I just saw an image of a rainbow on the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary Facebook page–along with a thank you to Master of Divinity student Caryn Doege for “sharing this beautiful photo and reminder of God’s love.” The seminary paired this image with a familiar passage from Genesis:

“I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth” (Genesis 9:13, NRSV).

We need to think about what is happening in this verse. Just what is it that God has placed in the clouds? We may respond, immediately, “A rainbow, of course!” But what is a rainbow? Our thoughts may go to sentimental whimsy

or to the science of optics

or, perhaps to the politics of inclusion (the PTS student organization supporting LGBTQ+ persons is appropriately called “The Rainbow Covenant”).

The Hebrew word used in Genesis 9:13-16 is qeshet, which does mean “rainbow” in Ezekiel 1:28. However, Ezekiel’s vision pretty explicitly alludes back to the Genesis flood story:

Just as a rainbow lights up a cloud on a rainy day, so its brightness shone all around. This was how the form of the Lord’s glory appeared.

Otherwise, we have to go to late Hebrew (Sirach 43:11; 50:7) to find qeshet meaning “rainbow.”

Everywhere else in the Hebrew Bible, qeshet refers to the bow as a weapon, whether in the hands of a hunter (for example, Genesis 27:3) or a warrior (for example, Zechariah 9:10). So here, the rainbow is the LORD’s war bow (Habakkuk 3:9; Psalm 18:14), which God sets aside, placing it in the clouds.

Remember, God had just finished destroying the world with a flood, returning the cosmos to pre-creation chaos. It was an action taken in sorrow and regret, to put an end to the violence and corruption that threatened God’s ordered world–but nonetheless, it had been done. Now, as life begins again on the renewed earth, the unavoidable question for the reader has got to be, what if this happens again?

God promises that it will never happen again: “I will set up my covenant with you so that never again will all life be cut off by floodwaters. There will never again be a flood to destroy the earth” (Gen 9:11). Then, to underscore and seal that promise, God disarms Godself:

I have placed my bow in the clouds; it will be the symbol of the covenant between me and the earth.  When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow appears in the clouds,  I will remember the covenant between me and you and every living being among all the creatures. Floodwaters will never again destroy all creatures.  The bow will be in the clouds, and upon seeing it I will remember the enduring covenant between God and every living being of all the earth’s creatures.” God said to Noah, “This is the symbol of the covenant that I have set up between me and all creatures on earth” (Genesis 9:13-17).

“Covenant” is not an everyday word–mostly, we encounter it in the sanctified vocabulary of the Bible or the church. When you see this word, think “treaty,” or “binding contract.” In the final form of the Torah, the priestly editors have tied the text together with a chain of these contracts, binding and committing God to the world, and the world to God.

This is the first covenant in that chain: one made, not merely with Noah, or his kin, or even with the entire human family, but rather with “with every living being with you—with the birds, with the large animals, and with all the animals of the earth, leaving the ark with you” (Gen 9:10). The others are the covenant with Abraham, promising him land and descendants (Gen 17:1-8); and the covenant with all Israel established through Moses on Sinai (Exod 31:16-18). Each of the three is called a berit ‘olam: an enduring, everlasting, or eternal covenant. Each is sealed and memorialized by a sign: sabbath for the Sinai covenant, circumcision for the covenant with Abraham, and for this first covenant in the chain, the LORD’s bow in the cloud. By setting God’s bow aside, God declares that, henceforth, God will not come against the earth and its people as an enemy, armed for battle.

Of course, other texts in Scripture view matters differently. The prophets sometimes describe the LORD’s judgment on Israel in such stark terms that God appears as the enemy of God’s own people (for example, Ezekiel 6:1-14). Apocalyptic texts famously speak of another, final end of the world, despite the promise in Genesis 9. The African American spiritual “O Mary Don’t You Weep” (here, by Mississippi John Hurt; first recorded by the Fisk Jubilee Singers) cleverly gets around this conflict: “God gave Noah the rainbow sign, no more water but the fire next time”!

But the fact that other texts follow a different path should not draw our attention from what is happening here. Indeed, God laying aside God’s bow, and rejecting the role of warrior, marks the beginning of a pronounced trajectory through Scripture, leading from Genesis through Hosea 11:8-9

How can I give you up, Ephraim?
        How can I hand you over, Israel?
    How can I make you like Admah?
        How can I treat you like Zeboiim? [towns destroyed along with Sodom and Gomorrah]
    My heart winces within me;
        my compassion grows warm and tender.

I won’t act on the heat of my anger;
        I won’t return to destroy Ephraim;
    for I am God and not a human being,
        the holy one in your midst;
    I won’t come in harsh judgment.

through, as we have seen before, Zechariah 9:9-10:

Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion.
        Sing aloud, Daughter Jerusalem.
Look, your king will come to you.
        He is righteous and victorious.
        He is humble and riding on an ass,
            on a colt, the offspring of a donkey.
 He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
        and the warhorse from Jerusalem.
The bow used in battle will be cut off;
        he will speak peace to the nations.
His rule will stretch from sea to sea,
        and from the river to the ends of the earth.

and leading, by Jesus’ humble road, from Bethlehem to Calvary to the empty tomb and beyond; to, finally, the Elder’s profound statement of who and what God is:

Dear friends, let’s love each other, because love is from God, and everyone who loves is born from God and knows God.  The person who doesn’t love does not know God, because God is love (1 John 4:7-8).

There are of course other trajectories through Scripture, friends. But particularly in these conflict-ridden days, we should not ignore this one, which begins and ends with God coming in peace.

I am a long-time fan of the television quiz show “Jeopardy.” Many categories throw me completely (pop culture, sports, and geography in particular), but usually I can hold my own. I particularly enjoy Bible questions, which often completely throw the on-screen contestants. Last week, I was tickled when the Final Jeopardy question was in the category “Old Testament Books.” So, after the commercial break, I was a bit thrown when the clue was, “By Hebrew word count, the longest book bears this name that led to a word for a long complaint or rant.” The reference to “jeremiad” made the answer they were looking for clear, but I thought (and said out loud to the television screen) “Jeremiah isn’t the longest book!”

Jeopardy has gotten it wrong before. Usually, they get it right in the end–often, before the final credits roll. But this past year, one question with a wrong answer was not corrected. The clue, under the category “Where’s that Church?”, was, “Built in the 300s A.D., the Church of the Nativity.” 

[Katie] Needle, a retail supervisor from Brooklyn, responded it was in Palestine but was told her answer was wrong. One of the other two contestants, Jack McGuire, then buzzed in with the reply “Israel”, which host Alex Trebek accepted as correct.

As it happens, I have been to the Church of the Nativity, in Bethlehem in the West Bank. I know people who live and work in Bethlehem. Bethlehem is not in the state of Israel: you must pass through a security checkpoint at the border between Israel and the West Bank to get there.

As the Arab news agency Al-Jazeera accurately reported,

The Church of Nativity, declared a world heritage site, is located in Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, which is internationally-recognised as part of Palestine.

Particularly as Israel continues to annex Palestinian land, displacing families, many of them Christian, who have lived in the land for generations, it is tragic that this error has still not, to my knowledge, been corrected.

At any rate–knowing, as I did, that the longest book in the Bible is the book of Psalms, I was confident that Jeopardy had erred again. But my old friend from graduate school, fellow United Methodist minister Frank Norris, set me straight. He posted on Facebook a link to an article by Justin Taylor in “The Gospel Coalition” titled “What Is the Longest Book in the Bible? (Hint: It’s Not the Psalms).”

The article cited the work of David J. Reimer, a fellow Ezekiel scholar. The book of Psalms is certainly the longest by chapter divisions (there are 150 Psalms, after all; no other biblical book gets out of double digits!), or by verse count (2,527 in the Psalms). But Dr. Reimer recognized that verse or chapter count wasn’t the best approach, as these divisions are mostly late, and not generally included in the biblical texts until the Middle Ages. He proposed three other criteria for length:

• “Graphic units” counts the number of Hebrew words in a particular book using BibleWorks (e.g., there are seven “graphic units” in Genesis 1:1).
• “Morphological units” was found according to the Groves-Wheeler Westminster Morphological database (which separates prefixed elements, but not pronominal suffixes; e.g., there are eleven “morphological units” in Genesis 1:1).
• The “Bytes” figure calculates the length of the Hebrew book in ASCII format (i.e., so there is no interference from extraneous word-processor code).

Placing the top ten in a chart:

Order	Book	# Verses in Book	Graph-unit Hits	Morph-unit Hits	Bytes
1.	Jeremiah	1,364	22,285	30,203	241,209
2.	Genesis	1,533	20,722	28,848	226,894
3.	Psalms	2,527	19,662	25,465	238,562
4.	Ezekiel	1,273	19,053	26,572	214,416
5.	Isaiah	1,291	17,197	23,204	191,777
6.	Exodus	1,213	16,890	23,934	184,372
7.	Numbers	1,289	16,583	23,363	182,945
8.	Deuteronomy	959	14,488	20,329	159,872
9.	2 Chronicles	822	13,520	20,000	154,125
10.	1 Samuel	811	13,506	19,211	147,392

So–Jeopardy DID get it right: by Hebrew word count, Jeremiah is the longest book. Psalms is not even the second-longest book–by Hebrew word count, that would be Genesis. I was wrong–and happy to learn something new! The Bible does this to me all the time, I find.

The trivial question of the relative length of biblical books opens onto other, more interesting questions–specifically with regard to Psalms and Jeremiah. The Greek text of the Psalms differs in many ways from the Hebrew Masoretic text (MT) from which our Old Testament is translated. More of the Psalms are given titles in the Greek text, and more of those titles ascribe the poems they introduce to David. Most notably, however, the Greek text contains an additional, 151st Psalm.

I was small among my brothers,
    and the youngest in my father’s house;
I tended my father’s sheep.

My hands made a harp;
    my fingers fashioned a lyre.

And who will tell my Lord?
    The Lord himself; it is he who hears.

 It was he who sent his messenger
    and took me from my father’s sheep,
    and anointed me with his anointing oil.

My brothers were handsome and tall,
    but the Lord was not pleased with them.

I went out to meet the Philistine,
    and he cursed me by his idols.

But I drew his own sword;
    I beheaded him, and took away disgrace from the people of Israel.

This psalm is found in Hebrew in 11QPs^a (the Great Psalms Scroll, one of the so-called “Dead Sea Scrolls”), a manuscript of the Psalter from Qumran dating to around the time of Jesus. Although not used in Western churches, Psalm 151 is included in the Bibles of many Eastern Orthodox communities, including Greek and Slavonic Orthodox Churches. So the length of the book of Psalms may well depend on where you worship.

Similarly, the text of Jeremiah in the Greek Septuagint (LXX) differs significantly from the Hebrew MT–but this time, the Greek text is shorter (by about an eighth), and its chapters are differently arranged: chapters 46–51 (the prophet’s oracles against foreign nations) in our Old Testament appears instead following Jer 25:13a: “I will unleash upon that land everything I decreed, all that is written in this scroll.” Then, in the LXX, the material in our Jer 25:13b–46:5 resumes, followed by our Jer 52. In this case, the finds from Qumran are particularly intriguing.

4QJer^a from before 200 BCE, and 2QJer, which on the basis of paleography (that is, the form of ancient writing used) dates roughly to the first century CE, place the oracles against the nations at the end of the book, and otherwise generally preserve the textual tradition of the MT.  However, portions of Jer 9:21–10:21, written in Hebrew, were found in a fragment, 4QJer^b, that looks more like the LXX. The fact that old Hebrew texts relating to both the LXX and the MT of Jeremiah were found at Qumran shows that ancient communities of faith treasured and studied both versions of Jeremiah. So it makes little sense in this case to ask whether the “real”–the best, most ancient, or original–book of Jeremiah is the shorter or the longer version!

We need to know that there is not just one, pristine original Hebrew version of Psalms, or Jeremiah, or indeed of ANY biblical book. Therefore Bible translators do not begin with how best and most faithfully to render the biblical languages into clear and understandable English. The prior question is which ancient version of a text to translate. Addressing text critical questions requires expert knowledge–and even experts may disagree as to their resolution. However, every reader of Scripture needs to be aware that these questions exist. Otherwise, we are vulnerable to misunderstanding and misinterpretation–and even to deliberate attempts to deceive.

For example: just this morning, a friend shared this meme, and asked me if there was anything to it (spoiler alert: there is NOT–and I have not included the poster or the address so as not to give them another platform to spread this deception).

VERY CRITICAL ALERT!!!
NIV was published by Zondervan but is now OWNED by Harper Collins, who also publishes the Satanic Bible and The Joy of Gay Sex.
•The NIV and ESV has now removed 64,575 words from the Bible
including Jehovah, Calvary, Holy Ghost and omnipotent to name but a few…
•The NIV and ESV has also now removed 45 complete verses. Most of us have the Bible on our devices and phones especially “OLIVE TREE BIBLE STUDY APP.”
•Try and find these scriptures in NIV and ESV on your computer, phone or device right now if you are in doubt:
Matthew 17:21, 18:11, 23:14;
Mark 7:16, 9:44, 9:46;
Luke 17:36, 23:17;
John 5:4; Acts 8:37.
…you will not believe your eyes.
•Refuse to be blinded by Satan, and do not act like you just don’t care. Let’s not forget what the Lord Jesus said in John 10:10 (King James Version).
There is a crusade geared towards altering the Bible as we know it; NIV, ESV and many more versions are affected.
•THE SOLUTION:
If you must use the NIV and ESV, BUY and KEEP AN EARLIER VERSION OF the BIBLE. A Hard Copy cannot be updated. All these changes occur when they ask you to update the app. On your phone or laptop etc. Please spread the word…

To address the first claim made above: it is true that Zondervan is owned by HarperCollins. But they purchased Zondervan over thirty years ago, in 1988. You can, if you wish, still access the NIV from 1984 online and compare it with later editions, made after 1988. When you do so, you will discover that the two passages cited in this meme read no differently in the 1984 NIV than in its post-1988 revisions.

So, first of all, the fundamental claim in this meme, that the NIV has been corrupted by “godless” editors from HarperCollins, is simply false. Refusing to update the NIV on your phone or computer, as this post recommends, makes no sense–again, the differences with the KJV that this post decries were already there over thirty years ago. Also, for the record, I highly recommend the HarperCollins Study Bible, which I have used in my Bible classes for years, as well as the HarperCollins Bible Dictionary and Bible Commentary. All three were prepared under the auspices of the Society of Biblical Literature, and should be on every pastor’s bookshelf.

However, the meme is certainly correct that the words cited here from the KJV do not appear in the NIV of those same passages, either before or after 1988. Not only the NIV, but the NRSV, the CEB, the ESV, and most other modern translations skip these sentences–although they are sometimes given in footnotes. That is because these words are not found in the oldest and best Greek texts of the Gospels.

The KJV translators in 1611 did not have access to as many texts as we do, and often included in their version very late additions and expansions to the biblical texts they were translating. Luke 9:56 and Matthew 8:11 are but two examples. Others include the Lord’s Prayer doxology in Matthew 6:13; the Trinitarian formula in 1 John 5:7-8, which is not found in any Greek text of 1 John from before the 16th century, and the inclusion of Erasmus’ explanatory expansion, “of them which are saved,” in Revelation 21:24.

These translators are not part of some imaginary “crusade geared towards altering the Bible as we know it.” To the contrary: they have decided to use the oldest and best texts available to yield the best translation of the Bible, rather than simply aping traditional language. We do not need to know the biblical languages or the ins and outs of text criticism to be faithful readers of Scripture, friends. However, we do need to be aware of these issues if we are to avoid senseless controversies (1 Timothy 6:20), and to read the Bible responsibly, comparing and selecting among translations, “rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15, KJV).

Merriam-Webster has decided that “irregardless” will be included in the next edition of their dictionary. A number of old and dear friends have greeted this news with alarm and dismay. In response to the brouhaha prompted by their decision, the dictionary’s staff wrote in their “Words of the Week” roundup:

Irregardless is included in our dictionary because it has been in widespread and near-constant use since 1795. We do not make the English language, we merely record it.

Please don’t misunderstand me: “irregardless” is an ugly and unnecessary word, birthed from a misunderstanding of what “regardless” means (much as the execrable “flammable” came about through a misunderstanding of “inflammable”). I will not use it, and will also encourage my students not to do so. Still, the people at Merriam-Webster are right about how language works. Language is a living thing. Old words pass out of use and new ones emerge continually. Likewise, the meanings of words are not carved in stone, but depend upon how they are used.

Sometimes, our language debates are a source of pain and controversy far beyond the “irregardless” fracas. The word “they,” our English third person plural pronoun, has for some time been emerging as the gender-neutral singular pronoun our language lacks. Many transgender and gender-fluid folk prefer “they” to the rigidly binary “he/she.” This use of the pronoun irritates and angers some, and even prompts hostility and ridicule. But we cannot pretend that English grammar is so rigid as to disallow this use. Much like the despised “irregardless,” the singular use of “they” has deep roots in the English language, going back to 1300, and including such notaries as Emily Dickinson, who wrote in an 1881 letter, “Almost anyone under the circumstances would have doubted if [the letter] were theirs, or indeed if they were themself.”

The flexibilities and peculiarities of language become heightened when one language is translated into another–particularly, when the translated text carries the cultural and religious weight that the Bible does. Consider the translation of 2 Timothy 3:16-17.  In the CEB, this passage reads:

Every scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for showing mistakes, for correcting, and for training character, so that the person who belongs to God can be equipped to do everything that is good (compare KJV and NRSV of these verses).

The phrase in bold print is a single word in Greek: theopneustos. Here the CEB follows other English translations, including the NRSV and the venerable KJV, in rendering theopneustos as “inspired by God.” 

But the New International Version famously renders this verse “All Scripture is God-breathed.” That is, literally, what theopneustos  (combining the Greek words for “God” and “breath”) would seem to mean. This reading of theopneustos is followed in the ESV, and in Eugene Petersen’s popular paraphrase The Message. Christians who insist upon the Bible’s inerrancy–that is, its absolute and infallible authority–often cite this passage. Surely, if the Bible is God-breathed, that must mean that its words are God’s very words, as perfect and infallible as God is, and carrying God’s own authority.

But the derivation of a word is not necessarily a reliable guide to its meaning.  For example, the “literal” meaning of the word “sarcophagus,” derived from Greek words meaning “flesh” and “eat,” would be “carnivore”–which of course is not what the word means at all.  Surely, a better guide to what theopneustos meant to the author of 2 Timothy would be how the word is actually used.  

Unfortunately, this word is uncommon: it appears nowhere else in the New Testament; nor is it used in the Greek translation of Jewish Scripture, the Septuagint. Outside of the Bible, the term is no less obscure. In the Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides, a first-century Jewish philosopher, theopneustos is used to distinguish wisdom from God from human wisdom (Sentences 129). However, as P. W. van der Horst observes, “This line, in clumsy [Greek], is probably inauthentic.  It is lacking in some important textual witnesses” (The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Vol. 2, ed. James H. Charlesworth [Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1985], 579).  Placita Philosophorum is a compendium of the teachings of the philosophers, ascribed to the first-century historian Plutarch (but almost certainly from after Plutarch’s time). In the chapter on the source of dreams, the teaching of Herophilus is cited:

dreams which are caused by divine instinct [theopneustos in Greek] have a necessary cause; but dreams which have their origin from a natural cause arise from the soul’s forming within itself the images of those things which are convenient for it, and which will happen (Placita Philosophorum 5. 2. 3).  

Perhaps, then, characterizing the Bible as theopneustos likewise means that unlike ordinary books, the Bible is a holy book–a book inspired by God.

What then does it mean to say that the Bible is inspired by God? Another way into this question would to ask what we usually mean when we speak of inspiration (a word also related to breath).  Methodist theologian William Abraham considers what we mean when we say that a teacher is inspiring, or that a teacher’s students have been inspired:

. . . there is no question of students being passive while they are being inspired.  On the contrary: their natural abilities will be used to the full extent, and as a result they will show great differences in style, content and vocabulary.  Their native intelligence and talent will be greatly enhanced and enriched but in no way obliterated or passed over. . . . there need be no surprise if, from the point of view of the teacher, they make mistakes (William J. Abraham, The Divine Inspiration of Holy Scripture [Oxford: Oxford University, 1981], 63-64).

Applying this analogy of classroom inspiration to Scripture, Abraham concludes that the writers of the Bible, likewise, should not be understood as inerrant automata, mechanically transmitting the actual words of the Divine. He writes:

We must allow a genuine freedom to God as he inspires his chosen witnesses, knowing that what he does will be adequate for his saving and sanctifying purposes for our lives.  In so doing we escape the tension and artificiality of those theories that have staked everything on the perfectionist and utopian hopes that stem from a theology of Scripture that substitutes divine speaking [i.e., “the Bible is the actual, literal word of God”] for divine inspiration without biblical or rational warrant (Abraham, Inspiration, 69-70).

While Abraham’s statement that the Bible is “adequate” to God’s saving purposes may seem to us far too weak, it is not much different than the claim that the writer of 2 Timothy makes.  This passage affirms that God-inspired Scripture is ophelimos–a word also not found in the Septuagint, and found in the NT only in 2 Timothy and Titus, but relatively common in Greek literature. It means “useful”–not infallible, not inerrant, not even authoritative, but “useful.” In particular, this passage says, Scripture is

useful for teaching, for showing mistakes, for correcting, and for training character, so that the person who belongs to God can be equipped to do everything that is good. 

Reformed theologian Daniel Migliore draws an important distinction: “Scripture is indispensable in bringing us into a new relationship with the living God through Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.”  However, “Christians do not believe in the Bible; they believe in the living God attested by the Bible” (Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology, Second Edition [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004], 50). The Bible is not “God-breathed”: inerrant and infallible. But the Bible is a sufficient, Divinely inspired means to a glorious end!

As a Bible teacher, Willie Abraham’s classroom illustration resonates strongly with me.  I do indeed hope that I inspire my students.  But by that, I certainly do not mean that I expect them to repeat my own words by rote, or even that I expect them to think just as I do.  I do hope that they will love the Bible as I do, and that through their study they will be led into a deeper and deeper relationship with the God of Scripture–which is the Bible’s purpose.

The alternate Hebrew Bible text for this Sunday in the Revised Common Lectionary is Zechariah 9:9-12: the only passage from the book of Zechariah found in the lectionary.  Curiously, as I have noted before in these blogs, this passage is not one of the readings for Palm Sunday, although it is quoted in the accounts of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem in Matthew 21:5 and John 12:15, and alluded to in Mark 11:1-11 and Luke 19:28-40 as well (both use the Greek word polon, “colt,” found in the Septuagint of Zech 9:9):

Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion.
        Sing aloud, Daughter Jerusalem.
Look, your king will come to you.
        He is righteous and victorious.
        He is humble and riding on an ass,
            on a colt, the offspring of a donkey (Zech 9:9, CEB).

Like the CEB, most English translations read “victorious” here, following the Septuagint.  But the Hebrew text has nosha’--literally, “one who is saved.”  Carol and Eric Meyers, in their commentary on this text, propose that here it is God, not the king, who “is victorious over the enemies, with the result that the king is ‘saved,’ thereby enabled to assume power” (Meyers and Meyers 1993, 127).  This is a very different idea of kingship, grounded not in the king’s victories as a warrior, but in God’s empowerment and deliverance (compare Zech 4:6).

The humble mount in Zechariah 9:9 derives from a long tradition in the ancient Middle East of processions where the king rode on an ass (Meyers and Meyers 1993, 129).  This Bible passage catches the point of that tradition: by riding on an ass rather than a war horse or chariot, the king shows humility, and declares that he comes in peace.  But the prophet dreams of a king who is not a warrior–who not merely claims to come in peace, but who really comes to end war:

He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
        and the warhorse from Jerusalem.
The bow used in battle will be cut off;
        he will speak peace to the nations.
His rule will stretch from sea to sea,
        and from the river to the ends of the earth (9:10).

No wonder Jesus’ first followers recognized his mission in these ancient words!

Yet curiously, Jesus’ modern American followers have moved in the opposite direction, embracing in our “law and order” rhetoric the language of war.  In a seventeen-minute video appeal to his fellow Evangelicals, Phil Vischer, creator of the wonderful Veggie Tales series, briefly summarizes the history of race in America, and why Black Americans continue to face injustice today.  In particular, Mr. Vischer points to the warfare language–specifically, the War on Crime and the War on Drugs–used by past administrations, Democrats and Republicans alike, to militarize our police, and to criminalize and incarcerate an entire generation of Black and Brown Americans.

Tara O’Neill Hayes, the Director of Human Welfare Policy at the American Action Forum, has the sobering statistics:

There are currently an estimated 2.2 million people incarcerated in the United States.  The incarceration rate is now more than 4.3 times what it was nearly 50 years ago. This increase has led to the United States having the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world, 37 percent greater than that of Cuba and 69 percent greater than Russia. This high incarceration rate is not because crime has increased; in fact, crime rates have declined since the 1990s.  Rather, the arrest rate increased dramatically, while sentences—particularly for drug crimes—have gotten longer.  These policy changes have disproportionately affected low-income and minority populations, who now make up roughly three-fifths and two-thirds of the prison population, respectively.

In the wake of the very public, brutal murder of African American George Floyd by a white police officer, worldwide protests today call for justice and reform–including calls, specifically, to “Defund the Police.”  Indeed, in Minneapolis where this horrific crime happened, a majority of the city council has pledged to “dismantle” that city’s police force.  According to Minneapolis council president Lisa Bender,

“It is clear that our system of policing is not keeping our communities safe. Our efforts at incremental reform have failed, period.”  Bender went on to say she and the eight other council members that joined the rally are committed to ending the city’s relationship with the police force and “to end policing as we know it and recreate systems that actually keep us safe.”

Some cities have already pursued this strategy, successfully.  For example, Camden, NJ, which in 2013 had one of the highest murder rates in the country, “dismantled the entire police department, starting a community policing approach.”

 

Reflecting on Mr. Trump’s evocation of Lincoln, and re-reading these ancient words from Zechariah, I find myself remembering what Abraham Lincoln said to a fiery old woman who urged her President to regard Southerners as enemies to be destroyed: “Why, madam, do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”

At the National Prayer Breakfast five years ago, then-President Barak Obama called for humility and a commitment to peace from people of all faiths:

. . . Our job is not to ask that God respond to our notion of truth — our job is to be true to Him, His word, and His commandments.  And we should assume humbly that we’re confused and don’t always know what we’re doing and we’re staggering and stumbling towards Him, and have some humility in that process.  And that means we have to speak up against those who would misuse His name to justify oppression, or violence, or hatred with that fierce certainty.  No God condones terror.  No grievance justifies the taking of innocent lives, or the oppression of those who are weaker or fewer in number.

Without doubt, the imagery of warfare and struggle is part of the biblical witness.  But Scripture also, in many places, subverts that imagery, transforming it unexpectedly into imagery of peace–as in Sunday’s reading from Zechariah.  What would happen if we listened to those texts, rather than focusing on the others?  What would happen if we listened to one another, and engaged in conversation, rather than physical and verbal assaults?  What might happen if we all opened ourselves up to become, as Chief Thompson said, “guardians and not warriors”–instruments, as St. Francis prayed, of God’s peace?