One of Jesus's names is Immanuel, which means "God with us". In the first chapter of Revelation, we see Jesus among the lampstands, which are the churches in their light-giving aspect. In the opening to this book, the Lord God says, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, who was and is and is to come, the Almighty." Alpha and Omega were the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, of course, and under this statement can be brought all sorts of ways in which God is the First and the Last. He is eternal, existing before the first thing and beyond the last thing; he encompasses all; he is the first and final cause of all things; he was there before the beginning and will be there after the end, etc. He always was, he is currently, and he is "coming" in the future. His saying, "Is to come" rather than the strictly parallel "will be" suggests a future not merely of existing but of acting, of self-revelation.
In the opening vision, we see Jesus standing among the Lampstands of the Seven Churches. He is there in their midst, holding in his hand their "angels". He identifies himself as "the First and the Last", not using the exact Alpha and Omega terminology used a few verses prior, but clearly reflecting the same idea. Do a word search on "first and last" and you will see that it is used of God throughout the Old Testament. (In the OT, it would not have been Alpha and Omega because those books were not originally written in Greek, but in Hebrew or Aramaic.)
So here, at the opening, we see Jesus, the eternal one, the one who died and returned to life, standing here on earth, in our midst, caring for us, having the angels of our churches in the palm of his hand. Jesus as Immanuel, God with us. Whatever frightening vision are to come, this revelation begins comfortingly with the truth that we are not alone in the world, that though we may not see Him with our physical eyes, yet Jesus is in our midst, walking among His churches.
Monday, September 19, 2011
Thursday, September 15, 2011
The Number Seven in Revelation
In the first chapter of Revelation I am immediately struck by the number Seven. This book is addressed to the seven churches in Asia. There are seven spirits before the throne of God. The Son of Man stands among seven golden lamp stands. In his hand are seven stars representing seven angels. Later in the Revelation we read of seven Seals, seven Trumpets, seven Thunders, seven Bowls of wrath; sevens are everywhere. In fact, the book of Revelation easily divides itself into seven sections: Letters to the seven churches, the seven Seals, the seven Trumpets, the Woman and her enemies, the seven Bowls of wrath, the fall of the Enemies of the Woman, and the final consummation.
So what's with the sevens?
This is another characteristic that this last book of the canon shares with the first, and this is a good place to note that essentially all the symbolism used by God in Revelation was taught to us in the Old Testament. The first place we see a strong "seven" is right there in the Genesis account of creation. As noted in the last post, the fullness of God's work in creation, including his own contemplation of it and his fellowship with Man, is accomplished in Seven Days. (BTW, I am an "Old Earth creationist", more or less, and think that to consider these “days” to be literal 24 hr periods is to almost miss the whole point of the whole account. The same wooden, concrete reading of what is meant to be highly symbolic, poetic material leads to the misinterpretation of Revelation in the same manner.) In Genesis, and in the Sabbath laws given later to Moses, God deeply grounds this symbolic seven. His work, including His rest, is a Seven. Man's work, like God's, is to be done in six days, and the seventh, like God's, is to be rest and fellowship with God. It is the seventh day, the Sabbath, which relates Man's work to God's. Seven is the number of completion of God's will with regard to Man and his world. Man was created on the sixth day, and without the seventh, without the Sabbath of fellowship with God and rest from his own work, he is alone with himself and the world. Six is the number of man alone, of Man without the Sabbath. Seven is the number of God's work, in its completion.
This symbolism is shot right through the Book of Revelation. The Seven Churches in Asia represent the complete set of all God's churches through the ages. What is written to them is not written only to them, but to any and every church that is like them, just as what was written by Paul to the Corinthians was not written only for the Corinthians of the first century. The Seven Lampstands (now separate...in the Old Testament temple lampstand they were seven branches on one stand) are the complete New Testament Church, through the NT age, seen in its light giving capacity. The Seven Spirits do not mean that the Holy Spirit is divided into seven, but represents His being distributed (remember Pentecost) among the churches down through the age, in His completeness. The Seven Seals represent the entirety of God's working in history through the entire church age, from the perspective of causality and the effects of the Gospel, culminating in the return of Christ. The Seven Trumpets represent the entirety of God's actions, through the church age, as regards providing warnings for mankind, culminating in the return of Christ. The Seven Bowls represent his visitation of final justice upon the unrepentant throughout the church age, culminating in the final judgement. The seven sections of Revelation itself represent a complete, whole view of the Church Age, from Jesus' first coming until his second and last. Seven represents the completeness of God's work, from beginning to end. It is a symbol whose meaning God has taken great pains to teach us.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Revelation: Opening and greeting
In the first three verses, we learn some very important things about this book. It is for all the servants of Jesus Christ, and its purpose is to show them what must soon take place. The nearness of these events is mentioned twice in three verses: "Must soon take place" and "the time is near." This cannot be a matter of John being mistaken about this, and thinking that Jesus was returning sooner than He would. There is certainly evidence in the Gospels that the apostles expected Jesus to return in their lifetime, but this entire book is a revelation directly from Jesus to John, who is expected to pass it on to all the Church. Given that scripture is inspired by God, it would be a strange thing to presume that John would be allowed to so mislead us as to twice state that the events were near, if they weren't.
Furthermore, the blessing is to all who read, hear, and keep (or heed) this book. In these musings, I shall try to keep this in mind: we are not finished with our understanding of Revelation until we have come to understand how we should "keep it", how we should act and think and speak as a result of what we learn here. To me, this makes it very clear that the purpose of this book is not to allow us to predict future events, but to understand our current events as they unfold, whether in the first century or the twenty-first, and know "how we should then live."
Furthermore, the blessing is to all who read, hear, and keep (or heed) this book. In these musings, I shall try to keep this in mind: we are not finished with our understanding of Revelation until we have come to understand how we should "keep it", how we should act and think and speak as a result of what we learn here. To me, this makes it very clear that the purpose of this book is not to allow us to predict future events, but to understand our current events as they unfold, whether in the first century or the twenty-first, and know "how we should then live."
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Genesis and Revelation
I do not believe that Revelation was intended to be a literal "future history of the end times", as it is taken to be by so many popular interpreters today. In fact, I think that one of the most unfortunate and harmful developments in the 20th century was the (mostly American) promotion of this manner of interpretation, to the extent that the average American Christian is aware of no other way to read this book. The "Left Behind" series and its movie have provided vivid mental images and deep predispositions to misinterpret this very important "final word" of God, with the result that we are largely expecting the wrong things and missing the comfort and instruction and wisdom that it was meant to provide.
Revelation was never intended to be a predictive literal history of the end times, so that we could figure out exactly what will happen and where. If that were its purpose, it would have been of no use to all the Christians living in the thousands of years between the first and the last coming of our Lord, and II Tim 3:16 would not apply to this book for those Christians. No, Revelation was intended for all the Church down through every day, decade, and century, so that God's people would understand the world they inhabit in any given age. It is a vivid, symbolic description of the forces behind the history of the Church age, so that we might recognize the enemy and his works, our Lord and His works, and take heart and comfort knowing that we are "more than conquerors through Him".
In this regard, Revelation is akin to the creation and fall account in Genesis. The purpose of Genesis was never to give us specific historical or scientific information about the formation of the cosmos, but to answer our very legitimate questions, "Where did we come from? What is the world like? What is our meaning and purpose? How does God relate to us and our physical, social, and psychological world? What is wrong with the world?" In other words, Genesis answers the origin and meaning questions profoundly. Our world is real, not illusory. It is a creation, meaning it has no self-existence, but came into being through the action of a creator who existed outside it and before it. It did not arise from chaos through struggle of primeval gods, as in the Enuma Elish, or accidentally, but came into existence through the thoughts and power of the creator, in an orderly manner. The categories of creation: form, substance, perception, time, life, habitat, rhythms, thought--all come from the mind of this creator, and all is related to all, by design. We come into being as the last and highest terrestrial creation, made to be so like God that we can actually have fellowship with him, walk with him. Our cosmos was created to be harmonious; it was all good. Our relationships to each other were good, without shame or deception or hiddenness; our relationship to the richly varied physical world was to be one of tending and keeping and further development. Work, in itself, was good, and involved tending and creating beauty and utility and sustenance for ourselves (gardening.) God made us as lesser gods to rule over the cosmos as his faithful servants, bringing forth out of the earth things delightful to us both.
All this is depicted as being accomplished in seven days. Man is created on the sixth, and God rests on the seventh. Seven, from the very beginning, becomes associated with the completion of God's work, including his contemplation and enjoyment of it. Like God, we are to do our own work over six days, and rest in fellowship with Him on the seventh. This is a deeply developed concept throughout the Old Testament; this Sabbath is to be enjoyed not only by Man but also by his animals and his land. The Sabbath...the seventh day...is developed further in the New Testament by the actions and teaching of Jesus, and of the author of the Letter to the Hebrews. In the latter, it becomes a symbol of our resting in the work of the Lord in our salvation, an endless Sabbath.
God gave us everything, but left us there in the Garden a single prohibition, by which His sovereignty and our faithfulness would be established: do not eat the fruit of this one tree. In this single law, the separateness of his will from ours was demonstrated. It was a moral universe, in which we had the choice whether to recognize his legitimate sovereignty or assert our own.
We asserted our own will and sovereignty over against God's, and fell, taking our whole domain with us. All our relationships were disrupted thereby; with God, with our habitat and fallen domain, and with each other. In this, we were tempted by the Serpent, who had apparently rebelled already. The consequences to this serpent included the pronouncement that, one day, the Seed of the Woman would crush his head, and the serpent would bruise the heel of this Seed.
So Genesis tells us much about our beginnings. We know where we came from, how we got here, how it is that we are so wonderfully godlike yet so terribly twisted. We understand the cosmos to be orderly and its behavior law-like. We find an explanation for the fascinating impression of design and purposefulness that we discover in the hard sciences, and an explanation for the aspirations and the perverseness that we find in history and psychology. But what of the future? Where are we going? Does future history have any guiding principles? Are we going to get better and better and overcome all our fatal flaws (Star Trek) or more and more complexly twisted until we have blighted everything (1984/Terminator/pick your apocalyptic story)?
Genesis and Revelation are the bookends of the revealed scripture. They are the transition zones, the interfaces, with unknown history. Genesis stands at the border of the unknowable prehistoric past, and Revelation at the border of the unknowable future. They help bring the specific, historical, didactic and literary scriptures right into our current world, whenever that happens to be. The Book of Revelation, correctly understood, was as important and meaningful to the first century Christians as it is now, and (the key is...) that understanding was the same then as now. "Blessed is he who reads these words, and blessed is he who hears them and keeps them." How do you "keep" a future history? That makes no sense. No, you "keep" words that are about how to live wisely and with understanding, whenever in history you happen to have been placed.
Revelation was never intended to be a predictive literal history of the end times, so that we could figure out exactly what will happen and where. If that were its purpose, it would have been of no use to all the Christians living in the thousands of years between the first and the last coming of our Lord, and II Tim 3:16 would not apply to this book for those Christians. No, Revelation was intended for all the Church down through every day, decade, and century, so that God's people would understand the world they inhabit in any given age. It is a vivid, symbolic description of the forces behind the history of the Church age, so that we might recognize the enemy and his works, our Lord and His works, and take heart and comfort knowing that we are "more than conquerors through Him".
In this regard, Revelation is akin to the creation and fall account in Genesis. The purpose of Genesis was never to give us specific historical or scientific information about the formation of the cosmos, but to answer our very legitimate questions, "Where did we come from? What is the world like? What is our meaning and purpose? How does God relate to us and our physical, social, and psychological world? What is wrong with the world?" In other words, Genesis answers the origin and meaning questions profoundly. Our world is real, not illusory. It is a creation, meaning it has no self-existence, but came into being through the action of a creator who existed outside it and before it. It did not arise from chaos through struggle of primeval gods, as in the Enuma Elish, or accidentally, but came into existence through the thoughts and power of the creator, in an orderly manner. The categories of creation: form, substance, perception, time, life, habitat, rhythms, thought--all come from the mind of this creator, and all is related to all, by design. We come into being as the last and highest terrestrial creation, made to be so like God that we can actually have fellowship with him, walk with him. Our cosmos was created to be harmonious; it was all good. Our relationships to each other were good, without shame or deception or hiddenness; our relationship to the richly varied physical world was to be one of tending and keeping and further development. Work, in itself, was good, and involved tending and creating beauty and utility and sustenance for ourselves (gardening.) God made us as lesser gods to rule over the cosmos as his faithful servants, bringing forth out of the earth things delightful to us both.
All this is depicted as being accomplished in seven days. Man is created on the sixth, and God rests on the seventh. Seven, from the very beginning, becomes associated with the completion of God's work, including his contemplation and enjoyment of it. Like God, we are to do our own work over six days, and rest in fellowship with Him on the seventh. This is a deeply developed concept throughout the Old Testament; this Sabbath is to be enjoyed not only by Man but also by his animals and his land. The Sabbath...the seventh day...is developed further in the New Testament by the actions and teaching of Jesus, and of the author of the Letter to the Hebrews. In the latter, it becomes a symbol of our resting in the work of the Lord in our salvation, an endless Sabbath.
God gave us everything, but left us there in the Garden a single prohibition, by which His sovereignty and our faithfulness would be established: do not eat the fruit of this one tree. In this single law, the separateness of his will from ours was demonstrated. It was a moral universe, in which we had the choice whether to recognize his legitimate sovereignty or assert our own.
We asserted our own will and sovereignty over against God's, and fell, taking our whole domain with us. All our relationships were disrupted thereby; with God, with our habitat and fallen domain, and with each other. In this, we were tempted by the Serpent, who had apparently rebelled already. The consequences to this serpent included the pronouncement that, one day, the Seed of the Woman would crush his head, and the serpent would bruise the heel of this Seed.
So Genesis tells us much about our beginnings. We know where we came from, how we got here, how it is that we are so wonderfully godlike yet so terribly twisted. We understand the cosmos to be orderly and its behavior law-like. We find an explanation for the fascinating impression of design and purposefulness that we discover in the hard sciences, and an explanation for the aspirations and the perverseness that we find in history and psychology. But what of the future? Where are we going? Does future history have any guiding principles? Are we going to get better and better and overcome all our fatal flaws (Star Trek) or more and more complexly twisted until we have blighted everything (1984/Terminator/pick your apocalyptic story)?
Genesis and Revelation are the bookends of the revealed scripture. They are the transition zones, the interfaces, with unknown history. Genesis stands at the border of the unknowable prehistoric past, and Revelation at the border of the unknowable future. They help bring the specific, historical, didactic and literary scriptures right into our current world, whenever that happens to be. The Book of Revelation, correctly understood, was as important and meaningful to the first century Christians as it is now, and (the key is...) that understanding was the same then as now. "Blessed is he who reads these words, and blessed is he who hears them and keeps them." How do you "keep" a future history? That makes no sense. No, you "keep" words that are about how to live wisely and with understanding, whenever in history you happen to have been placed.
Musings on the Book of Revelation
I am currently presenting the Book of Revelation to an adult Sunday School class. I am basing the presentation on William Hendriksen's More Than Conquerors, which was the first book on Revelation that made any sense to me, and which approach has informed my understanding of this wonderful book ever since. In college, in the early 70's, I had read Hal Lindsay's Late Great Planet Earth, and was initially very intrigued, but after taking some ancient history courses I realized that much of his interpretation of "heads and horns" amounted to arbitrary selection of various ancient kings and kingdoms, and was not, ultimately, convincing. As the years went by and regimes changed, it became increasingly evident that the "future history" approach was useless, as the interpretations changed from year to year. Hendriksen's book pointed out that the foretelling of specific historical events was never the purpose of Revelation, but rather its work is to comfort the Church and help us to understand the world around us during the entire church age. We cannot predict the specifics of the future on the basis of reading Revelation, but we can understand current events as they unfold, and know what to expect, in general, in the future.
It has been great fun teaching this class, but the timeframe has not allowed very deep excursions into the text. We have mostly covered the large sweep of John's vision, its overview and dominant themes, but have not had enough time to really reflect on Revelation's teaching on how we should live now, in this world, today. Therefore, I thought it might be fun to start blogging on Revelation, considering each section and simply enumerating thoughts and reflections on the text. I know myself well enough not to commit to a well-organized essay on each section. If that were the goal, I would probably never start.
So, look here for further posts in which I muse upon themes and lessons and ways of seeing suggested by my understanding of this book.
It has been great fun teaching this class, but the timeframe has not allowed very deep excursions into the text. We have mostly covered the large sweep of John's vision, its overview and dominant themes, but have not had enough time to really reflect on Revelation's teaching on how we should live now, in this world, today. Therefore, I thought it might be fun to start blogging on Revelation, considering each section and simply enumerating thoughts and reflections on the text. I know myself well enough not to commit to a well-organized essay on each section. If that were the goal, I would probably never start.
So, look here for further posts in which I muse upon themes and lessons and ways of seeing suggested by my understanding of this book.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Beauty, again
Today I was reading Exodus 35 and was again struck by the Lord's concern for beauty, and that we participate in it. This section concerns itself with the provision of materials for the construction of the tabernacle and its furnishings, and provides for the participation of the people in the making of these beautiful things.
It strikes me that the participation was not mandatory, but in proportion to the degree to which each person felt led by his or her heart. Anyone who felt moved to do so would contribute items of beauty and value to the material needs of the tabernacle: earrings, brooches, signet rings, beautiful dyed clothes and skins and valuable woods. Furthermore, anyone who found within her a skill (in the Hebrew, the same word as "wisdom") for the making of beautiful materials could participate in that way, by spinning beautiful yarns and weaving beautiful fabrics, by casting and forging the precious and strong metals into beautiful hooks and eyes and rings and implements, elaborating upon the basic parameters given by God to Moses on the mountain. Both men and women were welcomed into this process. In a large sense, God is saying to his people, "Here is the overall plan of the tabernacle, and some of the themes I would like to be represented. Now you gather up all the best materials, as you feel led, and use your creativity, your skills, the gifts I have given you to make it come alive and be a beautiful place, the place where your creativity and eye for beauty are lifted up to me."
It strikes me that the participation was not mandatory, but in proportion to the degree to which each person felt led by his or her heart. Anyone who felt moved to do so would contribute items of beauty and value to the material needs of the tabernacle: earrings, brooches, signet rings, beautiful dyed clothes and skins and valuable woods. Furthermore, anyone who found within her a skill (in the Hebrew, the same word as "wisdom") for the making of beautiful materials could participate in that way, by spinning beautiful yarns and weaving beautiful fabrics, by casting and forging the precious and strong metals into beautiful hooks and eyes and rings and implements, elaborating upon the basic parameters given by God to Moses on the mountain. Both men and women were welcomed into this process. In a large sense, God is saying to his people, "Here is the overall plan of the tabernacle, and some of the themes I would like to be represented. Now you gather up all the best materials, as you feel led, and use your creativity, your skills, the gifts I have given you to make it come alive and be a beautiful place, the place where your creativity and eye for beauty are lifted up to me."
Monday, July 26, 2010
The Patience of Moses: Exodus 24
In Exodus 24, Moses is called up the mountain to meet with God, and to receive the Ten Commandments from God's hand. Together with seventy elders from Israel, he "sees God" and does not die, remarkably. They ate and drank in God's presence. Then, Moses makes arrangements for governance in his absence (v. 15), and goes up the mountain to meet with God. A cloud covers the mountain for six days, and it is only on the seventh day that God calls for Moses. He waits upon the mountain for six days.
I have read this account many times over my lifetime, but only today was I struck by the patience of Moses, and how foreign his experience is to my own. Consider it in your imagination: You are the chief judge and governor for a huge multitude of people traveling through a wilderness, and you have made some arrangements for judicial coverage in your absence, and you have been called into the presence of God upon a mountain in the middle of a wilderness. You live a couple thousand years BC, so no iPhones, no white-gasoline Whisperlite stoves, no nylon tents, no communication of any kind with persons out of sight or shouting distance. You have climbed a mountain, a strange mountain that you do not know. It has become covered with a cloud, so you do not have a view, you do not see anything in the valley, the world has closed around you, you are completely isolated. You wait, for hours, and nothing happens, no call from God. You relieve yourself, you make a fire perhaps and prepare some food. Still nothing. Night approaches. You have to make some sort of shelter, you wonder what else is up there with you on this mountain. Where is God? What is the point of this past day? What is going on in the camp below? Did you misunderstand God? Did he want you to come up higher? Did you do something wrong? Did you leave something out? Really, what is the point of this? What are you thinking to yourself as hour after hour of waiting in this fog creeps by? You make some sort of shelter, you fall asleep, and you awake the next morning to more fog. You have to prepare, maybe find food. How much food did you bring? How long did you expect to be up here? Another whole day goes by, and no call from God. No change. Nothing. Minute by minute, hour by hour time passes, and nothing happens. The end of another day approaches. This happens for six consecutive days. Yet Moses waits.
I cannot identify, I cannot conceive of doing this. Six days with no word from God, isolated on a mountain in a cloud. I would have second-guessed myself any number of times by the end of the first day. I must have misunderstood, I must have gotten something wrong, surely. God would not waste my time like this. What is going on in the camp without me? (a legitimate concern, because Moses' absence does, in fact, lead to the camp taking matters into their own hands and creating the golden calf.) What kind of faith, what view of time and life allows a man to stay on a mountaintop, waiting, for six solid days? Is it patience? Is it humility? Was the culture that incredibly different from today? I wish I understood this. I wish I were the kind of man that could content himself with waiting in the dark, with nothing at all happening, for even one day, without busying myself and making excuses for why I am not waiting upon God, why I cannot wait upon God but must busy myself in the meantime. I cannot comprehend doing absolutely nothing but what is necessary to stay alive, and waiting upon God for an entire week. What was Moses thinking? Really, what was going on in his mind? I think I need to understand this. How did he occupy his mind, what were his conversations with himself, as he waited upon God? What did he see in his mind's eye?
I have read this account many times over my lifetime, but only today was I struck by the patience of Moses, and how foreign his experience is to my own. Consider it in your imagination: You are the chief judge and governor for a huge multitude of people traveling through a wilderness, and you have made some arrangements for judicial coverage in your absence, and you have been called into the presence of God upon a mountain in the middle of a wilderness. You live a couple thousand years BC, so no iPhones, no white-gasoline Whisperlite stoves, no nylon tents, no communication of any kind with persons out of sight or shouting distance. You have climbed a mountain, a strange mountain that you do not know. It has become covered with a cloud, so you do not have a view, you do not see anything in the valley, the world has closed around you, you are completely isolated. You wait, for hours, and nothing happens, no call from God. You relieve yourself, you make a fire perhaps and prepare some food. Still nothing. Night approaches. You have to make some sort of shelter, you wonder what else is up there with you on this mountain. Where is God? What is the point of this past day? What is going on in the camp below? Did you misunderstand God? Did he want you to come up higher? Did you do something wrong? Did you leave something out? Really, what is the point of this? What are you thinking to yourself as hour after hour of waiting in this fog creeps by? You make some sort of shelter, you fall asleep, and you awake the next morning to more fog. You have to prepare, maybe find food. How much food did you bring? How long did you expect to be up here? Another whole day goes by, and no call from God. No change. Nothing. Minute by minute, hour by hour time passes, and nothing happens. The end of another day approaches. This happens for six consecutive days. Yet Moses waits.
I cannot identify, I cannot conceive of doing this. Six days with no word from God, isolated on a mountain in a cloud. I would have second-guessed myself any number of times by the end of the first day. I must have misunderstood, I must have gotten something wrong, surely. God would not waste my time like this. What is going on in the camp without me? (a legitimate concern, because Moses' absence does, in fact, lead to the camp taking matters into their own hands and creating the golden calf.) What kind of faith, what view of time and life allows a man to stay on a mountaintop, waiting, for six solid days? Is it patience? Is it humility? Was the culture that incredibly different from today? I wish I understood this. I wish I were the kind of man that could content himself with waiting in the dark, with nothing at all happening, for even one day, without busying myself and making excuses for why I am not waiting upon God, why I cannot wait upon God but must busy myself in the meantime. I cannot comprehend doing absolutely nothing but what is necessary to stay alive, and waiting upon God for an entire week. What was Moses thinking? Really, what was going on in his mind? I think I need to understand this. How did he occupy his mind, what were his conversations with himself, as he waited upon God? What did he see in his mind's eye?
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Law with a Heart
Today my reading through the Bible using M'Cheyne's schedule took me to Exodus chapter 23, headed "Sundry Laws" in my New American Standard version. Sounds dry, but it isn't. I was immediately struck by the high level of personal integrity required by these laws. One is to do what is right by another person regardless of what everyone else (the "masses" in v. 2) is doing, regardless whether he is rich (this sounds modern) or poor (this does not), whether he hates you, or whether he is a stranger. You are not to accept a bribe, because a bribe will distort your judgment. There is a very strong sense here that each person stands before the Lord and must answer for his treatment of another, with no pleading of others' opinions or actions, and no extenuating circumstances. Furthermore, one's treatment of another is here linked closely with sympathy and empathy for that other. One is not to oppress a stranger, not only because it is not right, but specifically because the Israelite should know how it feels to be a stranger, since they were strangers in Egypt.
The sabbath rest every seven days for man and beast, and every seven years for the land, are likewise explained in terms of empathy and sympathy, not agricultural technique. In the seventh year, the self-seeded food crop will feed the hungry, who will have to go and pick it. The seventh-day rest allows refeshment for workers and working animals.
Finally, God's sympathy for his people is demonstrated in his driving out the nations gradually, so that the wild animals will not grow too numerous or the fields be ruined by too long neglect.
The sabbath rest every seven days for man and beast, and every seven years for the land, are likewise explained in terms of empathy and sympathy, not agricultural technique. In the seventh year, the self-seeded food crop will feed the hungry, who will have to go and pick it. The seventh-day rest allows refeshment for workers and working animals.
Finally, God's sympathy for his people is demonstrated in his driving out the nations gradually, so that the wild animals will not grow too numerous or the fields be ruined by too long neglect.
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