Their World

There are multiple creation stories in the Bible. Most are familiar with Genesis 1 and 2, but Job 38-39 and Psalm 104 also speak of God's creative activity. 

Ps 104 has God setting the "earth on its foundations" and establishing boundaries for the mighty waters (cf. Gen 1.2). Water was a symbol of chaos in the ancient world and the Bible makes very clear that God controls all such forces. 

Foundations of the earth are also mentioned in Job's references to creation (Jb 38-39; cf. Is 48.13; Hb 1.10).  When we investigate these passages on their own turf, without projecting our understanding of the cosmos on them, we get an image of the ancient world that looks like the picture below:

You can see in the image the "highest heavens" and the "waters above heaven" (Ps 148.4). Notice the dome of Gen 1.6-8, "Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters that separate waters from the waters."

When we look at this image we see a world very different than our own. Which makes perfect sense because the Bible was not written "to us" but is written "for us." 

We recognize that this means that to get the most out of our Bible reading, we must study the world of the Bible. In doing this, we see that God spoke to people according to their understanding of the world. 

This is yet another example of God meeting us right where we are; of him being intimately concerned with our lives and wanting each of us to know him in a way we can comprehend.

I Won't Do That Again

God has a serious problem. Shortly after creating human beings, they start offing each other. Brother killing brother at that.

Things really go downhill from there and in the end the earth is filled with so much evil and corruption that God decides to wipe the whole slate clean with a massive flood. 

He does preserve humanity by picking one guy and his family to carry on the human race. After the flood, God repeats his instruction to "Be fruitful and multiply," but he adds a stipulation not to kill each other. Seems like a fair request.

Then God makes a covenant with humanity, committing to never again use a flood to destroy the earth and its inhabitants. A covenant in the ancient world was a formal agreement between a superior and an inferior party, with the superior establishing the pact with the inferior. 

A ceremony was typically involved and in this instance God ceremoniously lays down his weapon, the bow (Hab 3.9-11), facing away from humanity, as a sign of his commitment not to flood the earth again.

Next time you look to the sky and see a rainbow, let it remind you of a God who is deeply invested in the world and who is desperately concerned about evil. Think about how he was genuinely puzzled by the condition of the world (Gen 6.6ff) and so he set a plan in motion to make it better.

Rock and a Hard Place

Around the 850s BC, one of Israel's enemies laid siege to Samaria, the capital of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. After a while the siege caused a famine and things became so desperate that people in the city resorted to cannabilism (2 Kgs 6.26ff). 

But not all the Israelites were stuck inside the city. Four guys with leprosy sat outside the city wall, outcast because of their disease (Lev 13.46). Without the traffic in and out of the city though, they found themselves starving as well. 

So they said to themselves, "If we enter the city, we die. If we sit here we die. If we go to the enemy's camp, they may spare us, and if they kill us, well, we were gonna die anyway!"

So they get up and go to the enemy's camp and find it completely deserted. The story tells us that God had convinced the enemy that the Israelites had hired two of the most powerful nations in the world to fight with them. Fearing their now guaranteed demise, the enemy left their camp and fled for their lives. 

The four guys end up saving the entire city by delivering the news that the enemy is gone and there is food in their camp. 

The thing I like most about the story is the desperation of the four guys. They picked the best of three rotten options and committed. There may be some application here for those of us who find ourselves between a rock and a hard place, barely hanging on. 

We weigh our options, pick the best of them, and commit. The important thing is taking action. Coming up with a plan and being willing to see it through.

Bring Back My Donkey

Torah scroll

When you come upon your enemy's (Hb. ayav) ox or donkey going astray, you shall bring it back. Ex 23.4

Bummer. I really wanted to keep it. Oxen and donkeys were extremely valuable in the Ancient Near East. 

One could use them for transportation, to plow, haul goods, and at least with the oxen, for hides and food. In this way, they would have a value similar to a car or truck today.

The laws of the Hebrew Scriptures sometimes seem very strange to us, but it is important to keep in mind that these laws helped an ancient, extremely superstitious people, grow confident in what they did and didn't need to do, to please their God. 

The laws made them less vulnerable to marginalization by the elites, who commonly used laws sent down from the gods to extort people. The laws also showed that Yahweh was concerned about even the most intricate details of daily living.

But how does a verse like this relate to us? The letter of law is tough to apply, as most of us don't daily encounter stray donkeys, but the spirit behind it is certainly transferable:

How many of us go out of our way to help people with whom we are at odds? How many of us, if we see misfortune befalling people we don't like, spend time justifying why we shouldn't help, instead of actually helping?

Take a read through the laws of Torah sometime, attempting to first see how they applied to the ancient Israelites, and then ask how they might apply to you today.

Fan the Flame

Exodus 32 records one of the most fascinating stories in the Bible. Moses was meeting with God, receiving guidelines on how God wanted his people to live, now that they were no longer slaves in Egypt.

But his meeting was taking too long. The people had been disconnected from God for longer than was healthy, and so they grew impatient and built an idol: an image that falsely represented God.

The idol the Israelites fashioned was a calf or young bull, which symbolized strength and fertility and brought with it illicit sexual practices (32.6). 

This act infuriated Yahweh. How could the people he had just delivered from bondage, so quickly turn their backs on him and return to the enslaving practices they knew in Egypt? 

Being made in the image of God, we each have a spark in us, that when fanned by connection with God, lights up our entire lives. This is where we experience the most substance and life.

But we are also capable of letting the spark grow dim, allowing darkness to enter our lives and rob us of the life we should be living.

This element of the story is a great reminder of the dangers of disconnecting from God. Tomorrow we'll use this passage to ask: "Does God change his mind?"

Bringing the Rain

Desert rain

"Who has cut a channel for the torrents of rain, and a way for the thunderbolt, to bring rain on a land where no one lives, on the desert, which is empty of human life, to satisfy the waste and desolate land, and to make the ground put forth grass?" - Job 38.25-7

                                              

This verse comes from a passage in the book of Job,  where Yahweh is helping Job realize that he is not the center of the universe. It includes a concept that was very strange in the ancient world: Why does it rain in places people don't live? 

The pre-modern world view, believed that the gods were responsible for bringing rain and would only do so if humans had properly appeased them.

Drought

Droughts then were understood as times when the gods where unhappy for some reason. This way of thinking was very familiar to the ancient Israelites and can be seen in Deuteronomy 28 and 1 Kings 18.1.

Today we understand that rain is less a direct act of God and more reflective of a cycle that God put in place to bring life to the whole world. 

As God spoke to Job, he did so based on Job's understanding of the world. This is a very important concept to keep in mind when reading the Bible: 

God acts within human history, so to get the most out of our reading, we attempt to understand the world to which God originally communicated.

If we don't do this, we are in danger of misunderstanding and misapplying the Bible. A danger with which the world is all too familiar.

Re-Contextualizing Love

Exodus tells the story of Yahweh's liberation of his people. He brings them out of slavery in Egypt and gives them a list of laws they are to follow, which radically changed the way people in the ancient world interacted with each other and their god/s.

Heston's 10 Commandments were written in Epigraphic Hebrew.

By giving his people concrete instructions about how to live and what they needed to do to ensure right standing with him, Yahweh showed he had an accessibility unmatched in the ancient pantheon. He was concerned about even the most intricate and even mundane, details of their lives.

Deuteronomy, literally the "second law," re-contextualizes the laws given to the first generation who escaped from Egpyt. The first generation had spent 40 years wandering in the desert and with the next generation about to enter their new homeland, the laws needed to be updated.

The Laws are changed as the people are about to re-enter civilization.

Take, for example, Deuteronomy 15.12-18, which insists that the same laws should apply to both male and female slaves and also details the extra care to be taken when a slave is set free. Contrast this to Ex 21.2-11.

Ways of cooking the passover lamb even changed. Ex 12.8-9 says, "they shall eat it roasted over the fire" and "do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water." While in Deut 16.7, the Hebrew states, "You shall boil it."

I prefer roasted.

Chronicles, written after the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC, records King Josiah's Passover celebration (2 Chron 35.13),  and adds a brilliant twist: "They boiled the passover lamb with fire according to the ordinance" - combining the instructions from Exodus and Deuteronomy.

These texts illustrate the incredible providence of God as he shows concern for every detail of our lives. He is interested in caring for all our needs (cf. Mt 7.11). This is the unchanging principle.

What does change is the application of the principle. If the laws had to be rethought after only 40 years, how much more are we, who live thousands of years after the Bible was penned, to rethink them for ourselves? 

This of course has happened. Christians have decided that most of the laws found in the Hebrew Bible are no longer to be strictly applied. But what about ways of running the church? Or male and female relationships? Or women's roles in ministry? 

God's love is to touch every area of our lives and because of this, we are charged by God, by the very nature of how the Bible teaches us to relate to him, to re-contextualize that love so that it is most powerfully experienced in our times.

What Are You Drinking?

The authors of the Bible use poetry to communicate the most powerful of ideas. This is most likely why two-thirds of the Bible is poetry.

No other genre (style of writing) is as open to such a broad spectrum of interpretation and application. Poetry is a perfect medium for a message that has been passed on for thousands of years, to hundreds of cultures.

Furthermore, no other genre communicates as potently in as small a space. Take for example, this poem from the book of Jeremiah, that highlights the lament of a God who has been rejected by his people:

                                For my people have committed two evils; 

                                    they have forsaken me, 

                                the fountain of living water, 

                                    and dug out cisterns for themselves, 

                                  cracked cisterns 

                                    that can hold no water. 2.13

There were three water sources in the Ancient Near East at this time. In order of "freshness":

Natural Spring

Well

Cistern

Cisterns were the least desirable water source in the ancient world. The water was frequently contaminated with feces and/or dead animals and because of this, was a haven for disease.

It was bad enough that the people rejected Yahweh, the fountain of living water. But they didn't stop there, they went on to dig cisterns to hold their own water. The cisterns represent the idols the Israelites fashioned with their hands and looked to for life.

But this is not the complete image Jeremiah paints for us. The poem continues:

                                    and dug out cisterns for themselves,

                                      cracked cisterns 

                                        that can hold no water. 2.13

Note how each line builds on the other: "they dug cisterns, No! Not just cisterns, but cracked cisterns! Cisterns that don't hold water!"

Israel traded Yahweh, the source of life overflowing, for dank, broken cisterns, that did not even function!

The application for us is important. Where do we trade the substance of God for things we create and  attempt to control? Where are we not submitting to God and instead trying to store our own life source in ways that simply don't work?

In the end the question may be, "What are you drinking?"

Mighty Warrior...sort of

The book of Judges records the constant cycle of: Israel's rejection of Yahweh, their subsequent bondage to foreign powers, Yahweh's deliverance using a "Judge", a human he empowers, peace for a while, and then the whole cycle starts over again! 

Samson, a muscle-bound man, who desperately avoided hair cuts, was one such judge; as was Deborah, a prophetess with an aptitude for leadership. Her victory Song in Judges chapter 5, is thought to be the oldest part of the Bible because of its grammar and vocabulary.

Samson and Deborah epitomized the typical larger-than-life qualities of a judge. But there is another judge who is worthy of our attention, one that was the farthest thing from a Samson or a Deborah, and that was Gideon.

Gideon's story starts in Judges chapter 6, where the Israelites are back in trouble, this time with the Midianites and Amalekites, who are terrorizing them and eating all their food (6.3). The Israelites cry out to their god for help and Yahweh responds, telling them:

Look, I have rescued you from being enslaved to the most powerful nation in the known world, given you a place to call your own and all I have asked is that you pay attention to me and not the gods of the surrounding people! But you don't listen!

After this, Yahweh, like any good parent, begins to orchestrate deliverance. But he doesn't choose a guy with big muscles, or an amazing leader, he chooses our man Gideon, who happens to be threshing wheat in a wine press at the time God calls on him!

The irony here is simply brilliant: threshing wheat requires an open space, where the wheat would be thrown into the air and a light breeze would separate it from the chaff:

But Gideon, fearful that his enemies will come take his food, is attempting this process in a dug out wine press:

A wine press found in the Shephelah (lowlands) of western Israel.

This is the image we get when Yahweh comes to Gideon saying, "Yahweh is with you, mighty warrior" (6.12). I can just picture Gideon looking around, "Are you talking to me?" And not in the De Niro Taxi Driver inflection, but in the incredibly timid, "I think you have the wrong guy."

But Yahweh didn't have the wrong guy and although Gideon was quick to point out that his "family was the weakest in the entire area, and he the least in his family" (6.15), he would go on to  powerfully deliver God's people. 

The story of Gideon is a great example of God meeting us where we are - hiding knee deep  in our inadequacies, with all of our doubts, and using us to accomplish his ends all the same.

Go Mighty Warrior, Go!

The NAME

Have you ever wondered why the Bible capitalizes all the letters in GOD or LORD? For instance, Psalm 29.1 "Ascribe to the LORD, O heavenly beings, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength."

The original Hebrew for the word here is not the actual word for Lord (adonai) or God (elohim) but rather the actual name of the Israelite God - Yahweh.

Some may be familiar with the traditional name "Jehovah" which is a combination of the consonants of YHWH and the vowels of adonai - thus Yahowah - the "J" and the "V" arose during the 1500s in a German translation of the Bible.

If the original Hebrew text includes God's actual name why do we not have it in our Bibles?

During the late part of the first millennia B.C. the Jews stopped using the actual name of God. They did this either out of a fear of taking "Yahweh's name in vain" - a rather typical human practice of allowing the pendulum to swing to extremes - or to highlight that Yahweh was not simply the local Jewish God but that he was the God of the entire world.

Respecting the Jewish perspective on this issue, translations of the Hebrew Bible substituted the LORD (adonai) for Yahweh and when the original text read "the Lord (adonai) Yahweh" they recorded it as "the Lord GOD."

I borrow from John Goldingay here, who notes that there are distinct disadvantages to the practice of avoiding the use of Yahweh.

First, there is tremendous power in a name; names open the door to relationship and names allow access. We are distanced from God in many ways by not using his name. Think of the amazing difference in level of connectedness you have with people whose names you know vs. those you do not.

Second, like the name Jesus (which means "savior"), the name Yahweh connotes immense power. It means I am who I am / I will be who I will be / I will be with you (Ex 3.14ff). There is incredible significance in connecting God's saving activity in the world with his name.

Back to Psalm 29 - this may have been originally a Canaanite hymn of praise to Ba'al, as we have a text that is almost verbatim to this, with Ba'al replaced for Yahweh. The potency of this passage is limited if we miss what Israel was doing in this hymn.

By replacing Ba'al with Yahweh, they were challenging the cultural presuppositions of the day - that Ba'al was the god in control of the rain that brought life to all people. They were saying, "Nice music, but you have the wrong words." It is our God, Yahweh, who is really in charge, who is really in control.

So what's in a name? A whole lot more than it may first appear.