As I continue to consider Rejoice in hope, endure in suffering, persist in prayer,[1] as a description of love rather than as rules to obey, I want to look at some more truth that love rejoices in along with some more ἀδικία that it does not. What Luke called a parable (παραβολὴν, a form of παραβολή) Matthew presented as a rhetorical question in a discourse about child-rearing: If someone owns a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go look for the one that went astray?[2]
| Matthew |
Luke |
| See that you do not disdain one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.
Matthew 18:10 (NET) |
So Jesus told them this parable:
Luke 15:3 (NET) |
| What do you think? If someone owns a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go look for the one that went astray? And if he finds it, I tell you the truth, he will rejoice (χαίρει, a form of χαίρω) more over it than over the ninety-nine that did not go astray.
Matthew 18:12, 13 (NET) |
“Which one of you, if he has a hundred sheep and loses one of them, would not leave the ninety-nine in the open pasture and go look for the one that is lost until he finds it? Then when he has found it, he places it on his shoulders, rejoicing (χαίρων, another form of χαίρω). Returning home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, telling them, ‘Rejoice with me, because I have found my sheep that was lost.’
Luke 15:4-6 (NET) |
| In the same way, your Father in heaven is not willing that one of these little ones be lost.
Matthew 18:14 (NET) |
I tell you, in the same way there will be more joy (χαρὰ) in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need to repent.
Luke 15:7 (NET) |
I should back up a bit and look at more of the context of Matthew’s Gospel narrative. Jesus’ disciples had asked him, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?[3]
He called a child, had him stand among them, and said, “I tell you the truth, unless you turn around and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven! Whoever then humbles himself like this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes a child like this in my name welcomes me.”[4]
Then He began what I am calling a discourse about child-rearing: But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a huge millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the open sea.[5] The Greek word translated causes…to sin is σκανδαλίσῃ (a form of σκανδαλίζω). The definition in the NET reads as follows:
1) to put a stumbling block or impediment in the way, upon which another may trip and fall, metaph. to offend 1a) to entice to sin 1b) to cause a person to begin to distrust and desert one whom he ought to trust and obey 1b1) to cause to fall away 1b2) to be offended in one, i.e. to see in another what I disapprove of and what hinders me from acknowledging his authority 1b3) to cause one to judge unfavourably or unjustly of another 1c) since one who stumbles or whose foot gets entangled feels annoyed 1c1) to cause one displeasure at a thing 1c2) to make indignant 1c3) to be displeased, indignant
It comes from σκάνδαλον a snare or trap, translated stumbling blocks in the next verse: Woe to the world because of stumbling blocks (σκανδάλων, a form of σκάνδαλον)! It is necessary that stumbling blocks (σκάνδαλα, another form of σκάνδαλον) come, but woe to the person through whom they (σκάνδαλον) come.”[6] The necessity (ἀνάγκη, a form of ἀναγκή) of stumbling blocks is part of the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God,[7] how God has consigned all people to disobedience so that he may show mercy to them all.[8] As I write this my daughter is essentially a witch, a neo-pagan. My part in her defection from Christ was a decision made during my divorce from her mother.
My children wanted to stay with me rather than their mother. I went along with it, hoping their mother would see reason. She called my bluff and asked for money (to which she was entitled) to leave. My biggest concern at that moment was the family’s financial survival. I traveled for a living and would need to hire someone to care for them while I was away. I had no legal rights to my children. (I married into them and hadn’t adopted them because their biological father was still living.) And there were a few more things.
Her care for those children had saved their mother from many (though not all) misguided mistakes. To take that from her seemed dangerous and cruel. Add to that, I was crushed in my own soul to be rejected again by yet another woman. I had serious doubts that I could be a single parent of two teenage children. Did I even want to be a single parent of two teenage children? I wanted to make movies.
I decided that I could walk away with nothing but a paycheck, start over again and still help the family financially, and my wife could not. And so I rejected and abandoned my daughter.
I’m grateful to Stephenie Meyer, Melissa Rosenberg, Catherine Hardwicke and Kristen Stewart for giving me two hours to be a teenage girl in love. Randy Brown, Robert Lorenz, Clint Eastwood and Amy Adams have also helped me immensely in a more didactic way. But both “Twilight” and “Trouble with the Curve” came too late to save me from making potentially the worst decision of a lifetime of bad decisions (Matthew 18:8, 9 NET).
If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter into life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into fiery hell.
If what I do with my hands, if where I go with my feet, if what I see with my eyes causes me to sin?
Causes you to sin has proven to be the worst of all possible translations of σκανδαλίζει (another form of σκανδαλίζω) for me. It turns my thoughts inward to my sins. My sins are forgiven! Young’s Literal Translation—cause thee to stumble—allows me to see that Jesus was still talking about my real bumbling and stumbling, causing my daughter—one of those little ones who believed in Him—to sin, becoming a stumbling block to her, causing her to desert one whom she ought to trust.
Having watched her struggle through two drug-related psychotic breaks and a stroke, I agree with Jesus that it would have been better for me to kill myself.[9] It is better for her, however, that I believe that I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So the life I now live in the body, I live because of the faithfulness of the Son of God…[10] And I continue to pray that his love, his joy, his peace, his patience, his kindness, his goodness, his faithfulness, his gentleness, and his firm control[11] are all she sees from me from now on, because if I cannot be forgiven…
And by forgiven I mean: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.[12] An eternity in a fiery hell seems like overkill to me for masturbation or premarital sex or even stealing a gazillion dollars. But if my daughter cannot be found again by the Lord Jesus, if I have condemned her to an eternity in hell, I’m not entirely convinced one eternity in one fiery hell will be sufficient for me.
And though I write like this I still have hope. “I’ll always be here as your daughter,” she texted me as I thought and wrote about these things. She has forgiven me, but not Jesus—not yet. “Your sacrifice has made my education possible and I can never repay you but with love,” she texted. Since faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word (ρήματος, a form of ῥῆμα) of God,[13] I pray that He will speak that word, “hear,” to her heart, so she will know Jesus and his Father who has given her so much more than a few dollars. Now this is eternal life, Jesus prayed to his Father, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you sent.[14]
I didn’t intend this essay to be so confessional. I intended to write about an incident in the history of Israel, when a Levite…acquired a concubine from Bethlehem in Judah.[15] Actually, I wanted to write about what happened on their journey home, after she got angry at him and went home to her father’s house in Bethlehem in Judah,[16] after he retrieved her from there. But in the KJV she didn’t get angry, she played the whore against him. The note in the NET reads: “Or ‘was unfaithful to him.’ Many have understood the Hebrew verb וַתִּזְנֶה (vattizneh) as being from זָנָה (zanah, “to be a prostitute”), but it may be derived from a root meaning “to be angry; to hate” attested in Akkadian (see HALOT 275 s.v. II זנה).”
Ken Stone wrote in the Jewish Women’s Archive online:
The Hebrew text states that the woman “prostituted herself against” the Levite (19:2). Thus, it has often been assumed that she was sexually unfaithful to him. Certain Greek translations, however, state that she “became angry” with him. The latter interpretation is accepted by a number of commentators and modern English translations, including the NRSV, since the woman goes to her father’s house rather than the house of a male lover. It is also possible that the woman’s “prostitution” does not refer to literal sexual infidelity but is a sort of metaphor for the fact that she leaves her husband. The act of leaving one’s husband is quite unusual in the Hebrew Bible, and the harsh language used to describe it could result from the fact that it was viewed in a very negative light.
And though Mr. Stone mentioned “Certain Greek translations,” the Septuagint reads simply καὶ ἐπορεύθη ἀπ᾽ αὐτοῦ ἡ παλλακὴ αὐτοῦ (literally: “and went from him the concubine of his”).
I won’t comment about a Levite with a concubine, except to say that the Hebrew word pı̂ylegesh (פילגש), translated concubine, does not occur in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers or Deuteronomy. It occurs in Genesis before God’s law was given and again after in Judges, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles, Esther, Song of Solomon and Ezekiel. But the concubine is a foreign custom to God’s law.
The Levite and his concubine spent the night in Gibeah, in the land of the Benjamites, with an old man from the Ephraimite hill country, the place to which the Levite and his concubine were returning. I made the following table to compare and contrast what happened next to the incident in Sodom the night before it was destroyed.
|
Judges, the Levite and his concubine |
Genesis, Lot and the visitors |
| They were having a good time, when suddenly some men of the city, some good-for-nothings, surrounded the house and kept beating on the door.
Judges 19:22a (NET) |
Before they could lie down to sleep, all the men – both young and old, from every part of the city of Sodom – surrounded the house.
Genesis 19:4 (NET) |
The note on good-for-nothings in the NET reads: “‘the men of the city, men, the sons of wickedness.’ The phrases are in apposition; the last phrase specifies what type of men they were. It is not certain if all the men of the city are in view, or just a group of troublemakers. In 20:5 the town leaders are implicated in the crime, suggesting that all the men of the city were involved. If so, the implication is that the entire male population of the town were good-for-nothings.” The text is clearer regarding Sodom: Now the people of Sodom were extremely wicked rebels against the Lord (yehôvâh).[17]
|
Judges, the Levite and his concubine |
Genesis, Lot and the visitors |
| They said to the old man who owned the house, “Send out the man who came to visit you so we can have sex with him.”
Judges 19:22b (NET) |
They shouted to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so we can have sex with them!”
Genesis 19:5 (NET) |
| The man who owned the house went outside and said to them, “No, my brothers! Don’t do this wicked thing! After all, this man is a guest in my house. Don’t do such a disgraceful thing!
Judges 19:23 (NET) |
Lot went outside to them, shutting the door behind him. He said, “No, my brothers! Don’t act so wickedly!
Genesis 19:6, 7 (NET) |
| Here are my virgin daughter and my guest’s concubine. I will send them out and you can abuse them and do to them whatever you like. But don’t do such a disgraceful thing to this man!”
Judges 19:24 (NET) |
Look, I have two daughters who have never had sexual relations with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do to them whatever you please. Only don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.”
Genesis 19:8 (NET) |
Chivalry as a moral code was invented much later.
|
Judges, the Levite and his concubine |
Genesis, Lot and the visitors |
| The men refused to listen to him…
Judges 19:25a (NET)
|
“Out of our way!” they cried, and “This man came to live here as a foreigner, and now he dares to judge (Septuagint: κρίσιν κρίνειν) us! We’ll do more harm to you than to them!” They kept pressing in on Lot until they were close enough to break down the door.
Genesis 19:9 (NET) |
| …so the Levite grabbed his concubine and made her go outside.
Judges 19:25b (NET) |
So the men inside reached out and pulled Lot back into the house as they shut the door. Then they struck the men who were at the door of the house, from the youngest to the oldest, with blindness.
Genesis 19:10, 11a (NET) |
| They raped her and abused her all night long until morning. They let her go at dawn.
Judges 19:25c (NET) |
The men outside wore themselves out trying to find the door.
Genesis 19:11b (NET) |
The Benjamites who did this were not “godless Sodomites,” extremely wicked rebels against the Lord (yehôvâh, ליהוה), but sons of Israel living in the promised land.
|
Judges, the Levite and his concubine |
Genesis, Lot and the visitors |
| The woman arrived back at daybreak and was sprawled out on the doorstep of the house where her master was staying until it became light. When her master got up in the morning, opened the doors of the house, and went outside to start on his journey, there was the woman, his concubine, sprawled out on the doorstep of the house with her hands on the threshold.
Judges 19:26, 27 (NET) |
Then the two visitors said to Lot, “Who else do you have here? Do you have any sons-in-law, sons, daughters, or other relatives in the city? Get them out of this place because we are about to destroy it. The outcry against this place is so great before the Lord (yehôvâh, יהוה) that he (yehôvâh, יהוה) has sent us to destroy it.”
Genesis 19:12, 13 (NET) |
The woman was dead. Dear God, I hope she was dead (Judges 19:29, 30 NET):
When he got home, [the Levite] took a knife, grabbed his concubine, and carved her up into twelve pieces. Then he sent the pieces throughout Israel. Everyone who saw the sight said, “Nothing like this has happened or been witnessed during the entire time since the Israelites left the land of Egypt! Take careful note of it! Discuss it and speak!”
[12] Isaiah 1:18b (NKJV) Table