And the sun stood still (Judges 5)

Judges 5 is a familiar scene that we've seen before in the Bible, and we'll see again: Battle's over, and having won, the Israelites sing a victory song. Typical of this sort of thing, there's a lot of poetic language, some of which (such as fighting "stars") the SAB picks up on and criticizes, and some of which (such as God himself marching into battle) it does not. Anyway, my blanket response to most issues here is that this, being a piece of poetry, is not expected to be realistic nor completely accurate. Not that there is nothing that can be said beyond that.

So when God's marching into battle and mountains are melting, you might suspect that we're being figurative, but many of these figures of speech have some meaning behind them. Basically, most of what is going on here is a description of the idea that God was on the side of the Israelites, and therefore nothing could stand against them. This imagery could be the meaning of the claim that the stars fought against their enemies: the idea that when God is on your side, essentially all of nature is fighting for you. There may be another sense in which this is more literally true, however. It is common in the Bible for "stars" to be a metaphor for "angels", which answers a lot of questions. It may be in this case that they are claiming the battle was won with the help of angelic beings, which I know to some isn't much of an improvement, but it makes more sense than the idea of the battle being fought by flaming balls of nuclear plasma in space.

The song talks about Jael, and brings up the real issues that I addressed briefly in my last post. Jael is praised for murder here, and it seems odd, yet this was in the middle of a war. If Osama bin Laden were on the run from the marines and asked you to hide him, don't you think you'd at least consider killing him? Dying instantly in his sleep might be considered a mercy, as based on other cases where enemies were captured alive, you'd think much worse could have been in store for him.

Verse 30 may be a misreading on the SAB's part, but as in a few other places, it's hard to tell, as there is no commentary. The verse talks about dividing the spoils of war, including the conquered women. If you read it carefully in context, you realize that it is not a description of something that has happened, but a description of what the Canaanites imagine would happen if Sisera won.

The last verse presents two issues of a very different nature. First, the Israelites declare that they wish all the enemies of God would die. This does seem rather mean and intolerant, yes, but on top of other things I've said in the past about such topics, note that God Himself does not say that He wishes this, it's the Israelites saying these words, and for the umpteenth time, they're not exactly the apex of virtue.

Lastly, there is some poetic prose talking about "the sun...goeth forth in his might." Aside from being obviously (to me, anyway) more metaphorical, poetic speech, I think the SAB note is reading in something that is not there. The SAB says, "The sun, according to the bible, goes around the earth." This may be so, I have little doubt, but it does not say so here. There is nothing about where or how the sun "goeth forth", only an observation that it does so. And while I think it is not an issue here, it's as good a place as any to reiterate that even in today's culture, in which we know that the earth orbits the sun (which technically it doesn't) it's perfectly acceptable to say that "the sun rises in the east and sets in the west" even though, in fact, it is not the sun rising and setting, but the earth's horizon.

Melchizedek king of Salem (Joshua 10)

It's been a while since I've gotten to post, partially because I've been generally busy, but also partially because I've been looking up the meanings of all the names in this chapter to see if it offers any interesting insight. The only thing that seemed to be directly related to the story in this chapter was the fact that "Lachish" means "invincible", which it apparently was not, since even with outside help from the Gezerites, the Israelites managed to defeat it.

I often do look into the names of the people and places I'm reading about in the Bible, but the thing that got me looking into the names here in particular was the name in the very first verse. Adonizedec king of Jerusalem? Weird and familiar. First of all, this is the first time the name Jerusalem appears in the Bible, but as just about anyone knows, it certainly won't be the last, as this city eventually becomes the capital of the united kingdom of Israel, the divided kingdom of Judah, and eventually the modern nation of Palestine. The name will appear 643 times in the Old Testament and 83 times in the New Testament. It's the city where the Jewish Temple will be built, the city where Christ will be crucified, and supposedly the city from which God Himself will rule the world at the end of time.

But the city was referred to before by a different name, back in Genesis 14:18. At that time, the king of that city was known as "Melchizedek king of Salem", a character of some interest, as he is talked about elsewhere in the Bible. Now, Melchizedek is clearly viewed as a good person by the writers of the Bible, but this new king is an enemy. The odd thing is how similar their names are. "Melchizedek king of Salem" translates to "my king is righteous king of peace"; "Adonizedec king of Jerusalem" translates to "my lord is righteous king of teaching of peace." Although I've never heard any speculation on the matter, the similarities in the names suggests to me that this is not only the same city 500 years later, but that these names are actually some sort of kingly title that has passed down with only a slight change in the intervening time. Maybe that's interesting only to me?

Getting back to the SAB and the matter at hand, this is the chapter where the Holy War really takes off. One of the longest chapters of Joshua so far, while we've only seen two cities destroyed
in the whole of the previous nine chapters, here we see possibly as many as ten cities destroyed (the number is not 100% clear from the writing, but seems to be at least seven). Apparently, when the Israelites made a treaty with Gibeon, the other people of Canaan were upset because Gibeon was one of the major cities of the land, and had some powerful warriors. So five of the Amorite kings decide the best thing to do is to make their own alliance and attack Gibeon before the Gibeonites add their number to the Israelite armies.

Unlike the previous battles, this battle has an extra dimension of provocation to it, as the Amorites make the first move. I think that distinction is important, as my previous claims about this war were that escaping from Canaan was an option for any nation who wanted to not be destroyed, yet when the Amorite armies try to run away, God and Joshua do not allow them to escape. (The SAB actually labels this with an "Absurd" tag for reasons unknown, perhaps because of the odd method God uses of crushing the armies with huge hailstones? Once again, it's clearly a miracle.) I think it would be one thing if one of the Amorite nations said "We don't stand a chance, let's get out of here!" but this is a matter of them saying, "Oops, trying to destroy them didn't work, let's retreat!"

I would like to note for whatever it's worth (which might not be much) that I suspect the language in Joshua 10:10 is figurative. While it says that God was doing all this awful stuff to them, I think it may mean that the Israelites were doing it under the authority of God. It doesn't change much, unless that was what the SAB was labeling as "Absurd"? I think it's the same sort of thing possibly as the wording in verse 14, the SAB note there giving me a chuckle. While I obviously don't agree with Steve Wells' theological position, I do appreciate his humor.

Another thing labeled as both "Absurd" and "Science/History" is the miracle of God keeping the sun from setting until Joshua was done fighting. (The reason Joshua asked for this is not given, perhaps this battle happened on a Friday?) Once again, I don't understand labeling a miracle as "Absurd", but I'm also a bit confused about the other label. Is this a problem with the fact that sunset is a by-product of the earth's movement rather than the sun's? If so, that's hardly a problem, as it's a matter of relative perspective; from Joshua's point of view, the sun did not move, but we would understand that the real meaning is that the earth ceased spinning for a time. If the note means something more complicated, then it probably needs some clarification, but I'll venture another guess.

The scientific angle, even once you accept the idea of the miraculous, implies a possible historical problem. If the sun never went down, then that would be a significant event. Even moreso elsewhere rather than locally, since the earth is round. Surely on this day in history, if this truly happened, the ancient Aztecs were wondering why the sun wasn't coming up. This miracle should have had a profound effect on the entire world, yet there is no written history of the event outside of the Bible that I am aware of. Perhaps that's what the note is trying to point out? The writer of Joshua points out that the miracle was also written about in "the book of Jasher" but the identity and nature of this book is not known today, and anyway, it probably was a Hebrew text as well.

The rest of the chapter is pretty much an account of the Israelite army going and destroying all of the cities that came against them in battle one after the other. The issues raised in here by the SAB are ones I have already addressed in the last few posts. There are a few notable things here going back to the names. Once again, I do find it ironic that Lachish, the "invincible" city fell even with help from Gezer. Gezer may have not so much been an entirely separate city in itself so much as something like a suburb, since Gezer means "portion". Also, while it may be simply a matter of name confusion, the strong possibility exists of a scribal error here. I'm surprised the SAB did not call to attention the fact that the fifth king was "Debir king of Eglon", but Joshua, a short time after destroying the city of Eglon, turns to destroying a city called "Debir". Perhaps the king of Eglon came from Debir, or was named after it, or he ruled over both cities and thus the city was named after him. Or it could be just a coincidence. Or, of course, it could be an error, probably in some ancient transcription of verse 3.

Anyway, a lot more of this fighting in the next chapter and those beyond.

Hast thou with Him spread out the sky? (Gen 1:14-19)

Remember analogies? If you took the SATs in high school like I and so many others did, you had to go through a whole series of these odd little things that were supposed to say something about how well-suited you were for college somehow. Do they still have those on the SAT today? You know, those things:

1) FOOT : SOCK :: HAND :
a. tool
b. finger
c. shoe
d. glove
e. mouth

Of course, the answer is (d). That's easy. Here's a really tough one:

2) DAY : SUN :: NIGHT :

No multiple choice, I'd just like you to mull it over. I'd be willing to bet that a strong majority of the people presented with this would immediately know that the answer was "MOON". Okay, the fun quiz time is over. (It wasn't that much fun, anyway.) Let's look at the SAB, which has three points to bring up about verse 16.

First, "the moon is not a light; it only reflects light from the sun." Granted, but I think that's a technicality. I would say that light's light, whether directly radiating from an object or reflecting off of it. When the moon's out at night, it lights up the place, and the fact that it's just reflected light doesn't change that fact. If I said, "Boy, the moon sure is bright tonight, isn't it?" would you really sound thoughtful to respond, "No it isn't; it's the sun that's bright, and the moon just happens to reflect that brightness," or would you sound like a jerk? I mean, in the morning, the sun will come up and the moon will go down, right? Wrong, the sun doesn't "come up"; the earth rotates until your perspective causes the sun to appear to be relatively positioned above the horizon line, foolish person! Ugh, that would be annoying to talk like that all the time, wouldn't it? I'm moving on.

Second point: "why, if God made the moon to 'rule the night', does it spend half of its time moving through the daytime sky?" Okay, I hope you all saw that the analogy thing up above was intended to respond to this point. The sun "rules the day" because it's the brightest object in the sky during the day, and the moon "rules the night" because...(can you feel the tension?)...it's the brightest object in the sky during the night, even if it is only reflected light. If a person is going to insist on such an over-literal interpretation of the Bible, then they're missing out on another golden opportunity like yesterday.

The moon is a big hunk of rock. The sun is a huge ball of glowing gas. Usually when we talk about something "ruling" something, the thing doing the ruling is either a person, group of people, or a set of laws created by a person or group of people. If I walked in on President Bush with a big chunk of moon rock, put it on his desk in the oval office and said, "This rock is hereby placed upon this desk by me to rule over the nation," they'd cart me away and lock me in a rubber room. (Although I'm sure many are convinced that the rock would do a better job...) Why don't skeptics ever point out this absurdity? It seems obvious that it's because they know "rule over" is just a poetic expression in this passage.

Last point on this passage: "almost as an afterthought, he makes the trillions of stars." I've heard Stephen Hawking himself has pointed this out as a reason to be an atheist. Maybe someone can find the quote; it's an interesting one about how God made too many stars. I'm going to guess Steve Wells is saying the same thing, as he doesn't actually seem to explain why he views this as a problem. Why trillions of stars? Why not a few hundred? Why not a dozen or so? Why any stars at all other than the sun? As for myself, I can imagine God creating a world with just the sun and the moon, and the moon is always full and out at night. On the surface of the planet, instead of thousands or perhaps millions of kinds of animals, just human beings, and the only plant would be a tree that has a terrific-tasting fruit that is perfectly nutritionally balanced for human needs. No harsh weather, no high mountains, no deep waters. Essentially very, very boring.

Now, I'm not the kind of guy who says, "Look at the world, and how complex and beautiful everything is; there must be a God!" But I grew up largely in the country, and late at night, you could lie on your back in a field among the grass and the weeds, and smell the pine trees, and hear the sounds of grasshoppers, wolves, a babbling stream nearby, and on a clear night, you could look up and feel like you could see every one of those trillions of stars scattered across the blackness of the sky. If you could imagine yourself there with me, both of us kids staring up at those stars, and I ask you, which of those stars are the unneccesary ones? The beauty of the universe doesn't tell me that there must be a God, but it does make me think often that if indeed there is a God, He made something beautiful that I wouldn't change in the least. Sure, they're not all visible from the ground, but have you seen images from the Hubble telescope? What if we'd put that thing up there, and there was nothing to see? All those stars don't necessarily serve a practical purpose, but do they really need to?

Final note, I notice that Wells also has a note on verse 14, and you may have noticed I didn't address it. That's because I have no answer for that one. (But I picked it up at a later date.) It might be a grammatical problem with the KJV, I don't know.

(See the comments for more musings on the nature of language.)

Strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel (Gen 1:9-13)

(I notice in my traffic logs that a lot of people land on this post while Googling the title of this post. The point made in the post is an example of the concept, not an explanation. Just in case there are people looking for an explanation of the meaning of the phrase, I'm going to post a brief one in the comments below.)

There's not much to say about this particular section, at least certainly the first part. So the waters flowed together to form the seas, and left behind the dry land. There's nothing spectacular here; that's essentially the same thing that happens every time it rains. But then the plants arrive.

The problem here that is addressed by the SAB is that of photosynthesis. More or less immediately upon the formation of dry land, plants appear. (Something not addressed by the SAB that I personally find curious is the fact that of course plants also grow in the sea, and supposedly wouldn't have needed to wait for this process of drying out. Not that it's earth-shattering, but it is interesting.)

There is also a note that the Bible says in this passage (and others in this chapter) "let the earth bring forth", which may hint at the possibility of evolution. Sure, it's possible, but I think the more literal interpretation, and certainly the theologically conservative one is that when God says, "Let such-and-such happen," He's really giving a command. The fact that this one is worded slightly different from the ones we've heard before I think is simply a reflection of making something from something, rather than something from nothing. After the first day, it seems that God largely shapes everything out of existing materials that He created in verse 1.

But seeing as it's apparently the question on everyone's mind, what of photosynthesis? How do plants exist without sunlight? I have two thoughts on this.

First, why such an insistence on plants needing light? I understand there is well-established science that says this in essence, and in fact it was probably well-known to be a fact long before modern science. However, if God can make something out of nothing, why not make plants without sunlight? Or better yet, if there is no need to appeal to the supernatural, why go there, right? So forget this idea of plants miraculously needing no light for photosynthesis, and let's talk about the bare facts.

Once, I got my wife some tulips in a pot. You know, they were alive, and all that? Okay, so I brought these live plants home, and intended to give them to her for her birthday, but her birthday was a couple days away. So what did I do? Like I would do with any other present, I hid it. I stuck it in an unused cupboard in the kitchen, where it stayed in darkness for over 24 hours. Guess what? It was still alive when I pulled it out! It hadn't shriveled up and died from lack of sunlight for over 24 hours. Maybe I'm weird but I don't believe it was a supernatural miracle. Nor do I believe there was anything odd about plants needing to wait 24 hours for God to make the sun, so long as He made sure they stayed warm enough.

This leads to my second thought, which I lean on a bit more, especially since my line of reasoning in the last paragraph unwittingly led me here in the end. (I reason these out as I go along, so sometimes I surprise myself, actually.) Going back to day one, we ask the question once again; where is the light (and heat!) coming from if there's no sun?

Coming from a bit of a spotty background, I can tell you from personal experience that I have known people to grow certain plants indoors, completely away from the sun's light until the time that they wish to harvest their, um, crop away from the prying eyes that might come if their plants were left outdoors. Not just 24 hours, but a plant living its entire life without seeing a single ray of sunshine (and perhaps destroyed before being ever taken outdoors). This of course is achieved with artificial light sources. If God can make a plant grow out of nothing, why can't he make light out of nothing?

I find it interesting that some comments I have received elsewhere regarding my posts here have complained about my earlier request that people accept the Bible on its own terms and suspend disbelief regarding the nature of God, yet nobody brings up the point about how absurd it is that plants would be created where no plants had ever existed before. I mean, the Bible doesn't say, "God planted some seeds and they sprung up." No, God just told the ground to make plants, and it obeyed. And the skeptics swallow this camel-sized absurdity whole and say, "All the different species of plants in the world created in one day out of barren ground? Yeah whatever, let's talk about photosynthesis!" I guess sometimes it's the little things that bother you, you know?

Let there be light! (Gen. 1:1-5)

Now it's time to dive in with some specifics, right? I'm tiring myself, and I don't know if anyone's bothering to read this anymore, if indeed anyone ever was. Well, one last semi-generalized note, actually.

Not everyone agrees on this, but it's my own personal opinion that chapter one is intended to be poetic. In many ways it's very poetic in form and feeling, and as such, I don't think it's necessarily intended to be taken as literal. The real point behind this chapter is the creative power of God, not the specific fine detail regarding what He does with it. That said, I do think one can take this chapter in a fairly straightforward way nonetheless, and a rule of thumb for Bible understanding is that if you can find a way to interpret it non-symbolically that makes sense, you should probably go with that.

The main thing that is taken as poetic by many is the concept of seven "days". Is a day 24 literal hours? Well, who knows? In a sense, a "day" is the period of time it takes for the earth to rotate 360 degrees relative to the sun's position, but of course the sun wasn't created until day four, so what does "day" mean in a more practical sense for those first three "days"? Who knows, indeed. I reiterate that the Bible is not a science textbook, and the technical specifics of the creation are not the real point of the story anyway.

On day one, God creates light. The skeptic says, "But if there's no sun, how can there be light? This doesn't follow our scientific understanding of the order things were created!" Point one: the sun is hardly the only possible light source in the universe. Point two: I'm not a physicist, but I believe that in fact this does follow the current scientific understanding.

What does science say presently about how the universe began? In the beginning, there was nothing; and by "nothing" we mean that not even time or space existed. You could say that it was "without form, and void". Then, all at once, there was something! What was that something? Essentially, it was a tiny little ball of energy, which exploded and made everything in the universe over the course of an extended period of time, supposedly over 10 billion years. At first, this ball of energy was so hot and charged up with power that it was unable to condense into matter of any recognizable form, but it surely radiated off one thing: light, and plenty of it. To say that light was the first thing created in the universe is, I would say, the one thing in this chapter that precisely matches up with modern scientific understanding. But I don't want to lose sight of my repeated warning that we're not really talking science here. The Bible doesn't say where this light is coming from, so we either speculate, or we let scientists figure it out.

On the poetic side again, the "light" may be a very symbolic thing. While I could speculate on how "God divided the light from the darkness" is flowery talk about how eventually that proto-plasma (Is that a word? I don't know what to call it.) at the beginning of the universe eventually cooled enough to settle into clumps of gas separated by empty space, I think it's much more worthwhile to talk about the imagery of light vs. darkness that pervades the Bible from beginning to end.

There's a fairly common belief known as "gap theory" that speculates on why God would create the heavens and the earth "without form, and void". (Once again, I think this shows a misunderstanding of the sequence of events; verse one is not an event so much as a "thesis statement," if you will, of the story that follows.) That theory is concerned with a pre-history that supposedly occurs in a gap between verses one and two. I don't know it well, but I believe the idea is that God made the universe in verse one, something went wrong that was somehow related to an angelic rebellion led by Satan, and the upshot is that God had to wipe everything out and start over: verse two.

Whether you choose to interpret things that way (and it's quite a bit of a stretch, clearly) or not, it's compelling to think of God creating a world which he infuses with "light" (goodness) so that he can separate and drive away "darkness" (evil). Really, that's what the Bible as a whole is about, so putting it right there at the beginning is interesting. As I have heard many a pastor say, while we tend to see the "day" starting with light and ending in darkness, the Jewish reckoning is that the "day" begins at sundown, thus starting with darkness and leading to light.