Psalm 24

God is worthy of praise as Creator, Redeemer and King

God summons the whole earth to offer a sanctified cacophony of praise to the Lord. But the Bible gives special attention and zeros in on the praise of men coming from His own covenant people. He dwells in the midst of His own, and He is especially enthroned by their praises. Jerusalem is the city of the King. The King is their right hand of victory—for their defense and shield.

 

Psalm 24 depicts the festive procession of the Ark of the Covenant to the gates of the city of Jerusalem, and we can mark the geographical movement in the psalm from location to location.

24:1 The earth is the LORD’s, and all its fullness.


24:3 Who may ascend into the hill of the LORD?


24:6 Lift up your heads, O you gates, and be
       lifted up, your everlasting doors!

David’s servants and the Levites and priests, along with his solders and the great throng who lined the streets leading to the city gates fixed their praise on the LORD who is Creator (vs. 1). All inhabitants of the globe should yield their praise. The parade of the Ark moved upward, climbing the hill. As the procession goes along, the question is asked, “Who is worthy to ascend the hill, to line the streets, to follow after the Lord’s presence to top?” 24:4 answers: “He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted up his soul to an idol…” Those near to the LORD must be washed and made pure. He as Redeemer provides this washing. Last, at the top of the hill, the Ark of the Lord is about to enter the city gates. Had men lost hope about God’s triumph? Had the anticipation of victory died out? Had the length of the wait for the return of the Ark lulled to sleep Jerusalem’s city dwellers? Wake up! God is faithful! 24:9-10 “Lift up your heads, O you gates! Lift up, you everlasting doors! And the King of Glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The LORD of hosts. He is the King of glory.”

On Palm Sunday, Jesus rides the donkey down from the Mt. of Olives in order to reach the road to head up the hill into Jerusalem. The crowd takes off their coats and puts them down as a red carpet. The King is processing. Who is this King of glory? Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD. Hosanna! “And when He had come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, ‘Who is this?’”

From the earth to the hill to the gates of the city, the name of the LORD is to be praised. He is the LORD mighty in battle.

G. Mark Sumpter

Is Genesis 1 Poetry?

Young on Writing Style of Genesis 1

Brothers who are proponents of non-literal views of Genesis 1 set forth that the grammar and syntax call for a non-literal interpretation of the text. At Westminster Seminary we read Henri Blocher’s IVP 1984 publication, In the Beginning—The Opening Chapters of Genesis. He elaborates on the style in Genesis and offers a proposal saying it is “…like the utterances of a Wisdom writer…” (p. 34). Usually we think of wisdom literature as poetic.


E. J. Young writes, “Genesis one is written in exalted, semi-poetical language; nevertheless, it is not poetry. For one thing the characteristics of Hebrew poetry are lacking, and in particular there is an absence of parallelism. It is true that there is a division into paragraphs, but to label these strophes does not render the account poetic.” See WTJ Vol. 25 (1963), “The Days of Genesis Second Article” (pp.148-149).


G. Mark Sumpter

Our God and the Gods of Gilgamesh

Another Affirmation about Covenant Theology

I wrapped up an eight-nine month home-school class on the World of the Old Testament yesterday. Two sharp, fun-loving young men have been the students.

Recently, we’ve had discussions on the story of Gilgamesh, a story related to the biblical flood story of Genesis 6-8, and how the main character, Gilgamesh, hungers and thirsts for immortality. In one way the epic is like a Paul and Timothy story. There’s a master teacher and a student disciple: Utnapishtim (Paul) is a model for Timothy (Gilgamesh).

The story, however, centers on a catastrophic flood event like the Noah episode.

In his pursuit for eternal life, Gilgamesh learns how Utnapishtim, the Noah-like figure, obtained eternal life.

Enil, one of the gods sitting as audience watching the wretchedness of man on the earth, determines to destroy the world with a flood. Utnapishtim learns of Enil’s plan and he, Utnapishtim, makes haste to build a huge vessel as a refuge for animals, and off we go with a Genesis 6-8-like story. Utnapishtim and his wife are saved from the deluge; they park the boat, step onto dry land and offer sacrifices to the gods. The assembly of the gods honors them with eternal life.

Gilgamesh likes what Utnapishtim has earned; he wants it too.

As the story unfolds we learn about the theology of the gods. There are twists and turns about the actions of the Assembly or Council of the gods.

In short, they are unpredictable, easily ticked off and flighty. One god comes along and usurps another. Another god comes along and flexes his muscles to squash another.

While reading Gilgamesh, I was waiting for one god to pipe up and say, “People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along? Can we get along?”

They are not covenanting gods.

Their relationship is not characterized by love, unity and bond.

The Church knows her God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—the God bound in peace, and fostering peace in His gracious revelation of Himself to His people.

He is the God unchanging, ever reliable. He is so because He is the God who makes and keeps covenant.

G. Mark Sumpter

Removing 1970s Adhesive Tape From the Dead Sea Scrolls

Here you go, would you hold your fingers right here while I get another piece of scotch tape?

Fascinating story from an Israeli newspaper; read the whole story here, Haaretz. Thanks to Todd Bolen for this summary:

For the past two and a half months, Tania Treiger, a conservator with the Israel Antiquities Authority, has been pouring over a piece of parchment about 20 centimeters square. It began with a microscopic examination of the fragment to gauge its condition, and continued with the placement of special paper over the writing to very slowly remove the circa 1970s adhesive tape.

Treiger, whose tools include Q-tips, tweezers and lots of patience, is one of four "guardians" of the Dead Sea Scrolls. These four women,

all from the former Soviet Union, are the only people in the world permitted to touch the scrolls.

The first of the Dead Sea Scrolls, among the most important archaeological finds in the world, were discovered in the mid-1940s in the Dead Sea area, and have been making headlines ever since. This week, the Hebrew daily Maariv reported that the IAA had decided to stop sending the scrolls abroad to exhibitions for fear of legal complications, after the Jordanian government demanded that Israel return scrolls to Jordan. In 1967 the Jordanians tried to remove the scrolls from the Rockefeller Museum in East Jerusalem to Jordan, but Israel took East Jerusalem before that could happen and found the scrolls in the museum storerooms.

[...]

The scrolls, dating from about 300 BCE to 70 CE, survived amazingly well in the dry conditions of the caves of Qumran, on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea. The first scroll scholars, an international consortium of eight researchers, tried to piece together the fragments as best they could. "They were geniuses who did amazing work, but they were not aware of the physical needs of the material," Shor says.

Using adhesive tape, they stuck together what they believed to be related fragments and laid them between two pieces of glass. The scholars created a total of 1276 such plates. But adhesive tape, an amazing invention in the 1950s, became a conservation catastrophe for the scrolls. The chemicals in the adhesive ate into the organic material, stained it and wiped out letters. Later scholars also did damage. In the 1970s, they began to piece together fragments using rice paper and plastic material, which caused additional damage. Luckily, this process was halted and most of the fragments remained within the glass plates.

[...]

The digitalizing of the scrolls, under preparation for three years, is to begin in about six months. The project, whose cost is estimated at more than $5 million, will use special photographic techniques, including infrared and full-spectrum photography, which are also expected to reveal hidden letters. The intent of the project, which will take five years, is to place everything on the Internet so scholars around the world can take part in the greatest puzzle of all - piecing together tens of thousands of fragments of some 900 different compositions.

G.Mark Sumpter