... that Psalm 45 calls the king of Judah "God" in the middle of a psalm celebrating his wedding?
Part 1: Getting a Sense of the Context
Verse 1 announces that the psalm is about the king, which--duh--anyone hearing it when it was written would have immediately understood to be about the guy that was their king.
Verse 10 addresses a woman, who is told to forget her father's house. Verse 11 tells us the king thinks she's hot. In verse 13 we find out she is a princess, and in verse 14 she is led to the king, with many maidens following her. Then verse 16 tells us the king is going to have some children who will become successful princes.
No question what the most likely interpretation of this psalm in its historical context is. The king's getting married, and this is a wedding psalm. To think that an audience at the time this was written would think anything different is to be an incompetent exegete, incompetent at inductive Bible study.
Part 2: The King as god
So now we take this clear context and go back to verses 6-7. "Your throne, O God, endures forever..." Following the train of thought from the beginning of the psalm to this point, the king is clearly addressed as "god," following standard practice of the Ancient Near East considering kings as representatives of the gods, as divine sons (cf. 2 Sam. 7:14, which is about Solomon in context). Indeed, verse 7 goes on to distinguish the king as god from God as the king's God. The king is thus only god in a somewhat derivative and somewhat figurative sense.
Part 3: Christ as God
Hebrews 1:8-9 then, as the NT regularly does, read these verses with a "fuller sense" and redirects them in relation to Christ, who of course is God for Hebrews in a greater sense than the king is god in Psalm 45.
Did you know?
Showing posts with label Did you know. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Did you know. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Did you know? (Matthew 11 and Sirach)
Did you know?
... that when Jesus says in Matthew 11 for his audience to "Come to me" and "take my yoke on you," he is echoing Sirach 24 and 31, a book that was widely used in the first few centuries of the church and remains in the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Old Testament? In Sirach, it is wisdom talking, and for various reasons it seems likely that Matthew wants us to think of Jesus as God's wisdom come to earth in a fuller sense than the Law was God's wisdom.
In Sirach 24:19, wisdom tells Israel to "Come to me" and in 24:23, this wisdom turns out to be the Law of Moses. In Sirach 51, the teacher speaks of how he found wisdom and then invites the uneducated to "draw near to me" (51:23), to "put your neck under wisdom's yoke" (51:26), by which the teacher labored little and found much rest (51:27).
So Jesus is God's wisdom and a teacher of wisdom, under whose yoke you will find peace, a fuller peace than you would find under the Law.
Did you know?
... that when Jesus says in Matthew 11 for his audience to "Come to me" and "take my yoke on you," he is echoing Sirach 24 and 31, a book that was widely used in the first few centuries of the church and remains in the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Old Testament? In Sirach, it is wisdom talking, and for various reasons it seems likely that Matthew wants us to think of Jesus as God's wisdom come to earth in a fuller sense than the Law was God's wisdom.
In Sirach 24:19, wisdom tells Israel to "Come to me" and in 24:23, this wisdom turns out to be the Law of Moses. In Sirach 51, the teacher speaks of how he found wisdom and then invites the uneducated to "draw near to me" (51:23), to "put your neck under wisdom's yoke" (51:26), by which the teacher labored little and found much rest (51:27).
So Jesus is God's wisdom and a teacher of wisdom, under whose yoke you will find peace, a fuller peace than you would find under the Law.
Did you know?
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Did you know? (Romans 1 and the Book of Wisdom)
I was working on the devotional that goes along with my forthcoming Paul book on Romans (with Wesleyan Publishing) and was remembering how similar Romans 1 is to some themes in Wisdom 13 and 14.
Did you know?
... that Paul seems to be interacting with the book of Wisdom in Romans 1? The "Wisdom of Solomon," as it is sometimes called, was written at about the same time as Paul--perhaps several decades earlier. It was used extensively by the Christians of the earliest centuries and remains in the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Old Testament. Hebrews 1:3 alludes to Wisdom 7:26.
Wisdom 13 talks about how foolish Gentiles worshiped wood when they used the other half of the tree to make a boat. It talks about how people should have realized the Creator behind the creation but worshiped created things instead. Wisdom 14 then talks about how sexual immorality naturally followed idolatry.
It is exactly this same sequence of ideas we find in Romans 1. Paul says that God's eternal power should have been evident, but instead Gentiles worshiped the creation and idols. God then left humanity to spiral out of control, manifesting itself not least in sexual immorality.
The similarity of themes and progression may be strong enough to conclude that Paul knew the book of Wisdom and was interacting with it.
Did you know?
Did you know?
... that Paul seems to be interacting with the book of Wisdom in Romans 1? The "Wisdom of Solomon," as it is sometimes called, was written at about the same time as Paul--perhaps several decades earlier. It was used extensively by the Christians of the earliest centuries and remains in the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Old Testament. Hebrews 1:3 alludes to Wisdom 7:26.
Wisdom 13 talks about how foolish Gentiles worshiped wood when they used the other half of the tree to make a boat. It talks about how people should have realized the Creator behind the creation but worshiped created things instead. Wisdom 14 then talks about how sexual immorality naturally followed idolatry.
It is exactly this same sequence of ideas we find in Romans 1. Paul says that God's eternal power should have been evident, but instead Gentiles worshiped the creation and idols. God then left humanity to spiral out of control, manifesting itself not least in sexual immorality.
The similarity of themes and progression may be strong enough to conclude that Paul knew the book of Wisdom and was interacting with it.
Did you know?
Monday, May 09, 2011
Did you know? (the word in John 1)
I was thinking about a new kind of post to do. One of my roles in the church is surely informant... If my education is worth anything, why not share some tidbits from time to time. So here's a first shot.
Did you know...
That the "word" in John 1 has a rich background in both Jewish and secular literature at the time of Christ.
1. It certainly does not refer to Scripture in its original sense. You will only think this if you are defining the words on the basis of your dictionary rather than the dictionary of John's time.
2. It eventually refers to Jesus in John 1. In the immediate literary context, the word becomes flesh in 1:14 and turns out to be none other than Jesus among the people of that time.
3. Jewish literature like the book of Wisdom and the writings of a Jew from Egypt named Philo use the word logos, "word," sometimes as a metaphor, sometimes as an almost personal entity that puts God's will into action. Here are a couple quotes:
"Through the logos God made the world, using it as an instrument..." (Philo, Allegorical Laws 3.96)
"Some regard the image of God, his messenger the logos, as God's very self" (Philo, On Dreams 1.239)
"God... you made all things through your logos..." (Wisdom 9:1).
So, in my opinion, when John 1 says, "In the beginning was the logos," it is drawing on this rich tradition. In the beginning was God's will for the world in action... and that will for the world became flesh, and tabernacled among us, just like the tabernacle where Moses met God in the wilderness...
Did you know?
Did you know...
That the "word" in John 1 has a rich background in both Jewish and secular literature at the time of Christ.
1. It certainly does not refer to Scripture in its original sense. You will only think this if you are defining the words on the basis of your dictionary rather than the dictionary of John's time.
2. It eventually refers to Jesus in John 1. In the immediate literary context, the word becomes flesh in 1:14 and turns out to be none other than Jesus among the people of that time.
3. Jewish literature like the book of Wisdom and the writings of a Jew from Egypt named Philo use the word logos, "word," sometimes as a metaphor, sometimes as an almost personal entity that puts God's will into action. Here are a couple quotes:
"Through the logos God made the world, using it as an instrument..." (Philo, Allegorical Laws 3.96)
"Some regard the image of God, his messenger the logos, as God's very self" (Philo, On Dreams 1.239)
"God... you made all things through your logos..." (Wisdom 9:1).
So, in my opinion, when John 1 says, "In the beginning was the logos," it is drawing on this rich tradition. In the beginning was God's will for the world in action... and that will for the world became flesh, and tabernacled among us, just like the tabernacle where Moses met God in the wilderness...
Did you know?
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