Impure Holiness

Last updated on: June 23, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Isaiah 65 piles up charges of idolatry and impurity against Israel. They are supposed to offer continuous sacrifices, but their sacrifices are a continuous provocation (65:3). They build their altars from bricks rather than from stones, as the law requires (65:3). The sacrificial smoke doesn’t sooth Yahweh but is an irritation to His nostrils (65:5). Besides, they are in a continuous state of uncleanness. They inhabit graveyards, and eat pig flesh that’s cooked in impure broth (65:4). Contact with death... Read more

The world of critical scholarship

Last updated on: June 21, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Back in 1952, AHN Green-Armytage wrote this splendid description of the world of critical scholarship: “There is a world – I do not say a world in which all scholars live but one at any rate into which all of them sometimes stray, and which some of them seem permanently to inhabit – which is not the world in which I live. . . . In my world, if I read that Mr. Churchill, in 1935, said that Europe was... Read more

Wallonians Need Not Apply

Last updated on: June 21, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

The Washington Post reports on a study that assesses the impact of religious affiliation on job applications. “Researchers Michael Wallace, Bradley R.E. Wright and Allan Hyde of the University of Connecticut sent 3,200 fake applications to 800 jobs within 150 miles of two major Southern cities through a popular employment Web site. Each employer got four résumés with comparable job qualifications. The only thing that set the fake job candidates apart was whether their résumés mentioned involvement with a religious group... Read more

Ten Words

Last updated on: June 21, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Isaiah charges that Judah has become a rebellious son, and enumerates the rebellions 65:2-5: 1) They walk in a way that is not good. 2) They follow their own thoughts. 3) They provoke Yahweh to His face. 4) The sacrifice in gardens. 5) They burn incense on bricks. 6) They sit among the graves. 7) They spend the night in secret places. 8) They eat swine’s flesh. 9) Unclean broth is in their pots. 10) They say Yahweh (?) is... Read more

Not Good

Last updated on: June 21, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

The first “not good” thing in the Bible is Adam’s isolation and aloneness (Genesis 2:18). It’s the one discordant “not good” in a string of “goods” that ends with a “very good.” Later, Jethro tells Moses that spending his day judging the people without any help is “not good” (Exodus 18:17). Moses needs “helpers suitable to him” in the judicial sphere, as Adam needed a liturgical partner in the garden sanctuary. Isaiah implies the same thing (65:2). Yahweh stretches out His... Read more

Genesis 1 in Ancient Perspective?

Last updated on: June 20, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

John Walton’s The Lost World of Genesis 1 promises a lot. It offers what Walton calls a “face-value” and “literal” reading of Genesis 1, but one that sidesteps the problems of attempting to reconcile science and the Bible. For Walton, creationist readings and concordist readings that attempt to correlate Genesis 1 with contemporary scientific theory both miss the point and read “modern” questions into an ancient text that was not designed to answer those questions. Walton’s treatment of the “days” of... Read more

Spirit of iniquity

Last updated on: June 20, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Israel laments over her sins and their consequences (Isaiah 64:5-7). Yahweh is angry because of Israel’s persistence in sin (v. 5), and as a result Israel becomes unclean and withered. Verse 6 uses a series of comparisons (using the particle k- four times) that stress the universality of Israel’s predicament (kol, “all,” is used three times): *All have become as an unclean one *All righteousness is as filthy garment *All wither like a leaf *Iniquities/guilt carry us away like wind.... Read more

Our Father

Last updated on: June 20, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Jesus taught His disciples to pray to “our Father,” and that has rightly been given a Christological gloss: Jesus and His disciples address a common Father. But that form of address is not wholly unprecedented. Twice Isaiah refers to a group that addresses Yahweh as “our Father” (63:16; 64:8). The first is, strangely, followed by the admission that those who call on Father Yahweh are unknown to Abraham and unrecognized by Israel. “Israel” here refers to the original Israel, Jacob, and... Read more

Foot-Washing

Last updated on: June 20, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Adriaan Vlok was minister of law and order in South Africa during the apartheid years. As the New Republic reports, he is making amends in a dramatic way. He recently visited one of his victims, Frank Chikane, a black minister: “He’d written it on the front flyleaf of a Bible. It read: ‘I HAVE SINNED AGAINST THE LORD AND AGAINST YOU! WILL YOU FORGIVE ME?’ Silently, he handed the Bible to Chikane, pulled a rag and bowl out of his... Read more

Ascent from the Sea

Last updated on: June 19, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Memory is supposed to encourage and ignite hope. In Isaiah 63, however, the people of Israel remember the old days of Moses and despair: “Where is he?” they ask – the one who brought His people through the sea, put His Spirit in their midst, divided the waters and led them through the depths (63:11). Memory reminds them that this God of wonders is now absent. What they remember is the exodus, and Isaiah describes the exodus in a peculiar... Read more