For today, One Year Bible Online links here.

    At first glance this proverb warns against mocking and scorning your parents. That reading is not wrong, but it is incomplete. I believe it is also a warning against those who mock and scorn other people’s parents. I do not think this is about mocking someone who is a parent. The warning is about encouraging someone to mock their own parents, to scorn their parents teaching.

    This psalm makes a great prayer. I will call on the Lord to rescue me from evildoers. I do not rely on my ability to keep me and my loved ones safe. I know that only the Lord can accomplish that. I know that God will help those whom the wicked persecute and bring justice to the poor. Yes, I will call on the Lord and praise His name.

    There are many lessons to be learned from this passage, but the one which strikes me is that Satan is a deceiver. He deceives the whole world. It is Satan, the devil, the dragon from this vision who is responsible for Anti-Semitism and the persecution of Christians. It is the deceit of Satan which leads people to persecute one group or another. In particular, Satan deceives people into persecuting Jews because he failed to destroy Jesus. When he is unable to get at Jews, he turns that persecution against those who faithfully follow Christ. Satan seeks to deceive all people. He uses deception to get us to hate those who have succumbed to another of his deceits. Whenever we allow ourselves to hate our fellow humans, even those who hate us, we have fallen for Satan’s deception.

    From time to time throughout history, God has raised up nations to punish the Jewish people. Time and again those nations go beyond the mandate they were given and persecute the Jewish people beyond the bounds which God had set. When those nations do so, God brings judgment against them and peace to His people. In many ways He uses the the excesses of those who persecute the Jews to bring good things to the Jews. This does not excuse the excesses of those who persecuted the Jewish people and God will bring punishment upon them.