August 14th, 2022

Our ‘journey’ continues this Sunday with the Old Testament text from the book of the prophet Jeremiah [23:16-29], although there will be little reference to that text in this writing. Last week I did mention that the book of Jeremiah does contain a LOT of ‘Thus says the LORD…’ statements. Perhaps it is not at all surprising that some of these statements did not carry over into the Greek translation of the Old Testament (usually called the Septuagint) that was completed in the centuries after the Greek empire was at its height and before Jesus’ birth. Could it possibly be that people were getting tired of hearing what the LORD had to say???

Does the LORD get tired of saying the same thing over and over again? Obviously not, especially since there are four gospel accounts, and three of them are quite similar. And we ourselves get bad news not just from the devil, but from the world and our own sinful nature.

Last week I also mentioned that sometimes in the original text the verb is in the present tense when you would normally expect the past. Instead of the writer writing that Jesus ‘did’ something, he wrote that he ‘does’ something. This is called the historical present. And these historical presents occur in the four gospel accounts with four different emphases. That makes each of them special and important, even though some very similar things are repeated. (By the way, the only translation I know of that does point out these historical presents—and it is simply done with an asterisk after the verb given in the past tense—is the New American Standard Bible.)

To help make sense of these different emphases in the different gospel accounts, I thought it would be helpful to look a little bit more closely at the few occurrences of the historical present in the book of Genesis. The book of Genesis is an important one, and it is probably one of the first ones to be translated into Greek. Last week’s Old Testament text—in its translation into the Greek language—looked at the first occurrence of this phenomena in Genesis 15:2. According to Dr. Wim Hendriks (in his article “Das Praesens Historicum in der Septuaginta,” he gives a list of the historical presents that he has found in the Old Testament; see the Revue Biblique of 2017; volume 124, part 3, pages 381-420), the historical present appears in the book of Genesis only in these six places: 15:2, 15:12, 29:2, 32:7 (6 in the English), 33:17, 37:29, and 39:16.

The first occurrence was covered last week. After the LORD had spoken, Moses’ response was to say something in the present tense. How are the other occurrences similar? Below are the other occurrences (in a somewhat-literal translation of the Greek translation), given along with their context.

15:12    This chapter contains the oft-quoted statement that basically ‘Abraham believed the LORD and it was credited to him as righteousness.’ This was Abraham’s response to the LORD’s promise of many descendants. Then the topic turns to the ownership (or rather the STEWARDSHIP) of the land. The LORD is about to give another promise. And so the LORD has Abraham bring some animals, and he has him cut most of them down the middle, and then verse 12 reads as follows:

And about at the setting of the sun, an ecstasy fell on Abram, and, behold, a great gloomy fear falls on him.

29:2      Jacob, Abraham’s grandson, just had the significant dream at Bethel of the angels of God ascending and descending. He was running from Esau, his brother, whose birthright Jacob had stolen. And he was about to find a wife. The previous verse indicates that he was in the area of the ‘eastern peoples’, and Jacob finds someone who is related to him. The verse describes what he saw:

And he looks, and, behold, a well in the plain. And there were there three flocks of sheep resting on it; for out of that well they watered the flock. And there was a great stone at the mouth of the well.

32:7      Jacob ends up having a big family, and at the very end of the previous chapter Jacob and his father-in-law part company. After meeting some angels of God, Jacob is getting ready to meet his brother, Esau. He just sent some messengers to Esau, hoping that he is on good terms with Jacob. But he does not know what to expect. And verse 6 (in the English) is what the messenger has in his report back to Jacob:

And the messengers returned to Jacob saying, ‘We came to your brother, Esau, and, behold, he comes to meet you, and four hundred men with him.

33:17    In this chapter, Jacob finally meets Esau, and it seems to be a very positive thing. In fact, Jacob says that seeing Esau’s face is like seeing the face of God (see verse 10). Immediately prior to the verse with the historical present, the writer relates that Esau returned back to his home. Verse 17 is as follows:

And Jacob departs to his tents, and he made for himself homes there; and for his cattle he made booths; therefore, he called the name of that place ‘booths’.

37:29    With the twelve sons of Jacob, you can be sure there was a competitive nature among them. And Jacob, the father, did not help things by giving Joseph a special gift—and the LORD also gave him a special gift, that of interpreting dreams. Almost all of his brothers had first agreed to kill him, but then most of them decide to sell him to some Ishmaelites who were headed to Egypt. Verse 29 describes the situation when Reuben comes back—he was planning on rescuing Joseph:

And Reuben returned to the pit, and he sees not Joseph in the pit; and he tore his clothes.

39:16    We fast-forward to Joseph and some of the details while in Egypt. He was bought by Potiphar and was REALLY liked by his wife. Joseph tried to get away from her, and he left his clothes in her hand and ran out of the house. In the verses prior to 16, Potiphar’s wife was telling her side of the story—with an extremely slanted perspective—to her household servants. Verse 16 is as follows:

And she leaves the clothes by her, until the lord came into his house.

In the case of all of these examples of the historical present in Genesis, they all have a strong connection to what is going on around them. Did you notice the connections when it came to vocabulary? In the two occurrences in chapter 15, there was the duplication of speaking and falling. In chapter 29, there was a connection between looking and beholding. In chapter 32, there were the messengers coming and Esau coming. In chapter 33, Esau ‘returned’ and Jacob ‘departs’. In chapter 37, there was the duplication of the word ‘pit’—admittedly a noun and not a verb. And in chapter 39, Joseph left his cloak, and Potiphar’s wife also leaves it.

Although there is a connection to the events around it, having the verb in the present tense brings attention to the event. More specifically, there are significant ramifications for the event happening in the historic present. Some were positive, and some were negative.

It is significant that, in all of these occurrences, something important is about to happen. The LORD is about to say something important regarding Abraham’s future. Jacob is about to meet his wife, he is also about to meet up with Esau again, and then he leaves him—still alive! Joseph is about to go to Egypt, then he is about to go to jail—which starts the way to save the rest of his family from a famine.

In a concrete way, the similarity among all these instances is one of significance. And another way to look at significance is to speak of weightiness or heaviness. Something happens, and then something else happens that is strongly connected to that first event. The phrase ‘to throw one’s weight around’ may have some significance here.
And that idea of heaviness is closely connected to the word ‘glory’ in the Old Testament. It is very close to the Hebrew word for ‘heavy’. And this word ‘glory’ is strongly connected to the LORD and what he does.

The LORD has glory; he has weight; he has significance. If Jesus would have come down and thrown his weight around while he was alive, that would be a different thing. But he shows his significance in slightly different ways in the four gospel accounts. And each account leads to the cross. And that is when he truly threw his weight against sin, death, and all that the devil has to say. And that has some significance for right now, at this very moment in time.