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Week 12  Ruth

Bible readings tend to transfer their own qualities into my head. And since their qualities aren’t neutral…and since my head isn’t neutral…there’s sometimes a kind of bible-reader’s Psychic Turbulence going on.
For instance the book of Judges isn’t neutral. It starts in a state of tribal degradation and crashes to an end with a story of vicious cruelty and violent stupidity. (I’m tempted to think that Judges is the ultimate example on how absolutely degenerated the world can be…but I won’t because then I’d have to pretend there were no 20th & 21st centuries.) Judges is dark. I think of it as being one of the deep blue books of the bible. Judges isn’t going to give me much elevation under any circumstances…but especially if I’m feeling the blues. If I could schedule it I’d only read Judges on a sunny day.
The book of Ruth is different. I can read Ruth under overcast grey because she brings her own warmth and lightness and boost. Ruth is as inspiring as Judges is dispiriting.
So reading Ruth today reminds me that bible readings tend to transfer their own qualities into the inside of me. There’s always those two factors: what I’m reading and what I’m feeling. When I’m reading-through in a programmatic way I can’t always match up the two.
Psychic Turbulence is a bible-reader’s concern. Being aware of it doesn’t resolve everything. But being on heightened alert is a bit of a help.

Week 12  bible reading

I’m reading the story of a man who was executed in Germany during World War II. In one of his letters he talked about bible-reading:
I believe the bible alone is the answer to all our questions and that I only need to ask it repeatedly and humbly for the answers. I’ll only get the ultimate answers
I’m looking for if that’s what I expect to find.
In the bible God speaks to me. I can’t simply figure things out about God using my own unassisted intellectual capacity. I have to ask him and it’s only in asking him that he’ll answer me.
I’ve found that I can’t simply read the bible the way I read other books. I have to be prepared to really ask questions from it. It’s only then that it will reveal answers to me.
Of course it is possible to read the Bible like any other book and there’s nothing to be said against that method. Except for the fact that then I’ll only see the surface of the book. I won’t discover the heart of the bible.
This letter was a good reminder to me. I’m reading to read-through. And I’m reading to discover answers.

Note: quoted by Eric Metaxas in Bonhoeffer: Pastor Martyr Prophet Spy (Nelson: Nashville, 2010) 136. The letter was written more than eighty years ago so I rearranged it and changed some of the language. But I’ve tried hard to keep the message accurate.

Week 12  Judges 17-18

The stories of the judges – Othniel Ehud Shamgar Deborah Gideon Tola Jair Jephthah Izban Elon Abdon & Samson – end at chapter 16.
But then the writer of the book adds on five extra chapters. Like an appendix. Not about judges. About two men from the tribe of Levi. I look at the first man…
Micah got a cast silver idol
He set up a religious shrine for it
Got some special priestly clothes stitched up
Then named his son to be priest of the shrine
Later he hired a real-live Levite as priest
The Levite left Micah when he got a better job offer
He became The Official Priest for the whole tribe of Dan
And Micah’s (stolen) silver idol became their god.
I look back over the story and see that almost every single thing that Micah and the Levite did was contrary to Moses’ laws.
At the beginning of the Micah story it says that in Israel: the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes (the book ends with that exact same phrase).
With the stories of the judges you get a feeling that Israel’s in a bit of a national tail-spin. But here at the end with the two Levites it’s spelled out pretty clearly that people are just doing pretty much whatever they wanted. Which seems contemporary and liberal and fairly desirable. But in Judges it turns into a chaotic fiasco.

Note: quote from Judges 17:6 (NLT)

Week 12  Judges 9

I don’t like Abimelech. Which isn’t saying much since it’s probably a pretty common feeling. He was a really terrible man. I think I’d be justified in totally disregarding him.
But I keep wondering about him. Mostly I wonder why he’s even in the book of the judges.
I know that not all the judges were stand-up guys. Abimelech not only wasn’t a stand-up guy but from what I can see he wasn’t even a judge.
Abimelech was one of Gideon’s sons and when Gideon died Abimelech hired mercenaries to assassinate his own brothers. And since he then had no rivals he had himself proclaimed king. Not judge…king.
And unlike other judges Abimelech didn’t save Israel from an external enemy. Instead he got involved in an intra-tribal war with the Shechemites that see-sawed back and forth until Abimelech was killed when a woman threw a big chunk of rock over the city wall and crushed his skull.
The other judges rescued Israel from its foes. Abimelech didn’t.
Judges helped bring peace and rest to Israel. Abimelech didn’t.
The story ends: God punished Abimelech for the evil he had done against his father by murdering his seventy brothers.
I saw a list somewhere that said there were thirteen judges (Abimelech’s name was on it).
But on my list – for now anyway – he’s got a pencil line through his name.

Note: quote from Judges 9:56 (NLT)

Week 11  Judges

I did myself a favour last year when I read Judges. Because coming into the book this year I already know two things:
A) I know what to expect. I.e. a heavy dose of assassination rebellion treachery fratricide inter-tribal & international trouble-and-strife. So I take a deep-breath and do a psychic-emotional prep for all the violence and brutality – kind of like watching today’s news.
B) I also know what the Judges Pattern looks like: Israel rejects the Lord – a foreign power conquers Israel– a warrior-judge comes to Israel’s rescue.
I decided to page-through and count up the judges named in the book. Looks like thirteen. Six of the thirteen I don’t know anything about. If I tried telling a story about Shamgar Tola Jair Izban Elon or Abdon it would be a totally fictionalized account because the bible offers basically zero-detail about those six.
The other seven judges are different. They have stories. Othniel only gets five verses…but there’s a story. The other six warriors – Ehud Deborah Gideon Abimelech Jephthah & Samson – have longer and more detailed stories.
I have a couple of questions:
Q#1: why is almost nothing said about Shamgar Tola Jair Izban Elon or Abdon?
Q#2: what do I do with Abimelech?
The answer to Q#1 is: I don’t know.
The answer to Q#2 is: I don’t know for sure…but Abimelech really seems like the odd-man-out in the group of seven. He just doesn’t seem to fit the Judges Pattern.
So I wonder why he’s there.

Week 11  Psalm 75

Asaph quotes the Lord as saying: at the time I planned, I will bring justice against the wicked.
So that answers two questions:
Q1: will the Lord bring justice against evil-doing people? A: yes.
Q2: when will he bring justice? A: at some point in time (unknown to me).
I notice that there’s a correspondence – an overlap – between the Lord’s concern for justice and my concern for justice. But not much overlap when it comes to timing.
I live in a material dimension that includes time. As far as I know the Lord doesn’t live in a material world and he isn’t influenced by the passing of time. Justice will definitely happen…but not on my schedule.
Which is too bad. I just checked the news and sure enough a country 8000 kilometres east of Medicine Hat is still bashing the living daylights out of its neighbouring country. It’s a bad situation and since I figure something should be done it’s fortunate that the Lord says he’ll enact justice against destructive villainy. But he doesn’t say exactly when.
It matters to me that justice gets done but it also matters quite-a-bit that it gets done sooner rather than later.
But for now I guess I have to be satisfied that wrongs will inexorably be brought to trial. But the Lord’s operating on his own schedule and it doesn’t look like my hurry-up time’s-a-wastin’ clock is much of a factor.

Note: quote from Psalm 75:2 (NLT)

Week 11  Judges 1-2

Let’s say a publisher asked me to revise & edit the book of Judges. My Opener would look like this:
After Joshua had dismissed the Israelites, they went to take possession of the land, each to their own inheritance. The people served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua and of the elders who outlived him and who had seen all the great things the Lord had done for Israel. (Then) Joshua son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of a hundred and ten.
At that point I’d go to my Follow-up:
After the death of Joshua, the Israelites asked the Lord, “Who of us is to go up first to fight against the Canaanites?” The Lord answered, “Judah shall go up; I have given the land into their hands.”
The writer of Judges didn’t do that. He started with Joshua dying and the tribes asking the Lord what-to-do? (which was my Follow-up). Then forty verses later Joshua cuts the tribes loose to develop their allotments (my Opener).
My revision makes pretty good logical sequential sense to me:
…Joshua dismisses the people
…the tribes spread out
…the tribes serve the Lord
…Joshua dies
…Joshua is buried
…the tribes ask the Lord what-to-do?
But that’s really all beside-the-point. I don’t get to rewrite the bible. I’ve got what I’ve got. The bible wasn’t designed to intentionally trip me up. But even so I’ve got to watch my step.

Note: quotes from Judges 2:6-8 1:1-2 (NIV)

Week 11  Joshua 3

The last roadblock to Israel getting into the Promised Land was the Jordan River. The Jordan wasn’t exactly the Amazon. But it was flooding its banks right then…so not the freeway either.
The Lord told Joshua to get twelve priests to carry the Ark of the Covenant into the river. He forecast that when they did: the flow of water will be cut off upstream, and the water will pile up there in one heap.
Joshua footnoted that the river would be dammed-up at the town of Adam. I check a map and see that Adam is about thirty kilometres upstream. One practical thing that concerns me is how long the priests are left standing in the Jordan. If the water is travelling at – let’s say – ten kms./hour they’d be standing for about three hours before the water already below the dam had stopped flowing past.
But that’s a side issue. Joshua makes the real point pretty clear at the end: the Lord your God dried up the river right before your eyes, and he kept it dry until you were all across, just as he did at the Red Sea when he dried it up until we had all crossed over. He did this so that all the nations of the earth might know the power of the Lord, and that you might fear the Lord your God forever.

Note: quote from Joshua 3:13 & 4:23-24 (NLT). The story is in Joshua 3:6-17.

Week 10  Joshua 5-6

Joshua meets a man at the end of chapter 5. Well…not exactly a man. The “man” told Joshua: I am commander of the Lord’s army (he also said the ground was holy so Joshua took off his shoes).
It looks at first like the story ends there because chapter six starts by saying: the gates of Jericho were tightly shut. But then the next verse says: the Lord said to Joshua, “I have given you Jericho”.
I don’t think that just because the conversations are in two different chapters that they’re two different conversations (a bible-reader has to be careful to not let chapter breaks foul him up). If I disregard the first verse of chapter six the two conversations suddenly read like one. Except for the different names.
Which raises the question: who was Joshua talking to? Was it the commander of the Lord’s army (chapter 5) or was it the Lord (chapter 6)? Is the commander of the Lord’s army = the Lord? Maybe. Except for the different names.
And what about the ground? Does a subsidiary being (i.e. one who’s inferior-to-the-Lord) have the heft to make ground holy? I don’t really think so…holy ground implies God himself.
I think for now I’ll say Joshua has one conversation with one person. And the commander of the Lord’s army is the Lord. And the Lord decided to appear to Joshua in a fairly natural-looking material disguise that didn’t totally spook him.

Note: quotes from Joshua 5:14, 6:1-2 (NLT)

 

Week 10  Joshua 1

The book opens with the Lord speaking to Joshua. He tells him four key things (I figure they’re key because each one is repeated at least twice). The Lord says:
I will be with you
Be strong and courageous
Be careful to obey the law
You will be successful
The Lord begins and ends that second paragraph with the promise that he’ll be with Joshua. The Lord will be with Joshua in that abstracted with-ness way that the Lord tends to practice with people. A non-physical with-ness…dissimilar to person-to-person with-ness since it’s an immaterial present-ness.
Anyway the two things that’re most interesting to me are what Joshua is supposed to do.
He has to a) be strong. He has to b) obey the law. He doesn’t get much direction about point a) but he does about point b):
Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left…Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it.
So this is an interesting bible-readers’ reminder. Bible reading is definitely part of the plan. An important & recommended part. But a part. The Lord has compounded the reading part with features like being more undeviating & absorbed & meditative & activated by what I read. Readings’ additives.

Note: quote from Joshua 1:7-8 (NIV) and see 5-9