INTRODUCTION Zion has called on Yahweh to awake (Isaiah 51:9), and Yahweh has responded by rousing Jerusalem from her sleep (51:17). Now, Yahweh rouses Zion to wake up to get ready for release and a wedding (52:1). THE TEXT “Awake, awake! Put on your strength, O Zion; put on your beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city! For the uncircumcised and the unclean shall no longer come to you. Shake yourself from the dust, arise; sit down, O Jerusalem! Loose... Read more
Romantic comedies and dramas have long been Hollywood staples, but Jeanine Basinger’s I Do and I Don’t reviews the alternative tradition of films about marriage. As Judith Newman says in her NYT review , the trick to making marriage dramatic is to create problems for the married couple. Newman writes: “Romance movies may demand chemistry, but movies about marriage demand something more difficult to create — a sense that a couple are simpatico, that however much they may bicker and... Read more
In his TLS review of Noel Malcolm’s three-volume edition of Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan , David Runciman summarizes the origins of Leviathan. Hobbes wrote the book in France, watching the civil war unfold, sometimes serving as tutor to the future Charles II. As he finished writing in 1650, he had concluded that a consistent royalist should endorse the Protectorate since “rulers should be obeyed, whoever they are.” He added a “Review and Conclusion” conceding that now that the Parliamentary rebels were... Read more
“Do not lay up treasures for yourselves upon earth, where moth and rust destroy,” Jesus commanded (Matthew 6:19). Just before, He has been warning about practicing righteousness before men (6:1), in alms, prayer and fasting. The chapter ends with an exhortation to “seek first His kingdom and His righteousness” (v. 33). We store treasures in heaven by practicing righteousness in secret, before the Father who sees in secret. Treasures in heaven are reserved for those who seek God’s righteousness first.... Read more
Leland Ryken taught English at Wheaton College for and astounding 45 years, and he is sharing the fruits of that long tenure in a Crossway series, Christian Guides to the Classics. So far Ryken has written on Homer’s The Odyssey , Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter , and Milton’s Paradise Lost . Each volume is about 70 pages long, and provides an overview, a section-by-section commentary on the text, and marginal notes that highlight more technical features of the work. The... Read more
When the seventh trumpet sounds, the heavenly temple of God is opened and the ark appears. Lightning, thunder, an earthquake, and a great hailstorm accompany the revelation of the Lord’s throne (11:19). This verse opens a section of several chapters that deal with the Satanic attack on the church, persecution by the beasts, and finally the outpouring of martyr blood on the city. It’s a transitional vision, and illuminates much of what happens in the following chapters. First, we can... Read more
George Weigel always gives a good pep talk, and not only to Catholics. He’s a can-do Catholic. Weigel does it again in Evangelical Catholicism: Deep Reform in the 21st-Century Church . The Counter-Reformation church is dead, and the “Presentitis” of some post-Vatican II Catholicism is a dead end. Weigel attacks all expressions and forms of “lukewarm Catholicism” too. It’s time for “deep reform,” and that means “submitting to the transforming fire of the Holy Spirit” (20). At the heart of... Read more
My review of Philip Jenkins’s challenging Laying Down the Sword: Why We Can’t Ignore the Bible’s Violent Verses is up at the Comment magazine web site. Read more
Jonathan V. Last ( What to Expect When No One’s Expecting: America’s Coming Demographic Disaster ) has a modest proposal for fixing social security: “Since the 1980s, policy wonks have been telling us that our social welfare programs are about to implode. The system is not sustainable! Either benefits or taxes must be changed – something’s got to give! And that’s all true. But this harangue ignores the root cause of why the system isn’t sustainable. Social Security and Medicare... Read more
Abraham is a rock (Isaiah 51). What does that mean? He’s a chip off the Rock of Israel, Yahweh himself. No matter how much you water them, rocks don’t grow into rock gardens, but Abraham becomes a garden because He is blessed by the Lord. Abraham the rock grows to become a mountain that fills the earth. Abraham the rock multiplies to become sand on the seashore. Abraham the rock is the prototype of Petra the rock, on whom Jesus... Read more
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