BIBLICAL Horizons, No. 86
June, 1996
Copyright 1996 Biblical Horizons
In my commentary on Judges, I demonstrated that Jephthah in his Spirit-led vow intended to offer to Yahweh the first person who greeted him from the doors of his house after the battle. Since it was a custom for the young women to come out dancing to greet the returning host, it was clearly a woman of his household he intended to offer up.
I also argued that to offer up as a burnt offering can have a figurative meaning. The word for "burnt offering" actually means "ascension," and in its verbal form is used for going up to the hill of Yahweh. Thus, there is no notion of actual human sacrifice in this passage. In the commentary I provided several lines of argument to demonstrate this.
Jephthah mourned because his daughter was his only child, and he had hoped to start a dynasty (Jud. 11:8). Instead, God claimed her for His dynasty, and she served Him at His house.
The daughter is unnamed. Like the mother of Samson, who is only called "the wife of Manoah," she functions as an archetype. The wife of Manoah is Eve, mother of the victorious Messiah to come. Jephthah’s daughter is Daughter Zion, God’s people, Yahweh’s (Christ’s) bride.
My further studies and growth in awareness of Biblical theology enable me to suggest some deeper answers to some matters I had to discuss tentatively in the commentary.
First, notice that the daughter mourns her virginity for two months (11:37). She thus entered her service in the third month, which corresponds to the time of judgment and resurrection in the Bible. This explains why she mourned for two months. And why months? I suggest that it is because in the deep structure of revelation, men are solar and women are lunar (compare Gen. 37:9-10). It is a matter of biological fact that women are lunar. Thus, measuring time in months is appropriate for a woman. Finally, why request time for weeping now? She would have the rest of her life to weep – of would she? Servants of the sanctuary were not allowed to mourn openly and publicly (Lev. 21:1-4, 10-12). I suggest that as a deaconess, the daughter would come under these rules, and thus would not be allowed to engage in outward mourning.
Second, she asks Jephthah to "let me go, and go down upon the mountains, and weep" (v. 37). Why did she weep, if she were going to be married in a special way to Yahweh? I suggest two complementary answers. For one, doubtless at the personal level she wept because she would never have a husband. If this were merely an edifying short story, that is all we would need to get from the text. But this is a theological text, one that communicates theology through narrative. I suggest, therefore, secondly, that the destined marriage to Yahweh awaited the coming of the true Messiah. Jephthah’s daughter, betrothed to Yahweh, would never come to a wedding under the Old Creation. (Compare Revelation 6:9-11; Hebrews 11:40.)
Third, why does she take along her companions (vv. 37-38)? The companions were those who would serve as her bride’s maids at her wedding, as we see in Psalm 45:14. Now they can only comfort her in her loss.
Fourth, why does she say that she will "go down" or "come down upon the mountains"? In the Bible, only God can come down upon the mountains. This expression cannot be taken literally here, for the girl could not fly and alight on the mountains. In my commentary, I suggested that she came down the sides of the mountains, and that this was somehow a symbolic picture of her work: Like Moses she would bring God’s word from the mountain sanctuary down to the women with whom she met four days each year. The problem with this suggestion is that it is not what the text actually says. It does not say she came down the mountains, but that she came down upon the mountains.
Figuring out precisely what Jephthah’s daughter meant by this expression is presently impossible for me, but finding a Biblical theological connection is not: The bride-daughter comes down upon a mountain in Revelation 21. To be sure, we have to go all the way to the end of the Bible to find this connection, and such long reaches are not in favor today. But we hold that God is the author of the whole Bible, and that it is one unified text. Thus, it is entirely possible that He placed a puzzle here in Judges 11 that is only explained in Revelation 21.
In Revelation 21, the bride-daughter comes down upon the mountain, but she no longer mourns and weeps for a virginity that will never be broken in marriage. The marriage has come, and she is beatified by her Husband. Her companions can rejoice with her.
This theological understanding of the passage clarifies for me the meaning of the last phrase in verse 39 and the statement in verse 40. Contrary to most modern translations, the last phrase of verse 39 stands alone, and says, "And she became a sign in Israel." The usual translation, "It became a custom" is impossible because "it became" is feminine, while "custom" is masculine. The word I have rendered "sign" is hoq, which usually translates as "statue, law, decree, ordinance, custom." It refers to something literally or figuratively graven in stone. Thus, the idea here is that Jephthah’s daughter became a living memorial sign, a teaching to Israel. She was a sign that it is God’s house, not man’s, that is to be built. She was a sign that God, not man, is king. She was a sign that Daughter Israel was to be God’s wife, not man’s.
Verse 40 literally reads, "From days, at days, the daughters of Israel went out to recount to the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite, four days in the year." Does this speak of a four-day occasion, or does it imply four times in a year? It seems to mean "from this time forth, at certain days." If it means four times during the year, the reference might be to new moon festivals associated with the equinoxes and solstices, since new moons seem to have been especially important to women, for obvious reasons (2 Ki. 4:23).
The only other time the verb "recount" is used in the Bible is Judges 5:11, "The voice of the minstrels at the watering places; there they shall recount Yahweh’s righteous deeds."And what did they "recount"? The recounting in Judges 5:11 is celebratory, and so there is no justification for seeing these as days of mourning for or with Jephthah’s daughter. Rather, the implication is of some kind of celebration. My guess is that the recounting consisted of the young women filling in Jephthah’s daughter regarding what was going on in their lives. She became a spiritual guide to them. They looked forward to these days of instruction and guidance from their deaconess.
Accordingly, the young virgins were instructed by the permanent virgin, Jephthah’s daughter. Thus, she is a type of the Church, instructing her citizens in proper behavior toward their Husband Jesus Christ.
BIBLICAL Horizons, No. 86
June, 1996
Copyright 1996 Biblical Horizons
Proverbs 7:6-23 is one of several passages early in the Proverbs in which Solomon warns his son about the wiles and dangers of the "strange woman." It is certainly quite proper to take these as straightforward warnings against sexual sins, and these are certainly warnings that need to be impressed upon the teenagers or young adults that are the primary target of Proverbs, not to mention older men and women subject to the same temptations.
At the same time, looking at these passages from the perspective of the whole Bible raises the suspicion that something more is going on here. Two biblical themes are in the background: First, the symbolic connection of adultery with idolatry (Jer. 2:20; 3:1-20; Ezk. 16; 23), and, second, the fact that the specific danger posed by "strange women" throughout the Bible is that they will entice one away from the Lord (Dt. 17:17; 1 Ki. 11:1-8; Ezra 9-10; Neh. 13:23-28). Moreover, the "wise woman" of Proverbs, ideal wife of the king, has a wider meaning than a mere female human being, so we can expect the "strange woman" to have a larger meaning also.
The danger, then, is not sexual sin alone, but that sexual temptation will lead to spiritual adultery. It would be wrong to conclude, however, that Solomon is simply using sexual temptation in a simplistic way as a "picture" of idolatry. The reality is that sexuality and worship are complexly intertwined threads of the human soul.
Looking at Proverbs 7 with these thoughts in mind throws new light on several details of the text:
1. The woman leads the naive or simpleton to her "house" (v. 8). The house is not merely the physical dwelling place but a place of worship.
2. The woman seeks for simpletons at "evening" or "twilight" (v. 9). This is the time of the evening sacrifice.
3. Verse 14 explicitly mentions sacrifice. Because the strange woman has paid her vows by offering a peace offering, she can offer meat. At the time of the evening sacrifice, she is seeking someone to share with her in the table of demons.
4. She has sprinkled her bed with "myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon" (v. 17). The first and last of these were ingredients of the special anointing oil that was used only for consecrating the tabernacle and priests (Exodus 30:22-33).
5. The end result is that the simpleton is led like an "ox" to "slaughter," that is, to sacrifice (v. 22). True worship is a matter of self-sacrifice. False worship is also self-sacrifice at the house of the strange woman.
6. This accounts for the strength of the warning in verses 24-27. The house of the strange woman is indeed the very gateway to death.
BIBLICAL Horizons, No. 86
June, 1996
Copyright 1996 Biblical Horizons
This essay goes with our previous study of the Amalek pattern back in Biblical Horizons No. 2. Since many do not have this essay, entitled "The Battle of Gog and Magog," let me cite the relevant paragraphs:
I wish to point out how Jesus fulfills this theme in Matthew, which is the "Mosaic" gospel.
We are initially alerted to the Egypt and Exodus themes in 2:13 & 19. A "famine in the land" – a threat of death – sent Israel into Egypt. Here a threat of death at the hands of Herod sends Jesus into Egypt.
Then we come to John’s baptism and Jesus’ move into the wilderness. In order to understand this, we need to see the land of Israel as another Egypt. This had been foreshadowed when David had to flee from Saul into the wilderness. Jesus’ baptism is parallel to Israel’s baptism through the Red Sea (Ps. 77:17; 1 Cor. 10:2). In fact, the meaning of John’s baptism in the wilderness is just this: The faithful needed symbolically to leave behind the Egypt of Judaism and come into the wilderness with Elijah-John.
Jesus’ baptism is accompanied by God’s declaration that He is His Son (Mt. 3:17), and we are to recall that the whole point of the exodus from Egypt was God’s claim of Israel as His son (Ex. 4:22). The death of the Egyptians at Passover and at the baptismal Red Sea was God’s proof that Israel was His son (Ex. 4:23).
What follows is the attack of Amalek in the wilderness, and this is fulfilled by the attack of Satan on Jesus in the wilderness. Israel prevailed as Moses’ hands were raised up to God, supported by Aaron and Hur; so that the prophet was central, with the priest and king (Judah) on either side. (Compare the Jachin-priest and Boaz-king pillar in front of the Temple, holding it up.) Jesus is tempted in the priestly area (stones to bread), the prophetic area (miraculous demonstration and confirmation), and the kingly area (all the nations of the world). (Mt. 4:1-11.)
When we see this, we can see a contrast. To see it, we have to look at Luke. Luke assumes we have read Matthew and Mark, and so he can add to them. Luke is the "Prophetic" gospel. What he adds is this contrast: Immediately after God defeated Amalek, the family of Moses met Israel and blessed them; whereas immediately after Jesus defeated Satan, Jesus preached in Nazareth and was rejected; in fact, they tried to kill Him (Luke 4:1-30).
We can now go back to Matthew, and see that in Matthew what follows the defeat of Amalek is the giving of the Law: the Sermon on the Mount, which is the equivalent and fulfillment of the Mount Sinai law-revelation.
With this parallel sequence established, we can make more out of the greatest fulfillment of the pattern: the crucifixion. Jesus’ uplifted hands parallel Moses’, and on either side of him are two other men also with uplifted hands, the sinful equivalents of Aaron and Hur: humanity, God’s priest-kings. It is again Luke who fills out the meaning for us, by pointing out that Jesus was first tried by the Sanhedrin (priestly), then by Herod (prophetic; for Herod wanted a miracle, and the Herods are the false-prophet/land-beast" of Revelation), and then by Pilate (kingly).
Jesus’ upraised hands, when He prayed for the salvation of humanity, are the defeat of Amalek, and also the defeat of false church and false world. Focussing on Amalek, we need only remember that the Herods were Idumeans, which is the Greek form of Edomites, and that the Amalekites were Edomites.
I should now like to conclude with a few observations on the pattern in Acts. Notice in Acts 1 that the disciples removed themselves to the upper room, where they "were staying" (Acts 1:13). This is equivalent, I suggest, to the homes of the Israelites on Passover night. They did not leave the upper room, definitively anyway, until there was a sign from heaven to make this exodus into the streets of Jerusalem.
The death of Judas, which seems to be a mere parenthetical insertion in Acts 1:18-19, can now be seen as a fulfillment of the death of the Egyptian firstborn. This is followed by the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which is the equivalent of the Red Sea crossing. The conversion of Jerusalem sinners stands in contrast to the destruction of Pharaoh’s army at the Red Sea, but both are defeats for Satan.
Acts, of course, does not directly parallel the exodus, because the early chapters are primarily a recasting of Joshua 1-11. But when we come to the murder of James by Herod, we see the attack of Amalek. Peter was cast into prison, but the Church, Moses-like, was continually in earnest prayer for him (Acts 12:5). The result was that Peter was released, and Amalek destroyed when Herod died soon thereafter.
Biblical Chronology
Vol. 8, No. 6
June, 1996
Copyright © James B. Jordan 1996
by James B. Jordan
2. The Setting of the Book of Esther
A. Xerxes
(continued from previous issue)
Ezra 6:14 says that the Jews finished building "according to the command of the God of Israel and the decree of Cyrus and Darius and Artaxerxes king of Persia." The problem with this verse is that the only decree of "Artaxerxes" mentioned in Ezra to this point is in 4:7-23, which was a decree to stop building the temple! Moreover, if the Artaxerxes of Ezra 6:14 is Longimanus, it is curious that he is mentioned here because the rest of Ezra says nothing about any decree of his to rebuild the temple. Of course, if Nehemiah is considered part of Ezra, then we can say that this is a decree to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, but then the question is: Why is this mentioned here in Ezra 6:14?
A far simpler solution is found in Hebrew grammar itself, which allows for "and" to mean "even" or "to wit." In that case, Ezra 6:14 would read, "according to . . . the decree of Cyrus and Darius, to wit: Artaxerxes." Here is Gesenius’s explanation of this use of the connective "and" in Hebrew: "Frequently vav copulativum [the connective `and’] is also explanatory (like isque, et – quidem, and the German und zwar, the English to wit), and is then called vav explicativum [the explicative `and’]. For instance, Isaiah 17:8 reads, "Nor will he look to that which his fingers have made, to wit: the Asherim and incense stands." Similarly, Nehemiah 8:13 reads, "the [people] gathered around Ezra the scribe, to wit: to give attention to the words of the Law." In Proverbs 3:12: "For whom the Lord loves He reproves, even [to wit] as a father the son in whom he delights." (See Gesenius’s Hebrew Grammar, second English ed., Oxford U. Press, p. 484, note 1b.)
This reading of Ezra 6:14 is not new. John Gill, in his commentary (late 18th c.) writes, "I am most inclined to think, with Aben Ezra [noted Jewish commentator], that he [Artaxerxes] is Darius himself; and the words to be read, Darius, that is, Artaxerxes, king of Persia; Artaxerxes being, as he [Aben Ezra] observes, a common name [throne name] of the kings of Persia, as Pharaoh was of the kings of Egypt . . . and I find Dr. Lightfoot [eminent chronologist] was of the same mind."
Remembering that the Bible often uses names meaningfully, we can interpret Ezra and Nehemiah in terms of the meaning of the names Darius and Artaxerxes. Ezra 6 would use the name Darius to focus on the fact that the king was doing good: "Then King Do-good issued a decree" (Ezra 6:1). Ezra 7 would shift to the name Artaxerxes to focus on the justice and universality of the king’s reign. Notice the end of Darius’s letter in 6:12, "I Darius (the Doer) issue decree; let it be done diligently." Now compare the end of Artaxerxes’ letter in Ezra 7:25-26, "Set magistrates and judges who may judge . . . all such as know the laws of your God. . . . Whoever will not observe the law of your God and the law of the king, let judgment be executed speedily on him." The emphasis on justice is in keeping with the meaning of the name Artaxerxes (King of Justice).
Similarly, the use of Ahasuerus (Chief of Rulers = Xerxes, Hero Among Kings) is appropriate for Esther, because of the emphasis on his rule over 127 other lands (Esth. 1:1). As we have seen, since Mordecai was active already in the days of Jeshua and Zerubbabel (Ezra 2:2), it is very unlikely that Esther’s king was (the second) Xerxes. He almost certainly was Darius the Great.
Since the genealogical and name-list evidence strongly indicates a short chronology for Ezra and Nehemiah, there is every reason to assume that Darius and Artaxerxes are the same person.
We have seen that it is likely that the Artaxerxes of Ezra-Nehemiah is the same as Darius the Great. If this solution be correct, and I think it is, possibly there is another problem in Ezra that can be resolved by it. In Ezra 4:6 we are told that "in the reign of Ahasuerus, at the beginning of his reign, they wrote an accusation against the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem." Nothing more is ever said about this accusation. The next verse reads, "And in the days of Artaxerxes" they wrote a letter of accusation. A full discussion of this letter ensues in Ezra 4. There are several interpretations of these verses.
A. The current establishment interpretation says that Ahasuerus is Xerxes and Artaxerxes is Longimanus. It is held that the letters to these two later monarchs are mentioned here, out of chronological sequence, because the theme of this section of Ezra is opposition to God’s work. Thus, we are shown two later instances of opposition.
B. The classical interpretation is that Ahasuerus is Cambyses and Artaxerxes is Pseudo-Smerdis. We know that there are at least two Ahasueruses in the Bible (Dan. 9:1; Esth. 1:1), so why not a third? The value of the classical interpretation is that it does not wrench Ezra 4 out of chronological sequence, nor does it fall into the modern trap of assuming that the Jews called these monarchs by only one name each and that they used the same names the Greeks used. The problem with the classical interpretation is that Pseudo-Smerdis almost certainly did not reign long enough for a letter to have reached him and a reply to have been sent back.
C. Another view is that Ahasuerus is Cambyses, and Artaxerxes is Darius. This initially makes a lot of sense, since as we have seen it is likely that in Ezra-Nehemiah, Darius and Artaxerxes are the same king. The scenario presented is that at the beginning of Cambyses’ reign, a letter of complaint was sent to him, which he ignored. Then again, at the beginning of Darius’s reign, when he was threatened with insurrection on all sides, more letters were sent complaining about the Jews. Darius-Artaxerxes ordered work on the Temple stopped. In the second year of his reign, having received more information, Darius ordered the work resumed (Ezra 6). The problem with this view is that there is good reason to believe that Cambyses was opposed to the Jews, so why would he ignore a letter complaining about them?
D. Another twist on this is to see both Ahasuerus and Artaxerxes as Cambyses, so that Ezra 4:7ff. is simply filling out 4:6. This means, however, that within Ezra’s book there are two Artaxerxeses (4:6 and 6:14), and that they are not distinguished by any indication – an unlikely thing for a writer to do.
E. Finally there is the Jordan view. I suggest that the Ahasuerus of Ezra 4:6 and the Artaxerxes of 4:7 are both Darius, and that the "and" of 4:7 should be translated "to wit." This means that the phrase "at the beginning of his reign" applies to Darius-Artaxerxes, and that the letter sent to Artaxerxes in Ezra 4:7 is the same as the one sent to Ahasuerus in 4:6. It also means that Ezra 4:5-6 are in chronological order. To wit: "They hired counselors against them to frustrate their counsel all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius (Do-good) king of Persia. To wit, in the reign of Ahasuerus (Chief of Rulers, Darius-Artaxerxes), in the beginning of his reign, they wrote an accusation against the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem. To wit, in the days of Artaxerxes (King of Justice, Darius), Bishlam, Mithredath, Tabeel, and the rest of his colleagues, wrote to Artaxerxes king of Persia; and the text of the letter was written in Aramaic and translated from Aramaic."
The letters Ezra 4 complain that the Jews were rebuilding not the temple but the wall. The long chronology says that under Darius the temple was rebuilt, but that when the Jews began to rebuild the wall, stiff opposition arose against them. In the days of Xerxes (son of Darius) and in the days of Artaxerxes Longimanus they were prevented from rebuilding the wall. Finally, Nehemiah obtained permission to rebuild the wall, in the 20th year of Artaxerxes Longimanus.
I believe that there is internal Biblical evidence against this reconstruction. We have seen that it is most likely that the Artaxerxes of Ezra-Nehemiah is Darius. But if the wall was not rebuilt until Nehemiah came in Darius’s 20th year, why were letters sent complaining about the wall at the beginning of Darius’s reign? The answer is seen in Ezra 9:9, which says that the Jews had begun rebuilding the wall before Nehemiah, and indeed had erected some kind of a wall by the time Ezra arrived in Jerusalem.
Here is the historical scenario, as I see it: Jeshua and Zerubbabel and their associates returned to Jerusalem in the first year of Cyrus. They built the altar, and begin rebuilding the temple (Ezra 3). Soon, however, they encountered opposition, which "discouraged the people of Judah and frightened them from building" (Ezra 4:4). The people left off working on the temple and devoted themselves to building nice homes for themselves and working on the wall (Haggai 1). God in His mercy raised up adversaries who complained about this wall-building, and at the beginning of his reign King Darius forbad them to work on the wall and city (Ezra 4:21). They were not, however, forbidden to work on the temple. Thus, God raised up the prophet Haggai, who told them that they were in sin for not having finished the temple first (Haggai 1). No longer able to work on walls and houses, the people to devoted themselves to rebuilding the temple. This aroused more questions, and another letter was sent to Darius asking about the temple (Ezra 5). Darius gave permission to rebuild the temple, which was completed in the 6th year of Darius (Ezra 6). The next year Ezra arrived, and noted that both the temple and a rudimentary wall had been completed.
This scenario does better justice to the information contained in the texts of Ezra-Nehemiah and Haggai, and does not require that Ezra 4 be yanked out of historical context.
What we have established thus far is that the Artaxerxes of Ezra-Nehemiah is Darius. We have argued that the Ahasuerus of Ezra-Nehemiah is the same man, thus identifying Esther’s king as Darius-Artaxerxes. We note that Josephus, as mentioned above, calls the Ahasuerus of Esther "Artaxerxes." While Josephus is not always a reliable guide, his identification must still be given some weight. It indicates that he thought the same man could be given both names. Josephus, though, links Esther’s Ahasuerus with the later Artaxerxes Longimanus, while I am arguing in the opposite direction.
We must now take note of the genealogical notice in Esther 2:5-6, "There was a Jew in Susa the capital whose name was Mordecai, the son of Jair, the son of Shimei, the son of Kish, a Benjaminite; who had been taken into exile from Jerusalem with the captives who had been exiled with Jeconiah (Jehoiachin) king of Judah, whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had exiled."
On the face of it, this statement says that Mordecai was taken into captivity with Jehoiachin in the 8th year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign (2 Ki. 24:12; 597 B.C.). If Mordecai was an infant at this time, he would be about 61 when Cyrus issued his decree, and when Mordecai made his initial return to Jerusalem (Ezra 2:2; 537 B.C.). At the beginning of Darius’s reign (521 B.C.), Mordecai would be 77, and he would be 89 in Darius’s 12th year, which is when Esther ends. But if we want to pull all this down to the reign of Xerxes, Mordecai would have to be about 111 at the beginning of that emperor’s reign!
Thus, most commentators argue that it is not Mordecai but Kish who was taken into captivity. This is, however, impossible grammatically. Moreover, it seems pretty clear that Shimei and Kish are Mordecai’s ancient ancestors, a relative and the father of Saul, the Benjaminite king of Israel. The conflict between
Saul and Agag (1 Samuel 15) is rejoined in Esther.
Esther was Mordecai’s niece, but Esther 2:7 indicates that she was much younger then he, so that she was like a daughter to him. In large families, it is not unusual for a man to be older then his uncle. Assuming that this is the scenario, Esther might be 40 years younger than Mordecai. This would make her 43 when she became queen. If she was 55 years younger than Mordecai, she would have been 28 when she became queen, assuming Ahasuerus is Darius. This is possible.
For this scenario to work, we can assume that Mordecai was the first son of his grandfather’s firstborn, while Esther’s father was the last son of Mordecai’s grandfather. Thus, while Mordecai’s father and Esther’s father were brothers, they were perhaps 25 years apart in age, and Mordecai was perhaps 5 years older than his uncle. (I am 40 and I have a cousin who is in his 80s. His children are 10-15 years older than I am. I had uncles and aunts who were over 60 years older then I)
Now, Esther’s father and mother are both dead. If we assume that they did not die violently, we can assume that Esther was one of their later children, born perhaps when her father was 50. This would make Esther 55 years younger than Mordecai, her cousin.
This scenario is not strained at all, and squares with the tightest reading of the Hebrew text; to wit: that Mordecai was brought into captivity with Jehoiachin, and that Mordecai was a leader of the Jewish community at the time of the return from Exile (Ezra 2:2).
We have established the following:
1. The book of Ezra & Nehemiah does not skip from Cyrus to Artaxerxes Longimanus, but uses "Artaxerxes" as a name for Darius.
2. The Mordecai mentioned in Ezra-Nehemiah must be the same as the Mordecai in Esther. It makes no sense to doubt this.
3. Mordecai was alive at the time of the captivity, and could not have lived until the reign of Xerxes.
4. The name "Xerxes" or Ahasuerus was held by more than one ruler, and is likely given to Darius in Ezra 4:6.
5. Nothing in the scenario of Esther contradicts identifying Ahasuerus as Darius the Great.
We must now consider two other alternative suggestions.
B. Cambyses
Herbert A. Storck has revived the suggestion that Ahasuerus might be Cambyses. Storck, History and Cosmology: Studies in the Book of Esther (Toronto: House of Nabu, 1990). He argues that for Esther to be as much younger than Mordecai as is required for the Darius interpretation puts a strain on the text, so moving the time back to Cambyses should be considered. He also argues that since Cambyses ruled as co-regent with Cyrus, his reign can be considered to have lasted 15 rather than 7 or so years. Finally, filling out the scenario, he argues that Mordecai might have been a prominent Jewish merchant, and that there was a rich banker in Babylon that had the name Itti Marduk balatu, who might have been Mordecai.
There are more problems with Storck’s suggestion than there are with the Darius view, however (and Storck only offers his view as a suggestion). First, Cambyses clearly did not reign over 127 provinces (Esther 1:1), and this information is given in Esther to help us identify which Ahasuerus is being referred to. Storck can only write that "it could also refer to Cambyses’ reign, retrospectively." More than that, however, it is a fact that Darius conquered India; Cambyses never ruled it. And Darius conquered the islands of the sea and levied tribute on them, something Cambyses did not do. Thus, if Storck is correct, Cambyses is being described as Darius!
Second, if Cambyses was co-regent, it is hard to see how he could have put on such a huge feast in Susa in the third year of his and his father’s reign. The feast of Esther 1 does not read like a festival put on by the mere son of a king.
Third, there is good evidence to believe that Cambyses was opposed to the Jews. At this point, I need to summarize some information that I presented in the studies in Daniel that were recently concluded in this newsletter.
The 79 verses of Daniel 10-12 are all one long vision and revelation. The setting is the third year of Cyrus. Daniel tells us that he had been mourning for three blocks of weeks, thus three full weeks, or 21 days. This period ended on the 24th day of the first month, and thus crossed the entire Passover and Feast of Unleavened Bread season. During this time, Daniel ate no meat and drank no wine, thus not participating in any shadow observance of the feast in any way whatsoever. He did not eat "bread of desirability," which may mean choice bread, or might refer to unleavened bread. Finally, he used no ointment, which means he kept his body free from oils. Oil is used for anointing priests and kings in the Bible. By doing all of this, Daniel stressed that he was in exile from the bread and wine of God’s kingdom, the anointing of God’s work, the feasts of God’s calendar.
Since Cyrus had decreed that the Temple be restored in his first year, clearly something had gone awry. Clearly the Temple had not been restored, as we know from Ezra 1-5.
Moreover, Daniel sees a "man dressed in linen, whose waist was girded with pure gold of Uphaz, whose body was like turquoise, whose face was light lightning, whose eyes were like flaming torches, whose arms and feet were like the gleam of polished bronze, and the sound of whose voice was like the sound of tumult." This "Man" was in the air above the river Tigris, at Babylon (12:7). Clearly this is Yahweh, and He is above the river just as He was above the River Chebar in Ezekiel 1. The meaning in Ezekiel was that God had departed from the Temple and had come to be with His people in exile. The meaning in Daniel 10-12 is that God is still in exile and has not returned to the Temple. He is, however, above the waters, like the Spirit in Genesis 1, and is preparing a new creation.
The problem is described in Ezra 4, to wit, that after the first year of return from exile, opposition to the Temple’s rebuilding arose among the people then living in the area, and they hired representatives to go to the
Persian court and put a stop to the project. We are told that they were successful throughout the reigns of Cyrus and Cambyses (Ezra 4:5), and initially successful with Darius as well.
Since Cyrus was favorable to the Jews, it must have been Cambyses who was not. Cyrus was off conquering new lands, and Cambyses, the Prince of Persia, was basically in charge. In Daniel 11:1, the person who is speaking with Daniel says that "in the first year of Darius the Mede [Cyrus] I stood up to strengthen and protect him." Almost certainly this speaker is an angelic messenger. He says that there was some problem in the beginning of Cyrus’s reign, but that he had stood up to help Cyrus. We now know from ancient records that Cambyses was co-regent with Cyrus in Babylon initially, but was removed during Cyrus’s first year. Since it is clear that Cambyses opposed the Temple-rebuilding project, the "strengthening" of Cyrus would seem to be connected with the removal of Cambyses’ opposition. Thereafter, in Cyrus’s first year, the decree to rebuild the Temple was issued. See William H. Shea, "Darius the Mede in His Persian-Babylonian Setting," Andrews University Seminary Studies 29 (1991):235-257.
Shea has argued cogently that Cambyses became co-regent with Cyrus at the New Year Festival in the Spring of 535 bc, on the fourth day of the month. This was when Daniel went into mourning.
In Daniel 10:13 & 20, the angel tells Daniel that he had been fighting the Prince of Persia for the 21 days of Daniel’s mourning, but Michael, the Prince of Israel, had stood up to help him. Thus, he was able to gain a small victory. Soon he would be returning to oppose the Prince of Persia further. Often this Prince is said to be the angelic overlord of Persia, but Calvin identified him as the real prince, Cambyses. Shea has demonstrated that Calvin was almost certainly correct.
In fact, the real overlord of Persia is the godly angel who has been opposing Cambyses, and who has received help from the angelic overlord of Israel, the arch-angel (chief of angels) Michael, the preincarnate Christ. (That Michael is Christ follows from a comparison of Jude 9 with Zechariah 3:2.)
We don’t really know all that we would like to know about the reign of the Persian kings, but from what I have just presented, it seems that Cambyses is a long shot as far as being the Ahasuerus of Esther is concerned. If Mordecai is to be linked to a prominent Jewish banking concern, we can be sure that this concern would still be in operation in Darius’s day.
It remains to take up the eccentric view of the always-eccentric chronologer E. W. Faulstich.
(to be continued)
OPEN BOOK
Views & Reviews
No. 27 Copyright (c) 1996 Biblical Horizons June, 1996
Isaac E. Mozeson, The Word: The Dictionary that Reveals the Hebrew Sources of English (Northvale, NJ: Jacob Aaronson Inc., 1995), 310 pp. Reviewed by James B. Jordan.
Once there was only one language in the world, the language God spoke to Adam. At the Tower of Babel, there came to be many languages. What was that one, original language? There are three possibilities:
1. A language that has disappeared and is thus unknown.
2. Hebrew.
3. Some language other than Hebrew that still survives.
Can we decide which it was? I believe so. First, looking into the Bible itself, we _nd that pre-Babelic names like Adam, Eve, Noah, Lamech, and the like are in fact Hebrew word-names. It could be argued that Noah’s father was not really named "Lamech" but something else, say "Joe-Bob," and that Moses translated "Joe-Bob" into "Lamech" when he put Genesis in its _nal form. But how likely is this alternative?
Second, it can be argued, from outside the Bible, that Hebrew word are found in the background of words in languages all over the globe. For instance, the Hebrew-knowledgeable Christians who came to America found many semitic words in American Indian languages. The led to the belief on the part of some that the Indians were descendants of some Hebrews. Others in more recent years have explained this phenomenon by arguing for American contact with Phoenician traders in the ancient world. But it may simply mean that Hebrew was the original pre-Babelic language, and that Hebrew foundations survive at some points in all post-Babelic languages.
This is the contention, admirably presented and defended, by Isaac Mozeson in his book The Word. A brief introduction sets forth the case for Hebrew as the primordial language, and then the rest of the book is an English dictionary that displays and discusses the Hebrew backgrounds of speci_c terms.
For instance, at random, "patio" comes from the Latin patere, which means "to open." The supposed Indo-European root is pet, "to spread." But the Hebrew word for open is patahh, a rather obvious association.
Now, the value of this exercise also lies in that it blows to pieces the notion that Indo-European languages and Semitic languages have radically different roots, a notion that actually developed in the anti-semitic culture of German scholarship, and a notion for which, as Mozeson shows, there is no credible foundation. It also knocks in the head the idea that Hebrew is some late form of a primitive semitic.
Mozeson also rightly argues that the fact that Hebrew is the primordial language does not mean everyone must go back to it. There is an eschatology, and God wants to be praised in all languages. All languages, being developments of the original language, are part of God’s plan. Mozeson is Jewish. As Christians, we have the "gift of languages" to a_rm this fact. The meaning of the "gift of tongues" is that in the New Covenant, now all languages are _t vehicles for the word of God, and thus God now authorizes the translation of the Scriptures into every tongue. While the miraculous dimension of this gift ceased in ad 70, the larger meaning of it abides because it is an aspect of the undivided Spirit and His work.
This is a valuable book, and could be useful in Christian high school education as well as of general interest.
Peter J. Leithart, The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1993). 269pp. Reviewed by James R. Rogers.
In his epistle to the Church at Ephesus, St. Paul writes that the struggle of the faithful is not a struggle _rst and foremost with human oppressors. Indeed,
Our struggle is not against _esh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places (Eph. 6.12).
Yet Paul makes clear earlier in the epistle that, just as Jesus contended against and overcame these powers, so God has ordained that his "manifold wisdom" be "made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places" (Eph. 3.10).
From the earliest days Christians have understood the critical connection between the Church’s worship and her Holy warfare against the spiritual rule of wickedness. On his way to martyrdom in Rome early in the second century, Ignatius, the Bishop of Antioch, thus encouraged the church at Ephesus to "Be eager to meet more often to give thanks [or "for eucharist"] to God, and show forth his praise, for when you come together often, the powers of Satan are broken."
Yet in an ideological, political age, Christians too often forget that the Church is the _rst institution of the Kingdom of God, and the Church advances the Kingdom, not with the comparatively ine_ectual political weapons of this world, but with her potent spiritual arsenal of worship, preaching, service and su_ering.
In The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church, Peter J. Leithart calls modern American Christians to remember their _rst recourse in the spiritual battle against the increasing darkness of this age.
His primary thesis that "the church is central to the kingdom of God" and that worship "is not peripheral but central to the kingdom" would no doubt strikes few Roman Catholic readers as controversial. What might be more surprising is that Leithart argues the Scriptural truth of a "Eucharistic world-view" as a theologically conservative, evangelical Presbyterian pastor. He is one of a growing handful of evangelical thinkers who argue that the Scriptures teach a much higher ecclesiology than that recognized in modern, "Bible-based" Protestant churches.
Needless to say, evangelical Protestantism is not well known for its high ecclesiology and sacramental theology. Until recently American Protestants did not really have to live with the practical working out of their low ecclesiology. After all, American national identity – "the nation with the soul of a church" – served to unify Christians in the face of Protestant denominational pluralism. American civil religion, nebulous as it was, nonetheless provided powerful cultural and social sanction to undergird Protestant belief and habit. The discipline of public opinion e_ectively substituted for ecclesiastical discipline.
With the erosion of social sanction as a force of de facto religious discipline for America’s once dominant Protestant culture, entropy occurs and denominational pluralism reverts to ecclesiastical anarchy. The demise of a Christian national culture thus fundamentally threatens American Protestantism in a way that it does not threaten Roman Catholicism and other ecclesiastically centered traditions.
Issues such as corporate prayer and Bible reading in public schools agitate evangelicals not simply because of concerns about the practice of personal piety in public settings. The struggle over these issues represents for evangelical Protestants a struggle over the means of ecclesiastical authority. With the loss of these powerful cultural tools of Protestant discipline, evangelicals rightly fear the centrifugal dynamic inherent in the Protestant principle.
Spiritual exile from the centers of American public life thus does not simply represent a Babylonian captivity for the American Protestant church, with the promise of restoration after the season of exile, as Jeremiah promised Judah. The impoverished ecclesiology of American evangelicalism means that the loss of the culture war risks ecclesiastical disintegration. For evangelicals, the political _ght over culture is a _ght for the survival of their church.
The failure of the Reagan revolution to make much progress in the culture war deeply disillusioned large segments of the evangelical community. While many politically active evangelicals simply increased their commitment to the political _ght, other evangelicals are becoming increasingly skeptical of attempts to renew the Church through a politically reanimated national Christian culture.
First, because America’s civil religion initially developed organically out of colonial America’s Protestant consensus, a consensus which has now been irretrievably fractured. Take the example of school prayer. Today, evangelicals hope only for a moment of silent "prayer or meditation" before school begins, even though teacher-lead prayer was common and largely uncontroversial before 1962. Teacher-lead recitation of the Lord’s prayer in public schools is inconceivable today because it no longer organically re_ects a society’s already existing Christian consensus. The "back then" no longer exists to go back to. Secondly, as Leithart argues at length, the political model of Christian renewal places priority on the wrong institutions, and answers the wrong questions. He explores and unpacks Richard John Neuhaus’s dictum that "The _rst political task of the Church is to be the Church."
Evangelical thinkers increasingly look for answers not in political action, but in critical theological re_ection. These thinkers fall into two large categories, both of which emphasize the church, but to much di_erent e_ect. One line of thinking stresses that all Protestantism needs is a revival of the sermonic, intellectual core of classical Protestant "liturgy." The other line of thought, represented by Leithart, while not at all denigrating sermon or mind, argues that classic American pastor-centered models of worship are unbiblical, and that the problems a_icting the evangelical church today do not issue out of the neglect of classic American Protestantism, but stem from the inherent weakness in the traditional model. Leithart’s line of criticism thus probes more deeply into the largely unexamined assumptions of modern evangelical worship and ecclesiology.
David Wells’s 1993 book, No Place for Truth: Or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology, is a helpful contrast to Leithart. Wells argues that Protestants need vigorously to reassert the sermonic center of "classical Protestant" worship. In writing of "classical" Protestant worship, Wells takes as his model the sermon-centered, liturgically minimalist worship of seventeenth century British and American Puritans.
Like the Puritans, Wells argues, Protestant ministers need once again to focus worship on the sermon and pastors need to preach hard-nosed theology from the pulpit. He explicitly rejects models of worship that do not reduce worship to sermon. Completely ignoring the sacramentally rich liturgical theologies of Martin Luther and John Calvin, Wells contrasts Catholic worship with classical Protestant worship: Unlike the Catholic priest, Wells writes, the Protestant minster cannot lean on the magisterium to teach his _ock, or the sacraments as a source of God’s presence in the worship service. Rather, for the Protestant, the Pastor’s sermon, and it alone, must bear the work of bringing the congregation into "the presence of God." The liturgy-lite, sermon-centered model of "classical" Protestant worship so e_ectively moves the "listening" congregation into the presence of God, Wells asserts, that by comparison, the presence of God in Catholic sacramental worship is but a pale shadow of the Protestant experience in worship. Nothing ails Protestantism, Wells argues, that a vigorous return to Puritan piety cannot cure.
In criticizing the rationalistic reductionism of this "classical" or Puritan model, Leithart urges modern evangelicals to reread the Reformers and to rediscover a richer heritage in the pre-Puritan Protestantism of the Reformers, a Protestantism that contrasts with the congregational passivity of the late medieval church and the Puritan church, and that forwarded sacramental renewal as well as sermonic renewal in worship. Unlike the "classical" Protestantism of Wells’s Puritans, Reformation Protestantism sought to be a Patristic and catholic Protestantism; it sought explicitly to engage and appropriate – even while it sought to correct – Catholic tradition.
Modern evangelicals largely dismiss Martin Luther’s view of the sacraments as leftover "Romanism," and they do not quite know what to do with John Calvin’s distinctly non-Zwinglian theology of the sacraments and worship. Indeed, the Puritan theology that Wells touts, and Leithart critiques, can be viewed as the logical working out of Zwinglian rationalism _avored with anglo-empiricism.
As a matter of practice, if not of theology, almost all modern American evangelical congregations, whether they be Baptist, Wesleyan, Presbyterian or independent Bible churches, approach the sacraments with a Zwinglian mind. The sacraments have no real divine referent. Rather, they stand as arbitrary signs which, when subjectively apprehended by Christians, edify them only by reminding them to think of Jesus Christ. They enjoy no intrinsic character beyond that of a verbal, sermonic reminder to "remember Jesus." To be sure, this neglect does not always result from Zwinglian confessional standards, but more often than not a low view of the sacrament is the manifested or practiced theology of these churches.
More than any theological di_erence between Calvin and Luther, Zwingli’s in_uence introduced a "di_erent spirit" into the reformation. Quoting J.P. Singh Uberoi, Leithart makes the point that "Spirit, word and sign had _nally parted company at Marburg in 1529; and myth or ritual . . . was no longer literally and symbolically real and true. . . .Zwingli was the chief architect of the new schism and . . . Europe and the world followed Zwingli in the event."
The logic of the Zwinglian spirit has worked itself out in modern evangelicalism, and compromises a signi_cant portion of the current ecclesiastical distress. After all, aside from the not insubstantial consequence of ignoring the sacrament and the presence of Jesus in the eucharist itself, a low view of the sacrament leads to a particular ecclesiastical problem: What sort of a stick is excommunication if neither church o_cers nor the censured Christian believe eucharistic communion is literally nothing more than eating a common morsel of bread and taking a sip of grape juice while thinking about Jesus? Once American cultural sanctions no longer work to communicate and enforce Christian habits, Zwinglian churches lose their de facto governing authority.
Leithart takes direct aim at evangelicalism’s low view of the sacraments and worship:
What is lacking in evangelical scholarship and evangelicalism in general is an adequate appreciation of and emphasis on the validity – in my judgment, the centrality – of the ecclesiastical or sacramental model of the kingdom.
Given the biblical emphasis on the feast of the kingdom, the lack of practical and theological attention given to the Lord’s Supper by contemporary evangelicals is little short of astounding. If anything is clear from the Gospels, it is that for Jesus the kingdom is a place of feasting. Yet, many who talk and write about the kingdom completely ignore this crucial dimension of Jesus’ teaching. Some look for the future millennial reign of Christ. Others talk about the kingdom in connection with social and political action. Still others concentrate on the power of the kingdom manifested in "signs and wonders" and the charismatic gifts. But many neglect the very dimension of the kingdom that was evidently central for Jesus Himself: the kingdom of God is a feast.
For Leithart, "Worship is not merely a means to realize God’s kingdom. Worship is itself the _rst form of God’s kingdom in the World."
The logic of individualism works inexorably in modern America to pull apart natural and supernatural associations, those little "platoons" of civil society, such as family, church, and city. Alasdair MacIntyre is certainly right when he admonishes his readers in the concluding paragraph to After Virtue that what matters at this stage in history, with the collapse of meaning in the modern vocabulary, is "the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already among us."
Leithart warns the Christian, however, not to be taken in by a promiscuous regard for each and every community. The _rst form of Christian community is the Church; the divine community is the type of all other communities, it is the "nursery of culture," as Alexander Schmemann put it. In the Church Christians unite with God and with each other, and this union occurs most poignantly in the union with God and with others in the sacraments.
Because "judgment begins with the Household of God," the recovery of community must begin with the recovery of the supernatural community of the church. John Calvin wrote without equivocation that the Church is the mother of the Christian. If Leithart has his way, American evangelicals will once again learn to call the Church their mother, and to honor her for the same.
