Hospitality - How important is it in the Bible?

In Sunday school this morning we read chapter 18 of Genesis in which 3 angels are taken under Abraham's roof in an act of hospitality, then 2 of those angels are taken into Lot's hospitality, but there the residents of Sodom demand that Lot hand them over for sex. The conclusion among the folks in the room this morning was that Sodom's sin was homosexuality. When I brought up that hospitality was certainly at issue as well, they were fairly uncomfortable with that -- apparently because the hospitality argument has been used by gays to prove that homosexuality isn't an issue in the Bible but hospitality is. The leader of the discussion stated that the homosexuality was the far more serious grievance because there is no where in the Bible where lack of hospitality is stated to be a grievous sin and he does find such verses regarding homosexuality. Well, that made my ears prick right up because any time someone makes a global statement regarding what the Bible does or doesn't say, and I can't think of examples off the top of my head that would agree with the statement, I figure that's when it's time to start digging.

So I plan to do a little digging on hospitality. I'm not going to dig at all into the homosexuality question. That's been hashed and rehashed umpteen times and if you're interested in following that route, there are lots of resources out there that lean every different direction of the compass. (Although I would be curious to know the number of times hospitality is addressed either positively or negatively compared to the number of times homosexuality is addressed in the Bible. But that'll take a bit of time to tally and I'm not up for that right now.) But when I searched for pages online regarding lack of hospitality being a sin, I inevitably came up against posts that focused on this story of Sodom and they used their argument not to focus on hospitality but to focus on homosexuality. (Which goes back to the hashing and rehashing thing and doesn't really focus on the hospitality issue at all to my satisfaction.)

I do believe that lack of hospitality is a sin - even a grievous sin. And I believe there is plenty of evidence in Scriptures to prove that point. I'll start with some of the positive admonitions to be hospitable... just to set a foundation.



Romans 12:13 Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.

Hebrews 13:2 Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.

1 Peter 4:9 Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling.

Stories that reference hospitality positively:
* Pharoah granted hospitality to Abram and Sarai and all their household during a time of famine.
* Melchizedek showed hospitality to Abram after the rescue of Lot by bring out bread and wine for him.
* Abraham and Sarah showed hospitality to the 3 angels that came to tell them about the impending destruction of Sodom.
* Abraham's servant was shown hospitality when he went to look for a wife for Isaac. (OK, so Laban wasn't really acting honorably since he took the servant in when he saw the jewelry that was being offered, but it's still an example.)
* Joseph had his brothers shown hospitality when they came down to Egypt to get food during a famine.

* The story of the Good Samaritan who showed hospitality to his enemy.
* The parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25:34-43, in which those who took care of the needy, showing them hospitality and meeting their needs, were the ones let into the kingdom.
* Simon Peter's mother-in-law showed hospitality to Jesus immediately after he had cured her from being sick. Girlfriend didn't even take time to recover. She just hopped up and started rolling out the bread dough.

I'm sure there are a jillion more examples in both the Old and New Testaments, but I think the point is clear... showing hospitality is a good thing. Duh. We all knew that. But now we really know that.

So what about not showing hospitality? Not so bad? Let's see.

The first example that I can think of was after Adam and Eve gorged themselves on the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. Usually they hosted a "walk with the creator" event each day. But after their repast, God had to go looking for them. They not only failed at their daily act of hospitality, but it was a direct result of their sin and showed an immediate break in their relationship with God.

When the Israelites were escaping from Egypt they wanted to pass through Edom (the descendants of Esau) but the Edomites said, "No way Mosé." The Moabites said the same thing and Israel had to skirt around both nations. They got their come uppance later under Saul when they laid waste to those countries and subjugated them. The Edomites refused to show hospitality to the Israelites despite the fact that they were relatives (distantly) and they later paid the price for that. Ditto with the Moabites and the Ammonites and a few others.

The story of the Levite and his concubine, found in Judges 19, parallels the Genesis 19 story remarkably closely, only in this story the Levite tossed his concubine out for the men to do as they pleased. They basically raped her to death. The Levite hauled her all the way back home, cut her into pieces and mailed them off to all of the tribes of Israel to show them what the Benjamites had done to his property. (There are all sorts of issues with this story. It is my most detested story in the Bible. But I'm only going to look at the hospitality issue here. I think it's fair to say that the Benjamites hospitality absolutely sucked. And the rest of the Israelites went to war with them over it. Twenty five thousand Benjamites died in the battle and their towns were laid waste.)

In 1 Samuel 25, when David was running away from Saul-gone-lunatic (talk about lack of hospitality), they came to the land of a man named Nabal. David demanded hospitality from him but Nabal was a big fat turd and refused. His wife, Abigail, was horrified by her husband's response, so she prepared a bunch of food and provided for David and his army. David had planned on killing all of the men in Nabal's household for their lack of hospitality, but because of Abigail's quick actions, he spared them. But Nabal didn't escape judgement. God himself struck Nabal dead 10 days later.

And in Matthew 10, when Jesus sent the disciples out to spread the good news, he told them, "If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet." In other words, if they're not going to receive you hospitably, have nothing to do with them.

These examples make it pretty clear that hospitality is important, to the point that God even killed a man who refused hospitality to others. I haven't found a verse that states, "Lack of hospitality is a sin," or even "bad hospitality is a sin." But I think it's safe to say that it's a big deal in God's eyes. If God punished Nabal with death because he failed to show hospitality, then there's something here that we need to pay attention to. And the fact that hospitality in both positive and negative forms is described in Genesis 19, and that those who showed hospitality are spared and those who didn't were incinerated, indicates to me that no matter what God is saying about homosexuality in this chapter, he's also making a very clear statement against the people of Sodom in terms of their aggressively anti-hospitality stance.

Made in the Image vs. Made as the Image

Rob and I have been reading a book together by Henri Blocher called In the Beginning: The Opening Chapters of Genesis. Last night we read through a section on mankind being made in the image of God vs. being made as an image of God. It was an incredibly interesting bit of reading. Blocher argues that the article b^e, as opposed to k^e, would better be translated "as" than "in." (I don't know Hebrew and I couldn't find either preposition when I used BlueLetterBible. So I've got to trust him on this. The NIV and several other translations roll with "in".)

Blocher uses a verse from Paul's writing to support his argument (1 Corinthians 11:7), "man is the image and glory of God." Blocher says, "If man is the image, the emphasis falls on his situation." (emphasis his) And later, "Mankind is to be the created representation of his Creator, and here on earth, as it were, the images of the divine Glory, that Glory which mankind both reflects and beholds."

Rob and I talked quite a bit about the distinction between "in" and "as." The way I see it, it's similar to the difference between being an ambassador vs. being a photograph of an important person. A picture/icon is often elevated as if it, in it's own right, is important because of the image it bears. But an ambassador is considered important only because of the person being represented. The real value is in the person being represented, not in the person who is doing the representing. It's a subtle distinction brought out in only one little teeny word, but I think it's an important distinction to mark. We are not made in God's image in the sense that we are important because we are little gods. We are made as God's image and are important only because of who we represent, and it is he who bears the true importance.

Blocher continues on to say, "If mankind is the image, does not the prohibition of making images of God appear in a new light? God himself has placed his image in his cosmic sanctuary, and he wishes due homage to be paid to it by the service of mankind, the neighbour created in his image. And Christ joins the first and great commandment with the second which 'is like it' -- 'You shall love the Lord your God... you shall love your neighbour...'; surely the logic behind that is the likeness between God and his image."

And then Blocher blows my mind away with what follows, "We can go even further. There is perhaps a polemical thrust to the Genesis declaration, not only against idols of wood, stone or metal, but also against the limitation to certain men of the privilege of the image of God; it is all mankind and everyman, not the king, whom God has made in his image." Wow! Caesar thought he bore the image of a god. So did Pharoah. But the Hebrew God shatters the idea of only royalty bearing God's image. Every person on the planet does. Every person. That is completely revolutionary!

I think the reformation made common the idea of individuals being important. The Catholic Church, for whatever reason, liked the idea of a divine order. First there was God, then kings and the pope (or was it the pope and then kings? Can't decide. Why don't you fight about it and see who's left standing?), then the nobility, then the twerps at the bottom of the ladder. But God says that there is no divine order except this: God - people. That's it. Mankind was made to be the image of God. Each of us.

Let Us Make Man...

Isn't it interesting that God made man on the same day that he created animals? He didn't throw animals into the 5th day with the birds and fish. Instead he made animals first, then humans, on the same day. And he follows that first with a blessing (that looks like it's primarily aimed at the humans, though God had also blessed the birds and fish already on day 5) and then a gift that is to both the animals and the humans (every green plant for food).

The animals and humans have been grouped together. They're different from fish and birds and plants. But they're similar enough to be made on the same day. This definitely gives a sense of the close connection between people and animals.

Meat and Vegetables - Genesis 1

This is what's wrong with the King James version of the Bible:

"And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat." (Genesis 1:29)

I don't know a single carnivore that would call plants, trees, or seeds "meat."

The First Creation Story - with colors

I'm still thinking on the first creation story in the Bible. I've typed it up into a spreadsheet with the text in order, but color coded to help me see parallels and repetitions. I suspect I could pull a few more out if I kept working on it, but this is what I have so far. I'll attach a pdf copy at the end. (Grrrr. I tried to insert a table here and Blogger kept rewriting the table out of the page. So I'm just posting a jpg and attaching the pdf....  OK, tried to upload a pdf only to find out that you can't do that on Blogger without a 3rd party assist. So I'm just posting the jpg. Deal with it.)

Tohu wa Bohu

Rob and I have been reading through the book "In the Beginning," by Henri Blocher. The book works through several interpretations of the first few chapters of the book of Genesis, giving various reasons why one interpretation makes more sense than another. It's been an interesting read so far, though it does get a bit academic (in the big words, long sentences, complicated ideas sense of the term). It was in Blocher's book that I first came across the terms tohu and bohu. A search online, however, has revealed that tohuwabohu (or variations on that transliteration) are common in many European languages (an interesting reflection upon the Jewish influence upon Europe despite the Europeans many attempts to eradicate that influence).

Tohu means formlessness, chaos, confusion.
Bohu is generally only found right next to Tohu and is generally taken to mean empty or void.

Pic from RuneSoup with thanks to Terry Pratchett

Tohu and bohu show up in Genesis 1:2. "And the earth was without form, and void..." (King James Version) "Now the earth was formless and empty..." (New International Version) "The earth was unformed and void..." (Complete Jewish Bible).

I find the words, at the very beginning of the creation story, to be a total conundrum. Does "formless and void" have substance? Can you see it? Feel it? Experience it? And if everything is unformed and empty, then how is it that there's water in the second half of that verse? "... and the Spirit of God hovered over the surface of the water." (CJB) Doesn't that imply that there was a watery part and a non-watery part such that God's spirit could hover in the one and over the other? And if that's the case, doesn't that indicate some pattern or "form" to things?

And what is the tohu and the bohu doing there? Is it the stuff, the medium, that God used to create everything out of? If so, then when he spoke did that shape the tohuwabohu? Or did speaking create things from nothing? And where did the tohuwabohu come from in the first place?

If you were sitting down to write a story, and you thought it was a really important story that you wanted people to grasp, don't you think you'd make it more understandable than this second verse of Genesis? Even the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian creation story, makes more sense in the beginning than this second verse of Genesis 1. The Enuma Elish starts like this:

"When in the height heaven was not named,
And the earth beneath did not yet bear a name,
And the primeval Apsu, who begat them,
And chaos, Tiamut, the mother of them both
Their waters were mingled together,
And no field was formed, no marsh was to be seen;
When of the gods none had been called into being,
And none bore a name, and no destinies were ordained;
Then were created the gods in the midst of heaven,
Lahmu and Lahamu were called into being..." - sacred-texts.com

They've got chaos in there, and earth and water. There's a lot of similarities. But the story makes sense! You know what's going on. There are only so many ways you can interpret "And the earth beneath did not yet bear a name." But calling something formless and void when there was nothing there yet except that there was something there and it wasn't formless and if it was there then it wasn't void either.... 

All I can say is at least it rhymes. You've gotta admit, that's a nice touch. 

If, in reading through Blocher's book, I reach a higher level of enlightenment besides the joy of rhyming, I'll let you know. 

Gospel Made Visible

"Christian proclamation might make the gospel audible, but Christians living together in local congregations make the gospel visible (see John 13:34-35). The church is the gospel made visible." -- Mark Dever in his book entitled The Church.