Diary of a Theologian

Ten Brothers and Three Days

The Lion and the Ass: Reading Genesis after Babylon, by Robert D. Sacks (ISBN 9781888009521) is my go-to commentary. I have been studying it (and its earlier versions) for more than a decade, with the result that I have grown ever fonder of the first book of the Bible. I recommend it heartily to everyone: from first-time Bible readers to Hebrew scholars. And here is an example of why.
    Earlier this week, our morning lesson was Genesis 42:1-17. The scene: It’s a decade or so after Joseph has been sold into slavery by his brothers. There is famine in the land, and Jacob, the father of twelve sons, tells them they should go down to Egypt and get food. In verse 3, we read: “So ten of Joseph’s brothers went down to buy grain in Egypt.” The next verse will tell us that Jacob held back Joseph’s full brother, Benjamin, from going with the others—for fear that harm would come to him also, as (he thinks) had come to Joseph earlier.
    But Sacks notes that verse 3 could be saying “ten” not in comparison with “eleven” but with “nine.” That is to say, verse 3 is silently telling us that Judah had rejoined his brothers.
    Judah, earlier, had tried to save Joseph from his brothers’ evil intentions, and was unsuccessful. In the next chapter (Gen. 38) we are told how Judah left his brothers and had an independent life. (This is the chapter left out of the daily office lectionary!) Judah married and had three sons. The oldest son married a woman named Tamar, but he died before children were born. The next son took his sister-in-law to wife, and died also. Judah tried to save his third son from death and sent back his daughter-in-law to her father’s home. She dresses as a harlot, Judah (not knowing who she is) goes into her, and she becomes pregnant. When all is revealed, Judah repents of his sin. It is the son of Judah by Tamar—Perez, the first of the twins to be born—who becomes the ancestor of David.
    What we didn’t know at the end of chapter 38 is what Judah would do. Would he stay away from his brothers, or somehow return to the obligations of transmission? He seems to have learned from personal experience that the obligations of transmission of the “new way” of the people of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, are what he must take on. He is not Jacob’s eldest son, but he does seem to be the natural leader, and also to have been wise enough to learn leadership. And as it were silently, the text lets us see that he has done just that, when it says in Genesis 42:3 that “ten” of Joseph’s brothers went down to Egypt.
---
    At verse 17, the ten brothers have appeared before Joseph (not knowing who he is) and asked for grain. Joseph affects indignation and puts them all in jail for three days.
    Sacks asks us to consider the meaning of "three days" in the Bible. “This is not the first time the reader has sweated through a period of three days,” he says. It took Abraham three days to go with Isaac to the place where he would have sacrificed him. Joseph (in ch. 40) had interpreted dreams that involved three days, and the men who dreamed had to wait three days for their rescue or death. Later, Moses asks Pharaoh to allow the people to go on a three-day journey; there will be a three-day journey for water; Samson will give the Philistines three days to solve his riddle; and so on. "Three days," Sacks notes, is always, in these scriptures, “a period of doubt and wonder.” From which observation it is not far for us to recall another three-day period, begun with an execution outside Jerusalem.

F is for Friend

This is the sixth in a series on the Divine Alphabet.

Friend is the most appropriate of all the names for God. It is not the first name we have for God, nor is it God’s proper name. But of all names that bubble up, as it were, from the sea of human existence, friend is the most fitting.
    God’s proper name is YHWH, which is rarely if ever to be pronounced. It is the Name Moses learned from God’s speaking to him out of the burning bush. It means something like “God is existence itself” or “God just is and always will be” or “God is entirely self-defined and nothing else can make him what he is.” In short, a rather mysterious name!
    God also has a second proper name, and it is to be pronounced freely: JESUS. This Name also is powerful in itself, summoning every knee to bend to the ground in obeisance, from the knees of the super-wealthy to the knees of those in government to the knees of simple folk, knees in heaven, knees on the earth, knees under the earth. Jesus’ Name is the proper Name of God, and to it belongs all the authority and power that belongs to the utterly mysterious YHWH.
---
    But Jesus did not cling to his divine prerogatives. Rather, he humiliated himself to be the tiniest human being in Mary’s womb. He was born, he was a child, he was an adult. He was humiliated most of all by the insulting device of crucifixion. He did all this, why?
    The answer: in order to establish friendship.
    The key is given in Saint John’s gospel, chapter 15. Jesus declares that the greatest love a person can show is to lay down his life for his friends. He also calls his disciples, at that very time, friends. On the night before he dies, Jesus interprets his death as the securing of friendship.
    It is human friendship with one another—an expansive friendship, which is shown by John when, in chapter 20, Jesus calls Mary Magdalene by her name. The good shepherd (John ch. 10) calls his sheep by name, and they know him and follow him. Mary knows him, in the garden, when he calls her name. She too is his friend, the first of an ever-expanding fellowship.
    It is at the same time human friendship with God that Jesus establishes. This must be true simply by the logic of theology: Jesus is God, and so friendship with Jesus just is friendship with God.
---
    There are three kinds of language to speak of our relationship with God, human words that we properly stretch to apply to our relationship with God. One is spousal, such as in the hymn “The Church’s One Foundation” where it says Jesus came from heaven to make her (the church, us) his bride. Behind this is the Song of Songs.
    The second kind of language is familial. We properly speak of being the child, son, daughter, sister, or brother of God. We are children of God and brothers and sisters of Christ. We are in God’s family.
    The third language is the language of friendship. It is the deepest language of the Scriptures, I believe, although it is certainly the least thought about. That God is and longs to be our friend seems to me the ultimate mystery of reality. The hymn-writer has it just right when he ends by addressing God as “our maker, defender, redeemer, and friend.”
---

    Wednesday, March 11, I am pinch-hitting for Bishop Sumner for the Lenten series at Resurrection Episcopal Church in Plano. The series is on turning the creed into prayer. It meets at the home of the vicar; you could drop me a line if you’re interested in attending ( ) at 6:30 p.m.

    June 8-10 in Baltimore. This year’s Pro Ecclesia conference will be on the Sermon on the Mount. I am responsible for this, and hope that, if you are able to come, you will! We have excellent speakers lined up who will explore this fundamental text in terms ranging from the biblical and theological to such things as the sermon in the arts and its economic feasibility. More information is here, and you can register now at the Early Bird rate here.