“What if the problem was never the law — but the heart?” The emphasis of Deuteronomy, Kaiser notes, is not “the second law” as the Septuagint labeled it — the emphasis falls on the grace of God despite the nation’s intrinsic bent toward sinfulness. Moses doesn’t end with a longer list of commands. He looks […]
“How do you curse what God has already blessed?” King Balak of Moab, watching Israel’s camp spread across the plains below him, hires a Mesopotamian prophet named Balaam to come and curse them. The strategy makes perfect sense: you cannot fight a people this clearly blessed, so find someone with spiritual authority and have him
“Be holy, because I am holy.” Kaiser is precise about what this system was and was not. Simply put, cleanness meant the worshiper was qualified to meet the LORD; unclean signified that the person lacked the necessary qualifications to come before the Lord. The sacrificial system was not a burden laid on Israel — it
“Four hundred years of silence.” Kaiser identifies the theology of the tabernacle as one of the most astonishing developments in all of Scripture. The Hebrew word for the tent-sanctuary, mishkan, comes from the verb shakan — “to tent, to take up residence.” God was not merely making a visit. The omnipotent, immortal, majestic God of
“Is he worth it?” Kaiser places Job squarely in the patriarchal era — the divine name El Shaddai appears over thirty times in this book, the same name that dominated Genesis 12–50. As Geerhardus Vos observed, El Shaddai emphasized the supernatural work of God’s grace, his ability to master nature in order to carry his
