Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
When Samuel saw Saul, Yahweh answered him, "Behold, the man of whom I spoke to you! This one will restrain My people" (1 Samuel 9:17) Many English versions of 1 Samuel 9:17 read, "This one will rule over My people," but that is a mistranslation. The Hebrew verb is `atsar…
We have arrived at the tentative date of A.M. 3474 for the decree of Cyrus, and we have determined to operate as if the 70 weeks of Daniel 9 are literal years. We also decided that Messiah the Prince arrives at the beginning of the 70th week, after the 69…
The book of Proverbs appears as a largely random collection of aphorisms drawn from experience saturated in law. Despite its random arrangement, however, the book does have an over-arching structure that reinforces its main themes. One way to gather clues regarding the structure of a biblical book (or any book)…
I recently had the privilege and pleasure of reading the first draught of Gary North’s Economic Commentary on Leviticus , which will be out some time next year. Gary’s comments on Leviticus 27 were stimulating, and caused me to take another look at the passage. The results, which I sent…
As we have seen in this series, each time there is a new covenant, there is a break in the year-by-year chronology. At the same time, each time the break is crossed by information provided in the text. Thus, the year-by-year chronology breaks down at the birth of Abraham, but…
The Openness of Literature Let’s discuss literature for a moment. There are two ways a story or novel can close. The first is called poetic justice. When a story ends with poetic justice, the bad guys are all punished and the good guys are all rewarded. This kind of story…
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Thomas Altizer of “death of God” fame is back, advocating for what he calls the Apocalyptic Trinity . This is not your grandma's “primordial Trinity” that is “the subject of all established doctrines of the Trinity.” That primordial Trinity bring “a total closure to apocalypse, even if there is an…
Ranko Stefanovic ( Revelation of Jesus Christ , 229-30) notes that interpreting the first of the horsemen of the apocalypse - the white rider - is determinative for the understanding the whole sequence. The first rider, he claims, symbolizes the “conquest of the gospel of Christ and its spread throughout…
The restoration of Judah involves a restoration of the Davidic kingship, the coronation and elevation of a Davidic king. Yahweh promises to send a new Davidic king who will rule with justice (Isaiah 32:1; cf. 9:1-7; 11:1-10). This addresses the complaints that Isaiah has brought against Judah from the beginning…
In a superb essay in The Guardian , John Mullan (like Wayne Booth in his Rhetoric of Fiction ) explains how Jane Austen's Emma transformed the writing of fiction. She found a way to split the difference between the omniscient third-person narrator and the limited first-person narrator, creating what came…
After the seventh seal is opened, there is silence in heaven for a half hour as an angel stands at an altar to offer incense with the prayers of the saints. There are two altars in the temple - the altar of ascensions in the courtyard and the golden altar…
The second half of Isaiah 22 focuses on two individuals, the current royal steward of the house of David and his eventual replacement, Shebna and Eliakim. What happens to them exemplifies what Yahweh is doing to Judah and Jerusalem. The current royal steward, Shebna, has spent his tenure planning a…
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