Category: Reflection

Echad: God of the Shema

Posted on by Jordan Spano

The other weekend I revisited a place I go to maunder and ponder in the discord of this age. With phones, applications, advertisements and such all taking us captive every moment of our life, it’s important once in a while to lock your phone in the car, hold nothing in your hands, walk outside, and just shut the…. be still and quiet.

I visited the pier, with the intent to do nothing but stare at the tumult over the waters. It reminds me of Genesis 1:2, really, and the reality we forget daily.

And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. (NKJV)

As I approached the verge where the concrete met the aged planks of the pier, something caught my eye. It was an inspirational call-to-action of some sort, with an emblazoned URL beneath it: JW.org.

Proudly its bold text and assuring promises were nestled in the pamphlets that were freely displayed for the public’s taking. Across from the stand sat two ladies primed for the sunny day, with water bottles in reserve, lawn chairs positioned where they ought not be, and wily grins.

I wasn’t going to engage them: I was going to walk by and head home.

I wasn’t going to speak to them: I was going to just stand next to them and stare at the kids on the beach play in the waves.

I wasn’t going to do anything… so I became one intellectual powerhouse of a nuisance, a faux-Paul of Tarsus rhetorician. The whole conversation was fruitless and vain.

You got past the preface? Great. Here’s the pith of this piece.

One thing the trained ladies couldn’t grasp (despite my approach being a very coarse, regretfully unloving one), was the tension in Scripture that ultimately led to the doctrine of the Trinity.

God is one.

The most declarative instance in Scripture about this idea is called “the Shema.” Shama, in Hebrew, means “to hear.”

Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. (Deut. 6:4)

This verse is by far the most iconic, most memorized verse in the Tanakh (Old Testament), and is ingrained in the hearts and minds of each follower of Judaism.

It bespeaks God’s oneness: and, since God’s story takes place in the context of polytheism and the worship of those false gods by his people, it doubles down on the truth that there is only one God.

Not two, three, or 3,000. One.

Now this is numerical. Quantifiable. It’s a number, and it’s probably been conveyed to you this way. It’s probably how you would convey this verse to someone else, too (especially if you were in Greece in the first few centuries, where the number of gods were multiplied a thousand-fold).

It may be part of your arsenal when evangelizing: to a smarmy opponent who numbers Yahweh with all thousands of God, but tritely “believes in one less god than you.” One here is a number.

Now, while in Hebrew words can have several meanings (i.e., there is a semantic domain for the word), usually one definition (cp. denotation vs connotation) takes precedence over the others. (If you’re really brave, see polysemy.)

For example, the word day, yom, is understood as a single day, one earth’s full rotation, far more than it as understood as a vague, indefinite period of time (for those who like conjecturing about the Gap Theory. I don’t.).

The word for God in the Old Testament, elohim, can mean God but can also mean “mighty [ones/men]” or “gods” (lowercase), as elohim is a plural noun. This word’s referent, though, is much more often God than it is mighty men or [pagan] gods. (For a thorough article discussing whether elohim can mean “mighty men,” see here.)

So it is with the word one, echad: It overwhelmingly refers to the cardinal number “1” than it does express another concept…

…like unity, wholeness–bordering the idea of shalom.

What if the word echad, one, in the Shema, “the Lord is one,” is expressing something other than the number? What if the author is not saying that there is one God, but God is united–not disparate?

It’s true that Hebrew hearers in the context of Deuteronomy would have known God’s injunction to avoid polytheism (worship of other gods), as their time was replete with worship of false gods. (You can read the whole Book of Judges to see that.) Therefore they would have well conceded that there is one God only, vis-a-vis the thousands of false gods.

But they, called to be a holy and set apart people, would also need to function as a united body and serve the Lord together, much like a cadre of prey form together to protect themselves from a predator. The Hebrews would see that the united behavior he had planned for his people would derive from his own character: one who is not divided in thought or being (cf. Jn 10:38).

Consider below some instances of echad in the Old Testament that allow for a wider semantic domain than just “quantity.”

Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. (Gen. 2:24)

Now the whole earth had one language and one speech... And the Lord said, “Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. (Gen. 11:1, 6)

[T]hen we will give our daughters to you, and we will take your daughters to us; and we will dwell with you, and we will become one people. (Gen. 34:16)

Then Joseph said to Pharaoh, “The dreams of Pharaoh are one; God has shown Pharaoh what He is about to do… (Gen. 41:25)

This is a small litany of examples and is in no way exhaustive, but you can see that a few of the examples are reaching deeper than simply cardinal numbers, than quantity. The ideas expressed in echad here seem to intimate unity and oneness–a non-dividedness that pervades the Hebrew culture and is a reflection of God’s character.

I concluded in another article that Scripture can have multiple meanings that are not immediately apparent or realized: much like God’s kingdom is here but not fully; Jesus’ work is done but not in entirety (for he will come again). I think this double entendre in echad is much the same.

The Shema can express both the quantity of one and the quality of one/oneness.

But why does this matter? It affects the way we see God’s word.

I was at a youth group some weeks ago that was lush with teenagers and budding adults, all there to have fellowship with each other and worship. The youth pastor emerged about twenty minutes in, and he began covering the rich theology in Hebrews 1, specifically verses 1-4 which highlight Jesus as nonpareil to angels and sets him apart unequivocally.

The teacher, in hopping between Old Testament verses to bolster his point, cited Deuteronomy 6:4, the Shema, as an instance of there being one God, not many (quantity). He left no room for a double meaning, a portent of deeper meaning, or anything of the sort. And that’s okay.

But if you base your theology on single verses that appear so intuitively in favor of your point, you won’t be equipped to answer when someone has hard questions about your beliefs.

But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear… (2 Pet. 3:15)

When we say “the Lord is one,” we should be declaring more than just number.

  • We are declaring there is one God, not many.
  • We are declaring God is united, not divided against himself.
  • We are declaring in him there is no change… that the promises he has made and the redemption we and creation groan for is coming.
  • We are declaring that as is his character, so will be ours: which means we are to be one as a people.

One day, the church will be united. There will be no great chasm between us, and the remnant that was holy and set apart by God will be together again.

One day, we will all be one. YHWH Eloheinu, YHWH echad.

Joseph’s Coat: Is Long a Color?

Posted on by Jordan Spano

About eight years ago now I was teaching in the kids’ ministry at a church in my hometown, where I was slotted as the one who leads the games. This was strange, I reckon, because I’m rather staid: if I could I’d have assembled a Socratic circle, corralled the youth on the dirty carpet, and busted out the Great Questions in theology, that would have been a blast!

I don’t think they would have liked that. They wanted to play Simon Says, Red Light-Green Light, Duck Duck Goose, Hangman (okay, I wanted to play that one), etc. At such a ripe age, kids don’t care about the depths in biblical stories–or yet they can’t grasp them. Whether Joseph’s coat was rainbow, orange, or banana-bright, the story would have enlivened them, and they would love to be adorned in that coat.

And that was one Sunday’s lesson: a play, with all thespian décor and leader coordination, of the time Joseph was given a coat of many colors by his father Israel.

Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age. Also he made him a tunic of [many] colors (Gen. 37:3, NKJV).

At this time Joseph was but 17, which in this era is a full-fledged adult: he was entrenched in the 9-5 schedule, so to speak, and had undergone the rites of passage to be a man. Still, the family dynamic was more tightly woven then than it is today: unless you were wed to become one flesh and thus called to leave your parents (Gen. 2:24), you were with your family.

Despite their elder age, Joseph’s brothers did not fancy the chap. Even in innocuous activities such as tending the flock, Joseph had to send bad report about them to his father (which would probably exacerbate the poor rapport he had with his brothers, to be fair).

(Also, I doubt the brothers liked hearing of Joseph’s dream about his sheaf being nonpareil to theirs, and their sheaves bowing to his: “Shall you indeed reign over us”? Tumult was brewing [vv. 5-8].)

At some point Israel decided to adorn his youngest son Joseph with an ornate robe, a ketonet passim. When his brothers saw that their father loved Joseph more than them, they hated him.

You have to wonder: What does bestowing a colorful coat have to do with a greater degree of love?

Here’s a scenario for you (if you have siblings; if not, use your imagination). Your parent comes home from the shopping mall and has a big, elusively-branded shopping bag. It’s bulging but noticeably with a feather weight–so that you know by the cusp of the bag there are clothes in it.

You wait for her cheery beckoning of you. A name leaves her lips–but it’s not yours. It’s your sister’s.

Out she pulls one rockin’ Roxy shirt (#flashback), with some cool oblique flames to help flaunt your figure from every angle. “Yea, I would have wanted that. I wonder what mine is.”

The bag is empty. Just one gift… for your sister only.

This is the situation that bred the animus between Joseph and his brothers: envy.

Joseph’s brothers, from both the envy and the sundry dreams portending his rule over the earth (cf. vv. 9-10), plotted to kill him (v. 18). It was more than a quarrel over the coat: it was much deeper–a wedge of status between him and his brothers. He was called by God to lead, and they despised it.

So… the coat.

So it came to pass, when Joseph had come to his brothers, that they stripped Joseph of his tunic, the tunic of [many] colors that was on him (v. 23).

The ketonet in ketonet passim clearly means a coat or tunic, the standard vestment for Joseph’s milieu. But what’s with passim? The ambiguity of this word is the reason we have varied translations:

A coat of many colors//a striped coat//a coat with long sleeves, one reaching the ankle…

Elsewhere in the Old Testament the existence of color-adorned attire is present, when the book of Judges chronicles Israel’s interaction with Sisera: “For Sisera, plunder of dyed garments, plunder of garments embroidered and dyed, two pieces of dyed embroidery for the neck of the looter” (5:30).

Monochromatic attire is reserved for the proletariat, but the embroidered and colorful for the affluent and prestigious.

The section of Judges mentions the concurrent use of the colored attire, but 2 Samuel showcases the exact phrase in Genesis 37: ketonet passim (Note: this is not an example of a hapax legomenon, as it was when we looked at tattoos).

When Ammon was behaving filthily with Tamar, he called his servant to send Tamar away, who was wearing a ketonet passim, which she immediately tore and replaced with ashes upon her head (13:18-19).

Although Judges and 2 Samuel succeed the Genesis time frame, it is wholly legitimate to assume the colorful robes were also present in Joseph’s story.

The difference, though, is the amount of uproar that a colorfully clad Joseph causes his brothers.

What it surely would have communicated is that the brother was set apart and favored as the son born to Israel at an old age, but there is another translation that seems to better fit the context: a long-sleeved tunic.

A long-sleeved coat would have meant that Joseph was exempted from working in the field, perhaps, being given a symbol of royalty. He would be seen as promoted beyond the proletariat, becoming a white-collar worker vis-a-vis his blue-collar brothers.

In 2 Samuel, however, Tamar’s coat could have easily been long-sleeved or striped, intimating royalty, “for the king’s virgin daughters wore such apparel” (v. 18). Whether her robe were rainbow, extending to the ankles, or striped, she would still be marked as royal and never proletariat.

Likewise, whether Joseph had a long-sleeved tunic that exempted him from working in the field at all or to the same degree of his brother; whether he had a multicolored robe that made him stand out as a peacock; or whether his robe was striped and displayed him with tiers of prestige as in the military, his brothers hated him.

He was set apart, much like God intended for Israel the nation of his people to be (Lev. 20:26).

I personally take the position that a ketonet passim, for both Joseph’s story and Tamar’s in 2 Samuel, is not a multicolored tunic, but one that is long-sleeved or striped, or even both. People who are given vestments that weigh heavy on them are not suited to work like a commoner: they are there to present themselves as royal and rest on their inherited laurels.

As we see in Genesis 37, Joseph is destined by God to rule his nation and lead his people, and has no time to work in the same manner as his brothers. He has a higher vocation.

The idea of a “robe of many colors” is possible in this context, but because of the unseemly reaction by his brothers, the scene of agrarian-type work, and contemporaneous instances of royalty wearing longer, baggier, and ornate tunics, I submit long-sleeved or striped to be the suitable translation for [ketonet] passim in Genesis 37.

 

Do you think the design of the tunic matters? More importantly, when God called us to himself to be set apart and remain unstained from the world (James 1:27), do you think our attire or our skin or our vessel really matters?

I don’t think it does.

[Hu]man of Dust

Posted on by Jordan Spano

In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return. (Gen. 3:19)

I‘ve been meaning to write on this topic for some time. It is, I believe, one of the most arresting theological topics that is largely latent, if not lacking, in the contemporary Christian culture. I call this the theology of dust (but hey, who needs labels these days? I identify as…).

The dawn of creation was an eventful time, to say the least. All that exists or would exist, was spoken into being by the Lord. It was Eden. Perfection. But one thing was missing: a creature who would, in the end, mess up everything and spread sin over the whole world. (Yay. That’s you and I!)

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. (Gen. 2:7)

The word for dust here in Hebrew is aphar, which generally means dust/dirt/soil/ashes. In the context of an ex nihilo creation (unless you subscribe to a dual creation per Gen. 1:2, but I don’t.), this means the terrestrial canvas onto which God painted all of creation had aphar atop it. It’s like earthen crust as we see today (minus the pavement and skyscrapers). In other contexts in Scripture dust can mean a pulverized material or something used as a building component (like mortar), which lends to the connotation of something small, significant, and ancillary.

Importantly, none of the contexts convey aphar as a glorious material. It’s nothing, it’s rubbish. And I think that’s beautiful.

It’s beautiful to be rubbish.

It’s important not to view yourself as glorious, and here’s why.

About two thousand years ago, something grand happened (and I think you know this story). The Lord of Glory himself made himself nothing (“of no reputation” [Phil. 2:7, in the kenotic hymn]) for our sake. That’s odd, I reckon, considering people who happen upon wealth or fame get so wrapped up in exorbitance that their souls wither.

The Lord surrendered his glory so we could become glorious? What?

But you can see it everywhere.

And we’re at this crux in Christian culture (and I don’t think at the true crux) where we glorify each others’ shortcomings and pat them on the back for confessing that the sin they just sinned five minutes ago was okay because that sin was paid for; where we call our ability to draw calligraphy a gift spawned by the resurrection of Jesus; where we call our passion for fashion or our appetite for fitness an outpouring of the Spirit or a realization of our calling. I call that missing the point.

It is not just our religious climate that creates an atmosphere amenable to this type of self-praise. We also see it in social and political sectors.

We’re enabled to victimize ourselves, to expect cascades of compliments and exhortations whether or not we need it. Do we really need to be featherbedded in all of our aspirations? What about when we fail?

What about when we try our hardest on a test, staying up till 12:17 (that’s the latest I’ve lasted), cramming the energy drink cans in the nook between the counterpane and the wall, panning between social media platforms to make us feel sane and engaged, only to race through a test with bronze balls and receive an American-failing D on our tests?

Christian culture says, “God has a plan for you. Keep trying and trust in him.”

I say, “God has a plan for everyone. Study harder. Life isn’t easy.”

There is, after all, something so tantalizingly gloomy and sweet when you view yourself as a dust. Insignificant. Unworthy. But also redeemed. Glorified. Saved. Magnified and loved.

That God would love a morsel, a creature as we, and shed his blood that we might have life; and not only life, but empowered, abundant life–giving us the victuals for daily living as the sparrows and lilies… is awesome.

It reminds me of a verse from one of Gungor‘s songs called “I Am Mountain.” Its mellifluous denouement goes…

Momentary carbon stories/from the ashes/filled with Holy Ghost

Life is hear now/breathe it all in/let it all go/you are earth and wind.

Now before you throw the heresy stick and proclaim, “Jordan alluded to the banal ‘You are stardust’ new-ageism,” let that sink in a bit.

You are nothing… yet God gave up everything for you.

As a man rather reticent to embrace some of the more sentimental components of Christian theology, I find such dense hope in this thought. When you find humility miles away and outrunning you, and those close to you are handing you undeserved accolades  (all of which you refuse to acknowledge), this piece in Genesis is a glorious cradle for your sulking.

When Jesus became man and humbled himself (“emptied himself” per the kenotic hymn in Philippians 2), he didn’t do it expecting a high-five and a Gatorade once the crucifixion was done: he was met with hypocrites and recreants. Nobody asked for it, but everyone sure needed it… I especially did and always will.

 

Have you ever internally warred against a wave in Christian culture that suggests we be praised–or that we ought to give ourselves more credit? Have you ever reveled in the thought of being just dust?