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Week 4  Psalm 9

Sometimes I think about justice and fairness (more accurately I think about injustice and unfairness).
This psalm says quite a bit about the Lord’s justice. About the way he adjudicates & resolves everything that’s going on. About how the Lord judging righteously. Fairly. Equitably.
Which is good to know since in a pretty regular way people get ground-down & brutalized & terrorized by other people. And some people get murdered.
I noticed this phrase about murdered people: he who requires blood remembers them (the note in the margin says that requires blood also means avenges bloodshed).
This is a very helpful fact to keep in mind – the Lord avenges murders. I check a couple of other versions:
He who avenges blood is mindful of them (mindful of murdered people)
The one who seeks an accounting for bloodshed remembers them
When He avenges blood, He remembers them.
I think the verse registered with me because I just read the story about Cain murdering his brother. The Lord said to Cain: the voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground. Still…Cain got to live his life. Got married. Had a family – a pretty successful family. In the meantime Abel’s blood was left crying in the ground. Seems unfair.
So David’s psalm is a help: he who requires blood remembers them; he does not forget the cry of the afflicted.

Note: quotes from Psalm 9:12 (NASB CSB ESV NKJV). Genesis 4:10 (NASB)

Week 3  Psalm 9

Today I had one of those bible-reader’s days…a day where big-&-pressing-&-preoccupying things are at the front of the line.
Usually I have a typical day. The routine is to start with Step 1 (when I have a time to read).  Then Step 2 begins (I get on with the rest of my day).
The thing is that some days it’s hard to keep Step 1 & 2 separated.
Today my mental list of things-to-do-today had several key items on it:
Key Item #1
Key Item #2
Key Item #3
Every day has things-to-do. Not every day has Key-Things-to-do. Things that distract. Intrude. Prevent reading-focus. Things that’re  basically reading interferers.
So I start reading psalm 9: I will give thanks to you, Lord, with all my heart; I will tell of all your wonderful deeds.
But today that metamorphizes into something more like ‘I’ll try to give thanks to you Lord (although I do have Key Item #1 in the back of my mind)’.
I guess there’s likely recommended ways to get mental mastery over intrusive things. But some days it’s tough to make them work.
Anyway…I think there’s a simple Reading Concentration Hierarchy:
1. Reading with attention & focus (my preferred option)
2. Reading while mentally distracted (this is the thorny one. Hard to predict. Hard to avoid. Hard to manage).
3. Not reading (technically this one really shouldn’t be on the list & I try to avoid it like-the-plague. Not reading is a simple habit to start but very difficult to break.)

Note: quote from Psalm 9:1-2 (NIV)

Week 3  Genesis 38

The story of Judah is a curious & interesting one about some shenanigistic sexual deceptions & misadventures. But it isn’t one of my favorite OT stories. I read it and wonder: What’s the Point?
I think there are (at least) three types of stories in the OT:
Type #1. Stories about good people who live pretty good lives. These stories illustrate how I should act & live. They’re stories of reputable people who I can imitate (for instance the story of Job).
Type #2. By contrast these are stories about people who aren’t good and who don’t live exemplary lives. Stories that illustrate how I shouldn’t act & live. They’re about disreputable people who I don’t want to imitate (for instance the story of Solomon in his later years).
Type #3. Stories about people who might be reputable or might not be. These stories aren’t there to tell me about a person I should or shouldn’t imitate. They’re there for some other reason that I have to figure out.
The story of Judah is one of those Type #3 stories. And I figure that Judah’s story is likely there for just one reason. Judah’s Extended Family Line will eventually become the Dominant & Primo Line of the Abraham clan. And that line runs through Judah & Tamar’s son Perez.
Perez is in the family line running from Abraham-to-Jesus. His name eventually reappears in Matthew 1:3 (about 900 chapters later). It’s a bit of a wait. But when I get there I won’t ask: who is Perez?  Genesis 38 already told me.

Week 2  Psalm 4

I see the pre-psalm subtitle first: “For the choir director; on stringed instruments”. I already knew that some psalms were lyrics put to music. But today I wonder how many psalms are Musical Psalms.
I paged through all 150 of them looking at the subtitles (it was a quick search so the numbers are approximate).
I was mostly looking for the subtitle “For the choir director” and I found it quite a few times. But I saw that some psalms were just subtitled “A Song” (for instance there are 15 psalms that said “A Song of Ascents”). I added up everything that looked musical. I found 68.
The majority of music-psalms showed up the first half of the book.
A couple of psalms were called “A Shiggaion” (the margin said this was a “dithyrambic rhythm; or, wild passionate song”).
I found one that was for “soprano voices”.
About 10 music psalms were also called “Maskils” (the margin said “Possibly, Contemplative, or Didactic, or Skilful Psalm”).
The “Miktam” psalms were “Possibly, Epigrammatic Poems” that (it looks like) were set to music by the choir director.
Instruments were recommended – “flutes” and “stringed instruments”.
My main goal was to find out how many psalms were musical in some way and it looked like about 45% were – give-or-take.
It’s a reminder to me: psalms are not all necessarily literal & precise & concrete lists of factual statutes & regulations. Some of them sing.

Note: subtitles & quotes from NASB

Week 2  Psalm 2

This year – for whatever reason – psalm 2:1-3 reminded me of Genesis 6:5 (I’d read the Flood story a couple of days ago so maybe that’s why Genesis came to mind). Anyway to prove my point I compared the two by sketching-up a two-column table so I could read the texts side-by-side. And it was at that point they seemed less similar than when they were floating around in my head.
It looked like Genesis 6 focused on the actual practicing of evil-doing. By contrast Psalm 2 highlighted people’s anger and their combative adversariality against the Lord.
But then when I read down to the end of both paragraphs I saw a similarity in outcome. Both had an ominous threat of destructive potential:
Genesis said the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I made them”
Psalm: …be warned, O rulers of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear…Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled.
The similarity means that I’m getting a double-dose reminder of the serious side of things.
In general it’s way easier to mentally stay on the Sunnier Side of the Street when it comes to the Lord. Which is fine (as long as I remember there’s more to him than that).

Note: quotes from Genesis 6:7 Psalm 2:10-12 (English Standard Version)

Week 2  Genesis 12

I started reading the story of Abraham today but I still had Ham in the back of my mind.
Noah had three sons: Shem & Ham & Japheth. There’s no reason to think they weren’t on some kind of equal-footing at first. But Ham did something – some kind of unspecified evil – and so Noah cursed him and his son Canaan. The curse said that Canaan would become like a slave to his brothers.
Anyway the years passed. The tribes of the Canaan family settled in what was Canaan Land.
Eventually Abraham left his home country and moved west. When he arrived in Canaanite territory the Lord told him: To your offspring I will give this (Canaanite) land. So Abraham built an altar there to the Lord.
Then one chapter later the Lord told Abraham again: Look from the place where you are. Look north and south, east and west, for I will give you and your offspring forever all the land that you see.
And two chapters later: the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “I give this land to your offspring, from the Brook of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates River…”
I’m not saying that centuries later when the Canaanite-family’s lost their homeland to the Shemite-family of Israel that that was the fall-out from the Ham-Canaan curse. I think it’s likely more complicated than that. But the connection is a pretty intriguing to me.

Note: quotes from Genesis 12:5-7 13:14-15 15:18 (CSB)

Week 1  Genesis 10

I was still thinking about the Curse on Ham. It seemed like a serious malediction: cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers. Bottom-of-the-Barrel Ham.
I still wasn’t sure why exactly Ham was cursed. But in chapter 10 I got to thinking about how the curse played-out.
In that chapter there’s a list of the families of Noah’s three sons: Japheth. Ham. Shem.
I looked at what was said about Ham and about his son Canaan:
Canaan was the father of Sidon his firstborn, and of the Hittites, Jebusites, Amorites, Girgashites, Hivites, Arkites, Sinites, Arvadites, Zemarites and Hamathites.
Some of the names rang a definite bell for me – the Hittites Jebusites Amorites Girgashites & Hivites – I remember that they’re the names of tribes that inhabited the land of Canaan. They’re mentioned frequently from Genesis to Joshua.
There’s a cross-reference in the margin and it takes me to something the Lord said to Abraham: to your descendants I give this land…the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.
Only the Hittites Jebusites Amorites & Girgashites show up on both lists. But it looks pretty clear that they – Ham’s family – are going to eventually lose their land to Shem’s family – the sons of Abraham.
I’m still not sure why exactly Ham was cursed. But I see now how the curse was going to unfold – Ham’s land would be lost to Shem’s clan.

Note: quotes from Genesis 9:25 10:15-18 15:18-21 (NIV)

Week 1  Genesis 9

Sometime after the flood Noah got drunk and lay down naked in his tent. One of his sons saw him and went and told his brothers. For that he (Ham) was cursed.
I think there’s a bible-reader’s caution here related to stories like this that don’t give complete information. The problem with incomplete stories is that readers are tempted to start playing The Bible-Reader’s Guessing Game. For example:
Q: Why Ham was Cursed?
A: I don’t know (but I’m willing to guess).
I checked several other bible versions of Genesis 9:22. They all said that a) Ham saw Noah naked and that b) he told his brothers. That’s it. Nothing else. Something’s missing. So I’m wondering: should I guess?
I don’t know how many guesses have been made about Ham’s curse. Likely several. If I’m going to guess I should likely:
a) find out all the answers that have been floated
b) evaluate them
c) decide which one makes the best sense
d) choose that one.
So at that point I’d have my answer. Or more correctly I’d have a guess-answer since the fact is I still don’t know what Ham did (I only have my made-up answer).
A guess-answer is likely harmless enough. It probably only gets to be a problem if I decide my guess-answer is The Answer.
So I think a simple (but helpful) bible-reader’s principle is to remember that a guess is just what it says it is.

Note: the story is in Genesis 9:20-27

Week 1  Genesis 4

Last fall I read through the NT and got a lot of detailed information about managing the Dark Side of my life. But even here in early-Genesis there’s a helpful clue about dealing with my instinct for badness.
After Cain had killed his brother the Lord told him: if you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.
[I’m concerned enough about getting an accurate read that I cross-check this verse in a dozen other versions of the bible. They use slightly different language but (fortunately) say pretty much the same thing.]
Anyway the key phrase for me was the one about ‘sin desiring to have me’ and the advice about me ‘having to rule over it’ (quite a few versions use ‘rule over it’ but others say ‘master it’ or ‘take dominion over it’ or ‘conquer it’).
The big (practical) question is: how do I do that? How do I ‘master sin’? How do I ‘take dominion over it’? Detailed advice to Cain is thin-on-the-ground but the Lord gives one applicable & doable recommendation: ‘do well’ (some versions say ‘do right’).
Q: how can Cain master sin?
A: by doing well.
There’s no doubt more to Mastering Sin than that. But Doing Well sounds like an excellent starting-point.

Note: quote from Genesis 4:7 (NIV) (plus Amplified & International-Standard-Bible & Living-Bible)

Week 1  Genesis 1-3

I started reading Genesis today and recalled a conversation with a guy about the days-of-creation (I realized pretty quickly that the guy figured the days-of-creation were literal 24-hour days – so I changed topics).
There’s no doubt the Creation Days in Genesis could be 24-hour days. The problem – and the question for me – is: are they indisputably 24-hours?
I decided to count up how many times the word ‘day’ was used in Genesis 1-3. I found it 17 times (‘days’ was used 3 times). I double-checked my count in my word book (‘day’: 17 times and ‘days’: 3 times).
then i looked them over. In Genesis 1 it seems a lot like ‘days’ are 24-hours long. But then in chapter 2 it says: this is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made earth and heaven. So ‘day’ here means something other than a 24-hour day – more like six days. A 144-hour ‘day’.
I flipped over to the dictionary in the back of the word book to see what the word ‘day’ meant. There were about 75 different ways the word ‘day’ was used in the bible (a lot looked like 24-hour days. But there were quite a few exceptions too).
Meaning my Happy New Year’s Day began with a question – not an answer.

Note: quote from Genesis 2:4 (NASB). Word book: NASB Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible.