Daily Bible Study

April 2, 2025 Bible Study — Obedience Is Better Than Sacrifice

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Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Samuel 14-15.

In today’s passage, King Saul repeatedly showed poor judgement.   When Jonathan precipitated the battle against the Philistines, King Saul declared a curse against anyone in his army who ate anything before evening, causing his men to be at less than optimal because of lack of food.  Saul did this after interrupting the priest who was about to seek the Lord’s guidance on what Saul should do in response to the turmoil among the Philistines.  In addition, when the battle was over and they could eat, they were so hungry that they did not follow God’s instructions for butchering meat(which had health implications).  Further, rather than acknowledge that his order that no one eat was a mistake, Saul was prepared to kill Jonathan.  And would have done so if his men had not threatened rebellion to protect Jonathan.  Later, after being instructed by Samuel to attack and completely destroy the Amalekites and their livestock, King Saul allowed his men to keep the best of the livestock and did not kill their king.  Saul’s excuse for offering the sacrifice was that the men were scattering and he needed to seek the Lord’s favor before the Philistines attacked.  His excuse for not slaughtering the best of the Amalekite livestock was that the soldiers were bringing them for sacrifice at Gilgal.  Saul claimed that he had only allowed the latter because he was afraid of the men.  So King Saul repeatedly exhibited poor judgement.  In his condemnation of King Saul after the battle against the Amalekites, Samuel told us the source of King Saul’s poor judgement.  King Saul trusted his own judgement over God’s direction.  The curse against anyone who ate before the end of the day made King Saul look more committed to victory, but it weakened his army.  The decision to  save some of the animals from the Amalekites in order to sacrifice them, made King Saul more popular with his men (the sacrifice would have been a great feast), at the cost of encouraging people to obey him as he obeyed God.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Daily Bible Study

April 1, 2025 Bible Study — Fear the Lord and You Need Not Fear the Government

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Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Samuel 11-13.

The first thing I thought about when reading today’s passage is that King Saul’s home town was Gibeah, where the Levite’s concubine was raped to death at the end of the Book of Judges.  So, the men of Gibeah precipitated the civil war which almost led to the tribe of Benjamin being wiped out, but they also provided Israel with its first king.  I thought about writing a bit about the events which appear to have led up to the Israelites seeking a king, but as I thought about it  I decided to go in another direction.  Following on what I wrote yesterday about a society which follows God does not need a government I thought I would write about what Samuel said in his farewell address.  In listening to Samuel make his farewell speech after anointing Saul king over Israel, the Israelites realized their mistake in requesting a king, in requesting a government.  Samuel consoled them that God would not forget, nor forsake, His people.  Samuel assured them that if they feared the Lord and served Him faithfully, the government He had established at their request would serve them well.  So, while those who serve the Lord do not need a government to guide them to do what is good and right, if they dedicate themselves to serving the Lord with their whole hearts the government the Lord has established will serve their needs.  But, if they turn away from the Lord, then they and their government will suffer.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Daily Bible Study

March 31, 2025 Bible Study — A Society Composed of Those Who Truly Worship God Should Not Need a Government

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Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Samuel 8-10.

I’ve thought this for awhile, but never wrote about it in my blog because I try to avoid politics, but today I finally saw how it fits with what I believe about how God wishes us to live our lives.  Israel from the time of Joshua until King Saul was a libertarian nation.  It had laws, but no government.  When the people asked Samuel to give them a king, God told him that it was not Samuel they were rejecting, but God.  The people were not satisfied with God as their king.  Rather than obey God, they chose to forsake God and seek fulfillment through things other than obeying His commands.  If they had worshiped God and served Him with their whole hearts, they would not have needed a government, the laws which He gave them would have sufficed.  The writer of the Book of Judges felt that the lack of government which existed during the period of the judges was a bad thing, while the writer of the Book of Samuel saw that kingship, particularly Saul’s, had its own problems.  The message of the beginning of today’s passage is that a society composed entirely of those who truly worship and obey God does not need a government.  In 1 Corinthians 6:1-8 Paul speaks to this same idea.  Those who are part of the people of God should not seek judgement between themselves from those outside of God’s people.  Instead, when they have a disagreement with another believer, they should mutually seek a believer to judge between them on who is right and who is wrong.  They should not seek someone with the power to coerce either party to agree, they should agree because they would rather be cheated than risk doing contrary to God’s will.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

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March 30, 2025 Bible Study — Rituals and Symbols Do Not Compel God to Come to Our Aid

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Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Samuel 4-7.

The battle at the beginning of today’s passage and the battle at the end of this passage stand in contrast to each other.  In between are some other great lessons for us to learn, but I am going to look at just that contrast today.  In both battles the Israelites recognized that they needed God’s aid in order to be victorious.  In the first battle they tried bringing God to themselves in order to gain His aid.  They thought that by bringing the symbols of God to the battle God would fight for them, but that is not how God works.  Wearing a cross, going to church services, etc., these things will not make God deal with our issues.  In the second battle, the Israelites turned to God and away from their idols.  They committed themselves to God only and put away from themselves all that took away their attention from serving Him.  Only then did God fight for them.  We cannot force God to come to our aid by following the correct rituals.  God will only come to our aid when our hearts fully want to serve Him.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Daily Bible Study

March 29, 2025 Bible Study — Hannah, a Model for How to Respond to a Bully

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Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Samuel 1-3.

The first thing which struck me about this passage is that if Hannah had not been bullied, Samuel would not have arisen.  Twice at the beginning of today’s passage it tells us that Hannah’s rival provoked her because Hannah was unable to bear a child.  I am not advocating for bullying, rather I am advocating for learning how to respond to bullies from Hannah.  Instead of attempting to get revenge, Hannah cried out to the Lord.  And while Hannah did ask God to “fix” the problem which her bully used against her, more importantly, Hannah committed herself to use what she was asking God to give her to serve God.  Hannah asked God to give her a son and promised that if God gave her a son she would give that son into service to God.  Hannah did not just promise this, she followed up on it.  In response to being bullied, Hannah reached out to God and acted to serve Him.  This contrasts with the stories we hear today of people who respond to being bullied by striking out against their bullies and against society which they thought enabled their bullies.  Hannah could have struck out a Peninnah, and we would have likely said she was justified.  She could have struck out at the society around her, which said that a woman who did not have children was worthless, and thus provided enablement to Peninnah in her bullying.  Hannah chose neither of these behaviors.  Instead, she chose to serve God.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Daily Bible Study

March 28, 2025 Bible Study — Inspire Others the Way that Naomi Inspired Ruth

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Today, I am reading and commenting on  Ruth 1-4.

I know I have written about this before, but it is the primary thing which struck me today.  Ruth’s declaration of loyalty to Naomi is moving: “Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.  Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.”  We see that as a commitment to seek in our own lives, and it is.  But I think we should seek to emulate Naomi more than we seek to emulate Ruth.  It is not that it is bad to emulate Ruth, rather Naomi is an even better model for us.  After all, it was Naomi who inspired such devotion in Ruth.  The passage does not tell us much about Naomi, but clearly her faith inspired such great devotion in Ruth that Ruth left her people in order to follow Naomi.  We should strive to inspire people around us to want to be part of our people, the people of God, and to serve our God.  

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Daily Bible Study

March 27, 2025 Bible Study — Lack of Accountability Leads to Tragedy

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Today, I am reading and commenting on  Judges 20-21.

When the Israelites mustered to punish the men of Gibeah, who were part of the tribe of Benjamin, the Benjamites rallied to their defense.  The Israelite army initially only asked of God who should take the lead in their assault on the men of Benjamin defending Gibeah.  After a terrible loss on the first day, they asked God if they should continue their assault.  God answered that they should.  After terrible losses on the second day of battle, they once more requested direction from God.  After receiving support a positive answer once more, they returned to battle on the third day with a new tactic.  This time they were victorious.  The army of Israel, excluding the Benjamites, numbered approximately 400,000.  Of those, 10 percent were killed in the first two days of battle.  In the entire battle, over 25,000 Benjamites were killed.  This ended up being a tragedy for all of Israel.  The failure of the people of Israel to address the problem of Gibeah when it was a small issue led to this tragedy.  We need to hold people accountable before the problem gets out of hand.  We need to offer ourselves up for accountability before we get too far from doing the right thing.  Otherwise, tragedy will eventually ensue.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

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March 26, 2025 Bible Study — The Importance of Taking Part in the Larger Body of Christ

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Today, I am reading and commenting on Judges 17-19.

These two stories come at the end of the Book of Judges, but it is clear that they did not occur at the end of the time period that the book covers.  The first story about Micah and the tribe of Dan would have taken place shortly after the death of Joshua.  All of the characters in the story seem  to have questionable morals (except possibly Micah’s mother).  Micah stole a sizable amount of money from his mother and only returned it when he heard her declare a curse on the thief.  Then when she gave him an image, he made it into an idol which he worshiped.  Initially, he had one of his sons act as priest to this idol, but when opportunity arose, he hired a Levite to be his family priest.  Neither he nor the Levite he hired recognized the need to be held accountable by the larger body of the people of God.  Later, when the Danites offered him a better position, the Levite left Micah and blessed the Danites theft from him.  The Danites thought they gained God’s favor by stealing Micah’s idol and acquiring his priest to serve them.  Again, they failed to see the benefit that came from being held accountable to the larger body of God’s people.  If we look closely at the story of settlement by the Israelites, the Danites were travelling through the area where Micah lived because they had been unable to conquer the area Joshua had chosen for them by lot, and the larger body of Israel failed to come to their aid.  In the same way, the larger body of Israel had ignored the misbehavior of the men of Gibeah from the second story in today’s passage, until an incident which was over the top came to their attention.  These two stories relay how we need to place ourselves in fellowship with our fellow members of the Body of Christ and how we need to both offer support for our fellows struggles and hold them accountable for misbehavior.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Daily Bible Study

March 25, 2025 Bible Study — The Philistines Were Not Nice People

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Today, I am reading and commenting on Judges 14-16.

I usually write about the lessons we can learn from Samson.  However, today I want to point out why God was so harsh in his judgements against the people of Canaan whom the Israelites displaced, as illustrated by the Philistines.  When Samson challenged the Philistine men chosen to be his companions at his wedding feast, they could have refused it.  However, they accepted it because they thought that he was not smart enough to come up with a riddle they couldn’t solve.  But that’s not the key thing about them from this story.  When they could not solve his riddle, rather than accept their loss and pay him their wager, they threatened his wife and her family.  Specifically, they threatened to burn her and her entire family to death.  Samson’s in-laws were Philistines from the same town as those who threatened them.  Further, we know it was not an empty threat because they later did just that after Samson burned their fields.  What kind of people burn their neighbors to death?  The answer is, very evil people.  The way the story presents it, Samson’s wife fully believed the men chosen as Samson’s wedding companions would have burned her entire family to death if she did not tell them the answer to Samson’s riddle.  That suggests that they had done something like that before.  These were the type of people whom God commanded the Israelites to drive out of the land or destroy.  They considered burning a family to death over the answer to a riddle to be routine.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Daily Bible Study

March 24, 2025 Bible Study — The Bible Does Not Say it Was 300 Years from the Defeat of King Sihon to the Time of Jephthah

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Today, I am reading and commenting on Judges 11-13.

OK, I’m not sure what I am going to write today, but I’m starting here.  I have been looking at various articles which talk about dating when Exodus, and the subsequent events in the Bible up until the time of King Solomon building the temple happened.  Many of them refer to the story of Jephthah happening 340 years after the Exodus (300 years from the defeat of Sihon plus 40 years that the Israelites spent in the wilderness).  I have a problem with this, a problem which I run into elsewhere in interpretation of Scripture.  I will start by saying that I am not taking a position on whether or not it was 300 years from the defeat of Sihon until Jephthah.  No, the point which I think it is important to note here is that the passage does not actually SAY that it was 300 years from the defeat of Sihon until Jephthah confronted the Ammonites.  The passage says that Jephthah sent a message to the king of the Ammonites saying that it had been 300 years.  It is important that we learn to distinguish between where the Bible says “Such and such happened” and where it says “Person A said that such and such happened.”  Where the Bible says that a particular thing happened I am inclined to believe that it did indeed happen when and where the Bible says that it did.  On the other hand, where the Bible says that a particular person said that a particular thing happened, I consider how likely it was that the person being quoted knew what they were talking about, and, even if they likely knew what they were talking about, how interested were they in being accurate about what they were saying.

Let’s look at this case where Jephthah said it had been 300 years since the Israelites defeated King Sihon.  It is certainly possible that Jephthah knew how long it had been since the Israelites defeated King Sihon.  It even seems likely that he knew approximately how long it had been.  The key being “approximately”.  I think it probable that Jephthah had only general idea of how long it had been: as in he would have known that it happened “300 years ago, give or take 50 years.”  The second question is, how important was it to Jephthah that he got how long ago it was exactly right?  Here, it seems to me that Jephthah would have thought it important to be approximately correct.  That is, he would have wanted to quote a time which was within the margin of error of any records kept by the Ammonite king with whom he was communicating.  Which, to my way of thinking means he would have wanted to be accurate to within about 50 years, plus or minus.  Actually, as I think about it, he may have wished to be off by enough for the Ammonite king to question his claim.  If the Ammonite king came back with, “You lie.  Israel only defeated King Sihon 225 years ago.” it would have nevertheless meant that the Ammonite king was acknowledging Jephthah’s claim that Israel had taken the land by conquering people who were not Ammonites.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.