Journey with Jesus #4

Old Testament - Water 02/20/09

This study explores how water is used in the Old Testament - specifically in three areas: an image of the chaotic primordial abyss, a metaphor for the spiritual abandonment of the individual, and finally a symbol of blessing.

For the Jews the sea was a particularly terrifying place. The peoples of ancient Northern Europe feared the dark forests and associated them with magic and monsters. The open land of Israel, sparsely forested, was a place of sanctuary, a gift from their God. It was the sea that was the place of chaos and darkness. It was from the sea that invaders came.

Psalm 89 celebrates the power and majesty of God (vv. 5-10). YHWH is the greatest of the heavenly beings who stills the raging waters and crushes the monster Rahab. Sea monsters are common in ancient mythology and Rahab gets several mentions in the Hebrew scriptures. Is 51:9-11 seamlessly links the conquest of Rahab to the Exodus account of the crossing of the Red Sea. Earlier in Isaiah (26:16-27:1) the battle with a sea serpent (Leviathan) is incorporated into the future apocalyptic battle. Chaos will erupt when the earth discloses the blood of the innocent and YHWH will definitively overcome the forces of chaos and violence personified by Leviathan.

Psalm 104:1-13 describes the creative act of YHWH – forming the earth by controlling and subduing the tempestuous waters. It has an underlying primitive cosmology – God has his dwelling place above the waters (v.3); the foundations of the earth are covered with the deep (v.6) and chaotic waters take flight to the tops of the mountains at the command of YHWH – where they run down into the valleys, their “appointed place” (v.8). In this psalm, rooted in the Wisdom tradition, God does not do battle with monsters. Instead he rebukes the water to tame them (v. 7). In the same way Jesus rebukes the wind and the waves. Leviathan is mentioned (v. 26) – but as a creature that plays in the sea. The waters have to be suppressed in order for life to flourish. Under God’s control water, fundamentally chaotic, becomes a positive creative force.

These passages illustrate how the Prophetic and Wisdom traditions use the ancient mythological material differently.

A second use of water can be found in the psalms. Here the psalmist describes the experience of abandonment in terms of being overwhelmed by the deep – “”deep calls to deep at the thunder of your cataracts; all your waves and your billows have gone over me.” (Ps 42: 7-9). The abyss is the place in which the lost soul finds itself – a metaphor for depression and despair. In Ps 69:1-4 & 14-15 this theme recurs. Sheol (the place of the dead) and the abyss overlap – both murky, subterranean places. The psalmist calls for rescue from the pit, believing that God will answer his/her prayer. It is easy to see how belief in resurrection grew out of this. There is a fluidity of boundaries. God can rescue us from un-differentiation, from un-life, from the ultimate experience of abandonment – death. Cf. also Psalm 88:3-7, 16-18 – being cut off from God as a way to interpret the human experience of loss. (God’s wrath is the human reading of the condition of abandonment rather than the contemporary proactive, violent God of fundamentalism).

Finally water becomes a symbol of blessing – Psalm 104 & 65”You visit the earth and water it, you greatly enrich it; the river of God is full of water; you provide the people with grain, for so you have prepared it…”

All of this is background to the story of Jonah. There was an actual historical Jonah, a successful prophet attached to the royal court in the 8th century– the only prophet to come from the area of Galilee. The story that has been attached to his name is a Wisdom story written long after that time, after the fall of Nineveh. Jonah is unique in the Old Testament in that it is really a Wisdom piece masquerading as a prophetic book, or rather achieves the level of prophecy. The story incorporates all three metaphorical uses of water and radicalizes them. It uses and subverts the themes so that the sea monster becomes the means of redemption and blessing. The prophetic and Wisdom themes work through the monstrous, turning the enemy into the friend.

Violence is everywhere in Jonah. The storm rages (1:15), the Ninevite King calls on his people to turn from their evil and violence (3:8), God turns from his violent intentions (3:10), Jonah is filled with anger and violence (4:1) and refuses to relinquish his anger (4:9). In this context the raging sea becomes an image of human anger, and the sea monster, catastrophic violence. Being swallowed by the whale recalls the personal psalms of lament, of being overwhelmed by the forces of chaos and violence. Jonah’s prayer from the belly of the whale reiterates the psalmists’ prayer for rescue.

In the Gospels when the people ask Jesus for a sign he replies that the only sign that will be given will be the sign of Jonah. Traditionally (and even in the Gospels themselves) this is given to mean that Jesus would be dead for three days before rising – just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale for three days. In the context of this study it seems likely that Jesus meant much more than this. The text confronts us. We are Jonah. We are self-destructive and violent. We would rather pull the towers down upon ourselves than forgive. Jonah is a story about forgiveness. The monstrous can be transformed, the enemy becomes our friend. This is the gospel message. Jonah deliberately and defiantly opts to enter the abyss for all his miserable, negative reasons. Yet God saves him. The element of chaos becomes the medium for his redemption. It is what we most wish to escape from that becomes the means of grace. Jesus enters the abyss for all the right reasons and saves us all. It is telling that the last words of Jonah’s psalm (2:9) are “Deliverance belongs to the Lord” – a variation of “The Lord delivers”, which is the meaning of the name Yeshua –Jesus.