Bible and Sword: On the Edge of Prophecy

I am currently reading, Bible and Sword, by Barbara W. Tuchman. It is an exposition on England and its relationship to Palestine. She covers the time from the Bronze Age to the time of the Balfour Declaration which paved the way for a Jewish state. It is a most interesting discussion of how the English took an interest in that small section of the earth that we as Christians would designate the Land of Promise.

In this week’s Sabbath Thought it is my goal to note one particular section of the book which I found to be amazing. What I found to be amazing was that there was a time when a group of Englishmen sought to literally implement God’s laws, judgments and statutes on a national scale.

In Chapter VII titled, “On the Edge of Prophecy: Puritan England and the Hope of Israel”, she gives an overview of the Puritans. For most people in modern America and in England, the Puritans are seen as “the lunatic fringe.”

She states, “With the Puritans came an invasion of Hebraism transmitted through the Old Testament, but distorted by the effort to apply to post-Renaissance England the ethics, laws and manners native to a Middle Eastern people of more than two thousand years earlier. In their devotion to chapter and verse of the Hebrew testaments the Puritans, undaunted by the mental jump of two millennia, adapted to themselves the thoughts of tribal herdsmen groping their way out of idolatry toward monotheism in the time of Abraham, or of slaves triumphing over Pharaoh in the time of the Exodus, or of warriors carving the frontiers of a new state in the time of Saul and David. . . .It did not matter that it covered a period, from Abraham to Maccabaeus, of nearly a millennium and a half; the Puritans swallowed the whole with equal zeal.”

“It was not a narrative ideally suited for transplanting word for word, as principle and precedent, to seventeenth-century England. But that was what the Puritans attempted” (Bible and Sword, Barbara W. Tuchman, page 108).

In other words, she sees the Puritans taking the teachings of the Old Testament and seeking to implement them in their time. In other words, they were seeking to take the scriptures and apply them in everyday life. They were seeking to apply God’s word to the whole of England.

There is actually a specific year in which the Puritans sought to bring about implementation of this lofty goal. “For in the year 1653, with the calling of the Barebone Parliament, the “remarkablest” of the modern world according to Carlyle, the peak of Hebraism was reached. The little band of stern, impassioned men hand-picked by Cromwell convened on July 4, 1653 with the set purpose of so remaking England’s constitution as to put into actual practice Mosaic Law and the pristine principles of Jesus. On the Exchange, in the courts, in the markets, the Englishman was willy-nilly going to love his neighbor as himself. It was, says Lord Morley in his life of Cromwell, an attempt “to found a civil society on the literal words of Scripture . . .the high water mark of the biblical politics of the time.

“Cromwell himself was inspired by the move and in his opening speech to the Little Parliament he seemed almost carried away by a vision of himself bringing, like Elijah, a nation back to God. “Truly you are called by God as Judah was to rule with Him and for Him. . .You are at the edge of Promises and Prophecies, he went on, and quoted the Sixty-eighth Psalm: “There it prophesies that ‘He shall bring His people again from the depths of the Sea’ as He once led Israel through the Red Sea. And it may be, as some think, God will bring the Jews home to their station, ‘from the isles of the sea’” And he rose in eloquence, quoting psalms and prophets in every other sentence and assuring his hearers that the triumph promised by the Sixty-eighth Psalm to God’s people of old would be realized by the Commonwealth, God’s people now on earth” (Tuchman, pp. 122-123).

The author is incredulous that the Puritans could not see that the literal implementation of the ancient word of God, formed and shaped over 1500 years, was an impossibility. For her, the Bible applied in its time only, but had little or no application beyond that time. The Bible is ancient and has little modern application.

Was there any positive outcome of this zeal for God’s word among the Puritans? Matthew Arnold wrote of the impact of the Puritans and their zeal to obey the law. Their zeal he says, “left a lasting imprint on the nation.”

“Our race,” Arnold declared, “has yet (and a great part of its strength lies here)…..a strong share of the assuredness, the tenacity, the intensity of the Hebrews. This turn manifested itself in Puritanism and has had a great share in shaping our history for the last two hundred years” (Tuchman, page 113).

From her interpretation of the Puritans, I have two observations.

First, is it really so unrealistic to apply the word of God on a day to day basis? She sees such application as impossible, but is it? What would happen if a nation undertook a full implementation of the word of God? The outcome would be revolutionary as the prophet Isaiah clearly stated.

Isaiah 2:3-4, ““Many people shall come and say, "Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; He will teach us His ways, and we shall walk in His paths." For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, and rebuke many people; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”

The second observation is that England was impacted positively by the Puritan effort to implement the principles of the Bible. It was not a trend that lasted, but it paved the way for freedom, parliamentary government, liberty, the rule of law and many other positive results in the English speaking world.

The Puritans didn’t fully understand the Bible, but they did understand that God’s way of life is to apply to a nation and our individual lives. Their approach was heavy-handed at times and at times misguided, but what they hoped for will be a reality when Jesus Christ returns.

Have a happy Sabbath,

Gary Smith