Author: admin

Week 6  Numbers 1

Moses takes a census of Israel in chapter one. It’s a head count of all the military-aged men in each tribe. Twelve tribes. He introduces each of the twelve like this: of the sons of ________ their genealogical registration by their families, by their fathers’ households, according to the number of names, every male from twenty years old and upward, whoever was able to go out to war.
I checked another bible version. Its introduction said: this is the number of men twenty years old or older who were able to go to war, each listed according to his own clan and family. The really big difference is that this version only says this sentence once…not twelve times. (It also formatted the  data in a list:
Reuben…………………….46,500
Simeon…………………….59,300
Gad…………………………..45,650…like that.)
Which means the second version is a lot quicker to read (~27 words vs. ~444 words). The editors admit in a footnote that the phrase this is the number of men twenty years old or older who were able to go to war, each listed according to his own clan and family is actually repeated twelve times in the original Hebrew bible. But not in theirs.
I looked at the front & back of the bible for an explanation to see why they deleted the sentence eleven times but couldn’t find one. Maybe their rule is: once is enough.

Note: quotes from Numbers 1:20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 42 (Reuben and Simeon add the phrase ‘head by head’) (NASB) & Numbers 1:20-21 (NLT)

Week 6  Psalm 36

David describes four qualities of the Lord: love faithfulness righteousness & justice. Four fairly specific things about what the Lord is like (I know there’s more than four but David just mentions these).
Finding out specific details about what the Lord is like is very helpful. But David also adds details about the extent and range of the four qualities – their expanse & magnitude & dimension & extravagant size. The Lord’s love faithfulness righteousness & justice stretch out beyond the stratosphere. They’re higher than Everest. Deeper than the Mariana Trench.
When I think about love faithfulness righteousness & justice I’m thinking about known qualities. Which helps a lot. David doesn’t say in psalm 36 that the Lord is – let’s say – colisticomorantic. He sticks to familiar concepts. I do have a general understanding about what love faithfulness righteousness & justice are. But David’s added-value comment – about the scope of the qualities – I do have some trouble with.
If a kid says to his mom ‘how much do you love me?’ and mom says ‘a million trillion’ then the kid can accept that. Mom loves me (even if I don’t have a comprehensive quantitative grasp of the degree of Mom’s love). The kid is just happy that his mom loves him. Her expression of excessive numerical quantity is more of a theoretical backstop to reassure him that more capacity is there. He’ll never not have what he needs from his mom. There’s no end to it.

Note: Psalm 36:5-6

Week 6  Psalm 34

It’s a short paragraph in the middle of the psalm and David asked a pretty interesting question: do any of you want to live a life that is long and good?
It’s a straightforward question with two possible answers:
A#1: Yes.
A#2: No.
David likely figured most people would say “yes” because he only lays out guidelines for that group:
Watch your tongue
Keep your lips from telling lies
Turn away from doing evil
Do good
Work hard at living in peace with others.
[If David had also asked ‘do any of you want to live a life that is short and bad?’ then his advice would look something like this:
Say whatever you like
Lie and be deceptive
Do evil things
Don’t waste time on good actions
Conflict is part of living (so make sure you come out on top).]
David’s short list of Long & Good Life recommendations is a selective basket of actions. There are more. But his condensation is a handy set of actionables.
And from the look of them they’re permanent & ongoing regulations. They’re not like the alphabet where once I learn it I’ve got it and I can move on to other things. If I want a long and good life then during all of my long-and-good life I’m managing my language. Overbalancing my lies with truth. Offsetting Evils by Goods. Phasing out my attack strategies.
A short list but with long-term implications.

Note: quotes from Psalm 34:12-14 (NLT)

Week 5  Leviticus 11-15

I’ve thought about creating a list of all the chapters in the bible in declining order – most-interesting at the top all the way down to the least-interesting. It would be a huge project and I wouldn’t do it. But if I did I’d start with the  really obvious ones (kind of like finding the perimeter pieces of a jigsaw puzzle first) – fantastically-engaging chapters at the top…on the bottom the grindingly-drudgerous ones. (The in-betweens would be the problem.)
Anyway today I landed on a section that would be very very close to the very bottom of the list. The food laws in chapter 11 for instance. They aren’t interesting at all but they’re by far the most interesting of the whole five-chapter section. After that? Purification instructions related to childbirth. Diagnosing leprosy & contagious skin diseases & sores & infections. Quarantine rules. Cleansing rituals. Seminal discharges & menstruation.
I mentioned the MHJ Weighting-Scale a while back. It’s an informal mental hierarchy where I give a higher-or-lower value to chapters to determine the time I allocate to a passage – it’s a reader’s pace-determination scale. Passages that are interesting informative helpful applicable instructive enlightening relevant engaging & affective will get higher scores. Chapters 11-15 are none-of-the-above so get a dismal score on the MHJ Weighting-Scale.
Which means that today I just put my head down and plowed through fairly quickly.

Note: I talked about the Weighting-Scale back in February 1/21: “weight & speed”

Week 5  Psalm 32

Therefore, let all the godly confess their rebellion to you while there is time, that they may not drown in the floodwaters of judgment. After I read that verse I sat thinking about Noah and the ark and the floodwaters of judgment.
In the great flood everyone except Noah’s family died. I saw a marginal  cross-reference to the NT: God did not spare the ancient world – except Noah and his family of seven. Noah warned the world of God’s righteous judgment. Then God destroyed the whole world of ungodly people with a vast flood.
Psalm 32 says let all the godly confess their rebellion to you while there is time.
Back in Noah’s day there was plenty of time. I heard somewhere that it took Noah more than a century to build his ship. If anyone had repented and appealed to Noah I’m pretty sure he’d have found space on the ark. And I also figure that if enough people had turned around the flood could have been averted.

Note: quotes from Psalm 32:6 & 2 Peter 2:5 (NLT)

Week 5  Exodus 21

There’s a pretty well-known rule in this chapter about punishing crimes. It’s this: an eye for an eye.
I noticed that the chapter clearly & definitely spells out an eye for an eye in a one-for-one correspondence: the offender must be punished according to the injury. Hand for hand. Foot for foot. Burn for burn. Wound for wound.
The next eleven verses give examples of the rule in action. But…the iron-clad law is modified. Here’s an example: if an owner hits a male or female slave in the eye and the eye is blinded, then the slave may go free because of the eye.
So that’s an eye-for-freedom. In a true and rigidly applied eye-for-an-eye situation you’d figure the law would say: ‘if an owner hits a male or female slave in the eye and the eye is blinded, then the owner will be blinded in one of his eyes’. So eye-for-eye isn’t actually applied. And I see a couple of verses later that if your bull gores my wife to death I don’t get to put your wife in an arena and let my bull gore her to death.
So the law says eye-for-eye but the law means something like ‘equivalent compensation’ – ‘an eye for something of approximately equal value’.

Note: quotes from Exodus 21:23-4 26 (NLT). End of January Reading report: I’ve read Genesis + Exodus + 31 psalms = 121 chapters. So I’m a little over 10% finished reading the bible in a little over 8% of the year.

Week 4  Psalm 22

I read psalm 22 in someone else’s bible. In the margin she had penciled-in some bible verses beside the words that David had written:
My God, my God why have you forsaken me? The hand-written cross-reference was to Matthew 27:46.
Everyone who sees me mocks me. They sneer and shake their heads. Luke 23:35-36.
If the Lord loves him so much, let the Lord rescue him. Matthew 27:39 41-43
My enemies surround me like a herd of bulls. Matthew 27:36 44
An evil gang closes in on me. They have pierced my hands and feet. She didn’t add a cross-reference to the Lord’s crucifixion – maybe it was too obvious.
They divide my clothes among themselves and throw dice for my garments. Matthew 27:35.
I read each of the gospel references and the similarities are uncanny.
David is writing about his own experiences. His adversaries were attacking him & he was on-the-ropes & he was nearly-getting-killed & just-barely-escaping-with-his-life. But some of the things he said are so similar to the actual crucifixion of Jesus that it makes you wonder.
One of the things David prays is: rescue me from a violent death; spare my precious life from these dogs. Luckily for David his prayer was answered.
There’s no gospel cross-references written beside this verse and I don’t bother looking for one myself. I know the dogs didn’t spare the precious life of the Lord. They howled and harried him all the way to death.

Note: quotes from Psalm 22:1 7 8 12 16 18 20 (NLT)

Week 4  Genesis 49

Jacob gave a short forecast of his son Zebulun’s future: he will settle on the shores of the sea and will be a harbor for ships: his border will extend to Sidon. He’s the only brother who gets this kind of specific geographic detail.
I check a wordbook for Zebulun. I want to see what happened. The name is used about 47 times in the bible.
One passage says that Zebulun will benefit from the riches of the sea.
Isaiah says that the land of Zebulun lies along the road that runs between the Jordan and the sea.
Other than these two I don’t find anything about Maritime Zebulun. And even these don’t help very much.
I look at a map of Israel’s tribal divisions in the back of my bible. Up in the north about midway between the Mediterranean Sea (to the west) and the Sea of Galilee I see his name in red capital letters: ZEBULUN. There aren’t any tribal border lines so on this map Zebulun maybe stretched west to the Mediterranean coast…and even east to the inland Sea of Galilee. I look at another map. This second cartographer seemed pretty sure about tribal borders and showed Zebulun as being as landlocked as Mongolia. No Mediterranean coast. No shores-of-Galilee. No sea or harbors or ships.
My extra homework on Zebulun didn’t really help and so I’m left wondering how Jacob’s marine-focused forecast panned out for Zebulun.

Note: quotes from Genesis 49:13 Deuteronomy 33:19 Isaiah 9:1 (NLT)

Week 4  Genesis 49

Not long before he died Jacob called his sons together: gather around me, and I will tell you what is going to happen to you in the days to come. (The writer said that each of the boys received a blessing that was appropriate to him.)
Some of the things Jacob said were pretty clear but others were fuzzy and I wondered how accurately I could dope them out.
Reuben & Simeon & Levi all had their bad actions come back to haunt them (and their blessings almost seem like curses).
Some of the language Jacob used about Judah is unclear but overall the message is very affirmative. So is Joseph’s – he’ll be a prince among his brothers. Out of 26-verses of promises Judah & Joseph account for 10 of them.
The other oracles are a bit murky…
Zebulun’s future geographic location is predicted.
Issachar will be strong (but he’ll end working like-a-dog in enforced labour).
Dan will have a judicial / governing function.
Gad is headed for armed conflict.
Asher will produce high-quality food.
Naphtali (a deer let loose) sounds affirmative but it could mean a lot of things.
Benjamin is like a wolf. Aggression is in his future.
I wish the forecasts were more unequivocal and explicit. I think about tracking the brothers forward to see what actually happens to them – how the forecasts came true. But it would be pretty time-consuming.

Note: quotes from Genesis 49:1 28 26 21 (NLT)

Week 4  Genesis 37

In the story where Joseph’s brothers conspire to murder him the writer doesn’t say anything at all about Joseph’s side of the story. It’s like he’s absent. There’s quite a bit of detail about the brother’s plans though. First they’re going to murder Joseph. Then they throw him in a well to let nature take its course. Finally they agree to sell him to some slave-traders. Nothing at all is said about Joseph. The brothers act. Joseph is acted on.
It’s only later – many years later when the tables are turned and Joseph now has all the power and he is tightening the screws on the brothers – that they have a secret conversation among themselves: this has all happened because of what we did to Joseph long ago. We saw his terror and anguish and heard his pleadings, but we wouldn’t listen. That’s why this trouble has come upon us.
So now we hear about Joseph’s experience. He was terrified. He was in agony begging & pleading with his brothers for mercy.
Which is exactly what you’d expect. The brothers reaction then? Rock-hard disdain.
But now…finally…the wheel has turned.
The orbit of the brother’s evil deeds had disappeared over the horizon on its big outbound ellipsis but now it was coming home.
One version quoted Reuben: we are going to die because we murdered Joseph. Another version said – a bit more ominously: now comes the reckoning for his blood.

Note: quotes from Genesis 42:21 & 22 (NLT NASB)