And Miles to Go
In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes. Judges 21:25 NASB
In his own eyes – A recent conversation with the rabbi of Parma caused me to recognize just how much of my Christian theological training affects the way I read a text. We were talking about a particular Hebrew construction in the book of Joshua and that led to a conversation about leadership responsibility. Rabbi Zev commented that under God’s sovereignty, people held the leaders accountable for their actions. He illustrated the point with this verse from Judges. Since there was no king (i.e., no symbolic representative of God’s authority), every person followed the instructions of God on their own. Of course, I immediately reacted negatively to the idea that this verse was a positive statement of personal commitment to God. I had been taught to read it according to the theological assumption that left to themselves people will do evil, not good. I read the verse as if it were negative, stating the without a sovereign authority, the natural propensity toward evil would run unchecked, and that people would do whatever they pleased. Discovering that the rabbi read the verse with an entirely different point of view was stunning. Why hadn’t I thought of this? All my years of theological education always led me to see the verse as a condemnation, not an endorsement. Why?
The Hebrew text is neutral and ambiguous. The phrase is found in just two words, the preposition “in” and the noun ʿenay with a possessive suffix. TWOT notes: “The phrase ‘in your eyes’ is equivalent to opinion or judgment.”[1] But not necessarily a wrong opinion or judgment. That’s the problem. Once more, the reader provides the interpretation. In my case, despite the awareness and rejection of Calvin’s doctrine of total depravity, some part of that “sinful nature” thinking seems to have planted itself in my perspective. So, I read this verse as if it were a condemnation of the people in the time of the chieftains (judges). Rabbi Zev didn’t just uncover a new way to read the verse. He exposed my latent homage to the man from Geneva. Abruptly dunked in the cold water of a baptismal font, I was shocked to find that I read the verse as if it had been written in 1530 by a Frenchman living in Switzerland. For twenty years I have tried to extricate myself from the ubiquity of Augustine and Aquinas in Western religious thought. Clearly, I have miles more to go before I sleep. For that I can offer only this picture and the words of Robert Frost.
Topical Index: in his own eyes, ʿenay, paradigm, Judges 21:25
[1] Schultz, C. (1999). 1612 עִין. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 663). Chicago: Moody Press.
Someday I would like to hear your comments on Daniel Gruber’s ‘Rabbi Akibas Messiah: The Origins of Rabbinic Authority’… if you have the time.
Skip, why do you think of the “ubiquity of Augustine and Aquinas”… (and yes, Calvin, too)… as something from which it is necessary to “extricate” yourself?
Surely, it is that when we discover the influence that Western thought in general— and on religious thought more specifically— has set against us finding our way to an understanding and realization of truth, we may indeed determine that a hyperbolic response of extrication is necessary. But is it actually possible? For example, has the Jewish religious community ever been able (or even desired) to “extricate” itself from its Rabbinic homage? Are we then to be hopelessly bound— to be always seeking extrication from that which has us hedged in… which constrains us?
No!… It is freedom for which Christ has freed us— both from the bondage and outcome of sin and death. The weight— the substance and time-space filling of our Sitz I’m Leben by God’s glory— comes to us as God’s panim-presence by His Spirit, conveying us to His Kingdom under Christ’s rule. We have no need of extrication, but only to realize the freedom attained under that rule, which is Christ.
Yes, there is a sense in which we are indeed extricated from the contraints of any other rule; but such extrication comes only by continually being handed over to death in accord with Jesus, in order that the resurrection life of Jesus may also be revealed in our (yet) mortal flesh.
“Wretched person that I am! Who will rescue… who will extricate… me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, while I myself with my mind (nous)… my attention, understanding, comprehension, reason, composure… am enslaved to the law of God, with my flesh I am enslaved to the law of sin.” (Romans 7:24-25)
Thus, the wretchedness of being human apart from Christ’s rule is that I myself am both subject and ruler… subject to a rule from which by reason I can only desire and hope to be extricated.