Read the Bible

Finished reading Esther. It’s a story I like a lot. One of the few stories where a woman saves the day and speaks truth to a male dominated hierarchy. There are two things that I find interesting in Esther. Why did Mordecai instruct Esther to hide her Jewish background while he himself created confrontation by being so public about his Judaism? Also I find it fascinating that Esther’s plan to save the Jews required fasting. She didn’t say, “oh please pray for me” She specifically instructed the Jewish nation to fast for three days with out food OR drink. That’s a hardcore fast. It wasn’t optional. It was part of the plan. I wonder what it would be like if Christians today fasted as a group on a regular basis.

I find Nehemiah a really interesting character. He’s completely incorruptible, a great leader, a great governor, and a man who sticks to his principles. A rare person to find then and now. What I find interesting is how he is both a pragmatist and an idealist at the same time. He finds a way of both restoring Jerusalem in record time both physically and spiritually while managing hostile elements from the outside and stamping out corruption from the inside. This is the guy you want as your mayor. He gets things done and he does it without selling out. Some notes of interest. In the beginning of the book he talks about how he manages the constant state of having to be at a ready state of war against the hostile neighbors while trying to move forward at the same time. It’s eerily like the current problems in Israel today. Also Chpt 5 has an inspiring bit about how he gets Jews to stop exploiting each other. Later in the book he reforms his people back to following the law set in the Torah. Not just the sacrifices, and purity laws, but also jubilee. It’s easy to see why the Persian King was so impressed with him that they let him go back to Jerusalem to rebuild.

So the Persian King Cyrus lets the Israelites go home to Jerusalem to restore the Temple. He gives them back all their gold and silver bowls and tells them to rebuild. When the Israelites get there the local Teamsters want in on the rebuilding project, but the Jews blow them off. So the locals file an injunction with King Artaxerxes and he issues a work stop order. Nice to know the ancients had problems with zoning too. Well the regional governor of Trans-Euphrates has a mess on his hands and a half finished temple, so he petitions King Darius to sort it out. Well they go through Babylon’s library and find the original Cyrus decree which predates Artaxerxes.Problem solved. The funny thing about this story is how modern-day this story sounds. Thou shalt always have headaches with urban planning. I love Darius’s final decision that if anyone interferes with the reconstruction their house will get torn down and the owner will get impaled on the main beam while their property gets razed. If only we could solve all of our planning issues like this. The thing I thought was weird is how highly the Persians spoke of the Jewish God and the Jews. I wondered what happened before the restoration that made the Persian leadership if not believe in this God, at least respect this God and His people? I think that would be a much more interesting story to tell.

The end of the book is a little weird because we switch to Ezra’s story. The book switches from 3rd person to 1st abruptly (did I mention the Bible needs an editor). And Ezra gets all upset about the great sins of intermarriage between the Jews and their neighbors. So to solve it they set up a special court to prosecute all those evil intermarrying fools. They are then forced to abandon their wives and kids and make a burnt offering. Abandon your wife and kids, what great family values.

Chpt 16, King Asa makes a alliance with king of Aram, God is displeased and thus begins the end. So you shouldn’t try to take things into your own hands, even if they make sense, makes God mad.

Chpt 18, Ahab is setup! Micaiah tells him about the evil spirit that convinced him to war, very strange predetermination vs. predestination play, did Ahab really have a choice? We’ll never know depends on what you think.

Chpt 20, same thing as chpt 16, Jehoshaphat who is mostly good in God’s opinion, only screwed up a few times, makes an alliance with Ahaziah of Israel, who is wicked. They build some ships together. God sinks the ships because he doesn’t like Ahaziah. The theme is God is unreasonable to anyone that isn’t 100% loyal

Chpt 30, is really interesting, because King Hezekiah employs both action and trust in God to save the Jerusalem. Also verse 15-20 I find interesting. It’s a rare example of the OT God being merciful and accepting people’s earnest effort rather than getting it 100% right. Is God a deontological ethicist after all?

I took a much needed break from the Bible for a few months. I realized that reading the Bible was killing my desire to read anything, as it is mostly a chore. Lucky for the Bible that for centuries it was the only book to read. If it had any real competition, it wouldn’t have been anywhere near as popular. So 1 Chronicles is mostly 1 Samuel rehash, with a lot of useless genealogy thrown in. I would recommend using Chronicles as a cool place to find names. My current favorite name is now Joshobeam. The only interesting part in 1 Chron was the retelling of the Monty Hall punishment game that God plays with David that I wrote about in 2 Samuel 24. This time Satan asks David to take the census, an important detail. It still doesn’t make sense why God gets so torqued up about this census though. Joab is also really against the census too. Once again no explanation of why. Yet another example of why the Bible needs an editor. On an aside note, a friend of mine who is non-Christian was asking a Christian about some life advice. The Christian rather than giving any decent encouragement or advice copped out and said, “you should consult the Bible for help about this.” What kind of advice is that? There are 1189 chapters in the Bible, would you mind narrowing that down a bit? I don’t know if Christians realize how much misplaced Biblephilia really hurts their mission. From what I’ve read in the Bible so far, the bad advice outnumbers the good advice by quite a bit. I would never advocate anyone raise their kids or treat their spouse according to Levitical law. We’d be stoning our kids and wives all the time. Plus the majority of the OT is non-advice, just merely big laundry lists of descendents, and other non-sequitur events. Chronicles is a good example of this. Simply dropping a Bible in someone’s lap is a really terrible way to spread Christianity

Wow so a lot happens in Kings 2. Elijah gets whisked away to “heaven”?? How does this mesh with the current view of Sheol etc? I don’t know. We see the prophet reins handed over to Elisha. So Elisha is walking around and some boys make fun of him for being bald. So he curses them and some bears run out of the forest and maul the kids to death. Nice one man of God! Which makes you wonder what powers do prophets have and what powers are solely God’s and does God use those powers on behalf of the prophet? If it’s all God’s power, does it mean God killed those kids just to fulfill Elisha’s wishes? The rest of Kings is a relentless succession of craptacular kings. They all basically go like this: “[King] does evil in the eyes of the Lord” “The Lord burned with anger” “Is this not written in the annals of the kings of Judah|Israel?” There are a few good Kings, namely Hezekiah, Joash, and Josiah. The funny thing is even though these kings try to do good, God still punishes them anyway. Joash gets assasinated, Josiah gets killed in battle, and God afflicts Hezekiah with illness. Judah is also still screwed no matter how hard the good Kings try to turn things around. God says teh same thing to Hezekiah, and H’s response is okay, well as long as it doesn’t happen in my lifetime. The interesting thing is bad things often don’t happen to a lot of the bad kings. Manasseh is a terrible King. God burns with anger but tells him nothing will happen to him but the kingdom of Judah will be destroyed instead. Real nice. The funny bits in this book: 1) Joash finds the book of law, apparently they lost it and that’s why everyone was disobeying God, duh we lost the manual. So all that boring Levitical stuff, they apparently misplaced it for generations. 2) Somehow during this time period sacrificing your kids by burning them up as offerings becomes popular. How would that ever be popular in any time period. I can’t imagine how that would work,”hey my religion is really cool, if you burn your kids up, my god does all sorts of good things for you” “um.. no thanks I’ll keep my kids and take my chances with your god.” 3)Tearing your clothes and putting on sackcloth. Once again real popular, but why? On an ending note, there were some cool lines like 17:15, but the overall theme that God is random and mean still carries over from 1 Kings.

I love the transference of power from David to Solomon. It’s something straight out of the Godfather or The Wire. David tells Solomon to finish off all his undone vendettas, and other things he didn’t have the stones to do himself like killing Joab. Israel then enters a golden age with wise Solomon at the helm. I remember most of these stories from childhood, what I don’t remember are all the other details conveniently left out. Remember that custody case with the baby? Moms were both prostitutes which is usually left out of the childhood story. Also ignored is how Solomon ends up blowing it in the end. What’s with this idol worshiping? You’d think they’d learn by now. I think the story that bothers me the most in this book is Chpt. 13. All it does is reinforce my belief that the God of the OT is random and mean. So many times the punishments never seem to fit the crime. The lesson of the Bible so far for me is: 1)You’re gonna screw up 2) When you do you’re gonna get it, nothing goes unnoticed to God 3) How you’re gonna get it will be completely arbitrary to how God feels about you that day. Come to think about it that’s how I feel God is now. Random and mean. Ahab is interesting character to introduce us too now. In many ways I feel he’s a lot like Abraham, not too bright and just does whatever his wife or anyone else tells him to do. Unlike Abraham though, he gets mostly really bad advice, mostly from his wife Jezebel.

Now I’m going at snail’s pace. I’m officially 100 pages behind where I should be. What I find interesting at this point is that we are seeing how the Jewish society develops. It is inevitable that as a society becomes larger, more complex systems of government and politics have to develop. David’s reign doesn’t have much to do with God, but more with how the various factions are struggling for power and the natural consequences that develop. Character development is now much more multi-dimensional now that the storytelling is getting more modern. Joab is a stone cold killer and David goes back and forth between being admirable and being a nitwit, much like all of us. The most interesting part of this book is the last chapter with the Monty Hall style pick yer poison challenge that God gives David. Says a lot about David, says a lot about God. Also I’m beginning to wonder why some Biblical names make it in everyday life and why some have died. It’s cool seeing the etymology of David, Saul, Abigail, Benjamin, etc. But I wonder why names like Zadok didn’t make it. How cool is that name? It’s easy to pronounce, and it sounds like an Martian prince.

Not a very interesting chapter. The style of story telling has definitely changed. The prose is more modern with a sense of plot, character development, and nuance that the older chapters lacked. Interesting things to note in 1 Samuel are the name origin of Ichabod (4:21) and Eli’s corrupt sons. I find the latter very interesting because it shows how little has changed. The modern church is just as prone to corruption. Ultimately the age of Kings shows how power corrupts no matter who holds it. I really wish the Bible had a decent editor, the last half of 1 Samuel dragged on and on. The prose was a lot of Saul did this, David did this, Saul regretted it – rinse, repeat. Overall I’m really behind on my reading. The discipline to read this material is waning. I find it largely dull and repetitive.

Ruth was a pleasant reprieve of the Judges’ bloodbath. It’s neat to read about those wacky Levitical laws being put to use. It’s also a great story of family and sticking together. I’ve always liked this book even before I started this Bible reading project.