:12-13).

Nonetheless, said Haggai, this new house of God would be adorned, in due course, with silver and riches from around the world (verses 7-9). A literal translation of verse 7 from the Hebrew (“I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of the nations will come in”) makes perfect sense, meaning that Jews from all over the world, coming to the new temple on pilgrimage, would continue to adorn and expand it until “the glory of the latter house would outshine that of the former.”

However, the ancient Christian Latin translation of this verse (reflected, curiously, in the King James Version), reads, et veniet Desideratus cunctis gentibus, which means, “and He who is desired by the nations will come.” This translation is echoed, of course, in the final verse of the old Veni Emmanuel hymn adapted from the “O Antiphons” of Advent, “O Come, Desire of nations, bind / in one the hearts of all mankind.” That is to say, the new temple of Haggai’s era was the very temple into which Jesus, the One desired by the nations, would enter.

Sunday, February 3

Trouble at Shechem: The inhabitants of Shechem are called Hivites in the Hebrew text, Hurrians or Horites in the Greek text. Non-Semites, they did not practice circumcision, and their introduction to the practice is something less than felicitous.

Jacob’s daughter went gadding about (verses 1–4) and came to the attention of a local young man who was evidently accustomed to getting what he wanted. His name was Shechem, too. In spite of the New American Bible’s indication of violence (“he lay with her by force”), the Hebrew wai‘anneha is perhaps better translated as “he humbled her” or “he seduced her.” Subsequent events suggest that this was not an act of violence. As it turns out, in fact, Dinah is already living at the young man’s home.

I remarked that this young Shechem was accustomed to getting what he wanted. Now he is about to be introduced to Dinah’s big brothers, who have some ideas of their own and also know what they want. This will be Israel’s first recorded armed conflict. As in the case of the Greeks assembled before the walls of Troy, they will be fighting over a stolen woman.

Down through the centuries this biblical story has been told chiefly for its moral message. For instance, in the twelfth century St. Bernard of Clairvaux used Dinah as an example of a gadabout, exemplifying the vice of curiosity, which Bernard called “the first step” on the inversed ladder of pride.

Jacob and Hamor, the fathers of the two young people, are remarkably patient, but not Dinah’s brothers (vv. 5–7). As we shall see in the cases of Reuben and Judah in the next few chapters, Jacob’s sons are not all models of chastity, but they were genuinely concerned for their sister’s wellbeing and their family’s honor. To describe what has happened to Dinah, they employ the word nebelah or “folly,” which term rather often indicates a sexual offense. For instance, this word appears four times in Judges 19-20, where it refers to a woman’s being raped to death. It also refers to Amnon’s rape of Tamar in 2 Samuel 13:12, to adultery in Jeremiah 29:23, and to the infidelity of an engaged girl in Deuteronomy 22:21. The word is perhaps better translated as “outrage.”

A meeting takes place, as though by accident (vv. 8–12). Hamor and Shechem offer a deal. After all, Dinah is living at Shechem’s house. Why not simply legitimize the situation? Any solution but marriage would make things worse. Besides, the Shechemites reason, if they were all going to be neighbors anyway, why not a general miscegenation of the two peoples?

Here we touch upon an important point of theology, because the very concept of intermarriage might mean that the line of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would cease to be distinct; the very notion of a chosen people might be lost. Intermarriage with these Shechemites would have led to quite another result than that envisioned in the Bible (cf. 2 Corinthians 6:14–18).

Jacob’s sons make a reasonable proposal, but not sincerely (verses 13–17). They speak “with guile,” bemirmah. This is the identical expression we saw in 27:35 to describe what Jacob had done: “Your brother came bemirmah and has taken away your blessing.” Guile seems to run in this family.

Shechem’s relatives, anyway, agree to submit to circumcision (verses 18–24). Do they realize that they will thereby be accepting the covenant in chapter 17? Probably not, but the question is moot anyway. Circumcision is simply part of a deceitful plan in this instance.

The offense of Simeon and Levi (verses 25–29), in addition to its cruelty, has about it a touch of deep irreverence. God had given Abraham’s descendents the rite of circumcision as the sign of a special covenant. That is to say, circumcision was God’s chosen sign for blessing. By their actions in this chapter, however, Simeon and Levi distort that sign, turning it into an occasion of violence against their enemies. They take something sacred and pervert it into the instrument of their own vengeance. Their action in this case points to the danger of using the blessings of God against our fellow man.

Monday, February 4

Genesis 35: Jacob revisits Bethel (verses 1–7) in a story that continues the tough “reform” mentality of the previous chapter. Bethel represents, after all, Jacob’s acceptance of personal monotheism: “There is only one God, and He is my God.”

The washing and changing of clothing is symbolic of Jacob’s sense of the holiness of the place (Exodus 19:10), and the earrings in the story are crescents dedicated to the Semitic moon divinity.

Verse 8 is a sort of parenthesis; that is, the author, when he comes to speak of Bethel, suddenly remembers that the nurse of Jacob’s mother was buried there. Otherwise, this verse seems to have no connection at all to the narrative at this stage.

The promises of the covenant are renewed for Jacob (verses 9–10). The scene is reminiscent of similar covenant scenes with Abraham (15:5, 7) and Isaac (26:2–4).

Bethel had been the scene of an earlier “stage” in Jacob’s religious growth. His return there (vv. 13–15) indicates that that earlier stage must now be incorporated into the larger picture. Jacob goes back to rethink and to rededicate that earlier event. In a sense, he is no longer the same man who first went to Bethel. Yet, that earlier event was an essential component of what Jacob has now become.

Finally we come to the birth of Benjamin and the death of Rachel (verses 16–20), Jacob’s favorite wife. Benjamin is the only one of Jacob’s sons to be born in the Holy Land. His mother’s choice for the boy’s name, Benomi, meant either “son of my strength” or, more likely, “son of my affliction.” The name Benjamin means “right-hand son.”

This could mean something close to our own metaphor of “my right-hand man,” or it could simply mean “southerner” (for an “oriented” or east-facing person). If this latter signification is what is intended, it may mean that Benjamin was born the furthest south of all the sons of Jacob. Whatever the specific meaning, the reader should not forget that we are reading here the partial genealogy of the apostle Paul (cf. Romans 11:1; Philippians 3:3–4).

Another domestic scandal ensues (verses 21–22), this time respecting Reuben. The latter will later come in for a rather unfavorable mention because of this incident (49:3–4), and in fact the tribe of Reuben will never amount to much in Israel’s history. In due course it will be absorbed by the Gadites and the tribe of Manasseh, and poor Reuben will be left with only a sandwich named after him.

In the patriarchal list that follows (verses 27–29), the author of Genesis is telling us that the foundation has now been laid for the rest of the biblical story. The patriarchal roots are now in place. We may compare this “list of the Twelve” with the four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, which early provide lists of the Twelve Apostles. In all these cases, as here in Genesis, we are dealing with a patriarchal institution.

Finally, we come to the death of Isaac (verses 27–29). Isaac thought he was dying back in 27:4, but here he is, eight chapters later, still alive, up to the end of chapter 35. Isaac was already 60 years old when the twins were born (25:26) and a hundred years old when Esau first married (26:34), and another eighty years have passed since then (verse 28).

Tuesday, February 5

The Edomites: Before closing the door on Esau, who was rejected from a direct and active role in salvation history (Malachi 1:2–3; Romans 9:13), the Bible provides a list of the tribes derived from the seed of Jacob’s older brother, the peoples of Edom. This list forms a sort of literary break between the Jacob and Joseph cycles.

Were it not for the Bible, and for this list in particular, the Edomites would have disappeared from recorded history just as surely as their patriarch disappeared from salvation history. The substance of this list was later incorporated into the work of the Chronicler (1 Chronicles 1:35–53).

This compilation appears to be made up of six separate lists: (1) the immediate sons of Esau and his settling at Seir (verses 1–8); (2) Esau’s grandsons (verses 9–14); (3) the early chieftains of Edom (verses 15–19); (4) the first inhabitants of Seir (verses 20–30); (5) the kings of Edom (vv. 31–39); and (6) the governors of Edom after their monarchy (verses 40–43). The reader observes that these lists correspond to the developing stages of Edom’s political history. That is to say, the biblical historians kept a steady eye on the Edomites over a fairly long history. (Much of this material obviously comes from periods long after Moses.)

In the first list (verses 1–8) it is easy to discern small discrepancies with the narratives about Esau (26:34; 28:9). These are probably to be explained by discrepancies within the extra-biblical sources used in their compilation. Nor do all the biblical sources themselves agree on the names of Esau’s wives. For example, in the Samaritan text Mahaleth is substituted for Basemath in verses 3, 4, 10, 13, and 17. There is no compelling reason to suppose that Esau had more than three wives.

Some names in the second list (verses 9–14) appear elsewhere in Holy Scripture. Reuel (v. 13), for instance, was the father-in-law of Moses (Exodus 2:18; Numbers 10:29), and Eliphaz (verse 12) may be one of the comforters of Job.

The tribal leaders in the third list (verses 15–19) perhaps correspond to the period of the biblical “judges,” on the reasonable hypothesis that the periods of Edom’s political history rather closely matched those of Israel.

The fourth list (verses 20–30), on the other hand, contains information about the pre-Edomite inhabitants of Seir, the Horites. They are listed here only to fill out the genealogical picture of the region. Thus, the mention of Uz (verse 28) likely refers to the founder of the city called by that name, the hometown of Job.

The fifth list (verses 31–39), which chronologically follows the third, contains the names of Edom’s kings and presumably corresponds, in rough fashion, to Israel’s monarchical period (1000–587 B.C.).

The short sixth list of Edom’s governors (verses 40–43) apparently comes from the Persian period when the Edomites, like the Israelites, no longer had kings.

Wednesday, February 6

Genesis 37: An attentive reader of Genesis will recognize that he has arrived at something new when he starts through the long Joseph narrative. Although all of the stories in Genesis are tied together by unifying historico-theological themes and a panoramic epic construction, there is a very clear point of style in which this long story of Joseph stands out unique with respect to the narratives that precede it.

This stylistic point has to do with structure. The various accounts of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob have what we may call a more episodic quality. Even though they are integrally tied together by theological motifs and theme-threads indispensable to their full meaning, often they can also be read as individual stories, each with a satisfying dramatic anatomy of its own.

For example, while the more ample significance of Abraham’s trial in chapter 22 doubtless requires its integration into the larger motif of the Promised Son and Heir, that chapter is so constructed that it may also be read as a single story with its own inherent drama. That is to say, it is an episode. Part of its literary quality consists in its being intelligible and interesting within itself and on its own merits.

Similar assessments are likewise true for numerous other patriarchal stories, including the rivalry between Sarah and Hagar, the courting of Rebekah, Jacob’s theft of Esau’s blessing, and so forth. Though they are parts of a larger whole, each of these narratives nonetheless forms a good, satisfactory dramatic tale by itself.

There is nothing similar in the Joseph narrative. Hardly any scene of the Joseph narrative could stand alone and still make sense. It is one, and only one, story. No one of the parts is of interest without the rest. The Joseph epic forms one long dramatic unity, characterized by the careful planning of particulars, sustained irony, a very tight integration of component scenes within a tension mounting to a dramatic denouement, followed by a quieter sequence that calmly closes Genesis and systematically prepares for the Book of Exodus.

Joseph also prepares for the tradition of prophecy. Indeed, his ability to discern the future makes him the Bible’s earliest clear example of a prophet.

Thursday, February 7

Judah & Tamar: Although this last section of Genesis centers on Joseph, the text does not lose sight of the bigger picture, the bigger picture here understood as the entire biblical message. In that bigger picture, Judah plays a more important role than Joseph. Ultimately the descendants of Joseph, the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, pertain to the ten lost tribes, whereas the tribe of Judah will provide the royal house of David and the Messiah (49:8–10; Matthew 2:6; Revelation 5:5). It is ultimately Judah who will give the “Jews” their name.

Between chapters 37 and 45, some twenty years elapse, and a significant number of those years are required by the events in chapter 38. Hence, this chapter allows the reader to put Joseph out of his mind for a while. It is something of an interlude, permitting Joseph to become settled in Egypt. It is a “here and there” style of narrative, inserted to fill in a gap and convey the impression of the passage of time until the thread of the larger narrative is taken up again. (Other biblical examples of this technique must include the narrative between Mark 6:7 and 30, contrasted with that of Luke 9:2 and 10).

The interest of this chapter, however, is less in Judah as a person than in Judah as the father of his tribe. In the larger picture this is a story about Judah’s descendants. Since it is the story of his lineage, it must start by getting him married (verses 1–5). This family, too, has its problems (verses 6–11). Once again there is a deception by means of disguise, an unfortunate characteristic which, as we have seen, tends to run in the family (verses 12–19).

We note that the Bible is not hard on Tamar here; she is simply trying to get what she has coming to her; namely, children. Judah, thinking he has managed to avoid Tamar all those years, now discovers an easy way to get rid of her for good (verses 24–26), but the young lady turns the tables on him. There is nothing Judah can do but acknowledge his paternity and get on with life.

This story is, in addition, one of the Bible’s great accounts of an underdog getting back at an oppressor. In this respect, Tamar’s story runs parallel with those of Esther and Judith. The irony of it continues into the New Testament, where Tamar enters the genealogy of the Savior (Matthew 1:5).

Friday, February 8

Genesis 39: In the story of Joseph the theme of Wisdom is explicit and pronounced (cf. 41:39; Psalms 104 [105]:22). In the present chapter Potiphar’s wife serves as the very incarnation of Dame Folly, that quintessential adventuress trying to seduce the inexperienced young man (Proverbs 5:3–6, 20; 6:29–40; 7:5–6).

As Joseph learned to his considerable hurt, it was in reference to Potiphar’s wife and residence that the wise man was warned, “Make your way distant from her / And do not come near the doors of her house” (Proverbs 5:8).

The ongoing history of Joseph is staged in symbolic ways. For example, Joseph’s different changes of fortune are symbolized in his clothing. His famous and elaborate tunic, which focuses the hatred of his brothers in 37:3-4, is dipped in blood in 37:23–32, thus symbolizing Joseph’s alienation from his family. Then, in verses 12–18 of the present chapter, his ill-fated encounter with Potiphar’s wife is imaged in the loss of the cloak used as evidence to imprison him. His eventual release from prison will again involve a change of clothing in 41:14, and finally a whole new wardrobe symbolizes his new state in 41:42.

Another element of staging and cohesion in the story is introduced by Joseph’s two dreams in 37:5–10, in each of which his brothers bow down before him. This double prostration is prophetic, inasmuch the brothers bow before him on each of their trips to Egypt (42:6; 43:26; 44:14; 50:18), and Joseph specifically remembers the dreams on the first of these instances (42:9).

The Joseph narrative is one of the Bible’s first examples of a story happening in two places at once. The introduction of the Judah episode in chapter 38, right after Joseph’s departure for Egypt, serves to suggest a lengthy passage of time, but it also establishes what will become a mounting “geographical” tension between dual centers of activity, Canaan and Egypt. The journeys of the brothers to Egypt and their returns to Canaan will eventually provide the setting for the two conflicting aspirations of Joseph and Jacob, the former resolved to bring Benjamin to Egypt, and the latter determined to keep him in Canaan.

Friday, January 25

Genesis 25: Abraham, having spent most of his life childless, seems to have overdone it a bit toward the end. He married a woman named Keturah, who bore him quite a family (vv. 1–6). This brief account sits somewhat outside of the central core of the biblical narrative, almost as an afterthought. Although it may have taken place prior to the marriage of Isaac in the previous chapter, the story is told at the very end, just before Abraham’s death. Its insertion into the Bible manifests a concern to show that the Israelites were related by blood to other peoples who lived in the region, particularly the Midianites and Kedemites (“Easterners”), nomadic tribes of the Arabian and Syrian deserts.

At the same time, however, care is taken to show that Abraham kept this later family separate from Isaac (v. 6), who alone was the heir of the divine promises.

At Abraham’s death, he is buried in the same plot that he purchased earlier at Hebron for the burial of Sarah. Ishmael and Isaac join to bury their father, a fact apparently indicating that some contact between the two households had been maintained (vv. 7–11). The scene of Abraham’s burial, uniting these two peoples of the Middle East, seems especially poignant in our own day.

Now that Abraham has died, the Bible’s interest will go to the history of Isaac and his family. This is not done, however, until the author has tidied up Ishmael and his own progeny (vv. 12–18). Here we observe that twelve tribes trace their lineage back to Ishmael, a parallel to the twelve tribes that will spring from the seed of Jacob later on. Various of these Arabian tribes will be mentioned again in Holy Scripture; in Exodus and Chronicles for example.

The latter part of this chapter concerns Isaac’s own sons, twins who begin to fight even in Rebekah’s womb (vv. 22–23). These men were already rivals, and, according to Romans 9:10–13, God had already chosen one of them in preference over the other. Just as God chose Isaac in preference to Ishmael, He chose Jacob in preference to Esau. “Choice” in this context does not pertain to eternal salvation, but to the role that Jacob was destined to play in the history of salvation. God’s “rejection” of Esau means only that he was not chosen to play that role; in the same sense, God will “reject” the older brothers in favor of David (1 Kingdoms 16:5–12). There is nothing in the Sacred Text, either in Genesis, Malachi 1:1–5, or Romans, even faintly to suggest that Esau was predestined to hell.

Jacob is obviously the shrewder of the two men (vv. 29–34). Indeed, Esau comes off as a bit of a spiritual klutz, forfeiting his birthright for a single meal. He should serve as a warning to Christians themselves, who may be tempted to squander their own birthright in favor of some immediate satisfaction (cf. Hebrews 12:14–17).

The attaining of a birthright requires patience and endurance; it is something to be valued and waited for. In this respect, we learn something of the superior patience of Jacob, which will become even clearer in his dealings with Laban later on.

Saturday, January 26

Isaac and Abimelech: God’s historical choice is now furthered narrowed; the promises made to Abraham are now made to Isaac, as they had not been made to Ishmael (verses 1–5). On the other hand, Isaac is clearly a “transition patriarch,” between Abraham and Jacob. There are almost no stories about Isaac, except in relation to either his father or his sons. Whereas both Abraham and Jacob traveled in both Mesopotamia and Egypt, Isaac never leaves the Promised Land.

The story about Rebekah and Abimelech (verses 6–11) is strikingly similar to two earlier stories about Sarah, and the she-is-my-sister trick is something Isaac evidently learned from his father.

There are differences among the stories, nonetheless. In the present case, we observe that the wife is not actually removed to the other man’s house; Abimelech does not go quite so far on the present occasion. He has evidently become just a wee bit more cautious; this time it does not take a divine revelation for him to discover the truth. He simply watches the couple more closely, until one day he sees them engaged in amorous exchanges (we will not speculate) that reveal that they are husband and wife. Indeed, as it turns out, Abimelech himself never admits being interested in Rebekah; he simply explains that he feared somebody else might be!

The “revelation” in this chapter happens differently from those in chapters 12 and 20. In the former two stories, God manifested the truth by a supernatural intervention easily discerned. In the present story God’s revelation to Abimelech is subtler; indeed, God is not even mentioned in connection with it. That is to say, God’s intervention and deliverance need not be spectacular in order to be real. It is sufficient that “all things work together for good to those who love God” (Romans 8:28).

In the controversy about the wells (verses 12–22), the word “Philistine” is an anachronism, because the real Philistines, to whom the regions about the Aegean Sea were native, would not arrive on the coast of Canaan for several centuries. The mention of them here is something on the order of saying that “Columbus discovered America.” While there may be some disagreement whether or not Columbus actually did so, no one disagrees that the name “America” was not in place when Columbus arrived. Similarly here, the “Philistines” are simply those who lived in the land that would later be inhabited by the Philistines.

In this story, we observe that Isaac has inherited the peace-loving, unassertive disposition of his father. When there is trouble, he defuses it by meekness. And in his case too, the “meek shall inherit the earth.”

The account of Isaac’s vision (verses 23–25) links his name to the ancient shrine of Beersheba, much as Abraham’s name was associated with Hebron, and Jacob’s will be with Shechem and Bethel. The account itself is similar to that in chapter 17.

We recall from chapter 24 that Isaac was not to marry any of the local talent, the idolatrous Hittite girls who lived in the neighborhood. A wife was procured for him, rather, “from the old country.” This wife, Rebekah, sharing the family’s dislike of these local girls, is understandably less than thrilled by Esau’s marrying them (verses 34–35). She will determine that Jacob, her own favorite son, will be spared such a fate (cf. 27:46). The two final verses of this chapter prepare us for the story in chapter 28.

Sunday, January 27

Genesis 27: The shrewdness of Rebekah (verses 1–13) was a family trait, which we have already seen in Jacob’s snatching of Esau’s birthright. Very shortly we will find Jacob matching wits with Rebekah’s brother, Laban.

If we are disposed to judge Rebekah’s favoritism too harshly, it will be useful to bear in mind that the Lord had already given her a special insight into the matter: “Two nations are in your womb, / And two peoples shall be separated from your body. / One shall be stronger than the other, / And the older shall serve the younger” (25:23).

Rebekah knew which son was which, so she knew which son would do the serving and which would be served. If such was God’s plan, Rebekah saw no harm in moving things in the right direction, as it were. Moved by a mixture of faith and anxiety, Rebekah decides to take the fulfillment of prophecy into her own hands. (We recall that Sarah also did that, when she gave Hagar to Abraham as a second wife.)

Christians have long been bothered by Rebekah’s and Jacob’s deception of Isaac. Their discomfort is understandable, but we should bear in mind that Holy Scripture is simply telling us what happened. The cunning of the mother and the mendacity of the son are not being held up for our emulation. Ultimately this is a story about what God does, not man. This is “mystery, not mendacity,” said St. Augustine.

There is no indication that anyone but Rebekah had received that revelation of God’s plan, so we should not be surprised that Isaac is unaware of it. Thus, his physical blindness becomes a symbol of his inability to see what is going on, according to God’s plan. His favoring of Esau over Jacob already puts him outside of God’s will; that is to say, his preference between his sons is not that of God. Being outside of God’s will, therefore, he is easily deceived. Acting outside of God’s will is a sure step toward deception. On at least two levels in this account, therefore, Isaac is acting blindly.

The blessing of the Promised Land, then, goes to Jacob, not to Esau (verses 26–29). Isaac unwittingly shifts God’s promises to his younger son, Jacob, and these promises will, in due course, pass to the latter’s descendants (Deuteronomy 7:13–14; 33:28).

The account of Esau’s return (verses 30–33) is especially dramatic. The inspired author is not so preoccupied with the underlying theology as to lose contact with the human and emotional components of this remarkable story. Isaac begins to tremble. At once he becomes aware that he has been acting in ignorance. Yet that blessing, once given, was the instrument of the divine will. He had become the unwitting agent of God’s purposes, which were quite distinct from his own. Thus, this is one of the Bible’s great stories of those who accomplish God’s will in ignorance and even contrary to their own intentions. It is not a story about fate, but it does have some literary similarities to Greek stories about fate. (The story of blind Teiresias, in the Antigone of Sophocles, comes to mind.)

Especially poignant are the tears of Esau, thus foiled a second time. It was not that Isaac had only one blessing to give. The really big blessing, however, the blessing that handed on the promises of God, was already taken and was no longer available. Esau, the man who had earlier thought so little of his birthright, was not worthy to receive the blessing of the firstborn, and Holy Scripture shows no great sympathy for him (cf. Hebrews 12:16–17).

Even acting in mistake, Isaac acted “by faith,” according to the Epistle to the Hebrews (11:20). Personal faith is compatible with a good deal of error, blindness, and misunderstanding.

Esau’s blessing (vv. 39–40) does give some reprieve to his descendants; they will not serve Jacob’s descendants forever. Their subjection will eventually come to an end (cf. 2 Kings 8:20–22; 2 Chronicles 21:8–10).

Monday, January 28

Bethel: As we saw in the previous chapter, Rebekah does not want Jacob simply to flee from the possible vengeance of Esau. She correctly wants Jacob to be sent away by his father. There are several things to be said about Isaac’s sending Jacob away (verses 1–5):

First, there is a sense of historical continuity. Isaac is aware that he is handing on a legacy that he himself received. The current family crisis is not treated simply as a matter of the present; it is subsumed into a larger historical picture.

Second, there is the prayer and promise of fertility. The effects of this prayer (twelve sons and a daughter!) show how powerful a man of prayer Isaac really was (cf. also 25:21).

Third, Jacob continues the tradition of being a “stranger” (v. 4), like his grandfather and father. This theme will be picked up in the New Testament: “By faith [Abraham] dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise” (Hebrews 11:9).

Esau, having twice failed to please his parents by his choice of wives, decides this time to choose a bride from within the family (verses 6–9). Alas, he marries into the discredited side of the family! One sometimes has the impression that Esau’s brow was branded with the word “Loser.”

The religious experience of Jacob at Bethel is divided into two parts: his vision, in which God speaks (vv. 10–15), and his thoughtful reaction within the dream (vv. 16–22). This division of religious experience into the visionary and the deliberative is found in other places of Holy Scripture, such as the case of Peter in Acts 10:9–17 and several places in Ezekiel. Jacob’s is a night-vision, like that of Abraham in chapter 15 and Isaac in chapter 26; indeed, God says to him (verse 15) much the same things that He said to Abraham (15:17–18) and to Isaac (26:24–25). Thus, all three of the patriarchs have visions in the night, and all three establish shrines: Abraham at Hebron, Isaac at Beersheba, Jacob at Bethel.

Bethel (“house of God”) is the place where earth and heaven are joined, as though by an umbilical cord (v. 12). When Jacob rises in the morning, he consecrates the place, somewhat terrified that he had picked, as his place to sleep, the very spot where heaven and earth are joined; he was nearly run over by all the angelic traffic, as it were. Bethel is a type and prefiguration, of course, of the real house of God, where heaven and earth are joined, Jesus Christ our Lord (John 1:43–51). Christians since the second century have regarded Jacob’s ladder as the ladder of Christ. For this reason, Jacob poured oil (chrisma) on the stone, making it a “Christian stone” (cf. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 86).

Tuesday, January 29

Jacob and Rachel: At about noon Jacob arrives at the city well of Haran, where he finds three shepherds that have already assembled with their flocks. They are waiting for other shepherds to arrive, so that there will be enough manpower to remove the very heavy stone that covers the mouth of the well. It says a great deal of Jacob’s physical strength that he is able, all by himself, to do the job. (And we recall that he was the weaker of the twin boys borne by Rebekah!)

Just as Jacob begins to inquire about Laban, his mother’s brother, his interlocutors point out to him that Laban’s daughter, Rachel, is approaching. Thus, like Abraham’s servant in chapter 24, Jacob is promptly blessed by the arrival of a young woman who proves to be a lady of destiny (verses 6, 9–12). Once again like the servant in the earlier case, Jacob tells the whole story, “all that happened,” to Laban (v. 13).

It is useful to observe that Laban calls Jacob “my brother,” whereas Jacob is really his nephew. The reader should bear in mind that the words “brother and sister,” when used in Holy Scripture, only rarely mean what we ourselves intend when we employ those same words today. The reason for this is very simple: the Semitic biblical languages, Hebrew and Aramaic, have no other way to designate relatives in general, and this Semitic usage has spilled over into the Greek parts of the Bible as well. “Brothers and sisters” is simply the common way of designating relatives in Holy Scripture and throughout the languages of the Middle East. Most of the time in the Bible, then, the expression “brothers and sisters” designates simply “male and female relatives.” Whenever, therefore, these expressions appear in Holy Scripture, they should be understood only in the general sense of “relative,” unless the context indicates otherwise. There are earlier instances of this idiomatic usage in Genesis, such as 13:8. Twice more Abraham’s nephew, Lot, would be called Abraham’s brother [14:14, 16].

Other biblical examples abound. This usage is commonly known among historians and linguists, but modern readers tend to forget it when they come across the “brothers and sisters” of Jesus in the Gospels. Contemporary readers need to remember that the entire Christian tradition without exception was aware of this idiomatic usage, including all the Fathers of the Church, both East and West, all the medieval theologians, and all the major Protestant Reformers, such as Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli; all these writers, consequently, explicitly denied that Jesus had any physical brothers and sisters born of the same mother.

Immediately Jacob falls in love with Rachel, whose physical appearance is contrasted with that of her older sister, Leah (verses 13–30). Jacob’s preference is clear, and he agrees to work the seven years that his cunning uncle requires. For Laban, however, Jacob’s preference in the matter posed a bit of a problem. While there would be no difficulty finding a husband for Rachel, Laban was less certain about Leah’s prospects. During those seven years, no one had sought the hand of Leah. (The medieval Jewish commentator Rashi speculated that Leah was afraid that, if Jacob married her younger sister, she herself would be obliged to marry the older brother Esau, and she wanted nothing of that!)

Laban determined, therefore, to look out for the fortunes of his elder daughter. Accordingly Laban pulls a rather mean trick, a trick rendered possible because the bride was veiled (verses 21–25). It is not hard to figure out the wily Laban, who does not shrink from taking advantage when he can. He studies situations carefully, spots weaknesses in his associates, and consistently uses people. There is a special irony in the account, as well. Jacob deceived his father in chapter 27; now he is in turn deceived by his new father-in-law; in each case it was a matter of a “false identity.”

Laban then makes the “magnanimous gesture” of offering Jacob both daughters as wives (v. 27), which procures the wives’ father, of course, another seven years of service from Jacob. (This sororite marriage will later be forbidden in the Mosaic Law; cf. Leviticus 18:18).

Laban has clearly thought this whole plan out ahead of time. This procedure is Laban’s way of keeping his property in the family. He has now procured this apparently dimwitted nephew, an energetic worker who will do whatever is required of him. This nephew will be married to both of his daughters. All of their children will be Laban’s; all the property will be his; everything will be his (31:43). From this point on, the story becomes a rivalry of wits between Jacob and Laban. Jacob will prove to be more than a match for his father-in-law.

Wednesday, January 30

Leah and Rachel: This chapter describes two tests of wills: between Rachel and Leah, and between Laban and Jacob. In fact, this is an important chapter in the mounting tension and conflict of the Genesis story. We began with the conflict between Sarah and Hagar. Then came the conflict of Isaac’s household, between Esau and Jacob. After the present chapter it will continue in the accounts of Jacob’s family, eventually leading to Joseph’s being sold by his brothers into slavery. Among the patriarchs there seems to have been precious little domestic tranquility. If one is looking for something along the lines of “The Secret to a Happy Family Life,” Genesis—beginning with chapter 3—is generally not much help.

At the end of chapter 29 the competition between Leah and Rachel was going strongly to the favor of the former. She has four sons to Rachel’s none as chapter 30 begins. Growing rather desperate (vv. 1–2), Rachel resorts to a tactic earlier employed by Sarah; this legal fiction is well attested in the extant literature of that time and period, specifically the Nuzi Tablets from excavations near the Tigris River.

Rachel’s plan, which effectively gives Jacob a third wife, works to her advantage (verses 3–8). Two can play that game, thinks Leah, who promptly follows the same tack (verses 9–12). Now Jacob has four wives and eight sons. Very quickly, however, the two sisters go beyond the niceties of the law. Leah resorts to a fertility drug (verses 13–21) and bears two more sons and a daughter. At last Rachel has a son (verses 22–24), whose story will dominate the final chapters of Genesis.

The relationship between Laban and Jacob has been something of a domestic business arrangement all along. For all legal and practical purposes, Jacob has become Laban’s son and heir. Meanwhile, however, everything still belongs to Laban. When Jacob asks to have a little something for himself (verses 25–34), he appears to be requesting a mere pittance, because in the Middle East the sheep are normally white and the goats normally black. Speckled and spotted animals are the exception. Laban, however, takes steps to eliminate even that pittance (verses 35–36).

Meanwhile, Jacob, having grown a great deal smarter, has plans of his own (verses 37–43). In putting three days’ distance between his own herds and those shepherded by Jacob, Laban intends to keep the speckled goats and the dark sheep away from him. This plan backfires, because it permits Jacob to have a three-days’ jump on Laban when it comes time to leave.

Thursday, January 31

Laban and Jacob: When Jacob wanted to leave in the previous chapter, it was his own idea. As we commence the present chapter, however, the initiative comes from God (verses 1–13).

Jacob summons his wives away from the tents and the ears of inquisitive servants who might report the discussion back to Laban. His argument is twofold, both earthly and heavenly. In purely earthly terms, he is fed up with working for Laban. As regards the heavenly, Jacob has heard from the God who had revealed Himself earlier, the “God of Bethel,” El-Bethel. That God had earlier promised to bring him back home (28:15), and now He is fulfilling that promise (verses 3, 13).

It turns out that Laban’s daughters are none too happy with their father’s treatment either. In his injustice to Jacob, Laban has also been unjust to his own flesh. He has treated them, not as daughters, but as outsiders. He not only sold them to Jacob; he has already used up the money he got for them! Leah and Rachel do not agree about much, but they do agree that it is time to start thinking of the welfare of their own children (verses 14–18). They flee (verses 19–21).

When Laban overtakes them (vv. 22–32), his complaints seem natural enough: “I did not get to say goodbye. I did not get to kiss my grandchildren. I did not get a chance to throw a going-away party. How could you treat me like this after all these years?”

Somebody in Jacob’s party (and the reader already knows who) has, in addition, pilfered one of Laban’s household gods. This incident does say something about the introduction of idolatry into the family, a problem that will prove to be chronic in biblical history. Holy Scripture provides numerous instances of idolatry introduced into Israel by the wives of Israel’s kings (cf. 1 Kings 15:13, for instance).

To cover her tracks, Rachel resorts to a ruse (verses 33–37), concerning which two points should be made: First, the reader is expected to be amused that a god is being sat upon. Second, there seems to be no end of deception in this family!

Feeling vindicated by Laban’s failure to find the absconded god, Jacob then upbraids his father-in-law, laying it on pretty thick (verses 43–54). It is a masterpiece of self-justification, in which the speaker is manifestly enjoying himself. Indeed, the author intends for the reader to enjoy it too.

By ascribing all his success to God, Jacob also intends to make Laban pause for thought; does Laban really want to be tough on someone whom God favors? Laban, evidently chagrined at not finding the stolen god, is at some disadvantage; he is unable to answer Jacob. The two men make a covenant and call it a day (verses 41–54). Laban and Jacob both head home.

Friday, February 1

Wrestling With God: After taking leave of Laban, Jacob must think about how to approach Esau, for Esau represents the tricky aspect of Jacob’s homecoming (verses 4–7). Esau, meanwhile, has moved south to the land of Edom, a dry and inhospitable land that lucidly explains the words of God, “Esau I have hated, and I have appointed his borders for destruction and made his heritage as dwellings of the wilderness” (Malachi 1:3).

If Jacob is feeling threatened by Laban, he now feels even worse from the information that his older twin is coming to meet him with four hundred armed men. That last part is hardly the sort of detail calculated to allay anxiety. Indeed, a certain sense of anxiety may be exactly what Esau wants to inspire in Jacob. If so, the maneuver is successful.

Jacob does two things (verses 8–13). First, he prepares for the worst, taking certain practical steps with a view to at least a partial survival of his family. Second, he takes to prayer, certainly the most humble prayer he has made so far.

Ultimately, after all, this is a story of Jacob’s relationship to God. Up to this point, God is still Isaac’s God, the “God of my fathers” (verse 9). Jacob has not yet done what he promised at Bethel—take God as his own (28:21). God had also made certain promises to Jacob at Bethel, and Jacob now invokes those promises.

He continues his preparations for meeting the brother he has not seen in twenty years (v. 14–23). He sends delegations with gifts, which are intended to impress Esau. Jacob, after all, knows that Esau has four hundred men, but Esau does not know how many Jacob may have. Jacob’s gifts, including five hundred and eighty animals, verge on the flamboyant.

Jacob approaches the ford of Jabbok, at a place called Peniel, or “face of God” (v. 30). The Hebrew text of verses 17–31 uses the word “face” (paneh) no fewer than six times. Jacob knows that Esau will soon be “in his face.” He must “face” Esau, which is why he is going directly toward him. Up to this point, Jacob has been a man of flight, flight from Canaan, flight from Haran, flight from Esau, flight from Laban. This all must change. No more flight; Jacob cannot face his future until he has faced his past.

Even before he can face Esau, however, Jacob must face Someone Else (verses 23–33). This encounter with God, which apparently Jacob has not anticipated, is far more significant than his encounter with Esau. A millennium later the prophet Hosea would meditate on this scene. This wrestling match is Jacob’s decisive encounter with God.

Everything changes: First, his name is changed to Israel (verse 29), as
Abram’s was changed to Abraham in a parallel encounter with God (17:3–5, 15). Second, God is no longer simply “the God of my fathers.” He is now “the God of Israel” (verse 20). Third, Jacob will limp from this experience for the rest of his life (verses 26, 32–33). No one wrestles with the living God and afterwards looks normal and well-adjusted. There is a further irony here. Jacob began life by tripping his brother as the latter exited the womb. Now Jacob himself will be permanently tripped up by a limp.

Jacob has remained on the near side of the river all night long, not fording the Jabbok with the rest of his family. When he rises in the morning, he must limp across alone. Esau and his four hundred men are just coming into view.

Friday, January 18

The Tent of Meeting: The “tent” (Latin tabernaculum where Abraham receives the Lord prefigures the later Tabernacle which Moses, at divine instruction, caused to be set up in the Desert as the place where Israel would meet the Lord. In both instances, the Hebrew word is identical—’ohel. At each place where Israel stopped during the forty years of wandering in the Desert, this ’ohel was erected, and it was taken down again when the People moved on. Whenever the People were on the move, the ’ohel was carried by the priests, and, wherever they camped, the ’ohel stood in the middle of the camp.

The later tabernacle (’ohel) set up in the desert was based on the original tyoe, the tabernacle “not made with hands,” which Moses beheld in mystic vision on Mount Sinai. As we are in the process of reading in the Epistle to the Hebrews, the ascended Jesus, our High Priest, entered into that heavenly tabernacle.

To return to the ’ohel in Genesis 18—-when Sarah first learned the news of the child she was to bear, she was eavesdropping—from within this tabernaculum—on a conversation between her husband and the Lord, whom he hosted outside. “Sarah your wife shall have a son,” she heard the Lord say. Her response? “Sarah laughed within herself,” asserts the Sacred Text, a reaction that she was a tad too quick to disavow when questioned on the matter. “I did not laugh,” she insisted. “No,” the Lord pressed the point, “but you did laugh!”

Her laughter was prompted, of course, by the sheer incongruity of the proposition, because “Abraham and Sarah were old, well advanced in age; and Sarah had passed the age of childbearing.” Did her laughter also betray skepticism about the promise? A first reading of the text may suggest it did, because her laugh was accompanied by the remark, “After I have grown old, shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?”

Nonetheless, our earliest Christian commentator on the passage evidently did not think this to be the case. He even counted Sarah among the heroes of faith: “By faith Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed, and she bore a child when she was past the age, because she judged Him faithful who had promised” (Hebrews 11:11).

Hebrews 12:18-24: The author of Hebrews outlines a contrast between two mountains: Sinai and Zion—the mountain of the Law and the mountain of the Temple, or the covenant with Moses and the covenant with David.

A similar contrast between these two mountains—Sinai and Zion—was made by St. Paul, much to the same effect: “For these are two covenants: the one from Mount Sinai which gives birth to bondage, which is Hagar—for this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children—but the Jerusalem above is free, which is the mother of us all” (Galatians 4:24-26).

In both texts—Galatians and Hebrews—there is a contrast between the bondage of the Law and the boldness of the Christian. With respect to this contrast, St. Paul writes, “you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God” (Galatians 4:7). In both cases, we observe, Mount Zion is called the heavenly Jerusalem: According to Galatians, “the Jerusalem above is free, which is the mother of us all.” According to Hebrews, “you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.”

One suspects that this contrast between Mount Sinai and Mount Zion may have been a rhetorical trope in early Christian preaching. This suggestion would explain why we find it in both Galatians and Hebrews, in spite of the great differences between these two works. This contrast is used in both places and adapted to the theme of each work.

Saturday, January 19

Genesis 19: To the fine example of hospitality shown by Abraham and Sarah in the previous chapter we now find opposed the terrible example of hospitality shown by the residents of Sodom. Although their failure in the matter of hospitality may not have been the worst of their sins, it was sufficiently serious for Jesus to speak of it in the context of the hospitality that He expected His own apostles to receive when they entered a town (Matthew 10:11–15).

Throughout Holy Scripture, Sodom will be remembered as a very bad place that got exactly what it deserved (Deuteronomy 29:23; Isaiah 13:19; Jeremiah 49:17–18; 50:40; Ezekiel 16:46–48, 55–56; Matthew 11:23–24; Revelation 11:8).

There are striking similarities between Psalm 11 (10) and this chapter’s description of the overthrow of Sodom. Consider the psalm: “He shall rain down snares upon sinners; / Fire and brimstone and a raging wind shall be the portion of their cup.” And Genesis: “Then the Lord rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah from the Lord out of heaven.” Or, again, in the psalm: “In the Lord I trust. How will you say to my soul, / ‘Flee to the mountains like a sparrow’?” And the angels say to Lot in Genesis: “Escape for your life! Do not look behind you nor stay anywhere in the plain. Escape to the mountains, lest you be overtaken.” To which Lot answers: “I cannot escape to the mountains, lest some evil overtake me and I die.” And yet again in the psalm: “The righteous Lord loves righteousness; / His face beholds the upright.”

But according to the apostle Peter, this explains precisely what transpired in the present chapter of Genesis, where God, “turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them to destruction, making them an example to those who afterward would live ungodly; and delivered righteous Lot, who was oppressed by the filthy conduct of the wicked (for that righteous man, dwelling among them, tormented his righteous soul from day to day by seeing and hearing their lawless deeds)” (2 Peter 2:6–8).

And the psalm once more:

The Lord is in His holy temple; / The Lord, His throne is in heaven; / His eyes are fixed upon the poor man, / His eyelids examine the sons of men. / The Lord examines the righteous and the ungodly, / And he who loves unrighteousness hates his own soul.”

And once again Peter, commenting on the present chapter of Genesis: “the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations and to reserve the unjust under punishment for the day of judgment (2:9).

Similarly, when Jesus would tell us of the final and catastrophic times, it is to Sodom that He sends us: “Likewise as it was also in the days of Lot: They ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built; but on the day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. Even so will it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed” (Luke 17:28–30). Indeed, “even so,” for we ourselves yet abide in the cities of the plain, “as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these” (Jude 7).

Sunday, January 20

Genesis 20: Abimelech, the king of Gerar, had an appreciative eye for handsome women. This trait brought him briefly to grief on one occasion, but they say he learned from the experience.

The incident began when some newcomers, Abraham and Sarah, settled in the neighborhood. When Sarah was introduced as Abraham’s sister, poor Abimelech at one glance felt himself going all gooey inside. At the sight of this beautiful, apparently unmarried woman, the king’s ardently smitten heart started to flutter like a leaf in the breeze. With a single look at the lady (a look that sober minds may have judged, nonetheless, injudiciously long), Abimelech found his knees shaky and his throat dry. This lovely Sarah was surely meant for him; the king had no doubt.

And, being the king, Abimelech was accustomed to getting what he wanted. Indeed, royal courting and romancing were rather uncomplicated in those days; Abimelech simply sent over to Abraham’s place and had Sarah removed to the royal palace. It all happened very fast. In fact, the story so far is contained in just one Bible verse (20:2).

Now in the considerations that follow, let us be temperate with Abimelech. He was, after all, a man in love, and men thus stricken have been known to act precipitously once in a while. Let us be gentle with him.

Nonetheless, let us also be frank. Abimelech should have known that this was not a smart move. Certain features of the case, if he had thought on them, might have prompted the king to a greater and more salutary caution.

Not least among these was the fact that lovely Sarah was ninety years old at the time (17:17), and Abimelech should have given that circumstance the reflection it deserved. This was not good. Please understand, no matter how well preserved and retentive of her youth the lady may be, the abrupt abduction of a ninety-year-old woman for amorous purposes is generally considered bad form. Among gentlemen, at least, it simply isn’t done. And when it is done, let me tell you, most of the time the thing just doesn’t work out.

Second, Abimelech was wrong to take at face value the assertion, “She is my sister.” That was one of Abraham’s old tricks to avoid getting his throat slit by other men who, it appears, were forever falling in love with his unusually attractive wife. Years before, when he and Sarah were visiting Egypt, the pharaoh down there had been similarly smitten with her. Not only had Abraham on that occasion saved his own life by recourse to his she-is-my-sister routine, but also the pharaoh had given Abraham lots of nice presents to honor him. Then, when the whole thing blew up in the pharaoh’s face, Abraham still got to keep the presents (12:11–20). That is to say, the ruse paid off.

Abraham, if questioned further about Sarah’s being his sister, could always point out that “sister” in Hebrew really means “female relative,” and Sarah was a blood relative—his half-sister, in fact (20:12).

Obviously this convenient arrangement was useful for throwing would-be rivals into confusion, nor did Abraham much scruple on the matter. Although we are never told Sarah’s views about it, we do know that she tended to appreciate the humor and irony of things (18:11–12).

Anyway, to return to our story, Abimelech thought Sarah definitely the woman of his dreams. These dreams, however, began turning sour right away: “But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night, and said to him, ‘Indeed, you are a dead man because of the woman you have taken, for she is a man’s wife’” (20:3). Abimelech argued his innocence, a point the Lord conceded, and in the morning Sarah was returned, untouched, to her husband. Both of them were rebuked for the deception, but Abimelech still loaded them down with more presents (20:4–16).

Monday, January 21

Two Women, Two Sons: We come now to the long-awaited birth of Isaac, concerning which the New Testament says,

By faith Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed, and she bore a child when she was past the age, because she judged Him faithful who had promised. Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, were born as many as the stars in the sky in multitude—innumerable as the sand which is by the seashore” (Hebrews 11:11–12).

While the author of Hebrews praises the faith of Sarah in this respect, the apostle Paul tends rather to stress the faith of Abraham (Romans 4:19–22). The circumcision of Isaac (v. 4), commanded in Genesis 17:9–14, would be explicitly mentioned by St. Stephen in Acts 7:8.

In chapter 16 we already learned that all was not well between Sarah and Hagar after Ishmael was born. At that time, however, Hagar enjoyed the advantage that she had borne a son, and Sarah had not.

In the present chapter, that advantage is a thing of the past, and we are not surprised to see that now Hagar and Ishmael are regarded as the mere slaves they are. Ishmael is accused of “scoffing” (NKJV) at the younger child Isaac, perhaps a reference to the kinds of teasing younger children have been known to suffer from older children. Indeed, one may reasonably speculate that Ishmael had heard disparaging remarks about Sarah and Isaac from his own mother and was simply acting them out. At the very least, Sarah does not want her son playing with a mere slave boy.

So Hagar must go. Ishmael’s true situation is revealed in the fact that he is not even named; he is simply “the son of this maidservant” (verse 10). In Sarah’s eyes he has become a nonentity. Abraham is faced with a new problem, therefore. Although Ishmael is not Sarah’s son except in a formal legal sense that no longer bears legal significance, the older boy is still Abraham’s son, and Abraham loves him.

Whatever Sarah’s reasons for expelling Hagar and Ishmael, God had His own reasons, and He permitted Sarah’s plans to succeed in order for His own reasons to succeed. This is true rather often; God permits evil to prevail for the sake of a greater good that only He can see and plan for. Had Hagar and Ishmael stayed on in Abraham’s household, they would have remained slaves. By their departure Ishmael was able to become the father of a great people on the earth (v. 13), a great people with us to this day, the great people of Arabia, for whom God manifested a special providential interest in this text. We will meet this theme of divine providence abundantly in the Joseph story toward the end of Genesis.

The biblical text tends to lose track of Hagar and Ishmael once they arrive in the Negev Desert. The legends of the Arabs tell their own story of how far the mother and child reached in their journey, namely, Mecca. The spring in verses 14–19 the Arabs identify as the spring of Zamzam, near the Ka‘ba at Mecca, which spring allowed human life to flourish in that place. Thus, Ishmael is credited with the founding of Mecca, which is a religious shrine vastly older than Islam. According to the Bible, the Arabs too are a great nation, close relatives of the Jews and regarded as their rather bellicose cousins (16:11–12). Indeed, much of the later history of the Fertile Crescent and the Mediterranean Basin was dominated by a single idea: how to restrain the ancient and native bellicosity of Arabia.

Tuesday, January 22

Beloved Son: When the author of Chronicles wrote, “Now Solomon began to build the house of the Lord at Jerusalem on Mount Moriah” (2 Chronicles 3:1), he inserted the theology of Genesis squarely into his account of Israel’s sacrificial worship. In fact, this text in Chronicles is the only place in Holy Scripture where the site of the temple is identified as Mount Moriah, the place where Abraham took Isaac to be sacrificed (Genesis 22:2). This is no incidental detail.

By introducing this connection of the temple to that distant event, not only does the Chronicler subtly indicate the new temple’s continuity with the distant patriarchal period, he also provides his readers with a very rich theme of soteriology.

In fact, chapter 22 is the Bible’s first instance of a “substitution” made in the matter of sacrifice. This ram caught in the bush becomes the substitute for Isaac, thus foreshadowing the paschal lamb of the Mosaic Covenant, which would be slaughtered on behalf of Israel’s firstborn sons on the night of the Exodus. In chapter 22, then, we are dealing with the Bible’s earliest configuration of a category important in biblical soteriology. The paschal lambs, offered in Solomon’s temple over the centuries, were all pre- figured by that earlier event on Mount Moriah.

The apostle Paul appealed to this category when he wrote that God “did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all” (Romans 8:32). Echoing this text from Romans, Irenaeus of Lyons wrote,

Abraham, according to his faith, adhered to the command of God’s Word, and with a ready mind delivered up, as a sacrifice to God, his only-begotten and beloved son, in order that God also might be pleased to offer up, for all his seed, His own beloved and only-begotten Son, as a sacrifice for our redemption” (Against the Heresies 4.5.4).

If Isaac was a prefiguration of the paschal lambs sacrificed in the Old Testament temple, then he is certainly a prefiguration of the One of whom St. Paul wrote, “Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us” (1 Corinthians 5:7). This theme of Christ as the Paschal Lamb has been much developed in the thought and imagery of Holy Church, and this from earliest times. Thus, in the second century St. Justin Martyr wrote, “And the blood of the Passover, sprinkled on each man’s door-posts and lintel, delivered those who were saved in Egypt, when the first-born of the Egyptians were destroyed. For the Passover was Christ, who was afterwards sacrificed, as also Isaiah said, ‘He was led as a sheep to the slaughter.’ And it is written, that on the day of the Passover you seized Him, and that also during the Passover you crucified Him. And as the blood of the Passover saved those who were in Egypt, so also the blood of Christ will deliver from death those who have believed” (Dialogue With Trypho III). Such testimonies are ubiquitous in Christian literature.

Wednesday, January 23

The Death of Sarah: Sarah’s burial in Genesis 23 merits more attention, let me suggest, than it generally gains.

The relative neglect of this story is easy to understand. Less dramatic than the sacrifice of Isaac, which comes right before it, the narrative about Sarah is also less romantic than the wooing of Rebecca, which immediately follows it. To the former it is no match as drama, because the quiet death of an old person is less exciting than the threatened death of a young person. And though Abraham’s burial of Sarah is hardly without romance, the tone of this romance is subdued, subtle, more nuanced than the younger love of Isaac and Rebekah. By these criteria, then, Sarah’s interment represents a pause, as it were, a respite or slowing down in the Abraham saga. For these reasons it may not especially stand out in the memory of Bible-readers.

However, there are two reasons why Sarah’s burial deserves more explicit attention: First, the story offers an intriguing psychological portrait of Abraham. Second, it sews a significant theological stitch in the Bible’s narrative pattern.

Let us begin with the story’s psychological interest in Abraham. A useful way to approach this subject, I think, is by contrasting the figure of Abraham in this account with that in Genesis 18. This comparison is amply warranted, inasmuch as both narratives describe Abraham engaged in a “negotiation.”

In the earlier story, when Abraham learns of the Lord’s plan to destroy Sodom, he fears for the fate of his nephew Lot, a resident of the city. With an enviable but bewildering optimism he endeavors to change the Lord’s mind, engaging Him in what is arguably the boldest enterprise of “haggling” ever recorded. No attentive reader will forget how Abraham resolutely lowers the original price, as it were, arguing the sum of required just men from fifty down to ten. The bargaining ends only when the Lord Himself, as though desperate of winning the arbitration, suddenly breaks it off!

In Genesis 23 all is different. After Abraham has lain prostrate for a while before the dead body of his wife, he rises, sobered by sorrow, and approaches a local Hittite chieftain in order to obtain a piece of land wherein to bury the cherished companion of his long life. He describes himself now as “a foreigner and visitor,” designations rendered doubly significant in the context of death. Abraham is solemn and deferential. There is no haggling now. His whole demeanor is one of gravity and respect. Sarah is gone. What else matters?

Finally, for a small field containing a cave Abraham pays the exorbitant price of four hundred shekels of silver. (In 1 Kings 16:24 Omri pays only six thousand shekels of silver for the entire site of the large city of Samaria.) A man does not haggle over the price of his wife’s tomb. After such a loss, nothing else is worth much. The old man treads slowly out to the cave, bearing Sarah’s body and a lifetime of intimate love.

Second, the story of Sarah’s burial in Genesis 23 advances the theological theme of Israel’s taking possession of the Promised Land. Up to this point in the biblical history, let us recall, Abraham owned no property in Canaan, “not even enough to set his foot on” (Acts 7:5). With the purchase of the burial cave of Machpelah, however, his family actually acquires its first piece of real estate in the Holy Land. This portion of ground becomes the initial installment of Israel’s inheritance, the germinal redemption of God’s earlier pledge, “To your descendents I have given this land” (Genesis 15:18).

In this burial ground an inter-generational transmission of ownership is now established, a “tradition,” a “handing on,” of Israel’s historical identity. The aged flesh of Sarah is but the first deposit the Chosen People adds to the soil of Canaan. Abraham will presently join her at Machpelah, and in due course Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Leah too, will lie down in the tombs beside them. Here the ancestors of the Chosen People will return—”dust to dust”—to the earth from which they were taken.

The grave is the place, after all, where time is fixed, durably fused with space. The complex, shadowing mists of the past are coupled forever to the plain but sturdy permanence of the soil. Everything is settled. In the graveyard, history and geography become one.

Thursday, January 24

Bride for Isaac: The doctrine of divine providence is asserted in the biblical thesis that “all things work together for good to those who love God” (Romans 8:28). This “working together” of historical events under divine governance for particular and interrelated purposes is a mystery, of course, but a mystery in two senses.

First, divine providence is a mystery in the sense that it is humanly inscrutable, exceeding even the furthest reaches of our thought, and is known only by faith. That is to say, it pertains to divine revelation. It is not the general providence, the natural pronoia of the Stoics and Middle Platonists, but a special providence revealed by God’s particular interventions in the structure of history. For this reason Holy Scripture never attempts to explain it. Although the Bible affirms divine providence, it teaches no theory of the matter.

Second, divine providence is also a mystery in the sense that we are initiated into it. It is rendered accessible, that is, to our revelatory experience of it, the discernment of which is a gift of the Holy Spirit. It is particular and personal, sensed through the coherent structure of events. For this reason Holy Scripture not only affirms divine providence, but also portrays the mystery of it through narratives about events.

One literary method of conveying the providential purpose in a biblical story is to place the affirmation of it in the mouth of one of the characters. A very fetching example of this literary device is found in Genesis 24, which describes the journey of Abraham’s servant to Mesopotamia in order to find a suitable bride for Isaac (namely, Rebekah). In this exquisitely crafted account of God’s historical intervention in response to prayer, two features should especially be noted.

First, the story is told twice—initially by the narrator (24:1–26) and then a second time by a character within the narrative itself, namely the servant (24:34–48). This deliberate doubling of the story, which obliges the reader to think about its implications a second time, also serves the purpose of placing the theme of divine providence more completely within the fabric of the tale. In the first telling, the reader is struck by how quickly the servant’s prayer is heard—“And it happened, before he had finished speaking” (24:15). This promptness of God’s response is emphasized in the second telling—“before I had finished speaking in my heart” (24:45). God is encountered in the servant’s experience of the event that comes crashing in, as it were, on his prayer.

Second, the doubling of the narrative is not artificial. It is essential, rather, to the motive of Rebekah and her family in their decision that she should accompany the servant back to Abraham’s home and become the wife of Isaac. That is to say, the characters themselves are made aware that God has spoken through the narrated events. They perceive God’s providence: “The thing [dabar] comes from the Lord; we cannot speak [dabber] to you either bad or good. Here is Rebekah before you; take her and go, and let her be your master’s son’s wife, as the Lord has spoken [dibber]” (24:50–51). The event itself, the “thing,” was a “word” from God, a dabar. That is to say, given the servant’s testimony, it was clear that all things had worked together “for good to those who love God.”

Friday, January 25

Genesis 25: Abraham, having spent most of his life childless, seems to have overdone it a bit toward the end. He married a woman named Keturah, who bore him quite a family (vv. 1–6). This brief account sits somewhat outside of the central core of the biblical narrative, almost as an afterthought. Although it may have taken place prior to the marriage of Isaac in the previous chapter, the story is told at the very end, just before Abraham’s death. Its insertion into the Bible manifests a concern to show that the Israelites were related by blood to other peoples who lived in the region, particularly the Midianites and Kedemites (“Easterners”), nomadic tribes of the Arabian and Syrian deserts.

At the same time, however, care is taken to show that Abraham kept this later family separate from Isaac (v. 6), who alone was the heir of the divine promises.

At Abraham’s death, he is buried in the same plot that he purchased earlier at Hebron for the burial of Sarah. Ishmael and Isaac join to bury their father, a fact apparently indicating that some contact between the two households had been maintained (vv. 7–11). The scene of Abraham’s burial, uniting these two peoples of the Middle East, seems especially poignant in our own day.

Now that Abraham has died, the Bible’s interest will go to the history of Isaac and his family. This is not done, however, until the author has tidied up Ishmael and his own progeny (vv. 12–18). Here we observe that twelve tribes trace their lineage back to Ishmael, a parallel to the twelve tribes that will spring from the seed of Jacob later on. Various of these Arabian tribes will be mentioned again in Holy Scripture, in Exodus and Chronicles for example.

The latter part of this chapter concerns Isaac’s own sons, twins who begin to fight even in Rebekah’s womb (vv. 22–23). These men were already rivals, and, according to Romans 9:10–13, God had already chosen one of them in preference over the other. Just as God chose Isaac in preference to Ishmael, He chose Jacob in preference to Esau. “Choice” in this context does not pertain to eternal salvation, but to the role that Jacob was destined to play in the history of salvation. God’s “rejection” of Esau means only that he was not chosen to play that role; in the same sense, God will “reject” the older brothers in favor of David (1 Kingdoms 16:5–12). There is nothing in the Sacred Text, either in Genesis, Malachi 1:1–5, or Romans, even faintly to suggest that Esau was predestined to hell.

Jacob is obviously the shrewder of the two men (vv. 29–34). Indeed, Esau comes off as a bit of a spiritual klutz, forfeiting his birthright for a single meal. He should serve as a warning to Christians themselves, who may be tempted to squander their own birthright in favor of some immediate satisfaction (cf. Hebrews 12:14–17).

The attaining of a birthright requires patience and endurance; it is something to be valued and waited for. In this respect, we learn something of the superior patience of Jacob, which will become even clearer in his dealings with Laban later on.

Friday, January 11

The Tower of Babel: In spite of the national diversities outlined in the previous chapter, all mankind, up to this point, speaks a common tongue (verse 1).

The construction of Babel, the second city to be founded in the Bible, prompts us to recall the moral ambiguity of the first city, founded by the world’s first fratricide (4:17). Babel, like that first city, represents the development of technology (verse 3; 4:22). The tower of Babel symbolizes man’s arrogance and his rebellion against the authority of God. Not trusting God’s promise never again to destroy the world by flood (9:15), the men of Babel decide to build this tower as a sort of insurance policy against God’s punishment. Its construction, therefore, is of a piece with all the earlier rebellions against God that we have seen, starting in chapter 3.

God’s response is twofold. It is both a punishment against the rebels and a preventative measure against their becoming even worse. That is to say, even God’s punishment is an act of mercy.

In the more general symbolism of Holy Scripture, Babel also represents Babylon, the city of power and godless rebellion, which is overthrown definitively in the Book of Revelation. There is a symbolic identity, therefore, uniting the present story to the destruction of Babylon described in Revelation 17 and 18. This city represents any political and economic establishment characterized by arrogance and the love of power.

Its punishment by the division of tongues was especially appropriate. Saint Augustine of Hippo comments on this chapter:

As the tongue is the instrument of domination, in it pride was punished, so that man, who refused to understand God when He gave His commands, should also be misunderstood when he gave commands. Thus was dissolved their conspiracy, because each man withdrew from those who could not understand and banded with those whose speech he found intelligible. So the nations were divided according to their languages and scattered over the face of the earth, as seemed good to God, who accomplished this in hidden ways that we cannot understand (The City of God 16.4).

Saturday, January 12

The Call of Abraham: The genealogy of Shem’s descendents, at the end of Chapter Eleven, prepared us for this beginning of the story of Abram, whom we first find at the city of Ur, in the extreme southeast end of the Fertile Crescent. That genealogy also introduced other aspects of the later story. It told us, for instance, of the barrenness of Abram’s wife (11:30), which is a detail crucial to the later narrative. Likewise, it introduced Lot, Abram’s nephew, who will appear at significant points in the story later on. Similarly, it told of those relatives who were left behind; these, too, will be important in later aspects of the story.

The first migration goes from Ur up to Haran, at the very top and center of the Fertile Crescent (11:31), and from there Abram’s company proceeds to migrate south and west (verses 5,9). Passing through Canaan, also known in the Bible as Palestine (the Roman name for Philistina), Abram arrives in Egypt, the southwestern extremity of the Fertile Crescent. All of this migration is in obedience to God’s call (cf. Acts 7:1-5; Hebrews 11:8-10). Nor was Abram a young man at this point; he was already seventy-five years old (verse 4).

Abram’s brief sojourn in Egypt (verses 10-20) prefigures Israel’s later experience of that country. Thus, he is driven into Egypt by a famine in Canaan (verse 10), exactly as Israel will be in the final chapters of Genesis (41:57—42:2). In Egypt Abram encounters Pharaoh, king of Egypt, as Israel will do near the end of Genesis and at the beginning of Exodus. Indeed, one already observes Pharaoh to be a rapacious, threatening, high-handed man of arbitrary behavior, exactly as we will find the other Pharaoh encountered by Moses.

Similarly—and again like Moses—Abram will outsmart this Pharaoh in a trial of wit and cunning. Moreover, Pharaoh is visited with divine plagues (verse 17), as the other Pharaoh will be in the case of Moses (Exodus 3:19-20). Like Moses and the children of Israel later, Abram and his family depart from Egypt. When he does so, Abram leaves with the wealth of the Egyptians (verses 16,20), as Moses will do later (Exodus 3:21-22; 11:1-3; 12:35-36). One also notes that Abram and Moses were about the same age (75 and 80) at the time of their departure from Egypt.

All of these elements in Genesis 12 prefigure the Exodus story: the arrogance of Pharaoh, the Israelite leader outsmarting and overpowering the Egyptian, God’s intervention in sending plagues, the vindication of the Chosen People, the departure from Egypt, the enrichment of the Israelites with the wealth of the Egyptians. Thus, in just eleven verses of the present chapter, we have a sort of synoptic prefiguration of the last dozen chapters of Genesis and the first dozen chapters of Exodus. Moreover, the later Exodus of Moses will be foretold to Abram (Genesis 15:13-14; cf. Acts 7:5-7; Hebrews 11:8-10,13-16).

Sunday, January 13

Genesis 13: When Abram left Egypt, he and his family were very wealthy because of Pharaoh’s generosity to someone he was trying to gain as a brother-in-law! Now Abram and Lot find that the sheer size of their flocks requires them to live apart (verses 1-7). The story of their separation (verses 8-13) demonstrates Abram’s humility in giving his younger relative the choice of the land (verse 9), while he himself takes what is left. This humble action of Abram illustrates the meaning of the dominical saying that the meek shall inherit the earth. Abraham’s descendents, not Lot’s, will inherit all this land. In this story we discern the non-assertive quality of Abram’s faith. He is not only meek; he is also a peacemaker. Meekness and peacemaking are qualities of the man of faith.

Lot serves in this story as a kind of foil to Abram. The meek and peaceful Abram takes what is left, whereas Lot, obviously having failed to do a proper survey of the neighborhood, chooses to live in Sodom. This was to prove one of the worst real estate choices in history.

The present chapter closes with God’s solemn asseveration to Abram, promising him the land and the “seed” (verses 14-18). Unfortunately the rich ambivalence of this latter noun (zera‘ in Hebrew, sperma in Greek, semen in Latin) is lost in more recent translations that substitute the politically-correct but entirely prosaic “descendents” for “seed” (verses 15-16).

Besides Sodom, two other important Canaanite cities are introduced in this chapter, Bethel (still called Luz at this period — cf. 28:19) and Hebron. Both of these cities will be extremely important in subsequent biblical history, and Abram is credited with making each of them a place of worship (verses 4,18).

Hebrews 10:26-39: Here we find one of Holy Scripture’s most solemn declarations of judgment. Having exhorted his readers to boldness in their access to God (10:19-22), our author now describes the alternative in frightening terms.

In both instances—the exhortation to confidence and the warning of judgment—he uses the description “living, declaring that we have a new and living way,” and then reminding his readers, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” In both cases the modifier serves to put the reader on notice that these things are not matters of theory and abstraction. “Living,” in each of these contexts, indicates real, actual, existential. It means that both salvation and damnation are worthy of our most serious attention.

These verses depict the gravity of falling away from God. The author recalls that such falling away, even at the time of Moses, was dealt with in a radical manner—namely, those who rejected the rule of Moses were devoured with fiery indignation (verses 27-28). Our author, who has been at pains to emphasize the superiority of Jesus over Moses, argues here that this superiority implies a greater severity in those who fall away: “Of how much worse punishment, do you suppose, will he be deemed worthy who has trampled underfoot the Son of God” (verse 29). He had earlier contrasted Moses and Jesus, calling the first God’s servant and the second God’s Son (3:5-6). Now, he asks, which of them is it more dangerous to abandon?

Monday, January 14

The Pagan High Priest: For someone distressed by what may seem an endless series of “begats” in the first chapters of the Bible, Melchizedek appears on the scene as a welcome relief, inasmuch as he arrives on the scene as though out of nowhere, “without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life.”

The very brevity of his appearance in the biblical story—which forms but an instant in the narrative, and not an element of sequence—becomes a symbol of eternity, inasmuch as eternity is an unending “now,” an instant without sequence. Our experience of eternity in this world is always an instant—a “now”—not a sequence. Thus, the “now-ness” of Melchizedek’s kingship and priesthood represents the eternal “today” of the sonship of Christ: “ You are My Son, / Today I have begotten You” (Psalm 2:7; Hebrews 5:5).

Genesis 14 tells us only five things about him:

First, Melchizedek was a king. “Salem,” the city of his kingship, was an old name for Jerusalem (Psalms 76 [75]:2). Indeed, the Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus, took Melchizedek to be the founder (ho protos ktisas) of the holy city (The Jewish War 6.438). Speculating on the etymology of Melchizedek’s name (melek-hassedeq), Josephus calls him a “righteous king” (basileus dikaios) (Antiquities 1.10.2).

Exploiting the resemblance of the name “Salem” to the Hebrew word for “peace,” shalom, the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews calls Melchizedek “king of peace.” Like Josephus, he sees etymological symbolism in Melchizedek’s own name, calling him “king of righteousness” (basileus dikaiosynes) (7:2).

Second, Melchizedek was “the priest of God Most High.” In fact, he is the first man to whom Holy Scripture gives the title “priest” (kohen), and it is Melchizedek‘s priesthood that receives the greater attention in the Bible. For example, while the Book of Psalms speaks of the Messiah’s kingship as derived from David (Psalms 78 [77]:70; 89 [88]:3-4,20,39,45; 110 [109]:1-3), the Messiah’s priesthood is said to be “according to the order of Melchizedek” (110 [109]:4).

Melchizedek was “the first to serve as priest to God” (ierasato to Theo protos), Josephus wrote, and long before Solomon built a temple at Jerusalem, Melchizedek had already done so (to hieron protos deimamenos). Indeed, Josephus traces the very name of Jerusalem (in Greek Hierosolyma) to this “priest of Salem” (hierus Salem) (The Jewish War 6.438).

Following the lead of Psalm 110 (109), the author of Hebrews sees in the priesthood of Melchizedek the “order” (taxsis) of the definitive priesthood of Christ the Lord (5:6,10; 6:20; 7:17). The Bible’s very silence with respect to the death of that ancient priest of Salem is taken as a prefiguration of the “unchangeable priesthood” (7:24) of God’s Son, to whom Melchizedek was “made like” (7:3). The latter was a living prophecy of the definitive Priest who ‘has become the surety of a better covenant” (7:22).

Third, Abraham gave a tithe to Melchizedek, just as Abraham’s children gave tithes to the Levitical priests (7:8-10). That detail argues for the superiority of the “order of Melchizedek” over the “order of Aaron” (7:11).

Fourth, Melchizedek blessed Abraham, saying: “Blessed be Abram of God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth; and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand” (verses 19-20). This priestly blessing too indicates the superiority of the “order of Melchizedek,” inasmuch as “the lesser is blessed by the better” (Hebrews 7:7).

Fifth, Melchizedek “brought out bread and wine” (verse 18). His offering of bread and wine, moreover, was recognized as a priestly act; that is to say, Melchizedek did this precisely “because he was” a priest (as is clear in the Septuagint’s en de and the Vulgate’s erat enim). Melchizedek’s offering of bread and wine, of course, was a type and prefiguration of what transpired that night when God’s priestly Son took the loaf of bread and the cup of wine into His holy and venerable hands and identified them as His Body and Blood.

Tuesday, January 15

A Covenant With Abram: This, the first of two accounts of God’s covenant with Abram, is arguably the more dramatic and colorful.

Here in Genesis 15 we also find two expressions appearing for the first time in Holy Scripture: (1) “the word of the Lord came to . . .” (verse 1), and (2) Abram “believed (’aman) in the Lord, and He accounted it to him for righteousness” (verse 6). That first expression will be especially prominent in the Bible’s prophetic literature, and the second, which introduces the theme of righteousness by faith in God’s promise, will dominate much of the New Testament, particularly the Pauline corpus. Indeed, St. Paul wrote the first commentary on this verse, Romans 4:1-5:

What shall we say then that Abraham our father, as pertaining to the flesh, hath found? For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not before God. For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.

At this point in the story, that is to say, Abram is not called upon to do anything. He is summoned simply to live by trust in God’s promising word. Eventually, of course, he will be called upon to do certain things, but the important point that St. Paul sees in this passage is that already, before he has done anything, Abram is called righteous. From this fact St. Paul argues that godly righteousness consists radically in that profound trust in God known in the Bible as faith. This faith is now explicitly spoken of for the first time in Holy Scripture. Hence, the importance of Genesis 15 for Christian theology. This is why Abraham is called “our father” in faith; his faith stands at the door of the history of salvation.

For St. Paul Abraham’s righteousness, prior to the works of the Mosaic covenant, became the point of departure for examining the Christian’s relationship to the Law of Moses, which was one of the most difficult and practical questions raised in New Testament times. For example, it was important to St. Paul that Abraham, at this point in the story, has not yet received the command to be circumcised (Romans 4:9-12); that command will not come until Chapter 17. That is to say, Abraham was declared righteous before circumcision.

Wednesday, January 16

Sarah’s Plan Backfires: Like the precedent referred to in 15:2-4, the “legal fiction” found here in verses 1-3 (and later on in the Jacob cycle) was never part of Israelite law, though both customs are well attested otherwise in Mesopotamian literature of the first half of the second millennium before Christ — that is, the very period under discussion. This fact is irrefutable evidence of the historicity of both of those narratives.

Hagar was one of the Egyptian slaves Pharaoh gave to Abram back in 12:16. The idea of Abram’s begetting children by this younger woman was Sarai’s, but when things backfire (verse 4) Sarai lays all the blame on Abram (verse 5)! The latter just shrugs his shoulders and tells his wife to handle the matter (verse 6).

The slave Hagar, being an Egyptian, heads south in her flight, though we know from another contemporary document, Hammurabi’s Code, that she endangered her life by running away. She travels the many miles from Hebron to Shur, southwest of Beersheba, which was a pretty good distance for a pregnant woman to walk, and there she encounters the “angel of the Lord” (malek Adonai), an expression that appears here for the first time in Holy Scripture (verse 7). The angel’s promise to Hagar (verses 10-12) stands parallel to the promises that Abram himself received in the Chapters 13 and 15. Although she herself is a slave, the angel tells Hagar that her son will not be.

It is a source of wonderment to this slave that she has been noticed by God (verse 13) in this story of God’s concern for the poor, the simple, and the persecuted. Hagar discovers her worth, when God’s sends His angel to care for her. God appears already as the champion of the downtrodden, as He will be especially portrayed in the Bible’s great social prophets.

What should be said about Abram’s taking of this slave girl as a sort of second wife? We observe that God did not tell him to do this; it was Sarai’s idea. The whole project, that is to say, was of the flesh, not of the Spirit. It is no great thing for a young woman to conceive and bear a child, but a great thing is what God had in mind to do. Sarai’s plan was a classic case of man interfering with the plans of God. This was simply a work of the flesh, as St. Paul observed in Galatians 4:21-25:

Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law? For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman. But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise. Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar. For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children.

In this story the Apostle to the Gentiles saw a prefiguration of the situation of the Jews and Christians with regard to Abraham. The Jews, he argued, were children of Abraham is a fleshly way, unlike Abraham’s spiritual paternity of Christians. Christians, not being slaves, are not children of Hagar, whereas the Jews, unfamiliar with freedom in Christ, are still slaves to the flesh and the Law. They are the children of Hagar!

Thursday, January 17

The Son of Laughter: Isaac is one of the most engaging figures in Holy Scripture, probably because he is the most associated with the exuberance of laughter. Isaac was named for laughter, in fact, because that name, formed from the verbal root shq, literally means “he will laugh.” It is ever a marvel and a grace, for sure, to hear a little infant laugh, and I confess, for my part, a preference for the view that babies, when they come to earth, bring along with them the laughter of the angels.

In the birth of Isaac, however, the circumstances attendant on his unexpected appearance in this world afforded an even ampler ground for mirth. No one felt this better than his mother, Sarah, who conceived him at the age of eighty-nine, and the happy laconism that she delivered, right after delivering her son, was smartly to the point: “God has made me laugh, and all who hear will laugh with me” (Genesis 21:6).

Truth to tell, the laughter had begun already, a year and more before. Abraham, when first he heard the tidings, bent himself upon the earth, prostrate in a solemn posture of devotion. The gravity of his reverence, however, and the deep mood indicated by his downward frame, were more than faintly muted by the smile that formed around his mouth. How should a ninety-nine-year-old man respond, after all, on being told, with respect to his eighty-nine-year-old wife, “I will bless her and also give you a son by her”? (17:16). Unfamiliar with a better rule for how to receive this sort of information, “Abraham fell on his face and laughed” (17:17).

According to the full, Christian understanding of the Holy Scriptures, the joy of Abraham and Sarah at the promised birth of Isaac was burdened with the gold of prophecy, for his miraculous begetting foretold a later conception more miraculous still. Isaac was, in truth, a type and pledge of “Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham” (Matthew 1:1). And Mary, mother of this Newer Isaac, having conceived Him in virginity just days before, made perfect her responding song of praise by remembering the mercy that God “spoke to our fathers, / To Abraham and to his seed forever” (Luke 1:55).

Did not Abraham himself anticipate with joy the later coming of that more distant Seed? Surely so, for even our Newer Isaac proclaimed, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad” (John 8:56). Like Moses (5:46), Isaiah (12:41), and David (Matthew 22:43), Abraham was gifted to behold, in mystic vision, the final fulfillment of that primeval word, “But My covenant I will establish with Isaac” (Genesis 17:21).

In the second century, St. Irenaeus of Lyons expressed the mystery inherent in the figure of Isaac:

Abraham, knowing the Father through the Word, who made heaven and earth, confessed Him as God, and taught by a vision that the Son of God would become a Man among men, by whose arrival his seed would be as the stars of heaven, he longed to see that day, so that he too might embrace Christ, as it were; and beholding Him in the Spirit of prophecy, he rejoiced (Against the Heresies 4.7.1).

Friday, January 18

The Tent of Meeting: The “tent” (Latin tabernaculum where Abraham receives the Lord prefigures the later Tabernacle which Moses, at divine instruction, caused to be set up in the Desert as the place where Israel would meet the Lord. In both instances, the Hebrew word is identical—’ohel. At each place where Israel stopped during the forty years of wandering in the Desert, this ’ohel was erected, and it was taken down again when the People moved on. Whenever the People were on the move, the ’ohel was carried by the priests, and, wherever they camped, the ’ohel stood in the middle of the camp.

The later tabernacle (’ohel) set up in the desert was based on the original tyoe, the tabernacle “not made with hands,” which Moses beheld in mystic vision on Mount Sinai. As we are in the process of reading in the Epistle to the Hebrews, the ascended Jesus, our High Priest, entered into that heavenly tabernacle.

To return to the ’ohel in Genesis 18—-when Sarah first learned the news of the child she was to bear, she was eavesdropping—from within this tabernaculum—on a conversation between her husband and the Lord, whom he hosted outside. “Sarah your wife shall have a son,” she heard the Lord say. Her response? “Sarah laughed within herself,” asserts the Sacred Text, a reaction that she was a tad too quick to disavow when questioned on the matter. “I did not laugh,” she insisted. “No,” the Lord pressed the point, “but you did laugh!”

Her laughter was prompted, of course, by the sheer incongruity of the proposition, because “Abraham and Sarah were old, well advanced in age; and Sarah had passed the age of childbearing.” Did her laughter also betray skepticism about the promise? A first reading of the text may suggest it did, because her laugh was accompanied by the remark, “After I have grown old, shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?”

Nonetheless, our earliest Christian commentator on the passage evidently did not think this to be the case. He even counted Sarah among the heroes of faith: “By faith Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed, and she bore a child when she was past the age, because she judged Him faithful who had promised” (Hebrews 11:11).

Hebrews 12:18-24: The author of Hebrews outlines a contrast between two mountains: Sinai and Zion—the mountain of the Law and the mountain of the Temple, or the covenant with Moses and the covenant with David.

A similar contrast between these two mountains—Sinai and Zion—was made by St. Paul, much to the same effect: “For these are two covenants: the one from Mount Sinai which gives birth to bondage, which is Hagar—for this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children—but the Jerusalem above is free, which is the mother of us all” (Galatians 4:24-26).

In both texts—Galatians and Hebrews—there is a contrast between the bondage of the Law and the boldness of the Christian. With respect to this contrast, St. Paul writes, “you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God” (Galatians 4:7). In both cases, we observe, Mount Zion is called the heavenly Jerusalem: According to Galatians, “the Jerusalem above is free, which is the mother of us all.” According to Hebrews, “you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.”

One suspects that this contrast between Mount Sinai and Mount Zion may have been a rhetorical trope in early Christian preaching. This suggestion would explain why we find it in both Galatians and Hebrews, in spite of the great differences between these two works. This contrast is used in both places and adapted to the theme of each work.

Friday, January 4

Genesis 4: Not least among the ironies of the Bible is the fact that its very first family was also its first dysfunctional family. For one thing, the boys didn’t get along. Fratricide is a useful clue.

The theological source of the problem, certainly, was the sin of the first parents in Genesis 3, though the novelist Jessamyn West did offer her own peculiar slant on the point: “Always thought Adam might’ve handled his boys better if he’d been a boy himself. . . . Worked under a handicap, as it was.”

In regard to these two brothers it is ironical, too, that the first man to die was also the first to be murdered. More ironical still, perhaps, he was murdered for his religious faith. “By faith,” Holy Scripture tells us, “Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain,” and “Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell.” Consumed with rage, he at last “rose up against his brother Abel and killed him” (Hebrews 11:4; Genesis 4:5,8). The first man to die, therefore, perished in testimony to his faith, and it was an angry unbeliever who took his life.

The key to the discernment of the first murder is the prior moral fissure dividing these two men. Murder was the fruit, not the root, of Cain’s offense. St. John tells us, “Whoever hates his brother is a murderer” (1 John 3:15). Antecedent to the killing itself, then, the killer was already “of the evil one” (3:12).

While we easily perceive that Cain killed because he was a bad man, it is important to see also that Abel was slain precisely because he was a good man. His goodness was the very reason that Cain took his life. St. John affirms it: “And why did he murder him? Because his works were evil and his brother’s righteous” (1 John 3:12). While it is said of Cain that “he perished in the fury wherewith he murdered his brother” (Wisdom 10:3), of Abel we are told that “he obtained witness that he was righteous” (Hebrews 11:4).

Thus commences the Bible’s reading of history as a prolonged chronicle of “all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel” (Matthew 23:35). The saga of persecution begins with “The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground” and ends with “How long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” (Genesis 4:10; Revelation 6:10).

Abel, then, though dead since the dawn of history, “still speaks” (Hebrews 11:4). The author of this book went on to invoke this same image with respect to Jesus’ own blood. The blood of Jesus, he wrote, “speaks better things than that of Abel” (12:24). Whereas Abel’s blood cried out demanding revenge, the blood of Jesus, who is called here “the Mediator of the new covenant,” invokes the divine mercy for sinners. Such is the blood in which we have access to “the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem” (12:23).

Saturday, January 5

Abel, Enoch, and Noah: Prior to the calling of Abraham, God provided the human race with certain introductory instruction through the deep perceptions of three patriarchs: Abel, Enoch, and Noah. In what Holy Scripture says of these men, we discern the initial steps of human education.

First, Abel examined the structure of the world around him and reached the conclusion “that things which are seen were not made by things which do appear.” The “thing-ness” of the world, that is to say, was not self-explanatory. The world was not its own cause. On the contrary, it gave “evidence of things not seen.” Abel’s probing mind, gazing at this visible world, laid hold on certain invisible truths.

Chief among these, I suppose, were the simplest rational principles (such as causality and non-contradiction) and the basic axioms and elementary theorems of the mathematical order. These interests emerged from the intellect’s encounter with empirical data. Abel’s mind perceived in matter an explanatory reference, and this perception laid the foundation for logical discipline and, in due course, metaphysics.

It is not without interest to reflect that Abel was a shepherd; the pastoral life was eminently compatible with the leisured intellectual exertion required for mathematics and metaphysics. Standing guard over his flock, as it grazed on the grass of the fields, Abel sought deeper nourishment from a greener pasture. He sharpened the earliest human hunger for “the substance of things hoped for.”

In the first generation that followed man’s alienation from God, then, Abel took the first human step back in the direction of Eden. In the world of things seen, he perceived God’s most basic self-testimony. This spiritual perception was an act of faith, in which Abel understood that “the worlds were framed by the word of God.”

Abel’s thought was followed by that of Enoch, who discerned the moral structure of existence. It was clear to Enoch, not only that God is, but also that “he is the rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” To the deductions of mathematics, therefore, and the insights of metaphysics, Enoch added the requirements of the moral order. He perceived that whatever separated true from false also separated good from evil.

In the transition from Abel to Enoch we trace the noetic step from the invisible things clearly seen to the law written in the heart—man’s conscience bearing witness to his responsibility. Just as Abel discerned the human mind as the locus where the universe learned the truth about itself, Enoch perceived in the human conscience the classroom where the universe was instructed about right and wrong.

The biographies of Abel and Enoch testify that neither man lived very long. The first was driven from this world by a violent human hand, and the second was summoned forth by a divine impatience, unwilling to wait longer for the delight of his company.

Since neither thinker remained long on the earth, it fell to a third patriarch to discover the moral structure of history; this discovery requires a bit more time. Living longer than Abel and Enoch, Noah carried their teachings to his consideration of culture and human affairs. If Abel was a metaphysician and Enoch a moralist, Noah was a prophet.

Tutored by the patriarchal tradition, which affirmed that God is the rewarder of them that diligently seek him, the observant and logical Noah became certain that “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness.” Metaphysics and the moral order drove his mind to the necessity of the retributive eschata. Evil was unnatural; it could not go on indefinitely. Driven by the fear such a perception engendered in his soul, Noah got busy and “prepared an ark to the saving of his house.”

Thus, in the three major patriarchs who followed the Fall, the human mind was enabled to grasp the true structure and significance of the world, to lay hold on the moral foundations of reality, and to act on a correct understanding of human events.

In this progression, humanity was duly prepared for the vocation of Abraham. Even as he dwelt in tents with Isaac and Jacob, Abraham was the heir of a thorough and intense tutelage. Though he left Ur not knowing whither he went, he was in no doubt about the universe—and university—he came from.

Sunday, January 6

Noah and Moses: In the third century, Cyprian of Carthage affirmed that “the one ark of Noah was a figure of the one Church” during the flood, and that “baptism of the world in which it was purified and redeemed” (Letters 68.2). Jerome (Letters 133) and Augustine (Against Faustus 12.17) said much the same in the early fifth century. Various combinations of this imagery are ubiquitous in patristic and liturgical texts.

The root of such symbolism is found in the Old Testament’s own portrayal of Noah’s ark. Genesis calls it a tevah, a word used in only one other place in the Hebrew Scriptures, namely, in reference to the little box in which the infant Moses floated on the Nile.

Indeed, the juxtaposition of the two stories seems clearly intentional if we examine the manifest similarities between them. First, in respect to both
Noah and Moses, the tevah is a floating container that preserves life from the peril of drowning. That is to say, the threat comes from water. Second, in each case the container is daubed with pitch to keep out the threatening water (6:14; Exodus 2:3). Third, both stories contribute to the ongoing biblical theme of God’s deliverance of His servants in times of crisis.

There is an even subtler element here, however. The word tevah is not Hebrew; it is Egyptian, in which language it may designate a box, a chest, even a coffin. Its use in only these two biblical passages cries out for an explanation.

Why does the Bible borrow this strange word and then use it in only these two places? That is to say, why does the Bible not state, in plain Hebrew, that Noah built a boat (‘abarah) or a ship (’oniyyah)? And why, when Moses was put into that little container made of reeds, is the thing not simply called, in plain Hebrew, a box (’aron) or a basket (tene)? Why do these two stories in Genesis and Exodus make such a point of employing an improbable, alien word not otherwise found in the Bible?

I can think of a single reasonable answer; namely, that the biblical author had in mind to tie these two accounts together in a very explicit way, so that the correspondence between them would be unmistakable. The setting of the Moses story may have suggested the use of the Egyptian noun tevah.

There stands out, in short, a clear literary parallel between the stories of old Noah near the beginning of Genesis and young Moses near the beginning of Exodus.

This correspondence will be evident to those who regularly read the Bible in Hebrew. For example, the medieval rabbinic scholar Rashi called attention to it in his commentary on Genesis (though not, curiously, in his commentary on Exodus).

As Noah in his tevah saved the human race and the animals from utter destruction, so the baby Moses, preserved in a tiny tevah of his own, became the deliverer of the Hebrews. Indeed, Moses’ very name, which means “drawn from the water,” is a foreshadowing of Israel’s deliverance from Pharaoh’s army at the Red Sea. Moses is a kind of new Noah. In his tevah at the beginning of this story, he makes his own personal exodus, as it were, a promise of the one to come.

The themes in both stories, finally, symbolize the Sacrament of Baptism, in which God’s people, even today, are “drawn from the water.”

Monday, January 7

Genesis 7: Noah’s construction of the ark represented his faith, the foundation of his righteousness. According to the Epistle to the Hebrews, “By faith Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith” (11:7).

But Noah not only lived in righteousness; he also proclaimed righteousness. The Apostle Peter referred to him as “a preacher of righteousness” (2 Peter 2:5), and late in the first century Clement of Rome wrote that “Noah preached repentance, and those who heeded him were saved” (First Epistle 7.6).

This picture of Noah as a righteous preacher of repentance came to the early Christians from Jewish lore about that famous builder of the ark. Flavius Josephus wrote of Noah’s relationship to his contemporaries in this way: “Noah was most uncomfortable with their actions, and, not at all happy with their conduct, he persuaded them to improve their dispositions and their actions.

“Seeing, nonetheless, that they did not obey him but remained slaves to their own wicked desires, he feared that they would slay him, together with his wife and children, as well as the spouses of the latter, so he departed out of that land” (Antiquities 13.1). Unable to convert his contemporaries, Noah then followed the divine leading to build an ark for the delivery of his family. He knew that God intended to flood the earth and destroy its wicked.

In the New Testament both the ark and the flood are understood as
having to do with the mystery of baptism.

Tuesday, January 8

Noah and Peter: St. Peter, writing of Christ’s descent into hell after His death, proceeded immediately to treat of Noah, the flood, our own baptisms, and the Lord’s Resurrection. For the early Christians, these were all components of the same mystery of regeneration: “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit, by whom also He went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly were disobedient, when once the Divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water. There is also an antitype which now saves us—baptism (not the removal of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God), through the resurrection of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 3:18–21).

If we are to understand the story of Noah as the early Christians understood it, then, we must examine its relationship to repentance and baptism.

We may start by considering the symbolism of water itself, especially water as threatening and destructive. The water in the Noah story is not the great life-sustaining fluid; it is utterly menacing, rather, and it is specifically menacing to sin. Like the flood of Noah, baptism is destructive. Baptism has been given to the world because the world is full of sin, and through this water of baptism we are delivered from the sinful world. To be baptized means that we deliberately drown our sins in repentance. Whether we speak of the baptismal type in the Deluge, therefore, or of the fulfillment of that type in baptism itself, we must start with sin.

Thus, the Bible’s flood account begins with a description of a world full of sin (Genesis 6:1–5, 11–13), ending with God’s sorrow at having made man and His resolve to destroy man from the earth (6:6–7). God does not destroy the world in wrath, but in sorrow, and only our repentance at Noah’s preaching can spare us this great sorrow of God.

We are baptized, therefore, because we are sinners, and our sins are destroyed in the mystery of baptism: “Arise and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord” (Acts 22:16). Or earlier, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus
Christ for the remission of sins” (2:38). Unlike Noah’s contemporaries, we ourselves hearken to his preaching. That is to say, we submit to this new baptismal flood because we repent at the witness of Noah. Baptism presupposes and requires this repentance of our sins, this conversion of our hearts to the apostolic word of Noah. In repentance we plunge ourselves into the deeper mystery of Noah’s flood, which is the death and Resurrection of Christ our Lord (Romans 6:3; Colossians 2:12).

Wednesday, January 9

Noah and Abraham: The word “covenant” (berith), which appeared in 6:18 for the first time in Holy Scripture, is now taken up and developed. The earliest explicit account of God’s covenant, that is to say, is the covenant with Noah. The second divine covenant, which we shall see in chapters 15 and 17, is God’s covenant with Abraham. In Genesis the idea of God’s covenant is found in only these two instances.

The first, the Noachic covenant here in chapter 9, is God’s covenant with the entire world and with mankind in particular. The second, the Abrahamic covenant especially as described in chapter 17, is God’s more particular covenant with the descendants of Abraham, which will be further defined as the biblical narrative continues.

There are several significant theological features shared by these two covenant narratives in Genesis, features reflected in a distinctive vocabulary that distinguishes them from the other covenants recorded in Holy Scripture.

One of the distinguishing features shared by these two covenants, in chapters 9 and 17, is the choice of verbs employed to predicate it. In most of Holy Scripture, the verb used for “making” a covenant is karat, literally “to cut.” Although the initiative in the covenant is always God’s, the verb karat does suggest something of a mutual agreement between two parties. In fact, both the verb karat and the noun berith were commonly employed in the ancient world to designate political treaties.

Examples of this usage are the treaty between Abraham and Abimelech in 21:27, and the treaty between Isaac and Abimelech in 26:28. In God’s covenant with Abraham in 15:18, moreover, karat is the verb employed for the making of the covenant, as is the case in most of the Hebrew Scriptures (for instance, Deuteronomy 5:2).

In these Genesis covenants of God with Noah and Abraham, however, two other verbs are employed: natan, “to give” (9:12; 17:2), and haqim, “to establish” (9:9, 11; 17:7). The first of these verbs emphasizes the gratuity, the generosity, of God’s act in making the covenant; it is pure, unmerited grace. This is why, in each case, God calls it “My covenant” (9:15; 17:7). The second verb places the accent on God’s resolve in the covenant; God Himself will not break the covenant. Each of these covenants is a perpetual pledge of hope for the future.

A second distinguishing feature of these two covenants in chapters
9 and 17 is the ’oth berith, “the sign of the covenant,” a distinctive symbol of each covenant. In the case of Noah, the ’oth berith is the rainbow (9:12–17), and in the case of Abraham it is circumcision
(17:1).

In the covenant with Noah, the function of the rainbow as a “sign” is to cause God to “remember” His covenant (9:15–16). The covenant sign serves as a reminder, as it were, a “memorial,” a zikkaron in Hebrew, an anamnesis in Greek. This theme will be taken up later on in Holy Scripture, when Jesus describes God’s definitive covenant with the Church in terms of an anamnesis, remembrance (Luke 22:19; 1 Corinthians 11:24–25). The Lord’s Supper, that is to say, is not simply an occasion for Christians to remember Jesus and his saving work on our behalf; as a “sign of the covenant,” the rite of breaking the bread and sharing the cup is even more the ineffable ’oth berith to God Himself, in which He is called upon to “remember” the redemption that He has definitively given and established with us in the Lord Jesus. This is why the Church’s celebration of the Holy Eucharist is the defining act of her existence.

With respect to these characteristics of the covenant with Noah, something should also be said of the Mosaic covenant as described in Exodus 31. This latter text ties the covenant on Sinai to both the Sabbath rest and the covenant with Abraham. The “sign” of the Mosaic covenant is the Sabbath, which is described in terms very reminiscent of the covenant with Noah here in chapter 9. The Sabbath is the sign (’oth) between God and Israel (Exodus 31:13, 17), much as the covenant with Noah is between God and “all flesh.” More specifically, the Sabbath is the sign of Israel’s “perpetual covenant” (berith ‘olam) with God (Exodus 31:16).

Thus, in the Exodus account we find the same vocabulary used with respect to the Sabbath that we have here in chapter 9 to describe the symbolic function of the rainbow.

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, marked with a sign) by a component that God placed in created nature.

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 (9:13). In 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 also a contrast.

Thursday, January 10

The Seed of Noah: Already at the end of the previous chapter of Genesis we found that all was not well among the sons of Noah, and the tensions of that chapter will be developed extensively in the rest of the biblical story. Just as Ham treated his father, Noah, with disrespect, so the sons of Ham—the Egyptians and the Canaanites—will make life unpleasant for the children of Shem, which include the Israelites. Thus, the discussion of the variety of nations here in chapter 10 prepares the way for the account of the diversity of tongues in chapter 11. We are given the ethnic aspect of the coming conflicts in the books of Exodus and Joshua.

The present list of the nations, however, seems more preoccupied with geography than ethnicity. We note that the descendants of Shem (still called Semites) mainly inhabit the Fertile Crescent, while the offspring of Ham inhabit areas to the south and southwest of the Fertile Crescent, and the children of Japheth live to the northwest, in the area of the Turkish peninsula and the Aegean Sea. That is to say, this list covers roughly the three landmasses that contain the Mediterranean Basin: southern Europe, western Asia, and northern Africa. The Holy Land touches all three of these land masses.

Josephus, describing this period, says that the descendents of Noah

first of all descended from the mountains into the plains, and fixed their habitation there; and persuaded others who were greatly afraid of the lower grounds on account of the flood, and so were very loath to come down from the higher places, to venture to follow their examples. Now the plain in which they first dwelt was called Shinar. God also commanded them to send colonies abroad, for the thorough peopling of the earth, that they might not raise seditions among themselves, but might cultivate a great part of the earth, and enjoy its fruits after a plentiful manner (Antiquities 1.4.1).

Holy Scripture ascribes to God the division of the earth among the tribes and clans of mankind. Indeed, this division is said to precede the rebellion of Babel and the multiplication of the tongues. That is to say, the genetic distinctions within the human race are presented in the Bible as a good aspect of human history, not as a consequence of sin.

About seventy nations are listed in this chapter. We remember, in this respect, that Jesus sent out exactly that number of apostles (Luke 10:1), a number indicating the universality of their mission to “make disciples of all nations.”

Friday, January 11

The Tower of Babel: In spite of the national diversities outlined in the previous chapter, all mankind, up to this point, speaks with a common tongue (verse 1).

The construction of Babel, the second city to be founded in the Bible, prompts us to recall the moral ambiguity of the first city, founded by the world’s first fratricide (4:17). Babel, like that first city, represents the development of technology (verse 3; 4:22). The tower of Babel symbolizes man’s arrogance and his rebellion against the authority of God. Not trusting God’s promise never again to destroy the world by flood (9:15), the men of Babel decide to build this tower as a sort of insurance policy against God’s punishment. Its construction, therefore, is of a piece with all the earlier rebellions against God that we have seen, starting in chapter 3.

God’s response is twofold. It is both a punishment against the rebels and a preventative measure against their becoming even worse. That is to say, even God’s punishment is an act of mercy.

In the more general symbolism of Holy Scripture, Babel also represents Babylon, the city of power and godless rebellion, which is overthrown definitively in the Book of Revelation. There is a symbolic identity, therefore, uniting the present story to the destruction of Babylon described in Revelation 17 and 18. This city represents any political and economic establishment characterized by arrogance and the love of power.

Its punishment by the division of tongues was especially appropriate. Saint Augustine of Hippo comments on this chapter:

As the tongue is the instrument of domination, in it pride was punished, so that man, who refused to understand God when He gave His commands, should also be misunderstood when he gave commands. Thus was dissolved their conspiracy, because each man withdrew from those who could not understand and banded with those whose speech he found intelligible. So the nations were divided according to their languages and scattered over the face of the earth, as seemed good to God, who accomplished this in hidden ways that we cannot understand (The City of God 16.4).