... he is hundreds of miles away. Ezekiel’s second act (4:4–5) is to lie on his left side for 390 days, in which he bears the sin of the house of Israel. One day matches one year of sin by Israel. To what do the 390 days refer? If one adds ... here represent the exile of Judah, which lasted about forty years (587–539 BC). In both paragraphs (4:4, 6) Ezekiel is said “to bear the sin” of his people. It is most unlikely that this means that the prophet makes atonement for their sins. Priests may do this ( ...
... observe John’s baptism or to be baptized themselves (the Greek is ambiguous in this regard). John has strong words for these leaders who should be producing fruit in keeping with repentance—that is, in keeping with a return to covenant loyalty (3:8). The notion of bearing fruit is a common one in the Old Testament, focused especially on God’s expectation that Israel would produce fruit (e.g., Isa. 5:1–7; 27:2–6; 37:31–32; cf. Matt. 7:15–19; 12:33; 21:43). Thus John warns Israel, especially its ...
... and distress. The allusion to Gethsemane (Matt. 26:36–46) is unmistakable. He learned to say, “Thy will be done” (Matt 26:42 KJV), when the will of God was the way of the cross. In answer to his prayer he was enabled to bear his trial just as he will enable believers to bear theirs (4:15–16). This statement serves to demonstrate how completely and unqualifiedly the Son of God became a man like other men, though without sin. Though he was the Son of God and a sinless man, he was not exempt from the ...
... his twelve sons (12:1; cf. Gen. 37:9). She is also captive Israel, whose sufferings, like the birth pangs of a pregnant mother, anticipate the apocalyptic arrival of God’s kingdom (12:2; cf. Isa. 13:6, 8; Jer. 6:24). She is ultimately the church, who bears witness to Jesus even in the face of death (12:17). It is through the lineage, history, and faithfulness of God’s people that the Lord’s Messiah was born. Now enters the celestial dragon (12:3). This one is gigantic, fiery red (a symbol of bloodshed ...
... Spirit, for we read, For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, 'Abba! Father!' it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God. (Romans 8:14-16) "This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you" (v. 17). The ...
... the entire night he is terrified. Every hoot of an owl sounds like a menacing monster. Every cracking twig sounds like a bear or bobcat. Every rush of wind sounds like whispers of the demonic. But when morning finally comes, the young brave sees another ... chaos I will not lose heart when the world is torn I will not fear when heat blazes I will not fret when drought comes I will bear fruit in the midst of all of it I will march to a different drum I will discover victory in tragedy I will trust in El Shaddai ...
... of financial well-being is to guarantee a spiritual crop failure. Seed that is sown on good ground is not only heard but understood as well. It sinks in with all its theological and ethical implications. Good soil yields a good return. These hearers bear a rich harvest. Some yield as much as a hundred … times the amount sown, others sixty, and still others thirty. Thus Jesus speaks of four ways that the message of the kingdom is received. His opponents have already demonstrated that in their case the ...
... the material according to the pattern of Deuteronomy 32:1–40, in which Moses sang of Israel’s ingratitude and idolatry and then of the goodness of God (p. 216). Critics have questioned what they understand to be a “sustained note of fierceness” (Beare, p. 447) or “the extreme bitterness of this chapter” (Green, p. 187). Instead of being seen as reflecting the mind of the historical Jesus, the material is often held to reveal the antagonism that is said to have existed between the Jewish ...
... anticipation of the end of the age. The same essential principles are in play. To speak of the end of history in terms taken from the impending crisis was quite natural. A parallel situation in Revelation pictures the final conflict in terms of hostility brought to bear on the church through the powers of the Roman Empire in consort with the religious leaders of the Asian church. The Olivet Discourse (as it is often called) is best understood if we do not press it unduly at points where we may be uncertain ...
... Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “and only he who is obedient believes” (Cost of Discipleship, p. 69). The Book of James is particularly aware of the problem of saying one thing and doing another (James 2:14–26). Jesus himself taught that a tree is known by the fruit it bears (Matt. 7:15–20; see also 21:28–32). His call to “Follow me” demands an act which embodies a belief. 1:6–7 Paul concludes the salutation in verses 6–7. He has been commissioned as apostle to the Gentiles, and hence he writes to ...
... 11) by breaking the reign of sin and flesh. The Spirit is not to be confused with an enlightened though inherent component of human personality (e.g., body, mind, and spirit). The Spirit is God’s creative presence, both in believers and in the church, which bears witness to Christ, provides liberation from sin and death (v. 2), and guarantees the completion of salvation in the world to come (2 Cor. 1:22; 5:5). The Spirit belongs indissolubly to the person and work of Jesus Christ. It is not an impersonal ...
... In applying the Hosea prophecy to the Gentiles, however, Paul affirms that they too are heirs of the promises to Israel. The two quotations in verses 27–29 come from Isaiah 10:22–23 (and Hos. 1:10) and 1:9. The themes of calling and people predominate, bearing witness that Israel’s existence depends not on itself but on God. It is God’s call which constitutes Israel as God’s people (9:8). The effect of both quotations is that a remnant, and not all Israel, will be saved. The quotation in verse 28 ...
... his God and Father, should be considered in apposition to the more abstract idiom, kingdom. The essential and concrete result of Jesus’ messianic love is the creation of a new people who live under God’s reign as a community of servants, and who bear witness to God’s rule by offering themselves to the Lord in worship. Thus, John has not diluted the communal and covenantal aspects of the Exodus typology found in the prophetic writings. No doubt he is keen to emphasize this more corporate aspect of ...
... , the social structures of human existence are transformed as well, so that believers are enabled by the Spirit to relate to each other in new ways. The fruit of the Spirit is the ever-increasing capacity to love each other and to form together a community which bears witness to the new Jerusalem in the age to come (Cf. S. C. Mott, Biblical Faith and Social Change N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 1982). The power of God which raised Jesus from the dead is at work in the community of his disciples to raise up ...
... does not view the history of God’s people as divided into discrete dispensations; rather, the faithful remnant of Israel and now of the church form an unbroken testimony to God’s reign from creation to consummation. In this sense, the saints of old bear collective witness to a pattern of life which ultimately overcomes the evils of a fallen world (cf. Heb. 11). John sounds a realistic, perhaps even an ominous note in the final stanza. While the heavens (and the eschatological community!) are now rid of ...
... the children of your people, but you will love your neighbor as you; I am Yahweh.” The verb for “keep,” to judge from its use in other texts, probably indicates continuing retention of anger or feelings of resentment. So the rendering bear a grudge is a reasonable one. The word for neighbor can mean “friend,” “companion,” or simply “another,” here probably another Israelite, although v. 34 includes the resident alien. The preposition lamed is used with the word for “neighbor.” While it ...
... in verse 30 for easy is chrēstos, which can mean “well fitting.” Thus Norlie translates, “For My yoke fits so easily that My burden is light.” The yoke of Christ fits comfortably on those who place themselves under it. The burden he asks us to bear is light in that it is not obedience to external commandments but loyalty to a person. Additional Notes 11:27 For helpful discussions of the critical issues, see A. M. Hunter, NTS, vol. 8, pp. 241–49; and I. H. Marshall, Interpretation, vol. 21, pp. 91 ...
... it is often used in a cultic sense for the payment of a debt to a deity (TDNT, vol. 4, p. 340). It is also used in the LXX figuratively in the general sense of rescue without any question of a ransom being paid to someone (Beare, p. 409). This has lead some scholars to consider this verse of limited importance for the biblical doctrine of atonement. Barclay calls attention to what “the crude hands of theology” have done with this “lovely saying” and quotes Peter Lombard (as the extreme example), who ...
... is to be “a house of prayer for all nations.” Gentiles were allowed no closer to the sanctuary than the outer court. It was there that the commercialism was rampant—hardly a house of prayer for the non-Jew. The second statement is from Jeremiah 7:11. Beare comments on the setting in Jeremiah, which tells of worshipers who committed all sorts of evil deeds (“steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury,” v. 9) yet came to stand before God in his house. To them God says, “Has this house, which ...
... killing of those who brought the invitation (v. 6), the destruction of the guests (v. 7), and the burning of a city while a meal is waiting to be served (v. 7). These are “no doubt additions, made by the Church or the Evangelist” (p. 347). Beare notes that there are three versions: Matthew’s, which is a “fullblown allegory,” Luke’s (“a genuine parable”), and one in The Gospel of Thomas (pp. 432–34). Hill states that there can be no doubt that Matthew and Luke (14:16–24) present the same ...
... refer to themselves as Israel. As in 26:25 and 64, Jesus answers sy legeis (lit., “You said [it]”). The ambiguity of the answer has been interpreted to mean that Jesus is in fact the king but not in any sense that Pilate would understand (Beare, p. 527). Jesus does not, however, answer the accusations made by the chief priests and elders (cf. Isa. 53:7). Pilate is disturbed by Jesus’ refusal to defend himself. He would like to have dismissed him with the verdict “not guilty,” but silence on the ...
... him, is a phrase taken from Deut. 18:15 (where Moses commands the people to listen to the great prophet that God would some day raise up) and so would represent the Law. This idea of the “Law and the Prophets” bearing witness to Jesus is seen explicitly in Luke 24:27 (and 24:44). Moses and Elijah bear witness to Jesus and then fade away from the scene, leaving Jesus alone, because the era of the “Law and the Prophets” is over (Luke 16:16a). Now it is the era of the “good news of the kingdom of God ...
... possession money that symbolized the very presence of the Roman Empire that they so detested. They have and produce the coin; Jesus does not, for he has none. Whose portrait is on the coin? Caesar’s. Since the coin bears the image of the Roman Emperor, it belongs to him, but what bears God’s image (humankind itself, Gen. 1:26–27) is God’s (see note below). Once again, Jesus’ answer proves to be too much for his opponents. Additional Notes 20:20–26 For additional NT teaching on the Christian ...
... ” which Morris computes to equal three and one half years (Revelation, p. 143). A synecdoche is a figure of symbolic speech by which a part represents the whole or the whole one part. In this sense, the two witnesses symbolize the entire worshiping community which bears collective witness to God and to God’s Christ. D. Hill has argued that the ministry of the two witnesses is in continuity with the OT prophets in “their readiness to proclaim the truth of God in the face of Jewish unbelief, and even to ...
... ). All along in the letter, Paul has appealed to himself (e.g., 1:12) and to God as witnesses (e.g., 1:23). We may compare Jesus’ defense of his own sending as given in John 8:12–20. When the Pharisees claimed that Jesus was bearing witness to himself and that, therefore, his testimony was invalid (v. 13), Jesus defended himself by appealing to Deuteronomy 19:15, claiming that the joint witness of the Father and the Son fulfills the requirement of two witnesses: “In your law it is written that the ...