Hermann Spieckermann, «God's Steadfast Love Towards a New Conception of Old Testament Theology», Vol. 81 (2000) 305-327

This article argues in favour of a conception of Old Testament theology that is aware of the different hermeneutical presuppositions due to the different canonical shapes of the Jewish and the Christian Bible, respectively. An Old Testament Theology based on the canon of the Christian Bible has to do equal justice to the Hebrew and to the Greek version of the Old Testament, acknowledging that the Greek version, the Septuagint, is a dominant factor for the emergence of Christian faith. Perceiving the Old Testament from a Christian point of view sheds new light on a central theological issue thus far underestimated in scholarly research: God's steadfast love. The contribution tries to show how this characteristic insight into God's true being is reflected and interpreted in the different parts of the Old Testament.

(Mymxr Myldg) I will gather you. In overflowing wrath for a moment I hid my face from you, but with everlasting love (Mlw( dsx) I will have compassion on you, says the Lord, your Redeemer (Mxrm)’ (54,6b-8). Although this God is ‘the God of the whole earth’ (54,5b), his love is exclusively directed towards Israel, his first love. God’s anger is not nearly stressed as much as his love. His love is not only great compassion, but ‘my covenant of salvation’ (ymwl# tyrb, 54,10). In the preceding verse (54,9), the Priestly Code’s covenant between God and Noah (cf. Gen 9,8-17) is recalled. It was deliberately done in reference to the Servant’s fourth song. As Noah’s covenant is surpassed by the firm promise of merciful love, so the Servant’s intercession is implicitly rejected by God’s salvatory covenant. There are no mediators between God and Israel, either in the field of love or in that of sin.

        Even more than MT the Septuagint has stylized the passage in Isa 54 as the canticle of divine mercy. To give only one example: Mxrm in 54,10, an epithet of God that means ‘who has compassion’, is rendered by #Ilewj, ‘gracious’, that sounds like e!leoj, due to the itacism of Hellenistic Greek. There is no other explanation than the homophony of e!leoj ‘compassion’ and #Ilewj ‘gracious’. God himself is the incarnation of compassion. However, it is left undecided in what way God’s compassion may be realized in Israel, considering the guilt which is continually separating Israel from God. Furthermore, it is left undecided in what way the nations may find a position within God’s intimate relation to Israel. The further time proceeds, the more the tension between the salvation of Israel and the judgement of the nations increases. But prophecy does not offer a final word about it.

IV. God’s Steadfast Love in Jesus Christ:
End and Abundance of the Law

        From the New Testament witnesses’ point of view the final word about this tension is the word of truth given in Jesus Christ. These witnesses themselves were Jews who lived on the words of their developing Jewish Bible, especially as represented by the Septuagint. After the glimpses just caught of the Old Testament tradition it is no wonder that they perceived Christ’s coming as the answer to the words they found in their Jewish Bible, which became Christian thereafter. It may be left undecided which texts in the Septuagint were still used in a proper Jewish sense and which were already reinterpreted in a Christian sense. There is no doubt that even the Jewish version of the