Peter Enns on Reading Exodus (2): Bridging Contexts

Peter Enns, Exodus, NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000).

The Introduction to this commentary is available online as a pdf download.

Peter Enns begins his commentary on Exodus by reflecting on the three interpretive steps utilised in the NIV Application Commentary series:

(1) Original meaning
(2) Bridging contexts
(3) Contemporary significance

On the bridging contexts step, Enns argues for a distinctively Christian interpretation of the Old Testament, one which knows the end of the story – Christ’s resurrection – and can read Israel’s story in that light. He says:

‘The Old Testament is not an ancient text with which we have to struggle somehow to find creative ways to bring its timeless principles into our world. God has already “interpreted” the Old Testament by raising Christ from the dead’ (27).

The New Testament writers interpret the entire Old Testament – not just isolated texts here and there – from this point of view (which, says Enns, needs to be taken into account when the writers quote an Old Testament passage in a way that doesn’t seem to fit). So, in 2 Corinthians 6:2, Paul can cite Isaiah 49:8 (‘… in the day of salvation I heard you…’) and understand that what originally applied to the Judean exiles in the sixth century BC ‘was merely a prelude to the fullness of God’s salvation as seen in the cross and the empty tomb’ (27). Christ can be seen in Isaiah 49:8 only by ‘standing at the end of the story’ (28).

Hence:

‘This, then, is how the contexts between the Old Testament and our contemporary setting will be bridged in this commentary – not by seeking timeless moral principles in the Old Testament and then seeking to apply them to our lives, but rather by asking ourselves what the Old Testament tells us about the nature of God (i.e., how he acts, what he expects of his people) and then seeing how these things can be understood in light of the gospel… What God has done in Christ, in other words, is the proper context within which we interpret the Old Testament’ (28).

This doesn’t make interpretation easy, or turn Jesus into a magic key to unlock passages. Nor, says Enns, is it necessary to find Jesus in every verse. There are explicit links between Christ and the tabernacle (and temple), as (for instance) John 1-2 makes clear, but this ‘does not mean that we have to find Christological significance in every detail in the tabernacle’ (29).

Enns notes that he sometimes does not supply a separate section on original meaning, bridging contexts, and contemporary significance for each passage in Exodus: each of the plagues, for instance, does not need to be individually bridged to our setting. The nature of the book of Exodus ‘lends itself to drawing theological implications from larger blocks of text’ (30).