Texts:
Exodus 3 and 4
Matthew 19
Moses gets to talk to God, or has to talk to God. I can't decide. As many questions as I think I'd like to ask God someday, I wonder how I'd feel in the actual moment. Moses says, "really, God? You think I'm the best person you could send to Pharaoh?" (3:11, loosely paraphrased) And "who should I say sent me? What's your name?" (Yet another reason I'm not Moses--I wouldn't have the courage to ask God for God's name.)
4:24 In this odd little scene, God catches up to Moses and is going to kill him. Your guess is as good as mine, but it seems that Moses does not seem to be practicing what he preaches, and God is ready to kill him for it. If Moses' son wasn't circumcised, then he wasn't obeying the covenant. God doesn't kill him once his wife does an emergency circumcision, so they seem to be related. Oddly, wouldn't God kill him before and not after he's assigned him to go to Pharaoh?
Matthew:
For all that Jesus does not say about social behaviors, he is pretty clear in this passage that he's not in favor of divorce. He also says, “Not everyone can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it is given." Do you think that provides a loop hole?
What do we do with texts like this? Are there other texts you would put in conversation with this text?
Also, the young man who asks Jesus what to do is given a list of commandments. What do you make of his comment, "I have kept all these." Do you think anyone could keep all of the commandments all of the time? I can usually keep most of them through breakfast.
John Calvin reads his Bible too.
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- Marci Glass
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I think Moses probably got sick on his travels and interpreted it as God trying to kill him for not circumcising his son. Perhaps because of his Egyptian upbringing?
ReplyDeleteMatthew 19:12 at least in my translation, seems to be a vague reference to homosexuality and saying the laws of marriage don't apply?
I'd never noticed that Rob. I wonder what a "eunuch from birth" means...
ReplyDeleteI'll look into that a little more.
Okay, I went to a higher source (one of my New Testament professors, Beth Johnson) and here's what she said:
ReplyDelete"A "eunuch from birth" is probably a man incapable of, or not inclined to, have sex. It could refer to impotence or malformed or ambiguous genitals. The phrase "made themselves eunuchs" sounds like typical ancient hyperbole, a shocking way to describe someone who is celibate, so it may also be that the "from birth" phrase is a metaphor. On the other hand, those who are "made eunuchs by others" are rather emphatically not metaphorical--it was a not uncommon fate for slaves. You remember the story about the church father Origen who took this verse literally and castrated himself?
The entire passage in its context is disturbing enough, what with Jesus' prohibiting divorce and remarriage ("except for immorality" doesn't mean "except for adultery," as modern protestants have thought, it means "except for incestuous marriage" as Leviticus 18 defines it)."
It is likely not about being gay, however. Before the 19th century, it was assumed that everyone was "straight" and any "non-straight" behavior was deviant. They wouldn't have been thinking of committed homosexual relationships or any 21st century understanding of sexuality.