Week 16 Psalm 105
105 is a summary of Israel’s history.
Having a condensed history is a pretty nice benefit for a bible reader. How nice? I flipped back about eight-hundred pages to find out how nice:
Psalm 105:7-23 is a summary of (roughly) Genesis 12-50
Psalm 105:24-41 is a summary of (roughly) Exodus 1-17
And psalm 105:44 is a summary of (roughly) Joshua 1-24.
That means that 105 collapses roughly 79 chapters into about 36 verses. So that’s nice. I spent weeks reading those chapters in January & March. For a couple of seconds I think about whether I could get away with skipping those 79 chapters next time and just reading psalm 105 instead (but I figure that would be a bible-reader’s cheat).
Another thing I see is that 105 is more than just a synopsis. It’s also an explanation of what was going on behind the Israel story. A lot of things happened – says 105 – and this is why they happened.
I don’t know how many modern-day Albertans think there aren’t any explanations. Probably lots. Events seem to just happen in fairly random directionless explanationless & arbitrary ways. But 105 makes the point that quite a bit of Complex Coordination was going on behind-the-scenes. How to decipher Complex Coordination isn’t simple. But deciphering’s starting-point is developing a sense of the Lord’s planning designing operating organizing intervening drafting modifying promoting. Things like that.
105’s explanation of history does two main things. It a) extracts the chancy-aimlessness from the story and b) adds a shot of the Lord’s focused-direction to the mix.