As the premier Author of all reality, we should expect God to excel at the craft. Scripture, in other words, should be a work of art, viewed as literature. Due to its history, context, and purpose, though, Scripture looks very, very different from our modern stories. Certainly we get much less vivid description of the landscape in books like 1 Kings or John than we’d expect in the average novel about the same period. Those landscapes, after all, weren’t the point, and the authors of those works were hardly going to waste their time- remember, these works were hand-written and then hand-copied, a rather laborious process, so space was at a premium- on elements that weren’t part of their worry.

Yet this pressure to brevity does not stop the Author and authors of Scripture from including all sorts of literary structures. To anybody familiar with the Psalms or Job or Isaiah or indeed any Hebrew poetry, the idea of chiasm should be familiar. Isaiah loves this pattern, as Motyer shows in his commentary on that book; the prophet constantly follows the A-B-C-B-A pattern, at more or less length and with all sorts of variation, in order to organize and emphasize his intent. But chiasm is not the only literary structure Scripture uses. One in particular I want to draw your attention to: foils.

In Luke 1, we see an example of foils, similar to character foils. Specifically, we see in the foretelling of John the Baptist a series of contrasts and parallels with the foretelling of Isaac, the son of Abraham, all the way back in Genesis 15. We can see the nature of a foil in this story, how a foil’s resemblance highlights its differences, how its differences are reliant for force upon its similarities. Consider the elements briefly.

First, in both cases the parents are skeptical. Abraham and Sarah, as they would be known, both laugh when God declares their blessing to them (Gen. 17:17, 18:12). Zechariah likewise is skeptical, doubting that it is possible despite being approached by an angel in the temple (Luke 1:18). As for Elizabeth, we are not told of any skepticism, and I hold this (lightly) to be an element of contrast. Elizabeth would certainly have known Abraham’s story, being a devout Jew, and we see here what seems to be a heeding of the lesson of that tale: God can give fruit even to the most barren of wombs. She heeds, but Zechariah does not (and here is the next step).

Second, we can compare the discipline which was wrought upon them for their skepticism. The parallel here is looser, admittedly. Abraham and Sarah are not explicitly punished for their laughter. We do see an element of their story that can be understood as discipline for skepticism, though: Ishmael. See, by Genesis 16, where Sarai gives Hagar to Abram, the patriarch has already received a promise of a seed (Gen. 15). Nevertheless, Sarai (and, as implied by his participation, Abram) doubt; they seek to bring this to reality by their own means, a choice Abram implies in his response to the promise of a son in Genesis 17:18. The result is Ishmael, the troubler of Israel (Gen. 16:11-12). Zechariah, on the other hand, is not disciplined by the natural results of his own actions, as Abraham was, but by the direct action of the Lord (Luke 1:18-19). Elizabeth, conversely, deals with discipline only insofar as she need deal with Zechariah’s blindness and muteness for a time (as it is relieved in Luke 1:67).

Third, we can look at the most obvious parallel. Both Sarai and Elizabeth are explicitly childless and of an age beyond child-bearing. Yet both are given children. More than this, though, both are given children who forerun- which leads us to point four.

Fourth, we can see that John the Baptist and Isaac have similar roles both in forerunning Israel (I’ll explain this momentarily) and in being fulfilments of the covenant. Let’s take this second part first. Zechariah says of John at the child’s birth that John’s coming is, “to show the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember His holy covenant,the oath that He swore to our father Abraham, to grant us that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him all our days.” Thus Zechariah connects John the Baptist explicitly with Abraham’s promise, just as Isaac is explicitly the fulfilment of that same covenant: “God said, ‘No, but Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him” (Gen. 17:19).

This connection is all the more fitting when we consider the relationship between Isaac and Jacob, between John and Jesus. Though John certainly was not Jesus’s father (a difference), he was certainly Christ’s forerunner (Luke 1:17), a role Isaac performs by Jacob by being Jacob’s father. I point also to John’s role as the predecessor to Christ’s ministry, preparing the path for him (as a father would, in his role as forerunner to his child).

This rests, I admit, in part on a parallel between Christ and Jacob, but that’s actually the strongest part of the argument. God Himself draws the parallel between Christ and Israel in Matthew 2:15, saying, “This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I called my son.’” In this verse, Matthew declares that Christ has fulfilled the Exodus, that Christ is the new Israel who is faithful as Israel was not. Now, remember, what was Jacob’s name at the end of his life? God said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed” (Gen. 32:38). Consider how these words apply to Christ, He who bore our sin, who redeemed us from judgement. Is not Christ truly the new Israel, the Second Jacob as well as the Second Adam?¹

Fifth, I should acknowledge a major difference. What was received directly from God by Abram in Genesis 17 is given through the medium of an angelic messenger² in Luke 1. It is certainly the case that the New Testament has far fewer instances of direct visions of God, if we bar Christ incarnate (which would, I think, bar the visions of Revelation and of Paul on the road to Damascus). I do not currently have a proposed reason for this difference; this is an interesting aspect of the comparison that will take more thought to unpack.

What is the import of this foil? Theologically, it brings not much new to the table. The structure is reliant on doctrines rather than generative of them, though the cogency of the foil structure’s existence does provide more credence to the doctrines which produce it by lending a little of their strength to each other. Certainly any novel doctrine founded on it would have to be held with extreme circumspection, until greater evidence could be found to its name. Founding doctrine on literary structures is a risky business, historically, prone to confirmation bias and eisegesis. Yet this does not erase the validity of the observation. To my eyes, it would beggar belief to think that the Jews of the time did not notice these parallels; Elizabeth herself must certainly have seen Abram’s message in her husband’s vision, must have considered her own reaction in light of Sarai.

For us authors, this case study on foils has much significance. It gives us, first, an example to analyze; by understanding Luke’s work here, the work of God, we can learn to better incorporate foils into our own work, to use parallelism to bolster our plots and our themes and our characters all. Consider, for instance, that God used the foretaste of Abrama and Jacob in a way that strengthened rather than compromised their straight-forward role in the story. He also spoke to the character of Christ, of Jacob, and of Israel in comparing the two (three, if we consider Israel-the-church), developed the idea of Christ as the New Israel and the bringer of the New Jerusalem (Is. 65:17-19), and gave narrative force to John the Baptist.

We can learn, second, that foils aren’t unrealistic. Reality does run on the same logic in all cases, the logic of reflecting His logic, so this isn’t really a surprise, but if God makes a reality which uses foils so integrally, we can make secondary realities which imitate that incorporation. Reality really isn’t purposeless, aimless, and chancy; God ordains it to a beautiful order, a beautiful order we can give glimpses of in our work, as we get glimpses of it in our lives. In other words, realism does not mean aimlessness, purposelessness, or those other ‘gritty’ elements which moderns too easily call ‘realism’, though those elements certainly appear as part of the purposeful pattern, being the results of sin.

Third, we should take from God’s example an encouragement and an urge to create beauty which echoes His beauty. God has given us this great glory to see, and shall we not witness to it (John 1:7)? He calls us to do as much, and for those who have been given the pen and the keyboard to declare themselves with, it is a grand calling. We get to play and work amidst the great scheme of God’s story, to learn from it patterns intricate and immense but still simple reflections of Him, to use the beauty He has given us to create even greater beauty. Let us rejoice and be glad forever in that which He has created, therefore, as we write for the joy of His glory, the glory of His Son and His coming (Is. 65:17-19).

God bless.

Written by Colson Potter

Footnotes

1 – Honestly unsure if I should be capitalizing these two, but you get the point.

2 – If you know the Greek word we get ‘angel’ from, you’ll recognize that I essentially wrote ‘a messenger-ly messenger.’ But again, you get the point.