Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.

Just a quick note to point you to the first of several guest-posts I will be making over at "Goosing the Antithesis", an atheism blog on which I have been a fairly regular reader and commentor. I have no idea why they invited me to post, nor why I accepted the invitation, but there it is.

The LORD thy God, which have brought thee out (Exod 7:1-13)

Sheesh, I've gone so long without posting here, I thought I was still on chapter 6. I was reading Exodus 6 yesterday, and I looked in the study notes of the Bible I was reading, and it had a possible explanation for the "Did Abraham know God's name?" issue. I don't know if I mentioned this fact yet, but often in the Bible, the word "name" is used to mean not so much the proper noun by which one would refer to a person, but rather to mean "reputation". This sort of thing is still in use these days from time to time, actually, such as the time that Paula Jones said that she wanted to "clear her name". At that time, I remember hearing a comedian say, "What, you mean the name that nobody had ever heard of until you brought charges against the President?" Funny, but hopefully people knew what she meant.

But back to the present, er, well, about 4,000 years ago rather. I've decided that I need to power through this chapter even if I can't quite do it justice, just for the sake of moving on and getting back on track before my other blog distracts me full-time again in July, where I'm planning a series on the Founding Fathers, politics, civil rights, and the separation of church and state. We'll see.

So, first issue here. Actually, a number of related issues that all intertwine throughout this chapter, starting in verse 3. Who hardened Pharaoh's heart? Was it God, or Pharaoh? My answer? Both. This is not only the answer that I touched on back in chapter 4, but the reason I added the "Exodus interlude" before attacking this chapter way back when. This is one of God's most important works in the Bible. He keeps referring back to this event time and time again, and it's that name/reputation thing I said above that it's all about. For the nation of Israel, God makes a short description of this event virtually a part of His name as it is a part of His character. How many times in the Old Testament does God refer to Himself not just as "God" or "the LORD" but "the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt", or some variant thereof? In the New Testament, the resurrection may be the most important thing, but this is #1 in the Old without a doubt. Hopefully the two previous posts I have linked to here answer any questions about these larger issues of the book as a whole (whether you agree with my answers or not.)

Now the SAB moves on to label many of the miracles from the next few chapters, be they showy tricks or larger plagues, as absurdities. Okay, sure, these are weird events, odd stuff. But I think as I have implied since the beginning of the blog, these are not at all absurd in context. If God's on Moses' side and God is all-powerful, then turning staffs into snakes is an easy thing, as is turning water into blood. (There's probably some possible New Testament symbolism there, as the first plague is turning water into blood, while Jesus' first miracle was turning water into wine, which he later used as a symbol for blood. It's interesting to me once again that turning water into wine is not marked as absurd in that chapter. I'm not sure what the difference is.) In fact, not only can Aaron and Moses do this trick, but Pharaoh's men can do it, too. Aaron's serpent eats the others, which is no doubt symbolic of God's power being stronger than theirs despite their ability to do this trick.

Now Pharaoh's heart is hardened, and the plagues begin. I'm going to close this post, because I think the first nine plagues deserve a post all their own.

He sent the people away (Look, links!)

I haven't added these links lately, but it occurs to me that it might be courteous to point out the blogs I've linked to on the sidebar. I wasn't originally going to do that, since I'm not really thinking of this as a blog per se, and I wasn't sure I really even wanted links at all, but what the heck, there are others out there writing interesting stuff, and they're worth checking out.

Actually, what got me thinking about this is that "I Read Leviticus So You Don't Have To" has finally gotten underway. For a while, there was only an introductory post, and I thought it was a project being left by the wayside, but now there are many good posts with some great writing. Furthermore, since Bob's been linking people back to me, I figure I ought to return the favor. I will warn you all that it's not good reading for the easily offended. (You can read his disclaimer.)

"A Messy Faith" is one among many blogs of a friend of mine who is a professional writer. Although his posting is probably as sporadic as mine, he's a much better writer, and his blog touches a lot on the moments of the Christian life where we remember that following God not only doesn't make life easier, but sometimes makes it harder, it seems. Actually, he's apparently recently renamed his blog to "The Recovering Christian" so I suppose I should update my link.

"Stumbling to Bethlehem" is the blog of my friend Victoria, who doesn't need my promotion of her blog, since it's a very popular one. She's just much more of an interesting person than I am, no doubt, and also posts regularly, completely unlike me. A very spiritual woman that I have intense respect for, she's a person whose blog you don't want to miss if you're really into blogs about Christianity, cat ownership, or the Atkins diet.

I don't personally know the writer of "Goosing the Antithesis", and in the very few online interactions I've had with him, he's been a real jerk, to be honest. Still, I found some value in linking to a blog that might likely deal with similar subjects to my own from a very different perspective. Of course, it's been a while since I read stuff over there, and they've changed their description to start, "We attack Christians..." so I'd suggest one tread lightly. If you read the whole description, I'm taking that a bit out of context, though, and really, the writers do have some good insights. I'd spend a lot more time reading their stuff if I had the time for it.

Oh, yeah, there's also "Running from Elevators" which is my second blog. I post there perhaps even less frequently than here, but the content is a bit more free-ranging, so it could be more interesting, or maybe mind-numbingly boring, I don't know.

Have a great weekend!