Month: March 2021

Week 11 1 Samuel

The story of Saul is one of the most dejecting long stories of the OT.
Even though Samuel features The Big Three – Samuel-Saul-David – Saul dominates the first book. After chapter eight he’s in every chapter except twelve & twenty-five. So that’s twenty+ chapters of material on Saul. Way more than lots of other characters.
The storyline of Saul is this – Saul was a guy who started well but finished in a disastrous mess.
He was such a quality guy at first: big strong good-looking humble unassuming helpful fair just. The bible says that Samuel told him: God is with you. It also says: God changed his heart; and that: the Spirit of God came upon him. So Saul started out in a big way, a good way. Pretty definitely on the Lord’s side.
But then in chapter thirteen and again in fifteen he stumbled – badly; disastrously; catastrophically.
A weird thing I notice as I’m reading thirteen & fifteen is that I kind of understand Saul. Feel sympathetic. His crazy excuses make some sense to me.
But I know it’s a misplaced sympathy because by chapter fifteen Saul has fully turned his back on the Lord. After that point depression insecurity envy fear murderous-animosity & duplicity are what characterize Saul. And in the end he turns to the dark side of the spirit world for help.
The main reminder I take from Saul? Concentrate on finishing.

Note: quotes from I Samuel 10:7, 9, 10 (NASB)

Week 11 1 Samuel

When Samuel told Saul he’d be Israel’s first king you get the sense that Saul kind of believed him but still had doubts. So to help convince Saul Samuel forecast several things that would happen that day.
A long time ago I saw a Look magazine Q&A that asked a well-known guy – a guy who did not believe God existed – what evidence could convince him that God did.
The guy said: I think that if I heard a voice from the sky predicting all that was going to happen to me during the next twenty-four hours, including events that would have seemed highly improbable, and if all these events then proceeded to happen, I might perhaps be convinced at least of the existence of some superhuman intelligence.
I remembered the answer today because Samuel did almost exactly that. I counted at least sixteen specific & highly improbable events Samuel forecast. For example, when Saul got to the oak tree at Tabor he’d meet three men headed for Bethel – one with three goats, one with three loaves of bread, one with a wineskin.
The ability to flawlessly know the impeccable future is scary-impressive.
Not even fortune-cookie manufacturers know the explicit-and-detailed future. Nobody does. So when somebody does then I know he’s doing something that can’t be done. And if something that can’t-be done can-be then I have a decision to make.

Note: quote from The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell (no publishing details: (1953?)). Story from 1 Samuel 10:1-7.

Week 11 1 Samuel

It’s easy to feel sorry for Eli.
He seemed like a pretty good guy. After he’d accused Hannah of drunkenness he realized his mistake and so then he blessed her – and she was blessed. Then later Eli treated Samuel with understanding sensitivity and alert advice when the Lord had come to the unsuspecting boy in a night vision.
But Eli was flawed in a key way. His sons were ripping off people who came with their sacrifices. They were also taking sexual advantage of young women who worked at the Tabernacle. Eli gave them a mild reprimand. They disregarded him.
You’ve gotta wonder why he didn’t get more animated about correcting Hophni and Phinehas because on at least two occasions the Lord spoke to him about it.
The first time by a prophet: why do you scorn my sacrifices and offerings? Why do you honor your sons more than me?
The second time through Samuel: I have warned (Eli) continually that judgment is coming for his family, because his sons are blaspheming God and he hasn’t disciplined them.
So whatever glimmers of quality shone in Eli they didn’t outshine the thing the Lord had explicitly & repeatedly told him to do, which he explicitly & repeatedly didn’t.
Eli might have been kind sympathetic understanding. But he was weak and indecisive and deaf to the voice of the Lord and unwilling to put the Lord ahead of his boys.

Note: quotes from 1 Samuel 2:29, 3:13 (NLT)

Week 10 Ruth

The book of Ruth begins with a story about a decision two young widows had to make.
Naomi had lived for years in Moab. Her husband and her two sons had died there. So now she was heading back home. She must have been a pretty fine mother-in-law because her in-law-ed girls wanted to go with her.
The three of them packed up and left. But Naomi stopped right there by the last-ditch and gave Ruth & Orpah a final chance. It’s better if you stay here: things are far more bitter for me than for you, because the Lord himself has caused me to suffer.
Ruth & Orpah stood there in the sun at their crossroad on the way to Judah with a decision to make.
Naomi had painted a pretty hopeless picture of her own chances. So, on second-and-last-thought Orpah decided to go back home. Her choice makes sense when you think about it. Staying was a bit safer, a bit more secure. Better safe than sorry.
But Ruth told Naomi: don’t ask me to leave you and turn back. I will go wherever you go and live wherever you live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God.
Leaving home. Emigrating. Converting. Big choices but for Ruth safe wasn’t better. Security wasn’t part of her calculus.
So Orpah went back to safety but Ruth kept heading west.

Note: quotes from Ruth 1:13, 16 (NLT)

Week 10 Judges

It’s a bit of a relief to finish reading Judges.
Judges has two trends happening. One is the up-&-down ping-pong pattern through the book that looks like this: Israel follows the Lord > Israel starts following other gods > disaster strikes > Israel prays for help > the Lord sends a judge. Up-&-down like that.
Then the second pattern is just basically down. It’s like if I draw a line on a page from the upper left to the lower right. From left to right along that line I can draw a saw-toothed bunch of ups-&-downs. There are ups for sure, but over time the ups are all trending down.
So it’s no surprise that Judges ends with two unpleasant stories – well, the second-last story is grim; the last one is distressingly terrible.
In the second-last story a Levite became a priest-for-hire for a private household. Then he traded up to become the idol-worshipping priest for the whole tribe of Dan.
The second story is about another Levite. It’s as gruesome as any story you’ll find in the bible. The outcome is civil war. Benjamin’s tribe almost joins the pterosaurs.
The 37-page Book of Judges shows a lot of Israel descending from good to bad to dysfunctionally ghastly. A kind of broken-down, pretender-federation of states that did – as Judges says – whatever seemed right in their own eyes.
Which in their case was wrong.

Note: one Levite story is Judges 17-18; the other is in 19-22. Quote from Judges 21:25 (NLT)

Week 10 Psalm 60

At the end of psalm 60 David asked the Lord for divine assistance because, as he put it: all human help is useless. So it reminded me how the bible sometimes says things in an unmodified way.
Saying that all human help is useless is unqualified enough that it makes me wonder if it needs some qualification.
Because – after all – I’m human so I tend to think that sometimes human help is useful and so I don’t much like the idea that all human help is useless. I wonder…if I could show that some human help is actually useful in some circumstances then I could say that it’s not quite accurate to say that all human help is useless.
But if I can legitimately say that some human help is useful then why does the bible say here that all human help is useless? Or I can ask a more general question. If the bible says something without any qualification and I can think-up a qualification then where does that leave me? Where does it leave the bible?
I think psalm 60’s all-human-help-is-useless comment is just one more example of the kind of puzzling content that a bible reader runs across during the reading year.
Reading through I’m finding out what-it-says. But I can’t seem to escape things that make me wonder why-it’s-said.

Note: quote from Psalm 60:11 (NLT)

Week 10 Judges

Jael is part of the Deborah story. I’ve read about her before and it’s easy to come away feeling kind of bleak. I slow down this time; concentrate.
Jael was married to a guy named Heber. Heber was a Kenite who’d cut ties with the Hebrews, left their territory and made an alliance with a Canaanite king named Hazor and his general – Sisera. This made Heber a pro-Canaanite, pro-Sisera guy (which wasn’t too bad a choice if you were choosing up sides).
Eventually Sisera and Barak went to war. Barak’s over-matched force miraculously won the battle. Sisera escaped: (he) ran to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, because Heber’s family was on friendly terms with King Jabin of Hazor.
That was a very bad choice for Sisera. Jael disregarded her husband’s treaty; disregarded eastern hospitality. Sisera was an enemy. She killed him.
A reader’s temptation is to see Jael as a treacherous barbaric cunning betrayer and murderer. But I’m not so sure.
Deborah had predicted this: the Lord’s victory over Sisera will be at the hands of a woman. And in Deborah’s Song of Victory Jael is hero-ized as an Israelite champion.
If I was reading the bible with the goal of correcting its un-contemporary-sounding and unsavoury atrociousnesses it would be one thing. Jael might end up a biblical Medusa.
But I’m not. So I won’t be too quick to say she is.

Note: quote from Judges 4:17, 4:9 (NLT), Deborah’s Song is in 5:24-27

Week 10 Judges

Deborah wore two unexpected hats. She was a judge, and she was also a prophet. She lived during the unhappy aftermath of Israel turning their backs on the Lord and being subjugated by a Canaanite commander named Sisera who ruthlessly oppressed the Israelites for twenty years.
Eventually Deborah called on a Naphtalese soldier named Barak to rescue Israel. She gave him a prophetic guarantee that if he recruited a ten-thousand man army from Naphtali-Zebulun he would defeat Sisera.
Barak was likely a talented-enough warrior but he was also reluctant. Maybe he did the strategic-math and 10,000 infantry vs. 900 chariots + foot-soldiers looked like a competitive disadvantage. Or maybe he didn’t have confidence in the prophecy – a promise in the central hills of Ephraim was different than standing in the north-country looking across the Kishon River at Sisera’s army. Or maybe he was afraid. Maybe all three. He told Deborah: I will go, but only if you go with me!
It was a weird thing to admit in a swaggering tough-guy world. He knew it. Deborah knew it. And even though she agreed to go she told him: since you have made this choice, you will receive no honor. For the Lord’s victory over Sisera will be at the hands of a woman.
Barak went. He won the battle. But in the end it was a woman who defeated Sisera.
The surprise was that the woman wasn’t Deborah.

Note: quotes from Judges 4:3, 8-9 (NLT)

Week 9 Judges

I’ve finished reading Judges chapter one before I realize it hasn’t said anything about judges or judging. The whole chapter is a bunch of miscellaneous tidbits of information – I go back and count about twenty of them.
Of the twenty the most interesting one is the story about Achsah. Achsah is Caleb’s daughter. Caleb is battling to carve out his inheritance and when he comes to a place called Kiriathsepher he wants help. As an incentive he offers that whoever captures Kiriathsepher can marry his daughter Achsah.
A man named Othniel captured Kiriathsepher. And so he got to marry Achsah.
Then two things happened. First: when Achsah married Othniel, she urged him to ask her father for an additional field. So Caleb gave them the land. Not long after Achsah came to her father with another request: you have been kind enough to give me land in the Negev; please give me springs as well. And so Caleb did.
I get a feeling of decisiveness with Achsah. She seems strong ambitious family-interested determined practical. She gave Othniel good advice, and then took initiative again to benefit her family even more. She was a woman living inside her cultural fence. But seemed to be testing its limits too.
I don’t know how many power couples there are in the bible. But I think Othniel & Achsah are good candidates.

Note: quotes from Judges 1:14, 15 (NLT). The Achsah story is also told in Joshua 15:13-19. Achsah is spelled Acsah in NLT.

Week 9 Joshua

Yesterday I was thinking about the twelve tribes, wondering if the family glue would hold them all together.
Today I was thinking about a different family division that looked like it had the potential to put a dent in national unity.
Reuben Gad and half of Manasseh had their huge land grant on the east side of the Jordan River. It was negotiated by Moses and on the surface looked like a workable and manageable split. But under the surface it seemed like it could be trouble.
Anyway RG½M decided to build a huge altar right by the river. As soon as the other 9.5 tribes heard about it they were up-in-arms and said: the whole community of the Lord demands to know why you are betraying the God of Israel. So RG½M were seen as betrayers!
But RG½M told the 9.5s that they had their own concerns looking down the road: we have built this altar because we fear that in the future your descendants will say to ours, ‘What right do you have to worship the Lord, the God of Israel?’ They figured the 9.5s might lock the religious door.
In the end cooler heads prevailed; unity was maintained.
But some fear and mistrust and disunity is already simmering between Israel East and Israel West and how that might pan out is something I’ll need to look out for.

Note: quotes from Joshua 22:16, and see all of 16-20; and 22:24, and see 24-29 (NLT)