Jeremiah 11-19: Brokenness

I feel really bad about getting so behind on these things.  It's just hard to blog about the prophets, like I said before.  I feel like I'm saying the same thing over and over.  I wonder if God felt that way when saying all this stuff to the prophets?

Chapter 11 is about how Israel has broken their covenant with God.  Covenant were an ancient oath ritual thing, very formal contracts that had specific terms and often very harsh consequences for breaking the covenant.  Israel has broken their terms of covenant, which were to remain faithful to God and worship Him only, basically. Not only this, but the people actually refuse to listen to God or turn back to Him. They don't want to be part of the God of Abraham's people anymore.  For this reason, God tells Jeremiah that he is not even supposed to grieve for the destruction that will come on Israel and Judah.  That would be very hard for me to obey.

Meanwhile, some people think it would be way more fun if Jeremiah weren't around, so there are some plots against his life, but God is protecting him from anything serious so far.

In chapter 12, we see again God's disgust with his chosen people who have rejected Him.  He says He is actually going to abandon them and forsake them - whoa, what?  The Bible actually says that?  Yes, it actually does.  God uses some very harsh language in the prophets, because He is flipping fed up with chasing after people who want nothing to do with Him.  So He's going to uproot them, cut them off, make their land desolate.

But . . .


The story doesn't end there.  After God does all this, He is going to bring them back, restore them, and bless them.  And when He does, then they will follow Him whole-heartedly.  I don't know if this is a reference to the coming of Christ, or to the eventual and ultimate restoration of Israel in the Day of the Lord.  Because Messiah has come, and the people of Israel didn't recognize or accept Him.

I think that we know more about Jeremiah as a person than we do about any other prophet who wrote a book.  Jeremiah (the book) is full of prayers of Jeremiah (the person), either laments over the state of his nation, or pleas with God to remember him and deliver him from his enemies, etc.  We find out about some of the plots against him, and we also find out that God didn't let him get married or have kids.  Bummer.  There are some people in the world that it seems God calls to live a really hard life.  Jeremiah did not have a fun life. Jeremiah did not have a lot of friends.  His only delight was in God.  He says in chapter 15, "Your words were found and I ate them, And Your words became for me a joy and the delight of my heart, For I have been called by Your name."  If we had no joy in life, would we be able to find delight in God?  That is something I wonder about myself.  Do I give praise to God because He makes my life fun and happy and successful, or because He is goodness and joy itself?

God uses some harsh words about Israel and Judah, like I said before.  He says that even if Moses and Samuel (the epitome of obedience to God, right?) were to plead with Him on behalf of the Jews, God would not listen or have compassion on them.  And this is saying a lot because Moses did plead with God on behalf of Israel more than once, and in each of those cases God relented from the punishment He was about to give. So Judah is in a pretty bad state right now if not even Moses can change His mind.


But . . .


There is something that could change God's mind, and that something is repentance.  He says, "If you return, then I will restore you."  No matter how far gone you are - even if you've become so corrupt that Moses himself could't argue a case for you - God will forgive you in a heartbeat if you simply turn away from a life of rebellion and submit to Him.  It's that simple.  Why don't we do that more often?

Chapter 17 has a famous verse about the heart: "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; Who can know it?"  My translation, the NASB, says that the heart is "desperately sick."  I think this is a better word image than what the KJV gives for the condition of our hearts.  We have a disease; it is called sin.  No matter what we do, we cannot rid ourselves of this inner illness, and what's worse, it is terminal.  Our sin is going to kill us.

But . . .


There is a cure.  There is one Doctor who knows how to treat this disease, a miracle surgeon who can take out all the nasty cancerous blackness and replace it with something good.  "Heal me, O LORD, and I will be healed; Save me and I will be saved," says Jeremiah.  There is only one way not to die of sin, and that is to die to sin by subjecting ourselves to the rule of God in our lives.  What does that look like?  Well, it kind of looks like clay being shaped into a pot, and God gives Jeremiah a visual of this by sending him down to a potter's house.  The potter is making a pot, and as sometimes happens in pottery, the thing just isn't turning out .  If you've ever tried your hand at pottery, you've experienced this - sometimes for whatever reason, the shape becomes such that you really can't fix it no matter what you do.  So you have to smash the clay back into a ball and star over.  This is what happens with the potter Jeremiah watches - the pot is ruined, so the potter starts over with the clay and makes something new, and that works.  This is what God is going to do to Israel.  They've become spoiled; they can't be repaired or patched or reshaped anymore because it's just patches on patches and sticking your finger in a dike, so to speak.  It's not going to work.  So God has to bring Israel down to the lowest possible point - He has to break her - in order to remake her into something new.

That is the gospel.  Sin has screwed us up beyond the point of repair; you can't slap a bandaid on an amputee and expect it to help.  If we are ever to become whole, we actually first have to become broken.  It's like when you break a bone, and it heals improperly, so then you go to the doctor to get it set and he has to re-break the bone in order to put it where it belongs.  It's a horrible, painful procedure, but it is the only treatment.  Brokenness is the only means to our cure.  That is what God is doing with Israel and Judah here - He's not just saying all this stuff about forsaking and destroying because He's done with them and is going to leave them in a pile of bones somewhere.  All this doom and gloom stuff has a purpose, and the purpose is to break Israel and Judah of their pride so they will return to following God.  And it actually worked; after the exile to Babylon, Israel remained monotheistic.  It was in Babylon that the Old Testament was compiled and copied.  To this day, the Jews have a strong attachment to their religion and the God of their fathers.  Unfortunately, as a whole they missed God's biggest blessing to them, their long-awaited Messiah.

Finally, one more broken thing.  God has Jeremiah take a jar out in the open and break it to foretell that destruction is coming to Jerusalem.  Another nation will come in and conquer the city and the nation, and they will demolish Jerusalem.

What do we learn about this passage?  First of all, there is a punishment for turning your back on God.  God is serious when He lays down consequences; He really means it when He says bad things will happen to you. Think about that before hastily agreeing to follow Him - because He's going to ask a lot of you.

Secondly, though, we learn that God is merciful, and that in spite of all His anger and frustration with these crazy people, He is willing and even eager to forgive them; in fact, everything He is doing to punish Israel is for the purpose of restoration.

I wrote in my journal once that we are like broken pieces of glass, and God can take all those broken pieces and shape them into something new and beautiful.  It's not something we can do ourselves (we're the broken pieces, remember?) - it's something only God can do.  And the amazing thing is, no matter how broken you were when you started, the thing He will make you into will actually be better than what you started as.  And that's a pretty awesome thing.

Isaiah 32-39: More Prophecies and a History Lesson

Okay, so I'm behind again, but only a little.  The great thing about Isaiah is I can lump a lot of chapters together pretty easily because it's a lot of words about a few key ideas.

And the first key idea in this passage is what the heading in my Bible calls "The Glorious Future."  As before, this is describing a time in the future when there will be a righteous king and basically the world will be the way it should be - people will listen to the truth, understand what's right, and cheaters really won't prosper, and that sort of thing.  But then he switches gears again and talks about trouble that is coming, and it seems to me that this time he gives a deadline: about one year from when he is speaking is when things are really going to go downhill and Jerusalem will be abandoned.  But then it says that the Spirit will be poured out on us, and everything will become good again.

So then Isaiah talks more about the judgment that's to come, and how basically the instruments of judgment will be judged themselves because they aren't righteous either.  And then he describes the God who is doing all this, how God is going to be exalted in all this, how He is the source of security, and how those who live according to His laws are the ones who will be able to stand the judgment because God will save them.

Then it talks about a more universal judgment (I think the last chapter was talking about Judah specifically) and how God is going to judge all the nations for their wickedness and the whole earth - the whole of creation - will be affected by it, even to the mountains and the sky.  I think this is describing the Day of the Lord - the final day of judgment - but Isaiah specifically mentions Edom in this particular chapter and says that it's going to be completely uninhabitable for men and that only wild animals will live there.

And once again, there's a full-circle effect when Isaiah talks again about a future time of peace and prosperity for Judah.  This has another favorite verse of mine, verse 4, which says: "Say to those with anxious heart, 'Take courage, fear not. Behold, your God will come with vengeance; The recompense of God will come, But He will save you.'"  There's a song based on this verse that we sang in church when I was little, and I really liked it.  In my Bible, whenever I read a line that I know from a song, I put a little music note mark next to it.  It's so neat to see where the songs I know from church originated.

Then there's a history lesson, and I think it's almost word-for-word from 2 Kings.  It's the story about Sennacherib invading Judah during the reign of Hezekiah, and how the army commander taunts the people, but they don't say anything back, and how Hezekiah prays and asks God to deliver them, and He does.  What I didn't mention last time was that Isaiah was involved in this story.  See, when Hezekiah hears what's happening, he sends for Isaiah and asks him to pray for the people who are left in Jerusalem.  Isaiah tells them not to be afraid of Sennacherib or of Rabshakeh (that's the name of the army commander, I think it's funny) because God will make them leave and Sennacherib will die in his own land.  That's basically all Isaiah says, and it happens just as he predicted.  We see Hezekiah's prayer again and God's response and the aftermath, how Sennacherib departed from Judah and was later killed by his own sons while worshiping a false god at home.  Kind of ironic, isn't it?  Sennacherib's commander bragged on and on about the powerlessness of all these other nations' gods and the might of Sennacherib.  Well, in the end, neither Sennacherib's own might nor his own god were able to save his life.

Then we have the story of Hezekiah's sickness again, and it's the same story again except for this time there's a poem that Hezekiah writes after his recovery about being sick and God healing him.  And finally, the story that makes me cringe, about the king of Babylon paying a courtesy visit to Hezekiah and Hezekiah showing him all the valuable stuff that the king of Babylon thinks would look great in his own house.  And of course, since we've already read Kings, we know exactly what's going to happen.  But in case we didn't, Isaiah tells us.

So what I think is cool about this passage is that after a bunch of prophecies about what's going to happen someday, we see a story about some of Isaiah's prophecies coming true.  So we know he's not just making all this up, and I think this story is to sort of silence the nay-sayers.

This was probably my shortest entry in a while, but I am saving the next passage for next time, because it's one of my favorites.

2 Kings 16-20: The Fall of Israel; Hezekiah

After Judah's stunning string of good kings, Jotham has a son named Ahaz, who is not just as bad as all the Israelite kings, but arguably even worse, because he practices human sacrifice with his son.  Now for me, the inference that I've gotten from my reading of the Bible so far is that sacrificing one's child is one of the most detestable and evil things that a person could do in God's eyes.  And I don't think there needs to be any explanation as to why.  Humanly, spiritually, socially, in just about every conceivable way, this is an evil act and you have to be really screwed up to do it, I think.  I mean, we're talking about taking your living breathing child whom you have raised from birth, and setting them on fire.  People like that deserve to have their fingernails and toenails pulled off one by one, then their fingers and toes chewed off one by one, and . . . well, you get the picture.

Then Aram and Israel combine forces and attack Ahaz in Jerusalem, and this is weird - he asks for help from Assyria.  I'm thinking this was a bad move, but he didn't know what Assyria was going to become.  Oh, and also, he sends more of the treasures in the temple to Assyria.  I'm surprised there's anything left in that place, because it seems like at least every two or three generations it's getting cleaned out for some kind of tribute.  You'd think it would be drained by now.


Thank goodness, Ahaz dies shortly after this story, and his son Hezekiah becomes king.  More about him later.

Meanwhile, Israel's next king is named Hoshea.  If that name looks kind of familiar to you, I think it must be a variant of Hosea.  I wonder if it is also a variant of Joshua or Yeshua (the Hebrew name of Jesus).  I don't need to mention that he's evil, but in his reign the king of Assyria rises up against him, so Israel pays tribute to him, but then Hoshea conspires against Assyria with the king of Egypt somehow and stops paying tribute, so the king of Assyria throws him in prison.  Then they invade Israel, besiege Samaria for three years, eventually capture it, and carry the people into exile.  And that is the end of the nation of Israel.

In another rare moment, the author of this book launches into a commentary here and talks about why Israel fell, apparently because he wanted us to learn a moral lesson from this story - that's what ancient history books were all designed to do, by the way.  He writes that the exile happened not because Israel's kings weren't strong enough leaders or made bad political moves, but because the people sinned and turned their backs on God and trusted in other gods.  These are the main things that Israel did wrong, according to this passage here: 1) they worshiped other gods, built idols, etc., 2) they evil things that provoked God, 3) they did not listen to the prophets' warnings, 4) they followed the example of the nations around them, 5) they practiced human sacrifice, divination, and sorcery, 6) they led Judah into sin by example.

What happens next is that the king of Assyria brings foreigners into the land of Israel after he's taken a bunch of people out and into exile.  I think the idea was to mix the cultures by intermarriage, thus diminishing a sense of nationality, thus lessening the risk of a future uprising.  And the plan worked: the ten tribes of Israel are no longer distinguishable today, although a few of their mixed-blood descendants remain in the land, even to this day.  They are called Samaritans, and we will not hear about them again for a very long time.

Anyway, when these transplant people come in, they make up their own gods and sort of add the true God into the mix, into the pantheon as it were.  God did not appreciate this.  He doesn't want to be one of many revered objects in our lives.  You can't put him next to anything; I think it has to be just him and nothing else beside him or above him.

Back to Hezekiah.  Hezekiah, I will let you know, is my favorite king.  The first thing it says about what he did as king is that he broke down the high places!  He is the only one out of all the good kings to have done this!  He broke all the idols that the people were worshiping, even the bronze snake that Moses made for the people in the wilderness, because they were worshiping that.  Note: sometimes we can take a really good thing, a God-given thing, and make an idol out of it.  In contemporary terms, these things might be going to church, or religious practices, or service, or even, to some extent, the Bible (because the Bible is not actually God, although it was written by him).  Anything that we put before God himself, no matter how good it is, must be broken down and removed until nothing stands between us and him.  That is a freaky thing to think about, because there are an awful lot of things in my life that I value very much.

Now, everybody talks about how great David and Solomon were, but get this: Hezekiah was better.  The Bible says so!  It says, "He trusted in the LORD, the God of Israel; so that after him there was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor among those who were before him.  For he clung to the LORD; he did not depart from following Him, but kept His commandments, which the LORD had commanded Moses."

Reread that phrase up there, "He clung to the LORD."  That brings such a powerful image to my mind.  It's one thing to keep something next to you, another to hold onto it; to cling to something is another matter entirely.  Here is how one dictionary defines that word:

1. To hold fast or adhere to something, as by grasping, sticking, embracing, or entwining: clung to the rope to keep from falling; fabrics that cling to the body.
2. To remain close; resist separation: We clung together in the storm.
3. To remain emotionally attached; hold on: clinging to outdated customs.

To me, the word "cling" conjures up the impression of a life-and-death situation.  Like clinging to a life preserver when you're lost at sea, or something like that.  It's not a casual action; it is . . . a desperate, committed action.  When you cling to something, there is no way you are going to let go, ever.

So Hezekiah is my favorite king.

It's during Hezekiah's reign that Assyria conquers Israel and carries everybody off into exile, and they go after Judah too.  In fact, it says Hezekiah rebels against the king, which I guess means he stopped paying the tribute, and that really ticks off the king.  He's already conquered Israel so he goes after Judah next.  Hezekiah gives him more stuff from the temple but that's not good enough.  The Assyrian army lays siege to Jerusalem, and the commander of the army comes out to taunt Judah and insult both Hezekiah and the God he so faithfully serves.  Luckily, Hezekiah's people keep their heads.  The soldiers ask the Assyrian dude to talk in Aramaic instead of Hebrew, because I guess the regular people didn't speak Aramaic that well and they didn't want them to hear.  And when the guy keeps threatening them and jeering and stuff, none of the people give him any kind of response, because Hezekiah had told them not to say a word.  To have that kind of self-command tells me that Hezekiah must have been held in very, very high esteem.  I think the people believed in him.  I hope they also believed in God.


But Hezekiah is not nearly as confident at this point.  He hears what's going on outside and tears his clothes and puts on sackcloth.

Okay, so I have to make a sidenote here about tearing clothes.  There have been a couple references to clothes so far - the clothes worn by the Israelites in the wilderness didn't wear out for 40 years, Samson bet his fiancee's friends so many changes of clothes for answering his riddle, and part of the gift Naaman offered Elisha was a change of clothes.  I get the impression that these people did not have a lot of changes of clothes, if any.  The king probably had a few more sets than the regular people, but still, it had to have been expensive.  Understanding that gives a very new meaning, to me, to the custom of tearing one's clothes when one was in mourning.  It was not comparable to me tearing up my clothes, because I have lots of clothes and I can replace them pretty quickly and easily.  It seems to me, this would be more like me smashing my computer.  Yipes.

But then a prophet comes and encourages Hezekiah.  You might know him; his name is Isaiah.  He says that God will take care of the army without even fighting, and Jerusalem will be okay.  Hezekiah prays for deliverance - and what's awesome is that he doesn't pray because he wants to save his skin, or preserve his kingly power, or even to save the lives of all his people, although I'm sure all those things were important to him.  What he asks is for all the kingdoms around the world to know that the LORD is God.  Hezekiah was a good king because he valued God's reputation above his own, when both were being threatened.  And he knew what Israel was about, I think, that it was supposed to be a light to the Gentiles, a revelation of the character of God.

I think the next thing that happens is cool.  God sends an answer to Hezekiah through Isaiah, and this is the answer that's given to the army commander.  It's basically God slapping Assyria in the face and saying, "everything that you think your bad self did, that was actually me, and I am going to kick you to kingdom come."  And then he does, because the angel of the LORD strikes 185,000 soldiers by night and kills them, so they go home.    Somebody needed to show that Sennacherib who was boss, and God was the perfect person for the job (because he is the boss).

Hezekiah is doing just awesome, so awesome that what happens next doesn't make sense.  He gets sick.  Just like Uzziah, the good king who got struck by leprosy, Hezekiah becomes mortally ill, and Isaiah even tells him he's going to die.  I feel so sorry for Hezekiah.  His response to this news is very short, so short I can quote it for you.  It says, "Then he turned his face to the wall and prayed to the LORD, saying, 'Remember now, O LORD, I beseech You, how I have walked before You in truth and with a whole heart and have done what is good in Your sight.' And Hezekiah wept bitterly."  That's all.

I don't know much about prayer, I have to admit.  Sometimes I feel like the more I pray, the better chance I have of God hearing and answering me.  And while I think there's certainly a biblical precedent for ceaseless prayer, sometimes all it takes is one sentence.  And Hezekiah didn't really even ask God to heal him.  He just asked God to remember him.  The image of this strong, wise, courageous king rolling over in his bed to face away from the prophet and just crying his eyes out, breaks my heart.  And I think it broke God's heart too, because Isaiah hadn't even gotten out of Hezekiah's house before God told him to turn around and tell Hezekiah that he was going to live for 15 more years, and moreover, God would totally deliver Jerusalem from Assyria.

I don't know why Hezekiah got sick, honestly.  God healed him pretty quickly after this incident, and it's not like Hezekiah was needing to be turned around or anything before he got sick.  Sometimes the things God does are inexplicable to me.  But I think what I learned from Hezekiah's story is that, while serving God may not prevent bad stuff from happening to you, when bad stuff does happen to you, it is good to find yourself on his side, because then he is on your side as well.

I love Hezekiah, but he does one stupid thing in his life (we're all entitled to something, I guess).  The king of Babylon sends him a get-well card and a care package, and once he's better, he comes over for a visit.  And Hezekiah is so hospitable to this king that he shows him all the valuable stuff in his whole entire kingdom.  Does the name "Babylon" ring a bell to you?  We'll be hearing from them again soon.  Now, Hezekiah must have trusted in God to protect Judah, and therefore thought there was no harm in showing Babylon exactly what they would get if they happened to conquer his nation.  But just because God is our protector, doesn't mean he gave us a license to be stupid.  I think God wants us still to make wise decisions, and Hezekiah's mistake will come back to haunt Judah - not in Hezekiah's own lifetime, thankfully, but sooner than you think.

2 Kings 4-6: There Can Be Miracles When You Obey

It's time for more stories about Elisha! One day Elisha meets a widow who is broke, and about to lose her sons to slavery, so Elisha makes her fill up a bunch of pots with oil, and all she has is a tiny little jar, but it fills every pot and jar and jug that she owns or could borrow from her neighbors, so she can pay off her debts and keep her sons. Now, what I find interesting is that when this woman came to Elisha, he didn't make a sack of gold drop from heaven, or the creditor drop dead. He made her do something. And the miracle only happened because she did what she was told. Sometimes when we look for miracles, I think we assume a miracle happens when we sit back and do nothing, when in reality, God is often calling us to do something that he will use in a miraculous way.


Now we meet another woman, and Elisha's always passing through her town of Shunem, so she invites him to dinner whenever he comes through, and then she convinces her husband to prepare a guest room for him so he'll have a place to stay. Elisha is so grateful that he asks her what he can give her as a thank-you, but she says she is perfectly fine. Elisha asks his servant what he should do, and his servant, Gehazi, points out that her husband is old and they don't have any kids. So Elisha tells her she'll have a son, and she does. Then when the son gets older, he gets sick and dies. She runs for Elisha and tells him what happened. First Elisha sends Gehazi off with his staff to see if that will cure the kid, while he follows the woman back. Gehazi is unable to resurrect the child with Elisha's staff, so when Elisha gets there, he goes into the room and prays and lies right on top of the kid, then stands up and walks around, then repeats, and the kid sneezes seven times and is fine. Talk about a funny resurrection story! Maybe he had a posthumous allergic reaction to Elisha's beard.


Next there's a famine, and some people make a stew, but it's poisonous. Elisha happens to be passing by and asks for meal, and he throws that into the stew and tells the people to eat it. Now, I don't know much about cooking, and I'm guessing these people didn't either since they made something poisonous, but I don't think that adding more ingredients typically cancels out a poisonous one, and I'm pretty sure the people knew that. So this was a very counter-intuitive move, and probably took a lot of faith in Elisha to obey. I mean, what if he was wrong? But they ate it, and sure enough, it was fine. Once again, in this case, obedience was required for a miracle to take place.


Another famous story happens in chapter 5. Remember that country Aram, that Israel's been fighting for the last several chapters? Well, there's a guy in the Aramean army who has leprosy, named Naaman. His wife has a little girl slave who's an Israelite, a captive from a raid. Now first of all, the fact that the Bible calls her a "little girl" tells me that she really is a little girl. Girls were women around 13 (and boys were men at the same age). Anyway, this little girl is so beautiful to me. She's been taken away from her mommy and daddy to be a slave to some pagan woman and her husband in a foreign land, and her master has a disease which, in her homeland, people got banished for, and yet she has compassion on him. Is that amazing or what? I love this little girl. She says she wishes that Naaman could be with the prophet in Israel (Elisha) because he could be healed. And Naaman, far from simply patting the girl on the head and saying "isn't that nice," actually goes to the king of Aram and tells him about it.


Now remember, Israel and Aram have been at war for the last several chapters, spanning a few generations at least. Yet for some reason the king says Naaman should go find this prophet guy – not only that, he volunteers to write a letter himself to the king of Israel, who, remember, is his enemy.

Now, the king of Israel isn't quite as cucumber-cool as the king of Aram. He sort of freaks out when he reads the letter because he thinks the king of Aram is demanding that he heal Naaman, or something like that I guess. He thinks it's another incitement to war. But Elisha hears about it – seems like word traveled fast in Israel, even without the Internet – and he sends a message to the king to invite Naaman over.


Anyway, you know the story. Naaman comes and Elisha sends a messenger to tell him to wash in the Jordan River seven times. Apparently the Jordan is really muddy and gross. Naaman gets angry because he wanted to see the real prophet and get a magic show. But one of his servants, who seems to be more sensible than Naaman, points out that if the prophet had asked Naaman to do something really hard, Naaman would have done it. So why can't he do something retardedly easy? So he does, and he gets healed! And a third time, the miracle was a result of obedience. And from what I can tell, Naaman wasn't 1/7 healed after his first dip, then 2/7, and so forth. He had to completely finish, and then he was completely healed – more than that, his skin became baby smooth! Seriously, it says his skin became like the "flesh of a little child."


Okay, so this is my favorite part. Naaman offers to give Elisha a present, but Elisha doesn't want anything. Naaman asks for some dirt, I guess to make an altar? Because from now on he is only going to sacrifice to the LORD and not to the pagan gods of Aram. Can you believe it?! Naaman didn't come here to be converted or to encounter God; he just wanted to get rid of his leprosy and go on with his life. But having been healed, Naaman has also been washed on the inside. He even goes on to explain that he helps the king into their temple to worship and he has to bow down for the king to lean on him, so he asks for God's pardon when that happens. I just can't believe the change in Naaman. He was angry before that Elisha didn't come out himself to see him and wave his hands and pull birds out of his hat. Now he seems really humble and grateful. I can see why he was well respected in Aram though; he's a dedicated guy.


Anyway, remember how I said Elisha doesn't want anything? Well, his servant Gehazi does. He goes out behind Elisha's back and asks for the gifts that Naaman had offered, lying and saying they're for somebody else (the sons of the prophets again, to be exact). Naaman gives him twice what he had offered to Elisha (also a very generous guy), and Gehazi takes it. But Elisha knows he took it, so he fires him, and more than that, he gives him Naaman's leprosy. Greed doesn't pay.


Then there's a short weird story about the sons of the prophets. They are building a new neighborhood, and while they're cutting down trees, somebody's axe head flies off the handle and sinks into the water, and he freaks out because it was borrowed. Have you ever lost something that you borrowed from somebody else? It is the worst feeling in the world. Especially when it was something important or valuable. But Elisha is a really nice guy and he makes the axe head float up to the top of the water so the guy can get it back. I wish that would happen to me when I lost something.

Okay, so now we go back to the Arameans. The king of Aram – Naaman's boss, the guy who sent him to Elisha – is at war with Israel already again. Israel is winning so badly that the king things there's a traitor among his servants. But his servants are like dude, that prophet in Israel, he can hear the things that you whisper in your bedroom and tell them to the king of Israel. Remember when Elisha asked for a double portion of Elijah's spirit? I think this story confirms that he's got it. The king tries to capture Aram, but he can't because Elisha asks God to let them see all the angelic warriors who are surrounding Samaria, and then he makes them go blind and leads them right into the middle of the city so they can get captured. But he doesn't let the Israelites kill them. On the contrary, he feeds them and sends them home, and they never come back – at least, not the "marauding bands" of the Arameans. 


Once again, I'm going to stop early because this is just going to be too long. I think I've made the main point of my post clear: miracles are not just the result of believing something good can happen. Sometimes they are the result of doing what God tells you to do. Sometimes they require doing things that are illogical, like the woman with only enough food for her and her son, or downright stupid, like washing in a river that's dirtier than you are. I think the point is, if God asks you to do something, you should do it, because you never know what will happen. Sometimes God does miracles when we don't do anything, like the Shunamite woman who got a son just because she was nice to Elisha. Contrary to the popular belief that "there can be miracles when you believe," I think that there can be miracles regardless of whether you believe or not, because if God wants to do a miracle, I think he's just going to. However, it sure does seem to help if you believe, because belief leads to obedience, and God blesses obedience.


I think we have also learned that it's best not to borrow or lend something valuable to another person, unless you have a prophet handy to recover it when it gets lost.

Numbers 21-25: Divide and Conquer

There's a lot of stuff in these five chapters so I'm going to try to say as much as I can in as few words as I can.  First, very quick summary.

• Chapter 21: we see the Hebrews conquer their first city, Arad.  The people get sick of walking around Edom (big country I guess) so they complain.  God sends fiery snakes that bite the people, and then as a cure Moses has to make a statue of the snake that the people look at and then they don't die.  Then we have two more military victories against the Amorites and Bashan.
• Chapter 22: the king of Moab gets scared of Israel, so he sends for a prophet named Balaam to come put a curse on Israel so that he can beat them.  On his way there, God puts an angel in Balaam's path that his donkey sees, but he doesn't see it.  The donkey freaks out and Balaam doesn't know so he beats the donkey until suddenly it starts talking to him.  After a heartfelt conversation with said donkey, Balaam decides that he'll tell the king whatever God says rather than whatever the king wants to hear.
• Chapters 23-24: much to the Moabite king's dismay, all Balaam can do is bless Israel - three times.  The king gets mad and fires him, and he goes home.
• Once the Israelites start moving in on the Canaanite territory, they begin to adopt Canaanite religion.  God gets really ticked off and there's a big meeting where Moses tells the people to kill the people who are not worshiping God.  Then some guy crashes the meeting by walking through the tent with a Canaanite girl, on their way to, um, talk . . . and a guy named Phinehas (son of Eleazar, grandson of Aaron) kills them.  Then God says nobody else has to die, and also there was a plague on the people, but it stops now because of Phinehas.

 So here are my thoughts.  First of all, the conquest of Canaan doesn't really start out like much of a conquest.  In fact, with Arad, it's their king who decides to pre-emptively strike on them as they're coming through.  Then with the Amorites, the Israelites send the same message to them that they sent to Edom: please let us pass through, we won't touch anything, we'll stay on the highway, we won't even stop for a drink break.  The king says no way and goes out to war against them.  And even after they were defeated, the king of Bashan decided to go attack the Israelites too.  So far, they haven't even been the ones making the first move, because this part of the land is not the Promised Land.  They're just trying to get through it to the other side.

Secondly, I love the story of Balaam.  I just think it would be so funny to have your donkey all of a sudden start talking to you - well, maybe not funny at the time, but it's funny to read because Balaam talks back to his donkey!  Now, I don't know if the text leaves out some details, like Balaam freaking out at his donkey talking to him, or if maybe this was something that he had experienced before, but it just makes me laugh to read that the donkey says to Balaamm, "What did I do to make you hit me?" and Balaam says right back "You're making me look stupid, that's what!" and she (the donkey is specifically a girl) says "Come on man, don't you trust me?  Have I ever freaked out like this before?" and he says "no," and then God lets him see the angel standing in the way.  And to top it off, God says to him, "why were you hitting the donkey?  Dude, if she hadn't tried to turn the other way when she saw me, I would have killed you and not her."

Anyway, I do find it interesting that Balaam, who is not an Israelite, seems to know the true God.  He even refers to Him as "the LORD [YHWH] my God."  God speaks to Balaam and Balaam prophesies accurately - that is, he says exactly what God tells him to say.  Now the third time he speaks, it almost seems like he's about to speak presumptuously, because it says that Balaam sees that it pleases the LORD to bless Israel, so the third time he doesn't go consult the LORD before speaking, as he did the first two times.  So I am not sure if that was the right thing to do.  But then it says that the Spirit of God came on him when he spoke, so I think his prophesy there was still real.  Go figure.

Next, the Phinehas thing.  So God has made it clear to the Israelites (see Exodus 20) that they are not supposed to worship any other gods, and that is exactly what they're doing for the first time since the golden calf.  This is very serious - again, Israel was not supposed to be a model government, but an example to the world (and to future generations like us) of how to obtain a relationship with the one true God.  Israel can't offer any kind of hope, any kind of message, to other nations if it is just like them.  So anyway, while Moses is discussing this with the people, this couple walks by, and the next thing we see is Phinehas ramming a spear through them.  Now, I always thought this was really harsh until my youth pastor asked this question:  how do you kill two people with one spear at the same time?  Answer: this couple is having sex right at this moment.  They've just walked right past all these guys talking about the severity of Israel's sin against God - everybody sees them - and they apparently have the audacity to go do this in apparently the middle of the day, not even attempting to hide it.  That is outright rebellion, the kind of sin described earlier in chapter 15 where we learned about unintentional sins versus sins of defiance.  And even though I wish these two guys didn't die, it actually kept a bunch more people from dying.

I want to talk about snakes last, so let's back up.  Now, these "snakes" may have been any of the various poisonous reptiles that inhabited these parts (or something supernatural); if so, we haven't heard a word about them until now, which means God was probably protecting the camp from them, and now He has obviously removed that protection.  Once again, this was a punishment for whining.  Now, you may wonder what is so bad about the gripe fest.  I mean, it wasn't Israel's fault that they had to go around Edom; and I'm sure it wasn't pleasant to be always on the move.  That's totally understandable to me.  But what's not so cool is when the people say this: "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?  For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this miserable food."  That tells me that one, they have totally forgotten their distress in Egypt and how desperate they were to get out; two, they are totally ungrateful for all the miraculous ways God has provided for them; three, they are not acknowledging their own responsibility for being in the wilderness right now in the first place - they were the ones who decided they couldn't get into the Promised Land and would rather die in the wilderness than try - if they had just had faith in the first place, they would've been there by now instead of traveling around in a circle; and four, they would rather be slaves, with their sons all being murdered and being forced to work all day, in a land that they can never own, than trust that God was taking them somewhere.  Ouch.

So about the bronze snake that Moses makes.  That seems really weird, almost like he's making an idol - and in fact later on, we see that some of the Israelites start worshiping the snake statue.  But the symbolism and meaning behind this odd method of healing is really profound, and I don't have time to do it justice - I'll direct you to the third paragraph of this commentary for a really good and thorough explanation.  But basically, this serpent was a metaphor for Christ.  Jesus Himself tells us in John 3 that "Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life" (vs. 14-15).  The image Moses made was of a serpent, in the likeness of the thing that was destroying the people, because Jesus came to earth in the likeness of sinful man.  Anybody who looked at the snake would live and not die from the bites, just as anybody who turns to Jesus receives forgiveness of sins and, rather than death, everlasting life.  I think this is really awesome.

Leviticus 9-15: Clean and Unclean

Well, it's been a while, but I'm going to do a big chunk (maybe two chunks) today so I can keep moving.

This part is all about what makes something ceremonially unclean, and what you're supposed to do when something (or, yes, someone) becomes unclean. It's pretty weird, but sort of neat. Some thoughts:

Chapter 9
(This is about Aaron offering sacrifices before God, after all the preceding chapters about how to do so)

• I wonder sometimes why Aaron was chosen to be the high priest instead of Moses, and why there's not much in the Bible about him if he was so important. I suppose Moses was too busy to be the high priest. Still, I find it interesting.
• There's a lot of instructions about how to present an offering to God. Why was the method - or formula, we could say - so important? If there was nothing inherently special, spiritual, or magical about the animals (or their various body parts), why did it matter what the priest did with which parts? I really don't know.
• In verse 24, when Aaron offers the sacrifice, fire shoots out and burns up all the stuff on the altar, and the people freak out and fall down. I love that. They've already seen God do a bunch of awesome stuff, but it never gets old.

Chapter 10

• Right at the beginning of this chapter, Aaron has two sons named Nadab and Abihu who put some weird incense that wasn't God-approved on the altar, and they die because of it. This is what I wrote in my notes when I read that: Harsh! What did they do that for? They knew the rules, and God made a really big deal about following them - like, the last NINE LONG CHAPTERS that have taken me forever to get through were all about how to do a sacrifice and how important it was and what it meant and all that. How could they just blow all that off? No wonder God was mad at them. I'm mad at them. That's likw how I feel when people post things on the board that I've expressly said "Do NOT do this!" Still, I'm sad that they died. That seems really rough.
• In verse 6, Israel mourns the deaths of Aaron' sons, even though Moses doesn't let the mourn. That must have been really hard on them, since obviously they're the ones who would be the most sad over it. But I am glad that they didn't prohibit everyone from mourning. In fact, Moses said that the whole house of Israel would "beail the burning which the LORD has brought about."
• I don't understand what happens in verses 16-20. Moses goes looking for the goat of a sin offering that they just offered, but it had been all burned up, so Moses goes to Aaron's sons (the ones who are still alive) and asks them why they didn't eat it, and Aaron says it's because his sons were burned up and it wouldn't have been good in the eyes of the LORD for him and his sons to eat the sin offering today. And Moses goes "oh, okay," and that's the end of the chapter. I don't get it. There must be some significance to all this stuff that I'm missing.

Chapter 11
(This part is about clean and unclean animals)

• It's really weird to me that animals which have split hooves and chew the cud are clean. I mean, it's not a random selection of different animals, or even based so much on what they eat or anything. I suppose God could have made "clean" animals that didn't have cloven hooves, but he gave all the animals he wanted the Israelites to eat those two things in common. How funny. I mean, with the fish it makes more sense: scales and fins. That's pretty general. Hooves and digestive process just seems so weird to me.
• We all know that the pig is considered an abomination to the Jews (as well as to Muslims and Hindus). But it's not the only animal that was unclean. I wonder why it became the sort of poster child of unclean animals.
• I also think it's weird that God never says why certain animals were unclean. Today we think it's because of sanitation and preventing disease and whatnot. But God doesn't tell the Israelites that, and I'm sure they didn't know about bacteria and all that to figure it out. But then again, maybe it wouldn't have done much good to tell them why because they didn't know anything about that stuff. So maybe sometimes God doesn't answer our "why" questions because the answers would be more confusing than the questions.

Chapter 12 (it's okay, this one is really short)

• Now, this chapter is really funny to me. It's about how when a woman has a baby, she becomes unclean for a certain amount of time. If it's a boy, she's unclean for a week, and on the eighth day when the boy is circumcised, that's when she enters a purification period of 33 . But if it's a girl, she's unclean for two weeks and has a purification period of 66 days. Why? I'd also like to know what the practical implications of this whole unclean period are. Is that kind of like maternity leave? Or is it a purely ceremonial thing that has no connection to "practical" matters like the unclean animals do?
• What I do like about this chapter is that it tells what sacrifice to bring to the Lord when your kid is born. You're supposed to bring a lamb, but if you're too poor for that you bring a pair of turtledoves or pigeons. I think it's neat that God has different requirements like that. And notice, He doesn't just make it so that -everyone- has to bring birds. If you can afford a lamb, that's what you should bring.

Chapter 13-14
(These two are about leprosy, or icky skin diseases, and what to do about them)

• The closest Israel got to having doctors was priests. They had to be able to tell what was just a scab and what was a serious disease, and they had to tell people how to treat each. Nasty job if you ask me. What really sucks is, there wasn't any treatment for disease, whether it was leprosy or just a burn. Pretty much you just wrap it up and try to stay away from people so you don't infect them. I wonder why God didn't give them more information about medical treatments? Lots of other ancient people groups had herbal remedies for all kinds of things (don't know about leprosy though). Well, maybe Hebrews did use herbs for things too, and we just don't know about it. But this leprosy stuff was apparently highly contagious, so people really had to stay away for their own good. I wonder if it was risky for the priests to be looking at their sores and stuff.
• All of chapter 14 is about cleansing a leper and his house and stuff, so apparently people did recover from it. That's really encouraging. But not everybody did.

Chapter 15
(This chapter is just weird. It's about, um, bodily discharge)

• Okay, first of all, why is this chapter in the Bible? This is like TMI to the nth degree for me! Now, it is my opinion that some books have a sort of personality, as though they were almost people themselves, separate from their authors (if you are an author, or if you have listened to one talk about their books, you understand how this is possible). And the Bible is called a "living book" so I think I can say it has more personality than other books, and its personality is totally candid. It is not at all apologetic when it talks about nasty stuff, or about deep stuff, or hard-to-believe stuff, or stuff that you just wish wasn't in there. It puts all its cards on the table, face-up, as it were. This chapter is an example of that. Now, I really don't know why this was so super-important to God or to Israel, but it apparently was worth writing 33 verses about (the baby chapter only has 8 verses), so we mustn't overlook it.
• What I do find interesting here (yes, I said interesting) is that no matter what kind of discharge a person has, at the end of it they have to bring birds for a sin offering and for a burnt offering. Now, the text doesn't treat any of these things like sins. The people don't get punished for them, and generally it's something that the person can't help (like menstruation). But you have to offer a sin offering anyway, and I wonder why that is.

So that was a lot of really weird stuff in those chapters. Burning, dying, eating, scabbing, birthing, discharging, sacrificing stuff. All I can say is, no wonder Hebrews says that the Law is only a shadow of the things to come.