Elisha’s ministry of life was, according to 1 Kings 19, a ministry of judgment. Elisha, after all, was a force of destabilization. By giving life and freedom to the faithful poor, the loyal sons of the prophets, he upset the “natural” hierarchy of the Northern Kingdom. By engaging in a ministry of life, he condemned to death those who refused to follow his word. The same is true in the church today. Within many mainline churches, renewal movements are seeking... Read more
The NASB translation of Proverbs 11:5 says that the righteous and blameless will walk on a “smooth” way, while the wicked will fall into the potholes that dot his path. The way of righteousness looks easy; the way of wickedness is the difficult way. Yet, Jesus says that the wide and easy way is the way that leads to destruction (Matthew 7:13-15). These are not contradictory. Solomon is talking about the kinds of obstacles and pitfalls that necessarily face wicked... Read more
INTRODUCTION This section of Proverbs 11 highlights several issues. The first two verses treat issues of honesty and dishonesty; verses 3-8 describe the security of the righteous. Verses 9-14 return to various concerns regarding the use of the tongue, which was a theme of the previous chapter. HONESTY AND HUMILITY Proverbs 11:1 urges honesty in economic transactions. The balance and the weight refer to the disks that a merchant would use to weigh out goods to determine price. Weights would... Read more
James C. Cobb cites revealing statistics concerning the self-identification of blacks in the South: “In 1964, only 55 percent of southern black respondents expressed ‘warm’ feelings toward southerners, as opposed to nearly 90 percent of the southern white polled. By 1976, however, the proportion of southern blacks who expressed this warmth stood just below 80 percent and only slightly below the percentage of white southerners who felt this way.” By 2001, “the percentage of blacks in the South who identified... Read more
Modernism, critic Richard Lehan writes, was built on the conception that the world was caught in a conflict between organicism and mechanism, between the feminine and masculine, or, as Henry Adams put it, between the dynamo and the virgin. Modernist writers can be classified by their responses to this division: “the naturalists were trying to reduce reality to mechanistic terms, while the romantics were trying to infuse matter with spirit, energy, and life. H.G. Wells would embody the first position,... Read more
Leviticus 18 describes sexual sin as occasions of exposure, as “uncovering nakedness.” At times, the nakedness is not only an individual’s, but is shared. The reason given for the prohibition of maternal incest in Lev 18:8 is that the mother’s nakedness is the “father’s nakedness.” This makes sense: In the nature of the case, husband and wife share a single covering, and so an exposure of the nakedness of the one is an exposure of the nakedness of another. There’s... Read more
Patrick Henry Reardon writes concerning the use of “tradition” in the NT (2 Thes 2:15 especially): “In this respect it is important, I believe, not to interject into Paul’s formula a later controversy between the Protestants and the Council of Trent. We observe that Paul does not distinguish between ‘Scripture and Tradition.’ For him, the apostolic writings are not a separate entity, something apart from and somehow superior to the traditions. The Scriptures are one of the means by which... Read more
In his Triune Creator, Colin Gunton offers this “argument” against reading Gen 1 as an account of six literal days of divine activity: “the sophistication and complexity of the writings make it clear that the authors, and that includes those who wrote the books in their canonical form, exclude – for example – any interpretation that insists that by the six days of the creation is meant six periods of twenty-four hours.” Apparently, everyone knows – at least Gunton did... Read more
God is light and there is no darkness in Him (1 John 1:5). Eschatologically, the alternation of light and dark ceases for the creation (Rev. 21:25). Yet, all things were created by Him and manifest Him, and the first form of creation to come from Him was covered with “darkness.” And the alternation of light and darkness was the arrangement for the first day of creation. How can a God who is pure light create a world that spends half... Read more
INTRODUCTION Prophets were involved from the beginning of the monarchy, but Israel’s prophets did not interfere with Gentile politics during the days of Saul, David and Solomon. Now, for the first time, a prophet anoints a Gentile king, and this initiates several centuries of prophetic ministry toward the Gentiles. Israel fall means riches for the world. THE TEXT “Then Elisha spoke to the woman whose son he had restored to life, saying, ‘Arise and go, you and your household, and... Read more
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