Comments on: Reading the Bible in the Right Direction (Part 2)

By: Joshua

Joshua — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 20:45:47 +0000

Gull’dern, Richard! That’s really cool. My understanding of of OT prophecy needs a lot of adjusting. Instead of a clean fulfillment of an obvious prediction it feels more like a having a memory being jogged about the deeds of God. This example shows us that God is consistent in His methods and that the same God who delivered Israel sent Jesus. I like it, but I hardly get it.

By: SilverRain Lee

SilverRain Lee — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 20:04:51 +0000

Hmmm.. Out of two interpretive options in 3rd paragraph, it’s certainly and obviously right to choose the latter one. Of course, Hosea 11 is clearly about Israel, returning to the land, future FULFILLMENT of God’s covenant. At first glimpse, I was questioning, “what on earth is the correlation between ‘Hosea 11 speaking about Israel’ and ‘Jesus staying in Egypt until Herod’s death’?” “Why did Matthew claim this incident of Jesus as the ultimate FULFILLMENT of Exodus? Your last paragraph has the answer in it. But at the same time your last paragraph makes me to question.. Isn’t it just legitimate to say that NT does repeat the Israel’s history? You said that Matthew is implicitly retelling it. In this case, since Jesus is a new exodus, why is it wrong to say NT’s story is repeating the OT’s theme? I think it does repeat in a developmental way.

By: Melissa

Melissa — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 18:12:18 +0000

I like this explanation of this passage. I have been confused before why Matthew chooses that Hosea passage to prove his point. Your explanation makes sens. I especially liked when you said, “History does not become irrelevant in the light of eternity. Earth does not become irrelevant in light of heaven. Humanity does not become irrelevant in the light of God.” I can, all too simply, separate the past (OT) from the story of Jesus in his life and death and resurrection. It is crucial to not read onto a passage what we want it to say rather than wrestling with what is actually there.

By: Chris Minch

Chris Minch — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 17:40:11 +0000

Wow. I have never heard “fulfillment” defined in these terms. (Nor the first chapters of Matthew explained in this way. That’s a bit disheartening.) Thank you for an excellent example of an OT reference that seemed to make no sense [to most of us] and how having an understanding of the OT can take a confusing reference and open it up into something much richer that will engage our hearts in a new way.

By: Emily

Emily — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:41:03 +0000

Wow. This was very helpful. I remember reading it and going back to Hosea, thinking that Matthew was out of his mind when he quoted that. I have noticed the similarities between the exodus story and Jesus’, but it was good to see it all written out side-by-side. Many times I do read the NT and flip back to the OT, inserting the meaning from the NT in the Old. It’s good to be aware of the danger of that!

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 05:59:08 +0000

Huh?? I had always wondered why that text was quoted. I had even gone back and look in Hosea but I had never really looked at it like that. I liked it although I would like to look at it closer. I liked your answer to Nathalie’s comment, and it makes me think what was Israel sopossed to display to the nations in revealing the knowlage of God, and what will they display when they come into their fullness as Jesus in his perfect obidence to that Father was a perfect representation of the Father. Overall I enjoyed the post and it brought clarity to that refrence that I never understood.

By: Sarah Beale

Sarah Beale — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 20:33:59 +0000

I really liked this post. I have never thought about the scripture like that. to be honest i normally want to just ignore those little plug-ins that are mentioned to the old testament because i dont really get the correlation or just take it for face value. But your parallel of Jesus to Moses really opens up the scriptures and his life even more. Though your saying this passage is not a “prove” text that Jesus is the Messiah the parallel is actually even more convincing that Jesus truly is the Messiah.

By: Jesse

Jesse — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 17:10:00 +0000

Glad you used these passages as your example. Like Natalie, this has been one of the more confusing OT quotes that I have come across. I had never seen this NT passage as an implicit retelling of the Exodus story and honestly did not know how to approach wrestling with how Matthew used this quote. Though I am not completely confident in how to approach interpreting OT quotes in the NT I am definitely in agreement that the OT must be the foundational starting point for our interpretation.

By: Jennifer

Jennifer — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 15:03:27 +0000

I loved this. I have had a hard time with the OT quotations and what to do with them; mostly I go back and read the chapter they are in but not understanding how they relate to each other. I loved the part about it being a reminder of how the Lord brought them out of Egypt. So many times in the OT; it talks about how God brought them out of Egypt with a mighty hand and delivered them. I love the connection again to how Jesus is our deliver. It connects God of the OT and Jesus in the NT together in a beautiful way. Thanks Richard for sharing your insights.

By: Gary

Gary — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 11:19:36 +0000

I like this post also. I appreciate the Exodus motif that is quite clear though implicit nonetheless that you pointed out. But there are quite a few proof texts that Paul or others pulled out of the bible that makes one wonder if the author knew what was going on. Like Jesus being called “A Nazarene” taken from Judges. Wait is that why you go to NTS?

I was also thinking of the point that Jeff brought up. Isnt a veil over the OT when one is reading it apart from Christ? (2 Cor 3) Doesn’t the NT also shed some light on the OT?

By: Jeff

Jeff — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 19:47:47 +0000

I certainly agree that we first of all want to understand what the New Testament authors meant when they wrote their books; and in order to do that, we need to know how the scriptures that they were interacting with were understood by their audience. The NT needs to be the completion of the OT’s story, not an alien story that somehow produces a revisionist version of the OT.

But at the same time, it seems that we need a kind of a “hermeneutical spiral” between the OT and the NT. Once we have understood the story of the OT and then used that to interpret the NT, we have to reckon with the fact that there were events recorded in the OT that were not meant to be understood until the story was complete – “types” (Rom 5:14) and “shadows” (Col 2:17, Heb 8:5, 10:1). We also want to see those Old Testament “mysteries” in light of the end of the story – in much the same way that the end of a really good suspense novel or movie suddenly causes a reevaluation of all the things you thought you knew about the story that went before (e.g. The Sixth Sense).

By: Richard

Richard — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 10:52:17 +0000

I think the contrast is part of the whole picture. Israel was unfaithful to its vocation, while Jesus, embodying the vocation of Israel is faithful.