ICHABOD TOWARD HOME

The Journey of God’s Glory

WALTER BRUEGGEMANN

WIPF & STOCK • Eugene, Oregon

Wipf and Stock Publishers

199 W 8th Ave, Suite 3

Eugene, OR 97401

Ichabod Toward Home

The Journey of God’s Glory

By Brueggemann, Walter

Copyright©2002 by Brueggemann, Walter

ISBN 13: 978-1-59752-434-6

Publication date 1/12/2011

Previously published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2002

For

Kathleen M. O’Connor

Contents

Preface

Abbreviations

(I)chabod Departed

Joy Comes in the Morning

(I)kabod Homeward

The Bible Strange and New

Have a Nice Weekend

Index of Scripture References

Preface

These chapters are material that I presented as the Stone Lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary in February 2001. It is my intention in these chapters to exposit some themes which my Theology of the Old Testament in 1997 had anticipated. During the lectures I greatly enjoyed the hospitality of President Thomas Gillespie and especially the generosity of Professor and Mrs. Patrick Miller.

The manuscript reaches completed form through the patient wizardry of Tempie Alexander, to whom I express my boundless thanks. I am pleased to dedicate the book to my colleague Kathleen M. O’Connor with thanks for her patient, good-humored, generative collegiality. It is fitting that my lectures at Princeton Seminary, her alma mater, are offered in appreciation to her.

Walter Brueggemann

Columbia Theological Seminary

Ash Wednesday, 2001

Abbreviations

AB Anchor Bible

ABD The Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman

BibInt Biblical Interpretation

BJS Brown Judaic Studies

BZ Biblische Zeitschrift

CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly

EvT Evangelische Theologie

HSM Harvard Semitic Monographs

Int Interpretation

JR Journal of Religion

JSOTSup Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement

NRSV New Revised Standard Version

OtSt Oudtestamentische Studiën

SBLDS SBL Dissertation Series

SJT Scottish Journal of Theology

VTSup Supplements to Vetus Testamentum

ZAW Zeitschrift fur die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft

(I)CHABOD DEPARTED

The question of what the church is doing and is to do when it stands before a biblical text is a complicated, contested, and endlessly important question. It is a perennial and recurring question, the answer to which has some constant contours. At the same time, however, the question evokes and requires different nuances of response in different contexts. There is no doubt that the question is a peculiarly urgent one in our church setting in the West—given the seismic transformations in Western culture, the complete reformulation of socio-economic relations in the face of new technologies, and the pressures, threats, and opportunities of the new globalism and its consequent pluralism.

In these lectures I will seek to respond to that question, not because I think I can give anything like a satisfying answer, but because I believe that a company like this has no more important work than to struggle together with that endlessly contested issue. I understand that the ...