Isaiah 10:6 warns that the Assyrians are coming to “spoil spoil, and to prey prey.” Both words are doubled, and the poetic equality of the phrase is enhanced by the fact that the Hebrew word for “prey” is baz – bazaz in its verb form, baz in its noun form. In Isaiah 10:6 itself, the phrase reads leboz baz . Assyria is coming to baz , not unlike a plague of flies and bees (7:18). Read more
In Isaiah 10:6, Yahweh describes Israel as a “people of wrath” ( ‘am ‘avrati ). Like other phrases that Isaiah uses to describe godless Israel, this one is a pun. ‘avarah puns first with ‘ever , or Eber, the ancestor of the Jews and the source of the name “Hebrews.” Eberites had become Wrathites. The word also puns, more directly, on the verb ‘avar , “pass over” or “pass through,” a word used both for the Lord “passing through” Egypt... Read more
Brock notes that the root of worship is the church’s common trust in the Word that calls them. Worship is a school in trust, where the church listens for God’s word to them. Worship develops a taste for trust in communication, and thus subverts the subversive suspicions of our culture. In good Lutheran fashion, Brock insists that the church is not divided into a teaching clergy and a listening laity. The whole community exists to listen, is constituted by listening,... Read more
Brian Brock argues that the church’s diversity of gifts should not be understood as a “division of labor.” That conforms the church to the social models of technological society in which “individuals [are] so organized that they can productively live out the fully formed gifts (skills) they bring when joining the social group.” That suggests a notion of gift as a form of “expertise.” Rather, in Paul’s model, each individual member of the body is only whole “in delighting in... Read more
John’s description of the Enthroned matches in a number of details Ezekiel’s description of the “king of Tyre” in Ezekiel 28. The stones that adorn the king of Tyre are the same stones to which John compares the Lord’s appearance, and the king of Tyre wears a crown like the crowns that are cast down before the throne in heaven. John’s vision at the beginning of Revelation thus sets up the expectation of a Tyrean theme that comes out at... Read more
In Revelation 4, the Enthroned is like “jasper” and “sardius.” Both stones are part of the high priest’s vestments (Exodus 28:17-18). the priest is the image of God; the Enthroned the Enthroned priest. Isaiah 54:12 describes the city in the same terms. Restored Jerusalem is the priestly city, which is the image of God. Read more
Anne Lamott writes that we know we are making God in our image when all His enemies happen to correspond with our own. Read more
Along the way in her lively critique of Jenson’s “Story Thomism,” Francesca Murphy ( God Is Not a Story: Realism Revisited ) notes that she has not spent much time refuting irrationalists and postmoderns, and explains why: “no one enjoying our technological world is a practising irrationalist,” and thus “the current against which our theology actually has to swim for its survival is rationalism, or making God look suspiciously like our reasoning process. Once we are more accustomed to boarding... Read more
Along the way in her lively critique of Jenson’s “Story Thomism,” Francesca Murphy ( God Is Not a Story: Realism Revisited ) notes that she has not spent much time refuting irrationalists and postmoderns, and explains why: “no one enjoying our technological world is a practising irrationalist,” and thus “the current against which our theology actually has to swim for its survival is rationalism, or making God look suspiciously like our reasoning process. Once we are more accustomed to boarding... Read more
INTRODUCTION Yahweh has pronounced “woes” against Judah and Israel, and many of these woes involve invasion, defeat, and exile at the hands of the Assyrians (cf. 7:17-20; 8:5-8, 21-22; 10:3-4). But Yahweh is the Judge of all the earth, and so Assyria too will be held accountable for her sins. THE TEXT “Woe to Assyria, the rod of My anger and the staff in whose hand is My indignation. I will send him against an ungodly nation . . .... Read more
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