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1. The History and Theology of Christian Blessing
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25 Chapter1 the history And theology of ChristiAn blessing The origins of Christian blessing are to be found in the scriptural traditions of the ancient Israelites. The theology of the Old Testament does not primarily emphasize blessing and God’s role in it, focusing its attention rather on God as one who saves, a God of deliverance.1 This is not to say, however, that blessing is absent from Hebrew scripture. Rather, blessing (understood as actions of God that produce a condition of well-being) exists side by side with God’s acts of deliverance.Deliverance is experienced in intercessory events,while blessing is a continuing activity of God present at God’s will,but both are necessary to scripture’s presentation of the sacred history of humanity’s relationship with God.2 Blessing,orberkhah,inparticularwasunderstoodtobeboththeinnervi1 .Claus Westermann,BlessingintheBibleandtheLifeof theChurch, trans.Keith Crim (Philadelphia : Fortress Press, 1968), 15 (for detailed treatment of blessing in each book of the Old Testament,see 29–34).For an important study of the significance of blessings in the Psalms, see Sigmund Mowinckel,Psalmenstudien, 6 vols.(Kristiana,Norway:J.Dybwad,1921–24),esp. “Segen und Fluch in Israels Kult und Psalmendictung”in vol.6.Also important is the work of Johannes Hempel,Dieisraelischen AnschauunenvonSegen undFluch im Lichte altorientalischer Parallelen , Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft 79 (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1925). 2. Westermann, Blessing in the Bible, 3–4. Westermann argues that this distinction is of vital significance to the Israelites’ conception of God: the God of deliverance is “one who comes”(for examples,see Ex 3:8,15:21),while the God of blessing is “one who is present”and enthroned (see Is 6:1;1 Kgs 22).These two conceptions of God are seen to have joined when the Israelites made the transition from nomadic to settled life,as the God who comes is united with the enthroned God in the ark of the temple (Westermann,BlessingintheBible, 9). z history & theology of ChristiAn blessing 26 tal power of the soul and the external good fortune that produces that power .3 Blessing manifests itself primarily as the power of fertility, both within the family and in the practice of farming, and as such represents a sharing in the life of God and the power to pass on that life by virtue of the blessing of creation.4 While God’s primal blessing was considered the gift of generation to all living things on the fourth day,it could also be manifest as the bestowal of the power to defeat enemies,as when Rebecca’s brother wishes, “May you,our sister,become thousands of myriads,may your offspring gain possession of the gates of their foes.”5 Jacob, Joseph, and Judah were especially endowed with this power, Jacob and Joseph also possessing the power to spread blessing around them as they traveled through foreign lands, as when Moses spoke to the Israelites before his death:“And this he said to Judah: O Lord, give heed to Judah, and bring him to his people; strengthen his hands for him, and be a help against his adversaries.”6 Blessing, an action in which the divine descends upon an individual or group, obviously hadspiritualeffectsuponitsrecipients;itwasapparentinthecounselaman gives,as when Isaiah prophesied concerning the messiah,“The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him,the spirit of wisdom and understanding,the spirit of counsel and might,the spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord.”7 Blessing, then,is at times considered a form of wisdom,and like wisdom it is considered to be the power to accomplish and succeed.8 The act of blessing, barakh, was understood as the imparting of vital power to another person,thus giving another a part of the blessing of one’s souloriginallybestowedbyGod.Thehandingonof blessingsfromfatherto son,as related in the story of Jacob’s deception of Isaac through the theft of Esau’s blessing, was thus seen as means to continue the “soul” of the fami3 .Westermann,Blessing in the Bible,18.This analysis is drawn largely from Johannes Pedersen ,Israel:ItsLifeandCulture, 2 vols.(London:Oxford University Press,1926),162–212. 4.Irene Nowell,“TheNarrativeContext of Blessingin theOldTestament,”inBlessingand Power, ed.Mary Collins and David Power (Edinburgh:T.and T.Clark,1985),3. 5. Gn 24:60; Westermann, Blessing in the Bible, 19. Similar invocations are to be found in Gn 27:29 and Nm 24:17–18.For a survey of the power of blessing in the physical world as understood in scriptural...