Jeremiah 39-45: Consequences of Disobedience

We've now reached the part of the story where it all hits the fan, and a lot of the stuff Jeremiah has been warning and prophesying about, happens.

First, the wall of Jerusalem is finally breached after a siege that lasted over a year.  Nebuchadnezzar's men overtake the city; King Zedekiah and his whole army try to sneak out, but the Chaldeans capture them.

Now let's review what Jeremiah advised Zedekiah to do: give yourself to the King of Babylon, basically surrender, and you'll be okay.  Zedekiah did not do that.  So now what happens is actually worse, I think, than just dying would have been: Nebuchadnezzar kills Zedekiah's sons right in front of him, and then blinds Zedekiah.  Imagine that - the last thing he saw was his children being brutally slaughtered.  That is harsh.  And Zedekiah is chained up and carried into captivity with just about everybody else.  Then the walls of Jerusalem are broken down and the city is burned.

Jeremiah, for some reason, is treated differently.  Nebuchadnezzar tells Nebuzaradan, the captain of his bodyguard, to do to Jeremiah whatever Jeremiah says he should.  So Jeremiah asks to remain in Jerusalem with the new governor-type guy of Judah that Nebuchadnezzar has appointed.  His name is Gedaliah.

Now I think Gedaliah is an okay guy.  He tells the Israelites what Jeremiah was telling them all along: don't be afraid of being under the Chaldeans (that's Babylon, remember); just stay here (the few who were not taken into exile) and things will go well for you.  So a bunch of Jews who had run off actually returned to the land.

But now there's this guy named Ishmael.  I don't know who he is, but some guy named Johanan confides in Gedaliah that Ishmael is planning to assassinate him (Gedaliah), but Gedaliah thinks it's a lie so he doesn't do anything about it.  And sure enough, Ishmael goes and kills him a short time later.  He also kills a bunch of other people and takes captive all the people who are left in Jerusalem and starts to take them to Ammon.  I have no idea why.  Was Ishmael an Ammonite, or just really screwed up?  But Johanan, the guy who had warned Gedaliah, takes some men and chases after Ishmael and gets all the captives back.  So that's good at least.

But now the people who are still in Judah are a little freaked out at what's happening.  They think it will be a really good idea to go to the one country that's been their ally for quite some time, Egypt (isn't that ironic after Exodus?).  And when you think about it, that does sound like a good idea.  Jerusalem has been burned; there's basically nothing and almost nobody left in the whole country, and the ones who are there are poor and helpless and now leaderless because their king has been exiled and the leader left to replace him has just been murdered, and who knows who's going to lead them now.  Egypt is rich and prosperous and they figure they can hide out there until things are going better in Judah and they can return.

So they ask Jeremiah if this is a good idea, and promise - actually they vow - to do whatever God says they ought to do, whether it's what they want to do or not.  Kind of weird that now they say they're going to listen to God.  What I find interesting about the exchange between the Israelites and Jeremiah is that they petition him to ask "the LORD your God," as if He's not their God too, and Jeremiah replies that he will pray to "the LORD your God," as if he's reminding them that He is.  I don't know if that's the reason for the "yours" or if that's just the way they happened to say it, but I find it interesting nonetheless.

God's response to the go-to-Egypt scheme is, don't do it.  Stay where you are and I'll take care of you, but if you go to Egypt, the enemies of Egypt will invade and you're going to die.  That is a pretty straightforward answer.  Now remember that oath the Jews just took to do whatever God said?  Yeah, they totally ignore that and say they're going to do what they want to do, because they think the reason all this bad stuff has happened is because they stopped sacrificing to pagan gods.  So they go down to Egypt anyway, and Jeremiah goes with them, and while in Egypt, Jeremiah prophesies the conquest of Egypt and destruction for the Jews who are there.  The only person whose promised life is Baruch, the guy who wrote Jeremiah's prophesies down a few chapters ago.  But that's about all he's going to get.

In light of what happened to Zedekiah and Jerusalem, you'd think the people would listen to Jeremiah.  After all, he's been right so far.  And I think they go to him for help because deep down they know he's right.  The trouble is, sometimes when we've made up our minds to do something, it doesn't matter whether we know we're right or wrong; we're going to do what we want to do and nothing can stop us.  I'm starting to think this is a bad attitude to have.

The other thing I learned from this story is, sometimes God calls us into dangerous and unpleasant situations.  It made sense to go to Egypt.  It would seem, from a practical standpoint, like the wise, prudent, and safe thing to do.  But God's wisdom confounds ours, and sometimes the things He wants us to do seem like foolishness to us and those around us.  Apparently God's not concerned with whether His ideas pass our test of "this makes sense."  He wants our obedience whether obedience makes sense or not, and whether it seems like a good idea or not.  The consequences of obedience may not be fame and prosperity and riches - they certainly weren't for Jeremiah and Baruch.  But the consequences of disobedience are far, far worse.

2 Kings11-15: Polarization of Judah and Israel

I'm going to tell you in advance, in this passage we have a series of good Judean kings and bad Israelite kings.  Actually, not to spoil the surprise for you or anything, but all Israel's kings are bad.  I think Jeroboam set a precedent.  Jehu apparently was the closest thing they had to a good king.

So remember that witchy Athaliah?  When her son (Ahaziah) dies, she sets herself up as ruler of Judah, and moreover, she goes on a rampage and kills all the possible heirs to the throne - I'm guessing she was planning on living forever? - except one escapes.  Ahaziah's sister takes Ahaziah's son Joash and hides him for six years.  He was about a year old when he was hidden, by the way.  For some reason, God has the priest, Jehoiada, proclaim Joash king when he is seven.  The people probably don't like Athaliah, because when they see that Joash is king they put her to death.  Jehoiada makes a covenant between God and the people and the new baby king, and the people go tear down all the altars of Baal.  So Joash's reign starts off on a good solid foot, and we find out that he follows God for as long as Jehoiada lives.  That's kind of a bad omen to me, because these priest guys tend to be old, and if he's going to stop following God when Jehoiada is gone, it means that, like possibly Solomon, Joash didn't have his own relationship with God.  Instead his relationship with God depended on somebody else, or else he was just content to let another person make his decisions for him.

But for now Jehoiada is alive, and so Joash has the temple repaired.  It takes 23 years for the work to actually get started, and that's when Joash has the bright idea of asking people to provide money to pay for the repairs.  But then Hazael, the king of Aram (remember the guy that Elisha anointed?) comes and threatens Jerusalem, so Joash sends all the valuable stuff that's in the temple to him so he'll leave.  It works, but it sucks.  He just spent 23 years trying to get the temple looking nice again, and now he's emptied it out to ward off an enemy.  You'd think he could ask God for some kind of miraculous deliverance, right?

In his later days, Joash became very unpopular; in fact, he was assassinated by his own servants.  But then his son became king so I don't know what good it did.

Meanwhile, Jehu's son Jehoahaz becomes king of Israel, and like his father before him, he does evil.  As a consequence, Aram is constantly beating them.  So I think that is fulfilling God's word to Elijah that Hazael would kill the people Jehu didn't kill.  Jehoahaz dies, and his son Jehoash becomes king.  Now, Jehoash is synonymous with Joash, and the names are used interchangeably for the kings of both Judah and Israel.  To keep them separate, I'm calling Judah's king Joash and Israel's king Jehoash.  He also does evil and is also succeeded by his son, who is named Jeroboam (my header calls him Jeroboam II).  It doesn't seem like either of these kings does anything really significant, compared to Joash over here who is repairing the temple.

Okay, so here is where we find out about the death of Elisha.  Elisha actually dies of natural causes, remarkably - that is, he dies of an illness rather than by being murdered.  Before he dies, he tells somebody to shoot an arrow out the window and that represents victory over Aram, and then he tells him to hit the ground, and that represents how many times they'll beat Aram, but the guy doesn't know that so he only hits the ground 3 times, which means Israel will prevail over Aram only 3 times.  We don't hear anything about Elisha's actual death except that when he is getting buried, some dead guy gets thrown into his grave, and when he touches Elisha's bones he revives and gets up.  So I think that's a final sign that to the very end - and I mean the very end - the same Spirit of the LORD that resided in Elijah, was present in even greater measure in Elisha. 

Joash's son becomes king of Judah next.  His name is Amaziah, and he s also a good king.  The high places are still around, but nobody else has taken them away either.  He kills the people who killed his father, probably a good idea in case they didn't want him on the throne, but he doesn't put their sons to death because that's against the Law of Moses, which says that people cannot be punished for the sins of their fathers, but only for their own sins.  It's nice to see somebody actually following this law.  That leads me to believe that whenever God does some kind of generational punishment, like when he wiped out all Jeroboam's family, it probably was because they were all just as bad as him.

Amaziah wants to fight against Jehoash for some reason, but Jehoash sends him some flowery message that basically says "no."  But Amaziah goes out against him, so Jehoash fights back, and Israel wins.  Sorry Amaziah.  Just because you're not serving idols doesn't mean God necessarily will give you a military victory, especially since it doesn't appear that God had any desire for this battle to happen, and in fact he was the one who had said Judah and Israel should not fight against each other.  But then Jehoash captures Amaziah and also takes all the gold and silver and stuff that's in the temple, so now all of Joash's work has really been undone I think.

But Jehoash doesn't kill Amaziah; Amaziah actually outlives him, but when he dies (he's actually assassinated like his father was), his son becomes king.  Like both Joash/Jehoashes, Amaziah's son has two names too.  The name my Bible gives right here is Amaziah, but the name he's best known by is Uzziah.  If you know Uzziah's name, you probably know that, like his father and grandfather, he was a good king.  Meanwhile, Jeroboam II has just become king, and no surprise, he's a bad king, just like his namesake.  Interestingly though, God gives Jeroboam II some military victories or something because he's able to restore some of Israel's land that had been lost before.  Why would this happen, you ask?  Fortunately the Bible gives us the answer right here.  It says, "For the LORD saw the affliction of Israel, which was very bitter; for there was neither bond nor free, nor was there any helper for Israel."  Elijah and Elisha, remember, were prophets specifically for Israel; they didn't do much work in Judah.  Even though Israel had crappy kings, God still loved the people of Israel; they were still his chosen people, and it was actually hard for him to see them suffering because of their bad decisions and the bad decisions of their leaders.  This just reinforces the teaching of Peter that God doesn't want anybody to perish but all to come to repentance, and that God is patient with us.

Meanwhile, Azariah/Uzziah is a good king, and guess what happens to him?  He becomes a leper.  He has a super-long reign, but he doesn't have his health.  To me that almost seems backwards - Israel, under a bad king, enlarges its border, while Judah's king serves God and gets leprosy.  Sometimes bad things happen to good people, and God doesn't even always give us an explanation why.  See, the good and bad things that happen to us aren't necessarily the consequence of our actions.  Suffering and grace alike can be completely undeserved.

Meanwhile, Israel gets a bunch more kings.  The first is Zechariah, and he is the fourth of Jehu's descendants to rule, so just like God promised, he is the last of his line.  A guy named Shallum kills him and becomes king, but he only lasts a month before a guy named Menahem kills not only him, but also all the pregnant women in the city!  I already don't like him.  He rules for ten years and is, as you probably guessed, evil.  During his reign Assyria starts creeping in, and Israel begins to pay them tribute.  Amazingly, nobody kills Menahem, and his son Pekahiah becomes king.  A guy named Pekah kills him and becomes king, and during his reign Tiglath-pileser of Assyria captures some of Israel's cities.  Slowly, Israel is beginning to crumble.  Think it has anything to do with the fact that every single one of their kings has not followed God?  Personally I sure do.  God gave them a bunch of chances, and he even showed them grace by restoring their border, and they kept screwing up.  I think God is withdrawing his blessing from Israel now.  I think he is going to let them go their own way and see what life without him really is like.  Sometimes God does that too.  Pekah also gets assassinated by a guy named Hoshea.

Okay, so Uzziah's reign didn't cover quite all that time.  Around the same time Pekah came to the throne, Uzziah's son Jotham became king in Judah.  And guess what?  He was also good!  We've had five whole chapters of good kings in Judah - four in a row!  I think that is a record, and that is why I am stopping at chapter 15, because the one after Jotham will break the trend.  Anyway, Jotham rebuilds some part of the temple, the upper gate.  Still nobody has taken away the high places, but the fact that Israel has managed to stay more or less on track for four generations is really amazing to me.

I think that up till now it's been kind of even between Israel and Judah, as far as who was following God and who wasn't.  Sure, Israel had all the bad kings and Judah had a few good ones, but Israel had some kick-awesome prophets to keep the people on track.  But now things are kind of going  chaotic in Israel, and Judah is on a roll in the right direction, or at least they're trying to be.  So it's not surprising that Israel is the one succumbing to Assyria as the empire begins to move toward the Holy Land.

2 Kings 6-10: The Final Prophesies of Elisha

Okay, so I didn't exactly finish chapter 6 last time. The Arameans beseige Samaria, and the people inside run out of food, to the point that inflation skyrockets and people start cannibalizing their children, and when the king hears about it he blames Elisha (don't ask me why) and wants to kill him.   But then, in chapter 7, Elisha prophesies that food will be plentiful the next day.  What happens is that some lepers go out to the Aramean camp thinking that since they're about to die anyway, they might as well throw themselves at the mercy of the enemy.  They discover that the Arameans have abandoned their camp - God apparently made them hear the sound of an approaching army - and left all their stuff.  At first the lepers take stuff and hide it, but then they feel bad and tell the people of Samaria.  So the people go and find food and riches and stuff, and then Elisha's prophecy comes true - awesome, and totally unexpected.  Good thing the lepers had consciences.

But apparently the famine continues, because Elisha goes to that Shunamite woman and tells her that her family should take a vacation to another country, so she lives with the Philistines, who I assume aren't much of a problem anymore, for seven years.  When she comes back, the land where she lives is now occupied by somebody else, so she appeals to the king and tells him about how Elisha gave her a son and then resurrected him and all that, so the king says she should get her land back. I take it from this story that the woman's husband has now died.

Remember at the end of 1 Kings, when God told Elijah to anoint 3 people? - Hazael as the new king of Aram, Jehu as the new king of Israel, and Elisha as the new prophet?  The only person he anointed was Elisha.  I don't know if that was okay with God or not that he didn't do it, but God never reprimanded him for it or anything.  But anyway, now Elisha goes and finishes the job.  But he's really upset over anointing Hazael because he foresees all the destruction he's going to bring to Israel.  So then Hazael goes and murders the current king of Aram, who was very sick at the time, and becomes king.  Reminds me of Macbeth.

Jehoshapat's son Jehoram now becomes king in Judah, and since two generations of good kings was apparently too good to be true, Jehoram is pretty much like all the kings of Israel, probably because he marries Ahab's daughter (and I'm sure she was the spitting image of dear mother Jezebel).  Maybe helping out Ahab and Ahaziah wasn't such a good idea, eh Jehoshapat?  Now, if you're confused, yes, you have heard the name Jehoram before - he's the brother of Ahaziah who is now the king of Israel.  Get this - when Jehoram of Judah dies, his son becomes king, and guess what his name is? Ahaziah.  And you thought all the Henrys of England and Louis (Louises?) of France were confusing.  Anyway, he's also bad, but even worse is his mother.  Her name is Athaliah.  That name makes me cringe, because one time a guy told the story of Athalia and Ahaziah and his son, and to make it more interesting he said Athaliah's name in a high-pitched, freaky, cackly voice.  So I always remember her name, and it sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard.

Then Elisha anoints Jehu.  In another stroke of irony, Jehu's father was named Jehoshaphat.  He basically tells him that he's going to destroy Ahab's family.  So Jehu gets right to business: he tells his people what Elisha said, and they proclaim him king right then and there.  Only then do they go about killing the current king.  Jehu makes short work of Jehoram.  Then he has Jezebel thrown out the window, and he basically runs her over with horses.  Then he kills all the males in Ahab's family after tricking them into coming to him under the pretense of peace.

Jehu is a pretty tricksy character.  He pretends to be a devoted Baal-worshiper and gathers all the priests and worshipers of Baal together for a big sacrifice, but he kills them all.  It almost looks like he's going to follow God, right? Wrong.  He still worships other gods, he just has a thing against Baal apparently.  God commends him for destroying the altars of Baal and the house of Ahab, and promises that he'll have four generations of sons on the throne, which I don't totally get because Jehu was still bad.  He even brought out the golden calves that Jeroboam made and worships those.  Do you ever notice yourself making a really big deal about getting rid of one evil in your life, while ignoring others?  God, it seems, is amazingly patient with us, but unless we tear down all the altars in our lives and eradicate all the false gods from our hearts, we will not really accomplish anything good in the end.

So what did we learn in this passage?  I think this passage was mainly about fulfilling God's prophecies through Elisha.  It's sort of tying up loose ends, because I think this is the last we hear about Elisha.  I don't know how he died or anything, although I'm pretty sure he was killed (all the prophets were, except obviously Elijah).  I think we'll have to wait until Chronicles to find out. Anyway, so we find out that God is serious about what he promises, whether it's for good or for bad.  He provided food as he promised to Samaria, and he also executed judgment on Ahab's family as he promised.  And he was pretty gracious with Jehu, and Jehu is the only Israelite king who was promised a legacy (although Jeroboam was offered a lasting legacy in the beginning).  Sometimes God's promises are unconditional, like the food for Samaria in the midst of the famine.  But sometimes they're based on what we do, like how Jehu destroyed the altars to Baal and killed off Ahab's family.  He doesn't always act exactly in the same way, so don't try to predict him, but he does always keep his promises, so you can definitely count on him.

1 Kings 12-16: DIvision of the Kingdom

When Solomon dies, his son Rehoboam becomes king.  The people of Israel tell him that they were pretty heavily taxed during the days of Solomon (probably to pay for the temple and the palace), and if the new king will just lighten the load a little, they'll faithfully serve him forever.  Rehoboam initially responds well to this request; he calls the elders who had been  on Solomon's advisory panel and ask them what they think.  But when they tell him to listen to the people, he doesn't seem too impressed.  So then he calls in his friends, the young spoiled rich kids who grew up with young spoiled Rehoboam.  They tell him, no way man!  You should tax them even harder, and make a wisecrack about your dad to boot!  Oh yeah, that comment about "my little finger is thicker than my father's loins"?  That was probably a lewd comment intended to mock his father's masculinity, if you don't know what I mean (if you don't, know that the word translated "loins" could have been translated to mean what's between the legs).

So Rehoboam turns out to be a jerk, because this is his response to the people.  A word of advice: when you're in a leadership position, try not to do something that will make the people under you quit, because they can.  And they do.  Ten out of Israel's twelve tribes secede and form their own country, and do you know who they make king?  That's right, Jeroboam from last time.  Now remember, God had told Jeroboam that he would become king of Israel, and promised him that if he followed God, he would have basically the same deal that was promised to David: a descendant on the throne forever.

Anyway, so as soon as Israel secedes, the people of Judah and Benjamin prepare to go to war - you know, your typical civil war situation.  But God tells a random prophet (ever hear of Shemaiah?) that the Jews can't fight against their own people.  They've never made a habit of listening to God before, but this time they do.

Let's go see how Jeroboam is doing as king.  Oh look, he's commissioned two golden calves and altars on the high places, and appointed non-Levite priests, and set up holidays to honor his calves.  What happened was, he was afraid that if the people continued to follow the LORD, they would be continually going to Jerusalem to sacrifice, and that would eventually reunite the kingdom - in spite of what the LORD himself promised Jeroboam.  So he created an alternative religion for his people so that they would stay out of Judah, thereby securing his reign - or so he thought.  See, there's a problem whenever we think that we can secure our own future.  God had already offered Jeroboam as good of a deal as anybody can have, and instead of trusting God to keep his word, he sets up his own security system. But God wants to give him a second chance, so an anonymous man of God visits him and warns him that there is impending doom because of his idolatry.  Jeroboam stretches out his hand to order that the man of God be seized, but God strikes his hand so that some weird affliction happens to it (my text says it "dried up" but I don't know what that would have looked like).  So of course, then Jeroboam begs the prophet to pray to God so his hand would be healed.  Now, if I were the man of God, I would say, no way!  You just tried to kill me, and you aren't going to listen to God.  Why should I help you, since I'm about to die anyway?  But this guy is a better guy than me, apparently, so he prays to God and Jeroboam's hand is healed.  Oh joy.  So then Jeroboam invites the prophet to come back to his house and get a "reward."  Now the prophet wises up and says no way man, there is nothing on earth that could make me go with you or eat your food.  Well, it's actually because God had told him not to eat any food or drink any water until he gets home.  So he goes home.

But on the way home something really weird happens.  There's this old prophet in Bethel, and his sons tell him the story above about Jeroboam and the man of God, so the old prophet goes out and meets the first prophet and invites him home to dinner.  The prophet at first says no way, but then the old prophet lies and tells him that God had spoken to him and told him to invite the first prophet to dinner.  So he does, but because he's disobeyed God, God tells him that he won't be buried in his father's grave.  And sure enough, on his way home, he's attacked by wild animals, dies, and gets picked up and buried in Bethel instead of his hometown.  Remember how serious the Jews were about death?  Being buried not in your family's grave, apparently, is kind of a disgraceful thing.

So basically, I think this story has a valuable lesson to teach us: that is, you can't always trust when somebody else tells you God has spoken to them.  Especially if it contradicts what you know God has told you.  Keep in mind, the guy who lied was also a prophet - he was a guy who spoke the words of the LORD that he heard directly from the Big Guy.  But prophets are not infallible, nor are they above doing something presumptuous and stupid like this guy.  You can't just rely on a person's reputation as a follower of God, a prophet, or a pastor, or on their word that God spoke to them, especially if you don't know the person very well.  You have to listen to God yourself.

Now we go back to Jeroboam.  Jeroboam's son has gotten sick, so he sends his wife in disguise to another prophet, named Ahijah.  Is it just me, or are there an awful lot of prophets in this country?  Anyway, this prophet is blind, so he wouldn't have been able to recognize Jeroboam's wife anyway, but God tells hm that she's coming so it doesn't matter.  Anyway, so Ahijah tells the wife that because Jeroboam rejected God's word and caused Israel to sin by building idols and high places, God is going to cut off all the males in Jeroboam's whole family and put somebody else on the throne in his place.  And moreover, as soon as the wife re-enters the city, her son will die.  Now, if I were a mother, and God told me that, I would stay out of the city for the rest of my life.  But this woman is none too bright; she goes straight home, and of course her son dies right away.

So later Jeroboam himself dies, and his son reigns in his place.  But we don't find out about him yet because now the text switches over to Rehoboam.

Now, as much bad as Jeroboam did to keep Israel away from God, Rehoboam and Judah do just as much and even worse.  They build up the high places and put Asherim on every big hill and under every big tree.  Asherim are a kind of idol, by the way.Moreover, they have male cult prostitutes in the land.  So then the king of Egypt comes against Jerusalem and makes off with all the treasures that were in the temple - remember all the riches of Solomon?  They're all gone now.  Rehoboam replaces Solomon's gold shields with bronze shields.  And finally, we find out that there is war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam continually, in spite of what God had said.  And that's all the significant stuff that happened in Rehoboam's reign.  In other words, he was a flop.

So then his son Abijam becomes king, for only three years, and he's pretty much the same as his dad - idolatry, war with Israel, etc.  But then when he dies, his son Asa becomes king, and Asa is as good as Rehoboam and Abijam were bad.  He got rid of the cult prostitutes and removed all the idols, and he de-throned his mother because she had made an Asherah (female deity) image, and he also destroyed that.  He didn't take down the high places, which I don't understand, but it says that his heart "was wholly devoted to the LORD all his days." He also put silver and gold back into the temple.  Unforutnately, there was war between him and the king of Israel (who by this time is a guy named Baasha - we'll hear about him soon).  Asa forms a treaty with Aram to prevent Israel from attacking him anymore, and it works.

So Jeroboam's son only lasts two years, and he does evil, and then he gets assassinated by Baasha, the guy we just heard of, who then becomes king.  And Baasha not only kills Nadab, but he also kills every male related to Jeroboam, just like God has said.  And Baasha is just as bad as Nadab and Jeroboam, so God sends the same prophecy (by another new prophet named Jehu) to Baasha that he gave to Jeroboam's wife:
every male in Baasha's family is going to be cut off.  And that's what happens. Baasha gets murdered by one of his army commanders named Zimri, who kills everybody in Baasha's family. But he only lasts for seven days - then a guy named Omri is set up as king, and he beseiges Tirzah, which is where Zimri was living, so Zimri actually sets his own house on fire so that he won't be killed by somebody else.  Omri reigns for twelve years, and dies, and his son Ahab becomes king.  Does that name ring a bell? It should.  We're going to hear a lot about him next time.  For now, just know that he is just as bad and even worse than all the kings who have been before him, and it says that "he did more to provoke the LORD God of Israel than all the kings of Israel who were before him."  This guy sets the new record for bad.  So it's time for God to send in the big guns - no more little prophets who speak up once and then disappear forever (well, that's probably not true; it just seems that way).  God's about to raise up the biggest prophet since Moses.  Tune in next time to see how that plays out.

1 Samuel 1-7: Samuel

I have to say, this book starts off on a way better note than Judges ended.  We find out, thankfully, that there are still some people in Israel who follow God.  One of them is a man named Elkanah, and he has two wives: Hannah and Peninnah.  Peninnah has children and Hannah doesn't, which in that culture was a HUGE disgrace.  Peninnah is also a bit of a witch to Hannah because she always ridicules her for not having kids - and this is why polygamy is a bad idea, by the way - although Elkanah loves Hannah more than he loves Peninnah - which is also why polygamy is a bad idea.

Remember the last time this happened?  Rachel, the beloved wife, didn't have any kids and Leah, the unloved wife, had a ton, so Rachel and Leah got in this war and Rachel tried everything from verbally abusing her husband to trying fertility drugs in order to get even.  Fortunately, Hannah is a way better person than Rachel. Check this out.  When the family goes to Shiloh (which is where the center of the priesthood was at the time), she goes to the temple and prays so long and so hard that the priest, Eli, sees her and thinks she's drunk.  Can you say intense?

I like Hannah.  All she wants is one kid, and she even promises to give her child back to God if He answers her prayer.  Even though Peninnah (I don't know what the technical term is . . .  co-wife?) constantly pesters and belittles her, she doesn't want to get even or to get revenge, she just wants one little kid, and she's even willing to give him up.  And instead of whining to her husband or digging up roots or doing anything else stupid, she goes straight to God, and only to God.

So God answers her prayer and gives her a son.  Remember what Rachel named her son Joseph? "I want another one."  Hannah names her son "I asked God for him."  Isn't that beautiful?  I have a friend who prayed and prayed for a kid for several years with her husband, and finally they had a son, and she named him Samuel, just like Hannah did.  And Hannah is true to her word and gives Samuel to the temple, and she worships God and sings a long song of thanksgiving because she is so happy to have a son, even though she's only going to see him once a year.  I don't know if I could do that.  But it's so cute that the text goes through the trouble of saying that each year when they go to Shiloh, Hannah makes him a new outfit and brings it to him.  She's a good mommy.  I would like to be like Hannah, although I hope I don't have to give my son away.

But guess what!  After Samuel is born, God gives Hannah five more children, three sons and two daughters.  And it's not because she asked and pleaded and went to drastic measures or made any more deals.  She was perfectly happy with Samuel, and I believe God blessed her for her thankfulness.

But I titled this blog entry "Samuel," and I am going to try to write about 7 chapters, so I should move on.  The priest at this time is a man named Eli.  Now he seems like an okay guy, but his sons are awful - which, by this point in the game, is no surprise to me.  Just about every good adult has rotten kids in Israel.  Except Hannah.  Samuel is not a rotten kid.  In fact, God tells Eli that since his own sons are so rotten, he's going to raise up a faithful priest instead of them.

So that's what happens.  God calls Samuel when he's still a little boy, and Samuel grows up knowing, obeying, and listening to the Lord.  And everybody in Israel knows it, too.

Next what happens is that Israel is at war with the Philistines again, and they're getting pretty badly, so they have a great idea: let's take the ark of the covenant into battle with us!  This strikes me as a form of manipulation, or maybe idol worship.  The presence of God dwells in the ark, so they're thinking, if we bring God to the battle, He'll have to make us win.  God doesn't have to do anything, ever.  Sometimes we assume that we know how God will act if we make the circumstances right, as if He's a chemical formula.  God is a person, not a formula.  We can't always assume we know what he's going to do.

So God doesn't let the Israelites win, and the Philistines take the ark with them.  But God's not about to be manipulated by them either; all sorts of havoc starts to break out as soon as the ark gets to one of their towns.  But I have to say, may favorite thing that happens is when they put the ark in the temple of their god Dagon, and the next day when they go inside the idol of Dagon has fallen on its face in front of the ark.  Ha!  Even false gods which cannot see or hear or speak bow before the Living God.

Anyway, the Philistines get all kinds of plagues, so they keep moving the ark from city to city, and eventually they've had enough and they decide to send it back to Israel along with a bunch of offerings, which is kind of a nice thought in the morning.  But when Israel gets it back they don't put it in Shiloh again, they leave it at Kiriath-jearim at this guy's house, and it stays there for 20 years.

So then Samuel, who is a grown-up now, tells Israel that what they need to defeat the Philistines is not to bring the ark of the covenant with them into battle but to serve God wholeheartedly - duh.  So they get rid of all the idols and serve God, and guess what?  They beat the Philistines.

So I think this passage clearly illustrates the importance of being straight with God.  If you have a request, just ask Him.  Don't be like the stupid Israelites who thought they could manipulate God into doing what they wanted, when they weren't even serving Him at the time.  Be like Hannah who prayed diligently, sacrificed, and was thankful.  I believe God honors wholehearted devotion and sincere worship.

Judges 6-9: The Original 300

Okay, before I start, I just wanted to say about the Spartan 300 that when the Persian army was approaching, somebody said they were so numerous that when they shot their arrows, they blotted out the sun.  One of the Spartan warriors replied to this, "Good, then we will have our battle in the shade."  I love Sparta.

*clears throat* But that's not the 300 I'm talking about in this passage.  No, these chapters are about a little guy named Gideon.

Unlike the Spartan warrior, Gideon does not strike me as a very brave, valiant, "it's a good day to die" type of guy.  When we meet him, he is threshing wheat in a winepress.  What?  Well, it's because the Midianites are oppressing Israel right now, and since the winepress was kind of a pit (maybe like an empty swimming pool?), he was threshing wheat in there to hide from the Midianites.  Normally, threshing wheat was a community event, maybe like a party - we'll see that when we get to Ruth - poor sad little Gideon is all by himself, hiding from the school bullies so he doesn't get his milk money taken.  Okay, so maybe I'm not being fair to him.  I'm just saying all this to make a point: Gideon is not the kill-a-few-hundred-people-with-an-oxgoad warrior, or even the shove-a-tent-peg-through-a-guy's-temple-while-he's-asleep sneaky assassin that we saw in the last passage.  He's just a regular guy trying to thresh his wheat.

So the angel of the LORD appears to Gideon, and it seems he hasn't been informed that Gideon isn't like Othniel and Shagmar and all them, because he says right off the bat, "The LORD is with you, mighty warrior!"  Can you picture Gideon turning around to see who's behind him that the shiny man is talking to?  Well anyway, Gideon's response to the angel is really interesting.  He says "Oh yeah?  If God is with us why am I threshing my wheat in a pit?  What happened to all the miracles that we heard about that used to happen?" (my paraphrase)

Note: I don't know if Gideon just hasn't read the Torah or something, but I believe that if an angel appears to you, a miracle of some kind is very soon going to happen.

In all seriousness, though, I think it's really interesting that Gideon is saying that miracles don't happen anymore, O woe is me, etc., right when God is calling him to do something miraculous.  Gideon seems to have excluded himself from that possibility.  When the angel tells him that God is going to deliver Israel from Midian through him, what does he say?  "Who me?  God is going to make me a mighty warrior like Shagmar the Oxgoad-Wielder and miraculously defeat the Midianites through me? Awesome, I can't wait!"  No, he says "I'm sorry, the warriors are in the third winepress on your right.  I happen to be the resident wimp from a family of wimps.  God must have been mistaken."

I think sometimes we have such grand, idealized ideas about the heroes of the Bible that we put them in a separate camp from ourselves.  It's like we think there's a special "hero pool" that God pulls people from, and we're not in it.  Reading through the Bible so far, though, I've become convinced of one thing: there's only one pool, and that's the pool you and I were in.  Now, there's two ways to look at that: one way is to think that means we're all in the hero pool, and that the same amazing stuff that was in Moses and Gideon is in us, and so we are capable of doing just as amazing things as they were.  The other way of looking at it is to think that all the heroes are in the "regular person" pool with the rest of us, and that they are just as unremarkable as the rest of us, but that God did amazing things through them because He is remarkable, and God can do amazing things through us too if we just get up when He calls us.  You can even look at it both ways; I'll let you decide though.

Anyway, so I'll stop ragging on Gideon because I think the "sign" thing is kind of a cool idea.  I don't know if it's because he was doubtful or because he just wanted to be sure - I mean, just because a guy is shiny doesn't mean they're the angel of the LORD - but he asked God for a total of three signs during the course of this story.  The first one is right now, when he prepares an offering for the angel, which the angel burns up.  The second and third signs are after Gideon has already gathered an army together.

Now, I heard a sermon about Gideon recently, so this next bit comes fromn that pastor, not me.  He said that when you're asking God for a sign, you'd better be already committed to doing whatever it is God's asking you to do.  When Gideon asked for the signs with the fleece and the dew, there were 32,000 people in his backyard playing football or something, ready to go to battle as soon as somebody said the word.  Gideon wasn't about to contest the results of the sign if it proved true.

So then God does one of his plot twists and trims down the army just a little - from 32,000 to 300 men.  I think it's interesting, though, that he didn't just tell Gideon to count off or have them pull straws or something, but that it appears He really was looking for a certain group of people, rather than a certain number.  First, God has all the people who are afraid go home.  Then he has the people who drink water in a more "refined" fashion go home.  I think God is trying to zero in on the people who are really committed no matter what, and ready and raring to go, like they're sitting there chomping at the bit and stuff.  Maybe God was looking for these people so that when He cut the army so absurdly small they wouldn't all get afraid and back out.  I mean, what if God hadn't eliminated the scared people? There might be some fraidy-cats in the final 300, and they would freak out and say "no way are we going to win," and run off.  Or maybe if He hadn't done the drinking thing, there would be some people in the final 300 who were kind of slow and wanted to take their time and enjoy the scenery en route to the enemy's camp.  I dunno.

So we all know what happens - the 300 people surround the Midianite camp, Gideon sneaks down and overhears some guy saying that Israel is totally going to win, and then they get pots and torches and basically just make a lot of noise, and Midian is so jumpy that they think they're being attacked so, in the confusion of night, they all start killing each other.  So Israel wins, but that's not actually the end of the story.

First of all, the Ephraimites get miffed that Gideon didn't invite them to the battle.  Gideon says Ephraim has already done a bunch of cool stuff and his little victory is no comparison, so the Ephraimites feel better about themselves and don't push it.  After that, Israel pursues Midian all over the place.  They are really tired and they stop at a place called Succoth and ask for food.  The elders of Succoth say "yeah right, whatever," so Gideon says that when he comes back he's going to beat the tar out of them.  Then he goes to a place called Penuel and the same thing happens, so he tells them he'll tear down their tower.  So he does - he captures the kings of Midian, whose names both start with Z, and returns to Succoth and beats up the elders, and then goes to Penuel, tears down the tower, and kills all the men in the city.  Now, I don't know that this was really necessary, but it appears that suddenly Gideon has become a mighty warrior - so mighty that he kills the kings of Midian himself, after asking a kid to do it and the kid was too scared - and also so mighty that Israel asks him to be their king.  But Gideon hasn't let all the gore and glory go to his head - he says no way, God should rule over you, not me.

At this point it seems that things are going rather well.  But then weird stuff happens - yeah, it's still not over.  Gideon asks for the people to give him earrings, so they do, and he makes an ephod out of the gold and takes it home with him.  Okay, no biggie, but apparently the people of Israel - including Gideon! - start using it in some kind of idolatry.  Sheesh!  Are there no decent guys in Israel?

But then we have a short story about Gideon's kids, who are really precious.  Gideon has 70 sons (from many different mothers, thank goodness), and one of them, Abimelech, wants to be king, so he goes and kills all 69 of his brothers - well actually 68, because on escapes - and the people of Shechem make him king over them for 3 years.  But then some other guy named Gaal challenges his authority, and apparently Shechem decides they like him better than Abimelech.  So they go to battle and - get this - Abimelech wins!  And he burns down the tower of Shechem with about 1000 people, men and women, inside!  At this point I'm really just waiting for this guy to die.  But then, the most awesome thing ever happens.He's marching against some tower in a place called Thebez, and as he's standing under the tower, some woman who doesn't even get her name put in throws a milstone at Abimelech's head, which crushes his skull (ouch).  Only he has another guy run him through with a sword so that people won't say that a woman killed him.  But too late! It's already in the Bible!  Man, that Abimelech guy really bugged me.  I'm glad he got killed by a girl throwing a rock on his head.

Then everybody goes home, end of story.

After all the awesomeness of Gideon's story, it looks like no amount of miraculous deliverance is going to cause permanent change in Israel.  It also looks like no matter how great a person like Gideon is, he can't for the life of him raise kids who follow the Lord.  I'm getting really frustrated with these people and their lack of good parenting.  Is it too much to ask for two successive generations of obedience?  But Gideon himself sort of turned against God with that ephod thing, so in spite of judging Israel and having 40 years of peace, it doesn't look like Israel is really following God that closely at any point in this story, after Midian was defeated.

Last night I said to a friend that I think the reason people live so long is because we learn so slowly.  The history of Israel is really a picture of each of us, or at least those of us who are normal.  Maybe some people follow God whole-heartedly and never turn away their whole lives, and are dramatically and permanently changed after witnessing a miracle, but I tend to repeat the same stupid stuff I've always done regardless of what God is doing.  And maybe stories like this one are in the Bible to remind me that I can't slack off after a major victory; I have to stay committed to following God or all kinds of stuff will get in the way, and I don't want that to happen.

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.

Exodus 19-40: The Covenant

I'm going to finish Exodus today. It's 22 chapters - wow - but I'll try not to write a novel.

Mostly what happens is, Moses talks with God and gets a bunch of commandments - kind of an overview of what we'll see in the next few books of the Law. The people say they'll obey everything God tells them to do, so then God starts telling Moses about how to build the tabernacle and priestly garments, which takes about seven rather lengthy chapters. Meanwhile, the people down in the camp go ballistic and have Aaron make an idol for them. God gets really mad, and Moses goes back and freaks out and kills a bunch of people. Then Moses goes back up on Sinai for a while and gets more instructions, and then the people make the tabernacle, and then we have a short scene describing God's presence in the tabernacle by day and by night.

So here are some thoughts.

1. I went to a synagogue once when I was staying with my Jewish friends for a weekend. My friend's Sunday school class (yeah, they have Sunday school too) was going over the Ten Commandments. The way they number them is a little different: the first commandment to them is "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt" (Ex. 20:2). I'm not really sure how that's a commandment, but that's how they have it. Then they merge what we consider the first and second commandments into one: no other gods. I just think that's interesting.

2. Murder is punishable by death if the victim is a man, a woman, a child, or even an unborn baby - but not if it's a slave. Why is that?

3. A lot of sins were punishable by death according to the Mosaic Law. If we applied all of them today, we would have the death penalty for the following:
a) murder
b) manslaughter, but you could get asylum
c) kidnapping
d) being an obstinately rebellious son or daughter
e) having a dog that has a habit of biting people and you didn't put him down and he bites somebody and they die
f) being involved in Wicca, astrology, palm-reading, tarot cards, the occult, etc.
g) bestiality
h) adhering to a religion other than the state religion

And that's just from two chapters; there are a few other things that could get you executed. Nobody crucify me here, but I think it's funny that people point to the Law for the reason why the death penalty is in effect today, but only where murder and perhaps rape are concerned. Not too many people want the death penalty to apply to witchcraft or rebellious children. Take that however you will; it's just an observation.

4. The other day I was rereading my very early IM conversations with Justin. It was funny to compare our relationship now to our friendship back then. One thing I noticed is that certain things that we thought would be potential issues back then, did become issues when we started dating. I also saw that even in IM, the same weaknesses and tendencies which each of us has today were present kind of as seeds at the very beginning. Not that we haven't worked through any of those things, but I'm just trying to use an analogy for Israel right here. Right away, as soon as they're out of Egypt - actually no, even back when they're still in Egypt - we can see a pattern of distrust and unfaithfulness. They believe in God, they don't believe in God. They obey Him, they disobey him. It becomes much more evident in chapter 32 - it was only a few weeks ago that they said "All that the LORD has spoken, we will do!" - and already they're saying, "What happened to Moses? He might not come back. Let's make a god we can see instead of the scary cloud on the mountain." This is really foreshadowing what the rest of Israel's history will look like. Like I said last time, yo-yo.

5. This is something I got from my Bible teacher. I don't know how intentional it is in the text, but give it some thought. When the people told Aaron to make them a god, what they meant was a god they could see. They had a god, but He wasn't really tangible. So far, their way of knowing God came by hearing God's word through Moses. Is it any coincidence, then, that when they told Aaron to make them a visible god, he had them take the rings off their ears - a symbol of hearing? Just like Eve in the garden, who heard God's command not to eat the fruit, but saw that the fruit was good, so she ate it. Actually, you could say that a lot of themes in the Bible have to do with seeing versus hearing. "We walk by faith, not by sight" (2 Cor. 5:7) and "now faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ" (Rom. 10:17). Or, as someone once said (I really wish I knew who it was), "In the beginning was the Word, not the video."

6. God told Moses he would kill all the Israelites and then make him into a great nation, and Moses seems to talk God out of it. I mean, the text actually says, "So the LORD changed His mind" (32:14). Was God -really- going to kill them all? Considering that God has been so determined so far to keep His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, I doubt it. Was He perhaps testing Moses then? And if so, what if Moses had said "sure, go ahead and kill them all"?

7. Aaron's a lousy excuse-maker. I don't understand him. The future high priest of the LORD is the one who makes this gold calf thing. Yet when Moses questions him, he makes it seem like the calf made itself - he says he threw the gold into the fire, "and out came this calf." Whoa, strange coincidence! What's weird is that Aaron still gets to be the high priest later.

8. Even after Moses intercedes for the people and asks God to be merciful to them, he has the Levites kill about 3000 people. Was he supposed to do that? God didn't tell him to. Personally, I think Moses has a hot temper. In chapter 11, when Moses warns Pharaoh about the last plague, it says he goes out from Pharaoh "in hot anger." I don't believe that phrase is used anywhere else in Scripture. Then with the golden calf incident, he gets so mad that he breaks the stone tablets that have the words of the covenant written on them. Then he tells the people to kill each other.

9. Right after Moses has the people kill each other, it says that God punishes everyone who was unfaithful to Him by "smiting" them. At first I thought that meant He killed them all, but when you think about it, if the vast majority of the people died, that wouldn't leave very many - and we find out in chapter 38 that there's over 600,000 men when the tabernacle is built. Also, Aaron was unfaithful, and clearly he's still around after the calf incident. Turns out the word use really means "to strike," not necessarily to kill. Personally, I think maybe God hit them with some kind of plague-like thing, even though in the laws He just gave Moses, it says that worshipping another god deserved death. So again, even in His judgment, God is showing mercy.

10. How big is this group of people right now? A lot of estimates say over a million, but critics say that's crazy because there simply wouldn't be enough room for them; I mean, we know from the beginning of the book that they outnumbered the Egyptians, but we don't know by how much. More importantly, though, is that a line of a million people, even if they were walking ten abreast, would be over 90 miles long by my estimation. Yet in chapter 38, it says that the men over age 20 numbered 603,550. Can somebody explain to me how this would work?

Okay, I'm sorry I made that so long, but seriously, it's 21 chapters.

Exodus 7-12: My Deliverer Is Coming

Let me preface this post by saying that I really wish I had my Prince of Egypt soundtrack with me right now, or that I had ripped it onto my computer, because it's been running through my head since I started Exodus.

We start with God telling Moses exactly what's going to happen: Aaron is going to talk for him, Pharaoh's not going to listen, plagues are going to hit Egypt, Israel's going to be saved, and all Egypt will know that YHWH is God. Then we see it all happen more or less exactly the way God told Moses it would.

Imagine with me for a second that you're Pharaoh. You have the coolest empire in the world right now, and you've got a bunch of slaves to make it cooler by building stuff for you (we know that the Hebrews built Pithom and Raamses; we don't know what else they built. We also don't know that they were the only slaves in Egypt, and they probably weren't). If I remember 7th grade history right, approximately 2/3 of Egypt's population was the slave class. That doesn't mean 2/3 of the population was Hebrews, necessarily, but there were quite a few of them. So if you were Pharaoh, and some guy came to you and asked you to let a huge chunk of your population, your cheap labor force, and the people who make your empire cool, go off into the wilderness for a couple days, you would say no too.

I don't think the plagues were just about letting the Hebrews go. They were about showing Egypt - and the rest of the world, because word spreads - that the Hebrew God was number one. That's why the text says over and over, "then you will know that there is no one like Me in all the earth" (9:14) and things like that.

The Egyptians, as we all know, were polytheists. They worshipped the sun and the river and all this other stuff, and a lot of their gods were represented as birds or frogs or dogs or what have you. In sending plagues that attacked various Egyptian deities, God was asserting His sovereignty and authority over the gods of Egypt. If Egypt is powerless before YHWH, then surely no other nation could stand before Him. That's what I think, anyway.

I find the parts about Pharaoh's heart being hardened very interesting. Four times (after the first, third, fifth, and seventh plagues) the text says "Pharaoh's heart was hardened," twice (after the second and fourth plagues) it says "Pharaoh hardened his heart," and four times (after the sixth, eighth, and ninth plagues and before the tenth) it says "The LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart." Hebrew writers are usually pretty intentional about patterns and stuff, so I think these distinctions are worth noticing. Some people seem to think that God hardening Pharaoh's heart means that God made Pharaoh act against his will, like if God had left him alone, he would've let the Hebrews go the first time. That's not what I see in the text. First of all, it doesn't draw any extra attention to the fact that God hardens Pharaoh's heart; secondly, it specifically shows Pharaoh hardening his own heart, and thirdly, by the time we get to where it says that the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart, he's already done it himself six times (including the time Aaron's staff became a snake), so by now he's in such a habit of being contrary, the real miracle is that he ever let the Hebrews go.

I also find it interesting and sort of odd that it's only during the fourth, fifth, seventh, ninth, and tenth plagues that God sets Goshen, where the Hebrews are, apart from the Egyptians. Did they have to endure the other five? The text gives us no reason to believe they didn't, because it makes such a point of God setting them apart when He did. To take the text at face value, we have to assume that the Hebrews dealt with water turned into blood, frogs, gnats (or lice), boils, and locusts just as the Egyptians did. Weird, isn't it? But that seems (to me) to be the way God does things. He doesn't typically remove His people from disasters and trials and persecutions; He preserves them through those things. That's what He did with Noah and his family, and that's what He's been doing with the Israelites, and that's what He did with Job, and that's what He did with the early church, and that's what He does with us today. That's why I stopped believing in a pre-trib rapture. God has never been in the habit of stopping bad things from happening to His people. We can never be sure that He'll remove us from evil, from pestilence, from persecution, or even from difficult situations, but we can be sure that He will be faithful to be with us and help us through those times.

Finally, we have Passover. This is one of my favorite parts of the entire Bible I think, and I can't possibly do it justice with my writing, but I'll try to show you what I find fascinating about this passage.

First each family has to take a year-old lamb, a perfect lamb, and keep it in the house for four days. Now, I don't have much experience with lambs, but we bought a lobster from Walmart one time for dinner, and before we had even gotten home my little brother had already named it. If you keep a cute fluffy animal in your house for more than a few seconds, you can just bet that everybody will fall in love with it. Then four days later you slit its throat. That's kind of morbid, isn't it? Killing something that for a while was a sort of pet?

The second thing is that they have to put the blood on their doorways using a hyssop branch. Later on, when we get into Leviticus and talk about the sacrificial system, we'll see hyssop is used a lot in sacrifices to cleanse the people from sin. When I read this, I immediately thought of Psalm 51, where David says "Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me and I will be whiter than snow." I'm pretty sure that is a direct reference to the blood of a sacrificial animal that was sometimes sprinkled on the people (like at Mt. Sinai) to represent that the animal's death covered their sins and made them blameless before God. But as Hebrews says, "it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins," because they're only animals. That's why people had to sacrifice them day after day, year after year, from the first sacrifice back in the Garden of Eden until the Atonement Day when Jesus died. After that, all those sacrifices became obsolete, because the blood of the true sacrifice, the only sinless man who ever lived, had been sprinkled over the people, washing us and covering our sins for good.

The third thing is that this wasn't just for the Hebrews. At the end of the chapter it says foreigners could eat the Passover meal if they became circumcised first, and I wonder if there were any Egyptians who did what Moses said and were spared that night. It says that "a mixed multitude" went out of Egypt with them - does that mean some Egyptians went with the Hebrews? I don't know. I think the text leaves that option open.