I have been delinquent in completing my series on Proverbs. I will do six more parts to complete this series. In part 8, we began looking at literary clues in specific contexts in Proverbs. With this post, we will finish looking at these clues in explicit settings.

B. Other Literary Clues

1. One-Line Sayings & the Use of a “Punch-Word”

This type of one-line saying, built on the model of contrastive parallelism, may show a certain emphasis through the use of a “punch-word” (Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry, p. 168). An example of this is seen in Proverbs 11:1.

A-false balance is-an-abomination to-the-LORD.

But-a-just weight is-His-delight.

In Hebrew this proverb takes seven words, four in the first line and three in the second. I have hyphenated the terms to reflect which expressions were one word in the Hebrew text. The antithesis of “a-false balance” is “but-a-just weight.” The two Hebrew terms, “an-abominations to-the-LORD,” are compressed into a significant one-word counterpart with “His-delight.” Both of these latter expressions are strong theological descriptions of that which is an abhorrence and a pleasure in God’s sight. The counterpart of “an-abomination to-the-LORD” is the theological punch-word “His-pleasure” (ibid.). This compressed punch-word is a theologically satisfying emphasis of this one-verse unit. In contrast to that which is abominable in His sight, this verse affirms that God’s pleasure is found not only in worship but even in the marketplace.

2. One-Line Sayings & the Parallelism of Specification or Intensification

Other one-line sayings, built on the parallelism of specification or intensification, may reflect a “consequentiality.” This type of proverb shows that certain types of activity generally lead to certain types of consequences. This is to say, it reflects that God has created and governs the world and man in such a way that certain consequences are generally the result of specific actions. “Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it” (Prov 22:6). God has designed life in such a way that when parents seriously instruct their children according to a godly pattern, the consequence is that they generally share the same godly patterns as their parents. In a modified manner, we see another example in 21:31, “The horse is prepared for battle, but victory belongs to the LORD.” The first part of the verse focuses on preparing the horse for battle. The last half moves to the conclusion of the battle. The last half is unexpected in that we have a new figure introduced into a proverbial equation, “the LORD” (ibid., pp. 172–73). This is to say, we do not have a strict cause-and-effect relationship between the first half of the verse and the second. However, from the sage’s vantage point, God is the ultimate cause for everything in life.

3. One-Line Sayings & the Riddle Format

One-line sayings may also reflect a type of riddle format. The riddle format not only includes a riddle, but it may also include a perplexing statement or an image. The pattern of this format will have a riddle, perplexing statement, or image introduced in the first half of a verse with the second half explaining it. A perplexing and shocking image is used in Proverbs 11:22, “As a ring of gold in a swine’s snout, so is a beautiful woman who lacks discretion.” The image in the first half of the verse would have been repulsive and ludicrous to a Jew. How foolish it is to think that a gold ring could beautify a pig. The second half makes the point. An undiscerning and ungodly beautiful woman is comparable to the same attempt to beautify a repulsive pig. Another example is 17:12, “Let a man meet a bear robbed of her cubs, rather than a fool in his folly.” A fool in his folly is a greater danger than meeting a bear that has been robbed of her cubs (ibid., pp. 176–78). As Alden has said, “Consider meeting a fool with a knife, or gun, or even behind the wheel of a car; a mother bear could be less dangerous” (Proverbs, p. 134).

With our next post on Proverbs, we will look at the fifth principle for interpreting Proverbs.

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Proverbs, Theology, Wisdom literature

In my Biblical Creation class this past Monday, I covered more than half of my fourth lesson that focuses on figurative interpretations of the days of creation. We looked at four of these interpretations: theistic evolution, the day-age view, progressive creationism, and the framework interpretation.

Theistic evolution, recently labeled by one of its current advocates as “the fully gifted creation,” argues that God created inorganic matter that contained properties with the potential to evolve into the wide variety of life forms presently observable. The advocates of this view affirm that God “created” all current life forms over extended geological ages and through random mutations and natural selection.

The day-age view maintains that the six days of the creation week were six
chronologically-arranged geological ages. This “concordist” position is supported by two primary arguments. The first is that the Hebrew term yôm (“day”) can be used figuratively to refer to an extended period of time, as it does, for example, in the expression, “the day of the LORD.” The second argument relies on the results of modern scientific dating. As such, the obvious advantage of this view is that it harmonizes the Bible with the current scientific estimate for a 4.5 billion year old earth.

Progressive creationism is distinct from theistic evolution in that progressive creationists postulate that God, while using evolution, intervenes at key junctures to create life forms that would not naturally evolve. In reference to God’s involvement in evolution, theistic evolutionists postulate that God created all current forms of living things from non-living matter by strictly using the mechanism of evolution. In contrast to this, progressive creationists assert that God progressively intervenes in many places to create specific life forms in the course of billions of years. In reality, the progressive creationist view is very similar, if not at times identical to the day-age view, though progressive creationist defenders do not tend to promote it as a concordist understanding, which often focuses on harmonizing the so-called findings of Scripture with the progression related to the unfolding of the days of the creation week.

The framework view asserts that the creation “week” of Genesis 1:1–2:3 is a literary device intended to present God’s creative activity in a topical, non-sequential manner, rather than a literal, sequential one. Framework defenders supports this hypothesis with three primary arguments. First, they contend that the figurative nature of the creation account demonstrates that it is arranged topically rather than chronologically. The following chart reflects the framework’s literary frame.

The parallel nature of days 1–3 with days 4–6 reflect that this is something of a poetic account which overrides the sequential numbering of the creation days. Second, it is argued that the unending character of the seventh day (Heb 4:3–4 cites Gen 2:2) indicates that the six days of the creation week are not normal days. This argument is a fundamental aspect of the framework. If the seventh day of the creation week is a continuous day, then the days of the creation week are also long periods of time, heavenly time as opposed to earthly time. Third, those framework advocates who follow Meredith Kline’s version of this position also argue that God used ordinary providence (i.e., the non-miraculous sustaining and directing of all creation) to control the creation “week.” This argument is predicated on interpreting “because it had not rained” in Genesis 2:5 as suggesting that God did not create plants until he first created an environment conducive to sustain plants Based upon what Kline calls “the unargued presupposition of Gen 2:5,” he infers that God primarily used ordinary providence to control the creation “week.” Thus, Genesis 1:1–2:3 cannot be a sequential account because, for example, vegetation was created on third day before the sun was created on the fourth day.

In our next class on March 8, we will look at the major problems with these four views.

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Biblical Creationism, Seminary Life, Theology

I have subscribed to Tyndale House’s Newsletter for a number of years; and, I would like to encourage you to do the same.

To assist you in seeing my interest in Tyndale House, here are some posts that I have done in reference to Drs. David Instone-Bewer and Peter Williams, Research Staff from Tyndale House.

My initial post, October 22, 2007, provided a link to Dr. David Instone-Brewer on the subject of “Divorce and Remarriage.”

I did another blog entry, on October 23, on “Divorce and Remarriage Update“

On October 29, Dr. Instone-Brewer responded to my post on October 23, click here.

While preparing to teach a class on Haggai & Malachi, I did a post on June 8, 2009 “Preparing for Malachi 2:10-16“

Finally, on January 1, 2009, I did a post about “Meeting Dr. Pete Williams“

For those who read my blog, you will profit if you take advantage of this opportunity to subscribe to their newsletter, as well as checking out their website. To subscribe to their newsletter, click here.

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Biblical Christianity, General Interest

I have posted many blog entries about my opposition to the climate change cult (if you want to follow my entries about global warming, go to this entry and follow the links). IMO, the global warming movement is unbiblical.The harsh winter that much of the US has experienced this year has correctly soured many Americans against anthropogenic global warming. The good people of Minnesota have some strong thoughts about global warming. After you check out the following video, you can check out eight other videos by going here.

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Global Warming, YouTube

The ancient Peruvian city of Caral was discovered in 1994 (the above picture is taken from wikipedia.org). It is estimated that it flourished contemporaneously with Mesopotamia and Egypt. This is consistent with what the Bible has to say about the global flood in Noah’s day and subsequent spread of civilization after the Tower of Babel along with its implications for the diversity in human language.

Dr. Carl Wieland, from Creation Ministries International, has posted a brief and informative post about the biblical significance from the discovery of the Caral pyramids. According to this entry, Peruvian archaeologist Ruth Shady notes that the discovery of the pyramids at Caral “raises questions about what prompted ‘civilizations to form throughout the planet at more or less the same time.’” Dr. Wieland aptly responds: “This is no mystery to the Bible-believer, of course, given the history in Genesis of how a civilization at Babel, after the Flood, scattered all over the globe in a short period of time.” The thesis of this post is that the book of Genesis informs us that the dispersion of people groups from Babel lead to a “burst of civilization,” which included diversity of language within each group. To read the full article, go to “All At Once.”

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Biblical Creationism, Genesis

Last month I was told that Coming to Grips with Genesis has sold over 8,800 copies. Because this book is a defense of biblical authority and the age of the earth, I am convinced that if we are to preserve the foundation for orthodox Christianity this is a must read. However, since I was one of fourteen contributors to it (for more information, click here), I must admit that I may have a little prejudice.

I am attempting to keep track of reviews dealing with Coming to Grips with Genesis. Here are a three reviews.

Dr. Michael J. Vlach’s review, 20 (Spring 2009), The Master’s Seminary Journal, pp. 114-116.

Rev. Ronald L. Cammenga’s review, 42 (April 2009), The Protestant Reformed Theological Journal, pp. 146–48.

Dr. Matthew A. Postiff’s review, 14 (2009) Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal, pp. 109–21. To read this review, follow the links in this blog entry.

If you have not purchased Coming to Grips with Genesis, you can purchase it from DBTS’s Online Store.

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Biblical Creationism, Genesis, Theology

Last Monday evening in my Biblical Creation class, we looked at our third lesson: “Creation of the Heavens and the Earth.” Until God created the temporary light source to initiate the first day (Gen 1:3), the heavens would have been empty and dark. Undoubtedly, this initial aspect of creation would have included the heavenly sphere surrounding God’s immediate presence. The second aspect of his initial creative activity was the formation of the earth. Like the heavens, the earth was made out of nothing. As such, the creation of the earth would have been supernatural, sudden, and mature. Immediately after the initial formation of the heavens and earth, God created a temporary light source (Gen 1:3) to establish the day-night cycle. This would have unquestionably included the earth rotating on its axis. In addition, Genesis 1:5 defines a day as a period of light-separated-from-darkness. Therefore, this is the first of six day-night cycles that took place in the creation week.

Concerning the formation of the earth, like the heavens, the earth was made out of nothing. As such, the creation of the earth would have included things like rocks and minerals, and water. The condition of the earth is described in three coordinate clauses in Genesis 1:2: (1) “Now the earth was formless and empty” (2) “and darkness was over the surface of the deep,” and (3) “and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” Since the earth was covered with water and had no biological life forms, we could say that the earth was created in an abiotic condition.

In the creation account, Genesis 1:2 is foundational for the creation week. The remainder of Genesis 1 is God’s progressive forming and filling the formless, empty, and darkened heavens and earth. In progressively dealing with the abiotic earth, “God first creates an environment in a progressive fashion—light, atmosphere and earth, sea and dry land, and vegetation on the dry land—and second, he creates the inhabitants of the environment, again moving progressively—heavenly bodies, creatures more removed from man, animals, and man” (Pipa).

Another item that we dealt with was what happened to the waters lifted above the earth in Genesis 1:6-8. I organized my notes in this section around two issues: the water vapor canopy and the collapse of the water vapor canopy. According to some young-earth creationist, this would have been an invisible, thermal canopy blanketing the earth’s atmosphere. In effect, this canopy would have created a greenhouse effect on the entire pre-flood world that would explain the subtropical climate on the earth, the longevity man’s age before the flood, and a way of explaining how it could rain for forty days and nights. However, a canopy such as this (with as much as 40 inches of water) would have made life on earth impossible. Consequently, many young earth creationists have rejected this canopy hypothesis.

While there are a number of reasons for rejecting this view, a major problem that has contributed to the collapse of this model relates to the expanse created on the second day. If the expanse (raqi‘a) separating the water on the earth from that which is above the earth (Gen 1:6–8), and the sun, moon and stars are part of the expanse (raqi‘a, Gen 1:14–19), then the waters lifted above the earth are beyond the sun, moon, and stars. This is a major problem for the canopy model. At least on a surface level, it looks like the waters lifted beyond the expanse in Genesis 1:6–8 may be alluded to in a post-flood comment in Psalm 148:4: “Praise him, you highest heavens and you waters above the skies.”

Next week, DBTS will be on its winter recess and will return to classes on March 1 at which time I will address “old earth creationism: figurative interpretations of the days of the creation week.”

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Biblical Creationism, Seminary Life, Theology

With this post, I will summarize our biblical creation classes from the first two Monday’s in February.

On February 1, I gave a brief commentary on significant articles and books cited in our 19-page bibliography (pages 100–119 of our syllabus). We also encountered a problem when a bulb in our projector burned out. In this class, we finished covering the last three of five arguments used to support the 24-hour day view (numeric qualifiers and the singular “day,” Scriptural parallels with “day,” and the sequence of events in the creation week and “day”). We concluded the class by initially looking at the first of four objections to literal creation days. This objection relates to the use of the seventh day (Gen 2:1-3) to argue against the 24-hour day view. If someone can prove that the seventh day is ongoing, then they are in a position to negate the literal substance of the previous six days in the creation week. To rebut this point, I noted that there is a twofold significance for the omission of the “evening” and “morning” on the seventh day of Genesis 2:1–3. Initially, the “evening-morning” conclusion is one part of a fivefold structure that Moses uses in shaping the literary fabric for each of the creation days (divine speech, “God said”; fiat, “let there be” or an equivalent; fulfillment, “there was” etc.; evaluation “God saw that it was good,” though it is omitted on day 2; conclusion, “there was evening and there was morning”). The omission of some of the fivefold framework, such as fiat, fulfillment, evening and morning, is because this was not a day on which any creative activity took place. Further, the “evening-morning” conclusion has another rhetorical effect in that it also functions as transition to the following day of creation. This transition is unnecessary on day 7 since creation is complete.

In our class presentation on February 8, we finished looking at our lesson on the nature of creation. We covered two areas: answering objections to literal creation days and four observations from the creation week. About the first area, I concluded looking at the first objection about the seventh day, in Genesis 2:1-3, being an ongoing day. More specifically, we looked at three biblical texts used to support the seventh day being an extended period of time: John 5:17, Psalm 95:7-11, and Hebrews 4:3-11. The second objection focuses on the use of “day” in Genesis 2:4 as supporting that day can refer to an extended period of time and thus undermining the 24-hour day view. The third one relates to two texts connecting “day” with a 1000 years: Psalm 90:4 and 2 Peter 3:8. The fourth objection maintains that too many activities took place on day 6 for it to be a literal day (for my more fully developed response to these objections, see pages 112-22 of my article “A Defense of Literal Days in the Creation Week.” Concerning the second area, we drew four observations from the creation account: God’s creative activities were supernatural, sudden, functionally mature (items such as fruit trees bearing fruit, stars visible from the earth, Adam and Eve as adults, to name a few), and God’s creative activities reflect that He is the self-existent, eternal Creator God (adapted from John C. Whitcomb’s The Early Earth).

With our lesson on February 15, the class objective is to look more precisely at the creation of the heavens and the earth.

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Biblical Creationism, Seminary Life

On a number of occasions, I have heard sincere believers thank God for his miraculous work in answering prayer. This type of testimony often gives me theological heart burn. On a few occasions, I have attempted to reason with a sincere believer making this claim. I make the point that a believer who trusts in a God who uses providence is just as much an act of faith as those in biblical times who occasionally had their prayers answered with a miracle. While excluding the miracle of regeneration, I explain why miracles do not take place today and that God has been working through providence since the closing of the New Testament canon. Earlier this morning, I rejoiced to read a great blog entry by Phil Johnson who uses a real-life illustration to make this same type of clarification about miracle and providence.

In this post, he clearly distinguishes between between “superstition” and “miracle” (you can see this distinction about 2/3 of the way into the entry). In reference to miracle, he helpfully defines a miracle as “a particular kind of sign—an unmistakable display of supernatural power calculated to confront unbelief and provoke awe—with the purpose of authenticating an agent of divine revelation. True miracles are not merely arbitrary displays of God’s power; they are manifestly supernatural and are themselves a form of revelation.”

Phil further clearly maintains that in God’s providence he still answers the prayer of faith. His conclusion is worth noting: “The faith that sees the hand of God in the natural outworking of divine providence (and understands that God is sovereign over every detail of everything that happens) is not a lesser faith than the kind of belief that can only see God at work when He intervenes in spectacular, supernatural, and miraculous ways.” This is an entry you do not want to miss. To read it fully, go to “Miracles and Acts of Providence“

HT: Mark Snoeberger

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Biblical Christianity, Theology

On January 25, we began looking at the nature of creation in my Biblical Creation class. Initially, I covered the events treated in Genesis 1:1-31. After this, we began looking at the duration of each of the six days in the creation week. Initially, I covered the events treated in Genesis 1:1-31. After this, we began looking at the duration of each of the six days in the creation week.

As I have defended in the Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal, each day of the creation week was a normal literal day. I treated two of five arguments that support the 24-hour day view: (1) the semantics of the singular use of “day” and (2) “evening” and “morning” as qualifiers of “day.” In reference to the first argument, the Hebrew word translated as “day,” yom is always used of a literal day when it_ appears alone as a singular noun (for an excellent treatment of 24-hour day view, see Gerhard F. Hasel’s “The ‘Days’ of Creation in Genesis 1,” Origins journal 21 [1994]: 5–38. About the second point, the qualifying expression “evening” and “morning,” used with the conclusion of each day of creation week, supports the literal day interpretation. A literal understanding of “day” is consistent with other Old Testament uses of “evening” and “morning.” Further, the general framework for each of the creation days also indicates that “evening” and “morning” are used to describe the completion of each day.

On February 8, I will finish a defense of literal creation day and then answer a number of common objections.

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Biblical Creationism, Seminary Life