Bible Difficulties (54 page)

Does Scripture use mythology from pagan sources (e.g., Leviathan [Job 41:1; Isa.

27:1], Rahab [Isa. 30:7], Behemoth [Job 40:15], Tartarus [2 Peter 2:4])?

The poetic books, such as Job and Psalms, and occasionally the poetic passages of the Prophets contain references to mythological figures. There is a far more sparing use of them than appears in the hymns and religious poetry of the non-Hebrew literature of the ancient Near East, and there is furthermore a basic difference in their use. The pagans for the most part believed in the real existence of these mythological characters, whereas the biblical authors employed them in a purely figurative and metaphorical way.

The same practice can be observed in English literature as well, especially in the seventeenth century and earlier, when frequent allusions occur in the works of the great masters who were trained in the Greek and Latin classics. Thus in the opening lines of John Milton's "Comus" (11. 18-21) we read:

"Neptune, besides the swayOf every salt flood, and each ebbing stream,Took in by lot `twixt high and nether Jove,Imperial rule of all the sea-girt Isles."

Or, again, we read in lines 46-53:

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"Bacchus, that first from out the purple grapeCrushed the sweet poison of misused wine, After the Tuscan mariners transformedCoasting the Tyrrhene shore, as the winds listed, On Circe's island fell (who knows not Circe The daughter of the Sun? Whose charmed cup whoever tasted, lost his upright shape,

And downward fell into a groveling swine)."

It would be a very naive and ill-informed critic of English

literature who would imagine that John Milton, that notable Christian apologete who composed the most outstanding of all English epics pertaining to the Fall of Adam and the redemption of man by Christ ("Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained"), betrayed a taint of pagan belief in his references to the Roman and Greek deities and demigods of Vergil and Homer. And yet many a nineteenth-century higher critic of biblical literature has fallen into this obvious fallacy in his attempt to link up the religion of ancient Israel with the superstitions of their idolatrous neighbors. A careful study of the religious documents of the Egyptians, Sumerians, Babylonians, and Canaanites (as set forth in Pritchard's
Ancient Near Eastern Texts
, for example) will show the distinction clearly and underline the fact that the attitude of the biblical authors towards Behemoth, Leviathan, and Rehab was very similar to the Miltonian references to Jove, Bacchus, Neptune, and Circe cited above.

To be more specific, "Leviathan" refers to an aquatic monster of great size and fearsome power. In Psalm 104:26 it is described in such a way as to suggest a whale. In Job 41 it probably refers to a monster-sized crocodile, as a prime example of an untamable beast too fierce and powerful for man to deal with--and yet perfectly cared for by Yahweh its Creator. In Isaiah 27 it symbolizes the empires of Assyria (the "fleeing" or "piercing"

serpent--possibly suggestive of the winding Tigris River) and of Babylonia (the

"crooked" or "twisted" serpent of the River Euphrates). In Psalm 74:14, on the other hand, Leviathan is used in parallelism with the
tannin
("sea monster," "whale," or even perhaps "river monster"), referring to the Nile River or the Red Sea. In Ezekiel 29:3-5 it clearly refers to the crocodile of Egypt, with its scales and gaping jaws.

"Behemoth" (a plural of intensity derived from
behemah
, a large quadruped, whether domestic or wild) appears in Job 40:15 as a fierce, huge beast that also frequents the water. On the whole it seems best to identify it with a giant hippopotamus, native to the upper reaches of the Nile. (An Egyptian etymology has been suggested:
p', ih mw
, "the water-ox," but this presents serious phonetic problems and was never so used by the Egyptians themselves, so far as we know. The three commonest terms for hippopotamus in Egyptian were
h'b, db
, or
nhs
[cf. R.O. Faulkner, "A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian," handwritten lithographed (Oxford, 1962), pp. 184,311,136 respectively].)

"Rahab" (Hebrew
rahab
[the "h" is a HE]--not the same as Rahab the harlot, which is
Rahab
[the "h" is a HET], a different root) is a term meaning "pride," "arrogance"; but it appears in Job 26:12 and 38:8-11 as a personification of the turbulent forces of the raging deep. It serves as a symbol of Egypt at the time of the Exodus, as employed in Psalm 87:4, or as the loud, blustering do-nothing Egypt of Isaiah's day in Isaiah 30:7.

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Tartaros
, the Greek term for hell as a place of torment, appears only in the verb for
tartaroo
("consign to Tartaros") and refers to no deity, only a place.

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Psalms

Do not Psalms 5:5 and Ps 11:5 contradict the teaching that God loves the sinner but
hates the sin?

Psalm 5:4-6 reads: "For Thou art not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness; no evil dwells with Thee. The boastful shall not stand before Thine eyes; Thou dost hate all who do iniquity. Thou dost destroy those who speak falsehood; the LORD abhors the man of bloodshed and deceit" (NASB). Psalm 11:5 reinforces this as follows: "The LORD tests the righteous and the wicked, and the one who loves violence His soul hates" (NASB).

To this may be added the often-cited passage in Malachi 1:2-3: "`Was not Esau Jacob's brother?' declares the LORD. `Yet I have loved Jacob; but I have hated Esau, and I have made his mountains a desolation, and appointed his inheritance for the jackals of the wilderness.'" (NASB).

From such passages as these we learn that God makes a difference between good and evil and between good men and evil men. Evil does not really exists in the abstract (except as a theoretical idea) but only in the evil nature and wicked deeds of ungodly men and the demons of hell. Scripture describes the wicked and immoral as those who love sinners in their defiance of God and in their contempt for His moral law. Thus the prophet Hanani rebuked even good King Jehoshaphat for his alliance with Ahab, saying,

"Should you help the wicked and love those who hate the LORD and so bring wrath on yourself from the LORD?" (2 Chron. 19:2, NASB). The apostle John warns in his first Epistle (1 Jn 2:15): "Do not love the world, nor the things in the world. If any one loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him" (NASB). We are not to love the wicked as sinners in rebellion against God, lest we become involved in their guilty ways and attitudes of mind. Therefore, we are to recognize that only Satan loves sinners in their transgression and opposition to the moral law. God does not love them in that way; rather, He condemns and punishes them in His capacity as righteous Judge over all the universe.

There is yet another aspect of God's attitude toward sinners that reflects His unfathomable mercy and matchless grace. He so loved the wicked, sinful world that He gave His only Son, Jesus, to die as an atonement for sin. "All we like sheep have gone astray,...but the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him" (Isa. 53:6). This means that even though God opposes and hates the sinner as a co-worker with Satan and a tool of his malice, God's love reaches out in compassion and grace to all sinners everywhere, seeking to deliver them from sin by the Atonement and the New Birth, and to adopt them as His children in the family of the redeemed. Here, then, we find to our amazement that while God hates and condemns the unrepentant, unconverted sinner, yet His heart reaches out to him in mercy and love--a holy love operating through the Cross,

"that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus" (Rom. 3:26, NASB). In other words, God is able to love the one whom He hates; but His hatred is of the sinner in his sin, and His love is for the sinner who repents of his sin and puts his trust in Jesus. Why is this so? Because from the moment he sincerely turns from his wicked 244

way and puts his trust in Jesus, he becomes united with Christ by faith--and the Father cannot hate His Son, or anyone who is a member of His body and a temple of His Spirit.

How can the superscription to Psalm 30 be accurate, when it seems so inappropriate
for the contents of the psalm?

The title for Psalm 30, according to the Masoretic text, is "A Psalm; a Song at the Dedication of the House. A Psalm of David" (NASB). The substance of Psalm 30 deals largely with a very personal experience on the part of the poet himself--an experience of rescue from the hand of his enemies--together with an earnest plea that the Lord will not allow him to be killed by his enemies, but will rather preserve him for further years of fellowship and service for God on earth. There seems to be nothing in the twelve verses of this psalm that would lend itself to use in tabernacle or temple by way of public worship. It should be added that the titles of the psalms, informative and illuminating though they often are, do not enjoy the status of inspired and authoritative Scripture. Only the words of the psalm itself as originally composed are included in the inerrant text. The titles are at best to be considered as highly reliable notations added sometime subsequent to the composition of the poem itself.

However, we observe one significant fact about Psalm 29, which immediately precedes the title of Psalm 30. Psalm 29 is eminently suited for use in public worship and shows some of the grandeur and exalting sublimity that we associate with the Hallelujah Chorus.

This brings to mind a treatise by J.W. Thirtle (
The Titles of the Psalms, Their Meaning
and Nature Explained,
2d ed. [London: H. Froude, 1905], ad loc.). In this discussion Thirtle suggests that many of the Psalms had not only a prescript but also a postscript.

Some of the ancient Egyptian and Akkadian hymns have been preserved to us with a final following. This establishes a certain likelihood that the first part, at least of the title of Psalm 30 ("A Psalm; a Song at the Dedication of the House") was originally a closing notation attached at the end of Psalm 29. This would leave only "A Psalm of David" as the true heading for Psalm 30. If this was the case, then the problem in inappropriateness disappears completely.

Should not the name in the title to Psalm 34 be Achish rather than Abimelech?

The title to Psalm 34 reads: "A Psalm of David; when he feigned madness before Abimelech, who drove him away and he departed" (NASB). This is probably a reference to the episode related in 1 Samuel 21:13, when in order to escape arrest as an enemy of the Philistines, David pretended before King Achish of Gath that he had become insane.

Reluctant to treat him like a responsible wrongdoer, King Achish ordered him to be expelled from the city and sent away. The appearance of the name "Abimelech" instead of "Achish" may be an error on the part of the editors of the Psalter, who added the titles to the Psalms for which titles are supplied. On the other hand, the biography of King David was known to the Hebrew people better than that of any other king of Israel; and it is most unlikely that this kind of a blunder could have been made by a knowledgeable editor of a later generation.

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It is far more likely that the reference to Abimelech was no blunder at all, but actually refers to a second name of King Achish. Just as Gideon also bore the name of Jerubbaal (Judg. 6:32; 7:1, etc.), Solomon was also named Jedidiah (2 Sam. 12:25), and Zedekiah was also called Mattaniah (2 Kings 24:17), so also the kings of the Philistines may have borne more than one name. Actually the earliest Philistine king ever mentioned in Genesis was King Abimelech of Gerar (20:2), followed later in the time of Isaac by Abimelech II (26:1). It would seem that Abimelech became a kind of recurrent dynastic name, a little like "Darius" in Persia (the first Darius actually bore the name Spantadata before his coronation in 522, and the personal name of Darius the Mede [Dan. 5:31; 6:1; 9:1] was probably Gubaru [
Dareyawes
was probably a throne-name meaning "Royal One"]). All the kings of Egypt bore at least two names (the
nesu-bity
name, which was a personal name; and a
sa-Ra'
name, which was a dynastic title, often recurring in the titulary of members of the same dynastic chain); so it should occasion no surprise if some of the Philistine kings, profoundly influenced by the culture of their neighboring superpower, followed a similar practice.

No other names of Philistine kings are given in the Old Testament except the two already mentioned, Abimelech and Achish. Assyrian sources, however, mention an Aziri or Azuri, king of Ashdod (Pritchard, ANET, p. 286), whom Sargon II replaced by his younger brother, Ahimiti and Sidqia, king of Ashkelon, preceded by Rukibtu and succeeded by Sharruludari (ibid., p. 287), along with Padi, king of Ekron, whom Sennacherib restored to his throne as a loyal vassal. At the same period Sillibel was king of Gaza (ibid., p. 288). Essarhaddon mentioned Mitinti as king of Ashkelon (ibid., p. 291) and Ikausu as king of Ekron--and very significantly, also, an A-himilki (the same name as Ahimelech, and very close to Abimelech in formation) as king of Ashdod. This furnishes a strong degree of likelihood that names like Abimelech persisted among Philistine royalty from the eleventh to the eighth century B.C.

What is the significance of "O Lord, when thou awakest" in Psalm 73:20?

According to Psalm 121:3-4, God does not sleep.

The verb translated "awakest" is
ba'ir
, meaning "to awake" "to act in aroused manner."

It is used here figuratively for bestirring oneself into action appropriate to a situation. In this context no Hebrew would draw the inference that God had to be literally asleep before He could rouse Himself into action. This is anthropomorphic language when applied to God; that is, God is represented as behaving or reacting in terms appropriate to humans with bodily parts and limbs. In His essential being, God is spirit and therefore does not have a "body, parts or passions," as traditional theology defines it. (Yet the Bible definitely teaches that He does feel the emotions of love, sorrow, or anger, when the occasion calls for it.)