The priests and elders who plot against Jesus determine not to do it during the Passover, to avoid an “uproar” (26:5). The word is used only one other time in Matthew, to describe the “uproar” among the Jews who are rioting in front of Pilate’s Praetorium . . . . Continue Reading »
“Jesus had finished all these words” (Matthew 26:1). Not only has Jesus finished the last of the five discourses; He has stopped speaking to Israel altogether. Through the next several chapters, He barely speaks at all. This is an announcement of judgment against . . . . Continue Reading »
Joel 2:25 plays a strangely prominent role in the Arian controversy. In the NASB translation, the Lord promises to “make up to you for the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the creeping locust, the stripping locust and the gnawing locust, my great army which . . . . Continue Reading »
The priests pay Judas 30 pieces of silver to betray Jesus (Matthew 26:15). The amount of the payment takes us back to Exodus 21:32 and Zechariah 11:12-13. Here I want to muse on the connection between Matthew and the Exodus passage. The scenario in Exodus is this: A man owns a dangerous . . . . Continue Reading »
“Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory.” For nearly two millennia, Christians have been singing that every week, often without a second thought about the radical claims embedded in the hymn. In Isaiah 6, the song shakes the temple, but Christians . . . . Continue Reading »
Gifts blind the clear-sighted and subvert justice (Exodus 23:8). In context, that’s statement about bribery, and the word used for “gift” here is almost invariably used for bribes of one sort or another (Deuteronomy 10:17; 16:19; 27:25; 1 Samuel 8:3; 1 Kings 15:29; 16:8; . . . . Continue Reading »
From Nabokov’s lectures on literature, quoted in Smith’s book: “All we have to do when reading Bleak House is to relax and let our spines take over. Although we read with our minds, the seat of artistic relight is between the shoulder blades. That little shiver behind . . . . Continue Reading »
Jamie Smith’s latest book ( Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Cultural Liturgies) ) is excellent. He rightly challenges the tendency for “worldview-talk” to take a rationalist bent, and in place of the assumption that “man is a thinking . . . . Continue Reading »
Athanasius points out to Marcellinus that the Psalms cover every “eventuality.” They are a mirror of the soul because they are a mirror of human experience - of suffering, of desperation, of exultation, of thanksgiving, of prosperity, of adversity, of garden and wilderness, of . . . . Continue Reading »
No one would dare, Athanasius writes to Marcellinus, to take the words of the patriarchs, or Moses, or the prophets as his own. No one would dare imitate the prophets by saying “As the Lord lives, before whom I stand today.” The Psalms are different. When someone reads, . . . . Continue Reading »
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