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Week 18 1 Chronicles

Yesterday the chronicler was making editorial choices – exclusions and inclusions – and he’s at it again today.
Saul is killed on the battlefield in chapter ten. The chronicler says nothing else about Saul’s life story. Just the battle and his death. Which means king Saul gets a fourteen-verse mention in Chronicles. I page forward and see that David gets the next nineteen chapters. So the chronicler is saying that he has bigger priorities than Saul. He’s laid his Priority-People Cards on the table, interested in some and not others. He’s very interested in David.

Side Note: the last two verses about Saul are pretty heavy: Saul died because he was unfaithful to the Lord. He failed to obey the Lord’s command, and he even consulted a medium instead of asking the Lord for guidance. So the Lord killed him (1 Chronicles 10:13-14 NLT). The last phrase really wakes me up: the Lord killed him. I think about it. Does that make Bible-God a Murderer? I doubt it. Just a couple of days ago I read: all (the Lord) does is just and good (Psalm 111:7 NLT). So it reminds me that however I try to dope out the action the Lord took at the end of Saul’s life it can’t really exclude other things I’ve already read. The sentence says the Lord killed Saul. Now I have to figure out just what that means and how it fits.

Week 18 1 Chronicles

The first nine chapters of Chronicles are one massive list of names – a kind of bible-reader’s Namibian Desert. Fortunately I’ve been here before and I’m not totally surprised.
I notice that the chronicler expands on some things and not others. I noticed that last year when the families of Judah and Levi were spotlighted but the other tribes weren’t.
Now I notice that all along the way the writer makes other selection & de-selection choices that I’m not sure what to do with. For example as soon as I get to Noah’s family – Noah is the tenth name in the book – I see the chronicler starting to skip some things. One of Noah’s sons was Japheth and Japheth had seven sons: Gomer Magog Madai Javan Tubal Meshech and Tiras. The chronicler names Gomer’s three sons and Javan’s four sons. But he doesn’t say anything more about Magog Madai Tubal Meshech and Tiras. So I wonder what’s behind the omissions.
Then in chapter seven the writer tells a story about the Ephraim family: Ephraim’s sons Ezer and Elead were killed trying to steal livestock from the local farmers near Gath…Ephraim mourned for them a long time. Afterward Ephraim slept with his wife, and she…gave birth to a son. Ephraim named him Beriah because of the tragedy his family had suffered. It’s an unhappy family story and I wonder what’s behind the inclusion.

Note: quote from 1 Chronicles 1:5 & 7:20-23 (NLT). My margin note says Beriah means Misfortune.

Week 17 1 Chronicles

Twelve days ago I sat looking at 1 Chronicles 1. I’d just finished reading about 180 pages of the Samuels & Kings histories and – whatever was going on in my psychic-self – thinking about starting another history that day loomed as a big Bible-Reader’s Impediment. So I started reading Isaiah instead.
Fortunately I was in a different frame of mind today as I started Chronicles…which was my good fortune since there’s about 240 mostly unrecognizable foreign names in chapter one –  and I know there’s more to come.
I start reading the names but I’m also trying to dope out what the author’s doing with them. I see that he mentions Noah’s three sons – Shem Ham & Japheth. Then he looks at each one – but in reverse order.
Japheth and his seven sons.
Then Ham and his four sons.
Finally Shem…because the author is tracking Shem’s family: Shem Arpachshad Shelah Eber Peleg Reu Serug Nahor Terah Abram – Abraham!
So the Chronicler is making some choices. Other families are important (otherwise I don’t guess they’d be mentioned). But Abraham is the key and I can figure that it’s a safe bet that I’ll be seeing familiar names like Isaac & Jacob and Jacob’s twelve boys soon enough.

Note: the Shem-Abraham list is in 1 Chronicles 1:24-27. Added Note: I ran my end-of-April numbers. I’ve read 44.4 % of the text in 33.3% of the year. Reading Isaiah in twelve days really helped my speed but it blurred my focus a bit. So I paid a price.

Week 17 Isaiah

I don’t know how many names there are in the OT. Enough that it’s a relief to see a familiar one.
So when Isaiah mentions Rahab a Name Recognition light switches on in my head – the Jericho-ite woman who helped the spies!
But the light’s only on for a second because Isaiah isn’t talking about Rahab of Jericho. Isaiah is advising Israel to steer-clear of dumb alliances – with Egypt in particular: Egypt’s help is vain and empty. Therefore I called her Rahab.
Egypt is called Rahab? I check what another version says about Egypt. Their help: is utterly useless. Therefore I call her Rahab the Do-Nothing.
I check another version: Egypt’s promises are worthless! I call her the Harmless Dragon (the footnote says: Rahab is the name of a mythical sea-monster that represents chaos in ancient literature).
So Rahab is a name used for Egypt. And/or a Sea Monster.
I look at a word book and see that Jericho-Rahab is named five times in Joshua. Then another Rahab is used six times in the OT – twice each in Job Psalms & Isaiah. They all use Rahab to refer to either Egypt or a Sea Monster.
I guess it’s possible that in the original language that Isaiah was using Rahab (Jericho) and Rahab (Egypt/Sea Monster) were two different words. But in English they’re not. So it’s a little detail to keep in mind.

Note: quote from Isaiah 30:7 (NASB NIV & NLT)

Week 17 Isaiah

Today a man named Cyrus showed up for the first time in my reading this year.
Isaiah said: he (Cyrus) will command that Jerusalem be rebuilt and that the Temple be restored.
Isaiah’s audience would have been wondering a) who Cyrus was and b) why he would want to rebuild structurally intact buildings.
I checked a word book. Cyrus’ name appears in the bible for the first time in the last paragraph of 2 Chronicles (when I turned the page I saw that Ezra mentions Cyrus too).
I think back…
Near the end of Isaiah’s life the Assyrian empire (unsuccessfully) threatened to demolish Jerusalem.
Many years after Isaiah died the Babylonian empire did demolish Jerusalem and the temple.
About seventy years later the Persian empire demolished Babylon.
So then Cyrus the Persian let Jewish exiles return and rebuild demolished Jerusalem.
So Isaiah made a very specific hard-to-believe forecast about the distant future.
It would be like me saying that in 2203 a man named Joe will recapture the territory that southern Alberta lost to Montana and that Joe will re-establish Medicine Hat as the capital of Western Canada. Something like that.
I guess one way of managing Isaiah’s incredible prediction would be to say that some guy who was a contemporary of Cyrus fraudulently wrote up Cyrus’ edict as a forecasted event and pre-dated it back to Isaiah’s time.
Another way would be to accept Isaiah’s startling prediction.

Note: quote from Isaiah 44:28 (NLT)

Week 17 Isaiah

The Assyrian Siege of Jerusalem.
As the story unfolds it becomes more clear that the Assyrians were working with an information constraint.
They were chalking up their battlefield successes to their own military superiority – fierce destructive incontestable empire-builders. But Isaiah was trying to qualify that view – to explain its limitations. He quotes the Lord: have you not heard? It was I, the Lord, who decided this long ago. Long ago I planned what I am now causing to happen, that you (Assyria) should crush fortified cities into heaps of rubble.
So it wasn’t that the Lord was caught off-guard when he suddenly saw the Assyrian juggernaut, realized what was about to happen and had to zoom in on a rescue mission. Isaiah said the reality was that the Lord had designed that event – and all the million other events leading up to it – a long time before.
How long before? For all I know the Lord could just as easily have told David or Samuel or Moses or Abraham or Noah. The Jerusalem attack, the whole Assyrian Imperial Program was a small detail in a big design made long ago.
Of course the Assyrians didn’t care much about God. They were small-plan guys – focussed on their own interests agendas and cultural predispositions. But while they were hammering out their own preferred national business plan they were doing exactly what the Lord had designed for them to do.

Note: quote from Isaiah 37:26 (NLT).

Week 17 Isaiah

Halfway through his book Isaiah launches into the story of the Assyrian threat against Jerusalem.
The Assyrians began with a bit of Bronze Age psychological warfare – a long public address telling Judah why they should surrender. The Rabshakeh offered several reasons-to-give-up. His last one was: don’t let Hezekiah mislead you by saying ‘the Lord will rescue us!’ Have the gods of any other nations ever saved their people from the king of Assyria? What happened to the gods of Hamath and Arpad? And what about the gods of Sepharvaim?…What god of any nation has ever been able to save its people from my power? Name just one!
His argument was…
a) states depend on their gods for protection
b) Assyria had conquered every state
c) Assyria had therefore bested the local gods, and
d) the Jerusalem-god would fail too.
If he had quit after point (c) the Rabshakeh would have been on safe historical ground. But he went on to predict that what happened before would happen again.
Hezekiah thought it was a convincing speech. He was petrified.
Isaiah was less impressed. He told Hezekiah: do not be disturbed by this blasphemous speech against me (i.e. against the Lord).
The big difference between Hezekiah and Isaiah was that Hezekiah was worried that something that wasn’t necessarily true was. By contrast Isaiah stood outside propaganda’s borders. Out where you don’t get to call a lie the truth.

Note: quotes from Isaiah 36:18-20 & 37:6 (NLT)

Week 17 Isaiah

“Though the Lord is very great and lives in heaven, he will make Jerusalem his home of justice and righteousness. In that day he will be your sure foundation, providing a rich store of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge” – those are Isaiah’s words and then he says that residents of Zion are people:
Who are honest and fair
Who reject making a profit by fraud
Who stay far away from bribes
Who refuse to listen to those who plot murder
Who shut their eyes to all enticements to do wrong.
These people sound like contestants for the Citizen of the Year Award – honest upstanding law-abiding people.
But there’s a key difference between garden-variety good citizens in – let’s say – Medicine Hat and good citizens in Zion. Isaiah says that Zion’s a place of good citizens and it’s also: a place of worship and celebration…(where) the Lord is our judge, our lawgiver, and our king.
So Isaiah distinguishes between normal Good Citizens and Zion-quality Good Citizens. The first are good citizens who are good citizens because (a) being a good citizen is good, and (b) being a good citizen is preferable to being a bad citizen. The second are good citizens who are good citizens because (a) being a good citizen is good, (b) being a good citizen is preferable to being a bad citizen, and (c) the Lord is their judge, their lawgiver, and their king.
Almost the same but different.

Note: quotes from Isaiah 33:5-6, 15 & 20-22 (NLT).

Week 16 Isaiah

Isaiah prophesied during the reigns of four kings of Judah – Uzziah Jotham Ahaz and Hezekiah – so he spent a lot of his book talking to or about the reigns of those four.
But there’s a section of the book – taking up maybe 14% of the total – where Isaiah makes prophecies about other states in the region: Babylon Assyria Philistia Moab Damascus Ethiopia Egypt Edom Arabia & Tyre. Eleven chapters of international predictions.
When I started reading chapter nineteen I wasn’t too surprised to see that a lot of gloom-and-doom things would be showing up on Egypt’s horizon: fear civil-war confusion military-conquest economic-collapse delusion helplessness oppression.
But then I was surprised: in that day the Lord will make himself known to the Egyptians…The Lord will strike Egypt in a way that will bring healing. For the Egyptians will turn to the Lord, and he will listen to their pleas and heal them.
I wondered when that would happen. Egypt was the traditional enemy of Israel and lots of times in the OT Egypt is code for Bad-Guys. But Isaiah predicted that at some future time the Lord would embrace Egypt.
Reading-through the OT I routinely get a strong sense of Israel-centrism. So this forecast about Egypt turning to the Lord is a nice example of inclusion in what usually seems like an exclusive text.

Note: quote from Isaiah 19:21-22 (NLT)

Week 16 Psalm 101

My main goal in reading-through is to read all 1189 chapters of the bible by the end of the year. That doesn’t mean my main goal is my only goal. Secondary goals are legitimate. And one secondary goal is the pretty personal one of ferreting-out guidelines that help me understand myself and live my life. [Obviously an easier way to understand myself and live my life would be to just absorb the standard 21st-century southern-Alberta cultural norms for self-understanding and life-living. But the one downside there is that I’d have to assume our contemporary Alberta standards are definitive.]
Anyway I was reading Psalm 101. I saw that David had listed about fifteen Intentionality Goals. A few of them sounded like guidelines for political rulers – not so interesting for me. But others sound like guidelines for anyone looking for pretty practical directions for self-understanding and life-living.
I will be careful to live a blameless life
I will lead a life of integrity in my own home
I will refuse to look at anything vile and vulgar
I will reject perverse ideas
I will not tolerate people who slander their neighbors
I will not endure conceit and pride
When I look at the list I don’t exactly feel giddy with excitement – even though I am looking for reliable pointers for living my life. But I don’t guess the writer was writing to promote my happy feelings. And maybe happy’s not a necessary requirement for life-living.

Note: quotes from Psalm 101:2-5 (NLT)