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Who is like Yahweh?
Who is like Yahweh?
Who is like Yahweh?
Who is like Yahweh?
Yahweh, the Most High, the God of gods, shunned the nations. He made himself known to his chosen people, his earthly portion, in the form of a man. The revelation began with Abraham and was repeated to Isaac and Jacob. The Angel who was Yahweh in human form changed Jacob’s name to Isreal. Jacob’s sons would eventually engage in a treachery against Joseph, one of their own, that would providentially place Isreal in Egypt.
Many Bible readers wonder why God would have allowed (much less instructed Isreal to go to Egypt. The question become more pressing when we remember the Deut 32 worldview, where the nations and their gods are pitted against Isreal and Yahweh. The human propensity toward evil seems to explain why the Egyptians feared and then enslaved the Israelites after the death of Joseph, resorting to even murder to control the population (see Exod 1-2). But, as usual, there is more to it than that.
The Voice of Providence
The Voice of Providence
The story of Yahweh’s disinheritance of the nations would have been passed on through generations of Isrealites during the bondage in Egypt. Every Israelite child would have learned about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. They would learn that their very existence was the result of a supernatural act, given that Isaac was born by supernatural intervention. They had life because of Isaac’s life.
But … the story produces a problem. Why doesn’t this God of gods deliver us? We are living in a land — not the promised one. God had sent Joseph into Egypt to preserve Isreal from famine and promised both Abraham and Jacob that he would bring them back to the land he had promised them.
The deliverance from Egypt would resolve that issue — and that wasn’t the only question God’s providential acts would address. The Isrealites asked “where is Yahweh?” in the wake of God’s decision to send them into hostile territory. But Pharoah and his people — and all the nations — asked a different question: “who is Yahweh?” They would find out the hard way.
The reason for Israel’s circumstances was that it wasn’t sufficient that only Isreal knew that Yahweh was Most High among all the gods, and that Israel was his portion. The other nations had to know it as well. Scripture makes it clear that Israel’s deliverance had that effect. Israel was in Egypt precisely so that Yahweh could deliver them — thereby conveying this theological message.
Yahweh and the gods of Egypt
Yahweh and the gods of Egypt
Gentiles back in Canaan heard about what Yahweh had done (Josh 2: 8-10, Exod 15) In Midian, Jethro, Moses’s father-in-law, put the impact in no uncertain terms
Now I know that the Lord is greater than all gods, because in this affair they dealt arrogantly with the people.”
Yahweh’s reputation among the nations was lined to the exodus and transplantation in the land.
This backdrop is why the exodus event is repeatedly cast as a conflict between Yahweh and the gods. Pharoah, as we know, was unresponsive to the command of God through Moses to let his people go … see Exodus 5:2
But Pharaoh said, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and moreover, I will not let Israel go.”
Pharaoh will not be pleased with the Lord’s answer.
For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord.
The plagues were aimed at Egypts gods, the elohim who had been given their authority by Yahweh and who were supposed to govern Egypt on his behalf. The idea is not that each plague nearly corresponds to an Egyptian diety, only that the powerful acts of Yahweh went beyond the power of the gods of Egypt and their divine representative-son, Pharoah (1).
Egyptian theology linked Pharoah and Egypt’s pantheon. From the fourth dynasty onward in Egypt, Pharoah was considered the son of the high god Re. He was, to borrow the biblical expression, Re’s image on earth, the maintainer of the cosmic order established by Re and his pantheon at the creation.
Pharoah was the son of Re. Isreal was explicitly called the son of Yahweh in the confrontation with Pharoah. Yahweh and his son would defeat the high god of Egypt and his son. God against god, son against son, imager against imager. In that context, the plagues are spiritual warfare. Yahweh will undo the cosmic order, throwing that land into chaos.
The final plague in particular, the death of the first born, was aimed at Egypt's gods.
The spiritual conflict is brought into vivid and tragic focus in this last plague. Yahweh would act directly, in the form of his angel, against the gods and people of Egypt. Exodus 12:23
For the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians, and when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you.
the destroyer is the word mashkhit...
Okay, there is no explicit reference to the Angel of the Lord here. However, the word translated as destroyer gives us a clue as to who the destroyer was. The term is employed in only three passages to describe divine judgment: here as we see currently then 2 Chron. 21:15 and
And when the angel stretched out his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it, the Lord relented from the calamity and said to the angel who was working destruction among the people, “It is enough; now stay your hand.” And the angel of the Lord was by the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.
the last two describe the same event … judgment for David’s sin carried out by the Angel of Yahweh. Then we have a suggestion that we need to consider about the day of the Lord, the final day
On that day the Lord will protect the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the feeblest among them on that day shall be like David, and the house of David shall be like God, like the angel of the Lord, going before them. And on that day I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.
“And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn.
This passage clearly identifies the Angel with Yahweh, who seeks to destroy all the nations coming against Jerusalem and his people. The reference to those who suffer as grieving over a firstborn is a striking allusion back to the last plague against Egypt and the death angel.
That the destroyer is the Angel of the Lord should be no surprise. We have already looked ahead at his appearance to Joshua as commander of Yahweh’s host. God comes in human form to be among his people and fight for them, judging those who sought his people’s enslavement and death. The visible Yahweh would later do the same to other enemies, like the Assyrians
And the angel of the Lord went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. And when people arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies.
Who is like Yahweh Among the gods?
Who is like Yahweh Among the gods?
On the other side of the Red Sea crossing, this earthly judgment of Egypt is clearly viewed as a victorious outcome of a cosmic conflict in the spiritual world. As we’ve seen so often before, behind a familiar story much is missed without a grasp of the ancient cosmic worldview.
Having crossed the watery chasm on dry land, Moses and the people of Israel sand the praises of the unmatchable Yahweh. This song is recorded for us in Exodus .. Ex 15:11
“Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods?
Who is like you, majestic in holiness,
awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?
The answer to this rhetorical questions is obvious. The Lord is incomparable. NO OTHER GOD IS LIKE HIM. As we have said earlier, if the other gods were considered fairy tales by the Israelites, this statement is at best a joke and at worst a lie.
Why is it, then, that we can read of this defeat of a sea monster?
Yet God my King is from of old,
working salvation in the midst of the earth.
You divided the sea by your might;
you broke the heads of the sea monsters on the waters.
You crushed the heads of Leviathan;
you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.
You split open springs and brooks;
you dried up ever-flowing streams.
Yours is the day, yours also the night;
you have established the heavenly lights and the sun.
You have fixed all the boundaries of the earth;
you have made summer and winter.
Did you catch the language? God “split open the sea” and crushed the heads of “sea monsters (tanninim) and Leviathan, giving the beasts as food for “desert dwelling creatures.” God split open the “spring and wadi,” two terms for desert water sources, and dried up “rivers”.
What happened to the sea?
What happened to the sea?
To make things even more confusing, the psalm has a number of allusions to Genesis 1. In the creation story God also divided the waters. Virtually all of the language in the Psalm we just read can be found in Gen 1.
Is this confusing? An ancient Israelite would have no trouble deciphering the messaging in Psalm 74 and recognizing that it ties the exodus crossing to creation — and then links both events to the slaying of a sea monster known as Leviathan.
Leviathan
Leviathan
The symbolic imagery of Leviathan and the sea is well known from the ancient literature of Ugarit, a city-state in ancient Syria. Of the stories that have survived from there, one of the most famous describes how Baal became king of the gods. This story is the backdrop of Psalm 74.
The epic tale describes how Baal battles against Yamm, a deity symbolized as a chaotic, violent force, often depicted as a dragon-like sea monster. In the guise of this sea beast, Yamm was also referred to by the names tannun and litanu. The overlap with the biblical terms is transparent to those who read Hebrew (from articles). Baal defeated the raging sea and sea monsters, early dominion over the gods. The moral of the Ugaritic story is that Baal has power over the unpredictable forces of nature.
More to it...
More to it...
Genesis 1 and 2 don’t provide the Bible’s only creation story. Psalm 74 describes creation as well — it is seen as God’s victory over the forces of primeval chaos (over the tannim) Yahweh brought the world into order, making it habitable for humanity, his people. The creation act of Psalm 74 was theologically crucial for establishing Yahweh as superior to all other gods. Baal was not superior — Yahweh is.
And neither is Pharoah, or any other Egyptian god. By linking the exodus event — the taming of the chaotic waters so that Yahweh’s people could pass through them untouched, with the creation story, the biblical writers were telegraphing a simple, powerful message. Yahweh is king of all gods. HE is Lord of creation — not Pharoah, who in Egyptian theology, was responsible for maintaining creation order. The same God who created also maintains that creation, and calls it to his service when needed.
No wonder Moses asks:
“Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods?
Who is like you, majestic in holiness,
awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?
No one in the ancient world, Israelite or otherwise, would have missed the theological punch. These passages left no question as to who was king of the supernatural world, and whose side that King was on. As creator, Yahweh had made the world habitual for all humanity. But the nations had been forsaken. Now the same God once again was described as subduing the forces of chaos to deliver his portion, Israel, for whom he had prepared a place of habitation — the promised land.
But before getting to the land, Yahweh needed to teach his people a few things. It’s time for some theology lessons at a place called Mount Sinai, Yahweh’s new earthly abode, headquarters of his unseen council.