Friday, September 12
Luke 5,27-32: Since the call of Levi falls in exactly the same sequence in the Gospels of Mark and Luke as Matthew’s call in the Gospel of Matthew, we are
surely correct in regarding these two men as identical, notwithstanding the contrary opinions mentioned by Heracleon, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen.
All three Synoptic Gospels treat the call of the tax collector (Levi/Matthew) as a centerpiece bracketed between two stories about sinners: the paralytic being forgiven his sins and Jesus having dinner with notorious sinners. Thus set between these two events, the call of the tax collector represents above all the evangelical summons to repentance and the forgiveness of sins.
2 Corinthians 11:1-15: Paul here begins his self-defense against the criticisms of certain roaming preachers who have stirred up controversy at Corinth since his last visit to the place. From Acts and 1 Corinthians we know that Apollos and Cephas had done some evangelization in the city, but it is clear that Paul does not have these men in mind. It is impossible to determine who his critics were.
Was Paul accused of jealousy with respect to those critics? Evidently so, but he explains the motive, nature, and justice of this jealousy. It is a jealousy for Christ, not himself; it is an expression of loving pastoral concern, for he fears the spiritual seduction of the Corinthians. After all, the latter have shown themselves disposed to receive and accept new versions of the Good News, preached by these itinerant evangelists whom he mockingly calls “hyper-apostles” (verse 5; 12:11) and, more seriously, “false apostles.”
It appears that Paul’s humble demeanor at Corinth, where he was supported by his own labor (Acts 18:3; 1 Corinthians 4:12; 9:18) and the financial support received from Macedonia (verse 9; Philippians 2:25; 4:10-20), made him the object of derision among his critics. This suggests that Paul’s critics at Corinth may have enjoyed a higher social status, even as they accepted the support of the Corinthians.
Since Paul did, in fact, accept support from other churches, it would seem that he had early sized up the spirit of the Corinthians and concluded that to accept their support would not be prudent in this case. Sometimes, after all, financial support comes with certain undisclosed obligations that will eventually render the recipient a debtor.
Paul’s language concerning his critics contains some of the harshest expressions to come from his pen.
Saturday, September 13
Judges 10: The forms of idolatry listed here come from all around Israel: Canaanite, Syrian, Phoenician, Moabite, Ammonite, and Philistine. Israel’s every border becomes an entrance for idolatry.
Such infidelities bring their own punishment. Having permitted themselves to be invaded spiritually, the people are soon attacked physically. The Philistines attack from one direction, the Ammonites from another.
These two invasions prepare for the appearance of the next two judges—Jephthe against the Ammonites, Samson against the Philistines. The accounts of these two men are distinctly grotesque. Even the stories of their deliverance are somewhat oppressive. Jephthe and Samson are two really strange characters.
In God’s response to the people’s concerns, the author lists seven (the number of perfection) occasions when He delivered Israel in the past. That is, God has always been faithful. He has forgiven them seven times.
There is nothing automatic about the divine forgiveness, however. God is not a slot machine in which we simply put the right coin. God is not a computer where we may hit the right keys. God is personal, and He deals with man personally. When we offend Him by sin, it is a personal offense, and God “takes it personally.” Offending God is not like neglecting to get an oil change. God does not respond to sin like a neglected engine. Sin always takes place within a personal relationship. It always has the quality of a personal insult.
And this is the reason why God relents once more, when the people put away their false gods. God forgives for His own compassion’s sake.
Hitherto in Judges, when Israel was oppressed, the Lord raised up a hero to defend them. It was not up to the people to choose their own. All of Israel’s champions so far were raised up by God. Now, however, the people go look for a deliverer, to whom they will offer the crown.
God will certainly pour out His Spirit on Jephthe, and the Epistle to the Hebrews (11:32) will list him among the heroes of faith, but God will not permit Jephthe to do things his own way. In particular, Jephthe will not be able to found the dynasty he intended.
It is worth remarking on the similarities between Jephthe and Remus, the other brother associated with the founding of Rome. Both characters are illegitimate sons, outcast by their families, and both become leaders of impoverished, oppressed men. Neither man leaves a dynasty.
Jephthe has no home, no family, no specific city of either birth or burial. He has no past, and, as the story develops, he will have no future. Jephthe receives no inheritance, nor will he leave one. He is a tragic character, and the entire account of his deliverance is freighted with tragedy. Jephthe will make many mistakes, and all of them will be costly mistakes. His final mistake will deprive him of offspring.
In a way peculiar to himself, Jephthe represents the weakness of God, which is the Cross, but his story will also demonstrate that the weakness of God is stronger than men, as the foolishness of God is wiser than men. In all of this tragedy, in all of this darkness, Jephthe’s faith is tried by fire, and this is exactly how the New Testament remembers him.
Sunday, September 14
Judges 11: Jephthe is a mixed man. He is personally ambitious and clearly wants to be chief over Gilead. At the same time, he is a believer and a God-fearing man, as we see in his response to the Gileadites: “if . . . the <i>Lord</i> gives them before me.
God does, in fact, used <i>mixed</i> people to accomplish His purposes, Perhaps the Lord would have chosen someone better to defeat the Ammonites, but He too makes the best of what He has. This fact suggests that if God does not wait around for ideal conditions, neither should we.
Jephthe’s first act (verses 12-13) demonstrates that he is really a man of peace. He appeals to the Ammonites in the hope averting war. His first thought is to avoid bloodshed if possible, so he seeks a discussion with the Ammonites. He is not a rash nor a violent man.
Indeed, Jephthe’s overture to the Ammonites may be taken as a sort of foreshadowing of the Gospel of peace proclaimed to the Gentiles. It calls on the Ammonites to forsake the ways of war, to reconsider and repent of the paths of violence.
The Ammonite response, however, was to argtue back. They rehearsed their historical grievance as best they could remember it: “Because Israel took away my land when they came up out of Egypt, from the Arnon as far as the Jabbok, and to the Jordan. Now, therefore, restore these lands peaceably” (verse 13). Perceiving a misunderstanding on their part, Jephthah went to some pains to spell out for the Ammonites several points on which his memory of the matter differed from theirs.
First, he said, Israel had always been careful to respect the territorial integrity of its neighbors east of the Jordan (verses 14-18).
Second, the land under dispute had not belonged to the Ammonites anyway, but to another group called the Amorites. Moreover, the territory in question had been seized from the Amorites when the latter attacked Israel, not the other way around (verses 19-23). In this reference to the ancient events narrated in Numbers 21:21-26, Jephthah also gently reminded the Ammonites that they themselves had formerly lived under Amorite rule, from which Israel had delivered them and restored them to their ancestral property (verse 24; cf. Numbers 21:29-30). With this they should be satisfied. For this they should be grateful.
Third, three hundred years had elapsed since all these things had happened (verse 26). Why had the matter never been brought up before?
The Ammonites, in short, were engaged in an exercise of historical revisionism, which consisted in treating old events with a new theory. Viewing history under the lens of a “fresh interpretation,” the Ammonites concluded that three centuries earlier they had suffered an injustice that now needed to be set right. Thus, having lived in peace with Israel for three hundred years, they were now commencing a war for the purpose of correcting an alleged wrong from a time before even their grandparents were born.
It came to pass, of course, that the Ammonites failed in this endeavor. Their historical revisionism brought upon them only further suffering-indeed, “a very great slaughter” (verse 33).
Monday, September 15
Judges 12: Jephthe is not the first Judge to have trouble with the Ephraemites (verses 1-7). We recall Gideon’s earlier difficulties with them.
Here they threaten to burn down Jephthe’s house, the very house from which he recently saw exit his now mourned daughter. This is the house that the Ephraemites threaten to burn down. This threat was not a proposition crafted to bring out the gentleman in Jephthe. It showed bad judgment.
It was also bad timing. Not having gone to battle before, the Ephraemites are ready to fight after the fight is over. The Lord had given victory anyway, and the Ephraemites had not been part of the victory. Now they threaten the very man through whom the Lord gave the victory. They are the classical troublemakers, still itching for a fight after the fighting is done.
Ever the man of peace, by preference, Jephthe endeavored to reason with these fools, as he had earlier attempted with the Ammonites. The Ephraemites, however, under the impulse of an irrational jealousy, refuse to act moderately or listen to reason.
The Jordan River, which divides the Ephraemites from most of Israel, is also the place of a linguistic divide, which will prove to make it, in the present context, a place of judgment. It is as a place of judgment that the Jordan River will later be the site of the preaching of John the Baptist.
Ephraem never learned its lesson. Never. Having resisted Gideon and Jephthe, it would resist David and rebel against Solomon. The Lord would later use the Assyrian army, under Sargon II, to take care of the problem.
And then Jephthe dies (verses 8-15). Why does Holy Scripture tell us that he died? Obviously it is not something that we doubt, so why mention it? Indeed, of some of the Judges we know precious little more than the fact that they died, so why bother with saying so?
The reason is theological. Each of these men was a deliverer of his people. Yet each of them died. Their deliverance, therefore, was temporary. In each case, death got the last word. That is to say, death still ruled. The mortality brought into the world by Adam’s offense still prevailed. Of not a single one of these men was it said that they rose again. In every instance, death was finally victorious over life. That is the real difference between the New Testament and the Old.
It is also the reason why burial sites are mentioned. Tombs are memorials. Men look upon them and are reminded of that supreme humiliation called death. This is why tombs are prominent in the Bible. They stand in eloquent testimony that something is very wrong in human life. Tombstones are the standing reminders of, the perpetual witnesses to, the fall of Adam. This is why, like the Ten Commandments, they are normally made of stone. They are stone because they testify to a hard fact, a fact you can lean on, and it will not give way.
But tombstones are also witnesses to man’s hope. Besides the past to which they refer, they point to the future and the Resurrection.
Tuesday, September 16
Judges 13: We now come to Samson, whose great physical strength made him one of the most memorable characters in Holy Scripture. If (as I have argued elsewhere) Jacob is the Semitic equivalent of the classical Odysseus, we may think of Samson as the Semitic parallel to the classical Hercules. In both cases, their stories form a series of “feats.” Indeed, St. Augustine testifies how easy it was for his contemporaries to confuse the two: “. . . there was also the Judge of the Hebrews, Samson, who, because he was so marvelously strong, has been thought to be Hercules”—erat et Hebraeorum judex Samson, qui cum mirabiliter fortis esset, putatus est Hercules (The City of God, 18:19).
Up till now, whenever the Book of Judges spoke of the political oppression of the Israelites, the text invariably went on to say that Israel repented and turned to the Lord. Not here, however. There is no mention of repenting or turning to the Lord. Israel no longer has the ability even to repent. Israel has hit rock bottom, and all human hope is gone (verse 1).
In this chapter we observe that God speaks to the woman first, not Manoah (verses 2-7). Earlier, we recall, God spoke first to Rebekah, not Isaac (Genesis 25).
The message of the angel to Manoah’s wife touches on the biblical theme of the barren woman (cf. Sarah, Hannah, Elizabeth, et aliae. The introduction of this theme continues the note of despair with which the chapter began.
We bear in mind that all three of the “permanent Nazirites” in the Bible (Samson, Samuel, John the Baptist) were born of seemingly barren women. Each of these mothers is a kind of new Eve, receiving God’s promise in the midst of her own sense of inadequacy.
The second visitation (verses 9-10) reinforces the fact that the message was for the woman. The angel ‘deliberately’ appears when Manoah is absent. When questioned by Manoah (verse 12), the angel responds that he has already said all he has to say—to the woman! (verse 13) Manoah is the nervous questioner, but all the needful information had already been conveyed in the first apparition. There is nothing to add. The angel simply repeats what he had said before, and this time with less detail (verse 14).
The angel is not going to explain himself. He was sent to earth to convey a promise and a command, not to give a news flash. He was proclaiming God’s plan of redemption and man’s place in that plan. The salvific initiative is God’s. The proper response to the message is obedience, not curiosity for more details.
Manoah, that is to say, is like the rest of the Israelites. None of them have been serving God and seeking His will. But now that God proposes a plan for deliverance, Manoah is full of questions and curiosity. He wants a more active role in the plan. There isn’t one. God does not need Manoah. God is not interested in Manoah’s questions and curiosities.
Manoah is a curious combination of audacious, inquisitive, controlling, and superstitious. Only such a man will get out of line with an archangel. (Compare Zachary in Luke 1)
Manoah is also not a quick learner (verses 15-23). Having heard the Lord’s message, he now wants to deal with the Lord’s messenger. Manoah is spiritually insensitive. Indeed, given how dangerous it can be to deal with the biblical God, Manoah is let off pretty easy. He is not struck dead like Uzzah!
But what does Manoah accomplish? At the end of the scene, he knows no more than he did at the beginning. God had given as much information as was required. This second apparition of the angel served only to point out Manoah’s limitations more clearly.
Manoah’s attitude was not unique. On the contrary, he was typical of his own culture, which was shallow, audacious, recklessly inquisitive, and deeply superstitious.
In these respects, Manoah’s inherited religious culture was a great deal like our own. Our own culture too knows very little of the biblical God. It is highly subjective, pretentious, and insensitive to the presence of holiness. It craves quick and easy answers to deep and impossibly complex questions. It is a generation disposed to wear its shoes at the Burning Bush. And what does God do with such a generation? He sends someone like Samson to knock some heads together.
The name Samson (verse 24) is a derivative of <i>shemesh</i>, meaning “sun.” Indeed, Samson resembles the sun as described in Psalm 19: “as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber; he rejoices as a giant to run his course.” The very next chapter will describe Samson as a bridegroom. In fact, after strong man, bridegroom is the description of Samson most easily remembered.
Wednesday, September 17
Judges 14: It is significant that all three stories about Samson have to do with women. His addiction to women is Samson’s tragic flaw. It would be easy enough to blame the women, I suppose, but that would be missing the point. The problem is Samson’s.
This first story about Samson (verses 1-4) concerns his projected marriage to a Philistine woman, and we recall that the previous chapter began by describing Israel’s bondage to the Philistines. Samson’s fascination with this Philistine woman, then, symbolizes Israel’s fascination with the surrounding paganism, a fascination that in each case leads to blindness and death.
As a consecrated Nazirite, Samson represents Israel’s higher calling and dedication to the true God in true worship. His failure to live according to that higher calling is symbolic of Israel’s failure.
Samson’s parents mention that Israelites are not supposed to marry pagans, but the inspired author speaks of God’s own plan, even in this deviation from the Law. All of Samson’s career, including his sins, will be under the influence of Divine Providence. Through all of it, God will bring good out of evil.
A strong man, but also a very weak man, Samson is an ironical figure. Ultimately his victory over the Philistines will involve both his weakness and his strength.
The blindness of Samson, however, begins very early in the story. In a sense, indeed, Samson starts out blind, long before the Philistines gouge out his eyes. Through this whole account Samson seems to be walking in the darkness. No matter. God knows where the story is going.
The story of the lion (verses 5-9) invites a comparison between Samson and David, both of whom fought against Philistines. The latter are symbolized in the lion. David, before he killed the Philistine Goliath, first killed the lion. Samson, before he takes on the Philistines, kills a lion with his bare hands.
This is why the Spirit of the Lord came down on Samson, as the Spirit of the Lord will descend on him in the next chapter. The roaring of the lion will be matched by the shouting of the Philistines. Samson will tear the binding cords apart, just as he tore the lion apart.
The killing of the lion, then, symbolizes Samson’s vocation. Indeed, Samson’s own tribe, Dan, was likened to a lion: “Dan is a lion’s whelp that leaps forth from Bashan” (Deuteronomy 33:22).
Once the lion is dead, the bees build their hive in its carcass. This symbolizes the Holy Land itself, flowing with milk and honey. What is this honey? It is the tasting of God’s Law, which the Psalter describes as sweeter than honey. This honey is the fruit of Samson’s victory over the lion. It is the result of his combat with the lion.
Samson will use this incident to stump the Philistines. That is to say, he perceives the incident to involve a riddle, or mystery. There is a mystery in the lion and the honey that lies beyond the comprehension of his enemies.
The honey in the carcass is symbolic also of Samson himself, who will be victorious in his defeat. Sweetness will come from his death.
Samson’s first contest with the Philistines (verses 12-14) will not be a test of muscles but of brains. He will attempt to outwit them, as Moses had done with the Philistines.
Alas, Samson the riddler does something not very bright. He is deceived by the woman, and this is Samson’s first experience of betrayal. The real treachery, on the other hand, comes from Samson’s own emotions. He loses control. He is betrayed by his feelings. Had he maintained control over his emotions, the woman would never have deceived him. The man who cannot control himself can hope to control nothing else.
The wedding feast ends badly.
Thursday, September 18
2 Corinthians 13:1-14: Throughout this letter Paul had played the theme of power made perfect in infirmity, a truth manifest in the condition and circumstances of his own life. The grasping of this truth is what prompted the Apostle, as he reflected on his ministry, to assume the extraordinary autobiographical style characteristic of this epistle.
Through this sustained experience of power made perfect in infirmity Paul learned, on his own pulses, the mystery of the Cross, and in the present reading he proclaims this mystery explicitly. The weakness in question is the weakness of Christ’s sufferings and death: “He was crucified in weakness.” The power in question is the power of Christ’s Resurrection: “He certainly lives by the power of God.” To live in Christ, therefore, is to test and live out the experience of that truth: “For although we are weak in Him, we shall certainly live with Him, with respect to you [<i>eis hymas</i>], by the power of God” (verse 4). When Paul will appear again before the Corinthians, he may seem weak to them, but they will experience in him the power of Christ (verse 3).
However, rather than simply wait for this godly disclosure, the Corinthians should meanwhile put themselves to the test. They should examine the evidence in their own lives to discern whether they are really believers, whether Christ is truly among them (verse 5). Paul is not anxious what other think of him; he is concerned, rather, with the spiritual health of his readers at Corinth (verse 7).
In verse 11 all the imperative verbs are in the present tense, the tense that in Greek signifies repeated or continuous action. That is to say, this is an exhortation to sustained effort with respect to moral renewal and the cultivation of the common Christian life. This is the only verse in Holy Scripture that contains the expression “the God of love.”
Judges 15: To put the era of Samson into perspective, it is useful to consider him along with two other biblical characters, Samuel and Obed. According to Judges 13:1, Israel was in bondage to the Philistines for forty years, a bondage that ended at the Battle of Mizpah in 1 Samuel 7. In that chapter we learn that the Battle of Mizpah was twenty years after the Battle of Aphek, when the Philistines captured the Ark of the Covenant and briefly held it. It was right after the Battle of Aphek, we recall, that Eli died. These facts give us a basic chronology with which to work.
If Samson was born at the beginning of the Philistine enslavement, and if we put his marriage at about age twenty, then the marriage of Samson took place about the time of the Battle of Aphek and the death of Eli.
It was while Samuel was growing up, then, that Samson judged the tribe of Dan, and it was Samson’s weakening of the Philistines that prepared for Saul’s victory over them at the Battle of Mizpah in 1 Samuel 7.
Someone else born during the lifetime of Samson was Obed, the grandfather of David. Obed himself, we recall, was something of a “miracle baby,” in the sense that God used a special providence to arrange for his birth.
During the period of Samson, then, the Lord was already mightily at work to provide for Israel’s future. He did this by sending the world three special babies in rapid succession: Samson, Obed, and Samuel.
Even as Israel was on the point of death and annihilation, the Lord of history was providing three little babies to oversee its renewal and rebirth. Resurrection would come out of death and judgment. Blind Samson to blind Eli, but God sees the future.
With respect to Samson’s own decline, the present chapter encourages us to trace it through a succession of animals: from lions, to foxes, to asses.
Friday, September 19
Amos 2.1-16: Between Edom and Ammon sits the fertile plain of Moab. Its citizens, like those of Ammon, were descended from Lot, the offspring of his two daughters (Genesis 19:37-39). Hence they, like the Edomites, were related by blood to the children of Israel.
They, too, likewise fall under the censure of Amos (verses 1-3), specifically for the desecration of a tomb. Special mention is made of Kerioth, the cultic center of the Moabite god Chemosh.
Next comes the condemnation of Judah (verses 4-5), the nation of Amos himself (1:1). This condemnation differs from all the preceding in two ways. First, it does not single out any “social” sins, such as the slave trade (1:6,9), torture and slaughter (1:3), abortion (1:13), warfare (1:11), and tomb desecration (2:1). Second, offense of Judah is less specific. In the eyes of Amos, Judah has just lost its way in general.
At this point those listening to Amos may have breathed a sigh of relief. The prophet, having spoken against Judah, had reached the number seven (as we hope the attentive reader has noticed), the number of completion, so the listeners could be excused if they imagined him to be finished. So far, so good, they thought. Amos had done the complete number, but he had not mentioned them. In fact, they may have gone on to reflect, this Amos is making a lot of sense. He has identified all the bad guys, and it’s not us!
Imagine their shock, therefore, when Amos turned on them. He did so, moreover, for a full eleven verses, more than three times the length of any previous condemnation. No, said the prophet, Israel would not be spared. For its oppression of the poor (verse 6), its prostitution (verse 7), and its religious hypocrisy (verse 8), Israel deserved more punishment than those who had inhabited the Holy Land before them (verse 9).
No strength of their own would deliver Israel, he insisted. God is singularly unimpressed by the things that fallen man strives for, and He is not on the side of the strong (verses 13-16).
If the citizens of Israel felt, at this point, that Amos was laying it on a bit thick, they were not about to feel relieved. He still had seven more chapters to go.
Psalms 50 (Latin and Greek 49):Does God need sheep? This psalm raises some genuine doubt on the point: “Should I be hungry, I would hardly tell you, for mine are the whole world and its fullness. Shall I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?” The observance of ritual, any ritual, without true dedication to God is, at best, a waste of God’s time, and more likely a form of magic.
Like Isaiah, our psalm stresses in particular the moral or ethical character required of the true worshipper. He may be a friend of the priest at the time of worship, but who are his friends otherwise? “If you saw a thief, you ran with him, and you kept company with adulterers. Your mouth gushed with evil, and your tongue fashioned deceits. You sat and spoke against your brother, and cursed your mother’s son.”
As with Isaiah again, one observes in such verses that the sin especially condemned in the false worshipper tends to be social sin, sin against other people in the outside, nonritual world. He offends his fellow man, whether by neglecting his duties of mercy, or by actively inflicting injustice. All the Bible cries out the impossibility of loving the God whom we do not see, without loving the brother whom we do see (cf. 1 John 4:20).
The Apostle Paul faced this problem at Corinth, where the Holy Eucharist itself, that supreme, definitive ritual of the biblical religion, was being desecrated by the participation of the uncharitable and unrepentant. Thus, since very early in Christian history, evidenced already in 1 Corinthians 10—11, there have been worshippers who treated even the Lamb of God with the same moral insouciance that the Old Testament sinner sometimes showed to that ritual sheep that he handed over for sacrifice in the temple.
The sin of such a man comes from his inadequate, truly pathetic idea of God: “Wickedly you thought I was like you.”