INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE

Year B - Proper 26 

 

RUTH 1:1-18.    The delightful short story of Ruth has an unusual place in the Old Testament. It is a beautiful folk tale which became a moral tract about welcoming  foreigners as one of the people of God and ancestor of Israel's greatest king. The hidden theology of the story assures us of the working out of God's purpose in human affairs, desperate as the times may seem.

                                                                   

PSALM 146.  This is the first of the final five psalms often referred to as the Hallel Psalms because they all begin with the Hebrew words for "Praise the Lord." It recites a number of reasons for trust in God.                                                             

DEUTERONOMY 6:1-9(Alternate)  This passage states the unequivocal standard of orthodoxy of the Jewish religious tradition as defined in the years after the return from the Babylonian exile. It has remained so for the past two thousand five hundred years. The Shema (vss. 4-5) states in as few words as possible the essence of that faith. It was so for Jesus too and formed the first of his two great commandments.

 

PSALM 119:1-8. (Alternate)  The whole psalm was written in the form of an acrostic, each verse of each section beginning with the same letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In this section, for instance, each verse begins with Aleph, corresponding to our A. The whole psalm is a celebration of the glories of the Law of Moses.

 

HEBREWS 9:11-14.   This brief reading presents another in a long series of arguments for regarding Jesus Christ as the one mediator between humanity and God. It declares the supreme efficacy of Christ's sacrifice on the cross in contrast to the repeated sprinkling of the blood of animal sacrifices on the temple altar customary in the Hebrew tradition.                                    

 


MARK 12:38-34.  Having arrived in Jerusalem, Jesus confronts  strong opposition to his teaching. Unlike Luke who added the parable of the Good Samaritan to this incident, Mark merely used it to summarize the whole of the Jewish law in two brief commandments. In one sentence Jesus offered his challenger the key to entering God's kingdom: to love God and neighbour  as oneself. No one has ever devised a better way to live in the real world.  As someone had rightly said, it isn't that we don't know how, it is rather a matter of doing it faithfully all the time in all our relationships.

 

 

A MORE COMPLETE ANALYSIS.

 

RUTH 1:1-18.    The delightful short story of Ruth has an unusual place in the Old Testament. Several different hypotheses have been proposed as to its origin and purpose, none of them entirely satisfactory. It may have been a simple folk tale from a specific community frequently repeated by a professional storyteller. It may have had such a humble beginning, but was intentionally rewritten at the royal court to emphasizes its royal significance. Its origin may have been  during the 5th or 4th  centuries BCE to offset the dissolution of mixed marriages mandated by the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Or it may have been a tract designed to promote the Moabite ancestry of David.

 

Whatever its original purpose, it is almost unique in the whole of the Old Testament as a complete narrative, paralleled only by the Joseph narratives in Genesis 37-50 and perhaps The Book of Jonah. It also shares with the latter a sense of universalism reminiscent of the late prophetic period most fully evident in Isaiah 40-66.                      

 

The hidden theology of the story assures us of the working out of God's redemptive purpose in human affairs, desperate as the times may seem.  Yet providence is not without human intervention in the person of Naomi who directs most of the action in keeping with the traditional custom of levirate marriage. This custom required the closest male relative to provide support for widows in his extended family, usually through marrying the widow himself (Deut. 25:5-10). Ruth’s sexual assertiveness may or may not have been common in Israel, but even that aspect of the story asserts the intent of the story to point to the very human ways of furthering the divine purpose (3:7-13).

 

Another, more obvious theme of the story is the preference of genuine human kindness over conventional duty. This finds expression through Naomi's careful scheme for Ruth to marry Boaz and his acceptance of it despite the difficulties he faced in not being her closest kin.

 


That the story was carefully composed or revised as a literary document can be seen in the poesy of the responses of Ruth (1:16-17) and Naomi (1:20-21) to specific situations. In the first instance, Ruth rejects Naomi's urging that she return to her people and her gods with her sister-in-law, Orpah. While it cannot be scanned in the traditional Hebrew form, it does feature the parallelism of ideas typical of Hebrew poetry and quite evident in the English versions. These words are often quoted as the supreme example of human devotion. It has been used occasionally in marriage ceremonies, but if spoken only by the bride the words express both sentimentality and sexist attitudes no longer acceptable in contemporary Christian liturgy.

 

Another hidden theological facet of the story can be recognized in the transition from traditional henotheism in vs. 15 where god, land and people are inseparable, to the monotheism of vs. 16. In the Hebrew text, Ruth does not used the word for God (el or elohim ) as would be expected of foreigners, but Yahweh. In so doing the author indicates that this foreigner worships the one true God.

 

While commonly placed between Judges and Samuel in the Christian canon, the book has a place of special liturgical significance in the Hebrew canon. It is first among five small festival scrolls immediately after Proverbs. Ruth is read in its entirety at Pentecost (Shavu'ot or Feast of Weeks) marking the time of the barley harvest (Ruth 1:22), Ruth's acceptance of Judaism (1:16), the tradition of David's birth and death at this time, and Israel's acceptance of the Torah at Sinai seven weeks after the Passover and Exodus. The others include in this collection of megillot are, in canonical order, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations and Esther. Like Ruth, each is read at a particular festival in the liturgical calendar of Judaism.

 

 

PSALM 146.  This is the first of the final five psalms often referred to as the Hallel Psalms because they all begin with the Hebrew words for "Praise the Lord" (Hallelujah). While the other four Hallels were clearly composed as congregational psalms, this one has a more personal sense of devotion. It contrasts the different capabilities of Yahweh and humans to provide help in desperate circumstances. As such, it appears as a reaction of the religiously oriented to an increasingly secular attitude to life. Thus, in a modern context, it has considerable relevance. 

 

The psalmist recites a number of reasons for trust in Yahweh. Unlike political leaders who die and disappear, Yahweh is eternal (vss. 3-4). As creator of all that is, Yahweh provides justice for the poor and oppressed (vss. 5-7). Yahweh frees the prisoners, gives the blind their sight, lifts up the fallen, loves the righteous, watches over strangers and supports widows and orphans (vss. 8-9). All these divine initiatives represent Yahweh's eternal and universal sovereignty (vs. 10).              

         


The Greek OT (LXX) ascribed this psalm to Haggai and Zechariah, two minor prophets who lived in the late 6th century BCE. Proposals for a much later date has greater internal force because of the number of Aramaic words, its debt to other psalms known to be late, and the influence of the didactic style of the wisdom school. Furthermore, it is not God's majesty or interventions in history, but a sense of social justice similar to that of the great prophets which moves the poet to praise Yahweh. This motif found  expression in relatively few psalms, (e.g. Pss. 10, 15, 24, 37, 94, 103).

 

 

DEUTERONOMY 6:1-9(Alternate)  This passage states the unequivocal standard of orthodoxy of the Jewish religious tradition as defined in the years after the return from the Babylonian exile. It has remained so for the past two thousand five hundred years. The Shema (vss. 4-5) states in as few words as possible the essence of that tradition. It was so for Jesus too and formed the first of his two great commandments.

              

Nowhere in the OT does the rhetoric of the Deuteronomists reach greater ethical heights. The purpose of the passage is to set before Israel in the post-exilic period exactly what Yahweh requires of them. Could this have been in deliberate contrast to Micah 6:6-8? Scholars have pointed out that the word English translators consistently define as “commandment” (not plural as per the KJV) actually means “charge.” The purpose for this charge follows immediately (vs. 2-3): to possess the promised land; for every succeeding generation to fear the Lord; to have a long life; to increase the Israelite population.

 

It would appear that this charge reflects the post-exilic period (late 6th century BCE) as much as, if not more than, the time of the Exodus and invasion of Canaan (12th century BCE). The purely Israelite ethnic population had been depleted by the exile and by intermarriage with the other tribes who had replaced the exiles. The destruction of the temple in 586 BCE had drastically reduced the religious purity of the people who had barely become accustomed to centralizing process of Josiah’s reformation (circa 621 BCE). With the temple priesthood in exile and the Temple in Jerusalem in ruins, the rural sanctuaries of Bethel, Shechem, Anathoth, etc., which had been centres of popular tribal traditions, may well have become centres of folk religion again. In the more rigid ritualism of the post-exilic period, it was more important to purify these trends so that the people of Israel truly believed in and worshiped the one true God in the national sanctuary in Jerusalem.

 

 

 


PSALM 119:1-8. (Alternate)  The whole psalm was written in the form of an acrostic, each verse of each section beginning with the same letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In this section, for instance, each verse begins with Aleph, corresponding to our A. As a whole psalm, the psalm celebrates the glories of the Law as given to Moses.

 

The acrostic system of poetic composition had a double purpose: educational and magical. Behind this form lay the belief in the magical power of letters and numbers. To the illiterate, written language gave the literate person a significant power advantage, as is still evident in the many treaties imposed upon indigenous people in North America and elsewhere during the days of early settlement by Europeans.

 

Several psalms and other Hebrew scriptures adopted the form as a means to aid memory in recitation and to fully express the central idea of the poem. (Pss. 9-10; 25; 34; 37; 111; 112; 145. See also Prov. 31:10-31; Lamentations 1-4.) One might also add a liturgical purpose to this highly structured poetic form. The supreme example is unquestionably Psalm 119 where each of the 176 verses of the 22 sections or strophes all address or refer to God. The effect is that of a litany, as in the instance of Ps. 119, in praise of the law.

 

In vss. 1-8, each begins with the letter Aleph. Also noteworthy are the several synonyms for the law: testimonies (vs. 2); ways (vs. 3); precepts (vs. 4); statutes (vs. 5) commandments (vs. 6); word (vs. 8). These are repeated again and again throughout the whole psalm.  Nowhere is there any reference to the temple, its liturgies or other Jewish ritual. The author thought only of the law as the truth from God and his rule of life and ground for hope.

 

 

HEBREWS 9:11-14.   This brief reading presents another in a long series of arguments for regarding Jesus Christ as the one mediator between humanity and God. It declares the supreme efficacy of Christ's sacrifice on the cross in contrast to the repeated sprinkling of the blood of animal sacrifices on the temple altar customary in the Hebrew tradition.

 

From the internal evidence of this letter, some scholars have concluded that the audience for this whole argument were Jewish Christians who may have been in danger of reverting to Judaism from their recently acquired Christian faith. Others have proposed that these new Christians were not necessarily Jews, but were also in danger of falling away from their earlier confession under the threat of persecution. The historical-critical data suggests that while no one key to its interpretation has been found, the background of the document may have been some form of Hellenistic religious speculation.

 


Brevard Childs describes it as "a word of encouragement" based on 13:22. (The New Testament as Canon, Fortress Press, 1984, 404) On the other hand, for Childs, the reception of the document by the Christian community was the chief factor in its inclusion the canon. According to Childs, the letter presents a "programmatic statement of the theological relation of the two covenants which receives its content from scripture and not from its historical setting."      

 

In an excellent commentary by Frances Taylor Gench expresses the view that the recipicents of the letter were Christians of the Jewish Diaspora familar with the scripture and traditions of Hellenistic Judaism in urban centres of the Greek-speaking world. The only clue to the whereabouts of the unknown author is in 13:24  “Those from Italy send you greetings.” (Hebrews and James. Westminster Bible Companion, Westminster JohnKnox Press, 1996) Gench follows William Johnson in describing the book as a series of sermons that alternate between exhortations and applications designed to apply theological insights to practical pastoral situations.

 

This lectionary reading gives ample support to this conclusion. In these few verses, the author is saying that atonement for sin, the abolishing of guilt, reconciliation with God and sanctification for a new and holy life came through the sacrifice of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit in the believer. This is a standard approach to exhortation found in many of the Pauline letters, notably Corinthians and Galatians. We may never be able to penetrate behind this rhetorical situation (after Beker, Schussler Fiorenza et al) to determine the historical situation out of which the letter arose.

 

The author had an intimate knowledge of the Hebrew scriptures and of the continuity of the Christian faith with those scriptures. He or she was particularly responsive to the prophetic element in the OT which emphasized the spiritual reality that the living God speaks both judgment and mercy to people with whom God had made an eternal covenant. God's purpose was to create a faithful people within a renewed creation. This God had accomplished through Jesus Christ, God's Son, who offered himself as the all-sufficient sacrifice on the cross instead of the repeated sacrifices of the old covenantal system. The task of the Christian believer in this new covenant, therefore, was to accept in faith this new relationship with the living God and to live out this relationship with purified conscience and grateful worship and service in the ordinary round of daily life.

 

 


MARK 12:28-34.  His traveling days done, Jesus has arrived in Jerusalem and confronts  strong opposition to his teaching. Unlike Luke who added the parable of the Good Samaritan to this incident, Mark merely used it to summarize the whole of the Jewish law in two brief commandments. The first commandment is the traditional Shema from Deuteronomy 6:4. This has been described as "the central confession and self-definition of Israelite belief." (The Complete Gospels*, Robert J. Miller, ed., 43n) The scribes response shows how much this expert in the Jewish Law felt at ease with Jesus' teaching at this point.

 

The second commandment is from a more obscure passage in Leviticus 19:18. There it appears at the end of a long sequence of ritual and moral dictates of the Holiness Code coupled with the prophetic refrain given as its divine warrant, "I am the Lord." In its Levitical context the commandment has the effect of countering vengeance within one's own extended family or tribe. It is probable that this did not extend to those of another tribe, as many of the OT narratives show. Was that how Jesus understood it too? Or Mark? Or Paul (cf. Gal. 5:14? Or James (cf. Jas. 2:8)? If Mark, Paul and James are representatives of the earliest apostolic tradition as they had received and created it from remembered sayings of Jesus himself, it is obvious that they recognized a much wider scope for this commandment that did the framers of the Holiness Code of Leviticus. With these commandments, Jesus offered this expert in casuistry so common in the interpretation of the Law the key to entering God's kingdom he had come to establish.

 

One might well ask what "Lordship" and "kingdom" meant to Jesus as he approached the cross. We can only speculate on such topics because we read his sayings through the prism of the early Christian community as they sought to clarify the continuity and discontinuity of the Old and New Covenants. We can believe, however, that if he was fully human he made no claims for himself as Lord and perhaps did not fully realize until Gethsemane that the sovereignty of God in his and all human life would involve his own death at the hands of his enemies.

 

Many scholars do not believe that Jesus was omniscient and could predict the future course of events. He did, however, have great moral perception into the  events of his time were trending. His perception of his own mandate may not have extended beyond that ascribed to him by the scribe in this instance, "Teacher." Possibly this went no further than the traditional wisdom teacher of the previous few centuries. Is there some inkling of that in the way Mark tells how Jesus reacted (vs. 34) to the scribe's approbation and praise in vss. 32-33?  Does this come to the fore in the fact that whereas Mark had several times previously quoted Jesus teaching about his death, he made no mention whatsoever about the cross at this place in his narrative?

 


So clear and memorable in their brevity, no one has ever devised a better way to live in the real world than by following these two commandments.  As someone had rightly said, it isn't that we don't know how, it is rather a matter of doing what we do know faithfully all the time in all our relationships. Without entering into Christological debate so divisive within our own tradition, we can speak of these commandments in terms similar to the late Wilfrid Cantwell Smith, renowned Canadian scholar of world religions. When these commandments are faithfully implemented in human affairs, and especially between the members of different religious traditions, the love of God revealed in Jesus would also be disclosed in the historical traditions of others.

 

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