Medicine Hat Joe

Week 16  Psalm 41

At some point in the past I underlined parts of paragraph #1 in red. I liked it then. And I still like it now.
In fact I think that those first three verses could be their own standalone psalm (it’d definitely be a short psalm – but longer than 117). The main reason I’d have for hiving it off is because it doesn’t seem to have any obvious connection to the rest of the psalm. That second section – verses 4-12 – is David’s prayer for help (he’s in the middle of a bunch of adversity where his enemies (and even his friends) are ganging-up on him).
Maybe I’m missing something. But the only correlation I can see is that: a) it’s a good thing for people to help people-in-need (1-3) and b) since David is currently in the people-in-need category the Lord could help bail him out (4-12). But I don’t like that explanation very much. It seems forced – a bit like trying to get a round peg into a square hole.
For me it makes just as much sense to treat paragraph #1 all by itself:
Blessed are those who have regard for the weak; the Lord delivers them in times of trouble. The Lord protects and preserves them – he does not give them over to the desire of their foes. The Lord sustains them on their sickbed and restores them from their bed of illness.

Note: quote from Psalm 41:1-3 (NIV)

Week 16  Psalm 38

Let’s say I’ve got a State of Mental & Spiritual Health & Wellbeing Index. Let’s say the scale registers a 10 (for positive wellbeing) and a 1 (for negative wellbeing). If I was assessing psalm 38 on that scale I’d rate it near the bottom – maybe a 2.
There are a couple of things going on with David.
On one hand he’s loaded down thinking about his own moral guilt & inadequacy. He says:
• there is no soundness in my bones because of my sin
• my guilt has overwhelmed me
• I groan in anguish of heart
• I confess my iniquity; I am troubled by my sin.
So David is facing an internal dilemma – a crushing sense of guilt that he can’t get rid of.
But then there’s a second thing going on – his relationships with people:
• My friends and companions avoid me
• Those who want to kill me set their traps (and) talk of my ruin.
However (and it’s a pretty big however) in spite of his adverse circumstances David takes the high road as best he can:
• All my longings lie open before you, Lord
• Lord, I wait for you
• I seek only to do what is good.
I’d give David high marks for doing what he can do in the face of his bad fortunes. So I’m surprised that by the end of the psalm – and this makes it an oddity – there’s no obvious resolution. David is left hanging.

Note: quotes from Psalm 38:3 4 8 18 11 12 9 15 20 (NIV)

Week 16  Psalm 37

David’s subject matter is Good people & Bad people. He splits his time roughly 50:50 between the two. But his most useful advice is for the Good ones.
Because self-interested Bad people tend to evolve toward taking hostile action against Good people David offers suggestions to Good people.
First…what not to do:
•  don’t fret about Bad people
•  don’t envy Bad people’s success
•  don’t get angry.
Then a couple of pieces of positive advice:
• first he says to trust in the Lord and do good (a bit later he adds: do good not evil)
• secondly he says to rest and wait patiently (and later: rest and keep to the Lord’s way).
David’s recommendations don’t really solve the obvious problem. There are still plenty of Bad people all around who might eventually prey on Good people. What David does do is give me a short Recommendation List – an action plan for dealing with adversity.
So…when I’m backed into a corner by evil opponents and when my fretfulness & anxiety & anger are getting jacked up and when I realize that I can’t manage my outside world…then what? Then I turn in.
Trust the Lord
Do what’s right & good
Be patient – settle-in & wait
Keep to the Lord’s way.
David’s recommendations are counterintuitive. And they’re difficult to practice routinely. They sound like exercises that are intended to help me start fundamentally reformatting my normal reactions to my external environment.

Note: quotes from Psalm 37:1 7 8 3 27 7 34 (NIV)

Week 15  Psalm 37

In Psalm 37 David splits his time fairly equally between talking about the two main groups of people in the world. They are: a) Bad people and b) Good people.
Out of the 40-verses in the psalm approximately 20-verses talk about Bad people and the other 20-verses are about Good people.
I was interested in what David said about the consequences of a Bad person living a Bad life. (I wasn’t too interested in finding immediate results since it’s pretty clear that a Bad person can have some pretty decent results even though being bad. I was more interested in the longer-term repercussions of Bad living.)
David mentions maybe a dozen and a half products of a Bad life (some of them are repeaters). He says that Bad people will:
wither like green plants
soon die away
be destroyed
be no more…will not be found
have their swords pierce their own hearts
have their power broken
perish…they will go up in smoke
pass away and be no more.
A couple of the repercussions David mentions are a bit vague (for example they will not be found). But the majority are definitive & decisive – death destruction & complete disappearance.
It’s discouraging seeing examples of how some people get-away-with-murder. So 37 is a reminder that people getting-away-with-murder is a temporary condition. And since temporary isn’t permanent – eventually temporary ends.

Note: quotes from Psalm 37: 2 9 10 13 15 17 20 36 (NIV)

 

Week 13  Jonah 2

Yesterday I read where David said that the Lord spared me from going down to the pit.
Today the prayer of Jonah had a similar sound: the engulfing waters threatened me…seaweed was wrapped around my head…I sank down. But you, Lord my God, brought my life up from the pit.
I checked some other versions and most of them used the word pit. A couple capitalized it: the Pit. A couple called it the pit of death.
Pit sometimes just means a deep hole in the ground. But the bible also uses it in a figure-of-speech kind of way:
…let’s swallow them alive, like the grave, and whole, like those who go down to the pit
…you are brought down to the realm of the dead, to the depths of the pit
I will make you dwell in the earth below…with those who go down to the pit, and you will not return or take your place in the land of the living.
So the Pit is one of the names of the place where dead people go. It’s the place where some people – like Jonah (who was right on the doorstep of doom) – were rescued from at the-very-last-second.
People can come very close to the netherworld without landing inside. But – barring a miracle – once a person is there they’re there for good.

Note: quotes from Psalm 30:3 (NIV) Jonah 2:5-6 (NIV CSB RSV EXB & NCV) Proverbs 1:12 Isaiah 14:15 Ezekiel 26:20 (NIV)

 

Week 13  Psalm 30

The psalm starts with David saying thank-you because the Lord lifted me out of the depths. A couple of seconds later David expands on that idea: you, Lord, brought me up from the realm of the dead; you spared me from going down to the pit.
I wondered about this place – this realm-of-the-dead. I checked a couple of other versions. Several used the word Sheol. Others used the grave or the nether world. So Sheol is the place where dead people go. And David said that’s where the Lord had brought me up from. Which sounds like David had died. Gone to Sheol. Then been revived by the Lord and relocated in the land-of-the-living.
I don’t think that’s what happened here. I’m not saying the Lord couldn’t bring someone back from death – that actually happened on a few occasions. But I don’t think that’s the situation here because David says in the next breath: you spared me from going down to the pit. I’m assuming that the pit is another way of saying Sheol. Which makes it sound now like David didn’t die and go to Sheol. More like the Grim Reaper had David in his sights. But then the Lord intervened.
I’ve seen this kind of divine intervention other places so it’s not totally unexpected. I figure David was talking about one of those last-second rescues.

Note: quotes from Psalm 30:1 & 3 (NIV). (I’m still curious about the nether world, so I’ll be keeping it in mind.)

Week 9  2 Kings 18

Nehushtan was a bronze snake. Originally he’d been cast by Moses back in the wilderness during one of the times that Israel had been complaining about their terrible life. The result was that the Lord sent venomous snakes among them. Deadly snakes. When people started dying they reversed course and pleaded with Moses to come-to-the-rescue. So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole…When anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived. It was another wilderness miracle: look at Nehushtan and survive.
Anyway after the snake episode Nehushtan disappeared for a long time. Where he landed is anybody’s guess. Maybe archived as a historical relic. Maybe locked away in a storage room. Whatever happened Nehushtan disappeared from the record for six or seven centuries. But he hadn’t been melted down.
And at some point Nehushtan reappeared. Polished-up & refurbished & repurposed as a kind of quasi-idol. He showed up during king Hezekiah’s reign. Unfortunately for Nehushtan it turned out to be his swan-song because Hezekiah was a reforming king and one of the first things he did was to break into pieces the bronze snake Moses had made, for up to that time the Israelites had been burning incense to it. (It was called Nehushtan.)
So credit Hezekiah for his efforts. But the Nehushtan revival was one more example of Israel’s voracious appetite for alternate gods. And their creativity in finding them.

Note: quotes from Numbers 21:6 9 & 2 Kings 18:4 (NIV)

Week 6  1 Samuel 28

Chapter 28 tells the story of Saul’s last night on earth. Of course Saul didn’t know he was that close to his point-of-no-return. But he knew that tomorrow he’d be facing-off against the Philistines in battle. And he was desperate to have some kind of premonitory tip-off about how things would pan-out. So on that last night he consulted a witch.
Under normal circumstances he likely wouldn’t have tried that but Saul had burned all his legitimate information-providing bridges. When he had tried consulting him the Lord did not answer him by dreams or Urim or prophets. All that Saul had left were the dark-arts.
I checked a couple of cross-references in the margin of my bible:
Do not turn to mediums or seek out spiritists
I will set my face against anyone who turns to mediums and spiritists (the Lord speaking)
Let no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead.
In spite of warnings like this Saul asked the medium at Endor to call up Samuel from the place of the dead. Which – eerily & frighteningly & amazingly– she was able to do. So her seance was a real success. But it spelled doom for Saul.

Note: quotes from 1 Samuel 28:6 Leviticus 19:31 & 20:6 Deuteronomy 18:10-11 (NIV)

 

Week 5  Joshua 18-19

A couple of weeks ago I was looking at Genesis 49 – it was the blessings / forecasts that Jacob gave to his sons. At that point I wanted to see what biographical data I could find about each of the boys and then look for logical connections from there to each boy’s unique ‘blessing’. Reuben cooperated. So did Simeon Levi and Judah.
It was a different story when it came to Zebulun Issachar Dan Gad Asher & Naphtali. Not only were their blessings pretty cryptic but I couldn’t find any biographical data on them. So the exercise fell flat. In the end I lumped them together and called them ‘the shadowy sextet’. Then I found that Benjamin was pretty inconspicuous too. So I ended up packaging him in with his other six semi-anonymous brothers.
Anyway…now I land on the land distribution chapters in Joshua and see that Benjamin Simeon Zebulun Issachar Asher Naphtali & Dan are grouped in a consecutive list. 66-verses in two chapters. Each tribe averaging about 9.5 verses. By contrast the other brothers each had pretty much a whole chapter to himself.
When reading Genesis 49 I came away with the feeling that Benjamin Zebulun Issachar Dan Gad Asher & Naphtali were second-tier sons. And in a quick read through Joshua 18-19 I have no reason to think differently.
Looks like some boys – specifically Judah Joseph (Ephraim-Manasseh) & Levi – were going to shape-up better than the others.

Note: see previous posts 12-blessings; Reuben; Simeon & Levi; Judah; the-shadowy-sextet; Benjamin and Joseph January 6-16 2026.

Week 5  Judges

While I was reading the stories of the twelve judges I paid a bit more attention to which tribe each judge came from.
I was surprised to see that only four of them had a definite tribal connection:
Ehud > Benjamin
Tola > Issachar
Elon > Zebulun
Samson > Dan.
With four other judges there’s only a hint at their tribal connection:
Barak. Maybe Naphtali
Gideon. Maybe Manasseh
Ibzan. Maybe Judah
Abdon. Maybe Ephraim.
And I couldn’t find any tribal link for:
Othniel (a Kennite / Kennizite)
Shamgar (unidentified)
Jair & Jephthah (from Gilead).
Anyway the reason I started looking at the tribal connections in the first place was because of the Victory Song of Deborah in Judges 5. The song celebrated the win and in the process it praised the tribes that pitched-in to help – Ephraim Benjamin Zebulun Naphtali Issachar all got kudos. But the Reubenites were kind of iffy – they might or might not have helped out. And it looks like Dan & Asher were complete no-shows.
The point being that in Judges the web of inter-connectedness among the twelve tribes – which seemed tight – was showing signs of fraying around the edges. Fine cracks are appearing in the spirit of all-for-one and one-for-all. Maybe not Twelve Independent Tribes so far. But not One Confederated State either.

Note: see Ehud in Judges 3:15 Tola 10:1 Elon 12:11 Samson 13:2 Barak 4:6 Gideon 6:12 Ibzan 12:8 Abdon 12:13 Othniel 3:9 Shamgar 3:31 Jair 10:3 Jephthah 10:18. One paragraph in Deborah’s Song 5:14-18