Who Was The King of Assyria During The Ministry of Jonah?

Who was the king of Assyria during the ministry of Jonah?

This isn’t a question I’ve really heard discussed before. Now, having looked into it, it seems we have a strong candidate. And that in part because of an ancient solar eclipse.

The biblical text of Jonah never names the king who presided over Nineveh during its great repentance, simply calling him “the king of Nineveh” (Jonah 3:6). But the Bible does tell us which king was on the throne of Israel during Jonah’s ministry – Jeroboam II. This king of Samaria ruled from 782 – 753 B.C., during a period of a resurgent Israel. Surprisingly – since we know what’s going to happen in a mere generation or two – this was also a period of Assyrian weakness.

While Israel was retaking territory from its former oppressors, the Arameans, things weren’t going so well for the Assyrians. Famines, plagues, revolts, earthquakes, and conflicts with the Arameans and Urartians threatened to overwhelm them. All the while, the Assyrian kings of this period were also steadily losing power to the governors of their own realm. In fact, during this period there were more kingly proclamations published by these officials than by the emperor himself. We know very little about the Assyrian rulers in these years, again, probably because they were weak and presiding over a realm that seemed to be falling apart.

However, this period of Assyrian decline has turned out to be unbelievably important. This is because it’s the key to orienting the history of the entire ancient world. A near-total solar eclipse occurs in the year 763 B.C., which the Assyrians so helpfully record. This eclipse functions as the solid timeline anchor for all the different dating systems of the ancient Near East. See, these societies didn’t use a dating system like ours that goes back to one great event that signifies a new age, but instead kept track of years relative to the beginning of such and such a king’s reign. For example, “In the twenty-seventh year of Jeroboam, king of Israel, Amaziah, king of Judah, began to reign” (2 Kings 15:1).

When you look back at all of these king lists that only reference themselves or perhaps the neighbors’ king lists, it becomes extremely tricky to align them accurately in world history – unless there is something objective and external, like a solar eclipse, that they can be attached to. This period of obscure Assyrian kings is when we get just such an event upon which we are able to then hook and build out the timelines of Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt, Israel, Judah, and so many others.

The specific Assyrian king ruling when this eclipse happened was not one I’d ever heard of before. His name was Ashur-dan III. In fact, there’s only one surviving inscription from his reign that even mentions him, although he is mentioned in later king lists as well. Crucial for our purposes, there is also a brief record of the eclipse from his reign, “[year of] Bur-Sugale of Guzana. Revolt in the city of Assur. In the month of Simanu an eclipse of the sun took place.” Notice the mention of a revolt in one of the empire’s royal cities hand-in-hand here with the mention of the eclipse. Clearly, this was a rough time to be king.

This same king, Ashur-dan III, is the Assyrian monarch with the greatest overlap between his reign and the reign of Jeroboam II – a full twenty-two years. Thus, this is the man most likely to have been on the throne when a gnarled Israelite prophet with hair and skin bleached by fish stomach acid showed up and started preaching doom. We can’t say this with absolute certainty, but when we compare the book of Jonah with the events of his reign, I think the case for Ashur-dan III is a strong one.

Ashur-dan III’s weakened realm alone gives us one possible answer for why the pagans of Nivevah were so open to Jonah’s message. Their society seemed to be falling apart, teetering from one disaster and uprising to another. Their patron gods Enlil, Ashur, and Ishtar seemed to have abandoned them. Now, add in a near-total solar eclipse, and suddenly the seemingly inexplicable mass repentance of Nineveh makes a lot more ancient Near Eastern sense. To the Assyrians, eclipses meant certain divine judgment. It meant that divine wrath was absolutely coming for them. Hence why it’s so likely that the eclipse played some part in Nineveh’s mass repentance.

If I had to theorize, I’d guess that the eclipse happened just before Jonah arrived in Nineveh. It could have happened while he was there preaching, but it seems the biblical authors would have recorded it like they do the sun standing still in Joshua 10, or the sun moving backward in 2 Kings 20. The Hebrew writers of the Bible are happy to record unusual events in the heavens as being caused by God’s sovereign hand and as an authenticating part of his message of repentance. But in the book of Jonah, we hear nothing about an eclipse. No, instead we merely see a city so ripe for repentance that they even put sackcloth on the cows. And this, at the preaching of a grumpy prophet who really didn’t want to be there. Clearly, this was a people divinely prepared for repentance.

If true, does a ‘natural’ phenomenon like an eclipse somehow nullify God’s direct spiritual involvement in Jonah’s mission? Not at all. Similar to the cosmic air burst that seems to have destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, if these natural events really happened then they merely give us more information about the means of creation God used together with his words of revelation. God is so sovereign that the fullness of the depravity of Nineveh and the ministry of Jonah around 763 B.C. perfectly aligned with a solar eclipse set in motion at the creation of the universe. It might seem fantastical, but God is doing stuff like this all the time, even though it stretches our brains to think about it. He is outside of time, after all.

I’ve always wondered about Nineveh’s repentance. If it was genuine and so widespread, why don’t we hear more about it? Surely an authentic society-wide repentance and turning to the true God of heaven and earth would lead to some kind of transformation, right? Perhaps this is another reason why there are so few records of Ashur-dan III’s reign. To someone like Tiglath-Pileser whose reign (745 – 727 B.C.) led to a revitalized, unified, and aggressive Assyria, the events of Ashur-Dan III’s reign may have been an embarrassment, something to cover up, an example of the kind of weakness and compromise that comes when you’re not devoted enough to the gods that made Assyria strong in the first place.

No, if there was any kind of genuine awakening that took place from Jonah’s ministry it must have been stamped out, replaced by an even more vicious and wicked Assyria whose scarlet-robed armies’ atrocities would go on to traumatize the ancient world so much that much of the later Persian propaganda was basically, “We’re not like the Assyrians.”

Sadly, if we’re honest about history, this is one pattern that does tend to repeat now and then. Sometimes, genuine awakening is followed not by a triumphant ‘Christian Nationalism,’ but rather by an increase in depravity, a demonic counterreaction that takes a society once full of light into places of terrible darkness. The Bible belt of Christian North Africa almost immediately turned to militant Islam. Lutheran Germany gave rise to Nazism. The Korean Pentecost gave way to the modern dystopia of North Korea. And Puritan New England is now one of the darkest places in the US. The Assyrian atrocities we hear so much about in the Old Testament may be in part because there actually was one generation that turned to God with all their hearts. And that repentance provoked even greater rebellion in a future generation. What a sobering thing to consider.

The message and events of the book of Jonah are true even if we don’t know the name of the Assyrian king, and even if there was no eclipse involved. According to Jesus, Jonah really went to Nineveh and Nineveh really repented (Matt 12:41). God’s mercy is not limited to one people but is for all the nations of the earth, even those as wicked as the Assyrians. Amen and amen.

But I find the possibility fascinating that such an obscure and struggling king like Ashur-dan III might turn out, in the end, to be so significant. One note from his beleaguered reign has become the keystone upon which our entire timeline of the ancient world is aligned. And the repentance which he possibly led would go on to be held up as exemplary by none other than the Son of God himself. Nor was any of this because of who he was or his own accomplishments. God sent the eclipse. God sent the prophet and then God granted the repentance. No, it really had nothing to do with Ashur-dan III at all. Instead, it was all of grace.

Just as it is with us.

For more on this topic, see the ESV Study Bible’s Introduction to the Book of Jonah, this helpful blog post by Tom Hobson, and Wikipedia here and here.

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The Psalms’ Quiet Case For Musical Diversity

“But do we have any precedent in the Bible for incorporating diverse styles of worship?”

The question was an unexpected one. One reason plural leadership is so good is because invariably one elder will come up with a question no one else is thinking of. The rest of us were just assuming that it was right and good to expand our church’s styles of musical worship to better reflect our diverse congregation. It seemed to fit with the Revelation 7:9 vision and with the fact that the New Testament advocates generally for Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs (Col 3:16), but otherwise seems to leave the details of musical worship up to the wisdom of the local churches – assemblies which were no longer just Jewish, but were fast becoming also Greek, Roman, Scythian, Persian, etc.

The question got me thinking. How much of a case is there in the Bible for the practice of incorporating diverse styles of music in the regular worship of our churches? After percolating on this for a number of years, I’ve become more and more convinced that a quiet but convincing biblical case can be built that God delights in receiving worship in the many musical styles of the world, just as he delights in receiving worship in the many languages and cultures of the world. And that this case can be built from the hymnal of Israel and the early church – the Psalms. This case is built on the history and context of the Psalms, as well as on the nature of music itself.

When it comes to its nature, music is much like language or culture; namely, like a cloud. Music does not sit still. It cannot. It’s always slowly changing and moving, shifting and developing in ways that clearly reflect where it’s been yet defy even the most skillful predictions of where it’s going next. With music, just add time and you will inevitably get substantive changes in method and style. Seeking to ‘freeze’ a musical tradition as that which truly represents a people is just as futile as trying to ‘freeze’ a language. You can protest all you like, but they will go on changing. They are clouds, after all, not mountains. Their nature is a moving one.

This is where the history and the context of the Psalms come in. We are told that Moses is the author of Psalm 90, which would make it the earliest psalm that we have. Moses was likely living and writing around 1400 BC. Of course, the most famous psalmist is King David, writing 400 years after Moses, around 1000 BC. Yet other psalms are attributed to Hezekiah (Ps 46-48), who was living around 700 BC, 300 years after David. The latest psalm seems to be Psalm 137, “By the rivers of Babylon,” which clearly speaks of the Judean exile to Babylon which took place in the 500s. That means there’s a span of roughly 900 years between the writing of the earliest and the latest Psalm.

That’s a lot of time for a given musical tradition to undergo all kinds of natural internal development. Were you to time travel, you’d likely recognize some elements of the music of the Judean exiles all the way back in the music of Moses. But Moses – were he to travel with you to Babylon – would probably be a little offended at what had become of his beloved Hebrew musical tradition. This is because the changes would have been considerable, perhaps as great as if he were encountering the music of a foreign nation.

Add to this the fact that musical style, again, like language and culture, does not exist in a vacuum. Musical styles borrow from one another, just as languages borrow vocab from their neighbors. Instruments and melodies get adopted from one culture to another at perhaps an even faster rate than words since music itself has a quality that seems able to transcend other natural differences. This is why it’s sometimes been labeled “the universal language.” This means that whatever musical traditions Abraham’s household brought with them from Ur probably picked up Canaanite/Hittite influences in the several generations that passed until Joseph’s time. After this, 400 years of Egyptian sojourn and slavery would have made its own significant imprint on the musical style of the Hebrews by the time Moses got to writing the first psalm. Once back in the promised land, another 400 years of musical mingling in Canaan brings us to the time of David. And the centuries of monarchy would have had their own cross-pollination. Finally, it’s not far-fetched to assume that Jewish music would have been influenced dramatically during the exile. Just remember what happened to the Hebrew language.

So, when the Psalter is finally finished in its current form, post-exile, the Psalms represent roughly 1,000 years of the natural diversity that emerges within one musical tradition – as well as the added diversity of external influence from at least Mesopotamian, Canaanite, and Egyptian musical styles. The finalized Psalter, before its melodies were lost, would not have been a ‘pure’ representation of the Jewish ethnic musical style. Instead, it would have been a collection of songs that represented a Jewish synthesis, one representing a long absorption of melodies and styles from many centuries, geographies, and cultures.

Perhaps a Jew in exile singing the Psalms of David would feel similar to how we feel when singing O Come O Come Emmanuel, one of the oldest melodies that we still sing in Evangelical churches. The song’s lyrics are in fact much older, but the earliest record of its current melody comes from France, about 600 years ago. Hum the melody of this song to yourself and notice how it seems to be from a different world. That’s because it is from a different world. It may be a familiar part of our Western European Christian tradition, but every time we sing it we are singing a song from a very different time and culture. For an even older tune, listen to a song from 1700 years ago, Phos Hilaron. Then compare these old melodies with the music of today. Even if you cut out the warp-speed mutations that happened to music in the 20th century, it’s stunning how diverse music can be in one religious tradition.

What’s my point? Essentially, the Psalms are evidence that the songbook of the people of God was one that originally contained a rich diversity of musical styles. We can know this because of the nature of music and because of the history and context of the Psalms themselves. Apparently, God ordained that his people, for centuries, sing diverse melodies, some of which would not have felt like the stirring tunes of their particular generation, but rather the music of other peoples and other centuries. In this, we have a quiet case for using diverse musical styles in our churches.

This really matters, though we don’t typically feel how much it matters until we are ourselves a minority worshipping in the melodies of other cultures and lands. One of our African American pastors recently stood up and shared, in tears, how much it ministered to his soul that our church choir had sung a song from the black gospel tradition when the Anglo-Irish melodies of our reformed circles are our more standard fare. Back in Central Asia, we once took the melody from one of the most requested local worship songs and wrote new English lyrics to it so that it could be sung in the international church where we were members. Since then it has become a favorite song of the church’s many members who are from a Muslim background. We should want to serve the diverse members of our churches with melodies that help the words reach their souls – and those are often melodies from the musical traditions that they grew up with.

This is why it can be so hard for the majority culture of a given church to incorporate diverse musical styles in its worship. Because the melodies the church typically sings are from their culture and tradition, the majority already feel the sweet union of the words and the melodies down in their bones. It can take a while for them to realize that for those from other musical traditions, that double encouragement is not necessarily taking place. But in the Psalms there seems to be precedent for both – singing the melodies that feel like the songs of your people and singing the melodies that feel like you are being transported to a foreign land.

Here it must be said that it is indeed possible to be edified by singing the songs of another people, another culture, another century. It takes time and growth, yes, but it can happen, and it is healthy to learn how to be fed with melodies from the distant past as well as with others that just don’t hit your heart in that way (yet). Keep singing them and meditating on the truth they contain. You may be surprised at what happens to you as those foreign-seeming melodies slowly inch closer and closer to your heart. Just as a deep view of church history and a broad view of the global church serve to strengthen the believer’s head, so equivalent Christian music may serve to expand his heart.

Do we have any precedent in the Bible for incorporating diverse styles of worship in our services? I say yes, and not just in the New Testament. Even in the Old, we see that one style and culture of music is not sufficient for the worship and delight of God. Instead, he quietly included 1,000 years of musical diversity in his Psalter long before he sent the New Testament Church out to write and sing new hymns and spiritual songs to the ends of the earth. The New Testament posture toward musical worship that we’ll see in full bloom in heaven (and even now is flourishing) had its first budding in the Psalter. In it we can see the shoots of both freedom and tradition, service to others as well as room for our own souls to drink deep.

So then, sing to the lord a new song, sing to the Lord, all the earth (Ps 96)! Sing an old song too. And while you’re at it, for the sake of that refugee in your service, sing a foreign one as well.

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Son of Man Also Means Human

It’s good for us to remember that affirming the humanity of Jesus is just as important as affirming his divinity. Not only the life of Jesus, but even his titles teach us that he is The Godman – fully human, fully divine.

Like many Christians, when I was growing up I assumed that the title Son of Man emphasized Christ’s humanity and the title Son of God emphasized his divinity. I was very surprised to later learn that I had it somewhat backward. While both titles can teach us of Christ’s humanity and his divinity, Son of God emphasizes Christ’s humanity, telling us that Jesus is the true Adam, the true heir of David, the true Israel – all three of whom are called God’s son in the Scriptures. And Son of Man emphasizes Christ’s divinity by linking Christ directly to the Daniel 7 Son of Man who comes on the clouds of heaven, is worshipped by all the nations, and rules an eternal kingdom. All of those descriptives are shouting in OT imagery and language that this figure in Daniel’s dream is, in fact, divine.

Yet even though Son of Man’s primary emphasis is Christ’s divinity, it truly does have a secondary emphasis that this figure is also human. When the original audience read Daniel’s dream account, they would have understood his “and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man” to mean essentially, “get this, someone who looked like a man came on the clouds.” Son of Man at this time was a phrase that meant human, son of Adam, not all that different from how Aslan uses it when addressing the Pevensies.

The events of Daniel 7 confirm this. What’s going on in the rest of the dream is that Daniel is shown four earthly kingdoms represented as four violent beasts. He is then shown how God, the Ancient of Days, judges them. Then this is where the Son of Man comes in. Whereas the four violent kingdoms are described as like a bipedal wing-clipped lion, like a lopsided bear, like a flying leopard with four heads, and like a mystery monster beast with iron teeth, this next figure is – mercifully – like a man. A Son of Man comes and is given dominion over the beasts. Sounds a lot like the creation account.

This connection to creation and the phrase, Son of Man, is made explicitly in Psalm 8.


	[3] When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
		the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
	[4] what is man that you are mindful of him,
		and the son of man that you care for him?
	
	[5] Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
		and crowned him with glory and honor.
	[6] You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
		you have put all things under his feet,
	[7] all sheep and oxen,
		and also the beasts of the field,
	[8] the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
		whatever passes along the paths of the seas. (ESV)

Just as Adam and the Son of Adam/Son of Man were given dominion over the beasts of the field in Genesis and Psalm 8, so the heavenly Son of Man in Daniel 7 is given dominion over and against the kingdoms of the earth that have become beastly. A contemporary reader of Daniel who knew their Psalms and their Torah would have been picking up on these connections. Son of Man communicates human at least, but a human as he’s meant to be. Perhaps the original audience wondered if this figure in Daniel’s dream might somehow be a new Adam.

There’s also a good possibility that readers of Daniel were also readers of Ezekiel since their ministries were happening at roughly the same time. Anyone who’s ever read Ezekiel can’t help but notice the dozens and dozens of times that God addresses Ezekiel as Son of Man. As a prophet, Ezekiel is sent into exile with his people. He suffers with his people and his acted-out punishment is even viewed as being for his people (Ez 4:4-6). Jim Hamilton* says of Ezekiel, “The role which the prophet has assumed among his people is one of representative, intercessor, and substitute.” It is possible that these kinds of roles of the exiled prophet might also be assigned to the heavenly Son of Man by Daniel. If so, then his identity is to be understood as a man who enters into the suffering of his people and bears their punishment with and for them.

The divine imagery of Daniel 7 can’t be missed. The Son of Man is clearly somehow God, even though he is also somehow distinct from the Ancient of Days. This is why the Sanhedrin freak out when Jesus applies this passage to himself. Yet the Adam and Ezekiel connections are there in Daniel 7 also, secondarily emphasizing the Son of Man’s humanity. In this way, the title Son of Man means divine and it also means human.

The result is a wonderful mystery that must have had the original readers engaging in quite the theological chin-scratching. There’s only one God. Yet this Son of Man figure is clearly divine. And yet he’s also distinct from the Ancient of Days and clearly some kind of human. How??? To echo a question from future centuries, “Who is this Son of Man?”

What a privilege to live in a time when we know exactly who he is.

*Hamilton, With the Clouds of Heaven, p. 150

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Fickle Gods and the Wondrous Clarity of the Law

It’s the time of year again when countless Bible readers are about to get bogged down in Leviticus. It’s easy to quickly skim through these sections of the Pentateuch that deal with Israel’s laws, our brains struggling to stay focused and longing to get back to some narrative passages. We read the minute detail of Israel’s purity requirements and wonder if the ancient audience was just as bored as we are. Could there have been a time and a place where hearing Leviticus read actually held the hearers in rapt attention?

Apparently so, even centuries after the fact. No reading of the Psalms can avoid the evidence that the writers of that anthology – and faithful Israel through them – not only found God’s Law interesting, but even delightful. Why did ancient Israel love God’s law so dearly? It was in Tremper Longman III’s How to Read the Psalms where I first came across one of the powerful answers to this question, an answer that continues to serve me today as I try to read and put myself in the shoes of those during that period of redemptive history. In short, they loved the Law so intensely because of its clarity.

To understand this, we need to step back into the religious worldview of the ancient near east. All of the peoples surrounding Israel would have believed in a pantheon of gods and goddesses. Think Dagon, Baal, Ashtoreth (Ishtar), Chemosh, Ra, etc. These so-called gods and goddesses were not necessarily moral, nor were they necessarily loving and committed to the good of their people. They were deeply flawed like humans, except immensely more powerful. And they needed to be constantly appeased in order to guarantee a good harvest, fertility in marriage, or safety from enemy armies.

To top it off, these gods were fickle and hard to predict. Their will could change on a whim. Elaborate divination ceremonies were needed to discern their wills and to (hopefully) avoid outbursts of their wrath. These divination attempts included things like reading the livers of animals, interpreting dreams, and slapping kings until they cried to see if they still enjoyed the gods’ favor. Ancient Arabs, for example, threw a handful of arrows on the ground in hopes of finding meaning in the unique design thereby created.

Remember, life and death and eternity depended on these shifting signs and their subjective interpretations. This meant that the inhabitants of the ancient world lived in a kind of hell of relativity. Their religious systems taught them that your crop’s failure or your wife’s death in childbirth was due to your failure to rightly appease the gods – whose requirements were always opaque and were always shifting, always arbitrary. How could this not foster fanaticism, resignation, or even madness? There was precious little that was solid and unchanging that you could hold onto. You might do everything right according to the oracles, only to find out after the fact that the gods had mysteriously changed the requirements without telling you. How easy it would have been for the priestly class to abuse this system for its own benefit, while the commoners and kings either gave up or gave themselves over to a life of endless striving and fear.

Into this kind of context came the Law of Moses, not only revealed, but even written in language that could be understood by the people. Written down so that it could be regularly accessible for the entire people group and for each new generation. And it was marvelously clear, on points major as well as minor. Don’t make any idols, take the seventh day off and rest, don’t drink blood, treat the foreigners in your midst well, make sure you rinse that pot when you find a dead lizard in it.

We tend to chafe at the sheer number of laws given to the people of Israel, viewing things primary through our new covenant perspective where so many of these laws have now been fulfilled in Christ. And yet a primary response of the ancient Israelites to these laws would not have been a sense of burden. It would have been a sense of tearful relief, even rest. They did not have to live at the fickle mercy of cruel gods. They had one true and unchanging God, who rescued them because of his steadfast love and who now called them to a life conformed to his clear will – his will that would not change or shift. It was solid, dependable, steadfast, not going to cut their knees out from under them when least expected out of some kind of twisted divine freedom. No wonder they loved the law.

Our own age of diversity echoes the fickle relativity of the ancient gods. Within our own cultures, the changing pace of public morality is increasingly hard to keep up with. Lives are destroyed as one slip of the tongue or keyboard violates the shifting sands of what phrases are now safe (clean) and what is bigoted (unclean). The man on the street must live at the whim of the “priestly class” of academics, politicians, celebrities, and journalists who somehow have the inside scoop on what is newly demanded in order to be a virtuous person.

The interconnectedness of the world also brings with it an invitation to fall into relativity. As diverse cultures increasingly interact, the morality of one is seen to be vastly different from the morality of another. For many, this casts doubt on the existence of a universal morality at all. Then languages interact with other languages, highlighting the limitations, weaknesses, and localized viewpoints of each. This casts doubt on any ability to access universal truth through such an imperfect medium as human language. Similarly, the more exposure you have to other cultures and languages, the greater the sense that it’s foolishness to think that you just happened to grow up with the true answers. Yet just like those in the ancient near east, all must be risked upon our attempts to get it right, to rightly discern “the will of the gods.” It’s not surprising then if some of us also turn to fanaticism, resignation, or even madness in response to this uncertainty.

However, just like ancient Israel, believers now don’t have to live at the mercy of the fickle gods. We have God’s Law and his gospel, wondrously clear and accessible. It proved to be a solid rock in the churning sea of ancient polytheism. It is just as stable of a rock in the contemporary sea of progressive culture and globalization.

In a world with nothing to hold onto, we should conduct ourselves with a certain knowing confidence, always ready to invite those weary of the world’s arbitrary demands to something eternally steadfast. “Don’t you want something solid and truly good to hang onto?” “In all the noise, don’t you long for something that is clear and always true?” “Don’t you want access to an eternal definition of love?” We need to keep our eyes peeled for the castaways around us who already know from awful experience how the gods of this age turn on those who were desperately trying to keep up and get it right. They are in need of rescue and rest. We can offer it to them.

The shifting will of the culture, the contradictory decrees of different global cultures, these are not a problem for us as believers. They are echoes of humanity’s desperate need for something solid, universal, and unchanging. And like a weary ancient near east worshiper hearing Leviticus for the first time, we have God’s word. And it is wondrously clear. So clear, it’s worthy of delight.

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Consistent With A Cosmic Air Burst

Sooner or later, archaeology tends to validate the biblical record. Take this research being done in the lower Jordan valley, the area of Genesis’ description of Sodom and Gomorrah’s destruction. Archaeologists have found evidence in a layer of soil of a cosmic air burst from around 3,650 years ago. A cosmic air burst is when a meteor explodes while still in the atmosphere, which can cause devastation on the ground resembling a nuclear bomb, such as occurred in the Tunguska Event in 1908 Siberia. The research on the site in Jordan goes on to describe cataclysmic temperatures, in excess of 2,000 degrees Celsius:

In addition to the debris one would expect from destruction via warfare and earthquakes, they found pottery shards with outer surfaces melted into glass, “bubbled” mudbrick and partially melted building material, all indications of an anomalously high-temperature event, much hotter than anything the technology of the time could produce.

Not also was there a fiery disaster from the sky spelling the end of the cities in the area, there’s also a connection with salt:

The airburst, according to the paper, may also explain the “anomalously high concentrations of salt” found in the destruction layer — an average of 4% in the sediment and as high as 25% in some samples.
The salt was thrown up due to the high impact pressures,” Kennett said of the meteor that likely fragmented upon contact with Earth’s atmosphere.

If this is indeed archaeological evidence of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, then we now have a little more information about what kind of means God used in this particular judgment: a meteor, exploding before it hits the ground. If so, it’s not that we now say that God wasn’t really actively carrying out a judgement of sin, since we now have some evidence that it was a meteor – something that naturally occurs. Nor do we have to reject this kind of evidence, insisting that God’s judgements in history must be purely “miraculous.” Rather, here we see an example of how God can sovereignly judge through natural means. A meteor – set on its cosmic track countless years beforehand – explodes above the lower Jordan valley at the appointed time, when the outcry against cities’ sin has reached its full pitch, and just after Lot and his family are rescued. And thus God’s sovereign action in history and the (super)natural workings of the universe are seen once again to go hand in hand.

“All the observations stated in Genesis are consistent with a cosmic airburst,” says the quoted professor. Yes, we may not always see how, but the record of scripture and the record of the soil will ultimately align. The archaeologists may be surprised. But we shouldn’t be.

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A Song on High Priests

“Peace on Earth/A Conversation” by The Psallos

In truth these are two songs, transitioning at the 1:30 mark. Both are exploring the theme in Hebrews of Jesus being our great high priest. It’s a fun pairing of theology, typology, and some creative banter. Some select lines:

I see your point, but you gotta see mine,
These men were appointed by God's design.

Designed to die? 

No, designed to sympathize 
With the lives of the Israelites.

I think you might be losing your mind there, Thom!
Sympathy's not going to save.

I know, but listen to what I'm saying, Kelsie!
These guys are like shadows and types. 

Yeah, ineffectual types. 

Your guitar's an ineffectual type. 

But what we can agree on is this,
Jesus he is better, he is infinitely better, 
Blameless, spotless, sinless, righteous,
Able to fight this sinful-itis. 

Able to right these wrongs that plague us,
Able to sympathize with our weakness,
Cause he has taken on flesh to save us.

The Ark of the Covenant in its Egyptian Context

Here is a fascinating article from the Biblical Archaeology Society about the Ark of the Covenant and the possible meanings of its design. The Hebrews weren’t operating from a blank cultural slate. They had been living in Egypt for 400 years and adopting from that culture certain meaning-form understandings. For example, the pharaoh could go into battle while seated on a winged throne. That throne would be held aloft by shoulder poles – just like the Ark of the Covenant. In other words, it’s highly likely that the poles the Levites used to carry the ark, and the wings of the cherubim, and the mercy seat itself were all designed to carry a particular visual meaning – YHWH is divine king. I find the concluding paragraph of the article helpful in summarizing many of the elements of Old Testament religion.

“Therefore, even though Yahweh is not bound to human limits, he condescended to mankind deferring to human expectations of divinity. The cherubim had wings that stretched out over the Mercy Seat, and the shekinah glory met with man from between the wings of the cherubim above the ark. God did not try to change the beliefs of the people before engaging them, but instead respected human frailty and human notions of the divine, inverting or modifying those beliefs to teach humanity new ideas about himself.”

Photos by Igor Rodrigues on Unsplash and Wikimedia Commons

Why Steal the Household gods?

Ever wondered why Rachel stole her father Laban’s household gods in Genesis 31? Was she really that devoted to these idols? Perhaps something else was going on. See this note from Gen 31:19.

household gods. One of the purposes of these idols was to obtain oracles (Ezek. 21:21). It may be that Rachel stole them to prevent Laban from using them to divine Jacob’s route of escape. In addition, possession of family gods symbolized title to family property in the ancient Near East, so Rachel may have stolen them to safeguard her inheritance rights.
ESV Archaeology Study Bible

This is another example of why it can be so helpful to understand the culture and context of biblical narratives. Here are two possibilities for Rachel’s motives in this story that I never would have known nor guessed without this background info. Divination or inheritance rights being tied to household gods is simply not self-apparent to me, given my own cultural and historical context. Interestingly, if the second possibility is what was going on here, then we see in Rachel an echo of her husband’s particular sin – seeking to wrest her inheritance rights in her own strength, rather than trusting in the promises of YHWH. As is usually the case, this backfires. And Rachel comes awfully close to losing her life because of her deception.

Photo by Agnieszka Kowalczyk on Unsplash

A Hedgehog Named Desolation

My history with colorful pets on the mission field is a long one. When I was a child in Melanesia, we had pythons, owls, parrots, praying mantises, tree kangaroos (my favorites), and a baby bat. We also had seasons with the more typical dogs and cats. Mostly, these were good experiences. Though an eclectus parrot once bit a chunk out of my thumb, and a tree kangaroo bit a chunk out of my big toe. That same tree kangaroo also bit one of my classmates, and for some reason, his parents insisted on getting him a rabies shot, which was probably much worse than what the frightened marsupial had done. Sorry about that, Ken.

This part of my life – an enjoyment of local critters – never quite went away, even when I moved to Central Asia. There was a part of our previous city called “Under the Bridge,” where the animal sellers would gather. All kinds of strange and interesting animals would be for sale there, though their conditions were sometimes lamentable. But sometimes you could see eagles, ostriches, chipmunks, or beautiful pheasants for sale. Locals have a thing for birds, especially of the dove, pigeon, and pheasant variety.

One day, as a new single on the field, I saw a couple of monkeys for sale under the bridge. I committed one of my classic language blunders that day by asking, “Where are the monkey’s people?!” over and over because I thought I was asking, “Where are the monkeys from?”

I later enthusiastically told my team about the little monkeys for sale. “Guys! We could have an office monkey! It would be great, we could teach it to serve chai to guests!”

Needless to say, my team didn’t share my enthusiasm.

Many years passed, and I never saw a monkey for sale again in the bazaar. Alas. But one day, I spotted hedgehogs. Just a few months beforehand, I had been reading in Zephaniah and was struck by the peculiarity of this passage:

 Zephaniah 2:13–14
  
             [13] And he will stretch out his hand against the north
                         and destroy Assyria,
             and he will make Nineveh a desolation,
                         a dry waste like the desert.
             [14] Herds shall lie down in her midst,
                         all kinds of beasts;
             even the owl and the hedgehog
                         shall lodge in her capitals;
             a voice shall hoot in the window;
                         devastation will be on the threshold;
                         for her cedar work will be laid bare. (ESV)

When I read the word desolation in verse 13, I wasn’t exactly expecting it to be illustrated with such a cute, friendly little critter in verse 14. I mean, who saw that coming? “I will bring desolation… the hedgehog!” (cue thunder and lightning). Now that I’ve lived in Central Asia for a while, I understand that hedgehogs (like owls) represent one of the desert creatures that would move into an abandoned city, as Nineveh was to become. Still, I couldn’t quite shake some level of amusement with the connection of these particular words in the text.

“Darling,” I told my wife, “If we ever get a hedgehog, we’re naming him Desolation.”

“OK, love, whatever you say,” was my wife’s response. She didn’t actually expect me to buy one.

But when I came across some for sale in the bazaar for the grand sum of $8 each, it was too good to pass up. I bought one and brought him home in a shoebox, proudly presenting him to my wife and two toddlers. The kids, of course, were thrilled. My wife was bemused and skeptical.

“His name is Desolation! Desi for short.” I announced. My wife shook her head. The TCK in me occasionally takes over, and she remembers that she did indeed marry someone who grew up swimming in jungle rivers and shooting his friends with coffee cherries.

I asked my wife tonight what she remembers about Desi.

“He was a punk,” she said. “And whenever we held him, he would hiss at us! And shrink his little head back up under his spikes. Then we would set him down, and he would run and try to get under the couch. But he was too fat, so he would get halfway under, get stuck, and then scurry his little back legs against the floor until he got flat enough to eventually fit under.”

Indeed, Desi had a grumpy personality befitting the name. Still, sometimes he was very cute and would let us rub his belly. Though most of the time he would just hang out under the couch, once he had finally managed to squeeze through. Every night, I would tip over the couch and put him back in his cage. The greatest danger for him in the house was that he would somehow find the bathroom and fall into the squatty potty in the floor and drown.

Ultimately, Desi never found the perilous bathroom, though he eventually succumbed to some kind of mysterious hedgehog virus and passed away, as Tolkien would say, “an image of the glory of the splendor of the kings of [hedgehogs], in glory undimmed before the breaking of the world.”

The kids were sad. I was sad. Even my wife was a little sad. We haven’t had a pet since, but I keep my eyes open every time we’re in the bazaar. I would love for my kids to also grow up with strange tales of colorful creatures that are usually grumpy and sometimes even cute. There are some downsides to growing up as TCKs. But there are many upsides also. Tree kangaroos. Hedgehogs. Parents who are naturally adventurous and who let you have things like pythons.

Meanwhile, perhaps we’d better bring more hedgehog imagery into our teaching on God’s judgment? I’m sensing a theme.

 Isaiah 14:23
  
 [23] “And I will make it a possession of the hedgehog, and pools of water, and I will sweep it with the broom of destruction,” declares the LORD of hosts. (ESV)

If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.

Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, one needs a lead pastor and one an associate pastor. Our kids’ TCK school is also in need of a math and a science teacher for middle school and high school. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.

Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here.

For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.Photo by Siem van Woerkom on Unsplash

The Cow As Local Shibboleth

Shibboleth [ shib-uh-lith, ‐leth ], noun

A peculiarity of pronunciation, behavior, mode of dress, etc., that distinguishes a particular class or set of persons. (Dictionary.com)

A shibboleth has come to mean a type of signal, usually verbal, that betrays what group someone actually belongs to. Having spent some years in the Philadelphia, PA, area, I know that locals pronounce water as wooder and call sub sandwiches hoagies. These verbal cues betray that they have been shaped by the dialect of a particular city. My wife being originally from the Rochester, NY, area, means that she happens to add and “L” sound into the word both, pronouncing it as bolth. Arabs usually can’t say the letter “P” and instead of Pepsi, they say bibsi. And Americans have an awfully hard time with the “Q” sound of Arabic, often mispronouncing the name of the country Qatar as kataar or gutter.

The term shibboleth itself comes from the book of Judges, from one of the many tribal conflicts that takes place in that book of uniquely highlighted human depravity.

Then Jephthah gathered all the men of Gilead and fought with Ephraim. And the men of Gilead struck Ephraim, because they said, “You are fugitives of Ephraim, you Gileadites, in the midst of Ephraim and Manasseh.” And the Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan against the Ephraimites. And when any of the fugitives of Ephraim said, “Let me go over,” the men of Gilead said to him, “Are you an Ephraimite?” When he said, “No,” they said to him, “Then say Shibboleth,” and he said, “Sibboleth,” for he could not pronounce it right. Then they seized him and slaughtered him at the fords of the Jordan. At that time 42,000 of the Ephraimites fell. (Judges 12:4–6 ESV)

Alas, the dialect of the Ephraimites had lost the sh sound and so their tongues gave them away when they were asked to reproduce shibboleth, the Hebrew word for ear of grain. As one who struggled even as a six-year-old to pronounce the tricky American “R” sound, I feel their pain. But I only had to go to speech class and miss my 2nd grade Thursday afternoon movie. Once their lie was exposed and they were found out to be Ephraimites, they were promptly killed.

I was surprised to hear a very similar account echoed by my Muslim neighbors here in our corner of Central Asia. Our region, like many tribal and mountainous areas worldwide, has many diverse dialects. These dialects are supposedly all part of the same language (though linguists debate at what point a dialect becomes its own language). The dialect of our new city is surprisingly different from the dialect of our previous city, for being geographically as close as they are. We are currently in the throes of learning a whole new set of vocab that we thought we had already mastered. Turns out many of the words that are commonplace in our previous city are just not used here, and vice versa. I’m talking about words you use every day like spoon, nose, neighbor, y’all, and cow. Well, maybe we don’t use cow every day, but it would have been a word used daily until the very recent past. But the term for cow used in our city and our previous city are as different as the English words mail and saunter. In other words, there is no connection between them whatsoever.

Not too long ago there was a civil war between these two cities and they unknowingly performed a live-action remake of Judges 12. As they say, those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. But instead using shibboleth as a shibboleth, they used the words for cow instead. When someone was caught at a checkpoint professing to be a friendly member of the soldiers’ side, they were put to a linguistic test.

“Say cow.”

Their answer, at least until word got out, determined their fate. Their chosen word for cow, of all things, was the difference between life and death. Though civil war is always tragic, locals do find humor in this tale of their recent conflict. It seems to somehow appropriately highlight the absurdity of conflicts that really boil down to the basic competition between two tribes, and nothing deeper than that. “It was a stupid war,” locals will say. “To this day we really don’t know why it even happened.”

Stupid and inexplicable. Like most human conflict. In the new heavens and new earth, if we still have shibboleths, I’m sure they’ll only be used for fun. “So, you’re a Philly boy, eh? I caught that usage of wooder.” Thankfully, the age where shibboleths are used for evil will then have finally passed away.

Photo by Hilde Demeester on Unsplash