Medicine Hat Joe

Week 11  Judges

I did myself a favour last year when I read Judges. Because coming into the book this year I already know two things:
A) I know what to expect. I.e. a heavy dose of assassination rebellion treachery fratricide inter-tribal & international trouble-and-strife. So I take a deep-breath and do a psychic-emotional prep for all the violence and brutality – kind of like watching today’s news.
B) I also know what the Judges Pattern looks like: Israel rejects the Lord – a foreign power conquers Israel– a warrior-judge comes to Israel’s rescue.
I decided to page-through and count up the judges named in the book. Looks like thirteen. Six of the thirteen I don’t know anything about. If I tried telling a story about Shamgar Tola Jair Izban Elon or Abdon it would be a totally fictionalized account because the bible offers basically zero-detail about those six.
The other seven judges are different. They have stories. Othniel only gets five verses…but there’s a story. The other six warriors – Ehud Deborah Gideon Abimelech Jephthah & Samson – have longer and more detailed stories.
I have a couple of questions:
Q#1: why is almost nothing said about Shamgar Tola Jair Izban Elon or Abdon?
Q#2: what do I do with Abimelech?
The answer to Q#1 is: I don’t know.
The answer to Q#2 is: I don’t know for sure…but Abimelech really seems like the odd-man-out in the group of seven. He just doesn’t seem to fit the Judges Pattern.
So I wonder why he’s there.

Week 11  Psalm 75

Asaph quotes the Lord as saying: at the time I planned, I will bring justice against the wicked.
So that answers two questions:
Q1: will the Lord bring justice against evil-doing people? A: yes.
Q2: when will he bring justice? A: at some point in time (unknown to me).
I notice that there’s a correspondence – an overlap – between the Lord’s concern for justice and my concern for justice. But not much overlap when it comes to timing.
I live in a material dimension that includes time. As far as I know the Lord doesn’t live in a material world and he isn’t influenced by the passing of time. Justice will definitely happen…but not on my schedule.
Which is too bad. I just checked the news and sure enough a country 8000 kilometres east of Medicine Hat is still bashing the living daylights out of its neighbouring country. It’s a bad situation and since I figure something should be done it’s fortunate that the Lord says he’ll enact justice against destructive villainy. But he doesn’t say exactly when.
It matters to me that justice gets done but it also matters quite-a-bit that it gets done sooner rather than later.
But for now I guess I have to be satisfied that wrongs will inexorably be brought to trial. But the Lord’s operating on his own schedule and it doesn’t look like my hurry-up time’s-a-wastin’ clock is much of a factor.

Note: quote from Psalm 75:2 (NLT)

Week 11  Judges 1-2

Let’s say a publisher asked me to revise & edit the book of Judges. My Opener would look like this:
After Joshua had dismissed the Israelites, they went to take possession of the land, each to their own inheritance. The people served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua and of the elders who outlived him and who had seen all the great things the Lord had done for Israel. (Then) Joshua son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of a hundred and ten.
At that point I’d go to my Follow-up:
After the death of Joshua, the Israelites asked the Lord, “Who of us is to go up first to fight against the Canaanites?” The Lord answered, “Judah shall go up; I have given the land into their hands.”
The writer of Judges didn’t do that. He started with Joshua dying and the tribes asking the Lord what-to-do? (which was my Follow-up). Then forty verses later Joshua cuts the tribes loose to develop their allotments (my Opener).
My revision makes pretty good logical sequential sense to me:
…Joshua dismisses the people
…the tribes spread out
…the tribes serve the Lord
…Joshua dies
…Joshua is buried
…the tribes ask the Lord what-to-do?
But that’s really all beside-the-point. I don’t get to rewrite the bible. I’ve got what I’ve got. The bible wasn’t designed to intentionally trip me up. But even so I’ve got to watch my step.

Note: quotes from Judges 2:6-8 1:1-2 (NIV)

Week 11  Joshua 3

The last roadblock to Israel getting into the Promised Land was the Jordan River. The Jordan wasn’t exactly the Amazon. But it was flooding its banks right then…so not the freeway either.
The Lord told Joshua to get twelve priests to carry the Ark of the Covenant into the river. He forecast that when they did: the flow of water will be cut off upstream, and the water will pile up there in one heap.
Joshua footnoted that the river would be dammed-up at the town of Adam. I check a map and see that Adam is about thirty kilometres upstream. One practical thing that concerns me is how long the priests are left standing in the Jordan. If the water is travelling at – let’s say – ten kms./hour they’d be standing for about three hours before the water already below the dam had stopped flowing past.
But that’s a side issue. Joshua makes the real point pretty clear at the end: the Lord your God dried up the river right before your eyes, and he kept it dry until you were all across, just as he did at the Red Sea when he dried it up until we had all crossed over. He did this so that all the nations of the earth might know the power of the Lord, and that you might fear the Lord your God forever.

Note: quote from Joshua 3:13 & 4:23-24 (NLT). The story is in Joshua 3:6-17.

Week 10  Joshua 5-6

Joshua meets a man at the end of chapter 5. Well…not exactly a man. The “man” told Joshua: I am commander of the Lord’s army (he also said the ground was holy so Joshua took off his shoes).
It looks at first like the story ends there because chapter six starts by saying: the gates of Jericho were tightly shut. But then the next verse says: the Lord said to Joshua, “I have given you Jericho”.
I don’t think that just because the conversations are in two different chapters that they’re two different conversations (a bible-reader has to be careful to not let chapter breaks foul him up). If I disregard the first verse of chapter six the two conversations suddenly read like one. Except for the different names.
Which raises the question: who was Joshua talking to? Was it the commander of the Lord’s army (chapter 5) or was it the Lord (chapter 6)? Is the commander of the Lord’s army = the Lord? Maybe. Except for the different names.
And what about the ground? Does a subsidiary being (i.e. one who’s inferior-to-the-Lord) have the heft to make ground holy? I don’t really think so…holy ground implies God himself.
I think for now I’ll say Joshua has one conversation with one person. And the commander of the Lord’s army is the Lord. And the Lord decided to appear to Joshua in a fairly natural-looking material disguise that didn’t totally spook him.

Note: quotes from Joshua 5:14, 6:1-2 (NLT)

 

Week 10  Joshua 1

The book opens with the Lord speaking to Joshua. He tells him four key things (I figure they’re key because each one is repeated at least twice). The Lord says:
I will be with you
Be strong and courageous
Be careful to obey the law
You will be successful
The Lord begins and ends that second paragraph with the promise that he’ll be with Joshua. The Lord will be with Joshua in that abstracted with-ness way that the Lord tends to practice with people. A non-physical with-ness…dissimilar to person-to-person with-ness since it’s an immaterial present-ness.
Anyway the two things that’re most interesting to me are what Joshua is supposed to do.
He has to a) be strong. He has to b) obey the law. He doesn’t get much direction about point a) but he does about point b):
Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left…Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it.
So this is an interesting bible-readers’ reminder. Bible reading is definitely part of the plan. An important & recommended part. But a part. The Lord has compounded the reading part with features like being more undeviating & absorbed & meditative & activated by what I read. Readings’ additives.

Note: quote from Joshua 1:7-8 (NIV) and see 5-9

Week 10  Deuteronomy

I finished reading Deuteronomy yesterday. Which means I’ve finished a law-heavy section of my bible-reading year. There are hundreds of laws in Exodus Leviticus Numbers (and then a pretty thorough review of them in Deuteronomy).
I think it’s easy to come away with the general feeling that the content there is just a bunch of formalized mechanistic going-through-the-motions ritualistic stuffy perfunctorily-necessitarian restrictive glumly-judicious & suffocatingly-legalistic regulations and kosherisms.
So reading through Deuteronomy is a helpful reminder that other things are in play. For example:
if you search for the Lord with all your heart and soul you will find him…
you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength…
the Lord requires you to fear him, to live according to his will, to love and worship him with all you heart and soul…
always love the Lord your God and walk in his ways…
the Lord…will delight in you…if you turn to him…with all your heart and soul…
love the Lord…and keep his commands…
choose to love the Lord…and obey him and commit yourself to him…
take to heart all the words I have given you.
When I think about the laws as abstract requirements that are independent of everything except their own archaic necessity then the law seems like a kind of dinosauric regulatory-irrelevancy. So Deuteronomy’s reminders help with that bit of asymmetry.

Note: quotes from Deuteronomy 4:29, 6:5, 10:12, 19:9, 30:10, 30:16, 30:20, 32:46 (NLT)

Week 9  Psalm 62

The verse was already underlined when I read it today: my soul waits in silence for God only. Probably because when I read it before it sounded implausible…non-achievable.
David was giving circumstance-specific advice…i.e. it was for when an assassination squad was trying to kill him.
I’m relieved there aren’t assassins in the neighbourhood. I’d think the silent wait would be easier without them. Still…it doesn’t seem much easier.
For example on the purely practical & personal level of being a bible-reader the silent wait seems like a poor use of time to me. One of the things about being a bible-reader is focus and concentration and time-management and staying-on-track. So waiting around grinds against my bible-reader’s psyche.
And my hunch is that the natural approach of people here in town would be a discussion-and-action route. The Medicine Hat Way: talking and doing…engaging and consulting…fighting and arguing. They all seem like preferable options to silence and waiting.
So it’s a nagging thing that David has come up with. The silent wait steps right in the path of true progress. It seems retrograde…mystical. My instinct is to suppress it since it feels galling exasperating vexing frustrating. It’s an unnatural & foreign & totally non-conformistic practice. It runs against the grain. I’m really tempted to disregard the silent wait.
So I sit here thinking…wondering if it’s one of the things that’s disposable. Or at least if it’s negotiable.

Note: quote from Psalm 62:1 (NASB)

Week 9  Psalm 59

59 is today’s reminder to me that not every psalm is completely applicable to me personally on every single occasion that I read it.
The subtitle says it was: a psalm of David the time Saul sent soldiers to watch his house in order to kill him. So under those risky circumstances David prayed: rescue me from my enemies, O God. Protect me from those who have come to destroy me…save me from these murderers. David’s prayer was compatible with his current life experience.
So far the mayor of Medicine Hat hasn’t sent the local police to kill me (and I’m pretty sure she won’t). Which means 59 has a different degree of urgency for me. I’ll tend to locate it in the bottom-half of my Psalm Personal Relevancy List…for now at least…under my current circumstances. 59 is in a kind of drowsy hibernation.
But halfway around the world some guy at this very second here-&-now on March 1/22 who is literally & experientially exposed to genuinely murderous life-and-death attack might be thinking 59 fits the bill exactly. That guy’s life might be replicating David’s: my enemies come out at night, snarling like vicious dogs as they prowl the streets.
That guy…wherever he is – let’s say hypothetically in some place like eastern Europe – has a totally different Psalm Personal Relevancy List from me.
Events can relevantize psalms.

Note: quotes from Psalm 59:1, 14 & 6 (NLT). Bible Reading Report: as of February 28/22: 223 out of 1189 chapters read; 18.7% completed in 16.7% of the year; head still above water.

Week 9  Deuteronomy 8

Moses was doing a thinking-out-loud exercise about how things would go for Israel once they had moved into Canaan. He projected two alternatives:
Alternative #1 was that once Israel settled-in and got established they would logically just: praise the Lord…for the good land he had given them.
Alternative #2 had a similar beginning but ended differently. In that scenario:
a) Israel would settle-in
b) over time they’d get more prosperous
c) eventually they’d become very successful
d) they’d chalk up their success to hard work & entrepreneurial skills
e) they’d feel good about their achievement. And then they’d…
f) forget about the Lord.
Points a) b) c) d) & e) look like pretty normal steps along the path to personal wealth-building success. But according to Moses the critical intersection was the Point e) because it was the pause-and-think moment: the time to be careful! Beware that in your plenty you do not forget the Lord.
In normal financial-economic thinking Point f) is where Moses goes off-the-rails because he starts bringing a religious idea into the mix. But for him the religious idea was the fundamental underpinning of the whole scheme: it is the Lord your God who gives you power to become rich. Points a) – e) aren’t detachable from Point f). In fact everything rides on it.
No self-respecting financial-advisor is going to move past Point e).
But Moses’ point is that disregarding the fountainhead of prosperity is a mammoth & crucial & lunatic & first-order omission.

Note: quotes from Deuteronomy 8:10,11, 18 (NLT)