Jesus of Nazareth

by Gerhard Lohfink

  Witnesses against Israel

  There are also judgment sayings from Jesus’ lips in which witnesses appear against Israel. These include first of all a saying directed to the Twelve whom Jesus had appointed. They are to be not only a sign of the gathering of the eschatological Israel. In addition, they will function as witnesses at the final judgment: “You… will… sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matt 19:28; cf. Luke 22:30). The twelve are here probably to be regarded as observers at the judgment. The background is Daniel 7:9. That vision in Daniel 7 played a major role for Jesus, and it is the only passage in which thrones for a committee of judges are set up at the last judgment.8 But that is not so important. More significant is the question: how will the Twelve judge their own people? They will do so simply by following Jesus and remaining with him (Matt 19:27; cf. Luke 22:28). Their discipleship and fidelity become a counter-witness to all the lack of faith and all the infidelity in the people of God. In other words, there is no further need for a solemn final sentence from a judge: the discipleship of some becomes the judgment of others.

  The same is true of the double saying about the queen of the South and the Ninevites, which can easily be reconstructed from the Sayings Source:

  The queen of the South will rise up at the judgment together with this generation and condemn it. For she came from the ends of the earth to hear Solomon’s wisdom—and behold, here is something greater than Solomon.

  The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment together with this generation and condemn it. For they repented at the preaching of Jonah—and behold, here is something greater than Jonah. (cf. Luke 11:31-32 // Matt 12:41-42)

  The two parts of the double saying are precisely matched and so strictly planned that later tradents were able to remember it easily. Here again Jesus took his illustrative material from Sacred Scripture: the first book of Kings (1 Kgs 5:14 [English, 4:34]; 10:1-13) tells of the Queen of Sheba, and the book of Jonah (chap. 3) has the story of the Ninevites. Despite the almost complete agreement of the two parts of the saying, there is an escalation present as well: the queen of the South only listens to Solomon, but the Ninevites repent.

  But the issue in our context is something different. We have here a clear scene of judgment. The judgment of the world has begun. The accused stand before the judge. Those accused are “this generation,” that is, the generation that has heard Jesus’ preaching and seen his miracles. During the judicial process witnesses arise from their places. The queen of Sheba stands up and testifies against Israel with her longing for Solomon’s wisdom; then the Ninevites get up and witness against Israel with their repentance.

  There is a shocking provocation in this double saying as well. It consists in the fact that the witnesses against Israel in both cases are Gentiles. Here we have come upon something that is characteristic of Jesus: he is amazed at the faith of the Gentile centurion (Matt 8:10). He heals the daughter of the Syrophoenician woman (Mark 7:29). He makes a man of Samaria the positive protagonist of a parable (Luke 10:25-37). He says that it will be better for the Gentile cities of Tyre and Sidon at the judgment than for the Jewish villages of Chorazin and Bethsaida (Matt 11:22), and adds that if the mighty deeds done in Capernaum had occurred in Sodom, that city would still be standing (Matt 11:23).

  This is precisely the place for the observation that Jesus’ proclamations of judgment are all directed against Israel. There are no words of judgment against the Gentiles. That is crucial, for in the Old Testament nearly all the prophetic books contain speeches about God’s judgment on the nations. Simply read in Ezekiel 25-32 the threatening discourses against Ammon, Moab, Edom, Egypt, the Philistines, and especially Tyre and Sidon. There is nothing like these in Jesus’ words. How should we evaluate this phenomenon?

  In my opinion it is inadequate to answer that Jesus had a special openness to and lack of prejudice about Gentiles. He may well have had such an astonishing openness. But the fact that his judgment discourses are all directed to Israel can be explained only by the fact that Jesus concentrated his whole proclamation and work on Israel. Obviously, he was familiar with the promises of the pilgrimage of the nations to Zion. But those very promises presuppose that Israel will open itself to God’s eschatological action and return to God. Therefore the path of the nations ultimately depends on the faith of Israel. And that faith is what is crucial for Jesus now, in this hour of decision.

  The Presence of Judgment

  Jesus’ appearance in Israel marks the decisive crisis in its history. Nothing is yet final. There is still, for Jesus, a last hope that his audience will grasp the “signs of the times” and understand their own situation (Luke 12:54-57). That is why his judgment sayings have such power. That is why he speaks so sharply. Even if Jesus in the end formulated the judgment on Israel as a settled fact, his discourse was still “conditioned,” still a warning, still the unremitting attempt to achieve repentance.

  The history of the subsequent few decades validated Jesus’ warnings. Whole sections of the people did not take his call to repentance and nonviolence seriously. The Zealots were able to set loose a war against Rome that took an immense number of victims and at the end of which the city of Jerusalem and the temple were a field of ruins. Previously the different Jewish groups had fought among themselves within the city itself and killed one another off.

  We simply have to read these horrible eruptions of violence, which Josephus tells about in his Jewish War, in light of Jesus’ judgment sayings. His warnings were not something we can simply erase from his preaching. Jesus was realistic to the utmost, and he wanted to preserve Israel from the catastrophe into which it was maneuvering itself. When he speaks of the threatening judgment he is not merely referring to the judgment of the world at the end of time. He always means also the judgment that is already taking place in history and is caused by unbelief itself. The coming judgment about which Jesus speaks extends just as much into the present as the coming reign of God. Here too the axiom of “already and not yet” applies. Jesus’ judgment sayings are absolutely intended to provoke and shock. That is how they hope to bring people to repentance and change the course of history.

  Is it allowable for Jesus to provoke, to drive fear into people? I say yes. He was allowed to do it just as were all Israel’s prophets, because the warning of judgment is always aimed to bring it about that the poor and the oppressed, who have no one to stand with and for them, should be helped now, that society’s structures of injustice should be changed now, that Israel should now struggle for peace and reconciliation.

  The crisis in society by which it is bringing itself down cried out to heaven at that time just as it cries to heaven today. Jesus saw that misery clearly. He had the oppression and rape of the poor before his eyes. Should he have remained silent? Should he have said, “Oh well, it isn’t so bad”? In light of the catastrophe toward which Israel was plummeting, which he clearly saw coming, should he have simply spoken of divine mercy that covers everything? A Jesus without a preaching of judgment, one who never shook things up, never shocked, never warned, never spoke of consequences would, for me, be absolutely unworthy of belief.

  Judgment as Salvation

  As regards the theme of “judgment,” today so well suppressed and rendered toothless, we should also consider, however, that at some point an hour must come when history’s lies and manipulations, meannesses and hidden acts of violence will all be revealed—the endless, twisted, matted tangle of human guilt and human innocence. A world that would not be judged in this sense would be a world without hope, without purpose, and without dignity. A world history in which the murderers triumph over their innocent victims, in which the ruthless are justified and the betrayed remain so forever would be absurd in the extreme.

  Human courts are helpless in face of the immeasurable potential for injustice in the world; they are even involved in the injustice themselves. Ultimately, it is only God who can clarify guilt and responsibility. But judgment does not mean
that in the end God will require satisfaction, that he punishes, that he demands reparation, but first and foremost that he makes history clear—or, to put it in better words, that in light of the absolute truth that God essentially is, history will reveal its own meaning. The masks will fall; the veils will be torn away; the self-deceptions will be removed. In this sense we can positively hope for judgment, judgment even for oneself and one’s own life with all its confusions. Clarity in light of God’s truth is salvation—and it may be precisely in such clarification that God’s mercy is revealed.

  There is a short text in the book of Hosea that introduces a long, wrathful discourse against Israel in which the voice of God alternates with the author’s commentary. That discourse begins with chapter 4 and extends to the end of chapter 11. The introductory text reads:

  Hear the word of the LORD, O people of Israel! for the LORD has an indictment against the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or loyalty, and no knowledge of God in the land. No: swearing, lying, and murder, and stealing and adultery break out; bloodshed follows bloodshed. Therefore the land mourns, and all who live in it languish; together with the wild animals and the birds of the air, even the fish of the sea are perishing. (Hos 4:1-3)

  There could be no harsher judgment on the true situation of the people of God. These three verses are “a true summary of divine wrath.”9 It affects not only the people in Israel but even the animals. The fish are perishing with all the rest.

  But in Hosea the wrath of God does not have the last word. At the beginning of chapter 11 that wrath has been transformed into lament. God cannot forget his first love. And in Hosea 11:8-9 everything is reversed in God; his burning wrath collapses and is transformed into love. God puts an end to the judgment that is already in progress. The cosmic catastrophe threatened in Hosea 4:3 does not come to pass:

  How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel?… My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath. (Hos 11:8-9)

  This transformation of wrath into compassion, of judgment into salvation, is not something we find only in Hosea. There are similar texts in other prophetic books and throughout the whole of the Old Testament. God responds to his people with faithfulness despite their own unfaithfulness and rejection. God’s heart beats for Israel, and he must have mercy on it. So we read in Isaiah 54:6-8:

  For the LORD has called you like a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit, like the wife of a man’s youth when she is cast off, says your God. For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with great compassion I will gather you. In overflowing wrath for a moment I hid my face from you, but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you, says the LORD, your Redeemer.

  Certainly, in citing such texts one should not fall into the error of separating them from their contexts. We cannot deny that in the Bible such love is spoken of mainly in the context of judgment and catastrophe. The Old Testament texts portray not a God of cheap love who accepts everything but rather the “nevertheless” of divine fidelity in view of the infidelity of the people of God.

  The love of God appears in the book of Hosea in the collapse of God’s wrath. The prophet can only speak of it in view of Israel’s unfaithfulness and in the context of the fearful losses brought about by that unfaithfulness. God’s fidelity averts the ultimate destruction of the people, which is nothing other than self-destruction. But it does not give salvation apart from judgment. The consequences of sin cannot be left aside.

  Jesus knew all these texts. His preaching of judgment presumed them. In the parable of the lost son he himself spoke of the fathomless compassion of God (Luke 15:11-32). But he also spoke of judgment. He could not do otherwise. It is precisely in the tension between salvation and judgment that runs through his whole proclamation that his deep rootedness in the Torah and the prophets is evident. That will be our next topic.

  Chapter 11

  Jesus and the Old Testament

  The title of this chapter conceals some problems. First of all, at the time of Jesus the Bible was not defined in the same way as it was later, through the definitive Jewish and Christian delimitations of the canon. The Pharisaic canon of sacred writings did play a decisive role already, but there was also the Sadducees’ canon of Scripture and that of the Samaritans, both of which recognized only the Torah, and there was the much more open idea of Scripture in the Qumran community.1

  And, of course, Jesus never called his Bible “the Old Testament.” The title of this chapter already presupposes the much later perspective of the church. We would have to speak differently if we take Jesus’ point of view. In his time what Christians today call the “Old Testament” was simply called “Scripture,” or “the Torah,” or “the Torah and the prophets,” or more precisely “the Torah, the prophets, and the other books.”

  That, at any rate, is how the foreword to the book of Jesus Sirach formulates it. That book, originally written in Hebrew, was composed around 190 BCE. The prologue is later and is by the Greek translator of the book, a grandson of the author. It begins: “Many great teachings have been given to us through the Law and the Prophets and the other [books of the ancestors] that followed them, and for these we should praise Israel for instruction and wisdom.”

  “Written on Your Heart”

  So we really should ask: what was Jesus’ relationship to the Torah, the prophets, and the writings? Or, more simply: how did he live with “Scripture”? What significance did it have for him? How did he deal with it? The answer, before anything else we have to say, must be: probably, on the basis of Deuteronomy 6:6-7, he knew central texts of Sacred Scripture by heart. Deuteronomy demands, “These words that I am commanding you today must be written on your heart. You shall cause your children to repeat them.”2 “They must be written on your heart” in the first place means nothing but “you must learn them by heart.” This a fixed formula. And when the text continues, “You shall cause your children to repeat them,” it means, “you must recite the Torah [the book of Deuteronomy] over and over again to your children” (“sons” in the original is understood to include daughters) “until they know the text by heart.” And concretely that probably meant that the children heard, day after day, how their parents prayed and meditated on Scripture out loud, and so they also learned the texts, almost automatically, until they were fixed in their memory. So this is not about a way of dealing with Scripture that only Jesus practiced but about the practice of many families in Israel.

  Thus we can take it as given that Jesus would have known crucial passages from the Torah and the prophets by heart, and probably all the psalms and some parts of the Wisdom literature as well. Most frequently quoted in the New Testament canon are3 the Torah (35 percent of all direct quotations), the Psalms (24 percent), Isaiah (22.5 percent), and the Book of the Twelve [Prophets] (10 percent). Quotations from other biblical writings make up 8.5 percent. It is true that these numbers already reflect a specifically Christian perspective, but at the same time they reveal the relative values of the different parts of the canon of Scripture in the Judaism of the time. The Torah is, of course, in the foreground; then come the psalms for daily prayer and then the prophets, Isaiah above all.

  How was it possible for a Jew of that time to know so many texts by heart? We can by no means judge this phenomenon in terms of the quantity of text we ourselves can recite from memory today. At that time people not only had a universally practiced mnemonic technique at their disposal. The texts themselves were shaped in such a way that they could be more easily remembered. But above all, people’s heads were not crammed with our media garbage.

  When Jesus withdrew and prayed for many hours alone (cf. Mark 1:35), he would have recited the Psalms and through them have entered into a deep, wordless conversation with his Father. And when the Torah was recited in the synagogue worship service, followed by secti
ons of the prophetic books as commentary, he heard in public what he had already learned by heart as a child.

  The Major Biblical Materials

  And what did Jesus learn when he heard Scripture recited or spoke its verses for himself? He learned what Israel had experienced of its God over the centuries, what his great teachers and preachers had understood, formulated, and collected, what they had thought through, corrected, expanded, deepened, arranged, written down, and continued to write, namely, that there was but one God who made heaven and earth. That he had created the world with its multiplicity and its wealth but was not himself the world. That he gave existence to all things, sustained all things, contained all things, gave meaning to all things. That the gods humans created for themselves were idols, nothing but deception and nullity.

  He learned that this one God had chosen little Israel out of the many nations because he wanted to have a people in the world that belonged entirely to him with its whole heart and soul and existence. That he had rescued the Israelites from the nation of Egypt, where they were oppressed and violated, in order to bring them together as a people that lived differently from the other nations, in justice and peace with one another and in holiness before its God.

  He then learned that God had led Israel through the desert, fed the people, and, at Sinai, gave them a way of life that was both a just order of society and instruction for hallowing all of life. That this Torah was meant to help Israel to give witness before the eyes of the nations to its God: to God’s glory, justice, and concern for the world. That God had made a covenant with Israel, to be their God and to make this people his very own.