exaggeration in the bible

If Your Eye…

Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg

eyeIf your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it from you. It is better for you to enter life with one eye, than to have two eyes and be cast into the fiery hell. Matthew 18:9

Some of the sayings of Jesus are so strong that we wonder if Jesus really wants us to take them literally. Should we really pluck out our eye, as this saying above says? Should we cut off our right hand if it causes us to sin? Is is really better to be drowned with a millstone than to lead a little one astray? Is it really harder for a camel to go through a needle’s eye than a rich man to enter the kingdom of God? Jesus’ overstatements can make us uncomfortable when we aren’t sure how we should take them.

One thing that we should keep in mind is that the practice of exaggeration and giving commands that go far beyond expectations was very much a part of Jesus’ rabbinic culture. In order to underline the importance of what they taught, the rabbis often spoke this way. For instance,

When three eat at one table and words of Torah are not spoken there, it is as if they ate at the altars of the dead… But when three eat at one table and bring up words of Torah, it is as if they ate from the table of God, blessed be He! (Mishnah, Avot 3.2-3)1

The point of this teaching is to emphasize that people should try to always include discussion of the scriptures when they eat together. Likening a meal without Torah study to worshipping in an idolatrous temple is a strong overstatement that is intended for emphasis. Or, here is another example:

Let no one stand for prayer without bowing his head… Even if the king greets you, do not answer him. And even if a snake is coiled at your heel, do not break it off. (Mishnah, Berakot 5.1)

Once again this the importance of concentration in prayer is taught by saying that even in the most extreme circumstances, you should have single-minded attention on God. People took these teachings seriously, but knew they were overstatements for effect.

Knowing this aspect of Jesus’ culture should give us some sense of how Jesus’ words were heard by his audience when he said things like, “Unless you hate your mother and father… you cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). He sounded like many other rabbis who said extreme things to reinforce the importance of their teaching.

We must be careful never to minimize Jesus’ high calling away as exaggeration. But at the same time, we gain wisdom for how to understand Jesus’ words when we have a better idea of how they would have been heard in his time.

(1) The Mishnah is a compilation of sayings of rabbis from before Jesus’ time until about 200 AD, and often is very useful in seeing Jesus’ words in context.

Photo: Normann Copenhagen

Irony in the Extreme

Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg

One key to unlocking many difficult Bible passages is to know that Middle Eastern teachers loved to use irony to make a point. Jesus and Paul frequently did this, but this habit can leave us scratching our heads. In fact, we can make major mistakes in our reading of the New Testament by not grasping the irony that they employed to describe the shocking new reality of the Kingdom of God.

 

NoExplanations

For instance, Jesus’ saying about John the Baptist in Luke 7 often mystifies readers:

I tell you, among those born of women there is no one greater than John; yet the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he. Luke 7:28

The first question that comes to mind is, “What’s wrong with John the Baptist?” But Jesus himself starts out by saying, “among those born of women there is no one greater than John.” Jesus was making an extreme comparison to show that when God’s Spirit is poured out on those who believe, they will be even more empowered to preach and convict than John. Wow!

We find this style of speaking throughout the Old Testament as well as among the rabbis. Proverbs contains many examples of ironic contrast. For instance,

He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty warrior, and he who rules his spirit, than he who captures a city. Proverbs 16: 32

The point isn’t that warriors are bad—in fact, warriors like King David were considered the greatest heroes of their day, and women filled the streets with dancing and singing when they came home from battle (1 Sam. 18:6-8). We can only grasp the power of such a saying when we see the irony of elevating someone who can simply control his own anger to the same level as a national hero.

One of the most common places to employ exaggeration and ironic comparison was in describing the coming glory of the Messianic reign:

On that day the LORD will shield those who live in Jerusalem, so that the feeblest among them will be like David, and the house of David will be like God, like the Angel of the LORD going before them. Zechariah 12:8

As in Jesus’ comparison above, we might ask, “What’s wrong with King David, that he’s being compared to the feeble?” It sounds, initially, like an insult to someone or something that we know is great, like King David. But the just opposite is true. We should say, “Wow! In the end times, what amazing glory God’s people will have!” Ironic comparison was a way of heaping superlative on top of superlative.

 

Welcome no parking

It’s critical for Bible readers to see this strong bent toward irony in the New Testament, especially when the kingdom of Christ is compared to the glory of Israel. For instance, in Hebrews, the giving of the covenant on Mt. Sinai is compared to the heavenly Jerusalem:

For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and a voice whose words made the hearers entreat that no further messages be spoken to them… But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem… Hebrews 12:18-24

Once again, this passage makes the event on Mt. Sinai seem very negative. But in the Bible, the meeting of Israel with God on Mt. Sinai was considered a stunningly amazing, wonderful event. Just imagine! The true Creator of the Universe had manifested himself on earth in order to make a covenant with this scraggly little tribe. Still today in Jewish tradition it is seen as a “wedding ceremony” where God betrothed himself to the nation of Israel.

The point of the Hebrews passage is not to say how terrible it was to have been at Mt. Sinai, but to say that as glorious as that was, the coming of God’s kingdom in Christ was even greater.

Often Paul employs this same irony in his letters, and it is essential that Christians to recognize his “accent” so that they don’t become anti-Semitic in their disparagement of Israel. For instance, Paul used it in Galatians 4:22-28 when he compared Israel to Hagar and Ishmael, and the Gentile believers to Sarah and Isaac (Genesis 16:4). His goal was to reassure the Gentiles that even though they weren’t born naturally into the Jewish nation, God had accepted them as his true “family.” Just as Hagar despised Sarah for her inability to bear children, they were being persecuted by the Jews for not being the true children of Abraham.1

We often read Paul’s statements about the law and God’s covenant with the Jews as negative, not realizing that in Paul’s own mind, these are extremely positive. He was using strong irony to say that as great as they were, the new covenant in Christ is even greater. Only when we comprehend the comparison he was making, will we see the glory of what God has done for the world through the coming of Christ.

1 See The Irony of Galatians, (Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 2002) by Mark Nanos, a Jewish scholar, who points out that the flavor of much of Paul’s letter to the Galatians is ironic.

(Photos: Albert Herrer, L. Tverberg – “No Explanations” sign outside the Church of All Nations, in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jerusalem)