Medicine Hat Joe

Week 46  Psalm 89

There’s a pretty informative paragraph in this psalm. I highlighted the key phrases:
Lord, the heavens praise your amazing deeds, as well as your faithfulness in the angelic assembly.
For who in the skies can compare to the Lord? Who is like the Lord among the heavenly beings, a God who is honored in the great angelic assembly, and more awesome than all who surround him?
The writer identifies several non-human supra-normal characters: an angelic assembly. Heavenly beings who are in-the-skies. Creatures who surround the Lord.
The NET version adds some pretty detailed notes and comments about these beings. For instance it says that the ‘angelic assembly’ identified in verse 5 is – in the Hebrew language – translated ‘the assembly of the holy ones’. NET then says: ‘the phrase “holy ones” sometimes refers to God’s people (Ps 34:9) or to their priestly leaders (2 Chr 35:3), but here it refers to God’s heavenly assembly and the angels that surround his throne’.
NET admits that the expression ‘holy ones’ has different meanings in the OT but here in psalm 89 it means ‘the angels that surround his throne’ (I guess that’s why they translated it ‘angelic assembly’).
Anyway the simple reminder for me is that whenever I’m thinking about the ranks of the inhabitants of the bible’s world from top-to-bottom I need to leave space for a big group of angels that surround the Lord.

Note: quotes from Psalm 89:5-7 (NET). Plus notes from NET.

Week 46  Psalm 94

Blessed is the one you discipline, Lord, the one you teach from your law; you grant them relief from days of trouble.
I checked to see how other versions handled this idea. Most agree that I’ll be ‘blessed’ when I’m ‘disciplined’ & ‘taught’ by the Lord. (Some versions the word ‘discipline’ with chasten correct instruct or admonish. Most of them use the word ‘teach’.)
The general idea in that first phrase is that when I put myself in an environment of disciplined instruction then I’m exposed to good ideas & good practices.
But it’s really the second half of the verse that interests me.
Quite a few versions say that when the first thing – instruction-and-teaching – happens then the second follows (I escape from troubles). Quite a few versions imply that trouble is avoidable. That when I’m disciplined-and-taught by the Lord I’m home-free.
My concern with that idea is pretty obvious. Any number of people who – from all outside appearances – have actually been disciplined-and-taught by the Lord have clearly not avoided trouble.
That’s why the Amplified version (even though it expresses a minority opinion) makes the best sense to me: blessed (happy, fortunate, to be envied) is the man whom You discipline and instruct, O Lord, and teach out of Your law, that you may give him power to keep himself calm in the days of adversity. Interior stillness is my defence when my troubled days arrive.

Note: quotes from Psalm 94:12-13 (NIV CSB ESV LSB NIV & Amplified Classic).

Week 45  Psalm 92

Though the wicked sprout like grass and all evildoers flourish, they are doomed to destruction forever.
I’m mostly interested in what the writer admits in the first half of the verse – that evil & corrupt people can be very successful. It seems like that’s just an existential reality of life. If success here-and-now is the test for success then evil people can & do win.
Psalm 92 is telling me ‘that’s just the way things are’. It’s making a point about how things work and the point is that bad people can be very successful.
There are a bunch of contributing factors that go into achieving success in this world and being good or bad aren’t (necessarily) two of them. Things like being talented. Smart. Good-looking. Fairly ruthless. Competent & capable. Self-serving. Lying (when necessary). Working hard. Stepping on people (when necessary). Coming from a rich family or having a strong backer. Being lucky. Laser-focus & strong-mindedness. Being an influencer & a good communicator. Being mentally & psychologically strong. Like that. With these kinds of qualities a bad guy can be successful.
So I figure this is useful to keep in mind to save myself from fighting against unchangeable facts.
The end of the verse affirms that wicked people are doomed to destruction forever. That’s a pretty serious forecast – something for a person to remember. But in the meantime I need to accept that the success of evil people is just one of life’s norms.

Note: quote from Psalm 92:7 (ESV)

 

Week 44  Psalm 82

The bible I usually read says God takes His stand in His own congregation; He judges in the midst of the rulers. It’s the kind of wispy comment I usually glide over. But this time I notice that ‘rulers’ has a number beside it. The note says ‘rulers’ literally means ‘gods’.
I check another version: God stands in the divine assembly; he pronounces judgment among the gods. Its note says ‘gods’ also means ‘heavenly beings, or earthly rulers’.
Another version: God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment. There aren’t any notes.
One final version: God stands in the assembly of El; in the midst of the gods he renders judgment. This version – the New English Translation – is interesting because it adds extensive notes saying who or what it thinks the ‘gods’ are. It says there are three possible options:
1. the ‘gods’ are false / pagan gods who make up ‘the assembly of El’. Since El is a false god God is there to judge him (NET likes this option)
2. the ‘gods’ are important people – judges or rulers (NET gives a couple of examples to back up this idea)
3. the ‘gods’ are angelic beings.
All three options can’t be right and I don’t get to just take-my-pick.
Even though I’m tending in the direction of #3 I know that going forward I’ll need to see how that option tests-out.

Note: quote from Psalm 82:1 (NASB CSB ESV NET)

 

Week 44  Psalm 81

The bible I’m reading says that those who hate the Lord would pretend obedience to Him…
That phrase – pretend obedience – is already underlined in my bible so I know that on a previous reading I’ve wondered how pretending-to-be-obedient works.
I checked some other versions. A couple use similar expressions like: feign subjection or pretend submission. But many don’t use the idea of pretending or faking-it. They say that people will cower. Cringe. Bow. Be humbled. Shake with fear. Which sound different.
I spot a cross-reference that says …foreigners submit to me…. Even though the margin says ‘submit’ literally means ‘deceive me’ other versions use obey grovel cower or cringe.
And another reference says God’s enemies will give feigned obedience to (him) (the margin says ‘give feigned obedience’ literally means to ‘deceive’). But versions still say cringe. Come crawling. Cower. Submit.
I check ‘feigned’ in my word book and see it’s just used this once (in my version). I flip back to #3584 (the number assigned to ‘feigned’ in the Hebrew-Aramaic dictionary). It links ‘feigned’ to words like ‘disappoint’ & ‘deceive’ & ‘fail’. But #3584 is also translated cringe (Deuteronomy 33:29). Deceive (Zechariah 13:4). And pretend obedience (2 Samuel 22:45).
So I’m not sure where exactly to land. My simple take-away is that I need to be pretty cautious about some words in the bible. Words are versatile. And flexible enough that I can’t force them to carry more weight than they actually & definitionally can.

Note: quotes from Psalm 81:15 (NASB RGT HCSB) 18:44 (NASB) 66:3 (NASB)

Week 41  Romans 6

Let’s say a guy decides to follow the Lord. One legitimate question he can ask is: where do I go from here? And one useful piece of advice Paul offers is: consider (yourself) to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Maybe the guy never gave much thought to sin. It’s maybe a bit of a surprise for him to learn that his normal condition is an in-built & functional commitment to sin. But now that he’s following Christ he’s been somehow freed from that automatic preference.
It’s possible that in a lot of ways the guy feels pretty much the same as before. But he has gained is a brand new capability. Now he can test out his capacity to consider (himself) to be dead to sin. In his pre-conversion life his devotion to sin was involuntary & unthinking. But under the influence of Christ he gains discriminability. He can call-a-spade-a-spade.
It’s not like he’s in-actual-fact so dead to sin that he can’t do sin. He retains his ability to revisit his old master. Going back to being alive-to-sin is always an option.
But the thing is that even though sin is still in the mix the guy can now mentally recalibrate – or as Paul says consider (or reckon or believe or think to himself or understand) – and act so as not to sin. Dead by choice to the wiles of his old master.

Note: quote from Romans 6:11 (LSB)

Week 40  Romans

There’s a lot of OT-related content in Paul’s letter to the Roman church and I was asking myself the question: why so heavy with the OT & with (what I’d call) Israelitisms?
The church in Rome would have had Jewish people in it. I wondered how many? A whole lot? I started digging for demographic info.
Pretty quickly I realized I was on shaky ground. I couldn’t even find the population of the whole city of Rome (estimates were from under 500,000 to more than a million).
I wondered how many Jewish people lived in the city of Rome? Numbers were all-over-the-map from lows of 10,000 on up to 100,000. But no hard data.
What was the size of the church in Rome? Forget-it.
And what about my main question? What was the ratio of Jewish to non-Jewish people in the church? Well…take your pick.
Either way Paul was writing to both Jewish & non-Jewish people. He specifically addressed Jews. And Greeks. And Jews & Greeks. But the high volume of OT content is a surprise. If the church wasn’t majority-Jewish people then why the big chunks of OT material in Romans 2 3 4 7 9 & 11? And why the dozens of OT quotes & references?
A regular bible-reader is faced with a couple of questions. How much attention do I need to pay to burdensome OT-related questions that I’m not even asking? And a second practical question: should I focus most of my attention on the NT content that relates to contemporary issues?

Week 40  Romans 5

I was lurching through Romans 5 when I noticed a long dash at the end of verse-12.
I checked online. A long dash is called an “em dash” and it’s used to ‘set off extra or amplifying information. It can also show an abrupt change in thought’.
I checked to see if other versions used an “em dash” after 5:12. Nineteen did (~30%) (the others just ploughed straight on through). Paul didn’t likely use a long dash in his original letter so it’s a translator’s add-on. Despite that it’s a helpful visual clue that Paul might be heading off on an extra-information tangent.
One thing that isn’t very helpful is that there’s only one “em dash”. A second one would be a nice tip-off to show where the supplemental info ends. So I’m on my own. My best-guess is that a second “em dash” to end the section would come after 5:17. I delete the in-between verses – 5:13 14 15 16 & 17 – and the passage says:
Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned – …Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people’.
It makes sense. The “em dash” paragraph might be edited out & gone but where Paul began – just as – he wrapped up five verses later – so also.

Note: “em dash” definition is from Search Assist September 28, 2026. Quote is from Romans 5:12 & 18 (NIV)

Week 39  Acts

When Luke wrote Acts it was an original one-&-only document. Ever-afterwards every Acts of the Apostles was a handwritten copy. Some copies were perfect. Some weren’t. Both kinds survived.
Knowing that the bible has these manuscript glitches means that there can be a dilemma for readers. And different readers deal with glitches differently.
One way to think of it is that there’s a bible reader’s Manuscript Glitch-Management Continuum. The continuum has a succession of many points where a bible reader can land. Here’s three:
• Out at one end of the line are readers who decide that the textual snags make the bible unacceptably imperfect. So the bible lands in the Mythology & Legend category.
• At the other end are readers who accept the bible pretty much unquestioningly. They’re unfazed by manuscript puzzlers and might pay no attention to them at all.
• Somewhere in the middle are readers who accept that a) there are uncertainties or inconsistencies but that b) the bible conveys the big ideas the original writer was driving at. Reliable accuracy.
I admit that it simplifies things if I’m out on one of the continuum’s end points where I can be in an unruffled state of mental certainty. It’s no surprise when a reader gravitates toward the ends of the continuum. It’s the middle ground that’s a challenge. I lose some certainty there and I have to be prepared to mentally recalibrate. But it’s my preferred spot.

Week 38  Acts

My sense is that lots of people aren’t too concerned about manuscript discrepancies. But they concern me.
I scanned through Acts looking for marginal notes about what I’d call manuscript glitches. I found 33 notes saying things like:
some ancient mss. do not contain…
some mss. add…
many mss. do not contain…
Getting a little reminder about the uncertainty of the verse is helpful. But it’s also demanding:
Helpful: variations tell me that there’s some undecidedness in the text. So I might end-up saying: “I’m not sure about it” (and there’s nothing wrong with I’m-not-sure).
Demanding: variations make reading more taxing. They mean I have to be cautious as I go. I have to be wary about what I’m accepting or thinking or concluding.
Luke tells a story about the Bereans: they received the (gospel) message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.
I think that second phrase. It’s a nice promo for an attentive reading.

Note: marginal notes from Acts 2:44 5:32 8:37. Quote from Acts 17:11 (NIV).
Added 1: the shortform for manuscript is mss. Added 2: I re-checked 33 glitchy verses to see if mss. differences significantly changed the text. I didn’t find any that did. That’s not to say I’m okay with discrepancies. I’m not. I think they make the text untidy and they make me uncertain. But that aside alternate mss. readings didn’t seem to change Acts in any serious way at all.