I can’t remember the first time I saw someone write, with a smirk no doubt, “May the force be ever in your favor.” It’s like those memes that attribute a Lord of the Rings quote to Harry Potter. I smile at these things when I see them, and maybe you do too, because we know what the writer is up to. The conflation is deliberate. We’re “in” on the joke.
With the statement, “May the force be ever in your favor,” the first half is drawing from Star Wars, and the second half is drawing from The Hunger Games.
Years ago I heard someone use that deliberately-melded line to make a biblical point: “The New Testament authors do this all the time.” Now that got my attention. What did he mean?
The New Testament authors don’t mind putting back-to-back allusions to the Old Testament together without telling you that’s what they’re doing. In order for you to understand what the biblical authors are doing, we must be careful readers who are immersed in earlier Scripture. If someone isn’t aware of Star Wars or The Hunger Games, then the statement, “May the force be ever in your favor,” won’t have the effect that it should.
As a biblical example, the Gospel of Mark opens like this: “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight’” (Mark 1:2–3).
These words in Mark 1:2–3 push several Old Testament lines together.
In Exodus 23:20, “Behold, I send an angel before you to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared.”
In Isaiah 40:3, “A voice cries: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.’”
In Malachi 3:1, “Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me.”
In commentaries on Mark’s Gospel, scholars will often point to these three Old Testament places. The variety of allusions is helpful to discern because Mark mentions only “Isaiah the prophet” at the beginning of 1:2. He says, “As it is written in Isaiah the prophet…” And yes, there are words from Isaiah. But Mark has more in mind than Isaiah’s prophecy. Being aware of earlier biblical material is key to discerning Mark’s other allusions.
For another biblical example, consider Mark 1:11, the voice that spoke to Jesus at Jesus’s baptism. The voice from heaven said, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”
The words in Mark 1:11 push several Old Testament lines together.
In Genesis 22:2, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love…”
In Psalm 2:7, “The LORD said to me, ‘You are my Son…’”
In Isaiah 42:1, “Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights…”
One final example. In Mark 11:17 Jesus said, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.”
Our eyes notice the “Is it not written” language, which cues us to an Old Testament passage. And our translations will put “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations” in quotation marks so that we can see the obvious use of an Old Testament text. Jesus is quoting from Isaiah 56:7.
But then Jesus tells them, “You have made it a den of robbers.” That’s not a random comment or implication. This, too, is from the Old Testament. Jesus is alluding to Jeremiah 7:11. So Mark 11:17 contains the use of two Old Testament texts back-to-back.
In Isaiah 56:7, “…for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”
In Jeremiah 7:11, “Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes?”
The New Testament authors do quote from the Old Testament, but most of their uses of the Old Testament are allusions. And these allusions sometimes come back-to-back.
Like those who understand the expression, “May the force be ever in your favor,” we need to be diligent readers of the Old Testament so that the allusions to it in the New will be more evident to us. We can read how an author uses an earlier text and smile and say, “Ah! I’ve seen language like this before. I know this phrase is pulling from an earlier source.”
And then we can do the necessary interpretive work to ask, “Why is that earlier text important for this later author?” And, “What is this later author doing with this earlier text?”