There are two nouns derived from ‘paroiko’, the personal noun ‘paroikos’, which we have met already, and the abstract noun ‘paroikia’; their AV translations are more convenient, if less familiar: ‘a sojourner’ and ‘a sojourning’. The latter is used by Paul, in its literal sense, in his sermon in the synagogue in Pisidian Antioch: “God exalted his people during their sojourning in the land of Egypt” (Acts 13.17); they dwelt there for 400 years, but were never more than resident aliens. This sermon is reminiscent in several ways of Stephen’s long speech before the Sanhedrin in Acts 7, but the similarity which is relevant here is his quotation of Genesis 15. 13-14. This is the third of God’s covenant promises to Abraham: “Your descendants shall be sojourners (‘paroikoi’, LXX) in a land not their own --- for 400 years”. Both these uses are literal, but with the only other use of ‘paroikia’ in the NT we enter the (promised !) land of metaphor. Peter in his first letter tells his readers (and we shall find out who they are before long): “Conduct yourselves with godly fear during the time of your sojourning here [in this world]” (1.17). ‘paroikia’ may be rare in the NT, but its descendant, via Latin, is now common in English: ‘parish’ – its Greek origin helps to explain its otherwise puzzling adjectival form ‘parochial’. In this sense it came to mean a group of people living near each other, and so, in ecclesiastical parlance, the sub-division of a deanery. But those who coined the term may have intended it to suggest that parishioners were ‘paroikoi’, merely sojourners in this world, rather than residents. For this is the metaphorical sense that the word, in all its forms, came to acquire, even in the OT (the LXX version, of course). Abraham, opening negotiations to buy the cave of Machpelah as a tomb for his dead wife Sarah (the only piece of the promised land he ever owned – suggesting, perhaps, that the true ‘promised land’ can only be reached by crossing the frontier of death), describes himself (Gen 23.4) as a ‘paroikos and parepidemos’ – the latter word merely a longer synonym of the former. He is literally a foreigner in a foreign land; but what of the psalmist, David himself, perhaps, who prays: “Hear my prayer, O Lord, --- for I am a stranger with thee (‘paroikos’) and a sojourner (‘parepidemos’), as all my fathers were. O spare me, that I may recover strength, before I go hence and be no more” (Psalm 39. 12-13, AV) ? No longer are the Israelites slaves in Egypt, or tent-dwellers in the desert; these two words now refer to the true status of all mankind: this world is just a temporary dwelling, just a tent. The evidence of David’s authorship of this psalm is supported by his great speech to the people at the end of 1 Chronicles – and at the end of his life. In response to their generous contributions towards the building of the temple, a task he was bequeathing to his son, Solomon, he prays words that have become familiar in many liturgies: “All things are thine, O Lord, and of thine own have we given thee” (I Chron 29 14). But the next verse deserves to be just as well known: “For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as all our fathers were” (‘paroiko’ again, and then its participle; the echo of the psalm is unmistakeable, though whether David is quoting himself, or a later psalmist is quoting him, we cannot be sure). So the paradox continues: the people were now settled prosperously in the promised land, but they were still, in a truer sense, just sojourners. This truth had, in fact, been established long before in Leviticus 25.23. While the Israelites were still tent-dwellers in the wilderness God gave them instructions about the land they would eventually ‘possess’: in the jubilee year all the land would revert to its original ‘owners’, even if they had been forced to sell some of it during the previous 49 years. The rationale for this arrangement follows: “The land shall not be sold on a permanent basis; for the land is mine, and you are strangers (‘proselutoi’, whence ‘proselytes’) and sojourners.” This is why the Jews who gave so generously for the temple were only giving back to God what was already his.
Tuesday, 20 December 2011
SKENE 3: Strangers and Sojourners (a) OT
There are two nouns derived from ‘paroiko’, the personal noun ‘paroikos’, which we have met already, and the abstract noun ‘paroikia’; their AV translations are more convenient, if less familiar: ‘a sojourner’ and ‘a sojourning’. The latter is used by Paul, in its literal sense, in his sermon in the synagogue in Pisidian Antioch: “God exalted his people during their sojourning in the land of Egypt” (Acts 13.17); they dwelt there for 400 years, but were never more than resident aliens. This sermon is reminiscent in several ways of Stephen’s long speech before the Sanhedrin in Acts 7, but the similarity which is relevant here is his quotation of Genesis 15. 13-14. This is the third of God’s covenant promises to Abraham: “Your descendants shall be sojourners (‘paroikoi’, LXX) in a land not their own --- for 400 years”. Both these uses are literal, but with the only other use of ‘paroikia’ in the NT we enter the (promised !) land of metaphor. Peter in his first letter tells his readers (and we shall find out who they are before long): “Conduct yourselves with godly fear during the time of your sojourning here [in this world]” (1.17). ‘paroikia’ may be rare in the NT, but its descendant, via Latin, is now common in English: ‘parish’ – its Greek origin helps to explain its otherwise puzzling adjectival form ‘parochial’. In this sense it came to mean a group of people living near each other, and so, in ecclesiastical parlance, the sub-division of a deanery. But those who coined the term may have intended it to suggest that parishioners were ‘paroikoi’, merely sojourners in this world, rather than residents. For this is the metaphorical sense that the word, in all its forms, came to acquire, even in the OT (the LXX version, of course). Abraham, opening negotiations to buy the cave of Machpelah as a tomb for his dead wife Sarah (the only piece of the promised land he ever owned – suggesting, perhaps, that the true ‘promised land’ can only be reached by crossing the frontier of death), describes himself (Gen 23.4) as a ‘paroikos and parepidemos’ – the latter word merely a longer synonym of the former. He is literally a foreigner in a foreign land; but what of the psalmist, David himself, perhaps, who prays: “Hear my prayer, O Lord, --- for I am a stranger with thee (‘paroikos’) and a sojourner (‘parepidemos’), as all my fathers were. O spare me, that I may recover strength, before I go hence and be no more” (Psalm 39. 12-13, AV) ? No longer are the Israelites slaves in Egypt, or tent-dwellers in the desert; these two words now refer to the true status of all mankind: this world is just a temporary dwelling, just a tent. The evidence of David’s authorship of this psalm is supported by his great speech to the people at the end of 1 Chronicles – and at the end of his life. In response to their generous contributions towards the building of the temple, a task he was bequeathing to his son, Solomon, he prays words that have become familiar in many liturgies: “All things are thine, O Lord, and of thine own have we given thee” (I Chron 29 14). But the next verse deserves to be just as well known: “For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as all our fathers were” (‘paroiko’ again, and then its participle; the echo of the psalm is unmistakeable, though whether David is quoting himself, or a later psalmist is quoting him, we cannot be sure). So the paradox continues: the people were now settled prosperously in the promised land, but they were still, in a truer sense, just sojourners. This truth had, in fact, been established long before in Leviticus 25.23. While the Israelites were still tent-dwellers in the wilderness God gave them instructions about the land they would eventually ‘possess’: in the jubilee year all the land would revert to its original ‘owners’, even if they had been forced to sell some of it during the previous 49 years. The rationale for this arrangement follows: “The land shall not be sold on a permanent basis; for the land is mine, and you are strangers (‘proselutoi’, whence ‘proselytes’) and sojourners.” This is why the Jews who gave so generously for the temple were only giving back to God what was already his.
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