Studying 1 Samuel 18 1-4 and so much more

This week we’re cherry-picking a bouquet of verses that have to do with the legendarily close relationship of David and Jonathan, namely: 1 Samuel 18:1-4; 1 Samuel 20:16-17, 32-34, and 42; 2 Samuel 1:26-27; 2 Samuel 21:7. Clearly, this means we’re skimming over or skipping over lots of vital context; we’ll likely want to explore at least some of that in the course of our study.

In the interest of full disclosure, I must say, yet again, that I am the wrong person for someone to ask about David if they want to hear prettily positive pieties. Maybe this has to do with my deep hermeneutic of suspicion whenever it comes to stories that sound like they spring from a political context, serving a political agenda (like ALL the stories about David). Maybe it’s my contemporary bias towards bluntness when it comes to naming things. [Like, why would we hesitate to call the execution of civilians, or of prisoners of war, (e.g., 1 Samuel 27:8-12, 2 Samuel 8:2) “war crimes” or “atrocities” just because they happen in the Bible, and are done by David?] Maybe I’m enormously grateful David wasn’t my dad. (See, e.g., 2 Samuel 13 or 1 Kings 2:1-9. Maybe it’s just a birth-order thing. Whatever the root(s), I make no secret of harboring no admiration for David.

Nevertheless, here are some notes on 1 Samuel 18:1-5 (from an earlier study), and here are a few notes on the other verses:

BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT

Let’s remember that we come across the stories about David as we’re making our way through the Deuteronomistic history, that long body of text (more or less Joshua-Judges-1&2 Samuel-1&2 Kings) that paints the history of Israel in the land of Canaan as a series of spiritual and practical disasters punctuated by moments of faithful return, or at least efforts in that direction. In that context, what can truly be said about David is that he is never reported to have worshipped any God other than the Holy One of Israel. By that measure, he really is a paragon of covenant faithfulness.

The stories about David begin in 1 Samuel 16 with the first anointing of David as king, by Samuel, and [first anointed king of Israel] Saul’s first introduction to David, and 1 Samuel 17 with David’s world-famous encounter with the giant Goliath and Saul’s second introduction to David.

From there the story goes something like this:

1 Samuel 18 – everyone, including the members of Saul’s household, loves David: from Jonathan (vv1-5), to the people (vv6-16), to Michal (vv20-30). Everyone but Saul, that is.

1 Samuel 19 – Jonathan rescues David from Saul (vv1-7), Michal rescues David from Saul (vv8-17), and Samuel rescues David from Saul (vv18-24).

1 Samuel 20 – Jonathan rescues David from Saul again, at length.

1 Samuel 21 – 30 – Saul pursues David for a long time, and fails; let’s note in passing that David sends his mother and father to live with the king of Moab until the trouble blows over, (1 Samuel 22:3-4), which totally makes sense when we remember that David has relatives there. (See the book of Ruth.) These chapters are mostly filled with hair-raising tales of David’s narrow escapes from Saul in the wilderness, including how he encounters Saul a couple of times and refrains from killing him because he’s “the Lord’s anointed” – although, as we know, David also is that. Finally David goes into the service of one of the Philistine kings, Achish of Gath. Ultimately this all sets the stage for

1 Samuel 31 – the last battle between Saul’s forces and the Philistines, in which Saul, Jonathan, and other members of Saul’s family die. Nothing to do with David, of course, who is absolutely positively NOT fighting on the side of those Philistines, as we learned in 1 Samuel 29, and who has a rock solid alibi for the time of death, as we learned in 1 Samuel 30.

2 Samuel 1 – David has the hapless bearer of the bad news killed, and laments for Saul and Jonathan in world-historically great literature.

2 Samuel 2-4 – David is anointed king again, this time over Judah; rules from Hebron; fights a long war against Saul’s son Ishbosheth/Ishbaal; there’s lots of internal politics, including David breaking up Michal’s re-marriage to someone who actually loves her (2 Samuel 3:14-16), and killing, none of which is ordered by David at all.

2 Samuel 5-6 – David is anointed king over all Israel, fights the Philistines, finally succeeds at bringing the Ark to Jerusalem, and that’s the end of Michal and any conceivable new relatives of Saul from her.

2 Samuel 7 – God makes a covenant with David forever.

2 Samuel 8-10 David fights wars and shows kindness to Jonathan’s disabled son Mephibosheth by bringing him to the palace in Jerusalem and keeping him there.

2 Samuel 11–1 Kings 2 [“the Court History of David”] – Everybody remembers the thing with Bathsheba, but after that there are all the subsequent stories of this “house” that is never free from sexual misconduct and vengeful murderous conflict and political maneuvering that sometimes breaks out into civil war and at other times just ends with assassination.

The verses from David’s lament for Saul and Jonathan are in the lectionary, but all the rest of our verses, and most of the stories about David for that matter, are things we wouldn’t know were in the Bible if all we knew were the lectionary.

[If all we know is the lectionary, we’ll know that David is anointed king by Saul, defeats Goliath, laments the end of Saul and Jonathan, has a covenant with God about that Temple, brings the ark to Jerusalem and gets in a fight with Michal about that, makes a covenant with God, gets in trouble with Bathsheba, which God is actually mad enough about to send a prophet to confront David, loses a son to civil war and grieves over that, is in David’s own words the “favorite of the Strong One of Israel (2 Samuel 23:1-7), and dies. Plus whatever we might know from reading Chronicles in church.]

So, once again: Bible Content Examinees are encouraged to read the actual Bible. While being warned that there may be an inverse correlation between positive impressions of David and the amount of the Bible’s story of David one has actually read.

CLOSER READING

There are better notes on 1 Samuel 18:1-4 here, which also include some notes on the material in 1 Samuel 19.

We won’t be able to make much sense out of the isolated verses from 1 Samuel 20 unless we at least skim through the chapter and learn the plot: David is on the run from Saul, having sought shelter with Samuel in Ramah; he leaves there to confer with Jonathan, protest that he’s done nothing deserving the death Saul is trying to impose on him, and to propose a way to convince Jonathan that Saul really is David’s enemy; the plan involves David’s staying away from court long enough to get Saul to show his hand to Jonathan; Jonathan will let David know the outcome by a coded message involving arrows; as it works out, Saul does mean to kill David [we already knew that], argues furiously with Jonathan, Jonathan gets furious at his father in return, and then gets David sent off safely with the intel and fond assurances of Jonathan’s loyalty.

When it comes to 1 Samuel 20:17, it may be instructive to compare the translation in the NRSV with Robert Alter’s:

Jonathan made David swear again by his love for him for he loved him as he loved his own life.

And Jonathan once again swore to David in his love for him, for he loved him as he loved himself.

In 2 Samuel 1:26, the word translated “beloved” in NRSV, “very dear” by Alter, is a rare Hebrew verb that is elsewhere translated “be pleasant.” The sense seems to be something like “you have been very pleasant / very delightful to me.” This is as much as David ever tells us in his own words about how he himself feels about Jonathan.

In 2 Samuel 21:7, we probably need to know that what David is “sparing” Saul’s crippled grandson Mephibosheth from is being handed over to the Gibeonites for execution along with all the other grandchildren of Saul because God has belatedly informed David that the famine that has been going on for the past three years is a consequence of something Saul did back when he was still king.

As far as I know, the Masoretic Text never records David loving anyone. 2 Samuel 13:21 does say David loved Amnon, but that evidently comes from the Septuagint.

On the other hand, it also never says David ever worshiped anyone but the Holy One of Israel. This is something that can’t be said of most, perhaps even of any, of the other kings of Israel. [Unless you count Saul. But then again, Saul does invoke the spirits of the dead that one time.]

By that measure, David really truly is the most faithful of the kings of Israel. We could meditate on this for a long time.

Image: Shofar window of Synagogue Enschede, by Kleuske, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Kabbalah, Part 2

Ultimately, it’s necessary to show compassion toward oneself as well as to share compassion with others. This “selfish” enjoyment of God’s blessings, but only to empower oneself to assist, is an important aspect of “Restriction” & is considered a kind of golden mean in kabbalah.

This corresponds to the sefira of Adornment (Tiferet) being part of the “Middle Column.” The golden mean (or Golden middle way) is the desirable middle between 2 extremes, 1 of excess & the other of deficiency.

The most esoteric Idrot sections of the classic Zohar make reference to hypostatic male & female Partzufim (Divine Personas) displacing the Sephirot, manifestations of God in particular anthropomorphic symbolic personalities based on Pardes & midrashic narratives.

Lurianic Kabbalah places these at the center of our existence. Rather than earlier Kabbalists, these are placed at the center of our existence. Rather than earlier Kabbalah’s Sephirot, which Luria saw as broken in Divine crisis.

Medieval Kabbalists believe that all things are linked to God through these emanations, making all levels in creation reflect its particular roots in supernal divinity. Kabbalists agreed with the divine transcendence described as the Ein Sof, the unknowable Godhead.

They reinterpreted the theistic philosophical concept of creation from nothing, replacing God’s creative act with panentheistic continual self-emanation by the mystical Ayin Nothingness/Nothing sustaining all spiritual & physical realms as successively more corporeal garments, veils, & condensations of divine immanence. This is when the divine encompasses or is manifested in the material world.

The innumerable levels of descent divide into 4 comprehensive spiritual worlds: Atziluth (“Closeness” Divine Wisdom), Beriah (“Creation” Divine Understanding), Yetzirah (“Formation” Divine Emotions), Assiah (“Action” Divine Activity), with a preceding 5th World, Adam Kadmon (“Primordial Man” Divine Will). Sometimes excluded due to its sublimity. Together, the whole spiritual heaven forms the Divine Persona/Anthropos.

In Kabbalah, Adam Kadmon (also called Adam Elyon or Adam Ila’ah, sometimes abbreviated as A’K) is the 1st of 4 Worlds that came into being after the contraction of God’s infinite light.

Hasidic thought extends the divine immanence of Kabbalah by holding that God is all that really exists, all else being completely undifferentiated from God’s perspective. This view can be defined as a cosmic monistic panentheism. Acosmism denies the reality of the universe, seeing it as ultimately illusory, & only the infinite unmanifest Absolute as real. Monism attributes oneness or singleness to a concept, such as existence.

According to this philosophy, God’s existence is higher than anything that this world can express. Yet He includes all things of this world within His divine reality in perfect unity. So that the creation affected no change in Him at all. This paradox, as seen from dual human & divine perspectives, is dealt with at length in Chabad texts. Chabad philosophy comprises the teachings of the leaders of Chabad-Lubavitch, a Hasidic movement led by the Schneersohn family & formerly based in Lyubavichi, Russian Empire.

Foundational texts of Medieval Kabbalism conceived evil as a demonic parallel to the holy, called the Sitra Achra (the “Other Side”), & the qlippoth (“husks/shells”) that cover & conceal the holy, are nurtured from it, & yet also protect it by limiting its revelation.

In a radical notion, the root of evil is found within the 10 holy Sephirot, through an imbalance of Gevurah, the power of “Strength/Judgment/Severity.” Gevurah is necessary for Creation to exist as it counterposes Chesed (“loving-kindness”), restricting the unlimited divine bounty within suitable vessels, so forming the Worlds.

However, if Man sins (actualizing impure judgment within his soul), the supernal Judgment is reciprocally empowered over the Kindness, introducing disharmony among the Sephirot in the divine realm & exile from God throughout Creation. The demonic realm, though illusory in its holy origin, becomes the real apparent realm of impurity in lower Creation.

In the Zohar, the sin of Adam & Eve (who embodied Adam Kadmon below) took place in the spiritual realms. Their sin was that they separated the Tree of Knowledge (10 sefirot within Malkuth, representing Divine transcendence).

This introduced the false perception of duality into lower creation, an external Tree of Death nurtured from holiness, & an Adam Belial of impurity.

In Lurianic Kabbalah, evil originates from a primordial shattering of the sephirot of God’s Persona before creation of the stable spiritual worlds, mystically represented by the 8 kings of Edom (the derivative of Gevurah) “who died” before any king reigned in Israel from Genesis 36.

In the divine view from above within Kabbalah, emphasized in Hasidic Panentheism, the appearance of duality & pluralism below dissolves into the absolute Monism of God, psychologizing evil. Though impure below, what appears as evil comes from a divine blessing too high to be contained openly. The mystical task of the righteous Divine Oness & absolute good is to “convert bitterness into sweetness, darkness into light.”

Kabbalistic doctrine gives man the central role in Creation, as his soul & body correspond to the supernal divine manifestations. In Christian Kabbalah, this scheme was universalized to describe Harmonia mundi, the harmony of Creation within man.

In Judaism, it gave a profound spiritualization of Jewish practice. The esoteric teachings of kabbalah gave the traditional mitzvot observances the central role in spiritual creation. Whether the practitioner was learned in this knowledge or not.

Accompanying normal Jewish observance & worship with elite mystical kavanot intentions gave them theiurgic power. But sincere observance by common folk, especially in the Hasidic popularization of kabbalists, could replace esoteric abilities. Many kabbalists were also leading legal figures in Judaism.

Medieval Kabbalah elaborates particular reasons for each Biblical mitzvah, & their role in harmonizing the supernal divine flow, uniting masculine & feminine forces on High. With this, the feminine Divine presence in this world is drawn from exile to the Holy One Above.

The 613 mitzvot (according to Jewish tradition, the Torah contains 613 commandments) are embodied in the organs & souls of man. Lurianic Kabbalah incorporates this in the rectification of exiled divinity. Jewish mysticism, in contrast to Divine transcendence, rationalizes human-centered reasons from Jewish observance, giving Divine-immanent providential cosmic significance to the daily events in the worldly life of man in general, & the spiritual role of Jewish observance in particular.

The Kabbalah states that the human soul has 3 elements: the nefesh, ru’ach, & neshamah. The nefesh is found in all humans, & enters the physical body at birth. It’s the source of one’s physical & psychological nature. The next 2 parts of the soul aren’t implanted at birth. But can be developed over time. Their development depends on the actions & beliefs of the individual. They’re said to only fully exist in people spiritually awakened.

A common way of explaining the 3 parts of the soul is as follows:

• Nefesh: The lower part, or “animal part,” of the soul. It’s linked to instincts & bodily cravings. This part of the soul is provided at birth.
• Ruach: The middle soul, the “spirit.” It contains the moral virtues & the ability to distinguish between good & evil.
• Neshamah: The higher soul, or “super-soul.” This separates man from all other life-forms. It’s related to the intellect & allows man to enjoy & benefit from the afterlife. It allows 1 to have some awareness of the existence & presence of God.
• Chayyah: The part of the soul that allows 1 to have an awareness of the divine life force itself.
• Yehidah: The highest plane of the soul, in which 1 can achieve as full a union with God as is possible.

Reincarnation, the transmigration of the soul after death, was introduced into Judaism from the Medieval period onwards, called Gilgul neshamot (“cycles of the soul”). The concept doesn’t appear often in the Hebrew Bible or classic rabbinic literature. It was rejected by different Medieval Jewish philosophers.

However, the Kabbalists explained several spiritual passages in reference to Gilgulim. The concept became central to the later Kabbalah of Isaac Luria, who systematized it as the personal parallel to the cosmic process of rectification. Through Lurianic Kabbalah & Hasidic Judaism, reincarnation entered popular Jewish culture as a literary motif.

Tzimtzum (Constriciton/Concentration) is the primordial cosmic act whereby God “contracted” His infinite light, leaving a “void” into which the light of existence was poured. This allowed the emergence of independent existence that wouldn’t become nullified by the pristine Infinite Light, reconciling the unity of the Ein Sof with the plurality of creation.

This changed the 1st creative act into 1 of withdrawal/exile, the antithesis of the ultimate Divine Will. In contrast, a new emanation after the Tzimtzum shone into the vacuum to begin creation. But led to an initial instability called Tohu (Chaos), leading to a new crisis of Shevirah (Shattering) of the sephirot vessels.

The shards of the broken vessels fell down into the lower realms, animated by remnants of their divine light, causing primordial exile within the Divine Persona before the creation of man. Exile & enclothement of higher divinity within lower realms throughout existence requires man to complete the Tikkun olam (Rectification) process. Rectification Above corresponds to the reorganization of the independent sephirot into relation Partzufim (Divine Personas), previously referred to obliquely in the Zohar.

From the catastrophe stems the possibility of self-aware Creation, & also the Kelipot (Impure Shells) of previous Medieval kabbalah. The metaphorical anthropomorphism of the partzufim accentuates the sexual unifications of the redemption process, while Gilgul reincarnation emerges from the scheme. Uniquely, Lurianism gave formerly private mysticism the urgency of Messianic social involvement.

According to interpretations of Luria, the catastrophe stemmed from the “unwillingness” of the residue imprint after the Tzimtzum to relate to the vitality that began creation. The process was arranged to shed & harmonize the Divine Infinity with the latent potential of evil.

The creation of Adam would’ve redeemed existence. But his sin caused a new shevirah of Divine vitality, requiring the Giving of the Torah to begin Messianic rectification. Historical & individual history becomes the narrative of reclaiming exiled Divine sparks.

Kabbalistic thought extended Biblical & Midrashic notions that God enacted Creation through the Hebrew language & through the Torah into a full linguistic mysticism. In this, every Hebrew letter, word, number, even accent on words of the Hebrew Bible, contains Jewish mystical meanings, describing the spiritual dimensions within exoteric ideas, & it teaches the hermeneutic methods of interpretation for ascertaining these meanings.

Names of God in Jerusalem have further prominence, though infinite meaning turns the whole Torah into a Divine name. As the Hebrew name of things is the channel of their life force, parallel to the sephirot, so concepts such as “holiness” & “mitzvot” embody ontological Divine immanence, as God can be known in manifestation as well as transcendence.

The infinite potential of meaning in the Torah, as in the Ein Sof, is reflected in the symbol of the 2 trees of the Garden of Eden. The Torah of the Tree of Knowledge is the external, finite Halachic Torah, enclothed within which the mystics perceive the unlimited infinity of the plurality of meanings of the Torah of the Tree of Life.

As early as the 1st century BCE, Jews believed that the Torah & other canonical texts contained encoded messages & hidden meanings. Gematria is 1 method for discovering its hidden meanings. In this system, each Hebrew letter also represents a number. By converting letters to numbers, Kabbalists were able to find a hidden meaning in each word. This method of interpretation was used extensively by various schools.

Like the rest of the rabbinic literature, the texts of kabbalah were once part of an ongoing oral tradition. Though over the centuries a lot of the oral tradition has been lost. Jewish forms of esotericism existed over 2,000 years ago. Ben Sira (born 170 BCE) was a Hellenistic Jewish scribe, sage, & allegorist from Seleucid-controlled Jerusalem of the Second Temple period) warns against it, saying: “You shall have no business with secret things.”

Nonetheless, mystical studies were undertaken & resulted in mystical literature, the 1st being the Apocalypse literature of the 2nd & 1st pre-Christian centuries & which contained elements that carried over to later kabbalah.

Throughout the centuries, many texts have been produced. Among them the ancient descriptions of Ser Yetzirah, the Heichalot mystical ascent literature, the Bahir, Sefer Raziel HaMalakh, & the Zohar, the main texts of Kabbalah exegesis.

Classical mystical Bible commentaries are included in fuller versions of the Mikrarot Gedolot (Main Commentators). Cordoveran systemization is presented in Pardes Rimonim, philosophical articulation in the world of the Maharal (a.k.a. Rabbi Loew was an important Talmudic scholar, Jewish mystic, mathematician, astronomer, & philosopher), & Lurianic rectification in Etz Chayim.

You can see Kabbalah in modern times also. The singer Madonna is a follower of Kabbalah, having been seen at their Hollywood location. Along with other various celebs.

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Reflecting on 1 Samuel 1 9-20

This week we’re studying 1 Samuel 1:9-20 + 25, the story of Hannah’s prayer for a child – who turns out to be Samuel, a significant character in the history of Israel and particularly in the lives of the first two kings of Israel, Saul and David.

We’ve studied this text before (see questions from that time here), but this time we’re looking at it in the context of our summer quarter study of “the testimony of faithful witnesses.” [Although I confess, this rubric feels like a stretch to me, brought on by the desperate need to find a unifying theme for somewhat disparate texts …]

Anyway, in light of this quarter’s context, we might want to ask ourself what we mean by “faithful witnesses,” and what we think it means to be “faithful,” or a “witness.” From there we can turn to Hannah’s story, and ask ourselves: how, in what way, in this story, does Hannah demonstrate faithfulness, and to what does she bear witness? Where do we see that in the text? What do we ourselves learn from Hannah’s story and Hannah’s example?

What is our overall impression of Hannah and her story, for that matter? What thoughts and feelings do we have about her actions? What strikes us as commendable, what as perhaps less than commendable, where do we applaud her, where do we question her …? Why is that? What do we find out about ourselves in looking at all that?

Some notes on the text are here. Here are a couple of additional questions we might want to think about, or to discuss in class:

In v11, Hannah vows to dedicate the male child she is begging for from God back to God as a nazirite (see Numbers 6:1-21). What is the meaning of such a vow, do we think? What does the vow indicate about Hannah’s state of mind, or about the cultural context in which the vow is made, or about God’s desires and preferences? [That is, do we think Hannah is trying to offer something to God that God would like, as an inducement …? Or is something else going on? What, do we think?]

What thoughts and feelings do we have about this? Why?

[More personal] Have we ever made a vow to God ourselves? What was our experience with that?

What would we say this story is “about”? [That is … we might say “it’s about prayer” or “it’s about Hannah and her relationship with God” or … what?] What do we learn from a story like this? What do we think we are supposed to learn?

Why do we think this story is in the Bible?

Image: “Gespräch vor dem Haus,” Gergely Pörge, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Kabbalah, Part 1

Also spelled Qabalah or Qabbala. It literally means the act of receiving, acceptance.

This is an esoteric method, discipline, & school of thought in Jewish mysticism. It forms the foundation of mystical religious interpretations within Judaism. A traditional Kabbalist is called a Mekubbal (“receiver”).

Jewish Kabbalists originally developed transmissions of the primary texts of Kabbalah within the realm of Jewish tradition. Often using classical Jewish scriptures to explain & demonstrate their mystical teachings.

Kabbalah came out of earlier forms of Jewish mysticism in 12th-13th century Occitania, specifically in Languedoc, among Hakhmei Provence.

Following the movement of Jews from Southern France & Spain, it was found in the Rhineland school of Judah the Pious, al-Andalus, L& was reinterpreted during the Jewish mystical Renaissance in the 16th-century Ottoman Palestine.

The Zohar was authored in the late 13th century, likely by Moses de Leon. Isaac Luria (16th century) is considered the father of contemporary Kabbalah. Lurianic Kabbalah was popularized in the form of Hasidic Judaism from the 18th century onwards.

The primary texts of the major lineage in medieval Jewish tradition are the Bahir, Zohar, Pardes Rimonim, & Et Chayim (‘Ein Sof’). The early Hekhalot literature is recognized as ancestral to the sensibilities of this later flowering of the Kabbalah, & more especially, the Sefer Yetzirah is acknowledged as the forerunner from which many of these books draw their formal inspiration.

The Sefer Yetzirah is a brief document of only a few pages, written many centuries before the high & late medieval works (sometime between 200-600 CE), detailing an alphanumeric vision of cosmology & may be understood as a kind of prelude to the major phase of Kabbalah.

The history of Jewish mysticism encompasses various forms of esoteric & spiritual practices aimed at understanding the divine & the hidden aspects of existence. This mystical tradition has evolved greatly over millennia, influencing & being influenced by different historical, cultural, & religious contexts.

Among the most prominent forms of Jewish mysticism is Kabbalah, which developed in the 12th century & has since become a central component of Jewish mystical thought. Other notable early forms include prophetic & apocalyptic mysticism, which are evident in biblical & post-biblical texts.

The roots of Jewish mysticism can be traced back to the biblical era, with prophetic figures such as Elijah & Ezekiel experiencing divine visions & encounters. This tradition continued into the apocalyptic period, where texts like 1 Enoch & the Book of Daniel introduced complex angelology & eschatological themes.

The Hekhalot & Merkabah literature, dating from the 2nd century to the early medieval period, further developed these mystical themes. This focuses on visionary ascents to the heavenly palaces & the divine chariot. Hekhalot literature (from the Hebrew word for “Palaces”) relates to visions of entering Heaven alive.

Merkabah (or Merkavah) mysticism is a school of Jewish mysticism, centered on visions such as those found in Ezekiel 1, or in the hekhalot literature, concerning stories of ascents to the heavenly palaces & the Throne of God.

According to the Zohar, Torah study can proceed along 4 levels of interpretation (exegesis). These 4 levels are called pardes from their initial letters (PRDs, “orchard”):

• Peshat (“simple”): The direct interpretations of meaning.
• Remez (“hints”): The allegoric meanings (through allusion).
• Derash (from the Hebrew darash, “inquire” or “seek): Midrashic (rabbinic) meanings, often with imaginative comparisons with similar words or verses.
• Sod (“secret” or “mystery”): The inner, esoteric (metaphysical) meanings, expressed in kabbalah.

Kabbalah is considered by its followers as a necessary part of the study of the Torah. The study of the Torah (the Tanakh & rabbinic literature) is an inherent duty of observant Jews.

There are 3 different types of Kabbalah: Lurianic Kabbalah, Meditative-Ecstatic Kabbalah, & Practical Kabbalah. These 3 types can be distinguished by their basic intent with respect to God:

• The Theosohical/Theosophical-Theurgic tradition of Theoretical Kabbalah (the main focus of the Zohar & Luria) seeks to understand & describe the divine realm using the imaginative & mythic symbols of human psychological experience. Its theosophy also implies the innate, centrally important theurgic influence of human conduct on redeeming or damaging the spiritual realms, as man is a divine microcosm. The purpose of traditional theosophical kabbalah was to give the whole of normative Jewish religious practices this mystical metaphysical meaning.
• The Meditative tradition of Ecstatic Kabbalah strives to achieve a mystical union with God, or nullification of the meditator in God’s Active intellect. Abraham Abulafia’s “Prophetic Kabbalah” was the supreme example of this. Though marginal in Kabbalistic development. His alternative to the program of theosophical Kabbalah. Abulafian meditation built upon the philosophy of Maimonides, whose followers remained a rationalist threat to theosophical Kabbalists.
• The Magico-Talismanic tradition of Practical Kabbalah endeavours to alter both the Divine realms & the World using practical methods. While theosophical interpretations of worship see its redemptive role as harmonizing heavenly forces, Practical Kabbalah properly involved Practial Kabbalah properly involved white-magical acts, & was censored by Kabbalists for only those completely pure of intent, as it relates to lower realms where purity & impurity are mixed. Consequently, it formed a separate minor tradition shunned from Kabbalah. Practical Kabbalah was prohibited by the Arizal until the Temple is rebuilt & the required state of ritual purity is attainable.

According to Kabbalistic belief, early kabbalistic knowledge was imparted orally by the Patriarchs, prophets, & sages. Eventually, to be “interwoven” into Jewish religious writings & culture. According to this view, early kabbalah was, around the 10th century BCE, an open knowledge practiced by over a million people in ancient Israel.

Foreign conquests drove the Jewish spiritual leadership of the time (the Sanhedrin) to hide the knowledge & make it secret, fearing that it might be misused if it fell into the wrong hands.

From the Renaissance onward, Jewish Kabbalah texts entered non-Jewish (Gentile) spaces. Where they studied & translated by Christian Hebraists & Hermetic occultists. Christian Hebraists are scholars of Hebrew texts who approach the works from a Christian perspective.

The syncretic traditions of Christian & Hermetic Kabbalah developed independently of Jewish Kabbalah. They read Jewish texts as universalist ancient wisdom preserved from Gnostic traditions of “the olden days.” Both adapted the Jewish concepts freely from their Jewish understanding. This made it possible to merge with multiple other theologies, religious traditions, & magical associations. In the time of the Age of Reason, Christian Kabbalah declined. Hermetic Kabbalah took a much different route, a route that some secretive “societies” went: they went underground.

The technical definition of Kabbalah varies according to sect & the aims of those following it. In its earliest & original usage in ancient Hebrew, it means “reception” or “tradition.” In this context, it tends to refer to any sacred writing written after (or otherwise outside of) the 5 books of the Torah. (This is the 1st 5 books of the Old Testament.)

After the Talmud was written, it refers to the Oral Law. In the much later writings of Eleazar of Worms (circa 1350), it refers to theurgy or the conjuring of demons & angels by the invocation of their secret names.

The nature of the divine prompted kabbalists to envision 2 aspects to God: 1.) God is essence, absolutely transcendent, unknowable, limitless divine simplicity beyond revelation, & 2.) God in manifestation, the revealed persona of God through which He creates, sustains, & relates to humankind.

Kabbalists speak of the 1st as the Ein Sof (“the infinite/endless,” literally “there is no end”). Of the impersonal Ein Sof, nothing can be grasped.

However, the 2nd aspect of divine emanations, accessible to human perception, dynamically interacting throughout spiritual & physical existence, reveals the divine immanently, & is bound up in the life of man. Kabbalists believe that these 2 aspects aren’t contradictory but complement 1 another, emanations mystically revealing the concealed mystery from within the Godhead.

As a term describing the Infinite Godhead beyond Creation, Kabbalists viewed the Ein Sof itself as too sublime to be referred to directly in the Torah. It’s not a Holy Name in Judaism. No name could contain a revelation of the Ein Sof.

The structure of emanations has been described in various ways: Sephirot (divine attributes) & Partzufim (divine “faces”), Ohr (spiritual light & flow), Names of God & supernal Torah, Olamot (spiritual worlds), a Divine Tree & Archetypal Man, Angelic Chariot & Palaces, male & female, enclothed layers of reality, inwardly channels (“limbs” of the King) & the divine Souls of Man.

These symbols are used to describe various levels & aspects of Divine manifestation, from the Pnimi (inner) dimensions to the Hitzoni (outer). It’s solely in relation to the emanations, certainly not the Ein Sof Ground of all Being, that Kabbalah uses anthropomorphic symbolism to relate psychologically to divinity.

The Sephirot/Sefirot/Sefirah are the 10 emanations & attributes of God with which He continually sustains the existence of the universe. These emanations are viewed as parts of God’s divine nature, which reveal themselves in different ways.

The Zohar & other Kabbalistic texts elaborate on the emergence of the sephirot from a state of concealed potential in the Ein Sof until their manifestation in the mundane world. In particular, Moses ben Jacob Cordovero (known as “the Ramak”) describes how God emanated the myriad details of finite reality out of the absolute unity of Divine Light via the 10 sephirot, or vessels.

According to Lurianic cosmology, the sephirot correspond to various levels of creation. 10 sephirot are in each of the 4 Worlds. 4 Worlds within each of the larger 4 Worlds, each containing 10 sephirot, which themselves contain 10 sephirot, which themselves contain 10 sephirot, to an infinite number of possibilities.

They emanated from the Creator for the purpose of creating the universe. The sephirot are considered revelations of the Creator’s will (ratzon), & they shouldn’t be understood as 10 different “gods” but through the Emanations. It’s not God who changes but the ability to perceive God that changes.

Divine creation through the 10 Sephirot is an ethical process. They represent the different aspects of Morality. Loving-Kindness is a possible moral justification found in Chessed, & Gevurah is the Moral Justification of justice, & both are mediated by Mercy, which is Rachamim.

However, these pillars of morality become immoral when taken to extremes. When Loving-Kindness becomes extreme, it can lead to sexual depravity & a lack of Justice to the wicked. When Justice becomes extreme, it can lead to torture & the Cain-ing of innocents & unfair punishment.

The tzadikim or “righteous” ascend these ethical qualities of the 10 sephirot through righteous action. If there were no tzadikim, the blessings of God would become completely hidden, & Creation would cease to exist.

While real human actions are the “Foundation” (Yesod) of this universe (Malkuth), they must be accompanied by the conscious intention of compassion. Compassionate actions are often impossible without faith (Emunah), meaning trusting that God seems hidden.

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Studying Judges 4, specifically 4-10, 14, & 21-22

We’ve moved into a new quarter of Uniform Series lessons, that are organized by the theme “the testimony of faithful witnesses.” We’re beginning that study with Judges 4 (specifically, vv4-10, 14, and 21-22 – but seriously, maybe we should just read the whole chapter), focusing on the faithful witnesses Deborah, Barak, and Jael.

We studied the first part of Judges 4 many years ago (some notes from that time are here). But here are a few notes on the chapter this time around:

BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT

We are reading a text near the beginning of the book of Judges. Hopefully, we’ll remember that Judges itself is near the beginning of the set of books that make up “the Deuteronomistic history” [Joshua – Judges – 1&2 Samuel – 1&2 Kings], a version of the history of Israel from the time of the entry into the land of Canaan through the final deportation to Babylonia, that presents a distinctive perspective on that history. The perspective of “the Deuteronomist” – the name people often give to whoever was the author of the Deuteronomistic history – is distinctive, in particular, compared to that of “the Chronicler” (see 1&2 Chronicles, and possibly Ezra-Nehemiah), and also compared to that of the author of the book of Ruth. They may or may not be the same author or editor who is responsible for much of the book of Deuteronomy; people have thought they might be, on the grounds of some seeming similarities in the texts.

Perhaps the most vital similarity is the message that Adonai, the God of Israel, rewards faithfulness, and punishes unfaithfulness. Israelite misfortunes like being oppressed by King Jabin of Canaan have been brought about by God, as a consequence of the Israelites having done evil in God’s sight. We see the same pattern in the blessings and curses God commands to be recited regularly from Mt. Ebal and Mt. Gerazim in Deuteronomy (27:11-14, but see through 28:68 for the substance of the blessings and curses). We see it in the Deuteronomist’s verdict on the Babylonian disaster (2 Kings 24:3-4). And we see it all through the book of Judges, when things take a fearsome turn every time the people start to do evil in the eyes of God, and bad things happen, and then God hears their cry, and raises up a judge to bring them back and sort things out.

By the way, Marc Zvi Brettler has written a marvelous book on the book of Judges (reviewed here) which cautions readers against taking it as a “history” in our modern sense of that word. [That’s not the same as saying it’s not important sacred text to be studied, perhaps obviously.] Or, check out Vol. 1 of A People and a Land (reviewed here) – which treats the “narrative” of Judges 4 and the epic “poetry” of Judges 5 as two sides of a single, complex tale.

Generally speaking, “the time of the judges” in which the entire book takes place is sometime between the end of the book of Joshua (say roughly 1400 BCE) and the early monarchy (say roughly 1050 or so BCE). BibleHub has a more precise but still approximate timeline here which puts Deborah and Barak around 1375 BCE. In academic world historical terms, that’s getting towards the end of the Bronze Age (dated say 3300 – 1200 BCE) but not there yet, which makes Sisera’s 900 iron chariots in v3 some advanced military technology, definitely worth mentioning.

The place names in the story can be confusing. In particular, the place name “Kedesh” appears in Judges 4:6 as Barak’s starting point, again in Judges 4:10, this time as a mustering point, and yet again in Judges 4:11 as the reference point for the location of the vitally important tent of Heber the Kenite. There is good reason to think that the Kedesh in v6, if it is the Kedesh Naphtali that is north of the Sea of Galilee, is NOT the Kedesh mentioned later on, mainly because that would be a long distance for the troops, and the fleeing Sisera, to travel before and after a pitched battle. The thinking is that there is another location, much nearer the Wadi Kishon and Mount Tabor, that is being referred to at least in vv10 and 11. [One possibility, Tell Abu Kudeis, is described here; a map using that location, along with a long and imaginative analysis of the battle, is here.]

Judges 4:1-7 is a lectionary option for the Season after Pentecost (A), which means that most of this story, and definitely the part about Jael, is something we’d never know was in the Bible if all we knew were the lectionary! So, Bible Content Examinees, be warned, and everyone else, just look at what we’d be missing.

CLOSER READING

Our lesson plan skips over vv1-3, which set the scene: again the Israelites (sons of Israel) do evil in the eyes of YHWH; the God of Israel sold them (a striking verb) into the hand of Jabin king of Canaan; Jabin, whose name could mean something like “God discerns,” rules from Hazor, which seems to mean something like “bunch of villages.”

He has a chief or prince of his “army” – which is probably not quite like an army these days, but more like a troop of folks bound to the leader by varying social ties, whether kinship or personal loyalty or economic arrangement – who is Sisera. If this were an episode of Gunsmoke [which it seriously could be, come to think of it, with minimal editing] Sisera would be wearing the black hat.

Sisera – whose name might have something to do with horse – resides in Harosheth-hagoyim, a place whose name identifies it as non-Israelite, and might have something to do with engraving or carving – again, perhaps, a reference to the iron and the chariots. A formidable enemy, we should presumably be thinking.

Vv4-5 tells us about Deborah (whose name means “bee” or perhaps “wasp”). V4 relentlessly emphasizes her feminine gender: Deborah, a woman prophet, “woman of lappidoth,” she was judging. She she she she. NRSV translates her identifying marker as “wife of Lappidoth,” as if Lappidoth were obviously a proper name. But there is a strong case to be made for thinking the word lappidoth , which is a feminine plural noun which would mean “torches” if it were in any other context, is not a proper name, but rather a description of some kind. In that case, we’d read the text as meaning Deborah is “a woman of torches” or “a woman of fire.” That would fit.

V5 locates her with reference to some well-known places, Ramah and Beth-el, in a place of her own, the palm of Deborah, in the hill country of Ephraim. People are, over some period of time, coming to her for judgment. That is, she has an established position before the incident in the story.

Vv6-10 then begin the action of the story, with Deborah’s sending and calling Barak – which means “lightning,” surely rather auspicious, and also a nice complement to Deborah’s own fiery-torchy identity – and questioning him about a command from God. The grammar in the Hebrew text reads “Has not he commanded, the Holy One, the God of Israel, go and draw out at Mount Tabor, and take with you …” – so we might get the impression that Barak has been a bit less than lightning-fast to answer this command – evidently to muster 10,000 troops from Naphtali and Zebulun.

God, for God’s part, will draw out Sisera along with the chariots and troops and will give them into Barak’s hand. We have confidence God can do this, because before this God has given Israel into the hand of King Jabin. God decides whose hand is going to hold on to whom.

Barak’s answer in v8 uses just one verb, go (literally, “walk”), over and over. If Deborah will go, he will; if she won’t, he won’t. [Whether or not this is a model answer to a divine command is genuinely debatable. It’s not without precedent – see for example Exodus 33:15-16.] And there’s lots of textual evidence that the Israelites appreciated a person or other token of God’s presence when conducting battles. On the other hand, Barak has come in for a lot of criticism for this response.]

Deborah’s answer in v9 may or may not be a rebuke. [See the discussion here.] It is, however, prophetic. And once again, we [fore]see the God of Israel selling someone into someone else’s hand. This time, it will be Sisera, into the hand of a woman.

Our select verses skip over v11, which serves the vital “meanwhile, elsewhere …” function of getting Heber the Kenite into position so that Jael, wife of Heber the Kenite, can be in the right place at the right time to stretch out her hand to take hold of what the God of Israel is planning to put into it.

They also skip over vv12-13, which fill in the indispensable step of Sisera summoning his troops and heading up to the Wadi Kishon, which God had already (v7) designated as the site of the battle.

We pick up with v14, Deborah’s call to attack. Which once again contains that questioning “Hasn’t the HOLY ONE gone out before you?” Either this is the way Deborah talks, or something about the way Barak responds to things, or both. At any rate, now Barak charges down Mount Tabor into battle …

And then we skip the vital and surely significant v15, in which the HOLY ONE throws Sisera’s army into a panic, they all flee before Israel, and Sisera, notably, got down from his chariot and fled on foot. Notably, surely, since Sisera, Mr. High-Horse, has been militarily superior for the past 20 years because of those chariots. Now God has stripped him of that advantage. So that in v16, Barak and his guys win the day.

Vv17-22, then, contain the story of Sisera’s fatal confrontation with Jael, wife of Heber the Kenite (Mrs. “meanwhile, elsewhere …”). Our verses pick up the story in v21, which is too bad, because we miss out on the narrative richness of the first part of the story-telling, just dropping in for the gruesome climax.

V17 reminds us that Sisera is on foot (not his strength), and brings him up to the tent of Jael (whose name might mean something like “useful, profitable”). The location seems reassuring to Sisera, evidently, because “There is peace between King Jabin and the clan of Heber.”

Jael comes out (v18) and calls to Sisera and says “turn, my lord, turn to me, do not fear.” Which he does. And it’s worth noting that in Hebrew the word “turn” here sounds a bit like Sisera’s own name, and a bit like the way we’d talk to a little cat we’re trying to get to come into the house at night (sss – sss – sss). Another commentator has pointed out that saying “don’t be afraid” is typically said in the Bible by the greater to the lesser, the angels to the mortals, etc. So there’s already a suggestion in the dialog that there’s been a shift in the balance of power. As if we didn’t already know this from Sisera’s being on foot.

He turns in, with her, and Jael covers him with … something. Whatever it is, there’s only this single mention of it in the Hebrew Bible. Some translators say “rug,” which sounds pretty heavy, although maybe that would make sense if you’re trying to hide something. But, as big as a soldier? Other translators say “blanket,” which sounds a bit more believable, maybe. Either way, there are hints of maternal comfort and care here, as well as hints of sexual invitation, all presumably written into the storytelling here on purpose.

Sisera says “Give me a drink” – which is an order, but he does then also say please, and then specifies water; and adds that he’s thirsty, a relatively rare expression, that suggests a person in extremity. Jael gives him milk from a skin. Again with the maternal care and comfort imagery, perhaps. Then he orders her to stand in the door of the tent, and tells her what to say if anyone comes and asks “is there a man in there?” Namely, “no.”

And then, in v21 where we pick up the story, Jael doesn’t follow those orders. Instead, she gets a tent peg and a hammer in her hand – there’s that “hand” again – and drives the peg into his temple (literally, a “thin” place). She must be very strong – this is the implication of the text. The references to Sisera’s having been fast asleep and weary help explain why he doesn’t resist, but also point towards his now being dead. Both of those words have some connotations of “death,” at least in figurative contexts.

In v22, Jael reprises her going out to meet a man of war, this time Barak, and takes him in and shows him Sisera, dead, with the tent peg …

Those of us with a consistent ethic of life may find this a challenging model of faithful witness. Or, we may thank heaven we do not live in the Bronze Age. Nevertheless, according to the text (Judges 5:24-27) Jael is a hero, twice “most blessed,” and a mighty deliverer of the oppressed, thanks to the God of Israel’s giving the enemy into her hand.

Some questions on the text are here.

Image: “Jael and Sisera,” An image by Artemisia Gentileschi [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Studying Matthew 28 18-20 and Hebrews 10 22-25

This week we are studying one of Jesus’ most famous sayings – “the Great Commission” – along with part of a sentence from Hebrews, plus a couple more, Hebrews 10:22-25. [But we really might want to read that whole sentence, starting with v19.] Some notes on Matthew 28:16-20 are here, from an earlier study; here are a few notes on these verses in Hebrews:

BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT

We know even less about the book of Hebrews than we know about lots of other New Testament documents. We don’t know who wrote it. [Everyone quotes Origin, I think, saying “God alone knows …”] Or when. [The author seems to be living in a world in which there is still a Temple in Jerusalem, though; because if he or she weren’t, he or she probably would have mentioned that. That fact nudges some of us towards thinking “before 70CE.”] Or to whom. [Whomever it was, the author treats them as familiar with the Hebrew Bible, the wilderness narrative, the sacrificial system and its earliest manifestation in the Tabernacle or Tent of Meeting, etc. So that nudges a lot of people towards thinking “not necessarily gentiles.”]

We do know it doesn’t read like a typical “letter,” so it probably isn’t one. It reads more like a sermon, or a lecture.

We know the author mentions trials the recipients are going through, and treats going back to an earlier way of life as an urgent danger for the audience, maybe because of those trials. From that we often conclude that the need to encourage suffering people to hold fast to the faith they have in Jesus is the very reason this document came to be written. Perhaps we are correct in that.

Leander Keck (Renewing New Testament Christology, Fortress Press, 2023) analyzes the distinctive Christology presented in the book of Hebrews. He points out that it presents Jesus, the high priest, who sanctifies his people, as the soteriological figure who corresponds to the human problem posed by human sin, and the death that goes with it, which bars humanity’s contact with God. People’s return pilgrimage to God is made possible by Christ’s high priestly work. But perseverance to the end of that pilgrimage is still required of the people who follow Jesus into the presence of God. We’ll definitely see that Christological message in our verses.

Our verses come about three-fourths of the way through the larger text of the sermon, after the author has contrasted the excellence of Jesus, a son, with the excellence of angels (Jesus is way better), and then the word of God that has come to us through Jesus with the word of God that has come to humanity through angels (again, the one through Jesus is far more compelling, surely), and then the whole apparatus of sacrifices made by priests in the earthly sanctuary for the purification of the people to the once-for-all sacrifice made by Christ, offering his own blood for the removal of sins (there’s an obvious pattern here). The beginning of chapter 10 makes that pattern explicit, and leads in to the exhortation in our text, to make good use of the boldness Christ’s work makes possible, and to hold fast to the faith and the hope that work opens up.

[The obvious pattern also reminds us that whenever we are reading Hebrews, we face the tough challenge of avoiding “replacement theology.” Because the author of Hebrews hasn’t made that easy for us.]

The rest of the book of Hebrews goes on to commend that faith in dramatic terms, listing the heroes of the faith, and invoking the reality of the “great cloud of witnesses” to exhort the hearers to persevere.

Hebrews 10:16-25 is a reading for Good Friday every year, so we might be familiar with this week’s text even if all we know is the lectionary.

CLOSER READING

In English, “we should approach” would make a good beginning to a sentence. Normally, in a presumably transitive construction like this, the next phrase would tell us what we should approach, like maybe “God” or “Jesus” or “one another.”

V22 begins precisely this way: “we should approach.” Those words are not, however, the beginning of the sentence. All of vv19-21 constitutes the beginning. Those verses give the reasoning behind why “we” can and should approach, and at least implicitly naming the “what” that “we” are approaching.

The “we” who is doing the approaching, by the way, seems to mean the author plus the brothers (v19) to whom the author is addressing the sermon.

We can approach because we are having boldness [NRSV reads “confidence”], a boldness that leads us into the entrance of the Holies or the holy things (v19). The holy things – analogous to the inner space of the sanctuary the author has just described, that lay behind the veil of the sanctuary – are themselves near God, an emblem of the very presence of God.

The boldness is something we have in the blood of Jesus. This has opened a way, newly-made and living into this inner sanctum.

There is a translation issue in v20 that hinges on grammar. We can read “(that is, his flesh)” as telling us about the veil through which the blood of Jesus has opened up a way; alternatively, this could be telling us about the way Jesus has made through that veil. The NRSV’s reading seems to lean towards making the phrase “that is …” describe the veil. It’s more consistent with the substance of the passage, however, and just as defensible grammatically, to think the author means “his flesh” is “the new and living way” through the veil that [used to] separate us from the presence of God.

[In other words, I’d read v20 into English more like this: “by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, the way of his flesh …”]

Then, in v22, we get to the approach, which we should do with a true/sincere heart, in full assurance/conviction of faith. Those hearts will have been sprinkled clean from an evil conscience, and the body that houses them washed in pure water. That sounds a lot like baptism.

We should also hold fast the confession – literally, the common word or common statement – of hope, unwavering. We can do this because faithful is the one having promised the new and living way we are relying on.

Moreover, in v24, we should consider one another – specifically, towards the end of a provocation (literally, “paroxysm”) of love and of good/beautiful works. We outselves would probably use the language of “spurring one another on,” which relies on a similar image of poking someone with something sharp to incite some action.

In the process of this considering and provoking, we ought not to be forsaking / abandoning our assembling together – which, perhaps not at all coincidentally, uses the word for assembling that gives us our word “synagogue.” Whether the custom some have is the custom of assembling, or of forsaking the assembling, is not entirely clear.

What is clear is that “we” should rather be encouraging the assembling, all the more as you-all see the day drawing near. “The day” might be the day earmarked for the assembly. That would imply that we’d do even more encouraging on a Thursday or Friday than on a Monday. Alternatively, it might be “the day of the Lord,” in which case our encouragement and invitation would take on added urgency along with our sense that time is short.

All in all, the author is urging active engagement: we should be following Jesus Christ into the presence of God, which takes the bold confidence of faith, which in turn will be supported by the worshipful assembly of believers which we should be participating in, and urging “one another” to participate in along with us.

Some questions on the two texts are here.

Image: Angels and Jesus Christ, Church of the Dormition of the Theotokos at Kondorpoga, 17-18 century icon painter, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

#CatchOfTheDay
#OpenAccess on
#MENAdoc:

"Otium Norvicense sive tentamen de reliquis Aquilae, Symmachi, Theodotionis" by Fridericus Field

[Oxonii: Combe, Pickard Hall & Latham, 1864-]

http://dx.doi.org/10.25673/98203

#bible #latin #greek #syrian #theology #exegesis

Reflecting on Mark 2 18-28

This week we’re studying Mark 2:18-28, to inform our consideration of the “social teaching of the Christian church” that is “the Christian view of recreation.”

We may see both some point of contact between Jesus’ teaching on fasting and Sabbath observance and whatever contemporary Christians might mean by “recreation.” We may also see plenty of difference. Because of that, we might want to begin our reflections on the text by asking ourselves what we mean by “recreation,” and what we think that might or might not have to do with “Sabbath” and Sabbath observance.

We will probably want to review what we know about Sabbath in the first place, and when and how we have learned what we’ve learned about it. [Here’s one contemporary rabbinic source.] [Here’s a Christian source, that advocates strict Sabbath observance.] How does our knowledge about the Sabbath seem to influence our understanding of its relationship to “recreation”?

For that matter, what are our thoughts and feelings about the Sabbath? How do those seem to be influenced by the things we know about it? What more would we like to learn about the Sabbath? Why?

Back to “recreation” – what aspects of “recreation” seem to be addressed by these reflections on Sabbath? And what aspects of “recreation” seem not to be addressed? How helpful is it, do we think, to reflect on “recreation” and “the Christian view” of it, within the frame of “Sabbath? What other frames might be available to Christians for thinking about “recreation,” and how might those take our reflections in different directions? What might we gain, and what might we fail to notice, if we did that?

Some notes on the text are here. Here are a couple of additional questions we might want to think about, or to discuss in class:

The first part of the text addresses fasting. How do we ourselves think about fasting?

[More personal] When do we ourselves practice fasting, and for what reason or reasons? What have we noticed about it, or learned from it? Would we describe fasting as recreational, and why, or why not?

What do Jesus’ examples of the unshrunk cloth and the new wine mean to us? What does Jesus seem to be saying to the critics in the context of the original conversation? What does the conversation say to us today?

What thoughts do we have about Jesus’ use of the story from 1 Samuel 21, about David taking the Showbread, to answer the critics? What are the implications, do we think, of Jesus’ using this particular story?

[More personal] How do we ourselves keep the Sabbath? Why?

Image: “After lunch on the banks of the Seine” Daniel Ridgway Knight, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Studying Mark 2 18-28

This week we’re studying Mark 2:18-28. The text includes a couple of criticisms aimed by Pharisees at Jesus’ disciples, along with Jesus’ responses to those criticisms. Jesus’ responses are famous, too. They include the comment about not putting new wine into old wineskins, and the one that “the Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” Or, as we say these days, “humankind.” Arguably, the text provides evidence for some position we might want to take on “the Christian view of recreation.” We’ll have to see how much anyone wants to argue that; in the meantime, here are some notes on the text:

BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT

We’re reading these stories – “the question about fasting” and “plucking grain on the Sabbath” – in Mark’s gospel, although we could read them about just as well in the gospel of Matthew (Matthew 9:14-17 and Matthew 12:1-8) or the gospel of Luke (Luke 5:33-39 and Luke 6:1-5). There are slight differences among the three different synoptic accounts, but the precipitating events and Jesus’ comments are substantially the same. Since we’re reading from Mark, though, we’ll recall that this is thought to be the earliest of the gospels, and to be the literary-theological account of Jesus’ life that provided the plot line for the other synoptics. It’s also the shortest of the gospels. Mark’s narrative speeds along, with event piling upon event “immediately,” as the clueless disciples and Jesus, the Son of Man, draw closer and closer to the revelation of the “messianic secret,” followed by the even bigger revelation of the empty tomb. And then, maybe, with one of the alternative longer endings.

Our text comes very early in the story, though not before Jesus has called disciples and done a spectacular exorcism and some healing that has gotten him immense word-of-mouth publicity, and embarked on a preaching tour of Galilee that has included some more spectacular healings, and then come back to Capernaum for more spectacular standing-room-only healing ministry, along with the kind of theological talk that will get him criticized by the religious experts, i.e., the Pharisees. And then has been sharing meals with “tax collectors and sinners,” publicly enough to get that added to his charge sheet.

The matters in our text, then, just add fuel to the fire of a theological conflict that has already been kindled. And which will keep intensifying through the story.

The question about fasting may have its background in what seems to have been a growing tendency, in Jesus’ day, to treat the practice of private fasting as an expression of personal piety. This would have been, clearly, not the kind of communal, public fasting done on some set days of observance, such as on Yom Kippur. Rather, it would have been a voluntary pious practice. Jesus’ comments suggest that fasting in that way conveys the sentiment of mourning, a reason for fasting also seen in the Old Testament. (For more on this, see Dr. Rabbi Zev Farber and Dr. Malka D. Simkovich on “Why Jews Fast” at TheTorah.com.)

These little stories would be something we most likely wouldn’t know was in the Bible if all we knew were the lectionary. Mark 2:13-22 and Mark 2:23-3:6 DO actually appear in the lectionary, but as the gospel selections for the Eighth and Ninth Sundays after the Epiphany in Year B. Those Sundays don’t even occur in the liturgical year over half the time, and when they do, they’re mostly not in Year B, and when they are, most of the time they’re Transfiguration, so the text only stands a chance to be read in church – if we’re following the lectionary that way – about every 20 years or so. [That’s according to Claude’s calculations, but those looked about right to me.] So, Bible Content Examinees, be warned.

CLOSER READING

Our texts breaks down into three pretty distinct sections: verses 18-20, on fasting; verses 21-22, further commentary on the episode, that changes the subject; verses 23-28, on plucking grain on the Sabbath and Jesus’ commentary on that.

In vv18-20, fasting is clearly the presenting topic; the word shows up six times in these three verses. Moreover, it’s clearly the fasting of disciples that’s in question, as the word “disciples” shows up four times. There are disciples of John and disciples of the Pharisees and disciples of Jesus. Jesus, however, doesn’t call his disciples “disciples,” but rather “sons of the bridal chamber” or, as our translation would have it, “wedding attendants.” Moreover, the bridegroom is with them.

What might that mean, should we suppose, about the character of discipleship, and specifically discipleship to Jesus, at least at that very specific time and place? It certainly seems to mean that there is more than a small element of celebration involved. It’s probably no coincidence that this question about fasting comes up, in the first place, immediately after the “scribes of the Pharisees” have observed Jesus eating and drinking at Levi’s house, with tax collectors and sinners. [As in, “Here I am! The kingdom of God has come near! Let’s get this party started!”]

Jesus does, of course, predict that when the bridegroom will have been taken away from them they will fast in those days. At that point, it will be a time for expressing the sadness of loss, and fasting will be appropriate.

In vv21-22 Jesus extends his commentary on the practice of fasting with his comments about unshrunk cloth and new wine. On one hand the message is practical: that unshrunk patch – literally, the “filling” – will (as it shrinks) tear away from the pre-shrunk old clothing. The tear will be worse than before. When it comes to that new wine, which is still effervescent with fermentation, it will burst the [old] wineskins, and all will be lost. New wine into fresh wineskins.

Surely this means, at a minimum, that Jesus has brought something new into the world of teaching and learning, leading and following, the life of the spirit and the practices of religion. And that new and fresh thing requires new and fresh vestments, containers; by extension, new and fresh spiritual practices. Fasting, by contrast, is one of the old spiritual practices.

It might be less obvious what Jesus’ choice of examples is supposed to mean to us. Is Jesus implying that the existing religious “garment” is torn? And doesn’t just need mending, but replacing? Or is that going too far?

Is Jesus implying that the existing spiritual wine is old? [Although, normally older wine is better, isn’t it?] Maybe the wine Jesus is making is like nouveau Beaujolais? [Always in high demand, but people have to make haste to get a share of the limited supply?] Or is all of that reading too much in to what are simply convenient, vivid examples of how new ideas, new insights, demand new behavior? [I have more questions than answers about this.]

Then Jesus and the disciples happen on the Sabbath to be passing through grain fields and the disciples began to make a way, plucking ears [of the grain]. The image of the text is these disciples walking, clearing a path through, rather than around, this particular grain field, “harvesting” and eating as they walk along.

“The Pharisees” ask Jesus “why are they doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?” The Pharisees seem to have come out of the blue, unless we are meant to think that they are all walking along together. Maybe coming home from that party the night before. We can maybe imagine the scene: a group of folks following Jesus, some of whom criticize the others. Perhaps we’ve been involved in a scene or two like that ourselves once or twice. Why the Pharisees don’t ask their critical question directly of the disciples is also, maybe, a mystery. [Unless it reminds us of feuding siblings: “Daa-aad, Johnny’s doing something baa-aad!”]

Jesus, in the disciples’ defense, pulls out a story from 1 Samuel 21, about David – on the run from Saul, in the story – commandeering the ritually prescribed “bread of the Presence” (Leviticus 24:5-9) for himself (along with Goliath’s sword, which just happens to be there behind the altar, as a weapon). Mark records Jesus as saying that Abiathar is the high priest in the story, although in our Bibles the relevant priest is Ahimelech. Abiathar is the sole survivor of Saul’s massacre of the priests at Nob, after Saul hears about how Ahimelech helped David (1 Samuel 22:6-23).

The point seems to be that David didn’t get in trouble for eating that bread, which was obviously not his to eat, if everyone were following all the rules. Which they weren’t. And not getting in trouble for it, either. [Unless, of course, we think of getting killed as getting in trouble. But then again, Saul – the killer – is not the good guy in that part of the story. So maybe Jesus’ intent in bringing that example could be to pose the question to these Pharisees: whose side are you going to be on, in this moment? The side of the old authority figure, or the new, rising one?]

Then, in v27, Jesus says [in clunky translation] “the sabbath because of man/humankind came to be, and not man/humankind because of the sabbath.” That statement seems to point most clearly to the rationale given for the sabbath in Deuteronomy 5:14, that “your male and female slave may rest as well as you.” Unless – as is perhaps also possible – we are meant to think here of God’s own sabbath rest on the seventh day of creation as a celebration of the culmination of the creation with humankind. (See Genesis 1:27-2:3.)

Jesus concludes the lesson with the assertion “So then, Lord is the Son of Man, also of the Sabbath.” Once again, the meaning of that assertion may be less than entirely obvious. It does not seem to mean that the Sabbath is unimportant, certainly not to Jesus. Nevertheless, that has been, practically speaking, what lots of Christians have taken it to mean, especially in recent years. It may mean that Jesus [the Son of Man, right?] has authority to say what it means to observe the Sabbath. At least as much authority as, and arguably more than, the Pharisees who have interpreted the prohibition of work on the Sabbath to include whatever the disciples are doing in v23. Because that is an interpretation, of course, difficult as it might be to remember that, rather than something that is simply and immediately obvious from sacred text itself.

What Jesus’ lordship of the Sabbath implies for contemporary Christians’ understanding of and observance of the Sabbath, however, seems like it could be a more open question than we often think. Hopefully, that thinking will not entail the kind of work we were supposed to have been resting from on the Sabbath all this time.

Some questions on the text are here.

Image: “Feuchtwangen Pfarrkirche – Vorhalle Fresko Evangelist Markus” (cropped), Wolfgang Sauber, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons