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); 1 Kings 18:36-39 (“God of Abraham”); 1 John 4:1-6 (Testing the spirits) (New English Translation)

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Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

Daily Bible readings that follow the church liturgical year, with sequential stories told across multiple weeks.

Duration: 1245 days

Psalm 47

Psalm 47^[a]

For the music director, by the Korahites; a psalm.

47 All you nations, clap your hands.
Shout out to God in celebration.^[b]
²For the Lord Most High^[c] is awe-inspiring;^[d]
he is the great king who rules the whole earth!^[e]
³He subdued nations beneath us^[f]
and countries^[g] under our feet.
⁴He picked out for us a special land^[h]
to be a source of pride for^[i] Jacob,^[j] whom he loves.^[k] (Selah)
⁵God has ascended his throne^[l] amid loud shouts;^[m]
the Lord has ascended amid the blaring of ram’s horns.^[n]
⁶Sing to God! Sing!
Sing to our king! Sing!
⁷For God is king of the whole earth.
Sing a well-written song.^[o]
⁸God reigns^[p] over the nations.
God sits on his holy throne.
⁹The nobles of the nations assemble,
along with the people of the God of Abraham,^[q]
for God has authority over the rulers^[r] of the earth.
He is highly exalted.^[s]

Footnotes

Psalm 47:1 sn Psalm 47. In this hymn the covenant community praises the Lord as the exalted king of the earth who has given them victory over the nations and a land in which to live.
Psalm 47:1 tn Heb “Shout to God with [the] sound of a ringing cry!”
Psalm 47:2 sn The divine title “Most High” (עֶלְיוֹן, ʿelyon) pictures the Lord as the exalted ruler of the universe who vindicates the innocent and judges the wicked.
Psalm 47:2 tn Or “awesome.” The Niphal participle נוֹרָא (noraʾ), when used of God in the psalms, focuses on the effect that his royal splendor and powerful deeds have on those witnessing his acts (Pss 66:3, 5; 68:35; 76:7, 12; 89:7; 96:4; 99:3; 111:9). Here it refers to his capacity to fill his defeated foes with terror and his people with fearful respect.
Psalm 47:2 tn Heb “a great king over all the earth.”
Psalm 47:3 tn On the meaning of the verb דָּבַר (davar, “subdue”), a homonym of דָּבַר (“speak”), see HALOT 209-10 s.v. I דבר. See also Ps 18:47 and 2 Chr 22:10. The preterite form of the verb suggests this is an historical reference and the next verse, which mentions the gift of the land, indicates that the conquest under Joshua is in view.
Psalm 47:3 tn Or “peoples” (see Pss 2:1; 7:7; 9:8; 44:2).
Psalm 47:4 tn Heb “he chose for us our inheritance.” The prefixed verbal form is understood as a preterite (see “subdued” in v. 3).
Psalm 47:4 tn Heb “the pride of.” The phrase is appositional to “our inheritance,” indicating that the land is here described as a source of pride to God’s people.
Psalm 47:4 tn That is, Israel.
Psalm 47:4 sn Jacob whom he loves. The Lord’s covenantal devotion to his people is in view.
Psalm 47:5 sn God ascended his throne. In the context of vv. 3-4, which refer to the conquest of the land under Joshua, v. 5 is best understood as referring to an historical event. When the Lord conquered the land and placed his people in it, he assumed a position of kingship, as predicted by Moses (see Exod 15:17-18, as well as Ps 114:1-2). That event is here described metaphorically in terms of a typical coronation ceremony for an earthly king (see 2 Sam 15:10; 2 Kgs 9:13). Verses 1-2, 8-9 focus on God’s continuing kingship, which extends over all nations.
Psalm 47:5 tn Heb “God ascended amid a shout.” The words “his throne” are supplied in the translation for clarification. The Lord’s coronation as king is described here (see v. 8). Here the perfect probably has a present perfect function, indicating a completed action with continuing effects.
Psalm 47:5 tn Heb “the Lord amid the sound of the ram horn.” The verb “ascended” is understood by ellipsis; see the preceding line.
Psalm 47:7 tn The meaning of the Hebrew term מַשְׂכִּיל (maskil) is uncertain. The word is derived from a verb meaning “to be prudent; to be wise.” Various options are: “a contemplative song,” “a song imparting moral wisdom,” or “a skillful [i.e., well-written] song.” The term also occurs in the superscriptions of Pss 32, 42, 44, 45, 52-55, 74, 78, 88, 89, and 142. Here, in a context of celebration, the meaning “skillful, well-written” would fit particularly well.
Psalm 47:8 tn When a new king was enthroned, his followers would acclaim him king using this enthronement formula (Qal perfect 3ms מָלַךְ, malakh, “to reign,” followed by the name of the king). See 2 Sam 15:10; 1 Kgs 1:11, 13, 18; 2 Kgs 9:13, as well as Isa 52:7. In this context the perfect verbal form is generalizing, but the declaration logically follows the historical reference in v. 5 to the Lord’s having ascended his throne.
Psalm 47:9 tc The words “along with” do not appear in the MT. However, the LXX has “with,” suggesting that the original text may have read עִם עַם (ʿim ʿam, “along with the people”). In this case the MT is haplographic, having dropped one set of עם (ʿayin-mem). Another option is that the LXX is simply and correctly interpreting “people” as an adverbial accusative and supplying the appropriate preposition.
Psalm 47:9 tn Heb “for to God [belong] the shields of the earth.” Perhaps the rulers are called “shields” because they are responsible for protecting their people. See Ps 84:9, where the Davidic king is called “our shield,” and perhaps also Hos 4:18.
Psalm 47:9 tn The verb עָלָה (ʿalah, “ascend”) appears once more (see v. 5), though now in the Niphal stem.

1 Kings 18:36-39

³⁶When it was time for the evening offering,^[a] Elijah the prophet approached the altar^[b] and prayed: “O Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, prove^[c] today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. ³⁷Answer me, O Lord, answer me, so these people will know that you, O Lord, are the true God^[d] and that you are winning back their allegiance.”^[e] ³⁸Then fire from the Lord fell from the sky.^[f] It consumed the offering, the wood, the stones, and the dirt, and licked up the water in the trench. ³⁹When all the people saw this, they threw themselves down with their faces to the ground and said, “The Lord is the true God!^[g] The Lord is the true God!”

1 John 4:1-6

Testing the Spirits

4 Dear friends, do not believe every spirit,^[a] but test^[b] the spirits^[c] to determine^[d] if they are from God, because many false prophets^[e] have gone out into the world. ²By this^[f] you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses^[g] Jesus as the Christ^[h] who has come in the flesh is from God, ³but^[i] every spirit that refuses to confess^[j] Jesus,^[k] that spirit^[l] is not from God, and this is the spirit^[m] of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming, and now is already in the world.

⁴You are from God, little children, and have conquered them,^[n] because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. ⁵They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world’s perspective and the world listens to them. ⁶We are from God; the person who knows God listens to us, but^[o] whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this^[p] we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of deceit.^[q]

Footnotes

1 John 4:1 sn 1 John 4:1-6. These verses form one of three units within 1 John that almost all interpreters consider a single unit and do not divide up (the other two are 2:12-14 and 15-17). The subject matter is so clearly different from the surrounding context that these clearly constitute separate units of thought. Since the Holy Spirit is not the only spirit active in the world, the author needs to qualify for the recipients how to tell if a spirit comes from God. The “test” is the confession in 4:2.
1 John 4:1 tn According to BDAG 255 s.v. δοκιμάζω 1 the verb means “to make a critical examination of someth. to determine genuineness, put to the test, examine.”
1 John 4:1 sn Test the spirits. Since in the second half of the present verse the author mentions “false prophets” who have “gone out into the world,” it appears highly probable that his concept of testing the spirits is drawn from the OT concept of testing a prophet to see whether he is a false prophet or a true one. The procedure for testing a prophet is found in Deut 13:2-6 and 18:15-22. An OT prophet was to be tested on the basis of (a) whether or not his predictive prophecies came true (Deut 18:22) and (b) whether or not he advocated idolatry (Deut 13:1-3). In the latter case the people of Israel are warned that even if the prophet should perform an authenticating sign or wonder, his truth or falsity is still to be judged on the basis of his claims, that is, whether or not he advocates idolatry. Here in 1 John the idea of “testing the spirits” comes closer to the second OT example of “testing the prophets” mentioned above. According to 1 John 4:2-3, the spirits are to be tested on the basis of their christological confession: The person motivated by the Spirit of God will confess Jesus as the Christ who has come in the flesh, while the person motivated by the spirit of deceit will not confess Jesus and is therefore not from God. This comes close to the idea expressed by Paul in 1 Cor 12:3 where the person speaking charismatic utterances is also to be judged on the basis of his christological confession: “So I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God says, ‘Jesus is cursed,’ and no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.”
1 John 4:1 tn The phrase “to determine” is not in the Greek text, but is supplied for clarity.
1 John 4:1 tn “False prophets” refers to the secessionist opponents (compare 2:19).
1 John 4:2 tn There is no subordinating conjunction following the ἐν τούτῳ (en toutō) here in 4:2, so the phrase could refer either (1) to what precedes or (2) to what follows. Contextually the phrase refers to what follows, because the following clause in 4:2b-3a (πᾶν πνεῦμα ὃ ὁμολογεῖ ᾿Ιησοῦν Χριστὸν…ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ ἐστιν, καὶ πᾶν πνεῦμα ὃ μὴ ὁμολογεῖ τὸν ᾿Ιησοῦν ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ οὐκ ἔστιν), while not introduced by a subordinating conjunction, does explain the preceding clause beginning with ἐν τούτῳ. In other words, the following clause in 4:2b-3a is analogous to a subordinate clause introduced by an epexegetical ἵνα (hina) or ὅτι (hoti), and the relationship can be represented in the English translation by a colon, “By this you know the Spirit of God: Every Spirit that confesses Jesus as the Christ who has come in the flesh is from God, but every Spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.”
1 John 4:2 tn Or “acknowledges.”
1 John 4:2 tn This forms part of the author’s christological confession which serves as a test of the spirits. Many interpreters have speculated that the author of 1 John is here correcting or adapting a slogan of the secessionist opponents, but there is no concrete evidence for this in the text. Such a possibility is mere conjecture (see R. E. Brown, Epistles of John [AB], 492). The phrase may be understood in a number of different ways, however: (1) the entire phrase “Jesus Christ come in the flesh” may be considered the single object of the verb ὁμολογεῖ (homologei; so B. F. Westcott, A. Brooke, J. Bonsirven, R. E. Brown, S. Smalley, and others); (2) the verb ὁμολογεῖ may be followed by a double accusative, so that both “Jesus Christ” and “come in the flesh” are objects of the verb; the meaning would be “confess Jesus Christ as come in the flesh” (so B. Weiss, J. Chaine, and others). (3) Another possibility is to see the verb as followed by a double accusative as in (2), but in this case the first object is “Jesus” and the second is “the Christ come in the flesh,” so that what is being confessed is “Jesus as the Christ come in the flesh” (so N. Alexander, J. Stott, J. Houlden, and others). All three options are grammatically possible, although not equally probable. Option (1) has a number of points in its favor: (a) the parallel in 2 John 7 suggests to some that the phrase should be understood as a single object; (b) option (2) makes “Jesus Christ” the name of the preincarnate second Person of the Trinity, and this would be the only place in the Johannine literature where such a designation for the preincarnate Λόγος (Logos) occurs; and (c) option (3) would have been much clearer if Χριστόν (Christon) were accompanied by the article (ὁμολογεῖ ᾿Ιησοῦν τὸν Χριστόν, homologei Iēsoun ton Christon). Nevertheless option (3) is preferred on the basis of the overall context involving the secessionist opponents: Their christological views would allow the confession of the Christ come in the flesh (perhaps in the sense of the Spirit indwelling believers, although this is hard to prove), but they would have trouble confessing that Jesus was (exclusively) the Christ incarnate. The author’s failure to repeat the qualifying phrases (Χριστὸν ἐν σαρκὶ ἐληλυθότα, Christon en sarki elēluthota) in the negative repetition in 4:3a actually suggests that the stress is on Jesus as the confession the opponents could not or would not make. It is difficult to see how the parallel in 2 John 7 favors option (1), although R. E. Brown (Epistles of John [AB], 492) thinks it does. The related or parallel construction in John 9:22 (ἐάν τις αὐτὸν ὁμολογήσῃ Χριστόν, ean tis auton homologēsē Christon) provides further support for option (3). This is discounted by R. E. Brown because the verb in John 9:22 occurs between the two accusative objects rather than preceding both as here (Epistles of John [AB], 493—although Brown does mention Rom 10:9 as another parallel closer in grammatical structure to 1 John 4:2). Brown does not mention the textual variants in John 9:22, however: Both P⁶⁶ and P⁷⁵ (along with K, ƒ¹³ and others) read ὁμολογήσῃ αὐτὸν Χριστόν (homologēsē auton Christon). This structure exactly parallels 1 John 4:2, and a case can be made that this is actually the preferred reading in John 9:22; furthermore, it is clear from the context in John 9:22 that Χριστόν is the complement (what is predicated of the first accusative) since the object (the first accusative) is αὐτόν rather than the proper name ᾿Ιησοῦν. The parallel in John 9:22 thus appears to be clearer than either 1 John 4:2 or 2 John 7, and thus to prove useful in understanding both the latter constructions.
1 John 4:3 tn The καί (kai) which begins 4:3 introduces the “negative side” of the test by which the spirits might be known in 4:2-3. Thus it is adversative in force: “every spirit that confesses Jesus as Christ who has come in the flesh is from God, but every Spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.”
1 John 4:3 tn Or “refuses to acknowledge”; Grk “that does not confess,” but the literal rendering can be misread by an English reader as a double negative with the following clause.
1 John 4:3 tc A number of variants are generated from the simple τὸν ᾿Ιησοῦν (ton Iēsoun, “Jesus”), some of which turn the expression into an explicit object-complement construction. ᾿Ιησοῦν κύριον (Iēsoun kurion, “Jesus as Lord”) is found in א, ᾿Ιησοῦν Χριστόν (Iēsoun Christon, “Jesus as Christ”) is read by 5 (442 1175) 1243 1735 2492 M, τὸν Χριστόν (“the Christ”) is the reading of 1846, τὸν Χριστὸν ᾿Ιησοῦν (“Christ Jesus” or “Jesus as the Christ”) is the wording of 307, and ᾿Ιησοῦν without the article is found in 1881 2464. But τὸν ᾿Ιησοῦν is well supported by A B Ψ 33 81 436 1611 1739 1852 2344, and internally best explains the rise of the others. It is thus preferred on both external and internal grounds.
1 John 4:3 tn The words “that spirit” are not in the Greek text, but are supplied in the translation to make clear that it is the spirit mentioned in the preceding clause (that is, the spirit that refuses to confess Jesus) that is not from God.
1 John 4:3 tn Here “spirit” is not in the Greek text but is implied, and is necessary in the English translation; Grk “and this is the of the antichrist.”
1 John 4:4 sn Them refers to the secessionist opponents, called “false prophets” in 4:1 (compare 2:19).
1 John 4:6 tn “But” supplied here to bring out the context. The conjunction is omitted in the Greek text (asyndeton).
1 John 4:6 tn The phrase ἐκ τούτου (ek toutou) in 4:6, which bears obvious similarity to the much more common phrase ἐν τούτῳ (en toutō), must refer to what precedes, since there is nothing in the following context for it to relate to, and 4:1-6 is recognized by almost everyone as a discrete unit. There is still a question, however, of what in the preceding context the phrase refers to. Interpreters have suggested a reference (1) only to 4:6; (2) to 4:4-6; or (3) to all of 4:1-6. The last is most likely, because the present phrase forms an inclusio with the phrase ἐν τούτῳ in 3:24 which introduces the present section. Thus “by this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of deceit” refers to all of 4:1-6 with its “test” of the spirits by the christological confession made by their adherents in 4:1-3 and with its emphasis on the authoritative (apostolic) eyewitness testimony to the significance of Jesus’ earthly life and ministry in 4:4-6.
1 John 4:6 sn Who or what is the Spirit of truth and the spirit of deceit in 1 John 4:6? (1) Some interpreters regard the “spirits” in 4:6 as human spirits. Although 4:1a is ambiguous and might refer either to human spirits or spiritual beings who influence people, it is clear in the context that (2) the author sees behind the secessionist opponents with their false Christology the spirit of the Antichrist, that is, Satan (4:3b), and behind the true believers of the community to which he is writing, the Spirit of God (4:2). This is made clear in 4:4 by the reference to the respective spirits as the One who is in you and the one who is in the world.

New English Translation (NET)

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Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

Psalm 47[a]

For the music director, by the Korahites; a psalm.

Footnotes

Footnotes

Testing the Spirits

Footnotes

Psalm 47^[a]