Monthly Archives: February 2010

I am stealing a whole post from Peter Leithart because I think it is important to Biblical Theology

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The bride’s description of her lover is a description of a statue: He has a head of gold (v. 11), hands of gold adorned with beryl (v. 14), an abdomen of ivory with sapphires (v. 14), and legs of alabaster set in pedestals of gold (v. 15). This conjures up the temple and the tabernacle, especially the references to “gold, pure gold.”

But it also throws some light on the vision of Daniel 2, and supports James Jordan’s claim that the empires depicted in that dream with a statue are supposed to provide a protective house within which Israel will live until the stone cut without hands strikes the statue and turns it to dust. In the Song, the lover is Solomon, the statuesque lover-king, but when the Davidic dynasty is interrupted, the emperors of Babylon, Persia, and so on take up Solomon’s task as the “anointed” of the Lord (the title Isaiah gives to Cyrus, of course).

The emperors were supposed to love and protect Yahweh’s bride, which they did not do. On the other hand, Israel was supposed to delight in her imperial lover as she delighted in Solomon.

via Peter J. Leithart » Blog Archive » Imperial lover.

So far, reading Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot

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  1. I’m surprised I’ve never heard King compared to Ray Bradbury
  2. It is refreshing to see a more Bram Stoker approach (so far) then the “vampires as enemy bike gang” approach which I have loved since watching The Lost Boys and Whedon used.  I wonder if King will give the vampire ghostly properties (bodies could become mist and then solidify in the original Dracula novel).
  3. It is so, so, so much better written than Stoker’s idiot book.
  4. But I do hate seeing Stoker’s rather inventive way of pasting together “journals” given up in favor of a standard third-person approach.  Then again, Stoker’s attempt was a failure, so maybe King was smart to not try to emulate it.

Was Solomon prophesying when he wrote Job?

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For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all.

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

“For who has known the mind of the Lord,
or who has been his counselor?”
“Or who has given a gift to him
that he might be repaid?”

For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.

The quotation Paul uses mashes an answer to Job with Isaiah 40.  The implications would seem to be that God’s answer to Job somehow meshes with the redemption of Israel from exile.  Job would be a picture, from Solomon’s perspecive, of the future of Israel.

The problem with this is that Israel was unrighteous, unlike Job.

But when Solomon was at his height, and before his fall, he would have known that Deuteronomy 30 promised a fall into exile, and he himself acknowledged it in his prayer for the Temple.  Also there were men like Daniel who had to go through the experience even though they did not personally deserve it.

Ron Paul won the CPAC vote?!

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So then, Ron Paul was the surprise winner of the CPAC presidential straw poll, and herein lies a lesson . . . for somebody. He came in first by a long shot, Romney second, and Palin third. It may soon start to sink in on establishment republicants, who want to “harness” all that tea party energy lying around, in order to get us a return to something like the Bush years, that this might be harder than it looks. The electorate is starting to act like a bear with a sore head. The immediate focus of this anger is Obama and his trillion-wielding minions, but a large number of Republicans wouldn't have to work too hard to get the treatment either.

There are deficiencies in Paul's approach to the world, but hardly any deficiencies in his approach to things like the deficit. And it is the deficit, and Republican earmarks, and Democratic earmarks, and the way things are usually done in Washington, that are the immediate and pressing danger to national security, and a bunch of people are starting to realize it. My children and grandchildren are far more likely to have their lives ruined by the big spenders than they are by the Taliban — determined by common sense and ordinary math.

Read the rest at Like a Bear With a Sore Head.

I am the king’s man!

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If you want to remember teach your children what faith in Christ looks like, one great place to go is C. S. Lewis’ The Silver Chair in the place where the owls have a night meeting and bring Eustace and Jill along.  Eustace, no knowing why the owls are holding a council in the dark, makes it clear that his loyalty remains with Caspian.

The difference death and resurrection make: boasting in God as a teacher of the nations

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BEFORE:

But if you call yourself a Jew and rely on the law and boast in God and know his will and approve what is excellent, because you are instructed from the law; and if you are sure that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth— you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. For, as it is written, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.”

AFTER:

But on some points I have written to you very boldly by way of reminder, because of the grace given me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit. In Christ Jesus, then, I have reason to for boasting of my work for God. For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience—by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God