Isaiah 52-66: Restoration for the Transgressors

Okay, I know I dropped the ball again for a while on this blogging thing.  It's difficult to blog about these prophetic books because they kind of say the same thing over and over and while that's not a bad thing, it makes it difficult to feel like I'm saying anything new.  So my next several posts may be a bit shorter and cover larger passages, because I'm really trying to just point out what sticks out to me.

Anyway, so in chapter 52 Isaiah starts talking about the exalted servant of God.  And then in chapter 53 he talks about the suffering servant.  Jews believe these are two different people, whereas Christians believe both passages are referring to the same person: Jesus the Messiah.  I have always wondered what the Jews think about chapter 53, because the language is that of sacrificial atonement - that our sins, sorrows, transgressions, etc., are placed on this person, that he is a guilt offering, that somehow this bearing of our iniquities justifies us.  For Jews who believe that justification comes through keeping the Law and making animal sacrifices, what does this passage mean to them?

Recently, the thing that has struck me about Isaiah 53 is that it's not just our wickedness that Jesus atoned for.  Verse 4 says "Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried."  In the margin of my Bible I wrote this:  "Not just our sins, but our sorrows - not just our wrongs, but also our hurts.  Jesus knows what all of our pains, griefs, shame, trauma, feel like, because He carried it.  It, too, was nailed to the cross, which means it, too, will be redeemed."  To me, that is a very comforting thought.

The next three chapters are pretty positive: God's lovingkindness and covenant of peace can never be shaken, God offers mercy freely, God's boundless mercy is incomprehensible because God Himself is incomprehensible, being obedient to God will yield blessing, etc.

Following this are three chapters of warnings and judgments and stuff like that.  There's an indictment of rulers who don't acknowledge God as higher than them, and there's a call to fasting so that God will hear.  But as it is, the text says, God doesn't hear because the people's sins have created a barrier between themselves and Him.  I find the juxtaposition of these two verses very telling: 59:1 says, "Behold, the LORD's hand is not so short That it cannot save; Nor is His ear so dull That it cannot hear."  Then the very next verse says, "But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, And your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear."  So it's not that God can't hear, but that He doesn't - I think He's waiting for repentance - He's waiting for us to turn from our wickedness in order to truly seek Him.  Because the thing is, people would cry out to God and stuff, but at the same time they were holding on to these idols and sinful practices and stuff, so it wasn't really God that they wanted; they just wanted a bailout.  And I think this is what I do too.  What I pray for the most is help when I'm in trouble.  I think I need to seek God for His own sake, not just to be my cleanup crew.

Chapters 60-66 cover a few different ideas, but I think they all are built around the central theme of the Day of the Lord, the restoration of Zion, and the redemption of man.  Someof the language is very messianic (or at least was used by Handel in writing Messiah): "Arise, shine; for your light has come, And the glory of the LORD has risen upon you."  Some of the language sounds like the book of Revelation: "No longer will you have the sun for light by day; Nor for brightness will the moon give you light; But you will have the LORD for an everlasting light, and your God for your glory," and, "the days of your mourning will be over," and (chapter 65) "behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; And the former things will not be remembered or come to mind."  Chapter 61 opens with the passage that Jesus read in the synagogue when He began His ministry: "The Spiri of the Lord God is upon me, Because the LORD has anointed me To bring good news to the afflicted . . ."

But at the same time that all this happy glorious stuff is going on, God also says that at this time He will judge the nations and will pour our His wrath on those who are wicked.  But to those who follow God, God will show mercy and compassion and will save them.

Chapter 65 reminds me of the book of Romans (actually it's quoted in the book of Romans), because it talks about God being found by people who didn't seek Him, while at the same time He is pursuing people who want nothing to do with them.  Paul says that this is referring to the Gentiles compared to the Jews.  All this time, God has been making appeal after appeal to the Jews, and they really couldn't care less what He has to say.  But when the gospel is brought to the Gentiles, they accept this brand new God that they didn't even know before.  But in this future time that Isaiah keeps referring to, the time when God makes a new heaven and earth, everyone will acknowledge God and everything will be great.  Even lambs will be safe in the company of animals that used to be their predators.  It just now struck me that this is the context of the verse, "Before they call, I will answer; and while they are still speaking, I will hear."  Does that mean that this verse doesn't apply to right now?  Because it seems to me that God does and has answered prayers before they were prayed or even at the same time.  So if God is already doing that now, I wonder what this verse will mean about what things will be like in the future.

Anyway, so the chapter ends basically with a comparison between the future state of the righteous and the future state of the wicked.  It's very clear that everybody ultimately will see and know who God is and will bow before Him, but only some will share in His glory and joy.  For those who persisted in transgression, there is only agony and death, which really sucks. 

I think the message is clear - the message of this whole book - that God extends mercy and forgiveness to everybody (because He makes intercession for the "transgressors," who are the wicked people - that's all of us), but not everybody is going to participate in that.  Ultimately, God is going to come down and give everybody what they really want, and it's either going to be Him, or it's going to be Not Him.  It's a message to take God seriously, to take repentance seriously, and not to be complacent about the thought of God's judgment, because it's real, and it's coming.  It's a sobering thought, but only if you're living outside God's mercy.

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.

1 Kings 5-11: The Reign of Solomon

King David got a whole book to describe his reign; Solomon reigned just as long and gets seven chapters.  This This is because ancient biographers were not concerned with chronicling every detail of a significant person's life, but only with recording the parts of the person's life that made them significant.  I wish that modern biographers would take this approach; I hate reading biographies.

Anyway.  The most significant event of Solomon's life, as we all know, was the building of the Temple.  This was a huge undertaking, and to accomplish it, Solomon had to get outside help from the king of Tyre, a guy named Hiram.  Solomon bought cedar and cypress timber from Hiram in exchange for lots of food.  Solomon also hires some of Hiram's servants in addition to his own tens of thousands of laborers.  It took this many people, I suppose, because they had to transport the materials, and that could not have been easy.  Solomon, being a smart dude, had 30,000 people divided into 3 rotating shifts - each shift of 10,000 would work 1 month and be home for 2 months, which is a pretty nice deal I think.  I don't know what his other workers' hours were.

Anyway, the book gives general specs on the building - dimensions, materials, rooms, some of the decorations, etc.  But it's not a blueprint, so we don't know exactly what it looked like, although a lot of people have made good educated guesses.  Wikipedia has an article about it.  The point is, this was supposed to be the most beautiful building in Israel - just about everything in it was overlaid with gold, and there were cherubim statues and engravings of palm trees, flowers, and more cherubim.  It took seven years to build and all 38 verses of chapter 6 plus 39 verses of chapter 7 to describe.

In the next chapter Solomon builds himself a house, which is much smaller and much less impressive, and only takes 12 verses to describe.  Clearly, the house of God was more important to Solomon than his house was, and that is as it should be.

Then the ark is brought into the temple, and Solomon addresses the people to tell them why he built the temple, and gives a very long prayer of dedication, asking God to hear the prayers of His people and have mercy on them when they are in distress or when they have turned from Him and then repent.  He finishes with a benediction and then a really huge sacrificing party - 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep.  I don't know how long it took to sacrifice each animal, but using a little bit of basic math I figured out that they definitely needed multiple priests sacrificing at once or they'd be there for like a week.

Now God appears to Solomon again, like he did before when Solomon asked for wisdom.  God tells Solomon again that if he lives as David did and follows God all his life, his throne will be established forever and everything will be good; but if he doesn't, the land will be taken away from him and the temple will be destroyed.  That makes me wonder, if Israel had never sinned, and if all the kings had been good, would Jesus have been born in a palace?

Now that all the temple work has been completed, Solomon gives fellow king Hiram twenty cities in Galilee, just to have.  I think that is really generous, because remember he's also been giving him food for the last 7 years.  But Hiram doesn't like the cities he got (maybe he doesn't like Galilee).  This, to me, is kind of like looking a gift horse in the mouth, don't you think?  But we don't know if Solomon did anything to make him more grateful.  We just know that those 20 cities were nicknamed Cabul, meaning "as good as nothing," and that Hiram sent Solomon 120 talents of gold.

Earlier, we heard that kings came from around the world to meet with Solomon because he had a reputation of being so wise.  Now the queen of Sheba comes to visit Solomon.  Sheba is apparently where Ethiopia is today.  The queen and Solomon seem to hit it off, to the point that many people believe the queen returned to her country carrying Solomon's child.  And to this day, I believe the Ethiopians claim to be descendants of the queen of Sheba and Solomon, to some extent.  And maybe that's why they accepted Christianity so readily.  I don't know.


Now we get a description of how rich Solomon was - the armor, the chariots, the armies, the goblets, etc.  Apparently Solomon made Israel so rich that silver because a common metal.  How would you like to live in a land where there was as much silver as gravel!

Unfortunately, the other thing Solomon has a lot of is women.  300 wives and 700 concubines - seriously, that's disgusting.  How is it that the wisest ruler in the world is probably the stupidest husband?  Well, God didn't say he'd give Solomon wisdom for everything in life, just for ruling.  I don't believe that Solmon was the overall wisest person ever to live, because he made really foolish mistakes in his relationships - namely, that he had so many.  And guess what?  Since Israel apparently ran out of single women for Solomon to collect, he started turning to foreign women, including women from countries and religions that God said never to intermarry with.  And wouldn't you know it, all those women eventually turned Solomon's heart away from God.  If your heart is divided among 1000 women, I think it's only natural to suppose that it would become divided from God sooner or later as well.  Really, really stupid idea, wise guy.

So of course, trouble starts to come, and it comes from Israel's cousin, Edom.  Edom rebels against Solomon, and there was strife between the two nations for the rest of Solomon's life.  Now God tells a prophet named Ahijah that he's going to divide the kingdom between David's descendants and another guy named Jeroboam, and he'll even give Jeroboam the majority of the kingdom.  Ahijah tells Jeroboam that if he follows God, things will go well for him and he'll have a descendant on the throne of Israel forever - kind of like what God said to Solomon.  God doesn't want to destroy Israel, but he is going to use it as an illustration of what a heart divided looks like.  But out of love for David, God's decided to wait until after Solomon's death to do this.

Solomon dies, and I don't know what the state of his heart was.  God told Solomon himself that he's going to take the kingdom away from him, and we don't hear whether Solomon repents or not.  That's kind of discouraging, because God had been so important to him before - or maybe it was that he was preoccupied with David's vision, without ever making it his own.  I suppose we'll never know on this side of heaven.  Either way, it's clear that the old saying is true: God doesn't have grandchildren.  Just because David followed God wholeheartedly, doesn't mean that Solomon could do whatever he wanted.  Maybe Solomon was basing his relationship with God off his father's relationship, figuring that being the son of David was good enough to keep him in God's good graces.  And you just can't do that.

Judges 13-16: Samson, or Proof that God Can Use a Doofus

You're going to tell me that I'm giving Samson a hard time, but I have a hard time liking this guy, and it's not just because of Delilah.  All the good things he did were the result of his own stupidity.  Let's look at his life.

So we begin in chapter 13 with the age-old story of Israel doing evil, and the Philistines oppress them for 40 years.  Then an angel appears to a woman who has no children and tells her she's going to give birth to a son who will deliver Israel from the Philistines, but there's a catch: he is to be a life-long Nazarite.

If you remember from reading the Law, "Nazirite" referred to a certain type of vow that a person would take for a period of time, and during that time they could not drink wine or any other strong drink, and they couldn't cut their hair either.  Normally the vow and its conditions were temporary, something that an adult would choose to do.  Samson's the only person I know of who was a Nazirite his whole life.  Pretty cool.

I like Samson's parents, I think.  Or at least, I'm glad that this story's not all about Samson but that we get to see a little bit of them.  After the angel visits the woman, whose name we don't even know, she tells her husband what happened, and he prays to God that the angel will come again so that he can tell them how to raise their kid.  Isn't that great?  First of all that he believes his wife right off the bat, and secondly that the reason he wants to see the angel is not because it would be really cool, but because he wants advice.  This guy's name, by the way, is Manoah.  I like Manoah.

So guess what?  The angel does come again, and Manoah gets to meet him.  He doesn't know that it's the angel of the LORD; he seems to think he's a regular person because he keeps referring to him as "man."  So he asks the angel some questions, which the angel really doesn't answer directly.  Then Manoah asks the angel what his name is, and we get another clue that the angel of the LORD may be the LORD himself, a theophany: he responds, "Why do you ask my name, seeing it is wonderful?"  the "wonderful" there means "incomprehensible."  That immediately brings my mind to Isaiah, where he prophesies the birth of Christ and says His name shall be, among other things, Wonderful.

So then Manoah wants to make dinner for the angel, and he gets some food and puts a burnt offering and a grain offering on a rock, and God sends a flame of fire down from heaven and the angel ascends in it, or something like that.  So then or told them stuff or shown them stuff. Manoah knows who he's just been talking to and thinks he and his wife are going to die for seeing God, but she says if they were going to die He wouldn't have accepted their offerings  Smart lady.

Okay, so now it's Samson's turn.  Samson gets born and grows up.  One day he sees a Philistine girl and without talking to her or anything, he goes home and tells his dad he wants to marry her.  His father says, are the pickings really that bad amongst our own people that you want to marry a Philistine?  Samson's response?  "She looks good to me."  I just have this picture of Samson talking like a stereotypical caveman and grunting.  Whatever happened to people like Isaac who trusted his dad to find him a wife, and loved Rebekah his whole life?

So finally Samson goes back and talks to her, and what does the text say?  "She looked good to Samson."  I don't think he really got much out of talking to her, personally.

Next, we find out that Samson is also kind of a pushover.  He's throwing a wedding party, because he really is going to marry this girl, and he tells all her friends a riddle that they can't guess, promising them new clothes if they can guess, but demanding new clothes from them if they can't.  I think he is purposely trying to trick them so that he'll get 30 new outfits. They talk to the bride and tell her to coax the answer out of him or else they'll burn her father's house down.  So she goes and pesters him for a whole week, and finally he cracks and tells her, so she tells the men, so they can answer Samson's riddle.  Apparently he doesn't have any extra clothes because he goes out of town and kills 30 Philistines so he can take their clothes and give them to his new wife's friends.  And he's so angry that he doesn't even go back to his own wedding, and guess what?  His bride is given to Samson's friend.  Ouch!  Can't say I'm surprised though.

So Samson waits a few months before thinking he wants to be a husband, and then he goes to visit the girl he is supposed to be married to, and her father doesn't let him see her.  He offers Samson a different daughter though.  So Samson gets angry, but he doesn't want people to blame him for killing Philistines again, so he go rounds up 300 foxes - do not ask me how - and ties two foxes at a time together with a torch between their tails, and lets them go right by the grain fields, which is ready to be harvested at this time.  So the Philistines go to Samson's non-wife and burn her and her father to death.

Samson says "I will surely take revenge on you, but after that I will quit."  What a nice guy.  So he just goes on the rampage and kills we don't know how many of them.  Then he goes and lives in a cave, until the Philistines come looking for them, and then he takes the jawbone of a donkey and kills 1000 men with it.  By the way, click here to see how this would actually have worked.

Next is the story we're all familiar with: Delilah.  But first he goes and sleeps with a prostitute, a Philistine prostitute at that.  Why can't Samson live with his own people and just go kill Philistines on the weekends or something?  Then he meets Delilah, who is also a Philistine, and falls in love with her.  Apparently the feeling isn't mutual because the Philistines pay her to find out the secret to Samson's strength.  You know the story: the first three times she asks him, he tells her something totally bogus, but the fourth time he tells her that his hair has never been cut, and so she cuts his hair off, he becomes normal, and he gets captured by the Philistines.  They gouge his eyes out, which is really really really gross to me, and parade him around at one of their parties.

Finally, finally Samson does something intelligent.  He prays.  In this story, we've seen the Spirit of God come upon Samson to endow him with strength, but we haven't seen Samson acknowledge God, in spite of being a Nazirite and everything.  In fact, he seems to be the most un-Israelite Israelite we've yet met: he doesn't live with his own people, he doesn't appear to have any kind of communication with God, and the only women he's interested in are Philistines, whom the Israelites are forbidden from intermarrying with.  But now, at rock bottom, Samson turns to God and prays that God will give him strength one last time.   True, Samson seems concerned only with avenging himself because the Philistines took his eyes, but God listens to him, and Samson pulls an entire giant house down, killing well over 3000 Philistines - and Samson.

It seems to me like Samson was really motivated by hormones, and that both got him into trouble and caused him to kill a bunch of Philistines, which was what he was born for.  And that brings me to the title of this blog.  Samson may have been a total Neanderthal without an ounce of gentleman in him, and he may have been really hormonal and made stupid rash decisions, but God used those things to do what He had always intended to do with Samson, in delivering Israel from the Philistines.  God can even turn our foolishness and our stupidity into something useful to Him.  Isn't that crazy?

Joshua 7-12: Six Chapters of War

Jericho is the first of many cities in the area of Canaan to be destroyed by Israel, and once it gets flattened, the Hebrews are chomping at the bit to go on to the next city.  But if you're at all familiar with the story, you know that they jumped the gun on this one.  It's a little town with a little name: Ai.

What happens is, in the case of Jericho (and several of the other cities), God told the people that they couldn't take anything from Jericho.  Not just that all the people had to die, or even that all the people and all the animals had to die, but they couldn't even take gold or silver out of the city.  So along comes this guy named Achan, and I'll give you three guesses what he does.  Yeah.  To be specific, he takes a lot of something: a mantle, two hundred shekels of silver, and a bar of gold weight fifty shekels.  A shekel is 9.56 grams, or a little over a third of an ounce.  200 shekels is a little over 4 pounds, and fifty shekels is about one pound.  Now, I don't know what the subjective value of these things would have been to that society, but right now, gold is being traded at over $1000 per ounce and silver at over $16 per ounce.  So if Achan had taken that amount of gold and silver today (I have no idea what a mantle is), it would amount to about $18,783 in gold and $1125 in gold that he stole.  That's if it were today.

So math aside, Achan screwed up, so after being found out and confessing, he is stoned to death - and not just him, but his family too.  Why is that?  I looked up some commentaries and one of them pointed out that Achan is the fifth generation after Judah, making him one of the older Israelites, maybe in his 50s at this time.  Based on that and the fact that God had previously commanded that no child was to be killed for the sin of their father, I think it is a safe inference to make that Achan's children 1) are adults, and 2) along with Achan's wife, knew about his sin and hid it from Joshua.  Being an accomplice to an evil - or just not saying anything - is sometimes as bad as doing the crime yourself.

So after this matter gets cleared up, so to speak, Israel goes on to defeat every tribe that is in the land God has promised them.  Different people try different things to defeat them, including making a sneaky promise, banding together with other tribes, and so forth, but nothing works.  A total of 31 kings, including the ones we've already learned about in Numbers and earlier in this chapter, are defeated by the Hebrews.

One of the kings mentioned, one of five actually who join forces in an attempt to stop Israel in its tracks, is named Adoni-zedek, and can you guess what city he is king of?  Jerusalem.  If you know any Hebrew at all, you probably know that the word "Adonai" means "lord," and you may also know that "zedek" means "righetousness."  Put those words together next to Jerusalem, and does this name sound familiar to you at all?  It sounds frighteningly close to Melchizedek, the guy Abraham met waaaaaaaay a long time ago in Genesis.  But this guy appears to be bad and definitely not in Israel's side.  Descendant?  Unrelated coincidence?  I have no idea but it's really weirding me out.

What do we learn about God in a chapter that basically is one war story after another?  I think we learn first of all that he was faithful to Abraham and the covenant he made with him and Isaac and Jacob.  I think we also learn that God is punishing the sins of the Canaanites.  Depending oon what city they go to, there are different levels of destruction that must be brought to the city; in some, every living thing is killed.  In others, every living thing is killed and none of the spoil can be touched.  In some, only the people are killed, and in the ones outside the promised land, only the men are killed.  I read this and I recall a passage way back in Genesis that I will paste here for you:

Genesis 15:13-16 "God said to Abram, 'Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years.  But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve, and afterward they will come out with many possessions.  As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you will be buried at a good old age.  Then in the fourth generation they will return here, for the iniquty of the Amorite is not yet complete.' "

In other words, God had already given the land of Canaan to Abraham and his descendants, but he was going to give the pagan people in the land four hundred more years to repent and turn from their ways.  It seems from the context like they were just doing things a lot more immoral than what was going around in the surrounding areas, because God didn't call for any kind of conquest or judgment on any other tribes.  And I really believe that if these nations had  turned to God, he would have forgiven them.

And this in turn brings a passage to mind from 2 Peter.  Read it with the Canaanites in your mind:

"[B]y the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water, through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water.  But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.  But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance" (3:5b-9).

God is patient with us - he is literally waiting for us to repent, and sometimes he withholds judgment in anticipation of that.  But there is evidently a point at which the time is up, when you either have repented or you are not going to.  The Bible says that today is the day of salvation - not tomorrow, not someday when you get around to it.  We don't know what exactly the Canaanites were doing that God disliked so much, but we do know that everybody does things that are wrong, and I even think everybody does things that are in rebellion of what we know is right.  And in the end, all sin separates us from God.  You cannot endure his presence unless you are no less than perfect.  I don't think it's because God is an Adrian Monk germ-freak afraid to get his clothes dirty; I think it's because our God is a consuming fire and everything that is not pure and holy already will be scorched when it comes into contact with him.  That's a problem, and that problem is what the nation of Israel was created to demonstrate.  The only way for us to enter God's presence is for something completely innocent to stand in our way - and friend, you and I will never be that.  No matter how good you become in your life, you can't erase the bad things you've done.  Only one person can do that, and his name is Jesus.  His blood is the only detergent that can wash the stain of our sins completely away.  All you have to do is take your dirty laundry to him and ask him to clean you.  The Canaanites had four hundred years to get things straight with God, and they missed the opportunity.  Don't let it pass you by.

Rewind - Genesis 3: Sin Entered the World . . .

Note: In reading over my blogs I've noticed a few chapters that got overlooked somehow here and there.  Genesis 3 is one of them. I think I'm going to make separate posts for each of these (I've only noticed one other so far).

Genesis 3 is about sin entering the world - the serpent deceives Eve and she eats, and then Adam eats, and the rest is history.  This is a loaded chapter. 

First of all, there's a tension between seeing and hearing - God gave a verbal command to Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree, but then Eve looks at the tree and sees that it appears good, so she goes with that.  We as humans, I think, are much more likely to believe our eyes than our ears.

Secondly, did you know that according to Jewish belief, Satan hasn't fallen yet at this point in the story?  They believe that Satan was specifically created to tempt man, so that he would have free will - the idea being that without options, you can't really be said to be making choices.  Ever since I heard about that, I've wondered if it is true.  The Bible doesn’t explicitly tell us who Satan is or what he was before he became God’s enemy; tradition tells us that he is Lucifer, the name Isaiah gives to the king of Babylon, but the text itself doesn’t say that, although it may well be true.  All we know is that his name means “adversary.”

Thirdly, Adam and Eve realize they're naked.  Donald Miller has an amazing chapter in his book Searching for God Knows What about the significance of this idea.  To sum it up, nakedness represents complete vulnerability.  We equate it with shame today, but it wasn't that way in the garden because Adam and Eve knew they were completely, wholly accepted by God and by each other; they had nothing to hide.  We lost that at the fall, that security.  Now we are always trying to cover up what we perceive to be our inadequacy; we're embarrassed of ourselves.  You know this is all a double entendre, right?  Nakedness is more than physical openness, it's every kind of openness.  We try to hide who we are from each other because we fear rejection.  In the same way, Adam and Eve tried to hide their nakedness from God in a symbol of their disobedience - they no longer could be completely open with Him; having broken His law, they had something to fear, and something to hide.  God is not at all put off by that.  And the beautiful thing is, He doesn't leave them like they are, even though they're being punished.  He clothes them with animal skins.  This is the first time in history that something has died, so it probably really freaked Adam and Eve out.  Something innocent died to provide covering for them, when God had said that when they ate of the forbidden tree, they would be the ones who died.  So they’re looking at the dead animals on their bodies and thinking, “Is this what was going to happen to me?”

What Adam and Eve did in the garden is what we all do.  I don’t believe that in a mystical, vaguely-Eastern way all humans were pre-incarnately present inside Adam’s body and every one of us chose to eat the fruit.  But I do believe that in each one of our lives, we take a shortcut – what we see over what we have heard, maybe – and we decide that our judgment is better than God’s.  Then when we screw up and we know it, we feel ashamed, inadequate, guilty.  We want to hide.  We try to cover up our wrongdoing by various means – good deeds, religiosity, denial, indifference, materialism, you name it – those things are leaves.  They’re a sloppy makeshift loincloth that is going to blow away at the slightest gust of wind, leaving us totally exposed.  But along comes God who sees who we are and what we’ve done, and He makes provision for us.  He doesn’t let us off the hook – no, when sin happens, something or someone has to die – and that someone was Jesus.  His death should have been our death, and would have been our death.  But now His body and blood give us covering for our shame and make us able to stand again.  It’s something we didn’t have to do and certainly didn’t deserve to have done.  In theological terms, that is called grace.

Deuteronomy 11-19: You'd Think These Laws Would Be Organized Better

I'm behind in my blogging again, so I'm going to lump several chapters together again.  Deuteronomy turns out to be really interesting.  The majority of the information has already been given in Exodus through Numbers, but there is stuff in here that I don't remember reading before (but then again, I don't even remember reading it from the last time I read Deuteronomy, so it could very well be in one of the other books and I just can't remember that far back).

Here's an overview of what goes on here:

• 11:1-32 Rewards for obedience
  
• 12:1-27 Instructions on where to offer sacrifices
  
• 12:28-32 Don't follow the religion of the other nations
• 13:1-18 Idolatry is punishable by death
  
• 14:1-22 Clean and unclean animals
• 14:23-29 Tithes
• 15:1-19 Slavery and the Sabbatic Year
• 15:20-23 Firstborn animals
• 16:1-17 Holidays
• 16:18-22 Appointing Judges
• 17:1-7 Punishing idolatry again
• 17:8-13 Difficult cases to be judged by Levites
• 17:14-20 Laws for appointing a king
• 18:1-8 Providing for the Levites
• 18:9-14 Sorcery, spiritism, witchcraft, etc forbidden
• 18:15-22 Prophets, true and false
• 19:1-13 Cities of refuge; manslaughter versus murder
• 19:14-21 False Witnesses

 As you can see, those are a lot of different topics, and it really kind of jumps around a lot.  There are a couple of one-sentence laws tucked in there too that I didn't list.  As something of an organization freak, this sort of drives me crazy, and I wonder if there's a reason for ordering it all like this, or if Moses is just speaking as he remembers something, or what.

So here are some things that I find interesting:

1.  Location of offering sacrifices.  Burnt offerings, it appears, could not be offered just anywhere; the people would have to go to a designated location.  Judging by the context, it seems that the purpose of this was to prevent people from using the pagan places of worship (and we'll find out why later on).  They were supposed to completely destroy every pagan altar and votive and object of worship so they wouldn't be tempted to start using those things.

2.  I think tithing, as it is described in the Bible, has been really misunderstood.  In chapter 14 it says that the tithe is a portion of a person's harvest, which that person is supposed to take to the designated place of worship and eat, or if they couldn't carry it all, they could exchange the crops for money or oxen or wine or anything they wanted and take that to the designated place of worship and eat it there.  Then every three years they were to take that tithe and give it to the Levites in their town for them to eat.  That sounds very different to me from the 10% of our income given to the church every month that I've heard about all my life.  I'm not saying it's bad to give money to the church - I think it's very important - I just don't think it's the same thing as a tithe.

3.  Slavery.  Slavery in ancient Israel, at least according to the Law, was really different from modern slavery like what we practiced before the abolition.  Slavery among Hebrews was a temporary state; ever seven years, the slaves were to be set free - and more than that, their owners were supposed to load them with money and livestock so they wouldn't have to start over with nothing.  Every time the Law mentions slaves and the poor and orphans and stuff like that, it says, "remember that you were slaves in Egypt."  I think maybe God let Israel be in slavery so long so that they would learn to have compassion on the poor once they became rich.  I don't know if it worked out that way, but that was the idea.

4.  God knew that Israel was going to want to have a king eventually, so He even made provisions for that.  He said the king wasn't supposed to accumulate wealth or possessions or wives or anything that would turn his heart away from God or make him think he was better than his countrymen.  Yeah, none of those rules were kept.  It also says that the king was supposed to have the Law written on a scroll to be kept next to him so he could read it every day his whole life - now if that rule had been followed, maybe the Hebrew monarchy would have turned out better than it did.

Numbers 26-29: A New Generation

I'm kind of behind in my blogging so I'll try to lump several chapters together.

When we get to chapter 26, the forty years of wandering have now passed (I guess it's assumed that the last few chapters took place during those 40 years).  So it starts out with a census of the new generation.  The population of the Hebrews has grown by just about 1000, which is not very much.  Upon closer inspection of the numbers, we find that some tribes have actually decreased considerably in size, while others have grown considerably.  Check out this before and after:

Tribe------------Before -------------After
Reuben---------46,500-------------43,730
Simeon---------59.300-------------22,200
Gad------------46,650-------------40,500
Judah-----------74,600------------76,500
Issachar--------54,400-------------64,300
Zebulun--------57,400-------------60,500
Ephraim--------40,500-------------32,500
Manasseh------32,200-------------52,700
Benjamin-------35,400-------------45,600
Dan------------62,700-------------64,400
Asher----------41,500-------------53,400
Naphtali--------53,400------------45,400

Now, these numbers represent every male of fighting age - that is, 20 or older - not every person in each tribe.  The Levites didn't fight and didn't have an inheritance in the promised land (a section of land allotted to them), so they weren't numbered in with the rest, but in this passage we find out that there are 23,000 males a month old and older.  So they must be a much smaller tribe all around.

I think it's interesting that so many of the tribes shrunk in number.  I wonder if it's that they just had a lot of old people and not a lot of kids, or that they had more girls than boys, or that a lot of them died in the plagues and things.  This is supposed to be the new generation, though, so most of these people were either kids or not born yet when their parents were dying of plagues and things.  But I guess a lot of people died in plagues who would have still had children, and by that means the number of births dropped.

Anyway, a cool thing happens in chapter 27.  This guy named Zelophehad (hereafter Z) has died, although he wasn't one of Korah's rebels from chapter 16, and he has no sons - only five daughters, all of whom are unmarried at this point.  They ask Moses to give them their father's inheritance (land in the promised land) to keep in his name.  I am going to assume this was unheard of in these days.  Even in modern times, land usually passed to the next direct male rather than the next direct person.  That's the initial conflict in Pride and Prejudice, which takes place around 1810 - the Bennetts' estate Longbourn is entailed by default on heirs male, so their five daughters are going to get nothing when Mr. Bennett dies.  Not every estate was handled this way (Miss Anne de Bourgh, only child of Sir Lewis and Lady Catherine, inherits all of Rosings Park), but it was common.  But God tells Moses, when he asks him, that Z's daughters are right in saying they should have an inheritance, and makes a law that any man who dies with no male heir should give his property to his daughters, and if there are no children it goes to his brother and so forth.  It's still primarily keeping the land to the male heirs, but I think it's really progressive and decent not to take a guy's land away from his family just because he doesn't have a son.

Then we find out that Joshua, Moses' assistant, is going to be the next Moses, and there's a ceremony for the transfer of power - kind of like what they did with Aaron and Eleazar, only in the sight of the whole congregation.  I wonder why they didn't go up on a mountain.  Maybe because Aaron went up the mountain to die and Moses wasn't going to die yet, or maybe because the people needed to see God put His stamp of approval on Joshua so they'd listen to him better than they listened to Moses.  I don't know.

The next two chapters are laws again.  In chapter 28, it sure sounds like there are a lot of sacrifices.  It sounds like they had to sacrifice two male lambs every day as a burnt offering - a continual offering.  Then every Sabbath there was an additional sacrifice of two lambs, and another burnt offering at the first of each month, and then the Passover lamb, and the sacrifices during the Feast of Weeks, and of course each of those had a drink offering and grain offerings to go along with the burnt offering.  Additionally, there was a seven-day holiday during the seventh month, in which there were sacrifices to be offered every day, grain offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings and so forth.  That's a lot of stuff!  I suppose God had to bless them just so they'd have enough sheep to sacrifice every day.  I suppose the reason for all this was, again, to point out the people's constant need for God.  I think the idea behind the continual burnt offerings was to tell people that  they were never in a state of perfect harmony with God - there was always a barrier between them and Him, and they always needed something to go between them and God.  We're not just separated from God by our sinful actions; we're separated from God by our nature, because He is holy and we are not.  God is not one of us, even though we are made in His likeness.  I suppose in order to remove the need for those offerings - in order for man and God to have a direct relationship with nothing in the way, God would have to become one of us.  But now I'm getting ahead of myself.

Numbers 18-20: Who Will Mourn You?

I'm going to focus on two very small parts of these three chapters, but here are my notes/thoughts on the whole passage.

• Chapter 18 is about duties of the Levites.  It says that they will "bear the guilt in connection with the sanctuary."  Does anybody know what that means?  I may have to look it up.
• This is interesting.  In chapter 19 the priests have to slaughter a heifer in the presence of Eleazar (Aaron's son, the next high priest), and then burn it and place its ashes outside the camp.  Those ashes would be used when somebody was unclean, to cleanse them.  I'm not sure if they placed the ashes in water, or if the ashes somehow represent water, because it says they're kept "as water to remove impurity" and speaks about people washing in it.  Anyway, this is what Hebrews 9:13 is talking about when it mentions "the ashes of a heifer" cleansing people outwardly.  I always wondered what that was talking about.
• Then it talks about people who are in contact with a dead person being unclean for 7 days.  If a person died in their tent, everyone in the tent was unclean too, and any jar or anything that didn't have a lid on it was unclean.  I think this must have been one of those sanitation things.  People didn't know about germs until the 1800s so they didn't know why people would get sick from being around someone else who was sick, and they also didn't know how long germs could live or anything like that.  So this was a way of keeping disease from spreading, I think.
• At the beginning of chapter 20, Miriam dies.  The heading "Death of Miriam" is over the first seven verses in my Bible, but the only part that's actually about her is verse 1.
• Then we have another water incident.  This is the part where God tells Moses to speak to a rock and it'll bring forth water, so what does Moses do?  He hits the rock, because that's the method that worked before.  And for this, God tells him he will not enter the promised land, because he didn't trust God to provide - he fell back on something that had worked earlier, maybe because he thought the power was in his staff or how hard he struck the rock and not in God who doesn't really need Moses to do anything in order to make water come from a rock.
• The people reach Edom - if that name sounds familiar, it's the other name for Esau, and it's now the name of the land where his descendants are living.  The Israelites send a message asking to travel peacefully through the land and promise to stay on the highway - they won't even touch the wells to get a drink - and Edom says "no way, get out of here."  I think this shows that the old sibling rivalry is still very much alive and well.  I'm proud of what Israel does, though. Instead of getting mad and attacking Edom, they travel all the way around the country to get where they're going next.
  
• At the end of the chapter, Aaron dies.  He gets seven verses.  What happens is he goes up to a mountain and his priest uniform gets put on his son Eleazar, and then Aaron dies.
  

As you have probably guessed, I'm focusing this post on comparing the deaths of Miriam and Aaron.  This is what the text says about Miriam's death:  "Now Miriam died there and was buried there."  She doesn't even get a full verse because the first part of the verse just says that they arrived in the wilderness of Zin and the people stayed at Kadesh.

This is what the text says about Aaron's death:
"Then the LORD spoke to Moses and Aaron at Mount Hor by the border of the land of Edom, saying, Aaron will be gathered to his people; for he shall not enter the land which I have given to the sons of Israel, because you rebelled against My command at the waters of Meribah.  Take Aaron and his son Eleazar and bring them up to Mount Hor; and strip Aaron of his garments and put them on his son Eleazar.  So Aaron will be gathered to his people, and will die there."  So Moses di just as the LORD had commanded, and they went up to Mount Hor in the sight of all the congregation.  After Moses had stripped Aaron of his garments and put them on his son Eleazar, Aaron died there on the mountain top.  Then Moses and Eleazar came down from the mountain.  When all the congregation saw that Aaron had died, all the house of Israel wept for Aaron thirty days."

Quite a bit of difference, isn't there?  We don't even know how Miriam died or whether people mourned for her.  With Aaron we get a whole story - that's more than what we got with Abraham, if you can remember back that far.  And we find that people mourned him thirty days.  Remember when Ronald Reagan died, and Bush commanded that all flags be raised to half-mast for thirty days?  That's not what this was like.  Mourning was something very important to ancient people - in fact, some people could do it professionally.  It involved sackcloth and fasting and wailing and all that sort of thing - it was a big deal, and it did usually last for a few days as far as I can recall.  But this was hardcore.

What I find really great about this passage is that it happens right after the waters of Meribah incident, where God tells Moses and Aaron that because of their lack of trust, they won't enter the promised land.  The last significant event in Aaron's life was a screw-up.  And still he gets to go up to a mountain to die in peace next to his brother and his son, and he gets a celebrity funeral.  I think it goes to show, you don't have to have lived a perfect life to die a good death.  But in contrast with Miriam's death, I think it also shows that you're not going to get an epigram like that unless there's a good reason for it.  Aaron may have been number two to Moses for most of his life, and he may have griped and complained about it, and he was even the one who made the golden calf back in Exodus, but he was the high priest of Israel, handpicked by God for a divine purpose.  And the people may have whined about God playing favorites with Moses and Aaron, but when one of their leaders died, they felt it so deeply that they showed him tremendous honor in his death.

I guess it's just something to think about.  Who would mourn you for thirty days when you die?

Numbers 15-17: More Rebellion (Surprised?) and the Sabbath

I'm going to do a lot of blogs really close together from now on because I'm reading every night and I want to be able to talk about each passage as much as I feel like I need to.

So here's the breakdown of chapters 15-17:

• God tells Moses that when they enter Canaan, they are supposed to present offerings to God, and there are intsructions about how to do that.
• God explains that Israel is to have the same laws for native Hebrews as they have for foreigners who join them (whether temporarily or permanently).
• Then it goes into the difference between unintentional sins and defiant sins.  Even though Israel was supposed to be an example of holiness to the other nations, God knew they would mess up even if they had the best intentions, so He specifically gives instructions for how to present a sacrifice to atone for those sins when they happen.  However, sins that are "defiant" are a different matter.  A person who deliberately broke one of God's laws to blaspheme Him or show blatant disrespect for Him was to be cut off from the congregation.
• Somebody is caught gathering wood on the Sabbath, and God says to stone him.
• A bunch of leaders decide to rebel against Moses because they don't think he should be the head honcho.  So Moses says God should decide, and the ground opens up and literally swallows the guys who rebelled.
• Then a bunch of other people blame Moses for the people above dying.  God tells Moses again that He'll just kill all the people, Moses says don't, God ends up putting a plague on the ones who are grumbling against Moses.
• To quell any further doubts, God asks Moses to collect the rods of twelve leaders (one from each tribe) including Aaron, and write their names on their rods, and then He'll show which man is chosen for the priesthood.  The next day, Aaron's rod has buds, flowers, and ripe almonds on it, so God has Moses save it (it was later placed in the Ark of the Covenant) as a testimony.

About the guy who got killed for working on the Sabbath.  In a discussion about the Sabbath, a friend of mine said the following:

"[The author of Hebrews] contrasts the rebellion many Israelites had toward the Sabbath in the wilderness with the rebellion many people in general have toward Grace in the Eternal Now. Those who do not accept God's grace and refuse to take part in the Sabbath rest of Christ will surely perish and be denied God's rest just as the rebellious Israelites were.
Those who reject the grace of God make themselves exempt from it, as God swears they shall never know rest, which is the Sabbath, which is His grace."


Note my friend's word choice - "refuse to take part in the Sabbath rest."  You see, the command to keep the Sabbath wasn't given as a burdensome obligation, another check box on the list of do's and don'ts.  It was given to man as a gift, a way to commune with God in joy and peace, without distractions.  Not participating in the Sabbath is essentially refusing that communion.

I think there was more going on in this story than a guy picking up sticks.  The Bible says that the things that happened to Israel in the Old Testament as examples and warnings for us today (1 Corinthians 10:11).  I think maybe this event happened as a warning to us today of what happens when we say "no" to the Sabbath, which to us today is a relationship with Christ (read Hebrews 4).

I think I'm going to start taking the spirit of the Sabbath more seriously from now on.  By that I mean, I think I really should take one day each week to focus on God and rest.  But I also mean that I think I can access that Sabbath rest at all times.  Hebrews says that there "remains" a Sabbath rest for us, so I think it's something that is always available, and it should be taken advantage of.

Numbers 5-10: We're Following the Leader

I'm back! After a long hiatus, I decided to pick up right where I left off and finish the Bible - and this blog - by the end of the year. So, let's get started.

When we last left off, Moses had counted all the men of Israel by tribes and God had explained the duties of the priests. We pick up with more ceremonial and religious duties in chapters 5-6.

Now, there's a part in the middle of chapter 5 that I don't really get: it's the test for adultery. If a husband got suspicious that his wife was having an affair, but he didn't have any witnesses, the process of finding out if it was true was to take her to the temple with an offering, and the priest would take a bowl of water and put some dust in it and make the woman drink it. If she got sick, she was guilty; if she didn't, she was innocent. What the heck? Well, apparently tests for unchastity were common - even universal - in ancient times. The thing is, as weird as it sounds, this test provided the suspected wife with some protection. Without witnesses, it would be the husband's word against the wife's, and in that culture, the man always won the argument. By requiring him to put her to some kind of trial, the husband was prevented from just acting on his suspicion and divorcing his wife (or something else). The manner of trial also clearly took the power out of the hands of man. The husband couldn't manipulate the judge to pronounce his wife guilty, because the judge was God. I wonder how well this trial system worked out.

Chapter 6 talks about the vows of Nazirites. I'm not going to go into that, but it's kind of neat to read.

In chapter 7, the tabernacle is anointed and consecrated, and at the same time, each of the twelve tribes presents and offering to the tabernacle, one tribe each day, presented by a leader of that tribe. The offering is exactly the same for each tribe: "one silver dish whose weight was one hundred and thirty shekels, one silver bowl of seventy shekels, according to the shekel of the sanctuary, both of them full of fine flour mixed with oil for a grain offering; one gold pan of ten shekels, full of incense, one bull, one ram, one male lamb one year old, for a burnt offering; one male goat for a sin offering; and for the sacrifice of peace offerings, two oxen, five rams, five male goats, five male lambs one year old." That's a lot of stuff, and it says that twelve times, along with who gave the offering, who their father was, what tribe they were from, and which day they presented their offering. That's the whole chapter. Now, several years ago when I read the Bible before, this is exactly the sort of thing that I would skip over. But I made sure to read every word this time. Why? I don't know, I think it's important. I'm not sure if there's any special reason for listing each tribe separately even though they all gave the same thing; maybe it's just an affirmation of the distinctness of each group in spite of their unity under God. I'm not sure.

Chapter 8 is about cleansing the Levites and the terms of their service (they got to retire at 50!).

In chapter 9, God tells the Israelites to observe Passover again, but a few people ask Moses what they should do if they're ceremonially unclean during that time. What I find very interesting here is that instead of just answering right off the bat, Moses says, "Wait, and I will listen to what the LORD will command concerning you." And the Bible actually makes a point of saying that. I think this is very important, and it ties into the next thing that happens. It talks about the cloud that settled over the tabernacle - the presence of the LORD - and how the people followed it. It says that when the cloud lifted, the people set out and followed the cloud, and when the cloud settled on the tabernacle, the people made camp and stayed there as long as the cloud stayed. The text makes this point about four or five times:

"At the command of the LORD the sons of Israel would set out, and at the command of the LORD they would make camp. . . . the sons of Israel woul dkeep the LORD's charge. . . according to the command of the LORD they remained camped. Then according to the command of the LORD they set out. . . . At the command of the LORD they camped, and at the command of the LORD they set out; they kept the LORD's charge, according to the command of the LORD through Moses."

In chapter 10, that is exactly what happens: the cloud lifts and the people start to move. It tells you in what order the tribes are lined up, and it looks like everybody is just revved up about following their God wherever he leads them.

If I could come up with a theme for these six chapters, it is this: wait for God to judge, wait for God to speak, wait for God to move. And for a brief moment in history, we see it actually happening with the Israelites. Don't get too comfortable though; next time I post things are going to be different.

Numbers 1-4: Let's Talk Math

It took me a while to get this far, because honestly, this book gave me some trouble from the beginning. I kept getting distracted by the fact that there were so many dang Israelites, and I didn't know if the numbers in the Bible were reasonable. I since found a site that really helped me out (click here).

Anyway. This is a difficult book for me to read when I'm trying to learn things about God. Why? Because so far it's a lot of lists and counts and repetition. It's very easy to start skimming and write it off as not important. I mean, how many sermons have you ever heard on any of the first four of Numbers? Speaking for myself, I haven't heard any (although I'm sure there have been some - my parents' church is reading through the Bible in a year and the sermons each Sunday reflect the week's readings).

I was going to do the first six chapters in this post, but chapters 5 and 6 are really on a different subject, so I'll do those next.

Here's the first four chapters of this book in a nutshell:

• Chapter 1: All the men in Israel who are of fighting age (20 or older) are counted. The heads of each tribe and the number of fighting men in each tribe is given. The Levites aren't numbered because they don't fight.
• Chapter 2: God tells Moses where each tribe should camp (north side, west side, etc.), and it tells you again who the head of each tribe is and how many fighting men are in each tribe, in case you had forgotten.
• Chapter 3: Now the Levites get numbered (all the males 1 month old and up), but they are given jobs in the tabernacle. Each clan has a different area of focus. Then all the firstborn sons of Israel are numbered, and the numbers of the Levites are supposed to match up, but there are 273 fewer Levites so the Levites get 5 shekels for every man they lack. This is part of the redemption of the firstborn thing that I'll come back to.
• Chapter 4: The duties of each of the three Levite clans are explained, and they're counted again but only the men between ages 30-50.
  

So as you can see, not a lot happens. What can we learn about God from this passage? What does the author, Moses or whoever, want us to know from reading this?

I think the first and most obvious answer is history. Judaism revolves around the exodus from Egypt. What happened between Goshen and Canaan is not only the basis their holidays, dietary customs, and moral code; it is their heritage. My family has this book of genealogical records that reads like this:

1. (first and last name) and wife, (first and last name).
1. (1st kid's name)
2. (2nd kid's name)
3. (3rd kid's name, etc.)
2. (1st kid's name) and wife, (first and last name).
1. (1st kid's name)
2. (2nd kid's name)

You get the picture. That's all the book is. Why the heck would somebody want to write about that? Because it's history. It tells me where I came from and to whom I belong. There's not a single complete sentence, or even a verb, in the whole thing, but from reading it I learn a lot about my past. I think Numbers is kind of the same way.

In keeping with that, I think another main point of Numbers is that it's history, not fantasy. The numbers in this book are intended as real numbers. Figurative and symbolic numbers in the Bible are generally 3, 7, 10, 12, and 40 (and a few multiples), along with "ten thousand times ten thousand" and "seventy times seven." The author of this book intends for the audience to know that what they are reading is a real story.

Let's keep going with that thought. When God spoke to Abraham and promised to make him a great nation, He gave a figurative number as well: "as numerous as the stars in the sky, and as countless as the sand on the seashore" - that's how many descendants Abraham would have, right? Now in Numbers, we see that God has turned that figurative number into a real number. The promise that existed only as an idea for so long has become a reality, and we can see that the Hebrews are a huge group of people, perhaps 2 million or more in total. God was faithful to Abraham in making his descendants numerous, and because of that, we can trust that God will be faithful to give Abraham's descendants the land He promised them as well, even though we won't see it happen for a few more books.

Now I would like to talk about the redemption of the firstborn. This seems to come up a lot in the Torah, and always under different circumstances. We first saw in Exodus 13 that God said the firstborn of every human and animal belonged to Him and was sanctified (set apart), because of the plague of the firstborn that freed the Hebrews from slavery. Because of this, every firstborn had to be redeemed (bought back). The animals and the sons were redeemed by sacrificing a lamb. Next, in Exodus 22:29-30, we see God mention giving the firstborn of their sons to Him again. Exodus 34 repeats what we saw in chapter 13. Finally here, in Numbers 3:40-51, it says that the firstborn sons are redeemed moreover by the Levites, who do not own any land or fight in battle but are constantly serving as priests, intercessors between God and man. That's why there were supposed to be as many Levites as there were firstborn sons, but they were just short so they had to substitute with money.

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what all the symbolism behind this concept means. On the surface, it's plain that God wanted the people to know they belonged to Him, and that their possessions - whether livestock or their own children - were a gift that He had given and could take away, as He took the firstborn of all Egypt. I feel like there's more to this, but I don't know what. If anybody has studied this passage, please elaborate on it for me.

Numbers is a difficult book because it appears so surfacey. I think, though, that there's a lot more depth to it, and that the more I read it the more I will understand. As I posted in my Xanga the other day, I'm glad that I don't understand this book very well, because it reminds me of how much more the Bible has to teach me.

Leviticus 16-22: Atonement and Holiness

I'm covering a lot of ground in one post here, and if you look at the chapters you might think, that's a lot of different subjects, but the more I've been reading and thinking, the more I see a very strong connection between them. I apologize if this is a little disjointed; unfortunately, it seems that I have the most difficulty articulating the most profound concepts.

In a nutshell, chapters 16-17 talk about Atonement Day, when once a year the high priest would enter the Most Holy Place and make a sacrifice to cover the sins of all the people, as well as sacrifices the people had to offer to the Lord. Chapter 18 lays boundaries for sexuality. Chapter 19 starts off talking about idolatry and then goes into a bunch of miscellaneous laws. Chapter 20 goes back to the immoral relations and then introduces the idea of clean and unclean animals. Chapter 21 is about how priests are supposed to be clean and the things they have to abstain from, and chapter 22 goes into more rules for priests and what they're supposed to do with certain offerings.

Some of the little things that stuck out to me:

God makes a connection between certain sins - human sacrifices and sexual immorality, namely - and the land. He says that the land became defiled when the pagan people did all these things, so it "spewed them out" - kind of like in Genesis 3 when God said that the ground was cursed because of Adam and Eve's sin. Paul says somewhere that the whole world is groaning, as if waiting for the day when it too will be redeemed.


There's a debate I've had on the Circle a few times over whether it is moral to lie in order to protect someone's life (think about Jew-smugglers during the Holocaust, or members of the Underground Railroad). The Bible says not to bear false witness or lie, but in Leviticus 19:16 it says "you are not to act against the life of your neighbor." That's kind of like "you shall not murder" expanded - even if you're not the one killing somebody, anything you do that acts against the life of your neighbor is sin. Regardless of your position on this particular argument I mentioned, I think this verse really shows that morality isn't always as clear-cut as we wish it were. And I think that points to the fact that really, it's about your heart even more than it's about your actions. If your heart follows God, then your actions will be right. So in that sense, it's really more simple than we think it is. Sort of a paradox I guess.

Certain sexual sins got the death penalty, whereas with others it says something like "he will bear his guilt" or "They will die childless" or "they will be cut off from among their people." The latter two are a little more self-explanatory, but I wonder what it means by simply "he will bear his guilt." And I do think it's interesting that we like to say sin is sin, it's all equal - and in a sense that is true - but the Bible also implies otherwise, that some sins deserve to be punished more than others.

Now, the thing that struck me the most while reading this whole passage, and later when I read through Matthew 4 and 5, is just the sheer complexity of this whole law system. Some of the rules seem a little weird, like don't cut your sideburns and don't mix two different kind of cloth. The priests especially had to stay away from a lot of things - they couldn't even touch a dead person unless it was an immediate family member.

A guy at my small group said once that the ceremonial law was really about making a distinction between the Jews and the Gentiles, a way of showing what holiness is. I think he had a point. The word "holy" means literally "cut off" or "separate." And when God brought Israel out of Egypt, He had to show them that they were no longer to live like Egyptians, nor like anyone else. He wanted them to be different, different in a very noticeable way.

God seems to have a thing against mixing. Don't mix fabrics, don't mix with other nations, don't mix different species in breeding. I wonder if the point of all that was to show that righteousness and sin don't mix. There is perfection, and there is sinfulness, and the two cannot go together. A lot of these things seem to be metaphors - not that the laws weren't literally followed, but that they existed to point to a spiritual truth. In this case, maybe they were pointing to God's nature as holy and separate from the world, from sin. He was calling His people to be separate too, not just for the sake of being separate, but so that the entire world could see that God is radically different from humans, unlike the petty humanoid deities they made up. You see, as much as people say that Jews didn't proselytize, I wonder about that. I think God was trying to make a statement about Himself to the world through His dealings with the Jews. Why did God send the plagues on Egypt? So the Egyptians would know He was God. What did Moses say when God said he was going to destroy the Hebrews? The other nations would see it. I think God was globally minded, even from the beginning.

Now, when I read Matthew 5, Jesus was talking about the importance of the Law and how nothing in it would be abolished, and how the people had to surpass the righteousness of the Pharisees in order to see the kingdom of God. In light of all the rules and regulations in these chapters here, that seems pretty insurmountable. But I think that, with the New Testament, we can see the bigger picture of what was going on: all those laws were there to show us how holy God is and how different He is from us. Jesus came and He kept the law, but more than that - He made it possible for us to have access to God. Under the old covenant, only priests could come before God, and only if they were flawless. The point is that none of us is really flawless, but Jesus opened the door to us all anyway. He kept the law in our stead, because there's no way we could do it all.

That's what atonement is all about. It's about Jesus doing what we were incapable of in order to make peace with us. So chapters 16 and 17, which are all about the blood of the atonement, serve as a picture to show what would later happen, how Jesus would cover our sins with His blood in order to make us holy. You see, God called the Israelites to be holy in what they did, but Jesus makes His followers holy by His own proclamation. That was the point from the very beginning, but the Old Testament was a picture, foreshadowing what was to come. We have to know who God is, have an idea of the infinite gap that separates us from Him, and understand what it was that Jesus saved us from, what it was that He accomplished by living a sinless life.

The Law is holy because God is holy. It shows us God's character in that His perfection is so complete, so utterly impeccable, that we can't even understand all the ways in which God is unlike us (perhaps like we can't really understand all the ways God demanded the Hebrews be different from the world). It shows us that God's demands are beyond our ability to reach - it shows us that we cannot meet His demands. We need a scapegoat to take our sins on Himself, and we need a sacrificial lamb to cover us with His righteous blood. So when God says to us, "Be ye holy, for I am holy," it is not our actions which accomplish this, but His. That was just a picture; the reality is that Jesus separates us and declares us righteous by the offering of His blood which wipes away our sins.