I’m finally back to posting again. My in-laws arrived for a two-week visit with us the day after my last post, and then a looming project deadline forced me to work 7 days a week throughout all of September, so there hasn’t been much free time for posting. Hopefully that will change in the coming weeks.
So.. back to the whole holiness/justice question, picking up from where I left off (the death of Solomon). As I hinted previously, the division of Israel into northern and southern kingdoms was precipitated largely by the people’s sense that Solomon’s policies had been unjust, and by his son Rehoboam’s foolish and prideful attempt to secure the respect and subservience of his subjects by threatening to be even more demanding than his late father (see 1 Kings 12). While Rehoboam thus initially displayed a disdain for the demands of justice and mercy, his counterpart to the north, Jeroboam, immediately set up false idols as a way of asserting his control over the religious life of his new subjects, thus leading the northern kingdom of Israel away from holiness and commitment to the One true God. As we have seen repeatedly, once either holiness or justice is abandoned, the other soon follows, and indeed the subsequent history of both Israel and Judah is an almost unbroken litany of failures to serve God faithfully on the one hand and to love and care for one another on the other hand, as the most casual perusal of the books of Kings makes abundantly clear.
Consider, for example, Ahab, the most wicked of Israel’s kings. What are the two best-known stories about him? First, his dramatic confrontation with Elijah at Mt. Carmel (1 Kings 18) in which he appears as a staunch supporter of the false god Baal (and thus a implacable opponent of proper holiness before God), and second, his seizure of Naboth’s vineyard (1 Kings 21), a miscarriage of justice if ever there was one. Or consider Manasseh, the most wicked of Judah’s kings (see 2 Kings 21 for the details of his reign). He showed his disregard for holiness by rebuilding the shrines to false gods that his father, Hezekiah, had destroyed, and even erected altars to the stars in the midst of the temple. In addition, Manasseh is hyperbolically said to have shed so much innocent blood that he filled Jerusalem from end to end, which seems like it probably falls under the umbrella of ”abandonment of justice.” Conversely, Judah’s greatest king, Josiah, not only launched a revival of holiness by tearing down the idols and shrines to false gods and leading the people to renew their covenant with God, but he also demonstrated his commitment to justice and integrity by using the money that the Israelites had freely given to the temple for the purpose of paying fair wages to the men who were entrusted with the task of repairing the temple (rather than confiscating the offerings for his own royal whims or ripping off the laborers, as many other kings of Israel and Judah surely would have). Time and again, we see that holiness and justice are inextricably linked in the life of Israel and Judah and their monarchs.
This linkage is also readily apparent in the words of the prophets, who, in addition to their frequent condemnations of Israel and Judah’s idolatry and disobedience toward God, also make a point of denouncing the many injustices that have been perpetrated by those in power against the poor and helpless of society. Here are a few (of many) representative examples of prophetic condemnations of both Israel and Judah dealing both with their abandonment of holiness in favor of idolatry and their propensity for injustice:
Hosea — Holiness: “I will punish her for the days she burned incense to the Baals” (2:13). Justice: “There is only cursing, lying, and murder, stealing and adultery, they break all bounds and bloodshed follows bloodshed” (4:2).
Amos — Holiness: “You have lifted up the shrine of your king, the pedestal of your idols, the star of your god—which you made for yourselves” (5:26). Justice: “They [Israel] trample on the heads of the poor as upon the dust of the ground and deny justice to the oppressed” (2:7, see also 5:7–13).
Isaiah — Holiness: “Their land is full of idols; they bow down to the work of their hands, to what their fingers have made” (2:8). Justice: “Your rulers are rebels, companions of thieves; they all love bribes and chase after gifts. They do not defend the cause of the fatherless; the widow’s case does not come before them” (1:23, see also 10:1–4).
Micah — Holiness: “All her idols will be broken to pieces; all her temple gifts will be burned with fire; I will destroy all her images” (1:7). Justice: “Woe to those who plan iniquity, to those who plot evil on their beds! At morning’s light they carry it out because it is in their power to do it. They covet fields and seize them, and houses, and take them. They defraud a man of his home, a fellowman of his inheritance” (2:1–2).
Jeremiah — Holiness: “ ‘The people of Judah have done evil in my eyes, declares the LORD. They have set up their detestable idols in the house that bears my Name and have defiled it” (7:30). Justice: “Woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness, his upper rooms by injustice, making his countrymen work for nothing, not paying them for their labor” (22:13).
Ezekiel — Holiness: “Because of all your detestable idols, I will do to you what I have never done before and will never do again” (this is the first of 45 references to idols in Ezekiel, a book that is positively obsessed with God’s holiness and Israel’s defilement). Justice: “The people of the land practice extortion and commit robbery; they oppress the poor and needy and mistreat the alien, denying them justice” (22:29).
In addition to addressing both holiness and justice in their condemnations of Israel and Judah, the prophets also maintain a linkage between the two concepts in their prescriptions and their promises of restoration. A great example of prophetic prescription that addresses both of these issues is the following passage from Jeremiah:
“If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, if you do not oppress the alien, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your forefathers for ever and ever” (Jeremiah 7:5–7).
As for prophetic promises of restoration and newness, a concise summary can be found in Isaiah 33:5: “The LORD is exalted, for he dwells on high; he will fill Zion with justice and righteousness.”
Of course, there are many, many more examples of condemnations of idolatry and injustice, as well as calls for and promises of renewed holiness and justice, that could be cited from the vast corpus of prophetic literature, but the point should now be relatively clear. In summary then, the basic story of the books of Kings is Israel and Judah’s progressive abandonment of both holiness and justice, and the basic message of the prophets is: A) Israel and Judah have abandoned both holiness and justice and will therefore be punished, B) Israel and Judah must faithfully seek after both holiness and justice, and C) When God restores the fortunes of His people, their new communal life will be marked by both holiness and justice.
This brings us (roughly) to the end of the Old Testament. In my next post, I’ll tackle the ways in which Jesus integrated these two themes in His ministry.
