You Have Put All Things Under His Feet

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You Have Put All Things Under His Feet

Psalms 6, 8–10, 14

November 13, 2022 • Psalm 8, Psalm 9, Psalm 10, Psalm 14, Psalm 6

THE PSALMS we study this week are especially timely, coming as they do after a contentious midterm election in the United States. At the end of the day, regardless of how the vote turned out, God is still on His throne, and He, for one, was not surprised by the results.

We also discuss a psalm not usually interpreted as messianic. Psalm 8 includes several verses quoted by the author of Hebrews:

What is man that you are mindful of him,

and the son of man that you care for him?

Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings

and crowned him with glory and honor.

You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;

you have put all things under his feet… (Psalm 8:4–6, ESV)

These verses are quoted in Hebrews 2:6–8, where it’s clear that “the son of man” refers to Jesus, the Messiah. Most Bible teachers don’t see it that way, for some reason.

We dig deeper into the title “Son of Man” and how it emerged as a messianic title during the first century BC in the Book of Parables, chapters 37–71 of the Book of 1 Enoch. That was written by an Essene living near the Sea of Galilee before the end of the reign of Herod the Great—in other words, before the birth of Jesus.

Even though we only see the term used in a messianic context in Psalm 8:4 and Daniel 7:13 (where it’s a description—“one like a son of man”—not a title), the Book of Parables uses it 17 times of the messianic figure who is prophesied to execute judgment on the the wicked, both human and divine, and Jesus applied it to himself more than 80 times in the New Testament.

Significantly, “the son of man” does not appear in any Jewish literature from the first centuries BC or AD other than the Book of 1 Enoch and the New Testament.

For more details on the Essenes, the parables of Enoch, and their influence on the New Testament, we recommend the research of Dr. John Ben-Daniel.

Her House Sinks Down to Death

April 21, 2024 • Proverbs 3, Proverbs 2

WE RETURN to our regularly scheduled reading this week with proverbs that are paternal calls for wisdom--and a warning against communing with spirits of the dead. Contrary to some who seen in these chapters a female deity named Wisdom, perhaps even the consort of Yahweh, the mundane explanation is simply that the word chokhmah (“wisdom”) is a feminine noun. Grammatical gender has nothing to do with biological gender. So, attempts to see in Proverbs a feminine spirit named Wisdom are misguided—an example of eisegesis, reading a desired, predetermined meaning into the text, rather than exegesis, drawing the intended meaning from the text. We also dig deep into Proverbs 2:18: [F]or her house sinks down to death, and her paths to the departed; We find in the passage what may be a reference to the cult of the dead that surrounded the Israelites. First, the word translated “departed” is rephaim, the spirits of the Nephilim destroyed in the Flood. This is confirmed by the Greek Septuagint, translated about 200 years before the birth of Jesus, which translates rephaim as “giants.” Further, the Septuagint uses axonas for the word translated “paths,” where three verses earlier the words triboi and trochiai are rendered “paths.” The Brenton translation of the Septuagint renders Prov. 2:18 this way: For she has fixed her house near death, and guided her wheels near Hades with the giants. We explain why this is relevant: On the Golan Heights, ancient Bashan, there are literally hundreds of funerary monuments that feature concentric rings of stone around a central tumulus or cairn. The largest is Gilgal Refaim (“Wheel of Giants”), which we visited last March, but there are three others nearly as large that are practically unknown. Gilgal Refaim appears to have been built as a cult site for ritual circumambulation around a sacred central core in which a priest or shaman would descend to make contact with spirits of the netherworld. In short, Proverbs 2 appears to be a warning against participating in rites that were clearly still taking place in the time of Saul, David, and Solomon (see 1 Samuel 28, Saul’s visit to the medium of En-dor). In fact, based on the writings of the prophets, communing with spirits of the netherworld continued in Israel for at least another three or four hundred years, down to the time of Jeremiah and the Babylonian captivity.

I Set Jerusalem as a Doorway to be Shaken

April 14, 2024 • Zechariah 12:1–10, Jeremiah 25:17–31

IRAN ATTACKED ISRAEL late last night, the first time the Islamic Republic has struck at Israel directly. The sight of missiles over the Temple Mount is startling, evoking images of the end times. We discuss the events of the last 24 hours and what may come in the days ahead, and we look at prophecies from Jeremiah and Zechariah about the role of Jerusalem and the Jewish people—no, God is not done with Israel yet—in the end times. The title of this week’s study comes from the Septuagint translation of Zechariah 12:2, which reads in the ESV: Behold, I am about to make Jerusalem a cup of staggering to all the surrounding peoples. In other words, at some point in the future, Israel’s neighbors will be so overcome with hatred that they will behave irrationally, as though they are drunk. What we have seen since October 7, 2023, is just prelude. Here is a link to the online books by 19th century author and clergyman H. Clay Trumbull, author of The Threshold Covenant, The Blood Covenant, and The Covenant of Salt. All three books, along with his other works, are available to read online for free here: https://bit.ly/hclaytrumbull

Together in the Garden of Love

March 10, 2024 • Song of Songs 6, Song of Songs 7, Song of Songs 8, Proverbs 1

IT’S APPARENT why the Song of Solomon is not often preached in church. It is a beautiful and poetic description of the love and desire felt by a husband and wife, but the euphemisms that describe physical intimacy between Solomon can raise awkward questions from children in the congregation! But if you have been blessed with a loving marital relationship, you know. We also begin the proverbs of Solomon this week. Chapter 1 emphasizes the importance of wisdom, which begins with the fear of (or reverence toward) God. We also explain why the personification of Wisdom in Proverbs 1, and later in Proverbs 8, does not mean that there is a feminine aspect to the godhead, nor does it mean that God has a “wife.”