Second Quarter
2004
Adult Sabbath School Lessons:
Isaiah "Comfort My People"
Insights
to Lesson 1
Crisis of Identity
March 27–April 2
(Produced
by the Editorial Board of the 1888 Message Study Committee)
Isaiah,
the gospel prophet, prophesied for about 50 years (745-686 B.C.). His
ministry spanned the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, the
kings of Judah (Isaiah 1:1). There is no mention here of Manasseh, son of
Hezekiah, but Isaiah prophesied for a very short time during his reign.
Manasseh hated both Isaiah and his messages of warning and of the gospel.
Shortly after taking office as the supreme ruler of Judah, Manasseh
executed Isaiah (see 2 Kings 21:16; Prophets and Kings, p. 382).
The
Identity Crisis Then. Manasseh was the most violent and wicked king of
Judah. He silenced every voice of disapproval of his tyranny and
oppression and the perverted justice of his kingdom. He rebuilt altars to
Baal and Astarte, used witchcraft, sacrificed little children (including
his own) to the Ammonite god, Moloch, and “worshipped all the host of
heaven” (2 Chronicles 33:1-10; 2 Kings 21:1-17).
Those
were desperate times, a time of crisis. This was a crisis of identity.
Manasseh and those whom he directed believed in the religion of God. But
they mingled heathen rites with the worship of Jehovah. They sanctified
and purified themselves according to pagan ceremonies that they became
familiar with (Isaiah 66:17).
Those
consecration and purification ceremonies were rites of the heathen
mysteries. They then took a “I am holier than thou” (Isaiah 65:5)
attitude toward their brethren. The reigns of both Ahaz and Manasseh were
characterized by such worship. It was in the gardens and groves where
scenes of cruelty and immoral religious ceremonies were practiced, and the
Hebrews often followed the heathen in worshiping in such places. These
places are mentioned at both the beginning and end of the book of Isaiah
(65:3, 4; 1:29).
The
paganism of Israel and judgments against her are found in Isaiah 5:8-24.
There are six judgments pronounced against the wild grapes. This fruit was
not the fruit of the righteousness of the Lord. The judgments begin with
the word “woe,” under each of which is described the fruit that called
for justice.
Why?
What happened? What went wrong? “They despised the word” of God and
rejected His holy law (Isaiah 5:24). They forgot the promises of God, and
they did not see the promises of God in His law. They broke the
everlasting covenant of God (24:5). That covenant is Christ (42:6; 49:8).
God’s covenant is one of promise, confirmed in Chirst (Galatians 3:17). The
covenant of God is broken by despising it through unbelief. Consequently,
God’s people went into spiritualism and made a covenantal agreement with
hell (Isaiah 28:15-19; 57:23-8).
God’s
people entered into covenants with religious heathen nations around them.
Those covenants were based on the pagan principles of fear of punishment
and hope of reward, and were practiced by the Assyrians, whose kingdom was
the leading one in the world in the days of Isaiah.
[Please see the
addendum below for a “look” into these types of covenants.]
Our
Identity Crisis Today: The gospel lessons and warnings of Isaiah
continue to be present truth. This is because the condition of the human
heart has not changed. Apart from the grace of God we will enter into an
old covenant experience similar to what Israel did in days of old. We
entered into an identity crisis over one hundred years ago for some of the
same reasons that Israel did. From 1844 to 1888 we believed in the
religion of God. But there came a mingling of Assyrian (read Babylonian)
old covenant concepts with the doctrines of God. By 1888 leaders such as
Elders Butler and Smith were strong advocates concerning the sanctified
life in an old covenant setting. But they did not appreciate, so opposed,
that “most precious message” of justification by faith that always
leads to obedience of all the commandments of God, in sanctification, as
presented by God’s “delegated” messengers Jones and Waggoner.
But
before passing judgment on worshipers in a bygone era, whether1888 A.D. or
700 B.C., we should search our own hearts today. According to researcher
George Barna, 93 percent of the households in the United States contain a
Bible and more than 60 percent of the people surveyed claim to be
religious; but we would never know this from the way people act. One
Protestant church exists for every 550 adults in America, but does all
this “religion” make much of a difference in our sinful society? Have
we (corporately and individually) affected such things as the crime rate,
the divorce rate, or the kind of “entertainment” seen in movies and on
TV? What do people know, by the way we act, about that “most precious
message”?
The
crisis of identity in our day can be cleared, as it could have been in
Isaiah’s day, through understanding and appreciating and
receiving (believing)—God’ everlasting covenant of peace. This
involves, as it did in days of old, a heart appreciation for Christ and
His way of salvation and the consequent surrender, repentance, and
obedience in sanctification.
In conclusion, God’s great mercy and invitation continues to us
today. God urges us to repent and return to him, promising to cleanse and
restore us: “Come now, let us reason together,” says the Lord,
“Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow,
Though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool” (Isaiah 1:18).
THE SUZERAIN-VASSAL TREATIES
“Identical” or “Similar” to God’s Everlasting Covenant
For the last 50 years or so of our modern era, many
Protestant scholars have believed that God’s covenant with Israel was
modeled after the suzerain-vassal treaties of both the Assyrians and of
the earlier Hittites. The Hittite treaties were in vogue when God came
down upon Sinai and gave His everlasting covenant to Israel. Many have
thought that God took the various Hittite treaties as examples of the kind
of covenant He wanted with Israel. However, evidence is lacking. True,
there were similarities, but similarities are not to be construed as
“identicalness” as some have contended.
God gave the same covenant to Israel on Sinai as He did to Abraham some
400 years previous. Why then did Paul in his letter to the Galatians speak
of the “old covenant” as one from Sinai (Galatians 4:24)? This was because
Israel followed Abraham’s example in establishing an old covenant
experience. God made promises to Abraham and to Israel. Both, however,
decided to help God fulfill His promises. Abraham did so when he took
Hagar as a wife and Israel when she said “all that the Lord has spoken
we will do” (Exodus 19:8). Both responses to God’s promises were
responses of the flesh. Israel, no doubt, influenced by the pagan
covenants of their time, made a compact with God, thinking they needed to
establish their own righteousness, not fully understanding or believing
that God’s righteousness was promised in His covenant (see Patriarchs
and Prophets, pp. 371-372). God in His mercy kept in step with them.
The people needed to learn the message of salvation given to them in word
and in deed. It was not until their flesh utterly failed them that they
were prepared to trust fully in God’s promises and in His righteousness
by faith.
Important discoveries were made in the last century concerning Hittite
suzerain-vassal treaties. In 1931, E. Seidl V. Korosec described the
construction and related parts of the Late Bronze Age (c. 1400-1200 B.C.)
treaties. When these treaties were compared with certain covenants
mentioned in the Bible, by biblical scholars (those who previously
couldn’t provide answers to all the questions of the educated skeptics),
these believed they had the solution to the problems raised by higher
critics especially in the dating of the writings of Moses.
During the decades of the 1950s and ‘60s no theme in the Old Testament
received more intensive research than that of God’s covenant with
Israel. George Mendenhall analyzed the Hittite treaty documents previously
published by Korosec. Mendenhall was the first to point out Hittite Treaty
and Sinai Covenant parallels. In 1954 he first wrote regarding his
thinking concerning similarities between the Hittite treaties and the
Sinai covenant. This covenant, according to Mendenhall, was derived from
international suzerainty treaties used by the Hittites. (See “Biblical
Archaeologist” 17 (1954): 26-46; 49-76. This was reprinted in 1955 as Law
and Covenant in Israel and the Ancient Near East.)
“The structure of treaties in the LB Age was fully described . . . in
1931 by V. Korosec, but it was not until 1954 that the extraordinary
similarity to certain OT traditions was pointed out (Mendenhall 1954a). [1]
Meredith Kline and others followed Mendenhall’s line of reasoning. Kline
wrote three major studies about this: Treaty of the Great King
(1963); By Oath Consigned (1968); and The Structure of Biblical
Authority (1972). In his form-critical analysis of Deuteronomy, the
Decalogue, and other passages, Kline argued that the covenant God made
with Israel utilizes the form of the suzerainty treaty current in the
second millennium. This new data, gathered and analyzed for about 20
years, required a sweeping revision of critical assumptions held by a
majority of Old Testament scholars.
In most, but not all, of the Hittite treaties there were certain
characteristics, forms, and structures. Following is a structure of some
of those treaties as discovered by Mendenhall (who identified the first
six in some, not all, of the treaties):
-
Preamble: Identification of the Covenant Giver.
-
The Historical Prologue: The Hittite king recounted his past deeds of
benefit to the vassal.
-
The Stipulations.
-
The Provision for Deposit and Periodic Public Reading: The deposit of a
copy of the treaty in a temple was considered a sacred act that placed the
treaty within the interests of the local deity and under its protection.
-
The List of Witnesses to the Treaty: Deities that included opposing
and/or rebel gods and/or deified elements of the natural world.
-
The Blessings and Curses: Detailed descriptions of the consequences of
obedience and disobedience. The motivating factor--hope of reward and fear
of punishment.
-
The Ratification Ceremony: Frequently, but not always, associated with
the sacrifice of an animal.
-
The Imposition of the Curses: Not stated in the text of any treaty, but
rather by unwritten implication of probability. As time passed the
treaties dealt more with curses and not blessings.
Not every Hittite treaty presents all of the individual elements of the
above structure. An “ideal structure” of these treaties has been
abstracted from numerous treaties.
There is ongoing debate among scholars concerning the relationship between
the covenant of God with Israel and the suzerainty treaties. Was the
covenant made at Sinai the same as that of the Hittite treaties? Was it
taken from those treaties and modeled after them? Certainly there are
similarities between the two. But must similarities be construed into
“identicalness”? In the Exodus account there are only three
characteristics identifiable with the suzerain treaties of the pagan
world, which are: (1) Identification of the Covenant Giver, (2) The
Historical Prologue, and (3) Stipulations.
Some scholars argue that other Hittite treaty elements are included in the
book of Deuteronomy. However, notwithstanding that Deuteronomy was a
recital of the wanderings of Israel in the wilderness, the time element
between the two events (of Sinai and the recital) was 40 years. During
those 40 years many of the Israelites practiced other heathen rites and no
doubt during those years, and in their later history, they entered into
Hittite treaties with other nations and even among themselves. But this is
no evidence that God’s covenant with Israel at Sinai was based on
suzerain-vassal contracts, which are based on the pagan principles of hope
of reward and fear of punishment.
The Exodus 20 text does not include the provision for deposit and periodic
public reading, and conspicuously missing from the Sinai covenant are the
lists of gods as witnesses. Further still, the curses and blessings are
not spelled out in the Decalogue. In those portions of Exodus that tell of
the events at Sinai, a Hittite treaty-like form has to be pieced together
from isolated fragments. It is not found in that context.
Another difference is what the Hittite treaties laid down as conditions of
agreement required by contract (the stipulations) and what God said. God
gave the Ten Commandments. The Decalogue is not a mere outline of
commands. They are not couched in terms of command (i.e., imperative
language). They are simple future indicative verbs that indicate the
future action of expected consequences proceeding from the prologue of
redemption: “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of
Egypt . . . , (and therefore) you will have no other gods before me . . .
.”
Most of the stipulations of the Decalogue represent the concerns that
individuals in a community legitimately expect in normal civilized human
life (no lying, killing, stealing, adultery, etc.). These are not part of
the international suzerain-vassal treaties. Moreover, there was a major
difference between gods. The Hittites were polytheistic and both parties
involved in a treaty called on all the gods they could muster to witness
and to bless or curse the vassal. This is in sharp contrast with the
monotheism of Israel in which God’s subjects are considered sons and
daughters, not vassals. The lack of other elements of the Hittite treaties
could be evidence that the covenant at Sinai had nothing to do with
suzerainty treaties.
It seems that more problems are solved and fewer ones are raised by
acknowledging that God’s covenant ideas at Sinai did not emerge with the
formation of the pagan political, social, and legal society itself, thus
were not adaptations of thought patterns that even then were already
centuries old in the pagan world.
It seems, also, that the most we can conclude from the literary form of
Exodus 20:1-17 is that Moses did not believe that he had to pattern the
text of the Sinai covenant deliberately after the suzerainty treaties.
Further, Exodus 20 does not include the provision for deposit and periodic
public reading and to repeat: no list of witnesses, nor the curses and
blessings. There were no curses associated with the giving of the covenant
at Sinai or before that event. The covenant given to Abraham and to Israel
contained not a single curse. The only curse given concerning Abraham was
this: if he should be cursed, the curser was to be cursed (Genesis 12:3).
There are more differences. The ratification ceremonies were different.
The ritual act involving the sacrifice of an animal, the blood of
which was thrown upon the altar and upon the people (Exodus 24:5-8) was
different from the pagan treaties. The blood as used by Moses was a
symbolic action in which the people were identified with the sacrificed
animal for dedication and for salvation. The pagan sacrifices mentioned
were not ceremonies to ratify a covenant or treaty. In the pagan treaties
the identification was that the fate of the animal sacrificed was
presented as the fate to be expected by the vassal nation if they violated
their sacred promises. Thus the ratification ceremony was, in effect, the
pledging of their lives as a guarantee of obedience to the suzerain.
So it appears that any similarity between the Sinai covenant and the
Hittite treaties can be considered coincidental.
“Though there has been an enormous amount of discussion since that time
[1954, Mendehall], there still seems to be no consensus concerning the
historical significance or even the validity of those similarities.” [2]
-
Freedman, D. N. 1996, c1992. The Anchor Bible Dictionary. Doubleday: New York.
-
Ibid.
Read the study notes for Lesson
2
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