Enthroned on Praise

When I pick up a book on the OT and worship, I always look for Jeff Meyers’ The Lord’s Service: The Grace of Covenant Renewal Worship in the bibliography.  Sadly, I’m usually disappointed. I was disappointed by Thomas Pierce’s recent Enthroned on Our Praise: An Old Testament Theology of Worship (Nac Studies in Bible & Theology) .  Meyers isn’t mentioned.

Then I look for Jacob Milgrom.  Pierce has only three articles by Milgrom in his bibliography, all from the 1970s.  He cited Milgrom a fair bit, but not Milgrom’s most recent work.  I am not encouraged.

Finally, I look to see what the writer has to say about Leviticus.  (I know, I should start with Leviticus.)  How does Pierce do?

The discussion of Leviticus is pretty thin.  Pierce spends only a few pages describing the tabernacle, sternly repeating Childs’s warning that we shouldn’t allow typology to “descend” into allegory – which happens when “one is not careful.”  It’s hard to get a sense of the arrangement of the tabernacle from his discussion, and he makes no connection to Eden.  He spends a lot of time reviewing the different positions on the meaning of kapar ; there’s useful information, but it’s more about atonement than about liturgical theology, and in the end he concludes (wrongly, in my view) that the verb means “wipe away.”  His descriptions of the Leviticus offerings is very cursory, and he does little if anything to tease out a liturgical theology from the sacrificial procedures, which are not described in any detail anyway.

Like Allen Ross’s recent (superior) book, Pierce’s volume is valuable mainly as a compilation of texts, scholarly arguments, and information.  Neither Ross nor Pierce is well-versed in liturgical studies, though Ross is more so.   Meyers combines lots of biblical work (richer than Ross or Pierce) with a wide exposure to contemporary liturgical studies.  If they would have started with Meyers, maybe Ross and Pierce could have gone somewhere.