Yahweh told Moses (Exodus 34:10 NET):
See, I am going to make a covenant before all your people. I will do wonders such as have not been done in all the earth, nor in any nation. All the people among whom you live will see the work of the Lord, for it is a fearful (yârêʼ)[1] thing that I am doing with you.
The Rabbis who translated the Septuagint chose θαυμαστά here. In John’s vision on Patmos[2] [those who had conquered the beast and his image and the number of his name[3]] sang the song of Moses the servant of God and the song of the Lamb: “Great and astounding (θαυμαστά, a form of θαυμαστός)[4] are your deeds, Lord God, the All-Powerful! Just and true are your ways, King over the nations!”[5] It is not that θαυμαστά is all positive spin, any more than φοβέω is all negative. John also used θαυμαστόν (another form of θαυμαστός) to describe the seven angels who have seven final plagues as a great and astounding (θαυμαστόν) sign in heaven.[6] But I think I can feel why the Rabbis chose θαυμαστά for the revised covenant over a form φοβέω.[7]
How tragic that the once-faithful city has become a prostitute (Septuagint, πόρνη),[8] reads part of the message about Judah and Jerusalem that was revealed to Isaiah son of Amoz during the time when Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah reigned over Judah.[9] She was once a center of justice, fairness resided in her, but now only murderers.[10] Your officials are rebels, they associate with thieves. All of them love bribery, and look for payoffs. They do not take up the cause of the orphan, or defend the rights of the widow.[11]
The sovereign Lord who commands armies, the powerful ruler of Israel, had a plan to rectify this situation. But it was not a plan to redeem Israel’s officials and fill them by his Spirit with the love that is the fulfillment of the law[12]—not yet anyway. It was a plan to remove them by death or exile in a foreign land. “Ah, I will seek vengeance against my adversaries, He said, “I will take revenge against my enemies. I will attack you; I will purify your metal with flux. I will remove all your slag. I will reestablish honest judges as in former times, wise advisers as in earlier days. Then you will be called, ‘The Just City, Faithful Town.’”[13]
All the people among whom you live will see the work of the Lord, for it is a fearful thing that I am doing with you,[14] He had said to Moses.
Most prophets were sent with dire warnings of impending doom in the hope that the people to whom they were sent would hear, believe and repent. Not so with Isaiah. His was truly a ministry that produced condemnation and death.[15] “Go and tell these people,” Isaiah heard the sovereign master say,[16] “‘Listen continually, but don’t understand! Look continually, but don’t perceive!’ Make the hearts of these people calloused; make their ears deaf and their eyes blind! Otherwise they might see with their eyes and hear with their ears, their hearts might understand and they might repent and be healed.”[17]
“How long, sovereign master?”[18] Isaiah replied.
“Until cities are in ruins and unpopulated, and houses are uninhabited, and the land is ruined and devastated, and the Lord has sent the people off to a distant place, and the very heart of the land is completely abandoned. Even if only a tenth of the people remain in the land, it will again be destroyed, like one of the large sacred trees or an Asherah pole, when a sacred pillar on a high place is thrown down.”[19] This devastation happened as it was written.
But Isaiah also prophesied about another time: “Comfort, comfort my people,” says your God. “Speak kindly to Jerusalem, and tell her that her time of warfare is over, that her punishment is completed. For the Lord has made her pay double for all her sins.”[20] And Jeremiah had prophesied, The Lord God of Israel who rules over all says, “I will restore the people of Judah to their land and to their towns. When I do, they will again say of Jerusalem, ‘May the Lord bless you, you holy mountain, the place where righteousness dwells.’”[21]
“Indeed, a time is coming,” says the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah. It will not be like the old covenant that I made with their ancestors when I delivered them from Egypt. For they violated that covenant, even though I was like a faithful husband to them,” says the Lord. “But I will make a new covenant with the whole nation of Israel after I plant them back in the land,” says the Lord. “I will put my law within them and write it on their hearts and minds. I will be their God and they will be my people.
“People will no longer need to teach their neighbors and relatives to know me. For all of them, from the least important to the most important, will know me,” says the Lord. “For I will forgive their sin and will no longer call to mind the wrong they have done.”[22]
The quotation of this passage in the letter to the Hebrews reads, “And there will be no need at all for each one to teach his countryman or each one to teach his brother saying, ‘Know (γνῶθι, a form of γινώσκω)[23] the Lord,’ since they will all know (εἰδήσουσιν, a form of εἴδω)[24] me, from the least to the greatest. For I will be merciful toward their evil deeds, and their sins I will remember no longer.”[25]
To Know the Lord is how Jesus defined eternal life: Now this is eternal life – that they know (γινώσκωσιν, another form of γινώσκω) you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you sent.[26] When Jesus asked Thomas, “Have you believed because you have seen (ἑώρακας, a form of ὁράω)[27] me?” He pronounced a blessing on those who believed without seeing: “Blessed are the people who have not seen (ἰδόντες, another form of εἴδω) and yet have believed.”[28] But He did not indicate that Thomas or anyone who knew Him by seeing, knew Him any the less for seeing Him: they will all know (εἰδήσουσιν, a form of εἴδω)[29] me, from the least to the greatest.
The prophet Daniel had received and recorded this message from Gabriel: Seventy weeks have been determined concerning your people and your holy city to put an end to rebellion, to bring sin to completion, to atone for iniquity, to bring in perpetual righteousness, to seal up the prophetic vision, and to anoint a most holy place. So know and understand: From the issuing of the command to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until an anointed one, a prince arrives, there will be a period of seven weeks and sixty-two weeks.[30]
If Daniel’s seventy weeks meant literal weeks then that time had long passed with no apparent fulfillment. But if it meant seventy times seven years, that hope was still future to the rabbis who translated the Septuagint. They lived in interesting times, after the people of Judah had been restored to their land and to their towns as The Lord God of Israel had promised. It would be natural for them to assume, that [Jerusalem’s] time of warfare is over, that her punishment is completed, and that they looked forward to a new covenant and the coming of an anointed one. It is not too difficult to see why the Rabbis saw that fearful thing the Lord was doing as θαυμαστά rather than φοβηθεῖσα or some other form of φοβέω.
But when the Anointed One appeared, speaking in parables, continuing Isaiah’s ministry of condemnation and death even as He inaugurated the New Covenant by his own death and resurrection, most in Israel did not pivot quickly in faith. They didn’t recognize that their time of punishment was not yet complete, or that Jerusalem was about to be destroyed again, to pay double for all her sins. And I don’t write this to blame them for it, but to learn from their mistakes.
I, too, didn’t understand faith[31] as “listening attentively”[32] to the Holy Spirit, remaining open and flexible and conformable to his teaching. I thought faith was a kind of rigidity, an unwillingness to be persuaded by anything I hadn’t heard before. And as far as I can tell, the word before meant some arbitrary time in an individual’s past or, worse, a particular period in church history. (And I say worse because it indicates that one never even tried to “listen attentively” to the living God but only to the opinions of dead men.)
Jesus told the chief priests and the Pharisees[33] a parable about a landowner who planted a vineyard and leased it to tenant farmers.[34] When the landowner sent his slaves to collect his fruit[35] (καρποὺς[36] αὐτοῦ[37]) from his vineyard, the tenants beat and killed them. Finally he sent his son to them, saying, “They will respect my son.” But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, “This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and get his inheritance!” So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.[38]
Jesus asked them what they thought the landowner would do with those tenants. They said to him, “He will utterly destroy those evil men! Then he will lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him”[39] this fruit (τοὺς[40] καρποὺς). Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures: ‘The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is from the Lord, and it is marvelous (θαυμαστὴ, a form of θαυμαστός, also in the Septuagint) in our eyes’?”[41]
For this reason I tell you, Jesus continued, that the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit (καρποὺς αὐτῆς).[42] When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. They wanted to arrest him, but they were afraid of the crowds, because the crowds regarded him as a prophet.[43] All the people among whom you live will see the work of the Lord, for it is a fearful thing that I am doing with you, He promised Moses.
Still, I must consider that Jesus’ expectation for the Gentile churches was that they would be that people who will produce the fruit of the kingdom of God, the fruit of his Spirit, because if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, this person does not belong to him.[44] But in the definition of καρποὺς in the NET online Bible the fruit of the Spirit is not even mentioned, except perhaps obliquely: “2) that which originates or comes from something, an effect, result.”
What is specified however is this: “is used in fig. discourse of those who by their labours have fitted souls to obtain eternal life.” So while there is no direct mention of Jesus’ stated reason for taking the kingdom of God away from the chief priests and Pharisees to give it to another people, “those who by their labours have fitted souls to obtain eternal life” is spelled out in detail and attached to the word καρποὺς (fruit). But if the fruit of the kingdom of God is nothing more than the works of “those who by their labours have fitted souls to obtain eternal life” there was no cause to seek another people. The chief priests and Pharisees were already far more advanced down that road than any others.
I am the Lord! That is my name! I will not share my glory with anyone else,[45] He told Isaiah. All the people among whom you live will see the work of the Lord, for it is a fearful thing that I am doing with you, He said to Moses. Paul preached the Gospel in the power of the Spirit of God. And he watched with a profound gratitude mixed with great sorrow and unceasing anguish[46] as—The sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, passive homosexual partners, practicing homosexuals, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, the verbally abusive, and swindlers[47]—heard his message and entered the kingdom of God while his own people judged themselves unworthy of eternal life[48] (καὶ οὐκ ἀξίους κρίνετε ἑαυτοὺς τῆς αἰωνίου ζωῆς) in Paul’s words. After he had wrestled with these things he wrote (Romans 11:20-22, 25-36 NET):
They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but fear (φοβοῦ, a form of φοβέω)! For if God did not spare the natural branches, perhaps he will not spare you. Notice therefore the kindness and harshness of God – harshness toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness toward you, provided you continue in his kindness; otherwise you also will be cut off.
For I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you may not be conceited: A partial hardening has happened to Israel until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: “The Deliverer will come out of Zion; he will remove ungodliness from Jacob. And this is my covenant with them, when I take away their sins.”
In regard to the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but in regard to election they are dearly loved for the sake of the fathers. For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable. Just as you were formerly disobedient to God, but have now received mercy due to their disobedience, so they too have now been disobedient in order that, by the mercy shown to you, they too may now receive mercy. For God has consigned all people to disobedience so that he may show mercy to them all.
Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how fathomless his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? Or who has first given to God, that God needs to repay him? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever! Amen.