Bible Difficulties (66 page)

In retrospect, therefore, Hosea interpreted God's encouragement to him to enter into this unhappy match as: directive at the very start: "Go, take to yourself a wife of harlotry"

(Hosea 1:2, NASB), even though the Lord may not have used such shocking terms in His original response to Hosea's prayer concerning this attractive girl with whom he had fallen in love. God knew very well what was in her heart; yet He said nothing to warn or dissuade Hosea before he married her. This amounted to the language of Hosea 1:2 in the light of God's foreknowledge and His overriding purpose in allowing this unhappy marriage to take place. The tragedy of Hosea was to serve as a parable of the tragedy of God's marriage to Israel. No more eloquent illustration of this could be found than that of the infidelity of Gomer to her godly husband.

298

Is there a contradiction between Hosea 8:13 ("Ephraim will return to Egypt") and
Hosea 11:5 ("They will not return to Egypt")?

Hosea 11:5 states in full: "They [i.e., Israel or Ephraim; cf. Hosea 11:1-2] will not return to the land of Egypt; but Assyria--he will be their king, because they refused to return to Me" (NASB). This passage reaffirms that the tribes of Israel generally, and the Northern Kingdom headed up by the tribe of Ephraim in particular, will not be driven back to Egypt as a nation of enslaved exiles. This reiterates the promise of Deuteronomy 17:16:

"Moreover, he [the future king of Israel] shall not multiply horses for himself, nor shall he cause the people to return to Egypt to multiply horses, since Yahweh has said to you,

`You shall never again return that way.'" Deuteronomy 17:16 suggests, however, that developing a large force of chariotry and relying on this type of armament rather than on the Lord's deliverance would lead to an Egyptian attitude of materialism and pride. In that sense such a king, as Solomon turned out to be (cf. 1 Kings 4:26), would in effect be turning the people back to Egypt on that spiritual level of materialistic arrogance.

It is surely in this figurative sense that Hosea intends 8:11-13: "Since Ephraim has multiplied altars for sin....As for My sacrificial gifts, they sacrifice the flesh and eat it, but Yahweh has taken no delight in them. Now He will remember their iniquity, and punish them for their sins; they will return to Egypt." While it is true that taken by itself this last clause might amount to a threat of actual deportation to Egypt, it seems more harmonious with the context to understand this as figurative and translate the verb
yasubu
as "they are returning"--which is legitimate for the Hebrew imperfect tense (i.e., an imperfect indicates noncomplete action, and this may have either a future reference or a present reference--as here--depending on the context). In other words, they are becoming spiritually Egyptian-pagan in their attitude toward God as they engage in sacrifice. Rather than coming to Him with full repentance for sin, with full trust in God's grace, and with a sincere purpose to do His will, they come to God's altar to buy Him off or earn His favor-

-as any heathen would do to his god. (Another striking example of using the name of a country or city as a symbol of wickedness, rather than an actual geographical location, is found in Isa. 1:9-10: "Hear the word of the LORD, you rulers of Sodom"--long after the historical Sodom had ceased to exist.)

299

Joel

Does not Joel's mention of the "Greeks" (3:6) indicate the late fourth century as the
earliest possible date for the composition of the book?

Joel 3:6 reads: "You [Phoenicians and Philistines] sold the sons of Judah and Jerusalem to the Greeks [
Yewanim
] in order to remove them far from their territory" (NASB). The very wording of this verse precludes dating the composition of Joel at any time subsequent to the conquest of Asia by Alexander the Great. The Greeks are referred to here as a people living "far from the territory" of Judah, and probably also far from the territory of the Phoenician and Philistine slave-raiders themselves, who swooped down on defenseless Judean towns in order to sell the captives on slave markets very far from Canaanite territory. But after Alexander's conquest the Greeks were very close at hand. In fact, they were in full control of the government of Phoenicia, Israel, and Philistia, and began to carry on all the administration in the Greek language. Therefore Joel must have been composed while the Greeks were still remote from the Near East.

The Greeks already came to public notice, of course, after the collapse of Xerxes'

attempted conquest of Greece in 480-479 B.C. But Greek coins are found in Palestinian hoards from as early as the late sixth-century issues of Peisistratus. Greek mercenaries or adventurers served in the court and army of the Babylonians as early as the Lesbian poet Alcaeus, who refers to his brother Antimenidas as engaged in such service. Alcaeus's date was the seventh century B.C. Neo-Babylonian ration tablets published by F. F. Weidner mentioned Ionian carpenters and shipbuilders as recipients of these rations. (Edwin Yamauchi's
Greece and Babylon
[Grand Rapids: Baker, 1967], p. 33, discusses the Cretan Linear B tablets dating from 1500 B.C., and gives full documentation for all these references, and also includes references to Egypt, Beirut, Tyre and Phoenicia, in general.) In the light of such data as these, it is nothing short of naive to suppose that a late ninth-century Joel could not have known anything about the Greeks, or to imagine that no slave-traders ever went to Greek ports with captives from Near Eastern slave raids.

300

Amos

Does the prophecy in Amos 8:11-12 refer only to Israel? If so, has it been fulfilled?

Are "the words of the Lord" (v.11) those that we have in the Bible today?

The ministry of Amos was to the apostate northern kingdom of Israel, near the close of the reign of King Jeroboam II (793-753 B.C.). The earlier portion of Amos 8 deals quite specifically with the approaching downfall of Samaria which took place about thirty-three years later, in 722 B.C., when the Assyrians destroyed both the city and the northern kingdom as an independent state.

Amos 8:11-12 reads: "`Behold, days are coming, declares the Lord Yahweh, when I will send a famine on the land, not a famine for bread or a thirst for water, but rather for hearing the words of Yahweh. And people will stagger from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east; they will go to and fro to seek the word of Yahweh, but they will not find it.'" This warning refers to the final decade of Israel's history (i.e., of the northern kingdom), during which the government, the clergy, and the people all sought in vain for some words of comfort and guidance from the Lord Yahweh but found none. (This parallels the final frantic efforts of King Saul just beforethe battle of Mount Gilboa, to receive some word from the Lord [cf. 1 Sam. 28:6]. Because of his stubborn rebellion and disobedience, Saul had forfeited all right to receive direction from God.) In this context "the words of the Lord" were not the Hebrew Scriptures that had thus far been revealed; rather, they were the words of special guidance the people were seeking from God in this coming crisis. The prophecy was, of course, fulfilled during the last tragic years when the kingdom of the Ten Tribes, founded by Jeroboam I back in 931

B.C., finally came to a close, never to rise again. The kingdom of Judah, however, continued for another 135 years under the Davidic dynasty and later experienced a rebirth after the Babylonian captivity.

It should be added, however, that the basic warning to northern Israel applies with continuing application to national apostasy wherever a nation or people puts aside the authority of Holy Scripture and lives in rebellion against God. Those who do not heed the teaching of the Bible find that they have no more access to God's mercy or favor and receive no comfort or deliverance from Him when disaster closes in on them.

"Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning," wrote Paul in Romans 15:4.

301

Obadiah

Which is the correct rendering of Obadiah 13?

The KJV renders this verse thus: "Thou [Edom] shouldest not have entered into the gate of my people in the day of their calamity; yea, thou shouldest not have looked on their affliction in the day of their calamity, nor have laid hands on their substance in the day of their calamity." Translated in this past subjunctive way, it seems to indicate that Edom participated in the storming and pillage of Jerusalem when it was finally and permanently destroyed (such is the implication of "shouldest not have entered...looked...laid hands on"). But when we turn to the Hebrew original, we find to our surprise that in each case the verb is in a normal negative-imperative construction (i.e., in the jussive mood with the negative
'al
). Therefore it should be translated "Do not enter...do not look upon...Do not stretch forth [hands] against." Similarly in v.14 the Hebrew says, "Do not stand...Do not deliver over..., etc. "So far as I am aware, KJV never translates
'al
with the jussive as a past subjunctive anywhere else in the entire Hebrew Scripture; and if it were not for incorrect rabbinical tradition, it would never have done so here.

The NASB has a good and faithful rendering of vv.13-14: "Do not enter the gate of My people in the day of their disaster. Yes you, do not gloat over their calamity in the day of their disaster. And do not loot their wealth in the day of their disaster. And do not stand at the fork of the road to cut down their fugitives; and do not imprison their survivors in the day of their distress." This straightforward rendition of the Hebrew text points to a situation that might arise in the future, similar to an attack on Jerusalem in the days gone by. It was probably in connection with the time of Jehoram son of Jehoshaphat (848-841

B.C.) that the Edomites joined with the Philistines and the Arabians who came up against Jerusalem and took it by storm (2 Chron. 21:16-17). Earlier in the reign of this ungodly king, Edom had revolted against Judean overlordship (2 Kings 8:20); and Jehoram had launched a punitive invasion in a determined effort to bring them back under his control.

Since he did not succeed in his purpose, despite the great damage he had inflicted on them, it was only to be expected that anti-Jewish feeling would have run high in Edom.

While the record in 2 Chronicles 21 does not include the name of Edom as a prime mover in the invasion against Jerusalem, it is quite conceivable that after the Philistines and South Arabians had captured Jerusalem, the Edomites joined with them for the dividing up of the spoil. It was this unduly cruel and vengeful attitude that called for God's stern rebuke, conveyed through Obadiah. The warning against ever doing that again in the future (a warning that of course implied that Jerusalem was still standing and capable of being thus victimized again by a combination of invaders) was no mere idle threat. As a matter of fact, in their later career the Edomites apparently did join with the Ammonites and Moabites in attacking Jerusalem as allies of Nebuchadnezzar in 588-587

(even though that episode is
not
the one referred to in Obadiah), and thus incurred the judicial wrath of the Lord. As a result He brought up the Nabatean Arabs against them in the sixth and fifth centuries, and the Edomites were completely driven out of the ancestral holdings in the region of Mount Seir. As the Nabateans established their kingdom in the 302

former Edomite territory, the Edomites themselves found refuge in the depopulated areas of southern Judea and converted them into "Idumea."

303

Jonah

Are there any good grounds for classifying Jonah and portions of Chronicles as
midrashic in nature?

A midrash is a special study and vividly imaginative expansion of some portion of Scripture. The term is derived from
daras
, which means "search," "investigate,"

particularly with a view to adding vividness and color to the narrative contained in the scriptural account itself. For example, the
Genesis Apocryphon
(composed in Aramaic ca.

200 B.C.) expands on Genesis 12:11-19, the account of Abraham and Sarah during their visit to Egypt, and supplies lengthy conversations and colorful detail concerning the striking physical attractiveness and charm of Sarah herself, the deadly danger to which Abraham was exposed because of her beauty, and the utter necessity of resorting to falsehood in order to save Abraham from assassination on the part of the agents of Pharaoh. The technique resembles that employed by a Sunday school teacher who wishes to make a Bible story come to life before a children's group. There is often a tendency to justify the motives and magnify the wisdom or prowess of the biblical hero whose exploits are described.

So far as Jonah is concerned, it should be pointed out that apart from the four chapters that compose the book so named, there is only one certain reference to the prophet Jonah in the rest of the Hebrew Bible, namely 2 Kings 14:25: "He [Jeroboam II] restored the border of Israel from the entrance of Hamath as far as the Sea of Arabah, according to the word of the LORD, the God of Israel, which He spoke through His servant Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet, who was of Gath-hepher" (NASB). There is virtually no connection between this verse and the subject matter of Jonah itself, except that it suggests a strong patriotic zeal on the part of the man of Gath-hepher. Insofar as a midrash furnishes an imaginative expansion and vivid elaboration of a passage in Scripture, Jonah cannot possibly be classified as midrashic; for it has nothing whatever to say about the wars of Jeroboam II. Only in the sense of vivid and exciting narration can the book be so classified--though in point of fact its style is far more pithy and succinct than is any genuine midrash. Yet if such thrilling adventure is to be regarded as midrash, this would apply equally well to Abraham's rescue of Lot from the Mesopotamian invaders as described in Genesis 14, or to the encounter between Christ and Satan in Matthew 4. Since elaborate visions are also part of the repertoire of midrash, the Book of Revelation in the New Testament might also have this label attached to it; although it is more usual to classify it as apocalyptic.