Like a Good Mystery Novel, the Bible Changes upon a Second Reading
What Rereading Reveals
There are books that demand a second reading. All the great books do. Masters of the literary craft can structure their stories in such a way that the beginning gains new significance—gains its true significance—only in light of the end.
Now, over the past several years, I have developed a fondness for murder mystery novels. I am not entirely sure what this may say of me. Perhaps I have an unhealthy preoccupation with death. Perhaps I am approaching middle age. Whatever the cause, it has happened. I enjoy relaxing with a mystery novel and following the road the author paves.
Let me tell you, a second reading of an Agatha Christie mystery is an entirely different experience than the first. In the first reading, you are the amateur detective. You are tasked with identifying which clues are, and are not, significant. It can be maddening to develop a theory that seems to explain everything, only to be thwarted by some new piece of evidence. And then, finally, at the end, all the pieces snap into place and you see what you had been missing all along. You exult in guessing correctly, you are simultaneously disappointed and thrilled at having been wrong, or you simply marvel at the execution of a well-finished work.
On a second reading, however, it is as if you are reading with Christie herself. She shows you how to compose a good tale, how to build suspense, how to misdirect an investigation, and how to hide a clue in plain sight. The book does not lose all pleasure because you know how it ends, rather the pleasure of reading changes and deepens. You see clearly both the story and the way the story is told. You find more of the true significance of things when you read the beginning in light of the end.
Songs of the Son
Daniel Stevens
Songs of the Son examines 9 psalms highlighted in Hebrews to reveal the preincarnate glory of Christ in the Old Testament.
The books of the Bible also demand rereading. This is true on the merely literary level. They are wonders of production that unfold the more we are familiar with them. But it is all the more true since they are Scripture. Our God always says exactly what he means, and each word is in harmony with the whole.
That we know Jesus will be crucified and raised does not diminish the power of the Gospel narratives, but rather it fills every event and saying with more meaning. The one who has power over death dies for us.
When in Mark the first human to recognize Jesus as the “Son of God” is the centurion at his death (Mark 15:39), we are led to a greater understanding of Mark 1:1: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” We see only then that Jesus’s nature and role as God’s Son is understood not chiefly in his teaching or his miracles but in light of his death. The Son of God is the one who died for us. We cannot know him otherwise.
This pattern is true not only for particular biblical books but also for the Bible as a whole. The garden gains new meaning from Revelation’s garden city (Rev 22:1–2). We understand that God spoke heaven and earth into being more when we know that “in the beginning was the Word” (John 1:1).
One of the disciplines we must grow in as Christians is not merely reading the Bible, but in learning to reread. And I mean this in at least three ways. We must learn how to re-read individual books of the Bible, the whole Bible, and books of the Bible in conversation with one another. Below are a small handful of examples of how intentional rereading can benefit our understanding.
Individual Books
The book of Genesis begins with the creation of the cosmos, and it ends with the death, but not burial, of an old man (Gen. 50:26).
How does knowing that this is where the story goes lead us when we re-read?
Obviously, Genesis is a forward-looking book—the story isn’t over at the death of Joseph—but it is also a book and should at least sometimes be thought of in terms of itself. To start over again, to go back to “In the beginning” with the death of Joseph on our minds, tells us that this God who spoke all things into creation did so to commit himself to the people he created in a small corner of the cosmos. It shows us the grand sweep of the opening chapters, as full of majesty and mystery as they are, are the prelude to the real story, the relationship of God and his people. It reminds us that God, for whom the stars are but the work of his fingers, is not lost in the details or expanse of the universe, but cares deeply and specifically for the details of the lives of those whom he calls his own, so much so that he records the movements of Joseph’s body in some detail, while the creation of the stars is added to the sun and moon almost as an afterthought. This God of grand creation is the God of his people, and always has been, even before he spoke his people into existence.
The Whole Bible
The first time a lyre is mentioned in the Bible is Genesis 4:21, when we learn of Jubal, the great-great-great-great grandson of Cain, that “he was the father of all those who play the lyre and pipe.” Almost certainly, this has slipped your notice.
Our God always says exactly what he means, and each word is in harmony with the whole.
In Genesis 4, Cain and his descendants are listed as the creators of several areas of human culture: cities, nomadic lifestyles, metalwork, and musical instruments. As I mentioned above, reading through the whole Bible once leads us on a narrative where the lost Garden of Eden finds its final fruition in the New Jerusalem, a city that looks an awful lot like the garden. You may notice that this also takes a creation of fallen, sinful humanity—a city, the first of which was founded by Cain (Gen 4:17)—and makes it the eternal place of the presence of God and his people. This might lead us to ask, Is there anything else like this? Do we see other creations of humanity, even explicitly sinful humanity, being taken up into the plan and worship of God like this?
And the answer we find on rereading is yes! Even if we look just a few verses after Cain’s creation of a city, we meet Jubal and his lyre-playing descendants. The lyre, another invention of Cain’s line, becomes a symbol not only of joy (Gen. 31:27) but of prophecy (1 Sam. 10:5) and worship (1 Chr. 25:3, Ps. 33:2, 43:4, 71:22). Further, the lyre (or harp, or kithara) is part of the heavenly worship of God before his throne (Rev. 5:8, 14:2, 15:2). Again, we have the pattern from Genesis to Revelation of God taking the creativity of mankind, even in our sinfulness, and redeeming it, bringing it into his presence and worship forever.
Books in Conversation
The Scriptures are a world unto themselves, with rich layers of meaning formed by the resonances between one text and another. Often this is implicit. Echoes and allusions are formed as one text calls to another. Sometimes, however, one biblical passage looks directly to another.
The Psalms show us how to read Exodus. So do Isaiah and Matthew. And when one part of Scripture draws again and again from the well of another, we do well to pay attention. When we see that, for example, Hebrews continually argues from the Psalms, we should not only pause and consider how those quotations work—that is, how they function within the argument of Hebrews—but also linger and investigate how Hebrews reads that earlier revelation.
The author of Hebrews has much to tell us about his own argument, about the superiority of Jesus. In the way that he argues, he also reveals much about his Scriptures: what they are and how they are to be read. As we strive to see what the author of Hebrews saw in the short selections of psalms that he references, we will learn how those psalms, how the whole Psalter, can be read. We must not miss these lessons. Only at these times can we see infallible interpretation. Only in these moments of inspired exegesis can we precisely know how God would have us read his words. Only by reading with Scripture can we be perfectly taught how to read Scripture.
So when the author of the Hebrews tells us that the Father speaks to the Son in the words of Psalm 2, we should not ignore that as creative reinterpretation, but rather we should look back to Psalm 2 and ask in what ways the Father and Son are present there. When we do, we find new depths of interpretation open to us as we allow Hebrews to guide us in reading the psalms in the full context of God’s revelation.
Daniel Stevens is the author of Songs of the Son: Reading the Psalms with the Author of Hebrews.
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