Here's where I'm really going to feel like I'm repeating myself, as this scene in Luke 4 doesn't change much between the Gospels.
Jesus goes off into the wilderness and fasts for forty days. Note that it doesn't say that he drank nothing, only that he ate nothing. As it happens, I have known people who have gone on a forty day fast from solid food, but really, that's beside the point, as Jesus is meant to be understood as being rather exceptional. If a guy can walk on water and bring people back from the dead, going for forty days with maybe only water should be a cinch.
When the devil takes Jesus up on a mountain and shows him all the kingdoms of the world, I never took it as being a literal thing, but more a sort of a vision. Even if the world were flat, you can only see so far, so I don't think this passage is suggesting such a thing.
Who is the Lord of all the earth? As is implied by this passage, the devil is, but then why all the verses saying that God is? Rather than a contradiction, this is a sort of complicated feudal matter; God is Lord in the end, but for some reason that's never fully explored in the Bible, when Adam ate from the tree in the garden of Eden, a certain amount of control over the earth was given to Satan. Anyway, if I remember from the first time I addressed Jesus' misquote, yes the word "only" doesn't appear in the verse Jesus is quoting, but it's strongly implied. So yeah, technically a misquote, but Jesus hasn't changed the meaning of the verse.
Can God be tempted? I answered this at length once before; let me try to give a short answer this time: You certainly can try to tempt God, but that doesn't mean it would be effective. Is it OK to test (or tempt) God? Generally no, but clearly there have been exceptions. Not only is it not a hard-and-fast rule, but the page on the SAB is missing an important verse, Malachi 3:10, in which God commands Israel to test him! (Perhaps the SAB will add the verse once this goes up? I think it's a big one for this issue.)
The SAB has a few issues with the comparison of Luke 4:18-19 to Isaiah 61:1-2. First of all, the SAB claims that the verse in Isaiah refers to Isaiah, and not to a future prophet. While yes, the verse does refer to Isaiah, that does not mean that it's impossible that it might have another layer of meaning. It actually comes up a lot in the New Testament that a verse that people thought referred to a past event is reinterpreted to have a secondary fulfillment; that's what's going on here. Secondly, the SAB points out that this appears to be yet another case of Jesus misquoting Scripture, and asks idly if Jesus made the mistake or if Luke added it in later. I don't know how to answer that question, but I do have some insight into what's going on here. In Jesus' time, Greek was a very commonly-spoken language, and a lot of people read their Old Testament from a Greek version known as the Septuagint. As is happens, the Septuagint does mention "typhlois anablepsin" or "recovering sight to the blind" in this verse. Jesus could have been reading from the Septuagint, or Luke could have gotten his verses from the same, but we don't really have any way of knowing for sure. Admittedly, this does still leave the verse open for questioning in a number of different ways. Is the Septuagint a bad translation? Was it wrong for whoever quoted from the Septuagint to do so? If Jesus actually read correctly from the Hebrew text, and Luke substituted the Septuagint, what does that imply? These are all potentially big issues that I admittedly don't have answers for; although its not a contradiction, it is an inconsistency, which some people may consider just as bad. Please feel free to share your thoughts one way or the other in the comments.
How long was Elijah's drought? The SAB claims a contradiction here, but I seem to be failing to see it. The Old Testament doesn't seem to be at all specific as to the length of the drought. I'd be curious as to where James and Jesus got three and a half years.
In verse 38, there is mention of "Simon's wife" which implies, as the SAB says, that the "first Pope" was married. I don't know what Catholics believe about this, or even if it would be an issue, as I'm pretty sure that celibacy among clergy was not a thing practiced in the early church. The SAB also implies that Simon Peter abandoned his wife to follow Jesus, but I don't know that one could say that with certainty. Sure, it's possible, but just because verse 5:11 says "they forsook all" doesn't mean that it should be taken quite so literally; at the very least one might assume that they didn't leave behind their clothes, and if they took something at all, who knows what they may have taken overall?
In the rest of the chapter, there's a lot of healing and casting out "devils", and while the SAB marks all of this as absurd and/or scientifically wrong, we're talking about miracles once again. Just because Jesus cleared a fever by rebuking it doesn't mean that the Bible is saying that's standard medical practice. As for the casting out of devils, the SAB brings up a question that I don't have a good answer for.
Showing posts with label testing God. Show all posts
Showing posts with label testing God. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Friday, April 11, 2008
This sign shalt thou have of the LORD (Judges 6)
Okay, I've been a bit too busy for this, and I probably still am, but I've just got to keep going, as I would like to finish someday, although at the rate I've managed, it'll probably take me more than 10 years to finish the whole Bible.
Judges 6 has a few tough questions. Right off the top is the question of the Midianites. I was going to say that obviously, the Israelites in Moses' time didn't do as thorough of a job as they seem to have done, but the way I'm reading the SAB note, that's not really the point being made here. The point is, after killing certainly nearly every male among the Midianites (and most of the adult women as well), just 200 years later, they flourish "as grasshoppers for multitude". One of the two passages is definitely erroneous, I'd have to say, unless one admits the possibility (and why not, other than it's a stretch) that the sort of miraculous growth that turned 70 men of Israel into 600,000 men in 400 years during the time of the Egyptian captivity has happened to Midian. Surely at least there is some exaggeration, as I seriously doubt that the Midianites are "as grasshoppers" (although that verse does admittedly talk about a "plague", not a mere natural swarm) since with numbers like that, how would you even know? Most likely, "without number" simply means the Israelites couldn't manage to count them, which could mean anything. Who stops in the middle of a battle to count their enemies?
Some other thoughts that could apply here though are mostly possibilities of mistaken identity. One would probably have to look at it deeper than I am at the moment, but like the Amalekites, the Bible may be referring to more than one group of people as "Midian". Just as the descendants of Abraham through Israel have split into many tribes, Abraham's descendants through Midian may have done the same, and the former group destroyed may have simply been a tribe. (After all, much later we see "Israel" taken into captivity by the Babylonians, but three tribes remain in the land, at that time called "Judah".) It's also possible that this was a completely different group of people who happened to live in the land of Midian; it's not always 100% clear in the Bible when we're talking about national vs. geographical identity. Also, as I noted previously in Genesis 37, "Midian" and "Ishmael" are inexplicably very interchangeable terms in the Bible, perhaps partly due to the fact that these two men were originally half-brothers of each other and Isaac.
Anyway, the SAB expresses disdain for the idea that God would take Israel's side in the war that is about to come. I'm not sure why this issue should keep coming up as a problem. I obviously have a very different point of view as to the way God should act towards His people than the SAB does. I mean, while I have voiced the opinion that I don't approve of the war in Iraq (at least not for the reasons we were given for starting it in the first place) I do think we were justified to a great extent for going to war in Afghanistan. When you're attacked in your own land, fighting back just makes sense. Well, that's my take anyway, for whatever it's worth.
The SAB also thinks it's absurd that God makes fire come out of a rock. For the umpteenth time, we're talking about a miracle here, so pretty much anything goes. That also goes for the miracle(s) of the fleece at the end of the chapter, although more might need to be said about that.
I am perhaps a bit surprised that the SAB doesn't question Gideon's act of "vandalism" (to quote from the Brick Testament link). Surely this is an act of intolerance if there ever was one. At least here we're not talking about warring with a foreign invading tribe of pagans, but with home-grown paganism. I suppose I've addressed this elsewhere in general, but it does raise some interesting questions for a modern believer: If you truly believe your faith is the one true faith, would that give you the right to, say, burn down a Mormon temple or raze a Mosque? Surely it doesn't seem right, (and in my opinion would do nothing to slow the rise of the LDS Church or Islam anyway) yet why not, if God is on your side? Is Gideon's act any more or less just? What about the reaction of Gideon's father? He says essentially that if Baal is such a powerful God, he hardly needs an angry mob to defend his altar. Seems like a clever response, doesn't it? But then, you could say the same sort of thing when someone in the modern day would firebomb a church, couldn't you? This action on the part of Gideon is full of some fascinating moral ambiguity in my opinion.
I'm not sure what the absurd part is about verse 34, although the link next to it would suggest perhaps it is strange that the "Spirit of the Lord" is so likely to lead men to violence. However, if that's the case, I'd expect more likely to icons for violence and intolerance, as have so many times been used elsewhere, and responded to by me as above.
The chapter ends with the fairly well-known fleece story, which I'll admit does seem a bit absurd for a few reasons. First, it's a pretty wacky miracle. Second, it's probably a far less impressive miracle than the one Gideon already saw, at least in my opinion. Third, as the SAB points out, what the heck does it take to convince this guy that God is really talking to him, and why does God put up with his demands for so many miraculous signs? The fact is, this is one of the odd places in the Bible that perplexes me where God really seems to stretch what He's willing to put up with from someone's questioning. Like the Apostle ("doubting") Thomas, who wouldn't believe in the resurrected Christ until He put in a special appearance just for him, Gideon seems to be asking a lot. In any case, whether or not this is okay to do is a difficult question, one that I have addressed to some extent here, but I really don't have any definitive answers. In short, God goes with this, and Gideon is convinced to do what it is that he does in the next section of the book.
Judges 6 has a few tough questions. Right off the top is the question of the Midianites. I was going to say that obviously, the Israelites in Moses' time didn't do as thorough of a job as they seem to have done, but the way I'm reading the SAB note, that's not really the point being made here. The point is, after killing certainly nearly every male among the Midianites (and most of the adult women as well), just 200 years later, they flourish "as grasshoppers for multitude". One of the two passages is definitely erroneous, I'd have to say, unless one admits the possibility (and why not, other than it's a stretch) that the sort of miraculous growth that turned 70 men of Israel into 600,000 men in 400 years during the time of the Egyptian captivity has happened to Midian. Surely at least there is some exaggeration, as I seriously doubt that the Midianites are "as grasshoppers" (although that verse does admittedly talk about a "plague", not a mere natural swarm) since with numbers like that, how would you even know? Most likely, "without number" simply means the Israelites couldn't manage to count them, which could mean anything. Who stops in the middle of a battle to count their enemies?
Some other thoughts that could apply here though are mostly possibilities of mistaken identity. One would probably have to look at it deeper than I am at the moment, but like the Amalekites, the Bible may be referring to more than one group of people as "Midian". Just as the descendants of Abraham through Israel have split into many tribes, Abraham's descendants through Midian may have done the same, and the former group destroyed may have simply been a tribe. (After all, much later we see "Israel" taken into captivity by the Babylonians, but three tribes remain in the land, at that time called "Judah".) It's also possible that this was a completely different group of people who happened to live in the land of Midian; it's not always 100% clear in the Bible when we're talking about national vs. geographical identity. Also, as I noted previously in Genesis 37, "Midian" and "Ishmael" are inexplicably very interchangeable terms in the Bible, perhaps partly due to the fact that these two men were originally half-brothers of each other and Isaac.
Anyway, the SAB expresses disdain for the idea that God would take Israel's side in the war that is about to come. I'm not sure why this issue should keep coming up as a problem. I obviously have a very different point of view as to the way God should act towards His people than the SAB does. I mean, while I have voiced the opinion that I don't approve of the war in Iraq (at least not for the reasons we were given for starting it in the first place) I do think we were justified to a great extent for going to war in Afghanistan. When you're attacked in your own land, fighting back just makes sense. Well, that's my take anyway, for whatever it's worth.
The SAB also thinks it's absurd that God makes fire come out of a rock. For the umpteenth time, we're talking about a miracle here, so pretty much anything goes. That also goes for the miracle(s) of the fleece at the end of the chapter, although more might need to be said about that.
I am perhaps a bit surprised that the SAB doesn't question Gideon's act of "vandalism" (to quote from the Brick Testament link). Surely this is an act of intolerance if there ever was one. At least here we're not talking about warring with a foreign invading tribe of pagans, but with home-grown paganism. I suppose I've addressed this elsewhere in general, but it does raise some interesting questions for a modern believer: If you truly believe your faith is the one true faith, would that give you the right to, say, burn down a Mormon temple or raze a Mosque? Surely it doesn't seem right, (and in my opinion would do nothing to slow the rise of the LDS Church or Islam anyway) yet why not, if God is on your side? Is Gideon's act any more or less just? What about the reaction of Gideon's father? He says essentially that if Baal is such a powerful God, he hardly needs an angry mob to defend his altar. Seems like a clever response, doesn't it? But then, you could say the same sort of thing when someone in the modern day would firebomb a church, couldn't you? This action on the part of Gideon is full of some fascinating moral ambiguity in my opinion.
I'm not sure what the absurd part is about verse 34, although the link next to it would suggest perhaps it is strange that the "Spirit of the Lord" is so likely to lead men to violence. However, if that's the case, I'd expect more likely to icons for violence and intolerance, as have so many times been used elsewhere, and responded to by me as above.
The chapter ends with the fairly well-known fleece story, which I'll admit does seem a bit absurd for a few reasons. First, it's a pretty wacky miracle. Second, it's probably a far less impressive miracle than the one Gideon already saw, at least in my opinion. Third, as the SAB points out, what the heck does it take to convince this guy that God is really talking to him, and why does God put up with his demands for so many miraculous signs? The fact is, this is one of the odd places in the Bible that perplexes me where God really seems to stretch what He's willing to put up with from someone's questioning. Like the Apostle ("doubting") Thomas, who wouldn't believe in the resurrected Christ until He put in a special appearance just for him, Gideon seems to be asking a lot. In any case, whether or not this is okay to do is a difficult question, one that I have addressed to some extent here, but I really don't have any definitive answers. In short, God goes with this, and Gideon is convinced to do what it is that he does in the next section of the book.
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Achar, the troubler of Israel, who transgressed in the thing accursed. (Joshua 7)
So now we come to the topic of Achan. Yes, the title of this post is a correctly copied verse from 1Chronicles, and I'm surprised this typo was not noted in the SAB, as Bible critics love to point out scribal errors, which this might be, although it could also be a matter of several hundred years' difference in Hebrew dialect. It is notable that achar is the Hebrew word for "trouble", and the names Achan and Achor that are found in this passage are forms of the word.
The first thing noted in this chapter is that the Israelite leaders rip their clothes, fall face down on the ground and put dust on their heads. This is noted as being absurd and intolerant, and I don't know why it was marked with either. This sort of behavior may seem strange to modern readers, but it was common practice in those days, and in fact may still be among modern Orthodox Jews, though I am not sure about that. It's just a way to show extreme sorrow. As for intolerance, I'm stumped as to what that's supposed to mean
Unless it's referring not to the actions of Joshua and the elders, but to the situation they find themselves in that causes them to be upset. God allowed them to suffer their first defeat at the city of Ai because (as it turns out) one person had done something wrong. As I said in my previous post, whatever this "accursed thing" was that Achan stole is not specifically named (unless it's the garment and precious metal mentioned in verse 21, which is possible if not likely), but the language used to describe it indicates that whatever it was, it was something of some pagan significance that he had no right to have in his possession. Why is it such a big deal?
The Apostle Paul said "A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump," a saying similar to the modern "One bad apple ruins the whole bunch." This is the point of the extremes of Holy war. The people and culture of Jericho had to be completely destroyed, and Achan saving some item he'd taken from the city was simply not acceptable.
In fact, shocking as it seems, it was apparently so very unacceptable that Achan along with his family and possessions were stoned to death and then burned. It's my personal opinion that God decided to have Achan punished so particularly severely in order to make him an object lesson for the rest of the nation. Just as the very first battle they fought in Canaan was won in a particularly spectacular manner to impress upon the people that God was with them in power, so the first transgression was punished in a spectacular manner to impress upon the people that while God was with them, He wasn't going to allow moral compromise.
As for the question of who Achan's father was, that's a simple matter that I've touched on before with other individuals, but I'll repeat here since it's so simple. The word "grandfather" never appears in the Bible. It was customary, whether by culture or by linguistic necessity, for any male ancestor to be called the "father" of a person. Twice in the chapter, Achan is referred to as "Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah". While he is once referred to as the "son of Zerah", this labeling is customary despite the fact that Zerah was actually his great-grandfather (or great-great-great-etc., sometimes genealogies are telescoped).
The first thing noted in this chapter is that the Israelite leaders rip their clothes, fall face down on the ground and put dust on their heads. This is noted as being absurd and intolerant, and I don't know why it was marked with either. This sort of behavior may seem strange to modern readers, but it was common practice in those days, and in fact may still be among modern Orthodox Jews, though I am not sure about that. It's just a way to show extreme sorrow. As for intolerance, I'm stumped as to what that's supposed to mean
Unless it's referring not to the actions of Joshua and the elders, but to the situation they find themselves in that causes them to be upset. God allowed them to suffer their first defeat at the city of Ai because (as it turns out) one person had done something wrong. As I said in my previous post, whatever this "accursed thing" was that Achan stole is not specifically named (unless it's the garment and precious metal mentioned in verse 21, which is possible if not likely), but the language used to describe it indicates that whatever it was, it was something of some pagan significance that he had no right to have in his possession. Why is it such a big deal?
The Apostle Paul said "A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump," a saying similar to the modern "One bad apple ruins the whole bunch." This is the point of the extremes of Holy war. The people and culture of Jericho had to be completely destroyed, and Achan saving some item he'd taken from the city was simply not acceptable.
In fact, shocking as it seems, it was apparently so very unacceptable that Achan along with his family and possessions were stoned to death and then burned. It's my personal opinion that God decided to have Achan punished so particularly severely in order to make him an object lesson for the rest of the nation. Just as the very first battle they fought in Canaan was won in a particularly spectacular manner to impress upon the people that God was with them in power, so the first transgression was punished in a spectacular manner to impress upon the people that while God was with them, He wasn't going to allow moral compromise.
As for the question of who Achan's father was, that's a simple matter that I've touched on before with other individuals, but I'll repeat here since it's so simple. The word "grandfather" never appears in the Bible. It was customary, whether by culture or by linguistic necessity, for any male ancestor to be called the "father" of a person. Twice in the chapter, Achan is referred to as "Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah". While he is once referred to as the "son of Zerah", this labeling is customary despite the fact that Zerah was actually his great-grandfather (or great-great-great-etc., sometimes genealogies are telescoped).
Friday, July 14, 2006
I will make the wilderness a pool of water (Exod 17)
Chapter 17 is a pretty easy one, so as I often do in such cases, I'm going to complicate things with my own comments on what I suggest the SAB might want to say.
First of all, it seems like verse 2 ought to be added to this page, although only if Wells is trying to be comprehensive in his citations. I think a lot of the time, he's just looking for a few good examples, but I'm not sure. It should be noted that he has mistakenly put Genesis 22:1 and 2Sam. 24:1 on this page, which I don't think he meant to. This verse would fit just fine, though. I suppose that since I therefore have not addressed this issue, I ought to here. I think the issue is not whether God can be tempted per se, but whether people will try to tempt God. One of the hard things about this concept is that "tempt" and "test" are largely used interchangeably, with some confusing results. God's certainly not going to be tempted into sin, which is the way we usually think of "tempting". However, God is certainly able to be tested; the only question is whether or not it's appropriate to do so at any given time or in any given manner. For some reason, throughout most of the wilderness wanderings of Israel, the kind of testing/tempting they were doing was inappropriate, while there are examples both of people testing God with positive results, and God actually ordering the people of Israel to test Him! Although the word "test" is not in that verse, the concept is pretty clear there, and I think Wells ought to consider adding it to the test page.
Really, I don't understand this well. I once heard a pastor who said that all testing of God is forbidden in the Bible except for what we find in Malachi 3:10. The guy was a great speaker, but I think he had forgotten Gideon, who doesn't really fit under this heading. (This is also akin to the story in Luke 1 which I really should have included in my "Christmas edition", in which one person gets in trouble for asking a question to an angel, and another person does not.) My only thought is that it has a lot to do with attitude. The Israelites were essentially saying, "Oh my gosh! Moses has led us out into the desert to die, and God doesn't care about us!" While people like Elijah tested God with an attitude more like, "I'm so certain that God is with me, that I'm willing to give him a test to show you!" This is only speculation on my part, but it makes some sense in that God seems to value faith very highly.
Now, Moses goes with the leaders of the tribes to this place where there is this rock that God says, "I will stand before thee there..." which I assume to be somewhat figurative; perhaps the pillar of smoke mentioned previously stopped at the rock. Moses hits the rock with the staff, and water comes out of it. "God is such a clever guy!" the SAB says. Yes, I suppose He is. Apparently, this is absurd to Steve Wells, but he doesn't explain why. I guess it's another case of anything miraculous is absurd. This is definitely meant to be a miracle, and aside from the obvious fact that it's supernatural for rocks to spew out water when hit, the fact that this staff is used is often an indication in the Torah that miracles are involved.
Shortly after this (although it's not clear, since the Bible isn't much on sequential storytelling) the Amalekites come to attack the Israelites. Apparently, the SAB deems fighting back against this attack to be cruel, unjust, and intolerant. Am I to take it then that they should have just let themselves be attacked?
Something miraculous seems to happen in this story. Moses goes up on a hillside, and holds up his staff. So long as the staff is over his head, the Israelites keep winning, when he puts it down, the battle turns on them. This may indeed be a miracle (remember what I said about the staff?) in which case it needs no further explanation. I do notice however that most of the miracles that Moses performs during his ministry are following an order from God to do them. No such order is mentioned here, and I wonder if it might have been a psychological morale-booster for the troops to see Moses holding up the staff? It's a possibility.
God tells Moses to write the story down "in a book," presumably this one we're reading now. I find this verse in itself to be an odd one, and it may be a Hebrew idiom that we don't fully understand, but God says essentially, "Make sure everyone remembers the Amalekites, because I'm going to make sure everyone forgets them." Huh? Sort of the reverse of Jesus' statement in Matthew 26, where He says the woman with the ointment will be remembered forever, but Matthew fails to tell us who the heck she was. (It may have been Mary, as a very similar story is told in John, and Mary is named there.) In any case, as I mentioned way back, Israel indeed had to keep fighting generation after generation of Amalekites, and yes, most of the time they had to do it without Moses' help.
First of all, it seems like verse 2 ought to be added to this page, although only if Wells is trying to be comprehensive in his citations. I think a lot of the time, he's just looking for a few good examples, but I'm not sure. It should be noted that he has mistakenly put Genesis 22:1 and 2Sam. 24:1 on this page, which I don't think he meant to. This verse would fit just fine, though. I suppose that since I therefore have not addressed this issue, I ought to here. I think the issue is not whether God can be tempted per se, but whether people will try to tempt God. One of the hard things about this concept is that "tempt" and "test" are largely used interchangeably, with some confusing results. God's certainly not going to be tempted into sin, which is the way we usually think of "tempting". However, God is certainly able to be tested; the only question is whether or not it's appropriate to do so at any given time or in any given manner. For some reason, throughout most of the wilderness wanderings of Israel, the kind of testing/tempting they were doing was inappropriate, while there are examples both of people testing God with positive results, and God actually ordering the people of Israel to test Him! Although the word "test" is not in that verse, the concept is pretty clear there, and I think Wells ought to consider adding it to the test page.
Really, I don't understand this well. I once heard a pastor who said that all testing of God is forbidden in the Bible except for what we find in Malachi 3:10. The guy was a great speaker, but I think he had forgotten Gideon, who doesn't really fit under this heading. (This is also akin to the story in Luke 1 which I really should have included in my "Christmas edition", in which one person gets in trouble for asking a question to an angel, and another person does not.) My only thought is that it has a lot to do with attitude. The Israelites were essentially saying, "Oh my gosh! Moses has led us out into the desert to die, and God doesn't care about us!" While people like Elijah tested God with an attitude more like, "I'm so certain that God is with me, that I'm willing to give him a test to show you!" This is only speculation on my part, but it makes some sense in that God seems to value faith very highly.
Now, Moses goes with the leaders of the tribes to this place where there is this rock that God says, "I will stand before thee there..." which I assume to be somewhat figurative; perhaps the pillar of smoke mentioned previously stopped at the rock. Moses hits the rock with the staff, and water comes out of it. "God is such a clever guy!" the SAB says. Yes, I suppose He is. Apparently, this is absurd to Steve Wells, but he doesn't explain why. I guess it's another case of anything miraculous is absurd. This is definitely meant to be a miracle, and aside from the obvious fact that it's supernatural for rocks to spew out water when hit, the fact that this staff is used is often an indication in the Torah that miracles are involved.
Shortly after this (although it's not clear, since the Bible isn't much on sequential storytelling) the Amalekites come to attack the Israelites. Apparently, the SAB deems fighting back against this attack to be cruel, unjust, and intolerant. Am I to take it then that they should have just let themselves be attacked?
Something miraculous seems to happen in this story. Moses goes up on a hillside, and holds up his staff. So long as the staff is over his head, the Israelites keep winning, when he puts it down, the battle turns on them. This may indeed be a miracle (remember what I said about the staff?) in which case it needs no further explanation. I do notice however that most of the miracles that Moses performs during his ministry are following an order from God to do them. No such order is mentioned here, and I wonder if it might have been a psychological morale-booster for the troops to see Moses holding up the staff? It's a possibility.
God tells Moses to write the story down "in a book," presumably this one we're reading now. I find this verse in itself to be an odd one, and it may be a Hebrew idiom that we don't fully understand, but God says essentially, "Make sure everyone remembers the Amalekites, because I'm going to make sure everyone forgets them." Huh? Sort of the reverse of Jesus' statement in Matthew 26, where He says the woman with the ointment will be remembered forever, but Matthew fails to tell us who the heck she was. (It may have been Mary, as a very similar story is told in John, and Mary is named there.) In any case, as I mentioned way back, Israel indeed had to keep fighting generation after generation of Amalekites, and yes, most of the time they had to do it without Moses' help.
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