Biblical Words [731]
Song of Solomon 2:8-13; Psalm
45:1-2, 6-9;
At moments God’s Word is exuberant and
spontaneous, especially after the great liberation from binding
convention.
Song of Solomon 2:8-13.
To have a reading from the Song of Solomon is both
surprising and delightful.
This begins a group of readings from the third
division of the Hebrew scriptures, the Writings, HakKetubim. Our
readings have moved through the historical traditions to the middle of
Solomon’s glorious reign, and now for a while we will sample some of the
literature of Solomon’s loves and wisdom.
This week alone is from the Song, then will follow a few weeks from
Proverbs and Job.
But what a transition! We move from
the staid piety of the Deuteronomist’s dedication of the
About full-blossomed spring as the time of new life
and the powerful urge of the young and healthy toward love, what comment is
there? Let the poetry, which echoes
through the history of English literature, speak:
Interpreted through the ages as the summons of God
to beloved Israel, as the wooing by Christ of his Bride the Church, it still
has the lure and verve of a vigorous young man, alive to the vibrancy of new
growth around him, making his urgent plea to the ravishing beauty behind the
lattice, who is herself eager to be off!
Psalm 45:1-2, 6-9.
Only a little less exuberant about love is the Psalm
reading, which says in its superscription that it is a love song (shir
yedidoth). Here we are dealing with a
Royal Wedding.
The speaker begins with his own role and credentials:
My heart overflows with a goodly theme;
He is the clerk and witness of the ceremony, and his
song will be the signed marriage license.
Then we get the wedding portrait of the bridegroom,
the king: “You are the most handsome of
men; grace is poured upon your lips…” He
is also a warrior, who has girded on his sword and ridden victoriously to
defend truth and the right (verses 3-4,
The prescribed reading stops there, in mid ceremony, but the psalm goes on
with the (minister’s) charge to the bride to appreciate her good fortune and
her very enviable position (verses 10-13a).
The bride is then led to the king’s chamber for their nuptials (verses 13b-15),
and the singer (perhaps speaking God’s blessing) winds up by praising the
king’s posterity – and his own part in magnifying the king’s fame and glory
(verses 18-19).
James 1:17-27 .
The Epistle readings now shift to another letter in the New Testament, the Letter of James, quite different from the letter to the Ephesians
we have heard for the last several weeks.
This writing is addressed to “the twelve tribes in
the Dispersion” (1:1), which at least means people outside
Comment on James the Brother. It is
romantic to think that the James who writes this letter is the brother of Jesus
– as Church tradition in the fourth and later centuries gradually decided – but
the concerns of the letter and the circumstances of those addressed do not fit
well the historical situation of James the Just (as even his Judean opponents
called him). This James, the brother of
Jesus, was the head of the
The Letter of James was written in
Greek and is a collection of memorable sayings in the manner of wisdom
literature. It does not have a structure
of thought so much as a succession of themes, with sayings grouped around each
theme.
In the passage for today there is
strong emphasis on the power of the word.
[God] gave
us birth by the word of truth… (verse 18,
Welcome
with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls (verse
21).
The passage goes on to make very
clear that the “word” involved is an instruction for how to live. The hearers of the letter must be “doers of
the word” and not only hearers. They
should be “not hearers who forget but doers who act” (verse 25).
Our passage concludes with a
declaration that is truly memorable:
Religion
that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their
distress… (Verse 27.)
Wherever God’s people, of whatever
description, are dispersed, this should be the word “implanted” in them that
constantly receives new “birth.”
After many weeks pondering the Bread
of Life in
This passage in Mark establishes a
major break between the Jesus
movement and the Judaism of Jesus’ time and later.
As a reformer, Jesus is not simply
reinforcing the old law; he is changing it.
He is definitely leaving out something (see the criteria in Deuteronomy
4:2)! He is leaving out the whole body
of dietary rules that so fractured table fellowship, even among Christians
themselves (Galatians
(For an
impressive interpretation of this passage from a Liberal (Reformed) Jewish
viewpoint, see the Special Note below.)
The entire passage, 7:1-23, is a
very composite, even inconsistent, block of Markan tradition. Most careful interpreters agree on this, but
differ a lot in how they describe its development.
As likely as any is a simple reading
of four stages in the development of the tradition behind
the passage. (This is NOT a description
of stages of writing; it is stages in how Jesus people evolved their
discussions of these related topics.)
1.
The first issue was hand-washing
before meals (verses 1-2, 3-4), a challenge raised by Pharisees against
Jesus’ disciples – not against Jesus, but against his disciples, that is, a
conflict between Pharisees and early Jesus followers. This issue is raised but not actually
addressed in the passage. It is now
subsumed in the next, later issue.
2. The second issue is scripture versus traditions (verses 5, 6-8). Here Jesus elevates the hand-washing issue into a scripture issue: He cites a prophetic passage that indicts the Pharisees because they place their oral tradition on an equal footing with Moses’ written torah. Verses 9-13 (not included in our reading) is an add-on example to support the charge about that oral tradition: the Pharisees supposedly elevate “qorban” vows above the written commandments concerning parents. Most scholars recognize this was not historically true, but the Jesus tradition came to sharply oppose the Pharisaic “oral law.”
3.
The third issue is Jesus’ revolutionary declaration about what actually defiles people (verses
14-15, 17-20). Not what goes into people
(like food from unwashed hands) defiles them, but what comes out of people
(verse 15). The basic concept is so
far-out that Jesus has to have a special in-house session with the disciples to
reinforce it (verses 17-19), a standard technique in Mark for addressing issues
that came up in the later church. This
discussion does not develop naturally out of what precedes but is a profound
theological extension of the rejection of the Pharisaic purity laws. This is no longer a critique of the oral
torah; it is a rejection of major parts of the Mosaic legislation itself. This is the freeing of Jesus believers from
living by Leviticus.
4.
Finally, a Hellenistic (non-Judean) inventory of what comes out of
people: a list of human defilements (verses 21-23), which resembles lists
of vices that appear in Paul’s letters (Romans 1:29-31; I Corinthians 6:9-10;
Galatians 5:19-21).
The entire
passage has moved from a local Pharisaic purity issue to a basic separation
between two emerging world religions.
This section marks the departure of Jesus followers from mainline Judean
practice, by at least 70 CE.
Special Note: A Jewish Interpretation of Mark 7:15.
The
following is a discerning and far-sighted statement of the historical
significance of this teaching of Jesus: C.
G. Montefiore, The Synoptic
Gospels (2d ed., 2 vols.,
Mark
(Paragraphing has been added to what
in the original is a long unbroken text.)
This section is of profound significance and value; it raises questions of the deepest importance. … For here Jesus enunciates a doctrine which appears not only to be new and emancipating, but which seems to constitute one of the two chief justifications or reasons for the main way in which Liberal Judaism looks at the old ceremonial law.
For first of all came the old prophets of the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. They said: The true service of God is not ceremonial, but moral; God desires love and not sacrifices, the knowledge of Him rather than burnt offerings. …This teaching is resuscitated by Jesus…
But here he says something which is akin to the prophetic doctrine, but is yet novel. There were two aspects of the old ritual and ceremonial practices, two sides to them. Some of them were supposed to affect God, and some of them were supposed to affect man. The prophets dealt mainly with those which were supposed to affect, please, or propitiate God, and they tell us that God does not care for them: it is not so that he is propitiated or pleased.
In this section Jesus deals with those which were supposed to affect man, and these were mainly rules and customs about clean and unclean, which again depended upon conceptions – very old, widespread conceptions – about clean and unclean. Just as the prophets upset the old ideas about the service of God, so here Jesus upsets old ideas about clean and unclean.
As the prophets moralized and inwardized men’s ideas about the service of God, so Jesus moralizes and inwardizes men’s ideas about clean and unclean. In a religious sense it is only man who can be clean and unclean; nothing else. Only man can make himself clean and unclean; outside things cannot make him clean or unclean. The conception of ritual or Levitical purity and impurity is overthrown and abolished. Upon these two doctrines, the doctrine of Hosea, upon the one hand, the doctrine of Jesus, upon the other, the new attitude of Liberal Judaism towards the ceremonial Law depends.
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