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Week 15  Psalm 103

For a few seconds I look at the verse thinking how useful it would’ve been if I’d seen it in the third week of January: (the Lord) revealed his character to Moses and his deeds to the people of Israel. Starting in Exodus 3 and going through all those episodes to the end of Deuteronomy the Lord was revealing his character to Moses. It’s a nice executive-style summary of those books.
I get a small sticky-note and write: “the next ~135 chapters are about the Lord revealing his character to Moses (& Israel). See Psalm 103:7”. I stick it by the chapter heading of Exodus 3. Next year – on about January 20, 2024 – I’ll see it and ask myself: what’s this section about? And I’ll say: it’s about the Lord showing Moses what he’s like.
Anyway David doesn’t leave it at that. He lists a few things Moses would have learned about the Lord:
The Lord is merciful
He’s gracious
He’s slow to get angry
He’s full of unfailing love
He won’t constantly accuse us
He won’t remain angry
He hasn’t punished us for all our sins
He doesn’t deal with us as we deserve.
It’s a short list – there’ll be more in Exodus-Leviticus-Numbers-Deuteronomy. But it looks like David is saying “you’ll find these for starters”.
It’s a helpful tip. It’s like an answer key at the back of the textbook. If I’m not finding things like these about the Lord then I’m missing something.

Note: quotes from Psalm 103:7 8-10 (NLT)

Week 15  Psalm 100

There’s a kind of ‘ownership by production’ rule in verse three: (the Lord) made us and we are his. So it looks like I’m the product of a producer.
Of course the other side of it is that I’m my-own-man. I’m free. More-or-less self-determining. Independent. I’ve got a lot of personal elbow-room to do what I decide to do. I can do pretty much whatever I have the mental & physical & emotional & genetic & skills-training to do.
There’s some things I definitely can’t do. But natural limiters aside I have the capacity and initiative and freedom to act on what I do have.
But then at the same time I bump into this Psalm 100 Statement of Constraint about being made by someone else who has a kind of a soft-claim on me.
It’s not an autocratic claim. Not dictatorial. I have quite a bit of liberty to do what I want. The claim’s a partial claim. An outsider’s quiet-claim. It’s a resistible claim – if I don’t like the outsider or his soft-claim I can disregard it.
The psalm ends with a short description of the outsider: he is good. His unfailing love continues forever, and his faithfulness continues to each generation.
I prefer the idea of being free of outside-claims. At the same time if someone had a claim on me I could do a lot worse than this claim-maker.

Note: quotes from Psalm 100:3 5 (NLT)

Week 15  1 Samuel 23

By chapter 20 David is definitely on-the-run (king Saul still visits Normal World occasionally but he’s mostly nursing his homicidal rages against David).
So Outlaw David was holed-up in the town of Keilah and he heard that Saul was coming. What to do?
David asked Abiathar the priest to bring “the ephod” (an elaborate piece of clothing the priest wore). When Abiathar and the ephod arrived David asked the Lord if Saul was actually coming. Yes! Then he asked if the people of Keilah would turn him over to Saul. Yes! So David took-off.
I’m left with the question: how did the ephod actually work? The story just says that Abiathar & the ephod arrived…David asked the Lord…the Lord replied.
Earlier in this same chapter David asked the Lord a question and got his answer without the ephod so I wonder how necessary it was.
I wonder if the ephod functioned as an added insurance measure – a back-up.
Did it work like a crystal-ball? (I don’t get that impression.)
Did it have an instrumental role in the forecast? (Bible doesn’t spell that out.)
Did it only work if a person was in close proximity to the device? (Bible doesn’t say that but I’d think so.)
My three main questions (and answers) are:
Q: Was the ephod helpful? A: Most likely.
Q: Was it necessary? A: I don’t think so.
Q: How did it work? A: Your guess is as good as mine.

Note: the story is in 1 Samuel 23:6-14

Week 15  1 Samuel 15-16

The three main players in 1 Samuel are Samuel Saul & David.
Up until chapter 15 Saul doesn’t know David but in chapter 16 Saul slid into a depressive funk (the Lord had sent a tormenting spirit that filled him with depression and fear). So Saul got some advice: try music-therapy. And since David was a musician David ended up coming to Saul’s court to play his harp on a regular basis.
Anyway in the next chapter (the David-and-Goliath story) David saved the nation by killing the giant. This is where the story gets a bit weird because it says that: as Saul watched David go out to fight Goliath, he asked Abner…”whose son is this?” It makes it seem as though Saul didn’t know who David was.
At first I wondered if the story was a slapdash jumble that needed editing.
Then I wondered if it could be a common biographical style used in the ancient world.
And it was a bit of a stretch but I wondered: were the two stories intentionally put out of  chronological order for some reason I couldn’t figure?
But now I think that Saul knew perfectly well who David was. The difference was he’d only known him as a court entertainer. Now he’s seeing David become a public hero. And it’s got Saul asking himself: who-is-this-guy? And along with that a bigger question: is David a potential competitor? And then the biggest: is he a threat?

Note: quotes from 1 Samuel 16:14 17:55 (NLT)

Week 15  1 Samuel 16

Sixteen is a transitional chapter with two things happening: a) Saul is on a down-and-out trajectory while b) David is inching up-and-in.
One pretty definite clue about Saul’s decline is this: now the Spirit of the Lord had departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him.
The idea that an evil spirit came from the Lord raises questions about “How-all Does the Lord Operate?” It’s one of my big bible-reader’s questions.
One possible way to think about it is this: the Lord is a good god who does good things but he’s also a bad god who also does evil things. Both-And. Personally I don’t think this idea fits with quite a few other things the bible says about the Lord. But sending-an-evil-spirit is a perplexing way for the Lord to operate.
A couple of weeks ago I was reading the story about Abimelech – a pretty abominable guy. It said: God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the citizens of Shechem. So Saul wasn’t the only case where the Lord decided to utilize an evil spirit to ensure a specific outcome.
I sit for a bit wondering why the Lord used an evil spirit. Wondering if he could have done something else. But the main thing I keep in mind is that it looks like the Lord can and does have unorthodox operational options that make up his discretionary tool-kit.

Note: quotes from 1 Samuel 16:14 & Judges 9:23 (NLT)

Week 14  Psalm 93

One of the topics I try to track while I’m reading-through is What-the-Lord-Is-Like. I don’t know if finding out what the Lord is like is the most important topic. But it’s near the top of my Important Topics List.
The bible is quite a bit like other books when it comes to me finding out about a character. I look for A) what the book says about the character and then B) what the character does and then C) what the character says. The last verse of psalm 93 is in the A) category (it says something about the Lord): the nature of your reign, O Lord, is holiness forever.
Saying that the nature of how the Lord oversees everything is holy is pretty definitive. The way things are run – their essential-quality & foundation & norm & inherent-tendency & baseline & standard – is along the lines of holiness. Holiness is fundamental. This is a useful idea to have in mind as I read…the reason being that when I read something about the Lord that looks-like or sounds-like or feels-like he is Not Holy then I’ve got something else to come back to.
There’s a totally different way to read the bible where I’m free to make my own judgment-calls about whether the Lord is holy. I get to say what the text means. It’s my call.
But I prefer the option of trying to figure out what the text says about itself.

Note: quote from Psalm 93:5 (NLT)

Week 14  Psalm 91

When it comes to bible-reading a bible-reader’s Objective #1 is to just read-through the bible. For some readers there’s also a supplementary objective – Objective #1b – something like ‘I want to understanding the bible better’.
Psalm 91 reminded me that there’s another type of bible reader with a different objective. Midway through the psalm the writer says that God: orders his angels to protect you wherever you go. They will hold you with their hands to keep you from striking your foot on a stone. It’s a familiar verse. A good verse. But it’s a verse the devil used to try to goad Jesus into jumping off the temple roof. After all: (God) orders his angels to protect you. And they will hold you with their hands to keep you from striking your foot on a stone.
So the Lord’s reply was: the Scriptures also say: “do not test the Lord your God”. The Lord was quoting Moses’ words: do not test the Lord your God as you did when you complained at Massah (at Massah Israel complained about being thirsty and Moses asked them: why are you testing the Lord?)
Anyway…in this case the devil’s objective in reading the bible was to use it to try to test-the-Lord with a crazy assistance-in-dying suggestion.
So my take-away is that there are legitimate reasons for reading the bible.  Any others I’d best avoid.

Note: quotes from Psalm 91:11-12 Matthew 4:6 4:7 Deuteronomy 6:16 Exodus 17:4 (NLT)

Week 13  Psalm 86

I was out of town yesterday so didn’t do my regular end-of-the-month reading review (it’s important to keep track so I’ll do that today).
I read Ruth yesterday. (After reading Judges for eight days in-a-row it was a big relief to read Ruth! I like to think that Ruth is a bible-reader’s reward for slogging through the undignified goo of the judges.) So anyway if someone who’d never read any stories in the OT said they wanted a recommendation for one nice OT story to read I’d suggest Ruth. It’s really almost a perfect story. There are other good OT stories. But none are nicer than Ruth.
Yesterday I also read this: teach me your ways, O Lord, that I may live according to your truth! That meant I got an end-of-month reminder about what I’m doing as I’m reading-through. I know that first of all I’m reading to read-through so that by December 31 I’ve gotten to page-396 of my NT. But then secondly I’m also (almost by default) picking up some clues about the ways-of-the-Lord. The Lord has his own particular ways of doing things and while I’m reading I’m puzzling my way through some of them. I think it’d be easier to figure the ways-of-the-Lord if his operations were uncluttered by the complications of human activity. But they aren’t.

Note: quote from Psalm 86:11 (NLT). End-of-the-month reading: Genesis-to-Ruth (236 chapter) + 86 psalms = 322. The Bible has 1189 chapters. I’ve read 27% in 25% of the year.

Week 13  Judges 19-21

I’ve never seen a list titled: Top Ten Worst Stories in the Bible. But my guess is that one exists. And I’m pretty sure that the long & revolting story at the end of the book of Judges would be on it. It would have to be. In fact Judges 19-21 might be the story at the very top of the list.
The story grinds out more than a hundred degrading verses of personal violence and cruelty that insanely blossoms into rage against the city of Gibeah and grows into a murderous civil war that comes very close to eliminating the tribe of Benjamin.
The story of that evil Levite from the hill country of Ephraim who dismembered his gang-raped girlfriend then managed to diabolically galvanize all of Israel in a vendetta against Benjamin is a terrible terrible story.
The story starts with the line: now in those days Israel had no king. And it ends by saying: in those days Israel had no king, so the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes.
I guess that one way to frame this grisly finale is to say that a big point is being made: Israel needed a king!
Maybe that’s true. But I close the book in a low-spirited funk over how very very far Israel has managed to regress in just 19 short chapters. It’s a terrible story to have to read. And a huge relief to have it over-and-done-with.

Note: quotes from Judges 19:1 & 21:25 (NLT)

Week 13  Judges 6

There’s a snippet in the Gideon story that’s easy to skip past. A prophet appears with a message from the Lord: I brought you up out of slavery in Egypt…I drove out your enemies and gave you their land…I told you that you must not worship the gods of the Amorites…But you did not listen to me.
The message is important but it isn’t really the message I notice. What I notice is that the Lord sent a prophet. The only prophet I can think of in Judges is Deborah. I check a word book and it looks like the only prophets in Judges are Deborah and this Anonymous Guy. I also check prophecy prophecies prophesied prophesies prophesy prophesying prophetic & prophets. Just Deborah & the guy.
Back in Numbers the Lord said that one of the characteristics of prophets was that: I the Lord communicate with (them through) visions and dreams. Which is interesting because here in Judges there’s a bunch of unusual vision-and-dreamlike things happening – in fact right away in the Gideon story an angel appears…speaks with Gideon…and disappears right before his eyes.
But even though people in Judges are being communicated with in super-normal ways they’re not prophets and they don’t become prophets. Or at least not formal and actual real-life prophets (not like the prophets in the books of the prophets).
So in spite of the fact that there’s lots of exceptional activity in Judges there’s almost no prophecy.

Note: quote from Judges 6:8-10 & Numbers 12:6 (NLT)