Strategies for Interpreting Problematic Texts (in Joel/Obadiah/Micah)
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This commentary highlights some of the theological and ethical problems raised by passages in Joel, Obadiah, and Micah. The current essay explores strategies that Christians can use for interpreting such problematic texts while still embracing them as part of Scripture.
Recognizing the Problem Willingness to recognize theological and ethical problems in the Bible is a critical starting point (see Seibert: 15–52; Sparks: 30–49). For good reasons, the church treats Scripture as an authoritative source for faith and ethics. As a result, certain views of Scripture and biblical inspiration prevent many Christians from recognizing theological problems in biblical texts. Even academic scholars may demonstrate a lack of critical thinking. Some scholars justify the Israelite genocide against Canaanites portrayed in the book of Joshua (Bartholomew and Goheen: 79–80, 86). Many commentators are oblivious to the theological and ethical problems inherent in Obadiah’s portrayal of the Edomites (see Introduction to Obadiah: “The Challenge of Reading Obadiah as Christian Scripture”).
If we do not recognize the sins of the past, especially in the Bible, then we may well repeat those sins in the present. One need only remember how some American and Canadian preachers of earlier generations identified Indigenous peoples as Canaanites, whom Christian settlers were to treat as the Israelites of Joshua’s day treated Canaanites (G. Matties: 410–11). Many Christians still appeal to patriarchal biblical texts to justify contemporary patriarchal practices. Because of how the Bible shapes faith, Christian life will head down some dangerous paths if we do not openly and courageously identify and resist the problematic features of biblical texts (cf. Davies: 120–38).
The Root of the Issue: The Incarnational Nature of Scripture Many Christians believe that God dictated the words of the Bible. Such an assumption about divine inspiration makes it difficult if not impossible to recognize the Bible’s problematic features. A more realistic and helpful approach is an incarnational understanding of Scripture (Bird 1994: 73–74; Gench: 21; Swartley: 233). Christians believe that Jesus is fully human but also God incarnate. On one hand, the words of the Bible are fully human, written in ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek so that the first reading communities could understand them. However, people of faith also claim to hear God speaking through these human words. The words of Scripture represent the attempts of ancient storytellers, teachers, priests, prophets, scribes, and apostles to discern and describe what God was attempting to accomplish and communicate. The biblical writers did their best in seeking to report God’s deeds and words. But they were human, and their vision was constrained by the limitations of their life experience, the theological understandings of the time, their culture, and a host of other factors that always limit what we humans are able to discern of God’s will.
Kenton Sparks provides a somewhat different way to account for the human and divine aspects of Scripture. He begins by pointing out that human beings are fallen creatures, subject to sin. Flaws in the Bible reflect the fallenness of the human condition (47). God respects human freedom, allowing “human authors the freedom to be precisely who they were when they wrote Scripture” (54). God has adopted human authors as divine spokespersons, permitting them, “fallen as they were—to write the sorts of things that ancient fallen people would write about their enemies” (54). Despite God’s permissiveness, God was not passive in the process of creating Scripture. By means of providence, God was active in ancient Israel, the Jewish community, the early church, and the life and work of individual biblical authors, to advance God’s redemptive agenda (55). God has adopted the human writers of Scripture as spokespersons through whom God continues to advance his saving purposes and speak to the church and the world (29, 54–55).
Recognizing the human side of biblical writings like Joel, Obadiah, and Micah can help us make sense of their theologically problematic features, giving us freedom to evaluate whether these features further or hinder God’s purposes.
The Bible Invites Disagreement One reason we must sometimes resist biblical texts is because the Bible itself models such resistance. Jesus’ opponents seek to test him by asking whether a man is permitted to divorce his wife (Mark 10:2). Jesus responds by asking what the Bible says on the matter. His opponents cite Deuteronomy 24:1-4, which permits a man to divorce his wife if he completes the proper paperwork. Jesus makes the stunning declaration that this law represents God’s concession to male hard-heartedness (Mark 10:5). It does not reflect God’s full will for marriage but was the best that God could get across, given ancient conditions. According to Jesus, God does not want a husband to have an easy way to dispose of his wife but rather intends marriage to be a lifelong commitment. Jesus points out that not all parts of Scripture reflect the fullness of God’s will. Arguing with a specific text can be an act of faithfulness (Gench: 12–14). That is why at various points this commentary argues with Joel, Obadiah, and Micah.
Interpreting Texts in Light of Each Other In the biblical story just cited, Jesus models another helpful approach to problematic texts. He claims that Deuteronomy 24:1-4 is not the only biblical text that speaks to God’s vision for marriage. Jesus points to God’s creation of male and female in Genesis 2. He asserts that the joining of husband and wife into a one-flesh union represents the work of God. “Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate” (Mark 10:9). Jesus points out that Scripture sometimes speaks with more than one voice on a particular issue. Individual texts must be interpreted in light of other texts (Gench: 57–60; cf. Swartley: 31–64, 96–191). Sometimes the faith community must discern that one text or set of texts reflects the will of God more fully than another text or set of texts.
In many cases the church makes such decisions almost instinctively, even if most Christians are unaware of it. We do not take our guidance for marriage from biblical passages that permit a man to have multiple wives, but from texts that portray marriage as a covenant relationship between two persons. We do not practice circumcision and Old Testament food and purity laws, because we are guided by New Testament passages that set these aside. Similarly, we do not need to embrace everything we read in Joel, Obadiah, and Micah, since other biblical texts may provide alternative perspectives.
Ancient Culture versus Revelation Human beings live in culture like fish live in water. The biblical writers swam in the patriarchal waters of their times, so they expressed their understanding of God’s saving works and words using the patriarchal assumptions of their era (cf. Davies: 44–62). The situation is similar with slavery. Slavery was so widespread in ancient times that biblical writers could not quite imagine God’s desire to abolish it. Even the New Testament admonishes slaves to submit to their masters (Eph 6:5-8; Col 3:22-25; 1 Pet 2:18-21). Because humans can never extricate themselves from culture, the Bible reflects ancient culture on every page, including the languages in which it is written. Faithful interpretation sometimes requires that we set aside the ancient cultural packaging in which God’s revelation comes to us.
I grew up in a context where it was inconceivable that a woman would preach on Sunday morning. We believed that the Bible’s patriarchy and male leadership patterns reflected God’s eternal will for the church. I am grateful that my childhood congregation and current church circles are now committed to distinguishing between the core of God’s revelation and its cultural packaging. This discernment has allowed us to welcome women into leadership roles in the church, to remain open to God’s leading so that we do not replicate the patriarchy (or slavery) of biblical and later times.
Joel, Obadiah, and Micah all reflect hostility to other peoples and a desire to see God destroy them. It is helpful to see this hostility as representing ancient culture. The hostility is understandable, given theological understandings of the time, Judah’s oppression by enemies, and the threats it faced as a small and vulnerable community. Today, we need not see the hostility as belonging to the core of God’s revelation: we can treat it as some of the packaging to be set aside.
Problematic Texts as Mirrors In her book Texts of Terror, Phyllis Trible retells four biblical stories in which women are victims: Hagar (Gen 16:1-16; 21:9-21), Tamar (2 Sam 13:1-22), an unnamed concubine (Judg 19:1-30), and Jephthah’s daughter (Judg 11:29-40). Her retelling deliberately highlights the terror in these stories and connects that terror to the abuse that women experience even today. In searching for a way to interpret such sad stories, Trible observes that Scripture reflects life “in both holiness and horror” (2). Not all biblical stories provide models for how to live. One way we might find a blessing in texts of terror is if we allow them to serve as mirrors in which we see our own reflection. “Reflections themselves neither mandate nor manufacture change; yet by enabling insight, they may inspire repentance. In other words, sad stories may yield new beginnings” (2). Trible’s hope is that her retelling of biblical texts of terror will hold up a mirror. When we look into that mirror, we may see ourselves, our society, and the ways we abuse women. Seeing our own ugly image may yield insight, lead to repentance, and make new beginnings possible.
Joel, Obadiah, and Micah all contain texts of terror when it comes to Israel’s enemies. Instead of treating these texts as encouragement to embrace similar sentiments, we can treat them like a mirror. When we look into that mirror, we may see reflections of ugly ways that our media, internet, politicians, political and military systems, and sometimes even church leaders promote hatred and fear of the other as enemy. Perhaps the mirror will provide a reflection of how we are tempted to believe that our salvation and well-being depend on the destruction of the other. Perhaps such reflections will inspire repentance and make new beginnings possible in our relationships with other individuals and peoples.
Recognizing That Revelation Progresses God’s revelation proceeds in slow and halting steps. God embraces the Israelite people in their ancient context and enters into relationship with them. In the course of this relationship, God seeks to move the Israelites toward greater understanding of God’s will and greater faithfulness to it (cf. Davies: 22–43). This is one reason the Bible is such a big collection of books. It is also why we should not assume that every biblical text reflects the full will of God.
Progress in revelation is not inevitable. When God’s people are unfaithful to the revelation God grants them, they lose their capacity to understand some of what they have already received. Over the sweep of the biblical story, however, there is some progress in what God reveals. Early texts reflect the patriarchal assumption that a man may have as many wives as he wishes. By the time of Jesus, the Jewish community had embraced monogamy, which Jesus and the early church did as well. A fundamental Christian conviction is that Jesus reveals new aspects of God’s will. That is why the Gospels record significant elements of Jesus’ teaching, and why Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount includes a series of sayings that contrast previous understandings of God’s will with Jesus’ new interpretation of Israel’s traditions (5:21-48). This new interpretation includes the command to love enemies (5:43-48). Recognizing that there is progress in God’s revelation means that the convictions of Joel, Obadiah, and Micah about God’s determination to destroy enemies does not reflect the fullness of God’s will. Through Jesus we come to see that God wishes enemies to be transformed by the saving grace available through Jesus Christ.
Reading with Victims in Mind Problematic biblical texts encouraging genocide, slavery, and oppression of women have contributed to enormous harm over the centuries (Num 31:1-20; Deut 2:31–3:7; 7:17-26; 20:16-18; Josh 11:16-23; 1 Sam 15:1-3; Lev 25:44-46; Eph 6:5-8; Col 3:22-25; 1 Pet 2:18-21; Num 5:11-31; 30:3-15; Deut 21:10-13; 1 Tim 2:11-15). One way to resist such texts and the suffering they can cause is to read them from the perspective of the victims. Author Robert Warrior, who is a member of the Osage Nation, challenges us to read the story of Israel’s genocide of the Canaanites from the perspective of the Canaanites who are slaughtered and dispossessed (22–26). How would we react to the story if we imagined ourselves being a Canaanite rather than one of the victorious Israelites? Feminist biblical scholars have helped us understand what it is like for women to read biblical texts that limit their agency, portray them as subordinate to men, or omit them from the story altogether. It was not just more study of the Bible by pastors and theologians that finally led the white church to recognize that slavery was sinful. A more crucial factor was that more and more white Christians finally became attentive and sensitized to the horrific suffering of enslaved people, who were the victims of proslavery readings of the Bible. Compassion and empathy for suffering people are essential ingredients in faithful biblical interpretation. Identifying with the powerful parties in the biblical story—like the Israelites who commit genocide, like people who treat human beings as property, or like men who dominate women—can lead to harmful interpretations and applications. Faithful appropriation of the Bible is more likely to be generated by attentiveness to both the plight of victims in the biblical story and the plight of persons potentially victimized by contemporary interpretations of challenging biblical texts. Faithful reading of Joel, Obadiah, and Micah requires paying attention to who might be victimized by the desire of these books to see enemies annihilated.
Paying Attention to the Purpose of Texts In Genesis 1:28, God tells humans to be fruitful and multiply. Does this mean God forbids birth control, as some Christian groups have argued? Another way to interpret the text is to note that these words were first heard by ancient Israelites who lived when the infant mortality rate was near 50 percent and the human population on the planet was a tiny fraction of what it is now. The passage expresses God’s desire to see the human community flourish in the world that God has just finished creating. By now humans have overpopulated the earth, putting unsustainable stress on ecosystems, the climate, and the carrying capacity of the planet. Human population growth now threatens the well-being of the human community, not to mention the well-being of the rest of creation that God also wishes to flourish (Gen 1:20-25; Ps 104). Faithfulness to God’s intention behind Genesis 1:28 now requires that we humans limit our multiplying.
Joel, Obadiah, and Micah foretell the defeat of Israel’s enemies, thus reflecting God’s desire to ensure Israel’s security and well-being. In light of God’s saving work through Jesus Christ, we should realize that our security and well-being as God’s people do not depend on the destruction of our human enemies (see the essay “Salvation and the Destruction of Enemies”).
Jesus Christ as Interpretive Key A basic Christian conviction is that we see God’s purposes and will reflected most clearly in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This means that God’s work through Jesus becomes an interpretive key for discerning why certain biblical texts are problematic, for evaluating texts alongside each other, for distinguishing between ancient culture and God’s revelation, and for seeing the progress or trajectory in biblical revelation (Matt 5:21-48; see Seibert: 183–207). Although Jesus and the New Testament cannot be understood apart from the Old Testament story that they assume and build on, Christian theological and ethical discernment should privilege the testimony of the New Testament about Jesus. What some of the prophets announce about how God will deal with enemies is not consistent with Jesus’ call to love enemies (Matt 5:43-48), nor with God’s granting of peace and overcoming human enmity through Jesus’ death on the cross (Eph 2:11-22).
Interpreting Texts in Light of God’s New Creation From a Christian perspective, Jesus represents the climax of the biblical story. Through Jesus’ ministry, God fulfills Old Testament hopes by inaugurating God’s healing reign, or kingdom, on earth. Through his life and ministry, Jesus demonstrates the shape and goal of God’s salvation project, which will someday renew all of creation (Rom 8:18-23; Rev 21:1–22:5; Bartholomew and Goheen; 135–84). Read from a Christian perspective, Scripture has a redemptive arc leading to God’s new creation, which has already been inaugurated by Jesus and will be fulfilled when he returns. This redemptive arc and the shape of God’s new creation revealed in Jesus should become a primary guide that Christians use for interpreting all biblical texts, especially problematic ones.
Embracing Healthy Interpretive Lenses Many biblical texts should be applied in a straightforward way. “You shall not murder” (Exod 20:13) is relatively straightforward and should remain so, although we might want to expand the text’s scope, as Jesus does, to forbid other actions that harm people (Matt 5:21-22). Despite examples like this, no one applies all of what the Bible says in a straightforward way, contrary to what some Christians may claim about themselves. We all read and interpret the Bible through a set of interpretive lenses, or what Ernst Conradie calls “doctrinal constructs” (301–11).
How an interpretive lens functions is illustrated by how the early church dealt with the contentious issue of Gentile inclusion in the church, which was linked to circumcision and the Jewish purity laws. The early church’s Bible was clear that circumcision and purity laws were essential marks of faithfulness for God’s people. Yet the church decided that it need not follow the many biblical texts mandating these practices. After making this decision, the church did not reedit its Bible and delete all passages about circumcision and purity regulations. Instead, to deal with such texts, it developed what can be called an interpretive lens. The church acknowledged that such passages and practices once played a useful role by setting the Israelite people apart from surrounding peoples. But now Jesus Christ had initiated a new era of salvation in which God was shaping the church into a universal multiethnic community. Therefore, the Bible’s circumcision and purity texts had to be set aside to pave the way for the inclusion of Gentiles into the church. This interpretive lens has served the church well ever since the first century. There is hardly a Christian today who does not happily read the Bible through it.
Slavery is no longer a burning issue, because over the last centuries the church has developed an antislavery interpretive lens for reading the Bible. We have not reedited the Bible and deleted passages that legitimate slavery. Rather, we have developed an interpretive lens highlighting liberating biblical texts and themes that can be used to challenge slavery, such as the command to love our neighbor as ourself. Our interpretive lens foregrounds these texts and themes so that they shape our practice, and it pushes proslavery texts into the background so that we modern readers essentially ignore them. Many Christians have dealt similarly with biblical passages that limit the role of women. Churches have developed an interpretive lens that views these texts as reflecting ancient patriarchal culture. God’s will shines through more clearly in biblical texts and themes that promote the empowerment of women and point toward mutuality and equality in human relationships.
The Anabaptist tradition deals with violence in a similar way. It recognizes that many biblical passages encourage God’s people to wage war against their enemies, but this tradition pushes those passages into the background. Anabaptists read the Bible with an interpretive lens that gives greater authority to the call of Jesus to love enemies and embrace his nonviolent way of life. This interpretive lens can serve us well as we read the texts in Joel, Obadiah, and Micah that delight in the destruction of enemies.
Interpretive lenses can be blinding and oppressive. For centuries the church had an interpretive lens that marshaled biblical evidence to justify slavery. This interpretive lens hindered Christians from seeing and understanding the implications of some of the liberating themes and passages in the Bible. In contrast, healthy interpretive lenses can be life-giving. They provide ways to deal with the Bible’s problematic features. Such lenses free the church from having to use its time and energy to debate (or fight over) issues like circumcision and purity laws, slavery, and women in church leadership. They free us to use our time and energy to grapple with the pressing matters of Christian ministry today.
Bibliography
- Bartholomew, Craig G., and Michael W. Goheen. The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014.
- Bird, Phyllis A. Feminism and the Bible: A Critical and Constructive Encounter. The 1993 J. J. Thiessen Lectures. Winnipeg: CMBC Publications, 1994.
- Conradie, Ernst M. “What on Earth Is an Ecological Hermeneutics? Some Broad Parameters.” In Ecological Hermeneutics: Biblical, Historical and Theological Perspectives, edited by David G. Horrell et al., 301–11. London: T&T Clark, 2010.
- Davies, Eryl W. The Immoral Bible: Approaches to Biblical Ethics. New York: T&T Clark, 2010.
- Gench, Frances Taylor. Encountering God in Tyrannical Texts: Reflection on Paul, Women, and the Authority of Scripture. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2015.
- Matties, Gordon. Joshua. Believers Church Bible Commentary. Harrisonburg, VA: Herald, 2012.
- Seibert, Eric A. Disturbing Divine Behavior: Troubling Old Testament Images of God. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009.
- Sparks, Kenton. Sacred Word, Broken Word: Biblical Authority and the Dark Side of Scripture. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012.
- Swartley, Willard M. Slavery, Sabbath, War, and Women: Case Issues in Biblical Interpretation. Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1983.
| —Dan Epp-Tiessen |
