#hebrew scriptures – @fathershane on Tumblr

Anonymous asked:

Why is it said that God hardened Pharaoh's heart? Surely God would not cause sin.

You're right! God hates sin. More than we can imagine. He wouldn't do anything to bring it about.

The Old Testament isn't as nuanced in its language as we would generally expect. In more precise terms, we might prefer to say that God gave Pharaoh his freedom, and that Pharaoh used it poorly, so much so that his heart was hardened.

But the Old Testament authors tended to compress all of that into a single statement: "God hardened Pharaoh's heart." Not very nuanced, right? It is however correct in this sense: God is the one ultimately "responsible" because he chose to make Pharaoh free, even though we would put the accent on Pharaoh's sin.

It's a pattern that we see all through the Old Testament: It sounds like God is being blamed for something lousy, whereas it's really just correctly saying that God is the maker and origin of all things.

So let's just focus on what God tells all of us in Psalm 95: "If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts!" Anyway, that's my understanding of it, certainly not as a Biblical scholar.

God bless you!

- Father Shane

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fathershane

Anonymous asked:

I'm having trouble with Jer. 22:3 Wasn't Jesus a descendant of Jehoachin? There must be some explanation.

Good question. I can't give you an expert answer, but it seems to me that this verse was in fact fulfilled with the end of the Davidic monarchy, and yet without cancelling out the truth of Nathan's prophecy to David himself:

Your house and your kingdom are firm forever before me; your throne shall be firmly established forever. (2 Samuel 7:16)

Thus the obscurity of Joseph, a poor carpenter yet descendant of David (Matthew 1:6-16) thanks to the sins of David and his royal progeny, is blessed with the ultimate fulfillment of God's promise, in being the chosen instrument by which God's Son would choose to be grafted into David's house and become the eternal Davidic king.

Then, too, as long as you're reading Jeremiah, turn to the next chapter for a Messianic prophecy of Christ also, in Jeremiah 23:5-6.

God bless you!

- Father Shane

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Anonymous asked:

Can we ask Abel to pray for us?I was just wondering because he's a favorite of mine in the Bible, and of course I tihnk we'd presume he's in heaven, right? So even though he lived way long ago, that's okay to do? What about other OT figures like King David or Isaiah, Jeremiah, or Enoch?

I asked a bunch of priests about this, and they all said the same thing as me: "What an interesting question! Never heard that one before."

Our collective answer was complex:

The First Eucharistic Prayer mentions the purity of Abel's sacrifice as a prefigurement of the Eucharistic Sacrifice.
But that doesn't translate directly into "he's in heaven."
As far as I know, the Church hasn't ruled either way. (Some of the Old Testament patriarchs, including David, are labeled "Sanctus" in the Latin version of the litany of the saints, but that can be a generic way of saying "holy," too. I'm pretty sure that the Orthodox refer to at least some OT figures as "Saint," also.)
Sure, you can certainly pray for his intercession, thanks to the doctrine of the communion of saints.
But in general, a surer thing would be to pray to canonized saints. The Church is proposing them to us specifically as models of a holy life and eminent intercessors.

God bless you!

- Father Shane

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