Extra Credit Podcast

Jesus and the God of the Old Testament

The Joseph Story Ep. 7. In lieu of a write-up of the class I’ll leave you with a couple of quotations. The first, from St. Maximus the Confessor, which framed our discussion. The second, from Chris Green’s Sanctifying Interpretation, which was the primary source for the entire class. St. Maximus the Confessor: “In consequence, it is necessary for him who seeks God piously not to latch on to a phrase, lest, instead of God, he unknowingly receive things about God; that is, because he is dangerously devoted to the words of Scripture instead of to the Word, the Word flees the mind which thought it had taken hold of the bodiless Word by his garments, indeed, much like the Egyptian woman who did not take hold of Joseph, but of his clothes instead…” Chris Green: “What are we to do with these [hard] passages? … One [approach] which is essentially Patristic, and which I think also fits with the best of Pentecostal interpretations. It insists that there is a spiritual sense to every text, and that we must press past the literal sense, ‘the letter,’ to grasp or be grasped by ‘the spirit.’ Read this way, the violence in the OT actually means something besides what it seems to mean at the literal level. Origen, for example, argues that the calls for Israel to wipe out the people of the land as described in Joshua are a parabolic way of calling for the churches to put to death their sinful appetites. In his own words, ‘a kingdom of sin was in every one of us before we believed. But afterwards, Jesus came and struck down all the kings who possessed kingdoms of sin in us, and he ordered us to destroy all those kings and to leave none of them.’ And he concludes: ‘Unless [Israel’s] physical wars bore the figure of spiritual wars, I do not think the books of Jewish history would ever have been handed down by the apostles to the disciples of Christ, who came to teach peace, so that they could be read in the churches’ (Origen, Homilies on Joshua 15). “These passages] do, of course, put us as readers in a difficult place…The good news is that God means to put us in that difficult place. “God uses the Scripture to overthrow our false conceptions of God. Paul was deeply committed to the Scriptures before he encountered Jesus on the road outside Damascus. But after that encounter, he was differently and more faithfully biblical, because he saw God differently—in the face of the resurrected crucified Jesus of Nazareth. “For most of us…the most difficult are the ‘texts of terror’ that characterize God as vindictive, bloodthristly, malevolent. The God we think we find in the OT is difficult to stomach, never mind adore. What are we to do in the face of these difficulties? We cannot ignore them, or dismiss them by using Jesus’ ethic as a trump card, playing the NT off against the OT. And we cannot explain these difficulties away by saying the OT texts merely witness to an earlier phase of God’s self-revelation and the moral development of God’s people. According to Jesus’ own teaching, how we read the OT is itself God’s judgment of us. The OT is nothing other than Jesus’ testimony, the Spirit’s prophecy (Rev. 19:10); therefore, to refuse Moses’ witness is to turn away from Christ. But to receive that testimony faithfully is to be indwelt by the Word that glorifies us with God’s own glory (Jn 5:36-47)… That is well and good, you might say, but how should it determine our reading of horrifying texts? We must begin, I believe, with a clarification, distinguishing the God who inspires and interprets the OT texts from the one described in the texts themselves. The inspiring, interpreting God is of course the Triune God revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Nazarene. But the narrated God, the God who is a character in the biblical stories God has inspired, is sometimes an entirely or almost entirely false image of the true God. In the Scriptures, God humbly takes on the guise of a character, one character among others—sometimes even a bad, or at least conflicted, one. As Rowan Williams argues, one way of understanding Scripture is as ‘a parable or a whole series of parables’ in which God says of himself: ‘This is how people heard me, saw me, responded to me; this is the gift I gave them; this is the response they made,’ requiring us to respond in kind (Williams, Being Christian, p. 28). I would say it just a bit differently than Williams does. In the ‘parables’ of the OT, God is not reporting to us how people understood and misunderstood his ways then and there. Instead, God is is here and now putting us to the test by describing himself at least somewhat misleadingly. ‘Everything written long ago was written to teach us’ (Rom. 15:4)… “If what I have just been describing seems too strange to believe, take a moment to consider the way Jesus taught and how people responded to his teaching, The Evangelists show us that he spoke mostly in parables, riddles, and symbolic acts, and read the Scriptures subversively and troubled traditional practices. In response, some of his contemporaries think they have understood him when they in fact have not. Others, like the rich young ruler (Mt. 19.16-22), understand him just well enough to be enraged or saddened by what he has said. A few are intrigued enough to follow him in spite of their lack of understanding. Most are left in complete bafflement. To make matters stranger, Jesus tells us that he intended such responses: ‘I speak in parables, so that ‘looking they may not perceive, and listening they may not understand’ (Lk. 8:10). Why would he do that? Rickie Moore offers what I take to be the pathbreaking insight: ‘Jesus told parables for one reason: in order to ‘throw’ people. Jesus threw people for one reason: in order that they might be broken. And Jesus became the wildest parable of all when He became broken. Everybody was thrown by that.’ Here, then, is the critical point. The same Jesus whom we find teaching in the Gospels is the Word who speaks in Scripture. And his pedagogy remains the same. He continues to tell parables, and for the same reason. He means to throw us, too.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cameroncombs.substack.com [https://cameroncombs.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

All Israel Will Be Saved

The Joseph Story Ep. 6. Jewish scholar Yair Zakovitch says that the book of Genesis is the Table of Contents for the Bible. Everything is contained Genesis in embryonic form, it is the genetic code of the Bible. The more I study Genesis the more I’m convinced he’s right. I don’t think it’s much of an exaggeration to say that most every point Paul makes in his letters can be made on the basis of texts from Genesis. Perhaps Paul’s most important point is taken from a line in the Joseph story. In Romans 9–11 Paul is making an intricate argument about God’s faithfulness to his people Israel, despite their unfaithfulness, and he’s trying to show that God’s including the gentiles in the new covenant is consistent with God’s original promises to Israel. Far from nullifying God’s promises to Israel, it is actually by bringing the gentiles into the covenant that God is keeping his promises to Israel. And at the climax of this argument in Romans 11 Paul gives a famous–or maybe infamous–line: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the fullness of the nations has come in, and in this way all Israel will be saved. (Rom 11:25-26) Many commentators on the book of Romans throughout the centuries have been baffled by what Paul might mean by this. What does it mean that all Israel will be saved? Who does “Israel” refer to? What makes this more difficult to answer is that it is a fact of history that there are a multitude of names to refer to the people from this region: Jew, Israelite, Hebrew, Israeli, etc. Do those all mean the same thing? New Testament scholar Jason Staples has made the definitive case that the answer to this is no. Although for the better part of the last two centuries we have treated the main biblical terms “Jew” and “Israelite” as interchangeable, they are not used that way in Scripture (or ancient historical texts like Josephus). To what does the name Israel refer? First, it refers to the patriarch Jacob after God changed his name to Israel. Second, it is applied to the children of Israel/Jacob. Therefore, it comes to refer to the twelve-tribe totality of “Israel.” But something complicating happens in the history of this people. They split in two. The North secedes from the southern kingdom. The North (which was comprised of ten tribes) retained the name Israel, while the South (comprised of Judah, Benjamin, and Levi) took the name of its most prominent tribe Judah. After the split between the two kingdoms, those from the North were called Israelites while those from the South began to be referred to as Jews after the tribe of Judah (Yehudim in Hebrew and Ioudaioi in Greek). This, of course, means that after the split the terms “Jew” and “Israelite” are not interchangeable names for the same group of people, but rather, as Staples has shown, the term Jew is a subset of Israel. In other words, all Jews are Israelites, but not all Israelites are Jews. The term Israel can refer to the twelve-tribe totality but it can also more specifically refer to the northern kingdom (depending on the book of the Bible you are reading and the context of the passage). Think of it this way: “Kansan” is a subset of “American.” All Kansans are Americans but not all Americans are Kansans. And yet, as Staples has pointed out, “Countless scholars [today] regularly alternate between these terms for stylistic reasons.” Simply put, we’ve gotten very confused over a pretty simple, but important fact. If we fast forward in the story to 722 BC we find another complicating factor. The northern kingdom of Israel was conquered and carried into exile by the Assyrians. The ten northern tribes were never seen again. All that remained were the southern tribes—or, those that were called Jews from Judah—which included people from the tribes Judah, Benjamin, and Levi. To complicate it once again, this means that while all Benjaminites are Jews, not all Jews are Benjaminites. So, we can see that the question of who “all Israel” refers to In Romans 11 is not as straightforward as we might imagine. By “all Israel” Paul almost certainly does not simply mean “all Jews” because there are some Israelites who are not Jews. For example, the Samaritans of Paul’s day did not claim to be Jews but descendants of the northern tribes of Joseph (Ephraim and Manasseh). The Samaritans’ claim was disputed, but the disputation was never over whether they were Jews but whether they were Israelites. In other words, Samaritans are Israelites but not Jews. The key to answering the question of who Paul means by “all Israel” comes in the other odd phrase he uses in the same sentence. And this line is taken directly from the Joseph story. Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the fullness of the nations has come in, and in this way all Israel will be saved. (Rom 11:25-26 The only other place that this odd phrase appears in Scripture is in Genesis at the end of the Joseph story. Jacob/Israel is an old man and about to die, so Joseph brings his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, to Jacob so that he can bless them. In a surprising twist, Jacob gives the firstborn rights to the younger son Ephraim. Jacob says that Ephraim’s seed will become “the fullness of the nations.” Ephraim, of course, becomes the prominent tribe from the northern kingdom. The kings from the North come from the tribe of Ephraim. This means that when the northern tribes are carried away by the Assyrians it is “Ephraim” who is, as Leviticus 26:33 puts it, “scattered among the nations.” The consistent promise of the prophets is that God will act to restore all Israel—meaning the twelve-tribe totality. Which means he will have to regather the northern Israelites (usually referred to as “the house of Israel” or “the house of Ephraim/Joseph”) who have been scattered among the nations. Here’s just one example from Zechariah: “I will strengthen the house of Judah, and I will save the house of Joseph, and will bring them back because I have compassion on them. They will be as though I had not rejected them for I am the Lord their God and I will answer them. Ephraim will be like a mighty man…” (Zech 10:6–7) What’s more stunning for many Christians today is that all the new covenant promises found in Jeremiah and Ezekiel where God promises to put his Spirit in his people and give them a new tender heart of flesh are made exclusively to Israel. The dry bones in the valley in Ezekiel’s vision are the dry bones of the house of northern Israel—those tribes that have been long gone for centuries. So, why do gentile Christians read these passages and assume they are promises made to them? Now we are starting to feel why Paul received so much pushback. Paul thinks that God has acted in one elegant, brilliant move to fulfill both Israel’s original calling to be a light to the nations and his promise that he would restore all Israel. Paul, along with the other apostles, recognized that God’s Spirit was being poured out not only on Jews but on gentiles as well. Gentiles were receiving new, tender hearts of flesh with the Torah written on them. God was keeping his promise to Israel but in a completely surprising way. Jews of Paul’s day knew the promise of the prophets was that God would regather his scattered people from among the nations. But they didn’t know how this would happen since the northern tribes had all dissolved. They had inter-married wherever they were taken into exile, so after more than eight centuries there was no trace of them left. They had, for all intents and purposes, become gentiles. Then it must’ve hit Paul. God promised to resurrect the lost tribes of Israel, but he was doing it by bringing in the gentiles/nations because that’s where the northern tribes had been scattered. This is why the resurrected Jesus commissions his disciples in Acts 1:8 to take the good news to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. God is restoring Israel—resurrecting the lost northern tribes—by bringing in the nations into which they assimilated. So “all Israel” looks something like the chart below—where “exiled Israelites” or “Ephraim’s seed”—have become “the fullness of the nations.” Remember Paul says, “Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the fullness of the nations has come in, and in this way all Israel will be saved.” This is how God is saving “all Israel”—by bringing in the nations. In class we connected this back to the Joseph story. Here you can read through a substack post from Jason Staples himself, responding to a question I put to him a couple months back on Jesus, Judah, and the Joseph story. (I especially like the line where he says, “Combs is, of course, exactly right.”) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cameroncombs.substack.com [https://cameroncombs.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Judah the Lion-King

The Joseph Story Ep. 5 The Roaring Lion At the end of the Joseph story the elderly patriarch Jacob gathers his sons around him to deliver last words to each of them. It is Judah (along with Joseph) that receives the most positive (and lengthiest) words. This helps us to pay closer attention to the important role that Judah plays in the Joseph narrative. He is one of the heroes of the story. Jacob’s blessing of Judah in Gen. 49 gives us insight into Judah’s role: 8 Judah, you, shall your brothers shall praise you; your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies; your father’s sons shall bow down before you. 9 Judah is a lion’s whelp [cub]; from the prey, my son, you have risen up. He crouches down, he stretches out like a lion, like the king of beasts—who dares arouse him? All of this carries distinctly Davidic overtones because David is from the tribe of Judah. This also means that these words carry messianic overtones. From the beginning Christians have read these words addressed to Judah as being in some mysterious way about Jesus of Nazareth—the Lion of the tribe of Judah. Jacob’s words to Judah are primarily about his military prowess. This, again, is obviously an homage to David. But within the Genesis narrative itself Judah is not a military warrior. So, what exactly is it that makes Judah a lion? In at least one reading of the story it is his words. He delivers two of the key speeches in the story (one to Jacob and one to Joseph) that both have the effect of reconciling and saving the family. As Avivah Zornberg points out, it is the force of Judah’s words that show the “kingly power” he brings to bear. So—to play with the image a little—what makes Judah a lion is his roar, his word. The speech Judah delivers to Joseph in Egypt is, “one of the most remarkable speeches in all the Bible.” In that speech, Judah does not know that he is speaking to Joseph. Judah thinks Joseph is an Egyptian ruler who is about to take his youngest brother, Benjamin, as a slave. So, Judah “went up to” Joseph to make his plea. Judah’s speech breaks through Joseph’s disguise. Joseph begins to weep. His heart is opened. He orders all of his Egyptian servants out of the room and reveals his true identity to the brothers: “I am Joseph.” One ancient rabbinic Midrash beautifully summarizes the kingly power of Judah’s speech as a rope that can reach down to the deep well of Joseph’s heart: “Then Judah went up to him”: “The designs in a man’s mind are deep waters, but a man of understanding can draw them out” [Proverbs 20:5]. “The designs in a man’s mind are deep waters” refers to Joseph. But as much as Joseph was wise, Judah came and defeated him, as it is said, ‘Then Judah went up to him.’ What does this resemble? A deep pit into which no one could climb down. Then a clever person came and brought a long rope that reached down to the water so he could draw from it. So was Joseph deep, and Judah came to draw from him. Judah’s speech is the rope that draws the deep waters up from Joseph. Judah doesn’t know this Egyptian lord, but he can see that as he is speaking something is stirring deep within him. Judah realizes there is water down deep in the well of this man’s heart and it is cool and clean water. It is drinkable water. The problem is no one can reach it. Judah’s speech is the rope that brings forth the deep waters from Joseph’s heart. And this is what makes him fit to be the father of kings, the father of David, the father of Jesus. Judah’s power is the power the psalms refer to as “deep calling out to deep.” It is the lion’s roar which shakes everything false leaving behind only what is firm and true. The Lion of the Tribe of Judah: A Theology of Preaching? The book of Revelation makes the connection of Judah the lion to Jesus explicit: Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep. See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.” Then I saw between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered.” (Revelation 5:5–6) What makes Jesus the lion of the tribe of Judah? According to John’s vision he is the lion of Judah as a slain lamb. Like Judah, Jesus’ words pierce through to peoples’ hearts and reach the tender place—the place where there is cool, clear, drinkable water. Isn’t this what happens over and over again in the gospels? When people gather around Jesus we are told that he knows what is in every person’s heart. He discerns the depths. And he speaks to peoples’ depths from his own depths. Jesus never speaks superficially or shallowly from his throat but only ever from his heart. This is at least part of the reason why no one understands Jesus when he speaks in the gospels. Dietrich Bonhoeffer notes that when Jesus converses with the Pharisees, “he seems to answer a completely different question from the one he was asked. He seems to speak past the question, but in this very act he completely addresses the questioner.” Jesus’ word pierces to the division of soul and spirit, joint and marrow. When Jacob delivers his last words to Judah he says, “Judah is a lion’s cub; from the prey, my son, you have risen up.” The great medieval Rabbi Rashi, in a typical midrashic (mis)reading, says that “the prey” that Jacob is referring to is Joseph. The word for prey is teref which rhymes with Jacob’s words that Joseph has been torn to pieces (tarof toraf Yosef). Judah was the wild animal that tore Joseph to pieces. But Rashi makes one other surprising move. When Jacob says, “From prey, my son, you have risen up” Rashi says that by “my son” Jacob is not speaking about Judah but referring to Joseph. In other words, Jacob is saying to Judah, “from the prey, my son Joseph, you have risen up.” It is by Judah’s speech that Joseph is metaphorically brought back to life. This is precisely what the words of Jesus do. Standing at the grave of his friend Lazarus Jesus weeps. He instructs them to roll away the stone from the grave. Then, Luke tells us, “he cried out in a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’” The Greek word used for “cried out” can be translated as “screamed.” This is the roaring Lion of Judah whose speech raises the dead. We could begin to piece together a whole theology of preaching from this story of Judah’s roar. When the preacher preaches he or she is not offering their opinion or advice. The preacher is delivering the Word of God. Jesus himself promises to speak through the humble human words of the preacher. The Lion of the tribe of Judah roars in our preaching. Just as milk does not come from the mother, says St. Augustine, the Word of God does not come from the preacher. But, of course, preaching hardly ever appears to be raising the dead. Most sermons do not sound like a “lion’s roar.” But this is the folly of preaching. Yes, the Lion roars when his word is preached, but usually (if not always) it sounds like a whimper. The Apostle Paul dealt with this. His preaching was foolishness and presented itself as weakness. Paul’s sermons did not sound like a lion’s roar, but a tender, weak, slain lamb’s bleating. This is the promise in the foolishness of preaching. The voice of the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the resurrected one, Jesus Christ, speaks to us today by his Spirit when the Word is preached. He draws up the clean, cold water out of the depths of our hearts. Bringing us back to life with his own life. But his roar sounds like a bleat. As Karl Barth said, when the word is preached “[Christ] speaks for Himself…It is not He that needs proclamation but proclamation that needs Him. He…makes it possible.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cameroncombs.substack.com [https://cameroncombs.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

The (Hellish) Judgment of God

The Joseph Story Ep. 4 This week we take a close look at Joseph’s scheme (dissembling) that he puts his brothers through. The scheme serves the purpose of forcing the brothers to experience the suffering they caused Joseph in an “eye-for-an-eye” type justice. But it also forces them to relive their original crime, which unearths their feelings of guilt. In other words, Joseph scheme causes his brothers to come to an intimate knowledge of the truth of what they did to him, but then it also opens up the possibility for forgiveness, reconciliation, and even communion. Joseph’s Scheme In Genesis 42 the brothers are forced to go down to Egypt to buy grain because of the famine. When they arrive Joseph immediately recognizes them, but they do not recognize him. After asking them where they are from, Joseph accuses them of being spies who have come to see the “nakedness” of the land. He then throws them into prison. This is an obvious doubling and reversal of what the brothers did to Joseph at the beginning of the story. Joseph’s scheme or plot echoes the brothers murderous conspiring—an eye for an eye. The brothers threw Joseph down into a pit. That pit led to Joseph being brought down to Egypt where he eventually is thrown into prison, which he associates with being in the pit. Now, the brothers are in the same place they put Joseph. And, what’s more, they have been thrown into prison after being falsely accused of a crime (with sexual overtones: i.e. “nakedness” in Scripture consistently refers to sexual misconduct). This is precisely what happened to Joseph in Potiphar’s house. He was thrown into prison after being falsely accused of sexual misconduct with Potiphar’s wife. The brothers are figuratively suffering an eye-for-an-eye punishment for what they did to Joseph. But this initiates another doubling in the story. Joseph’s next move causes the brothers to relive their original crime. Joseph says that in order for the brothers to prove they are not spies they must travel back to Canaan and bring their youngest brother Benjamin back with them. This will show him that they were telling the truth about who they are. But, of course, this is causing the brothers to relive the sins of their past: They must now bring the other son of Rachel down to Egypt, just as they did with Joseph. The narrative gives many signs of the doubling of the story, but this is the most striking: When they set off to travel back to Egypt with Benjamin we are told that they carry with them gifts of balm, honey, gum, myrrh, pistachio nuts, and almonds (Gen. 43:11). These are the very goods that Ishmaelite traders had with them when they took Joseph down to Egypt twenty years earlier (Gen. 37:25). Finally, Joseph’s plot has one last test in it. Not only are the brothers forced to experience Joseph’s suffering and relive their past sins, they are also given an opportunity to perpetrate a new crime. Joseph has his silver goblet hidden in Benjamin’s sack of grain. When it is discovered Joseph says that Benjamin must become his slave in Egypt. Will the brothers do to Benjamin what they did to Joseph all those years earlier? Will they try to be rid of another favored son? God’s (Hellish) Judgment Joseph’s scheme, has put the brothers through an eye-for-an-eye judgment. Yet, there is an obvious way that we cannot read this. Jesus says in Matt. 5:38-39 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.” Both Exodus and Leviticus spell out laws like this: * Exodus 21:23-25 But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise. * Leviticus 24:19-20 Anyone who injures their neighbor is to be injured in the same manner: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. The one who has inflicted the injury must suffer the same injury. Jesus is not overruling the laws given in the Torah, rather he is spelling out the spirit of these laws. So, Joseph’s scheme cannot be read as a how-to manual for getting even with your family. In Matthew 5 Jesus is not saying that Christians should let people take advantage of them, rather the point is that Christians must trust God to be the one to make things right. Paul says in Romans 12 that we are not to repay anyone evil for evil. Live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, but leave room for God’s wrath for it is written: “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” God is the only one who can make eye-for-an-eye judgments. But we must remember that God’s ways are not our ways. The result of Joseph’s scheme is the beginning of a process of reconciliation between brothers. Can we imagine that God’s eye-for-an-eye judgments might be up to the same thing? It hardly needs to be pointed out that justice is not served simply by repaying evil for evil. If you gouge my eye out in a fight, it does not actually repair or heal me to then have your eye gouged out. So, what’s the wisdom in eye-for-an-eye justice? It is not merely that it is punitive or retributive justice—which is not really justice at all. The glimmer of truth in this kind of justice is that it can bring some of the truth of what you have done to me to bear on you so that you reckon with the harm you’ve inflicted. So, why is the Joseph story given to us? Perhaps to gain an insight, a foretaste into how God’s judgment might work. George MacDonald captures the true spirit of God’s justice: “Annihilation itself is no death to evil. Only good where evil was, is evil dead. An evil thing must live with its evil until it chooses to be good. That alone is the slaying of evil.” Simply annihilating evil does not overcome it. Annihilation is an evil act. So to annihilate evil is to overcome evil with evil. Evil is victorious in that case. God is much better than that. He does not repay evil for evil. God overcomes evil by replacing it with his goodness. The true overcoming of evil is only with the good. This story bears a faint witness to this truth. By Joseph’s scheme the brothers live with their evil long enough that they finally choose to do good. They—figuratively—replace the evil they did to Joseph with what they do for Benjamin. This is the slaying of evil. I think that can even help us envision how God’s judgment might work. Of course I’m not claiming that this is the method by which God will put everything right, but it does help free up our imaginations to envision how a perfectly good God might bring his restorative justice to bear on the evils that have taken place in his world. Hebrews says that it is appointed unto man once to die and then comes judgment. Perhaps Joseph’s scheme gives us a foretaste of what God’s (hellish) judgment might be like. In George MacDonald’s fairytale Lilith (a story about the queen of hell!), people who have died are given the opportunity to confront what they’ve done in their lives and come to acknowledge the truth of their sins and the evils they’ve done to others. It is judgment. In fact, it’s hell. It’s terrifying. But the point is that this is a healing and restoring judgment. It is surgery. Each person has to come to see their own wrongs for themselves. They have to lay down on the operating table. This is where C.S. Lewis got his famous idea of hell: That the doors of hell are locked for the inside. This is Lewis’s idea of hell, too. The gates of hell are locked from the inside. Lewis has made a very appealing case that God does not send people to hell, but rather people choose hell for themselves. The doors are locked, but they are locked from the inside. While Lewis got his take on hell from MacDonald, they ultimately disagree. Both Lewis and MacDonald agree that God’s desire is that none should perish. Where they disagree is not in God’s desire but in God’s capacity. Lewis believed that some people will never come around. Even if hell is a never-ending repeating cycle of eye-for-an-eye justice in which sinners are being shown the truth of their sins and given the opportunity to make right what was wrong, Lewis believed that some people will choose to stay locked in that loop. As Lewis himself says, in the end love loses. God does not get what he wants. What God desire he cannot bring about because many human beings will not cooperate with what God wants. MacDonald had issues with that. For one, it makes it so that evil is actually undefeatable. It makes evil out to be an equal opposite power to God that in the end God cannot do anything about. But, of course, we have many passages in Scripture that seem to suggest that God will annihilate all evil rather than purge it. Whether you go with Lewis or MacDonald on the final issue, I think the Joseph story can at least bear a faint witness to how ultimately good the (even hellish) justice of God really is. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cameroncombs.substack.com [https://cameroncombs.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Trauma and Re-membering the Dismembered

The Joseph Story Ep. 3 A preliminary remark: One of the gifts of Scripture is that its stories allow us to process our deep-seated personal pain in a safe way. I can talk about my own pain a lot easier by talking about Joseph’s pain. The topic of trauma is a sensitive one, but perhaps the Joseph narrative can give us enough distance from our own circumstances—even for a moment—to think about the nature of trauma, God’s promises in the midst of trauma, and especially to begin to pray. Family Trauma Old Testament scholar James Ackerman points out that the main theme of the Joseph story is the providential care of the family of Israel through Joseph’s career. But, he says, a very strong and related sub-theme is the reconciliation of family. We’ve been referring to this theme as “family wounds [https://cameroncombs.substack.com/p/family-wounds].” The wounds in the Joseph story are deep. Joseph’s father, Jacob, loves him more than any of his brothers. This not only creates arrogance in Joseph, but it also has the unintended consequence of cutting him off from his brothers. His brothers hate him for this and it leads to their plot to “cast him into the pit” and be rid of him for good. Avivah Zornberg observes that this is a traumatic experience for Joseph—one that will mark him the rest of his life. In other words, family trauma and the healing of that trauma is right at the heart of the story of Joseph. Dismembered Zornberg points out that the themes of remembering and forgetting play a crucial role in the entire drama. Or as she has it: “Re-membering the Dismembered.” Joseph himself is dismembered by his brothers. They rip the coat of many colors from him, dip it in goat’s blood, send it to their father, and ask him to identify it: “Is this not Joseph’s coat we found?” Jacob cries out: “It is my son’s robe! A wild animal has devoured him; Joseph has surely been torn to pieces” (Gen. 37:33). In Hebrew that last line is only three eerily rhyming words: Tarof toraf Yosef. Joseph is torn apart. Jacob is wrong, but he’s also right. The brothers were the wild animals that “flayed” and “dismembered” Joseph so that he would not be a threat to them ever again. They were Cain and he was Abel. The rest of the story is about re-membering what was dismembered. Putting the broken, fragmented pieces of Joseph (and his brothers) back together through the act of remembering. Re-membered Zornberg asks: What happened at the pit that day? It seems straightforward. We tell the story to children and we reprise Genesis 37. But is it so simple? Perhaps not. At the beginning of Genesis 37 the 10 brothers decide all together to kill Joseph. They are of one mind on the issue. But Reuben speaks up. He’s the oldest. Reuben saves Joseph by saying, “Let us not commit murder.” Zornberg says that in Hebrew it’s the coldest, most legal way of stating the matter. In other words he is saying, “Let us not commit the crime of murder.” His plea is not filled with compassion for Joseph’s sake. It’s not an appeal for Joseph’s life but an appeal that they not become guilty of the crime of murder. But the narrator says that Reuben said this so that he might rescue him from the pit later. Twenty-two years pass. Joseph has been a slave in Potiphar’s house, accused of attempting to rape Potiphar’s wife, and thrown into prison (the pit, again!). But he rises out of prison to the right hand of Pharaoh. He is the most powerful person in Egypt. The famine hits the land and the brothers journey to Egypt to find grain. In Gen. 42 the brothers are all standing together again but the circumstances have been completely reversed. Joseph knows who they are but they do not recognize him. He accuses them of being spies that have come to check out the land. He begins his masquerade—pulling them this way and then that way. He says that in order from them to prove they are not spies they must go get their youngest brother, Benjamin, and bring him back to Egypt. While they do this he will keep one of the other brothers in prison. It is at this moment that we get the first confession of what they had done to Joseph twenty-two years earlier. As far as we know, they have never once spoken about it with each other until this moment. This is the first re-membering of what they dismembered. What do they remember? They re-member their cruelty. Not just the fact that they are guilty of a crime, but that they were overly cruel in a completely callous way. They say: “Alas, we are paying the penalty for what we did to our brother; we watched him in the anguish of his being when he begged us for his life and we did not hear it. That is why this anguish has come upon us.” (Gen. 42:21) Joseph was crying for his life but they didn’t hear it. It did not affect them in the moment. Immediately Reuben starts justifying himself: “Then Reuben answered them, “Did I not tell you not to sin against the child? But you would not hear it.” (Gen. 42:22) But in Genesis 37 he didn’t say anything like that. Then it was a cold statement that did not show any compassion towards Joseph: “Do not commit the crime of murder.” But now he remembers himself as being compassionate for Joseph. He remembers telling them: “Do not sin against the child!” But, he says, you would not hear it. So, what really happened by the pit? Zornberg then asks: Is Reuben editing the past to make himself look better? Is he trying to justify his own cruel actions? It’s possible. Memories often do work in the vein of wish-fulfillment. But, Zornberg observes, we do know that it was in his heart to save the child in some way—the text told us he said that calloused thing in order to save him. The 12th century Rabbi Maimonides says that Reuben did actually say, “Do not sin against the child,” but the brothers wouldn’t hear it. That’s why he shifted to talking about not committing the crime of murder. Genesis 37 does not record it because they did not hear it. It was as if he did not say that at all. This seems odd until we remember this little detail: “You would not hear it.” There was something else the brothers would not hear on that day. Did Joseph cry out from the pit? In Genesis 37 we are not told anything about Joseph crying out, begging for his life. We are only told that the brothers went and celebrated with a meal while Joseph was stuck in the pit. But now, twenty-two years later, we are finding out that he did cry. The brothers re-member. But before this moment it was as if it didn’t really happen. By not hearing Joseph’s cries they dismembered him. They tore him apart. Broke him into pieces. Zornberg then observes that it is only when someone hears you, acknowledges you, re-members the truth of what has happened to you, that the wound—the trauma—can start to heal. Joseph has been living a dismembered, broken life ever since that day at the pit. The only way for something that’s been dismembered to be healed is for it to be re-membered. When Joseph overhears them telling the story of the pit and all that they did to him, he is beginning to be re-membered. They did hear him cry. Reuben did see him as the little child that he was. Joseph is remembered and he begins to weep. Joseph has been in the world of the pit this whole time. His identity has been lost. He is fragmented and dismembered. He himself celebrates the fact that he has forgotten the trauma of the pit. He names his firstborn son Manasseh for “God has made me forget completely my hardship and my parental home” (Gen. 41:51). He’s grateful that God has made him forget. He’s thankful he is not haunted by the memory of what they did to him. But the irony of the name is clear: If you name your son “amnesia” have you really forgotten? Something in Joseph wants to remember that he has suffered a wound. Eventually in the story Joseph cannot continue the masquerade. He has to reveal his true identity to his brothers. He begins to weep again and orders all his Egyptian servants out of the room. He turns to his brothers and says: “I am Joseph.” He is re-membered. How? By hearing his brothers re-member him. He was in the pit, out of eyesight. Forgotten. Dismembered. But their re-membering begins to restore him. The work is not done, but he’s made the first few steps of climbing out of the pit of trauma. The broken fragments of himself are being re-membered. Jesus: Dismembered and Re-membered At the last supper Jesus gathers his disciples and breaks the bread to give it to them: “This is my body, broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” When Christ died on the cross his body was fragmented, broken, dismembered. But in his dismemberment for us in his death he has united himself to all deaths. He is broken into the pieces of every death in order to bring resurrection to all who have died. Christ is dismembered into the fragments of our lives, our traumas, our wounds—and by taking our deaths upon himself he re-members us—he puts us back together. Christ commands us to eat the meal in remembrance of him. We are to remember him. But when we do this it is actually him who is re-membering us—making us members of his body and bringing healing and restoration. The request of the thief on the cross to Jesus is Joseph’s request to the cup-bearer in the Egyptian prison: they both ask to be remembered. The cup-bearer forgets Joseph, but Jesus does not forget anyone. The thief said to Jesus: “Remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Luke 23:42). Jesus heard his cry. He hears all our cries to re-member and as we eat the bread and drink the cup he makes good on his promise. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cameroncombs.substack.com [https://cameroncombs.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]