Also the following videos:
I found a short clip from an interview of Jordan Peterson by Joe Rogan, in which Jordan Peterson discusses the journey of the Israelites out of Egypt, their wanderings in the wilderness, and their experience with the poisonous serpents etc. This seems to have resonated with quite a lot of Christian commentators and YouTubers, and several people have liked and quoted it in their podcasts, of which the above are three examples. Jordan Peterson is a clinical psychologist who shows a lot of interest in Christian and biblical studies; but he is not himself a “believer” as far as I can make out. He discusses biblical and Christian topics from a “psychological” point of view, rather than a theological one; but does so enthusiastically and consistently; and for this reason has gained quite a lot of traction and following with Christians of various description. Here I am going to briefly comment on what he said on Israel’s journey out of Egypt, as recorded in the above videos. He begins his comment as follows:
“Moses leads his people out of the tyranny, right. But weirdly enough, they don’t go to the promised land. This is very weird. They go into the desert. Well, why?”
There are several answers to that question. The first answer is the most obvious one: They went into the desert because they had nowhere else to go apart from the desert, at least initially. There was a desert between them and the promised land. They had no other choice but to pass through the desert to get to the promised land. A more interesting question (which is what he probably has in mind) would be, Why did they take the longer route through the wilderness to get to their final destination, instead of the shorter one? The answer to that question is given in the Bible itself, as follows:
Exodus 13:
17 And it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God led them not through the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, Lest peradventure the people repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt:
18 But God led the people about, through the way of the wilderness of the Red sea: and the children of Israel went up harnessed out of the land of Egypt.
The Israelites had to fight a war to obtain their promised land—something that they had no previous experience of doing. They couldn’t just walk in there, and expect the Canaanites to obligingly leave. God needed to prepare them first by giving them his law, and then to bolster their faith, so that they could put their trust in God to go and fight; and that took some time. The question of why they afterwards had to wander in the desert for another forty years, is a separate issue still. His own comments on the above events and experiences is as follows:
“Well, we are all say prisoners of our own tyrannical misconceptions and misperceptions, psychologically and socially. So let’s say, we free ourselves from those. Well then, we are nowhere. At least we were guided by—that is why people have nostalgia for tyranny. It is like, ‘at least we had enough to eat then, at least we knew who we were then.’ It is like, ‘out of the tyrant’s grasp, into the desert’. And so you think, why don’t people want to challenge their own preconceptions? It is like, ‘yeah, it is out of the tyranny, into the desert;’ and the worse the tyranny, the worse the desert. So if you have been tormenting yourself with tyrannical preconceptions and totalitarian obligations, and you decide to drop it, or maybe you are shocked out of that by trauma, you don’t go to paradise, you go to the desert. Maybe that is even worse. So no wonder people don’t do it. So now the Israelites are in the desert, you think why are they there for 40 years? And maybe it is because it takes three generations to recover from tyranny.”
That is his “psychological” interpretation, which is not the same as the biblical one. The Bible gives a different interpretation. The Bible explains it in terms of a “lack of faith”. They are condemned because of their failure to believe and trust in God, in spite of all the great miracles that he had performed among them, in delivering them out of the hand of the Egyptians; and also later in providing for them in the wilderness; and also all the signs and wonders God had showed them at the foot of Mount Sinai etc. That was the primary cause of their failures, and also condemnations:
Numbers 14:
11 And the Lord said unto Moses, How long will this people provoke me? and how long will it be ere they believe me, for all the signs which I have shewed among them?
12 I will smite them with the pestilence, and disinherit them, and will make of thee a greater nation and mightier than they.
That was the source of their failure, not “psychology”. That is what Jordan Peterson has missed. It was not just a matter of being “led out of tyranny,” and “into the desert”. It was a matter of being led by God himself, by means of all the signs, wonders, and miracles that God had done for them. They had no reason not to be optimistic of the future that lay ahead of them—being led and directed by God himself, with his infinite power, mercy, and goodness towards them. Their problem was lack of faith, not something else. Jordan Peterson misses that essential element in the Exodus narrative.
He also comments on their experience with the poisonous serpents, that God later sent among them to chasten them, in these words:
“Now the poisonous snakes come; and so the poisonous snakes are biting them, and biting them, and biting them. And they finally break down, and go to Moses and say, Look, you want to have a chat with God, and get him to call off the damn snakes. And Moses says, Okay. And so he goes and talks to God, and God says—this is weird, this is one of those impossibly weird stories. You think this is either insane, or it is true, because that is the only option. It is not boring; it is not predictable; it is either insane, or it is true. Okay, and maybe we can start by thinking it is insane, but whatever; Moses talks to God, and God could just call off the snakes, right? That is what you would expect him to do. But that isn’t what happens. He says, Go make an image of a snake in bronze, and make an image of a stick like a staff, and put the snake on the staff, and then stick it in the ground, and then have the Israelites go and look at the snake, and then the snakes won’t bite them anymore.”
He has got that bit quite wrong as well. God didn’t tell them that if they looked at the bronze serpent, that the serpents “won’t bite them anymore”. They were told that after they were bitten by a snake, if they then looked at the bronze serpent, that they would then be cured of their snakebites—which is a different thing entirely:
Numbers 21:
7 Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord, and against thee; pray unto the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the people.
8 And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live.
9 And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.
That was also a case of an exercise of faith. If they believed what Moses told them (or what God told them through Moses), and “looked” at the bronze serpent after they were bitten, they would be cured of the poisoning, and not die; if they did not believe what Moses told them, and consequently didn’t bother to “look” when they were bitten, then they would not be cured, and would die. So the “psychological” explanation that he tries to give of it is also speculative and incorrect, and has no scriptural basis. This is the “psychological” explanation that he tries to give of the event:
“So the snake, you have to look on the snake, yes okay. Here is the doctrine from all fields of psychotherapy, okay, Look at what you are terrified of, and you will get braver. So the the classic therapeutic treatment for terror, and the poisoning that terror induces, is exposure, voluntary exposure, okay. So the pattern there is, face what you face, what you are most afraid of, and you will be free, okay. That makes sense; voluntarily, yeah. Now that is a doctrine of psychotherapy. Now right, okay, so now that is weird. So God doesn’t chase away the snakes; he makes everyone braver, okay, because that is better than being safe. Bravery is better than safety. It is a more reliable cure for terror.”
Which of course is entirely incorrect. “Bravery” had nothing to do with it. It is a matter of believing, trusting, what God and Moses had told them to do, or not. It was a trial of faith, not an exercise in “bravery”. His interpretation is pure speculation. It is not based on what the text actually teaches.
Likewise he misses the mark quite badly when he comes to interpreting the symbolism of the “bronze serpent” in connection with the “crucifixion” of Jesus (John 3:14). The symbolism is again related to faith. Just as the Israelites needed to exercise faith to believe that looking on the bronze serpent would heal them of the snakebites, likewise mankind need to exercise faith to believe that looking to the crucified Messiah would heal them of the snakebites of sin.
You cannot interpret the Bible by means of “psychology”. No amount of “psychological training” will make someone a good interpreter of the scripture. It can only be discerned and understood by the power of the Spirit of God, as Paul says:
1 Corinthians 2:
9 But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.
10 But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.
11 For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.
12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
13 Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
15 But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man.
16 For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? but we have the mind of Christ.
If Jordan Peterson wants to be able to read, understand, interpret, and comment on the Bible correctly, meaningfully, and intelligently, the first thing that he needs to do is to gain a divine witness of its truth. And then to try to read and understand it by the power of the Spirit of God, as Paul says, and not in the light of his “psychological training”. Psychology belongs to the clinic, not to the field of biblical exegesis and hermeneutics. And this applies equally to all the “Christians” who are so enamored by his “psychological” commentary. They are as clueless about what the Bible teaches as he is.
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