The 103 Psalm declares, “The Lord made His ways known to Moses, His acts to the sons of Israel.” I have often pondered this simple statement. It tells us much about God’s self-revelation, and how we have come to know what we know and think the way we think.
It is easy for a thinking man or woman to accept the proposition, stated in the first verse of the Bible, that “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”. It is harder to accept the proposition stated a few verses later, “Then God said…”
The idea of a God who has spoken who has revealed Himself to the human race is hard for moderns who know the immensity of the universe to accept. But it was not an easy concept for ancient man either. In fact, one of the earmarks of the Bronze Age was the frustration men felt at the silence of their gods.
Men in the Bronze Age believed misfortune to be a sign that the gods were angry at them. “Surely we must have offended the gods,” they thought, “Otherwise we would not be suffering these calamities.” And so they sought to propitiate the gods with their sacrifices. But what had they done wrong? They could only guess. The gods weren’t saying.
Several ancient prayers which reflect this frustration have survived, like this one from John H. Walton’s book, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament:
“I wish I knew that these things were pleasing to one’s god! What is proper to oneself is an offence to one’s god; what is one’s own heart seems despicable is proper to one’s god. Who knows the will of the gods in heaven? Who understands the plans of the plans of the underworld gods? Where have mortals learnt the way of a god?”
Walton adds:
“With no revelation, however, there was no way to know what pleased and what angered. In a well known Assyrian prayer entitled A Prayer to Every God, the worshiper is seeking to appease a deity from anger over an offense that the worshiper has presumably committed. There are only two problems: he does not know which god is angry, and he does not know anything he has done wrong. He therefore addresses each confession he makes to ‘the god I know or do not know, the goddess I know or do not know‘. He is ready to confess ignorantly eating forbidden food or invading sacred space…anything to appease. His frustration overwhelms us with sympathy as he expresses his hopelessness: ‘Although I am constantly looking for help, no one takes me by the hand; when I weep, they do not come to my side. I utter laments, but no one hears me; I am troubled; I am overwhelmed; I cannot see. Man is dumb; he knows nothing; mankind, everyone that exists – what does he know? Whether he is committing sin or doing good, he does not even know.’
This is the plight of those who live in a world without revelation. In the end, for all of the conscientious ritual, they did not know what deity wanted – they could only adhere to traditions and ride out the storm.”[i]
Imagine, then, how incredible it must have been to Abram, a bronze aged man, when suddenly God began to speak to him and reveal Himself. Here was a God who speaks. How interested also the neighbors in Cana must have been when he erected altars and began to “declare the name of the Lord”.
The process of Divine Self-disclosure, or revelation, continued slowly throughout the Bronze Age. Abraham’s son, Isaac, learned a little more about Him than his father hand known, and Isaac’s son, Israel (Jacob) learned a little more than he had known. But the most significant and sustained period of self revelation in Old Testament times began with Moses, and continued throughout the Exodus and the years of wandering in the wilderness.
There would be addition revelation throughout the Old Testament period, and the Divine Self-Disclosure would reach its crescendo in the incarnation, but what David wrote in the 103rd Psalm should not be minimized, it was to Moses and the sons of Israel that God revealed His ways and acts. As part of this revelation God even laid out the blueprint for a nation, its laws, its economic order and governance.
It is amazing to me that future generation have ignored this blueprint in their subsequent discussions of these things, and in their discussion of a good society and what it should look like. Surely entire volumes could be written, but few if any have. But in this series of posts, in light of some discussion we have been having about Communism, Socialism and the Free Enterprise System, I am going to taking a look at a few of the broad principles that can be gleaned from the blueprint for the nation of Israel.
[i] John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible. Baker Academic; Grand Rapids, Michigan. p. 145
