joy in the judgment

Today I've been studying Ecclesiastes 3:16-22 in preparation for an upcoming lesson.

In this passage, Qoholeth, the "Teacher" of Ecclesiastes (1:1), ruminates on the fate of human beings.  The teacher does not believe in life after death.  The teacher does not share the voice of Isaiah, that those who die in the Lord "shall live, their corpses shall rise" (Isa 26:19), nor the hope of Daniel that "many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to everlasting shame and contempt" (Dan 12:2).  Far from these rare affirmations of resurrection in the prophetic and apocalyptic literature of the Old Testament, the wisdom of Ecclesiastes is that human beings "are but animals" (3:18).  Humans and animals share the same "fate"; they are one in spirit (or breath) and flesh ("dust") (3:19).  Perhaps in rebuttal of a more optimistic view of human destiny, the teacher sees little reason to hope that "the human spirit goes upward and the spirit of animals goes downward" (3:21).  His summary is that "all go to one place" (3:20).

If the teacher's conclusion on the fate of humans and animals was that they die to "one" and the same "place", it was his vexation that "in the place of judgment, wickedness was there, and in the place of righteousness, wickedness was there" (3:16) that led him to that conclusion.  The troubling proposition of the one and same place of judgment (or "justice", Hebrew mishpat) and wickedness, of good and evil, of saints and sinners, leads him to "the one place" of humans and animals.  Because wickedness flourishes in the place of righteous judgment,  in death humans go to the same place as animals.  In the teacher's mind, the reality of the one place of wickedness and righteousness is somehow related to the one place of humans and animals.

What is the relation?  In the teacher's mind, the one place of death follows from the same place of justice and wickedness because "God will judge the righteous and the wicked" (3:17).  The teacher, far from having abandoned hope, clings to faith in the judgment of God.  The wicked's standing, not falling, in the place of judgment, would seem to be evidence of the injustice and impotence of the world's Creator--if but for one equally conspicuous phenomenon.  For, just as the teacher has observed that it is common for the wicked to sit in the judgment seat, lording it over the just, he has observed that all human beings--righteous and wicked--die with the animals.  Just as surely as, in death, "humans have no advantage over the animals", so the wicked, by fact of their humanity, have no advantage over the righteous. Because of the animals, the place of judgment is not in the end overrun by wickedness; the witness of the animals suggests that a righteous God will yet pull the wicked from their thrones.

Consequently, while the perspective of the teacher is not exactly resurrection hope, it is nonetheless biblical faith. If the teacher could not affirm as much as Isaiah and Daniel, Paul and, of course, Jesus (“I am the Resurrection”) (Jn 11:25), he does, like them, “entrust himself to the one who judges justly” (1 Pet 2:23). Such trust, moreover, commends a distinctive course of living. For Jesus, trusting God for judgment sealed his own perseverance in love that refuses to return violence for violence. Paul, confident in God's vindication of the righteous through the resurrection of Jesus, counseled the Corinthians to “be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord” (1 Cor 15:58). The teacher wrote that “there is nothing better than that all should enjoy their work, for that is their lot” (3:22). Unless we view enjoyment of the work that God has given us to do as evidence of selfishness (as though working for God should not bring us happiness), the teacher's course of action is a welcome contribution to the biblical canon. Joy in our living is not the sign of self-satisfaction but of our justification by faith in God.

-Joe

"Bring them out"

I had an eerie sense that I had stumbled upon the paradigmatic judgment text in the Bible. From explicit references--"it will be more tolerable for Sodom on that day"--to the implicit--"the shut door" of the parable of the ten virgins--the story of the impending destruction of Sodom appears to have set the standard of judgment in the theology of Jesus.

What is that standard? And how does the text, Genesis 19:1-14, construct a biblical theology of judgment?

Having dissected the text in Hebrew, I settled upon the verb translated as "bring out" as that which brings out the key meaning in the text. It makes three appearances, each in turn lending central interpretive credibility to the objects and subjects which surround it.

In the first instance, "bring out" is the action of "the men of Sodom", those who have gathered at the door of Lot seeking "the men" who have "come to [Lot] in the night." Specifically, "the men of Sodom" request that Lot "bring them out to us, so that we may know them." Lot, noting his special responsibility toward guests--those who have "come under the shelter of my roof" and for whom he has already prepared a meal, baked unleavened bread, and washed their feet--is determined to protect "the men" from the "men of Sodom" in whom he sees "evil" intent. In fact, so great is Lot's determination that he offers in place of "the men" his two daughters "who have never known a man" to the "men of Sodom"--"to them [the daughters] do as seems good in your eyes", Lot tells the "men of Sodom."

This determination to protect guests was a quality not lost upon my student-readers; in every location where we studied together, they viewed Lot as righteous for this impulse. As one man put it, "Lot was in Sodom, but Sodom was not in Lot."

On one hand, his pithy statement was true; Lot, a "resident alien", through his hospitality toward "the two angels" does indeed "play the judge" against the residents of Sodom whose only gesture toward these same "men" is pregnant with the lust that would bear rape. The text indeed--in this regard--means to contrast the hospitality of the sojourner toward guests with the indignity of those who sit in Sodom toward the same.

On quite the other hand, however, Sodom is too much in Lot, for he appears unconcerned with the well-being of his daughters: "I have two daughters who have never known a man. Let me bring them out to you, and to them do as seems good in your eyes."

Such a thing is not good in the eyes of the text. Whereas Lot would "bring out" his daughters, abandoning them to abuse, "the men inside the house" would have Lot "bring out from the place all who are his in the city"--"sons-in-law", "sons", yes, and "daughters."

We note then, the ascending pattern of the usages of "bring out" with its subjects and objects. Whereas the activity began only with malice--"the men of Sodom" demanding that "the men" be brought out to them--it ends only with mercy--"the men" of Yahweh pleading with Lot to "bring out" from the city even "the daughters" Lot would have "brought out" to the mercy of evil men.

An undercurrent of my own seminary education--to which, by the way, I am indebted for the Bible study method employed above--was suspicion, if not dismissiveness, of allegorical readings of scripture. And yet, upon having completed the round of teaching this text at the final location last February, I found myself unrelentingly, by the Spirit, in allegory's grasp. The text, perhaps more neatly than is often the case, had presented three clear "types", specifically, "three" men. The first "man" and the last "man" are more obvious in the text; indeed, if you have been reading this entry, you will have noted well "the men of Sodom" and "the men". The second is somewhat veiled, hidden, deeply embedded in the story. Whereas the references to the other "men"--both of Sodom and of Yahweh--are rather ubiquitous, only once is a third, or as we are calling it, second, man, namely Lot, called a "man." This reference comes precisely at the point at which Lot's status as man in the middle is most acutely felt: "hard pressed against" by the "men of Sodom" but presently to be rescued by the hands of other "men inside the house." The man Lot stands in "the entrance of the doorway" of condemnation and salvation, of death and life; Lot has come out "to the men" and will go back in to other "men", but eventually the door stays shut.

Lot is a worldly man; Lot is in Sodom, and Sodom is in Lot.

Lot is a godly man; Lot is in God, is God in Lot?

And how might we, the church, like the Israel to whom the story first came, judge such a thing?

The church is in the world, and the world is in the church.

The church is in Christ, is Christ in the church?

Perhaps the daughters can tell. In the text they are powerless; so too are they in many places in the world. The Xhosa translations perhaps serve the point: Ndineentombi ezimbini, "I have two girls", says Lot, offering his daughters to the men of Sodom.

The point, in fact, came to me with some force this week. While staying for some days with a Xhosa family, we often heard the grandmother of the house cry, "Nontombi"--the name means literally, "mother of a girl"--whenever she wanted something. Without fail, Nontombi, or one of the two other adolescent girls there, would come with the desired thing. Young children--and especially young girls--serve their elders with unquestioning and, to these western eyes, astonishing, obedience. And while I know no one who would follow Lot's course in relation to his daughters, I do wonder who bears the brunt first when the forces of the world "press hard against" those who possess a relative measure of power (hint: it is not the latter).

And so, what of judgment?

Our treating as genuinely human the daughters--indeed any who are daily subject to suffering--is the quality by which we are judged, by which we know that the Holy Spirit of Jesus is in us, even as he has brought us to himself.

-Joe

Texts referred to or quoted in this entry: Lk. 10:12; Matt. 25:10; Gen. 19:1-14