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Week 18 Psalm 119

I started 119 today.
There was a note at the bottom of the page: this psalm is a Hebrew acrostic poem; there are 22 stanzas, one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The eight verses within each stanza begin with the Hebrew letter of its section. The editors of another bible I use pasted in Hebrew alphabet headers between each 8-verse stanza – aleph beth gimel and like that.
None of that helps a non-Hebrew-reading guy. But what I did notice right away is that the writer starts talking about something that’s super-easy for a reader to forget. The thing is this: lots of times bible-reading is just a simple information-gathering exercise – for example I read that the Lord created the world and now I know. But 119 talks about an additional feature – an extra that goes beyond reading-the-words. The basic idea when I read is reading but the next-step idea is to try to amalgamate or internalize or metamorphize or transmute that information content.
For example the writer is talking about blessed – or happy – people and says they:
Follow the law of the Lord
Obey his decrees
Search for him with all their hearts
Don’t compromise with evil
Walk only in (the Lord’s) paths.
These are pretty big not-just-reading steps.
I think a lot of the time I’m reading just to read-through. So this thing about doing what I’m reading is a good heads-up (but one that’s very hard).

Note: quote from Psalm 119:1-3 (NLT). The footnote is from NLT.

Week 18 1 Chronicles

One of the reasons I read-through is because I figure the whole bible is worth reading. Which means I’m starting with a kind of Uniform Equivalency Rule that says it’s-all-valuable.
That rule is balanced off with another one: the Uniform Non-Equivalency Rule that says some parts are more valuable.
I use both rules. Everything is valuable and there’s also comparative value among all of them.
Anyway I was thinking about that while I was reading the Lord’s promise to David in seventeen because that chapter breaks the Uniform Equivalency Rule for me. It seems really important. Maybe more important than any other chapter in the book.
The Lord promised David a number of things – I counted about a dozen. I can’t guarantee that number but however many there are they break down into three categories – promises about David’s own near-future, promises about Solomon in the middle-future, and promises about David’s dynasty in the distant-future. The forecast for David’s distant-future has no expiry date: your dynasty and your kingdom will continue for all time before me, and your throne will be secure forever.
To be true a prophecy has to come true. So a bible-reader is going to be looking for a line of Davidic DNA travelling down through the years to see whether an ancestor of David continued a kingdom of some kind that has lasted right down to 2021.

Note: quote from 2 Samuel 7:16 (NLT). The two versions of the promise are in 1 Chronicles 17:3-14 and 2 Samuel 7:8-17.

Week 18 1 Chronicles

Last year on April 28 I was reading chapter 16 and noticed that the chronicler more or less quoted Psalm 105:1-15. This year I noticed that right after quoting Psalm 105 the chronicler more or less quotes a chunk of Psalm 96. So chapter 16 looks like this – Introduction + Psalm 105 + Psalm 96 + Conclusion. But it’s mostly two psalms celebrating the Lord.
I also noticed that on the big day when the ark was taken to Jerusalem musical instruments were used to accompany the psalms: Asaph…sounded the cymbals. His assistants…played the harps and lyres. The priests…played the trumpets. I think I noticed the instruments today because I noticed them yesterday too – singers musicians lyres harps bronze cymbals trumpets.
Near the end of the chapter I noticed one other thing . The ark is home in Jerusalem now and David gives the Asaph Levites a job: to minister regularly before the ark of the Lord’s covenant, doing whatever needed to be done each day. Minister & ministry & ministering are funny words. They usually give me the feeling of doing something religious – like praying in public for example. But the chronicler seems to include in ministry just doing the things that needed doing from day to day. Doing good things that need doing is ministry too.

Note: quotes from 1 Chronicles 16:5-6 (plus see where music is talked about in 15:16-22) & 16:37 (NLT)

Week 18 1 Chronicles

Starting from chapter eleven the chronicler spends more than five hundred verses talking about David (out of all the thousands of people named no one is more important than king David).
The chapter begins this way: then all Israel went to David at Hebron and told him “We are all members of your family. For a long time, even when Saul was our king, you were the one who really led Israel…”
One thing I notice is that the writer uses the phrase All Israel. The name Israel means different things. The Lord named Jacob Israel. It also meant all twelve tribes – people of Israel, tribes of Israel, Israelites, and like that. And it was the name used by Jeroboam’s ten breakaway tribes – Israel came to mean the rebellious northern kingdom.
The chronicler was writing to the exiles in Babylon – Judah-South – but I get the sense that for him the Golden Age was David’s undivided Israel. I don’t know if he’s angling for  an inclusive Israel. I do remember that last year I saw a similar thing when he mentioned the other tribes in chapters 5-6-7-8. Not just Judah-Benjamin. Sure…the north is an alien and an enemy now. But remember when we were All Israel under the great king.
In spite of the bad blood I wonder if the chronicler is holding the door open for wayward northerners.

Note: quote from 1 Chronicles 11:1-2 (NLT). Disclosure: Dan & Zebulun weren’t included in chapters 5-6-7-8. Don’t ask me why.

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).