The Lively Lectionary Old Testament is a blog that reflects on the Old Testament text from the Revised Common Lectionary each week.
It should be noted that all of the great Bible narratives, from the tales of Genesis to the potent story of the Exodus to the story of Jesus begin with small tales of family. We ought never discount the power of the small family story to offer the origins of the larger narratives that occupy so much of our attention in the course of our sacred history; they are always worth a further look.
All that Ruth has done, from her great speech on the Bethlehem road to her risk in a foreign field to her greater risk on the threshing floor at midnight, has been solely because she has loved Naomi. It is this amazing devotion to her mother-in-law that makes Ruth one of the Bible’s great models for the love of YHWH for the people. In this tale, it seems, God is a Moabite widow. How about that?
The time of the story is “when the judges ruled.” Setting Ruth’s story in that time, any reader might hold their breath, waiting for the next dismemberment or raunchy sexual escapade. Fortunately, absolutely none of that occurs, yet the story has more than its share of surprising and startling events.
The sharp-tongued, unyielding Job, who refused to knuckle under to the friend’s avowed pieties, is the sort of dialogue partner that YHWH prefers. When God finds Job to God’s liking, God frees all worshippers to bring truth to God, no matter how harsh, no matter how painful. Like those harsh psalms of lament and complaint, Job pulls no punches with God, and neither should we.
Some readers imagine that God here merely reiterates the sharp attacks against Job’s arrogance, but I think not. I see God winking slyly, and saying to Job to go on and “tread down the wicked in their place,” as you think I do, knowing full well that Job cannot do that, precisely because God does not do that either!
Job believes with assurance that “an upright person could reason with God,” and after the case has been argued Job is convinced that he “would be acquitted forever by my judge” (Job 23:7).
It is only in year B in the round of lectionary texts that we get the opportunity to examine the rich and complex book of Job, and that for only four weeks. I urge you preachers to take full advantage of this chance to offer your congregation something of the wonders of this challenging story.
Nearly all other materials from the book of Proverbs has to do with instructions given by male mentors to young men, but at the very end, the collectors of the book provide us with a portrait of a truly powerful and worthy woman, a wife, mother, provider, a hard-working and clever pillar of the community, praised by her husband and recognized by all as the very epitome of what it means to be a strong and capable woman in Israel, according to this branch of the school of wisdom.
We find in Prov.1:20ff the intriguing and mysterious figure of Woman Wisdom, whose call to all is to embrace what she has to offer, namely true wisdom, the choice of which will lead inevitably to security and ease, and freedom from disaster (Prov.1:33).
Proverbs are here designed to tease one into active thought, to think more deeply than simple repetitions of bumper sticker blathering. This is a lesson that every generation must relearn, lest we do nothing more than mouth what others have said.
The Most Beautiful Song offers to us a superb and winsome portrayal of a sacred sexual relationship, a picture of a man and a woman lusting after one another with genuine human desire, announcing to all who read that such desire is not only fabulous and wondrous, but is also a desire born of God
The editor’s attempt to clean up the figures of the story is a rank failure. The Bible will never let us forget that both of these men were human, both weak and vindictive, and ofttimes thoroughly unlovely. Creatures of God, as are we all, but humans at full stretch at the same time. So it is with the people of God, and so it always will be.
© SMU Perkins Center for Preaching Excellence
