Medicine Hat Joe

Week 24  Proverbs 22

The third verse says: a prudent person sees danger and takes refuge. I stopped for a bit. Thinking about the word prudent. A guy I knew used that word to argue for doing something when he didn’t have a good practical reason – “it would be prudent” (vs. for example “it would save time”).
I checked a word book:
“Prudent” is used 21 times in the bible. 12 times in Proverbs.
“Prudence” is used 3 times in the bible – all in Proverbs.
In Proverbs I get the sense that being prudent includes things like being careful cautious thinking-ahead not-being-rash – like that. But Solomon says more about it:
…every prudent person acts out of knowledge
…the wisdom of the prudent is to give thought to their ways
…the prudent are crowned with knowledge
There’s the normal anticipatory think-aheaded-ness kind of prudence that some people naturally have. Then there’s a second-tier prudence that’s linked to a Solomonic-style knowledge/wisdom.
The idea of two-tiers of ideas in proverbs doesn’t surprise me that much. Solomon’s proverbs are like a bi-level house. On the lower level are common-sense proverbs (e.g. lazy people are a pain to their employer). But when I go to the upper level it’s like I need common-sense plus more-than common-sense (e.g. a righteous man hates falsehood).
In Alberta we don’t use the word prudent very much so Solomon’s reminder is a help.

Note: quotes from Proverbs 22:3 13:16 14:8 14:18 10:26 13:5 (NIV). One bible version I looked at almost always used “wisdom” instead of “prudence”.

Week 24  Job 19

Job had three friends – Eliphaz-the-Temanite Bildad-the-Shuhite & Zophar-the-Naamaathite.
When EB&Z: heard of the tragedy (Job) had suffered, they got together and travelled from their homes to comfort and console him.
EB&Z felt bad about Job’s reverses and went to console him. And they probably did console him at first. But then after a bit of consolation they started realizing that Job was not only devastated and ruined. He was also wrong.
That created a dilemma for them. On the one side they were sorry their friend had been smashed-to-pieces. But on the other they were getting irritated about how he was doping-out reasons behind why he’d gotten smashed-to-pieces. And so EBZ’s consolation started transitioning into disputation-correction-argument.
I’ve been reading Proverbs at the same time and Solomon says some Job-applicable things:
arguments separate friends like a gate with iron bars…
the tongue can kill or nourish life…
the human spirit can endure a sick body, but who can bear it if the spirit is crushed?
I’m down to Job 19 today and Job tells EB&Z – more or less: “you guys are killing me!” Then Job told them what he needed most from them: have mercy on me, my friends, have mercy.
Solomon: there are friends who destroy each other, but a real friend sticks closer than a brother. What Job needed more than anything from EB&Z was a friend who stuck.

Note: quotes from Job 2:11 & 19:21 Proverbs 18:19 21 14 24 (NLT)

Week 24  Job 7

By chapter seven Job is near the end-of-the-line. He wishes he was dead.
Part of the attraction of being dead was that any circumstance was starting to look better than the one he was in.
There are two basic states: being alive and being dead. I don’t have any clinical studies to prove it but my sense is that the normal feeling among living people is that being alive is the preferable condition.
In my mind I imagine a long horizontal line – a Life & Death Preference Continuum. Life is on the left. Death on the right. And everyone is located in between. Lots of us – maybe the majority – are clustered over toward the life-preferring left-end of the line. But as life gets less attractive for me I’ll start inching along toward the right. Job’s life circumstances were alarmingly bad. Job was a strong right-end candidate.
He says: I prefer…death, rather than this body of mine. I despise my life…my days have no meaning.
He’d been mulling being dead since chapter three: I would be lying down in peace; I would be asleep and at rest
In death: the weary are at rest
In death: captives enjoy their ease
In death: the slave is freed.
Personally I think Job embellished the benefits of the death state a little too much.
But the point is that he’s definitely warming-up to the benefits of being dead.

Note: quotes from Job 7:15-16 3:13 & 16-17 (NIV)

Week 24  Job 2

Job loses everything except his life. And his wife. After the hammer fell she’s around to ask him an interesting question (are you still holding on to your integrity?) She also offers Job some religious advice (curse God and die!)
Job’s wife takes the understandable (and maybe normal) view that when something bad happens curse God. It seems like “god-damn god” is a common enough reaction to adversity. (A guy thinks I might maybe thank the Lord for his benefits but – god-dammit! – I ’m definitely gonna damn him when bad things happen.)
Job’s reply-question to his wife is: shall we accept good from God, and not trouble? The bible doesn’t say it but I think Job’s wife’s answer would be “No. I’ll accept good from God but not adversity”.
Let’s say Job and his wife are asked to fill out a questionnaire: What Can I Expect From the Lord? There are three choices: a) good things b) adversity and c) both of the above.
Job’s wife would check a) and Job would check c). It’s choice c) that really separates Job from the rest of the pack.
Earlier in the chapter Satan had predicted that adversity would push Job to the point of cursing God. As it turned out Satan’s prediction didn’t come true. At least not in Job’s case. I can’t say for sure with his wife…but she came tantalizingly close.

Note: quote from Job 2:9-10 & see 2:4-5 (NIV)

Week 23  Job 1

Some day I might make a list of stories from the bible and call it Key Stories From the Bible (subtitle: Stories That – If They Were Missing – Would Leave a Huge Gap in My Understanding About What’s-Going-On).
One good candidate for that list is Job 1 & 2. That’s the one I’m sitting here thinking about today.
There’s a gathering – a kind of convention – in a location that’s inaccessible to humans. The conferees are non-human-beings and there’s two main categories of them:
…the angels came to present themselves before the Lord
…and Satan also came with them.
It’s surprising to see that a) the Lord has a gathering that includes Satan and b) the Lord has a personal conversation with him.
Part of that conversation is this:
The Lord: where have you come from?
Satan: from roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it.
I wonder about Satan’s daily agenda. What percentage of his time did he spend roaming-through-the-earth? Does he still do that? I see an NT cross-reference: your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. It sounds like he’s spending a lot of time.
In Job 1 & 2 Satan is looking to bring Job to the point where Job curses the Lord.
Meanwhile the Lord is looking on…seeing what Job will do.
And meanwhile Job’s completely in the dark about what’s happening behind the scenes.

Note: quotes from Job 1:6 7 & 1 Peter 5:8 (NIV)

Week 23  Nehemiah 9

Chapter 9 is mostly a review of the History of Israel and the main part of the passage is a reminder of the key historical events.
But a secondary idea that’s hard to miss is what Nehemiah says about the Lord.
What the Lord is actually like is a pretty important thing to know and so I write down the words that describe him. The Lord:
…made everything
…preserves everything
…gives life to everything
…sees & hears & speaks to people
…does a lot of supra-natural things
…gives people directions/instructions
…forgives people
…is gracious & good & practices mercy
…takes a long time to get angry
…is unfailingly loving
…helps & takes care of people
…is patient & great & mighty & awesome
…only resorts to punishment after a long time and as a last resort.
One of the reasons I read the bible is to try to figure out what the Lord is like. So this is a really productive chapter with lots of useful data.
Mostly it’s a nice consolatory reminder of the Kindly Lord (which is nice since the OT – just like the NT – also has edgier & off-putting & stern-and-serious qualities of the Lord).
I know that the happier picture of the Lord is non-comprehensive – that there’s a bigger picture it fits into. But it’s a legitimate & genuine part. And it’s a nice thing to be reminded about.

Note: see the features in Nehemiah 9:6 9 10-12 13-14 17 20-21 22-25 30 32 33 35.

Week 23  Nehemiah 7

There’s a list of names in chapter 7 – names and head-count numbers in a column down the page. I start reading them. Scanning more than reading. Mind drifting…
Parosh sounds like it could be an Indian name (and maybe Jaala as well)
Pashur. Hmmm…maybe Afghani
Ono & Hatita & Nekoda have a definite Japanese ring
Keros & Barkos? Greek for sure
Bakbuk Russia
Cherub might be a transnational angel
And Zattu & Darkon sound like Stan Lee super-villains.
Eventually I catch myself…I’ve lost track.
Doing something crazy to stay focused isn’t much better than losing it entirely.
I look back at the chapter’s intro trying to mentally regroup. The list was a registration of citizens. Nehemiah said that: my God gave me the idea to call together all the leaders of the city, along with the ordinary citizens, for registration. I wonder how Nehemiah knew the difference between his own ideas that just spontaneously came into his mind and ideas that the Lord gave to him. I can understand when a person – say for instance a prophet – gets an unexpected word-from-the-Lord. He knows that it’s from outside. Nehemiah’s registration idea is more like a logical bureaucratic and organizing decision…but he detects that it’s from the Lord.
I don’t know the answer but I’ve slid back on track now and so move on to chapter 8.

Note: quote from Nehemiah 7:5 (NLT)

Week 22  Proverbs 9

Chapter 9 features two women: Wisdom & Folly. They’re similar in some ways. But by the end of the chapter they’re clearly pretty different.
Wisdom calls out from the heights overlooking the city.
Folly sits in her doorway on the heights overlooking the city (and) calls out to men going by.
Wisdom’s message: “Come home with me,” she urges the simple.
Folly’s message: “Come home with me,” she urges the simple.
Wisdom’s offer: to those without good judgment, she says “Come eat my food…”
Folly’s offer: to those without good judgment, she says “Stolen water is refreshing…”
So…two outcome-based choices:
If I go to Wisdom’s house then Wisdom will multiply (my) days and add years to (my) life.
But the men who go to Folly’s house don’t realize that her former guests are now in the grave.
Both women are making similar offers to the same audience. And people who want some ideas about what to do with their hungers are listening.
Folly’s advice sounds something like this: do what you feel like doing. Who wants to be restrained?
Wisdom sounds more like: you’ll need to reconsider the benefits of doing what you feel like doing.
Mixed in with all the other urban noise are two feminine voices. One says one thing. One says another.
Two invitations. Which sounds better to me? Which one actually is? That’s the decision I get to make.

Note: quotes from Proverbs 3 14 4 16 5 17 11 18 (NLT)

Week 22  Proverbs 8

I notice in verse 8 that wisdom isn’t a thing. She’s a person: I, Wisdom, live together with good judgment. Wisdom was also referred to as a woman in chapter 1. I check a word book. Wisdom is used about 47 times in Proverbs. Most of the time wisdom is a thing – a quality like smarts or intelligence or knowledgeability. But here she’s a person calling out at the crossroads (in chapter 1 she was shouting in a public square).
Why is wisdom a person here? Who is she?
The woman called Wisdom sounds a lot like the Lord. Her words sound like what he’d say. I re-read chapter 8 and mentally plug in ‘the Lord’ where I see what Wisdom says. It fits most of the time:
…listen to me! For I have excellent things to tell you
…choose my instruction rather than silver
…I walk in righteousness, in paths of justice.
Wisdom’s words are just like the Lord.
But in a couple of places plugging-in ‘the Lord’ doesn’t work:
Wisdom says all who fear the Lord will hate evil
Wisdom says the Lord formed me from the beginning.
Which now sounds like Wisdom and the Lord are distinct.
Saying that Wisdom both is the Lord and isn’t sounds like a logical inconsistency so I’ll try to keep it in mind and think more on it.

Note: quotes from Proverbs 8:8 6 10 20 13 22 (NLT). Also 1:20-33. Added Note: End of Month Reading Report. The year is now 41.6% over. My reading is 47.8% completed.

Week 22  Ezra 9-10

Ezra’s last two chapters are a Reader’s Alert section because they absolutely sound like Ezra’s on an anti-inter-racial marriage rant. It looks like his rule is: a Hebrew guy has to marry a Hebrew gal. No other combination is permitted. Which seems weird. I think back to Rahab. Think back to Ruth. Think of outsiders who married-in.
I re-read the first paragraph and realize my problem might have started when I glided over verse one: the people of Israel have not kept themselves separate from the neighboring people with their detestable practices. The issue was racial but included loving ‘detestable’ practices of other races. So racial-plus-religious.
When I add religion to race I expand my matrimonial options:
a) a Hebrew guy reveres the Lord and marries a Hebrew gal who reveres the Lord
b) a Hebrew guy despises the Lord and marries a Hebrew gal who reveres the Lord
c) a Hebrew guy reveres the Lord and marries a Hebrew gal who despises the Lord
c) a Hebrew guy despises the Lord and marries a Hebrew gal who despises the Lord.
Four weddings that technically comply with the Hebrew-Race Marriage Rule. But 75% of them are scrambled when faith is in the mix.
So it’s like Ezra was using his marrying-within-the-race requirement as code-language for marrying-within-the-faith. The code was likely assumed by Ezra and likely understood by his audience. But it’s confusing for a reader who misses that key point.

Note: quoted from Ezra 9:1 (NIV)