Think not that I am come to send peace on earth (Luke 12)

In Luke 12, the first question given by the SAB is Should we fear God? The answer is yes, but I suppose the given verses imply a need for some explanation. I think the real point of those verses in the No column are actually closely related to the speech that Jesus is giving in the beginning of the chapter here. The main idea is that if you righteously fear God, then that fear will drive away all other fears.

Verse 7 is marked for "Science" and verse 9 is marked as "Injustice", and I have no idea why for either one.

Verse 10 brings up the issue of unforgivable sin, which I'm not going to rehash, but rather link to my answer here.

The middle of the chapter contains a lot of verses that the SAB marks as absurd, and they seem to be on the topic of learning to trust God to take care of you. Perhaps they may be absurd to an atheist, but to someone who believes in God, it may not seem so outlandish.

Next up in the chapter is a very strange parable that elicits a bunch of notes and questions from the SAB. Honestly though, I'm not sure what to make of it. As a parable, there's no real reason to take it literally, but I'm not sure what the symbolic lesson is, other than that people should be doing the will of God and looking forward to Christ's return (and even that second part's iffy). I feel sort of lame for not having more to say, but there it is.

Is Jesus peaceful? It's a surprisingly tricky question. As the SAB rightly points out in the next few verses after the one that raises this question, Jesus himself says that one of the effects he will have on the world will be the dividing up of families into factions. Jesus here is saying that he came to bring "division". So why is it that there do seem to be many verses that paint Jesus in the light of a peace maker? One thing that's important to note first of all is that Jesus never promoted violence. On one or two rare occasions, he suggested that his followers might wish to defend themselves against attack, and on many occasions he said that violence was likely to come because of their belief, but he never said this was a good thing, nor something he wanted to have happen. For the most part, however, the sort of peace that Jesus had to offer, if any, was peace with God. In James 4:4, it says "know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God." While it doesn't expressly state it, the reverse is true as well, and that is the source of the strife that Jesus brings: when you find peace with God, you will often find that most people who do not share this peace will be your enemies.

The final note on this chapter is on Jesus calling people "hypocrites" for failing to recognize "this time." I'll admit I don't see what Jesus means by this, as the problem could be called a lot of things, but I don't see hypocrisy as chief among them.

Perfect love casteth out fear (1Sam 12)

Chapter 12 is pretty much a one-issue chapter. Samuel gives an address to the people of Israel, and while he is not dying just yet, this has the flavor of a farewell address.

He gives a brief summary of Israel's history from the Exodus to the present, in the middle of which, as a sign of his supernatural authority, he calls down a thunderstorm. The people are afraid.

"Should we fear God?" the SAB asks, and it's not the first time. Nor is this the first time I have replied to the concept. While I think the answer I gave back in Joshua stands up pretty well, I think there might be more that could be said about it.

Fear of God is a strange and important thing. I don't know that I've outlined it here, but I have a great deal of fear of my father. The kind of fear I have of him at this time in my life is different than the fear I had of him as a child that I explained in my last writing on this subject, but I think it still applies in a way. (Then again, maybe this is more of a personal aside than real commentary on the Bible; excuse me while I indulge in some catharsis.)

My father and I had a falling out when I was just twelve years old, and as a result, I haven't spoken to him in well over 20 years. The fault for what happened was entirely on his side (although not necessarily entirely him, I know he was being influenced by others in an unhealthy manner at that time in his life), but I don't think I hold a grudge against him for it; I never got the impression that he quite understood that I was just a child. (Once, when I was six years old, he asked me if I'd given much thought to college.)

The point of all this is that after all these years, despite the fact that he is no longer really a part of my life, I have fear of him. Since my father is Jewish, he's always had a disliking for Christianity; it's common among Jews, and honestly often with good reason. Apparently late in his life he has become an orthodox Jew, so I'm guessing his views on the matter have not liberalized. Generally, I don't care that anyone knows I'm a Christian, but when we get down to specifics, I'm not keen on letting my father know, and it's one of the barriers (among many) for me in getting back in touch with him. Even with him being largely not a part of my life for roughly two-thirds of it, and even though my Christianity is one of the more important things to me personally, I still have a fear of disappointing my father, a fear of rejection. Now it may be that it's unhealthy for me not to confront this fear, but I'm pretty well convinced that it's healthy for me to have this fear. It shows me that despite all the hurt and "water under the bridge", my father still means something to me. He should, because he was there in my early childhood and I loved him dearly. On some level, I still do.

What does all this have to do with fear of God, though? If the God of Israel exists, if He's really there, then God should matter. He should matter deeply. Why shouldn't we fear Him? I fear God on a much deeper and more fundamental level than I fear my earthly father, because he was there for me in my early childhood, in my late childhood, and all through my adulthood as well. He was there for my parents and grandparents. He was there for my people (though I am not technically a Jew, I still identify with them) throughout history. He has always been there, He created us and saved us through His Son, and I love him very dearly. I do think it's natural and appropriate to fear God, not that we feel God is going to hurt us, but that we are going to hurt God because He cares for us so much. Just as we can hurt our parents by hurting ourselves, so we can hurt God in the same way. To me, that's incredibly scary.

In 1John 4:18, John writes "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love." I don't know if John is saying something about a specific type of fear (Greek is more precise than English and Hebrew in some aspects, it would be worth checking) that is cast out by love, or if he is talking about a point in time where the love we have is "made perfect" in that our relationship moves beyond fear because we have learned to love well enough that we no longer tend to fall so badly. Either is a possibility and both seem like very good places to be.

I break this people...as one breaketh a potter's vessel (Judges 7)

I was thinking that today was not the day to tackle Judges 7, since I was pretty tired and didn't have much time, but I see this chapter has mostly charges of absurdity against it in the SAB, which are usually not so difficult to deal with, I think.

So what is absurd here? First, there's this odd selection of Gideon's army by the manner in which people drink water. I've heard it suggested that there may be some significance to the way in which one would hold a sword while drinking from a stream, and that those who drink "with his tongue, as a dog lappeth" are showing greater alertness for a possible approaching enemy. I could see the value of that, although I have also heard some debates about whether this really makes any sense. My own take on it is from the context of the verses before: God wants Gideon to have a small army, so that He will get the credit. Remember, in the grand scale of things, the purpose of this battle is not just to free the Israelites from the oppression of the Midianites, but to turn them back to faith in God. There were 10,000 men when they went to have a drink, and God chose 300 to stay; that means 9,700 were turned away! I think this was just an arbitrary selection to get the smaller group, which turned out to be considerably smaller.

Verse 12 is also tagged for absurdity, though I think we're talking about hyperbole here, and what we're saying is that there are too many camels to count. There's something else noteworthy about this verse in respects to the issue of the number of Midianites. In this verse, it says "Midianites and Amalekites". It is quite possible that this is actually a coalition of several nations that happens to be led by the Midianites, which would explain the number of them a bit better.

The next few verses, despite being marked as absurd, are really quite clear and straightforward to me. It's made clear that the Midianites have been supernaturally caused to be very afraid of the idea that they are about to be attacked by a massive army. That night, the men arrive with trumpets, pitchers and lamps. Here's how it works: the lamps are inside pitchers so that they won't be spotted coming, and so that once the time comes to reveal themselves, they can whip out their lamps and smash the pitchers, making a sudden blaze of light accompanied by a crashing noise and the sound of 300 trumpets. Normally, an army would not have every man carry a torch or a trumpet, so the Midianites are to be confused by the illusory sights and sounds of a huge army created by just a relatively small group of men. In the resulting confusion and panic, members of the Midianite army either run away or mistakenly fight each other. Gideon's army of 300 hardly have to draw their swords to attain victory! Violent? Yes, but it's war, and these men are an occupying force.

The chapter ends with the capture and killing of two "princes" of Midian; it's a nasty business, yes, but my caveat here is that once again, it's war, and there's also no particular indication that the Bible condones the manner in which they were killed.

But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart. (Luke 1:26-80)

I suppose technically, I left off the issue from verse 20, but I figured waiting until the second half to deal with it was good enough. I actually really hoped to be done with my Christmas blogging before Christmas Eve, as I hate to do last-minute Christmas anything, and I still wanted to put up something on my other blog. At least my shopping was done weeks ago.

The story picks up six months later, and another angel appears, this time to a young unmarried (but engaged) woman named Mary. He announces to her that she is going to become pregnant with the Messiah. She asks, "How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?" This tends to present a problem for a lot of people, as it seems that she is expressing doubt, but she isn't punished like Zacharias was. Interestingly, while I had always figured that this was a matter of perhaps tone of voice or some other matter that doesn't come across in writing, I think it may actually be clearer than I gave the text credit. Zacharias asks, "Kata ti gnosomai touto?" which translates to "How do I know this is true?" Mary, on the other hand, asks, "Pos estai touto?" which translates as "How will this be?" I think the difference in the verb used is indicative of the thought processes behind the questions. Zacharias is saying "How can I possibly believe this?" while Mary is saying, "Okay, but how should I be expecting this to unfold?" I do admit however that even if you understand and accept the difference between the two questions, it's not really clear why Zacharias deserves to be punished. It may be that in part, the fact that he was struck dumb was intended as a sign of some sort, which we'll see a bit of here.

The angel makes the statement nothing is impossible for God, but the SAB questions that. I actually addressed that back in Genesis, but to put it in a nutshell, while God is able to do "anything" (what this means is actually open to interpretation, which deserves more discussion) it is in character that He will never do anything that goes against His basic nature, which includes lying and subverting free will.

Mary goes to visit her cousin Elisabeth, who is of course now six months pregnant with John the Baptist. Skipping the Holy Spirit question, which I addressed in the previous post, the SAB finds it funny that the fetus that would one day be known as John the Baptist responds to the presence of the mother of Jesus. Really it is sort of funny, and my own pastor spoke about it briefly this Sunday; John's ministry as the announcer of the Christ began three months before he was even born! (Some anti-abortion Christians will use this verse to bolster their case, which might be one of the best arguments if you think about it.)

The question raised as to whether one should fear God was one I addressed at length back in Joshua, and is the last question to address here. The rest of the chapter deals with Mary singing the praises of God and the Savior she carried in her womb, and then the birth of John which involves the lifting of the curse of dumbness on Zacharias, who then also sings the praises of God.

Until the children of Israel have inherited every man his inheritance (Joshua 16-22)

Maybe I should have covered more material in the last post, as most of the issues, well, pretty much through the rest of the book are repeats of the ones I already covered. We see numerous notes of various Canaanites that couldn't be driven out, a giant or two here and there, casting lots to determine a course of action or division of land, etc. This is really the part of the book of Joshua that's much more on the dry side, being a list of a conquest here, a list of cities there, and I'm going to skim over it pretty lightly for the most part, pausing to comment on notable things.

I think actually, the latter part of Chapter 17 is notable in that it illustrates much more fully the principle of what's going on when conquests of parts of the land fail. The tribe of Manasseh complains to Joshua that they don't have enough land, and Joshua tells them that they'd have plenty if they'd just drive the Perizzites out of it. Manasseh complains that the Perizzites "have chariots of iron", and therefore they can't possibly win. Joshua tells them to buck up and just do the job they have to do, since God is on their side. It seems quite clear to me that the only thing holding back this conquest was the fear of the people.

Joshua 20, while having no notes in the SAB is an interesting one for reasons that I'll probably delve into more deeply when I go back to the Mosaic Law. The "cities of refuge" are a concept that has to do with the laws in Israel about manslaughter. If a person killed another by accident, they could be protected by going to one of those cities according to the law. There, a person would stand trial instead of being subject to vigilante justice from the victim's close relative, the "avenger of blood".

Joshua 21 contains what is claimed to be an error, but while I think there may indeed be an error here, I think the SAB has misidentified the error. Or, that is to say that the error is not here so much as it is in the parallel passage in 1Chronicles 6. If you look carefully at that chapter, there are two things to note. First, that chapter is not about apportioning the land by tribes, but about listing cities given to the Levites, so the precise locations are not so important. Secondly, and this is the real problem, 1 Chronicles as a chapter names every tribe of Israel except for Dan, which is the tribe mentioned in Joshua 21. I suspect the real error is the omission of Dan's name from the list. Whether that was a scribal error or an omission in the original document (which could have been on purpose, actually) we can't say, choose what you like, or give me another suggestion as many people have done.

Joshua 22 discusses Joshua giving an address to the tribes who had land on the West side of the Jordan, and it turns out that all these years (the conquest took somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 years to finish) these tribes stayed faithful in their promise to stand by the others, and Joshua commends them for this. I myself am rather impressed, as I don't get the impression that there was really a lot of unity among the tribes in general.

Well, It looks like I might be able to finish this book in one more post, we'll see when I get to it.

The foolishness of God is wiser than men (Joshua 5)

Oh, I gotta tell you, I've actually been looking forward to this one a great deal. The SAB marks Joshua 5 in two places with the "Absurd" icon, and indeed, this chapter is full of weirdness. This is as excellent a place as any to put forward my personal theory on God's modus operandi when it comes to the Jewish people: God wants the Jews to be "weird" so that other nations will notice them, and thus notice God.

As I said before, there was already a certain amount of fame that preceded the Israelites into Canaan. The people of the land heard about the plagues on Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea, and a handful of battles that had been fought while they were wandering in the desert. Imagine an inhabitant of Canaan hearing about all this.

So those Israelites? The ones who came up out of Egypt few years back? They're headed this way! What's more, the trick they did with the Red Sea? They did it again with the Jordan River! The river just stopped, and they walked across on dry land! And then get this: they set up camp and all the men gathered together and cut the tips of their penises off! I'm telling you, those guys serve a God who is powerful, and apparently friggin' batshit insane!

Seriously, these guys are being watched, I have no doubt, by people from all over the region who want to see what craziness they will do next. These are a people who, along with their God, mean some serious business, and everybody knows it.

This is an important prelude to the whole issue of Holy war, which we are about to start into, and get up to our necks in throughout this book. This bizarre behavior, this series of miraculous events, it's all a way to send a message to the people of Canaan. It's a message that unfortunately very few of them understood, like Rahab did. Time's up for you people, and you now have to choose from three options: repent, evacuate, or die. While it is not my intention at this time to yet delve into the morality of the book as a whole, I think one thing that should be noted is that those nations which came to be destroyed were all forewarned, and as we later see in the case of Nineveh, God spares those who repent.

With all the miraculous happenings that center around the Israelites, however, one might wonder at the sort of "anti-miracle" that occurred to them. Indeed, it took them 40 years to complete a journey that conceivably could have been done in ten days. Now there are various aspects to consider like the fact that with such a large group of people, travel is difficult; everyone is forced to go the speed of the slowest member of the group. Furthermore, one must remember that they had to make a pit stop to pick up the Law, which must have taken some time to write down. That's hardly enough to slow them by a year, much less forty.

I don't like to say things that will come across as insulting to Steve Wells, who strikes me as a very intelligent and dedicated individual for all the work he's done with the SAB, which as I have said, is really quite an impressive body of work that I actually admire. It's no secret that there are a lot of Christians who haven't put half the time into studying the Bible that he has. Still, there are occasional points in the SAB where I wonder what Wells is thinking. Why do the Israelites wander in the desert for forty years? Because God made them do it as a punishment. It's a pivotal moment in the story of the Exodus that you could hardly miss, (and Wells doesn't miss it, but puts the same note on that passage) and it seems it would be difficult to miss the meaning, either. It's neither absurd nor technically flawed that this should have happened; if any of the SAB's icons really should go there, it might be "Cruelty", but there are certainly worse punishments than having to walk around aimlessly for several years.

Another "anti-miracle" that happens in this chapter is that right after the crossing and circumcising, they celebrate the first Passover in Canaan, at which point God ceases to bring them manna, telling them that they have now moved in, and they will eat off of the land as inhabitants.

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge (Joshua 4)

Well, I was going to combine chapters four and five, since chapter four only has one note on it, but then I realized that to do it justice, I ought to devote a whole post to that single note. It's one of the odd things about the Bible and people who believe in it to those who are on the outside of that group, a group referred to by some as "God-fearing people".

I thought I had actually already addressed the issue, and actually, it seems I did, back in Exodus right after the presentation of the Ten Commandments. It was there that Moses said that odd phrase (which the SAB did not give a comment concerning, but I did):

Fear not: for God is come to prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not.

It's this strange admonition on the part of Moses--that seems almost internally contradictory--that really in some ways summarizes the idea of having "fear of the LORD". The whole idea of needing to be afraid of God is that it is a fear that should inspire you to make right moral choices.

Here at the end of Joshua 4, this moment at which God brings up the topic is right after He has performed a fantastic miracle for the people of Israel as a final warning both for the Israelites and the people of Canaan with whom the Israelites will soon be coming into contact. In my opinion, this is just the period on the end of a warning that God has been speaking to the people of the Middle East for about forty years. The warning is essentially: God's judgment is heading this way, don't you dare fail to take it seriously.

This all goes way back to even before the Exodus, actually. Back when God first promised the land to Abraham and his descendants in Genesis 15, He told Abraham that there was an appointed time for the Hebrew people to return from Egypt "...for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full." The people of Canaan were given over 500 years to shape up or ship out, so to speak, and they refused to change their ways because they didn't "fear the LORD". But I'm veering into a subject for a few posts from now, let me get back on track...

"Should we fear God?" the SAB asks, calling it contradiction. I say there is no contradiction. The answer is a resounding "Yes!" None of the verses given in the "No" column of that page explicitly says that we should not fear God. I suppose the intention is to suggest that the concept is implied in 1 John 4:18, and maybe a case could be made for it, but I tend to think that the real issue is that John does not make clear the object of fear in that verse. (I could be wrong; Greek is a subtle, nuanced language, and I've been wrong about such things before.) I think it is as Moses said, that having fear of the LORD casts out fear of anything else.

Still, the non-believer often looks on the idea of "fear of God" as a distasteful thing. In a sense, I agree; at least with the concept as they no doubt are understanding it. There's an ugly side of religion, even (and perhaps especially) Christianity, wherein people are motivated to belief in God chiefly due to the fact that they've been convinced that not believing in Him will lead to a hearty smiting, if you will. "Why do you follow Jesus?" we ask an imaginary believer, who responds, "Well, I don't want to end up swimming in a lake of fire with little red demons poking me in the ass with pitchforks!" That kind of belief, while it might indeed save a person, is not pretty. It is my belief that the best kind of faith is a faith built on a foundation of love. Perhaps the best illustration I can think of is that for me, to not be a Christian would be something like spitting in the face of my mother. While even she, in her own imperfect way, gave so much of her life for me and my sister, God in His absolutely perfect way, gave His entire life for me. The only fear in that love is the fear that I would take lightly the gift of His blood shed on the cross. For most Jews, the feeling is essentially the same, without the cross part.

Yet there is fear, as I have said, the Bible admonishes repeatedly that we should fear God, that fearing God is good for us, that it leads to wisdom, righteousness and salvation. What of that? As I said in my post about Moses, at least one modern version of the Bible renders a translation of "reverential fear". This is the real key to understanding the concept, whether the translation is technically correct or not. It is part and parcel of proper fear of God that, unlike something such as fear of spiders that makes one recoil and pull away, this fear is such that makes one draw closer. True, genuine and fully understanding fear of God realizes who and what God is, knows that running away is not an option, sees that God is a being of love and compassion (even at the root of fearsome things that He does such as send His people to wipe out a handful of nations from the land of Canaan), and grows closer to God in reverence, awe and respect.

In C. S. Lewis' novel The Horse and His Boy, part of the Chronicles of Narnia, there is a scene where a talking horse named Hwin meets God, who in that fictional world is personified by a great and ferocious Lion named Aslan. At first, she is scared, but then, while her fear does not go away, it changes subtly and she approaches Him to say,

"Please, you're so beautiful. You may eat me if you like. I'd sooner be eaten by you than fed by anyone else."

As is so often that case, I think Lewis encapsulates it well. The fear of God is indeed fear, but in a way that is not at all ugly.

My own father, interestingly enough, only spanked me once in my entire childhood, and it actually made me respect him all the more. The pain was nothing; I don't even remember it. What I do remember was his look of disappointment because I had done something that was wrong and I knew it. I feared my father, but not because he was going to hurt me. He never spanked me before, nor after, and when he did it, it took me by surprise. I was afraid of him; afraid of being a disappointment. And this fear was not because I thought he would reject me if I disappointed him, but actually because I knew he would not. That's the kind of fear that one needs with God.

Was not Rahab the harlot justified? (Joshua 2)

I was considering giving a bit of the standard talk about how the Hebrew word used here is questioned by some who believe that there is possibility that Rahab was not a prostitute, but an innkeeper. Sure, translation can be difficult at times, and it may be that the ambiguity is real, but then, one still has to wonder about the concept of a woman being an innkeeper in that day and that culture, when women generally did not hold down jobs but were required by their culture to take a husband. Even if she is an innkeeper, it might be by definition a tad shady to have strange men coming to stay overnight at the house of an unmarried woman.

Let's face it, though; Rahab was almost certainly an outright prostitute of some sort, but let's consider a few things in relation to that. First of all, the Bible does not say that the two spies went to her for her services as a prostitute. If the reader would like to imagine they did, I suppose I can't say that the Bible says they did not, either, so speculate away. Secondly, note that whatever it is she does for a living, it's not a secret; even the king seems to know about her.

It's this second point that leads to the third and perhaps most important point. What sort of city was Jericho? They had a prostitute who lived in a nice house attached to the city wall, everyone knew she was there and didn't care. In the end of our story, she comes to be rescued from the city because of her righteousness. Think about it for a minute. Yes, she was a prostitute. Yes, she was a liar. Yet still, she was apparently the most righteous person in that whole city. What does that say about Jericho?

What drives a woman to become a prostitute? Sure, there may be a number of reasons, but don't most of them boil down to the fact that when a society does not take care of its people, then those people will be forced to resort to immoral means of making a living? In my opinion, the real victim of the crime of prostitution is surely the prostitute. It may be that Rahab was sick of the society that had brought her to the state she was in, and that is why she was so very willing to cast her lot in with the Israelites. That's speculation on my part, but it doesn't seem too far out there to me.

What is not speculation is that at least in part, Rahab gives her reasons for protecting the spies. Verifying what I said earlier, back around, oh... here. Rahab informs the spies that everyone in the land of Canaan knows what happened in Egypt (and various other places) and that the God of Israel doesn't mess around. She knows that if Israel is headed this way, Jericho is about to be wiped off the map, and she needs to pick sides now.

This actually makes the moral value of her lies more ambiguous than some other ones so-called "righteous" people got away with, and it makes me want to make a slight backpedal on what I said about the issue in Exodus 2. Sure, Rahab is lying because she knows that it's the easiest way to save the lives of the Israeli spies, but she's also doing it to save her own skin. Furthermore, it is most likely in no small part due to her lies that her family becomes the only one saved from Jericho. I wonder whether turning in the spies might have resulted in more people being saved from the destruction of Jericho? (I've heard at least one pastor suggest that "spies" is not the best term for these men, but perhaps they were sent in to give a last warning to repentance.) I think this edges a bit further into the gray in the matter of lying to protect life.

Rahab helps the spies sneak out of the city, and they return to Joshua with the good news that all the people of Canaan are terrified of them.

So Moses the servant of the LORD died there (Joshua 1)

I realized over the weekend that there was good piece of advice I've given many people over the years that I'm not taking for myself. If you try to work your way through the Bible from beginning to end, you're probably going to come to one or more parts that are boring and/or difficult, and you'll find it hard to proceed. I've always told people that if you're trying to read the Bible, it's good that you eventually read the whole thing, but you shouldn't let yourself get caught up in something excruciating to read, such as the first few chapters of Leviticus, which are description after description of procedures for dealing with sacrificial animals. Likewise in the New Testament, if you read Matthew first, and then proceed to Mark, you might get the feeling that you're reading the same book twice, as the two are very, very similar. (I think I've decided that when I eventually move to the New Testament, I'll start with Luke and include comments on parallel matters in the other two synoptic Gospels. We'll see.)

Anyway, the Mosaic Law is a tough slog, and not as easy to write on as I'd hoped, but in the spirit of moving on with my blog a bit, I'm skipping forward to Joshua. I haven't thought for a long time that I'd go straight through, but it was tough to drop a book midway through it. I will go back to Exodus and finish the books of Moses, but for now, I need something fresher.

Not that Joshua is easier. As a matter of fact, Joshua and Judges are two of the most difficult books to deal with apologetically, in my opinion. Joshua is the story of a massive genocide of the people living in Canaan, and there's no denying it, only examining it to understand whether there might be justification. Judges, on the other hand, is a book filled with more violence and sex than any other book of the Bible, and in fact probably more than most modern mainstream books. If any part of the Bible needs critical examination and questioning, it's these two books.

Before we get into the issue of genocide, however, the first issue that comes up is a bit of confusing prophecy that the SAB points out. Immediately after Joshua takes command of the nation of Israel (as a military commander more than a prophet like Moses), God tells Joshua,

"Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you."

The implication is clear; God is promising unfettered victory. Move in and crush every nation between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and it's all going to be a piece of cake, right?

Well, it turns out not to be, eventually. The SAB points out many passages where the military campaigns of Joshua failed, and for a long time afterwards, the Israelites simply were not victorious. Eventually, by the time of Solomon, they pretty much had it all, but the words here suggest an easy and pretty quick victory with virtually no setbacks, and that did not come to pass. Why? What does this say about the prophecy in these verses?

Well, there are a couple things that one could say about this, and one of them is a look into the immediate context, actually. Within the same speech, in verse seven, God says

"Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law, which Moses my servant commanded thee: turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper withersoever thou goest."

I suggest that if one looks at this verse, one may see that God is actually giving Joshua and the Israelites a conditional promise. Let me deal with the second part first: God is only going to make them prosper when the people of Israel are doing their best to follow the laws of Moses. Do what God says, and you prosper. Don't do what God says, and all bets are off. We actually see this more explicitly in the second battle of the conquest of Canaan, in which they initially lose because somebody stole something that they weren't supposed to touch.

But note that God is first of all ordering Joshua and the Israelites to be "very courageous". This is actually incredibly important! It relates to the issue that is often raised of God's omnipotence or lack thereof. God is sending the Israelites into Canaan to conquer it, but while God has the ability to simply wipe these people off the face of the earth like He did with Sodom and Gomorrah, He wants the people to do the legwork on this. Once again, the promise says,

"Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you."

See my added emphasis? God is willing to give them conquest over any part of the land that they're brave enough to go to. The answer to the question of "Can God do anything?" is pretty much, "Yes, God can do anything, but there are some things God will not do for one reason or another." In the case of Joshua's military campaign, and the years of fighting after Joshua was gone, God was only willing and "able" to help those that stepped up and showed their faith in God's promises and took what God had promised to them. As far as I am aware, most Biblical scholars are of the opinion that Joshua's campaign was ultimately a failure not because God couldn't follow through, but because the people just ran out of steam and stopped trying. Jesus didn't heal people in His hometown not because He lacked the power to heal, but because unbelieving people simply didn't turn to Jesus for healing. It's a tough issue that far wiser people than I have pondered, but personal faith is an essential part of a relationship with God on many levels and in many ways.

Last note: For those of you reading this who are not fairly familiar with the story that has come before, I am a bit sad for having skipped ahead if only for the missing of the great irony in verse 17. The Israelites promising Joshua that they'd follow him just the same as they followed Moses is not really a heartening promise.

Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom (Exod 20:18-26)

After the declaration of the Ten Commandments is complete, the people get a bit freaked out. Apparently, they find the overt presence of God in the area to be a bit much for them, and ask Moses to relay messages to them rather than having God speak directly to them. Moses tells them something that is an interesting turn of phrase,

Fear not: for God is come to prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not.

So, don't have fear of God, because He's come here to give you fear. Huh? You can't get out of this one by referring back to the Hebrew, since both words are from the same root. What you do have to appeal to in order to understand this is that "fear" in Biblical terms has different shades of meaning. You can fear something in that you can be terrified of it, or you can fear something in that you can have respect for its power. While it would be nice to have separate words for these different concepts in the Hebrew and in the English, we really don't. (The Amplified Bible inserts the word "reverential" before the second instance.) Oh well.

Then God starts to tell Moses some laws, which is largely the beginning of God dictating the whole of the Mosaic law that will be committed to paper over the course of the rest of this book and the three following, interspersed with commentary about important moments in their journey to the Promised Land. The Mosaic Law is admittedly fairly tedious reading, is often repeated (note the first thing God brings up is concerning idolatry), and isn't arranged in the sort of organized fashion we expect in modern times from legal documents, but it is important to a full understanding of the Bible and the nature of God. It's also full of SAB marginal notes that I'll have to address, so no skipping for me.

I have already commented on sacrifices, which I also considered to be a good answer to the issue of burnt offerings, so all that remains is the note on the "nakedness" of priests serving at the altar. Um, yeah, I guess it is sort of a funny concept, that if they go up high people might be looking up their robes. What's the question?

At that time Moses was born, and he was no ordinary child. (Exod 2)

Ack! I can't seem to ever get back to this, I've been so busy lately, and yet I feel like I've gotten very little done in my personal life. (And then Blogger.com was experiencing some difficulties for a while.) I can relate being busy in this way to the story, though. I gotta admit I've often wondered at the amount of busy-work God gave Moses. Most of what's accomplished in this book and the ones following seem like they could have been done much simpler and faster than they were, but no dice. I guess God has his reasons for it, though, and perhaps we'll get into some of them.

So, the background for our story having been set up, we now introduce the baby who will grow up to be our main character in the next few books: Moses. The SAB points out that the story of Moses' childhood bears a strong resemblance to that of Sargon the great, an old Babylonian king. As the link provided points out, however, such stories are actually very common, and not just in a literary sense, but perhaps in a very real sense. Note that Pharaoh's daughter, upon discovering the child, immediately realizes that he's a Hebrew baby; it may have been not so uncommon for Hebrew women to do this sort of thing in the days of Moses' childhood.

Actually, in a more general sense, I've heard many pastors make the claim about stories in other religions that are similar to the stories of the Bible that, "Satan is good at making counterfeits." The idea behind this belief is that when you hear about a pagan god who was born of a virgin, or a Babylonian king who was set float in a basket, or the Buddha who, having been born into a royal family, forfeited his earthly kingdom to begin a new religion, the similarities are actually deceptions to distract people from the truths of the Biblical accounts. If you believe in the supernatural, this explanation makes a lot of sense, actually, although it's not necessarily true. If you don't believe in the supernatural, then it hardly matters, but perhaps you can see the logic in it, or at the very least why it's an appealing explanation. In any case, it's not unheard of for two different important historical personages to have similarities in their life stories, is it? (For instance, the second and third U.S. Presidents both died of natural causes on July 4th, 1826, the 50th anniversary of American independence. Sounds mythical, but it's apparently true. Go figure.)

Anyway, Moses is raised among the Egyptian royalty, but it seems despite what the movie Prince of Egypt (I highly recommend it) would tell us, he did know where he came from. Thus, in his adulthood, he one day killed an Egyptian slavemaster, and hid the body. Yes, Moses was a murderer, and the fact that he was the chosen deliverer of Israel didn't make it less of a sin. Afraid once he realized that the murder wasn't a secret as he had hoped, Moses fled the country. Now the SAB calls this a contradiction with a later verse, but I think it's a matter of time scale. At this time in the story Moses feared Pharaoh, but later on, when he knew he was on a mission from God, that fear evaporated. Indeed later in his life, Moses is very bold in standing up to Pharaoh.

After fleeing into the wilderness, Moses meets up with the daughters of the priest of Midian, named here as being "Reuel". The SAB points out a contradiction here that is actually one I've heard a few times, that being that Moses' father in law keeps being called by many names. I have both the standard interpretation of what's going on here, and my own viewpoint that I came up with just the other day. The standard interpretation is that "Jethro" (which is certainly the correct name) also at times went by the name "Reuel", and that "Hobab" is actually Moses' brother-in-law. This latter point indicates that while Judges 4:11 is either an actual mistake or at the least, badly written, the problem with Numbers 10:29 is that the SAB only quotes the verse in part. The full clause that begins that verse reads, "And Moses said unto Hobab, the son of Raguel the Midianite, Moses' father in law,..." Now "Raguel" is actually "Reuel" in Hebrew, and I have no idea why the KJV spells it different in this verse, and unless there is someone out there reading this who knows Hebrew better than I do and knows why it must be otherwise, I think it's more than reasonable to assume "Moses' father in law" refers to "Raguel the Midianite," and not the preceding.

My own theories I put forth as possibilities are as follows. Note that "Reuel" means "friend of God". I believe that it is a possibility that Reuel is not just another name that Jethro occasionally used, but his priestly title. The other possibility goes back to the recurring theme in the Bible that the term "grandfather" is never used. It may be that at the time Moses comes to Midian at first, Reuel is the high priest, and these young women are actually Reuel's granddaughters. Years later, when Moses returns to Egypt, Reuel has died, and Jethro is now the high priest, having inherited the position from his father Reuel. I think any of these three explanations is sufficient to explain this issue, apart from Judges 4:11, which is a mystery to me.

The last issue brought up in this chapter is whether or not God "respects" anyone. Aside from my response to this issue in general in a previous post, I would like to say here that there may be another intended meaning of this word in the original Hebrew. If you look at what the word means, it seems that what's happening is that God is turning His full attention to their plight.

Of all meat which may be eaten (Gen 9:1-4)

The flood over, we reach chapter nine, which clearly has a lot to comment on, as the SAB has a note for nearly every verse. A lot of these comments are excellent food for thought, but I think there are very few that pose serious problems to the Bible's credibility, as they are largely a matter of opinion.

God tells Noah and his family to "replenish the earth," but what of the modern problems of overpopulation? Should the Bible address the matter? First of all, "overpopulation" is actually a matter of opinion, and I even say that as a person who does think the earth is presently overpopulated. There are a lot of people who disagree, and think the earth can handle many, many more people if we simply did a better job in handling our natural resources. I also tend to agree with that, but don't see any evidence that we're making much progress in that area. It's a really big "if". Also, the Christian view is that the world is eventually going to come to and end, and perhaps this time will come before we really reach a critical point in the world population. That's conjecture, of course, but a real possibility; in fact, the world may be forced to come to an end through a natural disaster brought on by overpopulation, who knows? Whatever the case may be, I do think the Bible indirectly addresses the matter. While the Bible only says to replenish the earth once after the flood, the whole book from beginning to end is full of admonishments to take care of the poor. One of the effects of "overpopulation" is that many people end up living in substandard conditions, suffering from poverty and malnutrition. When such things are going on, our first priority should be to deal with these problems, whether you're approaching the matter from a Biblical or secular viewpoint.

Do all animals fear humans? The SAB says no, but once again, I think this is a matter of opinion. I think it's in our nature to be violent creatures, and any animal that has extensive exposure to humans comes to realize it's wise to fear them. I think any animal with sufficient brain power to experience fear will do so to some extent in the presence of humans. (Just my opinion, but I think it holds water as well as anything.)

The SAB notes that some have undoubtedly used verse two as justification for cruelty to animals and environmental negligence. I think this was addressed in chapter two, but I don't mind repeating this as it's worth saying again. The SAB is right; it has been used that way by some. I think it's wrong, and I think it's a shame. What else can I say?

What about meat eating? The SAB gives a long list of verses in which it seems to be said

(A) Don't eat any meat.
(B) Eat only certain meats.
(C) Eat any kind of meat at all.

These would be on the mere face of things contradictory, but we have to consider context once again. Understand (and should come as no surprise to anyone who's read much Bible at all) that God throughout a great deal of History has set aside the nation of Israel as special. This one race of men was meant to be God's representatives here on earth, and as such, god made some special rules that apply only to them. Among such rules, there are a number of dietary restrictions. (God also has one dietary restriction for all men, but I'll get to that.) Let's take the verses quoted on this page largely in order as they are presented.

In Gen 1:29, this is not so much a command as an observation: there's all the food Adam and Eve need in the fruit hanging on the trees in the garden. I think Adam and Eve were vegetarians, but not because they were forced to be. Pr 23:20 is not a condemnation of meat-eating, but of gluttony. Daniel's refusal to eat meat in Dan 1:8 is not due to a desire to be vegetarian so much as a desire to want to avoid "the king's meat", which may have been unkosher for numerous reasons. Unable to assure himself of a source of kosher meat, he chose not to eat meat at all. Rom 14:21 is pretty nearly universally understood to mean that if you have a Christian friend who, due to something in his past, feels uncomfortable with eating meat, you'd do well to respect his feelings and abstain from meat while around him. Note that this verse, like the one in Proverbs mentions wine as well. It can be thought of much as the way it would be insensitive to drink alcohol around your friend who's a recovering alcoholic. So I don't think we're meant to be vegetarians, but if one chooses not to eat meat, I know of no reason why this would be a bad thing. In fact, if you're considering being a vegetarian for the cause of combating cruelty to animals, I'd advise you to look into veganism.

The two verses that follow are passages from the Levitical law, and represent dietary restrictions on Jews only. Even most Jews agree that these are not meant to be laws upon gentiles.

Now the last set of verses largely come from the New Testament, and need to also be taken in context. The Gen 9:3 verse, which I am covering now, is God allowing meat eating officially for the first time, and it occurs before the establishment of the nation of Israel, so no restrictions except that people should not eat/drink the blood of animals. I don't think too many people follow this dietary restriction; we tend to like our steaks bloody. Mark 7:18-20 is a passage I have to admit I'm not really clear on. Jesus is making a spiritual point, and while many people do interpret this passage as Jesus putting a stamp of approval on all meats, I'm not fully convinced. In any case, the point of what Jesus is saying is not primarily about meat, but about morals, and that what you do to your fellow man is more important than what you put in your mouth. The passage from Acts 10 is a vision that Peter has that god uses to teach him about the way that he is to conduct himself with respect to non-Jewish believers. The passages from 1Corinthians and Romans are both telling gentile believers that they don't have any obligations towards the kosher laws. (Note that this Romans verse is in the very same chapter as the earlier one quoted; how would it make sense to interpret Paul as saying, "Eat meat...but don't eat meat," in almost the same sentence?) 1Tim 4 is likewise a warning to be on guard for people who try to place extra rules on top of the ones that God has given through His Word, such as that they should follow the kosher laws even though they are not Jewish.

Now if you'll excuse me, all this talk about meat is making me hungry.

And the eyes of them both were opened (Gen 3:7-13)

I think many children go through a process like this at some point in their life: having their eyes opened, as it were. There comes a day when you realize that you have the freedom to act against your parents' will. This happens at different ages and in different ways, but whatever it is, you suddenly realize your own power as a free individual, and it changes the way you see the world around you. Oh my gosh, mommy and daddy don't know everything! Well, in this case, God is the parent, and He does know everything. But the fact that He knows everything and has the ability to control everything doesn't mean that it's something He's going to flaunt. Still, the man and woman had their outlook on God change.

The very first manifestation of this was noticing that they were naked. There's once again something literal and figurative in this. All throughout the Bible, there's a linkage between the themes of clothing and sin. In particular, I've always thought it was interesting to look at the parallel between this chapter and the story of the crucifixion. The man and the women sin against the will of God; Jesus becomes sin according to the will of God. The man and the women are separated from God's presence by guarding cherubim; the curtain of the Jewish temple which is embroidered with cherubim and separates man from God is torn open. God gives mankind clothing by killing an animal; mankind takes Jesus' clothing and kills Him on the cross. It's an interesting symbolic and literal reversal on many levels. In any case, they suddenly realize they've got something shameful to cover up.

The next thing that happens is that God "shows up". I put it in quotes because, as the SAB points out, there's some trouble you run into if you take verse 8 fully literally. Here's God in the garden, walking and talking like just some other guy, it almost seems. But we do know both from scripture and from commonly accepted doctrine that God has no body. A very likely possibility is of this passage being figurative; to some extent, it must be since God is also omnipresent. Then again, having no corporeal substance and being omnipresent at the same time is also a problem. I think it simply has to be accepted that God was literally there in the garden in some form, because even if he has no "body", He's everywhere, which includes the garden. So the sense of omnipresence is a spiritual rather than physical thing necessarily. (I hope this is making some sort of sense, I'm not feeling really well today for some reason.)

Another thing that is also often accepted, though, is that God does, at times, cause Himself to take on a physical human-like form (if not actually human). The man and woman perhaps experienced Him often in this form, visiting them in the garden. This time, when they heard Him coming, they hid. The fact that they hid from an omniscient being doesn't pose a conundrum, nor does the fact that God asks them where they are. My own children sometimes climb into my bed and pull the covers over their head to hide, completely missing the fact that the child-sized lump in the bed discloses their location. If I say, "Where are you?" I'm not admitting ignorance, but feigning it for the purpose of playing along in a little hide-and-seek. God's not playing, but throughout the Bible, God asks people questions He already knows the answer to in order to give them a chance to confess and seek forgiveness. I've heard some pastors muse that if Adam had only popped out and said, "Alright, I was hiding because I was ashamed that I ate the fruit, and now I'm afraid I'm going to die, please forgive me?" that things would have been, well not back to perfect, but better in any case.

God even gives Adam a second chance, hinting at the truth. Adam takes the chance to put the blame not only on his wife, but God Himself: "The woman (yeah, it was the woman, that's right, I was just standing here!) whom thou gavest (wait a minute, wasn't it God's idea that I had to have this trouble-maker with me? Yeah, I think this was His fault; I want my rib back!) to be with me..." The woman even tries to pass the buck as well. In the end, though, God's not buying any of it.

I think the Bible is a strong supporter of the idea that everyone is responsible for their own choices. I think it may sound odd coming in the middle of the story of original sin, and how this one act of eating a piece of fruit ended up changing the world for every human that ever lived, but it fits here. Yes, we are all stained by original sin, and have that sinful nature within us that we inherited from Adam, but at the same time, God will expect us to take responsibility for our own lives and our own destinies. In tomorrow's entry, I'll talk about the curse that came on the world, but I'll also talk a bit more about God's plan to take care of lifting the curse. God does His part, and we do ours. And it's not a meet me halfway deal, it's God coming 100% of the way, and only asking for your response.

The living creature after his kind (Gen 1:24-25)

A quick note to give people something to chew on since I'm taking a day off tomorrow. Subject? Evolution. Once again, this is my own opinion; in fact, just about everything in this post will be opinion rather than dealing with what I would consider key issues of Biblical interpretation, so some readers who have criticised me for taking off on flights of fancy or "comic book stories" can just skip this and come back on Wednesday.

Most Christians, particularly those who are towards the more literal side of Biblical interpretation, see this chapter of the Bible as being anti-evolution. Generally, the idea is that since God created everything that ever was, there's no random biological processes that cause evolution to occur, whatever the term "evolution" happens to mean. I note that in my experience, when evolutionists and creationists are debating, one of the big problems is a lack of definition of terms.

More specifically, literalists lean on the repeated phrase "after his kind", as it is rendered in the KJV. Surely, the reasoning goes, this is an indication that every animal will give birth to an animal that is just like it, and not another animal unlike it. (Particularly, of course, that a monkey did not give birth to a human.) I think this sort of over-emphasis on a particular interpretation of the meaning of these words is a far worse offense than most atheists are prone to make in criticism. Most of all because evolution in its simplest terms--which has nothing to do with whether or not man has any particular ape-like ancestors--is something that you'd have to be very foolish to miss out on.

What exactly does "kind" mean here? A cat's going to give birth to a cat, that's clear and obvious. Does that mean that a cat will only give birth to a cat that's identical to its parents? That's also obvious: obviously false. Aside from everyday traits like color and fur texture, there are a host of other aspects of a cat that may widely differ from its parents. Most cats have 18 toes, five on each front paw, and four on each back one. When I was a kid, I had a pet cat that had 20 toes, five on each paw, and the front paws actually had thumbs! Somewhere in this cat's ancestry, there probably was a regular 18-toed cat, but this cat was different. It also had kittens that had extra toes. One kitten had 28 toes, seven at the end of each leg! I say each leg, because three of the four legs seemingly ended in two separate paws. (Look up "polydactyl" if you're curious. It happens in many animals including humans, but is very common in cats.)

There was an interesting belief among locals that the marshy conditions that existed in the area where I lived favored cats with oversized paws, and so such oddities were more common in that area. This may or may not have been true, but this sort of variation, along with classically-known stories like the peppered moth are simple examples of evolution in action. Before the creationists reading this deluge me with refutations of the peppered moth story (believe me, I've heard quite a few of them, including that the whole thing may have been a hoax), understand my point. Variation in colors of moths and variations in numbers of toes of cats are really no more shocking in many ways than variations in skin tone among people of the world, whom Christians believe to be descended from just two people. My point is that I don't think Christians should be afraid of evolution just because the party line is that it doesn't happen. Some of it, maybe a lot of it, actually makes sense, and in no way contradicts anything in the Bible.

Is the idea that humans evolved from monkeys somewhat offensive and anti-Biblical? Yes. But there are no real evolution-understanding biologists out there who actually believe that to be true. Really. You should check it out. Atheists reading this who think I'm full of crap should check it out with reputable sources, too. I'll probably catch a lot of crap for this post because I somehow wasn't completely precise in wording something, but hopefully some of you will know what I'm saying and not misinterpret it. I guess I'll see when I get back in a couple days.