Medicine Hat Joe

Week 19 Psalm 66

Sixty-six is an I-was-in-trouble-and-the-Lord-helped-me psalm.
The writer prayed to the Lord in his time of distress. He promised a desperation promise. Now the trouble is past and he isn’t feeling as panicked. But I’m still going to the temple he says: to fulfil the vows I made to you – yes, the sacred vows you heard me make when I was in deep trouble. A deep-trouble vow.
I remember a very short fiction story about a world-war one soldier who was under fire and was praying a desperation prayer:
While the bombardment was knocking the trench to pieces at Fossalta, he lay very flat and sweated and prayed oh jesus christ get me out of here. Dear jesus please get me out. Christ please please please christ. If you’ll only keep me from getting killed I’ll do anything you say. I believe in you and I’ll tell everyone in the world that you are the only one that matters. Please please dear jesus.
The shelling moved further up the line. We went to work on the trench and in the morning the sun came up and the day was hot and muggy and cheerful and quiet.
The next night back at Mestre he did not tell the girl he went upstairs with at the Villa Rosa about Jesus. And he never told anybody.

Notes: Quotes from Psalm 66:13-14 (NLT version); and “Chapter VII” in Ernest Hemingway The Complete Short Stories (NY: Scribner’s, 1987) 109 (paragraph breaks added).

Week 19 II Chronicles

I looked at a bible map. It was a nice, tidy map showing the northern kingdom coloured baby-blue and the south imperial-red. The two colours seemed about equal in size, which is deceptive because there wasn’t a 50:50 division by tribes. Israel-North had: Dan, Ephraim, Manasseh, Issachar, Zebulun, Asher, Naphtali, Gad, Reuben, and some of Simeon. The south had Judah and Benjamin. A 10:2 split.
The armies weren’t equal either. The numbers show a 2:1 advantage for the north.
So the north was no weakling.
But the bible isn’t that concerned about material advantage. And after chapter ten its interest is: what’s happening to the life-of-faith-and-belief now?
It’s a timely question because Jeroboam decided to set up a new religion in the north. New religious centres, shiny new idols, new practices, a new religious calendar. Some of Moses’ ideas were thrown in to flavour the stew, but there were enough novelties that northerners had a decision to make: do-I-stay-or-go?
Quite a few northern Levites decided to emigrate, and the chronicler says that when priests started leaving: those from all the tribes of Israel who set their hearts on seeking the Lord God of Israel, followed them to Jerusalem. Which means that when members of the ten renegade tribes filtered south they were actually re-constituting Jerusalem as a kind of unofficially reunited-kingdom, but based on faith. So… still red, but tinged with ten shades of blue.

Notes: quote from II Chronicles 11:16; see also 15:9 (NASB version). See military census in 13:3.

Week 19 II Chronicles

Solomon was a smart, dynamic, ambitious and determined autocrat. So he had enemies.
As soon as he died a delegation of non-Judah-tribes wanted to renegotiate the oppressive labour policy. 
King Rehoboam had two advisory groups to help him decide. One advised that he lighten the load. The other said: work ’em harder. Crazily, Rehoboam chose suggestion #2.
What was he thinking? As the head of state he could have just publicly agreed with popular opinion, and then disregarded it.
Anyway, the interesting twist and explanation the chronicler adds is that Rehoboam’s decision: was a turn of events from the Lord.
A bible reader’s advantage is getting reminded that there’s not just one input. Rehoboam is making his own independent decision about state policy. And the Lord is directing the affairs of Israel. The Lord’s action is not unilateral because both he and the king are making decisions and taking action. It’s a bilateral process.
If Rehoboam had been conciliatory and chosen suggestion #1 it would have changed things quite a bit because then his decision is a different decision with different effects. I’m guessing that he’d still end up with only half a kingdom, and Jeroboam would win his rebellion and get the lion’s share. But all that comes at the end of a different set of events.
It’d be easier to understand outcomes if the Lord simply acted dictatorially. It complicates things that he doesn’t.

Note: quote from II Chronicles 10:15 (NASB version)

Week 19 II Chronicles

A couple of days ago I said I wanted to see how Solomon’s story ended.
The reason was because The David Story in I Chronicles had some pretty obvious, I would say glaringly obvious omissions that made the story a sunny one.
Today I see the chronicler doing the same thing with Solomon. The dark and gloomy I Kings ending of The Solomon Story is collapsed into three informational verses: Solomon was king for forty years; he died; and – if you want more info – go and read Nathan, Ahijah, or Iddo. Nothing about the Solomon who turned his back on the Lord.
There’s two things I plan to do this week:
First, I’m going to see how the chronicler deals with the other kings of Judah. Will he highlight them, too?
My second goal is to answer a question (it’s a bit complicated so I doubt I’ll figure it out): why did the chronicler omit this material? What was he doing? Why the exclusions?
Afterthought: As I finish reading I realize I’m more bothered by what the writer didn’t say than what he did so I ask myself: what do chapters one-to-nine actually say about Solomon? One thing I see: at least 135 verses out of 201 are about the temple – prepping, building, dedicating. So, 67% of the chronicler’s Life of Solomon is about the temple. That’s surprising enough to keep in mind.

Note: see the contrasting accounts of Solomon’s end-of-life in II Chronicles 9:29-31 and I Kings 11.

Week 18 II Chronicles

Earlier this week I didn’t need to have ears like a bat to detect an echo when I started reading the stories of David in I Chronicles because I remembered most of them from II Samuel.
Of course, there’s also a bunch of stuff missing. The chronicler says nothing about Goliath, Jonathan, Abigail, David’s escape from Saul, Bathsheba, Uriah, the Absalom rebellion. But he’s interested in David the King, and he ends up painting a pretty complimentary picture of a pretty ideal king.
I’m a modern-day Albertan so my first thought is cover-up – the chronicler’s tying-off loose ends. But even though that’s a kind of appealing default I have doubts about it right away. For a couple of reasons. First, my guess is that those downside stories were pretty well-known events – I’d be surprised if people in the ancient near east didn’t have an ear for scandal. The other thing I noticed is that the chronicler actually tells readers to check other accounts of the events: now the acts of King David, from first to last, are written in the chronicles of Samuel the seer, in the chronicles of Nathan the seer, and in the chronicles of Gad the seer.
Anyway, the reason I’m mentioning this now is that I’m seeing the same pattern in Solomon’s story in II Chronicles – repetition and, so far, the sound of lots of clapping. So I’ll wait & see how Solomon’s story ends.

Note: quote is from I Chronicles 29:29 (NASB version).

April 30, 2020

2020 is now one-third finished so I know I should’ve read 33.33333% of the bible by today (in my bible one-third is 571 pages).
I add up the numbers for Genesis – I Chronicles + Proverbs + Song of Solomon + the Psalms that I’ve read so far. 726 pages. I run that number and see that 726 pages is 41.96% of the bible. So that’s a relief.
There were a couple of things in play for me this month. For one, I decided on March 31 to try reading one book per calendar week so that forced me over the 100 chapters / month mark. Being quarantined might have helped a bit, too.
I’m looking ahead now, doing a quick count. The II-Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah-Esther-Job block is 111 chapters. Close enough to 100 chapters for the month. I think I’ll aim for that.

Note: in my April 27 post I wondered why two tribes – Levi and Judah – dominated the tribal verse-count in I Chronicles 1-9. The inequity was pretty surprising and I wondered: is the chronicler intentionally highlighting the David-Judah-kingly tribe and the Levi-priestly-religious line? And I wondered: what will the rest of the book show? What I found was that the last nineteen chapters of the book are the life of David, and sandwiched into that section dagwood-style there are about eleven chapters on the ark, the temple, and the work of the Levites. So…the mhj Unscientific Conclusion is: the chronicler was interested most of all in Judah and Levi.

Week 18 I Chronicles

I counted 241 names in the first chapter of the book.
That’s in the first fifty-four verses. And there’re thousands of names still to come.
Of course there’s narrative, too. Mostly the story of David. But even there the chronicler doesn’t go very far before he gets back to listing names.
So it’s a surprise to get to chapter sixteen and see a psalm. It runs for twenty-nine verses.
In my bible there’s a cross-reference at verse eight so I flip over to Psalm 105:1-15 to see what that’s about, one finger in page 598 and one in page 856. I read one line from Chronicles then flip over and read one in Psalms, comparing the two. I’m reading the same line twice, line after line. There are a couple of differences, places where the words aren’t exactly the same but the meaning is. They’re basically identical. A repeater psalm.
Then I realize the exercise has slowed me down. I also realize I’ve not been paying attention to the psalm. I look back and see a line I underlined at some point: let the heart of those who seek the Lord be glad. I flip over and see it underlined in Psalm 105, too.
It’s a good verse, and really doesn’t sound much like the oppressive and burdensome OT life I hear about.
As I’m looking for the Lord, one of the outcomes I can expect is gladness.

Note: the psalm is in I Chronicles 16:8-36, the quote is from 16:10b.

Week 18  I Chronicles

I finished through to chapter 10 in two days of hard reading. I didn’t recognize most of the names (fortunately I could identify the sons of Jacob).
Starting in chapter two, and for seven chapters there are a little over 300 verses of family names. Since there are twelve tribes you’d figure there’d be 26 verses of names for each clan, on average.
But I did a rough count and 26 wasn’t close:
Judah’s family counted about 102 verses
Simeon twenty verses
Reuben ten
Gad seven
Manasseh ten (two half-tribes)
Issachar five
Benjamin forty-seven (maybe)
Naphtali one
Ephraim ten
Asher eleven
Dan or Zebulun (I don’t even find them)
Levi eighty-one
So…Judah and Levi have about 180 of 300 verses – 60%.
Take away Benjamin and no one else gets more than 20 verses.
I wonder what’s driving the writer’s choice.
It’s hard to say if the discrepancy means anything.
Pretty clearly the Levi-family of priests and the royal family of Judah dominate the content numerically. 
But do the numbers prove anything?
I’m not sure they do. But I’m not sure they don’t, either.
I think the Numbers Discrepancy Question is not a bad place to start, and from there see where the writer goes in the rest of the book. Will he highlight Judah and Levi in some other way that lets me test my question?
I guess I’ll see.

Note: the numbers above are unofficial, so don’t take them to the bank.

Week 18 I Chronicles

The subtitle to I Chronicles in my bible is: Genealogy from Adam.
And that’s just what I see in verse one: Adam, Seth, Enosh.
So far so good. I recognize two of the first three names.
Then I recognize the three names in verse three, and the four names in verse four.
But after that things start going downhill.
I flip over a few pages…574, 575, 576…
There are pretty much nine chapters of names. A little over sixteen pages, give or take.
Over 400 verses. Mostly names.
As the chronicler started writing I Chronicles 1-9 he would have known that no one in world bible-reading history would ever choose to read these chapters if he was looking for inspirational reading. The writer didn’t write I Chronicles 1-9 to fire me up.
I start reading quickly, scanning down the page, seeing the words and not really missing anything but not mentally sounding out the names. I look for familiar names. It’s like a radar-scan…looking for a few familiar somethings in a mass of indeterminate nothings.
I Chronicles 1-9 wasn’t likely written to be read. More likely written to be consulted, like a big reference book in the library. And even though it’s not totally 100% names – for example, Sheshan had no sons so Jarha, his Egyptian slave married one of Sheshan’s girls and saved the family name – still, stories are an exception, as rare as pearls at the bottom of the sea.

Note: Sheshan’s story is in I Chronicles 2:34-41.

Week 17 II Kings

The words CHAPTER 17 in my bible are underlined in red.
I don’t know when I did that, or why. Probably because chapter 17 maps out a big turning point in Israel’s national history. Maybe not exactly turning point since turning point means changing-direction-but-still-moving. The only place Israel was moving was directly into exile in Assyria, and from there right on into national oblivion.
I might have also underlined CHAPTER 17 because the writer, I’m pretty sure expected the why-did-the-northern-tribes-disappear-from-history question. So he says: now this came about because… and then in the next seventeen verses lists about twenty reasons why Israel failed. All the reasons have to do with the covenant promises that Israel broke – nothing to do with ecological degradation, overpopulation, or bad political decisions. II Kings 17 is concerned with religious beliefs and practices.
Surprisingly, Israel is told twice that one of their problems was that they didn’t listen. When you look at some of the other faults on the list, this one doesn’t seem like such a big thing.
But I don’t think the writer was concerned with inattentiveness. Israel was listening. The concern was who they were listening to. I thought back to the beginning: Eve had two voices to listen to. Her problem wasn’t an attention deficit. It was the choice she made, preferring to listen to one voice and not the other.

Note: quote is from II Kings 17:7 (NASB version). Listen is in verses 14 & 40.