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Week 23  Isaiah 13-14

There’s a prophecy about Babylon in Isaiah 13 & 14. It’s roughly 45-verses long and one of the things Isaiah says is: how you have fallen from heaven, you star of the morning, son of the dawn! You have been cut down to the earth, you who defeated the nations!
The tricky thing here is the expression you star of the morning. I checked a bunch of other bible versions and I found that about 13 of them (roughly 25%) used the name Lucifer instead of star of the morning.
It’s a bit of a mystery because the prophecy is against the king of Babylon and I figure that the natural way to understand this verse is that Isaiah was saying that the king (the star-of-the-morning) was going to be defeated (fall from-the-sky).
The more complicated way is to say that the star of the morning is not the king. It’s actually Lucifer (Satan). The 13 versions that use Lucifer figured that Isaiah quit talking about Babylon and suddenly started talking about the Devil.
So I’m left to wonder: who is Isaiah talking about? Was it about the king of Babylon? Or did Isaiah switch-gears and start talking about Lucifer the Devil?
Obviously some Bible versions think he switched and so they write it up that way (star-of-the-morning = Lucifer / Satan). But that seems like the translator went out-on-a-limb.
I think Isaiah is totally capable of changing lanes without telling me. I’m just not sure he’s doing that here.

Note: quote from Isaiah 14:12 (NASB)

 

Week 23  Isaiah 1

The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. That’s the first verse of Isaiah’s long prophecy. It says that Isaiah’s oracles were specifically for Judah & Jerusalem. And the timeframe was during the reigns of four kings – Uzziah Jotham Ahaz & Hezekiah.
If Isaiah had divided his 66 chapters equally among the four kings each would have gotten 25% of the book – 16.5 chapters each. But that number isn’t even close. I checked a word book to see how much space each king got:
• Uzziah is named twice…nothing else is said about him.
• Jotham is the same. Named twice and that’s it.
• Ahaz did actually meet with Isaiah in chapter 7.
• Hezekiah was treated the most liberally. Chapters 36-39 tell the king’s story and Isaiah’s advisory role. with the king
So three of the kings barely rate as bit players. And Hezekiah – at only about 6% of the content – doesn’t hardly register. If Isaiah had more dealings with these kings he doesn’t let on. The only thing that the opening reference to the kings does is give me a time-stamp of when Isaiah was working. Other than that the book is all about other things and other people.

Note: quote from Isaiah 1:1 (ESV). References to Uzziah Jotham & Ahaz are in Isaiah 1:1 & 7:1. Ahaz connects briefly with Isaiah in 7. Hezekiah’s four-chapter-long story is in Isaiah 36-39 (I’ve already read it twice this year – in 2 Kings 18-20 & 2 Chronicles 29-32).

 

Week 22  Ecclesiastes

The bible I’m reading says that the Lord has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in (people’s) hearts, yet so that (they) will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end.
The idea seems to be that people – as part of our natural constitution – have something called ‘eternity’ planted inside us. I wondered what exactly it is to have ‘eternity’ inside me.
I checked a bunch of other versions. About 27 of them used the word ‘eternity’. About 10 used ‘the world’. That didn’t help me. Other versions weren’t much help either. They  suggested things like questions. A desire to know the future. Obscurity. Ignorance. Knowledge. Thoughts of forever. Hmmm…it all sounded like a bit of guesswork. None of the ideas helped very much.
In spite of that the verse was still useful. The Lord put something inside me that’s bigger than the normal things related to my natural space-and-time self. So that seems pretty good. But what’s not so good is that this internal enhancement – as good as it might be – isn’t comprehensive enough for me to know what-all I need to know.
It’s like it tips me off that I need to know something more. But doesn’t give me the content. Warns me that I’m lacking something but doesn’t tell me what it is.

Note: quote from Ecclesiastes 3:11 (NASB and with words from other bibles). End-of-May reading report: 55% completed.

Week 22  Ecclesiastes

They’re underlined in red in my reading bible. Six passages in Ecclesiastes that I’ve noted in some previous reading-year. They all talk about the same thing and in my mind I title them: How to Live Your Life (an alternate title: Enjoy Life While You Can.)
In these six passages a couple of similar ideas come up again-and-again. I know that “doing good” is only mentioned once – it’s an exception. But others show up multiple times:
• Eat & drink (five times)
• Work (seven times)
• Be satisfied (or glad) with what I’ve got – there’s enjoyment & satisfaction in eating/drinking & working & marriage (fourteen times)
One other recurring idea doesn’t tell me how to live my life. It’s a reminder that the things I’ve got are gifts from the hand of God (six times).
Anyway I wanted to bring the key ideas together in one short paraphrase:
1. Eat and drink with a glad & joyful heart.
2. It’s necessary to work. And even though it can be arduous & grueling it’s a gift from God – so I can be happy in my work too.
3. To sum it all up: the basic things in life are given to me from the Lord. So I can enjoy them.
In my bible the six passages total about 360 words. But my streamlined version reduces things to about 60. I admit that my rendition is pretty routine and unexciting. But it covers the fundamentals of living life.

Note: the six passages are Ecclesiastes 2:24-25 3:12-13 3:22 5:18-20 8:15 9:7-9

Week 22  Ecclesiastes

I’ve been thinking about who wrote Ecclesiastes. Was it Solomon? Or an unknown somebody else?
One reason people might figure Solomon wrote Ecclesiastes is because of the proverbs. Solomon was famous for writing proverbs and there are a bunch of them in Ecclesiastes.
I did a quick re-read and found 95 verses of proverbs. Since there’s roughly 220 verses in the whole book that means that Ecclesiastes is about 43% proverbial sayings:
• Wisdom is better than folly, just as light is better than darkness
• Better one handful with tranquility than two handfuls with toil
• When you make a vow to God, do not delay to fulfill it. He has no pleasure in fools
• Whoever loves money never has enough
• It is better to heed the rebuke of a wise person than to listen to the song of fools
• The quiet words of the wise are more to be heeded than the shouts of fools.
Sayings like these could be seamlessly flipped over into the book of Proverbs.
Anyway…I know that it’s easy to get tsunamied with the Preacher’s all is vanity messaging. But I think Ecclesiastes could be categorized as a Book of Proverbs (as well as a Book of Depressive Gloom-&-Doom).

Note: quotes from Ecclesiastes 2:13 4:6 5:4 5:10 7:5 8:7 9:17 & 1:2. Added note: I think 43% is a low estimate. For instance 3:1-8 & 12:1-8 look to me like long illustrated-proverbs. If I add them the 43% jumps to more than 50%. (Although on the other hand maybe those two literary paragraphs aren’t proverbs at all.)

Week 22  Ecclesiastes

I’ve always thought that Solomon wrote Ecclesiastes. But I know that some people think he didn’t. So this year I was looking for evidence. I found half-a-dozen verses where the person (I’ll call him X) sounded an awful lot like Solomon:
X is called the son of David and twice he’s called king of Jerusalem.
X said I have magnified and increased wisdom more than all who were over Jerusalem before me; and my mind has observed a wealth of wisdom and knowledge.
X also said I amassed for myself silver and gold, and the treasure of kings and provided for myself male and female singers, and many concubines. Then I became great and increased. My wisdom also stood by me.
And X discovered firsthand something more bitter than death. The woman whose heart is snares and nets.
This all sounds like Solomon and I’m tempted to say Solomon did write Ecclesiastes. But for sure? I don’t think so.
Near the very end it says: in addition to being wise, the Preacher (X) also taught the people knowledge; and he pondered, searched out, and arranged many proverbs. It’s pretty clear that there at the end somebody else is talking about X…not X talking about himself. Did that somebody-else write Ecclesiastes? Was somebody-else making a final editorial comment?
It’s hard to say for sure. I like the idea of Solomon being the mysterious X. But even if he isn’t Ecclesiastes has bigger-fish-to-fry.

Note: quotes from Ecclesiastes 1:1 12 16-17 2:8-9 7:26 12:9 (NASB)

Week 22  Ecclesiastes

One of the reasons I read the bible is to help myself find answers to questions. The bible is complicated and since I prefer simplicity I’m hoping for a gradual process of decomplicating the things I read.
In my experience the bible does explain & unravel some things. But other things stay pretty obscure – or are maybe only partially clarified. So I end up being partly in the light and partly in the fog.
I think there’s a good chance that over time some things that are already fairly understandable will get even more clear for me and that genuinely obscure questions might get a bit less fuzzy. But my suspicion is that even if I had 10,000 years to mull over the bible’s content I’d still end up with some cryptic hangers-on – vague & hidden & still unresolved. I’m pretty sure that my 10,000-year bible reading plan wouldn’t resolve everything.
I figure two things:
First is that I’ve got to make my peace with the inevitable mental-psychic vacuums. Try not to throw up my hands. Accept reality.
Second thing though is to working-away at trying to see whether the void has anything at all to divulge. It could be that it doesn’t. But who knows? And even if I can’t get to the bottom of a complicated thing it’s (likely) helpful to recognize that some things don’t have a bottom I can get to.

 

 

Week 22  Job 41

I was thinking about Leviathan.
I realized yesterday that I really couldn’t say for sure what a Leviathan was. At first I thought my problem was solved when my bible had a note in the margin that said Leviathan meant “crocodile”. But when I checked other bible versions I found most did not use to the more well-known & familiar word crocodile. They preferred Leviathan.
I checked a cross-reference to one of the very few other references in the bible to Leviathan: you (the Lord) crushed the heads of Leviathan; you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness. The bible’s margin said that Leviathan was a sea monster and not – as it said in Job – a crocodile.
In the only other psalm where Leviathan is mentioned the margin said Leviathan was a sea monster. I’m tempted to think the word monster might be being used here as a kind of exaggeration-for-emphasis (for instance “that wrestler is a real monster”). But I’m not so sure when is see the expression the heads of Leviathan. Why ‘heads’? I check other versions. Most of them agree that Leviathan had heads – plural.
So now Leviathan is sounding less like a crocodile and more like something else. A one-off. A solo act: nothing on earth is like him, one made without fear. He looks on everything that is high; he is king over all the sons of pride.

Note: quotes from Psalm 74:14 & Job 41:33-34 (NASB). And see Psalm 104:26

Week 21  Job 38-41

Chapters 38 & 39 have a long section that I think of as the Animal Episode. A bunch of animals are discussed: lions ravens goats deer donkeys oxen ostriches horses & hawks. 33-verses about animals.
The Animal Episode seems to end there and the next chapter moves on to another topic – a short (but serious) conversation between Job and the Lord. But then for some reason the rest of chapter 40 & all of 41 goes back to animals. This time it’s a short list of just two animals: Behemoth & Leviathan. 40-verses about them.
The margin of my bible says that Behemoth is a hippopotamus and that Leviathan is a crocodile. It looks like the two weird creatures are regular animals but I check a couple of dozen other versions for Leviathan. Only one of them said crocodile (a couple of them used sea monster). If Leviathan is a crocodile why not just use crocodile?
I checked online looking for Leviathan and saw that Leviathan was thought to be a demonic sea serpent. And Behemoth? A primitive chaos-monster. So this sounds more-and-more like Behemoth isn’t a regular hippopotamus and Leviathan isn’t a regular crocodile.
Leviathan is used just six times in the bible. And Behemoth? Just this once. Making them pretty rare species in the bible.
With lions ravens goats deer donkeys oxen ostriches horses & hawks I figure I’m on pretty safe zoological grounds. But with Leviathan & Behemoth I think I’m getting out of my depth.

Note: Behemoth & Leviathan info from Wikipedia.

Week 21  The Psalms

In one way I’m glad to be finished reading the psalms. But in another way it seems too bad. I’ve been reading one psalm per day since January and I’ve gotten into a bit of a nice reading-rhythm.
I remember that a couple of years ago I was reading where a guy suggested devoting time each day to a psalm. Not just a couple of minutes. He recommended spending 30-minutes of reading & reflecting time. I thought it was a good idea and wondered about trying it. But in the end I didn’t.
There are 150 psalms and if I spent 30-minutes a day on each psalm that alone would be 75 hours. I remembered that it takes a bit less than three days to read the whole bible – something under 72 hours. So if I decided I wanted to read the bible and also spend 30-minutes a day on a psalm then I’d be increasing my ‘bible’ time to about 150 hours a year.
Thinking about it I figure I’d have to make a choice: either a) read the bible through or b) think about / meditate on one psalm each day. But I realize that would only be the case if I decided that 75 hours was my ironclad maximum. If 75 was negotiable I could carve out time from one of my daily time-waster commitments. I have a couple of those.

Note: a man named D. Bonhoeffer made the 30-minutes per psalm suggestion.