Neh 8-11 - a short note on short-term housing

The readings - Days 147-148 - Nehemiah 8-11

Short post today.

A lot of people complain about sermons in church, and I suspect that that's been the case for quite some time. Maybe that's why it's so striking to me that the people of the newly-rebuilt Jerusalem call Ezra in to do nothing but read and comment on ("translate" according to the NASB) the books of the law - for days on end.

I also like the fact that so much significance is placed on the Feast of Booths. People essentially go camping on their rooftops in booths that the made themselves, and just live there instead of at home.

I'm not really a back-to-the-land-and-eschew-all-this-newfangled-technology-crap-dagnabbit type of people, but it is interesting that there seems to be something lastingly important about the temporary/transient nature of Israel's formation as a nation. Starting as a nomadic, desert-wandering tribe seems like it's foundational, and I can't help but notice that a lot more problems showed up when they got a king and a temple, etc, than when those things weren't actually there...

Told you it'd be a short post.

Neh 7 - Not (personally) interested

The readings - day 146 - Nehemiah 7

The thing is, when a census is released in Canada, I'm actually genuinely interested in the data. This time around, I was working on writing something up for my day job that allowed me to pore over the details with a nerdy, yet, useful/productive glee. I find it fascinating to look at the zoomed-out version of day-to-day life in Canada - who lives where, who left where, how many of whom stay where, etc.

See? I have nothing against the collection/publication of census data.

Census data collected and published from thousands of years ago in the ancient near-east, however...

Neh. 1-6 - From a certain point of view

The readings - Days 144 & 145 - Nehemiah 1-6

This is pretty cool. I knew the basic story/history surrounding Nehemiah and the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem, but I don't know that I've spent much time actually reading it, as is the case with large swaths of the rest of the OT. I like it.

For starters, despite the fact that the nation of Israel and the People of God could, at this point, as near as makes no difference not possibly get any worse off (they've been divided, then conquered, then exiled, and everything they held most dear - Jerusalem and the Temple of God - have been absolutely laid waste by the invading Babylonian and then Persian hordes), the book strikes a decidedly hopeful, optimistic and - I hesitate to use a word like this when talking about anything other that fruits/veggies - fresh tone.

Ezra 1-10 - Caught up

The readings - Days 141-143 - Ezra 1-10

So I now have an official answer to give people who try to act like never having read the Bible cover-to-cover is somehow anathema to being Christian. (Yes, I have been told that before, by both crazy Christians and crazy Atheists alike)

It was never meant to be read this way.

I'm not saying that I'm regretting doing it, or that I'm planning on stopping, or even that it's not (at times, at least) incredibly rewarding and enlightening to do it this way. What I'm saying is there's no way that this book was intended to be read through like a novel.

The only alternative to that conclusion is that whoever compiled it had absolutely zero concept of how stories work, and how people would like to read things in order to actually comprehend them effectively.

As if the complete discord of reading through the summarized history of Israel (the single and split kingdoms)  - twice - in Samuel, Kings and Chronicles wasn't enough to convince you that this is not a linear collection of episodes/chapters, here we are in Ezra, which opens with a reference to a prophesy that will not actually be made (according to the way the books of the Bible are laid out) for quite some time.

Cyrus lets the Israelites go home and rebuild stuff, and he does so, according to the text, to fulfill the prophetic words of Jeremiah. For those keeping score, we still have to go through Nehemiah, Esther, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon and Isaiah before we get to Jeremiah. Anyway, rant over.

Anyway, so the exiles are on their way home to rebuild the Temple and Jerusalem, but because nothing can ever be straightforward, the neighbours had to go and cause trouble, resulting in a three-king delay before the construction can actually finish. Artaxerxes gets a letter from Judah's enemies, who point to Jerusalem's "rebellious past" and successfully convince him to put a stop to the rebuilding process, and it's not until Darius takes over that Cyrus's original "send them back" decree was dug out of the archives and followed.

And then, as soon as they're back on home soil, what happens? The good ol' intermarriage things starts up again... This time, though, there's a twist. We get a sense of Ezra maybe being a fair shake more attentive to God's wants for His people than previous rulers - and by a remarkable coincidence, he's not actually a king, but instead is acting as Israel's leader from the office of priest. Funny how the whole "king" thing never took off all that well, eh?

Oh well.

This post is another in an alarmingly long list of posts that are shorter than usual for the somewhat counterintuitive reason that it tries to cover too much stuff, but I'm happy to say that we're now completely caught up. Tomorrow should bring another post that's more focused and, therefore, likely a lot longer and more in-depth.

2 Chron 1-36 - yup: one whole book...

The readings - days 130-140 - 2 Chronicles 1-36

So this post, once again, will be far too short, and more than a little meta.

I thought for sure that I was caught up, or at least very far along to road to being caught up, but Chronicles had other plans, so here we are - first post in ten days and a full book behind me.

Chronicles, part deux, was better than the first, but only slightly. It had more ups than the last one did in terms of kings actually behaving themselves, and there were a few points that, while I was reading them, did actually leap out at me as being interesting. However, since I was reading through the entire book in a matter of days, and desperately trying to catch up, they were sacrificed to the god of necessary expediency, and were lost.

Speaking of idolatry, these Israelites sure were good at it. Even kings that were mostly good at not worshipping small wooden statues didn't often go all the way and disassemble other temples, home shrines, and "the high places," like they were supposed to.

Whether it's intentional or not, the Bible sure is setting up a repetitive, cyclical rhythm of Israel screwing up and then waking up, then repeating over and over again.

And then Babylon comes, destroys the Temple, along with Jerusalem, and takes everybody into captivity.

And then Persia destroys Babylon and Cyrus says to the Israelites, "yeah - you guys should probably just go ahead and head home to rebuild your temple and your city. Sorry about Nebuchadnezzar..."

Reading the closing bits of 2 Chronicles is a little like spending an hour looking through a microscope, and then to have the room bulldozed around you. The story is so wrapped up in the goings on of these two comparatively minuscule kingdoms that when a few real local superpowers come barreling through it's a pretty harsh reminder that even at the best of times, the kingdom of Israel was in a pretty precarious spot. Shame they didn't seem to really grasp that either...

And that brings us to Ezra, which will have us caught up on posts and readings by tomorrow.

1 Chronicles 18-29 - I really can't believe how boring Chronicles is...

The readings - Days 127-130 - 1 Chronicles 18-29

This is unbelievable. I was really within a day of actually getting caught up, but Chronicles is (so far, anyway) so abjectly uninspiring that it's very, very difficult to muster the motivation to post something, since I'm essentially (as I said before) trying to find something interesting to write about a boring recap of stuff that's already happened.

*sigh*

HOWEVER, there is something that shows up in the latter half of 1 Chronicles that hinges on the fact that this is a re-run.

1 Chronicles 1-17 - yawn

The readings - Days 120-126 - 1 Chronicles 1-17

Step two in the overly long process of catching up from wayyyyy behind...

Welcome to Chronicles.

It's funny - before doing this, and having already read Chronicles (or, at least, most of it), I would have answered the question "what's the single most tedious book in the Bible?" with either Numbers or Leviticus, having never read either of them.

I would have been wrong. This book, in a nutshell, is boring.

The first nine chapters are entirely composed of genealogies.

Nine. Chapters.

Of names.

Yes, it's that boring.

2 Kings 2-25 - A desperate attempt to catch up

The readings - days 113-119 - 2 Kings 6-25

So it's come to this...

When I started this blog I wasn't anywhere near convinced that it was going to be a project I could keep up with, and I'm surprised it took me more than 30 per cent of the way through the Bible to really hit a giant lag. In my defense, it was the result of my being on the opposite side of the planet without reliable or consistent Internet service for more than a week, but still... here we are.

So I'm now epically behind, and as far as I see it, the only way I'm ever catching up is if I break one of my initial rules, which was to always limit posts to just a handful of chapters, ideally no more than two days' worth of readings per post, regardless of how far behind I was.

Up till now that's been serving me fairly well, since I've managed to keep up with readings and not actually get all that far behind on postings, but now that I'm well over an entire book behind, I'm going to have to do a grave disservice to 2 Kings (and to 1 Chronicles, but that's for tomorrow...) and just give a brief, not-at-all-sufficient, summary of the book with some specific thoughts and then move on.

So here we go: a short post covering almost all of 2 Kings...

2 Kings 1-5 - Bears!

The readings - Days 111 and 112 - 2 Kings 1-5

If you had to assign different musical genres the various Biblical characters, I'm pretty sure that heavy metal would be a not-bad fit for Elijah. He commands respect, dresses funny, plays (from the perspective of the crappy kings of the time, at any rate) by his own rules, and has a particular love for pyrotechnics.

This time, he follows up on his Mount Carmel hit by calling on God to torch two successive groups of soldiers who have been sent to fetch him by the king. The king was irritated at Elijah for telling him that he was going to die because he sent for word from another god in a neighbouring land instead of consulting with God about it.

1 Kings 15-20 - Jumpin' Jehoshaphat!

The readings - days 108 and 109 - 1 Kings15-20

Kings continues with a few chapters the various lines of succession in the two kingdoms (Israel and Judah), and descriptions of the various nefarious characters that take over the thrones.

Well... the nefarious characters that take over one of the thrones, anyway. A good general rule of thumb seems to be that Israel sucks, while Judah tends to be alright. Time and time again, the kings of Israel fall in with idols, false gods, bad business of all kinds, and generally prove to be quite an irritant for God.  Down in Judah, however, things seem to trend towards God, rather than away from Him.

Pop quiz! Anyone remember which kingdom David's line continued in? Anyone? Anyone?

2 Sam 19-21 - Dear David, stop sniveling...

The readings - day 100 - 2 Samuel 19-21

There's a trend emerging with David. First, he was pursued all over the country by Saul, who desperately wanted him dead. Then Saul died, and David was grief-stricken. Then Saul's kids started dying, and David was grief-stricken.

Then Absalom comes along, plans a revolt, conspires (successfully) to usurp the throne, and sends David fleeing into the countryside east of the Jordan River. Then Absalom dies. And David is grief-stricken.

1 Sam 28-31 - On seers and faith

The readings - Day 94 - 1 Samuel 28-31

So in case anybody hasn't noticed, it turns out the Middle East (and particularly Israel/Palestine) has pretty much always been a bloodbath region. Here in the closing chapters of 1 Samuel, we get a couple of snapshots of that - the picture painted by the Bible shows a land of nearly constant conquest and re-conquest. Not only are the Philistines still causing problems for Saul and the Israelites, but while David is on campaign with the Philistine king (and he wasn't even gone that long, since he was sent back before the fighting even started) the Philistine region (as well as chunks of Judah) were ransacked and pillages by Amalekite armies, who carry off David's wives and stuff, along with the wives, children and stuff of all the others who are away at the time trying to carry off the wives and stuff of other cities and countries.

1 Sam 25-27 - meals and marriage

The readings - Day 93 - 1 Samuel 25-27

The nice thing about actually keeping up with the readings and posting with them on time is that I have the luxury of much more bite-sized posts, at least for now.

I'm a big, big fan of the storylines that are involved with David's rise to power, as you may have gleaned from yesterday's post.

In the "times have changed" department, I should mention that one of the things I'm most looking forward to in life is getting to tell youngsters (grandchildren and the like) that I'm older than the Internet, and watching their tiny brains smolder and spin as they try to grapple with the very notion of a world without it.

1 Sam 15-20 - For tonight's performance, the role of Samuel will be played by Sir Ian McKellen

The readings - Days 90 & 91 - 1 Samuel 15-20

We're rapidly approaching what is (now that we're out of the drudgery of Leviticus/Numbers) becoming one of the hardest types of passage to write about - the "all-too-familiar" story.

Within these five chapters, we encounter what is quite possibly the most famous story in the entire Old Testament: David and Goliath. Its message is one of faith, hope and triumph against seemingly hopeless odds, and two out of three of those have been gladly co-opted by modern society, almost ad nauseum (guess which one tends to get left out?), and with good cause. It's a great story - you've got the enormous, lifelong-trained warrior (a whopping nine-and-a-half feet of him at that) against the puny talks-big-for-his-britches shepherd boy who has rocks and a strip of leather, and the 'underdog' wins. Perfect.

1 Sam 9-14 - That Saul, folks!

The readings - Days 88 & 89 - 1 Samuel 9-14

Two important lessons can be learned from these six chapters of First Samuel.

1) Saul, as generally vilified and derided as he remains, was at the beginning a chosen God-picked superstar.

and

2) Kings (dictators, tyrants, etc) are more often than not undone (at least initially) by their own irrepressible arrogance and stupidity.

1 Sam 1-8 - The king and I... srael...

The readings - Days 86 and 87 - 1 Samuel 1-8

If Judges is any indication, the fact that 1 Samuel starts with a man who is from the hill country in Ephraim is hardly the most optimistic sign... Hopefully this one turns out better.

A couple of interesting things about the opening chapters of 1Sam struck me over the course of this run-through.

The first is that I find it somewhat bizarre that people blindly throw out a phrase like "traditional Biblical interpretation of marriage" without, apparently, much of a fleshed-out idea of what that might mean. Samuel himself is the son of a second wife. Anyway... moving on.

Ruth - A breath of fresh air

The readings - Day 85 - Ruth (all four chapters)

Well we're finally out of the book of Judges. Sweet.

The relationship between Judges and Ruth is interesting to me. In Judges, we got a very macro-level view of the goings-on in Israel, and for the most part, they were appalling. Covenants broken, punishments doled out left, right and centre, and generally terrible people doing terrible things. There were glimmers of hope, etc, to be sure, but few and far between. I don't think anyone would try to argue that Judges is an optimistic book.

That's why reading Ruth immediately afterwards is such a refreshing experience. After the bloodshed, idolatry, treachery and violence of the nation as a whole, we get zoomed in to an intimate series of snapshots in the life of a single family. Make no mistake, there's still tragedy here, and not all is rosy, but the story as a whole just can't help but be uplifting.

Judges 17-21 - The dregs

The readings - days 83 and 84 - Judges 17-21

I had a professor once named Ephraim. He remains the only man I've ever met (or really even heard of) by that name.

Not that many of the names Jacob gave to his sons has really caught on through the centuries, other than Joshua, Benjamin (I'm pretty sure that most Dans are actual Daniels, so that doesn't count) and the occasional Levi. You don't meet a lot of Manessehs or Naphtalis these days, and as much as I'd love to, I'm pretty sure I'll never meet anyone named Zebulun.

Judges 13-16 - Samson's got more than 99 problems...

The readings - Days 82 and 83 - Judges 13-16

So in the interest of full disclosure, I'm veering away from the actual reading chunks delineated by my reading program, which has chapters 13-15 on day 82 and 16-18 on day 83. Since 13-16 is the story of Samson, and an ending of sorts within the book of Judges, it just makes more sense to be to break it up this way.

Anyway, moving on.

If you run a Google image search for "Samson," here are three images that show up at the top of the list:

Judges 8-12 - on civil wars and kids as collateral

The readings - Days 80 and 81 - Judges 8-12

Hooray! All caught up!

*one small note, because it may give insight into why I get behind in this thing. When I started this post (yes, the one link and that one line) it was around 10:45 p.m. and I was ready to go. I then spent the next two hours reading about pirates on the Internet. I will now type a sentence that is simultaneously genuine/heartfelt and bitter/sarcastic. Thanks a lot, Internet.

So... Judges, eh? Israel still generally sucks at remembering/following the rules, which by now shouldn't come as a huge surprise. However, what does come as something of a surprise (although maybe this shouldn't either) is how bad they seem to be at just getting along with each other. Once you get borders and factions involved in a nation, there's bound to be conflict, I suppose, but it just seems like the whole country is one or two tequila shooters away from ripping itself to pieces in a civil war.