When Moses Didn't Have the Answer with Dr. Simeon Chavel

Three thousand years ago, a man stood in public and prayed out loud. He begged God to act. Then, in the middle of the prayer, he turned and spoke to the people around him. His enemies. His neighbors. Everyone deciding whose side to take. For centuries we have read the Psalms as private conversations between one soul and God. They were never private.Dr. Derek Suderman, Associate Professor at Conrad Grebel University College and author of The Social Audience of Prayer, has spent his career listening for the other voices inside Israel's oldest prayers. He walks through Psalm 6, Psalm 3, Psalm 55, the book of Job, and the moment Jesus cried out the opening line of Psalm 22 from the cross. What he shows reshapes how we worship, how we read the Messiah, and how we respond when someone near us cries out.In this episode you will learn:- Why "go into your closet" in Matthew 6 was never about private prayer- How a simple shift in pronouns reveals who the psalmist is really talking to- Why lament psalms confront enemies and recruit bystanders in an honor and shame culture- What the David headings mean, and why "a psalm of David" may mean "about David"- Why Hannah was accused of being drunk for praying silently- Why God said Job spoke rightly, while his friends never once spoke to God- How Psalm 55 gives a voice to victims the church often leaves unheard- Why quoting the first line of Psalm 22 pointed to the whole psalm- How the passion story turns the conquering king of Psalm 2 into the one who takes violence into his own bodyMeet Our Guest:Dr. Derek Suderman is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Theological Studies at Conrad Grebel University College, University of Waterloo.The Social Audience of Prayer: https://www.amazon.com/dp/164602351XPublisher page (open access edition available): https://www.eisenbrauns.org/books/titles/978-1-64602-351-6.htmlFaculty page: https://uwaterloo.ca/grebel/profiles/w-derek-sudermanAcademia.edu: https://uwaterloo.academia.edu/DerekSudermanStay connected with Johnny:If this conversation added something to your study, like the video and subscribe to the channel. Turn on notifications so you never miss a new guest.YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thejohnnyovaInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/johnnyovaaa/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@johnnyovaWebsite: https://johnnyova.comListen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-dig-in-podcast-w-johnny-ova/id1173741212Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2vWGCsITnb4h5ZMSUCY4T7Check out Johnny's latest book on the Book of Revelation, The Revelation Reset: https://a.co/d/hiUkW8H

Seven cities. Seven congregations. And Jesus opens every message the same way: "I know your works." Some churches get praise. Some get warned. One is so bad Jesus says they make him want to vomit. Dr. Jeffrey Weima, New Testament professor at Calvin Theological Seminary and author of the award-winning commentary The Sermons to the Seven Churches of Revelation, has spent over twenty years walking the ruins of these cities. In this conversation he takes Revelation 2 and 3 out of the end-times charts and puts them back where they were written.Why these seven messages are sermons, not letters. What a Roman coin of a dead boy holding seven stars tells you about Jesus's first words to Ephesus. Why the church of Ephesus did not lose its love for God. Who the synagogue of Satan really was. Why "I will come like a thief" would have hit Sardis harder than any other city. And what the reward of hidden manna meant to believers being pressured into pagan temple meals. This is the seven churches read with an Old Testament ear and a first-century ear, and it changes who these messages are aimed at.In this episode you will learn:- Why Revelation 2 and 3 are prophetic sermons rather than letters, and the fixed structure behind each one- How the missing commendation for Laodicea tells you it was the worst church of the seven- How Roman emperors used coins as propaganda, and what the seven stars in Jesus's hand were answering- Why the "abandoned love" in Ephesus was love for one another, not love for Christ- What the synagogue of Satan meant in Smyrna and Philadelphia and how persecution changed after AD 70- Why the imperial cult and pagan temple meals were the real pressure on these churches- What "where Satan has his throne" meant for the believers in Pergamum- Why the fall of the "unconquerable" acropolis at Sardis sits behind Jesus's thief warning- What "to the one who overcomes" means in Greek and why the reward always fits the temptation- Why these sermons were written to compromising Christians, not persecuted heroes, and what that means for the church todayMeet Our Guest:Dr. Jeffrey A. D. Weima holds the Deppe Family Doctoral Chair in New Testament at Calvin Theological Seminary and leads biblical study tours to Turkey, Greece, Israel, and Italy.The Sermons to the Seven Churches of Revelation: A Commentary and Guide: https://bakeracademic.com/p/The-Sermons-to-the-Seven-Churches-of-Revelation-Jeffrey-A-D-Weima/2608421-2 Thessalonians (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament)Paul the Ancient Letter Writer: An Introduction to Epistolary Analysis- https://a.co/d/0bNRJMCjWebsite and study tours: https://www.jeffreyweima.comStay in touch with Johnny:Website: johnnyova.comYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thejohnnyovaCheck out Johnny's latest book on the Book of Revelation: https://a.co/d/hiUkW8H

A man curses the name of Yahweh in the middle of a camp fight. Another is caught gathering wood on the Sabbath. A group of Israelites, unclean from contact with the dead, stand outside the Passover and ask why they should be shut out. Four times in the Torah a situation arises that the law has not answered, and four times the lawgiver himself does not rule on it. Moses asks. Dr. Simeon Chavel of the University of Chicago Divinity School spent years tracing those four stories, and what he found led him somewhere most readers never expect.His argument in this conversation is direct. The Torah's laws were not written as a constitution for daily life. They were written to answer a different question entirely: if you are a people, what is your God like, and what would your God want? Only centuries later did readers begin taking the text as binding instruction, and Dr. Chavel walks through what changed when they did. We cover Hammurabi's monument and why its laws were never enforced, why the blasphemer is given an Egyptian father, why "an eye for an eye" reads as poetic justice rather than courtroom procedure, why Moses functions as a megaphone instead of a judge, and how the book of Ruth quietly fuses three unrelated laws into a single legal argument that exists nowhere in the Torah itself. Whether you land where he lands or not, this conversation will change how you read Leviticus and Numbers.In this episode you will learn:- Why the Torah is the only ancient literature that tells the story of an entire people and their God- How Hammurabi's law code functioned as reputation and monument rather than enforced law- What the "oracular novella" is and why four Torah stories belong in their own category- Why the blasphemer's parentage is in the text at all- How "an eye for an eye" works as symmetrical punishment and what that reveals about the image of God- What the second Passover teaches about law expanding to include people rather than exclude them- The real debate over what Moses did not already know in the wood gathering story- Why ancient hierarchy explains penalties that feel harsh to modern readers- Why Moses is never a judge in the Priestly writing, only an amplifier- How the book of Ruth combines land redemption, levirate marriage, and inheritance in a way the Torah never does- When scribes shifted from revising texts freely to copying them with absolute rigidity, and why that shift produced sectarianism- How to read the laws of Leviticus and Numbers without skipping past themMeet Our Guest:Dr. Simeon Chavel is Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at the University of Chicago Divinity School, with a PhD in Biblical Studies from The Hebrew University.Faculty page: https://divinity.uchicago.edu/directory/simeon-chavelBook, Oracular Law and Priestly Historiography in the Torah (Mohr Siebeck, 2014), ISBN 978-3161533419The Bible Sleuth blog on biblical poetry: https://voices.uchicago.edu/sbchavel/Articles at TheTorah.com: https://www.thetorah.com/author/simeon-chavelStay in touch with Johnny:Website: https://johnnyova.comYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thejohnnyovaCheck out Johnny's latest book on the Book of Revelation: https://a.co/d/hiUkW8H

In ancient Israel, a man with four wives did not have one family. He had four. Four mothers, four sets of children, one roof, one table, and one inheritance worth fighting over. Dr. Cynthia Chapman of Oberlin College has spent more than twenty years recovering the kinship unit buried inside the biblical household: the house of the mother. Read the stories through it and they stop sounding like family drama. They start sounding like a fight for territory.We walk through Dinah and the brothers who avenged her, Joseph weeping at the sight of Benjamin, Absalom's two-year wait to strike Amnon, and Abraham sending seven sons east so Isaac could inherit everything. Then the conversation turns to Ruth, a Moabite widow who should have stayed at the edge of the field, and Boaz, the man who sat her at his table and fed her with his own hand. It ends at one more table, where Jesus shares bread with his disciples and names the one who will betray him.In this episode you will learn:- What an Iron Age Israelite house actually looked like, animals included- Why the biblical genealogies leave out younger sons, daughters, mothers, and adopted children- What the house of the mother is and where it shows up in Scripture- How full siblings formed alliances inside households with multiple wives- Why Simeon, Levi, and Absalom were the ones who took revenge- How inheritance and the firstborn's double portion fueled the conflict- How land, labor, and shared bread made Ruth part of the family- How Jesus and the early church reframed kinship as a new householdMeet Our Guest:Dr. Cynthia Chapman is the Adelia A. F. Johnston and Harry Thomas Frank Professor of Religion at Oberlin College and holds a ThD from Harvard Divinity School.The House of the Mother: https://www.amazon.com/House-Mother-Maternal-Narrative-Reference/dp/0300197942The Gendered Language of Warfare in the Israelite-Assyrian Encounter: https://hmane.harvard.edu/publications/gendered-language-warfare-israelite-assyrian-encounterThe Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction (with Michael D. Coogan): https://global.oup.com/ushe/product/the-old-testament-9780197768174The World of Biblical Israel (The Great Courses): https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/cynthia-r-chapmanFaculty Page: https://www.oberlin.edu/cindy-chapmanStay in touch with Johnny:Website: johnnyova.comYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thejohnnyovaCheck out Johnny's latest book on the Book of Revelation: https://a.co/d/hiUkW8H

Genesis 1 is not just the story of how the world began. It is the story of a house being built. In this episode, Old Testament scholar Dr. L. Michael Morales walks through the hidden architecture of Scripture, from the Garden of Eden as the first sanctuary, to Adam as its priest, to the moment humanity is driven out to the east and cherubim block the way back. From there the whole Bible becomes the story of a locked door, and one question runs underneath every book: who shall ascend the mountain of the Lord?Dr. Morales, author of Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord? and the award-winning Exodus Old and New, explains why the tabernacle was built as a mountain, why Leviticus sits at the center of the Torah, and what the Day of Atonement was actually dramatizing every year. Then the conversation moves to Solomon's temple, the prophets' promise of a new exodus, the Word who tabernacled among us in John's gospel, and two angels sitting at either end of an empty tomb. This is the pattern most Christians have never been shown, and once it is in place the entire Bible reads differently.In this episode you will learn:- Why the cosmos in Genesis 1 is described as a temple and Eden as its holy of holies- What Adam's job description in Genesis 2 has in common with the Levites- Why "east" means away from God, and what that means for Cain, Babel, and Lot- The one question that holds the entire Pentateuch together- Why the tabernacle was designed as a portable Mount Sinai- How the high priest reversed Adam's exile on the Day of Atonement- Why God's glory filling the tabernacle was only a partial return to Eden- Why Solomon's temple was never meant to be the final answer- What it means that Jesus is both the dwelling place of God and the way to God- Why the two angels at the empty tomb point straight back to the ark and to Eden- What it means that the gathered church is now the temple of GodMeet Our Guest:Dr. L. Michael Morales is professor of biblical studies at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and holds a PhD from the University of Bristol.Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord? A Biblical Theology of the Book of Leviticus: https://accs.ivpress.com/who-shall-ascend-the-mountain-of-the-lordExodus Old and New: A Biblical Theology of Redemption: https://www.ivpress.com/exodus-old-and-newThe Tabernacle Pre-Figured: Cosmic Mountain Ideology in Genesis and Exodus: https://a.co/d/0gSh2I8WNumbers 1-19 and Numbers 20-36 (Apollos Old Testament Commentary): https://a.co/d/0g9gHFvTGreenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary: https://www.gpts.edu/ Stay in touch with Johnny:Website: johnnyova.comYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thejohnnyovaCheck out Johnny's latest book on the Book of Revelation: https://a.co/d/hiUkW8H

Most of us were taught that everything went wrong in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve ate the fruit. Dr. Desmond Alexander says the collapse happened before that. Adam and Eve were commissioned to rule over the creatures of the earth, and the serpent is identified in the Hebrew text as an animal of the field, meaning it belonged outside the garden entirely. When it came in, they did not subdue it. They agreed with it. In that moment they handed the serpent the authority God had given them, and humanity came under its control. Johnny sits down with one of the most respected voices in biblical theology to trace what that failure set in motion and where the story goes from there.Then the conversation takes a turn nobody saw coming. Dr. Alexander's own PhD supervisor was Gordon Wenham, the scholar whose work launched the widely taught idea that Eden was the first temple. On this episode, Dr. Alexander says he has moved away from that position. He explains why he no longer believes Eden was a sanctuary where God dwelt, why the temple may have functioned as a barrier rather than a bridge, and why the story of Scripture is not God's presence retreating from the earth but God's presence becoming more real on it. From the failure in the garden, to Babel, to the tabernacle as the footstool of heaven, to Pentecost, to a city at the end of Revelation with no temple in it at all, this is the storyline of the Bible told by a scholar who has spent his career mapping it.In this episode you will learn:Why the first act of rebellion was a failure to rule, not a piece of fruitWhat the Hebrew text reveals about the serpent being an animal of the fieldWhy Dr. Alexander has changed his position on Eden being the first templeThe difference between the high priest, the priests, and the Levites, and why blurring them distorts our reading of AdamHow the same guarding language used for Adam is later applied to the cherubimWhy Babel is the counterfeit of the city God intended humanity to buildHow the tabernacle connects heaven and earth as the footstool of the divine throneWhy the wilderness temptation of Jesus is a direct answer to what happened in the gardenHow Pentecost mirrors the glory filling the tabernacle in Exodus 40Why the Bible ends in a garden city instead of a garden, and what that says about God's original intentMeet Our Guest:Dr. T. Desmond Alexander is senior research fellow in Biblical Studies at Union Theological College in Belfast and former chair of the Tyndale Fellowship for Biblical and Theological Research.From Eden to the New Jerusalem: An Introduction to Biblical TheologyFrom Paradise to the Promised Land: An Introduction to the PentateuchThe City of God and the Goal of CreationFace to Face with God: A Biblical Theology of Christ as PriestApollos Old Testament Commentary: ExodusAll books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B00384ZZHSStay in touch with Johnny:Website: johnnyova.comYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thejohnnyovaCheck out Johnny's latest book on the Book of Revelation: https://a.co/d/hiUkW8H

A nation of former slaves builds a tent in the desert, and the Bible gives it more space than the creation of the universe. Inside that tent, the God of heaven chooses to dwell in the middle of a camp. And at the entrance, an endless river of blood. Bulls, goats, lambs, day after day, year after year. Then the prophets speak, and what they say is shocking. God desires mercy, not sacrifice. He takes no delight in burnt offerings. So did the God who commanded the altar ever actually want what happened on it?In this episode, Johnny Ova sits down with Dr. Nathan MacDonald, Professor of the Interpretation of the Old Testament at the University of Cambridge and one of the world's leading scholars on Israelite worship, the priesthood, and the Tabernacle. Together they walk into the tent at the center of Israel's story: what sacrifice actually accomplished, why the presence of God was both a gift and a danger, what really happened when a worshiper laid his hand on the animal, and how the family of Aaron quietly rose from cultic servants to the most powerful men in the nation.In this episode you will learn:Why sacrifice feels so alien to modern readers, and what it meant in a world where meat never came neatly packagedWhat Israel's neighbors believed sacrifice accomplished, and how Israel's understanding was differentWhy the prophets seem to reject the very sacrifices the Torah commandsThe two names of the Tabernacle, and how each one unlocks what it was forWhy the Bible spends more time on this tent than on creation itselfWhat the deaths of Nadab, Abihu, and Uzzah reveal about holinessWhat laying a hand on the animal may have actually meantThe different types of sacrifices, and what each one was designed to doHow Aaron's family went from cultic servants to ruling the nationThe hidden rivalry between the priests and the Levites buried in the textMeet Our Guest:Dr. Nathan MacDonald is Professor of the Interpretation of the Old Testament at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of St John's College.The Making of the Tabernacle and the Construction of Priestly Hegemony: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-making-of-the-tabernacle-and-the-construction-of-priestly-hegemony-9780198813859Priestly Rule: Polemic and Biblical Interpretation in Ezekiel 44Deuteronomy and the Meaning of MonotheismNot Bread Alone: The Uses of Food in the Old TestamentStay in touch with Johnny:Website: johnnyova.comYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thejohnnyovaCheck out Johnny's latest book on the Book of Revelation: https://a.co/d/hiUkW8H

Most Christians think they know Satan's story. A proud angel named Lucifer who rebelled against God, was thrown out of heaven, and slithered into the Garden to destroy mankind. There's just one problem. That story isn't in the Bible. In this episode, Johnny sits down with Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly, Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA, who has spent more than fifty years tracing how the satan of Scripture was rewritten into the Devil we know today.Dr. Kelly, the world's foremost "diabolologian," takes us to the three places the Old Testament actually mentions a supernatural satan, including a comedy scene with a talking donkey that translators quietly erased. He reveals a satan who stands in God's own throne room, works as heaven's tester and accuser, and never once switches sides. Then he names names: the church father who fused Satan with the serpent of Eden, the scholar who turned a taunt against the king of Babylon into Lucifer's origin story, and the poets who built the Devil an empire the Bible never gave him.In this episode you will learn:- The three places a supernatural satan actually appears in the Old Testament- The Balaam's donkey story, the Bible's funniest scene, and how "satan" vanished from it in translation- Why the satan in Job works for God, and why Job never knows he exists- How Justin Martyr's wordplay fused Satan with the serpent in Eden- How Origen turned Isaiah's king of Babylon into the fallen Lucifer- Why Dante's Satan contradicts itself, and how Milton made the Devil unforgettable- What Satan's real job was: obstacle, tester, and accuser in God's court- Dr. Kelly's four word conclusion after fifty years of researchAbout Our Guest:Dr. Henry Ansgar Kelly is Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA, former director of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and the author of numerous books on the history of Satan, the Bible, and the medieval church.Satan: A Biography: https://www.amazon.com/Satan-Biography-Henry-Ansgar-Kelly/dp/0521604028Satan in the Bible, God's Minister of Justice: https://www.amazon.com/Satan-Bible-Gods-Minister-Justice/dp/1532613318Faculty page: https://english.ucla.edu/people-faculty/kelly-henry-a/Stay Connected:Website: Johnnyova.comYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/@thejohnnyovaThe Revelation Reset: https://a.co/d/hiUkW8H

Everyone talks about the four hundred silent years between the Old and New Testaments. Dr. Matthias Henze of Rice University came on the Dig In Podcast to say something that changes the way you read your Bible. Those years were never silent. In the gap between Malachi and Matthew, Jewish writers produced an entire library, and Jesus and his first followers knew it well.In this conversation we open that lost world. Henze walks through the Apocrypha, the Pseudepigrapha, and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and shows why the New Testament is filled with things the Old Testament never prepared you for. Synagogues, rabbis, Pharisees, a densely populated world of angels and demons, a coming Messiah, and the resurrection of the dead. None of it appears in the Hebrew Bible the way it does in the Gospels. Henze traces where these ideas actually came from, and lands on a single verse in Luke 4 that stops the whole synagogue cold once you know what the audience already believed.Dr. Matthias Henze is the Isla Carroll and Percy E. Turner Professor of Hebrew Bible and Early Judaism at Rice University, where he founded the Program in Jewish Studies. He holds a Ph.D. from Harvard and is one of the few scholars equally at home in Second Temple Judaism and the New Testament. He is the author of Mind the Gap: How the Jewish Writings between the Old and New Testament Help Us Understand Jesus.In this episode you will learn:- Why the "silent years" between the Testaments were actually a time of explosive Jewish creativity- What the Apocrypha, the Pseudepigrapha, and the Dead Sea Scrolls really are and how they differ from one another- Why these books were left out of the Bible, and who narrowed the field after the Temple fell in 70 AD- Where the expectation of a coming Messiah came from, and the Hebrew texts that were later read messianically- How angels, demons, and Satan developed from near silence in the Old Testament into the crowded spiritual world of the Gospels- How the resurrection of the dead grew from a metaphor for exile in Ezekiel into a belief Jesus and Paul could simply assume- What books like 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra reveal about how Judaism wrestled with the destruction of the Temple- The verse in Luke 4 that carries far more weight than most readers ever noticeGuest:Dr. Matthias HenzeBook: Mind the Gap: How the Jewish Writings between the Old and New Testament Help Us Understand Jesus- https://a.co/d/0bMM077jWebsite: matthiashenze.netRice University, Program in Jewish StudiesStay Connected:Website- Johnnyova.comYoutube- https://www.youtube.com/@thejohnnyovaThe Revelation Reset: https://a.co/d/hiUkW8H

Two of the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament mention Satan. Nineteen of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament do. Something happened in between, and almost nobody in the pews knows what it was. In this episode, Dr. Ryan Stokes takes us back to the oldest texts, where the word we translate as Satan is not a name at all. It is a noun. And it does not mean accuser. It means attacker. Executioner. The one God sends to carry out judgment.That changes everything downstream. In Numbers 22, the figure standing in Balaam's road with a drawn sword, described with this exact word, is the angel of the Lord himself. In Zechariah 3, the scene everyone calls a courtroom may not be a trial at all, but a priest in filthy clothes about to be killed for entering God's presence wrong. And in Job, for the first time in recorded history, this executioner turns on an innocent man. Dr. Stokes walks us through how the figure who once served Yahweh became the enemy of Yahweh, and he does it without flinching from the hard questions or overselling what the evidence can bear.Dr. Ryan Stokes is Associate Dean of the School of Biblical and Theological Studies at Carson-Newman University, where he teaches on the Bible and its ancient Jewish context. He earned his Ph.D. at Yale University and previously taught at Yale Divinity School, Western Kentucky University, and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the author of The Satan: How God's Executioner Became the Enemy, published by Eerdmans and translated into Italian. He is also an ordained Baptist minister who has pastored churches in Connecticut and Kentucky.In this episode you will learn:Why the Hebrew word satan is not a name and never means "prosecuting attorney" in the Old TestamentHow the angel of the Lord is called a satan in Numbers 22 while carrying out God's judgmentWhy Zechariah 3 may be an execution scene rather than a courtroom, and how Isaiah 6 unlocks itThe case that the Satan material in Job 1 and 2 was added to an older version of the storyWhy Job's friends never mention Satan even once, and what that silence suggestsHow the Book of Jubilees and Second Temple Judaism reshaped the figure into the Prince of MastemaWhat Paul actually means when he tells the Corinthians to hand a man over to SatanWhy Revelation 12 is a defeat story rather than an origin story, and how the victory is wonWhy Dr. Stokes says the Satan that should frighten you is not God's enemy but God's agentWhat we lose when we flatten this figure into a cartoon villain with horns and a pitchforkGuest:Dr. Ryan StokesThe Satan: How God's Executioner Became the Enemy (Eerdmans): https://www.amazon.com/Satan-Gods-Executioner-Became-Enemy/dp/0802872506Faculty page: https://www.cn.edu/people/ryan-stokes/Published articles and essays: https://cn.academia.edu/RyanStokesStay Connected:Johnnyova.comhttps://www.youtube.com/@thejohnnyovaThe Revelation Reset: https://a.co/d/hiUkW8H