Month: July 2010

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Old Testament

Half way through! (Well, today or yesterday depending on how you round the 0.5.)

Today’s reading is problematic. Isaiah is a pretty important prophet, and he gives Hezekiah a message from the Lord saying that Hezekiah will die of his illness. As Isaiah leaves, he gets another message from God saying that Hezekiah will live (because of Hezekiah’s prayers prayed to God).

Now, either Isaiah lied the first time and God hadn’t spoken to him or he gave a false prophecy the first time (i.e., he misunderstood God)  or God lied to Isaiah to get Hezekiah to pray for healing or God and Isaiah colluded on the lying or God really did change his mind. None of these options is particularly appealing. I suppose the option which both retains God’s role as an omniscient timeless being (not that we have seen that claimed in the OT so far, but whatever) and maintains Isaiah’s reputation as a super awesome prophet is that they were colluding on the lying.

After Hezekiah recovers, he meets with some envoys from Babylon. Clearly, this is foreshadowing. Even if I did not know that Judah eventually falls to Babylon, the tone of the Biblical author, essentially “Gee golly, Hezekiah sure was naive to show all his riches to the envoys from Babylon”, is enough to let you know that nothing Good can come of this. Isaiah tells the king that Very Bad Things are going to happen, but Hezekiah is cool with it because they will not happen until after he is dead.

Hezekiah’s son becomes king after his death. The son, Manasseh, was only twelve when he became king. I wonder if there were older sons who were killed or otherwise removed. It seems kind of odd that Hezekiah did not have his first son until he was 42 (derived from the reading from two days ago which says that Hezekiah became king at age 25 and ruled for 29 years. 25 + 29 – 12 = 42.

Manasseh is an evil king and undoes all the good that his father did. He sets up shrines and prophets and idols. Because of these evils, God says,

I will bring such disaster on Jerusalem and Judah that the ears of those who hear about it will tingle with horror. I will judge Jerusalem by the same standard I used for Samaria and the same measure I used for the family of Ahab. I will wipe away the people of Jerusalem as one wipes a dish and turns it upside down. Then I will reject even the remnant of my own people who are left, and I will hand them over as plunder for their enemies. For they have done great evil in my sight and have angered me ever since their ancestors came out of Egypt.

It is only after this pronouncement that the Biblical author sees fit to mention that Manasseh was also killing people until

Jerusalem was filled from one end to the other with innocent blood.

I know I have a different point of view than the temperamental Yahweh, but I would think that should be considered worse than setting up shrines and whatnot.

After Manasseh, his son Amon rules and is also evil. Then Josiah becomes king, and he did what was right.

New Testament

Paul is back in Jerusalem. The leaders there warn him that some people might be looking to cause people trouble because,

the Jewish believers here in Jerusalem have been told that you are teaching all the Jews who live among the Gentiles to turn their backs on the laws of Moses. They’ve heard that you teach them not to circumcise their children or follow other Jewish customs.

Trouble is caused, even after Paul goes out of his way to show that he does respect the laws of Moses. The text implies that the troublemakers are being quite unreasonable.

However, let’s think about this for a moment in the context of our recent Old Testament readings. The theme of our current readings is that straying from God’s law, the law of Moses, brings death and destruction. Failing to follow the law and worshiping other Gods causes the destruction of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah and the near destruction of their people.

Now, here Paul comes along, and he is preaching some pretty risky things. Even if he is not saying that Jews should not follow the Mosaic law, he is certainly saying that the Gentiles are part of the covenant community despite not following those laws. It is also likely that he is telling the Jews that they do not have to follow the Mosaic law once they become believers even though they can. Plus, he is spreading the word that a man was God.

Now, given the way God has reacted to betrayal in the past, can you really blame the Jews for finding Paul threatening? As far as they can tell, he seems to be trying to encourage Jews to call the wrath of God down upon them again.

Now, I’m not saying that riots and violence are the right way to respond to such concerns, but the concerns that the Jews have are legitimate, and the Biblical author ought to have taken them more seriously.

Psalms and Proverbs

Nothing of particular note.

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Old Testament

Judah gets to experience the destructive tendencies of Assyria, but they do not fall as easily as Israel.  Today’s reading can be summarized as follows: King Sennacherib of Assyria invades Judah. King Sennacherib threatens Jerusalem. Hezekiah seeks help from God. God, through the prophet Isaiah (yes, that Isaiah), promises help and starts to deliver it (by randomly murdering 185,000 soldiers).

This statement of Sennacherib helps to illustrate the novelty of the idea of of worshiping one God in one  location:

But perhaps you will say to me, ‘We are trusting in the Lord our God!’ But isn’t he the one who was insulted by Hezekiah? Didn’t Hezekiah tear down his shrines and altars and make everyone in Judah and Jerusalem worship only at the altar here in Jerusalem?

Sennacherib, holding what I assume to be a fairly common attitude, implies that God would be insulted by having his alternate shrines and altars torn down. He thinks that God would want to be worshiped from anywhere people want to worship him

I am also amused by the specificity of the description of the Assyrian army’s camp:

The Assyrians took up a position beside the aqueduct that feeds water into the upper pool, near the road leading to the field where cloth is washed. 

New Testament

Does the Holy Spirit guide people in contradictory ways? Remember how in yesterday’s reading Paul said,

And now I am bound by the Spirit to go to Jerusalem. I don’t know what awaits me, except that the Holy Spirit tells me in city after city that jail and suffering lie ahead.

Today we read how in Tyre, the local believers

prophesied through the Holy Spirit that Paul should not go on to Jerusalem.

Notice the phrasing. It is not that these people knew by the Holy Spirit that Paul would suffer in Jerusalem and so they chose to persuade him not to go (although that happens too later in the reading). Rather, the phrasing implies that the message the believers were getting from the Holy Spirit was that Paul should not go to Jerusalem, contrary to the message he received.

I suppose that a Holy Spirit giving conflicting advice would explain much of the history of the church.

In any case, Paul is not dissuaded and continues on to Jerusalem.

Psalms and Proverbs

Today’s psalm is interesting for it’s sudden shift from generic cheerful praise to violence and vengeful thinking. Contrast this:

O Israel, rejoice in your Maker.
O people of Jerusalem, exult in your King.
Praise his name with dancing,
accompanied by tambourine and harp.

Let the praises of God be in their mouths,
and a sharp sword in their hands—
to execute vengeance on the nations
and punishment on the peoples,
to bind their kings with shackles
and their leaders with iron chains,
to execute the judgment written against them.
This is the glorious privilege of his faithful ones.

I like the phrasing of today’s proverb. Mmm, tasty dainty morsels.

Rumors are dainty morsels
that sink deep into one’s heart.

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Old Testament

Israel gets destroyed today. That surprised me. I knew it was coming, but we were just going along, one bad king after another, so to have it actually happen was a surprise. (Actually, it kind of reminds me of when my mother died. She had been sick so long that when she actually died, I was not quite expecting it even though I knew it would happen sometime.)

Israel was destroyed during the reign of King Hoshea of Israel. The Assyrian king, Shalmaneser (cool name!), besieged Samaria, conquered it, and exiled the people.  I remember reading somewhere that only the upper classes were exiled. Which just adds to my opinion that there was quite the disconnect between the religious, political, and military elite and the common people.

The author, of course, blames this downfall on the sins of Israel and its kings. He completely ignores the fact that Israel was a small weak country in between two powerful countries (Egypt and Assyria). In such a geographic and political situation, it was no wonder that Israel eventually fell.

According to the textbook I am currently reading for more background (Understanding The Bible by Stephen Harris), it was probably at this time that that the Torah started mixing together multiple narrative strands. Some of the people of Israel likely fled to Judah, and they would have brought their own oral and/or written traditions. The textual support for this hypothesis comes from the fact that one of the narrative strands has a primarily northern (i.e., Israel-centric) point of view while the other narrative strand has a primarily southern (i.e., Judah-centric) point of view.

After the Israelite ruling classes are exiled, the king of Assyria sends other people to live in the lands.

But since these foreign settlers did not worship the Lord when they first arrived, the Lord sent lions among them, which killed some of them.

I suppose this is a sign of the God of Israel becoming more universal. Before, he was the God of the Israelites only, and while he wanted to destroy everyone else who lived in the promised land, he generally did not demand that they worship him, only that the Israelites not worship their Gods. Now we have God demanding that others worship him, but his power, or at least his concern, is still limited to a small geographic area.

New Testament

Paul travels a bit more. During these travels, he brings a man back to life just by holding him. After that, he talks to some of the religious leaders and tells them that he he will be suffering in prison soon and not see them again. I find these anecdotes interesting because it seems like the author of Acts is walking a fine line of trying to make Paul seem as powerful (and therefore, as authoritative) as possible without making him bigger than Jesus. It is also interesting that, as far as I remember, Paul never mentioned any ability to do miraculous deeds in his own letters.

In any case, Paul shares his misgivings not to get sympathy but rather to encourage them to take his instruction to heart. He warns the leaders against false teachers and then entrusts them to God. Then he leaves.

Psalms and Proverbs

I like the structure of today’s psalm. The psalm is telling everyone and everything to praise God. It starts with the highest and most mighty things and moves on to smaller things. Last of all in this listing is humanity and its praise. The structure emphasizes that humanity is only a small part of the universe. And while I cannot get behind the call to “Praise the Lord!” I can certainly get behind this sweeping vision of all creation.

And the first of today’s proverbs certainly applies to me,

Fools’ words get them into constant quarrels;
they are asking for a beating.