Readings for today: 2 Chronicles 36:22-23, Ezra 1-3
“The Bible was written for us but it was not written to us.” This fundamental principle, reinforced by scholars like John Walton, reminds us to pay attention to the many different layers we encounter when we read Scripture. It’s not as simple as “The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it.” Consider the decree from Cyrus that we read about today. “This is what King Cyrus of Persia says: The Lord, the God of the heavens, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and has appointed me to build him a temple at Jerusalem in Judah. Any of his people among you may go up, and may the Lord his God be with him.” (2 Chronicles 36:23 CSB) In our modern, Western way of thinking, the most important question here is did this actually happen? Was there an actual decree? Did Cyrus issue it? Did the Jewish people return and rebuild their Temple? How did that return take place? Was it a trickle over time or did it happen all at once? Was Ezra a real person? These are all important questions to be sure but they wouldn’t have been the most important to an ancient Hebrew. The ancient Hebrews would have asked a much different, more theological question. What is God doing here? How is God fulfilling His covenant promises to His people? What role does this pagan emperor play in fulfilling God’s plan?
Modern biblical scholars and historians love to debate the historicity of the Bible. They approach the text with a “hermeneutic of suspicion” and demand the Bible support itself through archeological evidence. Of course, the archaeological record more often than not proves the Bible to be true which only frustrates many of those scholars who have built entire careers and reputations off of attacking the veracity of the Scriptures. I encountered this over and over again in my own academic career both at Princeton Theological Seminary and Columbia Theological Seminary where I studied. I had the privilege of learning from some of the top scholars in the world. Recognized experts in their fields. Men and women who had published innumerable books and articles on the Bible. However, what I so often discovered was that their scholarship was simply a projection of their own biases. Furthermore, the glaring weakness in their approach is that they rarely took the perspective of the ancient Hebrew into account. They privileged their own modern, Western scholarly perspective over that of the very people to whom the text was written. Though unspoken, the bottom line is they considered the ancient Hebrews to be superstitious and ahistorical and biased while they themselves were objective and historical and unbiased. It was pure chronological snobbery.
However, if we aren’t careful, all of us can fall into this trap. We can read the Bible superficially. Looking only for information that might be relevant to our personal lives or looking for a flash of insight that might help us meet our day to day challenges. It’s why you so often see individual verses appear on coffee mugs or t-shirts. Ripped from their context, we treat them like we do fortune cookie wisdom but this misses the point entirely. Yes, the Bible does often speak to us in our circumstances and give us wisdom to tackle the challenges of our daily lives but it also draws us into a wider, bigger story. One that’s been unfolding since the beginning of time. The story of God in search of man as one rabbi put it. The story of God’s desire to have a relationship with His people and dwell with them on earth. This is the story the ancient Hebrews believed they were part of and it’s why they saw God’s hand in everything that took place from the initial conquest of the Promised Land to the Exile to their Return. And it’s meant to remind us of God’s hand in our own lives, carefully orchestrating the good, the bad, and even the ugly, to bring about His sovereign plan for us.
Readings for tomorrow: Ezra 4-6