StT: Another Sample

All truth is God’s truth. Otherwise, it’s baloney.

There’s an underlying principle at work when we study the Scripture here at Kiln of the Soul. We leave the door wide open for Our Father to decide how He will speak to each individual. I’m not going to tell you that He cannot bless you with secular songs or even pagan literature. That doesn’t make those sources sacred; it’s that God cannot be confined to whatever we might define as “sacred” on this earth.

But one thing is for sure: You cannot claim to hear from God and reject the Bible. You will be required to figure out how to handle any apparent conflicts between Scripture and other sources you may like, but if you don’t take the Bible seriously, I don’t have to treat you as a spiritual-moral equal. But you see, the Devil takes the Bible seriously enough to twist its contents. Here’s another sample from my work on the red herring of “spiritualizing the text.”

Matthew 4:6

For once, it seems Matthew offers us a more literal rendering of a prophecy. That’s because he’s quoting Satan, who is misusing a quote from Psalm 91:11-12.

This section of Psalms begins with the 90th, written by Moses, and we can safely assume that the next few following songs are also from the same source. Thus, we have a continuing thread of thought. In 91, it’s all about the faithful man of God. In typical Hebrew style, it’s a mixture of dramatic symbolism, often in the form of hyperbole, along with more literal statements. The reader is expected to go with the flow, lose themselves in the moment, and know instinctively what to make of it. Read enough Hebrew literature and you’ll figure it out, but you have to adapt your reading to the Hebrew frame of reference.

So the two verses Matthew quotes work out to standard Covenant promises. They are part of a context which combines verses 10-13. The part about angels is fairly literal, but how do you describe their work, since you typically don’t see them? Even if you do catch them literally in the act, with your very human eyes, it would be far more important to understand their actions always as symbolic manifestations of something more important.

Satan correctly deduces that the angels were tasked with keeping good care of Jesus the man, who lived perfectly, well above the demands of the Law that promised the Father’s care. The context is Satan trying to get Jesus to perform actions which the Pharisees would interpret as clear signs of the Messiah, following the False Messianic Expectations. One of them specifically suggested the Messiah would jump down from the pinnacle of the Temple plaza — the point where the terrace had been extended far out from the original ancient site, and the southeast corner stood some 70 feet (21 meters) above the ground below. According to the fake prophecies, the Messiah was supposed to announce Himself by jumping down and landing safely, in part because of a misreading of this passage in Psalm 91.

Jesus says that He refuses to be that Messiah. The act itself was not consistent to Scripture, but constituted flinging a challenge in the face of God. This is typical of the literalist rendering of the Pharisees, not to mention the modern Pharisees among Protestant theologians.

Finally, Matthew quotes Jesus responding to this and another temptation by correctly quoting Deuteronomy 6, verses 13 and 16. Those were rather obviously meant literally in the first place.