I have to say, your glosses are doing an awful lot of work here. Certainly when the circumstances are favorable to using an experienced ox with an inexperienced there would be an advantage in yoking them together but I doubt that it has ever been such general usage that we ought to assume it, particularly since I don't see in any of your other examples that the 'other' was yoked with the person being addressed. I notice that neither the Egyptians nor Solomon nor Rehoboam were sharing the burden with those who bore 'their' yoke so your examples dont lend themselves to the idea that Christ is doing a part and expects the rest from us. The Pharisees as I recall hearing somewhere didn't touch the burdens they loaded on widows with their littlest finger.
But more generally, to ask if Christ's yoke, the Christian life, is only light compared to Phariseeism or is it light more generally is to ask if the Gospel is only good news in particular circumstances or if it is better at all times and all places than any alternative. To say that the Gospel is easier than being a slave to Pharaoh or Pharisees is a bit of a back handed complement, a bit of damning by faint praise.
I will say that verse 29 provides some seeming support for the 'burden sharing' explanation, but verses 25-27 make me think that what Christ has in mind is very far removed from a discussion of our life and practices. It seems to be about knowing the Father through the Son and the literal impossibility of our contributing to that knowledge. All of our contributions, whether studiousness or our own attempts at repentance, are condemned when Christ says that the Father has hidden these things from the wise and prudent to reveal them to babes, that is those who make no effort, who don't even know what effort to make if they wanted to or were able to contribute. The context is difficult but it seems to be very much about giving the kingdom to those who have not sought it, the babes of verse 25 or Tyre, Sidon, and Sodom a bit before in preference to the wise and prudent, such as Capernaum and the Jews/religious in general. I just don't see anything in the text that suggest that we should sort of grow into the load and learn to pull it, but rather we are called repeatedly to rest. I think that to understand the rest that He refers to we need Luke's amazing comment from his parallel passage to the early part of Matthew 11.
And when all the people heard Him, even the tax collectors justified God, having been baptized with the baptism of John. But the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the will of God for themselves, not having been baptized by him. Luke 7:29-30
We are children of wisdom and prudence; we justify hard work and growth, these things and their fruits impress us and seem right and good. But we condemn the righteousness of God whether it is displayed in the asceticism of John or the liberty with regard to fleshly ordinances of Jesus. The Christian life is not growth but death, a continual, prolonged death by drowning. The rest that Christ is talking about is the absolute rest of the death of self in the burden which Christ carried up Calvary. I don't know of any other burden that Christ bore and I can't see how we can discuss our contributing to the toting of the burden when we ourselves are the burden. When He says 'rest' we hear 'tote the load'. I think that that sums us up about as well as anything ever could. That's how I read the second half of Matthew 11, admittedly a very difficult text.
I’m sorry, glossing? Oxen were vital resources in biblical times, every birth meant a calf was in for serious time consuming training.
In the Bible, "oxen" generally refers to male, domestic bovine animals, primarily used for labor like plowing, threshing, and carrying burdens. My great uncle was a country vet in the hills of eastern Ky. Spent lots of summers with him going from farm to farm. I personally witnessed this manner of training in different stages. Your thoughts of the process not being prevalent during biblical times are not based on fact.
The Egyptians, Pharisees, Solomon and his son Rehoboam were leaders/rulers who enforced burdens and demanded obedience. They offered no guidance or sharing the grieves created by their imposed yokes. Their actions were characterized by control and exploitation. If you know truly know Christ, then you should realize the implication is that His yoke is easy, and His burden is light, suggesting a relationship where He helps us bear our load. The leaders/rulers however, demonstrate a one-way weight of burden, without consideration of care or respect for their people or subjects.
Christ's invitation to "come unto me" (Matthew 11:28) promises rest and guidance, which contrasts with the rulers' demanding nature. The promise of rest suggests a relationship where Christ helps us carry our burdens, not just impose them.
'Glosses' refers to things which we add to the text, in this case a story about training animals to bear loads which is not plainly in the text. I have no doubt that this practice is and always has been fairly common. It is a very commonsense way to train animals but cannot simply be assumed to be what the text is referring to when the context is very different as I indicate in my recent reply to Tony.
We should be very careful when explaining something in the text that includes information not in the text. We should never add to Scripture. At the same time, describing the practices of the day or the topography of the location or discussing idioms of the culture isn't automatically problematic.
A simple example: Jesus told His disciples that He would go away, prepare a place for them in His Father's house, come again, and take them with Him to that place. Clearly, most people see this as Jesus describing Heaven.
However: while Heaven is in view here, that is decidedly NOT what Jesus was saying. Jesus was proposing marriage. This is how a young Jewish man would speak to a young Jewish woman, then he would disappear from public view while he built an addition on his father's house. When he reappeared, the room was complete... and they could then be married. His reappearing would be cause for great celebration!
We know this to be the practice at the time Jesus said it... but NONE of the explanation for Jesus' words are actually IN THE TEXT. The meaning is obscured until we learn more than the text gives us. There's certainly nothing wrong with this kind of explanation.
For those reading along, "gloss" is a technical term for a note or annotation that was added to a biblical manuscript, intended to clarify or interpret obscure words or concepts. It can also indicate words that have (intentionally or accidentally) been added to the text by a scribe. This is where we get the word "glossary."
This is absolutely true and reasonable. I didn’t mean to say or imply that your interpretation is wrong or invalid. I think that the context points us in a different direction. While the word ‘yoke’ does bring the idea of two oxen pulling a load together and we could read, ‘learn from me for I am gentle and lowly of heart’ as suggesting a mentorship in pulling such a load, everything else at the end of Matthew 11 leads me in a different direction. When He talks about His role as the only revealer of the Father and the truth being deliberately hidden from the wise and prudent and revealed to babes I think that we are not talking about Christ as Example or even Christ as Teacher but Christ as Logos and Christ as the True Vine from which we receive all things necessary to life and godliness. The branch does not share the load with the vine in such a way that the branch bears a part of the load and the vine some other part, in any proportion. Rather, everything that the branch bears is transmitted directly down into the vine which supports it. I think that anything less does not give sufficient weight to His speaking of rest. Rest here is, anapausis, literally stopping or a cessation such as ‘and day and night they do not cease to say, "HOLY, HOLY, HOLY is THE LORD GOD, THE ALMIGHTY, WHO WAS AND WHO IS AND WHO IS TO COME." I don’t see how we can take this rest in a relative or comparative sense as ‘less work’ but it demands an absolute cessation.
Thanks for doing all the background work on this question Tony.
I have to say, your glosses are doing an awful lot of work here. Certainly when the circumstances are favorable to using an experienced ox with an inexperienced there would be an advantage in yoking them together but I doubt that it has ever been such general usage that we ought to assume it, particularly since I don't see in any of your other examples that the 'other' was yoked with the person being addressed. I notice that neither the Egyptians nor Solomon nor Rehoboam were sharing the burden with those who bore 'their' yoke so your examples dont lend themselves to the idea that Christ is doing a part and expects the rest from us. The Pharisees as I recall hearing somewhere didn't touch the burdens they loaded on widows with their littlest finger.
But more generally, to ask if Christ's yoke, the Christian life, is only light compared to Phariseeism or is it light more generally is to ask if the Gospel is only good news in particular circumstances or if it is better at all times and all places than any alternative. To say that the Gospel is easier than being a slave to Pharaoh or Pharisees is a bit of a back handed complement, a bit of damning by faint praise.
Is there a specific part that you believe is incorrect, Jon?
I will say that verse 29 provides some seeming support for the 'burden sharing' explanation, but verses 25-27 make me think that what Christ has in mind is very far removed from a discussion of our life and practices. It seems to be about knowing the Father through the Son and the literal impossibility of our contributing to that knowledge. All of our contributions, whether studiousness or our own attempts at repentance, are condemned when Christ says that the Father has hidden these things from the wise and prudent to reveal them to babes, that is those who make no effort, who don't even know what effort to make if they wanted to or were able to contribute. The context is difficult but it seems to be very much about giving the kingdom to those who have not sought it, the babes of verse 25 or Tyre, Sidon, and Sodom a bit before in preference to the wise and prudent, such as Capernaum and the Jews/religious in general. I just don't see anything in the text that suggest that we should sort of grow into the load and learn to pull it, but rather we are called repeatedly to rest. I think that to understand the rest that He refers to we need Luke's amazing comment from his parallel passage to the early part of Matthew 11.
And when all the people heard Him, even the tax collectors justified God, having been baptized with the baptism of John. But the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the will of God for themselves, not having been baptized by him. Luke 7:29-30
We are children of wisdom and prudence; we justify hard work and growth, these things and their fruits impress us and seem right and good. But we condemn the righteousness of God whether it is displayed in the asceticism of John or the liberty with regard to fleshly ordinances of Jesus. The Christian life is not growth but death, a continual, prolonged death by drowning. The rest that Christ is talking about is the absolute rest of the death of self in the burden which Christ carried up Calvary. I don't know of any other burden that Christ bore and I can't see how we can discuss our contributing to the toting of the burden when we ourselves are the burden. When He says 'rest' we hear 'tote the load'. I think that that sums us up about as well as anything ever could. That's how I read the second half of Matthew 11, admittedly a very difficult text.
Thanks for sharing your interpretation of the text, Jon.
I'll ask again: you say that it's a difficult text, and you interpret it differently, but is there a specific part that you believe is incorrect?
I’m sorry, glossing? Oxen were vital resources in biblical times, every birth meant a calf was in for serious time consuming training.
In the Bible, "oxen" generally refers to male, domestic bovine animals, primarily used for labor like plowing, threshing, and carrying burdens. My great uncle was a country vet in the hills of eastern Ky. Spent lots of summers with him going from farm to farm. I personally witnessed this manner of training in different stages. Your thoughts of the process not being prevalent during biblical times are not based on fact.
The Egyptians, Pharisees, Solomon and his son Rehoboam were leaders/rulers who enforced burdens and demanded obedience. They offered no guidance or sharing the grieves created by their imposed yokes. Their actions were characterized by control and exploitation. If you know truly know Christ, then you should realize the implication is that His yoke is easy, and His burden is light, suggesting a relationship where He helps us bear our load. The leaders/rulers however, demonstrate a one-way weight of burden, without consideration of care or respect for their people or subjects.
Christ's invitation to "come unto me" (Matthew 11:28) promises rest and guidance, which contrasts with the rulers' demanding nature. The promise of rest suggests a relationship where Christ helps us carry our burdens, not just impose them.
Shared with love and care.
'Glosses' refers to things which we add to the text, in this case a story about training animals to bear loads which is not plainly in the text. I have no doubt that this practice is and always has been fairly common. It is a very commonsense way to train animals but cannot simply be assumed to be what the text is referring to when the context is very different as I indicate in my recent reply to Tony.
We should be very careful when explaining something in the text that includes information not in the text. We should never add to Scripture. At the same time, describing the practices of the day or the topography of the location or discussing idioms of the culture isn't automatically problematic.
A simple example: Jesus told His disciples that He would go away, prepare a place for them in His Father's house, come again, and take them with Him to that place. Clearly, most people see this as Jesus describing Heaven.
However: while Heaven is in view here, that is decidedly NOT what Jesus was saying. Jesus was proposing marriage. This is how a young Jewish man would speak to a young Jewish woman, then he would disappear from public view while he built an addition on his father's house. When he reappeared, the room was complete... and they could then be married. His reappearing would be cause for great celebration!
We know this to be the practice at the time Jesus said it... but NONE of the explanation for Jesus' words are actually IN THE TEXT. The meaning is obscured until we learn more than the text gives us. There's certainly nothing wrong with this kind of explanation.
For those reading along, "gloss" is a technical term for a note or annotation that was added to a biblical manuscript, intended to clarify or interpret obscure words or concepts. It can also indicate words that have (intentionally or accidentally) been added to the text by a scribe. This is where we get the word "glossary."
This is absolutely true and reasonable. I didn’t mean to say or imply that your interpretation is wrong or invalid. I think that the context points us in a different direction. While the word ‘yoke’ does bring the idea of two oxen pulling a load together and we could read, ‘learn from me for I am gentle and lowly of heart’ as suggesting a mentorship in pulling such a load, everything else at the end of Matthew 11 leads me in a different direction. When He talks about His role as the only revealer of the Father and the truth being deliberately hidden from the wise and prudent and revealed to babes I think that we are not talking about Christ as Example or even Christ as Teacher but Christ as Logos and Christ as the True Vine from which we receive all things necessary to life and godliness. The branch does not share the load with the vine in such a way that the branch bears a part of the load and the vine some other part, in any proportion. Rather, everything that the branch bears is transmitted directly down into the vine which supports it. I think that anything less does not give sufficient weight to His speaking of rest. Rest here is, anapausis, literally stopping or a cessation such as ‘and day and night they do not cease to say, "HOLY, HOLY, HOLY is THE LORD GOD, THE ALMIGHTY, WHO WAS AND WHO IS AND WHO IS TO COME." I don’t see how we can take this rest in a relative or comparative sense as ‘less work’ but it demands an absolute cessation.