A little bit of LXX

During a recent camping holiday, I sat every morning in front of our tent with my espresso pot of coffee and a copy of Isaiah in the Septuagint version; as one does.

The Septuagint is interesting for various reasons. According to the stories it was translated by 70 (hence LXX) or possibly 72 scholars from Hebrew into the Greek of the day in the 3rd Century BC. It differs somewhat from the Masoretic Text (MT) – the version of the Hebrew OT we have now; but the MT was only finalised between the 6th and 10th Centuries AD, so potentially the LXX reflects a Hebrew manuscript tradition that is 1000 years older than the MT.

And of course we just don’t know – are the differences just translation artefacts, or were the scholars translating a Hebrew text that was a little different? All we do know is that differences in biblical texts are real and creep in for all kinds of reasons – tired copyists being the most easy one to understand.

But yesterday I was prompted to go back to my holiday running translation of Isaiah 54 – and this time I noticed something I hadn’t noticed at the time.

In the MT of Isaiah 54.2, the whole verse appears to be about a tent: enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, don’t hold back, lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes. Sitting in front of my tent I guess I wasn’t predisposed to see anything else. But the LXX is a little different.

πλάτυνον τὸν τόπον τῆς σκηνῆς σου καὶ τῶν αὐλαιῶν σου πῆξον μὴ φείσῃ μάκρυνον τὰ σχοινίσματάσου καὶ τοὺς πασσάλους σουκατίσχυσον

“Make broad the place of your tent” sounds pretty much like the Hebrew, but makes the notion of tents needing flat space more overt – πλάτυνον relates to the word for street, a broad flat space between houses.

The next phrase is a little different though. The verb πῆξον is about “driving in”; τῶν αὐλαιῶν σου could be “your curtains”, but how do you drive in curtains? The more natural reading is “screens” – usually woven out of some lightweight but strong material such as reeds or flax, and designed to stop or deflect missiles from hitting the tent or building behind them. “Drive in your screens” makes sense, as does “don’t spare yourself”- ie do this work with diligence.

What about the cords and stakes? Here they are not the cords and stakes of a tent, but rather about establishing and maintaining territory.

μάκρυνον τὰ σχοινίσματάσου is “lengthen” – but not simple cords. σχοινίσματάσου is the land measured out specifically by a cord of set length. So it is “lengthen the cords with which you are measuring out your land”.

And τοὺς πασσάλους σουκατίσχυσον ? I can’t find any references to πασσάλους as tent pegs; they are boundary pegs; and the verb σουκατίσχυσον is strengthen, but so as to prevail over anyone who might oppose.

So the picture is not just “here’s how to set up your tent”, which is kind of how the Hebrew of the MT comes across; it is much more about how to set up your claim on a place to live; make a broad place for your tent, drive in the defensive screens, don’t spare yourself, use longer ropes to measure your plot, and put in your boundary pegs like you mean it.

The context is the same in both the MT and the LXX; the barren woman rejoicing because she has more children than the woman who has a husband; and they are going to need somewhere to live – especially as they are going to “unfurl” (the LXX verb) to the right and the left, inherit companies of men, and dwell in desolated cities.

And as Paul says in Galatians 4, this is a picture of the Kingdom and of the heavenly Jerusalem, as opposed to the old covenant under the Law.

Oh, and did I mention; when Jesus and the Apostles and Evangelists quote scripture, they largely seem to use the LXX. I don’t have any big point to make here (because this all defies simplistic judgements); but I did find the LXX version of Isaiah 54.2 personally helpful.

Enjoy!

The Secret Mystery

οὐχ ὅτι καθ’ ὑστέρησιν λέγω, ἐγὼ γὰρ ἔμαθον ἐν οἷς εἰμι αὐτάρκης εἶναι· οἶδα καὶ ταπεινοῦσθαι, οἶδα καὶ περισσεύειν· ἐν παντὶ καὶ ἐν πᾶσιν μεμύημαι, καὶ χορτάζεσθαι καὶ πεινᾶν, καὶ περισσεύειν καὶ ὑστερεῖσθαι· πάντα ἰσχύω ἐν τῷ ἐνδυναμοῦντί με.

Phil 4.11-13, SBL Greek NT

This passage of Philippians has deep personal significance for me; reading it in the Greek completely changed my understanding of the Kingdom of God. And before you jump to the conclusion that this was where I learned to be content in every situation: no, not so much.

Immediately beforehand, Paul thanks the Philippians for once more sending him a gift; afterwards he says “yet it was good of you to share with me in the pressure (τῇ θλίψει). What on earth comes between verse 10 and verse 14?

Here’s my rather literal rendering of vv 11-13:

It is not from lack that I say this, for I have learnt, in whatever case I am in, to be self-sufficient; I know how to be humbled, I know how to be over and above; in everything and all things I have been initiated into the mystery, whether eating my fill or going hungry, overflowing or coming up short; I prevail over all things because of Him strengthening me.

As ever with Paul, his Greek is hard to render precisely into good English; precise or good, choose one. But what is unarguable is that αὐτάρκης has never meant “contented”, not when William Tyndall mistranslated it in his groundbreaking English translation of 1525; and certainly not when every other English translator since just copied Tyndale. αὐτάρκης means self-governing and by extension self-sufficient, and the equivalent English word, autarky has passed straight into the field of political economy with meaning unchanged.

And Paul says that what he has learned – to be self-sufficient in whatever situation he finds himself – is a mystery into which he has been initiated. Paul uses the perfect passive of the verb μυέω, to be initiated into a mystery, in v 12; Jesus uses the related noun, μυστήριον in Mark 4.11 – the secret (mystery) of the Kingdom of God. In both cases this is the language of pagan so-called “mystery religions”; and yet both are happy to use this language.

And what is the mystery? How is Paul able to be self-sufficient in every situation? I would argue that Paul’s mystery is one and the same with what Jesus said of the disciples, and which they surely did not understand at that point; the mystery is Emmanuel: God with (and now in) us.

If God is in me and He has assigned me to do x or go to y, and I haven’t any money or food; seriously, how can a little lack stop me? I can do this.

Or as Paul says, I prevail over all things because of Him strengthening me (from the inside!)

The God of Peace

Τὸ λοιπόν, ἀδελφοί, ὅσα ἐστὶν ἀληθῆ, ὅσα σεμνά, ὅσα δίκαια, ὅσα ἁγνά, ὅσα προσφιλῆ, ὅσα εὔφημα, εἴ τις ἀρετὴ καὶ εἴ τις ἔπαινος, ταῦτα λογίζεσθε· ἃ καὶ ἐμάθετε καὶ παρελάβετε καὶ ἠκούσατε καὶ εἴδετε ἐν ἐμοί, ταῦτα πράσσετε· καὶ ὁ θεὸς τῆς εἰρήνης ἔσται μεθ’ ὑμῶν.

Phil 4.8-9, SBL Greek NT

In the previous post, we looked at what the peace of God will do for you (be held over and above your thoughts and emotions in protection); this time we are looking at what seem like practical instructions for ensuring that the God of peace will be with you.

And I am not suggesting that this is about “how to behave in order to win God’s favour”, because that isn’t it; rather I think Paul is helping his readers ensure that nothing unsavoury can get in and disturb their relationship with the Father.

“For the rest, brothers, whatever is…” – well, what? And why? Unlike us, Paul and his readers lived in a time when one nation held (rather brutal) sway over most of the known world; and under that power structure, all kinds of immorality and violence and injustice had to be endured at every level of society; and the news – in this case, just what your friends and neighbours passed on to you – could be pretty distressing.

And yet Paul doesn’t suggest that as believers it was our job to sort it out; he apparently has no mandate to take dominion over society, or fix what is wrong in the world; he just wants his brothers and sisters to walk with the God of peace. So they are to λογίζεσθε – count or reckon upon, properly a term applying to numerical calculations – upon whatever is:

ἀληθῆ – “true” is the watered down option, fine for a first year Greek class but not really what it means. “Transparent” or “without anything concealed” would be better, because the word literally means “without forgetfulness”, a-privative plus lanthanw / lethw, as in “the River Lethe”. It is what is true, no matter how much you walk around it and examine it. (Not “true” because someone from a troll farm posted it on Facebook or Reddit.)

σεμνά – “worthy of reverence”; this word was used extensively of the Greek and Roman gods, and of their temples and rites, and by extension of the august within society. “Noble” loses the sense of divine awe.

δίκαια – “observant of rules and norms”, which in this case I think we should assume are the laws of the Kingdom and how it operates – Paul was not there to promote Roman laws and customs. “Right” is way too flattened out to convey this.

ἁγνά – “pure, chaste, undefiled” – and, in those senses, “holy”

προσφιλῆ – “dear or beloved”; the associated verb means to approach so as to kiss.

εὔφημα – the word means “uttering sounds of good omen” which in practical application usually meant “abstaining from saying inauspicious things”; in other words, not saying things that would bring the house down around your ears. If you have been following this blog for long, you will know how much Jesus majored on this subject.

“And if something is ἀρετὴ” – goodness, excellence and even prosperity

“And if something is ἔπαινος – praise or commendation

“… reckon with these things.”

“And whatever you learned from, received from, heard from and saw in me, do all these things. And the God of peace will be with you.”

I mean, this is Paul, in two short verses, summarising how to have a truly Good life; personally I find this both challenging, but also – full of the peace of God.

And enjoying the constant presence of the God of peace seems far, far better than inviting in the demons of anxiety and fear and offence and FOMO – no matter how broken, oppressed or unfair society seems to have become.

Protected

Χαίρετε ἐν κυρίῳ πάντοτε· πάλιν ἐρῶ, χαίρετε. τὸ ἐπιεικὲς ὑμῶν γνωσθήτω πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις. ὁ κύριος ἐγγύς· μηδὲν μεριμνᾶτε, ἀλλ’ ἐν παντὶ τῇ προσευχῇ καὶ τῇ δεήσει μετ’ εὐχαριστίας τὰ αἰτήματα ὑμῶν γνωριζέσθω πρὸς τὸν θεόν· καὶ ἡ εἰρήνη τοῦ θεοῦ ἡ ὑπερέχουσα πάντα νοῦν φρουρήσει τὰς καρδίας ὑμῶν καὶ τὰ νοήματα ὑμῶν ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ.

Philippians 4. 4-7, SBL Greek NT

Paul’s letters are usually directed at some specific situation, usually contentious, and mostly unknown to us; this keeps an army of theologians happily engaged in trying to reconstruct the scene of the accident (ie the situation he was addressing – was it gnostics or people claiming this or that, or libertarians or… what?), while the rest of us just try to make sense of his long sentences and trains of thought.

Which means that some of the best encouragements (and most profound yet approachable insights) are to be found at the end of the letters, ie after Paul has delivered his payload and is relaxing and just being himself again. Even better when it is the end of what is already a pretty happy and non-controversial letter like Philippians.

I would have quoted the whole of Philippians 4 except we would be here all week. Here is my reading of those 4 verses, with some short notes…

“Rejoice in the Lord always! I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your kind approach be known to all men. The Lord is near; let nothing make you anxious, but in everything, in prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requisitions known to God; and the peace of God, which is held in protection over all thought and feeling, let it keep watch over your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus.”

Philippians 4.4-7, my rendering

Nothing contentious about “Rejoice”, but just remember who this is and how much he has already gone through; and he is able to say “rejoice – always!” This is lived experience, not window-dressing. The ability to rejoice whatever the situation is a kind of litmus test of relationship with God by the Spirit. If we can only rejoice with a tail wind and a downhill run, that rejoicing rings a little hollow.

τὸ ἐπιεικὲς ὑμῶν is hard to find an English equivalent for, but is well established in Greek philosophy and thought. It means operating from the spirit of the law, rather than according to the letter thereof. The NIV says ‘gentleness’, I have said ‘kind approach’, but even that needs to be expanded in order to come close to the meaning of the Greek. It includes the notion of being reasonable; and is the exact antithesis of the “culture wars” narrative that seems to prevail across the church at present. Any action considered in the light of ‘letting τὸ ἐπιεικὲς ὑμῶν be known to all men’, is going to surprise them with its kindness, reasonableness and gentleness. That is what we are to be known for, according to Paul. (And you can be reasonable and still stand your ground, using your authority. It is anxiety and fear that drive us to unkindness.)

“In petition” (τῇ δεήσει) and “requisitions” (τὰ αἰτήματα) are not common to our understanding of prayer. Prayer itself (τῇ προσευχῇ) we think we understand, but as long as we still believe that God answers prayers in one of four ways: “yes”, “no”, “maybe” and “wait”, then we are really no better than the average pagan. What does scripture say? “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are all yes and amen in Christ Jesus.” So prayer is not begging to change God’s mind; it is asking Him to release to us what is already ours because of what He has already done in Christ. Hence petition and requisition; the root of petition δεήσει is “to be necessary or lacking”. So a petition is pointing out to one’s superior that something promised and budgeted for has not yet been released; requisitions (τὰ αἰτήματα) are things asked; not “please, please, pretty please” asked, but “we need x and y”. And this is why we are not meant to face anything with anxiety: just ask, knowing that we already have God’s “yes”.

And that is a non trivial change of mindset for most of us. Which brings us to the peace of God…

The peace of God, ἡ ὑπερέχουσα πάντα νοῦν φρουρήσει over your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

Most translations simply go with the notion that the peace of God surpasses all understanding: and that is a possible reading – but not the most compelling. ὑπερέχουσα means “held over” at its most fundamental, and is used of things held over something else in protection. Imagine a father covering his child’s head with his coat and arm during a sudden hail storm; that is the peace of God held over you in protection.

Held over what, exactly? Yes, πάντα νοῦν could be “all understanding”, but this exact phrase is more usually used in classical Greek to mean something more like “all thought and feeling” or “heart and soul”. It is wider than just hard edged cognition. What needs protection with God’s peace, your cognitive processes or all the thoughts and emotions churning around inside? I know the answer for myself…

And lastly, φρουρήσει. “Will guard” just seems a little passive, and with a hint of jail or some other lock-up; the word literally means “will watch over”. And as I think Paul had discovered, when the Peace of God, held in protection over your heart and soul, detects something amiss – He speaks to alert and guide you.

For example, how many times was Paul flogged, before he finally heard the Peace of God whisper, “son, you are a Roman citizen, and no one has found you guilty of a crime; why not speak up?” – which Paul did, with dramatically different results. (Suddenly he was being protected instead of beaten).

Just an example, but Paul wasn’t speaking in platitudes; his knowledge of how God loves us was entirely practical; and so should ours be.

Too proud to be blessed

ὀλίγοις ἀρρώστοις ἐπιθεὶς τὰς χεῖρας ἐθεράπευσεν

Mark 6.5b, SBL Greek Testament

“Laying His hands on a few sickly people, He healed them.”

If this is a record of what happened in your church last Sunday, you are probably still buzzing with excitement – or shock, depending on what you are used to. But you are unlikely to be as disappointed as Jesus was at His reception in Nazareth (we presume – Mark just says “τὴν πατρίδα αὐτοῦ”, or His home territory / town / village).

I have written on this one before (see Tall Prophet Syndrome), but this time wanted to zoom in on the reaction of the townsfolk. Jesus and His disciples arrive in town, and on the Sabbath, He begins teaching in the Synagogue.

“And the many hearing were SHOCKED” ( and the word ἐξεπλήσσοντο does not admit of any positive reading; the NIV’s “amazed” won’t do; this is “driven out of your wits” shocked.)

They know this kid. They are not impressed by how He has developed, they are offended.

“From whence did this one get these things?” The Greek is tighter: Πόθεν τούτῳ ταῦτα. “And what is this wisdom that has been given Him?” (Almost “where did He steal this from?”). “And the wonders such as these that come about through His hands?” And this might be the biggest point of offence of all: His hands working wonders? Isn’t He the carpenter?

And that’s the thing: “be a good carpenter by all means, we will all bring you our requests for window frames and broken looms to mend; but who the heck do you think you are, to be doing and saying all this… whatever it is? Your hands are for working wood, not wonders…”

And yes, they know all His brothers, and some of them are married to His sisters, and there will be no forgiveness for any of this.

Hence Jesus’ words, that a prophet is not dishonoured – except in his own town and amongst his own people.

And despite the townsfolk saying “wonders such as these”, Jesus was able to do no wonders there – except to lay hands on a few who were too weak and needy to be offended. “And He was astonished at their lack of faith.”

So what is your response, and mine, when Jesus comes past and demonstrates that He isn’t who we had filed Him away as, but very much alive and ready to overturn what we thought were certainties?

Or will we still find a few sick people being healed almost too much to process?

Legion

Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?”
“My name is Legion,” he replied, “for we are many.”

Mark 5.9, NIV

At the end of a long day of teaching, Jesus tells the disciples they are going to go to the other side of the Sea. On the way they suffer an unexpected storm, which I covered in the Seeing the Kingdom book.

What happens next? When they get out of the boat they meet an extremely demonised man, Jesus tells the demons to leave him, and once he is free and in his right mind, they head back across the Sea.

It is hard to avoid the thought that the whole journey, including the storm, was just about setting this one man free: which is a thought worth meditating on. And yes, as far as we know, this man was the first to carry the news of Jesus outside the territory of Israel.

But still: why? Were there not enough people in possession of a demon in Judaea?

Well, this man did have quite a number of demons.

We don’t know if the name Legion is to be taken literally, in which case he had between 4,200 and 5,200 demons – assuming that the demons were only counting the citizen soldiers in a Legion. Camp-followers and servants and so on could take the number over 10,000 for a legion.

What’s it like having 4,000 or 10,000 demons?

Well the man lived among the tombs and cut himself and cried out day and night. Actually though, the clearest picture comes from the pigs the demons entered. We are told there were around 2,000 pigs in the flock, so each pig got at least 2 demons, and possibly as many as 5. Imagine being a happy pig, grubbing out worms and grubs and truffles, and thinking happy pig thoughts; and suddenly your head is full of demons, arguing and shouting and carrying on.

Apparently all the pigs could think was “MAKE IT STOP” – and they all ran down the hill and off the cliff to drown themselves in the Sea. If a couple of demons could do that to a pig, think what it was like being the man, with thousands of screaming demon voices in his head.

No wonder he could break shackles and chains, and spent his time crying out and trying to injure himself.

Why did Jesus allow the demons to enter the pigs? I think He could see better than the demons how the pigs would react; and He definitely didn’t want them – the demons – to find another human victim. And if you are feeling sorry for the pigs, they were all being raised to be slaughtered and roasted for sacrifice, and at least this way they were saving people, instead of appeasing other demons, in the form of Roman or Greek gods.

Was it worth going all that way, just for one man? You would probably have to ask the man himself, but he seems to have been… extremely grateful! The townspeople who owned the pigs, perhaps not so much.

The Kingdom is like an aggressive weed

Too far? Ask any California Park Ranger or conservationist about Brassica nigra, and they are likely to give you an earful; whether it is the offshore islands like Catalina, or the Coachella Valley, this plant is supplanting (haha) rare native species. And yet B. nigra is the subject of a parable Jesus told, to represent the Kingdom of God to His listeners.

Again he said, “What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on earth. Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade.”

Mark 4:30-32, NIV

Before we start, it is worth noting that of all the Synoptic Evangelists, Mark (or perhaps, his presumed source, Peter) has the best understanding of which plant Jesus was talking about. He describes it as greater than all the garden herbs (λαχάνων); Matthew suggests it grows past the λαχάνων and becomes a (fruit) tree; Luke thinks it is just a fruit tree. I have grown B. nigra, and can assure all my readers that it is bigger than the herbs – and definitely smaller than any fruit tree I have come across. And hang in there: this is part of the point of this parable.

Let’s break the parable down. Jesus asks the rhetorical question, “what shall be say the Kingdom of God is like, and in what parable shall we establish it (literally ‘stand it up’)?”

“Well, it is like a mustard seed.” What does He tell us about mustard seeds? (and by the way, everything here is not only true of B. nigra, which is definitely the mustard found throughout that end of the Mediterranean in that period, but also of the other species of mustard, B. alba a.k.a. Sinapis alba, and B. juncea.)

First, they are small, and in terms of things that get sown (by men) on the earth, they probably are about as small as it gets in 1st Century Palestine. Cress might be smaller, but may not have been known in Israel. Here in NZ, we have a number of trees (Pohutukawa, Manuka, Kanuka) which grow into full sized trees from tiny threads you can hardly see; but I am reasonably confident that no one was sowing Metrosideros excelsa or Kunzea robusta in Judaea.

What is interesting is that there were definitely things Jesus could have used if His point was “the seed is tiny, but the result is huge”. Cedars of Lebanon would have been an easy choice for someone who grew up, a carpenter. So I think that we can assume that was not the point He was making. But yes, you could easily overlook a mustard seed.

And when it grows, is it huge? No; what is more impressive is that it gets bigger than a herb – and really really tangled. If you wanted to find a picture of something representing a rather nondescript network, that spreads new seed from every tangled corner, and which is big enough that birds can sit out the heat of the day on the ground in its shade (but definitely not sit on its branches, not unless they are way smaller and lighter than sparrows), then mustard is a great choice. Look at some of those photos of invasive mustard in California; when it spreads it covers the hillsides with its yellow flowers; but trying to work out how to rip it out is taxing the patience and ingenuity of ecologists and plant scientists.

I realise that if you have spent your life visualising “the mighty mustard tree of the Kingdom”, you might be suffering some disappointment right now. That just isn’t it. But as a picture of something whose origin looks insignificant and its final form fruitful but only passingly pretty (when it is in flower, before it all dries off), B. nigra certainly has a charm of its own.

And if you have ever had a sneaking suspicion that the Church is meant to operate under the radar and get absolutely everywhere; then this picture may actually be cheering you somewhat.

So what about the birds of heaven? What do they represent? I am not sure I know. The angels? The angels find rest and shade when the church gets on with its low-profile growth and existence? Could be. The birds could easily have gobbled up the mustard seed if they had seen it, but now they find it useful; so are they those who might have been inclined to be opposed to the Kingdom, but now take their ease in its shelter and find comfort there? Also plausible.

At the end of the day, perhaps what we said a couple of posts back is what matters; stay in the presence of this parable and see what it produces in you!

Keep the big feet out of the platter

He also said, “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.”

Mark 4:26-29, NIV

The title of this piece is a quotation from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Barbara Grant, telling David Balfour that things will go better for him if he is prevented from interfering (Catriona, ch. 19). It is surprising good advice in many situations, and appears to be implicit in the Parable quoted above.

Jesus says that He is telling His followers what the Kingdom of God is like; and proceeds to tell a story in which a man benefits from a process he trusts utterly – but of which he understands only the start and the end. He scatters seed on the ground – and then keeps well out of it, until the time when the “fruit is secured alongside” (ὅταν δὲ παραδοῖ ὁ καρπός, which the NIV translates as ‘As soon as the grain is ripe’). Then immediately he is all action again: “he sends the scythe, because the reaping is standing right there”, ie the time of harvest has arrived.

How do we know the man trusts the process utterly? Because he scatters seed on the ground – and doesn’t waste time, wailing over the loss of his precious seed. Quite the opposite: because he knows the process, he is able to leave well alone and go about his business; seed sown now equates to future abundance. He is celebrating!

Nor does he get tricked into intervening too soon. In both the English and the Greek, the head is mentioned twice – first it appears, but only later does it contain the full grain (εἶτα πλήρης σῖτον ἐν τῷ στάχυϊ). An impatient person – say it was myself – might be tempted to harvest the heads when they appear; and they will be rewarded with feathery tassels that cannot be eaten, much less ground to make bread. Only someone who trusts the process waits until that moment when the harvest he was expecting is standing alongside him; and then he acts.

So – keep the big feet out of the platter, and more especially out of the growing crop. But, what exactly is the process? Because supposing the man represents us, and the soil, our heart (following Luke’s key to the previous parable); then the bit “he doesn’t know how” is probably the Kingdom in operation. What is going on, while night and day, the man sleeps and gets up?

αὐτομάτη ἡ γῆ καρποφορεῖ; acting of itself, the earth bears fruit (ie a harvest or crop). And it doesn’t just happen in one night; first the green crop, then the head, then the full grain in the head. It takes time. You only know the process is complete when you can see (and feel) in the head, lots of grains, each and every one of them exactly like the grain that was scattered on the ground at the start of the process. Act before that and you have nothing of value; leave it too long and it rots in the field. So the man knows his part, but the process is the process.

What is that saying, outside of a field of sown grain?

“Acting of itself, the earth bears fruit.” That sounds wrong from a scientific point of view; a grain of wheat or any other seed is actually a fully formed embryo of the future plant to come. Chemical based agriculture from the late 19th Century would object and say, “no, no, Jesus – the seed turns into a plant, as long as there is the right ratio of N, P and K in the soil.”

And funnily enough, we now know that the people pushing nitrogen-based fertilisers on an unsuspecting world, were wrong. It is very much the earth that makes the seed grow into a fully formed plant. By itself, the embryo in the seed can unfurl – and then die. It is actually the living soil – alive with fungal mycelia and microbes – which is able to extract nutrients from dead organic matter and never-alive minerals alike, and trade them for photosynthesised sugars with the growing seed, to enable it to reach full stature and fruitfulness.

And – finally reaching the point of all this – that is how God has made us too. You and I are mimetic beings, and designed that way; our purpose is to receive what God speaks and reproduce and multiply that. We don’t know how it works, but it does. If you have been reading God’s word and trying to do it; well done, but perhaps relax. Your job is to scatter God’s word into your heart; and then to harvest it when it is ready and multiplied many times over. As long as you keep God’s word in your heart, you will reproduce and multiply it.

Of course, there is bad news too: whatever you keep in your heart, will reproduce and multiply. Yes.

So to fully understand what Jesus has managed to teach us in four short verses, come back to the Garden, and see why a small act of disobedience had such consequences. If you have been seeing Genesis 3 as something of an over-reaction on God’s part – a “bad dog, no biscuit” kind of moment – you should think again.

After He has made them and set them in the Walled Garden (which is literally what gan (גַּן) as in ‘gan eden’, the Garden of Eden, means; and if we call it Paradise, that is from the Persian, ‘pardes’, also a walled garden), He visits them there every afternoon.

We have no idea what God spoke about with them, but we can be sure that whatever He spoke, was being reproduced and multiplied in them. And just as God speaking into His world could have immediate impact, too (“let there be light – BANG!”), so we can assume the same was true of what Adam and Eve were doing. I always assumed that Adam naming the animals was just a job of description; but perhaps he actually prescribed what they were to become. That is of course just speculation; but we need to understand that when God made Man in His own image and likeness, that was not at all just a matter of number of limbs and facial hair; God had made people just like Himself.

Which means that breaking the one rule they had been given, and eating the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, was not a simple act of disobedience. Nor did God over-react, one iota. His children, with all the power they had received to reproduce and multiply whatever God said, had now snatched autonomy – and the knowledge of evil. If you can reproduce and multiply every evil thought that comes into your head and heart, you get… all this.

And as I have mentioned before, God did not curse the earth: Adam and Eve did. It is called consequences.

But circle back to the parable: here’s how the Kingdom of God is. We are redeemed and restored and back in the mimetic business God always had in mind for us: reproducing and multiplying what He said. That is the Kingdom of God; and that is us, its citizens. And in just 4 verses. Pretty useful things, parables…

Mind the Gaps

When he was alone, the Twelve and the others around him asked him about the parables. He told them, “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that,
“‘they may be ever seeing but never perceiving,
and ever hearing but never understanding;
otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!’”
Then Jesus said to them, “Don’t you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable?”

….

“Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop—some thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times what was sown.”
He said to them, “Do you bring in a lamp to put it under a bowl or a bed? Instead, don’t you put it on its stand? For whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed, and whatever is concealed is meant to be brought out into the open. If anyone has ears to hear, let them hear.”
“Consider carefully what you hear,” he continued. “With the measure you use, it will be measured to you—and even more. Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.”

Mark 4.10-13, 20-24, NIV

The artificial gaps in our English translations of the Bible are designed to aid reading, by breaking scripture into discrete story elements. Unfortunately, like any element of any translation, they are based on assumptions. And assumptions are sometimes plain wrong.

For example, anyone looking at the NIV version of Mark chapter 4 sees “The Parable of the Sower”, and its explanation, followed by the parable of “A Lamp on a Stand”, and then “The Parable of the Growing Seed”, and so on.

As a result, not only do we miss that the comments about the lamp are part of the explanation of the first parable, but it becomes that much easier to miss the detail, and why it matters. So please suspend your disbelief for a moment, and let’s unpack some of this.

The disciples ask Jesus why He always speaks in parables, and He says it is to stop ordinary people understanding what He is saying, lest they repent.

Just pause a moment, and consider what a monumental statement this is. Jesus comes because God so loves the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son so that… but the Son isn’t planning on letting anyone except His disciples to understand what He is saying. Really?

No wonder we get ourselves in such theological knots. Before Jesus went to the cross, it was critical that the Enemy had no idea what was going on, so Jesus regularly indulged in “misdirection for effect”. Jesus never said a thing that was untrue, but He often very deliberately withholds part of the truth, primarily to keep Satan in the dark.

Let’s walk back over that field. The disciples ask why Jesus speaks always in parables and He first tells them that

Ὑμῖν τὸ μυστήριον δέδοται τῆς βασιλείας τοῦ θεοῦ

Mark 4.11, SBL Greek NT

To you has been given the mystery (a technical term, relating to secret knowledge in a religious context) of the Kingdom of God.

And you can imagine the disciples all nodding knowingly to one another, “yes, the mystery of the Kingdom of God, yes I am all over that… umm… which mystery exactly…”

Jesus had spoken the truth, but the disciples couldn’t have told anyone the mystery because they hadn’t seen it, yet. You could say it was the secret of Emmanuel: God with us. In the same way that Jesus was with the disciples every moment of the day and night, God’s own Spirit would soon dwell permanently in them – and in any and every other person who believed in Jesus. So yes, they have been given the mystery, but they have no idea.

What about every one else? Doesn’t Jesus say they are not to understand? Well He quotes Isaiah 6.9-10, which was addressed to Isaiah himself, about Israel – and is clearly a provocation. If I say to my child, “well we wouldn’t want you to ever learn how to read…” that might be unwise parenting, but the intention of the provocation is clear – “of course we want you to learn to read!” Likewise God: of course He wants Israel to repent and be healed.

So why does Jesus use this scripture to misdirect everyone’s attention? I think it is clear who His target is. Satan knows scripture inside out, but can’t understand it because he has blinded himself to the goodness of God. Satan is ultimately the one who cannot understand or perceive, and who will not be saved. But if he understood God’s plan in Jesus, he would be able to thwart it (Paul says this explicitly in 1 Cor 2.8).

But that is only the beginning. Look at the end of Jesus’ explanation of the parable of the Sower. What is special about the good soil people? According to the Greek,

οἵτινες ἀκούουσιν τὸν λόγον καὶ παραδέχονται καὶ καρποφοροῦσιν ἓν τριάκοντα καὶ ἓν ἑξήκοντα καὶ ἓν ἑκατόν.

Mark 4.20, SBL Greek NT

“These hear the ‘word’ and receive from it for themselves and bear fruit, the one thirty, the one sixty, the one a hundred.”

Hold onto that thought, because it is about to become very important. The disciples may not have got the connection to the lamp at the time, but we need to!

Remember, Jesus has spoken about parables being used to hide things; now He says “it isn’t like you bring a lamp into the room so you can hide it under a bucket or bushel, but rather to put it on a menorah (lampstand).”

The message is “Yes, I told you that parables are to hide things, but things are only hidden to be revealed, and concealed to be bought to the light.” And of course it more than that. Parables are probably the stickiest kind of story there is – they are exceptionally memorable and repeatable, so they stick in people’s memories. Do they need a bible commentary to understand them? Not actually. In fact, according to Jesus, the thing is, when you hear the ‘word’ (and my use of quotes is deliberate: Goethe noted long ago that λόγος is the most untranslatable word in Greek – here it could be story or matter or account or thing or idea or…) do you receive from it? Because that is what leads to you bearing fruit. And I do not believe that παραδέχονται (receiving from it for yourself) is as much a matter of academic understanding or cognition as it is about the heart and the spirit.

So parables conceal… but things are only concealed to be brought to the light. And parables are about whether or not you receive from them. The disciples had managed as usual to ask exactly the wrong question: “what does it mean”; Jesus answered them, but actually for all His other hearers the seed had already been planted. Their ability to receive something from it was not limited to whether someone gave them the key. As long as it stayed in good soil in their heart, it would uncover itself in time and grow.

I would say that what Jesus said a moment later was more important than His patient walking of the disciples through the “meaning of the parable”. He said, not what the NIV suggests, but rather the wonderful, “Βλέπετε τί ἀκούετε.”

“See what you hear.” In other words, “don’t just hear what I say; see it!”

Jesus is saying that the kind of cognition that, say, the scribes and Pharisees, indulged in, was not what mattered – trying to understand scripture as a series of legal statements. It was actually in the process of visualising what Jesus was saying that it would start to give them what they needed to receive. And it is as that inner picture changed that His next statement kicks in: with the measure you measure with, it will be measured to you, and handed over (or “and more besides” – both options are credible).

In other words, as you visualise what you hear and receive from the word, you will change, so that the measure you use will no longer be that of the old you, but of the renewed you; and so you will start receiving according to that changed measure, which in turn changes you more and so on.

As conspiracies to overthrow an illegitimate regime go, this is the most subtle and the most powerful. What seem like children’s stories do the hardest thing in the world; they change people permanently.

And in summary, Jesus says: “whoever has (ie received from the word), they will be given more. But whoever does not have (who has failed to give the word a point of contact) – even what they have will be taken away.”

And that is both a wonderful promise and a salutary warning.

You have known – so hold to that

A large crowd followed and pressed around him. And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.
At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?”
“You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’”
But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”

Mark 5:24-34, NIV

Here is a well known passage; so have you spotted what is odd, yet?

It is odd in the English of the NIV, but says something different in the Greek. The end of verse 34 has Jesus saying “be freed from your suffering.” And yet the woman already knows she is completely healed. It says it twice – once when it happens and once when Jesus insists on the person who touched Him owning up. So why would Jesus say such an atypical thing. If it was you or me, it would be us taking the credit for someone else’s faith. That doesn’t sound like Jesus.

And actually, the Greek is deliberately ambiguous.

καὶ ἴσθι ὑγιὴς ἀπὸ τῆς μάστιγός σου could mean “you are are healed (literally healthy) from your torment or scourge”; but in the context, we are clearly meant to read ἴσθι as 2nd person singular perfect imperative active of οἶδα, “to know”.

Jesus uses the same unusual construction – perfect imperative – a few verses earlier when He tells the sea “you have already been muzzled, so act like it (implied)”.

The perfect tense is different from the simple past of the aorist. The aorist is like “he woke up” – it is a fact that happened somewhere in the past, whether a moment ago or last month. The perfect would be “he has awoken” – something that happened in the past few moments and which has relevance right now. Something like, “we were going to sneak out of his lair, but he has awoken (so we can’t).”

So what is Jesus saying. He is not speaking an anodyne blessing over something the woman already worked out for herself. “Be well.“ No, He is telling her something important. “You have known that you are healed – so hold fast to that.”

Because, unlike most of us, Jesus knows that Satan will try to come back and convince you that you weren’t actually healed. Here is a woman who all by herself has had faith for healing. That is a precious resource and Jesus intends that she can hold onto that ground she took, hence His very actionable advice.