Fallen Into Knowledge

There are two pictures in Haggai:
First, the people strive and work and toil, but its never enough. Its like eating but never being full, or putting you money in a bag full of holes. Life feels like that for me more often than I care to admit.

The second is of God’s blessing when Israel goes about His business, in this case, re-building the Temple. It is a picture worth striving toward.

At that time I will change the speech of the peoples
To a pure speech
That all of them may call upon the name of the Lord
And serve him with one accord.

The Creation was instigated by divine fiat: “then God said.” God spoke the cosmos into being. The power of language was given to humans; Adam was given the task of naming the creatures in the garden. The power wielded by the one who names is tremendous, remember that after Isaac blessed Jacob (who also received a new name, Israel), He could not revoke it.
Milton, in his extraordinary poem Paradise Lost, wrestles with the changes that must have taken place to our language capacity as a consequence of the Fall. To Milton’s credit, he recognizes that from this side of the fall (post-lapsarian) we cannot conceive of ourselves in a pre-lapsarian state. Our knowing is corrupted: In Paradise Lost, the language between Adam and Eve changes drastically after the fall, lapsing into metaphor and sarcasm. Knowledge was no longer direct, as when Adam named the creatures, but via analogy.
We have Fallen into Knowledge.
The centrality of language to the fall is highlighted just a few chapters later: Babel. English translators cannot resist the similarity between Babel and babbling, yet in Genesis we are to link Babel with Babylon. That is: the enemy of the people of God.
The law of Moses takes up the subject of language again: “You shall not take the Lord’s name in vain.” I’m not entirely certain what this entails, but there are times when language should fall short - it is an unholy vehicle: “The Lord is in heaven, so let your word be few.” The First commandment is also relevant here: We are not to make analogies of God. An idol is a proxy - it stands in place of a God. They are also metaphors, analogies.
Our fallen-ness encompasses our entire being: not only is my eyesight fading, and not only do I have a propensity to sin, but my capacity to know and to speak is corrupted also.
This will change, as the passage from Zephaniah seems to indicate, when God establishes His Kingdom.

The trailing question is: If the church is the Kingdom of Heaven - as we move toward the kingdom - how do we cultivate and reflect redemption of language?

In which Habakkuk asks the age old question: Why does God allow evil to happen. Habakkuk gets an answer that he seems satisfied with, but which is unlikely to satisfy his readers.

Here is a thought - and this one is only half baked, so reader beware:

“The mighty will be toppled off their perch by God” This is clearly a theme in the Old Testament: The proud will be humbled, the rich rendered poor, and so on. Hannah’s Prayer comes to mind, or the book of Nahum.
And yet, Deuteronomy pretty clearly outlines Prosperity for the obedient Israel living in the Land. The question is: what is difference between Israel’s forcasted prosperity and the riches ofthe wicked.

Here is my thesis: While the Lord’s blessing certianly accounts for the prosperity of Israel, Israel’s prosperity is also due to its peculuar dependency on the Land.
Israel’s future in the Land in Deuteronomy is described in primarily agrarian terms, the riches gained by Israel were not to be at anyone’s expense. In fact, there were safeguards built into the law to protect against this (for example, the Sabbath laws).

We live in a world where wealth is not seen as a moral issue: yet reading the Old Testament, I cannot but see a multitude of inditements against the Rich. There are examples of rich men of God - Abraham, for instance - but they are the minority.

Visions of the Kingdom:

In the last days the mountain of the LORD’s house will be established as the highest of the mountains and raised above the hills. People will stream to it. Then many nations will come and say, ‘Let’s go to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways so that we may live by them.’ The teachings will go out from Zion. The word of the LORD will go out from Jerusalem. Then he will judge disputes between many people and settle arguments between many nations far and wide. They will hammer their swords into plowblades and their spears into pruning shears. Nations will never fight against each other, and they will never train for war again. They will sit under their grapevines and their fig trees, and no one will make them afraid. The LORD of Armies has spoken.

And:

You, Bethlehem Ephrathah, are too small to be included among Judah’s cities. Yet, from you Israel’s future ruler will come for me. His origins go back to the distant past, to days long ago. That is why the LORD will abandon Israel until the time a mother has a child. Then the rest of the LORD’s people will return to the people of Israel. The child will become the shepherd of his flock. [He will lead them] with the strength of the LORD, with the majestic name of the LORD his God. They will live in safety because his greatness will reach the ends of the earth. This man will be their peace.

The “days to come” seem to be characterised, chiefly, by Peace. We might even say, that Israel is to look forward to a time of peace.
Or even, The people of God are to be a people of Peace.

I really don’t know where to start with Jonah. Some readers of this blog spent an entire semester with me in Jonah, A blog post is too small. Perhaps a good quotation:

A prophet ought to be obedient to God’s will, Jonah is not; a prophet ought to intercede with God in times of trouble, Jonah does not; a prophet ought to plead with his audience to repent, Jonah does not; a prophet ought not to wish that his prophesy of destruction would come true, Jonah does; a prophet ought not be overly concerned about his personal comfort, Jonah is; a prophet ought not be portrayed in uncompromising or ridiculous situations, but Jonah is. Jonah is largely portrayed in terms of not doing what he is supposed to, and doing what he is not supposed to.

{David Marcus, From Balaam to Jonah: Anti prophetic Satire in the Hebrew Bible}

Two thoughts after having read Obadiah:
1. Obadiah is directed at Edom, and the grievance that God had with Edom is that Edom gloated over the misfortune of his brother (Israel). (Matthew 5 comes to mind…)
2. Within the corpus of the Twelve, and also the Canon, the above grievance becomes a moral inditement on all those who take pleasure in the misfortune of others.

Oh sweet Irony:
(or maybe its plain old sarcasm)

Listen to this message,
you cows of Bashan who live on Mount Samaria.
You women oppress the poor and abuse the needy.
You say to your husbands,
“Get some wine! Let’s drink!”

The Almighty LORD has taken an oath on his holiness:
Surely, the time is going to come
when you will be taken away on hooks,
and the rest of you on fishhooks.
Each of you will leave [the city] through breaks in the wall,
one woman ahead of another.
You will be thrown into a garbage dump.
The LORD declares this.

Go to Bethel and sin.
Go to Gilgal and sin even more.
Bring your sacrifices every morning.
Bring a tenth of your income every three days.
Burn bread as a thank offering.
Brag and boast about your freewill offerings.
This is what you people of Israel love to do.
The Almighty LORD declares this.

Ouch.

Joel 2:11b-14

Truly the day of the Lord is great;
terrible indeed - who can endure it?
Yet even now, says the Lord,
return to me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning:
rend your hearts and not your clothing.
Return to the Lord, your God,
For He is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love,
and relents from punishing.
Who knows whether he will not turn and relent,
and leave a blessing behind him,
a grain offering and a drink offering
for the Lord, your God?

This is a significant chapter in the Book of the Twelve (aka, the minor prophets): Many of the themes of the Twelve show up here, and other books quote from this passage:

“the day of the Lord:” the phrase occurs 17 times in the twelve - mostly in Joel and Zephaniah
“who can endure it:” cf Amos 7:10, Malachi 3:2
“Return to the Lord your God:” cf Hosea 14:1
“Who knows? He may reconsider and change his plan:” Jonah 3:9
“He is merciful and compassionate, patient, and always ready to forgive:” Jonah 4:2
“grain offerings and wine offerings:” Amos 5:22

The book of the twelve actually functions as a literary unit: the individual books share many of the same themes, and often use the same language.

One thing I have noticed, as I have been reading the prophets especially, is that God’s relationship with Israel is most often described in the terms of a marriage. God is the Husband, who is faithful, and Israel is portrayed either as an adulterous wife, or as a whore. In these terms, faithfulness becomes the central religious issue. Faithfulness, specifically, to the exclusive relationship with God.
We (or, I) Sometimes think of “relationship with God” as primarily a New Testament idea, but it seems not to be. I must point out, though, that in the prophets its never an individual’s relationship with God, but the Community’s. (I don’t think that changes much as we move into the New Testament) It’s easy for us, those of us who grew up as humans or as Christians in America sometime during the 19th or 20th century, to read “relationship” exclusively in individual terms; such a reading seems foreign to the language of the Old testament, however.