Medicine Hat Joe

Week 31 Zephaniah

In the OT the Lord is portrayed as being supreme.
But what if someone decided he wasn’t supreme? What were his options?
I usually figure that when Israel started worshipping other gods they just left the Lord in the dust. Dumped him and moved on. And that was one of the options. Zephaniah refers to people: who used to worship (the Lord) but now no longer do. So…past tense.
But that’s not the only option. Zephaniah says there were also people who: go up to their roofs and bow to the sun, moon, and stars. They claim to follow the Lord, but then they worship Molech, too.
So there are two options. The first is that you subtract the Lord entirely. Then I guess you can worship another god or several gods. In this case your Personal Religious Equation looks something like this: god #1 + god #2 + god #3 + god #4 = my gods.
The second option is that you can keep the Lord in the mix. That equation adds an extra value: god #1 + god #2 + god #3 + god #4 + the Lord = my gods.
Zephaniah’s recommended OT balance is: The Lord = My God. His view was that if I start adding extra values to the equation I end up with an unequal-equation.

Note: quotes from Zephaniah 1:6, 5 (NLT). (Added note: theoretically there’s a no-god option but it wasn’t common, and the elements couldn’t be formulated too easily into an equation.)

 

Week 31 Habakkuk

The first words out of Habakkuk’s mouth are How Long?
The big question he raises in his book is like this – ok…the Lord is right in punishing Judah’s evil-actions. But how much retributive violence will the Lord let Babylon get away with …and how long will they get away with it?
In Habakkuk the prophet complains to the Lord twice and the Lord answers him twice. In the first answer the Lord tells Habakkuk something that’s a bit counter-intuitive. The Lord says: I am raising up the Babylonians to be a new power on the world scene. Hmmmm…the Evil Empire is evil because being evil is who they are…but they’re becoming an empire because the Lord is elevating them. Becoming a world power isn’t an accident.
The second answer the Lord gives Habakkuk relates to Time: How Long? The Lord says a couple of things:
These things I plan won’t happen right away. Slowly, steadily, surely, the time approaches…
The time is coming…
Babylonian captives will eventually say: at last justice has caught up with you!…
Soon it will be your turn…
For the time will come when all the earth will be filled…with an awareness of the glory of the Lord.
Habakkuk’s complaint about evil and suffering is totally understandable.
Where he got fouled up was in thinking that the Lord didn’t much care. Or thinking the Lord would never get around to doing anything about it if he did care.

Note: quotes from Habakkuk 1:6, 2:3, 6, 16, 14 (NLT).

Week 31 Micah 5

In chapter five Micah predicts: but you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, are only a small village in Judah. Yet a ruler of Israel will come from you, one whose origins are from the distant past.
That verse has a NT cross-reference in my bible. King Herod asked the religious teachers in Jerusalem: where did the prophets say the Messiah would be born?
I don’t know how Herod knew about the Messiah. But when he asked the religious teachers they knew who he was referring to and told him the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem – they quoted Micah: O Bethlehem of Judah, you are not just a lowly village in Judah, for a ruler will come from you who will be the shepherd of my people Israel. This means that by NT times people were calling the unidentified person in Micah The Messiah.
Micah says some things about the Ruler that are a bit vague and could refer to other people. For instance he’ll work for the Lord. He’ll lead people. He’ll bring peace. But Micah also says one thing that is a definite geographic test. He’ll be born in Bethlehem. Micah’s Ruler has to be born in Bethlehem.
Since I got to the prophets in April I’ve read a lot of forecasts that might be read one-way-or-another. But this one in Micah is solid – The Messiah has to be born in the little town of Bethlehem.

Note: quotes from Micah 5:2 & Matthew 2:4 & 6 (NLT).

Week 31 Joel

There’s a pioneer story about an insect plague in 1860s Minnesota: green grasshoppers of all sizes were swarming everywhere and eating. The wind could not blow loud enough to hide the sound of their jaws, nipping, gnawing, chewing. They ate all the green garden rows. They ate the green potato tops. They ate the grass, and the willow leaves, and the green plum thickets and the small green plums. They ate the whole prairie bare and brown.
Right at the beginning of his book Joel shouted out his own Grasshopper Sermon because millions of middle-eastern grasshoppers had come to Judah: after the cutting locusts finished eating the crops, the swarming locusts took what was left! After them came the hopping locusts, and then the stripping locusts, too!
Joel one sounds like a real description of real locusts. But chapter two sounds like a real description of a real army of human grasshoppers about to clear-cut Jerusalem.
Joel’s prepare-for-the-worst message to Judah sounds pretty definite. But it isn’t iron-clad definite. Joel adds: return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful. He is not easily angered. He is filled with kindness and is eager not to punish you. Who knows? Perhaps even yet he will give you a reprieve, sending you a blessing instead of this terrible curse.
So against the odds there’s still a chance.

Note: quotes from Laura Ingalls Wilder On the Banks of Plum Creek (NY: Harper & Row; 1971) 261; and Joel 1:4 & 2:13-14 (NLT)

Week 30 Nahum

I read Jonah to start the week and Nahum to finish it. A nice coincidence since Jonah & Nahum are book-end prophets – both spoke to Nineveh, Assyria.
Jonah hated having to tell the Assyrians that the Lord would give them a second chance. A chance at repentance. A chance at survival.
My guess is Jonah would have loved to have given a message like this: all who see you will shrink back in terror and say, “Nineveh lies in utter ruin.” Yet no one anywhere will regret your destruction…The enemy will consume you like locusts, devouring everything they see…O Assyrian king, your princes lie dead in the dust…All who hear of your destruction will clap their hands for joy. Jonah didn’t get to say that…Nahum did.
I think that Nahum is the most martial of the short-prophets. He’s a talented battle-scene writer – you see-feel-smell-hear the destruction. If you’re Assyria it’s awesomely scary. And Nahum describes the Lord in military terms. Anger revenge power rage destruction conquest. But he also knows that: the Lord is good. When trouble comes, he is a strong refuge. So a Lord who is both…and. Fluidly interactive. Jonah explained one side. Nahum the other.

Note: quotes from Nahum 3:7, 15, 18-19 and 1:7-8 (NLT).
Added end-of-month numbers: I’m roughly 70% through the bible (and roughly 60% through the year). To finish the OT I’ve got seven short-prophets plus Esther Ecclesiastes and Job – maybe a hundred chapters – that I’m aiming to read in August.

Week 30 Hosea

The story about Gomer & Hosea getting married is pretty absorbing because the whole idea seems so weird – the Lord told Hosea to marry a sex worker. There’s a couple of ways to look at this: a) maybe the Lord told Hosea to marry a girl who wasn’t a sex worker but started having sexual intercourse with guys; or b) maybe she was a sex worker when Hosea married her. It’s hard to know for sure.
But the Lord spells out the point right away: go and marry a prostitute, so some of her children will be born to you from other men. This will illustrate the way my people have been untrue to me, openly committing adultery against the Lord by worshipping other gods. So there it is – the sexual treachery is a picture of a bigger infidelity.
Hosea & Gomer would have mostly been just a point of lurid neighbourhood gossip. Only a perceptive person would understand that Gomer’s faithlessness was a tip-off that Israel was cheating on the Lord.
I’ve read the story before and figured that Hosea did what he was told because he was told. Not willingly; not happily; maybe like Jonah going to Nineveh – either the dogs in Nineveh or a big fish in the Mediterranean.
Now I’m not so sure. Maybe Hosea really & truly loved Gomer. Maybe it broke his heart when she started sleeping around. Which might be the point the Lord’s making.

Note: quote from Hosea 1:2 (NLT).

Week 30 Amos

Once I finished reading Daniel I decided not to read the short prophets in bible order. My Good Idea was to read them in the order they were written. Unfortunately there isn’t unanimous agreement about the chronological order.
I decided to avoid that squabble. Instead I grouped the short prophets under four rough-and-ready headings:
Prophets who prophesied to the northern kingdom
Prophets who prophesied to the southern kingdom before the exile
Prophets who prophesied to the southern kingdom in Babylon
Prophets who prophesied to the southern kingdom after the return.
So my northern kingdom prophets were Obadiah Jonah Amos Hosea & Nahum. One of the first things I notice about Amos’ book is that even though he’s mainly interested in Israel-North he’s interested in other nations as well. In the first two chapters he names Damascus Gaza Tyre Edom Ammon & Moab as Regions of Interest.
It looks like every nation was under prophetic scrutiny but Amos confirms that Israel got unique treatment. He quoted the Lord: from among all the nations on the earth, I chose you alone.
I already knew that but it’s a reminder that the procedure the Lord decided on to achieve his overall objective was to start with a family-tribe that grew into a small national aggregation. The Lord’s actions with them were interactive and their functionality was assessed. But even though Israel was the real Test Case other nations were operating like semi-independent variables. All part of the mix.

Note: quote from Amos 3:2 (NLT).

Week 30 Jonah

Jonah isn’t just mentioned in the book of Jonah. Kings says that king Jeroboam II had gained territory: just as the Lord… had promised through Jonah son of Amittai, the prophet from Gath-hepher. That would have been a good news prophecy for Jonah. One he liked giving. But things were different in the book of Jonah.
There the Lord told Jonah to go the city of Nineveh and tell them to repent or they would be destroyed. Jonah was one of the few OT prophets who decided not to do what the Lord had told him.
Recently I’ve been reading about Assyria. The writer said that: Assyrian rulers energetically promoted their reputation for using appalling savagery…as a tool of governance and a weapon of psychological warfare. So chances are Jonah was afraid of these destructive ogres. Chances are he hated them. If the Lord destroyed Nineveh? No problem. But Jonah had this irritating sense about the Lord – suspected that if Nineveh did repent then the Lord Would Forgive Them!
In the end Jonah did preach to Nineveh. The Assyrian capital did repent and they were not destroyed. Dang! Jonah hated every second of it.

Note: quotes from 2 Kings 14:25 NLT & Paul Kriwaczek Babylon (St. Martin’s: NY, 2010) 224-25. Added note: I guess the repentance didn’t last. Within about thirty years an Assyrian army blew Israel to bits. But back on that day when the city repented it was counted to their credit.

Week 29 Daniel

The story of Belshazzar is a pretty interesting one mostly because of the disembodied hand that mysteriously appeared at the gala and wrote three words on the wall of the reception hall. The king could read the words: Numbered… Weighed… Divided. But he had no idea what they meant.
Anyway the thing that caught my attention was that in my bible Nebuchadnezzar – mentioned in chapter four – was referred to as Belshazzar’s father. I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t been reading a book about Babylon and it said Belshazzar’s father was a man named Nabonidus – not Nebuchadnezzar. The book said the rulers were:
Nebuchadnezzar
Amel-Marduk
Nergal-Sharu-Ussur
La-Abashi-Marduk
Nabonidus
Belshazzar
So what’s going on? Well…some people figure Daniel got his facts mixed up. Other people figure Daniel didn’t even write Daniel…that a Fake-Daniel wrote Daniel years later – and he was mixed up too.
I know a guy who calls his own dad Grandpa so that his young son will learn to call his grandpa Grandpa. So why did Daniel call Belshazzar’s predecessor his father? Who really knows? Maybe there was a good reason that I don’t know. But whatever Daniel’s reason was paternity had nothing to do with his message…which was this: the Most High God gave sovereignty, majesty, glory, and honor to your predecessor, Nebuchadnezzar…But when his heart and mind were hardened with pride, he was brought down.

Note: quote from Daniel 5:18-20 (NLT). List of Babylonian kings is from Paul Kriwaczek’s Babylon (St. Martin’s: NY, 2010) 271-2.

Week 29 Daniel

The story of Nebuchadnezzar’s Tree Dream in chapter four is thirty-seven verses long. Most of the chapter – twenty-two verses – is told by the king himself. Which reminded me that Daniel got some of his content directly from the Lord. But not all of it.
Anyway the dream-story is about a fantastic tree that is chopped down. The dream-story’s meaning is that Nebuchadnezzar is that tree and he will soon fall. And he does. He loses his mental capacities his status his crown his sovereignty his power. He ends up out in the woods and fields living like an animal.
When Daniel had explained the meaning of the dream he told Nebuchadnezzar why it was going to happen: you will be driven from human society, and you will live in the fields…until you learn that the Most High rules over the kingdoms of the world and gives them to anyone he chooses.
Some readers figure the bible is an interesting but out-of-date and unreliable resource. Other readers figure it’s an interesting and currently relevant resource. Bible readers in the second group figure that the prime operators that affected Babylon’s destiny back then remain in force today. Which means that in 2021 the Most High continues ruling over the kingdoms of the world.
Which also means that even the top news agencies are most-of-the-time reporting under serious information restraints when it comes to comprehensively analyzing domestic & international affairs.

Note: quote from Daniel 4:25 (NLT)