Month: January 2020

Week 5 Exodus 33-Leviticus 13

January 31 is a good time for a progress assessment.
The reading through plan I’m following says I should be finished Exodus 40 by today, which I am.
Which seems good.
On the surface.
Last December I calculated that reading 1189 chapters in 12 months meant reading 99.08 chapters a month. And 50 chapters in Genesis plus 40 in Exodus = 90. So I’m falling behind.
Fortunately I decided to start reading Proverbs about three weeks ago – one chapter a day. So I’ve read 22 chapters in Proverbs, for a total of 90 + 22 = 112 chapters in January. [I know…this is breaking from my decision to consecutively read through from Genesis to Revelation. I’m hoping it’s a good deviation.]

Information Note on a different topic: Since I start reading it tomorrow, I decided to page through Leviticus, try to get a feel for what’s coming. I ran a couple of numbers. Those numbers say that Leviticus orders up a pretty big menu of legal information.
By my count Leviticus has 699 verses of laws and regulations (I counted chapters 1-7, 11-15, 17-25, and 27).
The rest of the chapters (8-10, 16, and 26) – the ones I’m saying are not legal content – have 160 verses in total.
A total of 699 ‘legal’ verses + 160 ‘non-legal’ verses = 859 verses in the book. When I convert that to a percentage I get 81% and 19%.
So the MHJ Unofficial Estimate is that Leviticus is 81% legal-type reading (and I’m pretty sure that’s a conservative estimate).
So now I know what I’m getting into, starting tomorrow.

Week 5 Exodus 33-Leviticus 13

Sandwiched between two multi-chapter blocks of text – the instructions for building the tabernacle (25-31) and the tabernacle building project (35-40) – is a story that catches me by surprise.
I read that some of the people built a golden idol and worshiped it. So that tips me off about how little impression the second commandment had made.
I read that the Lord took action and ordered the execution of the idol worshipers – about 3,000 people. So that tips me off about how serious the offense was.
I stop reading, wondering what to make of it – the crime and the punishment. There are some conclusions for me to jump to, and I’m ready to jump.
I keep reading, see that the Lord makes a closing statement about himself: I am the Lord, the merciful and gracious God. I am slow to anger and rich in unfailing love and faithfulness. I show this unfailing love to many thousands by forgiving every kind of sin and rebellion. Even so I do not leave sin unpunished…
Whatever conclusion I land on has to include these two verses – they’re part of the mix if I’m trying to get to the bottom of things. It’s not exactly as if they resolve all my problems. I guess it would be easier for me to pretend they weren’t there, leave me free to just judge for myself.

Note: quotation is from Exodus 34:6-7 (New Living Translation). The full story is in Exodus 32-34.

Week 5 Exodus 33-Leviticus 13

Yesterday I read the seven chapters of Exodus 25-31 at once – the Lord tells Moses how to build the tabernacle.
Today I read Exodus 35-40 – the tabernacle is being built.
Reading the two sections one after the other I notice the echo right away: the doing-it chapters pretty much repeat the what-I-want-done chapters. The Lord wants a bronze grate made; the people make a bronze grate.
Along with the repetition I detect the same cool, detached feeling I have between me and the text. No plot, no characters, no action. The pages don’t turn themselves. Like yesterday I know I’m still in rocky country. 
I try to avoid comparisons. I like Ecclesiastes, Ruth, and Ezra better than Exodus 25-40 but that’s not really the point, not really a fair comparison. The author wasn’t trying to stimulate or inspire or excite me. He was describing a construction project.
And I try to avoid certain assessment-words: boring, irrelevant, worthless. I’m not sure they apply. Exodus 20 is a colossus but that doesn’t make chapters 25-40 valueless because they’re not.
I remind myself I’m reading through because everything is valuable, even if it’s not equally valuable.
The last two days I’ve been travelling along at highway speed.

Week 4 Exodus 13-32

Exodus 25-31 is a seven-chapter block, a topical unit: Instructions for Building the Tabernacle. I decide to read it in one sitting. I’ve travelled this road before and have a sense of what to expect – seven pretty lonely and demanding chapters. 
I’m sitting in my room when I start but by the middle of chapter 26 I go into the kitchen and stand at the island. I catch my mind drifting in mid-28 and refocus, re-converge. Chapter 29 starts at the bottom of 123 and when I turn the page I see two columns of unbroken text – the longest chapter of the set. Before long I quit using my plastic ruler and lean on my elbows scanning the columns, lots of content passing through the sieve in my head. I finish in about thirty-three minutes (a long reading day); I’ve covered some ground.
Low sun is flooding the kitchen now; I turn off the lights, check the weather station – it’s cold. I look back at pencil marks in the margins of my bible – 18 small checks and 2 question marks that weren’t there 33 minutes ago. Twenty things that got my attention. No matter where I read there’s almost never nothing.

Note: tomorrow I’ll jump ahead to Exodus 35-40.

Week 4 Exodus 13-32

When I got to Exodus 20 I read it and the next four chapters all at once.
Exodus 20 is titanically and stupendously important so I slow down a bit. But I don’t stop and stare. It’s an important 20% chunk of the day’s reading, but I’m conscious of the 80% still coming.
In spite of my urgency, when I get past the ten commandments I bog down. There’s a three-chapter collection of what the author called ordinances: specific case laws, real life situations, legal decisions, ifs & thens. For example the fifth-commandment in chapter 20 says honor your father and mother. But 21 moves right on and develops that vanilla-flavoured guideline, adding a shot of legislative Tabasco by saying that he who strikes his father or his mother shall surely be put to death.
I read chapters 21, 22, 23. I notice myself edging toward a couple of conclusions, and also jumping to one pretty solid and definite one: this section doesn’t make much sense to me.
Jumping to conclusions might be one of my most common reading responses to the bible. I try to be alert to my jumpiness; try to remind myself to look before I leap; dial back on my confident this-doesn’t-make-sense; be a little less affirmative, more interrogative; ask myself: why isn’t this section making sense to me?

Notes: quotes from Exodus 20:12 and 21:15

Week 4 Exodus 13-32

I saw a quote in Good to Great that was pretty helpful, and so I decided to rewrite it and apply it to bible reading. I know…it’s specific advice for CEOs. But I think it’s also general advice for anyone who just wants to get something done.
MHJ’s re-phrase of Jim Collins: I want to read the bible. But how do I get going? How do I keep going? The starting point and the key is not to add bible reading onto all the other things I’m doing. A better start-point for me is to admit that a lot of what I’m doing right now is a waste of time and energy. So I need to identify my time-wasters. Then I need to ignore and stop wasting time on them. Now I can organize my spare time to get done what I want to get done (but didn’t have time or energy for before).

Note: credit to Jim Collins Good to Great (NY: Harper, 2001).
The actual quote says: the point of this entire book is not that we should “add” these findings to what we are already doing and make ourselves even more overworked. No, the point is to realize that much of what we’re doing is a waste of energy. If we organized the majority of our work time around applying these principles, and pretty much ignored or stopped doing everything else, our lives would be simpler and our results vastly improved (205)

Week 4 Exodus 13-32

What would I do if a guy told me God wanted me to sell my house and give the money to the poor? And that to prove that God had sent him, he would predict several things:
Monday your house will be vandalized;
Tuesday your website will be hacked;
Wednesday your fiancée will marry a real estate agent;
Thursday your neighbour’s tree will fall and crush his garage;
Friday the prime minister of Burkina Faso will be hit by a silver Mercedes Benz driven by a guy named Rufus;
Saturday an asteroid will hit the Sunridge Observatory at 3:36 a.m.
Sunday Niagara Falls will stop flowing.
If each of those things did happen what would I do? Well…I guess I’d do some serious thinking about selling my house.
That’s what makes the Exodus story of the hardhearted pharaoh so surprising. He was able to completely disregard the ten plagues, to dismiss the power behind them.
Pharaoh’s heart was strong and heavy against Moses, against God. Hard as rock. The text goes on to say that the Lord began collaborating with the pharaoh, co-acting with him, supplementing his diamond-hard hardness of heart, making it unbreakably durable.
Pharaoh is like a man who finds his perfect ocean wave and then realizes he’s surfing an irresistible dangerous lethal force. But not to worry, he’s thinking. I’m okay. I’m heading exactly toward where I want to go.

Note: the full story is in Exodus 7-14

Week 3 Genesis 43-Exodus 12 

Two things are going on while I read: (a) I’m reading, and (b) I’m trying to figure out what my take-away is from that reading. Luckily for me, sometimes the bible tells me what it is.
An example is the story of the ten plagues. Egypt had killed and enslaved the Hebrews, and so a series of plagues from the Lord ruined the country. Egypt released the slaves. The obvious thing I see is that the Lord was powerful and took action to free an oppressed people.
But the Lord also spells out to Moses the bigger point of the miracles. I’ve freed you from bondage, he says, in order that you may know that I am the Lord.
So on one hand there’s the story itself, and on the other there’s what I’m supposed to get from the story.
I think it’s totally possible that someone reading the plagues story today might feel sorry for Egypt, sorry for the pharaoh. It seems unfair, seems pretty drastic. Why would God do something like that? God must be pretty angry. I don’t like that story; it offends me.
So the bible sometimes anticipates response. Joe is reading the event but he might misread it, so he needs a key. Key for Joe: the point of this story is that you can know that I am the Lord.
If I was smart enough I guess I wouldn’t need the prompt. But there it is.

Note: quote is from Exodus 10:2

Week 3 Genesis 43-Exodus 12

Exodus 3: the angel of the Lord appears to Moses and says he wants Moses to lead Israel out of Egypt. Moses says he doesn’t want that job.
That much is pretty clear. I look at the last 12 verses of Exodus 3 and the first 13 verses of chapter 4 and I see Moses’ explanation: Reasons Why I’m Not the Right Man For the Job. I understand the story to that point. The Lord wants Moses to do something that he doesn’t want to do it. I find out something about Moses.
The story also says something about God. I already know from reading Genesis that God has incontestably dynamic force available to him. He has the titanesque power to vaporize galaxies with a glance; he has coercive powers to make Genghis Khan weep with envy. And then this story. The narrator portrays the Lord in human strokes, sketches him out to look kind of like, well, a guy. The angel of the Lord as a negotiator: I can discuss, I can listen, I’m reasonable, I can make concessions.
I’ve already seen, already know that the Lord is not just a regular guy. This story muddies the water, complicates the picture.
A one-dimensional god is a way more manageable god; multi-dimensionality is a tougher mental fit for me.
Things cloud over in my head. I feel I have to manoeuvre with care; a cat on a crowded counter.
I’ll file it away for now; wait and see if it’ll clarify for me.

Week 3 Genesis 43-Exodus 12

A lot of water has passed over the dam between Genesis 50:26 and Exodus 1:7. Hundreds of years of water in thirty seconds of reading.
Jacob’s family is a lot bigger now, big enough that Egypt’s ruler thinks the country’s foreign minority along the northern border could become a security risk. So by law the families of Israel lose whatever legal rights they have and are re-classified as unpaid mandatory labourers of the state – slaves. And another decision is made to help control the Hebrew population: universal male infanticide. The program of killing Hebrew newborns is assigned to two Hebrew midwives.
The bible doesn’t say anything else about Shiphrah and Puah. Just this story. Just that they were supposed to kill children, and that they decided not to. And just that the thing that motivated them to not kill children was that they revered God – Exodus 1 says that twice. And so even though revering God seems like shaky grounds on which to disobey the state, they disobeyed the state.
I’m pretty sure they didn’t know what the outcome would be. I don’t imagine they figured they would be rewarded for their disobedience. Don’t imagine they thought the pharaoh would come onside if they explained their reverence-for-God argument. Don’t imagine, even after they surveyed their mostly downside outlook, it would have made too much difference.