Tag: Christian book

John Sailhamer’s Messianic Interpretation of the Song of Solomon

~ Bob Hayton ~ 8 Comments

I came across the NIV Compact Bible Commentary and was delighted to find that John Sailhamer was its author. I’ve so enjoyed his The Meaning of the Pentateuch, that I picked up his commentary on the Pentateuch. I’m going to have to pick up this compact Bible commentary of his as well.

I was able to read the section on the Song of Solomon and was fascinated by Sailhamer’s insights, which I plan to share here. The following quotes are from his treatment of the book on pages 359-361 in the NIV Compact Bible Commentary (Zondervan, 1994), emphasis added.

Sailhamer begins by briefly recounting the traditional figurative interpretations of the book and the quite literal modern interpretations.

Although it is, on the face of it, just that–an ode to human love–one must ask whether it was originally intended to be read as such by its first audience. There are some indications within the book itself that suggest it was not…. There is no question that the book is a poetic drama of a lover’s longing for his beloved and of her willing complicity. To suggest, however, that this drama of two lovers is, in fact, the intent of the book is to confuse the poetic imagery with the purpose of the poem.

He is careful to say that this does not “justify the wholesale allegorizations of the poem that have characterized much of its history.” He admits the picture of the relationship of God/Christ with Israel/the Church, is a wonderful picture, but avers “there are no clues within the book itself to support such a reading. In the last analysis, one’s interpretation should come from within the book itself, and preferably from the clues given by the author himself.”

Sailhamer goes on to uncover several clues which do confirm that there is more to the Song than may meet the natural eye, however. He first points out from the overall structure of the book, that “the ‘reflections of love’ of the lover and the beloved do not progress and build in intensity in the course of the poem itself.” This is no average love story. He also argues that “though the poetic imagery comes close at times to suggesting the lover and his beloved have in fact come together and joined themselves in that union that they so longingly describe, the structure of the book itself suggests that has not yet happened.” Rather, the “lovers’ quest is an ideal, a longed-for desire that lies beyond their own grasp.”

Setting aside these preliminary observations for the moment, we come to Sailhamer’s focus on the “larger structural movement given to the poem by the author.” The repeated refrain throughout the book reads, “Do not arouse or awaken love until she [NIV, it] so desires” (2:7b; 3:5b; 8:4b). The meaning of this refrain comes from its connection to 8:5b where the author links it with the last statements made by the beloved (the woman): “Under the apple tree I roused you; there your mother conceived you, there she who was in labor gave you birth.” In this connection, Sailhamer sees an allusion to two other key biblical texts: the prologue of Proverbs (chapters 1-9), and the account of the Fall in Genesis 3.

If an illusion [sic] is intended to these passages, it suggests that “the beloved” in the Song of Solomon is intended to be understood as a personification of “wisdom” and Solomon, or “the lover,” is intended as a picture of the “promised seed” of Ge 3:15, i.e., the Messiah.

He goes on:

What appears to have happened in the composition of the Song of Songs is that the author has seen in this love-song the possibility of a portrait of Israel’s long-awaited messianic king. Solomon, the son of David (cf. 2Sa 7:16), whose quest for wisdom characterizes the central core of the book of Proverbs, speaks in the prologue of that book of binding wisdom to himself and on his heart (Pr 3:3; 7:1-3) in the same way that in this book [Song of Solomon] the beloved says, “Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm” (8:6). Moreover, in Proverbs Solomon says, “Say to wisdom, ‘You are my sister'” (Pr 7:4), just as here the beloved says, “If only you were to me like a brother” (8:1). An extended comparison of these two books suggests that these are not mere coincidental similarities of words and phrases, but rather a deliberate “inter-textuality,” or allusion of one text to another. Such verbal links and allusions between the personified Dame Wisdom in the book of Proverbs and the young beloved in the Song of Songs invite our attempts to see a larger purpose behind this love song. I have suggested that such a purpose is to be found in the growing messianic hope found in these sections [i.e. the Wisdom Literature] of the OT.

Thus far then, Sailhamer has shown “the Song of Songs is intended as a portrait of the promised Messiah’s love for divine wisdom.” He goes on:

The Messiah is here pictured by Solomon, and “wisdom” is personified by the young and beautiful beloved. Throughout the poem the notion of love is idealized by the fact that its obtainment lies in the future. The quest for wisdom was aroused “under the apple tree” (8:4a), probably an allusion to the time of the Garden of Eden when the first woman “saw that the fruit of the tree was…desirable for gaining wisdom [and] she took some and ate it” (Ge 3:6). The obtainment of wisdom, however, will come only when one like Solomon comes to claim his beloved.

Sailhamer also sees the reference to “there your mother conceived you, there she who was in labor gave you birth” (8:5b) as suggesting that the author of the Song of Solomon “also understood both the promised ‘seed’ in Ge 3:15 and the reference to Eve as ‘the mother of all living’ (Ge 3:20) messianically.”

The result of these inter-textual links, “if… intended by the author of this book” then,

…would place this song on a quite different level than that of an ode to human love. It would, in fact, give credence to the traditional attempts to see more in this poem than meets the eye. It would also provide some guidelines along which the symbolism of the book is to be read.

One final argument supports Sailhamer’s conclusions:

Finally, such a reading of the book would also provide needed insight into the underlying justification for the book’s inclusion into the OT. There is general recognition today that the time of the formation of the OT canon coincided with a significant surge in the hope of the imminent return of the messianic king. This book was included in the canon, one might say, because it was intended as a picture of the Messiah.

I am not one to discount seeing the Divine Author’s hand behind the human book as intentionally foreshadowing future covenant realities. I would see no problem in taking Sailhamer’s lead and affirming that this authorial intent was expanded in the wisdom of God, to allow the book as we have it in our Bible to suggest analogies between Christ and the Church. Think of the many songs that have been written culling from the poetic imagery of this Song of Songs.

Still, I had never seen Sailhamer’s reasoning for seeing a human authorial intent behind the Song of Solomon including an explicit Messianic connection. I’d be interested to know, if any of my readers knows whether Sailhamer has written more explicitly of this connection. The section on the Song is only a few pages long in the NIV Compact Bible Commentary. Along these lines, I’d also love to know what you think of this. Does this ring true to you? Or do you think Sailhamer is off base?

You can pick up a copy of this little book at Amazon.com or direct from Zondervan.

Book Excerpt — Singing the Songs of Jesus: Revisiting the Psalms by Michael LeFebvre

~ Bob Hayton

I’m reading through a new Christian Focus book entitled Singing the Songs of Jesus: Revisiting the Psalms by Michael LeFebvre. In this book, the author explains why singing the Psalms was so precious to saints through all ages, prior to the rise of the 18th century hymnwriting movement. LeFebre succeeds in making the Psalms come alive and in equipping the modern church with tools for recovering the use of the Psalms.

I wanted to offer an excerpt which has captivated me. LeFebvre describes the difference between singing to Christ, and singing with Christ. He avers that when Christians sing the Psalms, we are singing with Christ in a unique way.

You can learn more about the book at Christianfocus.com, and in the next couple weeks, I’ve heard this book will be showcased at their new Christian Focus Booknotes blog, too.

Without further ado, I provide an extended book excerpt. For more, you’ll have to get the book!

In the Gospels, Jesus often took the Psalms to his lips as his own praises. He sang Psalm 41 as his own song: ‘My close friend in whom I trusted…has lifted his heel against me’ (Ps. 41:9/John 13:18). He sang Psalm 118, not as a common experience of God’s people but as his own experience as our true king: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone’ (Ps. 118:22/Matt. 21:42). Jesus identified himself as the anointed king in psalm 110: ‘The LORD said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand.”‘ (Ps. 110:1/Mark 12:36). In these and other examples, Jesus frequently showed himself to be the Son of David by taking the Psalms of David to his lips as his own songs (e.g., Matt. 27:46/Ps. 22:1; Luke 23:46/Ps. 31:5; John 2:17/Ps. 69:9).

In fact here is Jesus’ own explanation about his relationship to the Psalms of David:

As Jesus taught in the temple, he said, ‘How can the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David? David himself, in the Holy Spirit, declared, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet.’ David himself calls him Lord. So how is he his son (Mark 12:35-37, quoting Ps. 110:1)?

Jesus says that David wrote Psalms for a descendant who would be greater than himself — the coming Christ. In the Holy Spirit, David understood that his songs would ultimately be taken up by the Christ.

Peter makes a similar point in his sermon at Pentecost. Peter preached from a string of Old Testament texts, including several Psalms (Pss. 16, 89, 110, 132)…. According to Peter, David wrote the Psalms ‘knowing’ that God had promised the Christ would come from his line. And he wrote Psalm 16 ‘foreseeing’ the resurrection of Christ. The Psalms were born out of the experiences of David and his heirs, but David wrote with awareness of the coming Son of David who would ultimately take the Psalms to his lips as our perfect king and songleader.

From the beginning, the Psalms were composed for Jesus — as his songs. No wonder the New Testament church never set the Psalmbook aside. They took up the Psalms in great delight, singing in them with Jesus.

Let me offer a word picture to anchor this principle. Imagine that a friend of yours has invited you to a concert. A famous choir is in town, and your friend bought two tickets. As you slip into your seats in the concert hall, a one hundred voice choir lines the platform before you. And the music begins. The singing is superb. It could not be better. It is such a pleasant evening, you and your friend decide to return the next week for another concert.

The next week, you return to the hall and find the same choir singing again. This time, however, a world famous tenor is going to be on the platform with them. As you sit in the audience listening, you are entranced by the beauty of the soloist’s voice, surrounded majestically by the hundred-voice choir behind him. Perhaps you will come again another time to hear more.

What is the difference between these to, imagined performances? In the first, the audience is listening to the voices of a hundred singers. The song is the choir’s song. In the second performance, however, the audience is listening to the voice of one singer accompanied by a hundred others. But it is the one singer in front who stands under the spotlight. His song is being performed, and the rest join him in singing it.

In Christian worship, God is the audience of our singing. Many congregations today see themselves as that hundred-person choir singing to God. They imagine that they stand as a mass of worshipers, singing their songs of faith to him. That is the expectation behind modern hymns and praise songs. Modern hymns do not say, for example, ‘What a friend I, Joseph Scriven, have in Jesus.’ Hymnwriters compose songs for the congregation to sing as their song to God, with the song’s original author and his experience disappearing from view.

This is where the Psalms are radically different. The Psalms are composed for a use like the second performance imagined above. Our divinely appointed leader, King Jesus, leads our praise. Jesus sings his own songs in his own words (composed prophetically for him). They are his praises of the Father which he calls us, as his subjects, to join him in singing. Rather than disappearing from view, we are supposed to sing in conscious identification with Jesus as our Psalm leader, and with his experience of the cross and resurrection before us.

[emphasis added, from pg. 51-54]

Disclaimer: This book was provided by Christian Focus Publications. I was under no obligation to offer a favorable review.

You can pick up a copy from Amazon.com, Monergism Books, or direct from Christian Focus.

“Remy the Rhino Learns Patience” by Andy McGuire

~ Bob Hayton

Books are powerful tools in the hands of children. My own five children remain fascinated with books of all types and sizes. Picture books especially captivate my younger children, who often read the same books over and over. Being a Christian parent, I know that Christian books for children are one way of reaching the hearts of my children for Christ. Yet finding good quality, well-written, Christian children’s books is not necessarily easy.

For these reasons, I applaud Andy McGuire’s attempt to offer beautiful, captivating story books which enable Christian parents to teach Biblical virtues to their children. In Remy the Rhino Learns Patience, we are introduced to an impatient, African rhino. He finds out the hard way that angrily insisting on one’s own way, doesn’t work. Remy finds himself in a pickle and at last learns to relax. The back cover provides the moral: “This entertaining story will help your children learn that anger only makes things worse, and that patience is the key to building friendships and solving problems.”

I was quite impressed with the quality of this little book. I’ve seen too many, poorly-produced picture books. This book from Harvest House Publishers, however, stands right up there next to books produced by the giant, general market publishers. The cover has a deluxe hardback feel, where it feels a bit soft and welcoming to kids’ hands. The pictures are beautifully illustrated, majoring on vivid earth tones. The pictures are life-like as well. The pages are glossy and the book’s size is a nice 7 by 7 inches — perfect for preschool and young elementary kids. This book could easily become a favorite with little hands.

Andy McGuire’s African theme is continued in another title from the “Little Lessons from Our Animal Pals” series: Eleanor the Hippo Learns to Tell the Truth. The two books together would make a wonderful addition to your kids’ reading material.

When it comes to the message of this book, it is missing any direct reference to the Gospel, and doesn’t quote a Bible verse, either. This allows the book to appeal to a wider audience, I suppose. But as a Christian I hoped for more. Still, the book has important lessons to convey to little hearts. As it is, this little book will provide an opportunity to parent your children and talk through the issues of anger and patience. And it certainly has more of a message than many other picture books your children will find. I’m happy to recommend this book for Christian parents and their little children.

Learn more about Andy McGuire at his website here. You can also preview the book here.

Disclaimer: This book was provided by Harvest House for review. I was under no obligation to offer a favorable review.

Pick up a copy of this book at Amazon.com or through Harvest House direct.

“Reclaiming the Old Testament for Christian Preaching” edited by Kent, Kissling & Turner

~ Bob Hayton ~ 7 Comments

Over the last few decades, a revival of interest in the Old Testament seems to have come over the evangelical church. Numerous resources for preaching the Old Testament and for understanding the various genres we find in the first two thirds of our Bibles have been produced. The tide is turning, and more and more we hear of careful preaching through the Old Testament again.

We still have a long way to go, however. Most conservative pulpits major on the New Testament. After all, the relevance of NT books to the Christian living today is much more apparent. Popular expositors have even given us commentary after commentary on the New Testament, to the almost complete exclusion of the Old Testament. Theology-heavy sermons from the doctrinal portions of the New Testament can serve to keep people out of touch with the reality of the story of Scripture. And ironically, in an age where everybody’s story has value, the grand overarching storyline of the Bible is silenced by the Church’s neglect of the first 39 books of her Bible.

Many of the resources being published that are seeking to revive a focus on the Old Testament are locked away in scholarly tomes or couched in some liberal theological garb, effectively kept away from the average pastor’s and Bible teacher’s reach. A new book by InterVarsity Press aims to bring scholarly resources into an accessible and highly useful format. Reclaiming the Old Testament for Christian Preaching, edited by Grenville J.R. Kent, Paul J. Kissling and Laurence A. Turner, actually manages to live up to its title’s bold claim. In an accessible and user-friendly format, the book brings together contributions from a wide array of OT scholars.

After a brief introduction, the book moves on to cover OT narrative plot, OT narrative characters, the Law, Lament, Praise Poetry, Wisdom literature, the Song of Solomon, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Apocalyptic literature, and the Minor Prophets. It also has a chapter on preaching from difficult texts and another on preaching Christ from the Old Testament. The chapters aren’t too long or overly detailed; instead, they are delightfully readable. They are structured in such a way as to clearly convey the primary difficulties and recommended approaches for the particular genre surveyed. Almost all the chapters include helpful footnotes and recommendations for further study. And each concludes with an example sermon which puts the theory into practice.

As I read through this book, I kept earmarking page after page where helpful insights were shared about the various parts of the Old Testament. The sections covering narrative plot and characters were especially helpful and full of examples. Laurence Turner stressed placing each narrative in context to its larger narrative, and on sticking to the flow of the author as much as possible when developing a sermon. Paul Kissling discussed a unique strategy of comparing the speech of the characters over and against the narrator’s account, as a way of finding the main point of a given story. Christopher J.H. Wright’s chapter on preaching the Law was also superb. He stressed the connection Law has with grace as seen in the historical setting given in the Pentateuch. He also unpacked the lesser-known missiological aspects of the Law: namely, Israel living out God’s Law as a testimony to the nations, and the application this has to the Church today.

Federico Villanueva’s chapter on Lament was particularly insightful as he writes from the standpoint of a non-Westerner (he ministers in Manila). Tremper Longman’s chapter on wisdom literature, particularly his discussion of Ecclesiastes and Job, was also very helpful in finding ways to grasp the main point of these books and how best to apply it to today’s Christians. Similarly, Grenville Kent’s discussion on the Song of Solomon was also very helpful. Even though he steers clear of a direct allegorical interpretation, he finds value in analogy and metaphor. His discussion of where God makes an appearance in the Song, and why, is worth quoting here:

So if Yahweh had appeared directly in the Song, the culture may well have misunderstood him as condoning fertility religion or even as just another fertility god. The Song clearly separates worship and sex. it is ‘a non-mythological, non-cultic, non-idolatrous, outright, open celebration of God-given sexual love’. (pg. 130, quote from John G. Snaith The Song of Songs (Eerdmans, 1993), pg. 5.)

The chapter on Isaiah, by H.G.M. Williamson did a great job stressing the literary unity of Isaiah. He traced the theme of righteousness and justice showing how such wide themes inform the specific context of any given passage in the book. Daniel Block challenges us to preach Ezekiel, and offers several helpful charts and analyses of the book and its central message. Alison Lo gave a wonderful, yet brief treatment of the Minor Prophets. She excelled at relating the context and themes of those books to today’s world and its problems. She also discussed the interrelation of the books as a wider whole (the “book of the twelve”), and provided a fascinating outline of Zephaniah.

Gordon Wenham’s discussion of various “difficult texts” in the Old Testament was in the whole, masterful. Some may disagree with his stance on Gen. 1 — explaining the wider context of the ideas about the world of the time (and thus not getting into a discussion of whether the six days are literal 24 hour days), but his comments on the imprecatory psalms, the “eye for an eye” law, apparent divine-sanctioned genocides, and OT slavery are both helpful and wise. R.W.L. Moberly’s chapter on preaching Christ from the Old Testament cites a lot of material that applies to this concern. He stresses that the wider context of the Old Testament includes the canonical grouping of the books and their use by the Church. He sees a second narrative (the NT) interpreting the original narrative in a sense similar to a detective story where at the end, all the initial elements of the plot make perfect sense. He also allows for imagination to impact interpretation and helpfully walks through some examples in how to think through this in a practical manner.

The chapters in the book are not all of equal value. The praise poetry, and apocalyptic literature sections were not as helpful to me. Some of the contributors may not be as immediately accessible as others. But the beauty of this book is how it offers a manual for the preacher who is choosing an OT text to preach. This book won’t be the only resource consulted, but it offers a sensible approach and several helpful points for encountering just about any text in the Old Testament. Throughout, it stresses a literary and canonical approach that focuses on the Old Testament we have, not imagined historical reconstructions. This ensures the book’s usefulness by people of a variety of particular persuasions within evangelicalism.

I trust tools such as Reclaiming the Old Testament for Christian Preaching, will encourage many pastors to pick an OT book for their next sermon series. This book will prove useful for any Bible student, and I highly recommend it. May the beauty of the Old Testament captivate the hearts and minds of more teachers and preachers, and be preached with power to the congregations that God has entrusted to their care.

Disclaimer: This book was provided by Inter-Varsity Press for review. I was under no obligation to offer a favorable review.

Pick up a copy of this book at Amazon.com or through IVP direct.

Quotes to Note 25: Dorothy Sayers on the Necessity of Fundamental Christian Doctrine

~ Bob Hayton ~ 4 Comments

I recently finished reading through Collected Writings on Scripture by D.A. Carson (compiled by Andrew Naselli; Crossway, 2010). The book includes not a few technical essays where Carson defends orthodox Christian doctrine on Scripture from innovative theological liberalism. In the conclusion to his essay, “Unity and Diversity in the New Testament: The Possibility of Systematic Theology”, Carson shares a lengthy quote from Dorothy Sayers that is pertinent to his defenses of orthodox doctrine. I intend to share the quote by Sayers here, as well as some of Carson’s remarks which follow it.

“The one thing I am here to say to you is this: that it is worse than useless for Christians to talk about the importance of Christian morality, unless they are prepared to take their stand upon the fundamentals of Christian theology. It is a lie to say that dogma does not matter; it matters enormously. It is fatal to let people suppose that Christianity is only a mode of feeling; it is virtually necessary to insist that it is first and foremost a rational explanation of the universe. It is hopeless to offer Christianity as a vaguely idealistic aspiration of a simple and consoling kind; it is, on the contrary, a hard, tough, exacting, and complex doctrine, steeped in a drastic and uncompromising realism. And it is fatal to imagine that everybody knows quite well what Christianity is and needs only a little encouragement to practice it. The brutal fact is that in this Christian country not one person in a hundred has the faintest notion about what the church teaches about God or man or society or the person of Jesus Christ.” (emphasis mine, quote from Dorothy L. Sayers, “Creed or Chaos?” in The Necessity of Systematic Theology, ed. Davis, 15-32)

So writes Dorothy Sayers, and I think she is basically right. This chapter has dealt with technical articles and critical judgments, but in the final analysis what is at stake is not some purely academic dispute, but what we preach. (D.A. Carson, Collected Writings on Scripture, pg. 148-149)

The wider American church needs to hear Sayers (and Carson) on this point. It does matter what you believe. The fundamentals of the faith are extremely important. All the warm-hearted feelings and emotion in the world, all the Christian morality and love for mankind, none of this means a hill of beans without clinging to the rock of Christian doctrine which has been revealed to us in Scripture.

In the next few weeks I’ll be sharing another quote or two from Carson’s work and then reviewing the book. I plan on giving away a copy too, so stay tuned!