We didn't get a chance to finish the planned arc of the evening, so we ended without really finishing our discussion of these passages:
"[The children of Israel] have turned to me their back and not their face. And though I have taught them persistently, they have not listened to receive instruction. They set up their abominations in the house that is called by my name, to defile it. They built the high places of Baal in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to offer up their sons and daughters to Molech, though I did not command them, nor did it enter into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin."So which is it? "I did not command them" or "I gave them statutes that were not good"? The prophets are apparently and perhaps truly at odds here.
-Jeremiah 20:33-35 (English Standard Version)
"Moreover, I gave them statutes that were not good and rules by which they could not have life, and I defiled them through their very gifts in their offering up all their firstborn, that I might devastate them. I did it that they might know that I am the LORD."
-Ezekiel 20:25-26 (English Standard Version)
The New International Version text, as published in 1984, reads some Pauline theology back into Ezekiel by translating part of verse 25 as "I also gave them over to statutes that were not good." This translation echoes the phrasing in Romans 1:21-25, and thus reverses the direct and indirect objects of the sentence by comparison to the other translations I've looked at.
However, the current NIV text has backed off and merely says "I gave them other statutes that were not good."
I don't have a problem with the solution the 1984 NIV proposes; but I am surprised that I grew up with a translation so brazen in pre-resolving difficult passages in scripture.
2 comments:
The NIV is closer to the Hebrew, which makes it look like it should be soemthing along the lines of "gave them statutes" as opposed to "gave them over to statutes." ("Them", the people, is pretty clearly the indirect object there.)
In my JPS translation, the footnote links "gifts" in Ez. 20:25 to verse 31, which links up again with child-sacrifice in an intriguing way (it looks to me like teaching children the ways of the parents' "fetishes" is compared to sacrificing them to Moloch outright).
But as for the tension between the two prophets -- isn't it possible that it's speaking to the inherent tension within the attributes of a God who is omnipotent/omniscient, and who also allows for free will?
"[I]sn't it possible that it's speaking to the inherent tension within the attributes of a God who is omnipotent/omniscient, and who also allows for free will?"
Very possible. I'm still thinking through this! It's hard for me not to flip forward to Romans or Hebrews in the New Testament to see what Paul might make of Ezekiel's "negative use" of the law, so I haven't put enough thought into other possible ways of reading Jeremiah and Ezekiel together.
Sorry to punt, but I think it'd be worse for me to pontificate this soon.
"'Them', the people, is pretty clearly the indirect object there."
That's what I wanted to know! Thanks!
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