Medicine Hat Joe

Week 33  Micah

If someone asked me: “what’s the one big thing that the prophets warned Israel about?” I’d say: “worshipping idols”. I don’t know for a fact that every single prophet pointed a finger at worshipping false gods but i figure idolatry would be a safe guess.
Anyway while I was reading Micah it caught my attention that Micah did mention idols (so no surprise) but he also mentioned other things too – actions that he said would eventually feed into Israel’s punishing national collapse.
Here’s a couple:
Expropriating & foreclosing on people’s property
Evicting renters when they can’t afford the rent
Manipulating the legal system so that injustice becomes – presto! – justice
Cheating & dishonesty in business practices
Extortion corruption & bribery
Influence-peddling & graft.
In Alberta these days going to a temple to worship an idol isn’t too common a practice. But the things in this list? Where people who have the wealth & power use their wealth & power to take advantage of poor & weak & disadvantaged people? Check. Check. Check. All of them are pretty common practices today.
Which means they’re likely worth thinking about.

Note: see Micah 2:1-2 8-9 3:9-11 6:10-12 7:2-3 for the list of injustices. I didn’t quote Micah but I think I’m saying what he was. Note #2: I finished reading Hosea Joel Amos Obadiah Jonah Micah & Nahum. Seven books in seven days. It’s a smaller accomplishment than it sounds (but it felt nice to do it).

 

Week 33  Jonah

Yesterday I was thinking about Amos’ Three-Step Process:
1) Israel sins
2) the Lord sends prophets to warn people
3) then disaster will (or won’t) strike.
I guess that technically-speaking another item should be added to the list (even though Amos didn’t explicitly say it):
1) Israel sins
2) the Lord sends prophets
3) the people then get to choose one way or the other
4) the Lord acts (one way or the other).
Anyway today I read Jonah and it looks like Jonah was very familiar with Amos’ process. In his specific case:
1) Nineveh had sinned
2) he had to go & warn them
3) Nineveh would then get to choose one way or the other
4) the Lord would act (one way or the other).
Jonah’s preferred outcome (what he wanted to have happen) was this:
1) I know Nineveh has sinned
2) I’ll go & warn them
3) Nineveh won’t pay any attention to me
4) the Lord will bring disaster on them.
But Jonah was worried and he was thinking “hold on a second. Something else might happen (something I don’t want)”:
1) Nineveh has sinned
2) I’ll go & warn them
3) But…Nineveh might listen & be sorry
4) so then the Lord won’t bring disaster on them!
That was a terrible outcome for Jonah. So he modified the plan:
1) Nineveh has sinned
2) I won’t go & warn them
3) Nineveh won’t get warned. Won’t get to choose. Won’t repent.
4) then the Lord will bring disaster.
I don’t really think Jonah was written to illustrate Amos 3:7. But today that’s just what it did for me.

Week 33  Amos 3

Yesterday I was thinking & wondering about the seven questions Amos asked. I decided that the point of his questions was: first of all Something happens…and then second of all a connected follow-up Something-else happens (I called it ‘first is followed by second’). It was a pretty basic idea that most people would accept and I wondered why Amos went to the trouble of making it.
But I realized that with his seven questions Amos was only making a Preliminary Point – a kind of lead-in point.
His Main Point was the next verse: the Lord does nothing without revealing his plan to his servants the prophets.
At the beginning of the chapter the Lord had already told Israel & Judah pretty decisively: I will punish you for all your sins. So: 1) Something had happened (Israel had sinned) and then the follow-up – the result – was that 2) Something-else would now happen (Israel was going to be punished). But Amos’ additional point was that the Lord would first tell people what he planned to do (and he’d use the prophets to do it).
So yesterday I started by figuring there were just two things going on (and based on Amos’ Seven Questions that made sense). But now there’s this third factor added in – wedged between 1) and 2):
1) Israel had sinned
2) the Lord would (helpfully) send prophets to warn the people about impending disaster
3) only then would disaster would strike.

Note: quotes from Amos 3:7 2 (NIV)

Week 33  Amos 3

Amos asks seven questions.
They’re a bit vague and I skim them. Then I go back and sit mulling them over for a bit (using time I don’t really have).
Can two people walk together without agreeing on the direction?
Does a lion ever roar in a thicket without first finding a victim?
Does a young lion growl in its den without first catching its prey?
Does a bird ever get caught in a trap that has no bait?
Does a trap spring shut when there’s nothing to catch?
When the ram’s horn blows a warning shouldn’t the people be alarmed?
Does disaster come to a city unless the Lord has planned it?
I decide that the point of the questions is that something happens because something had happened.
People agree on the destination – they go
Prey is located – lions roar
Prey is killed – lions growl
No bait in the trap? – no birds caught
Bait in the trap? – birds are caught
Animals avoid the trap – nothing is caught
Alarms sound – people are warned.
So a first thing happens…and then a second.
After his questions Amos says: the Lord never does anything until he reveals his plans to the prophets. It occurs to me that that’s the point of the questions.
In general terms a Something #1 happens…then a Something #2 happens as a result.
But a critical link between the Two Somethings is that the Lord reveals his plans to the prophets…who convey them.

Note: quotes from Amos 3:3-7 (NLT)

Week 33  Amos 1-2

Right away Amos lists six nations coming up for a judicial review: Damascus Gaza Tyre Edom Ammon & Moab. I’m only interested in Edom Ammon & Moab (EAM) since I was wondering about them earlier this year.
I remembered that heading toward the Promised Land Israel was specifically told to Leave EAM Alone! (Moab & Ammon had been given preferential land grants because they were the sons of Lot. And Edom had too since Esau was Isaac’s son).
Back in March I did some low-level searching to see how long EAM had held onto their land (it was long…but how long?) Anyway the point now – hundreds of pages & months later – is that I’m seeing EAM reappear in Amos. And whatever all else they’d been up to in the meantime Amos points out that some of it was no good:
Edom: they chased down their relatives, the Israelites, with swords. They showed them no mercy and were unrelenting in their anger
Ammon: they attacked Gilead to extend their borders, they committed cruel crimes
Moab: they desecrated the tomb of Edom’s king and burned his bones to ashes.
What I do know now is that EAM are all still in-the-mix during the time of Amos.
What I still don’t know: how much more time do EAM have left?

Note: quotes from Amos 1:11 13 2:2 (NLT). See Genesis 19:30-38 for Moab & Ammon and Genesis 32:3 for Edom. And see EAM posts from March 2/24 ‘whose land?’ and March 4/24 ‘long lasting’

Week 33  Joel

This year I’ve been trying to be a bit more alert to see what I can find out about the Lord and so what Joel says is pretty interesting: the Lord is merciful and compassionate, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. He is eager to relent and not punish.
It’s really easy in the bible – especially in the OT – to get the impression that the Lord is angry a lot and that he gets angry quickly. So this slow-to-get-angry phrase is helpful. I check a couple of other versions:
The Lord is merciful and compassionate, slow to anger, rich in grace, and willing to change his mind about disaster.
The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster.
The versions agree that the Lord is Slow to Get Angry.
One reason I noticed anger was because when I was reading Isaiah & Jeremiah in July I was thinking about the Lord getting angry. I don’t know if either Isaiah or Jeremiah use that exact slow-to-anger phrase. But I got the impression with them that the Lord is Patient Patient Patient Patient Patient & Patient…(before the hammer finally falls).
The hammer has to fall. There’s no getting round it. But the falling of the hammer seems like a When-All-Else-Fails strategy. It takes a long long time and a lot of provocation before it does.

Note: quote from Joel 2:13 (NLT / Complete Jewish Bible / English Standard Version)

Week 32  Hosea & Co.

I started reading Hosea today – the first of the Short Prophets (the others are Joel Amos Obadiah Jonah Micah Nahum Habakkuk Zephaniah Haggai Zechariah & Malachi).
I usually just read through the bible in bible-order even though I know that bible-order isn’t the same as calendar-order but I sometimes get lulled into thinking the-book-before-happened-before-the-book-after. Which isn’t necessarily true.
So anyway I was reminded about that when Hosea said his messages came to him during the years when Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah were kings of Judah.
That made me think about re-ordering the books so I could read them in date sequence. But I didn’t get too far with that idea because only six of them gave me a time-stamp:
Amos said he wrote during the time of king Uzziah
Hosea was Uzziah too…as well as Jotham-Ahaz-Hezekiah
Micah prophesied to Jotham-Ahaz-Hezekiah
Zephaniah to Josiah
Haggai & Zechariah both prophesied during the second year of Darius
Jonah & Nahum – Nineveh/Assyria prophets – didn’t give dates. But Jonah had to be earlier and Nahum later
Joel was before the fall of Jerusalem & Malachi after the return from exile
Obadiah talks about Edom & Habakkuk about Babylon.
The long-and-short is that with some of them I’m playing a guessing-game. And ball-parking a date to a one or two or three decade estimate isn’t too helpful. Not too helpful to me anyway.
So reading the Short Prophets this year I’ll just take them as they come.

Note: Hosea 1:1 (NLT)

Week 32  Ezekiel 40-48

I finished Ezekiel today – nine chapters. That’s more than I usually read but I had an uneasy feeling about my reading progress. At the end of July I’d checked and I was ahead of schedule. But the problem – a kind of X-Factor – is that I have two (non-corresponding) bible reading schedules.
Bible Reading Schedule #1 is to read through the bible by December 31.
But Bible Reading Schedule #2 – a sub-schedule of #1 – is to finish the OT by August 31.
Schedule #1 is my primary schedule. Schedule #2 is totally negotiable. But it’s my preference – I want four months to read the NT.
Anyway I checked my Schedule #2 progress today: 22 days left in August and I have 91 chapters to read. 4.14 chapters per day. That means that even though I’m ahead on Schedule #1 I’m behind on #2 (that confirmed my suspicion when I started reading today and that’s what put me in a hurry-up frame-of-mind.)

Note: one main thing I noticed today is that Ezekiel’s long last vision & prophecy begins with the Lord telling him: watch and listen…Pay close attention to everything I show you…Then you will return to the people and tell them everything you have seen (Ezekiel 40:4 NLT). I kept that in mind for nine chapters wondering: what will the exiles in Babylon think about Ezekiel’s fantastic temple vision? But the end of the prophecy was the end of the book. So I was left hanging. Wondering what people thought about Ezekiel’s unbelievable story.

Week 32  Jeremiah 40-43

Sometimes I’m reading and it’s obvious that a character is important. Abraham. Joseph. Moses. Elijah. Elisha. Key people.
Other times people are non-key. For instance Gedaliah & Ishmael & Johanan. Three guys whose lives were linked in the days after Babylon had levelled Jerusalem.
Nebuchadnezzar needed a compliant local guy to govern so he chose Gedaliah. Gedaliah didn’t last long as sheriff of Judah because he was assassinated. That’s pretty much the Gedaliah story.
Ishmael was the assassin. After killing Gedaliah he fled the country pursued by an avenger – Gedaliah’s friend Johanan. That’s pretty much the Ishmael story.
Johanan had been a guerilla/freedom-fighter during the Babylonian War and he knew Gedaliah personally. The long-&-short is that with Gedaliah gone Johanan replaced him. In what he thought was a smart move he convinced the people to follow him to the safety of Egypt (which was the exact location Jeremiah told him to avoid). Meaning Johanan led Israel down a wrong & deadly path. That’s pretty much Johanan’s story.
The story of Gedaliah-Ishmael-Johanan is pretty interesting. Three guys whose lives crisscrossed like a French braid.
I figure that the story is in the bible so I can know what’s going on. It gives me information that fills gaps. But if there’s any more to it than that I don’t know what it is.
Knowing the Gedaliah-Ishmael-Johanan story definitely helps.
But from what I can see (at this point) not knowing about these three non-key people wouldn’t be too great a loss.

Week 32  Jeremiah 38

The Babylonian army was outside the city walls and the people of Jerusalem were inside hunkering down. And under those circumstances Jeremiah told the people: everyone who stays in Jerusalem will die from war, famine, or disease, but those who surrender to the Babylonians will live. That’s the back-story.
The front-story is about the dispute between Jeremiah & the Jerusalem city officials. Jeremiah’s message was pretty simple: defend Jerusalem and die…or surrender and live. But it created a huge dilemma for the city gate-keepers. “What do we do with Jeremiah’s message?”
One possibility would have been to think about whether the message was plausible. But that was a very small concern. The Big Concern was the effect the message might have: that kind of talk will undermine the morale of the people.
Trying to figure out if something is true is a difficult exercise. It’s simpler to ask ‘what’ll be the effect on the audience?’ Thinking about it that way means I don’t have to worry about true. True is irrelevant! My only task is managing the audience reaction.
If the accuracy of the message is most important then what the audience thinks about it doesn’t matter much.
But if audience reflex is the key issue then the message can say whatever needs to be said.
Jeremiah’s problem was that he figured the Lord’s message had to be unedited.
The officials figured they had to massage it into manageability.

Note: quoted from Jeremiah 38:2 4 (NLT)