Month: May 2025

Week 21  Psalm 147

It usually catches my attention when a writer puts together a list. One example is right here in the first paragraph of 147:
The Lord builds up Jerusalem
He gathers the outcasts of Israel
He heals the brokenhearted
He binds up their wounds
He determines the number of the stars (and) he gives to all of them their names
Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure
The Lord lifts up the humble
He casts the wicked to the ground.
There are eight items in the list (or maybe ten items depending on how I dissect the sentences).
I see right away that verses 2 3 & 6 go together pretty well. But verses 4 & 5 seem out-of-place. The list looks like it mixes elements.
I’m not saying the items are incompatible. Not saying the Lord can’t be both the Determiner of Stars and also be concerned about needy people. But the list isn’t quite as tidy & coherent as I’d like it to be. So I’m wondering: why didn’t the writer just make separate lists?
Anyway even though I have this issue that (I think) might be a compositional glitch the bigger thing for me today is the reminder that the Lord is keenly aware of people’s needs. I’ve seen this idea again-and-again in the psalms. The Lord is attentive to the needs of people…and especially attentive to the needs of really needy people.

Note: quote from Psalm 147:2-6 (ESV very slightly revised)

Week 20  Psalm 143

Near the end of the psalm there are four phrases:
Let me experience your faithful love…for I trust in you
Reveal to me the way I should go…because I appeal to you
Rescue me from my enemies…I come to you for protection
Teach me to do your will…for you are my God.
I flip-flop the phrases:
I trust in you. So let me experience your faithful love
I appeal to you. So reveal to me the way I should go
I come to you for protection. So rescue me from my enemies
You are my God. So teach me to do your will.
But it doesn’t change things. Backwards or forwards I still have two elements: a) a request for something from the Lord and b) a reason for why the Lord should respond.
I’m interested in the mechanics of praying and I wonder if this pattern is mandatory. Do I have to give the Lord a reason?
What makes sense to me – for now – are these three guidelines:
I think that a) is more important than b)
I think that even though a) and b) are both worth having a) is essential and b) is optional
I don’t think the Lord needs b). But he does need the a).
I figure I’m on reasonably safe ground with these ideas. I might discover something later that does – or doesn’t – solidify things for me. But I can rejigger.

Note: quote from Psalm 143:8-10 (CSB slightly revised)

 

Week 20  Psalm 135

The verse said: for the Lord will judge His people and will have compassion on His servants. In some previous year I’d underlined the word ‘judge’. So I decided to check the verse in a couple of other versions. What I found was this:
Three of the versions used the exact same language: the Lord will vindicate his people and have compassion on his servants
The other one said: the Lord will give justice to his people and have compassion on his servants.
Hmmm…judging & vindicating. I decided to check a bunch of other versions. I found 19 translations that used the word ‘vindicate’. 17 others used ‘judge’. A pretty even split.
Having versions flip-flop the words ‘vindicate’ & ‘judge’ was a bit of a concern to me. In the modern world vindicate has the idea of me being in a jam but then I get acquitted. Absolved. Exonerated. Pardoned. Released. Getting judged has the sense of some judge weighing evidence – pros and cons – before forming his opinion. He thinks & weighs & deliberates & decides – but he might go one way or he might go another.
So for me judging is sitting down to think and make a decision. With vindicating a decision has already been made. Which seem like two related – but different – things.
I figure translators have good reasons for their word choices. But I know I’d prefer being vindicated than judged.

Note: quote from Psalm 135:14 (NASB CSB ESV NIV NLT)

Week 19  Nehemiah 8

There was a big public gathering in this chapter where Moses’ laws were read out loud to the crowd. Nehemiah says that the readers explained the law. But in the next verse he breaks down the process into several steps. The readers: read from the book, from the law of God, translating (the note in the margin says explaining) to give the sense so that they (the audience) understood the reading.
I wanted to see how other bible versions described this event so I looked at four other translations. They were all pretty consistent in breaking down the exercise into Four Steps:
• Step 1: the readers read the words of the Law
• Step 2: the readers then translated (or clarified or interpreted) the text (the different versions used different words)
• Step 3: the meaning was explained (so a jump was made – a pretty important jump – from What-Does-the-Text-Say? (Step 2) to What-Does-the-Text-Mean? (Step 3)
• Step 4: the final outcome? Hopefully it was understanding.
I negotiate Steps 1 & 2 & 3 so I can get to Step 4.
These steps make complete sense to me. Each day I start by reading. I do my best to make sure I’m clear about the words and the language. Then I can discover the meaning of those words & the meaning of the whole passage. Finally – if I’m successful – I understand.

Note: quotes from Nehemiah 8:7 & 8 (NASB). The other versions I checked were: CSB ESV NIV & NLT. I posted on this chapter five years ago May 18/20 ‘reading the law’.

Week 19  Nehemiah 7

Nehemiah: God put it into my mind to assemble the people to be registered by genealogy. I found the genealogical record of those who came back first. So Nehemiah then started his list in verse seven. I see a cross-reference from there to Ezra 2:2. Sure enough Ezra had a list of names. I flipped back…flipped forward. Back. Forward. The lists looked the same.
I drew a table with two-columns and wrote Nehemiah’s names down the left-hand column: Zerubbabel Jeshua Nehemiah Azariah Raamiah Nahamani Mordecai Bilshan Mispereth Bigvai Nehum Baanah.
In the right-hand column I listed Ezra’s names: Zerubbabel Jeshua Nehemiah Seraiah Reelaiah Mordecai Bilshan Mispar Bigvai Rehum Baanah.
Now I could see a couple of discrepancies. First of all four names were different. Instead of Seraiah Nehemiah said Azariah. Same with Reelaiah: Raamiah. Mispar: Mispereth. Rehum: Nehum. But they’re fairly similar and (maybe) variations of the same name – like Jayden and Jaden.
The second (more perplexing) glitch is that Ezra has 11 names but Nehemiah has 12. Nehemiah’s twelfth man is Nahamani and I wonder why Ezra didn’t list him. I check my word book. Nahamani shows up only this one time in the whole bible.
These 11 (or 12) men were leaders and the first names on the lists so it’s hard to imagine Ezra forgot one of them.
The long-and-short is that the lists don’t match. Simple as that. Which is too bad since the discrepancy irks me.

Note: quote edited from Nehemiah 7:5-6. 7:7 & Ezra 2:2 (CSB)

 

Week 19  Psalms 120-134

The fifteen consecutive psalms running from 120-134 are a kind of unified collection because a) they are all bunched together one-after-the-other and b) each one of them has the same subtitle: A Song of Ascents. So these psalms are a) musical psalms and b) have something to do with going up. Moving up. Rising. They’re Ascending Songs.
I checked a couple of other versions and they used the same subtitle: A Song of Ascents. Another one said: A song for pilgrims ascending to Jerusalem. That’s an explanation I’ve heard before: the people of Israel who were living in the Promised Land were supposed to travel to Jerusalem three times every year to offer sacrifices. Since Jerusalem was up in the (low) mountains the trip for most people would be an uphill grind. So I guess it’s possible that’s the time when these fifteen On-the-Road songs were used.
I checked a couple of keywords to see if the Songs of Ascent focused on the destination. I found Jerusalem five-times. Zion seven-times. The house-of-the-Lord & house-of-David four-times. Temple zero. Sacrifices zero. Priests once. So sacrificial topics didn’t seem to be a big part of the songs’ content.
And as far as that goes the lyrics of several of the songs – 120 121 123 124 126 127 130 & 131 – don’t have anything much to do with Jerusalem or temple worship. Which doesn’t mean they weren’t pilgrimage songs. But does mean they could have been multi-purpose songs – useable on other occasions.

Note: Moses’ ruling on the Three Trips is in Exodus 34:18-24