John 19:40-41, “They took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen cloths with the *spices*…in the place where He was crucified, there was a *garden,* and in the *garden* a new tomb…they laid Jesus there.” John knows Scripture well, such that, when he combines the words *spices* and *garden* here in his account […]
Hebrews 4:12-13, “The Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow…no creature is hidden from His sight, but all are naked and exposed before the eyes of Him to whim we must give an account.” The word
Ezekiel 37:7-10, “…and the bones came together…and flesh came upon them…But there was no Breath in them….And the Breath came into them, and they lived…” In these verses, a wilderness of dry bones is gathered together, clothed in flesh, and finally ‘breathed upon’ (ἐμφυσάω, crucially, the same word as Genes is 2:7 and John 20:22)
Song of Songs 6:3, “I am my Beloved’s and my Beloved is mine…” Where is the Lover of your soul? Where is the crown’ed King? We saw Him sealed ‘neath silent stone We heard Him cease to sing. Yea, truly have your eyes beheld For truly He has come Down to the depths of deepest
Holy Saturday – Song of Songs 6:3 Read More »
John 1:14, “The Word became Flesh…” O, Word high-throned eternally, O, Word beneath the world, O, Word, Great Cosmic liturgy, O, Name of God unfurled. O, Name of God! O, Name of God! Now sounding in our Flesh! Now running red through mortal sod, Down from your pierce’ed Breast. Down from that riven veil, your
Good Friday 2025 – John 1:14 Read More »
Song of Songs 2:10, “Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away…” The word for “arise” here in the Greek OT is “ἀνίστημι”—the same word translated “resurrection.” We may, thus, read this call to “Arise” as the call of the Risen Christ to His Bride, gathering her up from the dust of death and
Song of Songs 2:10 Read More »
Paschal Trilogy – 2024: Good Friday Micah 7:19, ‘He will again have compassion on us; He will tread our iniquities underfoot.’ Micah draws his prophecy to a close with a vision of the eschatological redemption by which YHWH will definitively manifest His identity to the cosmos such that the nations will cover their mouths in
Good Friday 2024 – Micah 7:19 Read More »
John 20:16, “Jesus said to her, ‘Mary.’” Mary stands weeping outside Jesus’ empty tomb…She weeps over the loss of her beloved Lord, but more than this, in weeping over Christ’s death—in which all the pain, grief, sin, death, and damnation of the redeemed creation are borne—she weeps for all the sufferings of the world. In
Isaiah 53:5, ‘He was pierced for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His wounds, we are healed.’ See how substitution is expressed in the very structure of Isaiah’s words, like lashes falling on the Lord’s back, we hear the repeated refrain ‘He…for
1 Thessalonians 5:8, ‘But we belong to the day, we should be vigilant, having put on the breastplate of faith and of love, and the helmet of the hope of salvation’ Consider, specifically, what it means to have the ‘hope of salvation’ as our helmet (περικεφαλαίαν, literally, that which is ‘around the head’). A helmet
1 Thessalonians 5:8 Read More »
Isaiah 49:3-4, ‘And He said to me, “You are my Servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.” But I said, “I have labored in vain and have spent my strength for nothing and vanity…”’ Here we see a glimpse into the human soul of Jesus as He hangs on the cross….This is the moment
Isaiah 41:17-20, ‘When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none…I YHWH will not forsake them….I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water. I will put in the wilderness the cedar…I will set in the desert the cypress…that they may see and know…that the hand
Proverbs 25:11, ‘A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver.’ A classical understanding of ‘the Beautiful,’ recognized ‘Beauty’ as that which appears when diverse parts harmoniously agree with one another, revealing a new whole within the concert of their unity. The idea of ‘fitness’ in Proverbs 25:11 seems to
Isaiah 26:19, ‘Your dead will live; their bodies will rise. Awake and sing, you who dwell in the dust! For your dew is like the dew of *morning,* and the earth will bring forth her dead. Today’s picture was created at the request of a friend, Izzie Thom (with whom I worked on the most
Luke 24:50, ‘And, lifting up His hands, He blessed them.’ These are the same hands that Jesus displayed to His disciples in v.39, the hands bearing the wounds of His crucifixion, which is to say, wounds that bear witness to the disciples’ sin and the condemnation due that sin. More than this, in those
Hebrews 3:7-8, ‘Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion…’ Why does the author of Hebrews cite Ps.95 (and so allude to Exodus 17) in this context? How does this situation apply to his readers? It would seem that the parallel to the ‘voice’ of Ps.95 / Ex.17
1 John 3:5, ‘…He appeared in order to take away sins…’ Jesus appeared—the Word was made flesh—in order to take away sins. But what does it mean that He takes away sins? Certainly He bears them in Himself as the representative head of redeemed humanity (2 Cor.5:21); certainly He secures their forgiveness through the sacrifice
Isaiah 1:9, ‘If YHWH of Hosts had not left to us a survivor (or, in the Greek OT, ‘seed’), we should have been like Sodom, and become like Gomorrah.’ Ultimately, the judgment humanity has to face is not an attack of Assyrians or an exile to Babylon (the judgments Israel faced when Isaiah wrote the
Psalm 42:11, “Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him, my salvation and my God.” How do we know that ‘we shall again praise Him’? How do we know that this darkness is going to lift? That we will rise again from this pit? That the hopelessness that has devoured days, months, years of
Luke 8:26, ‘Then they sailed to the country of the Gerasenes…’ This is the first of two visual exegeses that will be considering Jesus’ interactions with the demoniac in the region of Gerasenes. In this first post and picture, I just wanted to highlight the descent of Jesus as Living Hope into the darkness and
