Month: January 2023

Week 5  Exodus 21

There’s a pretty well-known rule in this chapter about punishing crimes. It’s this: an eye for an eye.
I noticed that the chapter clearly & definitely spells out an eye for an eye in a one-for-one correspondence: the offender must be punished according to the injury. Hand for hand. Foot for foot. Burn for burn. Wound for wound.
The next eleven verses give examples of the rule in action. But…the iron-clad law is modified. Here’s an example: if an owner hits a male or female slave in the eye and the eye is blinded, then the slave may go free because of the eye.
So that’s an eye-for-freedom. In a true and rigidly applied eye-for-an-eye situation you’d figure the law would say: ‘if an owner hits a male or female slave in the eye and the eye is blinded, then the owner will be blinded in one of his eyes’. So eye-for-eye isn’t actually applied. And I see a couple of verses later that if your bull gores my wife to death I don’t get to put your wife in an arena and let my bull gore her to death.
So the law says eye-for-eye but the law means something like ‘equivalent compensation’ – ‘an eye for something of approximately equal value’.

Note: quotes from Exodus 21:23-4 26 (NLT). End of January Reading report: I’ve read Genesis + Exodus + 31 psalms = 121 chapters. So I’m a little over 10% finished reading the bible in a little over 8% of the year.

Week 4  Psalm 22

I read psalm 22 in someone else’s bible. In the margin she had penciled-in some bible verses beside the words that David had written:
My God, my God why have you forsaken me? The hand-written cross-reference was to Matthew 27:46.
Everyone who sees me mocks me. They sneer and shake their heads. Luke 23:35-36.
If the Lord loves him so much, let the Lord rescue him. Matthew 27:39 41-43
My enemies surround me like a herd of bulls. Matthew 27:36 44
An evil gang closes in on me. They have pierced my hands and feet. She didn’t add a cross-reference to the Lord’s crucifixion – maybe it was too obvious.
They divide my clothes among themselves and throw dice for my garments. Matthew 27:35.
I read each of the gospel references and the similarities are uncanny.
David is writing about his own experiences. His adversaries were attacking him & he was on-the-ropes & he was nearly-getting-killed & just-barely-escaping-with-his-life. But some of the things he said are so similar to the actual crucifixion of Jesus that it makes you wonder.
One of the things David prays is: rescue me from a violent death; spare my precious life from these dogs. Luckily for David his prayer was answered.
There’s no gospel cross-references written beside this verse and I don’t bother looking for one myself. I know the dogs didn’t spare the precious life of the Lord. They howled and harried him all the way to death.

Note: quotes from Psalm 22:1 7 8 12 16 18 20 (NLT)

Week 4  Genesis 49

Jacob gave a short forecast of his son Zebulun’s future: he will settle on the shores of the sea and will be a harbor for ships: his border will extend to Sidon. He’s the only brother who gets this kind of specific geographic detail.
I check a wordbook for Zebulun. I want to see what happened. The name is used about 47 times in the bible.
One passage says that Zebulun will benefit from the riches of the sea.
Isaiah says that the land of Zebulun lies along the road that runs between the Jordan and the sea.
Other than these two I don’t find anything about Maritime Zebulun. And even these don’t help very much.
I look at a map of Israel’s tribal divisions in the back of my bible. Up in the north about midway between the Mediterranean Sea (to the west) and the Sea of Galilee I see his name in red capital letters: ZEBULUN. There aren’t any tribal border lines so on this map Zebulun maybe stretched west to the Mediterranean coast…and even east to the inland Sea of Galilee. I look at another map. This second cartographer seemed pretty sure about tribal borders and showed Zebulun as being as landlocked as Mongolia. No Mediterranean coast. No shores-of-Galilee. No sea or harbors or ships.
My extra homework on Zebulun didn’t really help and so I’m left wondering how Jacob’s marine-focused forecast panned out for Zebulun.

Note: quotes from Genesis 49:13 Deuteronomy 33:19 Isaiah 9:1 (NLT)

Week 4  Genesis 49

Not long before he died Jacob called his sons together: gather around me, and I will tell you what is going to happen to you in the days to come. (The writer said that each of the boys received a blessing that was appropriate to him.)
Some of the things Jacob said were pretty clear but others were fuzzy and I wondered how accurately I could dope them out.
Reuben & Simeon & Levi all had their bad actions come back to haunt them (and their blessings almost seem like curses).
Some of the language Jacob used about Judah is unclear but overall the message is very affirmative. So is Joseph’s – he’ll be a prince among his brothers. Out of 26-verses of promises Judah & Joseph account for 10 of them.
The other oracles are a bit murky…
Zebulun’s future geographic location is predicted.
Issachar will be strong (but he’ll end working like-a-dog in enforced labour).
Dan will have a judicial / governing function.
Gad is headed for armed conflict.
Asher will produce high-quality food.
Naphtali (a deer let loose) sounds affirmative but it could mean a lot of things.
Benjamin is like a wolf. Aggression is in his future.
I wish the forecasts were more unequivocal and explicit. I think about tracking the brothers forward to see what actually happens to them – how the forecasts came true. But it would be pretty time-consuming.

Note: quotes from Genesis 49:1 28 26 21 (NLT)

Week 4  Genesis 37

In the story where Joseph’s brothers conspire to murder him the writer doesn’t say anything at all about Joseph’s side of the story. It’s like he’s absent. There’s quite a bit of detail about the brother’s plans though. First they’re going to murder Joseph. Then they throw him in a well to let nature take its course. Finally they agree to sell him to some slave-traders. Nothing at all is said about Joseph. The brothers act. Joseph is acted on.
It’s only later – many years later when the tables are turned and Joseph now has all the power and he is tightening the screws on the brothers – that they have a secret conversation among themselves: this has all happened because of what we did to Joseph long ago. We saw his terror and anguish and heard his pleadings, but we wouldn’t listen. That’s why this trouble has come upon us.
So now we hear about Joseph’s experience. He was terrified. He was in agony begging & pleading with his brothers for mercy.
Which is exactly what you’d expect. The brothers reaction then? Rock-hard disdain.
But now…finally…the wheel has turned.
The orbit of the brother’s evil deeds had disappeared over the horizon on its big outbound ellipsis but now it was coming home.
One version quoted Reuben: we are going to die because we murdered Joseph. Another version said – a bit more ominously: now comes the reckoning for his blood.

Note: quotes from Genesis 42:21 & 22 (NLT NASB)

Week 4  Psalm 18

Sometimes David speaks directly to-the-Lord in this psalm. Then at other times he just makes a comment about-the-Lord.
There are fifty verses in the psalm and about 26 individual comments / phrases where David speaks directly to-the-Lord (for instance I love you Lord; you are my strength). They’re almost like prayers.
I doubled-back and counted how many times David says something about-the-Lord. Talking about-the-Lord David uses words like he-him-his-the Lord-God. There are roughly 49 things he says about-the-Lord (for instance: as for God his way is perfect).
So that means that there are really two audiences listening to the psalm: the Lord and then regular people.
I get the impression that the things David says about-the-Lord – the things he thinks about him – are his foundational jumping-off points for what he says to-the-Lord.
On a simple level this makes sense. If I can say about-the-Lord something like: ‘you save me from my enemies’ then that’s a staging-point for me to move ahead and say something like this to-the-Lord: ‘for this, O Lord, I will praise you’.
If I’ve formed a personal opinion about what the Lord is like then it’ll affect my interaction with him. And I think that holds true no matter what my opinion about him is – good-bad-or-indifferent.

Note: quotes from Psalm 18:1 30 (NLT)

Week 3  Genesis 38

Er was the first son of Judah and about all we know about him is this: Er was a wicked man in the Lord’s sight, so the Lord took his life. I don’t have any reason to think this was a normal action that the Lord took. In the bible the Lord doesn’t typically take the lives of individual evil people. So this looks like an exception (the writer doesn’t give details so who knows why it happened?)
I think the general rule is that most people – good or evil – get to live out their whole lives. Only a few die prematurely. So Er was one of the exceptions.
I think there’s another pretty basic rule too: if I live my life projecting my personal evil-actions out into the world then that evil will eventually circle around and come back to me. It’s not like my evils just dissipate into the ionosphere. They remain intact & virulent and when they cycle back to me there will be aftereffects. One of the rules of evil action is that repercussions follow. In Er’s case it’s no surprise his wicked behaviour came around. What is surprising is it’s rapidity.
One of the normal benefits of living life is that fallout isn’t usually immediate.
One of the not-so-nice things is that there will be fallout. What goes-around will – sooner or later – come-around.

Note: quote from Genesis 38:7 (NLT)

Week 2  Genesis 37

Joseph’s brothers hated him. They schemed killing him but ended up selling him into slavery. The brothers later admitted: we saw Joseph’s terror and anguish and heard his pleadings, but we wouldn’t listen.
So then the brothers took Joseph’s blood-spattered coat back home and showed Jacob. His reaction? Jacob tore his clothes and put on sackcloth. He mourned deeply for his son for many days. His family all tried to comfort him, but it was no use.
I think the reason the story registered with me today was because a couple of days ago I read James: whenever trouble comes your way, let it be an opportunity for joy. For when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. There’s no getting around the fact that big trouble came the way of Joseph and his dad. But neither of them showed joy. So where does that leave James?
For one thing I think James was totally aware that violence and adversity produced anguish terror & deep distress. But in his short-hand version of trouble’s outcomes he jumped straight to endurance and eventual joy (maybe James figured that the anguish that trouble always brought was too obvious to mention).
In the real-life & full-length versions of the stories of Joseph & Jacob it took time before they developed the endurance that James talked about. And over time joy came too. But it took quite a while.

Note: quotes from Genesis 42:21 37:34-35 & James 1:2-3 (NLT)

 

Week 2  Psalm 10

Sometimes I read with a Personal Preference Bias (PPB) in the back of my mind. My PPB is a notion about how I think things should be. Unfortunately quite a bit of bible content is about how things actually are. So my PPB bumps against that.
Psalm 10 talks about the way things are.
The writer talks about people who are wealthy greedy powerful & corrupt.
He highlights what these people think-and-believe. Evil actions are okay. God is dead. Nothing bad will happen to us. God won’t notice. We’re accountable to no one.
He describes what they do. They oppress poor people. Threaten people who live wretched & brutal lives. Murder innocent people. Victimize helpless misfortunates. They lie & curse God & stir up trouble & distribute grief lavishly & terrorize their opponents.
That’s what’s happening. It’s how things are.
Psalm 10 is about the real world and the writer asks: O Lord, why do you stand so far away? Why do you hide when (we) need you the most? I think those are a couple of really good questions.
It’s only near the end the writer reminds himself that: the Lord will bring justice to the orphans and the oppressed.
The Lord might take so long to act that it begins looking like he won’t. But assuming he will it becomes a matter of me trying to coordinate my own (short-range) Personal Preference Biases with his (quite a bit more expansive) sense of acting on time.

Note: quotes from Psalm 10:1 18 (NLT)

Week 2  Genesis 19

I was barreling through psalm 9 today not really slowing down until near the end: the wicked will go down to the grave. This is the fate of all the nations who ignore God.
The thing about “nations” caught my attention. Whatever-all interest the Lord has in the actions of individual people he’s also monitoring what countries are up to.
I scan back through chapter 9 and see that some nations will end up in trouble: nations have fallen into the pit they dug for others. They have been caught in their own trap.
When I finished psalm 9 I swung over into Genesis 19. It was an unexpected coincidence to be reading one minute about nations that dug themselves into a hole and then Bingo! – the next minute I’m reading Sodom & Gomorrah.
S&G aren’t nations. They’re maybe something more like city-states – primitive municipal corporations. But whatever they were when Lot had moved into Sodom he discovered that: the people of that area were unusually wicked and sinned greatly against the Lord. So before Lot arrived the people of S&G were already well along the way to digging their own graves.
Afterwards I wonder about 21st century dictatorial countries. Police states. Criminal regimes. I wonder if they have big excavations on the go. Ready-and-waiting to receive guests.
I wonder what kind of pit Canada is digging these days. Not a happy thought. But there’s no reason to think we have an exemption.

Note: quote from Psalm 9:17 15 & Genesis 13:13 (NLT)