Why Scripture? (part 1)

…useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training righteousness, that the person dedicated to God may be capable and equipped for every good work. – 2 Timothy 3:16b-17  (NET)

The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments exist for the purpose of representing the Creator God to His covenant people.  Though there is a tendency to look to Scripture to grab a verse or a story in order to find an application to a situation in which one may find himself, doing so may be a matter of getting things out of order.  The traditions of the covenant people of the Creator God, the prophetic utterances, the wisdom literature, and the theologizing about the meaning of the Resurrection that helped to shape the church community in the years following the Christ-event, do not exist primarily to serve man and to inform man how to live; but rather, they exist primarily to reveal the covenant God, and in that revealing, to cause His people to take steps to bring Him glory. 

This revelation for the purpose of knowing the Creator God is given so that those who are supposed to bear His image might be able to do so rightly.  This, of course, is why believers undertake and so highly value theology, for one cannot serve the Creator God, with a knowledge of His purposes, if He is not known primarily as revealed through that which is recorded in the book to which is ascribed the influence and inspiration of His life-giving Spirit. 

Believers do not approach the Scriptures so as to first learn about themselves, to gain encouragement for themselves, or to find out what the Creator God has in store for them.  All of these things take place as secondary results.  The believer approaches the Scriptures in order to learn about the covenant God.  Because humans are made in His image, it is in learning about the covenant God that they are able to learn about themselves.  This is encouraging because it is possible to learn that the Creator God has a purpose for His image-bearers, and the Scriptures provide believers with the hope that He is at work, quite faithfully, to bring about those purposes in his image-bearers, for His image-bearers, and through His image-bearers. 

If one was ever take a moment to consider why it is that believers gather together as Christians, in what is referred to as “church” or “worship” services, it is in this realization that the answer is to be found.  The author of the letter to the Hebrews is adamant about the regular gathering together of those that call Jesus Lord, as he writes “And let us take thought of how to spur one another on to love and good works, not abandoning our own meetings…encouraging each other” (10:24-25a). 

When looked at on the surface and from the outside, by those that do not yet call Jesus Lord, one would have to be compelled to admit that these regular (predominantly Sunday) gatherings as individual bodies in representation of the reality of the existing and coming kingdom of the Creator God, is quite the peculiar practice.  Naturally, it is as peculiar as the very message upon which the church is built, which is that of an eminently shameful and ghastly crucifixion, the extraordinarily ridiculous notion of a man’s resurrection from the dead, and the somewhat ludicrous idea that those two things, taken together and then punctuated by an ascension, prove that the crucified man was the very embodiment of the Creator God and is the sovereign and ruling Lord of all in a kingdom that has been inaugurated on earth and awaits its final consummation in the coming together of the Creator God’s realm of existence (heaven) and man’s realm of existence (earth). 

A Tradition Of Wells (part 9)

Wading into the deep, deep waters of the wisdom/poetic literature of the Hebrew Scriptures, it should be first noted with interest, and honestly, with a great deal of surprise, that there is no mention of wells within the Psalms.  This is surprising, especially considering that there are a number of occasions in which Israel’s history (or at least a part of it) is recounted in Psalmic form.  When reflecting on the routine placement of wells, and their connection with every patriarch as well as Moses and the nation of Israel itself, one is only left to wonder at such an omission.  Nevertheless, wells are mentioned on three occasions in the book of Proverbs. 

In the fifth chapter the author writes “Drink water from your own cistern and running water from your own well.  Should your springs be dispersed outside, your streams of water in the wide plazas?  Let them be for yourself alone, and not for strangers with you.  May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in your young wife” (5:15-18).  This is presented in the context of the first two verses of the same chapter, where one finds “My child, be attentive to my wisdom, pay close attention to my understanding, in order to safeguard discretion, and that your lips may guard knowledge.  For the lips of the adulterous woman drip honey, and her seductive words are smoother than olive oil, but in the end she is as bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword” (5:1-4). 

Not as a means of casting aspersions upon the Samaritan woman at the well in John, but it is certainly not beyond the realm of probability to hear in these verses some potential background for a woman that meets Jesus at a well, that has had five husbands, and is currently engaged in a relationship with a man that was not her husband.  It is in a similar vein that one hears the next mention of wells here in Proverbs, as the proverbial author writes “Give me your heart, my son, and let your eyes observe my ways; for a prostitute is like a deep pit; a harlot is like a narrow well” (23:26-27). 

In a use that does not seem to be entirely helpful to this project, though an effort could probably be made to shape and twist it to fit the particular needs of this study, the twenty-fifth chapter reads “Like a muddied spring and a polluted well, so is a righteous person who gives way before the wicked” (25:26).  The same could also be said (not entirely helpful, though one must be cognizant of the potential to shape the thoughts of Jesus and the Johannine author, so that it plays a role in their respective thinking) of what one stumbles upon in the book of Ecclesiastes, as before reading “Absolutely futile!... All things are futile!” (12:8), representing the “Teacher’s” summary of his search for the purpose of life, it is said that “before the silver cord is removed, or the golden bowl is broken, or the pitcher is shattered by the well, or the water wheel is broken at the cistern---and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the life’s breath returns to God Who gave it” (12:6-7). 

Rounding out the poetic literature and turning to the Song of Solomon, the well is mentioned in connection with a love relationship.  The word “bride” is even mentioned, creating the connotation of marriage and placing this use of “well” at a distance that is much closer to the John four story than what has been seen in the previous two instances.  There Solomon (presumably) writes “You are a locked garden, my sister, my bride; you are an enclosed spring, a sealed-up fountain.  Your shoots are a royal garden full of pomegranates with choice fruits: henna with nard, nard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon with every kind of spice, myrrh and aloes with all the finest spices.  You are garden spring, a well of fresh water flowing down from Lebanon” (4:12-15). 

Musing upon the number of marriages within the historical presentation of Israel that came about in connection with wells, it makes a great deal of sense to hear this Hebrew poet talk of wells during the course of a love song directed to his sister, his bride.  Because the bringing forth of children, especially in Genesis, following the marriages that were associated with wells, was packaged together with the continuation and propagation of the Creator God’s covenants that began with Abraham, would this subtly call attention to the Creator God’s covenant faithfulness, thus casting this, in a way, as something of a love song between the Creator God and His special people Israel?  If one was inclined to stretch the analogy a bit more, one could look at Israel’s stop at the place of twelve wells as the place of their birth, just before their entering into their own covenant relationship (marriage) with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?      

A Tradition Of Wells (part 8)

Continuing to lay the conceptual foundation for the collective consciousness concerning wells, it is worthwhile to quickly trace all remaining mentions of wells within what are considered to be the historical books of Israel.  In the second book of Samuel, there is a mention that is probably not a helpful or useful mention of a well, at least on the surface.  Nevertheless, it occurs during the time period following the death of King Saul, as David is solidifying his royal position, so perhaps others can find related value in its mention. 

Engaging the text: “Then Joab left David and sent messengers after Abner” (3:26a).  Joab is the commander of David’s forces, and Abner is the commander of the forces of Saul, and temporarily Ishbosheth, the son of Saul.  “They brought him back from the well of Sirah.  (But David was not aware of it.)  When Abner returned to Hebron, Joab took him aside at the gate as if to speak privately with him.  Joab then stabbed him in the abdomen and killed him” (3:26b-27a).  Later in the same book, during the time of Absalom’s temporarily successful (and seemingly temporarily divinely sanctioned) taking of the throne of Israel, there is a story concerning two spies that David had in his employ. 

This seems to be as useful as the event just presented, but in dutifully presenting the record it is found that “Jonathan and Ahimaaz were staying in En Rogel.  A female servant would go and inform them, and they would then go and inform King David.  It was not advisable for them to be seen going into the city.  But a young man saw them on one occasion and informed Absalom.  So the two of them quickly departed and went to the house of a man in Bahurim.  There was a well in his courtyard, and they got down in it” (17:17-18). 

Finally, in the book of Nehemiah, in a section that mentions wells as part of a prayerful praise that recounted Israel’s history, beginning with the Genesis account of creation, in a manner which undergirds the purpose of this study by demonstrating a mention of wells in a general recapitulation of the exodus narrative, Nehemiah can be heard to say “They captured fortified cities and fertile land.  They took possession of houses full of all sorts of good things---wells previously dug, vineyards, olive trees, and fruit trees in abundance.  They enjoyed to the full your great goodness” (9:25). 

Having reviewed the location of wells within the historical narrative (though it is possible to find some historical narrative overlap when turning to the prophets, specifically Isaiah), this study now turns its attention to the mention of wells within the wisdom/poetic and prophetic literature of the Hebrew Scriptures.  With these, it will be possible to see how the larger part of the historical narrative that is associated with wells serves to shape ideas about references to wells in this body of work, while also continuing to form the historical imagination along the lines of that of the Johannine author, that one might more correctly approach the story of Jesus and the woman at the well.