President, Theopolis Institute
Birmingham, Alabama
Joined August 2010
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My Revelation commentary had a baby: Revelation in Brief, all fingers and toes in place, a precis of my long and very expensive commentary. Available for pre-order at Baker.
bakerpublishinggroup.com/pro…
Psa 83 asks God to treat His enemies like Midian, Sisera, Jabin, who become like dung on the ground (Psa 83:9-10).
That is, their corpses turned to fertilizer. Their defeat made the desolate land fertile again.
Jael looks like Lady Folly, out in the streets enticing a man into her tent. What is deeply good often looks like evil.
Adam comes from the 'adamah, and so works the ground. Eve is mother of all living, and so is oriented toward her children.
Each is stretched, but stretched differently: The man toward the dominion task of subduing earth, the woman toward the dominion task of being fruitful.
Marriages and families are healthy when each stretches to encompass the obsession of the other: the man to include children, the wife to her husband's vocation.
The opening chapters of Ezek track the priestly ordination rite: Like Aaron, Ezekiel finds himself among cherubim; he's given food (a scroll, not a peace offering); he waits seven days by the Chebar.
And Yahweh hardens his forehead like a stone (Ezek 3). The priest too has a stony forehead, the golden crown-and-flower inscribed with "Holy to Yahweh" (cf. Exod 28:36-38; Lev 8:9).
Later in Ezek, the faithful will be marked on the forehead (Ezek 9:4), marked as hard-headed priests.
Ezekiel's ordination takes place in Babylon, not at the temple. As in Zech 3, the priesthood has run aground and Yahweh directly reboots it from heaven.
-thanks to Theopolis Fellow Marc Hayes
Jeremiah stations himself in the gate of the temple to deliver his sermon (Jer 7). Standing at the gate: that's a priestly position, for the priests are guardians of the house.
Jeremiah is a priest (Jer 1), but from a disgraced clan. Yahweh raises him from the grave so he can fulfill a task that none of the official priests are fulfilling.
Zion is described as "storm-tossed." A city, storm- tossed? Yes, if Yahweh has pushed the city from the dock out into the sea of Gentiles.
-thanks for Theopolis Fellow Daniel Adams
When Yahweh restores Zion, He promises to delete her shameful memory: “the shame of your youth you will forget” and “the reproach of your widowhood you will not remember.”
She was shamed by her early infidelities, she was reproached because of her Husband’s departure/death. Both of these she will forget.
The waters that Yahweh promises (55:1) might as well be from the river of Lethe. In the joy of reunion with her Husband, Zion forgets all prior shame and pain of her adulteries and her abandonment.
Isaiah sees Zion as a grieving “widow” (Isaiah 54:4). But Yahweh is her husband. Yahweh must have died if she is left in her widowhood.
Then he comes back as her ba’al (54:5), making her a Lady, a be’ulah (54:1). This isn’t merely a separation and reconciliation. It is a death and resurrection.
When He returns to her, Yahweh comes as her “redeemer,” her go’el (vv. 5, 8), the one charged with responsibility to raise up children for a dead brother (Deut 25:5-10).
Yahweh does double-duty: He is the first Husband, who dies and leaves Zion a widow; and He is the near kinsman, brother to the first husband, who takes grieving Zion into His keeping and fills her house with children.
Peter Leithart retweeted
It’s interesting that, at the beginning of Isaiah, she was “diseased and wounded” at the height of an earthly prosperity garnered by adopting the gods of trade partners. Smacks of Laodicea.
There’s no special ethics of marriage. Marriage is a unique relationship in which we are called to pursue holiness and bear the fruits of the Spirit.
Specifically, Eph 5 is preceded by Eph 4-5:21, where Paul says:
*Be humble, gentle, patient, tolerant in love.
*Preserve the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace.
*Put off lust, greed, impurity.
*Forgive one another as God in Christ has forgiven you. *Speak truth to one another, in love, as members of one another.
*Control your tongue, speaking nourishing edifying words and not rotten ones.
*Be fill with the Spirit. Sing.
*Don’t let the sun go down on your anger.
Marriages thrive when husbands and wives put off the old and put on the new. Put off Adam, and put on Christ.
Peter Leithart retweeted
Does Bible study matter - I mean, in the real world?
Who cares what anyone thinks of Adam or Abraham, whether you're pre-, a-, or post-mil, when missiles are flying from Israel to Iran and back?
Yes, Bible study matters, especially in the midst of today's war in the Middle East.
Israel exists as a modern state partly because English and American leaders have been gripped by a vision of the future of the Jewish people.
Lord Balfour's 1917 letter lending British support to "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people" was the fruit of several centuries of British Christian Zionism.
What became known as the Balfour Declaration was, in the opinion of one historian, "a triumph as much for Christian Zionism as for Jewish Zionism."
In his cleverly-titled Arc of the Covenant, Walter Russell Mead says the same was true in the U.S.: “Long before the modern Zionist movement appeared among Jews, non-Jewish Americans for both religious and secular reasons found themselves looking toward the establishment of a Jewish state in the Middle East as an important signpost on the road to a better world.”
It's hard to imagine the U.S. would give such ardent and uncritical support to Israel if we didn't believe Israel's very existence fulfills biblical prophecy.
But that's a misreading of Scripture.
Prophecies of Israel's restoration to the land are about the return from Babylonian exile, and ultimately about Israel fulfilled in Jesus and His body.
Friends and enemies of Israel operate with what Mead calls a "Jewcentric" view of the Middle East. That's not good for Jews, for their neighbors, or for America.
If we get the theology right, American Christians might be able to formulate a less knee-jerk, a more just stance toward the Middle East.
Does Bible study matter? Right now, it couldn't matter more.
- Peter Leithart
- In Medias Res, June 2025
"Where it is most apparent that the multitude of coffee houses of late years ... and the great resort of idle and disaffected persons to them have produced very evil and dangerous effects, as well for that many tradesmen and others do herein mis-spend much of their time which might and probably would be employed in and about their lawful calling and affairs, and also that in such houses diverse false, malitious, and scandalous reports are devised and spread to the defamation of his Majestie's Government ... His Majesty hath thought it fit and necessary that the said coffee houses be (for the future) put down and suppressed."
-Charles II, "Proclamation for the Suppression of Coffee Houses," 1675
Diseased and wounded Zion (Isaiah 1:5-6) finally the makeover she has wanted (Isaiah 54:11-12).
She is a bride, adorned with jewels, a city whose foundations, gates, and border fences sparkle.
She's dressed as a priest, gem stones on her breastplate, adorned like the firmament, a foundation of sapphire (cf. Exod 24:10) and a “sun” (shemesh) like agate.
At the table, we receive the incarnate Son, who makes His home in us. Jesus makes us capacious enough to receive Him, along the way stretching us to receive our neighbor.
We rightly have a lot of detailed questions about Paul’s teaching on marriage. We should.
But don't miss the big picture. Paul’s discussion of headship and submission occurs in Ephesians 5. He’s already been talking about Christ and the church for four chapters.
Jesus is exalted above all authority and power. He doesn’t trample the church, or keep His Bride far beneath Him.
He ascends to take His bride with Him, to enthrone her with Him in heavenly places. He’s Lord, but He exercises His sovereign authority to elevate, glorify, deify the Bride who is one body with Him.
Marriage is not the union of a man with a scullery maid, but a union of king and queen. A wife’s submission is a queenly, lordly submission.
-thanks to Gerald Hiestand
In his commentary on Rom 4:7, Luther illustrates justification with the image of a mortally sick man and his doctor.
The doctor is so certain that he is going to heal the patient that he declares him well already, and tells the patient to consider himself well.
The patient trusts the doctor so thoroughly that he considers himself well now, takes all the medicine prescribed, and looks eagerly to the time when he’s finally healed.
A few glosses:
*The patient is, in the present, simultaneously sick and well. Sick in that he is not wholly healed, well in the judgment and promise of the doctor.
*The patient’s “status” is that of “well.” The patient accepts this judgment because he trusts the doctor, not because of the condition of his own body.
*The present judgment of health in this parable is grounded in the future state of the patient. The doctor saying “you are well” depends on his confident “I will heal you.” But the future state of the patient is not the product of the patient’s own doing at all. It’s all the doctor’s doing. The physician pronounces the patient well because of the doctor’s confidence in his own healing powers.
*The doctor’s “verdict” on the patient is also a commitment to see the patient through to complete healing.
In saying “You are right in Christ,” the Father also says “And I have given my Spirit to make you righteous in fact.” Justification is God’s pronouncement that things are right; and that pronouncement is based on His utter commitment that He will not rest until things are set right.