Medicine Hat Joe

Week 10  Deuteronomy 17

Moses knew that Israel would eventually have a monarchial government. And so he gave the (future) king Two Recommendations. Plus Four Outcomes.
Recommendation #1 the king must copy for himself this body of instruction (so he needed his own bible)
Recommendation #2 he must always keep that copy with him and read it daily as long as he lives (so he had to read it).
If the king did those two things then there’d be four results:
1. He’ll learn to fear the Lord his God by obeying all the terms of these instructions
2. Reading will prevent him from becoming proud and acting as if he is above his fellow citizens
3. It will prevent him from turning away from the Lord’s commands
4. It will ensure that he and his descendants will reign for many generations.
Moses doesn’t say definitely that the Recommendations & Outcomes applied only to the king. So even though it’s a pretty safe bet to say that I’ll never be king of Israel (Outcome #4) I think it’s reasonable to figure the other outcomes are (theoretically) transferable. Meaning that when I read the bible I can hope that
1. I’ll gradually learn to revere the Lord
2. I’ll eventually become more genuinely humble
And 3. I’ll follow the Lord more consistently.
Which aren’t bad aspirations for a bible reader.

Note: quotes from Deuteronomy 17:18-20 (NLT). Personally I think it would have helped if Moses said how many chapters the king should read per day.

Week 10  Deuteronomy 2

Last weekend I was thinking about the Edomites & the Ammonites & the Moabites (“whose land?“). They were three Outsider Families from early in Genesis. Definitely Not Israel. But in spite of that still hanging-around for hundreds of years.
Anyway a couple of days ago I see that Israel was approaching the Promised Land the Lord told Moses: Leave Those People Alone because I’m Giving Them Land! So I was wondering how long the land grant to those groups lasted.
I checked my bible maps. One of them showed Tribal Land Divisions (so around about Joshua’s time). East of the Jordan River – ranged top to bottom – Manasseh & Gad & Reuben were marked in bright red. And Ammon & Moab & Edom were right there too (low-lighted in black).
The next map was The Divided Kingdom (so quite a bit later). Manasseh & Gad & Reuben are not marked on that map (though maybe their successors were there.) But Ammon & Moab & Edom are still there and holding onto territory east and south of the Dead Sea.
The last map is Palestine in the Time of Jesus – hundreds of more years later. There’s no sign of Manasseh Gad Reuben Ammon Moab or Edom.
I know this is an almost totally useless way to accurately track how long Ammon-Moab-Edom retained the land they got from the Lord (it’d take more digging inside-and-outside-the-bible for that). But it looks like Ammon-Moab-Edom held onto the land the Lord gave them for a fairly long time. Not permanently. But for centuries.

Week 10  Psalm 63

If I chose one line to summarize this psalm it would be: all who trust in (the Lord) will praise him.
I don’t see any hints in the psalm that praise is circumstance-specific. David doesn’t say: “when things are going okay people who trust in the Lord will praise him”.
The subtitle says the events happened when David “was in the desert of Judah”. He called it: a dry and weary land where there is no water. So David is saying “I’m in this dry & weary land and I’ll trust the Lord and I’ll praise him”. Desert Situation? I praise the Lord.
I draw a square box on the back of an old cash register slip. Divide it into three compartments:
1) Good Circumstances
2) Neutral Circumstances
3) Bad Circumstances.
About 2-inches to the right of the box I write the word PRAISE.
I ask myself: When do I praise-the-Lord? And I draw one mental line from Good Circumstances to PRAISE
I ask myself: When does David praise-the-Lord? He has three lines:
Good Circumstances —> PRAISE
Neutral Circumstances —> PRAISE
Bad Circumstances —> PRAISE
One defect with the diagram is that it gives a (visual) impression that David is praising the Lord for Good & Neutral & Bad Circumstances.
But I think that for David PRAISE is part of a completely separate class of practices that isn’t modified by any Circumstances at all. It’s independent.

Note: quotes from Psalm 63:11 1 (NLT)

Week 9  Deuteronomy 2

Israel isn’t ‘wandering’ anymore.
Now they’re heading toward the Promised Land.
And the Lord told them three things about the tribal regions they were approaching:
First: you will pass through the country belonging to the Edomites, who live in Seir. The Edomites will feel threatened, so be careful. Do not bother them, for I have given them all the hill country around Mount Seir as their property, and I will not give you even one square foot of their land.
Second: do not bother the Moabites, or start a war with them. I have given them Ar as their property, and I will not give you any of their land.
Third: today you will enter the land of the Ammonites. But do not bother them or start a war with them. I have given the land of Ammon to them as their property, and I will not give you any of their land.
I’ve gotten pretty used to the idea of the Promised Land being earmarked for Israel. In the OT the marquee tenancy is Israel in the Promised Land.
But Deuteronomy is also saying that – since the Lord is the custodian of all land (not just Canaan) – he also allocated other specific territories for the use of other groups of people.
There’s The Promised Land for Israel.
And also a raft of other Designated Territories for other groups.

Note: quotes from Deuteronomy 2:4-5 2:9 & 2:18-19 (NLT)

Week 9  Deuteronomy 2-3

I noticed it five times in the first three chapters (six times actually…but I don’t think the last one counts). Bracketed passages.
I wondered if the brackets were just a feature that my reading-bible decided to use. But I checked a couple of other versions and they bracketed the passages too.
I use brackets in a sentence to explain or clarify or add something. But these passages are different. I wouldn’t bracket them. These are more like marginal additions. Footnotes.
So for instance chapter two & three are talking about Israel’s conquest of King Sihon and King Og. Then after talking about Og it says this (in a bracketed note): incidentally, King Og of Bashan was the last of the giant Rephaites. His iron bed was more than thirteen feet long and six feet wide. It can still be seen in the Ammonite city of Rabbah.
As side-notes go this one is pretty interesting. I got a tape measure and stretched it out to 13-feet on the rec-room floor. Og was a big guy.
But aside from natural curiosity I think the bracket offers lower-value content. And all the brackets seem to have lower-value content. All of them give me some added factual informational tidbit. But if I didn’t have them? Well…no huge loss.
So I wonder why the bracketed notes are included. Wonder what the writer had in mind. Wonder how they benefitted his audience.

Note: quote from Deuteronomy 3:11 (NLT). Other brackets are at 2:10-12 2:20-23 3:9 3:13-14 3:19

Week 9

While I’m reading-through from year-to-year other things are going on. I see things I didn’t see before. Or an old idea develops new connections. Or I get new questions.
Annual re-reads seem to be developmental. Evolutionary. Cumulative. And a lot of my bible content falls into three big groupings:
First are the things I’ve put in the category of Fundamentally & Elementally Rock-Solid Ideas (for instance the Lord has tremendous power. Each year I get reminders of the Lord’s phenomenal and electrifying potency. I just accept it. Mentally reaffirm it.)
Second are things I don’t really understand. They’re ideas I have trouble making good sense of (for instance the Lord’s timing and scheduling of things. If there’s some logic to it I don’t ever seem to get-it. And maybe I never will.)
Third are things I didn’t used to understand but the idea gradually begins to make some better sense. Might sharpen into focus (for instance the linkage between the Lord performing his operations and me doing things. Putting the two together has been slow and things are still fuzzy. Progress at a snail’s-pace. But progress.)
So each year there’s these three things happening on the reader-reception front:
Things I’m pretty sure about and don’t adjust
Things I’m not pretty sure about
Things that seem to be mutating over time.

Note: End of February reading review. Genesis 1 to Deuteronomy 8 + 60 psalms = 221 chapters. That’s ~19% of the bible read in ~17% of the year. So I’m staying on-track.

Week 9  Psalm 51

David says something pretty definitive about the Lord: …you are justified when you judge.
I think that’s a good bible reader’s reminder. It’s (especially) handy when I’m reading some of the judgment-heavy stories of the OT. For instance I just read the story of Korah and Dathan & Abiram. It’s hard to read a terrible & frightening story like that without feeling bad for those guys.
On the other hand if I have it in mind that the Lord is ‘justified when he judges’ then I’m working with the idea that the consequences – bad as they were for KD&A – were legitimate. The outcome is pretty grim. But if I know in advance that the judgment is justified then I’ve got an important key to the story.
Two readers read a bible story.
Reader #1 reads the story > he responds / reacts to the story > then he makes his own personal judgment call about it.
Reader #2 reads the bible story > he responds & reacts to the story > then he mentally doubles-back to re-evaluate his reaction > then he checks what the bible says about its own story > then he makes his decision about the story.
Reader #1 really just has the one option. What he thinks.
Reader #2 has a choice of two. What he thinks. Or what he thinks + any related inputs.
Question is: a) do I just live with my own response? Or b) do I look for bible clues to tune-up  my own thinking?

Note: quote from Psalm 51:4b (NIV)

Week 9  Psalm 51

Toward the end of the chapter David talks about sacrifices: you (the Lord) would not be pleased with sacrifices, or I would bring them. If I brought you a burnt offering, you would not accept it. At first it looks like sacrifices are being devalued. But then David ends up saying that the Lord will be pleased with worthy sacrifices.
I try to think through this discordant-sounding comment:
A sacrifice – as a stand-alone item – is not necessarily either ‘worthy’ or ‘unworthy’
A sacrifice attains worthiness by being sacrificed by a penitent sacrifice-offerer.
There’s the intrinsic value – the market value – of a sacrifice. Then there’s the added value – it’s worth – which is the supplemental value that gets attached because of the repentant heart of the sacrifice-offerer.
A sacrifice won’t lose its monetary value. In the marketplace it might be bought or sold for $1000. It retains its asset value. But there’ll be no added worth attached to it.
So a sacrifice can be valuable…but at the same time lack worth. Every sacrifice is conditioned to some degree by the heart of the person giving it.
I tried mapping out a couple of sacrificing combinations:
An evil sacrifice-offerer + a good sacrifice = a worth-less sacrifice
A neutral sacrifice-offerer + a good sacrifice = a worth-less sacrifice
A penitent sacrifice-offerer + a good sacrifice = a worthy sacrifice
There’s other variables so this is a rough guide. But I’ll keep it in mind for when I hear someone dismissing sacrifices.

Note: quotes from Psalm 51:16 19 (NLT)

Week 8  Psalm 18

I was dropping off a couple of books at the second-hand book store. Before I went in I flipped through the books (looking to see if I’d left any $50 bills). What I found was a plain black-&-white bookmark. It said “God’s Way Is Perfect”. The four words were in a hollow-outline font surrounded by a simple floral border. God’s Way Is Perfect.
Last Sunday during church service we (repeatedly) sang the line “you are perfect in all of your ways” (the “you” and “your” were referring to the “good father” and so – assuming the “good father” was the Lord – the songwriter agreed with the bookmark guy).
Under the words God’s Way Is Perfect the bookmark said: Psalm 18:30.
That verse in my bible says: as for God, his way is perfect. I checked a couple of other versions and none of them used the exact phrase God’s Way Is Perfect. Bookmark guy might have used another version or maybe paraphrased the line. But either way the message is that the Lord is perfect. Unparalleled. Transcendent. The Paragon.
A couple of days ago I read the story of Korah: a guy who collided catastrophically with the God who’s way is perfect.
There’s a hundred more stories of guys like Korah. Where imperfect eventually plows into perfect.
A big part of the bible is stories of what exactly happens when people whose ways pretty deliberately aren’t perfect run into the God Who’s Way Is.

Note: quote from Psalm 18:30 (NLT)

Week 8  Psalm 49

When you’re rich there’s a double-congratulation happening: a) rich people will consider themselves fortunate. And then b) the world loudly applauds their success. That’s on the one side. And there’s more to it: people who boast of their wealth don’t understand that they will die like the animals. If I’m enjoying my wealth but don’t understand it’s serious limitations then I’m basically like an animal.
If “A” and “B” then “C”.
I think about the A & B & C that the psalm lays out. I accept that it’s the case. And I also think three other ideas spin-off that main idea. Related – but unstated – principles. They are:
If a poor guy wishes he was rich and doesn’t care how undependable money  actually is then he’ll die like an animal.
If a rich guy knows for-a-fact that his wealth isn’t reliable then he won’t die like an animal.
If a poor guy isn’t scrabbling for cash because he realizes that wealth is deceptively over-valued then he won’t die like an animal.
I can rely on the first idea. And I think the other three ‘principles’ that I doped out are probably legitimate too. But psalm 49 only actually says the first.
When I land on a verse that emphatically says something definite then I accept that definite something. (But I’m not so confident about implied somethings. Even if they look legitimate. Better to put them on the back-burner for now.)

Note: quotes from Psalm 49:18a 18b 20 (NLT)