John concludes his Gospel on a tantalizing note, implying that he has only scratched the surface in reporting the deeds and words of Jesus. Now there are also many other things that Jesus did, he writes. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written (Jn 21:25).
Here John reminds us of something important about the Bible.
Its narratives give summaries of what was said and done rather than exhaustive accounts of events or detailed transcripts of conversations. Biblical narratives are what scholars call "laconic," a word meaning brief or concise.
Several passages give additional evidence that biblical narrative is laconic. For example, in Genesis 20:13, Abraham confesses to Abimelech of Gerar that he has asked his wife Sarah to pose as his sister every place to which we come. His statement suggests the possibility that they had used this ruse not only in Egypt and Gerar, as recorded in Genesis, but in additional locations as well.
A second fascinating example appears in Genesis 26:5, where God tells Isaac, Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws. The Hebrew terms for "charge," "commandments," and "statutes" also appear together in Deuteronomy 11:1, where Moses uses them to describe the divine instruction that he expounds to Israel in the book of Deuteronomy. This parallel language may suggest that God gave more teaching to Abraham than is mentioned explicitly in Genesis 12-22, perhaps including commandments later recorded in Deuteronomy.
There is a third example in Genesis 31:7, where Jacob reminds Rachel and Leah that their father Laban changed my wages ten times. His statement implies Laban continually practiced deception in his dealings with Jacob, even beyond the examples already mentioned in Genesis 29-30.
These three examples have a similar structure. In each case, a laconic third-person narrative is followed by a first-person statement adding new information to the earlier narrative.(1)
This special structure is not confined to the book of Genesis.
In Acts 9:3-8, Luke describes Paul's confrontation with the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus. Then in Acts 22:6-11, Paul gives his own account of the event, adding details to the original narrative about the time of day, the brightness of the light, and what his companions saw and heard. Finally, in Acts 26:13-20 Paul recounts the episode again, giving additional information about what Jesus said to him during the encounter. Paul's retellings hint at how much was not mentioned in Acts 9:3-8 and enhance that original narrative.
Keeping in mind the laconic nature of biblical narrative and the preceding instances, consider one further example. In Genesis 2:16-17 God tells Adam, You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die. Later, when the serpent questions Eve on what God has said to them, she replies, We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, "You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die" (Ge 3:2-3).
When we compare these two passages, one difference stands out. Eve says that God had told them not even to touch the fruit of the forbidden tree, a detail not mentioned in Genesis 2:16-17. Usually, it is assumed that Eve in Genesis 3:2-3 has added something to what God told Adam.(2)
Commentators who make this assumption try to imagine why Eve would attribute to God a stricter prohibition than he had given. Does her remark, for instance, betray a feeling that God was being overly restrictive in withholding one tree from them?
While pondering this possibility, we should remember that the Bible cautions against making additions to, or deletions from, a commandment of God (Dt 4:2; 12:32; Pr 30:6; Rev 22:18-19). Doing so indicates a disagreement with God, implying that one does not have complete faith in him. The Bible says that whatever does not proceed from faith is sin (Ro 14:23).
One can argue, then, that if Eve added to the prohibition that she and Adam received from God, then she was sinning already, even before she was deceived by the serpent. However, we read in 1 Timothy 2:14 that Eve was deceived and became a transgressor. In other words, her sin came when she was deceived and ate the forbidden fruit, not beforehand.
Therefore, there are problems with simply assuming Eve added to God's original prohibition in Genesis 3.
It is also quite possible, though Gen 2:16-17 does not mention it, that God told Adam not to touch the fruit. If that is the case, it is another instance of the structure described in this article. The narrator used Eve's first-person remarks to convey new information about what God previously told Adam.
This last example suggests that since a biblical narrative is laconic, we should be wary of drawing conclusions based on what the Bible does not say. When the text is silent on a matter, it is wise to consider all possibilities in light of the entire witness of Scripture, keeping in mind the Bible's literary patterns and structures.
(1) Jeffrey J. Niehaus identifies and discusses this structure in When Did Eve Sin? The Fall and Biblical Historiography, Lexham Press, 2020.
(2) Niehaus surveys the history of interpretation of these passages in chapters 2 and 3 of When Did Eve Sin?
Post Title: Nourishing and Cherishing
"I've something a bit different to share with you that is always timely, interesting, and challenging. For a deeper dive into this subject, I commend to you my audio seminar, In His Image: Biblical Insights Into Love, Marriage and the Family."
Before closing our teaching time, let's review some essential ideas.
First, the kind of romantic love that is extolled and sold in movies, music, magazines, and books is an enormous deception. It creates illusions and false expectations of what love should be. Although authentic love may include romantic love, it is not the basis for biblical marriage.
Second, authentic self-love is based on seeing yourself as Christ sees you. You can extend love to others from that sense of self-acceptance. When we have a proper sense of self-love—that which is biblical, healthy, and restorative—we can freely and fully love another.
Third, the Bible teaches and pictures a radically different view of love. God commands it, which introduces an important lesson. You cannot command passions or emotions, but you can command your will. The exercise of the will leads to conduct. Appropriate conduct fosters positive emotions.
In doing acts of love, we are taught how to love.
Fourth, romance and affection—built on everyday acts of love—are highly desirable as part of a larger cluster within the marriage relationship. Why? Because marriage, first and foremost, is a covenant of mutually interdependent, not codependent, partners. Therefore, manifestations of affection, tenderness, and sexual expression are an important and fulfilling part of marriage.
A Hebrew word that points to the biblical idea of romance is yichud, from the word yadah (to know) and echad (oneness). The marriage covenant has three partners: a husband, a wife, and God. Only when God is part of the union do men and women come into their fullness. Yichud speaks of the sacredness of marriage. It speaks of a balanced, mutual relationship and a simple but enduring kind of love.
But yichud also speaks of deep affection and the intimacy of sex. One of the five blessings pronounced over a Jewish couple at their wedding is that the bride and groom may rejoice as friends and lovers. Adam and Eve were more than just lovers. They were friends. And this is the ideal of biblical love in the covenant of marriage, namely that you are both friends and lovers.
Yichud is the balance of reason and romance; of discipline and spontaneity; of dreams and realism; of both individuality and unity.
Even as I teach on this subject, I am deeply challenged. Don't think for a minute I am the ideal mate, embodying all these things. I have enough problems without adding hypocrisy to the list. [laughter] God's Word reveals his plan for us, his holy design. Yes, it brings conviction, but it also inspires my heart to love more intentionally each day. I pray it does so for you as well.
Paul writes in Ephesians 5: 25, Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, which suggests the principle I previously pointed out to you. If you don't have healthy self-esteem originating from a relationship with God through Messiah Jesus, if you are not operating out of that internal center where Christ reigns supreme, then you cannot love another or receive love from another in a complete way.
Although I am speaking now to husbands, the implications for wives are also clear.
In verse 29, Paul uses two important words, translated in the NIV as to feed and care (vs.29). I much prefer the English Standard Version, For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church because we are members of his body. Husbands, this is the ideal. We are called to nourish and cherish our wives.
The Greek root of the word nourish means "to bring." Because of the prefix, the meaning is "to bring out." It is the ability to bring out something of value from deep within, to let it emerge, and to encourage its development. What a beautiful picture.
We see it again in Eph 6:4, Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Bring them up is the same language; to nourish, to bring out the beauty, the value, and the unique personhood God has invested in them. If true for your children, how much more crucial is it to nourish your wife who gave them life?
The Greek word for cherish in Eph 5:29 is peculiar because it is only used twice in the NT. The other occurrence is in 1 Thess 2:7, But we were gentle among you like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. Paul cherished the believers in Thessalonica, like a mother who tenderly cares for her infant. The word means to warm or to heat. It evokes the image of a mother hen sitting on her eggs or brooding over her chicks to provide them warmth and protection.
We are called to provide emotional warmth, physical warmth, and spiritual warmth to our mates. Men, if we are to nourish and cherish our wives, then I suggest it would take these three forms: affection, affirmation, and acceptance.
One of the tremendous corroding influences of marriage is indifference and apathy.
The capacity to adapt is vital to our survival in this world; we are very adept at adapting. But this very capacity becomes a hindrance in a marriage because we get to a point where we have adapted to one another so well that we know them. (More to the point, assume we know all there is to know about them). We institutionalize the marriage leading to boredom. Mae West famously quipped, "Marriage is a great institution, but I'm not ready for an institution."
We need to show acceptance of our wives as people with all kingdom rights and privileges. We must know them in their personhood and affirm them for who they are, not just who we want them to be. They are so important as a person that God's own Son came to regenerate them and bring them into wholeness. We must nourish and cherish our wives with affection, affirmation, and acceptance.
We men—of whom Christ is to be the head—are also to be the leaders, the head for our wives. So we must be like Christ and extend affection, affirmation, and acceptance to those we love. In that, God will be well pleased, and love, both biblical and romantic, will be fused in a more perfect union.
And in the power of His Spirit, we can and will love as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.
Amen.
Get the most recent study in your inbox every Sabbath. Click here.
Want to go deeper? Click here to explore audio seminars by Dwight A. Pryor.
Interested in taking one of our dynamic online courses? Click here.
This study is from a professionally produced transcription of the audio recording. It was edited for readability by the team at JC Studies.
Dwight A. Pryor (1945-2011) was a gifted Bible teacher of exceptional clarity and depth who earned the friendship and admiration of both Christian and Jewish scholars—in the United States and Israel—as well as the respect and appreciation of followers of Jesus around the world. His expertise in the language, literature, and culture of Israel during the life and time of Jesus and the early church yield insights that nourish every area of faith and practice.
Dwight founded JC Studies in 1984 to edify the people of God. Click here to explore over fifty of his audio and video seminars.
Post Title: The Will to Love
"I've something a bit different to share with you that is always timely, interesting, and challenging. For a deeper dive into this subject, I commend to you my audio seminar, In His Image: Biblical Insights Into Love, Marriage and the Family."
The Bible teaches and pictures a radically different view of love. In three separate instances, the Torah commands it.
Deuteronomy 6:5 – You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
Leviticus 19:18 - You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.
Leviticus 19:34 - You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.
Think about it. You cannot command passions or emotions. What you can command is the will. The exercise of the will leads to conduct. Right conduct fosters positive emotions.
Israel's sages studied the scriptures diligently to figure out what God meant when he said, "You shall love" your God, your neighbor, the stranger. They reasoned that God cannot command passions or emotions because they are capricious and erratic; they come and go. But your will is something within your power to control.
What does it mean to love God? So they point out that the very next verse in Deut 6:6 says, And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart followed by God giving them specific things to do. So, they reasoned, to love God means to study his Word in a way that leads to keeping his commandments, which leads to growing in greater intimacy and delighting in him.
What does it mean to love our neighbor? In Lev 19:18, a neighbor is better translated as one's fellow citizen. It refers to those within the community of faith. It means that you desire and act for the well-being of your brothers and sisters. You are to treat them the way you desire to be treated. Israel's sages provide many practical illustrations of what it means to love your neighbor, like visiting the sick, comforting mourners, and providing a bride and groom with the necessities for establishing their new home.
What does it mean to love a stranger? The key to this text is the Lord's constant reminder to his covenant people, You shall not oppress a stranger. You know the heart of a stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt (Ex 23:9). It means that you treat those outside the covenant community like you would like to have been treated when you were captive in Egypt. It means you desire the stranger's well-being, evidenced by doing good and being kind to them. You do not cause or add to their suffering or sorrow.
It shocks most Christians when I tell them the highest goal of Judaism—then and now—is love. We have such a distorted image of the Hebrew Bible and the Jewish people. The highest ideal and ultimate purpose, even the greatest happiness according to the sages, comes only in love. And the highest form of love is to love God. Israel learned a secret in pursuit of being faithful to love God according to his Word. What they discovered is what I want to say to you today.
The means to the end (the end being love) is love. In other words, the performance of acts of love leads to the passion of love.
If you perform the deeds of love in concrete, specific actions, it will lead in time to the feelings and disposition of love toward the other—whether it be God, your family, your neighbor, or even the stranger. And this, they say, is why the Torah commands love. Because in doing acts of love man is taught how to love.
We can view the relationship between a husband and a wife through the same biblical lens. In the covenant of marriage, love involves both duties and delights. And love includes romantic love. The Bible explicitly praises the virtues of romance in stories like that of Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Rachel, and in entire books like the Song of Songs. But it is equally honest about the realities of human relationships.
The sages pointed out that ecstasy is temporary and fleeting unless formed into everyday acts of love. Romance and affection are highly desirable as part of a larger cluster within the marriage relationship. Why? Because marriage, first and foremost, is a covenant of mutually interdependent—not codependent—partners. Therefore, manifestations of affection, tenderness, and sexual expression are an important and fulfilling part of marriage.
The Hebrew word for a husband and wife having intercourse is the same for knowing God (yadah).
Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, "I have gotten a man with the help of the LORD" (Gen. 4:1). Yadah speaks of both the mind and heart that brings you into an intimacy with the other.
But there is a Hebrew word that is even more meaningful concerning romantic love. It is yichud. A version of this word occurs in Gen 2:24-25, Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. One flesh is basar echad. Echad, which speaks of oneness, has the same root as yichud.
Yichud speaks of intimacy, a balanced and mutual relationship, and a simple but enduring kind of love. The term denotes the last portion of the Jewish wedding ceremony. After all the blessings are pronounced, the new husband and wife retreat from the crowd and go off to a special room, and the door is locked. Alone together, they can be one. This ceremony is called yichud.
They spend quality time there together before they come out and greet the well-wishers. They are holy, and marriage is holy. They are separated from the rest of the world and set apart for one another. In another beautiful picture, traditionally, yichud refers to a room or a house designed to be an environment where both the love of spouses and children can flourish. Again, dear friends, this is truly romantic and reflects the loving heart of our God and Father.
Get the most recent study in your inbox every Sabbath. Click here.
Want to go deeper? Click here to explore audio seminars by Dwight A. Pryor.
Interested in taking one of our dynamic online courses? Click here.
This study is from a professionally produced transcription of the audio recording. It was edited for readability by the team at JC Studies.
Dwight A. Pryor (1945-2011) was a gifted Bible teacher of exceptional clarity and depth who earned the friendship and admiration of both Christian and Jewish scholars—in the United States and Israel—as well as the respect and appreciation of followers of Jesus around the world. His expertise in the language, literature, and culture of Israel during the life and time of Jesus and the early church yield insights that nourish every area of faith and practice.
Dwight founded JC Studies in 1984 to edify the people of God. Click here to explore over fifty of his audio and video seminars.