Month: May 2021

Week 22 Nehemiah

If someone found out I was reading through the bible and he put me on the spot by saying he wanted a brief synopsis of the OT what would I say? Other than: Uhhhhhhh……………………?
If my mental faculties were operating anywhere near full capacity I’d be smart to refer to Nehemiah. In chapter nine there’s a thirty-three verse public prayer & review of history section that covers lots of the major topics – from Genesis 1 to the return of the exiles.
Reading nine this year the thing that really registered was how many times the Lord is mentioned as being the Major Player in Israel’s history. There are thirty-seven references to the Lord doing things all along the way. For example:
You preserve and give life
You displayed miraculous signs
You came down on Mount Sinai
You gave them bread from heaven
You helped our ancestors conquer great kingdoms
You sent them deliverers
You rescued them repeatedly
You sent your Spirit
You showered your goodness on them
Like that.
37-actions in 33-verses. What’s that? 1-action every .9-verses?
Can’t really get around it. If I want to synopsize the OT the Lord’s intervention is a big part of the synopsis.

Note: quotes from Nehemiah 9:6, 10, 13, 15, 22, 27, 28, 30, 35 (NLT). End of month reading note: I finished Nehemiah and the book of Psalms today. My reading total is 931-pages. So I’m staying ahead.

 

 

Week 21 Psalm 148

Psalm Summary: everything that’s created should praise the creator.
On the surface it sounds plausible until you read on a bit and see that the writer included in the Everything category: a) created things that actually have – as far as I can see – the capacity to praise and b) created things that – as far as I can see – lack the capacity.
I can see where an angel has the capacity to praise the Lord. But not a star. I can see that a man has the capacity to praise the Lord. But not hail. I sit wondering what I can do at this border that divides what I think I see from what I don’t.
I have no problem understanding how all created things that can think & communicate can praise the Lord. But the writer names several created things – snow and cedar trees – that cannot think or communicate but that are supposed to praise the Lord.
From my perspective I’m tempted to say definitively that a limestone cliff cannot praise the Lord. But since I don’t know every thing that there is to know maybe I should back up. Maybe a wall of limestone – that can be shown by 21st century detection-technology to be absolutely and totally inanimate and beyond any measurable capacity to communicate – is emanating some kind – a qualitatively different kind – of praise.
I’m not saying limestone hums. I’m just saying I don’t hear it.
But it’s something to keep on the back-burner.

Week 21 Psalm 146

Everybody knows that when you’re in a jam it helps to have an influential helper.
So I paused when I got to where it said: don’t put your confidence in powerful people; there is no help for you there.
I’m tempted to think that – in the normal pattern of things – 146:3 should read: put your confidence in powerful people because that’s where you’ll get help. But it doesn’t and this looks like another case where I’m just reading along and I find out that something I figured was reliably true isn’t.
What’s the writer driving at?
Well for one thing he fast-forwards and says this about Currently Powerful People: when their breathing stops, they return to the earth. And he contrasts that with the Lord: the Lord reigns forever.
If I could pin the writer down I wonder whether he might admit that well, technically-speaking a Powerful Person could give you some brief & temporary assistance.
But I’m really not so sure he’s saying even that. I figure maybe he’s coming at it from the viewpoint that the help of powerful people is roughly equivalent to no help at all. After all he did say: there is no help for you there.
The idea seems to be that when you need any kind of help go to someone who can actually help you.

Note: quotes from Psalm 146:3, 4 & 10 (NLT)

Week 21 Ezra

When Ezra wrote Ezra he was writing history in chapters 1-6 and then autobiography in 7-10.
1-6 is the story of what happened during the time of Zerubabbel; 7-10 is the story of Ezra – and there’s fifty or sixty years between the two stories (it’s like talking about the Cuban Missile Crisis and then I jump into talking about the new carwash opening next week in Medicine Hat).
Anyway the Ezra-section of Ezra says two pretty interesting things about Ezra. First it says: Ezra was a scribe, well-versed in the law of Moses. Then it says: Ezra had determined to study and obey the law of the Lord and to teach those laws and regulations to the people of Israel.
So that’s a kind of time-lapse synopsis of Ezra:
He was well-versed in the law
He’d decided to study the law
He’d decided to obey the law
He’d decided to teach the law to people.
Those things didn’t happen on consecutive days. At some point – even though he doesn’t explicitly say so – Ezra probably just started by reading-through. Then as he kept reading-through he eventually became well-versed in the law. That right there is an excellent MHJ Reading Goal: keep reading-through until you get well-versed in the bible. Getting well-versed is a significant accomplishment.
Of course Ezra didn’t stop at Well-Versedness. But getting to the well-versed stage was a gigantic step.

Note: quotes from Ezra 7:6 & 10 (NLT)

Week 21 Ezra

Chapter four sneaks up on me.
Cyrus the Great had let the exiles return to Jerusalem.
They started rebuilding the temple but in chapter four got stalled by opponents.
Looks like they were stalled through the time of Cyrus…
Stalled through the time of Darius…
Stalled through the time of Xerxes…
Stalled into the time of Artaxerxes.
So it looks.
The way chapter four is written I get the sense that the writer is going through a story of Four Temple Stalls: Cyrus’ then Darius’ then Xerxes’ then Artaxerxes’. One-after-another. But then in chapter six he says the stalled temple rebuild was restarted. And completed by Darius’ sixth year.
I looked up the four rulers online:
Cyrus 559-530 BC
Darius 522-486 BC
Xerxes 486-465 BC
Artaxerxes 465-424 BC
If the temple was built by Darius’ sixth year it was built by about 516. Long before Xerxes and Artaxerxes. Xerxes and Artaxerxes stalled something but not the temple. It was already built. So if I’m thinking that Cyrus & Darius & Xerxes & Artaxerxes all stalled the temple project I need to rethink that.
I wonder why the writer didn’t make it more obvious for me. I don’t figure he was trying to jerk me around. Maybe he decided to group three similar situations (something like: oh, by the way Darius wasn’t the only oppositional episode). Or maybe he thought he had a smarter reader: no problem if I flash-forward. He’s got a brain…He’ll figure it out for himself.

Note: see the stalls in Ezra 4:5-7

Week 21 Psalm 144

David asks the question: O Lord, what are mortals that you should notice us, mere humans that you should care for us? For we are like a breath of air; our days are like a passing shadow.
I slow down. Tip-toe through this paragraph. It says I’m like a passing shadow. I’m thinking – okay, where does that leave me? What’s a passing shadow worth?
If I’m out on the prairie under a high blue summer sky and the wind is pushing clouds along I might see cloud-shadows off in the distance rushing darkly across the flat bright fields. It’s a pretty nice thing to see and I like it – a kind of visual dynamism. But even though it does register on my Things Worth Paying Attention To Scale it registers near the bottom-end. Here at 3:00:00pm. Gone at 3:00:03pm.
I don’t think David’s point is that – in absolute terms – I’m worthless. I’m not worthless. I’m noticeable. Interesting. There’s a definite worthwhile-ity to me. It’s not like I don’t register on the scale. I have a kind of low-level visual dynamism. But brief. Lightweight. Okay…but not as awesome as I think.
Psalm 144:4 isn’t the only verse in the bible that talks about what people are like.
But it’s the only verse on that topic today.
And when I think about it being told I’m not as awesome as I think is only an insult if it isn’t true.

Note: quote from Psalm 144:3-4 (NLT)

Week 20 2 Chronicles

Last Monday I decided to group each of the Judah-South kings into one of three classes: Goods-Bads-Middlers. The key question for me was: did the writer say only good things – only bad things – or both good-&-bad things about a king?
I’ve finished reading 2 Chronicles now and the fifteen candidates are: Rehoboam Abijah Asa Jehoshaphat Jehoram Ahaziah Joash Amaziah Uzziah Jotham Ahaz Hezekiah Manasseh Amon & Josiah. [I didn’t include Athaliah because she wasn’t officially coronated. When her son died she just took over – a decisive woman in the right place at the right time. Another thing about Athaliah – she almost eliminated David’s bloodline by killing everyone but Joash.]
So anyway my personal findings are…
Bads: Jehoram Ahaziah Ahaz Amon.
Middlers: Rehoboam Abijah Asa Jehoshaphat Joash Amaziah Uzziah Jotham Hezekiah Manasseh.
Goods: Josiah.
Couple of Comments:
I had Jotham as a Good at first. Then I cross-referenced his story in Kings and bumped him down.
Hezekiah was a star until near the very end when the chronicler says: he became proud. It’s too bad – I’d had him batting a thousand. I counted about 620-verses in the twenty-six divided-kingdom chapters and Hezekiah accounted for 117 of them – almost 19% of the total! Almost all of it admirable. Just one minor brush with pride.
I think all Middlers started well and went astray later on – except Manasseh – a real ogre right out of the starting gate – but he did a one-eighty in the end.

Note: quote from 2 Chronicles 32:25 (NLT).

Week 20 2 Chronicles

At the beginning of the week I set myself a little mental-focusing exercise. I decided to track and categorize the kings of Judah based on three simple questions. Were they Good Kings – Bad Kings – or Middler Kings?
It seemed like an okay exercise and I guess it was. Of course it slowed me down a bit. And in the end I think the three-category classification scheme oversimplified things. But it concentrated my thinking.
I got flummoxed in chapter 36 though. What to do with those last four kings? I’d figured on Monday to map all the kings from Rehoboam (first king) to Zedekiah (last king). But when I got to chapter 36 I realized that the independent kingdom of Judah was gone by then. Kaput! Did those four reign? Well…yeah. But did they have real power? Uh-uh.
Josiah died in chapter 35 and Jehoahaz replaced him. For three months. Then his guardian the king of Egypt shipped him off to Egypt.
Eliakim (also known as Jehoiakim) replaced Jehoahaz. But Egypt determined his state policies. He was a puppet-king.
Then when Egypt was a replaced in an international rebalance-of-power Babylon attacked Jerusalem. Eliakim? Shipped into exile.
Jehoiachin replaced Eliakim for three months then Nebuchadnezzar replaced him with Zedekiah.
Anyway the point is that I decided not to include these final four plug-in kings in my list of Goods-Bads-Middlers. They weren’t Real Kings. You’re not king-of-your-castle if someone else is.
Tomorrow I’ll submit my Good-Bad-Middler Report.

Week 20 2 Chronicles

The story of Manasseh got me puzzling over how the Lord operates.
Manasseh was one of the worst kings of Judah. Maybe the very worst.
The chronicler says that Manasseh: did what was evil in the Lord’s sight. And then he lists those things.
The Lord warned Manasseh. Manasseh just ignored the Lord. What wasn’t so easy to ignore was the Assyrian army when they arrived in Jerusalem. Manasseh was taken captive – led away with a chain hooked through his nose.
It was there in captivity that Manasseh had a serious change of soul: Manasseh sought the Lord his God and cried out humbly to the God of his ancestors.
The chronicler says Manasseh’s prayer was recorded in The Book of the Kings of Israel & in The Record of the Seers. I couldn’t find either of them but I found the prayer online.
It’s fifteen verses long and Manasseh prayed it from a place of abject hopelessness. For example:
The sins I have committed are more in number than the sand of the sea…
I have provoked your wrath and have done what is evil in your sight…
I earnestly implore you, forgive me, Lord, forgive me!
And what-do-you-know…the Lord did forgive Manasseh.
After all that he’d done it seems like a pretty big forgive.
Makes me wonder why; wonder if he should have. Manasseh was one of the very worst.

Note: quotes from 2 Chronicles 33:2 & 12 (NLT). Manasseh’s prayer 9, 10, 13 at biblegateway.com (May 20, 2021)

Week 20 Psalm 139

In 139 the writer is preoccupied with the fact that the Lord knew everything about him. And he didn’t just know…he took interventionary steps: you chart the path ahead of me and tell me where to stop and rest. But the Lord’s comprehensive knowledge didn’t seem to bother him at all. Really the only problem was: such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too great for me to know!
The writer realized he couldn’t dope out the totality of the Lord’s operating capacity. He knew that his own knowledge-deficit was pretty sizable. But the fact that he didn’t know everything didn’t get him in a big psychic contort. It just was what it was.
In the second paragraph the writer wonders – hypothetically – if it was possible to escape the Lord’s scrutiny…
Since the Lord’s in heaven I could hide in the place of the dead.
Yeah except for the fact that Lord has full access to the nether world.
Hmmm…
I could hide in the dark.
Wrong again. With the Lord: the night shines as bright as the day.
So there’s no escaping him.
But the two things I notice in 139 are that a) the Lord has exhaustive awareness of the writer and b) the writer seems fine with that.
Sure…he could say the Lord is invasive sinister dangerous objectionable revolting – he’s maybe even contravening Alberta’s Privacy Laws.
But that doesn’t sound like the writer’s take. He thinks it’s a good thing.

Note: quotes from Psalm 139:3, 6, 12 (NLT)