Author: admin

Week 32  Ezekiel 8-11

Ezekiel’s long vision starts geographically in Babylon. From there the Spirit lifted me (Ezekiel) into the sky and transported me in a vision to Jerusalem. Four chapters later the Spirit of God carried me back again to Babylon to the Judeans in exile.
Ezekiel’s vision left me with a few questions and one of them was: What / Who is the Man Dressed in the Linen Suit?
Ezekiel says that this man came into Jerusalem from the north. He was dressed in linen and carried a writer’s case strapped to his side. The man was given a specific task: walk through the streets of Jerusalem and put a mark on the foreheads of all those who weep because of the sins they see around them. So somehow he had an innate understanding of who loved the Lord and who despised him.
In the next chapter the Linen Man took live coals in his hand – which you wouldn’t normally expect someone to do.
So at first the Linen Man seems like a regular man. And he’s even called a man. But he has capacities a normal man doesn’t.
I checked a cross-reference in the margin. Daniel also saw a man dressed in linen. But that man had a body ‘that looked like a dazzling gem’.
Ezekiel’s man didn’t glow. But I think it’s safe to say he was some kind of agent of the Lord. Not just a regular guy.

Note: quotes from Ezekiel 8:3 11:24 9:2 4 Daniel 10:5-6 (NLT)

Week 32  Song of Solomon

I read Song of Solomon over the long week-end. All I had access to was an old King James version of the bible but that wasn’t a major obstruction since the Song uses language and ideas that are pretty straightforward and uncomplicated even in 500-year-old language. The big question with the Song is: what does it mean?
I read the Song in an ordinary way and at the end of my ordinary reading I didn’t see anything religious about it at all. It seemed pretty natural and normal and human.
There were quite a few references to the human body: skin cheeks neck breasts eyes hair hands nose head teeth lips tongue arms belly navel legs thigh feet.
Domestic and wild animals were mentioned: foxes stags sheep fillies gazelle deer doves lions panthers.
I didn’t make a list but there was fruit (like apples) & flowers (like lilies) & spices (like saffron).
It all seemed like things that were going on in this world.
I checked a word book. There was no mention of God. Or of the Lord. Or angels. Or the devil. Or sin. I didn’t see animal sacrifices or the Ten Commandments or Solomon’s Temple.
The Song sounds like a romantic poem about a guy & girl in love. But I wonder if it’s about more than a guy & girl in love. The Song seems unambiguous. But I don’t feel reassured that it is. And don’t feel I know what to do if it isn’t.

Week 31  Micah 4

In the last days, the Temple of the Lord in Jerusalem will become the most important place on earth. I stop when I read this.
Most of the time I’m trying to attach some meaning to what I’m reading and it looks like in the last days (some time future to Micah) a Temple (a real building made of stone concrete steel wood glass) that’s geographically located in the city of Jerusalem (currently the “capital” of modern-day Israel) will become the most important place on earth. That’s what Micah says. Still…I move cautiously. How a prophetic projection pans out in literal-and-actual fact can be a bit tricky.
For one thing Micah was a guy writing >2500 years ago in a >2500 year-old language in a way his >2500 year-ago audience could understand. But Micah didn’t know anything about artificial-intelligence or trans-oceanic flight. So miscommunication is a real possibility.
For another thing I remember that OT content is full of Pre-liminary Material. By contrast NT readings will be moving me into a bunch of Post-liminary Material. Similarities? For sure. But with developmental-complexities that I have to finesse.
Anyway today I’m left to decide between:
Q#1: in the last days will a literal Temple located geographically in Jerusalem be the most important place on earth?
And Q#2: in the last days will a non-literal Temple not located geographically in Jerusalem be the most important place on earth?
For the time-being I’m sticking with Micah’s literal forecast.

Note: quote from Micah 4:1 (NLT)

Week 31  Joel

Joel uses the phrase day-of-the-Lord five times.
I check a word book. It looks like Obadiah Zechariah & Malachi use the expression once. Amos Zephaniah & Ezekiel twice. Isaiah three times. So Joel has more to say about it than anyone else.
When I look at Joel’s five references I don’t get any impression that the day-of-the-Lord is something to look forward to:
The day of the Lord is on the way, the day when destruction comes from the Almighty. How terrible that day will be!
Let everyone tremble in fear because the day of the Lord is upon us. It is a day of darkness and gloom
The day of the Lord is an awesome, terrible thing. Who can endure it?
The sun will be turned into darkness, and the moon will turn bloodred before the great and terrible day of the Lord
The day of the Lord will soon arrive. The sun and moon will grow dark, and the stars will no longer shine.
Joel says that the day-of-the-Lord will be terrible. Destructive. Fearsome. Unendurable. He also adds physical-observable-astronomical elements – the sun will get dark. The moon will turn blood-red. No starlight.
The day-of-the-Lord hadn’t happened yet. It was future to Joel. And it either isn’t or is future to me now. If I had to guess I’d say it’s yet to come. But there’s likely a big debate about that.

Note: quotes from Joel 1:15 2:1-2 2:11 2:31 3:14 (NLT). Reading report for January-July: 64% completed. So I’m still ahead.

Week 31  Lamentations 5

Right near the end of his lament Jeremiah says: it was our ancestors who sinned, but they died before the hand of punishment fell. We have suffered the punishment they deserved.
I wonder what Jeremiah is getting at here.
Is he saying that a guy breaks the law and doesn’t suffer any consequences?
Does Guy #1 break the law and then – later in time – Guy #2 gets punished instead of Guy #1?
Does guilty Guy #1 get off scot-free but Guy #2 – who’s maybe an innocent guy – just suddenly get hit with Guy #1’s consequences?
Breaking it down this way makes no sense to me. Quite a few times I’ve read that every single individual person gets the benefit of a personal review and assessment. What I’ve worked at deserving is what I’ll get.
It’s possible that Jeremiah was thinking here about how things play-out on a more macro-scale. For instance a government can make an evil law that works out pretty well for some people in the short-term (a bad law can be rewarding). But it’s still a bad law. And over the long-haul it’s badness ends up damaging people.
One of the Basic Rules in the bible is that I get to input a whole bunch of consequential actions over the course of my life. And eventually my consequences come full circle.
I don’t think Jeremiah is arguing against that. But I’m just not sure what he is arguing.

Note: quote from Lamentations 5:7 (NLT)

Week 31  Lamentations 3

Jeremiah puts together a long list of what he calls afflictions that come from the rod of the Lord’s anger. The afflictions aren’t against Israel…they’re against him! I counted 21 of them. (There’s at least 21 because if there were 2 in one verse I only counted 1 (for example Jeremiah says the Lord has attacked me and surrounded me with anguish and distress).)
Anyway here are 10 of the things the Lord did to Jeremiah:
1. He brought Jeremiah into deep darkness
2. His hand was heavy on Jeremiah
3. He broke Jeremiah’s bones
4. He buried Jeremiah in a dark place
5. He bound Jeremiah in heavy chains
6. He shut out Jeremiah’s prayers
7. He twisted Jeremiah’s road with many detours
8. He blocked Jeremiah’s path
9. He shot his arrows into Jeremiah’s heart
10. He rolled Jeremiah in the dust.
That’s 10 afflictions and there’s at least 11 more. Summing up how he felt about things Jeremiah says: I will never forget this awful time. And that sounds like a pretty typical and understandable reaction.
So it’s a bit of a surprise when Jeremiah wraps it all up by saying: yet I still dare to hope when I remember that the unfailing love of the Lord never ends. By his mercies we have been kept from complete destruction. Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each day.
I’d class that as a non-typical reaction. Somehow Jeremiah’s reflection on the Lord looks like it’s totally independent of his own excruciating and oppressive personal circumstances.

Note: quotes from Lamentations 3:1 5 2-16 20 22-23 (NLT)

Week 30  Jeremiah 37

The Lord told Jeremiah to buy some land. This wasn’t exactly textbook real estate advice. The Babylonian army was threatening to take over Judah. Soon enough none of the locals would own any land. Babylon would own it all.
Anyway Jeremiah didn’t argue. He bought the land. Then decided to go and check it out. As he was leaving Jerusalem he was stopped at the city gate and interrogated. The story says the arresting official was a sentry named Irijah son of Shelemiah and grandson of Hananiah. At first the names seemed like an irrelevant detail. What difference did it make who arrested Jeremiah?
But then I realized that even though I didn’t know Irijah I did remember Hananiah. Nine chapters ago Jeremiah had locked-horns with him when Hananiah had flat-out contradicted Jeremiah’s forecast. True Prophet vs. False Prophet. Jeremiah then predicted that Hananiah would die before the end of the year. That forecast proved out. Hananiah died two months later.
Maybe that’s what accounted for Irijah’s check-point challenge. Hananiah was Irijah’s grandpa and any enemy of his grandpa was his enemy too. And so Irijah used his legal authority to stymy a guy his family disliked.
The story was a reminder to me that for all the ways that life in the OT is hard to make sense of there are other ways where the ancient world sounds exactly the same as today.

Note: quote from Jeremiah 37:13 (NLT)

Week 30  Jeremiah 27

Jeremiah made three predictions about what would happen when Babylon attacked & conquered Jerusalem:
– the temple bronze would be carted off
– the gold artifacts would be taken
– eventually those treasures would be returned to Jerusalem.
When a prophecy is first given it’s a wait-and-see proposition. But since I’m reading the prophecy after the fact I don’t have to wait. I can just ask:
– was the bronze carted off?
– were the gold items taken?
– were the treasures returned?
If the answers are ‘yes-yes-yes’ then Jeremiah’s prophecy came true. And since I’ve already read Kings & Ezra I know the answers are ‘yes-yes-yes’:
– the bronze was carted off (2 Kings 25)
– the gold was taken to Babylon (2 Kings 25)
– the gold utensils were eventually returned (Ezra 1).
The three events took place.
Accurately forecasting the future was easy enough for Jeremiah because he just repeated what the Lord told him. And it was easy enough for the Lord since time works differently for him – and in fact maybe time doesn’t apply to him at all.
But the accuracy is pretty impressive.

Note: the three predictions are in Jeremiah 27:19 21 22. Added note: some bible readers figure Jeremiah couldn’t possibly know the future. Which means his apparently accurate predictions weren’t predictions at all. They were post-dictions – “forecasts” written after they’d happened. My concern is that then the bible becomes a kind of semi-stupid anthology written by lying scammers for careless dupes. Which makes it a Book for Gulls.

Week 30 Jeremiah 29

Jeremiah wrote a letter to the Jewish people who were exiled in Babylon.
In that letter two dishonest prophets were named:
Ahab son of Kolaiah &
Zedekiah son of Maaseiah.
They were self-appointed prophets to the exiles. But Jeremiah wrote that they had told lies in the Lord’s name. That likely meant that A&Z said something like this (for instance): “the Lord told us that you-all would be freed from captivity next month”. So the one problem was the lie itself (no one returned home). And the second problem was that the lie was compounded when they said that the Lord said it.
This story sounded quite a bit like the story of Hananiah in the last chapter. Hananiah had said the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel says… – when in actual fact the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel hadn’t said anything even vaguely like what Hananiah said.
And another prophet – Shemaiah – shows up right after A&Z. The Lord said that Shemaiah: has prophesied to you when I did not send him and has tricked you into believing his lies. Shemaiah had tried to fool people with his fake prophecy by saying the Lord endorsed it.
The outcomes were all bad:
A&Z were publicly executed by Nebuchadnezzar
Hananiah died two months after his prophecy
Shemaiah didn’t live long enough to see much of anything.
Jeremiah’s point? A) don’t manufacture fictitious futures and B) don’t double your trouble by crediting the Lord with your fabrication.

Note: Jeremiah 28:2 29:31 26 (NLT)

Week 29  Jeremiah 22

Back in May I looked at the fifteen kings of Judah who reigned after Solomon. The kings were: Rehoboam Abijah Asa Jehoshaphat Jehoram Ahaziah Joash Amaziah Uzziah Jotham Ahaz Hezekiah Manasseh Amon & Josiah.
My goal was to rate them on a Quality of King Scale to see who was the best (I figured it was Josiah) and who was the worst (Amon). But I cheated a bit because Josiah was not actually the last king of Judah. There were four more after him. And I was reminded about my cheat when I saw these three subtitles in Jeremiah 22:
A Message about Jehoahaz
A Message about Jehoiakim
A Message for Jehoiachin
(A fourth subtitle – A Message for Zedekiah – was missing since he wasn’t mentioned until chapter 24.)
So anyway a complete list of kings would have included these last four ‘let’s-pretend’ kings.
I looked at Jeremiah’s comments about them:
Jehoahaz: he will never return (to Jerusalem). He will die in a distant land
Jehoiakim: his family will not weep for him when he dies…He will be buried like a dead donkey
Jehoiachin: he will die in a foreign land…His life will amount to nothing
Zedekiah: he will be disgraced and mocked, taunted and cursed.
I didn’t rate these four on my King Scale. But if I had they’d likely be at or near the very bottom.

Note: posts on the fifteen kings are at May 24-31 2023. Quotes from Jeremiah 22:11-12 18-19 26 29 24:9 (NLT)