Kind
Formula
Interpretive layers
Biblical typology
Psychological interpretation

Neville's reading of the one tribe Paul names for himself, taken to the concordance as he always advises. Paul says at the very end that he is of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin - and Benjamin means the son of the right hand. Then the question that turns a genealogy into a testimony: who sits at the right hand? Christ Jesus sits at the right hand of the Lord. So in calling himself Benjamin, Paul is not reporting his ancestry but confessing what has happened to him - he found him, was embraced by him, became one with him, and therefore sits where Christ sits. Elsewhere Neville draws the consequence flatly: if he tells you he is of the tribe of Benjamin he is telling you he has experienced resurrection, because scripture identifies resurrection with the motion to the right hand of God, the place of honour. The corollary he insists on is that Paul never became what the world would call a Christian and never gave up his faith in Judaism; he understood Christ as the flower and the fulfilment of the promise made to Abraham. And the embrace leaves no residue of separation: when you are embraced by Christ Jesus you are not another, you become one with him, and from then on you have no sense of being divorced from him - though you cannot grasp the full glory of the inheritance while the body is still on. Coined at the attach lane's request (PM 6049/6052), which reports the phrase unattached across some twenty-three passages; and Neville's own closing instruction stands over it: if you don't think it means these things, go and look it up in your concordance, and take nothing for granted.

Collections
Lectures
Own wordings
the tribe of Benjamin
The son of the right hand

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Did you ever look up the word Benjamin to find out what it means?—“The son of the right hand.” Well, who sits at the right hand? Are we not told that Christ Jesus sits at the right hand of the Lord? And he calls himself Benjamin the son of the right hand.
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