Kingdom Bible Study 9
The Song of
Moses
In Exodus Bible study 15 we have the
wonderful Song of Moses, which includes the following lines:
Who is like You, O Lord,
among the gods?
Who is like You, glorious in holiness,
Fearful in praises, doing wonders?
You stretched out Your right hand;
The earth swallowed them.
You in Your mercy have led forth
The people whom You have redeemed;
You have guided them in Your strength to Your holy habitation.
The people will hear and be afraid;
Sorrow will take hold of the inhabitants of Philistia.
Then the chiefs of Edom will be dismayed;
The mighty men of Moab, trembling will take hold of them;
All the inhabitants of Canaan will melt away.
Fear and dread will fall on them;
By the greatness of Your arm they will be as still as a stone,
Till Your people pass over, O Lord,
Till the people pass over whom You have purchased.
You will bring them in and plant them
In the mountain of Your inheritance,
In the place, O Lord,
Which You have made for Your own dwelling,
The sanctuary, O Lord,
Which Your hands have established.
(Exod. 15:11-18)
Before we are in a position to fully appreciate the
above words, we need to understand a bit more of the cultural background. We
have already seen that throughout the Bible God reveals Himself in the terms
and context of the culture He is dealing with.
The truths He is revealing are universal, but the medium by which He
conveys these truths involve a particular time, place and culture. This is
known as the doctrine of accommodation. To understand God’s kingdom, therefore,
we must understand the culture in which its truths were communicated.
In the ancient Near East each
nation had its own special god. The Babylonians had Marduk, the Cannanites had
Baal, and so on. Whichever god your kingdom worshipped, that was the one you
considered king. The god’s power and kingship was displayed in the human
kingship of his favoured nation. The human king was treated as divine since he
was the image and representative of the divine king. That is why he put images
of himself all over his nation - both to glorify himself as well as the god of
which he was the image.
You can begin to see how
revolutionary it was when Moses recorded that God considered us His image -
ordinary men and women. Whereas in the other nations the heavenly divine
Kingship was displayed in the earthly kingship of one divine monarch, Genesis
gives all men and women that dignity. (In this aspect, the nation of Israel was
different than the other nations. For a long time they didn’t have a king, and
when they did begin having a king, the king was not considered to be a god. The
king was an image of YHWH, to be sure, but only in so far as everyone in Israel
equally was.)
Now each nation considered that its
god was enthroned in a heavenly palace above the lesser gods (those of the
other nations) and symbolically enthroned in an earthly palace or temple. The
temple was the place where heaven and earth joined.
As a consequence of
each nation believing that its god was supreme above the gods of the other
nations, they also believed that their nation would one day become supreme over
the other nations. If your god was really the supreme god then he would demonstrate
that supremacy through causing your kingdom to conquer the world. Your god was
the one who ruled in the heavenly realm and would demonstrate that supremacy by
ruling on earth through his favoured nation.
So what would happen
if your kingdom was being defeated in war? You could conclude that your god is
weak and that perhaps he is not as supreme as you believed. But that was not
the only option open to you. Your god might be angry, that is, he might be
letting this happen in order to teach you a lesson. Perhaps you needed to offer
more sacrifice or build more images or something like that. Or he might be showing patience - in no rush to demonstrate
his superiority but willing to take his time at it.
Now all these aspects are at play in YHWH’s Kingship. Return now to
the Song of Moses. In verse 17 we read,
You will bring them in and plant them
In the mountain of Your inheritance,
In the place, O Lord,
Which You have made for Your own dwelling,
The sanctuary, O Lord,
Which Your hands have established.
The Lord
promises to lead His people to a place where He will have His abode. That sort
of language may seem a bit strange on our ears. In our day and age we tend to
be uncomfortable with anything physical being predicated of God. Building a
house for God to live in among His people, where He can have a footstool and
resting place (Ps. 132:7-8), is the last thing that we would think to do. But
in those days, this is exactly what the people would have expected God to do if
He was really the King. Remember each nation had a heavenly palace or temple in
which their god was enthroned. Since the temple was the place where heaven and
earth joined, the enthronement of the god in the temple was inexplicably
connected to his heavenly enthronement and superiority over the gods of other
nations. So Scripture says that the God of Israel is enthroned in heaven above
the lesser gods. “Who is like thee, O Lord,
among the gods?” (Exod. 15:11. See also
Ps. 82:1, 86:8, 89:6, 95:3, 96:4, 97:9, 135:5). He is then symbolically
enthroned in an earthly temple (1 Kings 9:3, Ps. 132:7-8) where His presence
may be invoked. These sorts of concepts would have just been part and parcel of
how this culture understood the notion of heavenly kingship.
So the God of Israel is supreme in
the heavens above the gods of other nations. But what about on earth? Remember
if your god is really supreme in the heavens then he would give your nation
dominion on earth. How would that dominion be established? Through the
multiplication of your god’s image.
That is exactly what is going on
here. God has formed a nation to be the means for the worldwide expansion of
His image. Man, as His image, was defaced so that human lives ceased to glorify
the King. But God has given to Israel the knowledge of how to live in a way
that glorifies or images Him. Deuteronomy 28:10 says that by walking in His
ways, “all the peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name
of the Lord.” Remember, it was by
seeing the image that people knew who was king. So when the Lord says
that all the people of the earth will see you and know who is the Lord, it is
clearly a reference to their capacity as images. Seeing is believing. (The
principle also works the other way round. Later, when God’s people went into
the nations and profaned the Lord’s holy name, they caused the Gentiles to say
of them, “these are the people of the Lord, and yet they have gone out of His
land” (Ezek. 36:20). Their profanity was so tragic because it profaned the name
of the Lord among the Gentiles (Ezek. 20:23), putting God’s reputation on the
line.)
To return to Deuteronomy 28:10, the
verse goes on: “and they shall be afraid of you.” The supremacy of Israel, and
hence of her God, is to be demonstrated through war and battle. This means
killing, bloodshed, slaughter - all the sorts of things that make us
uncomfortable when we read the Old Testament. But remember, these were wicked
people they were dealing with. We’re even told that the Lord had to wait until
their depravity had reached a certain degree before He could justly wipe them
out (Gen. 15:16).
The
judgement on evildoers is one side of the coin. The other side of the coin is
the glorification of God’s people - and therefore of Himself - through earthly
dominion. With our contemporary mindset we may think, “what is the glory in
that?” Indeed, history has taught us to associate conquerors with brutality and
repressive totalitarian regimes. It may be hard for us to think of God using
military success as a means for His glorification. But don’t forget that the
entire earth belongs to the Lord (2 Chron. 20:6) but has become enemy occupied
territory. The Lord is simply taking back what is His by right.
The axioms of ancient Near Eastern religio-politics meant
that only after a nation had conquered all the nations where people worshiped
different gods, only by storming their temples and smashing their images, only
by asserting political dominion over all the entire earth, would the god of
that nation really be seen to be the most supreme. It is hard perhaps for us to
fully understand how bound up their worship was with physical structures.
Destroy their idols and you destroy their ability to worship that god. If you
want to know which God is truly King, just look and see which nation has the
greatest dominion. Look and see which king has the most images, and the god of
that nation is the most powerful.
This formula is no different when dealing with YHWH and
the nation of Israel. To the ancient Near Eastern mindset there was no other
way for YHWH to prove Himself the true King of the earth than by establishing
worldwide dominion or, in the language of Psalm 82:8, “inherit[ing]all
nations.” If He cannot do that then He is not the true God. That is as true
today as it was back then. If the God of Abraham cannot utterly destroy all the
idols of the world and all the temples of false worship, then He is not the
true God.
The context for this
remains the dominion mandate of Genesis 1. The fall has not changed God’s original
desire to see His images possessing worldwide dominion. What has changed is
that now God must contend with rivals. Since all the false gods want to make
man in their image and to have those false images establish worldwide
dominion, certain things follow. First, as people grow into the image of their
false gods, they and their cultures become less human. Because of the enmity
between the serpent and the seed of man, the devil hates what is truly human
since humanity is the image-bearer of God. Consequently, he will seek to twist
and destroy everything that makes us truly human,
everything of what it means to be a true man or woman. Those who seek to remain
true to the human calling as image-bearers of God must now struggle against
everyone else. It is this struggle that we see outworked in the history of
Israel as they fight for earthly dominion.
At
first this may seem a rather different direction to that which we saw in the
previous Bible study, namely, the Israelites’ injunction to educate and be a
blessing to the other nations. Yes, they are to educate the Gentiles concerning
the true God through their example – through imaging their God. Now remember,
there were two ways in which an image worked to glorify the King-god: an
affirmative aspect and a negative aspect. The affirmative aspect was the
image’s role as a paradigm of the King-god; the negative aspect was that when a
territory was conquered, the placement of a particular image across the land
spoke a clear message concerning those other images that were no longer there.
As images are removed and destroyed to make room for those of the conquering
vassal, a powerful message is established concerning who is not the true
god. So, as images of God, the children of Israel also have this twofold
purpose: (1) to shine positively as an example of the true religion; (2) to
destroy and displace all other gods.
So
there is a major power struggle going on here, and the Lord enters into it. His
purpose in calling
a people to Himself is to “make for Himself a name” (2 Sam. 7:23). It is
through being “strong and mighty in battle” that YHWH establishes who the King of glory is (Ps. 24:7-10). We saw this
principle outworked in the judgement on the various gods of the Egyptians. Many
of the other stories in the Old Testament receive a fuller significance when
viewed in terms of these themes. Consider the famous story of David and
Goliath. David says to Goliath,
“You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a
javelin; but I come to you in the name of the Lord
of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and
I will strike you down, and cut off your head; and I will give the dead bodies
of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild
beasts of the earth; that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel,
and that all this assembly may know that the Lord
saves not with sword and spear; for the battle is the Lord’s and he will give you into our hand” (1 Sam. 17:
45-47).
Notice how the last verse puts the defeat of Goliath and
the Philistines in the context of demonstrating or validating that there is a
God in Israel who fights on behalf of His chosen people. David is confident
that he will win the battle because he is confident in the superiority of his
God. David wants the defeat of the Philistines to be an education to “all the
earth.” Again, the principle is that ‘seeing is believing’ and the implications
in David’s mind are global. Conversely, when Israel is doing poorly and being
defeated in battle, the reputation of the Lord’s great name is at stake (Josh.
7:8-9).
Now
consider another event that happened with the Philistines (recorded in 1 Sam.
5: 1-7). The Philistines committed the ultimate abomination by stealing the ark
of the covenant and putting it in the house of their god, Dagon. This would
seem to be proof to the ancient mind that Dagon was the most powerful god. But
in the night, the statue of Dagon fell to the ground in front of the ark,
breaking into pieces. God then afflicted the people of Ashdod with tumors and
other terrors until they returned the ark.
This
wonderful little story demonstrates in cameo what the Lord is preparing to do
throughout the whole earth. He is preparing to crush down all the false gods
and demonstrate His superiority and power. The Psalms are permeated with this
very theme, continually linking God’s judgements with the future salvation of
all nations.
But God shall shoot at them with an arrow;
Suddenly they shall be wounded.
So he will make him stumble over their own tongue;
All who see them shall flee away.
All men shall fear,
And shall declare the work of God;
For they shall wisely consider His doing. (Psalm 64:7-9)
We
see from this passage (and dozens of other passages from the Psalms might be
added) that the judgement is educational. It educates the people of earth that
the God of Israel is real, powerful and superior to all other gods. This theme
of remedial or productive judgement occurs throughout the prophets, both in the
context of God’s judgements on His chosen people as well as His judgement on
the Gentile nations. Thus the Lord speaks judgement on Israel and Judah through
Hosea saying,
“I will take them away, and no
one shall rescue.
I will return again to My place
Till they acknowledge their
offence.
Then they will seek My face;
In their affliction they will
earnestly seek Me.”
(Hosea 5:14-15; see also Isa.
4:4-5)
When chastising does not
lead to correction, the Lord says that it has been in vain (Jer. 2:30, 5:3). Or
again, as the Lord revealed to Ezekiel, He takes no pleasure in the death of
the wicked as if punishment were an end in itself. God punishes that the wicked
might eventually repent and live (Ezek. 33:11,
18:32). It
is no different here than with loving parents, a parallel Scripture is fond of
using (Deut. 8:5, Prov. 3:11-12). If a child acts in a very wicked way, any
loving father will be angry, and the greater his anger at the sin the greater
will be his persistence to do whatever is needful to bring about a change in
the child. This may include some severe measures, but the discipline is always
done with the child’s best at heart. Similarly, the Lord’s great love for all
those He has created, coupled with his extreme hatred of sin, can only result
in persistent discipline being leveled upon the wicked until they repent and
turn to Him who “desires all men to be saved
and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4, 2 Pet. 3:9).
This
does not mean that education is the only reason why judgement is
necessary. Fundamentally judgement is necessary because sin is wrong, not
because of its utilitarian value. The absolutes of God demand that evil be
destroyed whether anyone is actually educated in the process or not. However,
this does not deny that God’s judgement is often designed to also educate, and
this is a fact that must be understood if we are to properly grasp the promises
made to Abraham.
Remember,
God had not merely promised to Abraham that his descendants would be a source
of blessing to the nations, but also that they would be a source of judgement
and curses. In Gen. 22:17-18, the Lord says that all the nations of the earth
shall be blessed because Abraham obeyed His voice, only after just saying, as
part of the same sentence, that Abraham’s descendants will possess the gate of
their enemies (see also Ps. 149: 6-9). The important thing to realize here is
that when the Lord promises that Abraham’s descendants will be a source of
blessing as well as judgement to the nations, these two aspects are not
mutually exclusive but complementary. As we have been seeing, judgement is
often a blessing, for “when your judgements are in the earth, the inhabitants
of the world learn righteousness” (Isa. 26:9). God’s wrath is simply His love
in action – a love that cannot rest content until all the earth is filled with
the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.
This co-implication
between justice and love, between judgment and salvation, explains why it is in
some of the most depressing descriptions of judgment in the Old Testament that the message of God’s love and
redemption shines through most clearly. In Isaiah 19, for example, we find
God’s proclamation of judgment against the people of Egypt culminating in a
description of their salvation in verses 18-25. Similarly, in the book of
Lamentations we read one of the most depressing accounts of God’s judgment, yet
in the midst of it all we find these wonderful words of hope,
For the Lord will not cast off forever.
Though He causes grief,
Yet He will show compassion
According to the multitude of His mercies.
For He does not afflict willingly,
Nor grieve the children of men.
To crush under one’s feet
All the prisoners of the earth….
The Lord does not approve.
(Lam. 3:31-36)
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