Biblical Theology VI: Joshua

The Book of Joshua is the beginning of what is referred to as the Deuteronomistic History that stems from Joshua to 2 Kings. The history in general, as is the book of Joshua in particular, is concerned with Israel’s possession of the land as the inheritance of those who follow God.  Israel’s residence in the land, or lack thereof, therefore, is the result of Israel’s allegiance to YHWH, as it is displayed in their obedience to Him. YHWH must be worshiped through obedience to the law, which is represented by sacrificing at the tabernacle/temple, where the ark of the covenant resides. To worship at another altar is to symbolize the worship of an alternate religion (via pagan means of worship) that YHWH rejects, and therefore, to do this is to reject the covenant made with YHWH, even while claiming to worship Him.

Theology: The land belongs to YHWH. It is His land. The land, and its filling up of God’s people, is given as the inheritance granted by God to His people. To be an Israelite, one must follow YHWH by obeying Him, as the book of Deuteronomy had taught. Anyone who does not obey Him has broken the treaty of Deuteronomy to love YHWH, and therefore, must be removed from the land by death or exile. Anyone who obeys YHWH, even if he is a Canaanite, or if she is a woman who cannot normally inherit land, will, indeed, inherit the land as his or her possession. Hence, the blessings of creation that run through the Abrahamic promises given to the patriarchs belong, not necessarily to the physical descendents of Abraham, but to those who are his descendents in terms of their allegiance to the God of Abraham. God will remove everyone who does not have allegiance to Him from the land, either by way of His people removing them, or directly. Allegiance to Joshua (Greek: Jesus), who delivers them into the land, is allegiance to YHWH.

Ethics: Israel is to respond in obedience to YHWH and His servant Joshua if they are to consider themselves true Israelites. If they do not, they will be considered Canaanites. If Canaanites respond in obedience to YHWH as well, they will be shown mercy and considered Israelites. This is brought out the most in the contrast between Rahab, a Canaanite, and Achan, an Israelite from the royal tribe of Judah.

²² Joshua said to the two men who had spied out the land, “Go into the prostitute’s house and bring her out and all who belong to her, in accordance with your oath to her.” ²³ So the young men who had done the spying went in and brought out Rahab, her father and mother, her brothers and sisters and all who belonged to her. They brought out her entire family and put them in a place outside the camp of Israel. ²⁴ Then they burned the whole city and everything in it, but they put the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron into the treasury of the Lord’s house. ²⁵ But Joshua spared Rahab the prostitute, with her family and all who belonged to her, because she hid the men Joshua had sent as spies to Jericho—and she lives among the Israelites to this day. (6:22-25)

²⁴ Then Joshua, together with all Israel, took Achan son of Zerah, the silver, the robe, the gold bar, his sons and daughters, his cattle, donkeys and sheep, his tent and all that he had, to the Valley of Achor. ²⁵ Joshua said, “Why have you brought this trouble on us? The Lord will bring trouble on you today.” Then all Israel stoned him, and after they had stoned the rest, they burned them. ²⁶ Over Achan they heaped up a large pile of rocks, which remains to this day. Then the Lord turned from his fierce anger. (7:24-26)

Similarly, Caleb and his daughters will also inherit the land because of his allegiance to YHWH. The idea is that, regardless of ethnicity or gender, those who have their allegiance with YHWH, displayed by their obedience to Him, will inherit and live in the land forever, and those who do not, regardless of ethnicity or gender, will be removed from the land through death and exile. God requires obedience to His servant, Joshua to enter the land, and He requires a commitment to the covenant to love and worship Him by being creational in one’s works toward Him and His people in order to keep the inheritance. The communal responsibility of faith in YHWH, taught by Deuteronomy, therefore, is a large part of Joshua.

It is important to note that the inheritance of the land follows faith in YHWH. As is with the rest of biblical teaching, whether one is truly in covenant with Him is displayed by his obedience or lack thereof. Hence, works identify the true Israelite, but they do not make the true Israelite, since such is according to God’s election in the Deuteronomistic History and will be manifest itself in his or her confession (24:1-28), and the validity of that confession, in works (e.g., Rahab and Achan).

Biblical Theology V: Deuteronomy

Theology: Deuteronomy is set up as a suzerain treaty, where a greater power/king makes an agreement to adopt a lesser power/nation under his protection if they will agree to give tribute to him. God makes this deal with His people, agreeing to bless them, if they pay tribute to Him by worshiping Him.

The book emphasizes in its introduction that God is not visible, and therefore, cannot be worshiped through that which is visible. He, instead, is worshiped through the words He has spoken. They function as His “idol” through which He must be worshiped. Deuteronomy takes the Sinai theology from Exodus, therefore, and treats it as an introduction to the law. YHWH will be worshiped by His people by their close adherence to His commands in all aspects of their lives. This is how He will be loved.

If His people betray their vow to follow Him by disobeying the law, they will be cursed, and no longer under His protection. They will be given over to the demons of the nations to be trampled down by them and their kingdoms.

Ethics: To do what is unjust is to betray the covenant made with YHWH. Justice must be restored by bringing about judgment according to the lex talionis (law of reciprocation). The law is not one that simply seeks vengeance, but rather functions off of the creational principle, and therefore, asks what can be done to ensure that the victim will survive the unjust attack on his or her livelihood.

Some of the laws are meant to be deterrents, but others simply mean to restore a possible loss so that further life is not lost. When the betrayal is not one that can be rectified, either because it threatens God’s people in general, and therefore is not a specific injustice committed against a particular person, or because the victim him or herself was killed, the just penalty is death. The laws function off of the creational principle, and are not, therefore, merely legal prescriptions, but instead the trajectory the nation must take to worship God as their suzerain. It is to take upon the role of the image in seeking a justice for the victims within the covenant community that will either ensure that they survive, or to deter an injustice from occurring frequently. Those who worship YHWH by doing what is right to one another will remain blessed in the land. Those who do not do what is right to one another will be kicked out of the land as those who have been cursed. This is because breaking the law is to break the covenant made with God, and to say that one no longer wishes to be under His care. To obey the law, giving God His tribute (i.e., obedience as worship) is to continue to affirm the covenant that was made with Him, expressing that one wished to remain under His care. The covenant and obedience, therefore, are linked together in this way. This means that God’s people cannot worship Him without doing what is right to one another; and doing what is right to God’s people is the principle idea of worshiping YHWH in the Bible.

Biblical Theology IV: Numbers

The Book of Numbers begins with the numbering of the tribes of Israel (Chapters 1-2), singling out the Levitical priests as their mediators (Chapters 3-4), and then throughout its literary development, argues that Moses and the Levitical priests are the rightful  and necessary mediators of, and authority over, God’s people, who exist to keep them from destruction. It thus presents numerous examples of Moses and Aaron, along with the priests, as leaders who mediate between God and His people, and what happens when they fail to do so, or are opposed by the people.

Theology: God takes the Levites from Israel, instead of their firstborn sons, as His own. He sets them apart as the only ones who are allowed to care for His tabernacle. Hence, their inheritance is the tabernacle of God, rather than land. The tabernacle itself is the place of mediation between God and man. Their upkeep of the tabernacle, and later temple, saves the lives of the rest of Israel. If they neglect it, Israel will come under the wrath of God, or if someone else who is not a Levite attempts to maintain it, he will be killed for it. Only the qualified designated leadership is acceptable to God.

The camp is, therefore, ordered around the tabernacle, and as in Leviticus, the closest to the tabernacle one is, the closer to God, whose presence is the sphere of life, and the further away one is from the tabernacle, the further away from life and the closer to death he is. The ones who, therefore, have the authority to mediate between matters of life and death, what is acceptable and unacceptable to God, what can be in His presence and what cannot be, are the priests. No one else is permitted. Throughout the book, then, the priests are viewed as leading the congregation into righteousness and combating chaos/evil. They are essentially religious judges and warriors who are to keep the people of God clean and righteous so that God’s wrath will not fall upon them.

Moses is the highest authority over the priests. He speaks directly with God, many times with Aaron as well. In fact, Moses and Aaron are seen as a pair in Numbers because they both fill a single role together as prophet and high priest. When Moses’ authority is attacked, God views it as an attack upon His own authority and the people are severely disciplined for it, including other leaders like Miriam or Korah. This authority is transferred to Joshua toward the end of the book, “so that the people will not be like sheep without a shepherd” (27:17). It is the priests who are doing the will of Moses, therefore, who have his authority, and the book very clearly teaches that to rebel against Moses is to rebel against God.

Ethics: What the book ends up teaching, therefore, is that God cannot be approached without the specific leaders/mediators He has established. No one can just enter into His presence, and no one can take the authority to speak for Him or mediate for Him except the ones to whom it has been given. When the people are going to be consumed due to their sin, the mediators intercede in the book so that they are not destroyed.

To speak against these leaders, or to complain about their leadership, is to speak against God and against His leadership, and hence, it is met with God’s wrath. Order and harmony with God will only come to God’s community when the leaders are mediating for God’s people by maintaining the ministry of cleansing them from impurities, disciplining members of the community when they are in sin, praying on their behalf, and expelling what is unclean from the covenant community. If the priests do not do this, the people will perish.

Likewise, if the people reject God’s leaders, and wish to lead themselves, they will perish. They will be taken by their enemies either by sin or conquest. It is imperative, therefore, for God’s people to place their trust in God’s leaders as their mediators (both Moses and the priests who carry out God’s instructions through him). 

Allegorically speaking, Moses and Aaron represent Christ as the primary Mediator of God’s people, and the priests represent the elders in the New Testament who are commanded to perform the same functions as the priests in the OT. We may also say that the tribes/tribal leaders represent households that are to conduct themselves under the authority of Christ and the elders of His Church.

Biblical Theology III: Leviticus

Leviticus continues the teaching of Exodus in revealing God’s character, how He must be worshiped, and who can, and cannot, have a relationship with God as a member of His kingdom. The book is filled with the daily rituals of the people and priests concerning everything from what they plant and eat to what they do when bodily fluids get on them or in the camp. Holy days are meant to remember the days when God delivered them from death; and the sacrifices are set in place to cleanse them from ritual impurity in order to preserve them as holy in light of God’s deliverance of them. All of these rituals, holy days, sacrifices, etc. are meant to communicate the theology and ethics of the book through vivid, living pictures. If Exodus is the Old Testament book of justification, Leviticus is the Old Testament book of sanctification.

Theology: The book teaches that God is Holy (distinct from other gods), and therefore, His people must be holy as well (distinct from other people). Those who are not clean cannot enter His presence and be a part of His kingdom. Those who would be a part of His kingdom must be cleansed and remain clean. This will differentiate them from the world as God is differentiated from it in His purity. His wrath is upon the unclean/unholy and His favor and acceptance upon the clean/holy. “'By those who come near Me I will be treated as holy, And before all the people I will be honored'” (Lev 10:3). The book sets up spheres of life and holiness represented by the camp, the tabernacle/holy place, and the holiest place within the tabernacle, which is where God’s presence is represented by the ark containing the covenant, i.e., the law. Outside the camp is the wilderness, which represents disorder/chaos/death, and everything unclean is sent there. Once made clean by virtue of being healed or bathed, but always accompanied by an animal sacrifice, the individual must be declared clean by a priest, and then may reenter the camp, which represents the world of the living and life itself in the presence of God. God at the center represents that God is life Himself, and the closer one gets to Him, the closer to life one gets. The further from Him one gets, the further from life he is.

Ethics: As God is holy, His people are to be holy (19:2; 20:7, 26), and to treat God as holy. To treat God as holy is to obey His commands in their specific details, not wavering from them or improvising in any way. The purpose of the rituals that keep everything meticulously separated is to teach that the moral ideas of the culture are not to be blended with God’s commands. His people are to refrain completely from those cultural practices that are in conflict with what God has commanded. The central focus of this holiness is in the area of sexuality. As God made humans to take upon the role of the image in their being creational, Leviticus 18, which is the highlighted portion of the Holiness Code in the book, God commands His people to be creational in their sexuality as evidence that they follow the Creator, as opposed to the pagans who evidence their judgment in their sexuality, and were kicked out the of the land for it. The creation principle in Chapter 18 surrounds children and how the sexual activity of two people will effect a possible child that is either not born due to the nature of the anti-creational act, or is killed shortly after being conceived or born due to the act. Like the pictures presented by the spheres of the camp and the identification of what is clean and unclean, those who are morally unclean are removed from the camp (i.e., “cut off from the people”) and enter into the land of death via execution. The rest of the code reaffirms that there is to be no mixture of pagan practices with the religion of YHWH, and to do so is to reject YHWH, and therefore, to reject life itself. 

Biblical Theology II: Exodus

The Book of Exodus is also a foundational book that ties God’s work in creation to the creation of God’s people. The book begins to teach that enslavement to chaos can only be broken when one comes to know YHWH as his God.

Theology: The book answers the fundamental question, “Who is YHWH, and how is He known?”

The beginning chapters of the book repeat the theme that essentially asks the question, “Who is YHWH?” Both Moses asks for himself, then for the Israelites, then Pharaoh proclaims that he does not know who YHWH is. The rest of the book tells us how YHWH has made Himself known. He first makes Himself known through identifying Himself as the God of Genesis by stating that He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He, then, makes Himself known through His mighty deeds, which are the plagues that release Israel from their slavery. Finally, the book teaches that God is ultimately known through the special revelation of the law given at Sinai. The book, then, teaches that YHWH has made Himself known as the Creator and God of the patriarchs, who delivers His people, and is known through the law that He has given, revealing not only His might and His benevolence, but also His character.

This law is ultimately delivered to the Israelites by a mediator, as they cannot receive YHWH directly out of their fear of Him; and that mediator also functions to pray on their behalf. The messianic typology that points to Jesus is thus laid out in the book.

Ethics: Since God has revealed Himself through this salvific event and what He has taught His people through the law, to seek to worship and know Him through some other means is an act of rejecting YHWH, not accepting Him in an alternate way. Hence, the attempt to worship Him through an idol as His representative is met with absolute rejection. God will not be known through any other means except that by which He has made Himself known. Hence, God’s people are to know Him, and continue their work of joining Him in creating through the trajectories He has revealed in His Word.

Biblical Theology I: Genesis

Genesis is foundational in three main respects. It provides, not only the historical foundation for the world and God’s people; but also the theological and ethical foundations for the rest of the Bible. It, therefore, provides an all-encompassing grid through which all of the theology and ethics the Bible teaches should be understood.

Theology: The theological question being answered: “If God is good, and God is all powerful, why does evil/chaos still exist in the created world?”

The opening two chapters of Genesis provide a foundation for the book’s theology. Genesis 1 and 2 contrast one another in that Genesis 1 provides the divine perspective of creation and Genesis 2 provides the human perspective. From the divine perspective, God sees and declares all to be ordered and good. Chaos/evil is eradicated, and God rules from His throne over a finished creation. From the human perspective, however, creation (i.e., the ordering and subjugation of chaos/evil) is still taking place.

Hence, Genesis answers the above question by saying that the Good good, who is all powerful, is the Creator, and although He can see the end work and declare it good, creation is still in the process of being ordered, and chaos is still, therefore, in the process of being subjugated.

The book ends with the statement that indicates that God does all of these things for good/order, which is the ultimate preservation of many lives. Creation is seen as the filling up of the earth with His human images, i.e., His covenant people; and this work is still in the process of being completed through, not despite of, the chaos/evil that is in the world. Hence, God’s promises of people and land, given to the patriarchs, is fulfilled through the chaos they undergo, and not despite of it.

This is all to show that God is, in fact, dealing with evil, but in a way that humans may not appreciate since they must endure chaos in order to be created through it.

Ethics: The ethics of Genesis stem from its theology. If God is Creator, and His primary work in the world right now is creation, then what are His human images to do in the world? This question is answered by the very theology Genesis teaches. If God’s goal is to bring the world and His people to an ordered state, which is described as being fruitful in order to multiply, multiplying in order to fill up the earth, fill up the earth in order to subdue it, and subdue it in order to rule over it, then the role of the image is to join God in His work toward what Genesis considers “good.” The word “good” refers to a state of creation/order. God’s people are to work toward God’s goal in creation, which is to be creational with Him in all of their activities. To work toward the filling up of the earth with God’s human images in any given act is to do good by joining God in His creational work. To work against that goal in any given act is to do evil and reject the role of the image.

Hence, those who work toward it are called His image, and are His covenant people. Those who work against it are said to be wicked, agents of chaos, and they are destroyed/removed as chaos is removed by God as an act of creation. The genealogies in Chapters 4 and 5 lay this contrast out, and the contrast plays out in the rest of the book, and even in the rest of the Bible.

Biblical Theology Series

I'm doing a theological overview of the individual biblical books right now, and I thought I would post the one-page summaries of the books as I go along. We're in Samuel now, so I will post all of the summaries up to the book, and then continue to do so as we go along. I hope these are helpful in understanding the context for reading these books and the individual verses found within that are often interpreted apart from a contextual consideration of the authorial intent of a book in terms of their theology and ethics.