Taxation in Ancient Israel
Posted By MSH on February 6, 2010
Pretty informative article. I came across it while prepping for a course I’m teaching at the local university next quarter (Ancient Cities).
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John Walton Responds to Vern Poythress’s Review of The Lost World of Genesis 1
Posted By MSH on February 5, 2010
The Naked Bible faithful already know that I liked John’s book, despite some quibbles. Vern Poythress of Westminster Seminary doesn’t. Here’s John’s response.
Peter Enns Review of Greg Beale’s “Erosion of Inerrancy in Evangelicalism” Book
Posted By MSH on February 2, 2010
This of course resonates with me in light of our lengthy discussion of the need for a better articulation of inspiration and inerrancy.
The Absence of Satan in the Old Testament
Posted By MSH on February 1, 2010
Several commenters to the last post asked for some information on the satan.
Although English Bibles continue the practice of capitalizing the word “satan” in passages like Job 1 and 2, those passage do not have a specific individual in mind — that is, “satan” in these passages should *not* be understood as a proper personal name.
The reason for this is straightforward. In biblical Hebrew, the definite article (the word “the) is a single letter (heh). Hebrew prefixes (attaches) the definite article to a noun (or participle to make it a substantive) so that, like all languages that have definite articles, the noun is made specific. Biblical Hebrew does not, however, put the definite article (the word “the”) on proper personal nouns (personal names). In this respect, Hebrew is like English. I don’t call myself “the Mike”.No one (except maybe Donald Trump 
) puts the word “the” in front of their first name. Hebrew simply does not do this at all. As the well known biblical Hebrew reference grammar by Jouon-Muraoka notes: “No proper noun of person takes the article, not even when it has the form of an adjective or a participle.”[1.Paul Joüon and Takamitsu Muraoka, A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew (Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 2003; 2005), vol. 2:505; Par 137.b.]
Without exception, the word “satan” in Job occurs *with* the article. This indicates quite clearly that “satan” is *not* a personal name. It is generic, and means “the adversary”. The word can be used of human beings (1 Sam 29:4; 2 Sam 19:23; 1 Kings 5:18; 1 Kings 11:14). All of these examples have “satan” without the article, but the referent is a human being, not a divine being, so we don’t have “Satan” here either.
In terms of statistics, the noun “satan” occurs 27 times in the Hebrew Bible, ten times *without* the article.
Of these ten, seven refer to human beings and two refer to the Angel of Yahweh for sure. The lone outlier is 1 Chron 21:1. This is the famous passage where “Satan” provokes David to take a census, but in the parallel passage, 2 Sam 24:1-25, it’s Yahweh provoking David to take the census. Due to this parallel, and due to the fact that “satan” here has no article, this is viewed by some as the single instance of an evil, cosmic figure called “satan” in the OT. It actually isn’t, though. If you’re familiar with my work on the two Yahwehs in the OT, the parallel (Yahweh-satan) is striking to you. The “satan” figure here is none other than the Angel of Yahweh — and so this instance without the article is akin to the two instances in the book of Numbers where “satan” was used of the Angel. This relieves the “is Yahweh Satan?” question and any notion of contradiction — since it would mean BOTH passages have Yahweh provoking David — one appears to be the invisible Yahweh; the other is the visible Yahweh.
There’s actually been a good recent article on why the satan in 1 Chron 21:1 is the Angel. The article is freely available online, so I’ve posted it here as a PDF. Consider this one fact that the article notes. It is in THIS passage that, after verse 1 mentions the “satan” provoking David, we read the Angel is there “with a sword drawn in his hand”. The Hebrew phrasing behind this occurs only three other times: Joshua 5:13 and Numbers 22:23, 31. ALL of these references are the Angel of Yahweh. and in one of them (Num. 22) he is the satan.
This would mean there are ZERO verses in the OT that have a personal name “satan”, and ZERO references to Satan as a cosmic evil entity as in the NT.
So where does this leave us?
Basically, “the satan” in Job is an officer of the divine council (sort of like a prosecutor). His job is to “run to and fro throughout the earth” to see who is and who is not obeying Yahweh. When he finds someone who isn’t and is therefore under Yahweh’s wrath, he “accuses” that person. This is what we see in Job — and it actually has a distinct New Testament flavor. (We also see it in Zechariah 3). But the point here is that this satan is not evil; he’s doing his job. Over time (specifically the idea of “being an adversary in the heavenly council” was applied intellectually to the enemy of God — the nachash (typically rendered “serpent”) in Eden, the one who asserted his own will against Yahweh’s designs. That entity eventually becomes labeled “Satan” and so the adversarial role gets personified and stuck to God’s great enemy (also called the Devil). This is a good example of how an idea in Israelite religion plays out and is applied in different ways during the progress of revelation.
A Few Thoughts on Job
Posted By MSH on January 31, 2010
This will be brief (I know, you’re amazed).
Basically, the message of Job is fairly simple, but some would say not very comforting. When Job and God have their conversation at the end of the book, God’s answer to his (and the reader’s) implicit question of why the righteous have suffered is that “I don’t owe you an answer, Job.” And, frankly, God doesn’t owe us answers. People are fond of calling the first two chapters of the book a “wager” between God and the satan. I disagree. One could very well view it as a vindication of Job — after all, we find out that God was RIGHT when he told the satan that Job would not curse him. Job never does. As to why God didn’t just tell the satan to get lost, in one sense the satan was just doing his job (you have to understand that the satan is *not* the cosmic evil enemy of God in Job 1-2).1 In another sense, God could have told him he was done for the day, but he doesn’t — and that goes back to God not owing humans an answer. That is where faith comes in. We (with Job!) need to believe that God is as sovereign as he is good as he is wise. In other words, we aren’t at the pay grade that allows us to know this kind of information. Some things belong to the province of deity, not to us. More broadly, we of course know God honored Job’s faith and restored his health and what he had lost. But the text doesn’t say Job forgot the anguish of what happened to him. How could he if he’s human?
So how does this fit with my Haiti piece? On one hand, it has nothing to do with it, in that the “why” question is often inscrutable to us. God may steer circumstances through the exertion of his influence and power so that we can “figure out” why things happened the way they did. But even if that is the case, our grasp of how the events of our suffering really ripple outward are vast and beyond our vision. One person’s suffering, if responded to in faith, can influence hundreds, thousands, or perhaps millions. We can’t possible see that. And if they influence no one, if we believe the gospel, God will reward and bless that sufferer (to quote Paul) beyond anything that eye hath seen or ear heard in the next life. Finally, on the other hand, the question is relevant if by it we mean, “what can Job teach us about the suffering in Haiti?” It can teach us that God doesn’t owe us answer and we should trust him, opening ourselves to suffering as an opportunity for him to use it to influence others away from evil and toward the gospel. In other words, while it is a human thing to want to know why, and I’m sure from scriptural examples that God doesn’t mind asking (and venting — think of David!), the spiritual thing to do is submit to the future that God is working toward, which includes his ability to take suffering and turn it on its head.
- I can’t recall if I’ve blogged on that before, but it’s one of the things many people learn after taking a few weeks of Hebrew once you hit the definite article. If some of you want a post on that, let me know. ↩