Month: July 2021

Week 30 Nahum

I read Jonah to start the week and Nahum to finish it. A nice coincidence since Jonah & Nahum are book-end prophets – both spoke to Nineveh, Assyria.
Jonah hated having to tell the Assyrians that the Lord would give them a second chance. A chance at repentance. A chance at survival.
My guess is Jonah would have loved to have given a message like this: all who see you will shrink back in terror and say, “Nineveh lies in utter ruin.” Yet no one anywhere will regret your destruction…The enemy will consume you like locusts, devouring everything they see…O Assyrian king, your princes lie dead in the dust…All who hear of your destruction will clap their hands for joy. Jonah didn’t get to say that…Nahum did.
I think that Nahum is the most martial of the short-prophets. He’s a talented battle-scene writer – you see-feel-smell-hear the destruction. If you’re Assyria it’s awesomely scary. And Nahum describes the Lord in military terms. Anger revenge power rage destruction conquest. But he also knows that: the Lord is good. When trouble comes, he is a strong refuge. So a Lord who is both…and. Fluidly interactive. Jonah explained one side. Nahum the other.

Note: quotes from Nahum 3:7, 15, 18-19 and 1:7-8 (NLT).
Added end-of-month numbers: I’m roughly 70% through the bible (and roughly 60% through the year). To finish the OT I’ve got seven short-prophets plus Esther Ecclesiastes and Job – maybe a hundred chapters – that I’m aiming to read in August.

Week 30 Hosea

The story about Gomer & Hosea getting married is pretty absorbing because the whole idea seems so weird – the Lord told Hosea to marry a sex worker. There’s a couple of ways to look at this: a) maybe the Lord told Hosea to marry a girl who wasn’t a sex worker but started having sexual intercourse with guys; or b) maybe she was a sex worker when Hosea married her. It’s hard to know for sure.
But the Lord spells out the point right away: go and marry a prostitute, so some of her children will be born to you from other men. This will illustrate the way my people have been untrue to me, openly committing adultery against the Lord by worshipping other gods. So there it is – the sexual treachery is a picture of a bigger infidelity.
Hosea & Gomer would have mostly been just a point of lurid neighbourhood gossip. Only a perceptive person would understand that Gomer’s faithlessness was a tip-off that Israel was cheating on the Lord.
I’ve read the story before and figured that Hosea did what he was told because he was told. Not willingly; not happily; maybe like Jonah going to Nineveh – either the dogs in Nineveh or a big fish in the Mediterranean.
Now I’m not so sure. Maybe Hosea really & truly loved Gomer. Maybe it broke his heart when she started sleeping around. Which might be the point the Lord’s making.

Note: quote from Hosea 1:2 (NLT).

Week 30 Amos

Once I finished reading Daniel I decided not to read the short prophets in bible order. My Good Idea was to read them in the order they were written. Unfortunately there isn’t unanimous agreement about the chronological order.
I decided to avoid that squabble. Instead I grouped the short prophets under four rough-and-ready headings:
Prophets who prophesied to the northern kingdom
Prophets who prophesied to the southern kingdom before the exile
Prophets who prophesied to the southern kingdom in Babylon
Prophets who prophesied to the southern kingdom after the return.
So my northern kingdom prophets were Obadiah Jonah Amos Hosea & Nahum. One of the first things I notice about Amos’ book is that even though he’s mainly interested in Israel-North he’s interested in other nations as well. In the first two chapters he names Damascus Gaza Tyre Edom Ammon & Moab as Regions of Interest.
It looks like every nation was under prophetic scrutiny but Amos confirms that Israel got unique treatment. He quoted the Lord: from among all the nations on the earth, I chose you alone.
I already knew that but it’s a reminder that the procedure the Lord decided on to achieve his overall objective was to start with a family-tribe that grew into a small national aggregation. The Lord’s actions with them were interactive and their functionality was assessed. But even though Israel was the real Test Case other nations were operating like semi-independent variables. All part of the mix.

Note: quote from Amos 3:2 (NLT).

Week 30 Jonah

Jonah isn’t just mentioned in the book of Jonah. Kings says that king Jeroboam II had gained territory: just as the Lord… had promised through Jonah son of Amittai, the prophet from Gath-hepher. That would have been a good news prophecy for Jonah. One he liked giving. But things were different in the book of Jonah.
There the Lord told Jonah to go the city of Nineveh and tell them to repent or they would be destroyed. Jonah was one of the few OT prophets who decided not to do what the Lord had told him.
Recently I’ve been reading about Assyria. The writer said that: Assyrian rulers energetically promoted their reputation for using appalling savagery…as a tool of governance and a weapon of psychological warfare. So chances are Jonah was afraid of these destructive ogres. Chances are he hated them. If the Lord destroyed Nineveh? No problem. But Jonah had this irritating sense about the Lord – suspected that if Nineveh did repent then the Lord Would Forgive Them!
In the end Jonah did preach to Nineveh. The Assyrian capital did repent and they were not destroyed. Dang! Jonah hated every second of it.

Note: quotes from 2 Kings 14:25 NLT & Paul Kriwaczek Babylon (St. Martin’s: NY, 2010) 224-25. Added note: I guess the repentance didn’t last. Within about thirty years an Assyrian army blew Israel to bits. But back on that day when the city repented it was counted to their credit.

Week 29 Daniel

The story of Belshazzar is a pretty interesting one mostly because of the disembodied hand that mysteriously appeared at the gala and wrote three words on the wall of the reception hall. The king could read the words: Numbered… Weighed… Divided. But he had no idea what they meant.
Anyway the thing that caught my attention was that in my bible Nebuchadnezzar – mentioned in chapter four – was referred to as Belshazzar’s father. I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t been reading a book about Babylon and it said Belshazzar’s father was a man named Nabonidus – not Nebuchadnezzar. The book said the rulers were:
Nebuchadnezzar
Amel-Marduk
Nergal-Sharu-Ussur
La-Abashi-Marduk
Nabonidus
Belshazzar
So what’s going on? Well…some people figure Daniel got his facts mixed up. Other people figure Daniel didn’t even write Daniel…that a Fake-Daniel wrote Daniel years later – and he was mixed up too.
I know a guy who calls his own dad Grandpa so that his young son will learn to call his grandpa Grandpa. So why did Daniel call Belshazzar’s predecessor his father? Who really knows? Maybe there was a good reason that I don’t know. But whatever Daniel’s reason was paternity had nothing to do with his message…which was this: the Most High God gave sovereignty, majesty, glory, and honor to your predecessor, Nebuchadnezzar…But when his heart and mind were hardened with pride, he was brought down.

Note: quote from Daniel 5:18-20 (NLT). List of Babylonian kings is from Paul Kriwaczek’s Babylon (St. Martin’s: NY, 2010) 271-2.

Week 29 Daniel

The story of Nebuchadnezzar’s Tree Dream in chapter four is thirty-seven verses long. Most of the chapter – twenty-two verses – is told by the king himself. Which reminded me that Daniel got some of his content directly from the Lord. But not all of it.
Anyway the dream-story is about a fantastic tree that is chopped down. The dream-story’s meaning is that Nebuchadnezzar is that tree and he will soon fall. And he does. He loses his mental capacities his status his crown his sovereignty his power. He ends up out in the woods and fields living like an animal.
When Daniel had explained the meaning of the dream he told Nebuchadnezzar why it was going to happen: you will be driven from human society, and you will live in the fields…until you learn that the Most High rules over the kingdoms of the world and gives them to anyone he chooses.
Some readers figure the bible is an interesting but out-of-date and unreliable resource. Other readers figure it’s an interesting and currently relevant resource. Bible readers in the second group figure that the prime operators that affected Babylon’s destiny back then remain in force today. Which means that in 2021 the Most High continues ruling over the kingdoms of the world.
Which also means that even the top news agencies are most-of-the-time reporting under serious information restraints when it comes to comprehensively analyzing domestic & international affairs.

Note: quote from Daniel 4:25 (NLT)

Week 29 Daniel

Yesterday I saw Nebuchadnezzar’s fury when his seers didn’t come through. And I saw that Daniel faced the king’s wrath with wisdom and discernment.
Today I was thinking about Shadrach Meshech & Abednego refusing to worship the king’s idol. Just like yesterday Nebuchadnezzar’s response was rage. SM&A tried to rationally and calmly explain their position to the king but it made no difference. He was mad. SM&A had collided with power.
I was reading a book about Ecclesiastes and the writer was talking about power – the incontestable power of a person who rules. A power so powerful that no argument matters. He said:
…it is pointless for the sage to challenge the king’s decision, since the king does whatever he wants! No one can insist that the king justify his actions…(Ecclesiastes) could just as well have in mind the board of a multinational corporation, or modern administration and bureaucracy. They are just as authoritarian, arbitrary, absolute, and without explanation as dictators and kings. No point in challenging them…Power is always power; whatever its constitutional form, it always takes the form of absolute power.
So that’s what SM&A were up against. Chapter one says they were ten times better than anyone else in wisdom and balanced judgment. Didn’t matter. Wisdom can’t compete with power.
Only one thing completes with power. Power. Which – fortunately for the three young men – is what happened in this story

Note: quote from Jacques Ellul Reason for Being (Eerdman’s: Grand Rapids, 1990) 76.

Week 29 Daniel

While I was reading Proverbs last month I started listing the characteristics of Solomon’s Types of People. His uncomplicated bi-partite division was that in this world there were Wise People and there were Foolish People.
One of the differences between the two was in the area of anger-control management. Proverbs said things like:
Those who control their anger have great understanding
It is better to have self-control than conquer a city
People with good sense restrain their anger
Short-tempered people must pay their own penalty
Keep away from angry, short-tempered people
Those who are wise will calm anger.
So I remembered some of those proverbs when I read the story about Nebuchadnezzar’s dream – the one where the king couldn’t dope out his dream and so he called his soothsayers-and-magicians. But they were stumped too.
The result was that: the king was furious when he heard this, and he sent out orders to execute all the wise men of Babylon.
The other magicians were putting their affairs in order. But not Daniel: Daniel handled the situation with wisdom and discretion.
On one side there was Nebuchadnezzar’s fury.
And on the other there was Daniel’s wisdom and discretion.
I thought back to Solomon’s two contrasting Types of People.
Nebuchadnezzar’s anger was awesome and terrifying and potentially deadly. And it also held up a big sign about where the king fit on Solomon’s Wisdom-Foolishness Scale.

Note: quotes from & Proverbs 14:29, 16:32, 19:11, 19:19, 22:24, 29:8 and Daniel 2:12, 14 (NLT).

Week 28 Ezekiel

In the last segment of his book – 47:13-48:29 – Ezekiel describes a complete redrawing of the tribal settlement boundaries of the land. Things are looking very different from the conquest distribution in Joshua’s day. For starters Israel’s national boundaries have been redrawn. The eastern border is along the Jordan River now which means that the two and a half tribes who had settled east of the Jordan are brought over to the west side along with everyone else.
Now there are only seven tribes in the north: Dan Asher Naphtali Manasseh Ephraim Reuben Judah (Judah Reuben have to move north).
The orientation of the tribal boundaries is all east-west now – like horizontal strata deposits of sediment.
Down in the south are Benjamin Simeon Issachar Zebulun Gad (it’s a change in location for most of them). Just like in the north the boundaries in the south all run east & west across the country.
Sandwiched in between are the allotments for priests and Levites, the metropolitan lands, and the crown land (48:8-22). It’s hard to say how much the northern and southern borders of the country have changed since they seemed a bit fluid before.
I finish the book not sure what to make of this new land settlement map. It’s the same not-sureness I had with the new temple.
I’ve already had to put several things in Ezekiel’s book on the back-burner and it looks like the temple and the land will go there too.

Note: see Ezekiel 48:1-7, 23-29

Week 28 Ezekiel

In chapter 47 Ezekiel’s guide takes him outside the city to a shallow trickle of water flowing out of Jerusalem’s temple toward the east. I look at a topographic map. Jerusalem is in green but going east the colours soon change: green-to-yellow-to-white – no growth. The contour lines close in heading down toward the Dead Sea. Sea-level…and then still farther down. 400 metres below sea level. Hot-dry-hypersaline.
Outside Jerusalem’s east wall Ezekiel’s river started ankle-deep but within a couple of kilometres he can’t ford it.
His river hurries down to the Dead Sea. It will eventually turn the sea into a fresh-water lake. People will catch fish from water where no fish have ever lived.
The stream is magical: everything that touches the water of this river will live.
Ezekiel looks around and sees that: suddenly, to my surprise, many trees were now growing on both sides of the river. All kinds of fruit trees…and there will always be fruit in their branches…a new crop every month…The fruit will be for food and the leaves for healing.
As of today Ezekiel’s temple hasn’t been built. And so far no one’s ever fished the Dead Sea. So these visions describe a couple of unusual longshots. They will either actually happen in reality some day in our future. Or they describe something unusual and unexpected that won’t happen in our future material reality – but will happen in some way or other.

Note: quotes from Ezekiel 47:9, 7 & 12 (NLT)