The Blog of Toby J Sumpter
Besserman writes:
“For what Samuel Johnson said of readers of Paradise Lost — ‘none ever have wished it longer than it is’ — probably holds true for most readers of the Hebrew Book of Job. The Septuagint is only five-sixths the length of its exemplar, a disparity that was already noted by Origen in the third century, who observed that ‘often four or three verses, and sometimes fourteen or fifteen’ are missing from the Greek.”
The Legend of Job in the Middle Ages, 38.
Roy Atwood, dean of New St. Andrews College, reports that an NSA graduate has recently been accepted and decided to enroll in the Duke University law school. He writes:
I just received an email from one of our many gifted New Saint Andrews graduates who has been teaching at an ACCS school “back East” for several years and completed a Master’s degree in Liberal Arts at Duke University along the way. He has decided to head off to law school next year and was accepted at an impressive list of law programs at leading universities:
Cornell University
Duke University
Georgetown University
University of Minnesota
Northwestern University
University of Pennsylvania
University of Washington
University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA)
University of North Carolina
Vanderbilt University
Washington & Lee University
Read the rest here.
John Starke quotes from a letter Bonhoeffer wrote his brother in a new biography:
“If it is I who determine where God is to be found, then I shall always find a God who corresponds to me in some way, who is obliging, who is connected with my own nature. But if God determines where he is to be found, then it will be in a place which is not immediately pleasing to my nature and which is not at all congenial to me. This place is the Cross of Christ. And whoever would find him must go to the foot of the Cross, as the Sermon on the Mount commands. This is not according to our nature at all, it is entirely contrary to it. But this is the message of the Bible, not only in the New Testament but also in the Old Testament.”
I just listened to Kevin Vanhoozer’s talk from the recent Wheaton conference, a dialog with N.T. Wright, and I recommend it to you. If you have the slightest interest in N.T. Wright and the conversation/controversy surrounding his reformulation of the doctrine of justification and how that should be received and evaluated by those of us in the confessionally reformed tradition, this lecture is a great place to jump in. Vanhoozer is particularly helpful and winsome for his sense of humor, but he very succinctly summarizes Wright’s concerns, the concerns of his critics, and charitably offers his own take and makes suggestions for moving the conversation forward. So go give it a listen.
I also listened to Wright’s chapel message given during the conference, and it is a typically encouraging and challenging word from the book of Ephesians. Listen or watch here.
Davis points out that one of great insights of William Blake found in his famous Illustrations of the Book of Job is the resemblance between God and Job.
Blake underlines this point in Illustration Number XVII pictured here. Above the picture runs the quotation from 1 Jn. 3:2: “We know that when He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we shall see him as He is.”
What is really cool is the fact that Job resembles God from beginning to end. This underlines the image of God, Job as Adam before God. But by the end, there is an implied eschatology to this image. Job is growing up into the glory of God.
“Such a diversity of opinions has prevailed in the learned world concerning the nature and design of the Poem of Job, that the only point in which commentators seem to agree, is the extreme obscurity of the subject.” Bishop Lowth
Cited in The Legend of Job in the Middle Ages by Lawrence Besserman
Ellen Davis closes her essay “Job and Jacob” noting that Job’s maturation over the course of the book specifically has to do with an understanding of the concept of “blameless” as “capacity for obsession with the blessing of God.” This idea of “obsession” is itself a kind of insatiable hunger. But this hunger in turn corresponds to God’s own gratuity. God overflows with blessings for the hungry. And blessed are the hungry for they shall be filled.
According to Davis, Job grows up into this understanding. Through Yahweh’s speeches to him, Job comes to appreciate God’s overflowing nature. And this overflowing nature simultaneously insists upon God’s goodness and freedom. But this “answer” doesn’t leave Job unchanged. Rather, Job having seen God with his eyes becomes more like Him. He becomes more like His gratuitous, overflowing God in the double return of his possessions, but he continues this imitation of God in his generosity toward his children, even giving his daughters inheritances, relatively unheard of in the ancient world. Job is even gracious in his prayers, asking the Lord to forgive his three enemy-friends.
Receiving the blessings and bestowing them upon his children is the acceptance of great risk for him and for his family. Job knows that these blessings may also be ripped from him like the previous blessings. He knows that God’s overflow is wild and untamed and free. And Job images this same kind of freedom, abandon, and gratuity. Job grows up to “at last resemble the God to whom he surrenders.” Davis particularly notes that this reckless abandon of Job, including an inheritance bestowed on his daughters, contrasts with his former anxiety regarding his children. If previously he was a little too cautious, too fearful, offering sacrifices for possible sins in the hearts of his children, his piety now includes prayer for forgiveness for his enemies and has grown up into a generous abandon toward his children.
Without minimizing Job’s initial piety toward his children, we might still recognize a maturity moving from only a negative piety (forgiveness for possible sins) to a more robust piety that includes both the negative (prayer for forgiveness) and positive (bestowing inheritances).
Ellen Davis has a great essay in a collection entitled The Whirlwind, ed. by Stephen Cook, et al.
She recognizes the textual parallels in the characters of Job and Jacob and specifically notices the description of both men as tam or “blameless”. Davis suggests, following the Targum’s rendering of Gen. 25:27 that this “integrity” is a sort teachability. Specifically, she suggests that it is a kind of obsession with the blessing of God. She traces Jacob’s life from tricking his brother into giving him the birthright, stealing it and deceiving his father, and struggling with his father in-law for the blessing of a wife, he finally comes face to face with God, wrestling with Him and refusing to let go until he receives a blessing.
Davis applies this connection to Job and then based on her dating of the book suggests its applicability to post-exilic Israel, a nation still struggling, wrestling and the author hopes still obsessed with seeking the blessing of their God. Whether the dating is right or not, the application seems right.
On this reading, to be “blameless” is not in the first place a moral designation. It is rather the calling to seek the blessing of God, to search for God Himself, until He is found. Jacob finally sees God face to face, Moses speaks to God face to face like a friend, and Job eventually meets God and sees Him with His eyes.
These brief allusions all point to the ultimate “blameless” One, Jesus Christ, who is likewise obsessed with the blessing of God His Father. And this Jesus ultimately ascends to the Father and pours out the Spirit upon His people, blowing this calling wide open to all of God’s people. All of God’s people are called to be sons, called and re-created with capacities for obsession with the blessing of God.
“Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” (Jn. 3:3-5)
One of the reasons we baptize babies is because Jesus told us to let the little children come to Him. And the reason the little children are to come to Jesus is not because they are cute and cuddly, but because they are the model citizens of the Kingdom. Jesus says that in the first instance it is not the children and infants who must grow up and learn to believe and have faith like grownups, but just the opposite: we must somehow figure out how to become young again and become like children in order to enter the kingdom of heaven.
But even here, when we say this and believe this, we can still end up like Nicodemus, trying to figure out exactly how we are supposed to get back into our mother’s womb.
What exactly does Jesus mean? How do we become like little children?
Perhaps the greatest story that illustrates what Jesus means is Israel after the Exodus in the wilderness. God had promised Israel a glorious inheritance in the land of Canaan. He promised to go before His people and drive out the occupying nations, and to give His people cities and vineyards and blessings on every side. But Israel, seeing the giants in the land told God that He could not give the land to them. They are too big, we are too small. It’s just not possible, they said.
And so God said that since they did not believe His promises, since they did not believe His Word to them, He would not give them the land. Instead of bestowing the promised land on the generation that came out of Egypt, God said they would wander in the wilderness for 40 years until a new generation had grown up and the old generation had died away. And this is what happened: over the course of 40 years Israel became children again. And the children inherited the land of promise. The children believed the word of God and crossed the Jordan. And they took Jericho like children, marching around the city until it fell down.
And this means at least two things. First, every generation is a death and resurrection. Every child is the human race reborn. Every new child is a family reborn. Every new child is parents reborn. The centrality of children in the kingdom of Jesus has to do with the centrality of the resurrection. The only way to get into the promised land is to find some way to cross generations. The only way to escape dying in the wilderness under the curse of God is to find a way to re-generate.
The problem is that even children grow old. In the flesh that we have inherited from Adam, even the new generation eventually becomes the old generation. And so we come back to the question of Nicodemus. How can we become like children forever? How can we stay in the regeneration? How can we stay young?
The answer is believing the Word of God. The difference between the first generation and the second generation was faith. The second generation believed the promises of God. They saw the giants and the fortified cities, but they place their faith in God’s promises to their fathers. It was not their faith that gave them the land of Canaan it was God’s grace and might. But they believed God’s word and crossed the Jordan and headed toward Jericho. It’s not that their faith was great. It was that they believed the Word of God and knew that their God was great.
And so James and Alberta, this is not an exhortation to try harder or to hold your breath or bear down. The exhortation is to believe God’s promises that the salvation of offered in Jesus is here solemnly promised and sealed to you and to your son by the Almighty God. And it’s pictured wonderfully in the baptism of an infant. How could this infant possibly save himself? He can’t. At this point, he is completely at the mercy of God. If this child is going to inherit the land of promise, God will have to carry Him in and give it to Him. And Jesus says: exactly. And He calls to believe.
So believe these promises, looking not to faith which is not great, but to the God who is great. And model this faith before Charles, teaching him to look to this same Great God who is giving Him life and forgiveness and the world in King Jesus.
James says that quarrels and fights come from our lusts, our covetousness, our envy. But this table is a standing witness and invitation to another way of life, another way of speaking to one another, another way of being family and being in community. And the fundamental difference between earthly wisdom and heavenly wisdom is the difference between grabbers and givers. Jesus said that whoever wants to find his life must lose it, and whoever loses his life for the sake of Jesus will find it. And to the one who tries to save his life, Jesus says that he will actually lose it. Grabbers are busy trying to save their own lives, grabbing for money, grabbing for power, grabbing for authority, grabbing for influence, grabbing for respect and blessing and love and happiness. And Jesus assures us that that is the best way to ensure that you never have any of those things. But the wisdom that is from above, the wisdom of the Spirit calls us to be givers. For God did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. And God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. God is the Supreme Giver.
And here, He continues to give. But even this is just a heavenly glimpse into what the entire world is like. God gives everything away. God gives sunsets away like a madman. He throws snow and leaves and flowers around with abandon. He gives children and health and laughter and alligators and rainbows and steak and popcorn and wine and rest and work and kisses and violin concertos and dancing and stories and stars. And He gives them overflowing, over and over, day after day, again and again and again and again. We serve the Great Giver who overflows, spilling countless piles of grace and blessing and goodness on us and on our families.
And that’s what this is here. This is God’s grace pouring out, spilling out for you in Christ. And God says, do you get it? Do you understand how I love you? Do you see that I’m willing to die for you? Do you see that this world was made for you? That this universe is not only full of lakes and seas stocked with fish, this universe is stocked with my overflowing life. Do you see? Do you get it? But grabbers don’t see. Grabbers look around and all they see are a few crumbs on the floor. They look around and only see a barren wasteland. And God has designed the world such that grabbers get what they see. And when they see nothing but sand and cactus, that’s what they get.
But God has better things for you, and God reminds you here week after week that He is the Great Giver and He not only gives Himself to you here, but He calls you to imitate Him. Imitate Him here, and then go imitate Him out there. Be givers like Him. But the only way you can be givers like Him is if you believe Him, that you believe He is the Great Giver, and that He has given Himself to you and for you, and that He will always give, that there will never be a famine with Him. So come, eat, drink, and rejoice, and do not hold back. In this bread and wine see the reckless abundance of your God, and the only way to keep is to give it. Give it to your families, give it with your neighbors.
