Nielsen’s Nook

Introduction

There are a few questions we are attempting to address in the writing of this article. First, what is conveyed to us in the biblical imagery of the yoke Second, how is that imagery developed In other words, are there trajectories from which we may glean Finally, by way continuation of the image into our present life situation, in what ways may we make contemporary application of our discoveries

A Conceptual Overview of the Imagery of Yoke

A yoke[1] was a wooden and metal device that harnessed two livestock together (usually oxen) so that their combined labors at a singular task would be unified in such a way that the whole would indeed be greater than the parts and that the benefits of their labors might be directed by a single purpose. The uses of the words for ‘yoke’ to refer to the apparatus that bound two livestock together are relatively rare in the Bible (Num 19:2; Deut 22:10; eight times in Job to refer to yokes or pairs of oxen).[2]

Figuratively, the concept of a yoke is used often in the scripture to usually describe a negative situation in which one party lives in subjection to another. Additionally, there are positive uses of the trope; however, they are significantly fewer in number though not less significant.

Bondage and Freedom

Under the rubric of the figurative use of ‘yoke’ we find the most common use of the trope to be with reference to “political slavery to a foreign king.”[3] This is the language that was used to describe the Exodus from Egypt.

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that you should not be their slaves. And I have broken the bars of your yoke and made you walk erect. (Le 26:13 ESV)

Thus, if bondage is one side of the trope, then liberation is inescapably implied as the other side. The Lord liberated his people from the bondage of slavery to the Egyptians; however, that liberation was not so that they would not be yoked to anything or anyone else. The broken yoke of slavery and bondage is replaced by the yoke of liberty to YHWH.

The Interplay Between Political and the Spiritual

The nature of humanity and the new humanity that God is redeeming from the old is that it is by nature political and spiritual at the same time. It is no wonder then that two common images in which yoke is employed demonstrate a certain double entendre effect, at once utilizing the political to speak to the spiritual and conversely.[4] From this it would seem safe to extrapolate that God’s people are wholly involved in all aspects of life. In other words, echoing Kuyper’s sentiment, the assumption from which scripture seems to be operating is that there is no square inch of this universe or of a human being over which God has not declared his dominion.

A Union that Binds

What we have said thus far is that ‘yoke’ is most often encountered in the Scriptures as a trope, an image employed to teach us much more than how to bind two livestock together. The dimensions of the metaphor range from the abstract to the concrete. With regard to the abstract, we have found ‘yoke’ to be addressing the relative bondage or liberty of the people to whom the biblical writer was addressing. Naturally, these abstract ideas reflect the concrete spiritual and political realities that God’s people had encountered.

In the case of Israel’s bondage to the Egyptians, the Lord called Israel out of Egypt to yoke them to himself. It is in this sense that we see conceptually the positive aspect of the concept that the metaphor yoke entails, representing for humanity the most intimate and powerful bond a person can experience, Union with God. This is a theme that is found throughout the Bible, a fragrance leading us forward to the ultimate fulfillment of this Union, which we find expounded for us in passages like Matthew 11:25-30:

At that time Jesus declared, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Mt 11:25-30 ESV)

Those whom Christ liberates, “far from being autonomous, are ushered into a new bondage: they become Christ’s willing slaves (douloi), he becomes their Lord.”[5] Christ is the destination that the metaphor of ‘yoke’ throughout the Bible anticipates and His person and work must be the lens by which we seek to focus our understanding of the trope into wise and practical applications.

The Development of Yoke as a Biblical Image

In this section we seek to focus in a little more detail on selected passages in the Bible that have impressed us towards the trajectory and understanding that we have articulated above regarding the tropological and non-figurative uses of ‘yoke’ in the Bible. The framework that the scriptures themselves establish for understanding such movement is seen, by way of example, in Romans 5:12-21 in which Adam is established as the Old Testament type and Christ is exalted as the fulfillment, the anti-type of Adam.

Adam: The Yoke of Death (Gen 1-3)

In the creation of Adam there is the great and triune antiphony that declares his magnificence and dignity as the crown of the created.

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Ge 1:26-27 ESV)

Further, we witness a deep connection that the Creator has with Adam. Chapter two reveals an intimate awareness of an interaction with Adam regarding his purpose and his needs. God places him in the Garden according in covenant and sees that it is not good that Adam should be alone and so makes Eve. In other words, in the creation story we find God had established the bond or ‘yoke’ between Himself and Adam by means of Adam’s obedience, demonstrated in not eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In other words, while the word ‘yoke’ is not present in the creation story, the concept is most certainly there.

Chapter 3 presents Adam with a choice. The serpent appears and challenges the justice of God’s yoke. In convincing them that God’s yoke was heavy and unjust, the Serpent encourages them to throw off the divine yoke and walk yokeless. It was only to their dismay, that when they threw off the divine yoke, the Serpent’s slipped as a silk noose slyly around their necks. Outside of the divine yoke, they were left to be driven along mercilessly by the Devil.

The promise of God to deliver Adam and his progeny(Gen 3:15), is the promise that God will break the bonds of the oppressed, setting the captives free, returning the satanic yoke empty to the devil as he rots defeated in Hell. This promise echoes throughout the corridors of redemptive history, most often through the prophets. They were speaking to a people in political bondage, which in the Bible always corresponds to the reality of a far more grave sense of spiritual bondage. As the prophets addressed their situation, their words resonated towards a moment in time, in which true liberty is meted out perfectly in the person and work of Christ as a tonic note in the symphony of redemptive history.

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,

because the Lord has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor;

he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,

to proclaim liberty to the captives,

and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;

² to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,

and the day of vengeance of our God;

to comfort all who mourn; (Isa 61:1-2, ESV)

And the trees of the field shall yield their fruit, and the earth shall yield its increase, and they shall be secure in their land. And they shall know that I am the Lord, when I break the bars of their yoke, and deliver them from the hand of those who enslaved them. (Eze 34:27 ESV)

Covenant: Blood that Binds (Ex 12)

The breaking of the bars of the yoke of slavery in Egypt from Israel’s neck is preceded by a lengthy account of the Passover stipulations. This liberation of Israel entailed the shedding of blood in the setting apart of the firstborn to God. “We should understand this ritual [of setting the firstborn apart] in light of the tenth plague itself: Israel as God’s son (see [Ex] 4:22) was redeemed (delivered from Egypt) by the death of Egypt’s firstborn sons.”[6] That redemption of Israel was not to autonomy as they seemed to expect in the wilderness; rather, it was a redemption from the yoke of slavery to the yoke of YHWH, the yoke of true liberty.

What we see in the Exodus account is that the changing of yokes entails the shedding of blood. The tenth plague was not a “divine temper tantrum” against the Egyptians. Instead, it is a necessary implementation of a redemptive pattern, requiring death as a means to fuller life.[7] It is the shedding of blood, and only by the shedding of blood, that the destroyer made distinction between Israel and Egypt.[8]

Even in this cursory consideration of the Exodus, we see that the idea of yoke has to do ultimately with the covenant bond through which the Lord, in delivering his people from bondage, unites them intimately by the sacrificial blood of the first born.

The Yoke to Christ (Matt 11:25-30; Gal 5:1; Phil 4:3)

Early Christians seem to express this idea of being yoked to Christ. For example, the first literary section of the Didache known as the “Two Ways” which conceptually seem to articulate the notion of ‘yoke’ that scripture has given us throughout redemptive history.

The idea of taking the yoke of Christ upon oneself would seem to be an allusion to Matthew 11:30:

²⁵At that time Jesus declared, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; ²⁶yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. ²⁷All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. ²⁸Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. ²⁹Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Mt 11:25-30 ESV)

The passage revolves around a confusion of whether Jesus is the Messiah. Here, Matthew relays to us an instant in which Jesus is confronted with great unbelief. Even John the Baptist had sent a delegation to Jesus from prison because he had begun to doubt whether Jesus was in fact the Messiah (Mt. 11:3). Jesus responds by directing his interlocutors to the testimony of his deeds, “Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds.” (Mt 11:19). After denouncing those cities who witnessed his works for their unbelief, Jesus then thanks the Father that he has hidden the understanding of who Jesus truly was from the wise and learned and revealed it to little children.

The yoke here is clearly between the oppression and blindness of unbelief on the one hand and the liberty and sight of belief on the other. In calling his own to come to him, Jesus promises a new yoke, one in which the bearer may grow and thrive. His promise to provide such a yoke assumes the role he would play as Messiah, breaking the bars of the yoke of sin and death; trampling down death by death.

Believers and Unbelievers (2 Cor 6:14-7:1)

In this paradigm of liberation from the yoke of unbelief and to the yoke of belief, the Apostle Paul makes a basic and practical implication. He warns, εσε τετε (Do not be ‘otherly’ or differently yoked).
A common understanding of this passage is espoused in this passage from a very good background commentary:

In 6:14–7:1 … Paul might be using some sermonic material or ideas he gleaned from an earlier source. He bases 6:14 (”unequal yoking”—cf. KJV) on Deuteronomy 22:10 (cf. Lev 19:19), which may have been meant to reinforce the law’s prohibition of interreligious marriage with pagans (cf. Deut 7:3; Ezra 9:12; Neh 13:25).[9]

There would seem to be an illegitimate totality transfer here, based simply on the words used in Deuteronomy 22:10 without regard for the way the concept of ‘yoke’, particularly its tropological use, has been developed throughout redemptive history. Context would seem to argue that this is not a divagation,[10] in which Paul throws in his two cents worth on dating and marriage.

Rather, the Apostle is in the middle of a discourse on our position and purpose in this world as those whom God has reconciled to himself in Christ. In other words, Paul is exhorting those who have experienced the cold cumbersome satanic steel of the yoke of sin and death shattering to the ground as dust at the humble words of the Living God-Man who has said,

²⁸Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. ²⁹Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Mt 11:25-30 ESV)

It is these to whom the ministry of reconciliation has been given, for it is these to whom God Almighty has bound himself by way of everlasting covenant. The yoke that Adam had thrown off has been remade and now once again humanity is found truly human, truly liberated, in union again with its maker. It is because we now, in Christ, work together with God, yoked to him, that we demonstrate that the grace of God not taken in vain (2 Cor 6:1). Paul addresses the Corinthians as children (6:13), imploring them to widen their hearts. This would seem to echo back to the Matthew 11 passage in which we see those who think they are wise are only those to whom God has not been pleased to reveal himself and those who are regarded as children are those in whom we find the Father’s revelation.

Therefore, when we come to Paul’s statement in 6:14 to not be otherly yoked, we must understand that the yoke he has in mind does not seem to be ultimately between two mere mortals (i.e., do not marry unbelieving people). Rather, the yoke in question revolves around the matter of belief and unbelief relative to a person’s relationship to God (certainly having implications for whom we might choose for our spouse). This would seem to be the paradigm it has followed and developed throughout redemptive history. “What fellowship,” Paul asks, “does light have with darkness Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever”

Paul then quotes the covenant mantra, “I will be their God and they shall be my people.” (6:16). The appeal then is that since believers have been delivered from the yoke of darkness now yoked to Christ who is the resurrection and the light, there is now no going back. The old yoke has been decimated in the fullest Roman sense of the term. It makes no sense for the freeman to run back to his oppressive master. It is inconsistent with the call that is now on the freeman’s life, for he is now bound to Christ. Everything is indeed new! (2 Cor 5:17) He cannot be otherly yoked, for Christ’s yoke cannot be broken.

Works Cited

Chamblin, J. Knox. “Freedom/Liberty.” In Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, ed. Gerald F. Hawthorne, Ralph P. Martin and Daniel G. Reid, 313-316. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1993.

Enns, Peter. Exodus The Niv Application Commentary. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Publishing House, 2000.

Hughes, Philip Edgcumbe. Paul’s Second Epistle to the Corinthians; the English Text with Introd., Exposition and Notes. Grand Rapids,: Eerdmans, 1962.

Keener, Craig S. The Ivp Bible Background Commentary : New Testament. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1993.

Martin, Ralph P. 1-2 Corinthians Word Biblical Themes. Dallas: Word Pub., 1988.

Ryken, Leland, Jim Wilhoit, Tremper Longman, Colin Duriez, Douglas Penney, and Daniel G. Reid. “Bondage and Freedom.” In Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, 112-113. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1998.

________. “Yoke.” In Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, 975. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1998.