In response to invasion and siege, the people of Jerusalem do all the natural things people do in crisis – they shore up defenses, ensure the water supply, take account of the available weapons (Isaiah 22:8-11). They do everything they can to avoid defeat, and the exile that will no doubt follow on defeat. This is entirely the wrong response, the prophet says. Yahweh does not call them to defensive measures but to a fourfold defense: weeping, mourning, baldness, sackcloth.... Read more
Isaiah 22:8-11 is organized roughly as a chiasm: A. He uncovered ( galah ) covering of Judah, v 8a B. You “look” ( navat ) to shields, v 8b C. You see breaches in the citadel, v 9a D. Waters of the lower pool, v 9b E. Houses broken to fill breaches, v 10 D’. Ditch to collect water, v 11a B’. You do not “look” ( navat ) to Maker, v 11b A’. You did not see the potter,... Read more
Isaiah says that Judah’s “covering” will be removed (22:8). Elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, the word “covering” is used almost exclusively for the tabernacle coverings (22 of the 25 uses of the word occur in Exodus and Numbers). The covering that will be removed in Isaiah’s time might thus be the “covering” of the sanctuary. The enemy is coming to remove that covering. In Psalm 105:39, though, the same word refers to the Lord’s glory-cloud covering and protecting Israel, the... Read more
Isaiah describes the leaders of Judah “bound” by enemy archers (22:3). They don’t fall by the sword (v. 2) because they are in disarray, thorough retreat, and so they are vulnerable to weapons that kill from a distance. Isaiah (or Yahweh) mourns for the fallen chiefs, those struck down with arrows. The scene recalls the death of Saul, struck with arrows, and also the parallel death of Ahab. The first parallel, with Saul, is particularly relevant: Saul’s death meant a... Read more
The word “weeping” occurs eight times in Isaiah’s prophecy. Four times the weeping is for Moab (15:2, 3, 5; 16:9). Weeping fills Moab to the four corners. Twice it is weeping for Jerusalem in the “valley of vision” prophecy (Isaiah 22:4, 12), where the speaker weeps and, like Jacob mourning for Joseph, refuses comfort when he sees his daughter Jerusalem slain. Hezekiah weeps at the attack from the Assyrians (38:3). Through the first 39 chapters of Isaiah, there is a... Read more
Schleiermacher saw language as self-expression. Not unnaturally, on that theory, interpretation of language retraces the path of language back to the source, to the author’s intention. But Schleiermacher’s view of language is of a piece with his liberal experiential-expressivist theological framework. Why then would any evangelical, rejecting Schleiermacher’s theology, follow his hermeneutical theory? Read more
Gadamer from Truth and Method : “Every age has to understand a transmitted text in its own way . . . The real meaning of a text, as it speaks to the interpreter, does not depend on the contingencies of the author and his original audience. It certainly is not identical with them, for it is always co-determined also by the historical situation of the interpreter . . . . Not just occasionally but always, the texts goes beyond its... Read more
In the current issue of The Heythrop Journal , Brian Trainor analyzes the uses of Trinitarian theology among evangelical egalitarians and among evangelical “conservatives.” He finds both wanting, and offers some fresh reflections in an effort to break the impasse. He charges egalitarians with “‘homogenizing’ the three Divine Persons” and for failing to endorse “true and genuine differentiation in the inner life of the Trinity.” On the other side, “conservatives” have retreated into forms of subordinationism. Everyone distinguishes ontology from... Read more
Not Wesleyan Methodism, but against the methodism attacked by Gadamer. As Anthony Thiselton notes (in his essay in The Promise of Hermeneutics ), Gadamer’s life work is summed up in this sentence from a late essay: “It is the Other who breaks into my ego-centredness and gives me something to understand. This . . . motif has guided me from the beginning.” Thiselton explains “the historical finitude of fallen humanness characterizes every ‘Other’ with a givenness that calls into question... Read more
Bruce Cumings notes that the architects of the American Century could not have anticipated its most important events: “Never could the Achesons and Stimsons have imagined the fierce energy of aroused colonial peoples in the 1940s, for whom classical imperialism and a recent feudal past were hated realities and the promises of liberal modernism, an utter chimera. Nor could the theory of totalitarianism that long ruled the minds of American planners conceive of the possibility that courageous people in myriad... Read more
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