Nehemiah 4:1-23 or Lamentations 5:1-22

See the text and comments for October 29, one week ago.

Revelation 7:(4-8) 9-17

See the text and comments for October 29, one week ago.

Matthew 13:31-35

See the text and comments for October 29, one week ago.

Ezra 9:1-15

Mixed Marriages

9:1 After these things had been done, the officials approached me and said, "The people of Israel, the priests, and the Levites have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands with their abominations, from the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites. 2 For they have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and for their sons. Thus the holy seed has mixed itself with the peoples of the lands, and in this faithlessness the officials and leaders have led the way." 3 When I heard this, I tore my garment and my mantle, and pulled hair from my head and beard, and sat appalled. 4 Then all who trembled at the words of the God of Israel, because of the faithlessness of the returned exiles, gathered around me while I sat appalled until the evening sacrifice. (Ezra 9:1-4, NRSV)

In the time of Ezra’s leadership, it turns out that there is a crisis, because“men, including Jewish leaders, marry foreign women. To ensure survival as a small (see Ezra 9:8) minority in the midst of surrounding cultures, Ezra-Nehemiah advocates separatist policies” (Tamara Cohn Eskenazi, NOAB, 3^rd ed., on Ezra 9:1-15). “Thus the holy seed has mixed itself with the peoples of the lands, and in this faithlessness the officials and leaders have led the way” (Ezra 9:2). The rule of Deuteronomy 7:3-4 (cf. vv. 1-5) is thus violated. The resulting remedy, with mass divorces and the break-up of families (10:44) seems very harsh to modern people, but the community apparently felt that its identity was being threatened. In the complaint that the people “have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands with their abominations, from the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites” (Ezra 9:1),

The implication is that the planned second exodus is not being carried out with the same attention to purified peoples as the original Exodus. . . . To understand this action, we must think in terms of minority consciousness of perceived threat and the response to insulate themselves from threatening influences. Mal. 2:10-16 even suggests that some of the Jewish women were first abandoned so that the men could take on the foreign wives.” (Daniel L. Smith-Christopher, The Oxford Bible Commentary, 317, on Ezra 9:1-15)

Ezra's Prayer

5 At the evening sacrifice I got up from my fasting, with my garments and my mantle torn, and fell on my knees, spread out my hands to the LORD my God, 6 and said,

"O my God, I am too ashamed and embarrassed to lift my face to you, my God, for our iniquities have risen higher than our heads, and our guilt has mounted up to the heavens. 7 From the days of our ancestors to this day we have been deep in guilt, and for our iniquities we, our kings, and our priests have been handed over to the kings of the lands, to the sword, to captivity, to plundering, and to utter shame, as is now the case. 8 But now for a brief moment favor has been shown by the LORD our God, who has left us a remnant, and given us a stake in his holy place, in order that he may brighten our eyes and grant us a little sustenance in our slavery. 9 For we are slaves; yet our God has not forsaken us in our slavery, but has extended to us his steadfast love before the kings of Persia, to give us new life to set up the house of our God, to repair its ruins, and to give us a wall in Judea and Jerusalem.

10 "And now, our God, what shall we say after this? For we have forsaken your commandments, 11 which you commanded by your servants the prophets, saying, 'The land that you are entering to possess is a land unclean with the pollutions of the peoples of the lands, with their abominations. They have filled it from end to end with their uncleanness. 12 Therefore do not give your daughters to their sons, neither take their daughters for your sons, and never seek their peace or prosperity, so that you may be strong and eat the good of the land and leave it for an inheritance to your children forever.' 13 After all that has come upon us for our evil deeds and for our great guilt, seeing that you, our God, have punished us less than our iniquities deserved and have given us such a remnant as this, 14 shall we break your commandments again and intermarry with the peoples who practice these abominations? Would you not be angry with us until you destroy us without remnant or survivor? 15 O LORD, God of Israel, you are just, but we have escaped as a remnant, as is now the case. Here we are before you in our guilt, though no one can face you because of this." (Ezra 9:5-15, NRSV)

Although the problem of mixed marriages was first brought to Ezra’s attention by “the officials” (Ezra 9:1), he takes the lead in prayer of repentance . He acknowledges the repeated unfaithfulness “from the days of our ancestors to this day” which has recently led to punishment by “the sword, captivity, to plundering, and to utter shame” (v. 7). He acknowledges the LORD’s favor “for a brief moment” (v. 8), though “we are slaves” (v. 9). But it seems the pattern is repeating. “And now, our God, what shall we say after this? For we have forsaken your commandments” (v. 10). And the prayer specifies the problems of an unclean land (v. 11), the command not to “give your daughters to their sons, neither take their daughters for your sons” (v. 12). Ezra fears that God may “be angry with us until you destroy us without remnant or survivor” (v. 14).

or Ezra 6:1-22

The following text and comments are repeated here from Wednesday, October 26, 2005.

            Darius' Decree

6:1 Then King Darius made a decree, and they searched the archives where the documents were stored in Babylon. 2 But it was in Ecbatana, the capital in the province of Media, that a scroll was found on which this was written: "A record. 3 In the first year of his reign, King Cyrus issued a decree: Concerning the house of God at Jerusalem, let the house be rebuilt, the place where sacrifices are offered and burnt offerings are brought; its height shall be sixty cubits and its width sixty cubits, 4 with three courses of hewn stones and one course of timber; let the cost be paid from the royal treasury. 5 Moreover, let the gold and silver vessels of the house of God, which Nebuchadnezzar took out of the temple in Jerusalem and brought to Babylon, be restored and brought back to the temple in Jerusalem, each to its place; you shall put them in the house of God."

6 "Now you, Tattenai, governor of the province Beyond the River, Shethar-bozenai, and you, their associates, the envoys in the province Beyond the River, keep away; 7 let the work on this house of God alone; let the governor of the Jews and the elders of the Jews rebuild this house of God on its site. 8 Moreover I make a decree regarding what you shall do for these elders of the Jews for the rebuilding of this house of God: the cost is to be paid to these people, in full and without delay, from the royal revenue, the tribute of the province Beyond the River. 9 Whatever is needed-young bulls, rams, or sheep for burnt offerings to the God of heaven, wheat, salt, wine, or oil, as the priests in Jerusalem require-let that be given to them day by day without fail, 10 so that they may offer pleasing sacrifices to the God of heaven, and pray for the life of the king and his children. 11 Furthermore I decree that if anyone alters this edict, a beam shall be pulled out of the house of the perpetrator, who then shall be impaled on it. The house shall be made a dunghill. 12 May the God who has established his name there overthrow any king or people that shall put forth a hand to alter this, or to destroy this house of God in Jerusalem. I, Darius, make a decree; let it be done with all diligence."

            Completion and Dedication of the Temple

13 Then, according to the word sent by King Darius, Tattenai, the governor of the province Beyond the River, Shethar-bozenai, and their associates did with all diligence what King Darius had ordered. 14 So the elders of the Jews built and prospered, through the prophesying of the prophet Haggai and Zechariah son of Iddo. They finished their building by command of the God of Israel and by decree of Cyrus, Darius, and King Artaxerxes of Persia; 15 and this house was finished on the third day of the month of Adar, in the sixth year of the reign of King Darius.

16 The people of Israel, the priests and the Levites, and the rest of the returned exiles, celebrated the dedication of this house of God with joy. 17 They offered at the dedication of this house of God one hundred bulls, two hundred rams, four hundred lambs, and as a sin offering for all Israel, twelve male goats, according to the number of the tribes of Israel. 18 Then they set the priests in their divisions and the Levites in their courses for the service of God at Jerusalem, as it is written in the book of Moses.

            Passover (Cp Deut 16.1-8)

19 On the fourteenth day of the first month the returned exiles kept the passover. 20 For both the priests and the Levites had purified themselves; all of them were clean. So they killed the passover lamb for all the returned exiles, for their fellow priests, and for themselves. 21 It was eaten by the people of Israel who had returned from exile, and also by all who had joined them and separated themselves from the pollutions of the nations of the land to worship the LORD, the God of Israel. 22 With joy they celebrated the festival of unleavened bread seven days; for the LORD had made them joyful, and had turned the heart of the king of Assyria to them, so that he aided them in the work on the house of God, the God of Israel. (Ezra 6:1-22, NRSV)

King Darius directs that a search be made (Ezra 6:1) to find the decree of Cyrus concerning the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem (v. 3), and so he sends a letter to Tattenai, "governor of the province Beyond the River" (vv. 6-12) directing him to not merely permit the Jews to rebuild the temple but to help them with the costs and supplies, "whatever is needed (v. 9), including the animals for sacrifice. So the temple is finished in 516 B.C. (vv. 14-15, the "sixth year of the reign of King Darius"). The people celebrated the dedication of the temple (vv. 16-18) and soon (Adar to Nissan) the Passover (vv. 19-22).

Revelation 17:1-14

The Great Whore and the Beast

17:1 Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, "Come, I will show you the judgment of the great whore who is seated on many waters, 2 with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and with the wine of whose fornication the inhabitants of the earth have become drunk." 3 So he carried me away in the spirit into a wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns. 4 The woman was clothed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her fornication; 5 and on her forehead was written a name, a mystery: "Babylon the great, mother of whores and of earth's abominations." 6 And I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood of the witnesses to Jesus.

When I saw her, I was greatly amazed. 7 But the angel said to me, "Why are you so amazed? I will tell you the mystery of the woman, and of the beast with seven heads and ten horns that carries her. 8 The beast that you saw was, and is not, and is about to ascend from the bottomless pit and go to destruction. And the inhabitants of the earth, whose names have not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, will be amazed when they see the beast, because it was and is not and is to come.

9 "This calls for a mind that has wisdom: the seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman is seated; also, they are seven kings, 10 of whom five have fallen, one is living, and the other has not yet come; and when he comes, he must remain only a little while. 11 As for the beast that was and is not, it is an eighth but it belongs to the seven, and it goes to destruction. 12 And the ten horns that you saw are ten kings who have not yet received a kingdom, but they are to receive authority as kings for one hour, together with the beast. 13 These are united in yielding their power and authority to the beast; 14 they will make war on the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them, for he is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those with him are called and chosen and faithful." (Revelation 17:1-14, NRSV)

Following an Old Testament pattern of describing godless cities, John pictures Rome as "the great whore" (Rev. 17:1; D. E. Aune, Harper-Collins Study Bible, & B.M. Metzger, NOAB, 2^rd ed.). The scarlet beast represents the Roman Empire (v. 3) and then "the Emperor Nero, commonly expected to return to life and power (v. 11)” (Metzger, on v. 8). He leads his empire in war against the Lamb (vv. 12-14), but the fall of Babylon (Rome) is announced (predicted) by a dirge which echoes the taunts Isaiah and other Old Testament prophets used against foreign oppressors (e.g., Isaiah, chaps. 23-24; 47, Metzger).

The following is from some comments on Revelation 17:6b-18 by Richard Bauckham (The Oxford Bible Commentary, p. 1300):

Revelation takes up the popular expectation that the emperor Nero, thought not to be dead but to have fled secretly east to the Parthian empire, would return, with allies from the east, to wreak vengeance on Rome. This expectation, kept alive by a series of pretenders claiming to be the returning Nero, was a matter of eager hope for many in the eastern part of the Roman empire, who saw it as the resurgence of the power of the east against the west. The expected returning Nero was thus a kind of messianic figure. By alluding to this myth, Rev. 17 can take in a different direction the Christological parody which was a feature of the portrayal of the beast in ch. 13. Whereas there the healing of the wound the Roman power suffered at the death of Nero parodies the resurrection of Jesus, here the return of Nero parodies the parousia of Jesus. Thus in v. 8 the beast is twice described in terms which echo one of Revelation’s key designations for God: ‘the one who was and is and is to come’ (1:4-8). The description of the beast differs in that the middle term is negative: ‘is not’. Unlike God, the beast is not eternal.

“The beast that you saw was, and is not, and is about to ascend from the bottomless pit and go to destruction. And the inhabitants of the earth, whose names have not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, will be amazed when they see the beast, because it was and is not and is to come” (Rev. 17:8). The beast and his cohorts, the “ten horns,” the “kings for one hour” (v. 12), “will make war on the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them, for he is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those with him are called and chosen and faithful” (v. 14).

Matthew 14:22-36

At this point in a parallel version of the Gospels such as Aland’s (see the table), it is remarkable to find parallel versions of events in Matthew, Mark and John, but not in Luke. In general, the narratives Jesus’ public ministry in Mark and Luke run parallel up to and including the Feeding of the Five Thousand (Mk. 1:14-6:44 and Lk. 4:14-9:17) and, after a gap in Luke, the pattern continues (Mk. 8:27-9:41 and Lk. 9:18-50; Mk. 10:13 to the the Passion Narrative and Lk. 18:15 to the Passion Narrative). There are, of course, a number of incidental differences within these overall narratives, but two significant variations in the pattern stand out. The first has been called Luke’s major omission: on the assumption that Mark is one of his sources, he omits Mark 6:45-8:26, beginning with the account of Jesus Walking on the Water (Mk. 6:45-52). The second is Luke’s “Travel Narrative,” the account of Jesus final journey from Galilee to Jerusalem (Lk. 9:51-18:14).

John, however, who often goes his own way, presents a sequence of events at this point that has been compared to the Synoptic tradition, that is, a block of material with a common sequence is shared by the Mark-Matthew tradition (or the “pre-Markan” tradition, if you will) and the Johannine tradition. Vincent Taylor says of Mark’s account of “the Landing at Gennesaret” (Mk. 6:53-56):

This section is a narrative composed by Mark on the basis of tradition. [In other words, he did not find it in its present form in one of his sources.] In this respect it resembles iii. 7-12. Cf. Dibelius, 224; Bultmann, 366. It is not, however, a purely literary and imaginative sketch. There are good reasons for this view. The connexion with the preceding story of the Crossing is good, and there is reason to believe that the Feeding of the Five Thousand, the Crossing, and the Landing, attested twice over by Mark (vi. 30-56 and viii. 1-10) and by John (vi. 1-25), formed a fixed series in the earliest tradition. (Vincent Taylor, The Gospel According To St. Mark, 1959, p.331 on Mk. 6:53-56; cf. pp. 628-632)

For John, these events essentially bring the period of Jesus’ Galilean ministry to a close–or at least, most of the activity beginning with John chapter 7 (as some of the earlier material in chapters 2, 3 and 5 as well) is located in Judea. The note about Jesus’ withdrawal when “they were about to come and take him by force to make him king” (Jn. 6:15) is one indication of this transition.

As for the Walking on the Water miracle, if we believe that “all things came into being through him [i.e. the Logos = Jesus]” (Jn. 1:3), that he is one with the Father, of whom the Psalmist said:

When the waters saw you, O God,

When the waters saw you, they were afraid;

The very deep trembled.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Your way was through the sea,

Your path, through the mighty waters;

Yet your footprints were unseen. (Ps. 77:16, 19, NRSV)

why can’t we believe that Jesus really did walk on water? But there are respectable and responsible scholars who are generally traditional and “conservative” in their approach to controversial issues of biblical criticism who nevertheless give consideration to other explanations. Vincent Taylor says:

For the modern reader the point of difficulty is the walking on the water. A not negligible objection is the fact that it cannot be said that the intervention of Jesus meets a desperate need. The disciples are distressed by the wind, but they are not in jeopardy of their lives. . . . Most difficult of all is the objection that a docetic view of the person of Christ appears to be implied. (op. cit., 326-327, on Mk. 5:45-52).

William Barclay, whose conclusion is less decisive against the miracle, suggests that the key phrase in Matthew 14:25, epi tēn thalassan, can equally mean either “over the sea” or “towards the sea,” and that epi tēs thalassēs (v. 26), “on the sea” is used in John 21:1 for “at the sea,” that is, “by the seashore, of Tiberias” (The Gospel of Matthew, Daily Study Bible, rev. ed., 1975, p. 105 on Mt. 14:22-27), which he interprets as “a real difficulty in knowing what happened,” since “there are two perfectly possible interpretations of this passage. He adds:

But, whatever interpretation of the Greek we choose, the significance is perfectly clear. In the hour of the disciples’ need Jesus came to them. When the wind was contrary and life was a struggle, Jesus was there to help. No sooner had a need arisen, than Jesus was there to help.

In life the wind is often contrary. There are times when we are up against it and life is a desperate struggle with ourselves, with our circumstances, with our temptations, with our sorrows, with our decisions. At such a time no man need struggle alone, for Jesus comes to him across the storms of life, with hand stretched out to save, and with his calm clear voice bidding us take heart and have no fear. (Barclay, op. cit., pp. 105-106)

Only Matthew includes the part about Peter stepping out of the boat to come to Jesus. But Jesus’ words to him come to us as well, especially when we face challenges that seem insurmountable in human terms. “Come. . . . You of little faith, why did you doubt” (Mt:14:29, 31).

Ronald D. Worden, Ph.D.

rdworden@hgst.edu

rworden@houston.rr.com