It irks me a bit when people, particularly politicians or social activists, lift phrases and imagery from the Bible and exploit it for their own purposes. Winston Churchill did this quite often and this practice seems to be on the rise of late.
The temptation to fuse biblical wording with one’s own agenda is quite alluring–a person can call up the emotional associations of biblical passages and combine them with a certain political agenda (which may or may not be harmonious with the particular biblical text). Ideology with a religious-like emotional fervor is the mother-lode of politics.
At a symposium upon the “prophetic movement” and the legacy of Abraham Joshua Heschel (who briefly taught at HUC) at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York, Cornell West and Susannah Heschel, Abraham Joshua’s daughter and Dartmouth professor, integrated Barak Obama into the presentation. Here is a selection from the Wall Street Journal:
The recent evening’s discussion of Heschel’s legacy gravitated, over and over, to the subject of Barack Obama. First Ms. Heschel and Mr. West brought up the presidential candidate and then the audience did. “He’s a gift to this country,” Ms. Heschel said, to great applause. It was as if everyone in the room were intoxicated with the idea that a politician could embody the prophetic. As she explained: “Today, there is a yearning for redemption. We want to be redeemed from cynicism and corruption. We want our politicians to turn swords into plowshares.”
Professor Heschel surely knows her Tanak well enough to realize that the verse from Micah 4 that she alludes to is focused upon Yahweh and the restoration that he will bring. However, she lifts the Yahweh ordained escatological vision of peace from Micah and then fuses it with modern politics. Are modern politicians Yahweh? Most certainly not. However, she rearranged biblical imagery and urged the crowd to seek redemption and ultimate restoration and peace from presidential hopefuls.
If politicians and social activists want to use biblical imagery and phraseology (however, I would rather they not) may they spend a bit more time to properly understand and employ the texts instead of hijacking them for their own predetermined ends. Furthermore, it might be wise to avoid putting yourself or your favorite politician of the moment into the place of Yahweh. Sometimes the most politically expedient path is not the most sagacious one.
I’m mystified by this post on a couple of levels.
First, the phrase in question (which also appears in Isa 2:4 and Joel 3:10) is not a direct act of YHWH, but rather a peacemaking act of the people in response to the will of YHWH (“*THEY* will beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation will not lift up sword against nation, nor will they learn war any more”).
In other words, the usage does not cast Obama in the role of YHWH, but in the role of a faithful human leader. I can’t speak for others, but I would indeed like to have a president who responds to the will of God by making peace in the world.
Second, you say that it irks you “when people … lift phrases and imagery from the Bible and exploit it for their own purposes.” Religious leaders “exploit imagery from the Bible” every week, applying ancient texts to modern contexts. Do you object to all homiletical use of the Bible? Or only on the part of people with whom you disagree?
Realizing that it is Elohim and not Yahweh, I would still note that the question: “how long will you give wrong judgment” (Psalm 82) applies to politicians particularly. Obama does not have to be seen as infringing on the divine for anyone to hope that there might be a move away from wrong judgment. Of course we realize that this might all be window dressing, or if it was right judgment, it might go against interests of ours that we were not thinking about. But I don’t think it is usurping the place of Yahweh to have hope that we might be transformed in our own wills from a degree of the dismal to joy.
Charles, people mine scriptures all the time to infuse their own speech with something, usually authority or ornamentation to position themselves as religious (or part of a community). And sometimes people use scriptural language without even knowing where it comes from because it’s just part of English parlance. You can’t really expect people to be historico-critical exegetes before citing or alluding to a scriptural text. In fact, if you held the NT authors and the authors of the DSS to your standard (heck, even authors within the Hebrew Bible engaged in what we now call “innerbiblical exegesis”), then their exegetical skills were terrible. We’re historians; we’re supposed to be mindful of context and historical milieu. People who look to the scriptures for other reasons draw upon it as a reservoir of imagery, ideas, and turns of phrase for their own purposes, which are often to subvert or redirect the ideas from the original context. This kind of invocation says more about their purposes than it does the original text’s.
What I find most disgusting about the blurb is the blatant and naive political messianism. I like Obama. I’ll vote for him if he’s the Democratic nominee. But he’s no messiah. It’s that kind of naivete that leads people to jump on an uncritical bandwagon that has (as with Iraq) and could again lead to serious problems.
Chris, you make a valid point about the use of pronouns in this passage, however, Micah 4:4a indicates that the refashioning of implements of war flows from the fact that Yahweh has judged the peoples and set down peace. Furthermore, I agree with Alan’s comments–this language is messianic and employing it with political leaders is certainly saying something.
Bob, I believe that it is Yahweh. Micah 4:2 “Many nations will come and say, ‘Come on, let’s go up to the mountain of Yahweh to the house of the god of Jacob…” Micah 4:4 “Each person will sit under his vine and fig tree and no one will terrorize them for the mouth of Yahweh of armies has spoken.”
Alan, I think the political messianism was the underlying thing that chaffed me the most. You have a good point about phrases that enter common parlance and are thus for practical purposes disassociated with the biblical text.
I dunno — if Cyrus could be cast as a messiah (Isa 45:1), why not Obama? I think I’d rather live under Obama’s administration than Cyrus’, quite frankly.
Charles – yes I agree – in your passage it is Yahweh. In Psalm 82 it is Elohim – my ‘it’ was proleptic
Given that the Lord has judged and that we are judged in the death of Christ – and that Christ is risen having become our peace that the Lord has set down (Set down this, set down this, had we come all this way for a birth or a death), perhaps a change in recognition of this judgment and peace – rather than all those other dreadful interpretations of scripture – might bear some fruit…
I was using “messianism” in a rather generalized manner: looking to an individual to save a group from its woes. So I did not mean to imply that the OT passage(s) is “messianic” in a Christian theological sense.
Chris, I hope your comment was tongue in cheek. Yes, Cyrus was an “anointed one” so one could suggest that any secular leader, believer or otherwise, could carry the label, too, at least in theory. Here’s my basic problem: I don’t believe there is a divine anointer. Secondarily: messianic rhetoric under the umbrella of a political or national cause has never produced stellar positive results. Political messianism is a really bad idea (so is religious messianism, for that matter) and should not be encouraged. I’m not very comfortable with the cult of personality that is already surrounding Obama. Let’s not make it worse!!
Alan, it was a mistype for me to use messianic with reference to your comment. I wasn’t trying to import Christian theology onto your statement
I completely agree with on the cult of personality business–I don’t think this is good in any situation or with any individual.