27:3 – μεταμεληθείς – Judas “repented.” Does this mean that Judas was forgiven? See my earlier post on this issue. In the present post, I’ll pass over that question, and focus instead on the fact that as part of this repentance, Judas goes back to the priests and confesses his sin:

27:4 – Judas makes his confession in formal legal phrasing: to wit, he quotes Deuteronomy 27:25, which the NKJV translates as “Cursed is the one who takes a bribe to slay an innocent person.” The Hebrew is fuller and more poetic or picturesque than our sanitized English translation: “Cursed is he who takes a bribe to slay nephesh dam naqiy — the life of innocent blood.” One sign that Judas’ confession is cast in the language of Deuteronomy 27:25 is the use of the unusual adjective ἀθῳον, which appears in Scripture only in this chapter (Matthew 27:4 and 27:24, Pilate’s declaration of his own innocence). It is not a very common word, but it appears, sure enough, in the LXX’s rendering of Dt. 27:25: ψυχὴν αἵματος ἀθῴου.

Why should Judas use the technical language of this particular mitzvah? Because he is speaking to the priests not as co-conspirators, but in their official capacity. He is seeking their help in being reconciled to YHWH. That is what priests are for. But they disavow their job: “τί πρὸς ἡμᾶς;” “What is that to us?” or even “Why do (you come) to us?” Answer: Because you are priests.

It is only after the priests refuse Judas their intercession that he decides to kill himself.

The individual who can do something that the world wants done will, in the end, make his way regardless of race. One man may go into a community prepared to supply the people there with an analysis of Greek sentences. The community may not at the time be prepared for, or feel the need of, Greek analysis, but it may feel its need of bricks and houses and wagons. If the man can supply the need for those, then, it will lead eventually to a demand for the first product, and with the demand will come the ability to appreciate it and to profit by it. (Up From Slavery, ch. 10)

Elsewhere, he deprecates knowledge of Greek as a pretext for idleness and avoidance of manual labor:

On the morning that the school opened, thirty students reported for admission… With the teachers came some of their former pupils, and when they were examined it was amusing to note that in several cases the pupil entered a higher class than did his former teacher. It was also interesting to note how many big books some of them had studied, and how many high-sounding subjects some of them claimed to have mastered. The bigger the book and the longer the name of the subject, the prouder they felt of their accomplishment. Some had studied Latin, and one or two Greek. This they thought entitled them to special distinction.

In fact, one of the saddest things I saw during the month of travel which I have described was a young man, who had attended some high school, sitting down in a one-room cabin, with grease on his clothing, filth all around him, and weeds in the yard and garden, engaged in studying a French grammar.

The students who came first seemed to be fond of memorizing long and complicated “rules” in grammar and mathematics, but had little thought or knowledge of applying these rules to their everyday affairs of their life.

I’ve been correcting my students’ NKJV Bibles’ translation on this passage for years now. It’s all in N.T. Wright, and it’s amazing to me that there hasn’t been an outcry about how the usual translation makes utter nonsense of Paul’s argument.

Here’s the NKJV:

42 So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. 43 It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. 44 It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. 45 And so it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.

46 However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, and afterward the spiritual. 47 The first man was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is the Lord from heaven.

Now, there is a perfectly good Greek word for “natural”: φυσικός. Paul does not use it. Why? Because he is not contrasting “natural” with “supernatural” or “unnatural.” Rather, he is contrasting the invincible animating power of the resurrected Christ — a power that will make our bodies live forever — with the hopelessly doomed impotence of the souls we have received by natural descent from Adam. For the Greek is not “a natural body” (σῶμα φυσικός) but “a soul-filled body” (σῶμα ψυχικόν). The adjective derives from the word for “soul” (ψύχη), not the word for “nature” (φύσις). By any standard, the translation has to be considered objectively incorrect and misleading.

It also destroys our ability to follow Paul’s argument. And this destruction is compounded by the translators’ unaccountable decision to render the word ψύχη ζῶσα in 15:45 as “a living being.” Again, Greek has a perfectly good word for “being” (ο­ὐσία), and Paul did not use it. He used ψυχή, the word for “soul.”

The reference is to Genesis 2:7:

And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul (Hebrew: nephesh).

(The NKJV has also done a poor job on Genesis 2:7, since the Hebrew nephesh does not normally mean “being” any more than the Greek ψυχή.)

With both errors corrected, Paul’s argument suddenly snaps into focus: the soul (ψυχή) that makes your body alive is derived from Adam, who became a living soul when God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. That soul is doomed to die, as Paul proves by calling it χωικος, “dusty”, from the dust: “dust you are, and to dust you shall return.” Thus, without a new source of life, the only possible destination is the grave. If you are to live eternally, you will need to have a new source of life, namely, Christ, who has become a life-giving Spirit.

I’ve suggested before that understanding this argument helps us account for how it is that Adam’s sin is imputed to us. It is not a matter of mere legal fiction, arbitrary fiat, or heredity. Rather, there is a very real sense in which the very life-breath that animates our bodies just is that same Adamic soul that sinned. Adam is in us, and we need to get rid of him. He needs to be replaced with Christ.

Not a body made alive by a ψυχή!

26 “And inasmuch as they gave the command to leave the stump and roots of the tree, your kingdom shall be assured to you, after you come to know that Heaven rules. 27 Therefore, O king, let my advice be acceptable to you; break off your sins by being righteous, and your iniquities by showing mercy to the poor. Perhaps there may be a lengthening of your prosperity.”

Daniel’s warning to King Nebuchadnezzar is, like Jonah’s to the Ninevites, a conditional prophecy. The fact that the tree in the king’s dream is cut down does not mean that there is no room for repentance. Note the Hebraic “perhaps” — “Who knows? Perhaps the Lord will relent and not bring disaster upon us.”

The particular sins from which Daniel urges the king to turn are not described, except for a failure to show mercy to the poor. Nineveh is similar in Daniel: its faults are quite generic, and have nothing to do with the Torah in particular: “a wicked way” and “violence that is in their hands.”

God is not a vending machine. With Him there is forgiveness, that He may be feared.

And lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure. 8 Concerning this thing I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me.

Scholarship is rife with speculation about what St. Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” was. An eye disease? Stuttering? Homosexual temptations? An attendant demon? I have nothing new to offer about those theories, though I incline to the last of them, since a “messenger” is usually a personal agent.

It is interesting to me that Paul asks “three times that it might depart from me (ἵνα ἀποστῇ ἀπ’ ἐμοῦ).” The phrasing is quite similar to Jesus’ request in Gethsemane, “let this cup pass away from me” (Matthew 26:39). In both cases, the Father refuses the request, so that Paul, like Jesus, must rely on God and not on his own strength.

15 Also the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 16 “Son of man, behold, I take away from you the desire of your eyes with one stroke; yet you shall neither mourn nor weep, nor shall your tears run down. 17 Sigh in silence, make no mourning for the dead; bind your turban on your head, and put your sandals on your feet; do not cover your lips, and do not eat man’s bread of sorrow.”
18 So I spoke to the people in the morning, and at evening my wife died; and the next morning I did as I was commanded.
19 And the people said to me, “Will you not tell us what these things signify to us, that you behave so?”
20 Then I answered them, “The word of the LORD came to me, saying, 21 ‘Speak to the house of Israel, “Thus says the Lord GOD: ‘Behold, I will profane My sanctuary, your arrogant boast, the desire of your eyes, the delight of your soul…

Morna Hooker’s fine little book, The Signs of a Prophet is worth reading about what it meant to be a prophet in the Bible, especially concerning symbolic actions. Sometimes these take the form of outlandish behavior — cooking over dung, lying on one’s side for a number of days, etc. — but sometimes they involve the prophet’s ordinary life: his marriage (Hosea), or children (Hosea again, Isaiah). Here, Ezekiel combines both: his wife dies (significant family event), and he makes no lament over her (outlandish action). The goal is to arouse inquiry: “Will you not tell us what these things are to us, that you behave so?”

How hard must this have been? The prophet must set his face to do YHWH’s bidding and refrain from tears while facing the most profound loss a man can suffer, that of a wife. It is a heartbreak to surpass in intensity, though not in duration, that which Hosea experienced in his divinely-ordained broken marriage. In order to make vivid for Israel just how invested YHWH is in His people, the strongest emotions in human experience must be made into symbolic object lessons, living a fortiori arguments. And to this end, the entire life of a prophet is subordinated to the purposes of YHWH.

YHWH makes clear that Jeremiah has a calling, like Samson, and John the Baptist, even before he is born:

“ Before I formed you in the womb I knew you;
Before you were born I sanctified you;
I ordained you a prophet to the nations.”

The Hebrew hiqedashtika does not denote “sanctification” in the technical systematic-theological sense (“change of ethical habitus”). It is a hithpael, and thus factitive: YHWH has “made you qadosh“, holy or set apart to Himself, sc. to do a special work.

Like Moses, Jeremiah has other ideas about his fitness for that work:

“ Ah, Lord GOD! Behold, I cannot speak, for I am a youth.”

Jeremiah’s job is similar to the apostles in Acts: he will appear before kings and nations, “to root out and to pull down, to destroy and to throw down, to build and to plant.” This is heady stuff: as the agent of YHWH, Jeremiah is to understand that his word is really His Word, for He has touched his mouth. Thus, although it may appear to secular historians that the Babylonians have overrun the world, in fact the changes in nations and powers have happened because of what Jeremiah has spoken in YHWH’s name.

This is the scene of the Judgment when Christ comes “in His glory” and sits on the throne of His glory.” It seems to me that this translation, though literal, is misleading. Jesus does not mean that He will be enthroned just before the Judgment, as though that were the moment when He became king. Rather, if I may use a Roman metaphor, that is the moment when He will sit on His curule chair, to do judgment in an official capacity. It signals not a change in Christ’s office or glory, but a change in His activity, and the opening of the final assize.

The judgment is “according to works”, as several Protestant confessions put it. Some have tried to say that this means that Jesus is looking for good works the way a woman looks at the indicator line on a pregnancy test: it doesn’t make her pregnant, it isn’t the cause of her pregnancy, it is simply a concomitant of something else, and it is that something else that really matters.

But Jesus’ whole point in this passage is to break down that hard distinction between our relation to Christ the Head of the Church, and our relation to the members of His body: “Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.” Love for those who bear Christ’s name is loyalty to Christ.

Faith is not like human chorionic gonadotropin, an invisible thing that might occasionally manifest itself by works as concomitant indicators. No, Jesus wants us to be busy about loving our brothers, because that is love toward Christ. Faith without works is not faith at all.

So walk worthy. It matters.

Tuesday of the second week after Epiphany: Ezekiel 13.

This is Ezekiel’s denunciation of false prophets in Israel. It includes these words:

10 “Because, indeed, because they have seduced My people, saying, ‘Peace!’ when there is no peace—and one builds a wall, and they plaster it with untempered mortar— 11 say to those who plaster it with untempered mortar, that it will fall. There will be flooding rain, and you, O great hailstones, shall fall; and a stormy wind shall tear it down. 12 Surely, when the wall has fallen, will it not be said to you, ‘Where is the mortar with which you plastered it?’”
13 Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: “I will cause a stormy wind to break forth in My fury; and there shall be a flooding rain in My anger, and great hailstones in fury to consume it. 14 So I will break down the wall you have plastered with untempered mortar, and bring it down to the ground, so that its foundation will be uncovered; it will fall, and you shall be consumed in the midst of it. Then you shall know that I am the LORD.

Now, the whole phrase “they plaster it with untempered mortar” in the LXX is a single word in Greek: αλειφουσιν (see here), which occurs only in Ezekiel 13.

It is a peculiar enough idea that I wonder if it might not also be behind Paul’s denunciation of the high priest in Acts 23:3. Granted, the Greek is different: Paul calls the high priest a τοίχος κεκονιαμενος (literally, “a wall sprinkled with dust”). This is usually taken quite simply as an accusations of duplicitous hypocrisy (see here for the usual interpretation). On this view, Paul’s metaphor is similar to Jesus’ epithet “whitewashed tombs”, with he applies to the Pharisees in Matthew 23:27. But in that case, the point is more about the inside vs. the outside, and it’s not clear to me that that is what Paul means about the high priest.

If Paul is referencing Ezekiel 13:10 (and remember, if there were other translations than the LXX, it is even possible that he is quoting them), then the meaning of the phrase is different: it would denounce the high priest as a false prophet who bids the people ignore the wrath to come.

(Sorry for the overly technical note. I’ve got plaster on the brain right now after refinishing the kitchen walls in our 104 year old home!)

Thursday of the first week after Epiphany: Joel 1.

4 What the chewing locust left, the swarming locust has eaten;
What the swarming locust left, the crawling locust has eaten;
And what the crawling locust left, the consuming locust has eaten.

I have nothing terribly deep to say about Joel. I probably should, since I’m teaching on the plagues of Revelation 9 soon, and it bears some comparison with the similar vengeance described in Joel. But I haven’t thought enough about it.

Rather, what struck me is what a bear this sort of passage is to translate. The NKJV has a footnote after the name of the first sort of locust: “Exact identity of these locusts is unknown.” I should say so! We get similar opaqueness about birds in Leviticus 11:16-17: “the owl…the little owl…the great owl.” Three totally different words in Hebrew, and we have no clue what they really are. (See this page for discussion.)

One of the hardest things I had to translate in grad school was Aristophanes’ Birds. There are some frightful lists where even a very well-read classicist would have to look up every word: “hoopoo, owl, stork, egret, ostrich, mockingbird, nightingale, lark…” You just don’t have a chance without a pretty comprehensive bestiary in the original language! We can manage OK for Aristophanes because many of his bird names have come down to us in modern Greek unchanged. Still others are explained by scholiasts. But if you ever have to read the Birds in Greek, you’ll still want to get Nan Dunbar’s huge commentary to help you out with the ornithology.

I’m sure Bible translators feel the same way about entomology in Joel!