Theology Thursday: Redeemed
Back on New Year’s Eve, I engaged in a short debate-ish thing with my Esteemed Partner in Pavement Pounding about Jephthah, and specifically about whether he sacrificed his daughter in Judges 11. (Whoa, I just totally pulled that chapter reference out of my head! Sweet!) I took the negative proposition, that Jephthah did not sacrifice his daughter, though the wording of the passage seems to indicate he did. (You can go read it if you want. I’ll wait.)
Mostly my position is based in logic. And it goes like this:
- God does not approve of human sacrifice
- God approved of Jephthah (Hebrews 11)
- Therefore, Jephthah did not engage in human sacrifice
But then, a couple of weeks ago, I came across an additional bit of support for my position. (By the way, you’d probably like to know what I think Jephthah did sacrifice, right? The short answer is something acceptable.)
My new evidence came from Exodus 13, when the Lord commanded the consecration of the firstborn. Here’s the passage:
Exodus 13:12-13 (ESV):
12 you shall set apart to the LORD all that first opens the womb. All the firstborn of your animals that are males shall be the LORD’s. 13 Every firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it you shall break its neck. Every firstborn of man among your sons you shall redeem.
The “shall be the LORD’s” part seems to indicate that they would be sacrificed. But not all species would be sacrificed. Only clean animals. Others would be redeemed with a lamb. And firstborn sons, in particular, were consecrated to the service of the Lord (see Numbers 3), though later the tribe of Levi was taken for that service (but all firstborn sons of other tribes still had to be redeemed).
But my main point here is that an Israelite couldn’t offer just anything to God. Even when bringing a clean animal to sacrifice, it had to be spotless. God seemed to be very particular about what could be offered.
In this passage, the example of a donkey is given. Checking Leviticus 11 (a lot of 11th chapters in this post), we note that the donkey doesn’t have cloven hooves, so it’s unclean. It has to be redeemed (or throttled, apparently).
So, back to Jephthah’s case. He promised to offer what came out of his tent to the Lord. But he was an Israelite, and knew that he could only offer something clean. Anything unclean, he would have to redeem. But it would still belong to the Lord.
So, Jephthah’s daughter would have been redeemed, but would have been consecrated to the Lord. If this is so, and she was dedicated to service, she may not have been able to marry. This makes a good deal more sense when one considers that she lamented not her impending death, but rather her virginity. Jephthah’s grief would be explained by his knowledge that his line would end with her, since she was his only daughter.
This also seems to match the chronology of Judges 11, as one of the concluding verses says this:
Judges 11:39 (NKJV, just because it’s more word-for-word)
39 And it was so at the end of two months that she returned to her father, and he carried out his vow with her which he had vowed. She knew no man.
It might be stretching things a bit, it seems the “she knew no man” happened after Jephthah had fulfilled the vow.
BTW, I’m comfortably out of the mainstream with my interpretation here. Most commentators think that in the time of the Judges, the Law wasn’t observed particularly well, and so resorting to human sacrifice wasn’t be all that surprising, and Jephthah was honored for keeping a painful vow. But the writer of Hebrews doesn’t mention the sacrifice at all, so I think my explanation fits.
Now that we’re done with that, I’m shocked that my feeble little brain is just now really connecting the redemption of the firstborn with the fact that mankind was redeemed by the Lamb of God. The unclean redeemed by the clean. The broader idea of redemption by a lamb/bull is pretty well documented, but this specific idea is just now settling in for me. Guess I need to keep reading.
Theology Thursday Lite: Favoring the Good Side
I think I'm mailing it in this week. But I like this verse (it's the Second Commandment):
Notice that God isn't timid about punishing anyone, but He's really more about rewarding those who do right. I think there's some bearing here on the subject of Eternal Hell (which you may recall, I'm less and less convinced is really taught in the Bible). God's character is much more about rewards than punishments.
Or I could be reading too much into this, but it seems like one hears more about the punishment to the fourth generation. I thought I'd balance it a bit. And that's a wrap for today...
Theology Thursday: Carrying the Name
As I mentioned in my Monday Morning Musings this week, I've long suspected that exclaiming "Oh, my God!" does not constitute a violation of the 3rd Commandment, which states (in the NASB):
You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain.
If not for the corpus of built-up interpretation that equates "OMG" with "taking the name in vain," how might we view this? By the way, check out the Message on this:
No using the name of GOD, your God, in curses or silly banter; GOD won't put up with the irreverent use of his name.
Is this rendering even close to the real meaning? I don't really think so (not that I'm surprised...it is The Message, after all). But, I didn't want to be hasty, so I looked up the word translated "take" in Strong's (courtesy NETBible). Here's what I got:
1) to lift, bear up, carry, take
1a1) to lift, lift up
1a2) to bear, carry, support, sustain, endure
So, take is in there. But in the context of the other definitions, it seems to mean more "take up" than "use." So what's it mean? Dennis Prager, a radio talk show host who also teaches Old Testament, has said on many occasions that it means, "committing evil while acting religious."
Which justifies the thought I had back in the 80s, when David Duke (former-KKK-white-supremecist-pond-scum, the last adjective of which is totally redundant) said on national television, "I claim Jesus Christ as my personal savior," that he was taking the name of Christ in vain. Likewise for any who do evil in Christ's name (Fred "God hates fags" Phelps, you there?) or in God's name (Al Quaeda?).
All that to say that I don't believe "misusing" God's name is a specific violation of the 3rd Commandment. But is it okay? I personally flinch whenever I hear anything approaching "OMG," which includes "Gosh". I once heard Ethan's Sunday School teacher use it while doing the Bible Story of the day. I wanted to throw something at her. I don't want my son using such language. Am I overreacting?
And yet, you'll catch me saying "Geez!" What? How about, "Oh, my word!" or "My goodness!"? Aren't they all derivatives? How about "Crikey!" and "Cripes!" and "For Pete's Sake!"? How far do I take this?
Here's another angle. How about if you put your husband/wife into the position of God in the statement. What would people think if you said, "Oh my wife, it's hot out here?" Isn't it a bit silly? Does using her in that kind of speech lift her up or cheapen her? Not sure you could argue the former.
What about darn, dang, and drat? Why not just go with damn? Aren't they the same? While researching the various varieties of variations, I discovered the term "minced oaths" from Wikipedia, the locus of all knowledge we take other people's word for (BTW, that link contains some naughty language).
I guess, for me, even though I don't think many of these are specifically forbidden for Christian folks to do, they're not a good thing. Any of them. Specifically, the uses of "OMG" and it's forms. They've been so long associated with "taking the name in vain" - even in popular (secular) culture - that they now rise to that level. As Christians, we should try to move as far from that as possible. As for some of the minced oaths, I can see it two ways. To be completely consistent, we'd have to nix all of them. On the other hand, it shows a certain innocence to stay away from the more crass terms and use something "nicer" (even if it really isn't nicer). That alone could be the thing someone notices, which causes them to ask you what makes you different.
I'm curious about others' opinions on this. If you use OMG (or OMGosh), is it just habit? Do you think it's good/bad/indifferent? Now you have a topic. Discuss...
A Pro-Life Contradiction?
I'm disappointed by John Grisham. Don't get me wrong; he's a very talented, sometimes brilliant writer. At least one of his books would make my Top Ten Favorites list. But, his latest work displays at least one occurrence of shocking ignorance.
His latest book, The Appeal, deals with the messy topic of tort reform. Sort of. I'm pretty sure I know where he stands on the issue, but I'm disappointed by it (but maybe he'll prove me wrong). More than that issue, though, is his apparently shallow view of pro-life issues.
Jesus and the God of the OT
It's not at all uncommon these days to hear people, even ostensibly Bible-believing Christian people, claim that the God of the OT and the God of the NT are somehow different. Not so.
Yesterday I came across (again) this passage:
How often do we hear that the God of the OT is anything but "compassionate and gracious"? All. The. Time.