Steve Curtis
Puritan Board Senior
The focus really isn't inordinate at all. Letham is pointing out that the children "went" with their parents in the old covenant; why not in the new? As for those parents (Jewish men and women) who didn't receive His word, they were, in fact, excluded from the covenant - together with their children.What I think is interesting is the inordinate focus on children. What of the Jewish men and women who were excluded from the new covenant? "Those who had received his word were baptized." What of those that didn't? Well, to position it in Letham's words, they were also part of the mass excommunication.
Letham is not referring to the excommunication of adults, for they excommunicated themselves with their disbelief. Rather, he is referring exclusively to the children of those who did not excommunicate themselves (i.e., did believe) and marveling that they, unlike their old covenant forebears, might be essentially estranged from their believing parents.