Month: April 2020

April 30, 2020

2020 is now one-third finished so I know I should’ve read 33.33333% of the bible by today (in my bible one-third is 571 pages).
I add up the numbers for Genesis – I Chronicles + Proverbs + Song of Solomon + the Psalms that I’ve read so far. 726 pages. I run that number and see that 726 pages is 41.96% of the bible. So that’s a relief.
There were a couple of things in play for me this month. For one, I decided on March 31 to try reading one book per calendar week so that forced me over the 100 chapters / month mark. Being quarantined might have helped a bit, too.
I’m looking ahead now, doing a quick count. The II-Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah-Esther-Job block is 111 chapters. Close enough to 100 chapters for the month. I think I’ll aim for that.

Note: in my April 27 post I wondered why two tribes – Levi and Judah – dominated the tribal verse-count in I Chronicles 1-9. The inequity was pretty surprising and I wondered: is the chronicler intentionally highlighting the David-Judah-kingly tribe and the Levi-priestly-religious line? And I wondered: what will the rest of the book show? What I found was that the last nineteen chapters of the book are the life of David, and sandwiched into that section dagwood-style there are about eleven chapters on the ark, the temple, and the work of the Levites. So…the mhj Unscientific Conclusion is: the chronicler was interested most of all in Judah and Levi.

Week 18 I Chronicles

I counted 241 names in the first chapter of the book.
That’s in the first fifty-four verses. And there’re thousands of names still to come.
Of course there’s narrative, too. Mostly the story of David. But even there the chronicler doesn’t go very far before he gets back to listing names.
So it’s a surprise to get to chapter sixteen and see a psalm. It runs for twenty-nine verses.
In my bible there’s a cross-reference at verse eight so I flip over to Psalm 105:1-15 to see what that’s about, one finger in page 598 and one in page 856. I read one line from Chronicles then flip over and read one in Psalms, comparing the two. I’m reading the same line twice, line after line. There are a couple of differences, places where the words aren’t exactly the same but the meaning is. They’re basically identical. A repeater psalm.
Then I realize the exercise has slowed me down. I also realize I’ve not been paying attention to the psalm. I look back and see a line I underlined at some point: let the heart of those who seek the Lord be glad. I flip over and see it underlined in Psalm 105, too.
It’s a good verse, and really doesn’t sound much like the oppressive and burdensome OT life I hear about.
As I’m looking for the Lord, one of the outcomes I can expect is gladness.

Note: the psalm is in I Chronicles 16:8-36, the quote is from 16:10b.

Week 18  I Chronicles

I finished through to chapter 10 in two days of hard reading. I didn’t recognize most of the names (fortunately I could identify the sons of Jacob).
Starting in chapter two, and for seven chapters there are a little over 300 verses of family names. Since there are twelve tribes you’d figure there’d be 26 verses of names for each clan, on average.
But I did a rough count and 26 wasn’t close:
Judah’s family counted about 102 verses
Simeon twenty verses
Reuben ten
Gad seven
Manasseh ten (two half-tribes)
Issachar five
Benjamin forty-seven (maybe)
Naphtali one
Ephraim ten
Asher eleven
Dan or Zebulun (I don’t even find them)
Levi eighty-one
So…Judah and Levi have about 180 of 300 verses – 60%.
Take away Benjamin and no one else gets more than 20 verses.
I wonder what’s driving the writer’s choice.
It’s hard to say if the discrepancy means anything.
Pretty clearly the Levi-family of priests and the royal family of Judah dominate the content numerically. 
But do the numbers prove anything?
I’m not sure they do. But I’m not sure they don’t, either.
I think the Numbers Discrepancy Question is not a bad place to start, and from there see where the writer goes in the rest of the book. Will he highlight Judah and Levi in some other way that lets me test my question?
I guess I’ll see.

Note: the numbers above are unofficial, so don’t take them to the bank.

Week 18 I Chronicles

The subtitle to I Chronicles in my bible is: Genealogy from Adam.
And that’s just what I see in verse one: Adam, Seth, Enosh.
So far so good. I recognize two of the first three names.
Then I recognize the three names in verse three, and the four names in verse four.
But after that things start going downhill.
I flip over a few pages…574, 575, 576…
There are pretty much nine chapters of names. A little over sixteen pages, give or take.
Over 400 verses. Mostly names.
As the chronicler started writing I Chronicles 1-9 he would have known that no one in world bible-reading history would ever choose to read these chapters if he was looking for inspirational reading. The writer didn’t write I Chronicles 1-9 to fire me up.
I start reading quickly, scanning down the page, seeing the words and not really missing anything but not mentally sounding out the names. I look for familiar names. It’s like a radar-scan…looking for a few familiar somethings in a mass of indeterminate nothings.
I Chronicles 1-9 wasn’t likely written to be read. More likely written to be consulted, like a big reference book in the library. And even though it’s not totally 100% names – for example, Sheshan had no sons so Jarha, his Egyptian slave married one of Sheshan’s girls and saved the family name – still, stories are an exception, as rare as pearls at the bottom of the sea.

Note: Sheshan’s story is in I Chronicles 2:34-41.

Week 17 II Kings

The words CHAPTER 17 in my bible are underlined in red.
I don’t know when I did that, or why. Probably because chapter 17 maps out a big turning point in Israel’s national history. Maybe not exactly turning point since turning point means changing-direction-but-still-moving. The only place Israel was moving was directly into exile in Assyria, and from there right on into national oblivion.
I might have also underlined CHAPTER 17 because the writer, I’m pretty sure expected the why-did-the-northern-tribes-disappear-from-history question. So he says: now this came about because… and then in the next seventeen verses lists about twenty reasons why Israel failed. All the reasons have to do with the covenant promises that Israel broke – nothing to do with ecological degradation, overpopulation, or bad political decisions. II Kings 17 is concerned with religious beliefs and practices.
Surprisingly, Israel is told twice that one of their problems was that they didn’t listen. When you look at some of the other faults on the list, this one doesn’t seem like such a big thing.
But I don’t think the writer was concerned with inattentiveness. Israel was listening. The concern was who they were listening to. I thought back to the beginning: Eve had two voices to listen to. Her problem wasn’t an attention deficit. It was the choice she made, preferring to listen to one voice and not the other.

Note: quote is from II Kings 17:7 (NASB version). Listen is in verses 14 & 40.

Week 17 II Kings

A woman in Shunem had taken Elisha under-her-wing.
Culturally-speaking it’s hard to know how a woman would have approached a passer-by, a stranger. But she was poised enough that she told her husband: I perceive that this is a holy man of God passing by us continually. He believed her. She built a guestroom for Elisha. That put him in her debt. But she wasn’t after payback.
Then her son died.
She knew that technically this was the end. But she went far out on a limb. She lay her boy’s body in the guestroom and left on a desperate, futile trip to find Elisha. What was clear to everyone in Shunem was not clear to her.
On a map you can see she had to travel west and north for hours toward the Mediterranean and Mount Carmel. She told her servant: drive and…do not slow down the pace for me…
She was brusque with Gehazi, and when she saw Elisha she wasn’t brusque but was pretty unequivocal: as the Lord lives and as you yourself live, I will not leave you. So Elisha went with her to perform one of the great miracles of the OT and bring the boy back from a near-death experience.
If I had to choose an OT woman to be my mom this woman with no name is in the top three.
She’s one of the towering and forceful people of the bible.

Note: quotes from II Kings 4:9, 24 & 30 (NASB version)

Week 17  II Kings

If someone asked you what I & II Kings were about you couldn’t go wrong by saying: it’s about kings. There’s not much to debate since there’s got to be about a dozen and a half kings in the northern kingdom and probably the same in the south. So if about forty kings are named in forty-seven chapters then, for sure, the books are about kings.
That said, you can’t escape the prophets. I Kings 17 begins the story of Elijah, and then his story runs right on into the story of Elisha. So that’s about fifteen chapters right there devoted to those two. And they’re not the only ones. I figure at least 32% of the two books is about prophets.
For a bible reader the prophets have the best stories (I checked The Action Bible and it devotes a dozen chapters to Elijah & Elisha.)
Prophets are outsiders, minority voices, aberrants, eccentrics.
They criticize powerful men and women. 
They make unpopular judgment calls, don’t conform, and end up standing alone inside the danger zone.
Reading about most of the kings is like going to a portrait gallery of tiny monochromes. I glance and hurry on.
When I read about the prophets I pace myself, trying to catch the vivid graphics of their unorthodox lives.
The books of the Kings might be about kings.
It’s the prophets who are the heroes.

Note: The Action Bible; editor Doug Mauss, illustrator Sergio Cariello (Colorado Springs: David Cook, 2010)

Week 17  II Kings

In my bible the seventeen books of the prophets go from page 1049 to page 1334.
285 pages of prophets, all grouped together at the end of the OT.
Because of that I slip into a kind of lazy assumption that the Samuels and Kings happened, and then sometime later the prophets began prophesying.
But it doesn’t work that way. I got that reminder while I was reading about king Jeroboam the son of Joash and I saw the name of Jonah the son of Amittai. This is the Jonah of the Jonah & the Big Fish story. Jonah’s story comes twenty books after II Kings. I check a cross-reference to Hosea. He prophesied: during the reign of Jeroboam the son of Joash. I check a cross-reference to Amos. He prophesied: in the reign of Jeroboam the son of Joash.
In my bible there are hundreds of pages between king Jeroboam and the books of Hosea Amos & Jonah. But what do you know? They were contemporaries.
If I had the time I’d be tempted to revise the OT into its chronological sequence. I won’t because I’m pretty sure it would be a nightmarish copy-and-paste job. Plus I don’t know it’d be worth the effort.
So I’ll stick with the normal bible-order, but try to keep these gaps in mind.

Note: quotes from Hosea 1:1, Amos 1:1 (NASB). Jeroboam is in II Kings 14:23-29

Week 17 II Kings

Whoever wrote Kings can tell a good story. But I’m surprised by the one in chapter one. A captain and fifty soldiers are destroyed by an act of God.
I figure I’m a pretty normal reader and my instinctive reaction is that 51 innocent guys were incinerated by a god who is harsh, unfair, ruthless and brutal. A terrible guy.
So I think a bit while my instinctive reaction settles…
There’s something I’m pretty sure about.
And there’s something I’m not so sure about, but think could be true.
I’m pretty sure the writer’s aim was not to say that 51 pristine guys were eliminated by a horror-show god. I’m pretty sure that when I’m reading the story and drawing my conclusion that god-is-the-worst then I’m getting something out that the writer didn’t put in.
The thing I’m not so sure about – but think might be true – is that the writer decided to take a bigger story and boil it down so completely that almost nothing was left. Just a crust of distillate. Condensed so totally that I’m jammed into a corner. Like the writer is saying: okay, now you figure this one out.
It seems like a kind of test-story to me.
I know this writer can tell an inspiring and understandable story.
But here it’s like he wants to know how I’ll manage something that’s uninspiring and hard to understand.

Note: the story is in II Kings 1:9-15

Week 16 Psalm 48

I stopped right away: great is the Lord.
The Lord is great. I figure that if the Lord is great then what he’s like, what he says and does all squeeze in under the big umbrella of God being great. All of it. 
What that means is that when I read something about God and it doesn’t sound too great then I can either decide that what I’m thinking about God being not-so-great is correct, and that in fact God isn’t great. Or I can decide that what I thought about God being not-so-great was a gaff.
I think my basic question is: does everything fit under the big umbrella or are some things left out in the rain?
If I got to decide personally and independently what’s going to stay dry and what gets wet then a big problem is solved because I could manipulate quirky or inexplicable God-doesn’t-look-so-great things in a satisfactory way.
On the other hand if I’m basically stuck with what the bible says and I don’t get to decide what things about God are great or not-so-great then it’s more of an uphill climb. If God is great but from my perspective it looks like the greatness is not-so-greatness then that’s a predicament.
I’ve got to admit it would be easier if I got to decide for myself.
It would be way easier.

Note: Psalm 48:1 great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised (NASB version)