No One Knows The Hour (part 11)

It’s worth reviewing what happened when Jesus entered the Temple.  He “drove out all those who were selling and buying in the Temple courts, and turned over the tables of the money changers and the chairs of those selling doves.  And He said to them, ‘It is written, “My house will be called a house of prayer,” but you are turning it into a den of robbers!’” (Matthew 21:12b-13)  Then, “The blind and the lame came to Him in the Temple courts, and He healed them” (21:14).  This forces another look at Jeremiah, from which Jesus’ words of judgment are lifted, where one can see the Levitical parallels (and stand amazed at all that is going on in Jesus’ words and Matthew’s record) when reading “Change the way you have been living and do what is right.  If you do, I will allow you to continue to live in this land” (7:3b). 

Notice the connection here made by Jeremiah between land and Temple.  By quoting and re-enacting Jeremiah, Jesus would be making the same connection.  Jeremiah goes on to say (and Jesus intends to call to mind) “Stop putting your confidence in the false belief that says, ‘We are safe!  The Temple of the Lord is here!  The Temple of the Lord is here!  The temple of the Lord is here!’  You must change the way you have been living and do what is right.  You must treat one another fairly.  Stop oppressing foreigners who live in your land, children who have lost their fathers, and women who have lost their husbands.  Stop killing innocent people in this land.  Stop paying allegiance to other gods.  That will only bring about your ruin” (7:4-6).  Here, one should note that Jeremiah’s reference to Deuteronomy flows into a concern that Israel not fall into idolatry---worshiping the gods of the people of the land to which the Lord is bringing them. 

Continuing in Jeremiah, and continuing to connect land to Temple: “If you stop doing these things, I will allow you to continue to live in this land which I gave to your ancestors as a lasting possession,” as we note the land and Temple dynamic (7:7).  Jeremiah goes on to say (and again Jesus could just as well have said) “But just look at you!  Your are putting your confidence in a false belief that will not deliver you.  You steal.  Your murder.  You commit adultery.  You lie when you swear on oath.  You sacrifice to the god Baal.  You pay allegiance to other gods whom you have not previously known.  Then you come and stand in My presence in this Temple I have claimed as My own and say, ‘We are safe!’  You think you are so safe that you go on doing all those hateful sins!  Do you think this Temple I have claimed as My own is to be a hideout for robbers?” (7:8-11a) 

So not only has Jesus made reference to the whole of this section of Jeremiah’s seventh chapter while He dramatically acts in the Temple, but situated as it is within Israel’s history, its collective and active memory, and its understanding of past exiles and current subjugation to a foreign power, He calls this to mind again along with the Leviticus passage that Jeremiah seems to also have in mind when He speaks about the demand to love neighbor as self.  To clinch the argument that Jesus’ words are not to be disconnected from His ongoing and primary concern with the Temple as demonstrated in Matthew, it is necessary to point out that this section of Leviticus basically begins with “When you sacrifice a peace offering sacrifice to the Lord, you must sacrifice it so that it is accepted for you” (19:5).  The Temple, of course, was the place of sacrifice.

...Like A Gentile Or Tax Collector (part 10)

The second Scriptural use of “seventy seven” is in the book of Judges.  In the eighth chapter, as part of the story of Gideon (which would have been a very popular story for an occupied people such as the Israel of Jesus’ day, or a persecuted people such as the early church communities), Gideon is said to have “captured a young man from Succoth and interrogated him.  The young man wrote down for him the names of Succoth’s officials and city leaders---seventy-seven men in all” (8:14). 

It was at Succoth that Gideon, with he and his three hundred men pursuing the Midianites and exhausted, requested loaves of bread for his army.  The men of Succoth refused.  Gideon vowed vengeance and eventually took that vengeance, executing the city’s men (8:17).  Presumably, those executed first, if not exclusively, were those seventy-seven.  Again, if Jesus is speaking of the need for forgiveness instead of vengeance in the face of wrongs that are done, then it is more than possible that His insistence that forgiveness be offered seventy-seven times might very well be offered with this story in mind as well. 

The third and final use of “seventy-seven” in the Hebrew Scriptures comes from the book of Ezra.  Ezra is a post-exile work, chronicling the trials and travails of the Creator God’s people as many exiles returned to the land of their inheritance, joining those who had been able to remain in the land, and seeking to rebuild the Temple.  There, in the thirty-fifth verse of the eighth chapter (which, based on what is to be found there, seems as if it should be located after the second chapter), it is written that “The exiles who were returning from the captivity offered burnt offerings to the God of Israel, ninety-six rams, seventy-seven male lambs, along with twelve male goats as a sin offering.  All this was a burnt offering to the Lord.” 

Also in the eighth chapter, Ezra presents the record of his group’s travel to Jerusalem with the expressed purpose of re-building the Temple of their God.  Reading there, one finds “On the twelfth day of the first month we began traveling from the Ahava Canal to go to Jerusalem.  The hand of our God was upon us, and He delivered us from our enemy and from bandits along the way.  So we came to Jerusalem, and we stayed there for three days” (8:31-32). 

This itself is an interesting point of comparison, as Jesus Himself, in a way, was traveling to Jerusalem.  It will not be too far down the road in Matthew’s narrative that Jesus will be seen to be triumphantly entering Jerusalem and dramatically entering the Temple.  Of course, later on, as part of Jesus’ “trial,” there will be testimony that Jesus had said “I am able to destroy the Temple of God and rebuild it in three days” (26:61b), which is an allusion to an underlying motif of the Jesus tradition, not explicitly heard in Matthew, that Jesus saw Himself as a replacement for the Temple. 

The parallels with Ezra, and with the words previously quoted, are quite striking.  If Ezra is in mind when Jesus speaks words in regards to forgiveness (and based on what follows immediately thereafter, this doesn’t seem to be a stretch at all), then He is calling attention to the wider context and story in which this use of “seventy-seven” is to be found.  For those that will be hearing Matthew’s story, which will occur well after the Resurrection and after the various components of the oral (and written, to be sure) Jesus tradition have been relatively fixed, the resonances between the Ezra passage and Matthew’s narrative practically jump off the page. 

Only Son (part 20)

It is written that “When Solomon became old, his wives shifted his allegiance to other gods; he was not wholeheartedly devoted to the Lord his God, as his father David had been.  Solomon worshiped the Sidonian goddess Astarte and the detestable Ammonite god Milcom.  Solomon did evil in the Lord’s sight; he did not remain loyal to the Lord…  The Lord was angry with Solomon because he had shifted his allegiance away from the Lord, the God of Israel…  So the Lord said to Solomon, ‘Because you insist on doing these things and have not kept the covenantal rules I gave you, I will surely tear the kingdom away from you’.” (1 Kings 11:4b-5a,9a,11a)  This idolatry would reportedly lead to the division of the kingdom of Israel into north and south, and the dual monarchies that would persist until their respective subjugations and exiles. 

When the Temple of Jerusalem had been dedicated, Israel’s God promised to make it the place of His presence, as it was recognized in the ancient near east that temples were the resting places of the gods (the whole of the creation was the temple of the Creator God, for that is where He was said to have rested).  At the same time, the covenant God issued a warning for Solomon, saying “if you or your sons ever turn away from Me, fail to obey the regulations and rules I instructed you to keep, and decide to serve and worship other gods, then I will remove Israel from the land I have given them, I will abandon this Temple I have consecrated with My presence, and Israel will be mocked and ridiculed among the nations” (9:6-7).  To this was added: “This Temple will become a heap of ruins” (9:8a).  Is not this same warning, given to Solomon, also that which was given to both Adam and Israel? 

These respective sons of God were all given responsibilities, and all three, as the historical narrative would indicate, fall short of those responsibilities through which they were to reflect the glory of the Creator God, and through which their God would gain worship and praise.  Indeed, Adam’s temple (creation) would fall into ruin, subjected to death and decay.  Israel’s temple (it’s promised land) would fall into ruin, subjected to foreign power and exile.  Solomon’s temple (the Temple) would fall into ruin, destroyed by subjugating powers. 

For all of the good that was said to have been done during his reign, it was Solomon’s idolatry that set the nation on course for the eventual destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple at the hands of the Babylonians.  For all of the good that Adam presumably did, in service of his Creator, it was his self-idolatry that brought destruction into the world.  For all of the good that Israel had done, as they carried out at least a portion of their God’s commands in taking and subduing their promised land, it was their idolatry that routinely and repeatedly and finally brought about destruction. 

Before coming to that however, Solomon is shown to have served his Lord well.  As was said, kingdoms paid tribute to Israel, as the Creator God blessed Israel for its faithfulness.  “People from all nations came to hear Solomon’s display of wisdom; they came from all the kings of the earth who heard about his wisdom” (4:34).  The queen of Sheba was one of those that reportedly came to Solomon, having heard of his reputation.  It is said that when she heard him and saw all of his wealth, that “she was amazed” (10:5b).  She would go on to say, “Because of the Lord’s eternal love for Israel, He made you king so you could make just and right decisions” (10:9b).  This hearkens to the words of Jesus.  Is it not possible to hear echoes of these amazed words from the queen when Jesus says, “For this is the way God loved the world: He gave His one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16)?