Month: June 2021

Week 26 Proverbs

Last day of June; halfway through ‘21.
I finished two books today. Lamentations & Proverbs.
The last two chapters of Proverbs weren’t written by Solomon – chapter 30 was written by Agur son of Jakeh.
One thing Agur said was that there were four circumstances-situations-developments that – generally speaking – would turn out badly:
A slave who becomes a king
An overbearing fool who prospers
A bitter woman who finally gets a husband
A servant girl who supplants her mistress.
A question I sometimes ask myself is: is this verse really true? So, here for example – what about a slave like Spartacus? What about Cinderella? What about exceptions to Agur’s proverb?
For a minute I wonder if exceptions disprove Agur’s general rule? But not for very long; not seriously. If I said over-eating means you’ll gain weight and a guy argued wait-a-second what about this woman in Uzbekistan who eats 8000 calories a day and doesn’t gain a gram of weight? Fair enough. I still say that over-eating = weight gain.
Agur is saying that by-and-large a slave or a servant who gains power by some lucky circumstance won’t be able to manage it well. When an overbearing or bitter peasant gets a social boost he’ll usually stay an overbearing or bitter person, but with more status.
I carry who I am and what I am with me into my future. Winning the lottery will definitely change my circumstances. It won’t change me.

Note: quote from Proverbs 30:22-23 (NLT). End-of-June reading progress: 62% done.

Week 26 Proverbs

One of my reactions while I was listing the (roughly) ninety words & comments describing foolish people was that some of the language was pretty uncomplimentary.
For instance, calling a person a fool or a liar or a deceiver isn’t so good. So I was wondering what Solomon was driving at.
On the one hand I could just assume that since in Alberta we figure that name-calling is hurtful therefore Solomon is saying something he shouldn’t. But I don’t get the sense Solomon was trying to grind people down. Actually I figure he was writing negative things to enlighten people who were in the dark: come here and listen to me! I’ll pour out my spirit of wisdom upon you and make you wise. Solomon is making cool & clinical statements of actual fact.
But even at that it’s a pretty sober list.
Foolish people are: Angry Arrogant Bloodthirsty Boastful Bold (in a bad way) Brawlers Corrupt-witnesses Contemptuous Crooked Deceitful Disgraceful Dishonourable Excessive-drinkers Evil-doers Excuse-makers False-witnesses Flatterers Gluttons Godless Greedy Happy-at-others-misfortune Harmful Haughty Hot-headed Immoral Lazy Liars Mockers Oppressors Outlaws Predators Promise-breakers Proud Quick-tempered Rebels Resentful Schemers Scoundrels Shameful Short-tempered Simpletons Sinners Stupid Thieves Treacherous Trouble-makers Unjust Unreliable & Wrongdoers.
They: Backslide Curse Don’t-care-about-the-poor Exploit-the-needy Gossip Lack-mercy Lack-self-control Plan-evil Plot-violence Practice-adultery Pursue-wealth Quarrel Refuse-instruction Show-favoritism Speak-without-thinking & Spread-rumours.
They have: Twisted-hearts & Warped-minds.
My sense is that Solomon is offering a diagnosis for the symptoms of a dangerous & deadly condition.

Note: quote from Proverbs 1:23 (NLT)

Week 26 Proverbs

Proverbs is one of the bible’s Books of Wisdom.
I checked a word book to see. The word Wisdom is used roughly 220-times in the bible and about 47 of those times are in Proverbs. So Proverbs monopolizes about 21% of the uses.
The word Wise is used 180 times in the bible and Proverbs accounts for 33%.
One of the things that jumps out is that Solomon also contrasts Wisdom with Foolishness – wise people vs. foolish ones.
This year I decided to track the difference between wise & foolish people. I started with a lined sheet of 8 1/2 x 11 paper and wrote Foolish on the left and Wise on the right. It was a longer exercise than I thought. By the end I had almost two single-spaced columns describing wise people and almost three columns on foolish people.
Solomon said that people with wisdom are: Competent Cool-headed Discerning Disciplined Even-tempered Fair-to-the-poor Generous Hopeful-about-the-future Honest Humble Just Loyal Not-happy-at-someone’s-misfortune Patient Prudent Pure-hearted Reliable Righteous Self-controlled Sensible Teachable Trustworthy Understanding & Upright.
Wise people: Control-their-anger Don’t-envy-sinners Fear-the-Lord Follow-the-Lord Listen-to-instruction Rescue-the-innocent & Use-wise-speech.
Wise people have: Discretion Good-sense Honour Integrity & Knowledge.
Solomon begins his book by saying this: let those who are wise listen to these proverbs and become even wiser. And let those who understand receive guidance by exploring the depth of meaning in these proverbs, parables, wise sayings, and riddles.
So wise-listening comes first. And then more wisdom understanding and depth-exploration follow.

Note: quote from Proverbs 1:5-6 (NLT)

Week 25 Jeremiah

Jeremiah ends with a kind of Appendix 1 & Appendix 2.
Appendix 1 lists the number of people exiled in the three deportations to Babylon.
Deportation One: 3023 people
Deportation Two: 832 people
Deportation Three: 745 people.
Total: 4600 captives went into exile.
A pretty small number. When I think back to the census numbers that I read in Numbers and 1 Chronicles I realize that a nation of hundreds of thousands – maybe a couple of million – has shrunk to less than 5000.
Then I see Appendix 2. King Jehoiachin was the second last king of Judah. He had left Jerusalem in Deportation Two and spent decades in jail. He was the last surviving king in the bloodline of David but fortunately not the last  surviving person. I check a couple of cross-references and see…
That Jehoiachin had a son named Shealtiel
That Shelatiel had a son named Zerubbabel (the Zerubbabel I was reading about last month in Ezra)
And those three –Jehoiachin-Shealtiel-Zerubbabel – are all cross-referenced over into Matthew’s gospel genealogy. Ten generations after Zerubbabel I see Joseph’s name – Joseph the husband of Mary the mother of the Lord.
So things are eventually going to work out okay. But at the end of the book of Jeremiah you realize that the Abraham-Judah-David line of descent seems to be cutting things pretty close. And so is the nation as a whole. There’s only a few left standing.
Enough…but not with a lot to spare.

Notes: Appendix 1: Jeremiah 52:28-30; Appendix 2: 52:31-34. Jehoiachin-Shealtiel: 1 Chronicles 3:17; Shealtiel-Zerubbabel Ezra 3:2; and Matthew 1:12 & 16.

Week 25 Jeremiah

In chapter forty-four Jeremiah told Israel why their current disaster had happened… They had: burned incense and worshipped other gods.
I’ve been seeing different reactions to Jeremiah’s unhappy prophecies. Disdain disregard animosity hostility belligerence. Like that. But in this case the people challenged Jeremiah’s Reason Why.
They checked the record and figured their best days correlated with times when they were idolaters: in those days we had plenty to eat, and we were well off and had no troubles! But ever since we quit burning incense to the Queen of Heaven and stopped worshipping her, we have been in great trouble and have suffered the effects of war and famine.
Their equations were:
Worshipping the Queen of Heaven = good times.
Not worshipping the Queen of Heaven = bad times.
I don’t think there’s any reason to say there weren’t any good times when idolatry was popular. There must have been some evidence to back that up.
If the equation was worshipping the Queen of Heaven = immediate and disastrous bad times that would’ve been one thing. But it hadn’t worked that way. So Jeremiah had two problems. First was his glass-almost-empty message. And second was that based on observation his message could be disputed.
So no matter how iron-clad the message sounded it was a waste of Jeremiah’s breath if the audience believed they had good reason not to believe.

Note: quotes from Jeremiah 44:3, 17-18 (NLT).

Week 25 Jeremiah

After the fall of Jerusalem…
After the exile to Babylon…
After the assassination of the interim governor…
And while they waited for the Babylonian hammer to fall on them again the people came to Jeremiah with a what-to-do? question. Should we stay here? Or should we high-tail it for Egypt?
Jeremiah’s answer was pretty clear…Stay put! He offered a simple formula:
Choice A will lead to Results-Package A (positives)
Choice B will lead to Results-Package B (negatives).
If the people chose Choice A and stayed in Jerusalem then several things would happen (for example, they would live longer). I don’t know what-all other benefits would have been included but by not choosing Choice A it would mean that all those potential A-Results would get taken off the table. That’s what choosing Choice B would mean. All the promised A-Results were gone and the outcome values were reset to Results-Package B. The B-Results that were future possibilities would be actualized when Choice B was selected.
Anyway for whatever reason the people crazily chose Choice B. And their future at that moment switched onto track B.
The people could have chosen A. But they did choose B.
The story doesn’t spell out why the people made that choice. But it does spell out that a) choices are important and that b) choices come with add-ons.

Note: the story of Jeremiah’s two choices is in Jeremiah 42.

Week 24 Jeremiah

The troops are lined-up like Davy Crockett & Jim Bowie.
King Zedekiah is staring over the ramparts. Looking straight at national disintegration.
Coming up on zero hour.
And Jeremiah is prophesying: everyone who stays in Jerusalem will die from war, famine, or disease, but those who surrender to the Babylonians will live.
Back in April I read the story of Micaiah – he preached a Doomsday forecast to Jehoshaphat & Ahab. On their side Ahab’s prophets prophesied A Sweetness-and-Light forecast. So Micaiah’s Prophecy was offset by a Contrary Prophecy.
That’s not what happened with Jeremiah. No other prophet was tipping the balance with an alternate story. Instead a group of officials just told the king: this man must die! That kind of talk will undermine the morale of the…fighting men, as well as that of all the people.
No one was asking is-Jeremiah’s-prophecy-true? The question was…how does his prophecy make us feel?
So it looks like back in Jeremiah’s day they were using a kind of Audience-Emotional-Response Feedback Scale. A prophecy is given, and then if the audience felt upset annoyed fearful de-motivated anxious or like that then the prophecy was automatically wrong. It’s a pretty handy way of arriving at right-wrong – if the message makes me feel disconsolate it’s just disregardable noise.
Poor old Jeremiah. Not pliant enough to adjust. Not able to make a concession. Not a team-guy. I’m not sure how successful he’d be in Alberta.

Note: quote from Jeremiah 38:2, 4 (NLT). The Micaiah story is in 1 Kings 22.

Week 24 Jeremiah

I was reading chapters 34-35-36 today.
Jerusalem’s Big Bad Wolf – Nebuchadnezzar – was huffing-&-puffing at the gates and while that was going on the Lord told Jeremiah to: go to King Zedekiah of Judah and tell him… So luckily for me I’d been reading about Zedekiah approximately 28-days ago (May 21 post was the-final-four). At that point I’d decided to track the kings of the southern kingdom for Character Quality but I also decided to eliminate the last four kings because they were puppets to foreign states. Those last four ‘kings’ were: Jehoahaz-Jehoiakim-Jehoiachin-Zedekiah. I remembered Zedekiah and I knew he was the very last king (because his initial was the very last letter of the alphabet).
Anyway the point is that Jeremiah gave his message to Zedekiah – the last king – in chapter 34. So then I started reading chapter 35 and saw this: this is the message the Lord gave Jeremiah when Jehoiakim son of Josiah was king of Judah. Hmmmm…
This was a good reminder that the bible isn’t moving ahead in chronological sequence. The 66-books aren’t necessarily chronological and the book’s contents aren’t necessarily either.
That’s not really a glitch. I was reading a modern novel where the author was bouncing back-and-forth from present to past. A chapter would start with something like: Twenty years earlier.
Is writing non-chronologically a problem? I doubt it.
Is it worth keeping in mind? No reason not to.

Note: quotes from Jeremiah 34:2, 35:1 (NLT). I forget which novel – maybe a Jack Ryan story.

Week 24 Jeremiah

When I’m reading-through I usually think my job – my only job – is to read through. It’s not to do other things. Which isn’t always the easiest thing to do and I got a reminder of one of those Other Things today – prayer.
Prayer is a totally different exercise to reading-through. But it’s hard to keep the two separated because most of what I find out about prayer I find in the bible.
Jeremiah 20 is pretty much a verbatim prayer. Since I’m reading-through I can’t avoid it. And so I incidentally find out something about prayer.
It’s a Downside Prayer. Jeremiah identifies a bunch of the price-to-pay social outcomes that come with being a prophet:
Now I am mocked by everyone in the city…
These messages…have made me a household joke…
I have heard…many rumors about me…
My old friends are…waiting for a fatal slip.
By the end of the prayer Jeremiah hasn’t turned the psychic-corner – the last five verses talk about how he wished he was dead.
Jeremiah reminds me that following the Lord isn’t a cakewalk. Plus I might end up losing friends. And along with that he reminds me of a couple of things about prayer:
I can pray when things are pretty bad
My prayers might be untidy
I can pray but still end up feeling awful.

Note: quotes from Jeremiah 20:7, 8, 10 (NLT). Added note that’s not in Jeremiah but that I think is true: a poor prayer is better than no prayer.

Week 24 Jeremiah

The Lord told Jeremiah: if I announce that a certain nation…is to be uprooted…but then that nation renounces its evil ways, I will not destroy it as I planned. And if I announce that I will build up…a certain nation…making it strong and great, but then that nation turns to evil…I will not bless that nation as I said I would.
It’s a helpful bit of insight about how the system works.
The Lord sees that Nation A is evil so he plans to eliminate Nation A. If Nation A makes no adjustments it will be eliminated. But if it turns to the Lord then Nation A can sidestep annihilation.
And the reverse is true. Nation B is good. The Lord plans to back-up Nation B. But if Nation B turns around and rejects the Lord then Nation B will experience negative consequences.
This is a useful thing to keep in mind reading the prophets. The prophets give messages that are future-predictive. The Lord tells them something is going to happen. What that could mean is something is absolutely going to happen no matter what. But it could also mean something is definitely going to happen (unless something else changes).
Tracking prophecies to see if they’re qualified or unqualified would take too much time right now.
But I’ll keep in mind that not everything that sounds like it’ll definitely happen will.

Note: quote from Jeremiah 18:7-10 (NLT)