Wendy and I are participating in an exciting Bible study at our church, St. Paul’s UMC, taught by Pastor Ginger Thomas, on Matthew 5:2-10: the Beatitudes.  Our resource for this study, aimed at Christian growth and discipleship, is The Way of Blessedness, from Upper Room Ministries, written by Marjorie J. Thompson and Stephen D. Bryant.  This week is on the fifth Beatitude: “Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy” (Matt 5:7, KJV).  In the commentary on this passage, our study book observes, “We are more inclined to embrace this beatitude without argument, for it fits our sense of fairness” (The Way of Blessedness, 65)–which pulled me up short.  I wrote in my journal, “Yet the world isn’t fair.”

My thoughts turned again to Dr. Suess: this time to his book (and the short film based on it) Horton Hatches the Egg.  In this story, a bird named Mayzie persuades Horton the elephant to sit on her egg for her, giving her a rest.  But then, taking advantage of this freedom from responsibility (and of course, of poor Horton!), Mayzie flies off for a beach vacation.

Seeing Horton up in the tree, the other animals mock him cruelly.  Yet, though he grows tired and cold and hungry, Horton stays on the nest, keeping the egg warm and safe through wind, rain, and storm. Over and over, he repeats to himself,

“I meant what I said,

and I said what I meant.

An elephant’s faithful,

one hundred percent!”

Mayzie returns just as the egg is about to hatch, and scornfully dismisses the faithful elephant.  But then, the egg hatches, and to everyone’s wonder and astonishment, out comes–an elephant-bird!

At this point, Dr. Suess writes, “And it should be, it should be, it SHOULD be like that!”  But there is a desperation to that thrice-repeated claim!  As every reader knows, there are no elephant-birds–not really.  And in truth, it isn’t, it isn’t, it ISN’T like that: not where we live–not outside of the covers of Dr. Suess’ delightful fantasy.

Is it the case that the merciful obtain mercy?  Counter-examples come all too readily to mind.  Consider Abraham Lincoln.  Although he had urged his generals throughout the Civil War to put down the Southern rebellion aggressively, as the war came to an end, he urged mercy toward the erstwhile rebels. When one fiery old woman took issue with Lincoln for speaking of Southerners as people in error, rather than enemies to be destroyed, he responded:  “Why, madam, do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”

Lincoln visited Richmond on April 4, 1865, coming to the former Confederate capital not as a conqueror, but a peacemaker:

Indeed, while visiting the home of his Confederate counterpart, Jefferson Davis, someone asked Lincoln what he intended to do to Southerners now that the Confederacy had fallen. Lincoln replied that he didn’t intend to issue specific orders on that score, but he nonetheless made his wishes clear to the army: “If I were in your place, I’d let ’em up easy.”

Lincoln’s magnanimous tone proved vital in the days ahead. As Grant hunted Lee’s army to ground and forced their surrender, triggering a domino of subsequent surrenders across the South, Lincoln’s magnanimity guided surrender negotiations. 

Yet despite having been merciful, Lincoln was not shown mercy–in fact, he was assassinated.

Of course the most famous and tragically familiar counter-example is the very one who said, “Blessed are the merciful.”  Jesus was certainly merciful, forgiving and teaching his followers to forgive.  Indeed, in Matthew 5:38-42 Jesus goes so far as to set aside the law of retribution in Torah:

You have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth [Exodus 21:24]. But I say to you that you must not oppose those who want to hurt you. If people slap you on your right cheek, you must turn the left cheek to them as well. When they wish to haul you to court and take your shirt, let them have your coat too. When they force you to go one mile, go with them two. Give to those who ask, and don’t refuse those who wish to borrow from you.

Yet Jesus certainly did not obtain mercy!  He was betrayed, condemned, and crucified.

So–what does this beatitude mean?  Clearly, as the study book recognizes,

The reward of being merciful and the promise of receiving mercy is not an “I scratch your back, you scratch mine” proposition or a quid pro quo “spiritual bargain.”  The beatitude expresses a deep inner principle of connection, the same connection behind Jesus’ words, “Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you” (Luke 6:37-38).  If we want friends, we need to be a friend.  If we would have mercy, we must show mercy.  Our mercy toward others shows that we are ready to receive the mercy God offers us (The Way of Blessedness, 68).

Friends, the world is not fair.  The merciful are often not shown mercy, and the reward for being “faithful, 100 percent” may well be the rejection and scorn Mayzie showed Horton.  But the promise of the gospel is that living by the standards of God’s kingdom here and now places us in line with what God is doing in the world.  Having been shown such love and grace by God, having been the recipients of such great mercy, how can we not show that mercy to others?

As I write this, Wendy and I are in Ontario, enjoying the Stratford Shakespeare Festival.  Yesterday, we were stunned by an extraordinary staging of “The Tempest;” we laughed ourselves silly last night at the marvelously ridiculous “Something Rotten,” and look forward this weekend to productions of “Othello” and “A Midsummer Nights’s Dream.”  Tonight, we are seeing a new work, “The King James Bible Play,” which as a Bible Guy I am particularly intrigued to experience!

Being in Canada in this political season feels fraught to us, given our president’s declaration of a trade war against our longtime ally and peaceful neighbor to the north. Although I feel I need to apologize on behalf of my country, not a single Canadian has raised this issue with us.  We have been treated universally with kindness and respect, especially by our hosts at Acrylic Dreams, the beautiful B&B where we are staying.  Then this morning, I learned that Mr. Trump has had the unmitigated gall to issue an executive order declaring that Lake Ontario is to be called instead “Lake America.”

This is of course performative nonsense.  Apart from the very narrow circle he can actually affect (the Interior Department has been told to update its Geographic Names Information System to reflect his change), the president’s bullying, petulant “order” is meaningless: just as, apart from his sycophants, no one either internationally or in this country refers to the Gulf of Mexico any differently, despite the president’s declaration of a name change there.

So why am I so incensed about this?  Wendy and I have been impressed and moved by the attention and respect paid, by tour guides, in park signage, and even in announcements before the plays we have seen, to First Nations people.  On a boat tour of the islands off Tobermory, on the tip of Lake Huron’s Bruce Peninsula, we learned that the Ojibway people have lived on the land and fished in the lake for seven thousand years!

The name “Ontario” itself is very old.  The first European settlers and explorers already heard that name in the tongues of Native American peoples.  In the Iroquois language, it was called kanadario,  meaning “shining water.”  According to Pierre Picard, Great Chief of the Wendat nation, in their tongue Ontarïio’ means “the lake is beautiful, great.”  So rejecting that name is an insult, not only (as the president childishly intended) to the Canadian province of Ontario, but to the Native American peoples who first loved and named these beautiful bodies of water (here, from Georgian Bay off the Bruce).

Names matter: for the people of ancient Israel, as for the first peoples of this continent.  As readers of Scripture have long observed, in Genesis 1 God creates by speaking. John’s Gospel begins with this insight (“In the beginning was the Word”), and goes on to identify Jesus as that very creative word of God: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth”(John 1:14).

I have just started reading  The Future Is Peace: A Shared Journey Across the Holy Land (New York: Crown, 2026), by Aziz Abu Sarah and Maoz Inon.  Sarah, a Palestinian, lost a brother in the First Intifada: a civil uprising against the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza (1987-1993), culminating in September 1993 in the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).  According to B’Tselem (The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories), 1,376 Palestinians and 94 Israelis were killed in these protests. Inon, an Israeli, lost his parents in the Hamas terrorist assault on October 7, 2023, in which 1,218 Israeli civilians were killed and 252 taken hostage.  Yet the two have become not only fast friends, but allies in their quest for peace in the Holy Land through InterAct International.  The picture above is from their 2025 audience with Pope Leo XIV–the first Palestinian-Israeli peace activists to have been so invited.  

Early on, I was captivated by this quote:

We understand that in the face of suffering and grief, when so many lives have been lost and families shattered, talking about peace can feel too vulnerable—dangerous, even.  When each side believes that the other is a threat to its existence, talk of peace can feel like a betrayal of one’s people.  Wherever we look in the world, we find these growing divides.  Siloed into a false mentality of us versus them, we perpetuate zero-sum arguments fed to us by the politics of fear.  The biblical Book of Proverbs says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”  And today, we are too often sold a vision that leads to more violence, instead of one that leads to harmony and a strategy for lasting peace (Sarah and Inon, 2-3).

The raw honesty of these words, from men who have every reason to be moved by their grief to the hatred they decry, is profoundly moving.  But also, given my current work on the book of Proverbs, I was drawn to their use of a quote from Proverbs 29:18: “Where there is no vision, the people perish; but he that keepeth the law, happy is he” (KJV).

The quote struck me for a somewhat embarrassing reason.  Early in my ministry, I worked as a summer associate at Stout Memorial UMC in Parkersburg, WV, under the tutelage of Rev. Jim Denney.  Jim, following a practice he slyly referred to as “substitutionary atonement” (“Here am I, send him”) had volunteered me to do the devotional for our monthly Ministerial Alliance meeting.  I had decided to use as my Scripture for that meeting a Bible passage I was sure I remembered from somewhere: “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”  However, when I went looking for that verse (I was sure it was from Hosea, or maybe Amos), I couldn’t find it!

The reason I couldn’t locate the text back then was that in the Bible I was using (not the King James, but the RSV), the translation was quite different: “Where there is no prophecy, the people cast off restraint“!  Incidentally, both the NRSV and the recent NRSVue stay with that reading.

The Hebrew is be’eyn khazon yippara‘.  Sure enough, yippara‘ does appear to mean “run wild; go out of control” rather than “perish.”  However, khazon never means “prophecy;” it always (35 times in the Hebrew Bible) means “vision.”  Accordingly, the CEB has “When there’s no vision, the people get out of control;” and in the Jewish Publication Society’s English translation of the Tanakh (JPSV), this passage reads “For lack of vision a people lose restraint.”

Why then did the RSV (and after it, the NRSV and NRSVue) read “prophecy”?  There is some ancient warrant for that reading.  In the Septuagint, which is often rather free in its rendering of Proverbs, the Greek word is exegetes: “interpreter” (or exegete!), which appears elsewhere only in the account of Pharaoh’s dream (Gen 41:8, 24), for which he seeks an interpreter.  Similarly the Latin Vulgate reads cum prophetia defecerit dissipabitur populus: “When prophecy shall fail, the people shall be scattered abroad.”

However, the RSV’s decision was more likely due to the second, parallel line of Proverbs 29:18: “but blessed [the NRSVue has “happy”] are those who keep the law [Hebrew torah].”  This suggests the familiar pairing “the law and the prophets” (for example, Luke 24:44-45, and the Prologue to Ben Sirach).  In the HarperCollins Study Bible,  edited by Harold W. Attridge, Claudia V. Camp and Carole R. Fontaine’s note on this verse (HCSB 2006, 886) refers back to Prov 28:4, 7, 9:

Similarly, in the JPSV, the full verse is “For lack of vision a people lose restraint, / But happy is he who heeds instruction.”  In the Jewish Study Bible, Michael Fox’s annotation of this verse  reads,

Vision means prophecy, which was a source of discipline and reproof for Israelite society.  Instruction is ‘torah,’ which in Proverbs usually means parental instruction.  Here it possibly refers to God’s Torah (see also 28.9) (JSB 2004, 1493).

The word khazon (“vision”) appears only here in Proverbs.  Guidance for the meaning of “vision” in this context may be provided by  the editors of Proverbs, who include this verse in a collection (Proverbs 25–29) with the heading, “These are other proverbs of Solomon that the officials of King Hezekiah of Judah copied”–suggesting that we read these proverbs in the context of that southern king’s reign.   The concept of vision characterizes Judean prophecy.  The prophetic books of Isaiah, Nahum, and Obadiah are all called “visions” (Hebrew khazon; see Isa 1:1; Nah 1:1; Obad 1:1; and compare Hab 2:2).  Ezekiel sees “visions of God” (mar’ot ‘elohim; Ezek 1:1); Habakkuk sees (khazah; perhaps better “envisions”) the oracle (Hab 1:1); and Micah and Amos curiously “see” the word of the LORD (Amos 1:1; Mic 1:1).

By contrast, revelation comes to the Israelite Hosea through the ear, not the eye: “The word of the LORD” comes to him (Hos 1:1), rather than a vision.  The same is true of other prophets related theologically and ideologically to the northern, Levitical ideals given fullest expression in the book of Deuteronomy: thus, Jeremiah (1:1-2, 9-10) and Zephaniah (1:1) also receive the word (and, as noted above, Amos and Micah “see” the word).  In time, the idea of revelation by the word prevailed over the vision, as the title nabi’ (“prophet”; literally, “one called”) prevailed over the title khozeh (“visionary”).  Therefore, the postexilic prophets Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi all receive the word of LORD (Hag 1:1; Zech 1:1; Mal 1:1), as do Jonah (1:1) and Joel (1:1).

While the RSV/NRSVue rendering “prophecy” makes sense, it is important to remember that the Hebrew word used here actually means “vision.”  Accordingly, the use to which Sarah and Inon put this verse from Proverbs is certainly apt.  The violence and chaos evident in our own nation’s “policy” with regard to Israel, Palestine and the Middle East generally certainly reflects the lack of any coherent vision.  May we learn from Sarah, Inon, and other faithful witnesses to embrace a vision of peace, rather than of endless and pointless conflict.

AFTERWORD:  As some of you may know, I have been recovering (far more slowly than I would have wished–a reminder that I am not a kid anymore!) from sinus surgery.  It is a joy to be able once more to write and think!  Thank you for you prayers, and for your  patience with me!

In celebration of our 45th anniversary, Wendy and I took a road trip through several Kentucky parks around the Red River Gorge, walking trails through the woods to view lovely cascades, waterfalls, and fascinating rock formations.  A highlight was the number of impressive stone arches in these parks–the most to be found anywhere in the eastern United States.  These range from the more human scale of Rock Bridge in the Daniel Boone National Forest

to the gigantic Smoky Bridge in Carter Caves Resort Park

to the truly awesome Natural Bridge near Slade, KY: here, from a half-mile away

and here, walking across this immense formation: 65 feet tall and 78 feet long!

I asked a park ranger at Cumberland Falls Resort Park (where we were privileged to view its legendary moonbow) about the formation of these arches, and she told me that their origin begins 270 million years ago, when Kentucky was a sea bed.  Layers of hard sandstone and conglomerate rock were laid over softer shale, limestone, and sedimentary rock.  Over the millennia, the softer rock was worn away by water and wind, leaving the harder stone standing as rock shelters and arches.

Walking around, over, and under these amazing formations brought home to me the reality of deep time–the humbling realization that our entire history (perhaps 2.8 million years for the genus Homo; only around 300,000 years for modern Homo sapiens) amounts to less than the blink of an eye compared to the vast age of the earth, likely 4.54 billion years.  Indeed, our solar system itself is young in comparison with the age of the universe: perhaps 13.82 billion years.

Sadly, young earth creationists such as Dr. Kenneth Ham claim that Christian faith demands we reject the evidence of geology and astronomy in favor of their “literal” reading of Genesis 1:1–2:4a.  On his website “Answers in Genesis,” Dr. Ham writes:

If Christians doubt what at first appears [sic] to be insignificant details of Scripture, then others may begin to look at the whole Bible differently, eventually doubting the central tenets of the Christian faith, namely the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Thus the historicity of Scripture is quite important.    

. . . Ultimately, the controversy about the age of the earth is a controversy about the authority of Scripture. If millions of years really happened, then the Bible is false and cannot speak with authority on any issue, even the Gospel.

Others attempt to reconcile the seven days of creation in Genesis 1:1—2:4a with the deep time revealed by astrophysics and geology by reimagining this sequence as seven indeterminate periods, even aeons of time.  However, this attempt cannot succeed.  The text is quite explicit: in Genesis 1, each day begins with an evening, and ends with a morning (Gen 1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31), in accordance with Jewish timekeeping (so, in Jewish households, the Sabbath is welcomed not at dawn on Saturday, but at sundown on Friday).  If we lose the seven days, we also lose the sabbatical logic that is a major aspect of this priestly project.

Further, the Genesis creation sequence cannot be made to fit the order revealed by science.  For example: from our twenty-first century scientific and technological perspective, it makes no sense at all that the sun isn’t called into being until the fourth day (Gen 1:14-19): after three days have somehow gone by.  We know, after all, what causes day and night.  As this photo of the Earth from space, taken by astronaut Christina Koch, reveals, when our side of the spinning globe turns toward the sun, we experience sunrise and daylight; when our side of the globe turns away from the sun, we experience sundown, and nighttime darkness.

But the priests who wrote this text did not know this. From their perspective, day and night are not caused by the sun, but are rather direct creations of the Divine. The sun, moon, and stars are merely functionaries (with John H. Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate [Madison, WI: Intervarsity Press, 2009], 55), affixed to the sky dome “for signs and for seasons and for days and years” (Gen 1:14).  By their movements and phases they mark the passage of the days, months, and seasons, enabling farmers to know times for planting and harvest, and priests to set the dates of religious festivals.  But apart from that functional role, they have no power.

We do not, and cannot, share the worldview of this text.  The sky is not a solid bowl, and the sun, moon, and stars are not lights fastened onto it.  But then, Genesis 1:1–2:4a is not presented to us as a scientifically and historically factual account of the earth’s beginnings.  After all  (as my recently published book on the Bible’s creation texts discusses), this is far from the only creation account in Scripture!  Others include not only Genesis 2:4b-25, but also Job 38—41; Psalm 104; Proverbs 8:22-31; Isa 40—55; John 1:1-18; Colossians 1:15-20; Ephesians 1:20-23; and Hebrews 1:1-4.  Clearly, neither the composers nor the early readers of Scripture had any problem with these multiple perspectives on creation and the Creator.  They were happy to hold them all in faithful tension.

If we come to the Bible seeking factual answers to our scientific questions about how the world began, we will go away frustrated. Since there are multiple distinct and separate accounts of creation in Scripture, they cannot all be factual depictions of how the world began.  Even if we say, “I believe the Genesis creation account,” the next question must be, “Which account: the first (Gen 1:1–2:4a), or the second (Gen 2:4b-25)?”  But of course, we don’t have the leisure of choosing one or the other, for there they both are: right at the front of our Bibles, presented to us in our canonical text of Genesis.  The biblical text itself will not let us read Genesis 1–2 as a factual account of the beginning of the world.  Once we understand this, however, we can consider how the Bible’s views on creation relate to one another positively and creatively: not through some kind of artificial harmonization, but by seeing how they echo and resonate with one another.

The awareness of deep time contrasted to the brief span of human life is profoundly humbling.  Yet as the Bible itself testifies, God was at work with human beings long before the birth of Israel in the mid-thirteenth century BCE.  Indeed, God was at work on the earth before humanity, and in the cosmos before the earth–from before the beginning of time.  As the writer of Colossians affirms,

. . . all things were created by him:
        both in the heavens and on the earth,
        the things that are visible and the things that are invisible.
            Whether they are thrones or powers,
            or rulers or authorities,
        all things were created through him and for him.

 (Colossians 1:15-20 CEB).

To quote the irrepressible Paul Simon, “God is old!   We’re not old.”  It is good to know that we ephemeral creatures are held, and loved, by the Ancient of Days!

AFTERWORD:

Wendy and I were in Kentucky in pursuit of Thomas Dambo’s troll sculptures: fashioned out of waste lumber from fallen trees.  The sculptures in Kentucky are located in the Bernheim Forest and Arboretum.  In 1928, German immigrant Isaac W. Bernheim purchased 12,000 acres of land that had been despoiled by iron mining, and in 1929 he “dedicated this land to the people of his new homeland to provide a place for the renewal and restoration of the bond between people and nature.”  Bernheim hired the Frederick Law Olmsted firm of Brookline, Massachusetts, landscape architects, to restore the ruined land by planting a forest.  In the near century since then, Bernheim’s visionary forest has merged with the natural forest it abuts, continuing Bernheim’s vision of the healing and renewal of our world.

The land Bernheim purchased contained an abandoned cemetery, which has been itself preserved–marked on its four sides by bronze plaques.  Two of these contain writings from Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) regarding creation, and the Creator:

I have just learned that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, at the latest of the monthly Evangelical Protestant worship services he has instituted in the Pentagon,  led a prayer he called “CSAR 2517:” standing for, he said “Combat Search And Rescue,” and the Bible reference for the prayer, Ezekiel 25:17.  He then “prayed”:

The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.

If you followed the link above to Ezekiel 25:17 in the KJV (a translation whose cadences this prayer broadly imitates), you will know that Hegseth’s prayer did not, in truth, come from that passage, which simply reads, “And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the LORD, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them.”  So, where does it come from?

Its author is not Ezekiel, as it turns out, but Quentin Tarantino; and it comes, not from any biblical translation, but from the 1994 film “Pulp Fiction” –where those lines are delivered by the inimitable Samuel L. Jackson, playing a hit man in the process of brutally executing an unarmed man.  Here is the movie scene, including the quote in context.

In his worship service, Mr. Hegseth said, “Fifteen minutes ago I was talking about blockades with Admiral Cooper, and now we’re going to study the Lord’s word. May what we talk about, how we worship today, inform the remainder of our day and the remainder of our week.”  So evidently, he actually believed that he was quoting Scripture.

As it happens, I have never seen “Pulp Fiction.”  But I do know a bit about the book of Ezekiel.  Not only does Mr. Hegseth’s “prayer” not come from this biblical book, but his use of Ezekiel 25:17 entirely distorts its actual meaning in its context.

Ezekiel 25:15-17 is an oracle of the prophet against the Philistines.

The Lord GOD proclaims: When the Philistines set out to right the wrongs done to them, they enacted revenge with utter contempt and old hatreds.  So now the Lord GOD proclaims: I will overpower the Philistines, eliminate the Cherethites, and obliterate all who are left along the coastline.  I will act against them with great vengeance and with wrathful punishments. When I execute my vengeance against them, they will know that I am the LORD.

Oracles against foreign nations, like this one, were an important part of the prophetic repertoire.  Collections of such oracles commonly appear in prophetic books: we can compare Ezekiel 25—32 to Amos 1—2; Jeremiah 46—51; or Isaiah 13—23.   Ezekiel’s oracles against the nations consist of a series of short, pithy prophecies against Ammon (25:1-7), Moab (25:8-11), Edom (25:12-14), and Philistia (25:15-17); a collection of material regarding Tyre (26:1—28:19), another brief oracle, against Sidon (28:20-24); a promise of blessing upon Israel (28:25-26), and a miscellaneous collection concerning Egypt (29:1—32:32).

But it is doubtful that any of these messages were really meant to be read by foreigners, or indeed that any foreign king ever saw them.  Their intended audience was the people of Israel—just as, in our own day, political pronouncements about international affairs are often meant for domestic consumption.  So even in Ezekiel 25–32, where the subject of his oracles is other nations, Ezekiel is actually addressing his audience of Judeans in exile (as Ezekiel 28:25-26 makes plain).

The Philistines were a major group of the Aegean raiders called the Sea Peoples.  They settled along the southern coast of Palestine early in the twelfth century, and built a chain of five city-states: Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ekron, and Gath.  Despite their warlike character, it is a mistake to think of the Philistines as uncultured brutes.  Archaeological investigations at the three Philistine sites known to us (Gaza, Ashdod, and Ashkelon) show the Philistines to have been an artistically accomplished, highly sophisticated people (Ekron might have been located at Tel Miqne, but the location of Gath remains entirely unknown).

The Philistines were major rivals of the Israelite tribes, but particularly of Judah; the Samson cycle (Judges 13—16) is largely concerned with Judah’s struggles against Philistine domination.  Although David forced the Philistines to acknowledge his hegemony (2 Samuel 8:1), Philistia remained a constant threat throughout the history of the monarchy.  In the eighth century BCE, Philistia was granted considerable autonomy within the Assyrian empire, since it served as an important bulwark for Assyria against Egypt.  Therefore, Hezekiah launched his rebellion against Assyria by seizing Philistine territory (2 Kings 18:8).  Likely, the Philistine vengeance to which Ezekiel refers in 25:15 came in the wake of Sennacherib’s suppression of that revolt, when the Philistines reasserted their control over the disputed lands (see Ezekiel 16:27).  In Ezekiel’s day, Philistia once more was a buffer state, this time standing for Egypt and against Babylon.  However, just as Ezekiel’s oracle affirms, Philistia’s days were numbered: like Judah, Philistia would be overrun by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar and taken into exile.

The reason for God’s judgment against Philistia is stated in that first verse: “The Lord God proclaims: When the Philistines set out to right the wrongs done to them, they enacted revenge with utter contempt and old hatreds” (Ezekiel 25:15).  Like Edom, condemned in Ezekiel 25:12-14, Philistia is punished for taking vengeance.  Further, as in the Edom oracle, the punishment meted out against Philistia is the LORD’s direct vengeance, brought by the LORD’s own hand (compare Ezekiel 25:13 and 16)–and not, please note, by Israel.  In this way, “When I execute my vengeance against them, they [that is, the Philistines] will know that I am the LORD” (Ezekiel 25:17).

Apart from the specific context of family honor (see the various references to the go’el haddam [“avenger of blood”] in Numbers 35 and Deuteronomy 19), Torah rules out vengeance in the human world: “You must not take revenge nor hold a grudge against any of your people; instead, you must love your neighbor as yourself; I am the LORD” (Leviticus 19:18).  So, while Saul is condemned for seeking vengeance (1 Samuel 14:24), David is commended for leaving vengeance to God (1 Samuel 24:12).  Indeed, the LORD appears as go’el–that is, the avenger or the redeemer–in Exodus 6:6; Jeremiah 31:11; 50:34; Micah 4:10; Psalms 19:14 and 107:2; and 15 times in Second Isaiah (Isaiah 40-55; for example, Isaiah 41:14; 43:14; 48:17).  God takes vengeance directly against the nations, not only in Ezekiel 25:12, 15 but also in Genesis 4:15, 24 and Deuteronomy 32:43, acting on behalf of God’s own people, or for God’s own honor (Jeremiah 46:10). But often in Scripture, the Hebrew verb naqam (“take vengeance”) expresses God’s vengeance, not against foreigners, but against a sinful and rebellious Israel: in defense of the helpless, and on behalf of God’s own covenant and name (Leviticus 26:25; Isaiah 1:24; Jeremiah 5:9, 29; 9:9; 15:15; Ezekiel 24:8).

Edom and Philistia, having taken vengeance against Judah, are in turn consumed by the vengeance of God.  Their fate in Ezekiel 25 calls to mind a central theme of Israel’s wisdom literature: that violence and injustice carry within them their own consequences.  So, Proverbs 22:8 declares,

Those who sow injustice will harvest evil;
    the rod of their fury will come to an end.

Christian readers may be reminded of Jesus’ words to one who attempted to defend him from the mob in Gethsemane: “Put the sword back into its place. All those who use the sword will die by the sword” (Matthew 26:52).  Even if we disregard Tarantino’s grotesque ornamentation of this passage in “Pulp Fiction,” in no way does Ezekiel 25:17 justify our claims to wreak vengeance on God’s behalf.  Indeed, its point is quite the opposite: it is a warning against taking vengeance.  Here as throughout the Bible, the point is that vengeance belongs to God, not to us.  Certainly, this passage does not, as Secretary Hegseth implies, legitimate our war of aggression in Iran.

I have already written about the still relatively new NRSVue: the updated edition of the New Revised Standard Version.  I have commented at some length on those places where I find this Bible useful, even beautiful, and on those places where I disagree with the text-critical choices its editors have made.

However, I have only recently come to appreciate two passages in particular where the NRSVue distinguishes itself, not for some fresh insight or new discovery, but rather for its willingness to acknowledge our ignorance: places where we do not know for sure what the text means.  Those passages are 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and 1 Timothy 1:9-10: two texts often cited concerning same-sex relations.

Both passages are “vice lists:” stereotyped lists of offenses, often used by moral teachers in the Greco-Roman world.  These lists are common in Pauline literature (that is, the New Testament letters associated with the Apostle Paul), and their contents vary (for example, see Rom 1: 29-31; 2 Cor 12:20; Gal 5:19-21).  They are never unpacked in context: that is, the individual elements in the list are not discussed in any detail, and no case is made for naming any part of the list as a vice.  The entire list is thrown out as a block, to establish a consensus the teacher can then build upon: these are actions that the author assumes the entire community will regard as unacceptable.  Among those condemned, 1 Corinthians 6:9 lists malakoi.  Both 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10 also mention arsenokoitai.

Both words are uncommon.  In the Bible, the Greek word malakos (“soft”) occurs only twice in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of Jewish Scripture: Proverbs 25:15, for the Hebrew rakah (CEB has “tender”), and Proverbs 26:2, for the Hebrew mithlakhamim (“delicacies;” CEB has “choice snacks”).  Apart from 1 Corinthians 6:9,  malakos appears only two other times in the New Testament: in Matthew 11:8//Luke 7:25, for the “soft robes” (CEB has “refined clothes”) worn by the rich.  As for arsenokoitai, this word occurs only in these two passages in our Bible, and is found nowhere else until after its use in the New Testament by Paul.  None of this helps us understand what these words, or these passages, mean in context.

However, that has not prevented Bible translators from making rather bold claims.  The old NRSV and the 1984 NIV alike render malakoi as “male prostitutes,” while the KJV has “effeminate.”  For the term arsenokoitai, NRSV had “sodomites” in both places; the 1984 NIV has “homosexual offenders” in 1 Corinthians and “perverts” in 1 Timothy.  The KJV reads “abusers of themselves with mankind” in 1 Corinthians, and “them that defile themselves with mankind” in 1 Timothy.

The CEB has “both participants in same-sex intercourse” in 1 Corinthians 6:9; a footnote confidently explains that this refers to “submissive [that is, malakoi] and dominant [that is, arsenokoitai] male sexual partners.”  Similarly, the new NIV reads “men who have sex with men;” the translators’ footnote says that these words “translate two Greek words that refer to the passive and active participants in homosexual acts.”  In 1 Timothy 1:10, the CEB renders arsenokoitais as “people who have intercourse with the same sex,” while the most recent edition of the NIV has “those practicing homosexuality”–translations difficult to understand, since the word must refer to something that men (Greek arsenos) do, and not to same-sex relations generally (as is also the case in Lev 18:22 and 20:13; biblically, only Rom 1:27 specifically mentions lesbians).

Turning to Greek literature roughly contemporaneous with our New Testament, we find the term malakos in a history of the Roman Empire by Dionysus of Halicarnasus (ca. 60-7 BCE):

The tyrant of Cumae at that time was Aristodemus, the son of Aristocrates, a man of no obscure birth, who was called by the citizens Malacus or “Effeminate” — a nickname which in time came to be better known than his own name — either because when a boy he was effeminate and allowed himself to be treated as a woman, as some relate, or because he was of a mild nature and slow to anger, as others state (Roman Antiquities 7.2.4).

Since Dionysus admits that he is not sure why Aristodemus was nicknamed “Malacus” (“Softie”), this reference is not decisive–though the rumor that Malacus was “treated as a woman” when he was a boy suggests that perhaps malakos had to do with the sexual abuse of boys.

In his discussion of Lev 18 (see Special Laws 3.5–8), the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria (20 B.C.-50 C.E.) uses the term malakia (clearly related to malakos) with reference to pederasty–sex with boys:

And let the man who is devoted to the love of boys [Greek paiderastes] submit to the same punishment, since he pursues that pleasure which is contrary to nature, and since, as far as depends upon him, he would make the cities desolate, and void, and empty of all inhabitants, wasting his power of propagating his species, and moreover, being a guide and teacher of those greatest of all evils, unmanliness and effeminate lust [Greek malakias], stripping young men of the flower of their beauty, and wasting their prime of life in effeminacy (Special Laws 3.7.39).

Robert Gagnon suggests that Paul himself may have coined the word arsenokoitai, with reference to Leviticus 18:22 in the Septuagint–where the Greek words arsenos (“male”) and koite (“bed,” specifically “marriage bed,” hence our word “coitus”) both appear (Robert A. J. Gagnon, The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics [Nashville: Abingdon, 2001], 312).  If this is so, then Paul may be creating a term here to use for male homosexuality.  In Talmud, however, as in Philo, the infamous Leviticus 18 and 20 passages are read specifically with reference to pederasty (see b. Sanhedrin 54a-55a).

In Greco-Roman society, it was not at all uncommon for an upper-class man to take a boy as his ward, teaching him, enculturating him, introducing him into society–and using him sexually.  The myth of Jupiter and Ganymede, depicted in the plaque above, gave religious sanction to these relationships.  Still, as J. Paul Sampley observes, Roman moral philosophers such as Seneca, Plutarch, and Dio Chrysostom objected to the sexual exploitation of boys (and sometimes girls) enslaved in households for same-sex relations (J. Paul Sampley, “1 Corinthians,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol 10, ed. Leander Keck [Nashville: Abingdon, 2002], 859).  Perhaps this is what Paul too had in mind in 1 Cor 6:9 when he placed malakoi and arsenokoitai in his vice list, and the Pastor when he placed arsenokoitai in his (1 Tim 1:10).

This does not mean that either Paul or his Jewish contemporaries approved of homosexual behavior; certainly they did not (as Philo’s argument above demonstrates, and as Rom 1:24-27 shows with regard to Paul).  But it does mean that the New Testament vice lists, often used to condemn all same-sex relationships as immoral, are at best ambiguous.  Indeed if, as seems likely,  1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and 1 Timothy 1:9-10 in fact condemn child abuse, then these vice lists have nothing to say about committed, loving relationships between consenting LGBTQ+ adults.

In any case, too many translations of Scripture pretend to a confidence in the meaning of malakoi and arsenokoitai that we actually do not, and cannot, have.  By contrast, while the NRSVue follows the NRSV in rendering malakoi as “male prostitutes,” a textual footnote on the word notes, “Meaning of Gk uncertain.”  Unlike the NRSV, the NRSVue renders arsenokoitai in both passages with appropriate ambiguity, as “men who engage in illicit sex,” and textual footnotes on the word read, again, “Meaning of Gk uncertain.”

As the NRSVue refreshingly acknowledges, we do not know for certain what malakoi  and arsenokoitai mean–and when we do not know what a word means, we ought to in all honestly admit our ignorance.  Like the Sodom story, the story of the Levite’s concubine, or the Old Testament temple prostitution texts, these passages have no relevance to our contemporary conversation about sex and gender.