Month: February 2025

Week 9  1 Samuel 15

After Saul made his career-&-life-altering stupid decision (making a sacrifice that he wasn’t supposed to make) Samuel told him this: rebellion is as bad as the sin of divination; arrogance is like the evil of idolatry.
It’s a pretty interesting comment and it seems like Samuel was implying that there was a kind of socially-acknowledged Evilness Scale. I don’t know for sure but I don’t think there actually was such a scale. If there was it would map-out evil actions – sins – and classify them into different families or castes. So for instance there might have been a) Mildly-Evil Actions & b) Middle-of-the-Road-Evil Actions & c) Seriously-Evil Actions. A concrete example would be that killing someone is a heavier & eviler evil than stealing a bag of coleslaw.
But what Samuel said was that rebellion was roughly equivalent to divination. That arrogance was on the same footing as idolatry.
Personally I think I’d want to argue that rebellion & divination are two distinct evils (same with arrogance & idolatry). And I don’t want to put words in Samuel’s mouth but I figure he might agree that evils do have their own unique individualities. But I don’t think that was his point. I think Samuel’s main point was that all evils share a kinship. There’s a family likeness. All thing that are bad – small medium & large – are similar because they can never get to be good.

Note: quote from 1 Samuel 15:23 (CSB). Month-end reading report: I’ve read 26% of the bible in 17% of the year.

 

Week 9  1 Samuel 2-3

Samuel’s folks took him to live with a priest when he still a young boy. It was an exception to normal family practice and the arrangement likely raised-eyebrows. But it was the start of a religious life:
The boy Samuel ministered to the Lord before Eli the priest
He slept where the ark of God was
He opened the doors of the building in the morning.
Simple tasks. Learning-the-ropes. A religious apprentice.
And 0ver time the boy matured and developed:
Samuel grew and the Lord was with him and let none of his words fail
Eventually his reputation spread so that all Israel…knew that Samuel was confirmed as a prophet of the Lord.
I don’t know which bible person has the longest & most complete biography but Samuel would rank pretty high on the list. There’s a fair bit of detail – even the prenatal events (he’s a bit like Samson in that way).
Anyway what I notice is that a) he started small and b) he started young (at the end of his career he could tell Israel that I have walked before you from my youth).
From other life stories in the bible it’s pretty clear that starting young and small isn’t necessary. But in Samuel’s case it seemed like a great fit. And the consequence was an (almost) ideal life.

Note: quotes from 1 Samuel 2:11 3:3 15 19 20 & 12:2 (NASB)

 

Week 9  1 Samuel 2

There’s a line in Hannah’s prayer that says a specific thing about the Lord: the Lord is a God of knowledge, and with Him actions are weighed.
I cross-checked a couple of other versions looking for discrepancies. But they agreed:
The Lord is a God of knowledge, and actions are weighed by him
The Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed.
So actions have weight.
Weight is how heavy something is. In the world of material things the weight of every single thing is determined by the mystery-force of gravity. Gravity says that an apple weighs 100 grams and a truck weighs 2000 kgs. Objects have weight.
Actions are different from objects but they have weight too. I’ve seen lots of pictures of the blindfolded Lady Justice with her scales – weighing people’s actions. Every day the legal departments of the world take a stab at weighing the actions of people. The legal scales of justice have limitations and are only calibrated to give approximate weights. They’re not always too accurate (but they’re better than nothing).
But one of the (many) things that the Lord does is to exert a sort of Behavioural Gravitational Force over all actions. It’s a very precise scale that takes every single factor into consideration. And then every action is weighed to the milligram.
Which seems like a pretty solid argument for good action.

Note: quote from 1 Samuel 2:3 (NASB CSB & ESV)

Week 8  Ruth 2

The writer uses a tantalizing phrase when he describes Ruth going out to find work to support herself & Naomi. The bible I’m reading says that she happened to come to the portion of the field belonging to Boaz.
I’ve read the story before so I know it’s vitally important that Ruth connects with Boaz. She has to. But the story makes it seem like a coincidence. An accident. Like she could have ended up at someone else’s farm.
I don’t know any details about ancient land ownership or about the average size of agricultural holdings so it’s hard to say what the chances were of Ruth meeting Boaz. Let’s say there were ten landowner-farmers in Bethlehem. That left Ruth with a 1:10 chance of meeting Boaz. (Personally I think that ten farmers in the area is a low number. But even a one-in-ten chance isn’t really the best of odds.)
I checked a few other bible versions. They all give a similar it-just-so-happened impression of bumping-into-each-other synchrony.
It seems like pure luck landed Ruth at Boaz’ farm. Nothing about the Lord pulling-strings. If Ruth was the only bible book I ever read then it would sound like a story of the stars-aligning.
But I think the writer knew that a bible reader would figure out quick enough that – as usual – the Lord was behind the scene. Some things can (safely) be taken for granted.

Note: quote from Ruth 2:3 (NASB)

Week 8  Judges 13

At the beginning of the Samson story an angel of the Lord appeared to Samson’s mother.
When she got home she told her husband:
a) a man of God came to me
b) his appearance was like the appearance of the angel of God
c) he was very awesome.
I wonder what exactly she saw. Was he a fairly regular-looking material guy? Maybe. But if so it’s clear he was also more than a regular guy since he was also very awesome.
The reason I noticed this is because I’ve been wondering what angels look like. In January I tracked a few angelic appearances in Genesis:
• an angel guards the entry to Eden
• an angel appears to Hagar
• angels visit Lot in Sodom
• angels are in the “Jacob’s Ladder” vision
• angels meet Jacob at Mahanaim
• Jacob wrestles an angel.
None of those contacts spelled-out what angels actually looked like.
I have the feeling that an angel has more-or-less the features of a human being (if I saw an angel the human similarity might fool me). But there’d be something that would tip the scale. An instinctive sense & feeling of his being awesome. Maybe physically human-dimensional but having extra-human marvelosity. Fabulous. Stupendous. Sublime. Phenomenal. A manageably-seeming resemblance…but mostly an unmanageable difference that makes me automatically realize: this guy is my superior.

Note: quotes from Judges 13:3 6 (ESV). See Genesis stories in 3:24 (Eden) 16:7-14 & 21:17-21 (Hagar) 19 (Lot) 28:12 & 32:1 & 32:24-32 (Jacob)

Week 8  Joshua 21

The tribe of Levi comes to Joshua and asks him for their City & Land Allocations. It’s an important list if you were a Levite then. A plodder of a chapter for me now.
And it’s a reminder: different passages have different values for different people.
Chapter 21 was written to and about the Levites. It was a document that would give them legal ownership – spelled out  city-by-city and region-by-region – of all the municipalities that they’d be getting. Since I’m not a Levite and not living in OT Israel the practical value of chapter 21 tails off pretty quickly for me. It really has almost no practical or concrete or personal claim on my time or interest.
Joshua 21 illustrates a pretty common concern & reality for readers. There are 1189 chapters in the bible and I don’t know anyone who thinks that each of them is equally important. If I had time to create a Chapter Valuation List of the whole bible – one that listed chapters in order of importance – then Joshua 21 would be far down the list (in the Not Too Important section). It would join chapters like Exodus 25 or Leviticus 1.
I pretty well accept that some chapters have a greater buoyancy that elevates them above others – flotational oomph. But even so I’m reluctant to dispense with the chapters that lack effervescence.
I figure I have little enough data to work with and so I’d be foolish to jettison what I’ve got.

Week 8  Psalm 47

I’m interested in finding anything that the bible says about the organizational structure of the world (since it’s useful to know how the world is managed).
I figure that one of two possible things is going one. #1: there’s no macro-organizing taking place. Things just move along under the direction of various micro-managers (politicians or dictators or entrepreneurs or the super-rich) who grab power and rule. #2: there’s a Supra-Governing manager who oversees and directs all events.
Psalm 46 goes with Option #2. It says things like:
• The Lord, the Most High, is to be feared, a great king over all the earth
• God is the King of all the earth
• God reigns over the nations
• The shields of the earth belong to God; he is highly exalted (the margin says shields = leaders)
So psalm 47 is definitive about who’s at the top of the hierarchy. The Lord has the deciding vote when it comes to strategic-planning & decision-making & coordinating-resources-and-personnel. Planning & oversight & performance-assessment are all under his oversight.
Unfortunately the writer doesn’t specify any of the subsidiary managers who are part of the entire power-and-governance hierarchy.
So for now the one solid piece of information I come away with is that the Lord has executive authority over everything – which is maybe the critical and the best piece of the puzzle to have.
But I’m still interested in the bible’s view of the total structure of the system. So I’ll keep looking.

Note: quotes from Psalm 47:2 7 8 9 (ESV)

Week 7  Deuteronomy 29

The bible is pretty clear that the Lord knows everything. So in terms of percentages his knowledge score would have a value of 100%.
I can’t speak for the accumulated knowledge of everyone in the human race but I’d float the guess that in comparison to the Lord all of the knowledge that we-all have on earth would be less than 1% (how much less is debatable. Personally I’d say it was quite a bit less).
Anyway the bible doesn’t give an exact numerical value to how little we know but it does say that: the secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law.
So I keep a couple of things in mind.
First I don’t get too worried thinking that “Oooo…the Lord is keeping a Big Secret from me. Keeping me in the Dark”. It’s really more the simple fact that my knowledge capacity is significantly less than the Lord’s.
The second thing is the Lord has (in fact) revealed certain key things to me that I have the capacity to utilize.
I take two things I take from this verse. A) I don’t know and likely won’t ever know the Secret Things (I’ll stay 99% unaware). B) the 1% of things I do know belong to me and as a result I can observe – act on – them.

Note: quote from Deuteronomy 29:29 (NASB)

Week 7  Deuteronomy 1

In the book of Deuteronomy Moses is reminiscing about the past 40 years and right away I notice one of the things he says: at that time I said to you, ‘I am not able to bear you by myself’.
I don’t think I’d have noticed the comment except that a couple of weeks ago I’d read in Exodus about Jethro. He told Moses: the thing (being a judge to Israel) is too heavy for you. You are not able to do it alone’.
So in Deuteronomy Moses was saying  the job was too big.
In Exodus it was Jethro who was saying it.
So because of the size of the job Moses said: I took the leaders of your tribes, wise and respected men, and set them over you as leaders: commanders for thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens, and officers for your tribes.
But back in Exodus it was Jethro’s recommendation: you should select from all the people able men, God-fearing, trustworthy, and hating dishonest profit. Place them over the people as commanders of thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens.
So in Deuteronomy Moses said that he reorganized the judiciary.
In Exodus it was Jethro’s recommendation.
It isn’t a huge problem for me but I wonder why Moses didn’t credit Jethro with the idea.
And like I wondered before: why didn’t Moses consult with the Lord first?

Note: quotes from Deuteronomy 1:9 12 15 Exodus 18:18 21 (ESV or CSB). See  January 26/25 ‘Jethro’

Week 6  Psalm 33

Verse thirteen says: the Lord looks down from heaven; he sees all the children of man.
Verse fourteen says: from where he sits enthroned he looks out on all the inhabitants of the earth.
The two verses are slightly different in language but roughly equal in meaning.
There’s heaven and there’s earth.
There’s the Lord and there’s everyone else.
And the Lord (in heaven) is observing everyone (on earth).
One way to think of what the Lord is doing – David says he looks down & he looks out – is in a sinister way. Covertly from heaven the Lord is tracking my every move. Spying. Monitoring. Intruding. Looking for gaffs. Waiting to pounce. That’s one way.
But David says a couple of other things in the psalm that make me think twice.
He says that on the national level the Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; he frustrates the plans of the peoples.
Then on the personal level the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him (and) who hope in his steadfast love, that he may deliver their soul from death.
So the Lord (who is observing-people’s-deeds’ as it says in verses 13 & 14) is also assessing the situation and then taking action.
The Observing God observes. Not neutrally or impassively or without any rhyme-or-reason or without any good reason. He’s a Purpose-Driven Observing God. Watching is just one of the things he’s doing.

Note: quotes from Psalm 33:13-14 10 18-19 15 (ESV)