Structures in Mark 2-3

 I know I'm supposed to be an OT guy now, but I'm preaching through Mark until Easter, and I can't help myself. There are some things which stand out, and I haven't noticed elsewhere, but help me make sense of it much better. 

Jesus, Justify Yourself! Mark 2:1-3:6

Following Francis Moloney, who sees 2:1-3:6 as part of "Jesus and the Jews" (1:14-3:6), it makes sense to go back to the beginning of chapter 2 to make sense of the five scenes (and not just because there's a nice chiasm he identifies).

2:1-12 Justifying forgiving sins before healing, to show that the key ailment is spiritual rather than physical, which demonstrates he has God's power to forgive.

2:13-17 Justifying calling Levi and eating with his friends in order to show that he has come to call sinners, that everyone who recognises they are sick is welcome in the kingdom of God.

2:18-22 Justifying not fasting in order to demonstrate that these days are new and special days, that Jesus is now with them, but will be taken away.

2:23-28 Justifying picking grain on the Sabbath in order to explain that God made Sabbaths for people to enjoy, not people to keep Sabbaths.

3:1-6 Justifying healing on the Sabbath to show God's intention is to save life, in contrast to the Pharisees who are willing to team up with the Herodians in order to kill.

So we can see that each of these short anecdotes in Mark 2:1-3:6 are about Jesus vindicating his and his disciples' actions, and showing how spurious the claims are which will lead ultimately to his death, which his opponents' will from then on pursue (3:6).

Something changes when we hit the next section, and then there is another change when we hit chapter 4, so how does this intervening section work?

Who really understands Jesus? Mark 3:7-35

3:20-35 is seen to be a Markan Sandwich, but the sections before are a little less clear. 3:7-12 is viewed as a summary of the crowds, while 3:13-19 a summary of the disciples, now that all twelve have been called.

However, I’m always on the lookout for parallels. The parallels between 3:20-21 and 3:31-35 present themselves with not too much work, but the clearest one in 3:7-19 I’ve not seen mentioned. The parallel is actually less clear in the Greek than the English, which takes the idea of "his family" (3:21 EVV) from the second half of the sandwich, namely 3:31-32. In 3:21 it only has the ambiguous “οἱ παρ’ αὐτοῦ” (those with him), which, in light of 31-32 is interpreted as "his family".

For me, the noting of the locations in 3:7 and 3:13 tell us that we are supposed to read these stories together. 3:7 talks about the sea, while 3:13 has them on a mountain. Both pericopes involve groups of people coming together around Jesus; in 3:7-10 it is the crowd, described by their geographical origin, who are coming to him to be healed, while in 3:13-19 his disciples are mentioned by name (and occasionally a little more information).

This leaves in the centre (3:11-12) the description of the behaviour of the unclean spirits, who alone understand and declare who Jesus is, “You are the Son of God.” Compare this with the centre of 3:20-35, namely 3:22-27, likewise a discussion of unclean spirits.

The question dominating these two pericopes (3:7-19; 3:20-35) is, “Who really understands Jesus?” The spirits alone truly understand who Jesus is, and the threat he poses to them. His family on the other hand think he’s crazy, thereby showing they aren’t truly his family; rather it’s whoever obeys God.

Interestingly, the phrase in the beginning which draws the crowd to him is “what he was doing” (ὅσα ἐποίει, 3:8); who is Jesus’ family at the end? “Whoever does the will of God.” (ὃς ἂν ποιήσῃ τὸ θέλημα τοῦ θεοῦ, 3:35). Jesus is doing the will of God, so he is the one they should follow.

I'm not sure whether this way of making sense of this section Mark 3:7-35 has been raised before, but with the ποιεω inclusio bracketing the two Markan Sandwiches centring on spirits, this seems a coherent way of understanding what's going on.

Getting behind Jesus in Mark

Ὸπίσω in Mark's first call narrative

We're in Mark for the next term, and I noticed something interesting with the preposition ὀπίσω (behind) in 1:17, 20. It occurs twice in the calling of the first disciples (1:16-20), once with each set of brothers. What I found interesting is that it occupies two different places in each calling, whereas it could easily have been within one or even both callings. 

The first time is in Jesus' call to Simon and Andrew, where he says to come "behind me", and their response is to follow (ὰκολουθέω) him: 

16-18 And going along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew, the brother of Simon, casting into the sea, for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, “Come behind me, and I will make you become fishers of men.” And immediately leaving their nets, they followed him.

Ὸπίσω is in the call, but not in response. This contrasts with the second call, to James and John, where there is no speech, simply a report that he called them, and the response that they followed behind him:

19-20 And going on a little, he saw James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, and they were in the boat fixing the nets. And immediately he called them. And, leaving their father Zebedee in the boat with the workers, they departed behind him. 

It would have been easy enough to include ὀπίσω in the response in the first instance, or in the call in the second. Instead, what we in effect have is a bracketing together of the two calls of the two pairs of fishing brothers, the call with ὀπίσω in the first being concluded by the response with ὀπίσω in the second. 

Ὸπίσω elsewhere in Mark

Apart from the one time ὀπίσω occurs as an adjective (13:16), it occurs thrice outside of the call narrative. The first is in the introduction (1:7) as Jesus is previewed as the one who will come after John (ἔρχεται ... ὀπίσω μου). If we are able to link this with the calling of the disciples a paragraph later, then John is introducing Jesus as his disciple, albeit the disciple who will become the master. The cluster (if thrice within a chapter can be called a cluster) in the opening of the Gospel indicates that Jesus is to be followed rather than simply learned from.

The other uses of ὀπίσω are found around the turning point of Mark; twice in 8:33-34. This is the paragraph where Peter announces he believes Jesus to be the messiah, and where Jesus details what must happen to the Son of Man. Peter's defence of Jesus quickly leads to a rebuke, as he is told "Get behind me, Satan!" (ὕπαγε ὀπίσω μου, σατανᾶ). This is then quickly turned into a teaching point, as he describes to his disciples the life of the one who "wishes to come after me" (θέλει ὀπίσω μου  ἀκολουθεῖν). 

Thinking through ὀπίσω in terms of discipleship, following on from chapter 1, indicates that this odd use of ὀπίσω both for Peter/Satan (8:33) and for true disciples (8:34) might be better understood together rather than separately. That is, for Peter to be told to "get behind me" might be not so much as a dismissal (go away from me) as a command to situate himself in the correct position (follow after me). Peter's problem was that he had gone out in front, trying to tell Jesus what to do, rather than behaving rightly as his disciple: following, learning and listening. 

That was his original calling (1:17) and to that he must return in order to be an authentic disciple of Jesus. 

So many questions about Balaam

In Numbers 22-24 we first meet Balaam (or Bil'am, בלעם) son of Beor, a prophet hired by Balak king of Moab, to curse Israel. 

Amazingly, we know Balaam son of Beor also from extra-biblical material; the Deir 'Alla Plaster Inscriptions (Context of Scripture 2.27, Baruch A. Levine) writes about and translates the reconstructed fragments of an inscribed plaster wall from the 9th-8th century BC, slightly north of Moab in Ammonite territory. 

In those inscriptions he is a prophet who receives messages from the gods, providing a remarkable parallel to the biblical story. 

Balaam gets mentioned quite a lot in the Bible, which is surprising for a bit-player. His name comes up 60 times in the OT and a further three times in the NT. However, 51 of those 63 times are in Numbers 22-24, which is some impressive name repetition! He is mentioned again in Numbers 31, Deuteronomy 23, Joshua 13 and 24, Nehemiah 13 and Micah 6. The emphasis in the OT seems to be varied. 

He is also mentioned in the New Testament as an archetypal incitement to greed, in 2 Peter 2:15, Jude 11 and Revelation 2:14. 

In Deuteronomy 23, Joshua 24, Nehemiah 13 and Micah 6, God's determination to bless Israel despite human attempts to curse them. However in Joshua 13 the problem is his sinning through divination and being put to death as a cleansing of the land. 

Later on within Numbers (31) the Balaam/Balak saga is conflated with what becomes known as the Peor incident, in Numbers 25. In Numbers 31:15-18 Moses is upset that women who are not virgins, as well as boys, have been allowed to live in an attack on Midian. The reasoning is that the women who are not virgins are those who followed Balaam's advice to seduce Israelite men, which occurs in Numbers 25 but is not linked to Balaam in that place. 

That said, there are a few issues in Numbers 25 which are not clear, such as a plague which is stopped but is never explicitly said to begin (although 25:3a, "Yhwh's anger burned against Israel", may be an elliptical reference to the plague beginning). All this is to say the lack of a reference to Balaam is perhaps not that unexpected.

I do have some questions about Balaam, which are about 1) his location and 2) his patronym. 

Balaam of Pethor 

Numers 22:5, Balaam is at Pethor, his native land (NIV), that is the land of the children of his people (ASV), which is by "the river", i.e. the Euphrates. This description is filled out in Deuteronomy 23, as Pethor is further explained as in Aram Naharaim, or Aramea by the (two) rivers, which is identified as north-west Mesopotamia. You can see it right up the top of this map in red (made in Accordance Bible), while Beth Peor and Bezer are the names in red down the bottom, which are part of Moab, also in red below those towns. I've overlaid modern borders for some scale.

It doesn't take long to work out why people have problems with Pethor as Balaam's base and hometown. The plains of Moab, opposite Jericho either side of the Jordan River, are almost 600km away from each other as the crow flies, which is a long long way away. One might even suggest prohibitively far away to make sense in the story. If the details are correct, that Balak sent his messengers 600km to ask, and then they returned unsuccessful, and then they were sent back, whereupon he was willing to come with them (the talking donkey notwithstanding), then they have walked upwards of 2,500km in order to gain some support. The distances are staggering. 

Added to this is when Balak meets Balaam, he asks why he didn't come immediately in response to his "urgent summons" (22:37), which is laughable - the amount of time it would have taken to make two return trips of that distance would make haste or delay essentially negligible. 

It is of course possible that The River is a different river. The Nile could justifiably also be called The River, and the Jordan, for those in that area, could similarly be their The River. Further to this, it is always possible that Aram is Adam, a place attested to elsewhere in the Scriptures (such as in Josh 3:16, as well as a suggestion elsewhere in place of Aram), due to the easily confused pair of letters, the Hebrew daleth and resh, ד/ר. 

If Balaam was indeed from Adam, not Aram, and The River was the Jordan and not the Euphrates, then Balaam is slightly less exotic and the story becomes much less confusing, from that aspect at least. That would also fit more with the archaeological evidence discussed above. 

Balaam son of Beor or Bezer

The other issue I want to try to understand is why, in 2 Peter 2:15, Balaam is called the son of Bezer and not of Beor, as he is throughout the OT. Where has Peter got this from?

The patronymic, Beor, is written both plene and defectively within the same passage; that is, both בעור and בער. 

There were two things I immediately noticed upon hearing the name Beor. First off, there is a nice assonance between the three names in the passage: Beor, Balaam, Balak. This is nice, and a lovely coincidence (if it is that). Second, Beor sounds a lot like Peor, and apart from the B/P exchange, Peor is spelled the same as Beor (the plene spelling). 

I don't know what to make of that. Peor is clearly a real place in the Transjordan, known elsewhere as Beth Peor (not to be confused with another Peor within Canaan). 

If I had to guess, I would say Beor is how you spell Peor if you want it to rhyme with Balak and Balaam, so that Beor, rather than being a patronym, is a toponym. 

If this were the case, it could mean that 2 Peter preserves the name of Balaam's father, Bezer, so he is Balaam son of Bezer of Peor. 

However, it's not that easy. Bezer rhymes just as easily as does Beor, and you don't have to change anything. And Bezer is also a place, near to the plains of Moab (Deut 4:43; Josh 20:8; 21:36; 1 Chr 6:78; 8:78). 

So which place is his place? Is it Peor, Pethor, or Bezer? 

I think it's safest to go with what the OT has to say, rather than imagining that Peter has access to something that has escaped everyone else's notice for a millennium. This still doesn't explain how the patronym Bezer turns up in 2 Peter. 

The Greek behind it is Bosor, which is how the LXX consistently translates Bezer. However, it seems some scribes had some issues with that, as Vaticanus has Beor, and the original hand of Sinaiaticus combines Beor and Bosor into the horrific portmanteau Beorsor, which I take it is Beor + Bosor. UBS5 gives Bosor an A rating, suggesting that this is the most likely reading and that Siniaticus represents an attempt to correct the text.

There has been much work on 2 Peter and Jude's sources (very little of which I'm across), but I'm unaware of where the Bezer (Bosor) source may have come from, or why Peter didn't go with Beor (unless Sinaiaticus alone preserves the original text). 

Edit/update - I checked Norman Hillyer's UBC (1,2 Pet; Jude) and he suggests Βοσορ (Bezer) is a play on בשר (flesh); Peter then thinks Balaam is then a son of the flesh rather than being confused about who is father is. Why confuse us with the nearby town Bosor/Bezer I'm not sure. That said, the Greek has του, the genitive article, so it broadly means "belonging to", either as the son, or another type of belonging, as Hillyer suggests. 

Conclusion

All in all, there are a whole bunch of riddles associated with Balaam, son of Beor, of Pether. I don't know if I solved any of them, but I hope I have at least scratched the surface and edged towards some possible resolutions. 

The troublesome structure of the third wasf of the Song of Songs

I blogged a couple of days about the four wasfs in the Song; 4:1-7; 5:10-16; 6:4-10; 7:1-9. Of particular interest to me was the back and forth between her (5:10-16) and him (6:4-10). The structure of the interaction is quite clear, albeit complicated.

The section 5:9-6:10 (which I am preaching on in a week or so) comes as a direct response to the conflict in the preceding verses (5:6-7) and the plea to the daughters of Jerusalem to pass on a message to him, should they find him. They ask two questions, which each receive a response from her. The first, in 5:9, is essentially, what is so good about him? The second, in 6:1, asks where he might be found. The section (I discussed the break up here) concludes with his wasf, and that's what I really want to discuss. 

But first, the questions from the daughters of Jerusalem both follow a very similar ABAC structure:

5:9 How's your beloved better

beautiful woman?

how's your beloved better

to charge us so?

6:1 Where's your beloved gone

beautiful woman?

where's your beloved turned

so we can look with you?

Her response to the first question is a wasf (again, check my previous post for a description of this), while the answer to the second is a relatively straightforward answer. Again, to summarise the whole section, we have:

5:9 what is he like?

5:10-16 he's pretty amazing

6:1 where did he go?

6:2-3 down to his garden

6:4-10 she's pretty amazing too

5:9 and 6:1 are very similar, and so is 5:10-16 and 6:4-10. Her second answer (6:2-3) is different, and looks forward to the next scene (beginning 6:11). It is a simple ABAB answer:

6:2a My beloved has gone to his garden

6:2b a description of his garden - spices and lilies

6:3a My beloved and me are each others

6:3b he's browsing among the lilies

So that's all quite interesting, but the wasfs are where I want to get to, and particularly the second. But before we get there, the first wasf has a structure which I foreshadowed in my earlier post, which is to begin and end with praise, and then in the body of the wasf (no pun intended) to talk through the attributes of the body with metaphors and similes. 

A 5:10 my beloved is distinguished among 10,000

B 5:11-16a ten-part wasf

A' 5:11b this is my beloved, daughters of Jerusalem

The wasfs in 4:1-7 and 7:1-9[2-10] are essentially of the same form as this one, even if the one in chapter 7 has a little more going on. But if we can say this is the "standard form"—a list of attributes bookended by a general adoration—then how does the wasf of chapter 6 compare?

The short answer is it's complicated. Sort of. If I were a German text critic of a century ago, I would have no problem excising verses, to make his wasf a mirror of hers. But I would be pressed between two options—mirroring hers and excising 6:8-9, or a chiastic structure excising his wasf (6:5-7) altogether. Here are the two options:

His adoration with wasf (no 8–9):

6:4 my darling is as distinguished as Tirzah and Jerusalem

6:5–7 four-part wasf

6:10 the one who appears like the dawn is as distinguished as the moon and the sun

His adoration with chiasm (no 5–7):

A 6:4 she is majestic like the sight of two great cities

B 6:8 though there be courtly women

C 6:9a my dove, my perfect one, is unique

B` 6:9b the courtly women praise her

A` 6:10 she is majestic like the sight of two heavenly bodies

Both of these have great structural integrity, and I don't know how you could choose between them if you were of a mood to excise one or the other. I really like the way the second chiastic structure draws out the parallel between the three groups of courtly women: 

6:8 Sixty queens there may be,

and eighty concubines,

and virgins (almot) beyond number;

6:9 but my dove, my perfect one, is unique,

the only daughter of her mother,

the favourite of the one who bore her.

The young women (bnot) beheld her

and queens called her blessed

and concubines praised her.

You do need to change the line breaks in the second half of 6:9 to reveal the three-part parallels between 6:8 and 6:9b; EVV have "the young women saw her and called her blessed; the queens and concubines praised her." But the Hebrew order is "Saw her did daughters and blessed her queens and concubines praised her." All you have to do is add "did" before queens (a perfectly acceptable addition in Hebrew) and you've got a perfect mirror to 6:8. This also equates virgins/maidens with young women/daughters, which again makes perfect sense even without the parallelism; with it, it is only enhanced. 

What we are left with then are two wasfs, hers and his, which are a matching pair; his is developed further to include his highlighting her uniqueness, even among the presence of the court harem. 

The final thing to mention is the verb דגל, dgl, a verb which is related to the word for "banner", but, according to HALOT, has some kind of base meaning like to be distinguished, which fits the three uses in the song here. It occurs as a qal passive participle in 5:10 to talk about him, the stand out among 10,000. And it occurs as a niphal participle in both 6:4 AND 6:10 in identical constructions, despite the confusingly different NIV translations. 

What's going on then as the bookends of his speech in 6:4-10 is a comparison of her to two pairs of great things. In the case of 6:4 it is two cities, Tirzah (the erstwhile capital of the Northern Kingdom) and Jerusalem (the capital of the Southern Kingdom and of course all Israel under the United Monarchy). George Athas suggests this is referring to the cohorts of women at two centres of Solomon's power, and others too have problems equating a woman with not just one but two cities. In the case of 6:10 she is compared to the brightness of the moon and the sun. In both cases there are two great objects, there is the exact phrase "as majestic as these distinguished [sights], and there is a description of her to which she these objects are to be compared; in 6:4 it is "my darling" and in 6:10 it is her "appearing like the dawn" which is to be compared to the brightness of the two heavenly luminaries.  

For me the parallelism between the two bookends is primary, and it's worth noting it's not the actual cities and luminaries to which she is compared, but the beauty and brightness of them. And sure, they may be no extant textual evidence of women being compared to cities, but this is the Song, so why not? And I would think the rich history of Jerusalem being personified (cf. esp. Lamentations, Isaiah) would mean this is far from a problem.

In conclusion then, his response in 6:4-10 integrates two separate poetic forms, the bookended wasf, and the chiastic structure, the latter reusing the bookends of the wasf. This enables him to both respond to her wasf (5:10-16) in kind, while also developing on the form to highlight her unassailable uniqueness.

The Gruffalo and the Song of Songs

 As I continue working through the Song of Songs (I preached the first sermon in our series on Sunday), I started looking at the part of the Song which is most easily explained with reference to the popular children's book, The Gruffalo. If you aren't aware of this, it's a fun story about a mouse's ruse to scare off various predators with reference to an horrible, made up, animal. 

He has terrible tusks and terrible claws
And terrible teeth in his horrible jaws.
He has knobbly knees and turned out toes
And a poisonous wart at the end of his nose.
His eyes are orange, his tongue is black;
He has purple prickles all over his back.

Essentially what the mouse is doing is walking his eyes up and down the (supposedly) imaginary creature and describing him. And that's what happens in the Song of Songs! This technique is far older than the Song and is obviously still in use (Julia Donaldson published her tale in 1999). 

This technique is given an Arabic name, "waṣf"  (or just "wasf" if the s with a hireq doesn't come out), and there are four substantial wasfs in the Song. Three of them (4:1-7; 6:4-10; 7:1-9[2-10]) are him describing her, and they are always addressed to the second person ("you"). Only one of them is her describing him (5:10-16), and interestingly it is addressed not to the second person but to the third ("he"). I find this especially interesting because she does most of the talking in the song, but evidently, at least from the wasfs (as well as the vibe), much more about him than too him (I could and should work out the actual proportion some time). 

As they come in chapters 4;5;6;7, they are all found in the latter half of the book (again, roughly; there are eight chapters), but all four of them cover essentially the same sorts of terrain. Of five elements, they all contain at least one instance of it (with one exception), and furthermore, each of them has some mention which could be seen to do with the court or the military or something in that vein. 

Here are the four wasfs then in summary,

You can see that I've smudged a few words together as "lovely/darling", with דוד (beloved), יפה (beautiful), רעיתי (my darling), תמתי (my perfect one), and so on. I think it's fair to lump in belly for him with breasts for her; and commentators love to say that hand (5:14) must be a phallic euphemism, but there's very little that people won't say is a euphemism for something, especially in the Song. But grammatically that's a bit weird, because it's literally "pair of hands" (it's in the dual form). 

If we have a look at the categories across the four wasfs, we can see how common the common things actually are: 

Only breasts/torso fails to rate a mention in chapter 6; otherwise all the categories are consistently found across the four wasfs. There are of course some extra elements (4:7 for instance) which doesn't fit so well into any category, but by and large there is a remarkable consistency both in content and, to a certain extent, in order also (far more than one would expect if it were a collection of various poems).

Of particular note for me is that the lovely/darling category bookends the wasfs (notwithstanding its triple appearance in chapters 6,7). The wasfs are thus sealed off as distinct units, even if they still are important in their context. 

Also of note, reading through George Athas's commentary, is the use of military imagery. Athas reads the Solomon character negatively, and sees references to the tower of David (4:4), the queens and concubines (6:8-9) as signs of her oppression and her immanent assimilation into Solomon's harem. I wonder whether the references to the tower of Lebanon watching over Damascus (7:4-5) and to Tarshish [stones?], pillars, and Lebanon (5:14-15) are further illustrations of this theme. Towers are military buildings, and these places, whilst far off and beautiful, are also places of power and oppression, which simple viticulturists (she) and shepherds (he) cannot hope to withstand.

I don't think I need to say anything about the other categories - they're all fairly self-explanatory. There are some questions around the translation of teeth in 4:2 and 7:9, as there are with many words in the Song. 

So it's worth looking out for these wasfs when you come across them in the Song. They reuse and develop imagery from elsewhere in the Song, they bounce off each other, and as you get into the individual wasfs themselves, there is much more to look into. I'm particularly interested the way 5:10-16 and 6:4-10 work with each other, which I hope to blog about soon - my next sermon, in a couple of weeks, is on 5:9-6:10.

Structure of the Song of Songs

 I started a four week series today on the OT book of the Song of Songs, aka Canticles, aka Song of Solomon. I'm following the four-part structure in George Athas's commentary:

1:1-2:7
2:8-5:8
5:9-6:10
6:11-8:14

As he also did with his Ecclesiastes commentary, these are essentially preaching units rather than clear turning points in the book. And when you survey the literature, it's clear why one would want to be less rather than more prescriptive about the sections. Following especially Michael Fox, recent commentators perceive somewhere between a dozen and four-dozen separate songs; as such the "song" is actually "songs", an anthology of love poems akin to a collection of the short fragments we have of Egyptian love poetry from the New Kingdom (1500-1000 BC). 

David Dorsey has a good summary of the various positions to that point (1990) and suggests yet another approach, which focuses on keywords and refrains, as do Exum (1973) and Shea (1980) before him. They are roughly chiastic, but their choice of keywords and refrains seem somewhat arbitrary. 

The clearest markers in the text to me suggest a straightforward structure as follows. If we take the first verse as the introduction of a narrator, and take the sayings directed to the "Daughters of Jerusalem" as the end of sections, then we are left with the following structure (I have included the final verse of each of the central sections):

1:1 Introduction

1:2-2:7 Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you
by the gazelles and by the does of the field:
Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires.

2:8-3:5 Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you
by the gazelles and by the does of the field:
Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires.

3:6-5:8 Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you
— if you find my beloved, what will you tell him?
Tell him I am faint with love.

5:9-8:4 Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you:
Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires.

8:5-14 Epilogue

It is the variations on this key phrase and the not grossly disproportionately different section sizes which are among the reasons to commend this structure. To my mind the other approaches seem vague and mutually contradictory. 

However, by focussing on this one phrase and its variations, there is one clear phrase which divides the text into roughly equal sections, each concluding with a speech to the "daughters of Jerusalem", who play the role of the audience, substituting in for us. The variations are interesting; unfortunately the two most promising journal articles which look like they deal with this are in Spanish and Hebrew, and not available online. 

It is however worth noting that the first two and fuller iterations of the phrase include the words "gazelles" and "does", both of which sound similar, respectively, to "[Yhwh of] hosts" and "[God] most high". Swear, in other words, not just by creatures in the field, but by the God who created both the creatures and their fields. 

The first and second occurrences of the phrase are identical, and the fourth occurrence likewise, but for the middle phrase (as I've arranged it above). The third is the only one which is vastly different, which could suggest that it plays a different role to the others. However, that being said, its similarity is probably key, and its differences only go to highlight its position and importance.

Despite what I've said, I'm still in the early stages and may well change my mind on everything, but it seems good for now. To paraphrase Michael Fox on Ecclesiastes, it's about whether the structure works; does it make better sense of the text? Or, in other words, does it preach? We shall see. 

Reflecting on daily Bible reflections

 Back in late March this year, as we all went into lockdown, as in-person church shut down, I went to sleep thinking maybe I could send something out to encourage people as we were going through all this. My thought was to go through a psalm a day, and, God-willing, by the end of 150 days everything would go back to normal. 

Unless they were very short psalms, I wrote a summary, and at the doxology at the end of each book of psalms I wrote a little reflection on that collection of psalms. I started summarising the NIV11, then the REB, and then I started just translating (the DRV!). I slowed down a bit for Psalm 119, translated the whole stanza, so spent the better part of a month there, but otherwise it took somewhere close to 180 days for the psalms. 

I think often when we read the psalms we don't quite know what to do with them - should we look for the hidden messiah between the lines, like the New Testament seems to teach us to do? I wanted instead to show a Christian reading, which took seriously the struggles of this world (read Psalm 88 for a laugh sometime!) but also knows what it is to rest in God. 

But of course, the pandemic continued. What to do next? People were still struggling, we still weren't meeting in person, and places like Victoria were getting worse, not better. So I moved onto Ecclesiastes, in part because it's comfortable (see my book on the sidebar!), but also because I wanted to give a Christian reflection on each short section of the book. 

With both Psalms and Ecclesiastes, I wanted to model for people how to read Scripture as Christians, not as moralists or legalists, as we often default to, especially with the Old Testament. 

When Ecclesiastes came to an end after a bit over a month, I decided I would do one more book: Genesis. This time something a bit different; I wanted people to read the Bible, not just my summaries. So I asked people to read a whole chapter, and then reflect with me on just one verse. I really enjoyed doing this, and hopefully people appreciated the fact that (if they kept up) they had read a whole book of the Bible - something which some of us take for granted, but many really struggle to do. 

I only got the word out once or twice, and a couple of people join the whatsapp group every now and then. There's a few more than seventy right now, and of those probably two thirds click on the devotion. I don't know how many actually read that, but a couple of people occasionally tell me thanks, or bring it up in discussion - "like you said the other day on Ecclesiastes" - so that's encouraging! I certainly haven't gone viral, but I have encouraged people from my church and a few beyond. 

The way I've done it is start writing at 7:30am and send it out at 8:00am. Sometimes I'll write it in advance, but normally that's my routine, so it's been good for me. It's been pretty labour intensive; here are the word counts from these 262 days: 

Psalms: 73640
Ecclesiastes: 17151
Genesis: 19255

Total words: 110046

So it's taken a bit out of me, but it's also fed me. It's forced me to say something, or, better put, to listen to what God is saying, even from chapters I'd normally skim through (table of nations anyone?). 

But now, I might take a break. I might get back to it, but maybe not. I do hope and pray it encourages people in their own reading and reflecting. I'm grateful that this project was forced upon me, for the discipline it's forced upon me, and for the way that God has used this to encourage others. But now? Time for some time off.

Preaching through a Judges series

We've finished going through Judges; I broke it up into 9 weeks a little something like this: 

Judges 1:1-3:6 - beginning badly

Judges 3:7-31 - God's grace

Judges 4-5 - singing salvation

Judges 6-9 - Gideon's gaffes

Judges 10-12 - outrageous oath

Judges 13-15 - Samson's start

Judges 16 - winning through weakness

Judges 17-18 - grifters gonna get grifted

Judges 19-21 - the evil ending

I should add, I didn't think of the alliteration before today - that only just came to me now - always too late!

I try to preach through whole books where I can (see my complete list here), so that people go away from a series knowing that part of the Bible well, hopefully having read the whole thing, and with a growing picture of how the Bible fits together as a whole.

What I have been most struck by as I've worked through Judges (I had two weeks off preaching - Gideon and Samson #1 were preached by others) is the way the book uses recursion or juxtaposition. That is, every story is to be interpreted with reference to the stories either side of it. That is already obvious as the concentric structure of the book is examined, such that the opposing panels handle similar themes: 

Beginning at the end, we meet a Levite from the hill country of Ephraim. Could it be that this was the young Levite from the previous story, who was also a Levite in Ephraim? Probably not, because he moved up to Dan, but the connection is interesting.

So too with the Dan/Micah saga. The story begins without a beginning - it is as if it has slipped in between chapters 16-17. But when it begins we meet a woman who had 1100 silver shekels. Which other woman do we know with 1100 silver shekels? Delilah, from the previous episode, was promised 1100 shekels from each Philistine if she handed over Samson. Could it be that Micah's mother is Delilah? Probably not, but the connection is interesting. 

Similar connections continue throughout Judges (see my notes on Jephthah for some other examples). What this demonstrates is that Judges as a whole is thoughtfully composed, arranged, and edited with reference to every other story. However many original authors or redactors there may have been, the end result is a masterful illustration of adding meaning from structure; juxtaposing two stories next to each other forces them to be understood with reference to each other, so that two stories (or half a dozen or so) are more than the sum of their parts.  

As you work through or read through or preach through Judges, keep asking questions about juxtaposition. Rachelle Gilmour's book on Juxtaposition in Elisha is a superb guide and introduction to the question in general. 

Fighting and destroying in Joshua 10

We are reading Joshua in our staff meetings this year, and we were in the second half of Joshua 10 today (10:29-43). There is a lot of repetition in this chapter, but then a surprising flip at the end.

Essentially there are three elements which are repeated almost word-for-word:

A: And Joshua crossed over/went up/returned, and all Israel with him (29,31,34,36,38,43)

B: And he/they fought them/her (29,31,34,36,38,42)

C: He did not leave in her/for him a remnant (30,33,37,39,40)

There are other elements also repeated, such as the verbs for smiting (נכה) and proscribing/devoting to destruction (חרם). But each of these longer elements are almost the same, albeit with some minor variation. Until, that is the final time. 

The pattern looks like this:

29-30 ABC

31-33 ABC

34-35 AB

36-37 ABC

38-39 ABC

40-43 CBA

I don't think there's much to make of the missing C in the third cycle as חרם sort of plays the same role. Furthermore the C in the second cycle doesn't really belong with the AB but is a summary statement, similarly to the C in the final cycle.

But what is of especial interest is 42-43 and the switch from AB to BA, because there is a key difference. Every other time the subject of B is Joshua/Israel. This final time, however, as the Shephelah is tidied up, the reader is reminded that it is not Joshua but "Yhwh, the God of Israel, who fought for Israel." Not that they needed to be reminded, but the victories were only given to Israel because Yhwh fought for Israel. They fought and destroyed according to the command of Yhwh (40) and in reward for their obedience Yhwh fought for them, ensuring them total victory. 

That something different is going on is highlighted by this reversal in the final verses, and what that something is, is made clear with a new subject (Yhwh) and a new syntax (transposing the verb from a fronted wayyiqtol to the penultimate position). 

Trying to preach through the Bible

 I've been at ND since 2012, and wanted to keep a record of how much of the Bible I've preached through (or had preached through by others). I've included proposed preaching for next year, but haven't included one-off guest spots or topical/doctrine talks.

I tend to follow the pattern of Term 1: Gospel, Term 2: OT, Term 3: Doctrine, Term 4: Epistle. I try to rotate through the major divisions of the OT (Law, Prophets, Writings), and alternate between Paul and non-Paul for the Epistles. 

Old Testament

Law

* Genesis - 2012 (5)

* Exodus - 2022 (22)

* Leviticus - 2018 (10)

* Numbers - 2012 (3)

* Deuteronomy - 2025 (9)

Prophets

Former Prophets

* Joshua - 2015 (13)

* Judges - 2020 (10)

* 1-2 Samuel

* 1-2 Kings

Latter Prophets

* Isaiah - 2024 (14)

* Jeremiah

* Ezekiel - 2017 (10)

The Twelve

* Hosea - 2021 (10)

* Joel - 2012 (3)

* Amos - 2014 (7)

* Obadiah

* Jonah

* Micah

* Nahum

* Habakkuk - 2021 (4)

* Zephaniah

* Haggai - 2023 (2)

* Zechariah - 2026 (11)

* Malachi - 2023 (3)

The Writings

Poetry

* Psalms - 2012 (4), 2019 (14) (120-135)

* Proverbs - 2023 (5), 2024 (5)

* Job

Scrolls

* Song of Songs - 2021 (4)

* Ruth - 2026 (4)

* Lamentations - 2019 (5)

* Ecclesiastes - 2016 (7)

* Esther

Others

* Daniel - 2013 (12)

* Ezra and Nehemiah  - 2023 (5)

* Chronicles

New Testament

Gospels & Acts

* Matthew - 2014 (15), 2015 (12), 2016 (13) (= 40)

* Mark - 2012 (4) (ch's 4-5), 2021 (10)

* Luke - 2013 (12) (9:51-18:30), 2023 (13) (1:1-5:11), 2024 (12) (5:12-8:25), 2025 (15) (8:26-11:32) 2026 (13) (11:33-15:32) (= 65); also most Christmases 

* John - 2017-18 (28)

* Acts - 2019 (28) (ch's 1-17)

Epistles

Pauline

* Romans - 2025 (17)

* 1 Corinthians - 2016 (5) (ch's 6-7), 2022 (22)

* 2 Corinthians - 2014 (12)

* Galatians - 2016-17 (11)

* Ephesians - 2023 (6)

* Philippians - twice through; one church camp and one preaching group (8)

* Colossians - 2012 (9)

* 1 Thessalonians - 2018 (8)

* 2 Thessalonians - 2018 (5)

* 1 Timothy - 2024 (11)

* 2 Timothy - 2026 (7)

* Titus - 2020 (5)

* Philemon - 2021 (2)

Catholic

* Hebrews - 2013 (13)

* James - 2017 (10)

* 1 Peter - 2015 (9)

* 2 Peter - 2023 (3)

* 1 John - 2021 (8)

* 2 John - 2019 (1)

* 3 John - 2024 (1)

* Jude - 2023 (3)

* Revelation - 2020 (19)

There are obviously some big gaps there; I really have to do another decent series from the Pentateuch (the two short ones were from before I had control of the preaching program), and there is a lot to fill in the writing prophets. I haven't touched the monarchy at all (1-2 Sam, 1-2 Kg, 1-2 Chron). It's a problem of the OT being 80% of the Bible and only having a term per year (although the Persia series allowed me to hit 4 books). I need to do a big Romans series, maybe for six months - breaking my system (again). That being said, I've hit every division of the Bible at least once and most a couple of times. 

Over all I think I'm pretty happy with the diet I've fed to people in terms of the breadth and depth, but it goes to show how even with an systematic, expository preaching approach, it still takes a long time to work through the Bible, and it could easily take me another nine years and I still wouldn't have got through it.

Good and Bad things happen in threes - at least for Samson

Some things I've noticed in the Samson Saga (Judges 13-16), many of which happen in threes.

Three part structure

The saga comes in three parts:

1. Samson's parents and commissioning (13:1-25)
2. Samson judged Israel 20 years (14:1-15:20)
3. Samson judged Israel 20 years (16:1-31)

Parts 2&3 both begin with Samson meeting a woman.

Parts 2&3 are also bracketed with the location, Between Zorah and Eshtaol:

1. 13:25, where Samson received the spirit of Yhwh
2. 16:31, where Samson was buried

Three women

Samson shacks up with three different women. 

1. The first (ch's 14-15) is an unnamed Philistine woman who is then given away, allegedly because her father thought Samson hated her. The ripple-effect of this liaison is the slaughter of 30 Philistines to settle a bet, the arson of the Philistine grain, the woman and her father being burned to death, Judah turning on and handing over Samson, and the death of 1000 Philistines with a jawbone.
2. The second (16:1-3) is an unnamed Philistine prostitute, which gives the Philistines an occasion to ambush Samson. He does not stay the entire night with her, leaving early and helpfully relocating the city gates to a hill opposite Hebron.
3. The third (16:1-21) is named - Delilah - and is likely also a Philistine (although it is not explicit, and her name is Semitic). The results of this union is his capture, blinding, and servitude.

Three breakouts

While Samson is with Delilah, three times he tells her a lie about the source of his strength - although they each hint in some way to the truth.

1. tie me up with fresh strings (16:6-9)
2. tie me up with new ropes (16:10-12)
3. tie my hair in a loom (16:13-14)

This is obviously what Samson looked like.

Three gifts of the spirit

Three times Samson has the spirit of Yhwh. 

1. 13:25 it begins
2. 14:6 he rips a lion apart
3. 14:19 he slays and deprives 30 Philistines of their clothing

When Samson receives the spirit it is certainly not a "dwelling within" gift of the Spirit, but a "equipping for a task" gift of the Spirit. The first isn't assigned to any particular task, so it has the feeling of the dwelling-within kind-of spirit, but the life of Samson doesn't testify to that being a likely understanding.

This triple gift of the Spirit in part 2 of Samson, where he is empowered by strength from Yhwh, is contrasted with the three times he breaks out with his own strength in part 3; note that the fourth time, where he tries and fails to break out, is also where his strength (that is, the spirit) leaves him. In this we see a parallel with Saul and his downfall.

 

Three numbered slaughters

Samson kills a few times. Three times there are numbers of dead people given, and there is also an escalation evident.

1. 14:6 kills a lion
2. 14:19 kills 30 men
3. 15:8 "viciously attacked and slaughtered many" (NIV) "tore them limb from limb" (CSB)
4. 15:15 kills 1000 men
5. 16:27,30 kills 3000+ men and women

It's also interesting, with this focus on threes, that two of the three numbers have threes - 30 men and 3000 men and women on the rooftop. 

It's probably nothing, but it's also interesting how similar the words Samson and thirty are: שׁמשׁון & שׁלושׁים. Sure, they're not that similar, but Shimshon and Shloshim do sound very similar. Also, it's three hundred foxes that Samson catches and sets on fire. 

Conclusion

Good things, as well as bad things, do come in threes. There may be others that I've missed, and there may be some tenuous ones I've suggested. 

By far the biggest thing which stands out for me is the comparison between part 2&3 of the saga, and I think the threes add to that and help us be on the lookout.

When God Remembers

I've finished my Psalm a day, and then a month of Ecclesiastes a day, and now I'm on to a chapter of the Bible a day, starting at the beginning. I hit Genesis 8 this morning and came across this:

But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. (Gen 8:1)

It reminded me of one of my favourite passages at the end of Exodus 2:

God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them. (Ex 2:24-25)

After four centuries of slavery in Egypt, the groans of Israel are about to be answered with action.

What was interesting was doing a quick search for God and Remembers (זכר + אלהים), and amazingly there's only four in the whole Tanach. I changed the search to include Yhwh, but that only added one further occurrence, 1 Sam 1:19. Here then are all the times when the Bible records God "remembering" his people. (If you have others which don't match the construction, let me know - this is just from a quick Accordance search.)

1. God remembered the floating Noah (Gen 8:1) and caused the waters to recede
2. God remembered the worried Abraham (Gen 19:29) and rescued his nephew Lot
3. God remembered the barren Rachel (Gen 30:22) and gave her a child
4. God remembered his covenant for the sake of his enslaved Israel (Ex 2:24) and began working to rescue
5. Yhwh remembered the marginalised Hannah (1 Sam 1:19) and gave her a child

Obviously God remembering doesn't imply the opposite - that he could ever forget - rather it points to the fact that he has chosen that time to act and to intervene for the sake of those he loves.

Judge Jephthah in Context

Jephthah in Context

I've been thinking about Jephthah this week, and there are two things to note from the outset. The first is the context. After the long saga of Gideon + Abimelek, and before the long saga of Samson, there is a classic bookended structure:

Minor judges (10:1-5)

Jephthah (10:6-12:7)

Minor judges (12:8-15)

We can obviously say a lot more about the structure, but as a starting point the structure of the minor judges either side is used to mark out Jephthah in the centre as a major judge. But if we wanted to fill out the structure a little more, we can see another layer and more parallels: 

Two judges; many sons on many donkeys (10:1-5)

Sin, subjugation, suffering, supplication (10:6-16)

Jephthah the new judge, one of multiple sons, saves Israel (11:1-33)

A stupid vow and the slaughter of a virgin, succeeded by civil war and a shibboleth (11:34-12:7)

Three judges; many sons on many donkeys (12:8-15)

The parallels between the minor judges (two before, three after) are self-evident. Jair (10:3-5) had 30 sons on 30 donkeys ruling 30 towns. Ibzan (12:8-10) had 30 sons (to whom he married 30 women from outside his clan) and 30 daughters (who he married off outside his clan), and Abdon (12:13-15) had 40 sons and 30 grandsons on 70 donkeys. 

We will meet more donkeys in the chapters to come, but we have seen the wiley Aksah upon a donkey securing extra water rights  (1:14-15) and donkey goers are exhorted to pay attention to the call to unity by Deborah (5:10-11). But we have also seen an army slain with a donkey's jawbone (15:15-16) - perhaps having a dig at these wannabe warlords on their donkeys. 

The numbers 30 and 70 come up as well; 30 pops up several times in the Samson saga and in the epilogue (20:31,39), but 70 is both the number of kings mutilated by Adoni-Bezek (1:7) and the number of his own brothers murdered by Abimelek to become leader - a deal involving 70 shekels (8:30; 9:25). Are these new 70 a redemption of the number or simply a continuation? 

But apart from the minor judges, the structure highlights the situation before Jephthah (sin, subjugation, suffering, supplication; 10:6-11) but also that, after Yhwh grants him the victory, things aren't much different (11:34-12:7). The judges to whom Yhwh grants his Spirit (in Jephthah's case, 11:29) are going to become worse and worse leaders, worse and worse examples, and will highlight more and more what a failure it is to trust in human leaders, who cannot (really) save.

The Shortest Judge

The second is that Jephthah leads for the shortest time of all the judges:

That being said, we aren't always told the full details. We sometimes know how long they were judge for (from Tola onwards) and we sometimes know how long there was peace for because of their reign (up to Gideon). It could be that these timespans are coterminous, for example with Gideon it says "During Gideosn't lifetime, the land had peace for forty years." (8:28b) But we don't have the same information for other judges, and there seems to be a judgement in the latter judges (from Tola onwards) in that Israel weren't granted peace after their judge died. 

But Jephthah stands out because he is at the very bottom of the barrel in terms of lengths (not including Shamgar because we know so very little about him), and, even though we are in a sense comparing apples (years of peace) with oranges (years led for), the only information we are given is what we have to work with. That is, 40-80 years is associated with the first four judges, while 6-23 are the years associated with the latter seven. And Jephthah is at the bottom of everything:

• Jephthah: 6
• Ibzan: 7
• Abdon: 8
• Elon: 10
• Samson: 20
• Jair: 22
• Tola: 23
• Gideon: 40

I think why this matters is because Jephthah is not given a clear rebuke from Yhwh despite his evil vow and his evil fulfilment thereof. Rather, Yhwh is silent throughout. His name is invoked, but he is not. The response is threefold:

1. Jephthah's line is finished. His daughter's virginity is emphasised, as is her being his only child. There will be no Jephthaian dynasty.
2. The immediate aftermath to his victory over the enemy is civil war. There will be no united Israel under Jephthah.
3. His leadership (including his two wars) is the shortest of any judge: only six years. His only legacy is to be known as "the one who couldn't shut up"; Jephthah coming from פתח - to open (one's mouth).

Errata

 As I've been going through Ecclesiastes again, I noticed an error in my book. 

On p50 I wrote: 

"in 4:1 there is a fourfold use of עשׁק (to oppress), which occurs four times as a participle, albeit in different forms each time,"

It's clearly only thrice. In trying to understand why I made this error, I think I must have misread נַעֲשִׂים (from עשה) as הָעֲשֻׁקִים (from עשק). It's also possible that my brain was looking for groups of four - in the same paragraph I discuss 4:4 and "four near-synonyms for work." 

If you want to fix it, perhaps the paragraph should read,

This similar formula is seen with את־כל (twice in 4:4), and then patterns of three: in 4:1 there is a triple use of עשׁק (to oppress), which occurs three times as a participle, albeit in different forms each time, while in 4:4 the pattern of three is made up of three synonyms for work, with מעשׂה, ,כשׁרון ,עמל as well as, for a potential fourth, what Qohelet describes as work’s functional equivalent, namely כי הוא קנאת־אישׁ מרעהו (for this is one’s envy over their friend).

I'm not sure how it got through so many readings and readers, but there you go. I also still need to track down the library copy of my MTh and fix a separate typo there (which thankfully I caught before the published version). 

Sisera's mother

In chapter 5 of the book of Judges, there is a three-verse aside about Sisera's mother, absent from the chapter 4 account of the same battle, which I've always found intriguing. Here are a few thoughts I've gathered together

Sisera's mother among the women of Judges (5:28-30)

Through the window peered Sisera’s mother, Behind the lattice she whined: 

“Why is his chariot so long in coming? Why so late the clatter of his wheels?”

 The wisest of her ladies give answer; She, too, replies to herself:

 “They must be dividing the spoil they have found: A damsel or two for each man, spoil of dyed cloths for Sisera, spoil of embroidered cloths, A couple of embroidered cloths round every neck as spoil.”

(Judges 5:28–30 JPS)

In the story of Deborah and Barak, there are three female characters, two of them named.

1. Deborah, the key figure 
2. Jael, the unlikely victor
3. Sisera's mum, waiting for her son's return

But there's a couple more groups of women. 

1. First, the handmaids of Sisera's mum, who are standing by to help her out
2. But second, the female captives they expect will be the spoils of the battle

Nimrud ivory carving with “Lady at the Window” motif; Daniel I. Block, “Judges,” in Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 & 2 Samuel, vol. 2 of Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary: Old Testament. ed. John H. Walton; Accordance electronic ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009), 149.

The true picture of the mother

It seems quite innocent, but it's actually quite disturbing. 
This lovely old lady, looking out her window, waiting for her son to slaughter the naughty Israelites, to plunder their villages in retaliation, and to steal their widows and daughters as sex slaves. 
Because this is what she's waiting for - some nice fabric for her and some pretty women for him.
For comparison, here's a tribute list from Ashurnasirpal of Assyria (883–859 B.C.):

I received tribute from Sangara, king of the land of Ḫatti, 20 talents of silver, a gold ring, a gold bracelet, gold daggers, 100 talents of bronze, 250 talents of iron, bronze (tubs), bronze pails, bronze bath-tubs, a bronze oven, many ornaments from his palace the weight of which could not be determined, beds of boxwood, thrones of boxwood, dishes of boxwood decorated with ivory, 200 adolescent girls, linen garments with  multi-coloured trim, purple wool, red-purple wool, gišnugallu-alabaster, elephants’ tusks, a chariot of  polished (gold), a gold couch with trimming—objects befitting his royalty.

The other thing to mention is that the word isn't woman or female - it's "womb" - or perhaps something even cruder, which is to say there is no value to these women except as their utility to their male captors. 

Thankfully, when Israel do something just as evil in Judges 21 - the final chapter of Israel's descent into evil - the women there will at least be wives - therefore worthy of protection and support.

Sisera's Mother as anti-Deborah

Deborah is called a mother in Israel (5:7); Sisera's mother is unnamed - known only as Sisera's mother (5:28). This is important, because, from Israel's perspective 

the story ends with Israel being forged as a nation through this victory, but Sisera's mother becomes barren, her son lying dead. 

Deborah became a mother through victory, while Sisera's mother became an un-mother through defeat.

Sisera's Mother as anti-Jael

Jael is just minding her own business, doing her own thing. She's non-aligned - an independent. Sisera thinks she's allied with Jabin, but is unaware that Israel are her distant relatives through Moses's father-in-law (cf 1:16). But I think that the Kenites (her people) are able to choose their own path - do what is right without obligation. We might contrast this with Sisera's mother, who has raised her son; her hopes are his hopes, her morals his morals, and they are not good morals.

At the end of the episode, Barak turns up, a little puffed, because he's followed the Canaanite army and cut them down - but no Sisera. So he's doubled back and in 4:22 asks Jael if Sisera came by. Jael opens the curtain of the tent - might this be the commander you're looking for?

The contrast to this pulling back of a curtain with the curtain pulled back by Sisera's mum, standing by the window and waiting - I wonder where my boy is?

The aftermath

The story of these three women is the story of three different world-views.

• Deborah is the willing servant of Israel
• Jael is servant of none, master of her own destiny
• Sisera's mum is anxious, awaiting the return of her brutal son and his depraved idea of spoil from war.

I should note - Israel are going to go down a not dissimilar path - as we see how far they too have fallen. But for now there's a choice - clearly Israel have a mother (Deborah) and a cousin (Jael) who choose the right path. After their victory Israel have 40 years - an entire generation - of peace and prosperity, but Canaan is done; we won't hear from them again, as they are on the out and the Philistines will rise up to take their place as the chief enemy of Israel.

For a time, at least, the people will mimic their mothers - Israel will mimic the wise and measured Deborah - and they will prosper while Canaan, following the instruction of people like Sisera's mother, are headed for extinction as a people - there are no more Canaanites today.

We should rejoice at the destruction of this evil warlord and his army, and the eventual freeing of Israel from their oppressors. However, the evil expectation we see even in the mother of Sisera will sadly be matched by the Israelites at the end of the book, after which we hear the final words, "everyone did as they saw fit in their own eyes". S

o even though evil from the Canaanites is averted right now, we also know that Israel will show themselves to be no better, 

and as we continue on through the book we await with dread the inevitable.