Our survey of God’s self-revelation to Israel – inadequate as it has been – must come to an end. What impressions remain? What was the devout Israelite’s knowledge of his God?
Above all things God was a reality, not just an idea or principle, nor some kind of mysterious essence. B…
Ourselves and the Knowledge of God 1 Read More »
With the term “truth” we come to another whose Old Testament sense is rather different from that which our common use of it would suggest.
The Hebrew root aman (from which Amen comes) means firmness, steadfastness. Its sense is illustrated from its use in various forms in allusions like these…
That the Bible represents God as at times being moved to wrath against men is clearly a fact, but one which is not very acceptable in religious circles today. The emphasis upon the love of God in recent times, partly but not wholly a reaction against the sternness and hell-fire philosophy of an earl…
“The poor in spirit the meek they that mourn”: such is the opening description of those whom Jesus says are blessed in his Sermon on the Mount. They appear strange terms, for do they not suggest that the faithful should be depressed and sorrowful? But in fact they are terms with a long history i…
The Faith of the Poor and Meek Read More »
The mercy and the truth of God involve two at least of the most important words in the Old Testament, and indeed in the whole Bible. Micah’s: “Thou wilt perform the truth to Jacob and the mercy to Abraham, which thou hast sworn into our fathers from the days of old” (7:20), delivered as a …
The Mercy and the Truth (1) Read More »
The Old Testament word for judgment (mishpat) comes from the verb shaphat, judging, and is illustrated in the proper name Jehoshaphat, God has judged. In ordinary use it would be a word of authority spoken by a judge, but as in Israel the first Judge of the nation was God, it is His laws which are…
Judgment and Righteousness Read More »
IT MUST have been with great sadness that the Apostle Paul said to the elders of Ephesus in that very remarkable speech recorded in Acts 20: “I know that after my departure shall grievous wolves enter in among you.”What must have added to his sadness is the recollection that Moses had sa…
The Grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ Read More »
