Vince Vitale Hey everybody, glad you're with us today and always filled with gratitude whenever we have a chance to record. Because we know that you're not just listening, but putting into practice so much of what we talk about on this show.
And we just want to thank you for seeking God and being a light for Him and a blessing to those around you. It is such an encouragement to us.
I'm really excited about today's show.
A few months ago, Jo was a guest on the podcast of a long-time friend of ours, Dan Patterson, who's founded an Australian-based apologetics ministry called Questioning Christianity. Dan and his team really share the heartbeat of Ask Away and are doing a fantastic job listening to people's deep questions and putting out a lot of great content and resources.
On the show, Jo and Dan discussed some of the absolute most challenging passages of the Old Testament: Abraham being commanded to sacrifice his son, Isaac, the practice of taking war brides, and that mysterious and troubling passage about Elisha and the two bears.
We're talking about the sorts of passages that most people have no idea what to do with, and so just avoid at all costs and pretend don't exist.
But Jo and Dan dove right into these passages and shared some really helpful tools and frameworks for interpreting these texts, and it led to a rich discussion that we didn't want you to miss. So this week on Ask Away, as a one-off, we're sharing this Questioning Christianity conversation between Dan and Jo. Hope it's a real blessing to you.
We put links in the description because we would seriously encourage you to check out the great work that Dan and his team are doing at Questioning Christianity.
Dan Paterson [00:02:22] Well, welcome to Questioning Christianity. My name is Dan Paterson, and this is a channel all about helping you connect the Christian story to life's deepest questions.
If you've ever had any trouble reading stories from the Old Testament, the kind of stories that if you're reading to kids before bedtime, you think you might skip over, or the ones that really make you struggle to be able to trust the goodness of God, then this episode is for you because today I have the privilege of inviting onto the channel a good friend, Dr. Jo Vitale, who's going to help us wrestle with any of these troubled texts in the Old Testament.
[00:02:57] She did her PhD at Oxford University, specializing in, particularly, women and beauty in the Jewish scriptures, or in the Old Testament itself. She is the co-host of a fantastic podcast, if you haven't seen it already, called the Ask Away podcast, with her Italian-American and far less interesting husband, Vince Vitale. And so she definitely carries him on that one.
[00:03:23] But she's a mother of two boys, lives over in the USA now as a Brit herself. So it's a great cross-cultural experience, and it's my privilege to invite her onto the channel. Jo, it's great to have you on.
Jo Vitale [00:03:32] Oh, it's so good to be here with you, Dan. You're too far away, but it's nice to be on the screen together.
Dan Paterson So doing these sorts of recordings, it's obviously all hours of the day. And so I was just confessing before we jumped on to record with Jo, that it's 5 a.m. where I am. She's the middle of the day over there, but she's a day behind in the USA. And so it's always great to be able to bring you future news. Guess what? The world continues on Thursday. It's Wednesday where you are.
[00:03:55] But Jo, we go way back, actually. It's a bit scary how long we've known each other now, because it just means we're getting older. But I remember getting to meet you and your husband, Vince, for the first time when I was over in England studying. Vince was my tutor in the program there at Oxford at the time, and you were helping out around the college doing some tutoring as well.
[00:04:13] Obviously, the two of you just serving in ministry together for a long time, being able to wrestle with people's questions. I think you were still finishing your PhD at Oxford the year that I was there. But you guys have been really awesome friends to my wife, Erin, and I over the years. And we're just so thankful for the presence that you have.
[00:04:28] But the reason why I wanted to bring you on to this podcast is because you have, over the years, given a series of really helpful talks. As I've seen you unpack some of the texts in the Old Testament that maybe newcomers just balk at, and that Christians don't know what to make of, because it seems to raise all kinds of questions around the goodness of God, and is this scripture really inspired? What moral lessons are we meant to draw from this? This seems to be really subpar compared to the character and vision of human life that Jesus gives to us that ought to make of these texts. I'm so glad to be able to bring you on.
[00:05:03] Jo, maybe to kick things off, if you wanted to just take a couple of minutes to share a little bit of your own story, and maybe a bit also about what drew you into an interest in the Old Testament specifically.
Jo Vitale [00:05:15] Yeah, that's super kind of you to say. Honestly, if Vince and I were tutoring you, it's really a wonder you learned anything at all. But yeah, I think for me, I mean, if there's anything helpful I've said, it's actually only because it's come out of a place of deep wrestling for myself.
[00:05:31] I grew up in a Christian home, and actually from a young age, I would say I had a really alive relationship with God. Actually, I really felt close to the Lord. I actually loved reading scripture. I loved the Bible. It didn't feel like this dry, dusty book to me. I felt like I was having an encounter with God when I read it, that it was like Jesus was walking off the page into my living room being present.
[00:05:53] But as the years went by, you know, you get older and you start asking all sorts of questions, don't you? I think for me, and one of the reasons I love the name of questioning Christianity, actually, was because questions were so important to me. I take it really seriously when it says, Love the Lord your God with your mind. I think that's an invitation, right? Questions at how you get to know somebody. I think God wants us to ask our questions and not just settle for kind of like half-hearted answers and then sort of duck out.
[00:06:21] And so for me personally, I had a lot of questions, especially around the Old Testament, and if I'm honest, particularly around the treatment of women. I was wrestling for myself with what does it mean to be a woman who's growing up in Christianity? Am I a second-class citizen? How does God see me? Especially from the Old Testament, there was some really hard texts in there.
[00:06:40] Then I was hearing the same questions, the older I get getting to university from other people as well, especially feminists who would often say to me, "I could never become a Christian because the Bible is just too sexist." And I thought, "well, wow, like, I really don't want to be dismissive of your questions. Like, I want to wrestle with that kind of for you and engage with these texts for myself to be able to, if there is a good answer, to be able to give it, but if not, to really take it seriously." So that was some of my own journey into this topic.
Dan Paterson [00:07:09] I mean, it's safe to say that the Old Testament, even for me, has been relatively treacherous territory. And so for newcomers and maybe skeptics and doubters, they don't know what to make of it. And Christians, they come across passages like what we see with Noah's flood, or the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, or one of the stories we'll be tackling today, the sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham up on this mountain. And they just think, what am I meant to make of these seemingly morally problematic stories or even problematic laws that we find right throughout the Old Testament, particularly things like the Canaanite conquest as well, often come up?
[00:07:43] This is something that you'll find, it's not just a moral intuition that we've got that seems wrong, but it's something that almost gets sharpened into an argument, often against Christianity. What do you do when it comes to these conversations today, where a lot of skeptical thinkers will say, "Look, the Old Testament is our problem." What's really at stake when we discuss these kinds of Old Testament stories? Can we just get rid of them? Are they part of the Christian scripture? Do we unhitch ourselves from them? Can we critique them without losing our Christianity? What's really at stake in this conversation?
Jo Vitale [00:08:13] I love that because personally, I think a lot is at stake, actually. Because when we're reading these stories, they're really questions, aren't they, about the character of God. It's not just a question anymore of even, is the Bible true? But much more fundamentally, is God good? I don't even care about whether it's true if I don't think He's good in the first place. So, yeah, it's raising huge questions, whether you're inside the church or outside of the church about, is He a God I can trust? Is He worth following?
[00:08:40] I know some Christians will try and lessen the stakes by saying, well, we can separate from the Old Testament because we believe because of Jesus. We're in a new covenant. Those laws no longer apply. What does it really matter what happened all those thousands of years ago?
[00:08:55] To an extent, I agree. I'm a Christian because of Jesus. I relate to the Old Testament differently than people did before Christ came. But it's also because of Jesus that what the Old Testament has to say actually matters so much to me. Because if Jesus is a son of God, then how He's treating scripture, I think, should be the model for how I treat it as well. And He just holds it in such high regard. He says the scriptures testify about Him. He treats them as authoritative and as the life-giving word of God. He quotes them all the time. He says He didn't come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.
[00:09:28] But even more than that, when we look at His identity claims, He's claiming to be the son of God. And the God that He's talking about is the very same one who's in the first verse of the book of Genesis. So you can't separate Jesus from these challenging parts of the Bible when He is the God of the Bible.
So in my mind, the way I think of it is, you know, if the New Testament says Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and we're not confident that God has been good yesterday, then actually how can we trust that He's going to be good to us today, let alone forever? I think that is, for me, what's at stake.
Dan Paterson [00:10:00] And these sort of moral intuitions then, particularly maybe that feeling of disgust or just concern as you read some of these stories, it has historically been sharpened into an argument, and particularly more recently, against Christianity. Like you think of a decade or 15 years ago, certainly that was the approach of Richard Dawkins and his sort of new atheist comrades, where they take aim at the God of the Old Testament, and certainly the God of the Old Testament being the most unpleasant character in all of fiction, to quote Dawkins' book, The God Delusion. And then He throws every ad hominem you possibly can at God from the New Atheist playbook.
[00:10:33] But even maybe more high-level conversations, maybe people like Alex O'Connor, in his recent debate with Ben Shapiro on the Unbelievable? podcast, he raised that concern of just saying, Well, what do you do with laws in the Old Testament that seem to regulate slavery? What do you feel like this argument that's aimed at the Old Testament and its kind of moral vision? What's that argument intending to do from secular thinkers?
Jo Vitale [00:10:56] Yeah, and I think people come at it in different ways, that the tone is definitely different in some of these conversations. But I think what they're really trying to do is draw upon that intuitive moral disgust that you've sort of been talking about That we at times, I think, if we're honest, have all experienced over certain stories or texts in the Old Testament.
And then what they're really honing in on is they're saying, you know, that feeling you have, that moral intuition, that should be this glaring red flag to you that the God who you claim is perfectly loving and good, He actually isn't. He can't even meet your own moral standards, so why are you worshipping Him? And if that's the case, isn't that reason to conclude that, you know, He's not good because He's not real, that actually He is an unpleasant character in fiction?
[00:11:38] And I think in my mind, you know, the way I think of it is like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, right? You know, she kind of pulls back the curtain to discover that there's no magician after all, it's just this deceptive old man pressing the buttons. I think that's what they're trying to do. They're trying to pull back the curtain and say, hey, you know, these myths, they're just made up by human authors. There's no real God behind them inspiring the text or relating to human beings. I think that's kind of the thrust of the argument.
[00:12:02] You know, and I think as Christians we've got our own, like... you know, who doesn't feel that at times? Like, I think it hits deeply because we have in one way or another all felt that for ourselves. And so I don't think we can just be dismissive of it. At the same time, I think we need to be careful in terms of judging everything through the lens of a kind of intuitive knee-jerk reaction of disgust to something. Because, you know, if we're guided by our reactions alone, it's a lot of confidence, isn't it?
[00:12:29] To put in our own moral intuitions, what we're essentially concluding is, you know, I should be holding God accountable to my moral standards and not the other way around. Whereas, hey, like, if God exists, then, you know, at times our moral intuitions probably are going to clash with His. You would actually expect that. But which way round is it? And so I think we need a little bit of humility when we come to these texts, not to always assume, you know, I know best. That maybe there are things we don't know. Perhaps we don't know them because we weren't there. We're dealing with things that happened thousands of years ago in a world that's wildly different to the one that we live in today.
[00:13:04] And so sometimes we don't know historical context. And we can do some homework that can help clear that up. We're going to do a little bit of that today, I think, going through some texts. But sometimes we don't know because it's not there for us to know. Like there's some history we actually can't reconstruct. We don't have the information anymore.
And sometimes we don't know because it's not humanly for us to know. But it may be that it's in the mind of God, that there are things he's doing that as human beings, we're not even capable of understanding at this point. So I think I feel the tension of, I want to ask God the questions. I want to wrestle with it. I want to take the challenge really seriously. And I also want to acknowledge that there may well be reasonable limits to what I can know, especially in a book that has over 30,000 verses. You would actually expect, wouldn't you, there are going to be challenging ones.
[00:13:48] I actually think the amount you can know, given how many verses there are, is quite remarkable when you look at the time gap, the age gap, the historical context. So all that to say, I think we need to weigh these things. But I think it's good that we ask the questions and that we're not shying away from them. I think that's how we get to know God and discern more of what character is like.
Dan Paterson [00:14:08] And that wrestle, as well that you mentioned, is something that's really healthy for everyone to be able to do in wrestling with these texts and figuring out what kind of revelation is this? Is God's food feeding us clear, easy moral lessons or is He really intending us actually to grow through wrestling with the text of raising our objections and provoking our moral intuitions, and trying to help us come to terms? How do we reconcile this with what we know to be true of God? Maybe that's part of the formation as well. And Christians in that wrestle actually offer various different models for what exactly to do with some of these stories. And so if you're thinking, hey, what's at stake? Do I have to give up all of Christianity simply because I trip over some of these stories? Well, God can exist and Jesus can be who He claimed to be. And yet some of these stories may be human. Some of these stories may be aberrations. And so you've got Christians with different views of scripture that offer different answers to this.
[00:15:00] I probably tend to be a little bit more along the lines of where you are, Jo, of thinking that all this scripture really is God given to us as inspired revelation to take the view of Jesus on the Old Testament and therefore to wrestle and say, all right, what message does He really want us to receive and to learn from these?
And so the goal now is actually just to go through a few case studies if we can, maybe to draw out, like you said, some of that homework and those key insights for what do we do when we come across these stories personally and they do raise these moral intuitions or red flags about God's character?
[00:15:29] We might start, if we can, with the story of Abraham and Isaac. And I might just spell that out in broad brushstrokes for people that haven't come across this story before. It comes actually right near the beginning of the Bible in the book of Genesis. God promises to Abraham that he will have a child in his old age whom God will make from him descendants into a great nation and land and promises. And through them, they would be a blessing to all of the nations.
Then in Genesis 22, after this miracle child, Isaac, has finally come along, no one expected it, Abraham and Sarah, well into their old age. And in Genesis 22 too, we read, then God said, "Take your son, your only son whom you love, Isaac, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain. I will show you." Now that sounds like a crazy reference at first glance. And the story goes on. So Abraham sets out. He has Isaac carry the wood for the sacrifice on his back up this mountain. And when this boy, probably a teenager, Isaac notices that they have fire and wood, but no animal for the sacrifice, he asked his dad, "Abraham, why?" And Abraham replies, "God Himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son."
[00:16:40] Then Abraham builds the altar. He binds his son. All this time, Isaac remains silent and doesn't protest. Abraham lays him on the wood before lifting the knife to slay his son. And only then at the very last moment is Abraham interrupted by an angel who says, "Hey, don't harm the boy." As Abraham supposedly now has passed God's test. And before they find, then in the thicket, a ram that they ended up sacrificing in the place of Isaac.
[00:17:08] This is a pretty crazy story, you know, for someone who's just reading it thinking, Okay, I meant to learn the goodness of what God is like. And right near the beginning, it seems like God is commanding Abraham to do human child sacrifice. So, Jo, where do you start with trying to make sense of a story that on its face just seems so cruel?
Jo Vitale [00:17:28] Yeah, I mean, it's harrowing. This is a harrowing story.
Dan Paterson [00:17:32] Yeah, as a mom to two boys, you know, I've got three boys myself, the thought of hearing a voice saying, "Hey, go and sacrifice your son," is really confronting.
Jo Vitale [00:17:42] It's really confronting. Yeah. And my question is always, where is Sarah in this story? You know, what should we do? We get to find out what the mom is doing in the background of this story. But, yeah, there's so much to grapple with here.
[00:17:53] I think the key to understanding this text in a way is to recognize, I think there's supposed to be, like, I think this is supposed to be this deep wrestle of faith. But I think that if we push through it, there's actually something profound that we see on the other side of the story. So bear with me because it take a bit of unpicking, right?
Dan Paterson [00:18:12] Yeah.
Jo Vitale [00:18:12] So, firstly, we need to move back about over 3,000 years to get ourselves into the kind of framework, the context of the story. We're in the privileged position as the reader, because we already know from multiple other Old Testament laws that actually God is anti-child sacrifice. Like there were so many laws calling it abomination. It's detestable to the Lord. He's totally anti it. But the point is Abraham doesn't have access to that knowledge.
Dan Paterson [00:18:34] Yeah. That comes after Abraham in the story.
Jo Vitale [00:18:38] He has no idea. And he's living at a time where child sacrifice was practiced. You know, people were sacrificing their children up on the high places and mountaintops of their God. So in a way, this is about a bigger story than just this one random event in the life of Abraham. But it's this big picture of what is the God of the Old Testament like? What is His character like? And how is he going to lead His people? And what sort of precedent is He going to set for how they are to relate to Him in the future?
[00:19:02] I think people look at this text and what sometimes is drawn from it is this conclusion of, is this what Christians are saying faith is supposed to be like? That actually you can do anything horrendous in the name of your God, as long as you say, well, God told you to, right? Like Richard Dawkins looks at this text and he says, well, this sounds like the defense the Nazis gave at the Nuremberg trials. I was only obeying orders. Others have likened it to like a faith that kind of flies into buildings like terrorists. You know, as long as God says so, you can do awful things in the name of religion.
[00:19:33] I think when we're reading it that way, I think we're actually missing the point of what this faith is actually about. And to get it, we kind of need to walk back in the story a little bit. Philosopher, Eleonore Stump, she does a great job of really laying this out for us in her book, Wandering in Darkness. But basically what she points out is that at every point on the story so far, God has made vows to Abraham. He's covenant with him. He's promised him, "You're going to have a son and that son through him, you will have heirs as numerous as the stars in the sky.
[00:20:01] So this promise of Isaac. And time and time again God has made it. And at every point, Abraham doesn't have the faith to believe it. He bulbs at it. Like God says, "Go out from the land by yourself," Abraham brings Lot as his spare heir just in case it doesn't come true." And then Lot leaves him. So then he appoints his servant Eliezer as his heir.
And then he decides, "Well, this isn't working out with my wife, so, hey, let's have a surrogate through Hagar, and let's make this happen by, you know, having Ishmael instead." And then God says, "No, not Ishmael, it's going to be Isaac." And then, you know, Abraham is mad and says, "Why can't it be this son?" He just doesn't believe God is going to do it or that, you know, Sarah is part of that promise as well. You know, it's not just for him.
[00:20:35] And finally, he reaches the point, right, where God has provided. He's had the son and he's finally come to this place of believing, "Oh, wow, okay, maybe God's word does actually come true. Maybe I should take Him at His word. And then this is what happens.
[00:20:47] And so I think what at face value looks like the most terrible request God could ever give him, in a way, it's after this long journey of Abraham not having faith. And God is finally saying, "Now are you going to believe me? Like, at this crucial point when everything is on the line, are you going to take me at my word and actually trust that even if it seems now like you're about to lose everything, will you believe my vows to you and the promises that I've made over and over again, that this is your son and through him, you're going to have heirs?"
[00:21:16] And I think what's remarkable about the story is we actually now see the shift in Abraham. It's probably why he's called the father of faith in the Bible, because he actually doesn't question it this time. He sets out and he goes right away. And when he's asked that awful question from his son, like, "Where's the lamb for the burnt offering?" He actually says it. And I don't think he's kind of trying to duck the question. I think he actually means this response: "God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son."
[00:21:42] And he tells his servants, "Wait here, we're both going to come back together." I think something has changed in the mindset of Abraham that he now actually isn't walking out as a man who thinks he's going to lose his son, but I think he's walking forward as someone who's actually finally believing God will keep his promises.
I think we have reason to believe that interpretation based on the book of Hebrews in the New Testament actually confirms that. And it says, Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead. And so in a manner of speaking, he did receive Isaac back from the dead.
[00:22:10] So all that to say, I think we're confused about what this account is about if we say, Well, this is a celebration of a faith that flies people into buildings or sends people to gas chambers. It's not this blind faith. It's just saying, God, I will follow you even if you're not good. I think it's about a faith that actually is saying, God, I will follow you because no matter how things might look right now, I actually know that you are good. Like, I actually believe that you're going to be good to me. I think the test of faith for Abraham isn't whether he's going to cause the death of his son, but whether he's believing God for the life of his son. I think that's what it's about.
Dan Paterson [00:22:44] So some of the criticism maybe just of that[00:22:47] ?/ to pause there. And I think that Hebrews 11 passage is huge because this is Jewish interpretive history, right? This is the early Christian community looking back on this story and saying, well, obviously he's the first person to believe in resurrection in the Bible. Because he's reasoning that if God wants him to sacrifice his son, he's going to raise him back from the dead because it's through this son that he's promised the descendants. But that still raises questions about maybe means to an end.
[00:23:11] So if the end of God was to help showcase this faith in Abraham and to allow him to develop into this father of faith, it's a kind of a question of do means justify the ends? Because at the very beginning, at least it seems like you've got God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son. And if the intention was always to intervene with the angel at the point, so there is no child sacrifice to bring an end to that. Is it immoral for God to set up this test in the first place? Is there some deception that's going on there?
Jo Vitale [00:23:42] Yeah, it's such a great question. I think, is it that God is deceiving him or is it that he's just setting something before him and asking him to walk out his faith? And I think it's hard for us because it's such a unique example. I don't actually think God is going to ask of us the kind of thing he's asking of Abraham here because I think it is this once for all kind of moment of establishing something really big in the life of the people of faith.
[00:24:08] I also think that it's built on over a hundred years of their relationship. And I think we're trying to understand the internal dynamics of God's relationship with Abraham. Even the way he speaks to him, we hear the words, "take your son," and it sounds so callous to us, like God is so removed. But in the Hebrew, the grammar there, it actually means more like, take, I plead with you or take, I beg of you. There's actually this tenderness, even in the way that God is putting the question to him.
[00:24:34] And when God says, "take your son, your only son, the one whom you love," like God is acknowledging, "I know. I know what I'm asking of you. I recognize the gravity of this." I think we read it and we think, "This is so cold. This is so detached and impersonal." But I think there's actually something even in the tone of the way that they are speaking to one another, that God is talking to him, that Abraham is seeing something of God's heart in the heart of a father, even if he's not understanding in that moment.
[00:25:00] And I think there's something for us in that. Because even if God isn't going to ask of us to do something like this, that would be so contrary to what we know of scripture now. Like now we know, now it's been established. Like there are still times when I think, you know, in this life, God asks things of us that we don't understand. And it can seem contrary. It can seem conflicting. And I think, you know, that's part of the journey of faith of actually is God a God I can trust, even when I don't always understand who He is. It's part of our struggle with the Old Testament, isn't it?
[00:25:26] Like there are so many texts that we're wrestling through. We don't understand. We're saying, God, like I believe who you are because you've shown yourself to be in Jesus. And it's in light of that, that I'm coming to these texts, but I don't always understand how you're interacting with me. So there is that element of trust.
[00:25:42] But I think that the other thing I want to emphasize here is that I don't even think this is just about the dynamics of God's relationship with Abraham, but I think it's also about Isaac as well. You know, we look at this and we're thinking, "This poor child. How traumatic for Isaac," right? A small child in this situation. But actually, again, when you look at Jewish traditions of interpretation, you know, the word boy that we're given in the Old Testament, actually really classically in the Old Testament, it means... it kind of means more like young man. It can mean anything up to any man who's unmarried, who's not yet the head of a household. So it can be a young adult that we're talking about.
[00:26:18] And then we know he's asking questions about where the lamb is. So he's old enough to be curious about that. He's also carrying all of the wood on his back. That's substantial. So I think the dynamic is not some overpowering father with this tiny, small child, but actually that, you know, three times we're told in the text, they go together. And I think there's something significant about that as well. That actually I think what we're being shown in the text is a story of a father and son journeying together, in it together.
[00:26:41] Isaac is much part of this journey of faith as his father. Maybe well able to overpower him and fight back if he'd wanted to. There seems to be something voluntary in this act of them together. And I think it's partly why God is called the God of Isaac as much as the God of Abraham in the Bible, because I think this is profound for both of them. And I think there's something to that as well.
You know, think about acts like Rosa Parks, right? The incredible act of Rosa Parks. She doesn't just deal with injustice by avoiding sitting on the back of a bus, but actually to tackle an injustice head-on, she goes to the place where it's happening and she gets on the bus and she makes this profound statement. And I think that's something of what we're seeing here in this story that God is calling Abraham to do this really profound sign act in a way that is so much more lasting than just having laws that say, Hey, don't sacrifice your children. Don't sacrifice your children."
[00:27:36] But this story is so dramatic. It's so big, like to actually go to the place of injustice, to stand there with a knife, to face the actual horror of what this required and to look it in the eye and then have God say, "Absolutely not. This is not who I am. And this is not how I'm calling you to be." Like that lasts in the collective memory of a people. That's why we're talking about it over 3,000 years later. It stays with you.
[00:27:59] And so I think, yes, it's shocking, like it's deeply shocking and troubling, but I think God maybe intended it to be that way so that we would remember. And so that it would get us thinking even looking forward, when it says on the mountain of the Lord, it will be provided for us. What is this provision? You know, what is the provision that He's talking about in that moment? And so I'd say it's even spanning into the New Testament. And so-
Dan Paterson [00:28:25] That maybe historical context is really helpful. Like for me, you're just reading... as you're going through up until that point, Abraham maybe has a moral intuition that this is wrong, but maybe not. You don't know about the state of the moral formation of people at that point, where this was a relatively common religious practice in much of the ancient Near East.
But then he's told to do this act, he's brought to this point and then it stopped. And you're drawing out the major significance here is that God is stopping him and that God is using this profound act to teach something new about His nature compared to the gods that had been worshipped in the ancient Near East up until that point. That this is nothing that I will ever demand of you.
[00:29:05] The major moral lesson is actually a subversion of what people's objection is. God's asking him to sacrifice his child. No, no. God's walking him through this in order to teach them, never sacrifice your children. And so that whole point, even from maybe Genesis 9 earlier on around anyone who takes the life of a person innocently, their own lifeblood will be demanded of them. So this concept of the value of human life, the dignity of human life from the very first pages of Genesis is kind of carrying through. But Abraham's having to walk that out to learn that lesson specifically about who God is and about the depth of his own faith and his reasoning about God will do.
[00:29:41] And you've hinted already though that there's this prophetic push into the New Testament. Can you speak a little bit more about what you mean by that?
Jo Vitale [00:29:47] Yeah. I mean, we have this incredible line at the end of the story where it says, "To this day it is said, 'On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided.'" And this ram appears in the thicket and it's sacrificed instead.
When I look at this story, I mean, even the words, it comes to the New Testament and we're introduced to somebody who is the beloved Son and the only Son. And that's how we meet Jesus, right? And then suddenly we're set up for this later moment where another father and son, they go on a journey up a mountain together. The son is literally carrying the word for the sacrifice on his back. And he's saying, "Nobody takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord."
[00:30:24] We learn about the Father God in the New Testament who doesn't spare His own Son, but He gave him up for us. And suddenly it's all coming together and realizing, wow, the provision that God promises at this point is even bigger than just saying, I won't do child sacrifice. But what He's actually saying is any kind of sacrifice you make isn't gonna be enough. You can't actually make it right with me on the basis of your own sacrifices. And there is a different ram. There is another lamb of God that's gonna be provided for you in your stead.
[00:30:53] I mean, literally the crown of thorns Jesus wears is just like that ram caught in a thicket of thorns as He goes up and He becomes that provision for us when He lays that down in His life. And so all of these foreshadowing images that we're finding in this story, I think it's conveying something really deep and profound about the heart of a father who has a son that he loves. And just consider that, that not only does God not ask us to sacrifice our own children ever, but He Himself comes and does it for us to do what we can't do for ourselves in order to actually make a way. So, I mean, this story, it is like the gospel when you actually zoom out to the whole.
Dan Paterson [00:31:35] And these are part of the prophetic threads that kind of tie into the Old Testament. It's not a specific prediction of a particular event in ways that on this date, on this time, this event will happen. But they're these subtle prophetic promises that do seem to weave together in the life of Jesus. He's this Old Testament story come to life.
And one of the cool things, even historically, if you go and look at Jerusalem, which is the city where Jesus was condemned and then carried outside the city gates to be crucified. It's a city that's built on seven peaks, seven hills, Mount of Olives, which you'll see mentioned often, Mount Zion, which is there. But one of the mountains is Mount Moriah, sort of reflective of this particular story as well, as we read from Genesis 22 of the region that they were in. And so, again, this prophetic foreshadowing of on this mountain, in this place, another sacrifice will be offered exactly as Jesus did in laying down his own life.
[00:32:27] That still raises the question, though, and some people may even just have another moral intuition provoked by this: Isn't that God then doing child sacrifice? I mean, if the whole point of not asking Abraham to sacrifice Isaac was to be able to bring an end to child sacrifice, isn't the whole crucifixion story with Jesus cosmic child abuse or cosmic sacrifice? How do you make sense of that?
Jo Vitale [00:32:51] Yeah, great, great question. There's a lot we could go into on that one as well. But I think for me, it fundamentally comes down to, is Jesus some random innocent who God puts in our place to take it for us, who has nothing to do with God, He's just kind of intermediary between some bystander who got put in the way and unjustly punished, or is He actually God Himself?
[00:33:12] And I think this is where Trinitarian theology becomes so important, right? That in the one sense, we believe in a God who's in three persons, but we also believe that Jesus Himself is God. He's the one who... just as I think it's important that Isaac is making that journey himself, so Jesus very strongly says that no one is forcing me to do this. Like I'm doing this. No one takes my life from me. I'm laying it down of my own behalf and I can take it up again.
[00:33:39] And he's so clear throughout his life. We're told he sets his face towards Jerusalem. He's saying when I'm lifted up, I'll draw all people to myself. He knows what He's about.
Dan Paterson [00:33:48] Totally.
Jo Vitale [00:33:48] He's not being run into the mix. But I also think it matters that actually Jesus is God. He's not just a human person. Therefore, there's a very real sense in which, yes, God the Father and Jesus are distinct, but they're both suffering in different ways, the devastation and the grief of the cross. I think God the Father is suffering that the loss of what it means as a parent to watch your son dying and to allow them to go through that with something they've chosen to do themselves, but you're not intervening. You're letting it happen.
[00:34:15] I mean, as a parent, it's hard enough for me to imagine giving my life for somebody else, but allowing my child to go through that, you couldn't ask anything worse. I'd rather die than allow my... It's the hardest thing you could ask of any parent. But I think it tells us something about the heart of God the Father for us. That He would actually withhold in that moment and allow it to go forward. But it also tells us something about Jesus that he himself is doing it as God, not just in between God and man, but He is God Himself.
[00:34:43] And I think the Bible is clear about this when it speaks about God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself. Romans talks about this is how we... Yeah, this is how we know... Yeah, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. That text, there's something about the death of Christ that God Himself is in it, and He's doing it for us, and He Himself is the sacrifice. So yeah, I think there's a lot more that we could say there, but for me, it's about Jesus being God and Jesus choosing, like willing to do it of His own accord.
Dan Paterson [00:35:15] That's really helpful. I mean, there's been a lot we've covered already in that Abraham story that I've just really appreciated you shedding light on. You can have a quick breather because we may jump to another case study now, shifting from the Abraham story, actually to something that's pretty confronting.
[00:35:33] Let's maybe look particularly your Old Testament focus on women in your PhD studies. Certainly, the chronicle of the Canaanite conquest in the book of Joshua is really heavy because it's quite explicit that they are commanded to take no prisoners. We actually have a short video on our YouTube channel called Did God Command Genocide? that helps to walk out our moral intuitions and the different lines of reasoning on how you can make sense of the Canaanite conquest.
[00:35:57] But Jo, one of the puzzling features about Israel's war code in normal times, so not this specific conquest, but in normal times, is that they're allowed to take captives, including war brides. And I wanted to just share a screen on this one so that people can see it. This one's from Deuteronomy chapter 21. Let's come up. Great. Now in here, verses 10 through to 14, it says, "When you go to war against your enemies and the Lord your God delivers them into your hands and you take captives, if you notice among the captives, a beautiful woman and are attracted to her, you may take her as your wife, bring her into your home and have her shave her head, trim her nails and put aside the clothes she was wearing when captured. After she has lived in your house and mourned her father and mother for a full month, then you may go to her and be her husband and she shall be your wife. If you are not pleased with her, let her go wherever she wishes. You must not sell her or treat her as a slave since you have dishonored her."
[00:37:04] Now, again, this is kind of one of those stories that is very confronting and that provokes all kinds of maybe moral outrage from our view of the world. You think of the particular conflicts that we see going on around the world today between Russia and the Ukraine or between Israel and the Palestinian leadership, Hamas over in the Gaza Strip. And you just think, imagine if this was the practice that was carried out, we would be calling Geneva very quickly because the conventions of our particular human rights and responsibilities for conduct in war seems to be very different than this.
[00:37:41] How do you respond to sort of this practice of war brides within the Jewish Torah itself? Because the problem with this is it's not just a story that's describing what happened. It's a law that's almost setting what should be the practice within ancient Israel. So how do you navigate this story?
Jo Vitale [00:38:00] Thank you. I think that's what you said there is really key, right? Because when it comes to stories in the Old Testament, you can kind of say, well, that's just people behaving badly. That's not God's desire. But law codes are a different case, right? Because they're God's law, like they're presented as the will of God. And so what do we do with law codes in particular when we find them unpalatable? And this is a great example of a case like that.
[00:38:26] And I think to step back for a second to talk about law codes in general before we zoom in on this one, because I think part of the challenge of this to frame it is that we kind of misunderstand the function of the laws in the Old Testament and how they're even fitting into the picture of the biblical arc. Specifically what happens is when we come to Old Testament legal codes, we look at them, we think, well, this is God's ideal standard. This is how he desires the world to be. Everything's running perfectly. The laws are just here just to keep it going as he wants it to go. That's so not the case in Old Testament law.
[00:38:56] What we actually have is an example of case law. Case law is a law that's given in response to a situation that's likely already gone badly wrong. For example, if you drive a car, anything like me, and you drive into the back of somebody else's car, there are legal steps that you need to take in order to respond to that moment. Case law is not saying, hey, it's a great idea that you go around driving into the back of people's cars, but it's saying in a context where a crisis has already happened, what codes need to come around it to limit the damage as far as possible once disaster has already occurred?
[00:39:26] I think this is a context that we're seeing in the Old Testament that disaster has occurred, that nothing is going smoothly. And that moral intuition we spoke about, where we look at these texts and say, God, how can you be okay with this? I think actually often the point is that He isn't. He's not okay with that at all. Whatever our intuition of disgust might be, his is so much greater. That word "wrath" that sounds so antiquated, what do we do with that word?
[00:39:51] But what it actually really means is God's unrelenting hatred towards evil. Like however strong your instincts towards justice might be, God's are stronger. And I think one of the ways that we're made in His image is that we're burdened by the things He's burdened for, justice being one of them. But here's the catch, right? If God actually gave laws in the Old Testament that enforced His standards of justice, like where He actually wants us to be, if He gave laws that required us to live up to the ultimate perfect goodness, truth, beauty of Him, and then enforce those laws so that justice was met at every turn, none of us would live. Because none of us could actually meet His standards of what goodness are.
[00:40:28] And so God kind of has a choice to make. Either everybody dies because no one can measure up or God takes steps of what some scholars call accommodation. Now accommodation is the idea that He chooses to allow human beings to live despite being so far off the mark of where He actually wants us to be. But He does it in order to work with us through history, over time, through the people of Israel to keep moving them, piece-edging them closer and closer to a point culturally where they're finally in a place to be able to have ears to hear and receive a greater truth, fuller revelation of who God is and who He's called us to be, which Christians would say is Jesus.
[00:41:04] But the point is the process throughout the Old Testament, it's painstaking. You know, God's spoken of as longsuffering because it's so hard like to put up with so much that is so contrary to His heart. But the point being these laws that are given in the Old Testament, they're given more placeholder laws with a sell-by date. They come with a limit. Jesus acknowledges as much, doesn't He? You know, in the Gospel of Matthew when He's asked a hard question about divorce and He says, "Well, Moses gave you that law because your hearts were hardened. But in the beginning, the standard was here. Basically, God allowed this behavior because of your sin, but that was never what was intended.
[00:41:40] And so to me, that's kind of irony, right? That when we're looking at these laws in general, we look at them and we flinch and we're like, why is God's standards so much lower than ours when it comes to the laws? But actually from His perspective, they're intended as a form of grace. That rather than simply destroying us, He's accommodating our messed up cultures for a time, but that time will come when the laws will come to an end and Jesus will say, "I've fulfilled it. And now we're going to do things differently. I'm showing you what I'm really like." So the whole framework is different from how we often conceive of it coming to the Bible and how the Bible actually works without the legal codes. Let's talk about war brides. Unless you want to [jump in?].
Dan Paterson [00:42:17] Well, no, that big picture is really helpful, I think, just to kind of give almost an interpretive key to a lot of the things in the Old Testament. So we could think about that with some of these laws that seem to regulate the practice of slavery in ancient Israel, both for indentured servants that were a part of Israel, people that were working off debt, but also for foreign slaves who came in and seemed to be able to be more held as ongoing inheritance, passed down through the family or lifelong slavery, is to say that these laws aren't God's ideal, but they fall in this period of human hard-heartedness and of a cultural milieu that makes God's ideal almost impossible in that scenario.
And so working with fallen humanity to move them along this redemptive arc towards God's actual ideal, which you see at the very beginning of the Bible and at the very end of the Bible. So Genesis 1 and 2, and then Revelation 21 and 22 are the ideals for humanity. And Jesus is this beautiful window in the middle of what does it mean to love God with all of your heart and all of your soul and all of your strengths and to love your neighbor as yourself. But that's a really helpful big picture.
[00:43:18] But then on the specific... so what you're saying here with the war brides scenario, God's looking at a situation where tragedy is already occurring, i.e. war, and Israel were not meant to be a warring nation. They weren't meant to be an empire that's expanding outwards, but are meant to be a light towards the nations. But in situations where war happens, how is the taking of war brides and basically guys scoping out and saying she's available and she's beautiful, I'll take her? It just seems very self-serving. It seems to play into all of the intuitions of male domination over women, of the strong and vulnerable. In what way would we read a law like this as being something like a minimization of potential harm rather than an open door to go and do harm?
Jo Vitale [00:44:05] Yeah, such a good question. When you read it initially, it does feel that way, doesn't it? Like, "Oh, she's cute. I'm just gonna take her." It's galling when you initially encounter it. But I think for me, yeah, one of the questions I kind of ask as an interpretive key for reading laws in the Old Testament is when I really am baffled by a law, I'll ask the question, well, what is the law trying to preserve and protect? Like, what is so important that God has put this law in place to try and guard something? Like, what is the thing that has been guarded?
[00:44:42] I found this a helpful question for reading the laws of the Old Testament, because when I do, typically what I tend to find is that the thing that's actually being guarded is the most vulnerable in that culture. And I think that as hard as it is for us to orient our heads around, that's actually what's going on in this text. So yeah, we're in this awful situation. God doesn't desire warfare. His ultimate goal is for peace between all of us. That's the beginning and middle of the Bible. But in this context where it's happening, I think what we're seeing here is this impossible situation where you say, well, what do we do now? You know, now we have these foreigners who we've beaten in warfare, you know, do we just kill them all? Do we kill everyone? Or do we say, no, these women are non-combatants, they weren't part of the hostilities? And actually, is there an intent to show mercy here by allowing these women to live?
[00:45:29] I think that's the initial part of the piece here that actually it's about mercy for letting the women live and not just condemning them in the same way as those who've been involved in the fighting. But then that leads to a furthermore challenging question that we don't really face in our culture, you know, where women can go out and work and be independent and we can make our own livelihoods. And there's sort of a security to our culture today. But then what happens to these women? Like, how are they going to survive? Like, what are they going to do if they're left to themselves?
[00:45:54] And so then I think what the text is getting at here is, well, one way forward is that actually these women, you know, rather than viewing them as these foreigners who you look down upon because they're not Israelites, actually saying, no, God is saying, I want you to make them part of your community. The fact that they're foreign to you, that has no bearing on me because I've made everybody in my image and all people on earth image bearers. And so I'm not creating some prohibition against saying, well, you could never marry a foreign woman because, you know, hey, I made these women too and I love these women too.
[00:46:25] So what I'm saying is you can actually bring them into your family. But if you're going to do that, this is how you go about doing it. Firstly, I think in order to prevent that sort of lustful warmongering act of, hey, I'm just going to take this woman right here and right now, the first law that God gives around this is if you want to make this woman your wife, you need to actually... you can bring her into your home, but you have to wait a full month before you can actually marry her. And you actually need to keep separation here. I think part of the reason for that is because he's saying like, Hey, don't just act on short-term lust. This needs to be a considered decision about whether you actually want this woman to be your wife. The other purpose in that is very explicit in saying-
Dan Paterson [00:47:05] Wife and life is pretty much interchangeable anyway, if we're going to be honest. This is huge in the sense of like, when you actually look at the history of human warfare and what's happened around the world, that war, rape, and I'm sorry to use a very graphic term, but this is such a common practice, particularly in the ancient world. It was considered one of the ways in which you showed dominance over the culture that you're attacking. It's one of the ways in which soldiers saw the motivation for why they wanted to get involved in warfare in the first place was for the bounties of various kinds.
[00:47:39] And so to have a law here that is saying no as a blanket statement to any kind of behavior like that, it is actually quite a, like you said before, a step forward towards a different kind of vision for how a human being should be.
Jo Vitale [00:47:53] Yeah, it's so countercultural. It's so anti that dominant kind of power play. The other thing that's really meaningful to me in this text is it's not just giving him space to consider what he wants, but we're explicitly told she's given a month in order to enact the morning rituals of the culture. Like she's actually given space to grieve her parents, her former life, to go through all the rituals that had significant meaning of, you know, shaving your head and trimming it, you know, all of it. She is given this time period to actually, you know... is trying to create room for this girl who's been very traumatized to have some room to figure out what does it mean for me for my life moving forward, that my circumstances have changed so much.
[00:48:32] There's an acknowledgment. There's actually an acknowledgment of the loss and the hardship that she has gone through, which I think is really remarkable for this time period. And most significantly of all, of course, is the point that not only is rape not allowed, but it specifically is making clear that if you want to bring this woman into your household, you absolutely cannot make her a sexual slave. That is utterly prohibited. If she's coming into your home, she's coming in as your wife.
[00:48:59] And that is a staggering statement because it's saying she's not gonna be treated as lesser, as a foreigner, but actually, she's been given all the privileges of what it means to be a full member of the Israelite community with all of the rights that a wife would have. Even to the point that if the man decides after a month, he doesn't want to go ahead with the marriage, then he can't just now treat her as a slave and sell her on to somebody else or pass her on somewhere else. He has to let her go. He has to set her free.
[00:49:26] There's some debate over what does the text mean when it says she's been dishonored. Some people think, well, no, it's talking about if he changes his mind before he's married her, and in which case he has to just let her go free. But if it's talking about he marries her and then after the fact decides, if that's what it means by dishonored, then it's still saying, No, you can't treat her as if she was a sexual slave and just let her go, whatever, no big deal. You actually have to treat her according to the same rules that you would treat a wife in that culture. If you're gonna divorce your wife, which you've already heard was not God's intention, but Jesus says it's allowed because your heart's the hearts, then you have to treat her with all the honor and status that you would if you were actually divorcing a wife. You have to let her go where she wishes. You would have to let her go with provision for her. You'd actually then be supplying her needs so that she's not left abandoned and unable to support herself.
[00:50:11] So it's hard because it's so different to our culture. But when this text really hit home for me actually in 2014, and it was at the time when Islamic State had actually released this pamphlet in which they were giving guidelines for the treatment of female prisoners of war in Iraq and Syria. And the irony was when they put out this pamphlet, the purpose of it was actually trying to restrain the way that their soldiers were behaving towards the Yazidi and Christian women that they had taken captive in that war. But amongst other things, the pamphlet actually stated that it was permissible for soldiers to have sexual intercourse with a female captive immediately upon capture. That she didn't need to be taken as a wife, but could be taken as a sexual slave, that it was permissible to sell her on or give her as a gift if he didn't want her. And most awfully of all, that intercourse was permitted, even if she not yet reached puberty.
[00:51:00] And I remember just reading that and just like horrified. And as I read it, this text came to mind and I was like, Whoa, like these are so different. It's hard for us because the culture is so different and our knee-jerk response is, what do we do with Deuteronomy 21? But actually, the heart behind the text is to protect and give dignity to these women, not to take it away. She's given an honored status as an Israelite wife. She's welcomed into the community of God's people and she's not shamed and treated as a sexual object.
[00:51:30] I think what we're seeing undergirding all of it is the standard set up in Genesis 1 that men and women alike are made in the image of God. And that applies to everybody, Israelite and Gentile alike. That is the standard and God is trying to enforce that, even in this awful context. But that's what this case law is about.
Dan Paterson [00:51:48] Yeah, we've got a video on the channel as well, Does the Bible promote slavery?. And one of the kind of points I try to draw out in there is when it comes to these laws, the laws abstracted from the spirit that drives them, from the story of God and the nature of God that breathes into them. Without that spirit, they are a corpse entirely. But you go back and you read Genesis 1 of the full dignity of human beings is made in God's image. And you go and read Israel's own Exodus from slavery of God delivering them from brutal slavery in a foreign land and the kindness of God of leading them into the promised land and being able to give them a covenant and a name and reveal Himself and help them find their place in the world.
[00:52:31] It's just an incredible story. And it's that story of what it means to love God and love our neighbor, these great commandments that come out in Exodus and Leviticus then that animates, well, how do we read a lot of this case law, particularly in Numbers and Deuteronomy as it sort of plays out? And so I found that to be a really helpful point myself in wrestling through this and just realizing God is working in a redemptive arc towards His final end game, whereas slavery and acts like this seem as unthinkable in God's future world as they are at the beginning in His original creation, it's only the fallenness of our planet and the hardness of the human heart because of sin that makes sense of these texts in their own time. So that's really helpful as just maybe like groundwork for thinking about these laws more broadly.
[00:53:13] I want to touch on one just to finish up, another case study that's maybe pretty close to my own heart because it's about baldness and it's about the loss of hair and people making fun of you. But this is kind of an interesting story. It comes in 2 Kings 2:23-25. It's about the prophet Elisha and his forerunner Elijah, one of the great prophet of the Old Testament has just been assumed back to heaven. Elisha is kind of the one who's asked for a double portion of his anointing and is going to be the protégé to follow on the prophetic role of being God's spokesperson to the nation of Israel.
[00:53:47] And I want to just read these verses and then get your take on what do we do with stories that seem like an abuse of power? Because this isn't just a random story. This is one of the people that's meant to be God's prophets. What do we do with a story like this? So here's the text. It says, "Then he went up from there to Bethel; and as he was going up by the way, young lads came out from the city and mocked him and said to him, 'Go up, you baldhead; go up, you baldhead!'" I don't know what kind of a mock that is. "When he looked behind him and saw them, he cursed them in the name of the LORD. Then two female bears came out of the woods and tore up forty-two lads of their number. He went from there to Mount Carmel, and from there he returned to Samaria.
[00:54:30] Just a couple of verses in scripture where it seems like a prophet gets a little bit paid out and his response is to curse these guys and they get ripped apart hardcore by two female bears. It's just a brutal story. What are we meant to make of a little story that's thrown into the Old Testament like that? Is this God approving of this? Is this something that should teach us a moral lesson? Is this an abuse of power? What do we do with that?
Jo Vitale [00:55:04] It's hard. This one has perplexed people for a long time, in part because we feel like there are details we're not getting here, right? You're trying to figure out like... this is puzzling. This is confusing. How do we make sense of this? And I can see it's close to home for you, Dan, as well. I mean, because it seems wildly-
Dan Paterson [00:55:23] But I want to know if it's okay for me to start cursing anyone who calls me a baldhead.
Jo Vitale [00:55:31] But it does. It seems like this weird kind of like playground insult, right? Is this a bunch of little boys goofing off and suddenly this crazy disproportionate act and they're all being slaughtered by these bears? I mean, it just seems wild. To help us make a little bit of sense of what is going on, and I don't want to pretend that I understand every detail of this story. I don't think that I do. I'm sure there's so much behind it that I'm not even getting. But a couple of points just to help us work it out a little bit.
[00:55:58] Firstly, I mean, we've already said it, but the phrase in Hebrew "boy" that we often... other translations call this "little children". It actually, again, refers to young adult males. And so I don't know that we're talking about little children. We may well be talking about this, you know-
Dan Paterson [00:56:14] Teenage punks.
Jo Vitale [00:56:17] Teenage punks. And not just a few of them, right? I mean, we have Elisha and then we have... well, we know 42 people are mauled. We don't know how many of them were there. Like, it seems like this huge number of people are kind of like coming against Elisha when he's journeying. They've come out of the city to confront him, it seems.
And I also think that there's something going on here that maybe is bigger than just kind of like teasing and taunting. You know, the context of this story is right before this. Elijah the prophet of God has gone up to heaven in a chariot and then his mantle and his anointing have been passed on to Elisha. So it's kind of like his commissioning moment. He has been established as the next great prophet of God in Israel. And then it's proved by this miracle that he performs.
[00:56:55] And then right after this, right after he's established as the new leading prophet of Israel, suddenly this huge gang of youths come upon him intentionally, it seems, out of the city. And it seems like they're doing it specifically not in just some kind of random attack on a random guy, but that they are actually intentionally confronting him. Even the language they use, they say, "Go up! Go up!" And that seems to be paralleling the fact that Elijah has just gone up to heaven. It's almost like they're saying, Die. Like they're saying, go up to heaven too. Like, it's kind of like a death threat in a way.
[00:57:25] And then, you know, I don't quite know what's going on with the insult of baldness. I mean, scholars have different views on that one. Some people say, well, Elijah maybe is bold, and Elijah, his predecessor was known as hairy, which I kind of find hilarious. But implying like you're not the fit successor, like this is proof you're nothing like Elijah.
Other people think, well, actually, no, it's about calling down a curse on him, a particular kind of curse that they're actually cursing him first. And the curse that they're calling on him, like the first symptom of that would have been baldness. So there are a few different views on like, what does it mean when he's called bald? Sometimes, you know-
Dan Paterson [00:57:59] Maybe your next PhD should be on standards of beauty for men in the Old Testament.
Jo Vitale [00:58:04] There you go. That's not bad, but I'm not doing that. But yeah, so, you know, there's something to this. Basically, they're coming against him. It seems very threatening. This huge gang of guys come out of the city, it may be that they're just mocking him. They're certainly cursing him. It may even be that they're actually threatening his life. You know, we're just not sure quite of the dynamics here. But one thing does seem clear, which is that they're not just coming against him because he's some random dude. They're coming against him because of this event that's just happened. They've heard of it, it would seem. They're calling on the language of what just happened. But it seems like they're not-
[00:58:41] Bottom line, they're not just mocking Elisha. It seems like they're actually coming against God. It seems like they're coming against him saying, you're not God's chosen prophet. And actually, we are rejecting you and we're rejecting, you know, the miracles that God is doing in your life. We don't believe it to be true that you are who you are.
And so in a way, this is the commissioning. This is the start of Elisha's ministry. And it's kind of on the line. Like, is he God's prophet or isn't he? Does he have power to speak on behalf of God? Or doesn't he? They've cursed him. In a way, it's kind of like a reenactment of Baal a little bit. You know, like they've cursed him, He curses them back. Who actually has power here? Like, will the real God please stand up? Is a little bit of the dynamic of what's going on here. And I think that is the background to this text and so I think the reason you get this response.
[00:59:27] Now, I will say we don't actually know if they're killed. The text says they're mauled. You know, it's obviously a brutal attack. We don't know if they die or not. We just don't know. But it's obviously a severe judgment on them. But I think it's because it's not just about this random encounter in the woods with some little boys being a bit cheeky with a prophet. But I think it's because it's an actual act of coming against something powerful that the Lord is doing when He's called, you know, a prophet to speak for the next generation, and they're rejecting him.
And so what is at stake here is actually like, are people going to listen to the Lord and the one who's chosen to speak on his behalf and hear his message? Are they going to turn to God and live and find life? Or are they going to go down this other route of rejecting God's prophet, you know, being in denial about it, turning to other gods as they consistently keep doing, and that will lead them towards death? So it seems minor to us. But I actually think what is at stake here is this bigger action of life and death. And who are they going to follow, Yahweh or some other gods?
[01:00:21] You know, it's hard for us, right? Because we're in a culture where... you know, we're all about our autonomy. Like the idea that God has the right to judge me, to determine life and death in these situations, to act this way, like, I think we have huge problems with that. You know, we think it should be all up to us. But if God actually exists, like if there is a creator, then actually all life belongs to Him. The universe belongs to Him.
Actually, the whole message of the Bible is that He does exist and that He alone has power over life and death. But the key piece is, right, He wants to give us life. He actually wants us to live. He says, Ezekiel, don't take delight in death of the wicked, but that everyone should turn and live. But sometimes there are these situations where we're all running the other way and He does something really dramatic to say, "Don't go that way. I am the true God. Life is over here. I want you to find me. I want you to live." So, yeah, it's different, right? God is acting in ways that we find hard to understand.
[01:01:18] But I think one of the things we've got to get to grips with in the Old Testament is that these big sign acts do happen because God is kind of constantly having to establish, I am actually real. I am the true God. I'm trying to show up to keep leading you onto this path where you will ultimately find life. But sometimes that, you know, to us it can seem really heavy-handed. But I think God is intervening in certain ways because He's making a point that He's having to make again and again and again to get them to actually listen to Him so that ultimately they can be in a place to receive what He has for them in Jesus. But I guess it's hard. It's hard.
Dan Paterson [01:01:52] I really appreciate this. Really helpful thoughts in there. And just a bunch of different ways of coming at texts like these with a degree of humility, like you said at the beginning and just saying, or if the scriptures are intended to make us wise unto salvation, then the means by which God's teaching us is something we have to wrestle with. It's not just spoon fed information. These are normative, formative stories sometimes we're meant to protest against, sometimes we're meant to be shaped by, sometimes we're meant to have our moral intuition sharpened. Just a whole range of these things that God's intending us to really wrestle with in order to learn who He is. And to be able to do that from the beginning of the book right through with the gift of the cross, to be able to let that shadow cast right back to the Old Testament, we know who God is as He's spoken most fully in His son. And that just gives us the freedom then to say, Okay, well, what do we make of these texts? Whether they fit into that process of our formation, that redemptive arc that He's leading us to Jesus through.
[01:02:48] Jo, I really appreciate just your willingness to dive through some very tricky case studies from the Old Testament. We'll make sure we put a link in the show notes just to the website where people can track you guys down and then listen to the Ask Away podcast with Vince and Jo Vitale. It's just a really helpful podcast where you wrestle with a lot of the biggest questions that people have towards God and Christianity and the Christian story a lot like we try and do on here.
If you had a parting message to anyone who's watching this, maybe they've stumbled over the Old Testament before, but considering Christianity, what would you say to them?
Jo Vitale [01:03:20] Yeah, great. I think what I would want to say is don't give up because it's difficult. This was my struggle. Like during my master's year in the Old Testament, I was wrestling with these passages and I honestly came to a place where I was like, I think I'm going to have to concede either God isn't good or the Bible isn't true. Like, I don't know what to do with these texts. It was so hard for me at one point.
But the key thing I would say in that wrestle is for me, I was trying to do it outside the lens of God. So I was sort of thinking I can't bring God into this conversation because that would bias my decision. I'm the jury. God's in the dark. He needs to be out of the room while I deliberate about Him without Him being present. And I was just getting nowhere.
[01:03:59] And eventually I just realized, you know what? It's kind of a silly approach that I'm taking because if God isn't real, it doesn't matter if I bring my questions to Him, there's going to be no response. I'm not going to get any help if He's not there. But if he is, why am I ignoring my primary witness? If He exists, it would be so silly for me to be trying to work through these really hard questions without asking Him to help me, without asking His Spirit to guide me into truth and to show me what I'm missing and help me to figure this stuff out that is too big for me to work out on my own.
[01:04:28] That was the turning point for me, that rather than running from God, I started inviting Him into the struggle of working through these questions and these doubts and to illuminate what I wasn't seeing. And, you know, and it wasn't immediate. Like it was a serious wrestle of at least a year. But gradually I felt like God was showing me things about His character that I was missing.
I remember sitting in the library in Oxford one day and I was reading a book about God's love and judgment and suddenly it just hit me, Oh, these two things are not at war. They're not inconsistent. But actually, His judgment is the response of love. It's a response of justice for a God who cares deeply about every person. And gradually it just transformed my journey from hating certain texts because I didn't know what to do with them. They overwhelmed me. And I was like, "Why are they in the Bible?" It's actually coming to find some of them, the most life-giving ones, like that one in Deuteronomy 21. Texts like that being like, this is awful to women, to being like, Wow, even in these circumstances, you deeply care about women. You care about the vulnerable.
[01:05:23] So I gradually... it was a long journey, but I did go on this journey. I actually came out, to my shock, to be honest with you, thinking God was actually better and more loving and more good and more just than I thought initially, not less, which is where I thought I was going to wind up. And I really thought I was going that way.
It doesn't mean I don't still have questions. I have many questions. I've shown today I don't know. Like there are many things I don't know. But I love that journey with God that we get to have of loving Him with our minds and of Him meeting us in the wrestle. Like it's such a thrill in the Christian life that you don't just get everything handed to you, but you get to walk it out with Him on this journey of faith and discovery of what do you like. And I love that, that journey of discovery and delight that becomes part of this story. So just keep asking your questions. But I would just encourage you to invite God into that. Say, God, if you're there, help me. Like show me. Don't push Him out. Actually, ask Him in. You may be surprised by how He answers that.
Dan Paterson [01:06:20] Well, Jo, thanks so much. It's been awesome having you guys on and just being able to hear some of the responses to these questions. It's honest. It's helpful. It's heartfelt. And to hear a counter perspective to someone like Richard Dawkins, who says this God of the Old Testament is the most unpleasant character. And then to hear you say, actually, no, I've discovered Him to be someone who deeply cares and someone that you can put your trust in. It's just a really helpful maybe check on some of the rhetoric that's out there and an invitation for people to explore for themselves. We have this phrase here at QC, the truth invites a questioning, and we'd love people just to be able to live that out for themselves. So I hope that that'll be useful.
[01:06:54] Well, we'll make sure we put all the links to you and Vince down the show notes. We'd love to have the Vitalis cross the Pacific one time soon and come and visit us here in our humble shores of Australia. Everyone's doing it. Dude Perfect was here a couple of months ago. Mr. Beast just arrived on Australian shores. So we're waiting for the best and brightest of those who are living in America to come and visit us as well. It'd be great to see you guys. But until then, we'd love to get you back on to do maybe some more case studies another time.
Jo Vitale [01:07:21] Be fun. Thanks, Dan. Really great to be with you.
Dan Paterson [01:07:24] Thanks, Jo.
Jo Vitale We're so glad you joined us for Ask Away.
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