Nielsen’s Nook

Translation

1 And he said many other things also, was being filled up [a] with courage and joy, even his face was filled full of graciousness. For this reason, not only did he not collapse from being terrified [b] by the things said to him; but on the contrary, [c] the proconsul was astounded out of his mind [d] and sent his own herald into the midst of the stadium to proclaim three times, “Polycarp confessed himself to be a Christian!”

[a] ἐνεπίμπλατο (ἐμπί(μ)πλημι) Where the proconsul has threatened St. Polycarp with consumption by fleeting fire (§11.2), St. Polycarp is antithetically filled up with courage and joy. Ezekiel 35:8 LXX reads καὶ ἐμπλήσω τῶν τραυματιῶν σου τοὺς βουνοὺς καὶ τὰς φάραγγάς σου… And your wounded will cover your hills and ravines… (author’s translation). The picture here is that everywhere one would look in the land one would see wounded people covering the land. Luke 1:53 employs the derivative aorist ἐνέπλησεν in the Magnificat: πεινῶντας ἐνέπλησεν ἀγαθῶν / καὶ πλουτοῦντας ἐξαπέστειλεν κενούς (NA27). The hungry are filled up with good things / and the rich have been sent away empty (author’s translation).

[b] ταραχθέντα see note on §5.1.

[c] τοὐναντίον is apparently a conflation of the definite article τό and the word ἐναντίον (see BAGD, 262) and is used to show a logically alternate thought (e.g., on the other hand, on the contrary).

[d] ἐκστῆναι today we might say colloquially that the proconsul “lost it,” referring to a loss of emotional control.

Translation

2 While praying he had become entranced [1] three days before his arrest and he saw his pillow [2] being consumed upon the fire. After he turned to those who were with him, he said, “Burning me alive is required.”

[1] lit. ἐν ὀπτασίᾳ γέγονεν.

[2] προσκεφάλαιον has been translated as pillow and etymologically appears to be a pillow for the head (κεφάλη). However, Ezekiel 13:18(20) uses the word as something that is sewn upon elbows. Οὐαὶ ταῖς συρραπτούσαις προσκεφάλαια ἐπὶ πάντα ἀγκῶνα χειρὸς - Woe! To those women who sew pillows upon every arm’s elbow (author’s translation). προσκεφάλαια in the LXX apparently translates the Hebrew כֶּ֫סֶת, which may be rendered “cushion, bolster, pillow” or as BDB further suggests “bands.” Perhaps, in the case of Polycarp this pillow is one used for the knees while praying.

Preface

A poem I jotted down today during a break between sessions on a staff retreat. I have been studying Deuteronomy for a sermon series I am preaching at an area church and was overwhelmed at the manifold ways in which my own heart breaks the first commandment to have no other gods before the LORD. I was amazed at oft quoted verses in 2 Chronicles, “If my people, who are called by my name, will turn to me … I will heal their land…”. The problem with preaching that as a call to repentance is that it glosses over the fact that Israel, the original audience, never turned to God and yet salvation from God is bigger than they imagined. Often God takes us into desert places not to punish us but to reveal more of himself to us. Then we become complacent because of the great blessing of his presence and the process starts over again. Ezekiel 8 teaches us that God is one who goes into exile with his people, into Babylon. While Babylon has historically been the symbol of apostasy, it is not so here. It is the desert place of discipline where God reveals himself to his people even in the context of great suffering. If that is where Jesus is, then that is where I want to be. I don’t want to be like those Ezekiel rebukes who remain smug at home in Jerusalem, failing to recognize that the Glory of the LORD had left the temple and gone into Babylon with His people whom He disciplined.

Thank you for silence
a most rare and precious jewel
that fills the room with angst and awe.
A subtle gray light growing hot white.

As it illumines, my heart falls faint,
lunging, longing that the bulb would fuse
and in the darkness still and noisy
might I, in my sin, bemuse
its hiddenness and stealth.

But oh God! would you drag me out to Babylon,
for I, your son, am want to turn.
Burst these bonds of religion-steel cast
that bind my heart in pious farce.

At least in Babylon, hands now free to embrace
you, my Lord - to yourself exile me.
My many gods crushed and hubris rent
from these hands that formed countless idols,
hewn from the quarries of Old Man bent
deep in deviance and divorce.

But you, O Lord! have renewed.
You have become my last and lasting word
that redefines and reforms - even suffering.

Oh that Babylon would be mine
if more of you would be had there.
In humiliation might I find the Humble One.

In suffering the dross is dropped.
In the desert place the God of Abraham
would in my heart and soul and mind
be finally unstopped.

Introduction

Have you thought about the way God might use the dry and disillusioned times in your life? Would you be surprised to know that those “wilderness” times in the lives of God’s people are often when He reveals most clearly His glory and power to us.

Abraham

Here, Abraham is called out of his homeland and into the unknown. God calls him out of certainty and into mystery. Between the Land of Promise and Abraham’s homeland spanned the land of God’s Providence where Abraham would grow in faith and love to YHWH, the Lord. God calls us into the wilderlands to sharpen our sight, for the familiar serves but to blunt our spiritual sense. Indeed, it is in the wilderlands that we may see that joy is in the journey with the one who calls.

Israel In Exile

In Ezekiel 8, we see God’s Spirit leaving the Temple at Jerusalem. The people had proven unfaithful and defiled God’s name which they bore as His people. Consequently, the Babylonians had sacked Jerusalem and all of Judah carrying off many Israelites to Babylon. Those who were allowed to remain in Jerusalem, feeling that the point of the Promised Land was the soil of Palestine, mocked their captive kinsmen, “Go far from the Lord; to us this land is given for a possession.” However, we find that God’s response is quite the contrary. He has left the glory of the Temple to be with His people in the wilderlands - to be “a sanctuary to them.”

Jesus Identifies with His People in the Wilderlands

Here Jesus comes from Home town to the wilderlands where John was baptizing. God in His fullest Triune expression is identifying with His people. He binds Himself to those who are wandering in the Wilderness of Sin that they would find refuge in Christ the Incarnate Temple of the Father’s fullest presence. Jesus had come down from the glory of the Heavenly Temple to dwell with His People forever.

Where is God in the midst of pain and dismay? Why he is not far at all. For whether we are at home or abroad, as it were, we may know that in whatever circumstance, He would draw nearer still to His people.