The Passion of the Word. Chapter 10

THE PASSION OF THE WORD Author, cover design and icon: Sister Anne Eason O.S.B. THE FOURTH SERVANT SONG Isaiah 52:13-53:12 CHAPTER TEN Israel’s Suffering Messiah And it was Night Humility Exalted Adulterous Israel1: the Woman caught ISRAEL’S SUFFERING MESSIAH The Fourth Song is essential to Christianity’s Christology, and it is important to note the views of Judaism on this passage. It has become quite accepted to regard the Servant as Israel. Textual critics who advocate the sitz im leben method have emphasised that the Fourth Song is talking about Israel, and that Israel is the Suffering Servant. But this view has been challenged from within Judaism itself and in the interests of truth it is right that this should be addressed. It seems that any study of the details and thrust of the Fourth Song must call into question such an identification with Israel as a nation. Its descriptive detail is clearly specific, personal and expressive of the salvific role of the Person of the Servant and not of a corporate personality. Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks presents the views of Rabbis down the centuries in an article entitled “What Rabbis have said about Isaiah 53”.2 “The passage known as “Isaiah 53” actually begins at Isaiah 52:13 and includes the entire 53rd chapter of the Book of Isaiah. This passage speaks in detail of the life, suffering, and death of Messiah… The overwhelmingly dominant Jewish view throughout history has been that this extended passage speaks of Messiah. Therefore, the Jewish view of the Messiah traditionally has included the understanding that the Messiah would suffer and die as the ultimate kaparrah (atonement) for the sins of Israel and of the world. For over a thousand years after the death of Yeshua, this remained essentially the only Jewish view concerning Isaiah 53. In the late 11th century, a new view that the passage spoke of Israel, was introduced, but was 1 The theme of Israel likened to an adulteress is frequently employed by the prophets, cf Hosea 2:2-5 etc. What Rabbis have said about Isaiah 53 by Jonathan Sacks, August 21, 2013. This can be found here: https://oldschoolcontemporary.wordpress.com/2015/11/10/jonathan-sacks-what-rabbis-have-said-about-isaiah53/ (Accessed 15/11/2020) 2 206 vehemently rejected by the vast majority of rabbis for the next 700 years. 3 Twenty-four (24) prominent rabbis, writing from the 1st century C.E. through the 20th century C.E., are quoted chronologically in the passages that follow. These are not selected aberrations, but clearly represent the traditional Jewish view throughout the centuries. As Rabbi Moshe El-Sheikh …wrote in the latter half of the 16th century, Our Rabbis of blessed memory with one voice accept and affirm the opinion that the prophet is speaking of the King Messiah, and we shall ourselves also adhere to the same view. That “one voice” is the traditional view that Isaiah 53 speaks of Messiah, the suffering servant who would die as the ultimate atonement, bearing the sins of Israel and others. 1. Jonathan ben Uzziel’s Targums, on this passage dating from the 1st century C.E., begins Isaiah 52:13 by immediately identifying the suffering servant as the Messiah saying, “Behold my servant Messiah shall prosper.” 2. The Babylonian Talmud states: The Rabanan say that Messiah’s name is The Suffering Scholar of Rabbi’s House (or The Leper Scholar) for it is written, “Surely He hath born our grief and carried our sorrows, yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted.” Here, the Babylonian Talmud applies Isaiah 53:4 to the Messiah. 3. The Babylonian Talmud also states: The Messiah—what is his name?…The Rabbis say, The leprous one; those of the house of Rabbi say, The sick one, as it is said, “Surely he hath borne our sicknesses.” Here, the Babylonian Talmud also applies Isaiah 53:4 to the Messiah….” The most striking of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks quotations have been included in the above, and I quote also from the footnotes in an article by William Varner dealing with “the historical phenomenon of Jewish Christianity”4: “While I was completing the final revisions of this chapter, Daniel Boyarin’s most recent book was published (The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ, 2012). In it Boyarin argues that the Gospels are quite Jewish, even in their doctrinal teaching about the Messiah. By a fresh analysis of pre Christian Jewish documents like Daniel 7, the Similitudes of Enoch, and 4 Ezra, he sets forth the idea that Jews anticipated a divine Son of Man who came to be identified with the Messianic Son of God. Judaism thus expected a divine redeemer who was to be a God-man. Furthermore, there was a history of faith in a suffering Messiah (i.e., Isaiah 53) before Jesus. The usual debate about whether Isaiah 53 concerns Israel or Messiah is a moot argument, because there is evidence in the Targums and other Rabbinic material that Isaiah’s “servant” was a description of a suffering Messiah. While such evidence has occasionally been pointed out before, the significance of this book is that it is written by an academic rabbi recognized as one of the world’s leading Talmudists. Time will tell how other scholars, especially Jewish ones, will respond to Boyarin, but his evidence, while standing on its head many an assumption about 3 May be found online here: http://www.hopeinmessiah.org/10_reasons/ (Accessed 20/02/2023) Bauer to Bauer and Beyond Early Jewish Christianity And Modern Scholarship: William Varner. Footnote p18. This article can be found here: https://www.academia.edu/4192016/Early_Jewish_Believers_and_Bart_Ehrman (Accessed 10/12/2015) 4 207 the Jewish expectation of the Messiah, simply cannot be ignored.” 5 I have quoted Boyarin6 because he is both a Rabbi and an academic, approaching the texts of his faith with the objectivity of his training. He takes the same position as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. AND IT WAS NIGHT There are echoes of the Introduction to the Songs (cf Chapter 40 of Isaiah, which I exegeted at the beginning of this study), in Chapter 51.3 of Isaiah. It is the theme of comfort and the nature thereof: ‘Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem.’ Here we meet it again to remind us that the Passion of the Servant rests within this frame of reference. It reads: ‘The Lord therefore will comfort Sion and will comfort all the ruins thereof.’ This return to the theme of Chapter 40, is placed between the two Songs, the Third and the Fourth. The comfort which the Father asks for, and wishes to grant, can only be given through the Paschal Mystery in its entirety. This is its Kairos. It is the Passion as we find it described both interiorly and externally, in the Fourth Servant Song. This consolation is what Simeon waited for, prayed for, and perceived in the Child he held in his arms at the Presentation in the Temple. In the Fourth Song the Servant must go out into the night as it were and seek lost Adam. His Incarnation was the first step on this quest, and the Passion its most intense. Here the Bridegroom of the Shir HaShirim must go out into the night’s darkness, His head wet with dew and seek Israel, adulteress, but dearly beloved. His espousals will be on Mount Calvary, His Heart opened and bare, His hands pierced and stretched out. He will gaze through the lattice of His wounds, seeking His Bride. All the allusions which have been explored in the first three Servant Songs, find their home and completion here. Newman says that scripture is manifold in meaning: “…the all-wise, all-knowing God cannot speak without meaning many things at once…[Italics mine] It is well to keep this in mind when we read scripture.”7 There is much evidence of this in the exegesis of the great Fourth Song, for it is infinite and inexhaustible. Entering upon this exegesis the structures of the external and internal cross references within the Servant Songs, how connected they are both with each other and to other specific prophecies, will become clear. What is remarkable also is the consistent Johannine understanding of this. 5 https://www.academia.edu/4192016/Early_Jewish_Believers_and_Bart_Ehrman Footnote 49. (Accessed 22/02/2023) 6 He is Professor of Talmudic Culture, Departments of Near Eastern Studies and Rhetoric, University of California, Berkeley. 7 J H Newman: Parochial and Plain Sermons Vol. 1, pp. 271-273 208 HUMILITY EXALTED 52.13 See, my servant shall prosper; he shall be exalted and lifted up and shall be very high. The Hebrew word for this verb ‫( י ְַׂש ִּ֖כיל‬yaś-kîl) is sometimes banally translated: ‘shall prosper’. It is ‫( י ְַׂש ִּ֖כיל‬yaś-kîl) from ‫( שָׂ כַ ל‬saw-kal) and it hints at the themes of Job. It is not the facile idea of prosperity, but expresses an intelligence and wisdom, a prudence born of suffering. Job is given wisdom through what he suffered, not without it, and that is the inference here for the Servant. But in this first phrase of the Fourth Song the seer is consciously or unconsciously, who knows, choosing a verb which has a double meaning entirely governed by a dot. This doubled meaning is an example of the layers of truth to be found in the detailed language of the Fourth Song is. When the dot over the ‫‘ שׂ‬sin’ of ‫שָׂ כַ ל‬ (saw-kal) is moved to the beginning of the consonant and it becomes ‘shin’ ‫שׁ‬ it reads as ‫( שָׂ כֹל‬shaw-kole). It is a pun but more than, and it is very common in Hebrew poetry and prophecy. In Davidson’s analytical Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon it is listed immediately below ‫( שָׂ כַ ל‬saw-kal) as ‫( שָׂ כֹל‬shaw-kole).8 I believe the Prophet, his redactor, or his school of disciples, deliberately chose this verb. We will understand the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in this as we examine three (as in a Trinitarian form) meanings of ‫( שָׂ כֹל‬shaw-kole) which set the tone of the Passion and expand the Christology in line with the Gospel of John in particular. These meanings form the aura, or frame of reference of the verb ‫( שָׂ כַ ל‬saw-kal) as it stands in the text: what is seen and described as prosperity or becoming wise, is ‫שָׂ כַ ל‬ (saw-kal), and what is alternative to it, is contained in ‫( שָׂ כֹל‬shaw-kole), which is its hidden, veiled and eternal truth. This way of using puns in the sacred texts is consonant with and expressive of the character of the divine action, namely that what is visible needs to be interpreted, completed and fulfilled by its invisible reality. This first verb in the Fourth Song also contains a hidden reference to the Eucharist. It is the first such reference in the Fourth Song and right at the start. The three meanings of ‫( שָׂ כֹל‬shaw-kole) are as follows and in examining them I do not seek to ‘explain the poem’ as it were. I leave it its mystery but point descriptively to that mystery. Of first importance it is used to describe the loss of a child and I suggest here it is an Only Son to whom the seer feels its relation. This verb has already been used in Isaiah 49.20, 21: ‘I was bereaved and barren…’. So this form, ‫( שָׂ כֹל‬shaw-kole) is already part of the visions of Deutero Isaiah. But it is dotted differently and therefore understood primarily in the first verse of the Fourth Song as ‫( שָׂ כַ ל‬saw-kal). It is an allusion in shadow, as it were, to Zechariah 12.10: ‘…and they will look on Him (Me) whom they have pierced and they will mourn for Him as one mourns for an only Child and they will grieve bitterly…’ (although the verb for mourning in Zechariah is different in the Hebrew, the metaphor and connection 8 Davidson: Analytical Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon p. 714 209 stands secure). The Early Church obviously understood this Christologically as John 19.37 quotes Zechariah in His Gospel. John, as always, leaps to the depth and height of the Messianic prophecies. The Servant is the Beloved of the Song of Songs, the Only Begotten of the Father. But let me not pass over the other nuance of this verb when it means ‘loss’, for it can also be used to refer to a vine which is not bearing fruit. In this case, He is the Vine of John 15, the Servant whose Father prunes Him that He may bear much fruit. In the Passion it would seem that He was severely pruned, His chosen disciples hiding in the Kidron valley as He was dying, except of course John and the Holy Women, including His Mother. In that sense then it is ironical, for His ‘loss’ in the pruning of death, bears much fruit in both time and eternity, His branches richly laden. Moving to the second of the meanings of ‫( שָׂ כֹל‬shaw-kole), this is in the form of a noun a cluster of grapes, or of henna perhaps as in the Shir HaShirim 1.14, but specifically in 7.8 where it refers to the breasts of the Spouse, the Church, the Bride, as clusters of grapes. These are borne on the fruit bearing branches of Christ. Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks says: “It should be noted that “Branch” is a name for the Messiah who, in the second and third passages, is also referred to as the redeemer.”9 I shall explore this fully in Isaiah 53.2, but it is already anticipated in the first verse of the Fourth Song. The allusion in the Shir HaShirim 1.14 is to the Church as Mother, nourishing her young. These are associations we are able to make with hindsight, the kind of allusions which abound in the writings of the first centuries of the Church. It is the language of poetry in the prophecy which both hides and reveals these profound truths. The Christian Fathers also took up the image of the Branch for the Messiah: “How small He is and how great He is, He whom you brought forth into the world! He is small in His humanity, great in His divinity. He is small in the kingdom of the Jews, great in the kingdom of the Gentiles. But not all considered Him small in the kingdom of the Jews. You who brought Him forth, you grew like a branch springing from this Jewish people. For you are the branch which issued from the root of Jesse, you are the branch of Aaron which burst into bloom; you produced leaves and then you bore fruit…”.10 The third meaning of ‫( שָׂ כֹל‬shaw-kole) is used in the Arabic but exists in the Aramaic for ‘binding, to bind’ and as a proper name in Genesis 14.13. It takes us immediately to the classic account of the binding of Isaac, Abraham’s only son, bound for sacrifice on Mount Moriah. This account I examined in depth earlier in this exegesis and now recall it in this in the pun created by the location of the dot in the first verbs of the Fourth Song. I will have cause to revisit in depth the binding of Isaac later in the Fourth Song 9 I have learnt it from the words of R. Mosheh had-Darshan: The redeemer whom I shall raise up from among you will have no father, as it is written, “Behold the man whose name is Zemah [branch], and he shall branch up out of his place” (Zech. vi. 12); and so Isaiah says, “And he came up like a sucker,” etc. Says R. B’rckhyah, The Holy One said to Israel…the redeemer whom I shall raise up out of your midst will have no father also, as it is said, “Behold the man whose name is the Branch, and he shall branch up out of his place” (Zech. vi. 12); and similarly, by Isaiah, “And he came up as a sucker before him.” Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. Op. cit. 10 St Ambrose Autpert: Sermon on Purification Used in Lectionnaire Monastique 210 The first verbs of Isaiah 52.13 have set the scene, and the following verbs form a parallelism for emphasis ‘he shall be exalted and lifted up’. The First Servant Song showed the nature of the mutual upholding between Son and Father which turned on the verb ‫( תָּ מַ ְך‬taw-mak). The Servant Shepherd is lifted up by the Father, but He in turn lifts up His sheep as a Shepherd to carry them home to be with Him. Isaiah 53.6 opens the theme of both the sheep that go astray and that of the Lamb before His shearers and revisit that in Chapter 14. The action of lifting sheep onto one’s shoulder belongs to the shepherd and so I am introducing it here under the verbs referring to this uplifting and upholding. The exegesis of ‫( תָּ מַ ְך‬taw-mak) in Chapter 2 shows that it includes the sense of holding together, resting upon each other, fully knowing each other. The Son is sent, with His joyful consent, to lift up and carry back the fallen human race to its true home. This is done at great cost to the Shepherd; it displays the patience of God. St Ambrose has a luminous passage, in his commentary on Ps 118/119. This passage brings together in a synthesis the Shepherd’s will to save, the sheep’s will to be saved and the good will of the rest of the flock, “to think and to do what is right” 11 The sheep speaks: “Come then, Lord Jesus, seek your servant, seek your weary sheep. … Come without dogs … without the hireling, who did not know how to enter through the door … for a long time I am awaiting your coming. For I know that you will come: ‘For I have not forgotten your commandments.’ Come not with a rod, but with love and mildness of spirit. Do not hesitate to leave your ninety-nine on the mountains; because the ravening wolves cannot raid those settled on the mountains. … Seek me; because I search for you. Seek me, find me, lift me up, carry me [Suscipe me …]. You are able to find the one you seek. In kindness lift him up, when you have found him, and when lifted up, place him on your shoulders.” 12 But who is going to lift up the Shepherd, struck and suspended in death on the Cross, to carry Him home to the Father? The response is surely in the understanding of that upholding in the Trinity as seen in Chapter 2 of this work. John has used the concept on His Lord’s lips that He is to be ‘lifted up’ from the earth and this was done in reality by the cruelty of the Crucifixion at human hands: ‘I when I am lifted up will draw all men to myself.’ (John 12.32), … ‘when I am lifted up from the earth, you will know that I am He.’ (John 8.28) … ‘As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.’ (John 3.14). But, as always, there is the hidden, spiritual activity of the Trinity. This is concealed but more real than the material aspect. In this veiled reality the Father and the Holy Spirit lift up, uphold, the Beloved and carry Him home. It is 11 cf Collect of the First Week of Lent, Feria V Ambrose speaks of the way Christ lifts up the lost sheep upon His shoulders: “Seek me; because I search for You. Seek me, find me, lift me up, carry me. You are able to find the one You seek. In kindness lift him up when You have found him; and when lifted up, place him on Your shoulders… Lift me up in that flesh which fell in Adam. Lift me up, not from Sarah, but from Mary: who is not only a pure virgin but, through grace, is perfectly free from every stain of sin. Carry me on Your cross, which is the salvation of those who go astray. In it alone is rest for the weary, in it alone shall live those who are dying.” St Ambrose Sermo 22:27-30: CSEL 62,502-504 Used in Lectionnaire Monastique 12 211 not the Ascension, as described in Luke 24.51 and Acts 1.9. (as an aside here it is noteworthy that Luke says in his Gospel regarding the Ascension that as they watched ‘He was separated $rpt0 (AeT,P'ReSH) (from $rp (P'RaSH) in Aramaic)….. and taken up Qls (SLeQ)’ but the lifting up on the Cross was not a separation but a wedding cf John). The Ascension is a different moment and a different verb used in the Aramaic simple active form. The verb used in John 3.14 is wmrttml (LMeT'T'RoMuO), first person singular perfect tense in the Ettaphal or passive form from the root Mwr (RaM) in the Aramaic, ‘to lift up’. This refers also to the exegesis of this word earlier when examining the silence of Christ in His Passion in Chapter 3 of this work. It will be exegeted more fully further on in this Song, and this word Mwr (RaM) has a numinous home in Rachel’s grief.13 ADULTEROUS ISRAEL14: THE WOMAN CAUGHT St John 8. ff. has been waiting till this moment for its relevance to the Fourth Song to be explored. It is a vein to be richly mined for it shows how John approaches the question of the lifting up of the Servant Bridegroom, and how he portrays in this incident what it means in depth and detail for the Son of God to be lifted up, and therefore to lift up fallen creation within Himself. John does this in many ways, of course, but he portrays the dramatic encounter between Our Lord and the adulterous woman as a poignant instance of this. The representatives of Israel encircle the two protagonists. She is a mirror of Israel’s shadowed history and is symbolic of adulterous humanity. As the woman is dragged before her judges in public, an abyss of shame is opened within her. The abyss is her primeval chaos, the disorder of nature within her which has brought her to this point of distress. She has been caught in the very act of adultery we are told. Her primitive instincts, her choice for darkness, her blindness and sin, is exposed to those who encircle her. Her inner void which is potentially beautiful and certainly to God it is so, for He is already within her and stands before her in the Person of the Son, is to be radiantly recreated. This is at the hand of the Word, the creating finger of God the Incarnate Son. The exegesis of Isaiah 40 discussed the divine task of ‘lifting up’. The opening words of Isaiah 52.13 reflect this theme from Isaiah 40. John uses the phrase ‘lifting Himself up’ in 8.1-11 in a way which draws this theme into the encounter with the adulterous woman. John shows how Our Lord and the accused woman change places, with the representatives of Israel continuing to place themselves in the position of judge. It is more than irony; it is John’s unique grasp of the Servant Songs as Christological and as receptacles of the Paschal Mystery. The synoptics do not have this incident in Chapter 8 of John, and the Peshitta omits it. John is also the only Gospel to include the washing of the feet of the disciples in the Upper Room among several other moments unique to the Fourth Gospel. 13 14 Cf Chapter 3 and also Chapter 1. The theme of Israel likened to an adulteress is frequently employed by the prophets, cf Hosea 2:2-5 etc. 212 There has been debate about the authenticity of John 8:1-11, but there is a very strong patristic witness to the knowledge and reception of this passage in the Church,15 besides the Johannine flavour of the text itself. More recent editions of the Peshitta include the incident of the woman caught in adultery in John 8.1-11, and I assume that these are translations from Greek into Aramaic. This inclusion has caused valuable debate about John 8 in the Syriac Orthodox community. Because the ancient Aramaic Peshitta omits the section of John 8 concerning the woman caught in adultery, the verse with this verbal phrase ‘when you lift up the Son of Man’ in that version is at 8.17, but in the Hebrew version of John 8 it is verse 28. This omission in the Peshitta is regrettable concerning the phrase: the ‘lifting up’ of the Servant in the Fourth Song and Christ’s own use of it in the discourses of John 8, as well the use of this phrase by the redactor of the section of the woman caught in adultery. This section is clearly Johannine in character and of the corpus of the Johannine School. John’s choice of words is always of Christological import and so it is with this phrase. In the Hebrew translation of John’s Gospel (the Hebrew version of John’s Gospel used here is a translation from the Greek) the phrase takes the same root verb ‫( נָׂשָׂ א‬naw-saw) which is used as the second of the parallelism in Isaiah 52.13. This is an important textual link. But in the Aramaic of John’s Gospel i.e., 8.17 on this, we find something quite different happening. There is an Aramaic verb which means ‘to lift up’ or ‘raise’ and is used specifically of the action of crucifixion. In John 19.6 those calling for the crucifixion of Christ use the word Yhybwlc (TSLuOB,oYH_Y) from the verbal root Pilate replies with a different word for crucify, which is the verbal root Pqz Blc (TSLaB) and Yhwpqwzw (OZuOQP,uOH_Y) from (ZQaP) which means ‘to lift up as in crucify’. However, neither is John’s choice for this encounter and the lifting up of the Son in 8.17 ff. Rather he uses the verb Mwr (RaM) which means to raise or elevate, and the noun is ‘ram’ as in the place name it forms, Ramah. Among its meanings is the raising of the voice, as in the cries of lament in Ramah of Rachel weeping for her children,16 and the slaughter of the innocents under Herod. If Our Lord chose this word, as the Aramaic of John has it, and He was, of course speaking in Aramaic to His interlocutors, He meant to alert them to the grief of this raising, and that they would ‘look upon Him whom they have pierced’,17 they the elders of Israel, encircling the accused woman. He retains in His choice a restraint on the subject yet a reference to its character, one of trauma and death. And He, the Innocent Lamb, leaves space for the aspect of honour afforded His death, especially in John, that it is His glorification, the climax of His love. I would suggest that we can see the essence of what was happening in this incident of the adulterous woman, by juxtaposing the lifting up of the abyss in the Genesis moments of 15 https://timstaples.com/2019/was-the-woman-caught-in-adultery-original-to-johns-gospel/ (accessed 2/05/2022) 16 Jeremiah 31.15 and Matthew 2.18 17 John 19.37 referring to Zech. 12.10 213 Isaiah 40, with John 8.1-11. The prophecy of Isaiah 40, which itself points forward to the Fourth Servant Song, acts as a commentary on John 8.1-11. This seems an awkward task but in fact it happens naturally and serves to illustrate how steeped in the Servant Songs the Evangelist John was. John 8: And the scribes and Pharisees brought to Him a woman taken in adultery and set her in their midst…. This woman is Israel, humanity, is you and me. The religious rulers of Israel are ranged around her and the Servant Bridegroom. She is disgraced. She is at this moment the abyss of the deep, ‫ ְׂתה֑ ֹום‬the (ṯə-hō-wm) of Genesis… ‫ ֹֹ֙תהּו ָׂו ֹֹ֔בהּו‬the (tohu wavohu), is a concept for unreality, and the Logos, the Word and emanation of God, is reality and truth. The Servant is the Logos, the Word. Just as the abyss is the dwelling place of God, and the context for Divine creativity, it is also the place of action and truth for the Son of God, for the Wisdom of God. It is about to become this place for the adulterous woman. Suffering has a face, love has a face, and the abyss has a face. Upon the face of the abyss was ‫חשֶׁ ְך‬ ֹ ִּ֖ (ḥō-šeḵ) darkness.… The face of this abyss at this moment is the face of the woman. Every mystic (human being) who knows the void, (which in Hebrew is ‫ ְׂתה֑ ֹום‬the (ṯə-hō-wm) within himself or herself, has an interior ‘face’ or identity. In the negative sense, if that face is blind, sight must be given and insight suffered into being. This is born in and through darkness... and it is to be endured. The woman before Our Lord is suffering the travail of the ‘inner face’, its exposure in public, and gaining insight in her darkness. This is a Genesis moment. But it is a mystic, a Beguine, who captures something of its essence: ‘There I saw a very deep whirlpool, wide and exceedingly dark; in this abyss all beings were included... The darkness illuminated and penetrated everything... It was the entire omnipotence of our Beloved. In it I saw the Lamb......18’ She is to discover this. The essence of the Beguine’s perception of the abyss as the Divine possession and dwelling is what matters here. Her perception of the Lamb in the abyss illustrates with this image that Christ entered into the darkness of our human nature, its blindness, and ‘became sin though He knew no sin.’19 It is from the Incarnation and the Passion, that the abyss is definitively recreated, with the Sacrificial Lamb at its heart. He the Word through whom all things were made, is about to say to the adulteress: ‘Behold I make all things new…’ In the woman the abyss lifts up its waves to draw Him in. The understanding of the power of the abyss to draw down is illustrated elsewhere in sacred texts, eg. it is used in Habbakuk 3.10 of the abyss of the deep, the ‫( ְׂתה֑ ֹום‬ṯə-hō-wm): ‘the deep uttered his voice, and lifted up his hands on high.’ This finds an echo in Psalm 93.3: ‘the floods lift up their waves (their voice).’ He must enter her abyss, be drawn in and down by her and so lift it up. He bends down and writes in the dust, and the silence envelops all present. There are two examples of this action in the Old Testament: when God wrote the Law on tablets of stone with His Finger, 20 is one. St Augustine therefore interprets Our Lord’s action as revealing Himself as the Divine 18 Hadewijch of Brabant, op. cit. Vision 11. 2 Corinthians 5.21 20 Deuteronomy 9.10 19 214 Legislator.21 He is portrayed as such and has, as Law maker, the supreme right to judge, but will not. The second example is in Jeremiah: “…all who turn away from You will be written in the dust…”22 But who is turning away in this incident in S John’s Gospel? The woman is facing Our Lord. The encircling accusers are arguably representing Israel/humanity blind to the real nature of the One who stands before them, and they are in reality turned away from Him and seeking to trap Him. They are soon, in fact, to turn away, to walk away when challenged by Christ. Would He write them in the dust, He who had come to the lost sheep of the House of Israel? I think not. He seeks them, He woos them with mercy and argument and He will not let them go. His frustration at their obduracy He does not hide but expresses in tears over Jerusalem. He is their Spouse looking through the lattice, searching for them, watching for them. I believe that there is another dimension to this which belongs in the deeper context of Deutero Isaiah and within the character of Our Lord’s redemptive action and the nature of His love. This action of writing in the dust belongs with the recreation of the adulterous woman, her redemption. It is a Genesis moment and the action is prophetic. To illustrate this, two aspects of the above are developed further in the Johannine narrative. Because they follow immediately on this incident, in John 9, they give credence to the interpretation I have taken. John 9 continues the controversy between the religious elders of Israel and Our Lord, and these two aspects are blindness and the recreative action of the Word expressed prophetically in dust and clay. The Preface for the Fourth Sunday of Lent picks this up as follows: “Qui genus humanum, in tenebris ambulans, ad fidei claritatem per mysterium incarnationis adduxit, et, qui servi peccati veteris nascebantur, per lavacrum regenerationis in filios adoptionis assumpsit. He came among us as a man, to lead mankind from darkness into the light of faith. Through Adam's fall we were born as slaves of sin… ”23 It therefore focusses on the Genesis connection and the moral blindness. Augustine likewise supports the interpretation: “…this blind man represents the human race. This blindness came through sin upon the first man, from whom we all take our origin, not only as mortal, but also as culpable. For if blindness is infidelity and enlightenment is faith, whom did Christ find faithful when He came? … spiritually speaking, every man is born blind. The Lord came; and what did He do? He commended a great mystery to us. He spat upon the ground and made clay with the spittle; for the Word was made flesh. And He anointed the blind man's eyes with the clay.”24 Likewise in the controversy around the woman caught in adultery, in her moral blindness and in the blindness of the judges encircling her, He wrote in the dust. The issues, themes and images of John 8 and 9 form a continuum, a delicate web of argument pointing to the same truth. The source is from the Fourth Servant Song and John’s uniquely brilliant understanding of the Songs. His unique relationship with the Word Made Flesh has, in his long waiting for the Lord, created a singular composition, carefully connected both interior to itself and external to itself. S Augustine: Commentary on S John’s Gospel 33,5 Used in Lectionnaire Monastique Jeremiah 17.10 23 Eucharistic Preface following upon the Gospel of John 9.1 ff 24 Augustine on S John’s Gospel Tract 44 Used in Lectionnaire Monastique 21 22 215 The creating Finger of God the Word is in the dust and this is a Genesis moment. In Hebrew ‘Adam’ (mankind) is remade from the dust (adamah). The human icon is re written in this woman. But when the scribes and Pharisees continue to ask Him for a verdict on the woman, there comes the critical phrase, placed by John here in the narrative. ‘He lifted Himself up’ (John 8.7). His invitation to the one without sin to cast the first stone, is having its impact. Much is happening in the silence just as it does in the description of the Passion in the Fourth Servant Song. Bending down again, one might say reaching down, entering the abyss again, He continued to write in the dust. They leave, one by one until Jesus is alone with the woman, and again John places the critical phrase in the narrative … ‘and Jesus lifting Himself up’ (John 8.10) spoke to the woman. The Word spoke the word. He asks her where her accusers are, has no one condemned her? It is as if He wants to prolong the moment, make her think. She answers simply: ‘No one Lord’. And He makes all things new, becomes the Light in her darkness, says: “Neither do I condemn you, Go and sin no more.” The next sentence in John 8.12 confirms what I believe John was doing with Chapter 8. Our Lord says: “I am the light of the world. He that follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” In the Beguine’s words, it is the mystic darkness itself which illuminates everything within. In John’s words ‘The light shone in the darkness and the darkness could not overcome it/overwhelm it…’25 As the Chapter progresses from this point into the controversy narrative the phrase ‘lifted/ing up’, occurs for the third time in John 8.28: ‘When you have lifted up the Son of Man’… The point is that He lifts Himself up, giving Himself freely, in the action for which they are responsible, the Crucifixion. The trinitarian aspect is also significant. The waves of the woman’s abyss have lifted themselves up to draw Christ in. But in the lifting up of the Son of Man, the abyss is also raised in Him who is the Ark on the Cross. ‫נָׂשָׂ א‬ (naw-saw) is used, also, of the flood which lifted up the ark and bore it.26In a way the circle of religious judges which was formed around the woman and Our Lord is like the four points of the compass of the world.27 The same verb appears a few verses down in the Fourth Servant Song and so it confirms the interpretation of the exegesis. There ‫( נָׂשָׂ א‬naw-saw) is used to describe the lifting up/carrying of our sins by the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53.4. I have referred to Adam in this exploration of the meanings of ‫( נָׂשָׂ א‬naw-saw) for he lifted up his countenance in innocence to the Father before the fall and the Servant alone is able to do that since the fall. The controversy progresses and Chapter 8 ends with Our Lord increasingly standing in the midst of His accusers. That is, John portrays Him as he portrayed the woman, standing in the midst of accusers ready to stone her and now to stone Him, and so the final verse ends with His accusers picking up stones to stone Him. He is in solidarity with the woman, identified. Ready though they were to stone Our Lord, His hour had not yet come, and, when it did, it would also be in literal and material terms, a lifting up. Thus John illustrates how the Son of Prologue to St John’s Gospel Genesis 7.17 27 This is a reference to the Syriac tradition of the Ark, explored in full in an earlier Chapter. 25 26 216 God takes the place of sinners, ‘becomes sin though He knew no sin’, is the Second Adam, and so redeems. I cannot conclude this study without the completion and fulfilment of the phrase to lift up. This is the sursum corda. The truth, the fruitful vine, the sacrifice, all bring the adulterous woman and the Ecclesia to the ultimate invitation to lift up our hearts. For the accomplishment is the Eucharistic Presence, and Divine Communion. She, the adulterous woman takes her place in the Ecclesia. It remains to look at the third of the three verbs in Isaiah 52.13, describing the lifting up of the Servant. Isaiah has this trinitarian structure in the first sentence of the Fourth Song. John in writing of the lifting up of the Son, the Servant, has repeated the threefold structure within Chapter 8 and in his Gospel as a whole. This double faithfulness to Isaiah’s trinitarian usage is testimony once again to how deeply John understood the Servant Songs and interpreted them in his writing. The third verb, which completes verse 13, is ‫( ג ַָׂבִּּ֖ה‬ḡā-ḇah) which means ‘to be high and very lofty’ or ‘exalted’. It is a concept for mountains and trees, but more importantly for God. In the Aramaic it is used of the forehead, the brow. It brings to mind how elsewhere in the Songs, the importance of the human face, and of the Face of God is shown in the language and how it works. It recalls how the evangelists say of the Son that He set His face towards Jerusalem. He did not bow His face down, but His brow was raised, His will set upon the task before Him. 217 A select bibliography of works referenced in the book. Patristic quotations are mostly but not always from the Solesmes Lectionary for the Office of Vigils: Lectionnaire monastique (latin-français) série complète (6. vol.) Édition bilingue des textes bibliques et patristiques pour les temps liturgiques, de Abbaye de Solesmes, Solesmes/Cerf 1993. Translations are drawn from a mixture of published and unpublished sources. Phonetic transliteration of Aramaic is taken from the Aramaic Lexicon and Concordance produced for online use: https://www.atour.com/dictionary/. This work makes use of the Syriac Electronic Data Retrieval Archive (SEDRA) by George A. Kiraz, distributed by the Syriac Computing Institute. Phonetic transliteration of Hebrew is taken from Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, accessed via Bible Hub (biblehub.com) References to specific discussions of linguistic issues are given in the course of the text. The main linguistic resources used throughout have been: Young’s Analytical Concordance to the Bible on an Entirely New Plan Containing about 311, 000 References, Subdivided under the Hebrew and Greek Originals, with the Literal Meaning and Pronunciation of Each; Designed for the Simplest Reader of the English Bible. Third Impression, Seventh Edition revised by WM.B Stevenson, B.D. (Edin.) Edinburgh: George Adam Young and Company Benjamin Davidson The Analytical Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon Consisting of an Alphabetical Arrangement of Every Word and Inflection Contained in the Old Testament Scriptures, Precisely as They Occur in the Sacred Text, with a Grammatical Analysis of Each Word, and Lexicog. Samuel Bagster & Sons Ltd. Reprinted in 1978. Gesenius A HEBREW AND ENGLISH LEXICON OF THE OLD TESTAMENT with an appendix containing the Biblical Aramaic based on the lexicon of William Gesenius Michael Sokoloff A Syriac Lexicon. A Translation from the Latin : Correction, Expansion, and Update of C. Brockelmann’s Lexicon Syriacum. Winona Lake/ Piscataway: Eisenbrauns/ Gorgias Press. 2009. Online Dukhrana Biblical Research for further textual analysis of the Aramaic Concordance to the Septuagint English edition by Edwin Hatch (Author), Henry A. Redpath (Author), Robert Kraft (Introduction), Emmanuel Tov (Introduction) A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint Hardcover – 8 May 2009 by Professor T Muraoka (Author) Various Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek Grammars Latin Vulgate and a variety of translations depending on the text under discussion, as well as, sometimes, my own.