Friday, January 3
Genesis 3: When we think of Adam’s fall, there are two passive participles that should come forcefully to our minds: lost and cursed. These two words sum up the human condition without Christ.
First, man is lost. Worse, he continues to get lost. It is a mistake to think of the fallen human being as somehow looking for God. Indeed, the very opposite is true. When the human race fell in Adam, a kind of spiritual inertia came into play, a force that kept him going in the same direction—away from God. Of himself man had no power of initiative to reverse the movement. This is what is meant by the Fall.
If man was to return to God, God had to take the initiative. If God had not sought man out, he would keep going in the same direction—away. This is very clear in the biblical story of Adam’s hiding from God immediately after his disobedience. He and all his descendants would still be lying low there in the bushes if God had not come after him, inquiring, “Where are you?”
It was not that God did not know where to find Adam. It was Adam who was lost, not God. God knew where Adam was, but Adam didn’t. God’s query, “Where are you?” was intended to wake lost man up to his real situation. As such, it was the first proclamation of the Gospel, the merciful word that began to reverse the direction of man’s existence. Indeed, it was the first step toward the mystery of the Incarnation.
This divine inquiry was necessary, because man had no interest in finding God. It was of God, on the contrary, that Adam was most afraid, because God recognized him to be naked. God understood this and promptly provided a covering for man’s nakedness. It was the initial step toward man’s final clothing, indicated in St. Paul’s exhortation to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 13:14).
But even when confronted by his sin, Adam did not accept the guilt and responsibility. He immediately blamed Eve: “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate.” Indeed, this response even seems to blame God for the Fall. Adam speaks of Eve as “the woman whom you gave me,” as though to say, “I did not ask for a wife; this whole arrangement was your idea. This woman, whom You designed, is the one who got me into this mess. So the two of you are to blame for it.”
Eve, for her part, follows Adam’s example of passing the blame: “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” This too was God’s fault, of course, because he created this “creeping thing” (Genesis 1:25). Eve could hardly hold herself responsible for what happened.
Even found, that is to say, fallen man was obviously still lost.
Hence—to come to our second point—fallen man was cursed. In assigning punishment for the original sin, the Lord apparently accepted the order of guilt assigned by Adam and Eve. Accordingly, the snake was the first to be punished, then the woman, and finally the man (3:14-15).
The first word of God’s verdict is “cursed” (‘arur), because an historical curse is the lasting effect of the Fall. The Semitic root of this expression, ‘rr, is found in Akkadian, Ethiopian, and Arabic, in addition to Hebrew. Pronounced out loud, the word sounds a lot, in fact, like a “roar.” Well, I suppose it should, because both words, ‘arur and “roar” (from the Old English root ra) refer to the same thing—a loud and frightening expression of anger.
Long before its first inscribed record on Akkadian temple inscriptions, it is obvious that the root ‘rr was an onomatopoeia, a word that imitated a sound, in this case the sound of a lion.
Thus, to be “cursed” (another word, we note, that preserves the same guttural ur sound) means to receive a decree of irate and radical disapproval. It signifies expulsion from God’s society and communion. Moreover, it is of the nature of a curse that it is effective simply by being pronounced.
The curse incurred by fallen man was related to the very earth from which he was taken: “Cursed is the ground for your sake. . . In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread/ Till you return to the ground,/ For out of it you were taken;/ For dust you are, And to dust you shall return.” The curse, that is to say, was man’s mortality. What Adam handed on was domination by death; “sin reigned in death” (Romans 5:21). By reason of Adam’s Fall, man without redemption is under the reign of death and corruption, because “the reign of death (regnum mortis) operates only in the corruption of the flesh” (Tertullian, On the Resurrection 47).
This is what Adam bequeathed to his offspring, “the reign of death.” To die without the grace of redemption is to die eternally. This is the real curse of death, because to die such a death is to be “lost” in a most radical way, lost in the sense of putting oneself beyond the possibility of being found.
Saturday, January 4
Psalms 8: From the very earliest translations of the Creed into the English language, the mystery of the Incarnation has been expressed in a rather puzzling way, even if our long familiarity with the words has reduced our sense of their grammatical enigma. We say of the Son of God that He “became [or “was made”] man.”
The puzzle posed by this construction is exactly how to classify the predicate nominative “man” in this instance. Is the sense of the expression indefinite—“a man,” much as we might say that “Fred became a farmer”? But if so, why didn’t the translators simply say that? “He became a man” would not only make sense; it would be both grammatically and theologically correct.
Or is the meaning of the expression merely descriptive—“he became human,” much as we might say “Fred became agrarian”? Here again, the translators could easily have said that, if that is what they meant, because God’s Son most certainly did become human.
No, neither of these translations was deemed adequate. Rendering very literally from the underlying Latin (and not directly from the original Greek, by the way), the translators said that He “became man,” leaving us with this stylistic puzzle. One can hardly think of an occasion, after all, in which we might properly say “Fred became farmer.”
What the translators gave us here is an idiom, which is to say a form of expression unique to a particular setting and standing outside of expected usage. On reflection, their recourse to idiom in this case is hardly surprising, for the event under discussion, the Incarnation, is itself “idiomatic” in the extreme, in the sense of being completely unique, utterly unexpected, and standing free of normal patterns of acquiescence. How better, after all, to speak of an incomparable and unparalleled event than by recourse to an idiomatic improvisation?
God’s Son did not only “become human,” though it is true that He did. Nor did He simply “become a man,” though this likewise is a correct statement of the fact. He “became man,” rather, in a sense defying grammatical precision as thoroughly as it confounds also the expectations of biology, psychology, metaphysics, and other aspects of the human enterprise, thereby shocked and left reeling, all its vaunted resources now massively strained and overcharged at the infusion of unspeakable glory.
The most correct formulation of the Incarnation is the one to which we are accustomed: “He became man.” Christ is the archetype of man, bearing all of humanity in Himself. “It was for the new man that human nature was established from the beginning,” wrote St. Nicholas Kavasilas; “the old Adam was not the model of the new, it was the new Adam that was the model of the old.”
The wise English translators of the Creed were taking their cue here from Psalm 8: “What is man (’enosh) that You are mindful of him? Or the son of man (adam) that you care for him?” According to Hebrews 2, which is our oldest extant Christian commentary on Psalm 8, the word “man” in this text refers to Christ our Lord, and the entire psalm is a description of His saving work.
By the Incarnation, our psalm says to God, “You have made Him a little lower than the angels, and You have crowned Him with honor and glory,” in explanation of which Hebrews replies that “we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor” (2:9).
When God gave our forefather Adam dominion over the earth and its fullness, that act was a prophecy of the universal subjection of creation to the reign of Christ. Such is the true meaning of Psalm 8: “You have made Him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under His feet.”
Christ is no afterthought; He is the original meaning of humanity. Christ is what God had in mind when He reached down and formed that first lump of mud into a man. Again in the words of St Nicholas Kavasilas: “It was towards Christ that man’s mind and desire were oriented. We were given a mind that we might know Christ, and desire, that we might run to Him; and memory, that we might remember Him, because even at the time of creation it was He who was the archetype.”
The mystery of the Incarnation is the theme of Psalm 8. Christ is the reason for our singing out: “O Lord, our Lord, how sublime is Your name in all the earth, for You have set Your glory above the heavens.”
Sunday, January 5
Genesis 5: In this first biblical genealogy we draw special attention to the figure of Enoch. After the Epistle to the Hebrews gives its initial definition of faith as “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (11:1), there follows the famous list of the “great cloud of witnesses,” those “elders” who “obtained a good testimony” by exemplifying such faith (12:1).
One can hardly fail to observe in this list the strong emphasis on death with respect to this saving faith. Throughout Hebrews 11 faith has to do with how one dies, and “all these died in faith” (11:13). This emphasis on death in the context of faith renders very interesting the inclusion of Enoch among the list of faith’s exemplars, because Enoch departed this world in some way other than death. Indeed, in the genealogy here in Genesis 5, the verb “died” eight times with respect to the patriarchs from Adam to Lamech, but in the case of Enoch, “the seventh from Adam” (Jude 14), our text says simply he “walked with God, and he was not found (ouk eurisketo), for God removed (metetheken) him” (verse 24).
By way of commentary on this passage, the Epistle to the Hebrews says, “By faith Enoch was removed (metethe) so that he should not see death, and was not found (ouk eurisketo), because God removed (metetheken) him; for before his removal (metatheseos) he was witnessed to have pleased (euariestekenai) God” (11:5).
That ancient “witness,” cited here in the Epistle to the Hebrews, is found in the Book of Wisdom, where Enoch is thus described: “He was pleasing (euarestos) to God and was beloved of Him, so that, living among sinners, he was removed (metetethe). He was snatched away so that evil would not alter his understanding, nor deceit beguile his soul. For the malice of what is worthless takes away things of worth, and the roving of passion subverts a guileless mind. Made perfect (teleotheis) in a short time, he filled out massive times, for his soul pleased (areste) God. So He rushed him from the midst of evil” (4:10-14).
Such is the biblical witness about the “short time” that Enoch spent on this earth (a mere 365 years, according to verse 23). Unlike the other heroes listed in Hebrews 11, Enoch did not die in faith, for the unusual reason that he did not die at all. He nonetheless deserved a place in that heroic list, we are told, because “he pleased God” by his faith. Thus, when we believers “draw near unto the Throne of grace” (Hebrews 4:16), when we approach “the general assembly and church of the firstborn registered in heaven” (12:23), there stands Enoch among “the spirits of just men made perfect (teteleiomenon).”
Living before Noah, Abraham, and Moses, Enoch was participant in none of the covenants associated with these men. Not a single line of Holy Scripture was yet written for him to read. Much less did Enoch ever hear the message of salvation preached by the Apostles. Yet, he was so pleasing to God by his faith as to be snatched away before his time, not suffering that common lot of death from which the Almighty spared not even His own Son.
What, exactly, did Enoch believe, then, that he should be such a champion of faith, an example for the Church until the end of time? The Epistle to the Hebrews explains: “But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is the rewarder of those who diligently seek Him” (11:6).
This was the sum total of all that Enoch’s faith told Him — God’s existence and his own duty to seek God to obtain the singular blessing that Holy Scripture ascribes to him. It is the Bible’s portrayal of Enoch, then, that affords us some hope for the salvation of those millions of human beings who must pass their lives on that bare minimum of theological information, for which Enoch rendered such a marvelous account.
Monday, January 6
Genesis 6: In the third century Cyprian of Carthage affirmed that “the one ark of Noah was a figure of the one Church” during the flood, 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, an Egyptian word used in only one other place in the Hebrew Scriptures, namely, to designate 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 (Genesis 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.
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’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).
However, the important literary and theological relationship between Genesis 6-9 and Exodus 2 is all but obliterated in many translations, starting even with the Septuagint and the Vulgate. More recently the English Standard Version, while leaving Noah in his “ark,” plops poor little baby Moses down in a mere “basket.” On the other hand, it is one of the merits of the King James Bible that it employs the word “ark” (from the Latin arcatevah<.i> 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.”
Tuesday, January 7
Psalms 18 (Greek & Latin 17): Second Samuel 22 gives a nearly identical version of Psalm 18, similarly providing the historical context of David’s deliverance from the unjust persecution of Saul.
In the ancient and inherited liturgical customs of the Christian Church, this is a morning psalm, divided in the West between Fridays and Saturdays at prime (first hour), and prayed in the East at third hour (Tierce). It was about this time of day, from sunrise through early morning, that Jesus our Lord was brought to trial before Pontius Pilate (cf. Matt. 27:1), and many Christians have seen fit, over the centuries, to pray Psalm 18 in the context of that trial.
Indeed, certain lines of the psalm lend themselves readily to such a reading: “With praise will I call upon the Lord, and I shall be saved from my enemies. . . . From my powerful opponents will He deliver me, and from those who hate me, for they were stronger than I. They confronted me on the day of my calamity, but the Lord became my champion. . . . The Lord will reward me according to my righteousness; for the purity of my hands will He repay me. For I have kept the ways of the Lord, nor have I strayed profanely from my God. For all His judgments are before me, nor have His decrees departed from me. In His presence will I be faultless, and I will preserve myself from rebellion. And the Lord will reward me according to my righteousness; for the purity of my hands will He repay me.”
Jesus was subjected to trial under the two greatest legal codes of that day, those of Israel and Rome, and in neither could His innocence find vindication. Within the finest forensic systems of humanity then devised, the most just man in history could obtain no justice. Psalm 18 fits congruously into that dramatic context.
In the final analysis, nonetheless, the real villains in this psalm, those opponents against whom the Lord Jesus directs His prayer, are not the Sanhedrin and Pilate. These are but the agents of a higher intrigue, as St. Peter will afterwards affirm: “Yet now, brethren, I know that you did it in ignorance, as did also your rulers” (Acts 3:17). No, the far deeper malice of the hour is that of the satanic spirits, the true enemies who conspired against the Holy and Righteous One.
Consequently, it is the fallen angels that we should see referenced in so many lines of this psalm, for against them our Lord waged a combat without quarter: “I will pursue My enemies and overtake them, nor will I turn back until they are perished. I will crush them, and they will not stand; they shall fall beneath My feet. . . . Like dust before the wind will I thrash them, and trample them down like mud in the streets.” This crushing of the Lord’s demonic foes is vividly described in the Bible’s final book: “And fire came down from God out of heaven and devoured them. The devil, who deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are. And they will be tormented day and night forever and ever” (Rev. 20:9, 10). Obviously, in the ongoing war of the spirit, neither this last book nor the Psalter was composed for noncombatants.
Many lines of Psalm 18, however, lay greater stress on the rich blessings of the Lord’s triumph over evil. For example, the calling of the Gentiles to salvation. Rejected by the Jews at His trial (cf. Matt. 27:25; John 19:15), Jesus speaks of the other nations: “You will set me at the head of the nations. An unknown people have served me. . . . For I will confess You among the nations, O Lord, and praise will I sing to Your name.” Later the Apostle Paul will quote this verse from our psalm by way of explaining his thesis that “the Gentiles [should] glorify God for His mercy” (Rom. 15:9).
The merciful calling of the Gentiles, in the wake of Israel’s defection, is, of course, a large theme in much of the New Testament. It is John’s Gospel, however, that most specifically joins this theme to the Lord’s rejection by Israel at the time of His sufferings and death. Note, for instance, that it is in the context of the appearance of the “Greeks” that Jesus gives the most explicit prophecy of His death: “‘Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain. . . . And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself.’ This He said, signifying by what death He would die” (John 12:24–33).
Wednesday, January 8
1 Peter 3;18-22: Peter speaks of Christ’s descent into the nether world, which took on so pronounced an emphasis in Christian faith and worship that it became an article in the Nicene Creed. Peter says that Christ “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.”
The relationship of Christian Baptism to the Flood and Noah’s Ark, found here explicitly for the first time, became a common trope in Christian biblical exegesis:
“Righteous Noah, along with the other mortals at the Deluge, that is, with his own wife, with his three sons, and with their three wives, all of them being eight in number, were a symbol of the eighth day, whereon Christ appeared when He rose from thee dead, first in power forever. For Christ, being the firstborn of every creature, became again the head of another race regenerated by Himself through water, and faith, and wood, containing the mystery of Cross, even as Noah was saved by wood when he rode upon the waters with his family” (Justin Martyr, Dialogue With Trypho 138).
“Just as the waters of the Deluge, by which the old iniquity was purged—after the baptism of the world, so to speak—a dove became the herald announcing to thee earth the softening of the heavenly wrath, when she had been sent away out of the Ark, and had returned carrying the olive branch, a sign that even among the pagans signifies peace, so by the selfsame law of the heavenly dispensation, there flies to the earth—that is to say, our flesh—as it emerges from the font, having put away its old sins, the dove of the Holy Spirit, bringing us the peace of God, sent forth from heaven, where is the Church, typified by the Ark” (Tertullian, On Baptism 8).
Genesis 8: Since, as we have seen, baptism is the fulfillment of that mystery of which the flood was a type, we should rather expect to find the dove to appear in the New Testament descriptions of baptism, and indeed it does. At the baptism of our Lord, the Holy Spirit assumes that form in order to confirm the testimony of the Father, who proclaims Jesus His beloved Son. Thus, St. Cyril of Jerusalem wrote, “Some say that, just as salvation came in the time of Noah by the wood and the water, and as the dove came back to Noah in the evening with an olive branch, so, they say, the Holy Spirit descended on the true Noah, the author of the new creation, when the spiritual dove came upon Him at His baptism, to demonstrate that He it is who, by the wood of the cross, confers salvation on believers, and who, by His death at eventide, conferred on the world the grace of salvation.”
Thursday, January 9
Hebrews 3.1-11: Having contrasted Jesus to the prophets (1:1-2) and to the angels (1:5-14), the Epistle to the Hebrews proceeds to contrast Him to Moses. In all cases, God’s Son and Heir is contrasted with His mere servants. In the cases of the angels and Moses, the words used for “servant” have a religious meaning.
First, with respect to the angels the descriptive word is leitourgos (1:7), translated in the KJV as “minister.” In describing the angels further, the author resorts to an equivalent expression, leitourgika pnevmata, translated in the KJV as “ministering spirits.”
Second, with respect to Moses, the descriptive word is therapon (verse 5). Since this word is normally translated into English as simply “servant,” the reader may not suspect the religious meaning it sometimes has. The noun therapon often refers to someone who serves in a temple. This is how we should understand Moses as God’s “servant.”
The underlying Hebrew noun is ‘eved, a word used for Moses many times (Exodus 14:31; Numbers 12:7-8); Deuteronomy 34:5 (cf. 33:1), Psalm 105 [104]:26).
In the LXX of Exodus 14:31 and Numbers 12:7-8, this ‘eved is translated as therapon. This preference of the translators probably reflects the importance of Moses in the institution of Israel’s priesthood and ritual worship.
This became a designation for Moses, as we see twice in the Wisdom of Solomon (10:16; 18:21).
Now it is passing curious that in early Christian literature, the word therapon is used only for Moses. It became virtually a technical designation for Moses. Our earliest example is the present text in Hebrews, where the “house” (oichos), over which Moses is the minister, is the Church.
Moses remains a permanent minister in God’s house. This is an important assertion of the role of Moses in the Church. He is the therapon, the servant of the temple, and from the beginning this is how Moses was regarded by Christians.
Near the end of the first century, Clement of Rome wrote to the rebellious congregation at Corinth: “Envy brought down Dathan and Abiram alive to Hades, through the sedition which they excited against God’s servant Moses [pros ton theraponta tou Theou Mousen] (4.12).
Perhaps quoting our text here in Hebrews (and/or Numbers 12:7-8, Clement later speaks of “the blessed Moses, “a faithful servant in all his house”—ho makarios pistos therapon en holo to oiko Mouses (43.1). Clement uses this noun three other times to refer to Moses (51.3,5; 53.5). It refers to Moses also in Pseudo-Barnabas 14.4. Thus, we find the word used seven times in Christian literature prior to about A.D. 110, and each time it refers to Moses.
Even as the author of Hebrews contrasts Jesus and Moses, he is careful not to permit this contrast to reflect badly on Moses. He is called a “faithful minister” (pistos therapon). This expression, used also by Clement, comes directly from the LXX of Numbers 12:7.
This twofold concern of the author of Hebrews—to show proper respect for the angels and Moses even when arguing for the preeminence of Jesus—is consistent with his attitude toward the Old Testament generally. He never permits the superiority of the New Covenant become an occasion to denigrate the Old.
Moses is arguably the most prominent Old Testament figure to appear in the Epistle to the Hebrews. He will return to this work several more times (7:14; 8:5; 9:19; 10:28; 11:23-27; 12:21).
Friday, January 10
Genesis 10: 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 the Canaanites—will make life unpleasant for the children of Shem, which includes 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. In the present chapter we are given the ethnic aspect of the coming conflicts in the books of Exodus and Joshua.
This 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.
Flavius Josephus, describing this period, says that the descendants 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 tongs. That is to say, the genetic distinctions within the human race 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.” In other words, the evangelization of the human race is not presented simply as “one soul at a time.” Full evangelization requires that the nations themselves—together with their own unique and distinctive cultures—become enclaves of faith.