I was never much of a wine drinker. That was until I met Leanne. When we started dating, whenever we went out, she would order a glass of wine; I would order a beer. That’s just how it was. But I would always try a little bit of her wine, and gradually I came to like it enough to start ordering it myself. Before that stage, though, I had a bit of a running joke: I’d take a sip, take a moment to taste it, and say, “Mmm, I’m getting a… woody… oak.” Not that I had the first clue about what to taste in wine; I just made it up.
Leanne and I were talking about it a little while ago, and she pointed out that when you start drinking wine, you just taste wine; but when you really get accustomed to it (so not me), you don’t just taste wine; you taste berries, and spices, and a hint of pepper, and, as it turns out, woody oak. All of that is there in the wine. But when you’re starting out, you have no clue what it is you’re looking for.
Last week we started looking at biblical theology—what it is, why it matters, and the beginnings of how we go about it. We said that biblical theology is the study of God’s plans and purposes as they are revealed progressively in his dealings with humanity. What we’ll be spending this evening doing is looking at some of the tools we use in biblical theology to see the overarching unity and development of the Bible story.
What I’m hoping is that this week, as we dig into some of these tools, we’ll start to notice things that we haven’t seen before—or rather, you’ll start to notice things you haven’t seen before. The goal of this talk isn’t to go digging into everything now, but to get a feel for the tools so that you can then go get your hands dirty putting them to use. That said, we will get some practice—we’ll be looking at some examples tonight, and we’ll spend the next three weeks we’ll put them to work as we spend some time doing biblical theology, looking in some depth three examples.
Progressive Revelation
One of the key features of how we’ve defined biblical theology is that it is progressive in nature—it’s looking at the unity of the Bible, but as it unfolds in history. We know more clearly what God’s plans and purposes are as the story goes on and more is revealed to us. Charles Scobie explains that: “[P]rogressive revelation recognises that God’s revelation, given to a specific people within history, was given in stages. Later revelation can add to and modify what was revealed in the earlier stages.”
Tropes and Types
With that in place, the first set of tools we’ll be looking at are tropes and types; but before we can talk about either of those things, we need to talk about what’s usually called intertextuality.
Intertextuality
Biblical theology “investigates the themes presented in Scripture and defines their interrelationships.” Since the Bible is one unified, progressively unfolding story, a central component to doing biblical theology is working out how different parts of the Bible relate to each other, and how some parts of the Bible are used in other parts.
Intertextuality, as defined by John Sailhamer, “means that [the author’s] message assumes an informed knowledge of [one or more earlier texts] on the part of his hearers.” Greg Beale explains further “that later biblical quotations of and allusions to earlier Scripture unpack the meaning of that earlier Scripture, and yet the earlier passage also sheds light on that later passage.” The biblical authors interpret previous passages in light of further revelation. This sheds light on our interpretation of the later text and the earlier text, in that the meaning of the one can’t be contrary to the meaning of the other.
We often think of this in light of the NT’s use of the OT; but this happens plenty within the OT as well. One of the implications is that when one of the biblical authors point to or make use of some earlier text, they could be using, not just that text, but a matrix of texts that are interconnected.
Now, it is worth saying that there is a risk of this becoming quite fanciful. We don’t want it to be that we found a hammer and now every passage we read now looks like a nail. So the next question we should ask, naturally, is how can we tell? How do we ensure that the connections we are spotting are actually there, and that we’re not just reading our own ideas into the text? What are some of the guardrails?
Three principles should help us here; we’ll go from the more specific to the more general. The first has to do with common language being used. Jeffery Leonard writes that “Shared language is the single most important factor in establishing a textual connection.” This doesn’t mean it needs to be the same in every detail; if there’s some parallel, it’s worth looking at—not to say that it’ll definitely be an allusion, but the fact that there are differences isn’t enough to say that it isn’t. If it’s more than one word, that makes it more likely—“Shared phrases suggest a stronger connection than do individual shared terms.” But even if it is just one or two words, what’s just as likely is when the language used is rare or distinctive. If it’s only one of a handful of times that a word or phrase is used in a particular way, it’s worth looking at. That’s the first principle: shared language.
The second, going more general, has to do with common themes or sources. Does the earlier passage being alluded to fit the theme of the later one? We’re not asking if they’re talking about exactly the same situation—we need to take into account progressive revelation. But, given where they are, does the earlier text being used make sense in and of the later author’s argument? Related to this, we could ask about the later author’s use of sources: “how often does the alluding author … cite the earlier Old Testament reference, or how often does he refer to the same Old Testament context elsewhere?”
Thirdly, going more general still: a cumulative case may be made for the allusions we are proposing for a given text. Even just from the principles we’ve just considered it will be clear that some allusions are clearer than others. But the clearer ones can make the more doubtful ones stronger. Greg Beale makes this point in his biblical theology of the temple:
[A] typical strategy of argumentation … [is] to adduce several lines of evidence in favour of a particular interpretation. Some of these lines will be stronger than others, but when all of the relevant material is viewed as a whole, the less convincing material should become more significant than when seen by itself. Therefore, it will sometimes be true that some of the arguments in favour of an interpretation will not stand on their own but are intended to take on more persuasive power when viewed in light of the other angles of reasoning. And, even when this may not be the case, the design is that the overall weight of the cumulative arguments points to the plausibility or probability of the main idea being contended for.
Nearly everyone who talks about intertextuality emphasises that it’s more of an art than a science. It’s the kind of thing that you get better at just by doing it loads, and checking your work with others—in other words, this is something we should do in community.
Tropes
Intertextuality, as we’ve been seeing, refers to the literary relationship between texts. With that in place, the next thing we’ll be looking at are what we’ll call tropes, which is a particular expression of intertextuality. Robert Alter writes: “A coherent reading of any artwork, whatever the medium, requires some detailed awareness of the grid of conventions upon which, and against which, the individual work operates.” In other words, you need some idea of what the creator (author, painter, composer, whatever) is taking for granted in order to understand what he or she has created. Robert Alter calls these “type-scenes”; The Bible Project guys call these “design patterns.” We’re going to call them “tropes.”
To illustrate, Robert Alter tells us to imagine a film critic way in the future analysing the only twelve Hollywood westerns that survived. As she watches, what she notices is that, in eleven of them, “the sheriff-hero has the same anomalous neurological trait of hyperreflexivity—no matter what the situation in which his adversaries confront him, he is always able to pull his gun out of his holster and fire before they, with their weapons poised, can pull the trigger.” We know what’s going on in westerns because we’re familiar enough with the conventions. As Alter puts it: “For us, the recurrence of the hyperreflexive sheriff is not an enigma to be explained but, on the contrary, a necessary condition for telling a western story in the film medium as it should be told.” When in the twelfth film the sheriff has something wrong with his right arm and instead uses a rifle swung over his shoulder, familiarity with the convention will tell us that it isn’t something completely different going on, but a variation, perhaps to draw our attention to some or other detail.
Tropes are those conventions or patterns that serve as a backdrop to the biblical story, setting up expectations, or making connections for the reader. It’s the way in which the story is told, which helps us to understand what’s going on, or notice certain details, in light of previous iterations of the same story.
Robert Alter points to a few: “the annunciation … of the birth of the hero to his barren mother; the encounter with the future betrothed at the well; the epiphany in the field; the initiatory trial;” and so on. All these stories in each of these categories tend to follow similar shapes.
Let’s look at an example. Abram and Sarai have been promised a child—well, strictly speaking, Abram has been promised a child. But it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen, so Sarai takes matters into her own hands. We read their exchange in Genesis 16:
1 Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar. 2 And Sarai said to Abram, “Behold now, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Go in to my servant; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.” And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. 3 So, after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abram her husband as a wife. 4 And he went in to Hagar, and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress. 5 And Sarai said to Abram, “May the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my servant to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the Lord judge between you and me!” 6 But Abram said to Sarai, “Behold, your servant is in your power; do to her as you please.” Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she fled from her (Gen. 16:1–6).
On a first reading, it’s a story of Abram and his wife making alternative arrangements to see that God’s promise to them gets fulfilled. But when we look more carefully at the details, what we see is a replaying of the Fall narrative from Genesis 3.
Sarai said to Abram (v. 2)—much like “the woman said to the serpent…” (v. 2). “Abram listened to the voice of Sarai” (v. 2)—much like God observed in Genesis 3: “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife” (v. 17). Sarai “took Hagar … and gave [to] her husband” (v. 3)—much like the woman “took of [the] fruit and ate, and she also gave … to her husband” (v. 6). After that there’s some blame-shifting that goes on, which I don’t think is too far off from the blame-shifting that ensues between Adam and Eve in the Garden.
Now, on one level this is just part of our exegesis. Allusions don’t necessarily mean we’re talking about biblical theology. But the overarching unity that tropes imply points us in the direction of how the Bible story is progressively unfolding—in other words, it points us in the direction of biblical theology. Robert Alter explains: “The type-scene [or trope, as we’re calling it] is not merely a way of formally recognising a particular kind of narrative moment; it is also a means of attaching that moment to a larger pattern of historical and theological meaning.” It shows us that this story, while different in the details, forms part of a bigger picture.
It’s worth saying at this point, though, that while we can make these distinct categories, it’s never as neat as that when we’re actually working to interpret Scripture; we’ll constantly be going back and forth between exegesis, biblical theology, and systematic theology. Don Carson explains: “Biblical theology tends to seek out the rationality and communicative genius of each literary genre; systematic theology tends to integrate the diverse rationalities in its pursuit of a large-scale, worldview-forming synthesis. In this sense, systematic theology tends to be a culminating discipline; biblical theology, though it is a worthy end in itself, tends to be a bridge discipline.”
Types
Types are those people, events, and institutions which reach their fulfilment in their antitype by way of analogical correspondence, and eschatological escalation. Let’s break that down.
In talking about types we’re using the language of fulfilment. This is because types are, by nature, prophetic. They are predictive in nature (although in a much richer way than we tend to understand prediction—we’ll say more on this shortly), and, as such, they are inherently forward-pointing, anticipating in some way their antitype—which is simply the fullest realisation of that type—that which, in God’s providence, it was pointing to all along. As such, the antitype fulfils what the type stands for.
So, types are those people, events, and institutions which reach their fulfilment in their antitype by way of analogical correspondence. Types, in some ways, are like analogies. We use analogies all the time—explaining something less familiar by means of something more familiar. This doesn’t mean every detail will correspond—in fact, part of the point of an analogy may be to highlight both similarities and differences.
Take Paul’s example in Romans 5 of Adam and Christ: Paul says in v. 14 that Adam is a type of the one to come (namely Jesus), and then goes on to draw a parallel between them:
15 if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. 16 And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. 17 For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ (Rom. 5:15–17).
Clearly Paul is not trying to show how Adam and Christ correspond in every way. Rather, the point is to show the contrast: whereas Adam brought death, Christ brought life; Adam brought condemnation, Christ brought justification. But their relation to the rest of humanity is the same: they’re both representatives, and the fate of all who identify with them is bound up in the actions of those two representatives. How Adam is to those who identify with him, so Christ is to all who identify with him. There’s a one-to-one correspondence—in a word, an analogy.
Some scholars have stopped there, or thereabout, understanding typology just as a form of analogy. Certainly, typology is not less than analogy; but it’s also not merely analogy—to stop there is to stop short. Typology is not just characterised by analogy, but also escalation—which brings us to the last part of our definition.
Types are those people, events, and institutions which reach their fulfilment in their antitype by way of analogical correspondence, and eschatological escalation. The fulfilment of the type far surpasses the type itself. But it’s not just that it’s a bigger, better version of the same thing; what characterises typology is that the fulfilment of the type is eschatological in nature. “Eschatology” is a fancy-pants Bible-nerd way of talking about the age to come. In saying that types are eschatological, then, what we’re saying is that they reach their fulfilment in that coming age. Goppelt argues that a “type is not essentially a miniature version of the antitype, but is a prefiguration in a different stage of redemptive history that indicates the outline or essential features … of the future reality.”
Types are those people, events, and institutions which reach their fulfilment in their antitype by way of analogical correspondence, and eschatological escalation.
The next question, then, is how does this work itself out? We’ve said that types are, by nature, prophetic. We’ll talk more about the nature of prophecy in a little while, but it’s worth saying here that prophetic doesn’t have to mean verbal. Greg Beale explains: “[T]he concept of prophetic fulfilment must not be limited to fulfilment of direct verbal prophecies in the Old Testament but broadened to include also an indication of the ‘redemptive-historical relationship of the new, climactic revelation of God in Christ to the preparatory, incomplete revelation to and through Israel.’” It’s primarily in this non-verbal sense that we talk about typology. He explains elsewhere that for the types found in the OT, “Christ … is the final, climactic expression of all God ideally intended through these things in the Old Testament.”
We’ve kinda seen an example already—how Adam is a type of Christ—but let’s look at another one: Noah and the flood.
We pick up in Genesis 6:
11 Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. 12 And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. 13 And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth. 14 Make yourself an ark … [and some details about what it should be like]. 17 For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven. Everything that is on the earth shall die (vv. 11–17).
And that’s the way it goes: Noah builds the ark, they get on—eight of them in total—and when the flood comes, they’re saved. They’re preserved as a remnant through the floodwaters which brought death (Gen. 7:21–23).
This is picked up by the apostle Peter; we read in 1 Peter 3:
18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, 19 in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, 20 because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. 21 Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 22 who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him (vv. 18–22).
Now, we’re not going to go down all the crazy rabbit trails this passage presents us with. What concerns us right now is how Peter uses the flood narrative in making his point.
The flood meant death—death for those who were disobedient to God in the days of Noah (1 Pet. 3:20). Noah and his family, however, were carried safely through in the ark. Baptism corresponds to this—the Greek here is ἀντίτυπον, from which we get the word antitype, if you’re interested. It corresponds to the flood in that, just as the flood was death brought by God against those who were evil, so an eschatological—that is final, cosmic—judgment is coming. But those who pass through with Christ will be saved, like Noah was with his family in the ark, because in the resurrection, Christ conquered death (v. 21).
So how does this correspond to baptism? Well, baptism is a physical sign of a spiritual reality. In Romans 6 Paul talks about baptism as being buried with Jesus in his death (v. 4), and goes on to say that “if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (v. 5). So what Peter is not saying is that baptism is what saves—but it is symbolic of what does, namely, identification with Christ in his death and resurrection. Thomas Schreiner writes: “Just as Noah was delivered through the stormy waters of the flood, believers have been saved through the stormy waters of baptism by virtue of Christ’s triumph over death.”
Promise/Prophecy and Fulfilment
Let’s talk now about the thing we put to one side earlier: promise or prophecy and fulfilment. While there are differences between promise and prophecy, what we’re focusing on here is what they have in common: fulfilment.
Now, this can take place on a number of levels. Sometimes it’s quite straightforward. Abraham was promised a son, and against all odds, has a son—Isaac. God told Abraham his descendants would receive the land of Canaan, and a few centuries later, his descendents receive the land of Canaan. Micah prophesied that the messiah would be born in Bethlehem, and when Jesus, the messiah, was born, he was born in Bethlehem.
Yet, as Sidney Greidanus explains, “Even fulfilled promises can still point forward toward the future. The Old Testament acquaints us with the concept of multiple fulfilments or progressive fulfilment, that is, the initial fulfilment may hold the promise of further fulfilment.” The promises made to Abraham were fulfilled in a much bigger way through Christ. This should make us think again about typology. The further fulfilment that Christ brings about is eschatological fulfilment: fulfilment not for the present age, but the age to come—“eschatology is in fact a key dimension of every biblical theme.”
This brings us to another way in which we can talk about promise and fulfilment. We need to recognise that, while in some cases it is, the fulfilment of prophecy is not quite as straightforward as, say, Abraham being promised a son, or Micah prophesying the birthplace of the messiah. Charles Scobie puts it well: “Prophecy is to be distinguished from prediction. The OT prophets do not necessarily gaze into a crystal ball and produce an exact blueprint or scenario for the new age. Through them God promises to act for the salvation of Israel and of humankind, but often the fulfilment far exceeds the expectation.”
One key feature of biblical theology is that it “attempts to embrace the whole message of the Bible and to arrive at an intelligible coherence of the whole despite the great diversity of the parts.” But too often, in Scobie’s view, scholars’ attempts at biblical theologies “have been in fact either OT or NT theologies,” and, as such, “do not offer much help in constructing a structure appropriate to a true biblical theology.” The way this usually shows itself is over-emphasis on the NT at the expense of the OT, “portraying [the OT] as merely a quarry of messianic proof texts, or characterised by ‘law’ in contrast to the New Testament, which is ‘gospel.’”
Scobie’s point is that we shouldn’t do this, and I hope I don’t need to convince you of that. By rushing too quickly to how the prophecy is fulfilled, we won’t do justice to the text in which we find the prophecy, which has the knock-on effect that we won’t fully understand its fulfilment. Quite often, though a single verse is quoted, it’s the whole section that is in view, so to understand the way it’s being used, we must understand the quoted passage on its own terms, in its own context.
Once we understand the text on its own terms we can understand how it’s being used by the author alluding to it. It’s then that we ask how it’s relevant to the later author’s purpose, and how what the author said is being further applied in light of further revelation. We can’t deny that there will be difficult passages, but the general assumption I take is that, while reappropriating what the earlier authors were saying in light of later revelation (again, think progressive revelation), they are not doing violence to the intended meaning of the earlier author, whether or not the earlier author was aware of how, or to what extent, what they said would be fulfilled. As Beale has put it: “Typological interpretation involves an extended reference to the original meaning of an Old Testament text which develops it but does not contradict it. Put another way, it does not read into the text a different or higher sense, but draws out from it a different or higher application of the same sense.”
Let’s look at an example. In Matthew 2 we read:
12 Being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way. 13 Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” 14 And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt 15 and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, “Out of Egypt I called my son” (vv. 12–15).
Now that all seems fine, until you go and read the prophet Matthew was quoting: Hosea.
1 When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. 2 The more they were called, the more they went away; they kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning offerings to idols (Hos. 11:1–2).
God is not talking about some future son that he will call out of Egypt; he’s talking about the nation of Israel. More than that, he’s not talking about some future coming out of Egypt, but the exodus event that happened in the past, way back in Moses’ day. And if that all wasn’t enough, in Matthew 2 Jesus and his family aren’t coming out of Egypt, they’re going in. So Matthew’s just ripping verses out of context to suit his own purposes.
Or maybe he does know what he’s doing. But to see that, we first need to understand what’s going on in Hosea.
1 When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. 2 The more they were called, the more they went away; they kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning offerings to idols. 3 Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk; I took them up by their arms, but they did not know that I healed them. 4 I led them with cords of kindness, with the bands of love, and I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws, and I bent down to them and fed them. 5 They [will surely] return to the land of Egypt, [and] Assyria shall be their king, because they have refused to return to me. 6 The sword shall rage against their cities, consume the bars of their gates, and devour them because of their own counsels. 7 My people are bent on turning away from me, and though they call out to the Most High, he shall not raise them up at all. 8 How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. 9 I will not execute my burning anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath. 10 They shall go after the Lord; he will roar like a lion; when he roars, his children shall come trembling from the west; 11 they shall come trembling like birds from Egypt, and like doves from the land of Assyria, and I will return them to their homes, declares the Lord (Hos. 11:1–11).
Hosea begins with the exodus event: God brought the Israelites up out of Egypt. Yet they didn’t remain faithful to him. Though he “taught Ephraim to walk” and “took them up by the arms,” they turned to other gods, and refused to return to God. So God will hand his people over to judgment: “They [will surely] return to the land of Egypt, [and] Assyria will be their king, because they have refused to turn to me” (v. 5). Reference to Egypt here probably has a double meaning; on the one hand, it’s probably true that some Israelites fled to Egypt in this time. But more significantly, with the exodus story clearly in view, Egypt was being called to mind as a symbol of bondage.
But from this second bondage there would be another exodus—“They shall go after the Lord; he will roar like a lion; when he roars, his children shall come trembling from the west; they shall come trembling like birds from Egypt, and like doves from the land of Assyria, and I will return them to their homes, declares the Lord” (vv. 10–11).
The Lord will “roar like a lion”—this takes us back to the book of Numbers. In Numbers 22 one of the kings of the surrounding nations, Balak, was starting to get nervous about the Israelites after seeing what they did to the Amorites, so he called for Balaam to come and lay curses on them (Num. 22:1–6). So Balaam comes, and in chs. 23–24 we read the oracles that Balaam spoke over Israel. Every time he tried to curse the Israelites he could only bless them, and, as you can imagine, this was quite infuriating for Balak. There were four oracles; we’re only interested in the middle two for now.
In the third oracle we read:
22 God brings them out of Egypt and is for them like the horns of the wild ox. 23 For there is no enchantment against Jacob, no divination against Israel; now it shall be said of Jacob and Israel, “What has God wrought!”24 Behold, a people! As a lioness it rises up and as a lion it lifts itself; it does not lie down until it has devoured the prey and drunk the blood of the slain (Num. 23:22–24).
Again, what’s in view is the exodus event, God bringing his people up out of Egypt, and is compared with a lion. Similarly in the third oracle in ch. 24:
8 God brings him out of Egypt and is for him like the horns of the wild ox; he shall eat up the nations, his adversaries, and shall break their bones in pieces and pierce them through with his arrows. 9 He crouched, he lay down like a lion and like a lioness; who will rouse him up? Blessed are those who bless you, and cursed are those who curse you (vv. 8–9).
Same idea again, but notice the difference: In 23:22, “God brings them out of Egypt,” whereas in 24:8 “God brings him out of Egypt.” It’s not the people of Israel in view here in v. 8, it’s someone—a king: “Water shall flow from his buckets, and [the Lord’s] seed shall be in many waters; his king shall be higher than Agag, and his kingdom shall be exalted” (24:7).
John Sailhamer takes a step further and links the lion language back to Genesis 49:9 where Judah is described as such, so it’s not just any kind that God is bringing out of Egypt: it’s the lion of the tribe of Judah.
Let’s come back to Hosea: “They shall go after the Lord; he will roar like a lion; when he roars, his children shall come trembling from the west; they shall come trembling like birds from Egypt, and like doves from the land of Assyria, and I will return them to their homes, declares the Lord” (Hos. 11:10–11). The lion here seems to be God, but from elsewhere in Hosea this future exodus would be led by a messiah: “And the Judeans and the Israelites will be gathered together. They will appoint for themselves a single ruler and go up from the land” (Hos. 1:11)—and not just any messiah, but a Davidic messiah, under whom all of Israel would one day be reunited: “the children of Israel shall dwell many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without ephod or household gods. Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God, and David their king, and they shall come in fear to the Lord and to his goodness in the latter days” (Hos. 3:4–5).
When we come back to Matthew 2, Jesus is going into Egypt—like Israel went into “Egypt” (Assyria)—as the precursor to the ultimate, eschatological exodus that he’s going to bring about. He is the Davidic messiah, the Lion of Judah, under whom Israel would be reunited—and not just Israel, but all the nations—“Having gone, make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19, my translation).
So as it turns out, Matthew wasn’t just making things up—he was interpreting Hosea’s prophecy typologically in light of Christ. Beale explains: “Matthew portrays Jesus to be recapitulating the history of Israel because he sums up Israel in himself. Since Israel disobeyed, Jesus has come to do what they should have, so he must retrace Israel’s steps up to the point they failed, and then continue to obey and succeed in the mission Israel should have carried out.”
Fulfilment in Christ
We have one more thing to talk about: how we fit into all of this. I remember a few years ago being in a workshop where we were talking about the book of Haggai, in particular the command to rebuild the temple, and, through the lense of biblical theology, how it applies to us. There were four options given to choose from, and the idea of the exercise was to choose one and motivate for it. I don’t remember all of them, but one was from John 2 where Jesus says, “Destroy this temple and I’ll raise it up in three days” (but what they didn’t realise at the time was that he was talking about his body). Another was from Paul; I don’t remember where exactly, but it would have been somewhere like 1 Corinthians 6 where he says that our bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit, therefore flee sexual immorality. Both of these seemed legit, and my group was torn over which of these two we should go for.
Fulfilment, we have said, culminates in the person and work of Christ. In Christ God is doing what he’s always been doing, in a much fuller way. Much of what we’ll talk about in biblical theology, first and foremost, finds its end not in us, but in Christ. But it’s also true that we participate in that. But I think the reason why also answers the question about which of those two temple applications are more appropriate as a first choice.
Christ is the fulfilment of the temple. So are we, but only insofar as we participate in Christ. He is the ultimate expression of it. But he invites us in to be a part of the new order that he’s inaugurated.