Isaiah 60:1-6; Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14; Ephesians 3:1-12; Matthew
2:1-12.
Epiphany
is about a brilliant light coming into the world for all the nations.
NOTE: The Lectionary readings for Epiphany Day
(January 6) are here given for the Sunday before Epiphany. These are the texts appropriate to inaugurate
the Epiphany Season.
Christmas in Matthew’s Gospel
emphasizes the royalty of the savior sent by God. Epiphany glorifies even more the royal
servant, whose righteousness and power shine like a beacon light for all the
nations.
Isaiah 60:1-6.
Epiphany is about light
shining, and the great Isaiah passage of Epiphany summons Zion
to shine with the reflected light from God’s “dawning” upon her. (The verb and noun “dawn” appear three times
in 60:1-3, translated in NRSV as “risen” and “will arise” as well as
“dawn.”) This light is to shine in a
darkness, deep darkness that enshrouds the peoples of the world, the nations
(“Gentiles”; see Special Note on “Gentiles” below).
This is a breathtaking view,
a vast panorama exceeding a Disney World laser-light spectacular. Here is the scene:
All the world is a vast black space
when a piercing light cuts through from the east and illumines a glorious city
on an elevated summit (see Isaiah 2:2). The city on the hill shines for all the
distant lands that have only that brilliant glow to guide them as they move
toward that center. They go there to
redistribute the wealth of all the world according to new priorities, now revealed
as the righteousness and peace given by the Lord of all creation.
The great light that shines on Zion
attracts all the wealth and glory from among the nations, and as they bring the
wealth toward the center, they also bring the dispersed sons and daughters of
the mother city, now restored to her glory.
Among the tribute flowing to Zion
from Midian, Sheba,
Kedar, and the like, are gold and frankincense. Such gifts constitute “the praise of the Lord” from the nations.
Psalm
72:1-7, 10-14.
The Psalm selection also focuses
on the tribute and enrichment from the nations, but now the emphasis is on
God’s rule through God’s king instead of the glory of God’s city. The psalm is a prayer uttered on behalf of
God’s king by the king’s people.
The psalm has a superscription,
“For Solomon,” that is, for “the Son of David.”
In the prayer the king is seen as the source of blessing for the whole
natural realm, producing “prosperity” (shalom, verse 3) for the people
and rain and showers for the earth.
More especially is the king the
source of justice and righteousness for the poor and oppressed of God’s
people. The tribute prayed for from the
kings of Tarshish and Sheba
is deserved – because “he delivers the needy when they call, / the poor and
those who have no helper” (verse 12, NRSV).
This king redeems the poor from oppression and violence, “and precious
is their blood in his sight” (verse 14).
This is the kind of rule by the
Son of David that will attract the devotion of the nations and cause them to
stream to God’s city with gifts and new orientations of their power and
wealth!
Ephesians 3:1-12.
The Epistle selection from
Ephesians is one of those passages overloaded with lofty thoughts and pregnant
phrases, too rich to be exhausted in a short reading. The relevant thread, however, is “the
mystery of Christ,” which concerns the Nations. (“Gentiles” means “nations” in both Hebrew
and Greek.).
The “mystery” is that the true
assembly (church) of God’s people is not confined to the people of Israel,
but is destined from of old to include the nations. It is these nations who are here informed
about the mystery: “…that is, the
[nations] have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in
the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel” (verse 6, NRSV). Through the gospel of which Paul was made a
special servant, these nations are being brought in from the distant lands to
share in the blessings that God’s King has brought to those who turn (repent)
and reorient their lives toward the rule of God.
The conclusion of this inspired
line is that “the mystery” is revealed to the heavenly powers themselves, that
the nations are joined with Israel in the church of Jesus Christ, “so that through
the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to
the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places” (verse 10, emphasis
added).
The multi-ethnic and
multi-cultural church of Jesus
Christ is a revelation to the heavenly beings
themselves!
Matthew 2:1-12.
The exalted language and imagery
of the message about the nations used in the previous readings is left behind
by the Gospel reading for Epiphany.
Here a series of simple
circumstances are related very concisely.
We do not even hear of these magoi while they are still in the
east, but they simply appear in Jerusalem
and say, Where is the king? We learn
only later that they had previously seen a star leading them from the east
(verse 9, alternate NRSV translation, “in the east”). Here there is no fanfare or spectacular laser
light show; only some ambassador types trying to get local directions in order
to make an appearance in a very modest court.
Where the prophets and the psalmists exulted in pyrotechnic language to
refer to worldly realities that were more modest, here the divine aura behind
the simple events is significantly understated.
The narrative presents, without emphasizing, that
these are lofty representatives of the nations of the world, come to find the
secret king whose coming changes the whole world. Here royal gifts are presented in an utterly
unassuming way. The modesty and the
secrecy of the real identity and destined work of God’s saving King are
preserved.
Only those with special wisdom (knowing the
“mystery”) are aware of the cosmic import of what has happened and know how to
conduct themselves accordingly. These
ambassadors from the east have their welfare and their secret preserved by God,
and these sages “left for their own country by another road” (verse 12).
The light of Epiphany had come into the world, and
only a few knew it.
Special Note on “Gentiles” [originally written around 2012].
In Christian tradition, the season of Epiphany
includes the reading of many Biblical texts that refer to “the nations,” often
rendered in English translations as “the Gentiles.” This translation is a serious error, however,
and this seems the right place to discuss it.
Let’s put the matter bluntly: There are no such things as “Gentiles” – unless you are speaking Latin.
In translations of Biblical texts “Gentiles” is used to translate the Hebrew haggōyīm
and the Greek ta ethnē. Both of
these terms mean “(the) nations,” and they should be so translated. We get “Gentiles” because that is the Latin
word for “(the) nations.” The early
English translators spoke Latin in their everyday discourse as scholars, and
they didn’t bother to actually translate here.
They simply repeated the Latin gentes where the Hebrew and Greek
said “nations.”
We have gotten rid of “Gentiles” in modern
dictionaries of Biblical Hebrew (Brown-Driver-Briggs and Koehler-Baumgartner
under gōy), but it still appears in dictionaries of New Testament Greek
(Thayer, Abbott-Smith, Bauer-Arndt-Gingrich under ethnos), not to
mention the dictionaries devoted to theological terminology of the New
Testament (Cremer, Kittel-Friedrich-Bromiley, and The New International
Dictionary of New Testament Theology [ed. Colin Brown]).
The presumed justification for “Gentiles” is that
Jewish usage in the post-Exilic and New Testament periods used “the nations” to
refer to everybody else besides Jews, especially for religious purposes. Thus, gōyīm became a pejorative term
meaning the unbelievers, “heathen” (often used by the King James translators)
and “pagans.” This is a correct
statement about Jewish usage in the New Testament period, but for people who spoke
Hebrew or Greek, what was heard in this reference was “(the) nations,” not some third
term between Jews and nations called “Gentiles.”
Absurdity has been reached when writers fall into
saying, “these references are to the Gentiles rather than to the nations”
(Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Vol. II [Eerdmans, 1964;
original German 1935], p. 368. Emphasis
is mine.). “The Gentiles” rather than “the
nations”! This is, of course, an
oxymoron. The Gentiles are the
nations – in any ancient language, at least.
As a discipline of thought, I have systematically
avoided the term “Gentiles” for some decades.
In Biblical texts it can always be translated “(the) nations,” when the
reference is to political units, or “the people(s) of the nations” when the
reference is to populations.
It is important to note that the Biblical terms are nouns.
In both Hebrew and Greek, it is “the nations” or “peoples of the nations.” Whenever you see “Gentile” as an adjective, you are reading a modern writer, not a Biblical writer. When modern
writers use “Gentile” as an adjective, they mean “non-Jewish,” and
sometimes it’s important to force the modern writer to be clear about
that. There is no such thing as
“gentile” in between “Jew” (or “Israelite”) and non-Jew.
Why
bother?
Avoiding “Gentiles” is important only if you are trying to retain the
overtones and nuances of “the nations” in the books of Isaiah, Psalms, and
other post-Exilic writings – and carry those nuances over to New Testament
texts, especially those used in Advent and Epiphany seasons.
There is one discussion of “the nations” in a
theological dictionary that gets it right.
This is A.R. Hulst’s discussion in Theological Lexicon of the Old
Testament (ed. Ernst Jenni and Claus Westerman, tr. Mark E. Biddle;
Hendrickson, 1997), Vol. 2, esp. pp. 916-918.
In his discussion, Hulst uses the Hebrew term gōyīm rather than
either “Gentiles” or “nations.”
Hulst, along with many others, observed that in the
Deuteronomistic era of Israelite religion a definite theory of “the
nations” was developed and embodied in the
Deuteronomistic writings (Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Kings, and
Jeremiah). In this theory, the land of Israel had been taken from the “the nations,” who resided
there before, and given by Yahweh to Israel. The
previous nations had not served Yahweh, and instead practiced
“abominations.” Many enclaves of those
nations had survived the conquest period and remained as “snares” to lure
Israelites to their (forbidden) religious practices – especially by marrying
their daughters and sons to Israelites.
The Deuteronomistic and prophetic writings warn loudly and repeatedly
against yielding to these deadly enticements of “the nations”!
It is worth repeating that this was strictly a
theory; it was not what really happened in early Israelite history. However, for the “Yahweh-only” religious
movement (that from the time of Elijah on created the essentials of what became
the Jewish scriptures), this theory became the religious reality by which
faithful (and often elite) Israelites lived.
Which meant that, if faithful, they lived in
separation from “the nations.” Hulst
writes:
Now
Israel’s separation is deeply rooted in the OT… Deuteronomy never mentions that Israel may have the assignment of bringing salvation, to
call the gōyīm, near and far, to faith in the one and universal
God. One sees the gōyīm as
potential seducers, thus an impending danger.
The gōyīm could at most admire Israel (Deut 4:6); preferably they should be satisfied
with their own religion and not burden Israel.
As
is well-known, however, another trend is also visible in the OT in other
passages, those which are aware that Yahweh chose his people so that it could
be a means for him to proclaim salvation to the peoples of the earth and thus
to bring the whole world to a recognition of God’s majesty. Beginning with the basic promise in Gen 12 and continuing through later statements in Exod 19,
this line leads to Isa
60. But here too a feeling of religious
superiority easily arises. One must go
through the depths to be rid of this feeling and to come to a correct view of Israel’s task of bringing blessing in relation to the
salvation of the gōyīm. Exile and
diaspora can be valued positively in this regard. The servant of Yahweh is the light of the gōyīm
(Isa 49:6), of all humanity: suffering
for the well-being of the world comes into view. (TLOT, vol. 2, pp. 917-918.)
This
long-term and redemptive view of the nations – which includes the view that the
nations at first make war on Zion and its Lord, but then are attracted to Zion
as the source of blessing – is presented especially in the book of Isaiah and
in the psalms that celebrate the Reign of Yahweh and of Yahweh’s Anointed. Historically, it was the ancient vision of
the Zion tradition before it became enmeshed with the
Deuteronomic compromises of the time of Josiah (and probably of Hezekiah before
him).
In
the exilic and post-exilic periods this vision of the nations is expressed by
those voices that speak most clearly of Zion’s shame and restored glory through Yahweh’s
judgment and salvation. These are the
texts that most clearly defined, for early Jesus followers, the meaning of “the
nations” as a part of their Advent and Epiphany messages.
And
the overtones and nuances of this redemptive view of the nations tend to get
lost when the poor “nations” show up in our English texts as “the
Gentiles.”
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