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In a 2007 essay on leonine imagery in the Journal for the Study of Pseudepigrapha, Brent Strawn helpfully summarizes the associations of the lion in the Bible, Apocrypha, Dead Sea Scrolls, New Testament Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, and Gnostic texts.  It’s a fascinating survey, rich in colorful detail (like the story of the baptized lion in the Acts of Paul).

His main question, though, is why Revelation does the bait-and-switch of first introducing Jesus as Lion, then immediately, and permanently, shifting the imagery to Lamb.  Most of the commentary on this switch has been on the Lamb side of the question, but Strawn raises the question, Why even mention the lion to begin with if it is simply going to be abandoned?  His answer is that John is shown a Lion who instantly becomes a Lamb because of the negative associations of the lion:

“By introducing the lion, with its system of associated commonplaces, the author evokes a profoundly rich image-history, much of which is positive in tenor. But, by quickly shifting the image to the lamb, the author protects against the equally profound negative aspects that also inhere in the lion image, inviting in their place the host of commonplaces associated with the lamb image. This shift, with its rhetorical ‘safeguard’ in place, operates on a number of different semantic levels. There can be little doubt, for example, that much of the lion-to-lamb shift has to do with issues of power, dominance, and threat. Simply put, the lion has all these—indeed, its use as an image and metaphor is entirely predicated on such—but the lamb qua lamb does not have all these, at least not to the same degree. To be sure, this lamb is not the average, run-of-the-mill variety. This lamb, too, is capable of power, dominance, and threat (see Rev. 6.16; 17.14); this is, after all, a lamb that has seven horns and seven eyes, that is worthy to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing (5.6, 12, 13). But these powerful and potentially threatening qualities are rhetorically situated and literarily crafted within the Apocalypse. The lamb qualamb does not possess the negative system of associated commonplaces that obtain for the lion image.”

To support this, he points out that after the abrupt shift from lion to lamb in chapter 5, all the leonine imagery of the book is negative: “Leonine qualities recur later in Revelation in descriptions of (1) the locust horde with lion teeth that tortures those who lack God’s seal (Rev. 9.8); (2) the horses of the four angels, bound at the river Euphrates, whose plagues kill a third of humankind (9.17); and (3) the first beast from the sea, which has a lion’s mouth (13.2). After 5.5, that is, leonine qualities completely disappear from good entities in the Apocalypse, with the sole exception of the angel in 10.3; though even there the leonine image applies only to the angel’s shout.”  He concludes, “The point is clear: the ambivalence of the lion qua lion would permit too much ambiguity—even negative connotations—in light of traditional patterns of image-use; the lamb image resolves this conundrum.”

This is possible, and perhaps a part of the intention behind the lion-to-lamb shift, but I find it unsatisfying.  I suggest two further dimensions that might be at play.  First, Jesus is not the first lion figure introduced in the book; prior to Jesus’ appearance as lion, John has seen the four living creatures that constitute the throne of God, and one of them has a face like a lion.  When Jesus is introduced as lion, then immediately becomes a Lamb, he is being depicted as a Cherub, especially since He is a Lion-Lamb combination, combining the beast of the ark-throne with the beast of the altar.  Second, I wonder if we have a progression here, a hint of a process of maturation.  The elder says that the Worthy One is a Lion; but when the man John, the seer of the new creation, sees the Worthy One, it is a Lamb.  Perhaps there is a Old-New contrast here; what the ancient ones expect as a lion appears as a Lamb.  Perhaps this is one of the things that even angels long to peer into (1 Peter 1:12).

Giffiths speaks of the “complex admixture of regret and lament for unworthiness . . . and delight in lovability” that marks human love, and adds: “The presence of the one without the other makes it impossible to receive the offer of love and therefore impossible to be a beloved.  Were you to respond to the gift of love with an unruffled sense of your own beauty and worthiness to be given that give, you would not be a beloved – one who can return love – but rather a demigod receiving homage.  And were you to respond to the lover’s gift to you of your new condition as a beloved with nothing but a sense of your own unworthiness and ugliness and filthiness, then too, you could not be a beloved but only a mirrored wall of self-hatred from which all offered love would be reflected directly back to its offerer.”

Some profound meditations about sex, time, life, the universe and everything from Paul Griffiths’s Song of Songs (Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible):

The first six verses of the Song “point the hearer first to what everyone knows about [human love and sexual desire], which is that the memory of lovemaking and the imagination of its repetition are at least as important for us as its performance.  We are constituted as beings in time and as beings who are capable of being aware of ourselves as such.  This is what makes memory and anticipation important for us, and it is remarkable that in the Song lovemaking is depicted almost entirely through their lens and not in terms of how the kiss and the caress seem as they are being given and taken. Hearing the Song as a depiction of human desire can intensify an awareness of this interesting fact about ourselves as lovers and beloveds.  It reminds us of what we want when we want to be loved and to give love is not fully available to us in the performance of those acts.  The intensity and complexity of human romantic and sexual need cannot find its fulfillment in the circumincession of two  . . . human bodies and minds.  If that circumincession were limited to its performance it would not be human lovemaking.  In order to be that it needs to be placed in the order of time as an object of memory and anticipation and in the order of narrative as an event about which the right story can be told.  Even when attention is restricted to the Song’s surface, therefore, the horizon it points to is open.  The human desire to love and be loved, to caress and be caressed, exceeds its own fulfillment and indicates its own insufficiency.  It begs for a story and for the memories and hopes that enframe stories.  Every act of human physical love is therefore already and inevitable figural.  The only question is: what does it figure?”

Among other things, Griffiths highlights how inhuman casual sex is.  Sex that has no background story, sex that has no anticipation of future union or encounter, sex that seeks its fulfillment in the sheer performance of the act, sex that is isolated from a story that is a collection of memories and hopes – this memory-less and hope-less sex is nothing but animal sex.  It is sex extracted from human existence.  Everyone who indulges it, whether with a series of real partners or a series of digital partners, becomes bestial.

“Bowl” (phiale) is used twelve times in the New Testament, all in Revelation.  This is obviously the number of Israel.  Israel’s twelve tribes are the twelve golden vessels of God, molded by God, fired in the furnace of affliction, shined up for service in God’s house.  Once in Revelation, in 5:8, the bowls contain incense that is the prayer of the saints.  The other eleven vials are filled with the wrath of God, the wine that is squeezed from the harvested grapes, which is the blood of saintly martyrs (Revelation 15:7; 16:1-4, 8, 10, 12, 17; 17:1; 21:9).

The two uses of bowls are connected: The prayers of the saints are prayers for vengeance for blood that has been shed (cf. 6:9-11), and when the prayers ascend and the blood descends, the Lord brings an end to the harlot-city that drinks holy blood.

There is a neat little anthropology here:

We are vessels of God’s service, designed for two purposes: To give off aromas that ascend to God and to spill blood.  We are vessels of sacrifice, aromatic blood-bags created for prayer and martyrdom.

And there’s a neat political theology too: Tyrants are destroyed, harlots burned, when the vessels of the new Israel offer the incense of prayer and confess Jesus to the shedding of blood.  Smoke and blood are the two mechanisms of Christian revolution.  Neither can be stopped.  Prayer is harder for tyrants to control than Twitter.   Killing Christians just makes more blood, and quickens the tyrant’s collapse.  Not killing Christians doesn’t work so well either, because they multiply and create a bigger incense cloud, more of the aroma that ascends to the Father and more of the fragrance of Christ that is for life and death.

John sees the Lamb “in the midst of the throne” (Revelation 5:6), precisely where he had seen the living creatures (4:6).  Before the Lamb’s arrival, the four creatures make up the seat of the throne – they are in its midst; and they are also surrounding the throne, forming the outer structure.  The Lord is enthroned on the beasts, and He is surrounded by the beasts as if they were guardians of the throne.

Now, however, the Lamb is in the midst of the throne, and also in the midst of the four living creatures.  That means He is located where the Enthronement is located.  He appears already in the middle of the creatures.  He is also in the middle of the twenty-four elders.  The Lamb has taken center stage, and has in a sense replaced the four living creatures as the throne of God.   We never again see the beasts “in the midst of the throne.”  A voice comes from the midst of the four beasts (6:6), but that is the voice of the Father or the Son, and in 7:17 we read again that the Lamb is in the midst of the throne.

The Lamb is a Cherubic creature.  He is introduced as a Lion, but also as a Lamb.   He is a strange Lamb or Lion, with far too many horns and eyes.  He is a composite being that sums up all creation, and He is now the throne of His Father, the new cherubic chariot of God.

The Lamb is as if slain, but stands in heaven (Revelation 5:6).  That might appear odd, John knows his sacrificial system.  This is precisely what happened to all lambs that were slain on Israel’s altars.

The sacrificial procedure was not completed when the Lamb was killed.  The Lamb was killed, dismembered, and then turned to smoke that ascended to God.  The sacrificial sequence moved from presenting and slaying of a Lamb to its appearance in the presence of Yahweh.  Standing is a priestly posture, and so the Lamb is slain and turned to smoke so that He can enter the smoky cloud of God’s presence and stand before the Lord to minister as priest.

Lambs also ascended to Yahweh’s throne to share it.  No human being was qualified to share Yahweh’s throne, but what the worshiper could not do, a lamb-turned-to-smoke does.  The Lamb, again, does what all sacrificial lambs do – ascends to the throne as Priest-King.

At the climax of Isaiah 33, the prophet envisions a restored and secure Zion, its regular feasts back in place and Yahweh (or His Davidic Son) reigning in beauty.  But the image of restoration is not taken from the glory-days of Solomon.  Jerusalem will be undisturbed, but not because its walls are impregnable or its temple glorious.  It doesn’t appear to be a city at all, but a tent that will not be folded up (v. 20).  Instead of a restoration of the glories of the monarchy, Isaiah reaches further back to describe Zion as a return to the beginning, to the precarious period of the exodus and wilderness wandering.

That is an accurate description of the Zion that emerges after the exile: It has walls and a house, but it is a vulnerable community, a tent that depends for its permanence not on the power of a Davidic king but on the grace of an emperor, ultimately on the favor of Yahweh.  And it is an accurate description of the New Covenant age (as Hebrews reminds us, with its persistent references back to the Mosaic era).  At the beginning for sure, and often throughout her history, the church is more tent than temple.  And that is as it should be.

Primitivism is hopeless as a permanent program.  Fresh initiatives always form into traditions and habits and rituals, and that is perfectly fine.  But Isaiah suggests that there are moments when teh proper move is to reach back beyond the golden age, all the way back to the beginning, to start over not with cathedrals but from the catacombs, not with a temple but with a tent.

Tinker, tailor, spy.

Yahweh is declared to be Israel’s Judge, Lawgiver, and King in Isaiah 33:22.  As Thomas Leclerc (Yahweh Is Exalted in Justice) points out, Yahweh is assuming responsibility for the failures of Judah’s leaders.  Judges take bribes and ignore the pleas of the weak (1:17, 23, 26; 5:23), but Yahweh is coming to Judge, and His Branch will judge in righteousness (11:4).  Law has been perverted as the people ignore it (5:24; 24:5).  Kings like Ahaz have proven themselves faithless.  Yahweh ensures that Judah will be restored to justice, righteousness, and peace by combining all the offices in One, in Himself and His Branch.

The triple office is a brief outline of the exodus:

Yahweh came as Judge to Egypt, to judge Pharaoh and rescue Israel; He came as Lawgiver on Sinai, delivering Torah through Moses; Israel covenanted with Him as King at Sinai as well, committing to be ruled by Yahweh’s instructions and to submit to Him.

Yahweh takes on a triple office here.  There are structural links to the triple-holiness attributed to Yahweh in Isaiah’s vision (ch. 6), and this also suggests a Trinitarian structure of Yahweh’s leadership of Israel.  The Father is Judge, the Son King, and the Spirit the one who writes law on the tablets of human hearts.  Or, this verse could be the basis for a fresh gloss on the triple office of Christ.  He is Priest, King, Prophet; He is also Judge, Lawgiver, King.  He is a Judge like Gideon or Samson, a rescuer; Lawgiver like Moses, teaching from a mountain; a warrior King like David leading His armies on a white horse and a King of peace like Solomon who builds a temple.

Verse 22 should be connected to the previous mention of Yahweh as King in verse 17.  Yahweh taking responsibility as Judah’s Judge, Lawgiver, and King is the revelation of the King in beauty.  Salvation is beautification.

The final clause of 33:22 states that Yahweh will save, and that suggests that the triple office of Yahweh is an elaboration of what it means for a people to be saved.  Salvation means rescue from enemies, the role of the judges of Judges; but salvation also involves receiving and obeying the instruction of a Lawgiver; and salvation means being ruled by, led by, organized by a King.

Isaiah 33 is arranged into two fairly neat chiasms.  The first goes from verses 1-13:

A. Woe to the destroyer, v. 1

B. Prayer for mercy in time of distress, vv. 2-3

C. Yahweh exalted, vv. 5-6

B’. Land laments, vv 7-9

A’/C’. Yahweh arises, is exalted, lifts Himself, and lets distant lands know what He does, vv. 10-13

J. Alec Motyer (The Prophecy of Isaiah: An Introduction & Commentary) suggests this for the second part of the chapter:

A. Zion’s people repentant, vv. 14-16

B. The King’s presence, vv. 17-19

C. Zion at peace, v. 20

B’. The Lord of power, vv. 21-23

A’. Zion’s people, healed, v. 24

The first section thus focuses attention on Yahweh’s exaltation and His establishment of justice and righteousness in Zion; the second part focuses attention on the consequences for the city, now restored as a city of appointed feasts, a safe haven, an undisturbed tent.

Only twice in Scripture are the words “treasure,” “wisdom” and “knowledge” used together.  In Isaiah 33:6, Yahweh promises that after He destroys the Assyrian destroyers, He will fill Zion with justice and will open the fourfold treasure of wisdom – salvation, wisdom, knowledge, and the fear of Yahweh.  Earlier, the Branch from Jesse was given the Spirit of wisdom, knowledge, and fear (Isaiah 11:2), but in chapter 33 Isaiah says that the riches of the Spirit will spread from the Branch to the entire nation.

The other place that uses this combination of terms is Colossians 2:3, where Jesus is identified as the One “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”  Isaiah prophesies about the riches of jeshua, salvation (33:6), the riches of Jesus.  Those treasures are opened only after a “time of distress” (33:3) when Gentiles attack Zion.  That too is Jesus, for it is on the far side of the distress of the cross that Jesus is unlocked as the treasure-chest of the Father’s wisdom and knowledge.

“Wisdom” and “knowledge” do appear together in other connections, which give us further insight into what Isaiah and Paul promise.

The first use of the combination of terms is in Exodus 31:3 and 35:31, both references to the gift of the Spirit to Bezalel: “I have filled him with he Spirit of God in all wisdom, in understanding, in knowledge, and in all kinds of craftsmanship.”  Bezalel’s wisdom is artistic skill to craft the vessels and furnishings of Yahweh’s house.  The Branch too is given the Spirit of skill to fashion and orchestrate the human vessels of God’s house.  This is the treasure that Isaiah promises will be opened in Zion for all the people of God: When the Spirit’s riches are poured out, every resident of Zion will be a king, every resident will be an architect devoted to “edifying” the house and promoting the beauty and harmony of justice and righteousness (Isaiah 33:5-6).  Yahweh will do this work, but He will do it through His Spirit-equipped craftsmen.

Of course, “wisdom,” knowledge,” and sometimes “fear of Yahweh” are a common combination in Proverbs (1:7; 2:6, 20; 8:12; 9:10).  We can overlay this layer on the earlier connections we’ve drawn: The Branch becomes a true son of Solomon, a true sage-king, by the gift of the Spirit.  Isaiah predicts that this same wisdom and knowledge will fill Zion and its inhabitants.  And of course this all comes to a climax in Jesus, the Branch, the incarnate Wisdom, the Father’s living treasure-chest, opened in His death and resurrection to share His Spirit and all the Spirit’s wealth with us.

I flew into Toronto recently on a smallish regional plane from Chicago.  It was a wild landing, the plane flopping this way and that in a strong wind.  At times, we seemed certain to land wing-first, not the kind of landing one dreams of.  Even after we landed, we could feel the wind pushing the plane sideways.   As soon as we were securely on the ground, we all clapped and everyone started chattering excitedly.

Do I owe the pilot – or United Airlines – my life?  Perhaps.  But, apart from a slightly heartier “thank you” to the stewardesses and pilot as I exited, I haven’t done anything to pay him back.  Presumably, the pilot received his paycheck.  I know I paid my fare.  And we all went away thinking we were square.  If I had done more to express my gratitude, I might eventually have had to answer to the TSA.

Suppose we had crashed, and the pilot had pulled me out of the burning wreckage?  Would paying the ticket have sufficed?  We all assume not, but what’s the difference?

Seneca muses on these questions in a section of On Benefits (The Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca), happily released in a new translation last year.  Whatever the truth of Maussian tribal exchanges, Seneca assumes throughout his treatise that there is a difference between buying and selling on the one hand and benefit-gratitude exchanges on the other.  The pilot, he would have said, got his just compensation by being paid for his work:

“What fee do you propose for someone who crosses the seas and, when the land has receded from sight, cuts a clear course through the midst of the waves and foresees future storms and suddenly, when all on board are unaware of danger, orders the sails to be furled, the tackle to be lowered, and everyone to stand ready to face the sudden force of an onrushing storm?  Yet this man receives, as his reward for such work, the passenger’s fare.”  No further obligations of gratitude are required of the passengers, even though without the pilot’s foresight, they would have been at the bottom of the sea.

Yet Seneca recognizes exceptions, certain sorts of bought-and-paid-for exchanges that do put the recipient in debt to the benefactor.  Tipping is a small scale example, but his major examples are medical care and teaching.  We pay for medical care, and yet, Seneca says, there is a debt of gratitude owed to a doctor that is not owed to the pilot or to the merchant in the marketplace.  We pay the teacher, and yet there’s something more than payment owed.  Why?

There are several factors.  First is the benefit conferred.  Physicians give health, which is “priceless.”  Teachers introduce students to the liberal arts and provide “the education of a gentleman and the cultivation of the mind,” which he regards as priceless as well.

Beyond that, there is the personal attention that good physicians and teachers give to their patients and students.  Seneca says that the doctor “gave me more than is required of a doctor; it was for me, not for his professional reputation, that he feared; he was not satisfied with pointing out remedies: he administered them; he sat by me among my anxious friends; he came quickly at times of crisis; no service was too burdensome, none too distasteful for him; he did not hear my groanings unconcerned; in a crowd of patients invoking his aid, I was always his prime concern.”

Teachers likewise invest themselves in their students in a way that the merchant does not invest himself in patrons, or the pilot normally invest himself in his passengers.  Seneca’s teacher “in teaching me, endured work and tedium; in addition to the things that are commonly said by teachers, there were other things he instilled in my and transmitted to me; by exhorting me he roused my good character; now he encouraged me with praise, now he dispelled my idleness with scoldings; then he extracted by hand, as it were, my hidden and inert intellect; nor did he dole out his knowledge grudgingly to prolong his usefulness, but he wanted, if he could, to pour the sum total into me; I am ungrateful if I do not love him as one to whom I am bound by the very closest obligations of gratitude.”

Seneca thus recognizes a spectrum of forms of exchange: Purely business arrangements, where goods are exchanged for money immediately and which are legally enforceable; loans, where money or goods are given to be repaid later, also legally enforceable; “professional” services, which are paid for but which involve personal attention and offer goods worth more than the exchanges set by the market; and, finally, pure benefactions, unmotivated generosity, to be repaid in gratitude, which are not legally enforceable.

A pilot who pulls me from the burning plane shows specific personal attention that he does not show me when he lands the plane safely in a strong wind.  The safe landing benefited me, but it wasn’t the pilot’s aim to benefit me directly.  He wanted everyone to get to Toronto safe and sound.

Robert Solomon concludes an article that analyzes the reasons given for condemning kitsch with this defense of the emotions associated with kitschy art: “it seems to me that the real objection to kitsch and sentimentality is the rejection  (or fear) of  emotions and,  especially, certain kind of sentiments, variously designated as ‘tender’ or ‘sweet’ or ‘nostalgic. . . . But the  rejection extends as  well to the gloomier emotions, and Karsten Harries warns us: ‘how easy it is to wax lyrical over despair, to wallow in it, to enjoy it. This too is kitsch, sour kitsch.’  Mary Midgley points out that ‘thrillers’ have much in common with kitsch and sentimentality, for they too distort reality and manipulate emotion (though different emotions and to  a very different end).   So what emotions are legitimate,  ‘true’ and undistorted? Can art evoke any ordinary human emotions without being condemned as kitsch? Is there any room left in our jaded and sophisticated lives for the enjoyment of simple innocence and ‘sweet’ affection? The trumped-up charges against kitsch and sentimentality should disturb us and make us suspicious.  These attacks on  the  most  common human sentiments-our reactions to the laughter of a child, or to the death of an infant-go far beyond the rejection of the bad art that evokes them. It is true that such matters provide a facile vehicle for second or third rate painters, but if such incidents are guaranteed to evoke emotion it is because they are indeed a virtually universal  concern. The fact that we are thus ‘vulnerable’ may make for some very bad art but this should not provoke our embarrassment at experiencing these quite ‘natural’ sentiments ourselves, nor should it excuse the enormous amount of sophistry that is devoted to making fun of and undermining the legitimacy of such emotions.”

In a decades-old article, Robert Solomon criticizes the “liberal American sexual mythology” found in the work of Tom Nagel: “His analysis is cautious and competent, but absolutely sexless. His Romeo and Juliet exemplify at most a romanticized version of the initial phases of (hetero-)sexual attraction in a casual and innocent pick-up. They ‘arouse’ each other, but there is no indication to what end. They ‘incarnate each other as flesh,’ in Sartre’s awkward but precise terminology,  but Nagel gives us no clue as to why they should indulge in such a peculiar activity. Presumably a pair of dermatologists or fashion models might have a similar effect on each other, but without the slightest hint of sexual intention. What makes this situation paradigmatically sexual? We may assume, as we would in a Doris Day  comedy, that the object of this protracted arousal is sexual intercourse, but we are not told this. Sexuality without content. Liberal sexual mythology takes this Hollywood element of  ‘leave it to the imagination’ as its starting point and  adds the equally inexplicit suggestion that whatever activities two consenting adults choose as the object of their arousal and its gratification is ‘their business.’ In  a  society with such secrets, pornography is bound to serve a  radical end as  a  vulgar valve of reality. In a philosophical analysis that stops short of the very matter investigated, a bit of perverseness may be necessary just in order to refocus the question.”

Further on, he questions why Nagel would consider what he calls “unadorned sexual intercourse” as the paradigm of sexuality:

“what is it that makes intercourse the paradigm of sexual activity-its biological role in conception, its heterosexuality,  its convenience for mutual orgasm? Would Nagel’s drama still serve as a sexual paradigm if Juliet turns out to be a virgin, or if Romeo and Juliet find that they are complementarily  sado-masochistic,  if Romeo is in drag, if they are both knee-fetishists?  Why does Nagel choose two strangers? Why not, as in the days of sexual moralism, a happily married couple enjoying their seventh anniversary? Or is not the essence of sex, as Sartre so brutally argues, Romeo and Juliet’s mutual attempts to possess each other, with each’s own enjoyment only a secondary and  essentially distracting effect? Are we  expected to presume the most prominent paradigm, at least since Freud, the lusty ejaculation of Romeo into the submissive, if not passive, Juliet? Suppose Juliet is in fact a prostitute, skillfully mocking the signs of innocent arousal: is this a breach of the paradigm, or might not such subsequent ‘unadorned’ intercourse be just the model that Nagel claims to defend?”

Nearly forty years on, after decades of obsessive attention to the body, have we made any progress?

VanderKam quotes 2 Maccabees 3:1-3′s claim that “King Seleucus of Asia defrayed from his own revenues all the expenses connected with the service of the sacrifices,” and comments: This continues “the centuries-old practice that the foreign overlord of Judea pay at least a part of the expenses involved in the Jerusalem cult.”  He cites Ezra and Josephus’s quotation of an edict of Antiochus III.

The prophetic visions of kings supplying sacrifices and other materials for Israel’s temple worship thus had an historical precedent.  The prophets were envisioning a restoration of the earlier practice of Gentile support and sponsorship for the temple.

1 Maccabees famously includes a letter from King Areus of Sparta to Onias, high priest of Israel, in which it is stated that “the Spartans and the Jews . . . are brothers and are of the family of Abraham.”  Scholars dismiss the genealogical connection, and many even deny that the letter is authentic: Would a Spartan king claim ancestry with a barbarian people?  But James C. VanderKam (From Joshua to Caiaphas: High Priests after the Exile) assembles evidence that make a plausible case for the authenticity of the letter.

To start, he cites Moses Hadas’ claim that Greeks took up whatever genealogy that could be advantageous to them: “It was the Greeks themselves who set up the precedent; their ancient genealogies . . . made a place for the founders of various eastern nations, including Egypt and Persia, and in the historical period they were not above inventing genealogies when it suited their political ambitions.”

Besides, there are other ancient documents that make a connection between Greeks and Hebrews.

Josephus (Antiquities 14) includes the text of a decree from Pergamum dated in the late second century BC, written to the Hasmonean ruler John Hyrcanus I.  It says, “to preserve and increase his friendship with us and always be responsible for some act of good in the knowledge that he will receive a fitting recompense, and also remembering that in the time of Abraham, who was the father of all Hebrews, our ancestors were friends, as we find in the public records.”  VanderKam notes, “some one hundred fifty years later than the Areus-Onias correspondence, a Greek city claimed a common past with the Jews.”

Where might this idea have come from?  VanderKam suggests that it may have come from Hecateus of Abdera.  According to Plutarch, he visited Sparta and he is credited with writing a book On Abraham and the Egyptians.  That book is lost, and perhaps was never written, but Hecateus did write On the Egyptians, in which he gives a brief account of the exodus.  When a pestilence began to ravage Egypt, the Egyptians decided to expel all foreigners, thought to be the source of the plague: “At once, therefore, the aliens were driven from the country, and the most outstanding and active among them banded together and, as some say, were cast ashore in Greece and certain other regions; their leaders were notable men, chief among them being Danaus and Cadmus.  But the greater number were driven into what is now called Judea, which is not far distant from Egypt and was at that time utterly uninhabited.”  VanderKam comments that “Danaus” is “the ancestor of the Canoi who lived in the Peloponnesus and who produced both dynasties of Spartan kings. Hecateus thus paired the ancestors of the Spartans and Jews as two groups who were expelled from Egypt at the same time (the time of Moses) and under the same circumstances.”

Ultimately, VanderKam suggests that the source of this genealogical connection is Genesis 25:2-3, the list of Abraham’s children by Keturah.  The second son of Jokshan, who was father to Sheba and Dedan: “The name Dedan resembles that of Danaus to some extent; moreover the name of his son – Leummim – was translated in Tg. Onq. Gen 10:5 as nagon, a term for the islands inhabited by Gentiles descended from Japheth, that is, the Greeks.  It is possible that Hecateus had heard of an equation of the names Danaus and Dedan and that he was the source behind Areus’s claim that the two peoples shared Abraham as an ancestor.”

VanderKam concludes that “A plausible case can be created, then, for the conclusion that Areus I sent a letter to Onias I.”  And if that’s true, we might ask whether Areus might have known something we don’t about the origins of the Spartans.

Explaining the adjuration of Song of Songs 2:7 (repeated in slightly different form in 8:4), Cheryl Exum (Song of Songs (Old Testament Library)) helpfully points to the connection with the theme verses of the Song, 8:6-7: these are the only places “where love is spoken of in the abstract and virtually personified.”  The repetition of the adjuration “is rather like a riddle or puzzle” until we reach the climax of the poem in 8:6-7.  The paradox is, “If love has a will of its own, how can one rouse love before it wishes to be roused.”  She also suggests that the adjuration playfully points to the power of love – playfully because the oath, while sounding like an oath in the name of Yahweh Zebaoth and Elohim, is not.  On 8:4, she says that the question become rhetorical, with the implied answer being: “there is no need to [arouse love] since, when it is ready to be roused, love overwhelms with its force.”

Perhaps we can push the link of 2:8 and 8:6-7 a step further.   The fire that inspires the flame of love, the love that is stronger than death, is the Flame of Yah Himself.   And that fiery love does need to be roused at times, as David well knew (cf. Psalm 7:6; 35:23; 44:23; 57:8; 59:4; 78:38; etc.).  That love might express itself in jealous wrath, in which case it is a danger, and even when it doesn’t it is a relentless power that is stronger than death and fiercer than Sheol.  Once that love is aroused, no water can quench it, and so one must be prepared for the consequences before stoking up that Fire.

This is wisdom literature: As Solomon says in Ecclesiastes, do not be hasty to utter a word before the Lord, since He is in heaven and you are on earth.

The Bride of the Song declares that she is a “lily” (shushan), and her lover agrees (Song of Songs 2:1-2).  The word is used eight times in the Song (2:1, 2, 16; 4:5; 5:13; 6:2, 3; 7:2), sometimes for the Bride, sometimes for her lips, sometimes for her breasts.  Not surprisingly, gathering from the garden is linked to gathering lilies: The Bride is the pick of the garden.

A form of the same word is used in the titles to several songs: “On the shoshannim” (45:1; 69:1; 80:1).   Lexicons suggest that the reference is to a musical instrument that in some way resembles a lily, but the link between the Song and the Psalms is suggestive of thematic connections.  Psalm 45 is clearly a Song-like Psalm, an epithalamion, and Psalm 80, with its narrative of a vine and vineyard planted, abandoned, and (in hope) restored also picks up themes from the Song.

Psalm 69 has few verbal, conceptual, or thematic links with teh Song.  It is a Psalm of lament, one frequently quoted or alluded to in the Passion narratives of the gospels.  Perhaps, though, there is a connection with the Song, since the Psalm describes the passion of the Lover for His beloved and their house, which is Yahweh’s house.  Perhaps we should read Psalm 69 as a poem of lovesickness.

I have commented before on the aural parallel between “fragrance” and “spirit” in Hebrew (reach, ruach).  The theological import of that parallel is enhanced by the Song’s use of reach as the object of the verb “give” (Song of Songs 1:12; 2:13; 7:13).  Perfumes, flowers, mandrakes “give” their aroma that is received by the breath/ruach of the recipient.  Fragrance, like spirit, is given.

And fragrance gives spirit.  The fragrance of burnt offerings calmed the Lord’s Spirit, moving Him from anger to favor; the fragrance of burning animals cooled His burning nose.  In the Song, the lover and beloved are aroused when they catch the scent of the other.  When we give off the fragrance of Christ, that too communicates the Spirit.  Catching a whiff of Christ from us, a whiff that is the effect of the Spirit’s fire in us, unbelievers are stirred to seek the One whose fragrance draws them.

The NASB translates Song of Songs 1:16c as “our couch is luxuriant.”  that is an unfortunate translation, because the word translated as “luxuriant” is actually “green” (ra’anan).  The NASB translation suggests plush cushions and linen or silk sheets.  The Hebrew indicates a bower.  The lovers’ house has cedar beams and cypress rafters because they are outside on a bed of green.  1:16-17 thus seamlessly lead into the bride’s declaration “I am the rose of Sharon.”

But “green” also highlights the liturgical aspects of the passage.  The temple was a “forest” or “grove,” an interior space that was conceived as a natural place (cf. Psalm 52:8; 92:14).  Though man-made, the temple was a “green world” where (Northrop Frye has taught us) people, especially lovers, can flee to find renewal.  Of course, there were alternate “green spaces” in Israel, the idolatrous shrines under ever “green tree” (Deuteronomy 12:2; 1 Kings 14:23; 16:4; 2 Kings 17:10).  Israel sought new life by indulging in harlotry in these green places (Jeremiah 2:20; 3:6, 13).  All the while, the green space of the temple was there, Yahweh’s own cedar-and-cypress grove where He promised to renew His bride on a green couch.

There are few agreements among scholars about the structure of the Song of Songs, but many commentators recognize that the opening section is 1:2-2:7, a series of seven alternating speeches between teh beloved and the lover.

Seven!  That makes one curious if there is a more-than-numerological parallel with Genesis 1.  As usual, some of the parallels are stronger than others.

A. 1:2-7: The bride longs for a kiss, describes herself as black from the sun (v. 6).  The reference to the sun might connect this with Day 1, or the play with darkness and blackness.  The parallels here are meager.

B. 1:8-11: The lover speaks to his darling, telling her where to find him and complimenting her adorned cheeks and neck.  Not much firmament here, it seems.

It gets better, though.

C. 1:12-14: The bride describes the king at table, the fragrance of her perfume, and describes the king as a cluster of henna blossoms in a vineyard.  The connection with Day 3′s “table” of land, spread with grain and fruit, is fairly strong.

D. 1:15: At the center of the passage (which is a chiasm), the lover is astonished as the beauty of his beloved, twice repeating “Wow!  You are beautiful!”  He compares her eyes to doves.  Eyes are the light of the body, and connect with the lights of the firmament.

C’. 1:16-2:1: The bride compliments her lover on his beauty, and describes the pleasantness of their meeting place.  The cedars and cypresses that spring from the land on Day 3 have been formed into a nest for the lovers.

B’. 2:2: The lover describes his bride as a flower among the thorns.  She is the new Eve, an Eve who remains a lily or lotus though she is in a world of brambles.

A’. 2:3-7: In this Sabbatical speech, the bride takes a rest in the shade of her apple-tree lover, who brings her to his “house of wine” and raises his banner over her.  She finds her apple tree, and “sits down” in His shade – “sit down” is yashavti, which contains shabat.