Stories, frankly all human stories are practically always about one thing aren’t they? Death. The inevitability of death. . . . “There is no such thing as a natural death. Nothing that happens to man is ever natural, since his presence calls the whole world into question. All men must die, but for every man his death is an accident and, even if he knows it and consents to it, an unjustifiable violation.” Well, you may agree with the words or not, but those are the key spring of The Lord Of The Rings. – J.R.R. Tolkien
At the very beginning of Genesis, we have a picture, not of conflict, but certainly of contrast. Yahweh is in heaven and below Him is the earth “welter and waste.”[1] Theologians, very rightly, have emphasized how different this is from the ancient myths in which the gods violently subdue some sort of equal, self-existent opposite; Yahweh has no opposite and He does not need to bloody his hands when He creates. While the doctrine of creation ex nihilo is true, Yahweh does create, if not an enemy, at least an obstacle to cut and mold. He begins with, if not violent action, at least with acts of separation. He divides light from darkness, the firmament above from the firmament below, and sea from the dry land. After cutting in two, Yahweh goes out filling the creation with life and judging it as good on the seventh day.[2]
Before describing this creation, the Spirit or Wind of God is described hovering over the face of the waters. This detail is significant. Yahweh creates a dark, indistinct, and unstable deep to transform in order to prove that He alone is Life. He is the vitality that causes the swarmers to swarm in the sea and the birds to soar in the heavens. He is in the seed that bursts into fruit and in the animals that multiply. He is the breath that fills Adam’s nostrils, without which Adam is merely empty flesh, dust from the ground. Only after division can Yahweh’s breath rustle through the creation, making something Very Good.[3]
Even when creation is accomplished, Yahweh continues to show that He alone is the true Life. So he gives Adam and his wife an enemy, a serpent who questions his word, accusing Yahweh of withholding life from them. The serpent offers them an alternate source of life in something earthly, ironically, in the fruit of knowledge/judgment of good and evil. The serpent is the deep given a voice. James Jordan argues that Yahweh would have eventually told Adam to eat from the tree, dying as he ate it, but Yahweh would have resurrected him.[4] Whether or not Jordan guesses rightly, he helpfully highlights how Adam needed to trust in Yahweh and resist the fear of death, the fear that his being would be diminished by not eating from the fruit. That is the fear of death: the fear that Yahweh will only separate and not fill and that we must look to some other source of life.
After eating from the tree, Adam’s fear of death is only increased, leading him to cast his moral guilt on Yahweh and on his wife. Cain carries this a step further. Cain offers vegetables to Yahweh, an offering symbolic of simple organic life. Abel knows that he lives in a world of death and kills an animal, subjecting earthly life to death in the confidence that Yahweh will fill it with Life. Yahweh confirms his faith by sending His fiery breath into the sacrifice. Cain parodies Yahweh’s transformation of death to life by offering Abel as a sacrifice.[5] He goes out and builds a city and soon the world is filled with violence (Genesis 6:11). Men desperately avoid anything that diminishes their life and seize whatever they can (6:1-2). Yahweh withdraws his breath from them (6:3) and decides to utterly “destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life from under the heaven” (6:17).[6] Yahweh is merciful, waiting until the fear of death is so great that He must agree with the accusation that His creation is not very good, a grim parody of his judgment on the seventh day after creation.
But Yahweh has not given up on creation. Noah, unlike the rest of mankind, trusts that if he offers himself and the animals as a sacrifice for God in a tomb-like Ark, Yahweh will preserve them from death. The world returns to a state of welter and waste, yet Yahweh blows His wind over the earth again, subduing the waters (8:1), making a new creation, and commanding Noah to be fruitful and multiply. Yahweh repeats this with the Tower of Babel and the patriarchs. The builders of Babel fear death in Yahweh’s command to scatter over the face of the earth, while the Patriarchs like Abraham leave their father’s house, going where Yahweh sends them, admitting the impotence of their flesh in the face of death (Phil. 6:6); Yahweh alone can resurrect them and give them rule over the earth.
But despite this, Israel faces death in Egypt. Without even a fight, they fall into slavery. They work, not with hope of reward, but in fear of punishment and death. Yahweh sends Moses as a judge over them, to show that they are not to deal with each other by might or sword, but that they must act righteously in fear of Yahweh. Yahweh separates them from Egypt, bringing them out of the dead waters of the Red Sea into the wilderness. There, Israel must learn to fear Yahweh, instead of the wilderness. Egypt had offered a covering from the wilderness through the protection of the gods, through the might of Pharaoh’s chariots, through wealth and splendor—all of which Yahweh exposed in the plagues. Israel was to be a nation that looked for protection from death only under Yahweh’s wings. By showing a different way of being human and being a nation, by another way of defeating death, Israel would become a blessing to the nations. Paul describes death reigning from Adam to Moses, adding that “sin is not charged to one’s account when there is no law” (5:14). Somehow, with Moses, death and sin were dealt with or at least battled.[7]r and waste–the sky is s not shine, recieving ead up to judgments of hte at his bein
The essential purpose of the Tabernacle was to bring heaven on earth. In the Holy of Holies, Yahweh appears as a glory-cloud above the Ark of the Covenant (Lev. 16:2), guarded by the wings of the Cherubim (Exodus 25:20). The Holy of Holies is both a mirror of Yahweh’s heavenly court, and a picture of how Yahweh will one day be enthroned on earth as well. The building of the Tabernacle is, in fact, another creation. The Israelites construct veils and make separations—the Holy of Holies is divided from the Holy Place and the Holy Place is divided from the Outer Court. After these separations are completed and once the Tabernacle and the Priests are set apart and consecrated (Exodus 40:1-33), Yahweh fills the house with his glory-cloud (40:34-35). The Tabernacle was not merely to mirror Yahweh’s court of Life, but was also to serve as a means of bringing Life to Israel, to the nations, and ultimately to the creation.
Leviticus often proves a difficult, if not troubling book for Christians. Much of it is about sin and its consequences, but a great deal seems irrelevant, such as the purity code, or overly exacting, like the sacrifices. Here, I want to look at the Levitical system through the lens, not of sin and holiness (though both are important), but of Life and Death. Throughout Deuteronomy and in Leviticus 26, Yahweh shows Israel two paths: the way of obedience and subsequent blessing and the way of disobedience and subsequent cursing. Life is found in the fear of Yahweh, not in the fear of starvation or the strength of enemies. In the sacrificial and purity system, Israel was being shown that in Yahweh was Life and without His breath all was death.[8]
This principle explains many details in performing the sacrifices. For a typical sacrifice, the worshiper was supposed to bring either an animal or a grain-offering. In certain sacrifices, the animal had to be unblemished. Just as with Abel, it was an image of perfect earthly life. A blemish would be a sign of division, of light touched by darkness, of the encroachment of boundaries, of death. If the sacrifice was a grain-offering, it needed to be made of fine flour with no leaven or honey (Leviticus 2:11). As Mary Douglas helpfully points out, honey and yeast work in the natural mode of generation; they are both living, teeming things.[9] We will see why they are forbidden in a moment.
Then, the Israelite worshiper would place his hand on the animal’s head, identifying himself with its fleshly life. The worshipper or priest would then kill the animal, throwing its blood around the altar or tent, covering the place, the altar, or the horns of the altar with blood. Unlike pagan sacrifices, which were often simply attempts at bribing the gods and overcoming justice with might, the Israelite worshiper admitted that, on his own, he had no life. Leviticus 17:11 says, “Indeedthe flesh’s life is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your lives, because it is the blood with the life that makes atonement.” Spilling blood symbolizes the rupture of boundaries, a creational reversion back to the unformed waters, the reversion of life to pre-life. A grain offering, by contrast, could not be killed, thus living agents like yeast or honey would symbolize that the worshiper could derive life from himself.
The Hebrew word for atone, kipper, means “to cover”. While the overall purpose of the sacrifice is to make a covering for the worshipper, at this point in the sacrifice, the worshipper has uncovered in the fullest possible sense. Life, perfect fleshly life, has been exposed to death.
Then, the priests or worshippers would arrange the pieces on the altar, a picture of separation, and sometimes they would wash the pieces. Water, as we saw earlier, was the unstable material from which Yahweh brought a new creation, so to pass through water was to pass through the forces of death and chaos, just as Israel had in the Exodus. In the case of grain-offerings, portions were scooped out or broken in pieces, another image of separation.
The most important part of the sacrifice was when the fire was lit and the sacrifice went up as a pleasing aroma to Yahweh. As we noticed earlier, the breath of Yahweh was described as a wind, and, when Israel leaves Egypt, she is covered by a pillar of fire or by a pillar of cloud (Exodus 13:21-22). By being burned, Yahweh ate the food. In its transformation into smoke, the animal became a part of God’s glory cloud. Sometimes portions were eaten by the priest or worshipper, but always the most precious part, the fat, and the entrails were consumed by Yahweh.[10] The worshipper, having been completely uncovered and subjected to the power of death, places himself before Yahweh, calling for judgment. Yahweh feeds upon the dead animal and raises it up to a Spirit-filled, glorified life. Though not a literal resurrection, death is symbolically conquered. Light allows darkness to invade, but the consuming fire of Yahweh casts it out. The worshipper is covered both by blood and by the glory cloud and sometimes he would end the sacrifice eating at Yahweh’s table.
At the center of the Levitical sacrifice is Israel’s affirmation that, despite the powers of death and the division, Yahweh can always create life anew. This confession applied both to individual and to political sins. The Israelite who sinned, who had been afraid like Adam and Eve that in Yahweh’s commands were death, could confess in faith that without Yahweh he was actually dead. He allows death to do its worst to him and the fire of Yahweh finds an acceptable offering. When elders came to confess their sin, they admitted that they too had not trusted in Yahweh and feared death for themselves as a political body (Leviticus 4:13-21). The animal’s body also represented how the nations might kill Israel, but Yahweh would resurrect her. Though the chariots and horses of Egypt might surround them, Israel was to have faith that Yahweh would again part the sea for them.
Of course, Israel was not merely to offer sacrifices for specific sins, but also to provide purification. The rules of impurity, as laid out in Leviticus 11-15, can be divided into sections: clean and unclean foods (11), childbirth (12), skin/garment/house diseases (13-14) and discharges of blood (15). Each is somehow connected with the curses of Genesis.[11]
The food prohibitions have to do with Yahweh’s curse against the serpent and the dust which he defiles and to which he drags down Adam.[12] Land animals needed to have both cloven-hooves and needed to chew the cud if an Israelite was to eat them. Hooves separated animals from the dust, and perhaps the cloven-hoof symbolized how Israel was to not just avoid, but consciously distinguish between life and death.[13] Douglas suggests that chewing the cud means chewing, swallowing, and regurgitating to make sure it is fully broken down.[14] Before turning the animal into food as a means of life, the animal made sure that the animal was absolutely dead.[15] Israel, in what they ate, was not to have confidence in death, but in the One who raised from the dead.
The second set of impurities is related to childbirth and to the curse on Eve. Childbirth is another form of death. The child comes out of pain and blood, an image of life being spilled, as well as an image of the pattern of division and union that we saw in creation. By circumcising the boy on the eighth day, the parents showed that they did not have confidence in the flesh, but in Yahweh for safely giving them a child. A girl, however, could not be circumcised and so her impurity would last twice as long (12:5).[16]
The third set of impurities involves skin ailments. The connection here to the fall is a bit more ambiguous. Adam was told that he would live by the sweat of his brow. After the fall, the body emits and releases its fluids during labor. In the promise that man would return to the dust is the ultimate transgression of boundaries and subjection of the body to chaos. When a man’s body broke out into a patch of whiteness, it was a reminder that his skin made to function as a covering had failed to serve as a boundary. A man who contracted such a skin disease was cut off from society. A man with the skin impurity—with a body that was symbolically bursting from his skin—represented a breach in the house of Israel, a contagion of death in the people of Life. The action demanded of a man in such a situation was to cut himself off from Yahweh’s people, again a confession that without Yahweh, his body was a decaying body that could only be fenced in by Yahweh.
A similar breakdown is occurring in discharges with the expulsion of blood from the body, even more closely aligned with death. Of course, discharges were a less serious affair since the discharge, unlike the skin disease, could be expected to end after a relatively short amount of time. Nonetheless, entering into the presence of Yahweh with a discharge was forbidden.
Now the distinction that I am placing between life and death is fairly straightforward, but the system I am explaining does not operate on a simple unclean/holy distinction, but included the overlapping, but by no means identical dualities of unclean/clean and common/holy.
The Priests were servants in the House of Yahweh, robed in white robes like angels of light and often guests at Yahweh’s table, more often than the worshipper was. For them, violating the purity code was serious and required important reasons (Leviticus 21:1-9) and the rules were even stricter for the High Priest who went into the presence of Yahweh (21:10-15). At the other end of the spectrum, even the one who sojourned among the Israelites was not free from all the purification rules (17:13-16). Situated between the two in the ambiguous realm of the common was the lay Israelite. On the one hand, a common Israelite could become unclean for lengthy periods of time without moral guilt, yet at the heart of the Israelite identity is the command that, because Yahweh set them apart from the nations and drew them from Egypt, they must be holy just as He was holy (20:26).
Earlier I described how Israel was to be a nation in which death and sin were dealt with. The increasing demands of being set apart by Yahweh—Israel from the nations, the Priests from the people, and the High Priest from the priests—is not a system of mere substitution, but also of representation and promise. We might say that the High Priest is consecrated and separated from death in a way most Israelites could never be, but when the Priest stands before Yahweh making sacrifices, Israel stands before Yahweh making sacrifices. The consecrated High Priest is a promise that one day the whole house of Israel will be finally and totally separated from death.
But every death, every impurity, and every sin seems to deny this promise. Though Yahweh rescues her from death again and again, Israel always seems to slide back into her old habits and into the death-fearing ways of the nations; the way their bodies decayed was a reminder of this. Israel’s fall into impurity and sin dirtied the garments of the High Priest, placing doubt on Yahweh’s promise to save Israel. In Zechariah 3, Satan stands accusing Joshua, a high priest dressed in filthy garments. Throughout the Old covenant Satan denounces Israel for her covenantal infidelity and reminds Yahweh that Israel is still subject to the power of death. Yahweh rebukes Satan, reaffirming his choice of Israel (Zechariah 3:2), and every year, as Israel regularly became defiled, Yahweh did something similar on the Day of Atonement.
On that day, Aaron would go in wearing, not garments of glory, but white linen garments. Instead of dazzling garments like the sun, which he usually wore in the congregation of Israel, they are white like the moon.[17] Afterwards, a series of sacrifices followed, including casting lots over two goats: one was sacrificed and the other was sent into the wilderness. The sending of one into the wilderness is perhaps the most fascinating and ambiguous part of the ritual. On the one hand, both goats seem to be covering Israel in some way (Leviticus 16:10, 15-16), so perhaps the goat represents how Israel will go into the exile among the nations.[18] On the other hand, the scapegoat also goes into the wilderness, which might mean the two goats should remind us of Cain and Abel or of the Israelites who went on to the promised land and those who died in the wilderness.
But whatever was happening with the scapegoat, we know what happened to the other goat. The High Priest confessed that without Yahweh to cover them, Israel was as dead as the goat on the altar. In the Holy of Holies was the Ark of Testimony which contained the bread, commandments, and the rod that budded—all signs that Israel was to look to Yahweh for life and glory. By seeking life by some other means, Israel had feared death, forgetting all that Yahweh had done for them in the covenant. Their covenant infidelity made them open to the accusations of the accuser and the powers of death: Israel as a nation could revert to a state of slavery.
On the Day of Atonement, Israel confessed her sin and was symbolically subjected to the powers of death. The High Priest removed his garments and was instead covered by a cloud of incense that protected him from death (Leviticus 16:13). Yahweh covers Israel, resurrecting her from death and removing her shame. The High Priest could then be re-clothed (16:32) and, having been separated from death, he could again serve in the Yahweh’s Life-filled house. The symbolic death and resurrection he went through anticipated the death and resurrection of Israel as a nation, including every Israelite, whether clean or unclean. Israel was to be a light to the nations, the picture of another way of sacrifice. Instead of sacrificing the nations around them to maintain their identity and to avoid national death, Israel was faced death regularly and was regularly reminded that Yahweh would deliver them.
All in all, the sacrifices and especially the Day of the Atonement were a promise on the part of Yahweh that His Life was stronger than death—whether death came in the form of sin, impurity, the nations, or even the accusations of the devil. Yahweh said that His creation was very good and the earth would one day be married to heaven.
Hopefully this interpretation can make us see how life-affirming the Mosaic system was. We tend to think of the sacrifices as mere mechanical rituals that, if done rightly, pleased Yahweh. We have a hard time understanding the Psalmist when he sings “I will take delight in your statutes; I will not forget your word” (Psalm 119:6) or when he says Yahweh’s law is “sweeter than honey” (19:10). But, given Yahweh’s promises here, how could they not delight in the good news every sacrifice proclaimed? C.S. Lewis thought that the Psalmists were prigs when they boldly declared their righteousness before God and asked for judgment.[19] Lewis in his criticisms is more right than many pious interpreters. The Psalmists struggle with death, at least as much if not more than they struggle with sin. Often I have felt disconnected from the Psalms. They are crying for deliverance from death, but what does that have to do with me and my struggles, which seem restricted to sin? Yet, is not death the unspoken enemy hanging over all our actions?
N.T. Wright points out that the most common command in the Bible is not to fear. He says, “This surprising command bursts upon a world in which we eat, sleep, and breathe fear. We emerge from the warmth of the womb into the cold of the cosmos, and we’re afraid of being alone, of being unloved, of being abandoned. We mix with other children, other teenagers, other young adults, and we’re afraid of looking stupid, of being left behind in some race that we all seem to be automatically entered for. We contemplate jobs, and we’re afraid both that we mightn’t get the one we really want and that if we get it we mightn’t be able to do it properly; and that double fear lasts for many people all through their lives. We contemplate marriage, and we’re afraid both that we might never find the right person and that if we do marry it may turn out to be a disaster. We consider a career move, and are afraid both of stepping off the ladder and of missing the golden opportunity. We look ahead to retirement, and are afraid both of growing older and more feeble and of dying suddenly. And these are just the big ones.”[20]
To answer Lewis, when the Psalmist calls himself righteous, he is not declaring that he never ever sinned or that Yahweh owed him a rescue on merit alone. Instead, he is declaring or, more often, coming back to faith in the God who resurrects from the dead. In the Psalmists’ vocabulary, to trust in God is to be righteous. The wisdom literature is full of it. Job, unlike his friends, knows that death is an attack, an effrontery on Yahweh’s creation. Proverbs jumps up and down on the distinction between the way of life and wisdom and the way of death and folly. Ecclesiastes is a call to faith in Yahweh in the face of what death does to all man’s accomplishments. And the prophets? The prophets are full of hope that, despite Israel’s death and her scattering among the nations, she will be gathered and resurrected.
Yet for all its virtues, Satan’s reign over Israel through the power of death continues. Israel is constantly falling back into the ways of the nations and fearing death more than Yahweh. Our fundamental problem is that we exist in dying bodies, bodies that get tired and tempt us to falter and doubt. The sacrifices showed Israel how life always conquers death, but they still had bodies that decay; though symbolically glorified, a dead animal is a dead animal. Little wonder Paul calls the Old Covenant the “ministry of death” (2 Corinthians 3:7).
When Jesus came, death and the nations get one final chance to attack Israel and, in Israel, Yahweh’s entire creation. Jesus came and was tempted as we were (Heb. 4:15). He was governed by an earthly body that felt pain and hunger in the desert. He was threatened with expulsion and abandoned by his followers. On the night of his betrayal, he felt the terror of the knowledge of his own death. When these things cannot stop Him, death ravages him with torture. Is it any wonder the mockers cry “He trusts in God; let him deliver him now if he wants to” (Matthew 27:43)? The Romans sought Imperial peace and justice by the sword; the Jews wanted to make Israel holy, not to give life to the world, but to hoard it for themselves. So they uncovered him and with his blood attempted to cover their nation. Behind them all is Satan who sees Israel’s hope—and in Israel, the hope of making things on earth as in heaven—and kills it. Death, the great anti-creation force, falls upon Israel with all its power and Israel dies.
But death, in attacking Jesus, overstepped its bounds and was uncovered; this man has something different. Before being tempted in the wilderness, Jesus is filled with the Spirit of Yahweh (Matt. 3:16) and then, instead of hoarding this gift, he gives it away. Again and again, despite the fear of death, Jesus does not stop giving. Even when his breath is taken away, are not his last words a gift? “Father, into your hands I entrust my spirit!” (Luke 23:46).
Satan, the one so concerned with Israel’s sins, kills the Israel who never sinned. Death, that great force of anti-creation, reveals the true meaning of all death: an attack on earth is an attack on heaven and an attack on creation is an attack on the Creator.
As all the sacrifices promised, the Father takes Jesus’ empty body and fills it with life. Jesus returns with a Spirit that allows his body to pass through locked doors. He breathes on his disciples and his body is not destroyed by ascending into the clouds. After he leaves, His burning life enters His disciples and fills His Church and she is not consumed in anger. The Spirit that He received He freely gives, and the men who receive this Spirit, unafraid of death, give themselves in the face of death. Death has been conquered. Men may die, but they know death had its full say and God still said it was Very Good.
(Very little in this paper is new. Dr. Leithart’s creation outline of Leviticus allowed me to concentrate on the pattern of division and renewal in the Mosaic system. My theology of principalities and powers and the power of death they wield comes largely from Richard Beck’s The Slavery of Death. Very little of my thought can be separated from the work of James Jordan and N.T. Wright, and the contrast of life and death was pointed out to me by Douglas M. Jones. Though I am sure he would have a bone or two to pick with this essay, I would not have been able to reach half of these insights without his innovative and maddening insights. It is with love and gratitude that I dedicate this essay to him.)
Brian Marr is a senior at New St. Andrews College, Moscow, Idaho.
[1]. Robert Alter, Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2004),17.
[2]. Admittedly I am generalizing a pattern of cut and fill in creation, one that has exceptions (i.e. the light is created on the first day and vegetation grows on the third day). These exceptions are theologically important, but we can discern a pattern, perhaps if not here, at least in Genesis 2:20-24.
[3]. I am going on the skinny branches here, but perhaps the pattern of division then union, cutting and then filling and then finally judging, is a small image of the Triune God. The Father is delighted with the Otherness of the Son and the Son with the Father and this enables them to indwell or fill each other. Their love—if you will allow, the evaluative act that the Other is Very Good—is in fact a person, the Holy Spirit. This is not essential to my argument.
[4]. See James Jordan’s essay “Merit Verus Maturity: What Did Jesus Do For Us?” in The Federal Vision, edited by Steve Wilkins and Duane Garner, (Monroe, LA: Athanasius Press, 2004) 151-200.
[5]. James Jordan, Primeval Saints: Studies in the Patriarchs of Genesis (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2001) 30-32.
[6]. All Scriptural references are taken from the Lexham English Version unless otherwise noted.
[7]. This reading of Romans 5 is defended in Leithart, “Adam, Moses, and Jesus: A Reading of Romans 5.12-14,” Calvin Theological Journal 43:2 (2008) 257-273.
[8]. A question is commonly raised as to the definition of life. Obviously God is the source of all life, whether in plant, vegetable, or mineral, but there is a distinction between creatures with and without the “breath of life.” Division occurs before the fall, in Yahweh’s acts of separating, in the rib being taken from Adam’s side, and probably in plant death. Death of animals with breath and man probably only happens after the fall.
[9]. Mary Douglas, Leviticus as Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) 165.
[10]. Douglas, Leviticus, 71-80.
[11]. Again I owe this interpretation, with the exception of the last one, to Dr. Leithart.
[12]. For instance, if a wooden vessel is made unclean, you just need to wash it, but if an earthenware vessel is made unclean, you need to smash it (Leviticus 15:12). By coming into contact with death, the vessel has become a tomb.
[13]. The fish exist in the sea. I suspect it is unclean because waters are associated with the realm of death and anti-creation, but there is no curse over it like there is over the land animals. The birds are difficult to identify, but the theory that they are predators, birds that actively bring death upon its prey, is a fitting guess. The three classes of animals fittingly mirrors the three categories of god-fearers, lay Israelites, and priests.
[14]. Douglas, Leviticus, 49.
[15]. I am not exactly sure what is symbolized by this. Perhaps it shows again that the animal distinguishes death from life, the partially living from the completely dead animal or perhaps it shows what we saw in the sacrifice: a symbol that Yahweh could transform from death to life. The notion of food dying so we might live I owe to Douglas Wilson.
[16]. Douglas, Leviticus, 181.
[17]. Perhaps the High Priest was confessing that in him there was no natural light, but only that which reflects Yahweh’s glory.
[18]. See Leithart, “Scapegoat” First Things, accessed on March 31, 2013.
[19]. C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1958) 17-19.
[20]. N.T. Wright, Following Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1994) 67.