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Week 21  Psalm 147

Great is the Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limits.
So…the Lord’s understanding has no limits. I check a couple of other versions and I see the same thing. The Lord’s understanding is beyond comprehension. It’s beyond measure. It’s infinite & boundless & beyond-all-telling & has no end.
A couple of things come to mind.
First thing is that the Lord’s power & understanding puts me at a distinct and worrisome disadvantage.
Second thing is that one practical result of the Lord’s unlimited understanding-of-things is that I should – realistically & common-sensically – be referring to him to find out his view.  I should – technically speaking – be adopting a high degree of deference to the Lord. Given this state-of-affairs it would be stupid for me to advise the Lord or make recommendations to him. He’s the consultant & I’m the consultee. He’s the advisor & I’m the advisee. Director-directee. Counselor-counselee. Mentor-mentee. Leader-follower. Teacher-student.
That’s not to say I can’t just decide to usurp the Lord’s position and flip things back-to-front. But if I did that I’d want to be pretty sure about a couple of things:
1. that the Lord isn’t as great as advertised
2. that he doesn’t have incontestable power
3. that his understanding – extensive as it might be – has limitations.
If I could be certain about those three things then I’d be more confident about becoming my own advisor.

Note: quote from Psalm 147:5 (NIV)

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 is (I think) 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.
It looks like a pattern to me. There’s a part a) – David requests something from the Lord. Then there’s a part b) – David gives a reason for why the Lord should respond.
I’m interested in (I’ll call it) the mechanism of praying and I wonder if this pattern is mandatory. Do I have to give the Lord a reason?
What makes sense to me are these three guidelines:
I think that a) is more important than b)
I think even though a) and b) are both okay a) is essential and b) is optional
I don’t think the Lord needs b). But he does need the a).
I’ll keep these in mind (and rejigger if necessary). But I figure I’m on reasonably safe ground – though hopefully I’ll discover something later that solidifies things for me.

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. I found these:
the Lord will vindicate his people and have compassion on his servants
the Lord will vindicate his people and have compassion on his servants
the Lord will vindicate his people and have compassion on his servants
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 (maybe) 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 once in the whole bible.
These 11 (or 12) men were leaders and the first ones 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 were likely multi-purpose songs – useable on other occasions.

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

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.