Committed Critic

Most non-scholars might not be aware that the people who wrote the New Testament appear to actually have read the Old Testament in a Greek translation, rather than the original Hebrew and Aramaic texts. This makes sense since all the NT books were written in Greek, and it’s natural for a writer to quote from the language he’s writing in.

Relying on translations

This use of different versions can create some problems when we consider how often the NT writers quoted scripture, and that their use of a Greek translation means they weren’t reading and quoting the exact same text as we do: all major modern translations use the original Hebrew Bible as the primary basis for our English Bibles.

The most common Greek translation in antiquity is called the Septuagint (abbreviated LXX), but multiple Greek translations existed in antiquity, and none of them was anywhere near perfect. There is no such thing as a truly literal translation even under the best of circumstances: a Hebrew word could have multiple nuances that no one Greek word could ever capture, and Hebrew grammar uses constructs that Greek can’t really translate. A good translation can capture the sense of the text it translates, but it can never communicate exactly what the text was saying. This is one reason many people today read multiple English translations of the Bible, to try to get the multiple possibilities for the sense of the Greek and Hebrew originals.

Mis-translating Scripture?

But the problem goes deeper than merely the nature of Hebrew and Greek as languages. Modern English translations such the NRSV and NIV will sometimes include footnotes admitting that a passage can be translated more than one way, or that the translators really aren’t sure what a passage means in the original Hebrew of the OT, and the same was true with the old Greek translations –– only worse. A lot of the Septuagint, for example, gives a pretty faithful translation of the Hebrew text of the OT. However, the translation wasn’t all done by the same people or even in the same place or time period, and some parts get pretty messy. In Isaiah, the Septuagint translator sometimes seems to have badly misunderstood what the Hebrew said.

So for example, Isaiah 25:7 in the Hebrew says,

And on this mountain he will destroy the shroud that is cast over all peoples.

An important point to realize is that the Hebrew original uses very rare words in this verse for the “shroud” being “cast” over all peoples. Modern scholars debate what exactly the passage means, but all are confident that it does not mean what the Septuagint translates it as:

And on this mountain he will hand over all these things to the people.

It seems pretty clear that the Septuagint translator in this case just has no idea what the Hebrew text meant. In fact, “all these things” is so general that I actually laughed the first time I saw it as a translation of the Hebrew. Isaiah can be difficult to read in Hebrew, and on this verse, the translator just gave up and punted.

The Isaiah 25 passage is pretty obscure, but in some places the use of the LXX makes a substantial difference. One of the most famous is the meaning of Isaiah’s oracle to Ahaz in 7:14, which the LXX translates,

On account of this the Lord himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin will conceive and bear a son, and you shall call his name Immanuel. He shall eat butter and honey; before he knows or selects evil, he shall choose the good. Therefore before the child knows good or evil, he shall disobey wickedness in order to choose the good, and the land whose two kings you fear shall be made desolate.

It is easy to see why early Christians read this as a prophecy of Jesus. A child will be born of a virgin, and will choose good before ever knowing of good and evil––a description clearly compatible with Jesus as the sinless savior of the world. The difficulty is, this isn’t what the original Hebrew text actually says. Rather, the Hebrew reads:

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: Behold, the young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and she shall name him Immanuel. He shall eat butter and honey by the time he (starts) to reject what is bad and choose what is good. For before the child knows how to reject what is bad and choose what is good, the land whose two kings you dread shall be made desolate.

The key point is that in the original Hebrew, it is a young woman, not necessarily a virgin, who has the child. The “sign” appears to be not a miraculous birth, but rather that fact that by the time the child knows good from bad (that is, by the time he’s old enough to make decisions for himself), the kingdom that threatens Ahaz will have been destroyed. Butter and honey (or milk and honey) appear to be signs of abundance, and the name of the child is an oracle of encouragement: “God is with us.” In other words, God will be on Ahaz’s side in the coming conflict, and the sign that will confirm the oracle will be when Ahaz sees this new baby grow into a child as Ahaz’s kingdom prospers.

This may seem a strange “sign” since there’s nothing directly miraculous about it, but in fact it’s the same kind of sign God gives Moses in Ex 3:12. In that passage, Moses’ “sign” that God is sending him to rescue the children of Israel is that after the exodus, he and Israel will worship God on mount Sinai.  In other words, the “sign” just means: wait, and you’ll see that God has delivered you. Similarly, in Luke 2:12, the “sign” for the shepherds that they have found Jesus will be that he is wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger. Again, the sign isn’t a miracle in itself; rather, it’s simply a fact that the person can notice and realize that God’s word has come true. This is what Isaiah seems to have meant in the Hebrew of 7:14.

Mis-quoting Scripture?

This passage from Isaiah is of course quoted in the New Testament. Matthew 1:23 says Isaiah was fulfilled in Jesus.  What’s interesting (and perhaps troubling) is that a virgin bearing a child reflects the LXX (which is what Matthew quotes here), while the original Hebrew text just has a young woman bearing a child.  The word is similar to our use of the English word “maiden,” in that it generally refers to a virgin (under the assumption that most young women have not had sex), but is not a technical designation.

This leads to the difficult question: Why would God have let NT writers sometimes quote Greek translations that differed from the original Hebrew? For this I don’t have a completely satisfactory answer, but I think it points us to a better understanding of what it means for the OT to be fulfilled in Christ. Some people assume that passages in the OT that refer to Christ must have been prophecies about Christ in the exclusive sense, meaning they were written down in order to refer to Christ.  This seems to be the case in some passages, but other prophecies seem to have more than one meaning at the same time. I think that when Matthew quotes Isaiah 7, Christians should understand him as claiming that the OT passage was fulfilled in a new way, not necessarily that Isaiah was originally prophesying about Jesus in Isaiah 7.

An important point to compare is Matt 2:15, where Matthew says the scripture is fulfilled, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.”  When we actually look at the passage from Hosea 11:1, we find that Matthew is using a Greek translation that follows the Hebrew quite literally. However, in Hosea the quoted verse is clearly referring to the nation Israel as God’s son, rather than to a future messianic individual. In this case there’s no way it could refer to Jesus––because Hos 11:2 says he’s worshipping idols!

It is actually quite common in the NT for passages like this to use LXX readings that don’t match the original Hebrew. This should not cause undue problems in our understanding of Scripture if we recognize that God isn’t just using the OT as a collection of straightforward predictions, but rather is showing how Jesus is the fulfillment of the entire OT. As Randy Harris says, we should read these fulfillments in light of what Paul says in 2 Cor 1:20: “In [Christ], every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes’.”

These kinds of inexact fulfillments can actually say something more interesting than a direct fulfillment of a literal prophecy. As Matthew’s narrative continues, Satan tempts Jesus as the “son of God” in Matthew 4, and it seems we’re supposed to recognize that Jesus was a faithful son, even though Israel (as in Hosea 11:1) had been an unfaithful son. And just as God had been “with Israel” (Immanuel) when they were led by a wicked king in Isaiah 7, so in Jesus, God comes to be with Israel as the good, long-promised king from the line of David.

I’m not quite sure how a completely literal interpretation of Scripture would deal with these texts, though I’m sure some would insist that the Hebrew word can simply mean virgin. In my opinion, however, that still does not account for the flow of Isaiah 7:1-16, which clearly anticipates a sign that will be fulfilled in Ahaz’s lifetime, and clearly provides him with such a sign––once we observe how “sign” can refer to the outcome of events rather than a specific supernatural miracle.

Difficulties like this call for us to understand Scripture with greater nuance, and they make it far more difficult to prove our faith on objective grounds of miraculous prophecy followed by specific fulfillment. From what we actually have in Scripture, it appears we should conclude that God does not intend for us to be able to do this.

For some parts of my reading of Isaiah 7, I made reference to John J. Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible (2004), 311-314.

This is a sermon I preached yesterday at my church in Brookline, MA. (It took about 20 minutes to deliver.)

I’ve always been bothered by the apocalyptic passages in the New Testament –– the ones that seem to talk about the end of time. On the one hand, they’re inspiring and powerful –– God is going to show up in glory and set the world right. On the other hand, it’s been a long, long time now since those passages were written, so when exactly is God going to do all this?

In the New Testament, we get a range of answers. In 1 Thessalonians, Paul thinks it’ll be very soon, and he assumes that he’ll still be alive when Christ returns. In 1 Corinthians, he doesn’t think people should even bother getting married, apparently because he expects Christ to return before they would have time to raise kids. But as time wears on, Paul seems less confident that Jesus will return all that soon. By the time Paul writes Philippians, he’s talking about seeing Christ when Paul dies, not when Christ returns. That’s a very different notion of what the end means.

In Mark, Jesus talks as if the fall of the Temple in the year 70 will be the end of time, but then in Acts it seems as if the church is here for the long run –– though Jesus could still return at any moment.

And then time rolls on and we get 2 Peter, which seems to have been written long after Peter’s death, as if it were from Peter, like if I stood up and read a letter to the Brookline church from Alexander Campbell or some other important figure in our history. In 2 Peter, a day, for the Lord, is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day, so we shouldn’t worry if it’s taking a long time for Jesus to return. Well, maybe now we should say a day is more like 2,000 years, or longer. Why do we have to keep waiting?

We have Jesus’ promise, and so we have hope. But if we spend our time looking at the sky –– and there are lots of Christians in this country who do –– it sure seems like nothing ever happens. And it’s tempting to drift toward despair.

The choice between hope and despair is key for the Christian life, and it’s also in the background throughout the book of Jeremiah, which is where my main sermon text today comes from.

JERUSALEM UNDER SIEGE

To understand Jeremiah’s prophecy, you have to know something about the political situation of his day, in the years just before and just after 600 B.C. So these next couple of minutes will be not so much sermon, as history review.

There are three main points to get straight.

First, Israel was a small nation surrounded by superpowers who wanted to conquer them. We might imagine Afghanistan or Armenia during the rise of the Soviet Union –– it was just a matter of time till they got overwhelmed. The northern half of Israel had already been destroyed about a hundred years earlier by the Assyrian empire from the east –– a huge part of their population was deported and never heard from again.

And now a new empire –– Babylon –– had risen up, and was threatening to do the same thing to Jerusalem. We worry about terrorism today, but the people of Jerusalem were imagining vicious armies marching up to the city walls, laying siege, starving the city, and then rushing into Jerusalem and killing the men, raping the women, enslaving the children. This is how war worked, and you didn’t want to be on the losing end.

The second point is that the prophets of Israel had interpreted the fall of the northern kingdom a hundred years earlier as God’s punishment for turning their back on God’s covenant. And now Jeremiah claimed that the same thing would happen to Jerusalem for the same reasons. Jerusalem was worshipping other gods, beating down the poor, forsaking the covenant, and Jeremiah was adamant that the political situation was punishment, one of the curses for disobedience that the book of Deuteronomy describes. Meanwhile, the King was more interested in political or military solutions, and Jeremiah’s theology didn’t sound very helpful.

And then the third thing to understand about Jeremiah’s situation is that Jeremiah wasn’t the only prophet in Jerusalem, and most of the rest of them disagreed with him. Other prophets were saying that God would protect Jerusalem –– after all, it was God’s city, and God’s temple was there –– so the people should take heart. We know what it’s like to be in a war where some people say we’re going to win if we just fight hard enough, while others say we should give up now. But this was a little different, because giving up meant having your homeland occupied by foreigners. In any event, Jeremiah said that the other prophets were liars and that God would strike them dead with sword and famine.

So you have one very lonely voice preaching in Jerusalem that the city was about to be destroyed –– which looks a lot like treason, and in any case makes you lots of enemies.

So 3 points about Jeremiah’s situation: (1) the army of a superpower is marching into the country to take the people into exile; (2) Jeremiah says this is punishment from God for breaking the covenant; and (3) other prophets in Jerusalem disagree with Jeremiah and say “no”, that God will deliver Jerusalem after all.

Finally, king Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon does show up, and Jerusalem gets lucky. Instead of destroying the city and the Temple, all he does is take away 10,000 of the most able-bodied people into captivity –– the king, and royal family, and everyone who knew how to govern, or fight, or make swords––anyone who could cause trouble if they were left in Jerusalem. (As a point of reference, this is when Daniel, and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego ended up in the Babylonian court, because they were exiled.) The rest of the people got to stay in Jerusalem, with a new king appointed by Nebuchadnezzar. It wouldn’t be till ten years later, when that new king rebelled, that Nebuchadnezzar would come back, tear down the walls, burn all the buildings, and destroy Solomon’s temple and the city of Jerusalem completely.

In the meantime, with the Temple still standing, Jeremiah stays in Jerusalem and continues to preach. He argues the very unpopular position that God has given the land to Babylon, and that the king and the people should continue to be obedient to Babylon, or else God (using Babylon) will do something worse. Other prophets, both in Jerusalem and with the exiles in Babylon, continue to preach that God will fix the situation quickly and bring the exiles back in a couple of years.

OK, done with the history lesson; back to the sermon.

SETTLING INTO EXILE

Jeremiah writes this letter to the exiles and Babylon, which is our lectionary text for today. I’ll be reading in Jeremiah 29, starting in verse 1, and I’ll go all the way to verse 14.

These are the words of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the remaining elders among the exiles, and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people, whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon…Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let the prophets and the diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, says the Lord.

For thus says the Lord: Only when Babylon’s seventy years are completed will I visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place [that is, Jerusalem]. For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me, says the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.

This is one of the most powerful and most quoted passages in the Old Testament, and for good reason: no matter what our circumstances, it says, God always has plans for our welfare. Paul makes a similar claim in Romans: In all things, God works for the good of those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.

But there are problems with quoting this passage as if God has a specific plan for the success of every individual Israelite –– or every individual Christian. And not the least is, no one that Jeremiah is writing to will actually see the restoration God is promising. It’s only going to be 70 years later, after their whole generation has died off, that their children and grandchildren are going to return to Jerusalem. In the book of Numbers, when God killed off a generation like that, it was called punishment, not hope for a future.

Jeremiah’s instructions are for the meantime. Reading again from verses 5-7

Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

Settling down in exile is completely counter-intuitive. The whole idea of exile is that you’re not at home, so why would you want to raise a family there? Surely that can’t be God’s plan for the people of Jerusalem. And yet, God’s word holds true, and a number of years later the people are allowed to return to Jerusalem, where they rebuild the walls, build a new temple, and begin sacrifices to God once again. But those who heard the promise weren’t the ones who got to see it fulfilled.

1 PETER’S EXILES

In the New Testament, Jeremiah’s message is echoed in 1 Peter, where Christians are called “exiles” in this world, but are still told to settle down, live good lives among the pagans, and do their civic duty by honoring the Roman emperor. Just like the Israelites in Babylon, Peter’s church would also end up watching their entire generation die off without seeing the fulfillment of God’s promise. Maybe their children would see it, but they had to make do in exile.

It doesn’t seem to make sense why God would leave his people in exile like that for so long, and that problem is compounded for us today. We talk about Christ’s return, but it’s a stretch to really think it’ll happen in my generation. It’s just been too long. One place in Scripture tells us that God is waiting so everyone will have a chance to repent, and yet most people don’t repent. Centuries go by of humans rejecting God’s call, and it’s not all that clear that the world is becoming a better place.

I’m sure Jeremiah’s audience didn’t really understand why they had to wait, and neither did Peter’s, and neither do we.

These passages highlight the paradox of the Christian life as something that is lived completely in this world, but also as something other-worldly.

On the one hand, this world matters, just like life in Babylon mattered to Jeremiah’s exiles. God had put them there for a reason, and he wanted them to throw themselves into that life while they were in Babylonia. And the same is true for us. We are the salt of the earth, the light of the world, as Jesus said. As God’s Holy Spirit acts through our lives, we embody the kingdom of God, helping God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.

God may call different people to different roles, but on the whole there is no room in the Christian faith for ignoring the world God created by isolating ourselves from everyone else in an effort to be holy. There is no room for abusing or neglecting creation, either because we feel entitled to, or because we anticipate God destroying or recreating it at the end of time. There is no room for ignoring the physical needs of people who are hungry, sick, or homeless, even if we conclude that spiritual needs are more important in key ways. God told Israel to seek the welfare of the Babylonian city they lived in, and it seems his call to us is also to work for the welfare of our world.

So God calls us to live in this world. But the other side of the paradox is that we are still exiles here. We don’t seek the welfare of this world as if it is all we have. We pray for it, but we should never mistake it for our home. We serve those in the world around us, but we belong to God.

We must not resign ourselves to our work here as if it’s God’s final word –– as if there’s nothing more after death, so we’d better make the best of what we have here. That kind of attitude might look like hope for the future of this world, but in fact it is despair toward the promises of God.

As Christians, there’s actually quite a lot at stake in overcoming despair, since Paul says that our faith in God’s promises is wrapped up somehow in the way that God saves us. Judging just by the world around us, death seems pretty final –– we don’t see people come back from the dead. And so the only real reason we have for believing God will raise us from the dead is that we believe God raised Jesus. But then we might believe that God acted back then, and yet still doubt that God will act again. Despair is still an option. As I said, it’s been a long, long time. In light of this, having faith means holding fast to the promises of God even when it seems he may never return. We act in this world, but we hope for the next.

2 TIMOTHY AS PROMISE AND WARNING

Sometimes the difference between this world and the next is very clear, something we see especially in the life of Paul. He may have sought the welfare of his society, but they certainly didn’t seek his. Instead, he was often abused and beaten, and eventually he was thrown into prison, as we’ve seen in our lectionary readings these past two weeks.

Paul knows why someone might be tempted to despair of God’s promises, but he warns against that temptation, citing a poem that we read earlier from the lectionary. Paul calls it a trustworthy saying, and he uses it to warn Timothy and the church that they cannot give in to despair if they hope to receive God’s promise. This is 2 Timothy 2:11-13:

If we’ve died with him, we’ll also live with him.
If we endure, we’ll also reign with him.
If we deny him, he’ll also deny us.
If we are faithless, he’ll remain faithful ––
for he cannot deny himself.

The first part, “dying with Christ,” is easy. In Paul’s writings that means baptism, which most of us here have already done. So if we’ve died with him, we’ll live with him. It’s a powerful and important promise.

Next is an even better promise: If we endure, we’ll also reign with him. This is a little vague in Scripture, but apparently the plan is for Christians to have some kind of ruling role in the world to come, sitting alongside Christ to judge and govern the recreated world. Again, it’s a powerful promise, but this time it comes with a warning: if we endure. We might have Christ’s gift of life now, but reigning with him in the final resurrection requires endurance. Paul proclaims boldly that he is not ashamed of Christ, even when he’s thrown into prison for his preaching. Whether or not we face the same kind of suffering, we are called to the same kind of boldness.

Then, in the next line, Paul’s warning turns more explicit: If we deny Christ, the poem says, he’ll also deny us. Our salvation may be the work of God from start to finish, but it appears here that we can reject that salvation if we give in to despair. Christ makes no promise to vouch for those who turn away. We may be called to settle into the land of our exile, but we still have to be faithful to Christ while we’re here.

And so we settle into the paradox that Jeremiah has set up for us, of living in exile as if we are at home, yet knowing all along that we are not at home. And Paul tells us what is at stake in choosing hope –– in God’s promises –– over despair –– that we will be in exile forever. If we choose despair and deny Christ, he’ll deny us.

What remains is to say why exactly this is good news –– why this is the gospel, rather than just a contract that we have to try to live up to or else face dire consequences. And both Jeremiah and Paul give us this good news in memorable words.

In Jeremiah, it sounds like this: “Surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.”

And in 2 Timothy, it sounds like this: “If we are faithless, Christ will remain faithful––for he cannot deny himself.”

God had a plan for bringing the exiles back to Jerusalem, and of course he has a plan for our future too, whether he shows up to renew the earth during our lifetime, or whether we’ll die and have to wait for salvation beyond the grave. Our salvation is always in Christ’s hands, and that is always the reason we can have hope.