Any Blade Won’t Do
And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Ephesians 6:17 NASB
Sword of the Spirit – When Paul explains that the sword of the Spirit is the word of God, do you think he meant the Bible? No, of course not. First because the Bible as we have it today didn’t exist when Paul wrote this letter. Second, even if we correct our typical anachronistic mistake and claim that he only meant the accepted books of the Torah at that time (which, by the way, wasn’t all the books in the Hebrew Bible today), he doesn’t actually say that all the current Torah is the word of God. The word of God might just be the actual words God spoke mixed in among all the words of the then-current Jewish Scriptures. Of course, that’s a little problematic because even the Jewish “Scriptures” weren’t fixed yet.
Furthermore, Paul uses a particular pregnant word here. In Greek it’s máchaira. It’s not really a sword, at least not the kind we think of from our exposure to Middle Age armories. “máchaira means the ‘knife’ used in sacrifice, cooking, gardening, etc., then the ‘small sword,’ e.g., the saber or dagger. In the LXX it is the knife in Gen. 22:6; Josh. 5:2–3, but mostly the dagger or small sword.”[1] This is surprising. Why would Paul use an analogy to a dagger or knife when he’s describing the WORD of GOD? You would think he’d use a word for a big, huge, terrifying blade. Instead, he choses a word about a small little piece of sharpened metal that one can easily hide, as, for example, the way it shows up in Yeshua’s arrest. It seems to me that Paul deliberately choses this word because of its connection to Abraham. What? Okay, let me explain.
In Genesis 22:6 Abraham takes the wood for the altar on which he intends to sacrifice Isaac. He also takes a maʾăkelet. The Hebrew word has some powerful connections:
This word is used to denote the knife by which Abraham intended to sacrifice Isaac (Gen 22:6,10) and the knife used by the Levite to dismember his concubine (Jud 19:29). It also describes the teeth of devourers of the poor slicing them in greed. maʾăkōlet (two times) is found only in Isa 9 and means “fuel,” occurring once in a passage of hope and once in a passage describing oppression (9:5 [H 4]; 9:19 [H 18]).[2]
In Jewish/Hebraic thought, the “sword of the Spirit” immediately brings to mind the sacrifice of Isaac—and the rescue God provided. Perhaps the real “word of God” is “Abraham, Abraham.” Perhaps it means being called by your name. It also reminds of the central place of the Akedah: “”Remember unto us, O Lord our God, the covenant and the lovingkindness and the oath which Thou swore unto Abraham our father on Mount Moriah: and consider the binding with which Abraham our father bound his son Isaac on the altar, how he suppressed his compassion in order to perform Thy will with a perfect heart. So may Thy compassion overbear Thine anger against us; in Thy great goodness may Thy great wrath turn aside from Thy people, Thy city, and Thine inheritance.”[3] In other words, everything about God’s unbreakable covenant with Israel is found in the maʾăkelet. Sacrifice, forgiveness, obligation, promise—it’s all there in the blade. Maybe Paul was being quite a bit more subtle than the Bible-thumping defenders of the faith. Maybe he was pushing us deeper to see that “the sword of the Spirit” isn’t just some sacred words on parchment paper. Rather, it is the call of God on our lives, the identification with obedience, sacrifice and salvation, and the absolute assurance that He cares.
Now get dressed.
Topical Index: sword of the spirit, máchaira, knife, maʾăkelet, Abraham, Isaac, Ephesians 6:17
[1] Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (p. 572). Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans.
[2] Scott, J. B. (1999). 85 אַכַל. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 40). Chicago: Moody Press.
[3] https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/akedah
