Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Bruce Marshall once wrote that every young man who rings the bell at a brothel is unconsciously looking for God. While it is not necessarily true that the inward desire of every man is ultimately a thirst for righteousness, it is true that every sin is the disordering of a…
In a previous essay , I argued that the story which begins with Lot and culminates in Ruth’s great-grandson David follows God’s five-fold pattern of creative work as laid out by Jim Jordan: taking something in hand (in this case, the Abrahamic family), restructuring it, distributing the product of labor,…
Gilder, George. Men and Marriage. Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2023. 1 By 1973, the hightide of second-wave feminism had flooded the beaches of American culture. Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique eroded the shores of traditional female roles by naming and stirring up further domestic discontentment. Kate Millet wrote her dissertation-turned-book,…
The Book of Job is a very tortuous book. The arguments of Job and his friends are shot through with truth and error hopelessly mixed together. Every line of contentious poetry stands locked in deadly battle with every other line. As maddening as this can be for a reader who…
More than once in the last 50 years it has occurred to me that Paul might have known Jesus before He appeared to Paul on the Damascus road, but I had never taken up the notion in earnest until recently when I ran into a book by Stanley Porter titled…
The question in the title is genuine, not polemic. I could be perfectly happy to follow an ancient — and what is regarded as a well-attested — tradition. But I do not feel compelled to follow it simply because it is tradition. I would like to have arguments that Peter…
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Micah 4:9-10: Now, why do you cry loudly? Is there no king among you, or has your counselor perished, that agony has gripped you like a woman in childbirth? Writhe and labor to give birth, Daughter Zion, like a woman in childbirth. Micah 4-5 is a prophecy about the restoration…
Doctrine matters, and no doctrine matters more than the doctrine concerning Jesus Christ. Nestorius was the last of the major Christological heretics in the early church. He objected to the church’s declaration that Mary was the “God-bearer,” the “theotokos.” No human being can give birth to God, he thought, and…
Sweeney says that “to little to be among the thousands of Judah” (Micah 5:2) means “too young,” and alludes to the “younger son” theme of the Old Testament. This specifically refers to David, the younger son of Jesse. But why “too young to be among the thousands of Judah”? The…
The following notes summarize M. A. Sweeney’s marvelous exegesis of Micah 4-5 (in the Berit Olam) series. In 4:8 and again in 5:2, Micah addresses particular places. The first, 4:8, is an address to “Daughter Zion” which is also identified as “Migdal-eder,” a phrase that means “tower of the flock.”…
Commenting on Micah 4:6-8, M.A. Sweeney notes, “the return of the blind and lame remnant of Jacob to Jerusalem (Jer 31:8) points to the lame (solea) figure of Jacob in Gen 32:32. Jacob’s exile from the land of Israel to Aram in order to find a bride and to escape…
There are 12 minor prophets, but these 12 individual books also make up a single book, the “Book of the Twelve.” Like Israel, the minor prophets are both one and many, 12 books and one book. Not only do these prophets form a single book, but the book is neatly…
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