At this rate, I’ll be typing all of Brad Young’s JESUS: THE JEWISH THEOLOGIAN on this blog. But as I continue to slowly read my way through it, savoring each chapter, I keep running into more and more valuable insights he offers into the teachings of Jesus. This time he’s opening my eyes to new aspects of what biblical faith and prayer are all about.

In a chaper entitled “Faith as Chutzpah,” Young explores two parables that Jesus used to get across His teachings about the relationship between faith and prayer: the “importunate friend at midnight” (Lk 11.5-8) and “the unjust judge” (Lk 18.1-8). He contends that Jesus used a word play involving two Hebrew words, one of which is chutzpah.

“The word chutzpah is difficult to define in a single word. It means headstrong persistence, brazen impudence, unyielding tenacity, bold determination, or what in current English terms might be referred to as raw nerve. Can faith be described by the Hebrew word chutzpah?

“But the real issue with prayer concerns God. These parables teach expectancy in prayer. The great Jewish theologian Abraham Heschel noted that the real issue of prayer is how one understands God . . . The difficulty of prayer is the way one views the divine nature.

“One prays with bold determination because God is good. He is not like the contemptible friend who would not help his neighbor. He is not like the corrupt judge who feared neither God nor man and refused to help a needy widow. True faith requires bold perseverance . . . True faith is committing all one knows about himself or herself to all he or she knows about God. Faith can be defined as chutzpah. Persevere with unyielding tenacity.”

Young then turns to the twin parables and, as usual, provides valuable information about the times and cultural, thus bringing the stories into a different light. In the case of the persistent neighbor and his unreliable friend, Young explains he importance of hospitality in Jewish culture in the first century.

“In the Middle East the obligation of hospitality was highly valued as an essential requirement. At midnight the contemptible friend hears his neighbor’s voice outside the house. The neighbor does not knock because this would cause unnecessary alarm . . . By all custom and etiquette the neighbor must offer his guest traditional hospitality. In many ways, according to the culture, the visitor is not only the neighbor’s guest but the guest of the entire village. A dinner, including bread, the essential part of every meal, must be prepared for the visitor . . .

“What do the listeners expect? When they hear the story, they expect the friend to open the door for his neighbor . . . Instead of providing the anticipated result, however, the contemptible friend answers with a feeble excuse . . .

“The outrage of the audience will be directed toward the unacceptable behavior of this friend . . . His excuse is totally unacceptable. Everyone hearing the parable will view him with extreme contempt. They will complete the story because they know what the neighbor standing outside the house will do. Shamelessly he will pound on the door with bold tenacity . . . The man outside the house demonstrates his brazen tenacity as he reacts to his friend’s contemptible behavior in refusing to answer a simple request in the time of an emergency.”

The Greek word translated as “shamelessness,” “impudence,” or “persistence” in this passage (describing the friend at the door) is used as a synonym for faith in the story of the unjust judge. This word, Young says, is comparable to chutzpah. In each of the parables faith is “being as defined in a mini-drama in which steadfast perseverance is depicted as the perfect example of true faith in the goodness of God.”

What makes the judge so bad in the second parable is the Jewish view that rulers and judges are stewards of God’s justice and authority on earth. It was required of judges to rule fairly and faithfully. God is concerned about the welfare of people and the judge, as His representative, should reflect God’s love for less-powerful members of society. “Saying that a judge does not fear God is a most serious charge,” Young says, adding later that “tenacity was the only weapon the widow possessed.”

Young provides numerous examples of rabbinical teaching on chutzpah, but the best illustration is the story of a famous rabbi named “Choni the Circle Drawer.”

“Because of a severe drought, the people approached Choni and asked him to pray for rain. When Choni prayed and no answer came, he took decisive action, which offended some of the religious leaders of his day. Choni had the audacity to draw a circle in the dirt and pray to the Almighty, ‘I will not move from this circle until You send rain.’ The miracle happened! The much-needed rain fell . . . Choni’s strong-willed perseverance is a true expression of his devout faith in the goodness of God.”

The message of the two parables is to be bold and confident when praying, knowing that God is good and will answer the prayers of His children. Young cites numerous examples from the ministry of Jesus that show His delight and approval of tenacious, brazen, and determined prayer and faith:

“In a number of the healing stories in the Gospels, Jesus responds to an individual who has demonstrated strong-willed determination by saying, ‘Your faith has saved you’ . . . the friends of a paralytic . . . the woman with a hemorrhage . . . the woman who burst into the house of Simeon with a bottle of ointment . . . the Canaanite woman who steadfastly begged Jesus to heal her child . . . the blind man in Jericho . . . The firm determination of these individuals who approached Jesus with their needs and Jesus’ affirmation of their faith demonstrates the qualities of the Hebrew term chutzpah.”

In these two parables, Young says, Jesus employs the Jewish concept of “kal vechomer.” Kal is the “light” side of an argument, while chomer is the weighty and significant side. The principle is characterized by the phrase, “How much more . . . !”

“If it is true that a contemptible friend who will not even assist his neighbor with three loaves of bread at midnight will be moved to action by the tenacity of the petitions of his neighbor, how much more, on the weighty side, will the merciful God be moved by the prayers of his people. If, on the light side, a corrupt judge will give an equitable decision in favor of a helpless widow because of her bold persistence, how much more, on the weighty side, will God grant the steadfast petitions of those who serve him.”

Young ends his discussion of faith where he began, focusing on the determining factor in prayer:

“The issue of prayer is God. People mistakenly pray as if God is a friend who does not care or a judge who does not deal justly . . . in many ways the theme of these colorful illustrations can be summarized by saying, ‘God is your good friend.’ Because God is good, perseverance in prayer will receive the answer.”


2 Cor 1.13