Episode Transcript
Carey Griffel: Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot where we raid the ivory tower of a biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel, and today we are going to continue our look into the deep waters of Scripture. We are going to be tracing more elements of the theme of water.
[00:00:28] Last time we noted a few different things that water is centered on. Water is about hospitality, it is about welcome. There's also that really interesting aspect of marriage and wells.
[00:00:42] We might wanna say that a well is a threshold of belonging, but then also water can become a threshold of power struggle. Water is very disputed and this makes sense. Water is absolutely crucial to life, and so it becomes disputed in areas where it's rare or harder to get. We also talked about water and war and water and deception, and this whole idea that whoever controls the water controls the life. In many places we see God as being the one who has that control, and so it is God who can turn the tide of history with that control and use of water.
[00:01:25] We'll be looking more at that today. But remember as we do this survey that one of the big things we're primarily interested in is looking how these things might connect to baptism. The reason we're doing that is because baptism is so core to our belief system in Christianity.
[00:01:44] We have to realize that not everything in the theme of water has to have something to do with baptism. So that's the first thing we need to keep in mind as we're doing this. But I think we will see that many things that are a little bit unpredictable actually do connect to baptism, and it might be a little bit surprising as we do this survey.
[00:02:08] Now, of course, this will have an unfortunate, at least it's unfortunate for some people, side effect of muddying the waters of baptism as to what it is and what it does in a really formal sense when we're looking at it from the lens of doctrine. But in my opinion, this is going to be a delightful study that will also help to clarify many things, at least from a narrative perspective.
[00:02:38] So far we have water as connected to hospitality, to marriage, to covenant, and it is a locus of power and life. We're gonna keep looking at those things. Those are all going to connect in what we'll talk about today.
[00:02:54] And again, I just want to suggest that these are things we should consider when we're thinking of our entry into the waters of baptism. We also want to remember that water is connected to spirit, though we're not gonna get into that just yet, but we want to hold all of that in the back of our mind as we're looking at these things.
[00:03:16] We want every instance of the theme of water to be able to stand on its own and to give us its own message. Only after we've done all of this evaluating can we see what kinds of crossover there is and what kinds of relevancy it has to our Christian life.
[00:03:33] So today we're gonna look at a couple of different things. We're gonna look at the idea of toil and water, and there's a little bit of crossover to the things we've already talked about before with that. And toil is also connected to curse, although I will say that they are not obviously, and inextricably linked. Toil and curse is not always the same thing, but they can be connected. Sometimes toil is a positive thing.
[00:04:04] And of course we're gonna be looking a little bit at water as judgment and salvation. These two sides of the coin that seem like opposites, but they come as a complete package.
[00:04:16] But one of the central things we're gonna be talking about today is the waters above versus the waters below. Is there actually a distinctive difference in meaning in those two themes? I will suggest that there is, but again, we're going to be very careful in what we're doing and we don't wanna suggest that every time waters from above are mentioned that it's going to necessarily pack in all of the meaning there. Just as waters from below will also not have every bit of meaning packed into every bit of use of that.
[00:04:54] And I will mention once again that we're gonna keep in mind the theme of spirit that comes alongside these metaphors. We're gonna be looking at rain, at river, at living water and cisterns. Kind of as always, we're going to be coming back to the theme of the deep in Genesis one.
[00:05:17] Now, here's a question. When we look at the flood, we tend to think of rain waters, don't we? We're always thinking about how there was all this rain and then the rain caused the flood. But in the flood story, we actually have two sources of water. We have the rain water, the rain from above, and this is the first mention of rainfall actually happening in the story.
[00:05:41] And of course, this is judgment water. It's a picture of unleashed chaos that wipes out violence and it resets creation. This is our two sides of the coin, the judgment and the chaos, and the destruction and the violence versus a cleansing and a resetting and a purification. We have both of those with the same water, and of course we do have that rain from above, but we can't forget the fountains of the deep. Those are also another picture of judgment water.
[00:06:19] Many scholars have pointed out that what we have in the flood is the re bringing together of the two realms of water. In Genesis one, we have the waters separated. The waters above are separated from the waters below, and that separation is what allows for human life. In the flood, those two waters are collapsed back down. This is, as many people have suggested, a picture of decreation and then recreation after the flood.
[00:06:54] Okay, so in the flood, that's what we have going on. Those are the main pictures of waters above and waters below. But I'm going to suggest that there's more disambiguation we could do between those two different waters and what they mean in many places in the story.
[00:07:12] We know that the early church practiced baptism in rivers. Why was that? Well, rivers were seen to be living water.
[00:07:21] Our earliest descriptions outside the Bible of baptism have people being baptized in living water, if at all possible. Now, interestingly enough, there seems to be some dispensation given to people when they don't have that accessibility to living water. If you don't have living water around to baptize people, then you are authorized to use some other form of water, even to the point of sprinkling or dipping the water onto people.
[00:07:54] But there is a priority into the immersion into living, flowing water. And the reason for that is because of how Scripture talks about living water. So a river or a spring from below is connected to certain things in Scripture. If you go into Leviticus, you see that it is tied to purity laws. If you go into the prophets, you will see that it's tied to prophetic hope. And then of course, we've already talked about wells and marriage and covenant. And all of these things are connected together. Living water or rivers or springs all represent God's presence and spirit as a life source.
[00:08:41] Okay. So to get a little bit more into this, let's go back to the beginning.
[00:08:47] I have done this podcast for years now, and I cannot get past Genesis one through three. It's just not possible. There's too much here to talk about. So let's go back to Genesis two in particular here. We're gonna look at the effortless provision of water that we see at the beginning of Genesis two.
[00:09:08] Let's go ahead and read our verses. I'm going to be reading from the Lexham English Bible. Genesis two, four through seven says, quote, "These are the generations of heaven and earth when they were created. In the day that Yahweh God made earth and heaven, before any plant of the field was on earth, and before any plant of the field had sprung up, because Yahweh God had not caused it to rain upon the earth and there was no human being to cultivate the ground, but a stream would rise from the earth and water the whole face of the ground. When Yahweh God formed the man of dust from the ground and he blew into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living creature." End quote.
[00:09:54] Okay, so what we have here is some interesting language. If you look at different translations of Genesis two verse six, you'll see different words here. The Lexham English Bible uses the word stream, and it says that the stream is rising from the earth to water the whole face of the ground. Some of your translations might read as mist coming up. Well, mist and stream are two different things. They're not the same. So why do we have these two different translations?
[00:10:26] Well, first of all, this is just an unusual word, so there's a little bit of confusion as to how to translate it. It's just not a word that is used often enough.
[00:10:38] I'm going to read an old Evangelical Theological Society Journal article. This is from 1968, written by R Laird Harris. This article is called The Mist, the Canopy, and the Rivers of Eden. So he's talking about the mist and he's going to be talking about a particular interpretation. He says, quote, " Basic to this contention is the translation of two verse five. There went up a mist from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground. The common interpretation is that this mist was worldwide and that there was no rain until the flood. Following the flood, a rainbow appeared for the first time. This view is associated with a canopy theory that sometimes involves the idea that prodigious amounts of water were held above the canopy until it was released at the time of the flood." End quote for just a second here.
[00:11:40] So maybe you've heard of this. This is a common young earth creationist argument that there was a canopy of mist, and this is how vegetation was sustained because, I guess there was a lot of humidity in the atmosphere, and rain didn't have to come down because there was so much water in the air.
[00:12:00] And associated with that is the idea that a rainbow could not appear until after the flood. And honestly, I've never understood that because if you have a whole lot of mist and humidity in the atmosphere, you're gonna end up with more rainbows, not less. You're gonna have way more rainbows when you have all of that mist in the atmosphere, unless the mist was heavy enough that it was blocking out the sun somehow. Anyway, that's just confusion I've always had with that.
[00:12:33] And again, this is a scientific condordist view. They're trying to concord the story of Genesis with actual scientific reality of some sort, although they kind of miss a few points here with the rainbow bit.
[00:12:50] But this is the picture of the mist. It's like watering everything because there's enough water in the atmosphere, I guess.
[00:12:57] Continuing reading from the Jets article here, quote, " A liberal view is given by EA Speiser in his Anchor Bible Commentary on Genesis, he holds that this verse reflects ancient mythology. The word mist is translated flow, and it refers to the idea that waters beneath the earth welled up and irrigated the land. Some have even suggested that Eden is pictured as a holy hill from which four rivers flowed in all directions." End quote.
[00:13:32] Okay, so here, Speiser is suggesting that this is connected to mythology of water coming from the subterranean realm to water the ground. The reason he's connecting it to ancient mythology is because he's thinking of that ancient Near Eastern cosmological idea of the three realms.
[00:13:53] Okay? You have the heavens, you have the earth, and you have the underworld, which is also the deep. And so this water is being pictured as coming from the deep to water the ground, and he's connecting it specifically to that cosmological model, which is why it's not a scientific explanation, even though it sounds like it could be, but rather he's saying it's connected to mythology because it's connected to ancient cosmology.
[00:14:22] Harris goes on to say quote, "Both of these views are deficient, and a straightforward interpretation of the verse seems to make excellent sense when the meanings of the words are determined. To begin with, the translation " mist" is a guess. The word is used elsewhere only in Job 36 27, where it could possibly mean mist, but could also mean "water course." No hebrew etymology is known for the word. Mist was conjecture by the King James translators, apparently because the word concerned water and the verb used was go up. Water does not go up except in the form of a mist. The Greek translation is spring or fountain." End quote.
[00:15:15] Okay. So he's explaining why we have the word mist in our English Bibles because it comes from the King James translators who were trying to figure out how water was going to go up when water usually flows down. And so they thought, well, it must mean that the water is going up from the ground into a mist, and that's how we get the word mist. But if water course is another legitimate use of this verb, then the word flow actually makes quite a bit of sense. Let me go ahead and read Job 36, 27.
[00:15:49] Actually, I'm going to read 36, 27 and verse 28. Quote, "For he draws up the drops of water, they distill rain for his stream, which the clouds pour down. They drip upon man abundantly." End quote.
[00:16:07] So you can kind of see how mist would fit here. But if God is drawing up the drops of water, we could see it as being just the course of water in general. Of course, it's talking about water going up into the clouds, so again, we can see how we're getting the word mist here. But the picture in Job is one of moving water, and that's kind of the point. It's not that there's like this hovering mist that's all around, it's that the water is being drawn up into the clouds. So we could see that also as being some sort of a flow, right?
[00:16:44] Going back to Harris, he says quote, " Speiser, however, has a better explanation of this Hebrew word ed. He, like others before him whose work he cites, had traced the Hebrew word to the Akkadian word edu, flood, waves, swell. His contribution was the claim that the word, borrowed from the Sumerian, refers to the rise of the subterranean waters, which fitted his interpretation of the Genesis passage." End quote.
[00:17:18] So we don't know any Hebrew etymology for the word, but we have this possible connection with the Akkadian word that means to flood, or could also mean waves or the water that swells.
[00:17:30] B ack to Harris. Quote, " It would seem, however, that Speiser presses the mythological connections too far. There is nothing in the context cited by Speiser to prove that the reference is always to the rising of subterranean waters." End quote.
[00:17:49] Okay, so what is Harris's point here? Well, Speiser is saying specifically that the water is coming from underneath the earth and coming up to water the ground. Harris is going to suggest a different idea that is quite similar but still different and not necessarily coming up from the ground underneath the earth.
[00:18:12] Harris mentions a German glossary that defines the word to include the overflowing of rivers. " Speiser specifically cites the use of the Akkadian term edu to refer to irrigation. Also, the context of the Genesis passage says nothing about subterranean waters unless the verb go up, is taken to imply such a picture.
[00:18:38] According to the Assyrian Dictionary of the University of Chicago, the word edu is used of an inundation that overflowed the city of Babylon on the lower Euphrates. Such floods, both beneficial and destructive, were common in the lower Euphrates Valley. The whole context is quite adequately cared for without any resort to mythology by the translation inundation. Thus, no plant of the field was yet in the land, and no herb of the field had yet sprung up, but an inundation went up from the country and it watered all the face of the ground. Verse 10 is very similar to verse six and serves to explain it. A river went out of Eden to water the garden. The word for river is the usual Hebrew word, and the verb to water is identical with the verb watered in verse six, it should be concluded that the watered garden of verse 10 is parallel to the watered ground of verse six. Verse six does not refer to the whole globe at all. The whole passage refers only to Eden, and it informs us that it was not a rain country. It was rather a territory watered by river overflow and irrigation." End quote.
[00:20:00] Okay, so to sum all of that up a little bit here, we have these three options of the picture that's going on here in Genesis two.
[00:20:09] Option one is that there was a misty canopy over the land and it just over the whole globe, and there was no rain until we get to the flood.
[00:20:20] Options two and three seem a little bit more contextualized. Option two is according to EA Speiser, who is suggesting that the water is coming from underneath the ground in kind of welling up from the subterranean deep.
[00:20:36] But what Harris is suggesting here is that it can just mean irrigation by river. And we know that this was a very, very common way that people irrigated their crops. Either they were doing irrigation on purpose by making the water go from the river into the fields. And we see this in Deuteronomy 11 with the mention of the Egyptian foot pumps. This is how they would irrigate their fields by pumping water from the river into the field.
[00:21:08] And I don't know if you live around farmland, but I see this quite frequently myself with canals. Farmers will take the water from the canal, divert it into the field, flood the whole field, and that's how they water their crop. Still a very common way of watering today.
[00:21:26] Now of course, I would say that Speiser's idea and the river irrigation idea are quite similar. Rivers still seem to be coming from some sort of spring, and that spring is arising from the ground. But at the same time, it does seem like Genesis two is calling towards a specific type of irrigation. In Genesis two, it mentions it before the creation of the man in the garden, and so it is God who is doing the irrigation, not mankind.
[00:22:01] With both of these interpretations of water, either from the ground or from a river, which is kind of the same thing, the imagery is connecting Eden to temple cosmology, and it's a garden that is nourished from within and it's not being nourished with rain or with toil.
[00:22:22] So there's two different pictures here I want you to imagine. The garden being nourished and being given water by God automatically without anybody needing to do that.
[00:22:34] And yet that picture is still being contrasted to the toil that the man is going to do. So there is some suggestion that what's going on with the irrigation of the river water or whatever's happening here in the garden, it's not quite enough for human flourishing. Mankind is still going to be tasked to particularly do something in order to make this happen in a way that's going to lead to proper flourishing for people.
[00:23:03] But part of my point here is that this kind of water is God's presence and there is a suggestion that the river water or the subterranean water is going to be flowing continually. That's kind of an idea here. That is as opposed to rain, which does not flow continuously.
[00:23:25] Okay, so I hope you're kinda seeing these two different pictures that I'm drawing for you of the waters below, or living water versus waters from above. Those are the two kinds of ideas we should have. And they are different. They're going to produce a different image. And that's not to say that river water or living water cannot be seasonal because it often was as well. Rivers would dry up because even if they were fed from a subterranean source, they also relied upon the rain and the snow that falls in the mountain to feed the rivers. But the image of the river or the spring or the well is a more continual source of water, because rain is certainly not a continual source of water.
[00:24:14] Alright, so we might say that we have kind of three ideas of water. We have the rain. We have the water that either comes up from the ground or flows in a river. And then the third type of water that we have in Scripture that is a really strong image for the people is the water that is from a cistern or water that is collected from rain that eventually dries up.
[00:24:38] The water that has been sitting in a cistern is not said to be living water. It is less healthy water. although it can be used by people and often was. In fact, there's a suggestion that Jacob's well didn't actually come from an internal spring, but was rainwater that collected in the well. That's kind of an interesting thing, but it's going to depend on if you rely on archeological determinations of where Jacob's well actually was.
[00:25:11] But at any rate, the water in a cistern is going to be stagnant. It is not going to be pure, it's not going to be vital. It's not going to be that symbol of divine life and presence.
[00:25:24] And I think that this is as opposed to wine that is stored away. You have water that's stored away and it tends to get a little bit gross and icky and not so healthy. That is as opposed to wine that is stored away, and wine that is stored away properly can be a source of life for quite a while compared to water. So that's an interesting distinction there as well.
[00:25:51] Okay, so let's open up this picture again. We're gonna look at rain as a divine gift. Rain is said to not be coming into the land before the man is toiling in the garden. John Walton has emphasized that rain is tied to covenantal dependence. It requires looking upward to God, rather than relying on automatic provision from below. There's the suggestion in Genesis two that rain only comes when humans are cultivating the soil and dependent on Yahweh.
[00:26:25] Now, of course, rain can come as judgment. Again, what we see as rain's first actual appearance in Genesis is destructive.
[00:26:35] So the gift of rain can come in two different forms. It can be a blessing like we have in Deuteronomy 28, verse 12, which says, quote, " Yahweh shall open for you his rich storehouse, even the heavens, to give the rain for your land in its time. And to bless all the work of your hand and you will lend to many nations. You will not borrow from them. End quote.
[00:27:02] Here in Deuteronomy 28, which is a really crucial blessing and cursing passage, right? Rain is the blessing from Yahweh, but it's so interesting that it's connected here to the work of their hands. So even though God is giving you rain, it's still up to humans to actually plant the crops and harvest the crops and do all of the things needed in order to receive the blessing from that rain. If you're just sitting around and it's raining, you're not getting a whole lot from that.
[00:27:36] Now, Deuteronomy 28 is contrasted with places like Amos four verse seven, which says, quote, " And I also withheld the rain from you when there were still three months to the harvest. And I would send rain on one city and send no rain on another city. One tract of land will be rained on and the tract of land on which it does not rain will dry up." End quote.
[00:28:04] Again, rain is connected to harvest here and human labor. So God is giving the rain, but he is presuming that you are working for that. There is kind of no point to the rain without human working.
[00:28:19] I mean, I guess we have the flood waters, but that was about humans working in a bad way. Human violence.
[00:28:27] Now let's look at this ancient cosmology and mythology that Speiser was drawing upon. In the ancient Near East, there was a very strong distinguishing difference between waters above, the rain, and waters below, the springs. And we've talked about this before, the primeval waters. In the Enuma Elish, which is the Babylonian creation epic, we have Apsu, which is the fresh subterranean waters that is as opposed to the epitome of the salty, chaotic sea. The salty sea is not going to give you life. And water that sits around long enough is going to turn into that. That's as opposed to the fresh living subterranean waters.
[00:29:17] In the Babylonian stories, creation begins when the gods separate and subdue the primordial waters. And the mesopotamians were seeing these as two distinct, but both cosmic domains. The waters above in the heavens and the waters below in the subterranean realm, were both ruled by deities. So there is a cosmic structure here in the ancient Near Eastern mind of what the world is structured like, and these different realms of inhabitation. Just like in the Bible, in Mesopotamian texts, the heavens above are called storehouses of rain, and they are controlled by gods. But at the same time, the earth is resting on a watery deep, the Apsu. This is the source of springs and rivers and irrigation.
[00:30:13] In ancient Near Eastern thought and the Old Testament, John Walton observes that this maps almost directly onto Genesis one with the waters above and the waters below. We also see the connection with the flood waters. Those waters collapse into de creation, and they are both said to be under divine control.
[00:30:34] The rain from above is associated with blessing and curse in agriculture. The springs from below are tied to underworld gods in the ancient Near East. These are also connected to fertility and irrigation systems. And so there's a kind of duality, and that duality is overlapping, right? Both of these things, agriculture and irrigation and fertility, they're all kind of wrapped up in the same ideas.
[00:31:04] But when we see rain from above versus springs from below, there is a different metaphorical use for them in the Bible.
[00:31:13] Now of course, even though Israel is embedded into that ancient Near Eastern reality, and they're thinking much the same way as your typical ancient Near Eastern person in a lot of ways, we do have Scripture that de mythologizes some of this to a point. In the typical ancient Near Eastern mindset, we have different gods that rule above and rule below. But of course, Yahweh rules both sources. And we see that in Psalm 1 0 4.
[00:31:45] Psalm 1 0 4, verse 10 says that Yahweh is the one who sends forth springs into the valleys. Verse 13 has Yahweh who waters the mountains from his upper chambers. By the way, that verse also says that the earth is full with the fruit of your labors. So again, we have rain connected to laboring and toil.
[00:32:08] So springs and rivers and living water are seen to be effortless compared to rain, which is tied directly to the labor of agriculture. Now both of those are going to be subordinated to covenant theology in a proper way, right? Not like modern covenant theology, but covenant with Yahweh.
[00:32:30] One way we might look at Psalm 1 0 4 is that it is making explicit the idea that human labor doesn't secure provision, but divine labor does. And divine labor precedes and enables human work. So the way that we're working together is, I mean, it's a synergistic picture. God is giving something and humans are to work for that. It's both pieces together.
[00:32:58] All right, so let's kind of back up a little bit again and look at streams from below as a kind of signal for paradise and the presence of God versus rain from above that signals covenant. Okay, so I'm gonna unpack this a little bit more here. And again, we're gonna keep in mind that every use of an image does not necessitate that all of the meaning of that image is packed into every instance of it In Scripture.
[00:33:30] What we're doing is looking at themes and patterns and seeing what is mostly connected to water from below or living water and what is mostly connected to rain from above. And I'm suggesting that these are two distinct images, even though they're also compacted into one thing.
[00:33:52] Again, this is where frame semantics is going to shine. When we look at each individual passage and we parse out all of the meaning and contextualization of the use of a term or the use of an image, what is the whole picture being brought to mind? Now, certainly we can say that paradise and God's presence is very connected to covenant, but we still want to keep these two as separate things so that we can examine them and what they mean.
[00:34:25] Because on the one hand, paradise and God's provision and his presence ought to be something that is automatic, right? Like if we are in covenant with God, then God promises to be with us. but the rain from above is absolutely dependent on people being in covenant with God.
[00:34:48] That's kind of the picture we have here, right? And that's why we have the cosmic temple associated with water flowing out to bring life like we have in Ezekiel 47. We have it in the end of Revelation. And that's what I would suggest is what we have here at the beginning of the Eden story as well.
[00:35:09] There is an automatic presence here, but then what happens is people are placed into the sacred space and they are meant to toil. They're meant to keep and guard that sacred space. And in doing so, they are then not just given the living water in the form of the upwelling of the streams and the rivers, but they're also giving rain in abundance and the agricultural cycle is connected to the festival cycle as well.
[00:35:41] So we have this idea of the life of the people and the covenant life of the people and the cultic life of the people as connected to that rain, versus God's continual presence through the whole thing that gives us what we need. But we have to have both things because without the rain, without our staying in covenant with God, we also do not get the streams. God's presence will be drying up.
[00:36:12] Okay, so I said we weren't gonna get into spirit connections here, but let's go ahead and touch on it anyway, because this is some rich stuff here. In John seven, we have a really interesting passage. I'm going to read John 7 verses 37 through 39. Quote, " Now on the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood and cried out saying, If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and let him drink. The one who believes in me, just as the Scripture said, out of his belly will flow rivers of living water. Now, he said this concerning the Spirit whom those who believed in him, who about to receive. For the Spirit was not yet given because Jesus had not yet been glorified." End quote.
[00:37:02] Now many scholars have connected this directly to Eden's stream. The Spirit flows from within like the subterranean spring or the living waters. We also see echoes here of the story of Jesus with the Samaritan woman at the well. So Eden stream and the Spirit here is symbolized as being an inner provision. This is something we are given to provide our life in Christ and it comes from within. It's not coming from outside. It's a picture of the living waters.
[00:37:37] Now why does this matter? Why do we have to disambiguate the living water from rainwater?
[00:37:45] Well, again, the picture of living water coming from within is something that is about God's presence and provision and it's not something that ebbs and flows. It's something that is seen as continual support.
[00:38:01] Just like John four verse 14 says, quote, " But whoever drinks of this water, which I give to him, will never be thirsty for eternity. But the water which I give to him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life." End quote.
[00:38:19] So here's a picture of us having springing up living water. We are not cisterns that collect rain water that sits and becomes not potentially good to drink, and besides which rainwater only comes in certain seasons.
[00:38:37] Now, to bring this over to the context of baptism, baptism is signifying dying and rising through water, as we see in Romans six. And post baptism life is sustained by the indwelling of the Spirit and not mere external provision.
[00:38:55] I'm gonna go ahead and read Romans six, three through 11. Quote, "Or do you not know that as many as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. Therefore, we have been buried with him through baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through thou glory of the Father. So also, we may live a new way of life. For if we have become identified with him in the likeness of his death, certainly also, we will be identified with him in the likeness of his resurrection. Knowing this, that our old man was crucified together with him in order that the body of sin may be done away with that we may no longer be enslaved to sin. For the one who has died has been freed from sin. Now, if we died with Christ, we believe that we also live with him. Knowing that Christ because he has been raised from the dead, is going to die no more. Death, no longer being master over him. For that death he died, he died to sin once and never again. But that death he lives, he lives to God. So also, you consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus." End quote.
[00:40:10] Now certainly in the Hebrew Bible, we have pictures of springs drying up. The idea here is that even the provision of God that is constant can be stopped and can dry up in extreme cases. In Job 1411, we have human mortality as compared to drying waters. In Joel one verse 20, we have the streams of water that are dried up and fire devouring pastures. This is a picture of drought as covenant curse.
[00:40:43] Jeremiah 50 has a picture of a drought, and it's connected to idolatry. So the idea of springs drying up and drought is certainly another picture of judgment and loss of blessing as well.
[00:40:57] In Isaiah 41, we have the poor and the needy who seek water, but Yahweh promises to open rivers and fountains. So the opening of rivers and fountains is a picture of covenant renewal and presence. And here we have God's care for the poor and the needy and the oppressed.
[00:41:16] Psalm 1 0 7, we have a really strong picture here of God as sovereign over the spring's flow or its failure.
[00:41:24] Psalm 1 0 7 33 through 35, quote, " He makes rivers into a wilderness and springs of water into a thirsty ground, a fruitful land into a salt waste because of the evil of those who inhabited it. He makes a wilderness into a pool of water and a dry land into springs of water." End quote.
[00:41:46] So there's a dual picture here. Jeremiah two verse 13 says, quote, " For my people have done two evils, they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters to hue for themselves, cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water." End quote.
[00:42:09] So here it's a picture of forsaking the source of living waters and relying instead on cisterns, which collect rain water. People who have broken covenant and abandoned the true source, end up substituting that for things that dry up on their own.
[00:42:28] Okay, so all of these pictures of dry springs, judgment, curse mortality, idolatry, apostasy, false sources of life, those are all what we have when we trade the presence of God with something else. And quite often those something elses are connected to rainwater, some external source that is not God. But it's not relying on rainwater itself, it's relying on our collection of rainwater.
[00:43:01] So here the picture is rain is withheld because of covenant disobedience. Springs are dried up because of judgment, idolatry, or people relying on false promises. Now both of these images show how we are dependent on God. Without his gift of rain, the land dies, and without his presence, the living water, life also fails.
[00:43:31] And then when we bring Spirit into the picture and Spirit as the actual source of life Spirit is not seen from coming outside us, but from welling up within. This is the indwelling of the Spirit and it produces life. This is not an external dependence, but rather an internal one.
[00:43:53] Okay, now let's bring all of this into the idea of toil. Now, of course, we have the cursing of the ground in Genesis three, and the whole idea of by the sweat of your brow, you will eat bread. And keep in mind here, rain has not been mentioned still. And so watering seems to shift from God's effortless provision into human struggle. This isn't a picture of no rain happened here, but it's a shift in human perspective. Rather than our reliance on the presence of God, we are cast out of God's presence and thus our toil becomes a curse instead of a blessing, which it would be a blessing within God's presence as God would be giving the rain in its time.
[00:44:43] Now let's go ahead and turn to a different story. Let's look at the story of Hagar and Ishmael in Genesis 21. Here we have a setting where they are cast into the wilderness. Survival depends on a single water skin. Hagar and her son become the image of toil and vulnerability in a waterless land.
[00:45:09] Let's go ahead and read part of this chapter. I'm going to start in verse 14, Genesis 21, verse 14, quote, " So Abraham rose early in the morning and took bread and a skin of water and gave them to Hagar, putting them on her shoulder, and gave her the child and sent her away. So she went and wandered about in the wilderness of Beersheba. When the water in the skin was finished, she put the child under one of the bushes. Then she went and sat down opposite him about a bow shot away for she said, do not let me see when the child dies, and she sat opposite him and lifted up her voice and wept. Then God heard the voice of the boy crying and the angel of Yahweh called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, what is the matter with you Hagar? Do not fear for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. Arise, lift up the boy and hold him by the hand for I will make a great nation of him. Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water, and she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink." End quote.
[00:46:21] Okay, so a couple of different things to notice here. In verse 14, Abraham gives her bread And a skin of water. So she's got some bread, but the focus here is on the water. She does not have a source of living water. She's given a single bit of water and sent out. So we might compare what she has with something like a cistern. There's no rain. There is no living water.
[00:46:51] When the water that they have that is all the water in the world that they have in their possession is gone, she despairs and she separates herself from her child. And she cries as of course she would. And then what do we see? God hears the voice of the boy crying. That's interesting. It's not her crying that he notices but the boy and he talks to her and asks her what's wrong? Don't fear. God has heard the voice of the boy where he is.
[00:47:23] God tells her to go back to the boy, lift him up, hold him by the hand, which probably means he's not an infant. And what does she see after her eyes are opened? She sees the well of water. She is provided with living water, but she doesn't see that until God opens her eyes.
[00:47:43] Now they're said to still live in the wilderness, so that's interesting. We don't have any mention of rain here. We don't have any mention of agriculture. So presumably the bread they're given by Abraham in verse 14 is the only bread they ever had and they subsided on something other than bread because again, rain is connected to agriculture, settling, bread, things like that.
[00:48:12] They are provided instead with living water, and that is the source of nourishment. It kind of doesn't really make a big deal out of what they're going to eat because the big deal is the nourishing living water. They are able to survive in the wilderness because of that living water.
[00:48:32] There is actually no toil mentioned here, which is really quite fascinating, and yet even though they aren't seen to toil, God's mercy still sustains them throughout.
[00:48:43] Now, what is the point here? Well, remember that even though Ishmael is Abraham's offspring, he is not the promised offspring. He is somewhat outside the promise, but he's still receiving life giving water. He still receives life from the direct source. He still has some sense of presence with God and God is working out his promises in a particular way with him.
[00:49:11] Now we could see how this is something that anticipates later themes where water is a grace, even where toil fails, and life is given by God to the outcast and the one who is oppressed.
[00:49:25] What we don't see in the story is agriculture or rain. The lack of agriculture or rain does not mean death because you still have some sources of living water, and that is truly what is going to keep you alive is God's sustaining presence.
[00:49:44] Now, what we have with the water that is given in time are the people who are in the promised covenant situation with God. This is the Israelites. Again, we're not distinguishing people who are in covenant with people who are outside a covenant as if there's no life outside of it. But there is still a difference here.
[00:50:07] There is no suggestion that Hagar and Ishmael have to toil and work, but they are still provided for. And I know I keep repeating myself here. This is a really heavily repeating episode because this is really strange. Like it's very odd to me, honestly. And maybe this is just me, that we have two sources of water. They both give life, but they both mean something different. And this is really quite fascinating to me.
[00:50:40] And if we bring this into the ancient Near Eastern context where we know that Mesopotamia was very big on agriculture, very big on cities, very big on saying that this is what civilization means, and this is how you get life. Outside of agriculture, outside of a city, outside of kingship, Mesopotamia or Babylon was saying, you aren't civilized, you aren't really alive. It's not necessarily that the wilderness is a dangerous place, even though it was and is in both Mesopotamian ideals of reality and biblical ones.
[00:51:22] But Mesopotamia had a very strong idea that Babylon is how things are done. And if you aren't doing it like Babylon, well, you are wrong. The Bible is still presenting things like agriculture as a good thing. There's nothing wrong with agriculture and in fact, agriculture, which is provided for by rain, especially as we see the contrast in Deuteronomy once again with the contrast of Egypt having their fields watered by foot pumps versus Israel, whose fields are going to be watered by rain.
[00:52:00] There's still this kind of dualistic idea here. Agriculture and covenant are still related in the biblical mindset. That's what I'm saying here, but they're not related in the same way that they are in the Babylonian mindset.
[00:52:15] And this is just a fascinating image, especially when we bring it into the New Testament where Jesus talks so much about living water and we have baptism that occurs in living water, and we have all of those things connected to the Spirit, and we have the Spirit that is then connected to the transforming of the person.
[00:52:35] And so all of this is going to matter when we think of our ideals as a Christian, when we think of the discipleship that we are to walk out as a Christian, when we are to think of what the Spirit's role is and what the Spirit does for us as believers, why it is so important to have that. Because God is not just an external reality, but he is an internal reality to us today.
[00:53:04] The presence of God is not just that we go somewhere and we worship at a certain place, although that can certainly be part of it, but the expression of the internal reality is absolutely crucial to the Christian Understanding of how God is working with us.
[00:53:22] Alright, I'm gonna mention a few other things because I want to wrap up this idea of toil and water. Now, I talked a lot last time about Rebekah at the well in Genesis 24. We have hospitality in action. We have marriage proposal, we have all of that. And I did mention last time the extreme labor of the watering of the camels.
[00:53:45] This was not a small act on Rebekah's part. A single camel can drink twenty to twenty-five gallons after a long journey. So 10 camels is potentially 200 gallons, and she was going down and up. So this indicates there were stairs. This is an extreme form of toil, and she was doing it voluntarily. She offered this to the servant of Abraham.
[00:54:13] Now, some scholars, like Gordon Wenham of the Word Biblical Commentary series, says that this is a stiff test of Rebekah's character. And her action proves her suitability for covenant family.
[00:54:26] Now, that's certainly possibly at view here, but the question I have is, is this truly a test? It does seem like a well is another place of at testing, right? We have the presence of God and then the person who is in the presence of God is tested as to whether or not they're going to continue to turn God's direction or turn away their own way.
[00:54:53] But remember my suggestion here overall is that living water or springs or wells are seen as signs of God's provision and presence versus rain, which is part of human toil. So if that's the case, then why is Rebekah working so hard here? Is this in fact a test of Rebekah's worthiness? It might be, but we might also ask if this is a test for the servant, because remember it's the servant who brings this idea up.
[00:55:33] He is the one who is testing Yahweh's faithfulness. So it seems to me that rather than a test of Rebekah, this is the servant testing Yahweh and testing the provision of Yahweh's grace.
[00:55:49] Now can this be a both/ and kind of a situation? Well, sure it can be, but there's no suggestion on Rebekah's part that she is at all reluctant or that she's choosing two paths here. She just comes on the scene and does what she's going to do.
[00:56:09] Her willingness to work seems less an example of her own testing and her own character than it is of Yahweh's. I don't think this is showing that Rebekah is perfect marriage material, but it seems to me that it's showing the persistence of the promise of God in his presence.
[00:56:29] Now again, I've talked quite a bit about Deuteronomy 11 and the contrast of water supply from Egypt to the land of promise. This seems to be a theme that we can track through the rest of the Old Testament.
[00:56:44] In Jeremiah 14 verse 22, it says, quote, "Are there any among the idols of the nations who give rain or can the heavens give showers? Is it not you, oh, Yahweh our God. Therefore, we hope in you, for you are the one who has done all these things." End quote.
[00:57:07] in Matthew 5 45, Jesus says that God causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
[00:57:19] The last thing I want to kinda sit here with in thought is the idea of water as a threshold. We get this very clearly with the waters of Jordan. This is the line between the wilderness and the inheritance land. The line between wandering and their native home. The line between promise and fulfillment. Crossing the line defines Israel as God's people in their land. It's a kind of identity marker.
[00:57:51] Water can also provide a symbol of prophetic succession. Now we don't have time to get into all of this, but we have water connected to Elisha, and it confirms divine calling quite often. We have many major stories here which pivot around the passing through water into new life. We certainly have the flood story. We have the exodus, we have the Jordan, we have baptism, and the passing through is salvation. It's deliverance. It's entry into inheritance. It's a transfer of authority sometimes, and it's an inauguration of the new covenant. All of that has to do with identity mission that is connected to God's promise and sustainability. I mean, there's a lot more we could talk about there, and we will be as we continue this theme of water.
[00:58:47] As always, I would suggest you guys go and do your own thematic tracings. Now, how do you do that, you might ask if you're not familiar with that kind of a study? Well, first of all, you're going to want to do word studies. These are absolutely an essential step, but as I've said quite often, a word study is not enough, and you have to look beyond the lexicons. Look beyond the concordances, as helpful as those could be, because they will show you the ways that people have translated a certain word in various ways. But what you're gonna have to do is drill down into particular passages and look at how those passages are understanding the word or the concept.
[00:59:34] This is why I'm getting so passionate about the whole idea of frame semantics, because when you're looking at a word and you're only looking at it in definitions, and you're looking at the ways that it's been translated from one language to another, the danger here is to drill down so far into word definitions and to think that lexicons and concordances will give us everything about a word. And we think that we understand a concept because we understand all of the ways it's been translated. We understand the definitions in the dictionary, so therefore we understand a term.
[01:00:14] But I suggest that that's not enough because what that might do, and believe me, I've seen this, what that can do is that can strip the word and the passage of its actual contextual meaning.
[01:00:29] When we're talking about symbolism in particular, we have to be able to pack more ideas into the concept than is strictly there in the passage, right? When the New Testament says that baptism saves, what does that mean? We could drill into the word baptism and find its definition and find all of its lexical uses. We can drill into the idea of salvation and its definition.
[01:00:58] But we have to realize that the idea of both baptism and salvation are used in many different ways in many different places. Is the baptism and the salvation referring back to the flood? Is it referring back to the Exodus story? Is it referring to the crossing of the Jordan? Is it referring to Levitical washings and purification?
[01:01:25] What relationship does this have to judgment? How does baptism relate to the waters from above and the waters from below? Because it's connected to both, right? When you have baptism being called back to the flood narrative, you have both. What does that mean for us? Are we looking at it mostly in covenant language? Are we looking at it mostly in purification language? Are we looking at it in mostly judgment language?
[01:01:56] When you have so many ideas wrapped up in one ritual, how do you separate out these things? And when you go into different denominations and their explanations of what baptism is and what baptism does, you will see a plethora of different things. And it's not that they're not being fair or that they're not seeing the picture. It's generally because they're looking at only one piece.
[01:02:24] They're connecting baptism to this or that. Or they may be drilling down so far into the idea of baptism that the only thing they can say about it is what the New Testament says about it. And if you do that, you're missing the first century contextual understanding of how the people were thinking of baptism in general.
[01:02:46] So you see, that's why we're doing this really deep dive into the water symbolism and the actual uses of the metaphor in Scripture and all of the narrative connections.
[01:02:57] And again, I'm not saying that they all should be packed into the idea of what's going on with baptism. We have to be very careful. That's why frame semantics will look at individual words in individual uses by individual authors to try and get at what they are saying. But that becomes really difficult when we know that the New Testament authors were pulling in all of this language. They were looking at it in thematic narrative ways. They just were.
[01:03:31] So when we reduce it down to single sound bites of doctrine, my suggestion is that we're doing a disservice here to the whole idea. We too should be looking at this in a narrative form, not just doctrine form. Now, I'm not saying that doctrine doesn't matter, but I am saying that if we reduce it down too far, we are missing the story. So let's not miss the story.
[01:04:01] All right, so if you are interested in frame semantics, you can go onto my website at genesis marks the spot.com. You can go to the resources tab, and the first link on that resources page will get you to my blog post that gives you my frame semantics study guide, and links to some of my other episodes, which will explain it a little bit more if you haven't heard those before.
[01:04:28] I really highly encourage you guys to go look at that because again, word studies are great, but they're not quite enough. We need to understand things in concept, not just definition. And if you want to see what else I'm doing with frame semantics, you can come into my Biblical Theology community On This Rock, which you can find at on-this-rock.com. You can join there, and if you're on the paid tier, you can access all of my frame semantics materials that I'm developing.
[01:05:05] And if you're listening to this anytime close to when this episode actually drops, our theme in the community for this month is Christus Victor and The Atonement Wars. We're looking at atonement theology and talking about that together. So come join the conversation. If you're listening to this later on, we've probably got a new theme. So come and join that one and join the conversation there.
[01:05:32] At any rate, I look forward to more deep dives down into water, spirit and baptism and salvation. And if you guys have any questions or any points that you want me to bring out in these episodes, please do let me know. You can contact me through my website or on Facebook or on my community platform.
[01:05:54] Before I go, I want to say a great big thank you to all of you who are my Patreon or PayPal supporters and all of you who have joined the paid tiers of my community because you guys are helping to produce content and make more of this available to more people. And I also hope that you are blessed by what I'm doing here. I truly believe that the body of Christ is something that works in history together and I am grateful for you all. But at any rate, that is it for this week. I wish you all a blessed week and we will see you later.
