Resistant Rest

Last updated on: July 10, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Walter Brueggemann’s Sabbath As Resistance is, like most of Brueggemann’s other work, bracing and frustrating in equal measure. He rightly sees the Sabbath command in connection with the first commandment: Worshiping the God of the exodus means worshiping a God who delivers from the demanding, restless gods of Egypt and their political representatives (Pharaoh). He also links Sabbath with the demand that Israel renounce images in worship, noting that images turn worship back toward exchange and the work-culture from which Yahweh... Read more

Piketty and Politics

Last updated on: July 10, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Duncan Kelly argues in his lengthy TLS review of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century that the “book is as much a story about the limits of modern democratic politics as it is about the structures of inequality.” That is not simply about the anti-democratic role that wealth plays in contemporary democracies, though it is partly about that. Kelly writes, “inequality might be the result of political choice, but one of the obvious implications here is that modern democratic politics... Read more

Dialectic of Realism

Last updated on: July 10, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Frederic Jameson’s Antinomies of Realism continues the argument he made a couple of decades ago in Signatures of the Visible. In that earlier book, Jameson argues that realism depended on “prolonging and preserving – rather than ‘resolving’ – [a] constitutive tension and incommensurability.” That tension is inherent in realism’s attempt to render reality raw, but to do it through the artifice of fiction. As Ben Jeffrey, the TLS reviewer of Antinomies, puts it, it’s a matter of “artists striving to produce... Read more

The Music of the Text

Last updated on: July 10, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Yahweh will take some of the clusters from Judah to make new wine (Isaiah 65:8-9). Those who seek Yahweh will inherit land (v. 10). But those who forsake him are in danger. Isaiah ends the section with a beautifully constructed set of four contrasting beatitudes and curses (65:13-14). Each verset begins with hinneh, “behold,” and a clause about Yahweh’s “servants.” The second part of each verset states a curse against those who forsake Him, a curse that contrasts with the... Read more

Sacrifice for Sacrifice

Last updated on: July 10, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, liturgy for liturgy. Isaiah warns those who forsake Yahweh by preparing sacrificial feasts for Fortune and Destiny (65:11). The judgment for this sacrificial infringement is itself sacrificial. Those who worship Destiny are “destined” (65:12; the Hebrew verb is from manah, also the root of the word Destiny) for the sword. They prepare a table for Fortune, slaughter the sacrifice for a feast; the Lord will pull out His own sacrificial sword against them. They... Read more

Postmodernism

Last updated on: July 9, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

I offer a brief assessment of postmodernism at the Trinity House web site. Read more

Speak, Hear, Do

Last updated on: July 9, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

At the creation, God spoke and “did” or “made” (‘asah) things. God speaks again to Judah, with the same creative word, a word that will form a new heavens and a new earth (Isaiah 65:17). Something is “done” or “made,” as it was at the beginning (Isaiah 65:12; ‘asah again). But what is made is not tov, “good.” What’s made is “evil” (ra’). Does God speak evil into being? No: Judah “makes” ra’ because she refuses to listen to Yahweh:... Read more

Tabernacled Among Us

Last updated on: July 9, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In his history of Mesopotamian religion, Treasures of Darkness, Thorkild Jacobsen calls attention to the intimate relationship between a temple and the god who was supposed to reside in it. The presence of the temple was “visible reassurance that the God was present and available, that he – as the hymn to the moon god expressed it – ‘among the (creatures) in whom is breath of life has settled down in a holy abode” (16). Like a human home-owner, the god... Read more

Jew

Last updated on: July 9, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Balaam tries to curse Israel but the Lord turns the curse to blessing. He alludes to the exodus of Jacob and Israel from Egypt, and then says, “He couches, he lies down as a lion, and as a lion, who dares rouse him? Blessed is everyone who blesses you, and cursed is everyone who curses you” (Numbers 24:9). This is not simply a blessing, but a very specific blessing. On his deathbed, Jacob blessed his sons, and to Judah said:... Read more

42 Times: Isaiah and Servants

Last updated on: July 9, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

A year ago, I observed the shift from singular “Servant” to plural “servants” within Isaiah 40-54. Further work has revealed a larger pattern. ebed, “servant,” is used 42x in the Hebrew text of Isaiah. The distribution of the word is significant, It is used only five times in the first 35 chapters, prior to the narrative center of the book. Three of those (14:2 [2x]; 24:2) refer not to servants of Yahweh but to servants of a human master; both uses... Read more