Isaiah 1:15 is organized as a neat chiasm. At the center is Yahweh’s rejection of Judah’s prayers, but at the ends are references to hands: A. in your spreading your hands B. I will hide my eyes C. when you multiply prayers B’. I will not hear A’. hands covered with blood The A sections spread out like two hands, hands that, in the last phrase, we discover are covered with blood. Read more
Fat and blood are at the center of the Levitical system. Blood cleanses the altar, and opens the window of heaven so that the priest can offer the Lord’s portion, the fat, in smoke. Isaiah 1:11 places these two substances at the center of his condemnation of temple worship. Following the Hebrew word order, the verse is organized like this: A. I am full of B. ascensions C. rams D. fat of fatlings D’. blood of bulls C’. lambs B’.... Read more
Psalm 88 is a Messianic Psalm, but in indirect ways. Because the Psalm contains the words of the anointed King, it contains the words of Christ. The utter isolation and anguish of the Psalm is the utter isolation and anguish of Jesus. No matter how low we go, we’ll still find Jesus, lower still, holding us up. The Psalm also questions whether Yahweh can be praised in the grave, by the shades that populate Sheol. That question is left unanswered... Read more
Linguists these days tell us that an author chooses one synonym over another for reasons of meaning (one may be slightly more specific or general than the other), for reasons of common usage (one of several synonyms may be used more commonly in certain contexts), or for stylistic reasons. All true. To which I would want to add that an author may choose one synonym over another for reasons of sound (alliteration, assonance), or even shape (one word looks “smoother”... Read more
Linguists these days tell us that when a word is ambiguous (more than one lexical definition), the default option is to assume that the author intends one of the multiple meanings. Fair enough: “I rose from bed” and “I plucked a rose” clearly use “rose” in two radically different senses. Linguists recognize that there can also be deliberate double meanings, such as “Jesus is the rose from the dead.” But that’s a fairly colorless featureless way to handle the problem.... Read more
My colleague Jayson Grieser points to Calvin’s comments on Psalm 5:8: “The righteousness of God . . . in this passage, as in many others, is to be understood of his faithfulness and mercy which he shows in defending and preserving his people.” Read more
My colleague Jayson Grieser points to Calvin’s comments on Psalm 5:8: “The righteousness of God . . . in this passage, as in many others, is to be understood of his faithfulness and mercy which he shows in defending and preserving his people.” Read more
As soon as the Twelve are called, they begin to follow Jesus (Matthew 4:20, 22, 25), but until Matthew 8 we never actually see them follow Jesus somewhere. Discipleship is a large concern of chapters 8-10; the word “follow” is used 10x, climactically in 10:38, where following jesus means taking up the cross, encountering threats and dangers. The disciples have already learned that lesson, though. The first time the disciples are said to follow Jesus somewhere is in 8:23. They... Read more
There are three “quakes” in Matthew. Twice the earth quakes, at the cross and at the resurrection (27:51; 28:2). The other quake is a quaking of the sea (8:24). The quake of the sea in chapter 8 foreshadows the resurrection. Jesus is in a boat, on the sea, sleeping; later, he will sleep the sleep of death, having been tossed into the Gentile sea, tried, and executed. Jesus “rises” from sleep (8:25-26), as He will “rise” from the dead (28:6-7).... Read more
Webster ends his interesting Barthian discussion of the canon by noting that Christians should be grateful for the genealogies of modern thought that “trace the history, observe the corruptions of producers and their products, and so cast the mighty from their thrones.” But in the end he advocates another response to the immantization of the canon: “to talk of the canon dogmatically as that means of grace through which the judgment of the apostolic gospel is set before the church.... Read more
Leithart
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