Hip Hop Theology: Reclaiming the Prophetic-Poetic Tradition

“The day will come when people will once more be called to speak the word of God in such a way that the world is changed and renewed. It will be in a new language, perhaps quite nonreligious language, but liberating and redeeming like Jesus’ language, so that people will be alarmed and yet overcome by its power.”

—Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Introduction

These prophetic words of Bonhoeffer, penned from a prison cell in Nazi Germany, come from the depths of his anguish and despair over the German church’s utter loss of credibility during his time.  Though on the surface they continued their liturgy and baptisms, they had sold their soul to Hitler and the Nazis and failed to live as authentic disciples of Christ.  When God is honored in name during worship services, but injustice, hatred, violence, racism, and oppression go unquestioned and unchecked by those claiming to be God’s people, the prophets boldly announce God’s hatred of our worship and reiterate God’s call: “Take away from me the noise of your songs…but let justice roll like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:23-24).  Amos shows us that when our words about God (theo-logia) become worn-out expressions, emptied of practical meaning and ethical consequences, not only is this displeasing, but God actually hates this (v. 21).  Thus, when this happens, God raises up prophets to speak the Word anew, powerfully and profoundly addressing the pressing concerns of the current time.  This is why prophecy is so intimately connected to poetry—it becomes a vehicle for transcending language through language itself, of getting beyond the restrictive rigidity of common and conventional expression and point to a greater truth and to pronounce God’s word anew.

Thus, there is much more at stake in the theological exploration of hip hop than merely a way of making theology more “relevant” to contemporary youth, reaching the “unchurched,” or using its aesthetic idioms simply as an evangelistic tool and a ready-made cultural container into which we can insert church doctrines and scripture verses.  While these approaches represent the vast majority of previous attempts by the church to engage hip hop culture, they are insufficient because they fail to truly listen to the community they seek to reach out to.  What is needed is an approach that hears and accepts the voices of the hip hop community in their own right.  To do this, we must first understand that hip hop is more than just a kind of music, a subculture, or a set of aesthetic principles; it is all of that and more.  We must explore the poetics of hip hop how all of these aspects are interwoven to construct meaning and intelligibility.  Only then can we begin to grapple with its theological content.  I will begin by outlining a basic understanding of the essential historical, cultural, and poetic roots of hip hop. After establishing the hermeneutical context of hip hop theology, I will articulate three key aspects: God’s solidarity with the suffering of the oppressed, the prophetic denunciation of hypocrisy in contemporary Christian worship, and the prophetic denunciation of the dominant American culture.  Each section will include direct examples of contemporary hip hop artists who take up this prophetic-poetic tradition to speak to contemporary circumstances.

Part I: Defining Hip Hop

Hip hop is, in a sense, a cultural dialectic; it functions as a bridge to merge contrasts in aesthetic and cultural convention. Theodore Adorno defines art as “a critique of praxis.”

Hip-hop, in this sense, is a critique of conventional linguistic, cultural, religious and aesthetic practices.  The dialectic of hip hop is fundamentally acheived in the “mix”—a re-contextualization of the artist’s surrounding elements, including musical and nonmusical sounds, religious and philosophical ideas, conventional and subversive language, popular culture, politics, history, and community—all of which are “sampled” from their disparate sources and mixed together into a new cohesive unit.  The new context of these elements is aimed at deconstructing conventional dichotomies through juxtaposition.  This juxtaposition is what allows hip hop to function as a dialectic of literary and musical tradition, of sacred and profane, of noise and music, and of originality and reproduction.  While hip hop is, in a sense, a part of Western culture, it is imperative that hip hop be understood primarily as a specifically African-American type.

Its unique situation in both the local community and within the wider context of musical and cultural tradition creates the hybridized dialectic through which hip hop critiques convention and constructs new meanings out of sampled material.

If hip hop is ever to be properly understood academically, then a convergence of multiple disciplines is need—these include musicology, history, sociology, economics, political science, theology, anthropology, philosophy, and cultural studies.  Any one-dimensional academic approach will fall short of a full account of what hip hop truly is.  For example, Music theory, in its attempt to focus solely on the musical aspects of hip hop, will also neglect the way that historical and cultural themes are so deeply saturated into the music itself; and even music history will run the risk of reducing hip hop to a postmodern musical development out of a linear progression instead of seeing it as a musical dialogue between past and present.  Though exceedingly difficult to define, hip-hop is primarily about finding a crossroads, or a convergence somewhere in the mixture of differing elements.

The greatest composers of hip-hop are master synthesizers; artists who are able to create harmony out of sounds and ideas that seem to have no interrelationship.  Thus, to fully understand them will require a thorough explication of their “poetics”—here taken in the widest possible sense, so as to include any meaning constructs, whether musical, linguistic, or otherwise.

African-American Language tradition

It is often said that hip-hop is a hybrid form. Much of what is called hybridization in hip-hop arises out of the unique cultural dynamic resulting from the tension between a minority African-American subculture and the dominant mainstream American and Western culture.  In 1903, African-American intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois coined the term “second sight,” in order to depict this unique intra-cultural dynamic.  Du Bois asserted that the black minority understood the white majority to a much higher degree than the obverse; often, according to Du Bois, the minority even understands the majority better than they understand themselves.

The concept of second sight can be applied to many aspects of African-American culture as a means of understanding its intersection with the majority culture.  Second sight opens the possibility for a discursive subtext, wherein the dominant culture can be challenged and subverted without the majority’s comprehension.  An extremely significant manifestation of such a subtext is the usage and development of African-American Vernacular English.

Linguistically, it is an admixture of Southern English with some grammatical elements remaining from the West African language family, and the incorporation of continuously formed slang expressions.  Its origin is in preserving some degree of linguistic autonomy from slave masters; African-American vernacular culture has always been, and continues to exist as a discursive challenge to dominant cultural forces.

For AAVE to continuously function as a medium for cultural identity and subtext, it relies on the constant invention of new words and phrases as older expressions become absorbed by the mainstream.  While new words preserve a degree of obscurity on a grammatical and semantic level, AAVE harbors much greater cultural depth as a discourse based on how African-Americans use language, what they use it to say, and what verbal routines are used in this communicative practice (Perry, 25).  The way in which AAVE remixes conventional linguistic expression into a creative trope to heighten the meaning imparted to those familiar with this process is at the aesthetic core of hip hop.

Thus, more must be understood about African American linguistic practice than a merely semantic comprehension of slang terms.  The distinction between literate and oral dissemination of linguistic culture is also important.  The preference for oral culture gives African American language a uniquely performative character.  The use of print in literate tradition tends to freeze concepts as they are written, whereas oral tradition, by virtue of its “actionality,” maintains a much looser paradigm for communication and perception alike.  Barbara Christian elaborates in her essay “The Race for Theory,” that, “people of color have always theorized, but…our theorizing…is often…in the play with language, since dynamic, rather than fixed ideas seem more to our liking.”

Though often judged and misunderstood by those outside the hip hop community, the use of coarse and abrasive creative language to avoid physical violence has long been important feature of African-American culture.

Henry Louis Gates identifies one example, which he dubbed signifyin’ —a form of verbal affront distinguished by the use of an indirect sub-textual delivery through double-entendre and metaphor. Signifyin’ is further characterized by its use of humor, irony, rhythmic fluidity, subtly didactic imagery and wordplay to introduce the semantically or logically unexpected.

In keeping with the Du Boisian concept of second sight, signifyin’ can be used in two basic ways: it can be directed at a fellow minority who understands its implications, or it can be used more subversively to target a member of the dominant class so that the minority group understands the insult, while the receiver remains ignorant.  Hip hop similarly employs these techniques of subversive poetry, which requires artists to constantly coin new words and idioms so they never lose their poignancy.

Hip Hop Is Born

In the mid 1970s, a time of marked economic downturn, there was very little funding for musical education in inner-city school districts.  As disco clubs also began to decline, due in part to their negative association with gang violence, there was a glaring absence of musical opportunity for young African-Americans. The youth of Brooklyn, New York began to fill this artistic void with an emerging outdoor block party scene.  They would plug in to light posts outside to play recorded music and dance.

As it became evident that the dancing crowds loved the highly syncopated drum breaks of funk records more than the rest of the music, DJs began the practice of looping these drum breaks.  With two turntables, a DJ could either use two copies of the same record to loop a break as long as was desired, or he could superimpose two records into one sound.

The techniques of these early DJs effectively transformed them from mere consumers of recorded music into creative producers in their own right.

Thus, from its inception, hip hop has been a community-centered movement devoted to liberating and empowering marginalized and disenfranchised young people and to give a voice to the voiceless.

Hip Hop’s Poetics

There are several ways in which the poetic conventions of hip hop create and strengthen bonds of community and identity among its marginalized progenitors.  Most immediate is an MC’s “flow”—the rhythmic delivery of rhyming lyrics. Flow is an admixture of originality (without which an MC would be dismissed) and stylistic convention (without which an MC would fail to identify with an established listening community).  In the hip hop community, for example, the rhythmic style of flow by itself can inform listeners of its historical period and geographical origin.  Since identity is an immensely important aspect of hip hop music, locality must be explicitly manifested in an MC’s style.

The emphasis on identity construction in particular local communities is thus underscored by the fact that sound characteristics that may be authentic and accepted in one city may be considered disingenuous or unpleasant in another.

Community representation thus occurs at a purely aesthetic level, as mediated by cultural interpretation, in addition to what the MC alludes to in the lyrics of a song.  Such emphasis on cultural authenticity, or realness in hip-hop is unprecedented in other forms of popular music; not because other popular musics are inauthentic, but because authenticity is less critical to the creation and reception of the music.

This is evidenced by the fact that, from the perspective of hip hop artists and listeners, there

appears to be more poetic/stylistic variation along regional lines than any other means of classification.

Another aspect of hip hop poetics and construction is “sampling.”  It is simultaneously one of the most important and controversial elements of hip hop.  One of its functions, and precisely the reason for this controversy, is to contest conventional capitalist notions of property and proper citation.

It is the use of samples that gives hip hop music its unique dynamism, by allowing contrasting, and often quite disparate sounds to converge in a musical dialectic.  These sounds are brought into dialogue and archived within a hip hop composition, so that the historicity of the sampled sound is both contrasted against and brought into a contemporary context, calling into question conventional concepts of authorship, creativity, and originality.

The intersection of the aesthetic and economic implications of sampling have problematically led many to dismiss it as a means of recycling old material.  This conclusion, however, ignores the role sampling has of disseminating material to a new audience, as well as the heightened semantic poignancy achieved by using literal sounds in addition to mere allusion or reference.  As rapper Chuck D describes it:

Our music is filled with bits of information from the real world, a world that is rarely exposed.  Our songs are almost like headline news.  We bring things to the table of discussion that are not usually discussed, or at least not from our [urban African American] perspective.

Evoking a sense of realness, and giving a voice to an often neglected and marginalized life experience is central to hip hop; sampling as such is a highly useful means of bringing pieces of reality into the music.

Part II: Hip Hop Theology

This emphatic insistence on realness and authenticity, when manifested as a window into the violent and unjust conditions of inner-city life, has led to its unique admixture of the sacred and profane and its inclusion of imagery that strikes the dominant culture as offensive, grotesque, and perverse.  Yet, as Daniel White Hodge demonstrates in his own hip hop theology, the Bible itself bears witness to a history of God engaging, embracing, and working through profane contexts in order to love and liberate the marginalized.

Consistently, the biblical injunction is for us to redirect our disgust and righteous indignation from “sinners” to the conditions which lead to their sinfulness.  Hip hop theology, then, becomes a way for us to recover the profanity and hostility of our scriptural tradition which boldly calls the circumstances of injustice into question, and reintroduces us to the Jesus who embraced and uplifted prostitutes, drunks, diseased people and tax-collectors and rebuked those who ignored and disdained these profane people.  It will indeed be a vulgar theology, because, as the etymology of that word indicates, it is a theology of and for the common people.  In this sense, it is precisely the theologies which are not vulgar that are perversions of the gospel.  Hip hop theology seeks to offer a valid alternative to the problem in contemporary American Christianity that, as Hodge puts it, “We continue to want a G-rated savior in an NC-17 world.”

Since Hodge has already profoundly articulated a theology of the profane, in which biblical exegesis is brought into conversation with the hip hop cultural context, I will attempt to cover new territory and explore hip hop as a prophetic-poetic theological type.  This will take on three important assertions of hip hop theology: announcing that God identifies with the oppressed, marginalized and downtrodden, denouncing the hypocrisy of dominant Christian theology and practice, and denouncing the injustice and lack of freedom in this “land of the free.”

Rap as Prophecy

As Walter Brueggeman thoroughly demonstrates in Out of Babylon, the struggle of the poetic-prophetic tradition primarily concerned community and identity; the poetic idiom in which the prophets uttered God’s word anew was a way of preserving their local community’s identity in the midst of the challenges posed by living under the oppression and powerful influences of exile in the empire.  He relates this preserving poetic capacity of the Hebrew people in Babylon to the contemporary need to recovery this capacity to maintain allegiance to Christ in the midst of the demands to pledge allegiance to the American “empire.”  He argues, “The task is not simply to reiterate old poetry, but to learn from its cadences what now needs to be uttered.  Both the distorted chosen people and the imperious empire run roughshod over such utterance.”

Thus, the poetic-prophetic tradition Brueggeman describes is intimately connected with each of the three key aspects of hip hop theology.  Furthermore, the prophets, like rappers, were “uncredentialed utterers with no social standing,” whose authority thus came exclusively from “imaginative, playful utterance…facts on the ground connected to human bodily reality, and the claim to be connected enough to speak the truth of YHWH.”

Though hated and killed by their contemporaries, these poets are vindicated by God for their boldness and courage to speak truth where and when it was desperately needed (cf. Lk. 6:22-3).  In hip hop theology, as in the biblical prophetic tradition, this poetry is not merely an aesthetic convention, literary art form, or flight of imaginative fancy.  On the contrary, the  very articulation of the poetic imagination is liberating, both in speaking and in hearing.  Over against the dominant picture of reality which reinforces the injustice of the status quo, “It imagines otherwise; it invites its listeners to walk boldly into the world it creates. It authorizes courage, summons defiance and lines out resistance, all in the interest of legitimating the compelling force of the local tradition.”

This imagination and liberation, however, can only be available to those who maintain an authentic identity rooted in the local community; it is lost on those who have “sold out” to the prevailing imperial reality and ideology.

Similarly, in hip hop music, legitimacy and authenticity can only be maintained by “representing” (sometimes abbreviated “reppin’”) and staying true to the ‘hood from whence you came.  This is why one of the most serious charges that one rapper can lay on another is that of being “fake,” when one’s ‘hood identity is overcome and lost through the preoccupation with one’s own wealth and success.  The “commercial” rappers who parade on MTV and BET with expensive cars, jewelry, mansions, and women are often accused of leaving and forgetting the downtrodden ghetto communities they were raised in and for exploiting their previous experiences for personal profit.  A few lines from the opening verse of Common’s song “Chi-City” suffice to illustrate this trend:

Too many rape the culture

Leave rappers with careers and they faith over

It’s a war goin’ on, you can’t fake bein’ a soldier

In the basement, listening to tapes of Ultra-Magnetic,

to the fact the messiah is black

I’ll turn the TV down, we can take it higher than that

I wonder if these whack niggaz realize they whack

And they the reason that my people say they tired of rap

Represent

The main question of God in hip hop theology concerns who God “represents.”  Hip hoppers have not found a place in the church, because they do not hear about a God who loves them and identifies with their struggles there.  What they need to hear, as the rapper Nas says in his song “God Love Us,” is that, “God love[s] us hood niggaz/Cause next to Jesus on the cross was the crook niggaz…Cause he be with us in the prisons/And he takes the time to listen.”

Nas echoes the familiar strain of liberation theology with the final words of the song, “Our lives are the worst, on top of that, we broke/That’s the main reason why God love us the most.”  The clearest example of who God represents in hip hop theology, however, comes out in the spoken word poet Malik Yusef’s song, “I Spit.”  To “spit” means to rap, or to prophecy poetically, but it also conveys the image of speaking out with so much vulgarity, vigor, and passion that spit issues forth from the mouth.  The whole song is thus a passionate manifesto of solidarity, and a declaration of the specific local community who has access to the poetic-prophetic imagination:

I spit for the benefit of those who was told they was never ever gonna be shit

I spit for all those that wish to God they could just ball legit

I spit for every little ghetto boy and ghetto girl that have to beg, cry, fight and pray for each and every thing he or she get…

I spit for those that can’t speak without cursin’,

puttin’ body piercin’s and tattoos on they person,

who wanna talk to you, but them things do all the conversin’…

I spit for babies born as “pimps” and “soldiers”,

little black kids with no money, but big-ass chips on they shoulders,

I spit for those at fed joints fightin’ time,

and that’s the reason I’m writin’ rhymes

and recitin’ lime-green nouns and verbs

and slangin’/slingin’ that shit like pounds of herb just to elevate you

…

so outa all the gods claimin’ to be God, Yusef is the closest;

I spit the most lovely to the most ugly, the most beautiful to the most atrocious…

Life’s a gamble—we just roll the dice,

prayin’ that we don’t blow the heist

and if we do, let us go to Christ

and come back to raise our seeds as poltergeists

Here we get the clear picture that solidarity with the marginalized and voiceless is very important for hip hop theology.  Hip hop identifies with the Jesus who cared less about his own reputation than about loving and embracing sinners and Samaritans—who were, as Hodge puts it, “the ‘niggas’ of Jesus’ day.”

Like the Hebrew prophets, the hip hop community uses poetry to create bonds of solidarity and to partake of what Brueggemann terms “emancipitory imagination.”  Solidarity is a ministry of presence that loves and affirms the other as he or she is and which humbly listens to others in their own terms.  Hip hop can be a tremendous vehicle for this ministry of solidarity which fights the individualistic tendencies of our culture by building community.  As rapper Lupe Fiasco says, “You see the tears of fire run out my cryin’ songs/Now the world’s shoulders is what we cryin’ on…‘Cause it’s never cyclops; it’s never I alone/I’m tellin’ you story wherever I perform.”

The laments and cries that once fell upon deaf ears now have a global audience, thanks to hip hop.  The challenge for rappers like Lupe Fiasco is to continue to represent these folks by “keepin’ it real” and telling their stories.

Denouncing Religious Hypocrisy

One of the major reasons that the church has had difficulty accepting hip hop has been the perception that rappers are irreverent, sacrilegious and even blasphemous.  Even in African-American churches, hip hop is often seen as something to convert out of, rather than something to dialogue with.

Many Christians simply do not want to encounter the deeper messages of hip hop music, and perhaps rightly so; at the core, they will likely find a critical denunciation of their own tightly held theology and ideology.  Hip hop is vociferously critical of the “white Jesus” of American Christianity and the images of Jesus as an authoritarian figure, a judgmental moralist, and a timidly docile and unquestioningly obedient son—images that have been used either overtly or subliminally by the church to control and maintain the status quo.

While this domesticated Jesus imagery demands acceptance of an unacceptably unjust status quo, hip hoppers reject it in favor of a less tame and more hostile gospel—the gospel of the Jesus who is so enraged at what is going on that he violently throws over the tables of the moneylenders in the temple.  Talib Kweli, as a matter of fact, takes up this theme in his song appropriately titled “Hostile Gospel.”  The repeated chorus of the song sums up quite well:

This is the hostile gospel

I’m reaching through the fire (please deliver us)

I’m preaching to the choir (please deliver us)

Just keep it real with us, you scared to spill your blood

Your words rung hollow, we need someone to follow

In fact, Kweli’s entire Ear Drum album is wrought with this kind of prophetic address, clearly illustrating that the criterion for differentiating between the real, “hostile” gospel and the “hollow” one being preached in the churches is whether and to what degree solidarity is established with the marginalized people of the ghetto.  Thus, in another song, he says:

I’m not a judge, but I’m handing out sentences

To political prisoners, regular inmates with no visitors

Niggas in the streets outside to reach up for ministers

Not those that say they spiritual but actual parishioners—rap listeners

Kweli’s words here are reminiscent of those of Jesus Matthew 25, where he chastises those who call him “Lord” but fail to love and serve his people.  Far from being irreverent or blasphemous, the prophetic denunciation of Christian hypocrisy in hip hop is akin to Christ’s own words, “Woe to you…hypocrites!” in Matthew 23.

Kweli’s song “Give ‘Em Hell” summarizes the denunciation of religious hypocrisy far more poignantly than anything I could offer:

Every Sunday dressin’ up, catchin’ gossip at its worst

Couldn’t see the difference in the Baptist and the Catholic Church…

If we all God’s children then what’s the word of the reverend worth?

Taught early that faith is blind, like justice when you facin’ [jail] time

If we all made in God’s image, then that means His faces is mine

Wait, or is that blasphemy? It’s logical, it has to be—

If I don’t look like my father, then the way I live is bastardly

Naturally, that’s confusin’ to a young’n tryin’ to follow Christ,

Taught that if you don’t know Jesus then you lead a hollow life,

Never question the fact that Jesus was Jewish, not a Christian

Or that Christianity was law according to politicians…

They say Hell is underground and Heaven is in the sky

And they say that’s where you go when you die, but how they know?

We know that what we reap we sow

But we forget how low we can go

You think it’s bad here on earth but if we can’t get to heaven it’s hell…

So it all sound the same to me

That’s why when they say one [religion] is right and the other’s wrong

It just sound like game

to me

It’s like God skipped past the church and came to me

No, that ain’t vane to me; it’s just a particular way that I came to see…

The poem’s divine ‘cause it coincide with the growin’ tide

Of those who lookin’ for God, knowin’ to go inside

Livin’ in mass confusion, lookin’ for absolution…produce the last solution

Based on an interpretation of what the words were sayin’

Tryin’ to get to God but ended up doin’ the work of Satan,

Religion create[s] division: make the Muslim hate the Christian,

Make the Christian hate the Jew,

Make the rules of faith that you conditioned to and gotta follow

Or God forbid, you go to Hell,

But if you ever walked through any ghetto, then you know it well…

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,”

Just because the Lord is my shepherd don’t mean I gotta be no sheep

You feel me?

More blood is spilled over religion than anything in world history

We sayin’ the same thing

Kweli’s narrative is interwoven with numerous scriptural idioms, which he turns inside out into a critique of the vanity of contemporary religiosity.  There is no place for a holier-than-thou, judgmental theology or for fire and brimstone condemnations in the ghetto Kweli comes from; it is hard to instill a ‘holy fear’ of going to Hell in a group of people who already live there and “know it well.”  Thus, Kweli and those whom he represents, since they already live in Hell on earth, look for their liberation in a Heaven that is also on earth.

Denouncing Empire and Injustice

Perhaps the most central and prevalent prophetic mode of hip hop concerns the denunciation of the social and political structures of oppression.  Having come from the ghettos and inner-cities of this nation, hip hoppers are well aware that American imperial ideology is rooted in lies and half-truths.  The “American dream” and the promise of economic prosperity have never been a reality for the ghetto.  In fact, since the 1980s, economic inequality has dramatically increased, as the wealthiest Americans continue to be the profiteers of the wars and economic crises that plague the rest of the nation.  This the background out of which Lupe Fiasco says:

Your child’s future was the first to go with budget cuts

If you think that hurts then wait, here comes the upper cut

The school was garbage in the first place, that’s on the up and up

Keep you at the bottom but tease you with the upper crust

You get it then the move you so you never keepin’ up enough…

Limbaugh is a racist, Glenn Beck is a racist

Gaza Strip was gettin’ bombed, Obama didn’t say shit

That’s why I ain’t vote for him, next one neither

I’m a part of the problem, my problem is I’m peaceful

And I believe in the people

On the same album Lupe Fiasco expounds on his critique of the American media—both its empty messages and propagandistic tendencies in a song called “State Run Radio.”  In his view, the corporate interests that control American media are hardly different from the government-controlled media of oppressive regimes.  Though the title alone is perhaps indicting enough, he elaborates:

We interrupt this broadcast to bring you a special message ‘bout the forecast:

The future’s cloudy and it’s rainin’ on the poor class

The roads to peace are closed and the traffic’s on the war paths

Love is ballin’ on a budget,

the military’s stressin’

‘We need more cash to keep fighting for your gas’

Keep us in our ‘hoods and hope we never explore past

‘Stay inside of your half, believe the lies you learn in your class,

That there’s no treasure in/and your/you’re

trash,

And the ceiling has the same feeling the floor has,

And that’s where you should stay,’

This is what they play…over again, and over again, and over again…

The thrust of his argument is thus that there are no uplifting messages for the downtrodden people of the ghetto in mainstream American media, in spite of the fact that their destitution is the result of a process that profits the few and impoverishes the many.  Similarly, Brueggemann suggests that the best way to understand the liturgy of prophetic poetry is to contrast it to the traits that predominate in the empire’s own liturgy, which is “all doxology, all praise, all celebration, all self-affirmation, and all victorious confidence.”

Such propagandistic self-delusion is loudly trumpeted in an attempt to drown out the dissenting voices.  In Fox News tells us they are “fair and balanced” enough times, while we actually believe them?  Nas thinks not, and explicitly seeks to call Fox and other American mainstream media out in his song “Sly Fox.”  Disgusted with the double-standards and hypocrisy of the media, Nas says, “I watch CBS and I see BS…make a nigga wanna invest in PBS.”  In the same song, he is especially critical of the way in which the American media demonizes hip hop and African-American culture by labeling it gratuitously violent:

They say I’m all about murder murder and kill kill,

But what about Grindhouse and Kill Bill?

What about Cheney and Halliburton—the back door deals on oil fields?

How is Nas the most violent person?

In his song “America,” Nas further elaborates on the hypocritical double standards:

The hypocrisy is all I can see

White cop acquitted for murder, black cop cop a plea

That type of shit make me stop and think we in chronic need

Of a second look at the law books, and the whole race dichotomy—

Too many rappers, athletes, and actors,

But not enough niggas in NASA

Who give you the latest dances, trends, and fashions?

But when it comes to residuals, they look past us;

Woven into the fabric, they can’t stand us

Even in white tee’s, blue jeans, and red bandanas…

Assassinations [=] diplomatic relations,

Killed indigenous people [to] build a new nation [with] involuntary labor…

Ain’t we in the free world?

Barbarity…how far [are] we really from third world savagery?

When the empire fall, imagine how crazy that’ll be,

America…this is not what you think it is

Conclusion

Only recently are theologians and academics of the mainstream beginning to catch on to the prophetic validity of such criticisms that have prevailed in hip hop culture for over two decades.  Nas’s closing questions in “America” give us ample food for thought.  While it is easy to sell our allegiance to the empire in order to gain wealth, status, and notoriety, the historical and the prophetic witnesses tell us that all empires crumble.  To what will we hold fast?  Where does our true loyalty lie?  With whom shall we identify?  These are the questions that hip hop theology will not allow us to evade.  We can no longer retreat to a “safe” gospel and the domesticated Christ who protects the interests of the privileged, but then again, we never really could.  After all, it was Christ himself, and not any contemporary rapper, who first warned us that we would have to take up our crosses, and lay down our lives.  Whether or not hip hop constitutes the way of speaking God’s word that will change and renew the world, as Bonhoeffer hoped for, it cannot be disputed that it is a “quite nonreligious language, but liberating and redeeming like Jesus’ language, so that people will be alarmed and yet overcome by its power.”

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Krims, Adam. Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Perry, Imani. Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip-Hop. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004.

Ramsey Jr, Guthrie P. Race Music: Black Cultures From Bebop to Hip-Hop. Chicago: Center for Black Music Research, Columbia College, 2003.

Salaam, Mtume ya. “The Aesthetics of Rap.” African American Review (1995): 303-315.

Discography

Common. Be. Geffen, 2005.

Lupe Fiasco. LASERS. Atlantic, 2011.

Nas. Nastradamus. Sony, 1999.

_____ Untitled. Def Jam, 2008.

Yusef, Malik. The Great Chicago Fire: A Cold Day in Hell. Ark 21, 2003.

Kweli, Talib. Ear Drum. Warner Brothers, 2007.

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Beyond Stewardship: Immanent Theology and the Redemptive Mission of Life

God’s Mission is nothing less than the sending of the Holy Spirit from the Father through the Son into this world, so that this world shall not perish but live…For the Holy Spirit is ‘the source of life’ and brings into the world – whole life, full life, unhindered, indestructible, everlasting life.

– Jürgen Moltmann

 

Introduction

Notions of Stewardship

The concept of stewardship has a long history of application to the context of Christian understandings of the relationship between human beings and the natural world.  Thus, there is no singular or all-encompassing concept of what stewardship specifically means; there are many interpretations.  As is the case for virtually every biblically-derived notion, proponents of stewardship have often misinterpreted or abused their scriptural sources and consequently developed unacceptable concepts.  The most prevalent text for understanding human stewardship of the natural world is the second creation narrative in Genesis 2, which states that God placed the original human being in the garden “to work it and keep it” (v. 15).  In the same account, God creates all of the animals to be in community with the human being and with each other, and then consummates the created community by giving ha adam (the earthling) an ezer kenegdo — a human companion and counterpart to share the task of working and keeping and sustaining God’s garden (2:18).  Now the harmonious community of creation was complete and it was good, just as God intended.  Though not explicitly mentioned, this passage is foundational for a concept of stewardship that entails the work of maintaining the harmony of God’s creation by working to sustain the relationships among creation in three spheres: between humans and God, between humans and each other, and between humans and the other creatures God has made (vv. 18-19).  So far, this is a healthy conception of stewardship that is rooted in solid exegesis.

 

Problems and Critiques of Stewardship

The problem with the idea of human stewardship of the earth is not found in the text of the Bible itself, but rather in the abuse of the text in its employment for the justification of corrupt and sinful human constructs.  The twin creation narratives of Genesis have been abused in such a way as to confound the proper biblical understandings of all three aforementioned spheres of relationship.  In the first place, it has been forgotten that the first humans were not simply land managers for an absentee landlord-God. On the contrary, the Lord God was present, dwelling and walking with them and the other creatures in the garden (cf. Gen. 3:8).  The immanent presence of God in creation cannot be neglected; it is the God’s ruach, the breath and Spirit of God, which animates and sustains all living creatures and renders them mere dust when it retreats (Ps. 104:29;146:4; Job 34:14).  When God is seen as wholly transcendent and absent from creation, stewardship quickly devolves into an anthropocentric view that appropriates the charge to dominate and subdue the earth (Gen. 1:26) and ignores all of the biblical constraints on this privilege.    Yet, when this critique is carried to its logical extreme, the result is a pantheistic view that ultimately also loses the fundamental basis for respecting the natural world—that it is God’s creation and we, as God’s creatures, are answerable to God for how we interact with it.  Furthermore, when God is characterized and caricatured as exclusively male, the sense of domination takes on a sexist dimension and finds in Genesis 2-3 evidence for the primacy and superiority of males over females (cf. 1 Tim. 2:9-15). The only way to resolve these problems and begin answer their critiques, then, is to reclaim a panentheistic theology that realizes God is beyond gender, recognizes both God’s transcendence and immanence and which respects God’s creation, affirms God’s ownership and lordship over creation, and sees God as both the preeminent source and indwelling sustainer of all life.  The benefit of panentheism is that it can hold God’s well-attested transcendence and often neglected immanence in tension, affirming the fullness of the divine nature without reducing God to one or the other extreme.  After surveying the foundational scriptures for such a theology, it will become abundantly clear that the missio Dei, God’s work for the redemption of creation, is at its core a missio vitae, a mission of life.

 

Old Testament Foundations

Ruach: The Spirit of Life

All that exists is created through and sustained by God’s ruach, the very breath

of life.  It enveloped the entire earth when God began to speak created life into being (Gen. 1:2), and still fills the world and holds all living beings together (Isa. 34:16).  So dependent is all life on the immanent presence of God’s ruach in creation that Job says, “If he should set his heart to it and gather to himself his spirit and his breath, all flesh would perish together, and man would return to dust” (34:14-15).  It is through the denial of God’s presence in creation that human sinfulness brings about the violation and destruction of life—both human and non-human.  For if, by the breath of the Spirit, Godself is present in creation, indwelling and supporting all life, then there can be absolutely no basis for an anthropocentric worldview.  If the very Creator is here, and not somewhere else, then it matters what we do and how we interact with God’s creatures.  It is no accident, then, that in the very same passage in Job, the presence of God’s spirit leads him to proceed directly to talking about justice!  Throughout the Old Testament the knowledge of God as Creator is inextricably bound up with God’s presence on earth, and that is precisely why justice is among God’s most fundamental concerns; in a very real sense, a violation of creation or creatures is simultaneously a violation of the Creator. More specifically, sin and injustice are essentially violations of life—all of the violence, deprivation, vulnerability, suffering and oppression that characterize human sinfulness are connected with death in that “they are all something death steals from life.”

 

Sin, Injustice and Death

That the Old Testament writers connect justice with God’s life giving immanence in creation becomes abundantly clear in the writings of the prophets, in which the concrete victims of human sin and injustice are depicted in the crying out of creatures both human and non-human.  One clear example of this occurs in Joel, where the prophet declares that because the “fields are destroyed, the ground mourns” (1:10).  He goes on to exclaim, “How the beasts groan! The herds of cattle are perplexed because there is no pasture for them; even the flocks of sheep suffer” (1:18).  The ground itself, and the creatures that depend upon it are said to “pant for [the Lord] because the water brooks are dried up” (1:20).  In the vulnerability of embodied suffering, non-human creatures, both plants and animals, know to cry out for the God upon whose Spirit they depend for their very life; it is the humans in this passage who are the last to realize this need, and it is they who are to blame for the suffering endured by all the creatures.  The desolation of the earth is “because of its inhabitants, for the fruit of their doings,” says Micah (7:13), and the ensuing punishment is brought upon this terrestrial dwelling place because humans “fill their master’s house with violence and fraud” (Zeph. 1:9).

 

The Household of God and the Missio Vitae

All of God’s creatures are linked by their mutual sharing of life in God’s household, the community of creation, as we have seen in Genesis 2.  The scientific word for the study of this intricate and interconnected community of creation is ecology, which comes from the Greek root oikos and refers literally to the household shared by all living organisms.  Wilderness ecologist Aldo Leopold once said, “We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us.  When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”  Thus, we see that the underlying premise of the science of ecology, despite its basis in evolutionary biology rather than creation theology, is very close to the central emphasis of cosmology in the Jewish and Christian scriptures: God’s creation is a fundamentally relational community of life.

The other connection made by the prophets with regard to the injustice of human sin as a violation of God’s oikos is an economic one: the sin of slavery, oppression, and economic exploitation of the poor by the wealthy. While the first part of the word economy comes from oikos, the second part comes from another Greek word: nomos, which refers to laws or regulations.  In the oikos of God, ecology and economy are inextricably linked.  Thus, when Jesus ‘cleanses the temple’ in Mark 11, he quotes from two prophetic texts that speak to this connection: the first is a statement by God about the nature of God’s house and who it is for—”a house of prayer for all nations” (Is. 56:7)—and the second deals specifically with how humans have profaned God’s house by making it “a den of thieves” (Jer. 7:11).  We might ask, in what way was God’s house made a den of thieves?  Of course, we only need to turn to Jeremiah 7:5-10 to discover the reason: the people do not execute justice with one another but instead they “oppress the sojourner, the fatherless, or the widow, or shed innocent blood” (vv 6-7) and God refuses to allow the doers of such domestic violence to dwell in God’s house, so God asks, “Will you…then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, We are delivered!—only to go on doing all these abominations? Has this house…become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it” (vv 9-11).  The sheer volume of prophetic writings pertaining to the indivisibility of executing justice and worshipping God make it impossible to drown out the biblical cries of the poor and oppressed.  Injustice everywhere elicits the cry of the ecological community, as we saw in Joel, as well as the cry for economic liberation from the poor and oppressed.  Therefore, we do not understand the prophetic witness to God’s divine judgment at all unless we understand that “the judgment is for the cleansing of the world, not is demolition.”

These lamentations and God’s judgment, however, is not the end of the story, for God listens lovingly to the cries of creation’s suffering and detests the empty worship of those who call to him but do not practice justice; and to both parties, God offers the same solution: “Seek me and live” (Amos 5).  In the fallenness of the Godforsaken world of human sin and injustice, we suffer and cry out in the feeling that there is not enough to sustain us; death is everywhere encroaching on our very existence.  This is not the end of the story, as Moltmann eloquently suggests, “But if God is not far off, if God is near, if God is present among us in the Spirit, then we find a new, indescribable joy in living…we are at home.”  The prophets affirm that God does indeed dwell in this very cosmos, and that God is with us, neither far off nor cordoned off in the brick and mortar of the temple (Isa. 66:1).  Joel looks forward to the time when humans will join the earth and the animals in praising God, the giver of life, when God says, “I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh” (2:28).  For now, the “palace is forsaken,” says Isaiah, but only “until the Spirit is poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness becomes a fruitful field…then justice will dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness abide in the fruitful field” (32:14-16).  After God’s redeeming work to restore the household community of creation, when God’s missio vitae is fulfilled, God says, “My people will abide in a peaceful habitation, in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting places” (32:18).  In this beautiful prophetic vision, not only is humanity liberated, but so too are the animals set free from economic bondage, for God also says, “Happy are you who sow beside all waters, who let the feet of the ox and the donkey range free” (v. 20).

 

New Testament Appropriations

The Immanence of God in the Incarnation

We have seen the firm Old Testament foundation for a panentheistic theology that affirms God’s life-breathing presence in creation and its implications for understanding the missio Dei as a missio vitae, a mission of redeeming and restoring life.  In the New Testament, these scriptural traditions are not only affirmed; they are radically recontextualized; God not only pours the Spirit on all flesh—through the incarnation of the Jesus Christ, the Son and second person of the Christian Trinity, God has indeed become flesh!  This is not seen as simply a symbol or merely a doctrinal suggestion; the only heresy explicitly described as such in the entire New Testament is not believing precisely that extreme statement: that God has become flesh in the person of Jesus Christ (1 Jn. 4:2-3).  At the incarnation, the immanence of God is revealed in a new and more profound way; it is Emmanuel, God with us.  The one in and through whom all of creation has come into being, according to John, “became flesh and dwelt among us” (Jn. 1:14).  In the same Gospel, Jesus later says, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (10:10), and after the resurrection, he tells his disciples, “Because I live, you also will live. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you” (14:19).  Thus, for Moltmann, the fourth Gospel states quite directly what it is that God has brought into the world through the incarnation—life—and this leads him to state that, “God’s mission is nothing less than the sending of the Holy Spirit from the Father through the Son into this world, so that this world should not perish but live.”  Through Christ, then, we understand that the beginning of the pouring of God’s spirit anticipated by Joel and Isaiah has indeed entered the world, this very world, and that it is sent out to us by Christ himself.

 

Reconciliation in Christ

The apostle Paul connects the notion behind John’s words about Christ with the imagery of God’s nature in Isaiah 34:16 in his epistle to the Colossians: “all things were created through him and for him…and in him all things hold together” (1:15).  Having brought together the Old Testament understanding of God’s creation and life-sustaining activity and the incarnation of God in Christ, Paul goes on to speak about what was accomplished in this miraculous event, “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven” (vv. 19-20).  God’s reconciliation, says Paul, is not just for all humans, or all animals, or all life; it is for the entirety of creation.  In his letter to the Romans, Paul strikes this chord even more eloquently, speaking of the “hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (8:21).  Before speaking about our own hope, Paul speaks of the hope of creation crying out in yearning for God’s Spirit, just as the ground and the animals did in Joel 2.  For the fate of the earth is not merely to be the staging ground for human salvation; with the earth, from which we were made, our own fate is inextricable bound up.  Thus, Paul goes on:

For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.  And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.  For in this hope we were saved (vv. 22-24).

Here we get a new image of life in the redeemed household of God: family.  In Jesus Christ, the firstborn, we have the hope of life and adoption into the very family of God.  We do not get the idea that we will escape this world, nor our bodies; instead we are promised the “redemption of our bodies.”

 

 

 

The Body of Christ

It is not uncommon to hear the church called God’s house in Christian circles, but what is significant is that the imagery of God’s house in scripture is not of brick and mortar (Is. 66:1) but it is rather imagery of living flesh: the Body of Christ.  It is after building this embodied image of the church that Paul goes on to mix in the imagery of God’s house:

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God…In [Christ] you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit (Eph. 2:19-22).

In the reconciliation through which God is bringing us back, the relationship between humanity and God is mended mutually; we are allowed back into the house as family members, while at the very same time, we are opening up to allow the Spirit of God to dwell in us!  But what can this mutual indwelling possibly mean?  How can this help us to understand the nature of the church and to find our place in the midst of God’s project of reconciliation?  To understand all this, it must be remembered that the same trait is at the very core of the biblical imagery for God, creation, human beings, Jesus Christ, and the church: they are all alive. Moltmann says that we have failed to understand the role of the church in the missio Dei because we have fundamentally misunderstood the mission of Christ: “Jesus didn’t bring a new religion into the world.  What he brought was new life.”  Thus, as we read the accounts of Jesus’ earthly mission in the Gospels, we discover that, “Where Jesus is, there is life…sick people are healed, sad people are comforted, marginalized people are accepted, and the demons of death are driven out.”  According to the bible, the signal of the Spirit’s presence is vitality and the true end of history is completion of the missio vitae wherein all relationships are indwelled by the Spirit and taken into the community of the triune God.  To us, the firstfruits of God’s redeemed household have been entrusted.  It is in this sense that we, who by grace have been allowed back into the house, indeed even welcomed in as actual family members, can conceive of ourselves as oikonomoi—stewards.  Such an understanding is not hierarchical, nor does it seek to dominate the household in the place of an absentee Master; it is ecumenical.  For the literal sense of the word “ecumenical” is of all the inhabitants of the household living together as a family.

 

The Church and the Missio Vitae

Home Economics 101

As a church that exists within an insatiable human economy in which there is never enough, we are called to be a community that confesses the good news of God’s economy: there is enough.  Those of us who come into the church from places of privilege humbly admit that God is the liberator of the poor, oppressed, marginal, and downtrodden.  Those who come into the church from a position of material poverty must also admit that spiritual poverty is also a very real affliction.  For those of us who are wealthy, we must recognize that most of the wealthy people who come to Jesus in the Gospels found him to be too difficult to follow.  There is, however, one counterexample which we are challenged to follow: Zacchaeus, who gave half of everything he owned to the poor and paid back everything he took fourfold (Lk. 19:1-10).  Zacchaeus was committed to reconciliation and accordingly worked very hard to restore the relationships he had violated and broken.  In God’s economy, money is not in itself good or evil; what matters are justice and community.  In the New Testament picture of God’s community of the church, there are both rich and poor members, but what is important is that they are nevertheless a community of equals who are dedicated to sharing with one another and meeting the needs of the community (Jm. 5, Act. 4).  In fact, it is precisely this kind of diversity—the rich and poor communing together—that is essential to how God’s economy works.  It is precisely by bringing the rich and the poor together into relationships that the resources of the rich can be directed to meet the needs of the poor–both spiritually and materially.  That is because “the opposite of poverty is not property.  The opposite of both poverty and property is community.”  In this community of sharing, it becomes possible to speak, like Arias, or “evangelization by hospitality.”

Homecoming

The household of God is the community that is marked by the ethic of the

Sermon on the Mount (Mt. 5-7), and its mission must reflect this ethic.  This community’s vocation within the holistic project of God’s missio vitae is to be the people who have returned home to the house of our true Father.  In this oikos, we have all been the prodigal sons and daughters who return from estrangement glad even to be readmitted into our Father’s house as domestic servants but unimaginably surprised by the grace of being accepted warmly and lovingly, though certainly undeservingly, as sons and daughters (Lk. 15:11-32).  Our challenge, however, is to remember this as we call all our other long lost siblings back into the household, lest we should be like the brother in the parable and start to hate our returning brothers and sisters out of entitlement and jealousy.  We know that as the family grows, it will also change in ways that may make us uncomfortable.  Such are the challenges to the oikonomoi, the stewards of the household.  Where these attitudes of fear, insecurity, and self-preservation surface in the community, they will be corrected by an affirmation of the good news of God’s economy: there is enough for everyone!  Then and only then will we be equipped for our role in reconciliation: to continue the homecoming by welcoming all who will enter into God’s ecological and ecumenical household.

 

The Missio Vitae in Context

The Stewardship of Life

We have expanded our view of God and the church in order to glimpse the

missio Dei in a new lens: the life-affirming activity of God on behalf of all creation.  As disciples of Jesus who are welcomed into the family life of God’s household, we are stewards of life called to participate in God’s mission, whose aim is the abundance of life (Jn. 10:10).  “If we could start from that premise,” Douglas Hall argues, “The despondency that now so often clings to our discourse on mission…would be exchanged for a new sense of being needed.”  It is the grounding in the missio vitae that finally enables us to get beyond stewardship as a flawed framework, dismissed by economic and environmental activists as archaic and oppressive, and shrugged off by the church as a periphery slogan and biblical euphemism for shrewdness.  Instead, the stewardship of life becomes “a way of designating the very core of our faith. In a time given over to the courting of death, the gospel means: stewarding life!”  Throughout the Old Testament, from Deuteronomy to the prophets, God’s people have been confronted with a choice: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse.  Therefore choose life” (Deut. 30:19).  In the New Testament, we learn that in Christ, God has personally brought this life into the world.  On the cross, Christ took upon himself the world’s response to the charge in Deuteronomy 30, in order to transform the world’s opting for death into the possibility and promise of new life.  Hall poignantly remarks, “I am interested in rediscovering the mission of that Jesus; and I suspect that it doesn’t have very much to do with getting people to say, ‘Lord, Lord.’”

Lest we should fall into a form of Christian legalism and merely solicit the empty cry of ‘Lord, Lord,’ we must remember the task to which we have been called.  As Johannes Nissen reminds us, “Mission is not only about verbal proclamation but healing action as well, and it strives not just for church growth but for the wholeness of creation.”  To be a community of healing, we must seek out and identify with vulnerable and suffering creation.  What we need is “compassion so that we enter into the suffering of the earth…In sharing its wounds, we will become participants in the healing of the earth.”

 

Implications

What does it mean to be a community of sharing justice and peace in God’s household?  For starters, we must recognize that the basic unit of God’s salvific mission is not the individual, or even simply humanity; it is the whole of creation.  “Justice, biblically, is the rendering, amidst limited resources and the conditions of brokenness, of whatever is required for the fullest possible flourishing of creation.”  The primary advantage of beginning to adopt this point of view for the concern of evangelism is that it entails truly good news for everyone.  What agent for centripetal mission could be better than being known as the community that is dedicated to the fullest possible flourishing of all creation?  Who could possibly find in that goal any bad news?  The sheer universality of this claim identifies it with the very heart of the gospel itself and also opens up a vital starting point for dialogue.  In a postmodern world in which models of authority and conquest are distrusted and abhorred (and for good reason!), the humble goal of upholding all life and identifying with the most vulnerable members of creation will open more doors than any other missionary model.  Jesus did not lay down his life so that we could avoid our responsibility, and the cross that we must take up in our own time is that of affirming life in a world in which it is always and everywhere threatened.  If we send missionaries to Iraq or Afghanistan alongside the troops whose bombs and bullets are killing and destroying their lands and people, what success could we possibly expect?  Yet if there are Christians in those places, risking that their own lives may be caught in the crossfire, to stand alongside Iraqis and Afghans in the name of Christ, what better witness could be asked for?  How can the Christian mission reach those people who are already laying down their lives for the life of the world today, but who do not know the Lord for whose mission they work?  As Hall points out, “Those who are really giving their lives for the world’s life today are too altruistic to be concerned primarily for their own salvation.”  But what if the message of the Gospel and the hope of salvation is not just about me?  Then, I suppose, there would be a mission worth joining, a God worth serving, and a community—indeed, a household and family— truly worth participating in.  Then, we might actually have some good news to proclaim to a world numbed and deafened by the ceaseless drone of bad news.

References Cited

Attfield, Robin. “Environmental Sensitivity and Critiques of Stewardship.” In Environmental Stewardship, Edited by R.J. Berry, 76-91. New York: T & T Clark International, 2006.

 

Boff, Leonardo. Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor. Translated by Phillip Berryman. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1997.

 

Conradie, Ernst M. “The Whole Household of God (Oikos): Some Ecclesiological Perspectives.” Scriptura 94 (2007): 1-9.

 

Dyrness, William. “Stewardship of the Earth in the Old Testament.” In Tending the Garden: Essays on the Gospel and the Earth, Edited by Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, 50-65. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987.

 

Edwards, Dennis. Jesus the Wisdom of God: An Ecological Theology. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1995.

 

Gottfried, Robert R. Economics, Ecology, and the Roots of Western Faith. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995.

 

Hall, Douglas J. The Stewardship of Life in the Kingdom of Death. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985.

 

Jegen, Mary E. “The Church’s Role in Healing the Earth.” In Tending the Garden: Essays on the Gospel and the Earth, Edited by Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, 93-113. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987.

 

Knights, Philip. “”The Whole Earth My Altar”: A Sacramental Trajectory for Ecological Mission.” Mission Studies 25, no. 1 (2008): 56-72.

 

Moltmann, Jürgen. The Source of Life: The Holy Spirit and the Theology of Life. Translated by Margaret Kohl. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997.

 

Newbigin, Lesslie. The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission. Grand   Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978.

 

Nissen, Johannes. New Testament and Mission: Histonrical and Hermeneutical Perspectives. Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2007.

 

Palmer, Clare. “Stewardship: A Case Study in Environmental Ethics.” In Environmental Stewardship, Edited by R.J. Berry, 63-75. New York: T & T Clark International, 2006.

 

Park, Rohun. “Revisiting the Parable of the Prodigal Son for Decolonization: Luke’s Reconfiguration of Oikos in 15:11-32.” Biblical Interpretation 17, no. 5 (2009): 507-520.

 

Rasmussen, Larry L. “Creation, Church, and Christian Responsibility.” In Tending the Garden: Essays on the Gospel and the Earth, Edited by Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, 114-131. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987.

 

Van Dyke, Fred, David C. Mahan, Joseph K. Sheldon, and Raymond H. Brand. Redeeming Creation: The Biblical Basis for Environmental Stewardship. Downer’s Grove, Ill.: Inter-Varsity Press, 1996.

It would be nearly impossible to cite the biblical references to the theme of economic justice exhaustively, but here is a short list: Is.1:2-4, 56:4-8, 58:6-7, 59:13-15; Jer. 11:13-16, 22:4-5,13-17; Ezek. 9:9, 12:2-3, 14:11, 37:10-14; Hos. 4:1-3; Joel 1:9-20, 2:12-16; Amos 3:15; Mic. 7:13-17, Zep. 1:9; Hag. 1:4; Hab 2:8-20; Zec. 3:7

 

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Flipping the Script From Judgment to Reconciliation: An Exegesis of Amos 9:7-15

3/11/2010

INTRODUCTION

The final nine verses of the book of Amos bring the prophet’s message to a dramatic unexpected close.  Following eight chapters of rather blunt denunciation of the social, economic, and political woes that plague the northern kingdom of Israel and its neighbors, Amos ends his message with an unexpected twist regarding God’s judgment and what it means to be his chosen covenant people.  This in turn is followed by an equally unexpected mitigation of judgment language as Amos finally looks to the distant future as a time of restoration for the righteous remnant of God’s people who escaped the scathing judgment of the previous oracles.  For these reasons, this final dual-pronouncement of judgment and salvation is the hermeneutical key for reading the whole book of Amos, serving to underscore the fact that even as God executes judgment under the most despicable of circumstances, he is not found to act mercilessly upon those who truly belong to him.  There is always a glimmer of hope remaining even against the dimmest of backdrops.  Interpreting these verses, however, has quite often been a difficult and even controversial task, as it challenges our notions of entitlement, privilege, identity, and even our notions of race and ethnicity.  This should not, however, prevent us from addressing these issues, as they remain just as important and relevant to our time as in that of Amos.

 

TEXT AND TRANSLATION

1. TEXT

A comparison of several English translations reveals a spectrum of differences.  Discrepancies range from the more trivial–such as using either Greek or Hebrew names for places and nationalities in verse 7–to more significant issues like whether to maintain the Hebrew use of rhetorical questions in the same verse, as in the NRSV, or to render them more forcefully as declarative statements, as in the TEV and NET.  In verse 11, another notoriously difficult word is translated “booth” in the NRSV, NASB and several others; it is also rendered variously as “tent” in the NIV, “tabernacle” in Young’s Literal Translation, “hut” in the NET and, more interpretively, as “house” in the TEV.  One scholar has even suggested that the word is, in fact, a reference to the city Succoth!

Aside from this puzzling instance, however, all other variations appear to stem from how idiomatic expressions are to be properly understood in their context.  In these cases the variation is acceptable as long as the passage as a whole is given a holistically appropriate interpretation.

1. TRANSLATION

Due to the prominence of imagery and idiomatic expressions in the highly poetic text of Amos, there are several parts of this pericope that are difficult to translate.  To properly translate poetic language, one must first understand the imagery; thus, any translation must be to some extent interpretive.  Of the translations I consulted, the NRSV seemed to preserve, to the best possible degree, both the poetic structure of the verses and the original wording in Hebrew.  I do, however, propose four amendments to the NRSV: to use the more understandable place names in verse 7–Crete instead of Caphtor, and Syria instead of Aram–to use a better English idiom to make verse 8a read, “the Lord God is keeping his eye on the sinful kingdom,”  to change verse 9 to read, “and no pebble,” so that the sieve metaphor can be properly interpreted, and finally to use the original Hebrew word “disaster” instead of “evil” in verse 10.

 

CONTEXT

1. HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Amos, as stated in the opening verse of his book, was a farmer from a small town called Tekoa, about ten miles outside Jerusalem in the southern kingdom of Judah.  During the reign of the northern king Jeroboam II (786-746 B.C.E.) in Israel, Amos ventured up to the north to deliver his prophecy around the year 760.

This fact is a striking historical parallel to the circumstances roughly a century earlier, during which the Davidic Kingdom of Israel split into Amos’ native Judah in the south, and the new kingdom of Jeroboam I centered in the northern capital Samaria (I Kings 12:25-33).

Amos has in mind the so called “sins of Jeroboam” when he delivers his scathing criticisms of the religious practices in Israel that had their beginning in the new religious centers erected outside Jerusalem, in the northern cities of Dan and Bethel (see Amos 4:4-6).  In the time of Amos, both kingdoms were enjoying a period of unprecedented prosperity since the golden era of the United Kingdom under Solomon and David, however, this period is the source of the most numerous collection of judgment oracles as well.

Amos addressed a sociopolitical context wherein all the land ownership was concentrated into the hands of a small upper class, comprised of court officers, military leaders and successful merchants, by means of a thoroughly corrupt system of enriching the rich while further impoverishing the majority of the people into such great debt that many were sold into slavery with no prospect of being liberated.

Those who had the privileged, lavish lifestyle enjoyed by the power-brokers felt themselves to be invincible recipients of God’s blessings; the Assyrians had conquered Damascus in 797, shattering Israel’s only neighboring rival, Syria (Aram), and thereafter experienced a decline in their own power so as to pose no immanent threat to Israel.  Thus, to the royal house of Jeroboam II, it seemed that God had favorably intervened and used Assyria as a tool to put down their Syrian enemies, only to end up vanishing after fulfilling this purpose.

This, of course, turned out not to be the case, as the Assyrian empire soon rose up from its lull and conquered Israel under Tiglath-pileser, after Israel’s neighboring enemies Syria and Philistia rose up and attacked near the end of Jeroboam II’s reign.

 

1. LITERARY CONTEXT

The earliest prophet with a Biblical book to bear his name humbly began as a rural southern farmer. Amos would then go up to the more prosperous northern cities, feeling that he had been called by Yahweh to go prophesy there in spite of the fact that he was not an official court prophet, nor the descendent of any such person.

Using the language and experience of his life as a farmer in Judah, Amos went to the north with an outsider’s perspective to see and proclaim that Israel was not nearly as strong, nor as privileged as they thought themselves to be.

The pericope of Amos 9:7-15 is the final twist in a shockingly unexpected and disappointing conclusion to the brilliant rhetorical strategy the prophet used to draw an enthusiastic crowd.  In the first two chapters, Amos pronounces oracles of judgment on Israel’s hated enemies, such as Syria and Philistia.

But after he systematically denounces the sins of all the surrounding nations, including his homeland of Judah, he suddenly shifts the aim of his criticism upon Israel, harshly denouncing all of the ethical and social ills that plague the kingdom of his very audience.  He uses the key motifs of his religious tradition–especially the exodus from Egypt and the Mosaic covenant–by recasting them into the current social, political, and ethical climate to challenge the prevailing notion that Israel was being favored by God and therefore cannot be destroyed and judged.  For Amos, God sees Israel in the same light as the other nations; he was both the God who oversaw their liberations and exoduses, as well as the God who will punish and judge them for their iniquities.

By creatively reinterpreting the meaning of both exodus and covenant, Amos boldly pronounces the downfall of Israel while still seeing the merciful restoration God promises for the distant future for those who remain faithful to God.

 

 

FORM AND STRUCTURE

1. FORM

This pericope is a prophetic oracle in which God is directly addressing Amos’ audience, the people of Israel.  Amos primarily uses poetic language, idioms and imagery from his own social background as a Judean farmer.  The thematic content of Amos unfolds beginning with the prophetic presentation of the problematic and troubling times during which he preached (Amos 1-2).  First, he pronounces God’s judgment on six surrounding enemy nations (1:3-2:3), then he proceeds to denounce Judah and Israel themselves (2:4-16), ultimately elaborating on the specific sins of these “chosen” people for three whole chapters (3-6).

Once the judgment has been turned upon Israel, Amos describes a series of five visions, vividly alluding to the inevitable   and comprehensive judgment and destruction God will direct against them (7:1-9:6).

II. STRUCTURE

After Amos poses the prophetic problem, God begins to speak to his people.  God’s final word in Amos is spoken in direct address, transitioning from Amos’ vision of judgment into God’s vision of restoration, and it consists in two main parts:

i. God’s disputation: pronunciation of judgment as the partial solution (verses 7-10)

a. identifying his audience, whom he will judge (7-8a)

b. there will be a remnant; only the sinners will be judged (8b-10)

ii.  God’s hopeful message: oracle of restoration as the final solution (11-15)

a. sociopolitical restoration of the kingdom (11-12)

b.  economic and environmental restoration (13-15)

The prophecy thus concludes with this pericope, which makes a sharp transition from the prophet’s visions to God speaking a judgment oracle directly to Israel (9:7-10), which is then followed by a brief oracle of salvation (9:11-15), marked by a dramatic change from poetry to a prose to create a tension with the otherwise dire oracles of judgment and condemnation.

The significance of the fact that the book of Amos ends with God speaking directly to the people becomes abundantly clear when the contents of his message are explored in detail.

 

COMMENTARY

[9:7] Right after the conclusion of a hymn declaring God the ruler of all the earth (9:5-6), God directly addresses Israel with two rhetorical questions that demand an affirmative response.

The controversy of this verse stems from the comparison to the Ethiopians, which many scholars have taken to refer to a “far-distant, uncivilized, and despised black race…[whose] color…added to the grounds for despising them.”

This is both an ethically abhorrent and academically irresponsible trend in the exegesis of this passage, which must be addressed.  The Ethiopians were, in fact, quite civilized and had at this point in history achieved the apex of their prosperity, ruling over all of Egypt, as well as their original land to the south for nearly a century (760-656 B.C.E.).

Thus, the reference can better be explained as implying that Israel’s prosperity was no more the result of divine privilege than that of the Ethiopians.

The second question picks up on the motif of the exodus, which was the basis of the Israelites’ appeal to immunity from judgment; in their view, God could not turn on them because he had brought them up from Egypt.  Amos does not dispute that historical fact, but he does challenge its interpretation.  Thus, not only was  the Hebrew exodus from Egyptthe work of God, but the exoduses of Israel’s neighboring enemies, Syria and Philistia, were also the recipients of God’s impartial favor.

Since this did not stop God from pronouncing judgment upon them (see Amos 1:6-8; 2:6-8), it certainly would not prevent him from judging Israel too.

A historical fact cannot be a guarantee for survival if the people have forgotten to honor their covenant with God.

[9:8] God keeps his eye on the “sinful kingdom,” meaning that he has seen the oppression, exploitation, dishonesty, corruption, and arrogance of the ruling class in Israel, as has been thoroughly developed in the previous eight chapters; these sins will not go unpunished.  The total destruction of the “sinful kingdom” is not to be confused with or to contradict the exception that the “house of Jacob” will be spared. Amos deliberately choses to distinguish between the wealthy and powerful sinners from the house of Jeroboam II, whose existence as a political entity will be abruptly put to an end, and the oppressed people of Israel (Jacob) who will survive the invasion in exile, and thus will not be totally exterminated.

Just as when Jeroboam I disobeyed the prophetic word and had his royal house consequently destroyed (I Kgs. 13:33-34), Amos says the same fate will come to Jeroboam II; it will, however, only bring an end to the state, and not that of God’s people in general.

 

[9:9] The metaphor of God shaking Israel like a “sieve” is an example of Amos’ use of familiar agricultural imagery as a rhetorical devise.  In a continuation of verse 8b, the metaphor is used to illustrate the means by which the “house of Jacob” will be spared.  As the sieve filters out the good grains, what remains inside are the unwanted pebbles and stones, which are then thrown out.  The righteous will pass through God’s judgment and fall back to the earth, though scattered, like the grain through a sieve, but as every last stone is retained in the sieve to be cast out, so every last sinner will be subject to the judgment described in the following verse.

God sifts through the “house of Israel” here to divide it into the “house of Jacob,” which will endure and the “sinful kingdom,” which will not.

[9:10] Continuing to narrow in on the group of people who will be contained in the sieve of  verse 9, and reiterating why it is precisely these people who will be judged, God refers to the “sinners of my people.”  Such a designation recalls the explicit list of the sins of Israel’s corrupt leaders and oppressors (5:12), casting the invasion by the “sword” as a kind of purge of the social, political and ethical climate denounced throughout the book.

This is followed by the use of the people’s own arrogant words as incriminating evidence, which is one of Amos’ most powerful and consistent rhetorical devices.

Using the word “sword” as the instrument of their demise links the pericope to the other instances of its usage (4:10; 7:9, 17; 9:1, 4), thus making it exceedingly clear who are the recipients of judgment, while leaving the identity of the ones wielding the sword a mystery.

It is more important to know that God doing the judging than it is to know the identity of the ones he uses for that purpose; it is even more important to know whom he judges and why.  If verse 7 did not make it explicit enough that the appeal to privilege in light of the exodus is not grounds to avoid “disaster,” then this verse does so by twisting the very words of their appeal to invulnerability into the very reason for their destruction.

[9:11] The placement of the phrase “on that day” in this verse serves as the transition from the day of punishment described earlier and the day of blessing that follows, with numerous overlapping pictures of repair and restoration.

The word “booth” is both rare and problematic, so it is unclear exactly how it was originally used.  Regardless of the word used in translation, most scholars seem to be in agreement that it implies that the Davidic dynasty is no longer unified and strong enough to be called a “house” at this point.  It could mean that Jerusalem’s status as religious center has been undermined by the Jeroboam I’s rival centers in the north, but its importance will be restored when the northern kingdom is destroyed.

This is possible, given the relative proximity of Amos‘ home town to Jerusalem, but within the context of the rest of the book, it seems more likely that it is a reference to God’s ideal beginnings with the kingdom of David, before the succession of kings had strayed so far from God’s purposes.  At that early stage, before the building of the temple in Jerusalem, the ark of the covenant was housed in tents, or “booths.”

In this way, it is a nostalgic reflection on the hopes God had for the kingdom of Israel before David and Solomon had built it into an empire, and it serves as a reminder that God is still at work even on the verge of such a tragic reversal of fortune.

 

[9:12] The end of the judgment section and the beginning of the oracle of salvation is marked in this verse by the brief and abrupt shift from poetry to prose.

“Edom,”  the neighboring kin nation,  is probably used as a prophetic symbol for the hostility of the surrounding world to God’s kingdom, used here to depict its return to God’s possession (“called by my name”) as an end to opposition.

The “remnant” applies both to Edom and to the other nations, which refers back to the sifting process of verse 9, implying that after God has executed judgement, he will bring those who remain back into right relationship with himself and each other so that all may share in the intimacy of being called by his name.

 

[9:13] This verse uses hyperbolic agricultural imagery to depict a renewal of good fortune.  In that region, harvest is normally ready in April and May, but here it is so abundant that the harvesting is not finished even when the plowing begins in October.

The treading of grapes was usually done in August and September, but now there are so many grapes that it continues until the sowing begins in November and December; where there are normally gaps of time in between agricultural seasons, now there is a continuous and simultaneous bounty such that the mountains are said to “drip sweet wine” just as the promised land was once said to be “flowing with milk and honey” (Exodus 3:17; 13:15).

 

[9:14] The provisions alluded to in this verse are a direct antithesis to the punishments described  earlier (5:12).

Taken with verse 13, this is a common ancient Near Eastern correlation between righteous human kingship and the fertile harmony of nature; here, the God that created them both in perfect harmony is restoring and fulfilling both humans and nature.

This frames the context of God’s destructive action as a process of returning to the original intent of his creative actions.

[9:15] In the final verse, the link between human and natural harmony is again alluded to by another metaphor.  Now, God has planted his people and vows to never uproot them again.  The “never again” corresponds antithetically to the “no longer” statements in the judgment visions, shifting the emphasis to the positive content of God’s promise.

The recurrence of “says the Lord” at the very end gives a forceful close to the book of Amos, using the same phrase employed throughout the pericope to end by emphasizing who is saying these things: it is Yahweh, the faithful creator God who does what he says he will do.

CONCLUSION

1. SUMMARY

Thus the book of Amos closes with a beautiful promise of a hopeful future to contrast the dire circumstances of impending judgment.  Amos’ bold and creative use of metaphors, idioms and traditions begin to paint a new picture of Yahweh as the universal God of all creation, who judges, punishes, but ultimately restores his creation into relationship with himself.  The bleak message of the downfall of an oppressive kingdom is tinged with the hopeful expectation of the deliverance of those whom it oppressed and of the eventual restoration that God will bring about for those who remain faithful to him.

 

1. THEOLOGY

During the time in which Amos preached, virtually no one had conceived of a deity as having anything other than a strictly national identity.  That Amos conceived of a universal God capable of uttering the challenging rhetorical questions in verse 7 to his own nation is as revolutionary as it is remarkable.

To that end, it is quite clear that “Amos was truly one of the greatest, not only of the prophets of Israel, but also of the creative religious thinkers of all human history.”

For the Christian tradition, any conception of the overarching universality of God’s sovereignty and love that allow us to conclude, with St. Paul in Galations 3:18 that “there is neither Greek, nor Jew,” ultimately finds its roots in the theology of  Amos in these final verses.  Surely God loved Israel, but, Amos reminds us, God also loved both its most distant neighbors and its closest enemies, as well.

1. APPLICATION

The most important thing Amos speaks to us is a word of warning about how we are reading and interpreting our scriptures and religious traditions.  Amos warns us of the consequences for reading our own blessings and privileges into the texts without warrant.  It is detrimental for us to feel more entitled to God’s blessings than any other part of God’s creation.  Amos also reminds us that none of the kingdoms and powers of this world will endure forever, and that we will pay the price when we invest too much in them, especially when the result is the oppression and marginalization of those weaker than ourselves.  When we profit and gain from the loss and degradation of others, we cannot hope to escape punishment, but when we remain faithful to each other and to our God, even when it puts us at odds with the status quo, God has a promise of restoration and blessing in the future.  He will never abandon those who remain faithful to the covenant relationship, vowing to uphold the harmony he created us to live in and maintain (Genesis 2:15).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bramer, Stephen J. “The Structure of Amos 9:7-15.” Bibliotheca Sacra 156, no. 623 (1999): 272-281. http://libproxy.anderson.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=rfh&AN=ATLA0000987406&site=ehost-live&scope=site (accessed 29 January 2010).

 

de Waard, Jan, and William A. Smalley. A Translator’s Handbook on the Book of Amos. New York: United Bible Societies, 1979.

 

Harper, William R. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Amos and Hosea. Edited by Samuel R. Driver, Alfred Plummer, and Charles A. Briggs, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark Ltd., 1979.

 

Hayes, John H. Amos: The Eighth-Century Prophet. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1988.

 

House, Paul R. “Amos and Literary Criticism.” Review & Expositor 92, no. 2 (1995): 175-187. http://libproxy.anderson.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=rfh&AN=ATLA0000895153&site=ehost-live&scope=site (accessed January 29, 2010).

 

Jeremias, Jörg. The Book of Amos: A Commentary. Translated by Douglas W. Scott. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998.

 

Matthews, Victor H. Social World of the Hebrew Prophets. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2001.

 

Morgenstern, Julian. “The Historical Antecedents of Amos’ Prophecy.” Hebrew Union College Annual 15 (1940): 59-304. http://libproxy.anderson.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=rfh&AN=ATLA0001283891&site=ehost-live&scope=site (accessed January 29, 2010).

 

Motyer, J A. The Message of Amos: The Day of the Lion. Downer’s Grove, Ill.: Inter-Varsity Press, 1974.

 

Paul, Shalom M. Amos: A Commentary on the Book of Amos. Edited by Frank M. Cross, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991.

 

Premnath, D N. “Amos and Hosea: Sociohistorical Background and Prophetic Critique.” Word & World 28, no. 2 (2008): 125-132. http://libproxy.anderson.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=rfh&AN=ATLA0001648582&site=ehost-live&scope=site (accessed January 29, 2010).

 

Richardson, H N. “Skt (Amos 9:11); ‘Booth’ or ‘Succoth?'” Journal of Biblical Literature 92, no. 3 (1973): 375-381. http://libproxy.anderson.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=rfh&AN=ATLA0000743478&site=ehost-live&scope=site (accessed January 29, 2010).

 

Smith, Gary V. “Continuity and Discontinuity in Amos’ Use of Tradition.” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 34, no. 1 (1991): 33-42. http://libproxy.anderson.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=rfh&AN=ATLA0000838484&site=ehost-live&scope=site (accessed January 29, 2010).

 

Smith, Regina. “A New Perspective on Amos 9:7a: ‘To Me, O Israel, You Are Just Like the Kushites.'” Journal of the Interdenominational Theological Center 22, no. 1 (1994): 36-47. http://libproxy.anderson.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=rfh&AN=ATLA0000892123&site=ehost-live&scope=site (accessed January 29, 2010).

 

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Out of Two, Oneness: An Exegesis of Genesis 2:15-25

10/14/09

INTRODUCTION

The second chapter of Genesis is a story that elaborates on the creation of humankind, and more specifically of male and female.  As the only Ancient Near Eastern myth that gives the creation of woman a distinct account, this is a text that invites the reader into a discussion that questions conventional anthropology, gender relationships, and the tendency to dichotomize.  God is interested in the wholeness and unity of his harmoniously created order, and becomes concerned that his crowning achievement, the human being, is somehow incomplete.  The paradox, then, is that he facilitates the consummation of his perfect unity by dividing the human in two: male and female.  The distinction he made, however, was not without a purpose.  As humans, the reader of the story is already aware of the results: there are animals, who are different from humans, and there are men and there are women, and they are strongly attracted to each other.  The point of the story, then, is to address the question of why this is the status quo.

TEXT AND TRANSLATION

1. TEXT

A comparison of ten English translations reveals little undisputed space in this text.  The variations seem to stem from hermeneutical influences on the translation rather than from inconsistency in the Hebrew manuscripts. The most extreme variation is the use of the proper name Adam in every major translation except the NRSV and Young’s Literal Translation which use “the man.” Also of interest here is the use in verse 18 of “helper/counterpart” in YLT, “companion/corresponds” in the NET and “helper/partner” in the NRSV which emphasize an equality, as contrasted by “helper/suitable for” in the NIV and NASB or the more archaic rendering “help meet” of the KJV which underscore a subordination.  Additionally, all translations have “rib” in verse 21 except the NET which instead uses “side.”

1. TRANSLATION

One major problem for translating this passage is the central importance and frequency of wordplay in the Hebrew text.  It becomes a challenge to simultaneously provide an accurate word for word equivalence while faithfully rendering the assonance present in the Hebrew words, which bears a significant influence on the text’s reception and interpretation.  Of the translations I consulted, the NRSV seems to most accurately treat the text and preserve to the best possible degree its nuance.  The only necessary amendments to the NRSV would be the use of “the groundling” in place of “the man” to uphold the wordplay between “ground” and “groundling,” and to borrow the NET’s use of “side” in place of “rib.”

CONTEXT

1. HISTORICAL CONTEXT

This passage comprises the latter part of the second creation account in Genesis.  Thus, it is set, whether actually or mythologically, in primordial history.  Within the second account, this specific pericope follows the creation by Yahweh Elohim of the heavens, the earth, and the groundling into whom he breathed life.  It includes the differentiation of the groundling into man and woman, and precedes the further primordial development of their expulsion from the garden Eden.  The distinct account of the creation of woman is without parallel in all the known literature of the ancient Near East.

According to the documentary hypothesis commonly accepted by modern scholarship, this account is the earlier of the two creation stories, and its authorship dates back to the time of David during the 10th century.

It introduces the Patriarchal theme of the Hebrew Bible and begins its narrative genealogy with Adam and Eve.  As such it also underscores the universality and oneness of Yahweh Elohim by expressing that all people spawned from one originally created pair.

1. LITERARY CONTEXT

The first chapter of Genesis outlines the day by day creation story and ends with the creation of humankind, both male and female, followed by God’s rest on the seventh day.  Chapter two summarizes the creation until the creation of humankind, and then elaborates on this point until its conclusion in verse 25.  Thus, this pericope serves as a pivot between the first creation account, and the account of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden in chapter 3.  Thus the climax of the story of creation becomes the starting point point of the decline in subsequent chapters.  The tension between the cosmological focus of the first account, and the anthropological nature of this one serves to introduce the dramatic tension of divine-human interaction that is told by the rest of the scripture.

FORM AND STRUCTURE

1. FORM

This pericope is an etiological narrative.  In contrast with the poetic-cosmogonic creation story in chapter 1, chapter 2 is a prosaic-anthropological answer to the ultimate question: what is humankind and where did we come from?

Thus, the pericope more specifically addresses how male and female came to be differentiated, and why their reciprocal attraction is so compelling.

It also outlines the relationships between humans and God, between humans and the rest of creation, and between humans and each other.  This emphasis reaches a climax in verse 18, in which the words “not good” stand in glaring contrast with the sevenfold repetition of “and it was good” in the first account.

The implication is not that God’s creation is intrinsically flawed, but rather it becomes “not good” when characterized by isolation rather than the harmonious wholeness intended for it.

1. STRUCTURE

As an etiological narrative, the pericope outlines the answer to the question “who or what are we humans?” as follows:

1. 1. We are created by God for a purpose (verses 15-17)

1. 1. 1. to maintain/protect his creation (15)
      2. to be obedient (16-17)

1. 1. We were intended to have a harmonious relationship (18-20)

1. 1. 1. with the rest of creation (19-20)
      2. with other human beings (23-25)

Since it is a narrative, these themes are interwoven and repeated throughout, rather than stated in a clearly delineated expository fashion.  As a narrative, it is important that it be understood as a whole unit, and that it is not primarily intended to function like a didactic treatise, nor as a historical or scientific account.  Even if one must faithfully affirm its literal historicity, the functional intent of the story will be lost if focus is not centered on its more-than-historical elements as a myth.  It is also important to note that the passage uses the story of female creation to underscore the primary theme of the oneness or wholeness of creation, rather than to emphasize its division into opposing dualisms.  That the story begins and ends in harmony, with the distinction between man and woman in between, highlights the fact that the distinctions made by God (as opposed to those made by humans later on) result in harmonious balance rather than opposition.

The harmony of these distinctions will become evident in light of the wordplay that is employed throughout by the Hebrew text.

COMMENTARY

Genesis 2:15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.

The Hebrew wordplay begins here with ha ‘adam (the man) and ha adamah (the ground).  Thus, it is implicit in the very word for “the man” that he comes from the earth and embodies a degree of unity with the earth.  Hence, the suggestion to render “the man” as “groundling” so that this frequent wordplay is not lost, and so that the gender ambiguity of ‘adam is preserved.

It is interesting to note that in the Eden that has come to represent utopia and pleasure, the groundling’s destiny is nevertheless to work.

The groundling was created to sustain the life God created (till it), and to guard and protect it (keep it).

Genesis 2:16-17 And the Lord God commanded the man, ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.’

God has placed the groundling in the garden of Eden with absolute freedom.  The admonition of verse 17 does not, as some commentators contend, limit human freedom; if anything it affirms this freedom by offering the means by which humanity can disobey God.

“Knowledge of good and evil” likely refers generally to moral autonomy; it is the ability to decide what is good, and thereby effectively usurp God’s authority when he commands obedience.

The result of this is explicitly stated “you shall die,” so that when the finite groundling adopts the role of the infinite God in attempting to make distinctions, the groundling has violated the purpose of its creation and suffers the consequence.  The meaning of life in this primordial paradise is to work and thereby be obedient to the creator God, not to indulge in pleasure or to be free from all suffering as we might expect.

Genesis 2:18 Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.’

“It is not good” here stands in obvious contrast to the pronouncement “it was very good” in chapter 1 after the creation of humankind.

This is the pivotal moment before the consummation of creation held in suspense before being brought to completion.  This dramatic tension serves to heighten the events that follow.  “Alone” here is unlikely to refer to the psychoanalytic feeling of loneliness.  With reference to the groundling’s created purpose in verse 15, it probably alludes to the fact that the sustaining and keeping of the ground is too great a task to take on alone.

The groundling and the ground are in harmony, but the groundling is as yet incomplete.  “Helper as his partner” is one of the most problematic points of translation.  The first word ‘ezer is used elsewhere in the Old Testament to refer to God as a helper, so it cannot be taken in English that the “helper” is subordinate to the one needing help.  “A sustainer beside him” would give a better sense of what is meant here by ‘ezer kenegdo, by emphasizing what kind of help is being offered, and that the two are equal.

Furthermore, the groundling is not as yet differentiated into man and woman, so the ‘ezer kenegdo will refer at the moment to the animals God creates in the following verse.  The narrative plays out the suspense as the search for the co-sustainer for the groundling begins.

Genesis 2:19-20 So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man* there was not found a helper as his partner.

“Out of the ground” is another instance of the wordplay with “groundling.”  Its purpose here is to highlight that the groundling is also in unity with the animals as part of God’s creation from the same ground.  It centers on the groundling’s commonality with the animals rather than its domination of them.  The use of “ground” also recalls the groundling’s purpose as stated in verse 15, so that its status as a creature better equips it to preserve and protect creation.

The naming of the animals reflects the fact that the groundling understood them for what they were, and incorporated them into its life.  The act of naming is possibly the origin of language as a means of facilitating relationships.

The animals are a partial realization of the need for a co-sustainer, but are only able to play a limited role; the groundling is in need of an equal, thus, “there was not found a helper as its partner.”

Genesis 2:21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.

The groundling falls into a “deep sleep,” because the creative act of God is essentially mysterious, and no one is aloud to witness it.

The Hebrew word tzela (rib) can also be translated as “side,” which is by far the more common meaning in the Old Testament.  This is the source of the Rabbinical tradition that God created the human being both male and female, then separated the male and female sides in this verse.

Genesis 2:22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.

If the wordplay between ground and groundling implied the unity of humanity with the earth before, then the fact that God formed the woman from the same substance as the man in this verse must imply the unity of male and female.

Since the “out of” of verse 21 corresponds to the “into” of verse 22, it is implied that neither man nor woman is complete without the other.  At this point the word “groundling” can be dropped for “the man” because the man and woman are at last disjoined into separate entities. This point also serves as a foreshadow of the summarizing epilogue statement of verse 24.

Genesis 2:23 Then the man said,‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh;this one shall be called Woman,* for out of Man* this one was taken.’

The man’s response to the realization of his ‘ezer kenegdo in the woman is one of relief: “At last!”  Finally in this second creation narrative, we have caught up with the “it was very good” of the first, and thus consummated the “not good” of verse 18.

The idiom “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh,” though in this case perhaps literally accurate, is a statement not only of kinship but also of loyalty as in a covenant.

It is also interesting that here, where the application of wordplay seems most evident, the attempted play on the words ish (man) and ishshah (woman) has failed.  Etymologically,  ishshah did not derive from ish, and obviously the longer word for woman could not be “taken out of” the shorter word for man.

In fact the use of words for opposites like man and woman cannot arise before the need to distinguish; there can be no woman without man, nor a man without a woman.  Rather than perceive this as the author’s naive error, I suspect the failure of the wordplay in this instance was a deliberate attempt to underscore the theme clearly stated in verse 24.

Genesis 2:24 Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.

The placement of “therefore” in this verse suggests that what follows is an epilogue summarizing the main point of the preceding story.

The fact that “clings” is elsewhere translated as “forsakes” emphasizes the fact that the reciprocal attraction between a man and a woman is so strong a bond that it causes the two to break what is otherwise their closest human connection: the bond to one’s parents.  Thus, what follows is the etiological answer to why this bond is so strong in the first place: “they become one flesh.”  Perhaps the insertion of the word “again” would bring this sense out into focus, to recall that the man and woman once were one flesh, and thus they seek to return to the original state.  This is not to say that they ought to become a singular entity again, as this was already described as “not good,” but instead they may partake in what the man refers to with “At last! bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.”  There is no reason given by the text to assume that this specifically sanctions a particular conception of marriage other than an intimate sexual partnership.  Some have contended that the “one flesh” is realized by their offspring, but this is not supported because the animals also reproduce, yet there is no sense of them becoming “one flesh,” nor is there any reference to the man and woman having any children at this point.

Genesis 2:25 And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.

The final verse affirms that this account ends with the harmony still intact, though the wordplay used here, as well as its immediate connection in the opening of chapter 3, end the chapter with the sense that things are not going to stay this way.  The word arummim (naked) is juxtaposed with arum (wise).  The implication is that the wise mind is uncovered, and open to everything like the eye, unashamed and without the sense that it is at all exposed.

“Not ashamed” here is a pivot in much the same way as “not good” was, that recalls the purity of unity and harmony in Eden, while anticipating that shame is going to come in what follows.  Shame is thus the loss of the inner unity that characterizes Eden by means of an inner contradiction at the core of existence.

With reference to the man and the woman and their nakedness, it is inseparable from sexuality; this moment is the line of tension between the moment of sexual self-realization (verse 23) and the damaging of those connections that results in shame and nakedness (chapter 3).

CONCLUSION

1. SUMMARY

Thus, the etiological narrative of the pericope can be summarized by three main points.  First, God created all life, including humankind, and he separated humankind into male and female so that they could be fulfilled in their created purpose.  Together the man and the woman co-sustain God’s creation.  Second, God endowed humanity with freedom but demands obedience to himself.  Third, God’s creation is intended to live harmoniously in interrelationship.  Humankind is charged with the task of maintaining rather than contravening this perfect order.

1. THEOLOGY

Since God definitively does all of the creating, it is our task to obey him and preserve his creation.  Humanity is conceived in his image, but this is merely a finite rendering of the infinite, and ultimately God is creator whilst humans are creatures.  God is painted as the parent figure par excellence, and thus his demand for obedience should be seen less as a wanton limitation than as a loving provision; as creatures in his likeness, it is in our nature to grapple with matters of eternal significance, but as finite beings it is in our best interest to resign them to him, the infinite creator God.  The result of this difference for us is death (verse 17) and thus we must seek God’s providence of redemption.

1. APPLICATION

We were created to sustain and protect the harmony of the cosmos God created.  We are instructed that if we tamper with this harmony, implicitly trying to be our own god, then we will die.  The ecological implications of this passage are rarely addressed, but perhaps carry one of the most central themes of the text itself.  We tend to forget that we are “groundlings” created to sustain the “ground” and often pretend to have a more other-worldly origin.  The development of our science and technology are in a critical sense our means of eating of the “tree of knowledge,” as we become easily seduced by the notion that we can do it (i.e. invent technology) better than God (who created nature and called it “good”).  Rather than relate to women as our ‘ezer kenegdo we instead record thousands of years of chastising them via patriarchal society.  Thus, this pericope beautifully invites us into a discussion about our own very essence, of what it means to be obedient to God and ultimately to be human.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Atkinson, David. “The Message of Genesis 1-11.” J A. Motyer, 52-80. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1999.

DeClaisse-Walford, Nancy L. Genesis 2: “It is Not Good for the Human to Be Alone.”. Review & Expositor 103, no. 2 (2006): 343-358. http://libproxy.anderson.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=rfh&AN=ATLA0001525321&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

De Vries, Roland J. Wonder Between Two: An Irigarayan Reading of Genesis 2:23. Modern Theology 24, no. 1 (2008): 51-74. http://libproxy.anderson.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=rfh&AN=ATLA0001635636&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Ezra, Ibn. Genesis (Bereshit). Vol. 1. . In Ibn Ezra’s Commentary on the Pentateuch, New York: Menorah, Inc, 1988.

Guillaume, Philippe. The Demise of Lady Wisdom and of Homo Sapiens: an Unwise Reading of Genesis 2 and 3 in Light of Job and Proverbs. Theological Review 25, no. 2 (2004): 20-38. http://libproxy.anderson.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=rfh&AN=ATLA0001456170&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Hamilton, Victor P. Handbook on the Pentateuch. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005.

Klassen, Randy. ‘Ēzer and Exodus. Direction 35, no. 1 (2006): 18-32. http://libproxy.anderson.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=rfh&AN=ATLA0001513172&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Kvam, Kristen E., Linda S. Schearing, and Valarie H. Ziegler. Eve & Adam: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Readings on Genesis and Gender. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1999.

Rad, Gerhard von. Genesis: A Commentary. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1972.

Snyder, Johnny Lee.  “The Use of the Hebrew Term ‘adam, as Reflected in Historical and Contemporary Translations of Genesis 1-2.” masters thesis, Anderson School of Theology, 1991.

Walker-Jones, Arthur W. Eden for Cyborgs: Egocentricism and Genesis 2-3. Biblical Interpretation 16, no. 3 (2008): 263-293. http://libproxy.anderson.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=rfh&AN=ATLA0001666403&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

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