Medicine Hat Joe

Week 26  Proverbs 1

The first six verses are Solomon’s introduction to the Proverbs. In my bible that paragraph is one long sentence and it names some of the benefits that I can get from reading the proverbs. It ends with this: to understand a proverb and a figure, the words of the wise and their riddles.
I normally think of the proverbs as a book of sayings that are pretty straightforward & clear & uncomplicated. A lot of them are easy enough for a kid to understand. But however simple the proverbs seem to be Solomon says they also have this riddle-quality to them.
I looked up ‘riddle’. The dictionary said that a riddle is a saying that has to be solved because it has a hidden meaning. A riddle is tricky. I need some ingenuity to dope it out.
I check other bible versions. About 30 of them use the word riddle. The other versions use words or phrases that are different…but have the same idea: dark sayings. Puzzles. Enigmas. Clever messages.
That’s not to say proverbs aren’t straight-ahead literal sayings. But maybe they’re layered sayings too. They have a plain & simple surface but lying underneath is a more complicated subsurface. Maybe they make good & common sense. But there’s more to them than meets-the-eye.
Head-scratchers disguised as vanilla-flavoured platitudes.

Note: quote from Proverbs 1:6 (NASB)

Week 25  Jeremiah 26

The Lord told Jeremiah to go to the temple and give a public prophecy. But prior to going he tipped Jeremiah off about what might happen: perhaps the people will listen and turn—each from his evil way of life—so that I might relent concerning the disaster that I plan to do to them because of the evil of their deeds. So the situation was fluid & open-ended.
The backstory to Jeremiah’s prophecy was pretty typical:
• The people had already done a lot of evil things
• The Lord was planning a calamity against them
• Prior to the disaster Jeremiah was to go with a warning message
• The people could listen to Jeremiah’s message.
It was at that point that the people got to decide one way or the other. They could either a) listen and turn from their evil ways or they could b) disregard Jeremiah.
If they shrugged off Jeremiah’s warning then the Lord’s projected plan would simply move forward as it was designed.
But if they turned then the Lord would change his plan. A catastrophe would be avoided.
So there were choices and interactivity and adjustments and adaptation that would be in play here. It wasn’t a static situation.
And quite a bit would be hanging in the balance.

Note: quote from Jeremiah 26:3 (CSB)

Week 25  Jeremiah 22

Jeremiah was prophesying during the days of the last five kings of Judah: Josiah Jehoahaz Jehoiakim Jehoiachin & Zedekiah. Not all of them are named there in the introduction in chapter 1. Jehoahaz & Jehoiachin are missing. But they both show up later in chapter 22.
What I noticed in 22 was Jeremiah’s comment about Jehoahaz. I already know that Jehoahaz – just like Jehoiakim Jehoiachin & Zedekiah – was a low quality & substandard king. But Jeremiah contrasts him with his father Josiah (too bad for Jehoahaz since I think his dad was maybe the best of the kings).
Jeremiah asks Jehoahaz: did not your father eat and drink and do justice and righteousness? Then it was well with him. He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well. Is not that what it means to know Me?” But Jeremiah’s description of Jehoahaz was different: you have eyes and heart only for your dishonest gain, for shedding innocent blood, and for practicing oppression and violence.
What does it mean to follow the Lord? Being just. Being righteousness. Being fair to poor people.
I’m more than a thousand pages into the bible and I know for a fact that there’s more to following-the-Lord than this short list.
But Jeremiah limited himself to these three: 1) doing justice & 2) doing righteousness & 3) judging poor people fairly.
Doing good. Doing right. Helping people. A short list of things that signal I’m a follower.

Note: quotes from Jeremiah 22:15-16 17 (ESV)

Week 24  Isaiah 28

Isaiah says something pretty interesting when he says that the Lord – at a certain point in time – will begin to do His task, His unusual task, and to work His work, His extraordinary work. When things are going along in their regular routine way then the Lord is operating in his normal way. His predictable & expected way. Doing the kind of things you’d expect the Lord to do. The Lord’s normal work is just that – standard regular typical & routine. It’s regularity is so regular that it seems like life in the world is on auto-pilot. A fixed recurrency. And while this is going on the Lord is keeping a pretty low profile. Maybe for a long time.
But nothing goes on forever and at some point it’s time for an assessment & review. At that point the Lord moves into his judicial function – which is quite a different category of work. The activity of the Justice Department is unusual & extraordinary work.
I checked a couple of other versions. They used different words but the idea was the same. That this part of the Lord’s work was incredible. Unexpected. Unfamiliar. Strange. Alien. I didn’t see worrisome. Or troubling. But I got that sense too.
So anyway the Lord engages in two kinds of action (maybe there’s more but there’s at least two). There’s a) the Lord’s normal & familiar & customary work and b) his strange & unusual work.

Note: quote from Isaiah 28:21 (NASB plus Amplified CSB ESV & NIV)

Week 23  Isaiah 13-14

There’s a prophecy about Babylon in Isaiah 13 & 14. It’s roughly 45-verses long and one of the things Isaiah says is: how you have fallen from heaven, you star of the morning, son of the dawn! You have been cut down to the earth, you who defeated the nations!
The tricky thing here is the expression you star of the morning. I checked a bunch of other bible versions and I found that about 13 of them (roughly 25%) used the name Lucifer instead of star of the morning.
It’s a bit of a mystery because the prophecy is against the king of Babylon and I figure that the natural way to understand this verse is that Isaiah was saying that the king (the star-of-the-morning) was going to be defeated (fall from-the-sky).
The more complicated way is to say that the star of the morning is not the king. It’s actually Lucifer (Satan). The 13 versions that use Lucifer figured that Isaiah quit talking about Babylon and suddenly started talking about the Devil.
So I’m left to wonder: who is Isaiah talking about? Was it about the king of Babylon? Or did Isaiah switch-gears and start talking about Lucifer the Devil?
Obviously some Bible versions think he switched and so they write it up that way (star-of-the-morning = Lucifer / Satan). But that seems like the translator went out-on-a-limb.
I think Isaiah is totally capable of changing lanes without telling me. I’m just not sure he’s doing that here.

Note: quote from Isaiah 14:12 (NASB)

 

Week 23  Isaiah 1

The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. That’s the first verse of Isaiah’s long prophecy. It says that Isaiah’s oracles were specifically for Judah & Jerusalem. And the timeframe was during the reigns of four kings – Uzziah Jotham Ahaz & Hezekiah.
If Isaiah had divided his 66 chapters equally among the four kings each would have gotten 25% of the book – 16.5 chapters each. But that number isn’t even close. I checked a word book to see how much space each king got:
• Uzziah is named twice…nothing else is said about him.
• Jotham is the same. Named twice and that’s it.
• Ahaz did actually meet with Isaiah in chapter 7.
• Hezekiah was treated the most liberally. Chapters 36-39 tell the king’s story and Isaiah’s advisory role. with the king
So three of the kings barely rate as bit players. And Hezekiah – at only about 6% of the content – doesn’t hardly register. If Isaiah had more dealings with these kings he doesn’t let on. The only thing that the opening reference to the kings does is give me a time-stamp of when Isaiah was working. Other than that the book is all about other things and other people.

Note: quote from Isaiah 1:1 (ESV). References to Uzziah Jotham & Ahaz are in Isaiah 1:1 & 7:1. Ahaz connects briefly with Isaiah in 7. Hezekiah’s four-chapter-long story is in Isaiah 36-39 (I’ve already read it twice this year – in 2 Kings 18-20 & 2 Chronicles 29-32).

 

Week 22  Ecclesiastes

The bible I’m reading says that the Lord has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in (people’s) hearts, yet so that (they) will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end.
The idea seems to be that people – as part of our natural constitution – have something called ‘eternity’ planted inside us. I wondered what exactly it is to have ‘eternity’ inside me.
I checked a bunch of other versions. About 27 of them used the word ‘eternity’. About 10 used ‘the world’. That didn’t help me. Other versions weren’t much help either. They  suggested things like questions. A desire to know the future. Obscurity. Ignorance. Knowledge. Thoughts of forever. Hmmm…it all sounded like a bit of guesswork. None of the ideas helped very much.
In spite of that the verse was still useful. The Lord put something inside me that’s bigger than the normal things related to my natural space-and-time self. So that seems pretty good. But what’s not so good is that this internal enhancement – as good as it might be – isn’t comprehensive enough for me to know what-all I need to know.
It’s like it tips me off that I need to know something more. But doesn’t give me the content. Warns me that I’m lacking something but doesn’t tell me what it is.

Note: quote from Ecclesiastes 3:11 (NASB and with words from other bibles). End-of-May reading report: 55% completed.

Week 22  Ecclesiastes

They’re underlined in red in my reading bible. Six passages in Ecclesiastes that I’ve noted in some previous reading-year. They all talk about the same thing and in my mind I title them: How to Live Your Life (an alternate title: Enjoy Life While You Can.)
In these six passages a couple of similar ideas come up again-and-again. I know that “doing good” is only mentioned once – it’s an exception. But others show up multiple times:
• Eat & drink (five times)
• Work (seven times)
• Be satisfied (or glad) with what I’ve got – there’s enjoyment & satisfaction in eating/drinking & working & marriage (fourteen times)
One other recurring idea doesn’t tell me how to live my life. It’s a reminder that the things I’ve got are gifts from the hand of God (six times).
Anyway I wanted to bring the key ideas together in one short paraphrase:
1. Eat and drink with a glad & joyful heart.
2. It’s necessary to work. And even though it can be arduous & grueling it’s a gift from God – so I can be happy in my work too.
3. To sum it all up: the basic things in life are given to me from the Lord. So I can enjoy them.
In my bible the six passages total about 360 words. But my streamlined version reduces things to about 60. I admit that my rendition is pretty routine and unexciting. But it covers the fundamentals of living life.

Note: the six passages are Ecclesiastes 2:24-25 3:12-13 3:22 5:18-20 8:15 9:7-9

Week 22  Ecclesiastes

I’ve been thinking about who wrote Ecclesiastes. Was it Solomon? Or an unknown somebody else?
One reason people might figure Solomon wrote Ecclesiastes is because of the proverbs. Solomon was famous for writing proverbs and there are a bunch of them in Ecclesiastes.
I did a quick re-read and found 95 verses of proverbs. Since there’s roughly 220 verses in the whole book that means that Ecclesiastes is about 43% proverbial sayings:
• Wisdom is better than folly, just as light is better than darkness
• Better one handful with tranquility than two handfuls with toil
• When you make a vow to God, do not delay to fulfill it. He has no pleasure in fools
• Whoever loves money never has enough
• It is better to heed the rebuke of a wise person than to listen to the song of fools
• The quiet words of the wise are more to be heeded than the shouts of fools.
Sayings like these could be seamlessly flipped over into the book of Proverbs.
Anyway…I know that it’s easy to get tsunamied with the Preacher’s all is vanity messaging. But I think Ecclesiastes could be categorized as a Book of Proverbs (as well as a Book of Depressive Gloom-&-Doom).

Note: quotes from Ecclesiastes 2:13 4:6 5:4 5:10 7:5 8:7 9:17 & 1:2. Added note: I think 43% is a low estimate. For instance 3:1-8 & 12:1-8 look to me like long illustrated-proverbs. If I add them the 43% jumps to more than 50%. (Although on the other hand maybe those two literary paragraphs aren’t proverbs at all.)

Week 22  Ecclesiastes

I’ve always thought that Solomon wrote Ecclesiastes. But I know that some people think he didn’t. So this year I was looking for evidence. I found half-a-dozen verses where the person (I’ll call him X) sounded an awful lot like Solomon:
X is called the son of David and twice he’s called king of Jerusalem.
X said I have magnified and increased wisdom more than all who were over Jerusalem before me; and my mind has observed a wealth of wisdom and knowledge.
X also said I amassed for myself silver and gold, and the treasure of kings and provided for myself male and female singers, and many concubines. Then I became great and increased. My wisdom also stood by me.
And X discovered firsthand something more bitter than death. The woman whose heart is snares and nets.
This all sounds like Solomon and I’m tempted to say Solomon did write Ecclesiastes. But for sure? I don’t think so.
Near the very end it says: in addition to being wise, the Preacher (X) also taught the people knowledge; and he pondered, searched out, and arranged many proverbs. It’s pretty clear that there at the end somebody else is talking about X…not X talking about himself. Did that somebody-else write Ecclesiastes? Was somebody-else making a final editorial comment?
It’s hard to say for sure. I like the idea of Solomon being the mysterious X. But even if he isn’t Ecclesiastes has bigger-fish-to-fry.

Note: quotes from Ecclesiastes 1:1 12 16-17 2:8-9 7:26 12:9 (NASB)