Month: July 2022

Week 31  Jeremiah 28

Q: What events had happened just before Jeremiah 28?
A: The Babylonians had conquered Israel. They’d shipped off king Jehoiachin to Babylon and stolen a load of religious utensils and set up a Babylon-sponsored lackey-king to caretake things in Jerusalem.
So…in 28 a prophet – Hananiah – made a prophetic forecast. He said that within two years Babylon would release Jehoiachin and ship him and the temple implements back to Jerusalem and things would pick up where they’d left off.
Jeremiah admitted that it was a pretty nice prophecy but that – unfortunately – things wouldn’t turn out that way. He explained the Test of a Prophet to Hananiah: the prophet who prophesies peace will be recognized as one truly sent by the Lord only if his prediction comes true.
A prophecy is true if it comes true.
Which means prophecy creates a bit of a dilemma for the audience. When people have two opposing predictions they can’t know which is true until one comes true. How is a prophetic prediction legitimized? If Pre-diction = Post-diction then I’ve got a Genuine Forecast.
By the time future-time morphs into present-time and the forecast becomes either true or false it might be too late to be of actionable use to the audience. So maybe prophecy has as much value for a person looking back as for a person who was looking into the uncertain future.

Note: quote from Jeremiah 28:9 (NIV). End of July reading report: 66% of the bible read in 58% of the year.

Week 29  Jeremiah 25

Most chapters in the bible aren’t dated but yesterday I found one that was. In the first verse of this chapter Jeremiah said that a prophecy had come to him during the 4th-year of Jehoiakim’s reign…which happened to be the 1st-year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign in Babylon (that was 605 BC).
In that same chapter Jeremiah went on to predict that Nebuchadnezzar would eventually attack and conquer Jerusalem. Since I found out yesterday that Jerusalem was captured by Nebuchadnezzar in 597 BC – roughly eight years later – Jeremiah’s forecast had to wait awhile before people realized it was true. Of maybe long enough that by then they’d forgotten it.
Anyway not only did Jeremiah predict that Nebuchadnezzar would attack Jerusalem and Israel’s geopolitical neighbours but also that: this whole country will become a desolate wasteland, and these nations will serve the king of Babylon for seventy years. But when the seventy years are fulfilled I will punish…the land of the Babylonians for their guilt.
I was already searching up Nebuchadnezzar so it was easy to find when Babylon was conquered – 539 BC. 605 BC to 539 BC is closer to 66 years than 70 so I’m not sure what to do with the discrepancy. Maybe 2500 years ago the practice was to round-up to the nearest decade.
Anyway apart from the technical debate over the 70 years in Jeremiah’s forecast his prediction about the fall of Babylon is still pretty impressive.

Note: see Jeremiah 25:1. Quote from 25:11-12 (NIV)

Week 29  Jeremiah 1

The introduction to Jeremiah says: the word of the Lord came to (Jeremiah) in the thirteenth year of the reign of Josiah son of Amon king of Judah, and through the reign of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah, down to the fifth month of the eleventh year of Zedekiah.
When I read that a couple of days ago I did some homework looking for extra details about when Jeremiah’s kings were kings. This is what I found:
Josiah (639-609 BC)
Jehoahaz (609 BC)
Jehoiakim (608-597 BC)
Jehoiachin (597 BC)
Zedekiah (597-586 BC).
Jeremiah started to prophecy during Josiah’s 13th year (~626 BC) and he continued until Zedekiah’s 11th – and last – year (~586 BC). The time span from 626-586 BC is roughly 40 years. That’s what I discovered last Monday – Jeremiah was a prophet for 40 years.
Anyway today I started reading chapter 25 and it said that those events occurred: in the fourth year of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah. So right away I looked back at Monday’s homework notes and calculated that from Josiah’s 13th year (~626BC) to Jehoiakim’s 4th year (~604BC) is roughly 22 years. But  it turned out I didn’t need to run those numbers because Jeremiah says two verses later: for twenty-three years – from the thirteenth year of Josiah…until this very day – the word of the Lord has come to me. So by the time I arrive at Jeremiah 25 Jeremiah is 23 years into his long stretch of prophesying.

Note: quotes from Jeremiah 1:2-3 & 25:1 3 (NIV)

Week 29  Jeremiah 5

A horrible and shocking thing has happened in the land: the prophets prophesy lies, and priests rule by their own authority, and my people love it this way.
Prophets prophesied lies.
Priests ad-libbed the rules.
And the people loved being misinformed.
This meant that when Jeremiah spoke to people in Jerusalem their instinct wasn’t to sit down and evaluate what he said. They didn’t ask: is what I’m hearing true? They did ask: is what I’m hearing what I want to hear?
It sounds like the people were using an ancient near-eastern version of the Data Assessment & Confirmation Procedure (it’s a test that’s still in use in Alberta). There’s five-steps:
One: I listen to Message X
Two: I ask myself ‘is Message X the message I want to hear?’
Three: if Message X is what I want to hear then it qualifies as an acceptable message
Four: if Message X is not what I want to hear then it’s an error and irrelevant
Five: I can move on to Message Y.
Jeremiah’s point wasn’t that people had been tricked or deceived. It was that being deceived was their natural preference. Being tricked or deceived was about equal to – or maybe better than – not being tricked or deceived. It was an instinctive and normal and natural response even though it was like preferring a mirage to a spring of water.

Note: quote from Jeremiah 5:30-31 (NIV)

Week 29  Isaiah 61

The opening verses of Isaiah 61 sound familiar. I check the cross-reference in the margin: Luke 4. In the gospel story Jesus publicly reads this passage from Isaiah while he’s in a synagogue in Galilee.
I looked at the paragraph in Luke then flipped-back and reread Isaiah. They’re very similar. I copied the two sections phrase-by-phrase. Isaiah’s original…then Luke’s version:
Isaiah: the Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me
Luke: the Spirit of the Lord is on me
Isaiah: the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor
Luke: he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor
Isaiah: he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release for the prisoners
Luke: he has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed
Isaiah: to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
Luke: to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
The discrepancy is in that third phrase and I wonder what to make of it. Luke skipped the brokenhearted phrase and added recovery-of-sight.
I don’t figure that Luke was just jerking his reader’s around. And I’m not sure a secretary made a copying error. It’s more likely that Luke’s version was a paraphrase that was – for Luke’s purposes – close-enough.

Note: quotes from Isaiah 61:1-2 & Luke 4:18-19 (NIV)

Week 28  Isaiah 45

I have a couple of lists I add to while I’m reading through. They’re my Concentration-Intensification Lists. They help me focus.
One of them is titled About God and any time I read something about the Lord – what he’s like or his characteristics or qualities or like that – I add the reference to the list.
I added several items from Isaiah 45:
I am the Lord, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God
There is none besides me. I am the Lord, and there is no other
I am the Lord and there is no other
There is no God apart from me…there is none but me
I am God and there is no other.
At first I feel pretty pleased with my find. But then it occurs to me that even though Isaiah is saying something about-the-Lord he isn’t describing the Lord’s attributes or qualities. He’s getting at something else.
And I wondered if there was some kind of Deity Caste System back in Isaiah’s day – a ranking scheme of great-greater-greatest gods – and Isaiah’s point was that no matter what people thought there wasn’t actually a great-greater-greatest hierarchy. There was just The Lord.
Whatever-all other beings exist – whoever and however special they are – there’s just the one God. A singularity. A stand-alone. A one-of-a-kind.
On the left: The Aggregate of Everything/Everyone Else.
On the right: The Lord.

Note: quotes from Isaiah 45:5 6 18 21 22 (NIV)

Week 28  Isaiah 36-39

I start reading chapter 36 and know right away that I’ve read it before. And not just last year. This year. I read this story late-April or early-May. I check a marginal cross-reference…find the same story in 2 Kings…then page through the two accounts. 2 Kings 18-20 is roughly equal to Isaiah 36-39.
I’m wondering how “roughly equal” they are so I find a second copy of the same version of the bible and lay the two side-by-side on the kitchen counter: left index finger on Isaiah 36:1…right finger on 2 Kings 18:13.
Right away I find a glitch – 2 Kings 18:14-16 is an extra paragraph that Isaiah skips. But after that it’s very close. I line them up verse-by-verse: 2 Kings 18:17 = Isaiah 36:2. Then 18:18=36:3. Then 19=4 20=5 21=6 22=7 23=8 24=9 25=10. Like that. 2 Kings adds a couple of phrases and names. But the two are about 97% the same.
I only take time to compare one chapter of the two accounts word-for-word. After that it’s paragraph-for-paragraph. But they keep looking very similar (the one huge difference is that Isaiah adds what looks like a psalm written by Hezekiah).
Isaiah was right there when the Assyrians threatened Jerusalem so I wonder if he wrote this account first and then had his story copied by the person who wrote Kings. Hard to say. I’m sure there’s an argument for both sides.
But it’s hard to say and maybe not worth the argument.

Note: Hezekiah’s psalm is in Isaiah 38:9-20

Week 27  Isaiah 9

It was 27-degrees Celsius & sunny in the Hat yesterday and I thought about Christmas.
I thought about Christmas because Handel wrote Handel’s Messiah and part of that included Isaiah 9. Every Christmas I hear The Messiah sung: for unto us a child is born…unto us…a son is given…unto us…a son is given. Every Christmas. Handel. Isaiah 9.
I’m pretty sure Handel thought that Isaiah 9 referred to Jesus.
By contrast I’m not sure what Isaiah thought when he wrote it. What kind of idea did he have about who the son was?
I look at the titles/names Isaiah gave the son:
Wonderful Counselor
Mighty God
Everlasting Father
Prince of Peace
I guess that within his own framework Isaiah could have imagined a future Wonderful-Counselor & Prince-of-Peace. With titles like that the son would have to be an exceptionally talented guy. But he’d still be in the Talented Guy category.
The other two titles wouldn’t be so manageable. What to do with Mighty-God & Everlasting-Father? If an exceptionally-talented-guy’s resume also included being Mighty-God & Everlasting-Father then he wouldn’t exactly fit the Talented Guy category. A Talented Guy – no matter how qualified – is still a guy. Isaiah’s ‘son-who-is-given’ is a Talented Guy (with a lot of natural talent) but he also has those added remarkable talents & competencies.
According to Isaiah he’s still a son. Still a Talented Guy. But a guy who also has inordinate & extra-dimensional potentialities.

Note: quote from Isaiah 9:6 (KJV)

Week 27  Isaiah

Even though my reading schedule is in pretty good shape I hurried through Isaiah 1-6 today. The sixth chapter is Isaiah’s vision-experience of the Lord.
I think if I was editing Isaiah I’d put that vision story in chapter one right at the beginning. The book opens: the vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem that Isaiah son of Amoz saw during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah.
If it was me I’d go directly from that verse into Isaiah’s vision and the commission he got from the Lord: in the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted…
I did a quick scan through the rest of the prophets to see what happened with them…
Jeremiah’s commission comes in chapter one.
Ezekiel has a spectacular and mind-boggling vision in chapter one and he’s commissioned in chapter two.
Hosea Joel Jonah Micah Zephaniah Haggai Zechariah & Malachi all open with the phrase ‘the word of the Lord came to…’ They all move straight into their assignments.
And oracles or visions open the books of Obadiah Nahum Habakkuk & Malachi.
All of those things happened right away. So I wonder why Isaiah waits ‘til chapter six.
But I realize it’s not something to get jammed-up about so I don’t over-think it. There’s more than 100 other verses between 1:1 & 6:1 and reading through them today I thought quite a few were pretty instructive.

Note: quotes from Isaiah 1:1 6:1 (NIV)

Week 27  Ecclesiastes

If I organized all the bible books in a list that went from the Most Religious to the ones that seemed Least Religious then Ecclesiastes is going to be near the bottom (Ecclesiastes could flip with Song of Solomon for #66) .
I checked a word book to see how many times the writer used the expression under-the-sun (for instance – what does a man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun). I counted 32 times (three of those he used the phrase under-heaven – which I figured was roughly equivalent to under-the-sun).
I doubt that the writer set out to write the Least Religious book of the bible. But he focused so intently and concentratedly on life under-the-sun that there wasn’t much room for any other life. Anyway the Key Question was: what-can-I-make-of-life-under-the-sun? And the Key Answer was: life under-the-sun is utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless. (I get the sense the phrase everything-is-meaningless is a short version of everything-under-the-sun-is-meaningless.)
Even though I figure Ecclesiastes is the Least Religious bible book it isn’t a Non-Religious book. It’s more like life under-the-sun dominates all other life regions.
In the bigger and all-inclusive region of all-life (i.e. areas under-the-sun plus areas beyond-the-sun) life isn’t necessarily futile or meaningless. It’s just that I’d also have to start looking for meaning above – not just under – the sun.

Note: quotes from Ecclesiastes 1:3 2 (NIV). Added note: Ecclesiastes’ writer admits that there are some consolations & satisfactions to be had under-the-sun. But not meaning.