Monthly Archives: May 2020

Daily Bible Study

May 12, 2020 Bible Study

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Chronicles 10-12.

I find a few portions of today’s passage interesting.  First, it appears to me that David conquered Jerusalem so as to set it up as his capital.  This would have been important because Hebron was very much a town of the tribe of Judah.  One might almost consider it to be the capital of the tribe of Judah.  By moving his capital from Hebron to Jerusalem David made it less like he was the king of Judah who had come to rule over all of Israel.  It made David equally king of all of the tribes.  The compiler of this passage makes the same point in another way at the end of his discussion of David’s mighty men.  After listing the Three and the Thirty, he gives us a list of warriors from each of the tribes who came to follow David while he was at Hebron, and before.  David became king because warriors from all of the tribes chose to follow him and support his claim to kingship.

Going back to look at what this passage says about the Three and the Thirty we see some things which interest me.  As I am reading this it seems like these men were leaders of David’s army.  Unlike some other men who are mentioned from time to time, they had no specific unit which followed their orders.  Instead, they would be given charge of units, or take charge of units in ways that changed from battle to battle and war to war.  More interesting to me is the fact that there were more than thirty members of the Thirty.  Further, according to the translators’ notes and other translations, there was more than one leader of the Three.  The original Hebrew mentions that Joab’s brother was the leader of the Three, even though he was not one of them.  But before that it named one of the Three as the leader of the Three.

 

 

Daily Bible Study

May 11, 2020 Bible Study

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Chronicles 7-9.

I said yesterday that it seemed as if possibly the less detailed genealogical list for the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and half of Manasseh were because few had returned from those tribes.  Today’s passage suggests and alternate explanation.  Perhaps their detailed genealogies derived from the records of a census taken before the Exile.  The most likely candidate would be the census which King David took, but nothing here would allow someone to reach a definitive conclusion on that.  Once again, the general tone of the passage indicates that it was a summary of information taken from another record which was available to the compiler.  While it is certainly likely that a good part of the reason for creating this document was to provide justification for the Returned Exiles to exert control over Jerusalem and the area around it, it also seems likely that it was based on pre-existing documents.  That is, the people who compiled this document did not make their claim up at the time, but instead compiled here the arguments for a claim which had been made by their ancestors for several generations going back to the Exile itself.

In fact, they seem to have included people in that claim who had not yet joined them.  In fact, it seems similar to what the modern state of Israel has done in seeking out those of Jewish descent throughout the world and inviting them to join them in Israel.  An example would be the Ethiopian tribe which had claimed for as long as we have a record of them to be descended from Jews who fled to Egypt with Jeremiah.  The Israeli government investigated their claim, and then arranged an emergency airlift to rescue them from persecution in Ethiopia.

Daily Bible Study

May 10. Bible Study

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Chronicles 5-6.

It is unclear to me why the genealogical records here for the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and half of Manasseh are so sparse relative  to those for Judah previously and Levi later in today’s passage.  Perhaps the reason is that few, if any of their descendants had returned to the land of Israel in the post-Exilic period.  However, it is clear that the writer was familiar with communities of them living in the areas where they had been taken into exile.  This suggests to me that the post-Exile residents of the land of Israel interacted with and traded with those who remained settled elsewhere.

In both the genealogies of the tribes which had settled east of the Jordan and the more detailed one of the Levites the compiler gives a rather detailed account of where they had lived within the the Kingdom of Israel.  The writer probably included this to establish a claim to the lands being described, or perhaps a better wording would be to establish the lands which he felt his people should aspire to regain control over.

Daily Bible Study

May 9, 2020 Bible Study

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Chronicles 2-4.

There is a line of thinking which postulates that the Old Testament was put together by post-Exile Jews in order to justify their rule over the territory around Jerusalem.  Many of those who take this position believe that those who came to rule Jerusalem in the post-Exile period were not actually descended from people who had lived in and around Jerusalem.  There is some merit to the first position in that 1 and 2 Chronicles were certainly compiled at least partially for that purpose.  We can see that to an extent in the genealogies in today’s passage.  However, the first thing we see is that this list of genealogies is designed to allow confirming whether or not a returning Exile was indeed descended from those taken into Exile.  In this passage we see evidence that the Jewish people in Exile (and quite likely before that) had maintained genealogical records similar to the family Bibles which many people had maintained from colonial times up until recently in which a record was kept of family births and deaths.  Further, I believe that the stories about what certain individuals did was to allow those whose record had used alternate names, or where the name was copied incorrectly at some point, to show that they were indeed genuinely descended from the people of Israel.

What makes this important is that it shows that those who compiled 1 and 2 Chronicles had actual records from which they put these books together.  They did not just base it on family stories they vaguely remembered Grandpa and Grandma telling.  They had things which had been written down and passed from one generation to the next.  Here they brought those records together and made a systematic compilation of them, just as the compilers of 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings had done.

Daily Bible Study

May 8, 2020 Bible Study The Importance of Comparing Multiple Translations

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Chronicles 1.

I have stated before that genealogical lists like those in today’s passage do very little for me.  So, when I come to such passages I need to approach them a bit differently.  I spent more time than usual looking at the translators’ footnotes.  My first comment regards a large number of comments which result from the fact that Ancient Hebrew did not contain vowels as we understand them today.  This results in different manuscripts indicating the vowels differently, which means some of the names look different when transliterated to English (a similar thing sometimes happens today with Arabic names for different reasons, so that Muammar Gaddafi and Moamar Khadifi refer to the same person).  More interesting, the translators decided to introduce the phrase, “The sons of Noah were,” in front of the names of Noah’s three sons (which we know from other sources).  What makes this interesting is that all of the names before that are one generation followed by the next.  So, in the Hebrew there is no clue that Shem is not the father of Ham, who is not the father of Japheth until the verses where it starts to list each of their descendants.  Finally, by comparing to the NIV translator notes we discover that the translators made judgement calls as to whether or not to translate certain words/phrases as “father of” or “ancestor of” and “son of” or “descendant of”.

Which reinforces something I first became aware of some years back.  We must be careful about reaching conclusions about what a passage means for us based on the connotations of the English word the translators selected.  I first became aware of this when a good friend, whose Biblical understanding I generally respected, supported their understanding of Bible verse on the connotations of a word used by the King James Version which I knew to have not applied when the KJV translation was made.  My point here is that, since I have never learned to read Hebrew or Greek, I must look at multiple translations when I want to do a deep dive into what a particular passage means.  There are many places in the Bible (and in other translated documents) where the translator needed to make a judgement call on what words to use in the translation.

Daily Bible Study

May 7, 2020 Bible Study Serving God For The Joy Of Serving God

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Kings 22-25.

At the beginning of the account of King Josiah we are told that he did what was pleasing in the Lord’s sight and followed the example of David.  Then at the end, we are told that there was never another king like Josiah who had turned to the Lord with all of his heart, soul, and strength.  What I like most about Josiah was his dedication to following the Lord even though it was too late to turn aside the coming disaster.  His efforts to wipe out idolatry and to get his people to obey God was done purely for the purpose of worshiping and serving God, not for any other benefit.  Let us strive to serve God in the same way: for the joy of serving God, not for personal gain (or any other sort of gain other than that joy).

Daily Bible Study

May 6, 2020 Bible Study Recognizing God’s Hand In the Things We Do Not Do

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Kings 19-21.

In yesterday’s passage we were told that King Hezekiah did what was pleasing in God’s sight, just as David had done.  I believe that Hezekiah is the only king of Judah about whom the writer says that.  In today’s passage we see the reason he wrote that about Hezekiah.  When Hezekiah faced trouble he turned to the Lord.  When the King of Assyria threatened Jerusalem, Hezekiah turned to God.  When his health was bad, Hezekiah turned to God.

The response which God gave to Hezekiah through Isaiah regarding the King of Assyria contains much for us to consider.  The King of Assyria was proud of his successes, and with good reason, but he credited himself with those successes and gave no credit to a higher power.  For all that he had done, the King of Assyria only had that success because it accorded with God’s plan for him to do so.  It was God’s plan that allowed the King of Assyria to rise to such heights.  The King of Assyria was convinced that no power could stop him from doing that which he chose to do.  He probably died believing that to be true.  Yet, when he chose to attack Jerusalem, something happened so that the attack never took place.  How often do we see God’s hand at work in things that do not happen?

Daily Bible Study

May 5, 2020 Bible Study Mix-and-Match Religion Is Not What God Desires

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Kings 17-18.

Israel’s last king was less evil than his predecessors, but he still did evil in God’s sight.  Important note: being less evil is not the same as doing good.  As we read through the account of each of the kings of Israel it would be easy to miss the extent of the people’s sin.   The writer makes that extent clear here in today’s passage.  They adopted the practices of the people whom God had driven out of the land and worshiped idols, setting up pagan shrines in all of their settlements.  I want to note that the writer makes a distinction between following the practices of other peoples and idolatry.  Yes, idolatry was practiced by the people to whom the writer refers, but by listing it as a separate sin from following their practices he makes it clear that they had other practices which were detestable to God.  As the writer summarizes the various forms of idolatry they practiced, he singles out sacrificing their own children as going above and beyond other forms of idolatry.

After the conquering Samaria and taking many of the people in the Northern Kingdom into exile, the King of Assyria settled peoples from other lands in that territory.  These peoples had problems with lions attacks, which led them to conclude that they did not know the proper customs for worshiping God.  I think this suggests that there were Israelites remaining in the land, but those who had been educated (in particular about God’s laws, but also everyone who had been educated) had been exiled.  How else would the new people in the land know there were different customs for worshiping God than what they knew?  In any case, once a priest was brought back from among those who had been taken into exile, these new immigrants began to worship the Lord.  But, they did not give up their worship of other gods, the gods they had worshiped in their homeland.  From what is written here it seems likely that the compiler of this book was a post-Exile Jew.  His understanding of the worship practices of those who were in the land when the Exiles returned certainly colored his understanding of what he wrote here from the stories he collected into this document.

Daily Bible Study

May 4, 2020 Bible Study Do Our Enemies Succeed Because They Do Right, Or Because We Do Wrong?

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Kings 15-16.

Comparing what the passage tells us about the kings of Israel with what it tells us about the kings of Judah gives us some interesting insight.  The kings of Israel in today’s passage did what was evil in God’s sight by committing the sins which Jeroboam had first led the people of Israel to commit.  On the other hand, there was a stretch of four kings of Judah who did what was pleasing in the Lord’s sight, but did not destroy the pagan shrines.  Then there was King Ahaz, who did not do what was pleasing in the Lord’s sight, but instead followed the example of the kings of Israel, going so far as to sacrifice his own son to a pagan god.  Jeroboam’s primary sins were setting up two gold calves in place of God, and making the priesthood a political appointment with no connection to the descendants of Aaron, or even descendants of Levi.  By making appointment to the priesthood merely another sinecure which the crown gave out with no connection to a knowledge of God, or His Law, the kings made God’s Law subordinate to their law.  One example of the end result of this was King Ahaz viewing the gods of Assyria as more powerful than God because Assyria was powerful.  Rather than seeing the rise of Assyria as a judgement on the failure of the people of Israel and Judah to be faithful to God, he saw it as the result of God’s inferiority to their gods.  All too often, we make similar mistakes, we view the success of wicked people as an indicator that they are doing right, rather than as an indicator that we are failing to follow God’s will.

Daily Bible Study

May 3, 2020 Bible Study God Is Not an Umbrella

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Kings 13-14.

I find a few things interesting about today’s passage.  First, the three kings of the Northern Kingdom mentioned are all listed as being evil in God’s sight because they continued in the sins of Jeroboam.  This description is interesting because the writer spoke positively about King Jehu, listing that he failed to destroy Jeroboam’s gold calves as his only drawback (although the writer does count that as a serious drawback).  So, perhaps King Jehu had not encouraged the worship of the gold calves but merely allowed it.  Also interestingly, King Jehu’s grandson, King Jehoash wept at Elisha’s bedside as the prophet was dying, despite the fact that we are told he did what was evil in God’s sight.  This reveals that the Israelites of the Northern Kingdom did not outright reject God.  Rather, they just gradually allowed themselves to foll into sin, while thinking they were continuing to worship God.  Just as we all too often do today, they treated God as something to be used in case of emergency.  Sure, when times are good you check that He is there every so often, but you don’t really need to spend any time with Him.  They, and we, only “get Him out” when disaster strikes.  Then we cry out to God for deliverance.