By Jason T. Lecureux
'Return to me', broadcasts Yhwh of Hosts, 'and i'm going to go back to you', announces Yhwh of Hosts. The sentence stands on the head of the prophecy of Zechariah (1.3). yet what does it suggest to 'return to Yhwh'? And what does it suggest that Yhwh 'will go back to you'? LeCureux argues that it truly is this name to repentance, and Yhwh's responses to it, that shape the unifying and organizing subject matter of go back for the ebook of the Twelve. whereas stories at the improvement and composition of the Twelve have proved fruitful lately, this booklet makes an attempt to extend on these works by means of having a look heavily on the ultimate kind of the Twelve, really of its beginning and shutting books (Hosea-Joel, Zechariah-Malachi), and the function that canonical place and topic play in the publication. This undertaking starts via defining the functionality of subject matter in biblical books, after which compares the function subject performs in Isaiah with its function within the Twelve, ahead of conducting the first job of exegesis. LeCureux examines using 'return' within the Twelve, exhibiting that it's the name to come back that controls the occasions of the Day of Yhwh. Going additional, the exegesis uncovers the hyperlinks among the go back imperatives of Hosea 14, Joel 2, Zechariah's personal calls to come back and Malachi's concluding query, 'How are we to return?'(3.7). what's finally published is the multifaceted nature of God's courting together with his humans, one who includes the people's fight to show from covenantal disobedience towards Yhwh in repentance, in addition to Yhwh's personal turning from judgment towards his humans in blessing.
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Extra resources for The Thematic Unity of the Book of the Twelve
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However, Clines adds, ‘If theme encapsulates the meaning of the work, the theme and the work are created together in the author’s mind… None of this is to say that authors cannot or do not perceive the theme of their works or that they are not in many cases far better able to state the theme of their works than any of their readers or critics’. 38. Clines, Theme of the Pentateuch, p. 24. 39. He concludes, ‘All I am arguing is that we do not need to assure ourselves that such and such a theme could have been present in the mind of an author or conceptualized by him or her before we allow the possibility that such and such is the theme of the work’ (Clines, Theme of the Pentateuch, p.
See Sweeney, ‘Sequence and Interpretation’, pp. 53-54. 1 20 The Thematic Unity of the Book of the Twelve and trouble with the nations. 82 Instead of ¿rst presenting the books concerned with Israel and then those concerned with the nations [as the LXX], the MT mixes books together. The result is the placement of two programmatic books at the beginning—Hosea outlines the disrupted relationship between YHWH and Israel and calls for Israel’s repentance; Joel outlines YHWH’s defense of Jerusalem and Israel on the Day of YHWH, emphasizing the transformation of the cosmos as YHWH manifests sovereignty over the nations.
30 This, however, disagrees with most prophetic scholarship on the uniting themes of prophetic literature. 31 Most prophetic scholars seem more than willing to discuss various themes, often at the same time. Clements identi¿es Jerusalem-Zion and the royal Davidic 25. This will be discussed in more detail in regard to the Twelve. 26. Clines, Theme of the Pentateuch, p. 21. ‘That is to say, the statement of theme can serve an historical-critical purpose, of attempting to lay bare what the author intended to convey to his or her audience, or it can act as a control on interpretations of the text that treat it as a relatively autonomous work of art, with polyvalent signi¿cance’.