bookmark_borderNov 1

Reference links:

Old Testament

We start the book of Ezekiel today, and it looks like we’ll be spending awhile with it (48 chapter, about 3 of which we cover today). Let’s see what Harris has for background:

A younger contemporary of Jeremiah, the priest-prophet Ezekiel was taken to Babylon during the first deportation of Judah’s ruling classes in 597 BCE. Although tightly structured, with the oracles arranged in generally chronological order, Ezekiel’s prophecies and mystical visions are filled with strange and grotesque images puzzling to modern readers. The first set of oracles describes the prophet’s call and conveys messages of judgment and doom on Judah and the Jerusalem Temple, from which Ezekiel sees Yahweh’s “glory” depart, abandoning the holy city to Babylonian invaders. Breaking with Mosaic principles that punished younger generations for their elders’ misdeeds, Ezekiel emphasizes individual responsibility. The second part records oracles of judgment against foreign nations such as Tyre and ends with news of Jerusalem’s fall. In turn, this provides a transition to the third section, oracles and visions of Israel rebirth and a future restoration of the Temple cult. 

The book of Ezekiel does a good job of setting its context right from the start:

On July 31 of my thirtieth year, while I was with the Judean exiles beside the Kebar River in Babylon, the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God. This happened during the fifth year of King Jehoiachin’s captivity. (The Lord gave this message to Ezekiel son of Buzi, a priest, beside the Kebar River in the land of the Babylonians, and he felt the hand of the Lord take hold of him.)

He has a vision where he sees weird multi-faced humanoids. There are also a bunch of spinning wheels covered in eyes. I am guessing there’s some symbolism here, but I’m not good at decoding such things.

Above them was a crystal surface. I can guess the meaning of that, at least. The world view of the ancients was that the world was encased in a crystal sphere and the heavens were outside of that (the sphere held back the primordial waters).

God appears as a man whose upper part looks like “gleaming amber, flickering like a fire” and below “like a burning flame, shining with splendor.” Certainly, not an old man with a white beard. He’s on a blue lapis lazuli throne with a glowing rainbow halo. This seems to be the only time the word “halo” appears in the New Living Translation.

After that, Ezekiel gets his mission: he shall be a prophet to rebellious nation of Israel. God lets Ezekiel know from the start that they will not listen.

Ezekiel, not surprisingly, will be delivering a message of sorrow. That is, based on precedent, what prophets of Israel do. Ezekiel receives the message by eating the scroll containing it, and the scroll is sweet like honey. One way to interpret this is that even sorrowful truths are sweet.

Then he snaps out of his vision and sits in wonder for several days.

New Testament

Today’s content: Jesus is better than Moses because he is God’s son. Jesus is in charge of God’s house and that house is built out of believers. People should not have evil hearts because that turns them away from God. The people Moses led out of Egypt turned out of God, and you believers don’t want to be like them, right?

Psalms and Proverbs

Evil hateful people hide their hate, but their wrong doing will eventually be exposed.

bookmark_borderOur pattern language

For once, I (Erika) am writing a post.

A Pattern Language provides the classic reference for defining the qualities that make buildings work and houses homey. My own sense of what I want from a home developed largely from reading and rereading this book. The book is massive; it contains 253 patterns which can be used to define everything from an entire geographic region to a corner of a room. Such complexity seems overwhelming, but fortunately the authors provide a way to get started. In the words of the book:

[E]ach part of the environment is given character by the collection of patterns which we choose to build into it. The character of what you build, will be given to it by the language of patterns you use, to generate it.

For this reason, of course, the ask of choosing a language for your project is fundamental. The pattern language we have given here contains 253 patterns. You can therefore use it to generate an almost unimaginably large number of possible different smaller languages, for all the different projects you may choose to do, simply by picking patterns from it.

To generate your own pattern language, A Pattern Language, suggests the following steps:

  1. First, find the pattern which best describes the overall scope of your project. We chose pattern 76, “House for a small family”
  2. Turn to the starting pattern and read it. Add the patterns mentioned at the end and any other interesting patterns mentioned and add them to your list of candidate patterns.
  3. Repeat step two until all of the connected patterns have been read. 
  4. Remove any patterns you aren’t sure about. The list of patterns can easily get too long. We ended up pruning over 30 patterns from our initial list.
  5. Add your own materials. If there are things you want to include that aren’t captured by patterns in the book, add them.
  6. Change any patterns that you want so that they are appropriate for your situation and desires. Change the name of the pattern so that it captures your changes clearly. 

We have gone through all but the last two steps. In a future post, we will  talk more about the patterns that make up our personal pattern language.