Bible Difficulties (58 page)

The triune makeup of man is brought out even more clearly in the New Testament. In 1

Thessalonians 5:23 Paul expresses this prayer for his readers: "Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit [
pneuma = ruah
] and soul

[
psyche = nepes
] and body [
soma = basar
] be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ..." (NASB). Quite clearly the spirit and the soul are differentiated here as distinct elements of the human psyche, and man is represented as triune in nature. This is exactly what we should expect, if man was really created in the image of the Triune God (Gen. 1:26-27).

A clear distinction between
pneuma
and
psyche
is unquestionably implied by 1

Corinthians 2:14-15, which defines the difference between a believer who is dominated by the
pneuma
(the
pneumatikos
, "spiritual man") and the once-born "natural" man (the one dominated by his egoistic
psyche
): "But a natural [
psychikos
] man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually [
pneumatikos
] appraised" (NASB).

Similarly, in 1 Corinthians 15:44,46, the same distinction is maintained in reference to the transformation from a merely physical body (prior to death and resurrection) and a spiritual body (i.e., a body especially adapted to the needs and desires of the glorified spirit of the redeemed believer): "It is sown a natural [
psychikon
] body, it is raised a spiritual [
pneumatikon
] body" (NASB). In v.46 we read, "However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural; then the spiritual..." (NASB). Quite clearly then, the spirit is distinct from the soul, or else these verses add up to tautological nonsense. We therefore conclude that man is not dichotomic (to use the technical theological term) but trichotomic. (The fullest discussion of this question may be found in Franz Delitzsch,
A system of Biblical
Psychology
, reprint ed. [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1966].)

260

Song of Solomon

How did such a book as Song of Solomon get to be part of the Bible?

There is no denying that the Song of Solomon (or Song of Songs, or Canticles, as it is variously called) is a very different book from the rest of the Bible. Its theme is not doctrine but inner feeling--that most exciting and uplifting of all emotions, the emotion of love. Love is that which knits two souls together into a larger unity, an organic partnership that responds to and reflects the love of God for His children and the love of Christ for His chosen bride, the church. The importance of Canticles is that it is a book about love, especially love between husband and wife as a paradigm of the love between the Savior and His redeemed people.

Many times this sacred, typical character of marriage is referred to in Scripture. In Isaiah 54:4-6 the Lord addresses His sinful, straying, chastened people Israel in terms of an aggrieved but graciously forgiving husband: "Fear not for you will not be put to shame...and the reproach of your widowhood [i.e., the period of alienation from Yahweh during the Babylonian exile] you will remember no more. For your husband is your Maker, whose name is Yahweh of hosts; and your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel....For Yahweh has called you, like a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit, even like a wife of one's youth when she is rejected."

In other words, the deep, emotional commitment of a good husband toward the wife he adores bears a typical relationship (albeit a faint and finite one) to the inexhaustible and eternal love that God has toward His redeemed (cf. Eph. 3:18-19). This is spelled out most fully in the classic passage from Ephesians 5:21-27 (NIV): "Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.... Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless" (NIV).

From this perspective, then, we turn to the Song of Solomon and it's lyric, emotional imagery, which is constructed like some mood-creating symphony, written by a musical genius and performed by a magnificent orchestra. It is a heart-stirring account of Solomon's romance with a humble but surpassingly beautiful girl from the country, perhaps from Shunem up in the territory of Issachar (the Septuagint renders "Shulamite"

in Song of Songs 6:13 as
Sounamitis
, "Shunemite"). It may be that Solomon originally wooed her in the garb of a shepherd and thus came to know her as she was tending her sheep in an adjacent field.

It is quite possible that in the earlier part of his reign, at least, Solomon took time off from his official duties to enjoy a vacation in the country (apparently in an estate at Baal-hamon-- Song of Songs 8:11). His preference was for the tending of sheep, vines, and 261

flowers, rather than golfing, fishing, boating, or tennis (such as our modern executives enjoy). So he spent a few weeks away from Jerusalem incognito. (Some scholars prefer to introduce some local swain who was a shepherd by profession and who became a successful rival to the king for the girl's affections; but this is very hard to sustain from the wording of the text itself, and it is most unlikely that Solomon, the apparent author of this production, would have written up this episode as a monument to his own defeat in love.)

As he picked up an acquaintance with this charming young shepherdess, Solomon found himself unexpectedly falling in love; and she apparently became deeply enamored of him before she discovered his true identity. As he secured her hand in marriage, he took her off with him to Jerusalem and the splendors of his court. There she was faced with the sixty wives and eighty concubines who already made up his harem, and in these palace surroundings she felt abashed at the unfashionable deep tan she had picked up from her outdoor life, to which she had been compelled by her own brothers (Song of Songs 1:6).

The memoir Solomon wrote of this deeply meaningful episode in his life, in which he experienced the most authentic relationship of love he was ever to know, has been recorded for us in an amazingly beautiful way by this consummately gifted poet.

Although through his foolish self-indulgence this misguided polygamist failed to live up to the exalted insights to which this lovely girl had brought him, he gave us an unsurpassable expression to the glory of a love that reflects the incomparable love of God. "Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it away. If one were to give all the wealth of his house for love, it would be utterly scorned" (8:7, NIV).

The poet has not followed a strict logical or chronological order in the way he has brought his material together; rather, there is an emotional stream-of-consciousness technique throughout these eight chapters. This greatly resembles the recurrent flashback technique followed by certain television shows of our own day. But if the basic guidelines and presuppositions we have suggested above are borne in mind, the various components come together in a coherent and convincing way. Try it again, dear reader, maybe you will like it! And please bear in mind, as you go through passages like Song of Songs 4:1-5 and Song of Songs 7:1-9, that a beautiful woman who loves the Lord is God's supreme masterpiece of artistry; and external though that beauty may be, it serves as a fitting symbol of the spiritual loveliness of the temple of the Lord to which the body of every true believer has been transformed as a habitation of the Holy Spirit of God. The woman's viewpoint finds expression equally eloquent in Song of Songs 2:3-6 and 5:10-16--although a male reader may not find himself emotionally attuned to respond to those passages as well as a woman can.

The Song of Solomon serves as a reminder to all believers that God rejoices in His handiwork and knows how to invest it with thrilling beauty that deserves a full and proper appreciation. Yet along with this warm response to all that God has made beautiful--whether landscape, sky, sea, the magnificent trees, gorgeous flowers, or the transient charms of human loveliness, we must never forget to give all the glory and 262

worship to the One who fashioned them so. We must always remember to exalt the Creator above all His creation and above all His creatures.

263

Isaiah

What solid evidence is there for the unity of
Isaiah?

Isaiah 6:11-13 records a revelation made by God to Isaiah at the beginning of his prophetic ministry (ca. 739 B.C.). After he heard God's call and had been commissioned to preach to a people who would only harden their hearts against the truth, he asked the Lord with troubled heart, "Lord, how long?" Then Yahweh answered him, "Until cities are devastated and without inhabitant, houses are without people, and the land is utterly desolate, the LORD has removed men far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land" (NASB). Here we have a clear prediction of the total devastation and depopulation of Judah meted out by Nebuchadnezzar in 587 B.C., over 150 years later!

This is of extreme importance as evidence, since all scholars of every viewpoint admit that Isaiah 6 is an authentic work of the eighth-century Isaiah.

Continuing on in v.13, we read of the return of a remnant of the exiles back to the land of Israel, to found a new commonwealth from which "a holy seed" (
zerà qodes
) will arise. Literally translated, v.13 says, "But [there will] still be a tenth-part in it [i.e., the exiled people], and it will return [
wesabah
] and it will be for burning [i.e., subjected to fiery trials], like a terebinth or like an oak, which in [their] felling [still have] a root-stump in them, a holy seed [shall be] its root-stump." In other words, although the parent tree was hewn down by the Chaldean conquest and deportation in 587, yet from around the base of the stump a new sucker would spring up that would some day grow into a strong and vigorous tree. That is to say, the Fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of Solomon's temple would not really mean the end for God's people. After their exile, they would return and establish a new state for God and prepare the way for the Holy Seed.

Crucial to this interpretation is the translation of
wesabah
, which is often construed to have mere adverbial force, tantamount to "again" (i.e., "and it will again be subject to burning"). But in this case we have proof positive that Isaiah himself did not so interpret it. On the contrary, he must have understood it as meaning "It shall return" (from the verb
sub
, "to return"). We know this because of the name he gave to his firstborn son, Shear-jashub, mentioned just three verses later. That name means "a remnant will return," as all scholars admit. Where did Isaiah learn about an exile from which the future people of Israel would return? From 6:13! The same verb
sub
is used both in 6:13 and in 7:3. This leaves no ground for doubt, then, that back in 739 B.C. Isaiah the prophet knew by revelation what was going to happen in 587 B.C., when Jerusalem fell, and also what would happen in 537 B.C., when the exiles would return from Babylon to the Holy Land by permission of King Cyrus of Persia--an event that was not to occur until more two hundred years later.

Isaiah 6:13 therefore destroys the basic premise of the entire Deutero-Isaiah theory, which assumes that it would be impossible for an eighth-century Hebrew prophet to foretell or even foreknow the events of 587 and 539-537 B.C. (the Fall of Babylon and the return of the first settlers to Jerusalem). It was on this premise that J.C. Doederlein 264

(1745-92) built his entire argument and based his case for some unknown author living quite near to 539 B.C., who began his prophetic composition with chapter 40 (with its awareness that the Babylonian exile has taken place and that there is now a prospect of their return to Palestine) and ending with chapter 66.

In other words, Doederlein assumed that no genuine predictive prophecy was possible, and that no eighth-century prophet could have seen that far into the future. His theory was built on antisupernatural presuppositions, and so also were the elaborations of this theory by J.G. Eichhorn (ca. 1790), H.F.W. Gesenius (ca. 1825), E.F.K. Rosenmueller (ca.

1830), and Bernhard Duhm (ca. 1890)--who opted for three Isaiahs instead of just two.

Every one of them assumed the impossibility of genuine prophecy by a personal God; therefore every apparent evidence of it had to be explained away as "prophecy after the fulfillment" (
vaticinium ex eventu
). But Isaiah 6:13 cannot be explained away as prediction concocted after the event since its time of composition was unquestionably in the 730s B.C.

Second, the internal evidence of Isaiah 40-66 speaks decisively against the possibility of post-exilic composition. Many of the same evils deplored and denounced by Isaiah 1 and Isaiah 5 are still prevalent in "Deutero-Isaiah." Compare Isaiah 1:15: "Yea, when you make many prayers, I will not hear [you]; your hands are full of blood" and 59:3, 7: "For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue has muttered perverseness....Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood." Compare also Isaiah 10:1-2 with Isaiah 59:4-9.

Moreover, there is a revolting hypocrisy that corrupts the religious life of the nation.

Compare 29:13: "Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men" and Isaiah 58:2,4: "Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as a nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinance of their God; they ask of me the ordinance of justice; they take delight in approaching to God....

Behold, ye fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness."