Sep 24, 2026 · 53 min · 12 segments
*Hésed* - Understanding God’s relation to humanity in the Old Testament In our quest to understand the old testament scripture, we tend to look for themes around which we can plot the narrative, like…
Jennifer MathenyGuest
Kenny InnesHost
So in this long journey of Old Testament studies that you've gone on, you will have come across many different attempts to try to find some kind of theme that grounds or holds all of the Old Testament together.
Yes, I think the many attempts demonstrate just how much we want to wrap our heads around the complexity of the Old Testament and the Hebrew Scriptures.
And I think sometimes if we can find one theme or five points, it just sort of seems easier to teach and preach in some ways.
But of course, some of the struggle there is when we reduce the complexity to a theme or central idea, it can help wrap our heads around the expansiveness of the Old Testament and offer a starting point.
But sometimes these themes and organizing principles, while useful, can have some reductionistic, I think, tendencies, especially with such a broad range of complex material.
And that's been some of the critique of a lot of scholars with certain themes.
So much as you read the Old Testament is how can it, you know, be reduced to this one image or one theme.
There's an Old Testament scholar at Duke who I really appreciate his work, Brent Strawn.
It's usually my very first class when I teach Christian scriptures, the Old Testament version, I do the Genesis through Kings.
And in it, he uses this linguistic metaphor, like pigeonized language and how two cultures will come together that speak different languages and kind of create this other language that's very reduced.
And so, and I won't get into his whole linguistic analogy, but I think This metaphor really helps us see, like, we're trying to reduce it to understand it, but then we lose, like, you know, like, when there's only a few words, like, how could you really get into Dostoevsky or, you know, the Russian language or things like that, right? And so, yeah, so I think that the theme is, like, we want that, but at the same time, like, what do we do with the complexity of the Old Testament? So anyway, so I think it's helpful, but definitely, yeah, it just needs some, a little bit different engagement, I think.
I was once talking a little bit with Brent on social media and I cited his book and I said, I really loved Brent's book, The Old Testament is Dead.
Like Will Kynes has this great book, Wisdom, the Death of Wisdom literature or something.
It's like, this is how we get us talking, right? It's like something is dying, you know?
So in this long journey of Old Testament studies that you've gone on, you will have come across many different attempts to try to find some kind of theme that grounds or holds all of the Old Testament together.
Yes, I think the many attempts demonstrate just how much we want to wrap our heads around the complexity of the Old Testament and the Hebrew Scriptures.
And I think sometimes if we can find one theme or five points, it just sort of seems easier to teach and preach in some ways.
But of course, some of the struggle there is when we reduce the complexity to a theme or central idea, it can help wrap our heads around the expansiveness of the Old Testament and offer a starting point.
But sometimes these themes and organizing principles, while useful, can have some reductionistic, I think, tendencies, especially with such a broad range of complex material.
And that's been some of the critique of a lot of scholars with certain themes.
So much as you read the Old Testament is how can it, you know, be reduced to this one image or one theme.
There's an Old Testament scholar at Duke who I really appreciate his work, Brent Strawn.
It's usually my very first class when I teach Christian scriptures, the Old Testament version, I do the Genesis through Kings.
And in it, he uses this linguistic metaphor, like pigeonized language and how two cultures will come together that speak different languages and kind of create this other language that's very reduced.
And so, and I won't get into his whole linguistic analogy, but I think This metaphor really helps us see, like, we're trying to reduce it to understand it, but then we lose, like, you know, like, when there's only a few words, like, how could you really get into Dostoevsky or, you know, the Russian language or things like that, right? And so, yeah, so I think that the theme is, like, we want that, but at the same time, like, what do we do with the complexity of the Old Testament? So anyway, so I think it's helpful, but definitely, yeah, it just needs some, a little bit different engagement, I think.
I was once talking a little bit with Brent on social media and I cited his book and I said, I really loved Brent's book, The Old Testament is Dead.
Like Will Kynes has this great book, Wisdom, the Death of Wisdom literature or something.
It's like, this is how we get us talking, right? It's like something is dying, you know?
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