Thoughts on Deuteronomy 2 & Revelation 1

Today’s reading: Deuteronomy 2; Revelation 1

Thoughts on Deuteronomy 2

When we think about God working through the line of Abraham we tend to think of Israel and ultimately Jesus coming from his line. After all, God told Abraham that all the nations of the earth would be blessed through him, and in Christ, all people, Jews and Gentiles alike, are brought back into the family of God. But Deuteronomy 2 gives us a glimpse behind the curtain into how God was already using the line of Abraham while Israel was still in Egypt and the wilderness.

As Moses recounts the wilderness wandering to Israel he mentions some of the people they encountered who are also descended from (or directly associated with) Abraham. First they ran into the people of Esau, who was Jacob’s brother. Jacob received the blessing, and his line became the people of God, but God also blessed Esau, and just as twelve tribes came from Jacob to form Israel, so too twelve tribes came from Esau to form Edom. Then Israel ran into the Moabites and the Ammonites who were children of Lot. Even though Lot was not a direct child of Abraham, he was part of Abraham’s tribe, and God blessed him for it. 

But Moses does not merely mention that these descendants of Abraham were living in the land and Israel wasn’t allowed to mess with them, but Moses also tells us that they have been clearing the giant clans out of the land.

This is important because, in Jewish thought, the giant clans were a problem for humanity. If you ask a Christian today how the world got the way it is, they would probably point you to the Fall in Genesis 3, and that’s the only answer. In Jewish thought though the Fall was only part of the problem. The world ended up in the state it did as a result of the Fall in Genesis 3, the descent of the Watchers in Genesis 6 (and the corruption they and their children brought), and God dispossessing the nations at Babel in Genesis 11. The giant clans were the vestiges of the Nephilim from the Genesis 6 event, and their presence was a continual source of corruption.

We will actually see in Joshua, as we get into the conquest narratives, that the cities and places Israel is told to outright destroy, even killing all the people, are the cities of the giants. Their task was not just taking possession of the promised land, but also the eradication of the remaining vestiges of this angelic/human rebellion, a task ultimately completed by David when he and his mighty men kill off the last of the giants among the Philistines.

But what we see in Deuteronomy 2 is that this task did not start with Israel. God was using the people of Abraham, well before Israel, to remove His enemies from the land He promised to Abraham. The Moabites cleared out the Emim, the Edomites clear out the Horites, and the Ammonites cleared out the Zamzummim. Then, even while Israel was wandering in the wilderness before entering the land, they defeated Sihon king of Heshbon and Og king of Bashan, both of whom were Rephaim (descendants of the Nephilim).

So while we tend to think of all the nations being blessed through Abraham as purely being Messianic, there is more to it than that. The Nephilim actively corrupted humanity, turning the nations further and further from Yahweh. So by removing this source of ongoing corruption from the world, Abraham’s descendants are already being used by God to be a blessing to all the nations of the earth.

Thoughts on Revelation 1

I have a hard time with the doctrine of the Trinity. Not in terms of believing it, I think it is as clear as day in the Scriptures, but wrapping my head around the total unity and diversity in the Trinity. The more I think about it the more I realize I don’t understand it.

There are two very disparate sides of my brain when it comes to thinking about or explaining the Trinity. On the one hand, I recognize and fully accept this is a mystery I can never possibly expect to wrap my head around, and I’m 100% fine with that. We are talking about an eternal entity that created the reality that defines the boundaries of my comprehension, and so He necessarily exists outside the boundaries of this reality that He created. So, logically, if such a God exists who created time, the universe, and everything, it makes complete sense that I would not have the categories or faculties to understand and explain the inner workings of such a being. But then, on the other hand, I want to understand Him more, and so I keep mulling over it and trying to understand how the Father, Son, and Spirit do and don’t relate.

I actually started reading a book on four views of the Trinity with a friend a little while back, that we were hoping would help us think better about it, but it was next to worthless for that. It was kind of an interesting book, and the authors made some interesting points, but it was mostly them debating nuances of terms and debating whether or not a given view might accidentally put a toe over the line into heresy. Maybe my biggest takeaway from that book was that even devout Christian scholars, who have devoted significant time to studying the Trinity from theological and philosophical standpoints, don’t have the ability to wrap their heads around the mystery of the Trinity.

But, something being difficult, or even impossible, to wrap our extremely limited minds around does not make it false. And if you couldn’t guess from me talking about it without actually mentioning the passage yet, the Trinity is what struck me in Revelation 1 this morning because we see both aspects of it that make it so difficult to understand, the diversity and unity within it.

The book of Revelation opens with a greeting that explicitly notes the three distinct persons of the Trinity: “Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth.” So we have the greeting coming from the Father, Spirit, and Son as clearly distinct from one another, but then as we read on there is also a complete unity in the reality of these three persons. We read, just a few verses later, “‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, ‘who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.’” And while we might assume it is God the Father who says this, given that this is His title in the greeting, when John turns to see who is speaking to Him, he sees one like a son of man, who also then says to him, “Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold, I am alive forevermore…”

Lest there be any doubt that maybe the Father also took on a corporeal form here, Jesus clarifies that He is the living one who died but is alive forevermore. And just as the God the Father is the Alpha and the Omega, Jesus Himself too is the first and the last. Both the Father and the Son are given the same titles here and the same nature as the One who is, was, and always will be, and the One who is the first and the last. So somehow, while they are truly distinct persons, they are also both the singular, eternally unique God, and I simply cannot wrap my head around that.

I can promise you now though that this is going to be bugging me and bouncing around in my head for the rest of the day today…