Month: March 2010

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Old Testament

God likes to test the Israelites every once in awhile just to see if they really love him. He must have self esteem issues.

If they then say, ‘Come, let us worship other gods’—gods you have not known before— do not listen to them. The Lord your God is testing you to see if you truly love him with all your heart and soul [physical and mental self].

God also has a zero tolerance policy towards those who try to entice the Israelites away from God.

Suppose someone secretly entices you—even your brother, your son or daughter, your beloved wife, or your closest friend—and says, ‘Let us go worship other gods’—gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known. They might suggest that you worship the gods of peoples who live nearby or who come from the ends of the earth. But do not give in or listen. Have no pity, and do not spare or protect them. You must put them to death! Strike the first blow yourself, and then all the people must join in.

And it sucks to be anyone who lives in a town where some people have gone astray.

If you find that the report is true and such a detestable act has been committed among you, you must attack that town and completely destroy all its inhabitants, as well as all the livestock. Then you must pile all the plunder in the middle of the open square and burn it. Burn the entire town as a burnt offering to the Lord your God. That town must remain a ruin forever; it may never be rebuilt.

If people in a town have actually been tempted away from God, the whole town must be destroyed? Remember, these are allegedly God’s direct commands, and so, in my opinion, it is perfectly reasonable to apply modern standards to them. By any reasonable modern standards of morality, this is horrendous.

After that we get a description of which animals are clean or unclean. We also get discussions of tithing, the forgiving of debts every seventh year, the release of Hebrew slaves every seventh year, and God’s dislike of imperfect animals. Much of this we have heard before. Repetition can be useful for learning, but I still wonder how short the Torah would be if all the repetition were removed. Half the size?

New Testament

Speaking of repetition, today we read the story of the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years and was healed when she touched Jesus’ robe. We also read that Jesus raised Jairus’ daughter from death. Finally, we read about how Jesus sent out his disciples to teach and heal. All things we have read before.

Psalms and Proverbs

Nothing of note today.

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Old Testament

Gah, it’s late! So only highlights tonight.

Keep in mind that I am not talking now to your children, who have never experienced the discipline of the Lord your God or seen his greatness and his strong hand and powerful arm. They didn’t see the miraculous signs and wonders he performed in Egypt against Pharaoh and all his land. They didn’t see what the Lord did to the armies of Egypt and to their horses and chariots—how he drowned them in the Red Sea as they were chasing you. He destroyed them, and they have not recovered to this very day!

“Your children didn’t see how the Lord cared for you in the wilderness until you arrived here. They didn’t see what he did to Dathan and Abiram (the sons of Eliab, a descendant of Reuben) when the earth opened its mouth in the Israelite camp and swallowed them, along with their households and tents and every living thing that belonged to them. But you have seen the Lord perform all these mighty deeds with your own eyes!

I suppose part of the population may have seen these things as children, but God’s sentence of 40 years wandering plus multiple killing sprees killed off most of the population that would have seen all these things.

Rather, the land you will soon take over is a land of hills and valleys with plenty of rain

Sadly, extensive droughts are a problem for modern Israel. I know that the climate has changed in that region over the times spanned by human civilization. I wonder if it was significantly different in the time of the ancient Israelites.

Your pattern of worship will change. Today all of you are doing as you please, because you have not yet arrived at the place of rest, … When he gives you rest from all your enemies and you’re living safely in the land, you must bring everything I command you … to the designated place of worship, the place the Lord your God chooses for his name to be honored. … Be careful not to sacrifice your burnt offerings just anywhere you like. You may do so only at the place the Lord will choose within one of your tribal territories. There you must offer your burnt offerings and do everything I command you.

This passage confuses me. Didn’t we read extensive passages in Exodus about the building of the Tabernacle? Wasn’t that supposed to be the place all the sacrifices were performed? That sure does not sound like sacrificing burnt offerings “anywhere you like”. I seem to even remember some passages to the effect that sacrifices could only be made by the priests at the altar, although I cannot remember them now.

New Testament

Jesus calms a storm. Jesus heals the man filled with many demons and sends them into a herd of pigs.

Psalms and Proverbs

Nothing of note in today’s psalm. However, we do learn from Proverbs:

A worthy wife is a crown for her husband,
but a disgraceful woman is like cancer in his bones.

I somehow feel that “cancer” must be a pretty liberal translation of whatever the original Hebrew said. Seeing as, you know, its designation as such is fairly modern.

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Old Testament

Today in short: “God tells the Israelites that they suck, but everyone else sucks more.”

it is because of the wickedness of the other nations that he [God] is pushing them out of your way. It is not because you are so good or have such integrity that you are about to occupy their land. The Lord your God will drive these nations out ahead of you only because of their wickedness, and to fulfille the oath he swore to your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You must recognize that the Lord your God is not giving you this good land because you are good, for you are not — you are a stubborn people.

Moses recaps the golden calf incident to illustrate the stubbornness of the Israelites. He makes it clear that the Israelites forced him to endure enourmous hardships and trouble.

After telling the Israelites how much trouble they are, Moses beseaches them to change their ways.

And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you? He requires only that you fear the Lord your God, and live in a way that pleases him, and love him and serve him with all your heart and soul. And you must always obey the Lord’s commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good.

Obeying a yet unspecified set of commands and decrees seems a lot to sweep under the word “only”. However, maybe this is meant to be read as two parts. First, God requires the Israelites to love him and serve him and live lives that please him. Separately, God gives the Israelites the decrees for their own good. Only the first set are general requirements from God. The second set are contextually generated requirements.

One of the interesting things about Deuteronomy ?:12-22 is that it is the first bit of Old Testament we have read in awhile that really fits what seems to be the contemporary Christian view of God. God is described thusly,

He is the great God, the mighty and awesome God, who shows no partiality and cannot be bribed. He ensures that orphans and widows receive justice. He shows love to foreigners living among you and gives them food and clothing.

That said, I am hard pressed to see how a God who has a chosen people shows no partiality.

New Testament

The parable of the farmer scattering seed! You knew we had to get here again sometime. We saw this parable in both Matthew and Mark. Jesus tells the same story, but his explanation differs in a small but, for me, vital way.

To review: a farmer throws seed on the ground. Birds eat some, some sprout and whither, thorns choke and crowd others, and some grow and thrive. Jesus reveals the meaning of this parable: The seeds taken by birds represent people who are kept from God’s word by the devil. The seeds that whither up represent those who believe for awhile and then fall out of belief. The plants that were choked to death represent the people whose reception of God’s word is pushed out by the world, but here is where the difference comes in. In Mark we read (Matthew is nearly identical):

The seed that fell among the thorns represents others who hear God’s word, but all too quickly the message is crowded out by the worries of this life, the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things, so no fruit is produced.

But in Luke we read

The seeds that fell among the thorns represent those who hear the message, but all too quickly the message is crowded out by the cares and riches and pleasures of this life. And so they never grow into maturity.

Saying “no fruit is produced” has pretty much the same meaning as “never grow into maturity”, but for some reason, the second phrasing made me think about the passage differently. Unlike the first two types seed which die off, this type of seed does grow, but it never reaches the point of maturity. However, it does stay alive, so is, in some respects, successful. Applied to a person, it seems to me like this group of seeds describes people who complacently think that they are living the life called for by their faith, but they are not actually doing so. To not comment on modern issues, probably most Christians in the US today are represented by this third category of seed.

Today’s reading also talks about how you do not light lamps just to cover them up and so, similarly all that is secret will eventually be brought to life. It also contains the vingette about Jesus’ true mother and brothers: When Jesus’ mothers and brothers come to him, he declares that those who hear and accept God’s word are his real mother and brothers. I still cannot read that story without thinking that it is concealing some deep family tensions.

Psalms and Proverbs

When I predicted yesterday what today’s reading from the Psalms would be like, I predicted that today’s completion of yesterday’s psalm would describe how God eventually did save the psalmist from the hardships he suffered. I was wrong in detail, right in general gist. Instead, what today’s reading contains is the psalmists declaration of how he will praise God once God does rescue the psalmist.

The first proverb today is almost tautological if you start from the position that God is good

The Lord approves of those who are good,
but he condemns those who plan wickedness.

I have stopped adding pictures to posts because they make the posts take an extra ~10 minutes to write. Do people miss them? Prefer having them gone? I know that I often found them entertaining, and they helped to break up the wall of text, but I do not know if other people appreciate them enough to make the effort worthwhile. (And, since I haven’t included any pictures in awhile, I have included a random one in this post. =)

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Old Testament

Today’s reading seems to have these main points.

• The Israelites have a duty to destroy their enemies because they are God’s holy people.

For you are a holy people, who belong to the Lord your God. Of all the people on earth, the Lord your God has chosen you to be his own special treasure.

The Lord did not set his heart on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other nations, for you were the smallest of all nations! Rather, it was simply that the Lord loves you, and he was keeping the oath he had sworn to your ancestors.

• The Israelites should completely destroy their enemies. Now, while total destruction may have been a rational strategy for the ancient Israelites given the world at that time, it is not an attitude that I can accept in a being worthy of being called God.

When the Lord your God hands these nations over to you and you conquer them, you must completely destroy them. Make no treaties with them and show them no mercy.

• God will bless the Israelites if he obeys them and curse them if they do not. On the one hand, it is reasonable for God to demand something (obedience) in return for what he is giving (prosperity). On the other hand, it provides a useful out for the good and bad that inevitably happens in any society.

Be careful to obey all the commands I am giving you today. Then you will live and multiply, and you will enter and occupy the land the Lord swore to give your ancestors. …

… But I assure you of this: If you ever forget the Lord your God and follow other gods, worshiping and bowing down to them, you will certainly be destroyed.

• Everything God did in the dessert, including nearly starving and dehydrating the Israelites and killing tens of thousands for them was just to prove their character. I did not realize that mass murder was an acceptable way to prove character.

Remember how the Lord your God led you through the wilderness for these forty years, humbling you and testing you to prove your character, and to find out whether or not you would obey his commands. Yes, he humbled you by letting you go hungry and then feeding you with manna, a food previously unknown to you and your ancestors. He did it to teach you that people do not live by bread alone; rather, we live by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

New Testament

As I noted when we started reading Luke, one of the themes of Luke is a concern with women. This shows up in today’s reading. We read the story of a woman who anointed Jesus with expensive perfume, and we read a list of women who followed Jesus.

With just that summary, you might think that this is the same as the story presented in Matthew and Mark where a woman pours a jar of expensive perfume over Jesus’ head shortly before his crucifixion. You may or may not be wrong. In detail, this version is quite different, but just similar enough to make it unclear as to whether or not one or two events were described (or one story grew in two ways).

• Who: In Matthew and Mark, the anointing was done by woman. In Luke, the woman is specifically an immoral woman.
• Where: In Matthew and Mark, this occurred at the home of Simon, a former leper. In Luke it occurred at the home of Simon, a Pharisee.
• What: In Matthew and Mark, the woman came in and poured the perfume over Jesus’ head. In Luke, it is Jesus’ feet that are anointed with a mixture of an expensive perfume and the woman’s tears. In both cases, the perfume was in a “beautiful alabaster jar”.
• The criticism: In Matthew and Mark, the disciples criticize the woman for wasting perfume that could have been sold for money to give to the poor. In Luke, Simon is aghast that Jesus is letting himself be touched by a sinner.
• The resolution: In Matthew and Mark, Jesus declares that the woman has done a beautiful thing and will be remembered. In Luke, Jesus forgives her sins.

Luke’s list of women travelling with Jesus shows that Luke, at least, viewed women as significantly powerful than we might think. Luke also notes that women were supporting Jesus out of their own resources. I do not have the background to know whether or not such activities were radical for the time. If they were, it does a lot to support the argument that Christianity treats women as equals (a view that, as we will see, Paul provides plenty of support against). If such a view was not radical for its time, it shows how much we had regressed before the 20th century women’s liberation movements.

Psalms and Proverbs

Today’s psalm appears to be another one in the pattern “God has abandoned me. Oh look! Now he’s saved me.” However, since it is broken over two days of readying, today we only get the part where the psalmist complains about how much he suffers for God and how God seems to have abandoned him. Presumably, tomorrow we will get the part where we hear about how God saved him and is wonderful and what not.

Today’s proverb actually seems like a good one,

To learn, you must love discipline;
it is stupid to hate correction.

Learning does requires discipline and being open to acknowledging you are wrong.

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Old Testament

About half of today’s reading repeats the 10 commandments. In the preface to that, Moses makes the following declaration,

The Lord our God made a covenant with us at Mount Sinai. The Lord did not make this covenant with our ancestors, but with all of us who are alive today.

This statement implies, or at least possibly implies, that the people receiving this speech are the same as the people who were at Mount Sinai. But this speech is being given after the forty years of wandering, so we know that the people Moses is addressing are nearly a completely different group than before. Maybe the Hebrew phrasing implies distant ancestors?

Getting back to the commandments, this list pretty much provides a straight repeat of the list in Exodus. Since then, I have learned that the use of the word “covet” in the passage below is probably completely wrong,

You must not covet your neighbor’s wife. You must not covet your neighbor’s house or land, male or female servant, ox or donkey, or anything else that belongs to your neighbor.

The word translated as covet probably means “take.” It seems to be a word for taking that had certain unrecoverable implications, but still, analyzing the Hebrew in context makes for a fairly strong case that it is an action that is being condemned, not thought crime.

The other half of today’s reading contains an admonition to the Israelites to remember the Lord’s commands and live a life faithful to his will. This passage summarizes as good as any,

Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children.

This part of the reading describes the land God is giving to the Israelites,

It is a land with large, prosperous cities that you did not build. The houses will be richly stocked with goods you did not produce. You will draw water from cisterns you did not dig, and you will eat from vineyards and olive trees you did not plant.

As I read that I could not help but think, “You know, that is not exactly something I would go around bragging about.”

New Testament

Today’s reading relates the story of Jesus raising a widow’s son from the dead. The Wikipedia article on Jesus’ miracles points out, that three of the gospels have stories of Jesus raising someone from the dead, but all of the stories are quite different. Given that descriptions of other miracles seem to overlap a lot, this makes me wonder if, by the time the gospels were written, there was a tradition of Jesus having the power to raise the dead, but there was no single story commonly associated with that miracle. Thus, each gospel author either drew from a different tradition or made up their own story to work in that aspect of Jesus’ power.

In other news, Jesus more or less tells John the Baptist,  “Yes, I am the the Messiah.”

Psalms and Proverbs

Today’s reading from the psalms has some rather icky imagery.

But God will smash the heads of his enemies,
crushing the skulls of those who love their guilty ways.

and

You, my people, will wash your feet in their blood,
and even your dogs will get their share!”

I feel like the first two of today’s proverbs must have lost something in translation.

Those who bring trouble on their families inherit the wind.
The fool will be a servant to the wise.

The seeds of good deeds become a tree of life;
a wise person wins friends.

Neither quite makes sense as a two line unit.

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Old Testament

Moses sets a high standard for the decrees and regulations that God gives the Israelites.

Obey them completely, and you will display your wisdom and intelligence among the surrounding nations. When they hear all these decrees, they will exclaim, ‘How wise and prudent are the people of this great nation!’ For what great nation has a god as near to them as the Lord our God is near to us whenever we call on him? And what great nation has decrees and regulations as righteous and fair as this body of instructions that I am giving you today?

Therefore, as we read these laws and decrees, we should remember that they are supposed to seem wise and prudent to people outside the Israelite community, so we should feel free to judge them by that standard. The standards of surrounding nations are not exactly the standard of modern America, but we do know that these laws were expected to stand up to some external evaluation.

In today’s reading, Moses lays out what will happen to the Israelites if they do not keep their covenant.

If you break my covenant, you will quickly disappear from the land you are crossing the Jordan to occupy. You will live there only a short time; then you will be utterly destroyed. For the Lord will scatter you among the nations, where only a few of you will survive. There, in a foreign land, you will worship idols made from wood and stone—gods that neither see nor hear nor eat nor smell. But from there you will search again for the Lord your God. And if you search for him with all your heart and soul, you will find him.

The main thing I want to point out about this passage is the use of the phrase “heart and soul”. Looking at a concordance, we see that this passage actually uses the words לבב (levav) and נפש (nefesh) . As I discussed several days ago, the translation “heart and soul” is rather terrible. The true sense of this phrase is more like “everything intangible about yourself and everything tangible about yourself”. In particular, the passage makes no commitment to the abstract idea of a soul.

Today’s reading also emphasizes the point that the God of the Hebrews is the only God and that the Israelites are pretty special to be his chosen people. This is interesting since earlier books in the Torah were far from clear on this point. In fact, they sometimes pointed to the contrary by declaring that the God of the Israelites was more powerful than the Gods of the various people they interacted with.

The Lord is God both in heaven and on earth, and there is no other.

It is statements like these that provide the value of Deuteronomy. Although the events it describes are all review, the commentary helps clarify the theological position that is being staked out. In fact, it is such theological clarity, sometimes in contradiction of the theology implied by the earlier books, support the hypothesis that the source material for Deuteronomy was composed independently of the rest of the Torah.

New Testament

Today is full of lessons from Jesus, some good, some bad.

• Two people of equal inability cannot lead each other (blind leading the blind)
• Students are not greater than their teachers, but can become the equals of their teachers
• Don’t criticize others for flaws you also possess (speck in your friend’s eye, log in your own)
• Good people will produce good, evil people will produce evil. What you say comes from your heart (trees and their fruit)
• Without a strong foundation, you will falter in hard time (building your house on solid rock)

A good tree can’t produce bad fruit, and a bad tree can’t produce good fruit. A tree is identified by its fruit. Figs are never gathered from thornbushes, and grapes are not picked from bramble bushes. A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart. What you say flows from what is in your heart.

The implication of this passage is that individuals are good or they are evil. However, I believe that such an attitude is both wrong and harmful. People are not inherently good or evil. They are a mixture of tendencies. Furthermore, for the vast majority of tendencies, whether they are good or evil depends on context. It is the minority of tendencies that are always good or always bad. This attitude is harmful because it leads to unfair condemnation of those who are perceived to do something evil. This, in turn, directly feeds in to a lack of mercy toward the one who did wrong.

Today’s reading also contains the story of the Roman soldier who had faith that Jesus could heal his servant from a distance (although in Luke, the servant is described as a “highly valued slave”). This story also appeared in Matthew 8:5-13. Note, however, that in Matthew’s version, the Roman solider came to talk to Jesus. In Luke’s version, the soldier sends some respected Jewish elders to talk to Jesus.

Psalms and Proverbs

Today’s psalm contains some highly entertaining imagery. Poetic imagery, so we cannot take it literally, but entertaining all the same.

Sing loud praises to him who rides the clouds.

I wonder, is that ride like a horse, or ride like a wave?

Even those who lived among the sheepfolds found treasures—
doves with wings of silver
and feathers of gold.

I wonder if metallic doves were acceptable sacrifices?

Why do you look with envy, O rugged mountains,
at Mount Zion, where God has chosen to live,
where the Lord himself will live forever?

Surrounded by unnumbered thousands of chariots,
the Lord came from Mount Sinai into his sanctuary.
When you ascended to the heights,
you led a crowd of captives.

So God lives on a mountain with a bunch of prisoners?  Well, not the housing situation I would choose, but then, I’m not a deity.

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Old Testament

In today’s reading, we review, amongst other things, the victories of the Israelites over Sihon of Heshbon and Og of Bashan. In the process, we learn a few things we did not know before.

With respect to the attack against Sihon of Heshbon, first God says,

Look, I will hand over to you Sihon the Amorite, king of Heshbon, and I will give you his land.

Then Moses sends ambassadors,

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Old Testament

Today, we finish Numbers and start Deuteronomy. This is going to be a tough book to get through because I really have trouble typing Deuteronomy. ::sigh::

But before we get there, we need to finish up the last chapter of Numbers. The last chapter discusses women who inherit property. You may remember that the daughters of Zelophehad get to share in the inheritance of land because their father died before the Israelites reached the promised land (Numbers 27:1-11).

The heads of the clan they belong to went to Moses to let him know that this situation displeased them. See, if the women inherited the land and then married men from other tribes, the land would go to those tribes. This would cut into their land. A legitimate concern. So God tells Moses the solution: let women who inherit land marry anyone they want as long as that person is from their own tribe. Not a terrible solution, I suppose, but kind of an annoying one.

On to Deuteronomy! Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about it:

A large part of the book consists of three sermons delivered by Moses reviewing the previous forty years of wandering in the wilderness, and the future entering into the Promised Land. Its central element is a detailed law-code by which the Israelites are to live within the Promised Land.

In other words, recap! The recap serves the purpose of emphasizing the key themes of Israel’s covenant with God.

Like with the other books of the Torah, tradition considers Moses the author of Deuteronomy, but modern scholars date it several centuries after Moses is traditionally thought to have lived (although the content may very well be derived from traditions and writings from earlier).

In today’s Deuteronomy reading, we get a review of the time when God was going to send the Israelites into the promised land, but the scouts they sent brought back reports that made the people fearful. Because of their hesitation, God declared that none of the men of fighting age but Caleb and Joshua would enter the promised land. This threat causes the Israelites to reconsider their rebellion, and some of them try to enter the promised land. However, God is not with them, so the Amorites defeated those who entered their land.

While reading the recap, I thought of another way to interpret the basic facts. Let’s assume, for the moment, that the Israelites really did reach the promise land, attack it, and leave. What would be an alternative narrative? Maybe the Israelites tried to attack and lost. Because they knew they were not powerful enough to defeat the locals, they continued wandering for forty years until their strength exceeded that of their enemies (either through their increase or the enemies’ decline).

Now, my version is completely made up, but if it were true I could imagine that tradition would change the story around to make it more consistent with the idea that the Israelites were God’s chosen people. A lost battle is inconsistent with the idea that the Israelites were God’s chosen people unless the argument could be made that, for some reason, God did not want them to win at the time.

New Testament

More repeat stories in today’s reading. These stories all share the theme of showing how Jesus is anti-establishment.

• Jesus eats with tax collectors and other disreputable sorts.
• Jesus’ disciples do not fast even though John the Baptist’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees do.
• Jesus harvests and eats handfuls of grain on the Sabbath.
• Jesus heals on the Sabbath.

Psalms and Proverbs

Today’s psalm is a pleasant psalm of praise. I much prefer these to the psalms of constant whining.

Today’s proverbs teach that it is good to be generous. I agree!

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Old Testament

Today we finish up the travel log. Then God tells the Israelites (via Moses, as always),

When you cross the Jordan River into the land of Canaan, you must drive out all the people living there. You must destroy all their carved and molten images and demolish all their pagan shrines. Take possession of the land and settle in it, because I have given it to you to occupy.

Let’s assume, for the moment, that God exists and is not the moody, violent being that he has appeared to be so far. Even given that and even accepting that this God is the creator of all humanity, I do not think that he really has any right to tell the Israelites to drive people out of their homes and cities and to take possession of it. Having created self aware beings, even a creator God has certain responsibilities not to destroy or order the destruction of such beings, in my opinion.

We read a description of the boundaries of the land that God gives to the Israelites followed by a listing of the current tribal leaders and a description of the towns to be given to the Levites (since they do not get land of their own).

The reading ends with a description of cities of refuge. We first read about those way back in Exodus, and now we get a lot more detail. Cities of refuge are places where one can flee after accidentally killing someone else.

designate cities of refuge to which people can flee if they have killed someone accidentally. These cities will be places of protection from a dead person’s relatives who want to avenge the death. The slayer must not be put to death before being tried by the community.

After describing, by example, types of killings which constitute murder and types of killings which do not. If the community determines a death to be murder.

In such cases, the avenger [the victim’s nearest relative] must put the murderer to death when they meet.

I still think that a system where murders have to be killed by a family member of the person they murdered is kind of disturbing. I think it probably does produce a more realistic understanding of the death sentence for the community as a whole, but it seems rather bad for the avenger’s state of mind.

Obviously, in a system where murderers are killed, you want to be pretty sure the death was actually a murder.

All murderers must be put to death, but only if evidence is presented by more than one witness. No one may be put to death on the testimony of only one witness.

And why must murders be killed? Because God lives among the Israelites.

And no sacrifice except the execution of the murderer can purify the land from murder. You must not defile the land where you live, for I live there myself. I am the Lord, who lives among the people of Israel

That’s right. Murder is wrong not because people are inherently valuable or anything like that, but because God thinks murder makes the land unclean. Now, I know pretty much nothing about theories of morality beyond that they exist, but I am pretty certain they can do better than “murder defiles the land”.

If the community decides the death was accidental, the killer still faces punishment, but they also receive some protection.

The community must protect the slayer from the avenger and must escort the slayer back to live in the city of refuge to which he fled. There he must remain until the death of the high priest, who was anointed with the sacred oil.

If the slayer leaves the city, he forfeits that protection.

But if the slayer ever leaves the limits of the city of refuge, and the avenger finds him outside the city and kills him, it will not be considered murder. The slayer should have stayed inside the city of refuge until the death of the high priest.

So pretty much, accidental killers are sent to prison for some time dependent on the life span of the high priest.

New Testament

Repeat stories. Jesus heals a man with leprosy, and tells him to keep the deed quiet, but the man lets people know. Jesus heals a paralyzed man after shocking the crowds by telling the man that his sins have been forgiven.

The bit of new material we get today is Jesus calling Levi (Matthew) as a disciple.

Later, as Jesus left the town, he saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at his tax collector’s booth. “Follow me and be my disciple,” Jesus said to him. So Levi got up, left everything, and followed him.

Psalms and Proverbs

I like today’s psalm because it’s half about growing things, and I like growing things

You take care of the earth and water it,
making it rich and fertile.
The river of God has plenty of water;
it provides a bountiful harvest of grain,
for you have ordered it so.
You drench the plowed ground with rain,
melting the clods and leveling the ridges.
You soften the earth with showers
and bless its abundant crops.
You crown the year with a bountiful harvest;
even the hard pathways overflow with abundance.
The grasslands of the wilderness become a lush pasture,
and the hillsides blossom with joy.
The meadows are clothed with flocks of sheep,
and the valleys are carpeted with grain.
They all shout and sing for joy!