Month: April 2025

Week 18  Nehemiah 3

Nehemiah took the whole chapter to describe the rebuilding project. He named people’s names (the title of the chapter could be: Who Repaired What Section of the City Wall).
The gates of the city were handy reference-locator points to describe the wall-building assignments. Nehemiah described quite a few other city landmarks but I didn’t have time to worry about them. I focussed on the gates. There were ten of them: Sheep Fish Old Valley Refuse Fountain Water Horse East & Inspection Gates.
I found a bible map showing the city of Jerusalem in the time of Nehemiah. Right at the top was the Sheep Gate. Starting from there I worked my way counterclockwise around the wall. On the city map I found the Sheep Fish Valley Fountain Water Horse & East Gates.
The seven gates named on the bible map matched up with Nehemiah’s list. The difference was that Nehemiah named three extra gates: the Old Refuse & Inspection Gates. My bible map didn’t seem to have any idea about the location of those last three – didn’t even name them. And actually as far as that goes it looks like most of the gate-locations on the map were guess-work – all of them (except the Valley Gate) were followed by a question-mark – [?].
On a Scale of 1-10 Most Interesting & Useful Chapters in the OT chapter 3 will be in the lower half. But it’s still worth having.

Note: end of month reading report: 45% of the bible completed – so on April 30 that’s reassuring.

Week 18  2 Chronicles 28

Chapter 28 is Ahaz’ story. It’s another one of those bleak accounts about what the kings of Judah were doing. When I finished the story this year I decided: Ahaz wasn’t much of a king – at least judged by the Good King Standards in the bible history books.
I looked back at an exercise from 2023 where I ranked the kings of Judah. Out of 15 kings I had rated Ahaz 14th. Second from the bottom. Second-worst king.
I took a couple of minutes to look back at the Kings’ version of Ahaz’ reign (I remembered that I shouldn’t pull-the-trigger too quickly on Ahaz (or any of the kings) since one version of the story will sometimes add a qualifying point of detail). But there’s no luck for Ahaz there. The Kings version gives me no reason to boost my opinion of Ahaz.
I also checked a cross-reference to Isaiah. Isaiah had prophesied during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah and he’d told a short story about Ahaz. It’s a bit of a tricky anecdote since – looking at it in one way – I could possibly think there’s a little glimmer of inspiration-in-the-distance for Ahaz. But I think it’s really just a mirage.
Ahaz is a uniformly bad king – which verifies my opinion from two years ago. But it’s an unfortunate confirmation.

Note: quote from Isaiah 1:1 (NASB). The other stories of Ahaz are in 2 Kings 16 & Isaiah 7.

Week 18  Psalm 115

One of the problems with reading through the bible is that a big percentage of the content – in the OT especially – doesn’t have too much connection to me. There’s what I think of as an Applicative Disconnect (put another way it’s a feeling of this-don’t-mean-nuthin’-to-me).
So anyway a couple of verses started giving me the feeling that I was reading some advice aimed at someone else:
O Israel, trust in the Lord! He is their help and their shield
O house of Aaron, trust in the Lord! He is their help and their shield.
This was a bit of operationable advice for a) Israel and b) Aaron’s family.
But then I got to a third group – a more general audience:
You who fear the Lord, trust in the Lord! He is their help and their shield.
And so what Israel was told to do (trust in the Lord) and what the Aaron family was told to do (trust in the Lord) was the same advice for anyone at all who feared-the-Lord (trust in the Lord).
So what started out seeming pretty inapplicable for me turned right around.
Do I respect & honour the Lord? If I do that means that I’ll setting store by him.

Note: quotes from Psalm 115:9-11 (ESV). It was helpful that the margin of my bible reminded me that ‘fear’ is roughly equal to ‘revere’. So fearing the Lord is not – for example – like being terrorized by a zombie.

 

Week 17  Psalm 107

This psalm could be quite a bit shorter if the writer had jumped straight from the first paragraph to the final two verses. And it would still be a pretty good – and short – psalm:
Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his faithful love endures forever.
Let the redeemed of the Lord proclaim that he has redeemed them from the power of the foe
and has gathered them from the lands – from the east and the west, from the north and the south.
The upright see it and rejoice, and all injustice shuts its mouth.
Let whoever is wise pay attention to these things and consider the Lord’s acts of faithful love.
A five-verse psalm would save me some reading time. At the same time it would still give me some good content. For example, God is Good. Short. Simple. A factual statement and an excellent reminder of something that’s very easy for a reader to lose sight of. God is Good. Lots of people look around and figure that God isn’t all that good. Or that he’s an on-again-off-again unpredictable God – good sometimes & bad other times. And some people figure that he’s flat-out terrible.
So reading my abbreviated psalm I get a nice reminder: God is Good. A world of disastrous inexplicables happening all around me doesn’t fundamentally tell me much about God. Any more than my (poor old) dog dying of bone cancer says very much about me.

Note: quote from psalm 107:1-3 & 42-43 (CSB)

Week 16  Psalm 105

Psalm 105 retells some of the stories from Israel’s past.
One of them is the story about Joseph being sold-down-the-river by his brothers.
I look back at the story in Genesis. It’s about 90 verses long. So the psalm-writer’s version – 5 verses – is a real whittled-down version:
(The Lord) had sent a man ahead of (Jacob’s family) – Joseph, who was sold as a slave.
They hurt his feet with shackles; his neck was put in an iron collar.
Until the time his prediction came true, the word of the Lord tested him.
The king sent for him and released him; the ruler of peoples set him free.
He made him master of his household, ruler over all his possessions.
The Genesis story of Joseph is one of the best stories in the bible and doesn’t need to condensed. But I guess the psalm writer had his reasons. And anyway the more important thing is that his short-version is an accurate rendition.
I remember reading a guy who had an explanation of Jesus walking across the Sea of Galilee. He figured there was weather anomaly in the eastern Mediterranean where the temperature plummeted and froze the lake. Jesus was walking on ice – not water! (We do that all the time in Alberta and so I know there’s no miracle there.)
Changing a story is okay. But an important rule is that when it gets changed it has to be approximately the same story.

Note: quote from Psalm 105:17-21 (CSB)

Week 16  1 Chronicles 3

Mental focus is one of the challenges a reader faces while reading the first nine chapters of 1 Chronicles. That’s why I didn’t notice at first that mid-way through chapter three there’s a list of the kings of Judah. But then it did register: the kings of Judah. Yes! This was familiar ground for me.
I re-read the list of the fifteen kings that followed Solomon: the son of Solomon was Rehoboam, Abijah, Asa, Jehoshaphat, Joram, Ahaziah, Joash, Amaziah, Azariah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, Manasseh, Amon, Josiah. 
Since I’d posted on the kings of Judah in May, 2023 I wanted to cross-check my list with this one in 1 Chronicles 3.
My list of the fifteen kings of Judah had: Rehoboam Abijah Asa Jehoshaphat Joram Ahaziah Joash Amaziah Azariah Jotham Ahaz Hezekiah Manasseh Amon & Josiah.
The lists are the same (allowing for the fact that Jehoram’s other name was Joram and Uzziah was also called Azariah).
The writer of 1 Chronicles 3 no doubt expected his readers to know the stories behind this list of names. So fortunately for me I did.
But unfortunately for me the rest of the list (especially verses 17-24) kind of fall-off-a-cliff. Zerubbabel is the one familiar name – I remember him from the book of Ezra (and he’s also in the genealogies of Jesus in the gospels). But with the other names I’m at-sea.

Note: quote from 1 Chronicles 3:10-14 (ESV. The phrase ‘his son’ is repeated fourteen times so I deleted it.)

Week 15  Psalm 93

The third & fourth verses spend quite a bit of time talking about oceanic power to make the point that the Lord is mightier than the sea:
The floods have lifted up, Lord,
the floods have lifted up their voice;
the floods lift up their pounding waves.
Greater than the roar of a huge torrent—
the mighty breakers of the sea—
the Lord on high is majestic.
The psalm-writer could have briefed things up. For instance:
“The Lord is greater than a north Atlantic gale”.
But he didn’t. So when I’m reading the psalms I try to keep in mind that the writer has an idea he wants to convey and he’s conveying it (in his view) in an appealing way.
Let’s face it…I could write up an accurate list of this psalm’s basic ideas in bullet-points. The Lord is:
• The King
• Majestic
• Immoveable
• Everlasting
• Powerful
• Holy
And I think my list covers the main attributes of the Lord. But I’d also have to admit that my version isn’t very elegant. Not compelling. Not forceful. Kind of ho-hum. Sure…it conveys key facts. But in a stiff & wooden & kind of boring way.
Factual information about the Lord can be communicated concisely & clearly & accurately. But I figure the writer asked himself: ‘how do I make it attention-grabbing too?’ And he knew that a bullet-pointed list wouldn’t be half as absorbing as a word picture.

Note: quote from Psalm 95:3-4 (CSB)

Week 14  1 Samuel 16

I started reading the story of David this year and after a couple of days I noticed that I kept going on-and-on with his story.
David’s story is good. But it’s long. And when I started wondering who had the longest life-story in the bible I figured that David might be a good candidate.
I added up all the chapters from 1 Samuel 16 to 31 (16) plus all of 2 Samuel (24) plus 1 Kings 1-2 (2). The arithmetic  said David’s biography was 42 chapters long. (I didn’t want to quibble about a couple of non-David side-stories in the 42, And I didn’t tack-on the couple of dozen chapters of duplicated stories in 1 Chronicles.) 42 chapters is my rough number.
The only other challenger in the OT (that I could think of) was Moses. I could argue that Exodus 2 to Deuteronomy 34 are about Moses – 136 chapters. But that would be an inaccurate tally since the majority of those chapters aren’t Moses’ biography. I didn’t have time to do a chapter-by-chapter review of Moses so I don’t know if there are 42 biographical chapters. But I think Moses would be in-the-conversation.
There are other great stories in the OT: Noah Samson Ruth Elijah Elisha Jeremiah Jonah. But as far as the narrative-space devoted to a person? David is near the very top.
[Of course if I include the NT Jesus takes-the-cake – racking up 90 chapters.]
Anyway David is very very important in the OT scheme of things. And – as long as it is – the story still moves along fairly quickly.

 

Week 14  1 Samuel 16

When Samuel went to designate a replacement for Saul he looked at a number of candidates but the Lord told him: do not look at his appearance or his stature because I have rejected him. Humans do not see what the Lord sees, for humans see what is visible, but the Lord sees the heart.
So the Lord sees differently than people see.
It’s a pretty important concept for me to keep in mind. I See Things Differently Than the Lord Does. Meaning I’m faced with a personal question: do I believe my own eyes or do I believe the Lord’s? Quite a bit rests on my answer.
Am I going to run with what I see & think? Or do I run with what the Lord says he’s seeing – even if it unbalances or maybe even contradicts what I’m feeling certain about? (It’s very difficult to believe what I don’t.)
When Samuel went to Jesse’s house looking for a king he was impressed by a couple of the brothers because they were actually impressive. But the Lord wasn’t impressed because he wasn’t impressed by the things that impressed Samuel.
There are likely a number of different kinds of being smart. When totaled up there’d be an enormous collection of smartness in the world. No denying the smartness. But it wouldn’t be totality of smartnesses.
In fact it’d maybe be something like one one-trillionth as smart as the Lord.

Note: quote from 1 Samuel 16:7 (CSB)

Week 14  1 Samuel 15

Samuel said: the Eternal One of Israel does not lie or change his mind, for he is not man who changes his mind.
It’s a reassuring reminder that the Lord is not like humans. He’s not changeable. Not unstable. Not unreliable.
At the same time the Lord’s character isn’t locked-down into a kind of conscious state of emotional rigor mortis.
Here’s a hypothetical example of the Lord showing some common sense elasticity. Let’s say there’s two guys:
If Guy #1 lives a life of good actions from beginning-to-end the Lord will affirm him.
If Guy #2 lives a life of evil actions from beginning-to-end the Lord won’t affirm him.
But what if Guy #1 lives a life of good actions for a while but then turns around and lives an evil life? Things have changed. So the Lord doesn’t affirm him any more.
And what if Guy #2 lives an evil life for a while but then turns around and lives a life of good? Things have changed. And he goes from not being affirmed to being affirmed.
If the Lord was Totally Inflexible & Rigidly Mechanical then he wouldn’t be responsive to changeable things happening all around. But one thing the bible confirms is that the Lord is responsive to new developments.
The Lord responds intelligently and fittingly to mutating inputs. He changes.

Note: quote from 1 Samuel 15:29 (CSB)