Job 40-42 - With a pink ribbon...

The readings - Day 164 - Job 40-42

Although Job has spent dozens of chapters moaning and whining and making all manner of wild accusations about God's character, there is the silver lining that shows up at the end.

Job, unlike some other books so far, actually has a fairly satisfying and summarized ending. After God's awesome summary of His own rad-ness, Job actually does as God says, mans up (God actually said to do this - it's awesome!) and just admits that he was wrong all along, he doesn't know everything, God's still the best and he's very sorry for being such a twit.

It's good stuff.

Then God takes a second to tell Job's friends that they're a bunch of jerks, restores all of Job's wealth (gives him new kids, too!) and land and livestock, and everyone lives happily ever after.

I still don't quite know what to make of God's willingness to just give Satan free reign over Job's life, or what exactly Satan was doing at a Heaven's Council meeting in the first place, but at least Job's story ends on an up note, and everything's back the way it was.

Job 17-23 - Wherein I admit that I dislike Job, and economics and politics rear their heads...

The readings - Day 157 & 158 - Job 17-23

I'm starting to come to a sort of uncomfortable realization about this book, and the character what gives it its name... I don't know that I even like Job.

The character, that is. The book is actually proving to be quite a bit more interesting than I'd given it credit for. It's also a lot more cerebral and theological than I'd thought as well. Maybe I just hadn't given it enough thought at all.

No matter.

Job.

The man.

He's a bit of a whiner, isn't he?

1 Kings 10-14 - Solomon screws up

The readings - Days 106 and 107 - 1 Kings 10-14

So it turns out that seven months of sleep deprivation is about the limit that my brain can handle. That's my story for why these posts have ground to a bit of a halt, and I'm sticking to it. It's also an explanation as to why I can't even type a few words in sequence without having to correct a whole mess'o'typos...

Anyway.

The Queen of Sheba! She's come to visit Solomon!

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure why this particular story is in here, but maybe I'm trying too hard to relate everything together. Kings is a history book (fine - two history books), and it's quite self-aware of itself as a recording of events (particularly a bit later on when it keeps trailing off and telling its readers that if they really want to know more they should just read Chronicles), so maybe the whole point is just to tell the story.

It's an impressive story, after all. This foreign dignitary arrives positively blinged out and is duly blown away by the extravagant wealth, power and wisdom of Solomon. Quite a feather in Solomon's already considerably decorated hat.

---

It's a well-known story, and (as I said) I'm super tired, so I'm not really going to get into Solomon's idiocy, what with letting a few of his 700-odd wives convince his sorry self to screw things up for everybody. Stuff sucks.

So then the kingdom gets divided, and that's pretty much that until 1948. It's pretty much Israel vs. Judah from here on out.

1 Kings 6-9 - architecture and priorities

The readings - days 104 and 105 - 1 Kings 6-9

If I had a TARDIS, one of the places I would definitely like to visit would be the original Temple in Israel. Chapter six and most of chapter seven are dedicated to describing it in detail, and the level of luxury and beauty described here is incredible. It's a fitting successor to the Tabernacle, and correspondingly more ornate, since this one gets to have actual walls, and doesn't need to be portable.

It's no wonder that the construction of the first temple is, after the generic "he was wise" thing, the thing that Solomon is most known for. Seven years in the making, with tens of thousands of workers involved at every step of the process, and an intentionality and reverence (workers hewing the stone had to do all their carving off-site so that even while it was being built, the inside of the Temple was undisturbed by excessive noise) that is truly inspiring.

Then we find out that Solomon spend nearly twice as long working on his own palace, which was almost twice as big as the Temple. Huh.

Still, God doesn't seem to sweat it, and Solomon seems to be keeping on the up-and-up on other fronts - making his proper dedicative sacrifices and instructing the people to remember/keep God's commandments, etc, so maybe it's not so big a deal.

1 Kings 1-5 - Solomon = good people

The readings - Days 102 and 103 - 1 Kings 1-5

Here we are, playing catch up again. Things were going so well, too. It's funny how the books/passages that are more boring (IE the dry philosophical/statistical/historical bits) often actually end up being better fodder for writing/reflection that the faster-paced narrative stuff...

Not that the book(s) of Kings starts off at a particularly riveting clip, but still - it's story, and stuff's happening, but maybe that's what makes it a bit harder to write about. The stuff happens, you read about it, and that's pretty much that.

On to Solomon.

Deut. 17-20 - Occupy Ancient Israel

The readings - Day 64 - Deuteronomy 17-20

So we're still trucking away with all the laws, etc, but there remain those merciful gems of interest scattered here and there.

Take, for instance, the stuff about setting up a king, talked about in chapter 17. Having spent a lot of time reading Judges over the years, I always had the impression that the whole "Israel wants to have a king" thing was a fairly new phenomenon - something that had arisen at around the time that the events in Judges were taking place.

Seems that (and for the record I'm not surprised by this) God saw it all coming. He outlined for Israel what type of king they should have, and the details are fascinating:

Ex. 39-40 - So that's that...

The readings - Day 31 - Exodus 39-40

Well would you look at that - the end of Exodus already...

And I've got to say, it seems to go out with a whimper rather than a bang, as these last two chapters are, with only a minor exception at the very, very end, more of the same schematic-recapping of the preceding three.

To be perfectly honest, there's not all that much here - the robes are done, and the rest of the priests' garments, and the tabernacle has all of its component parts finally put into place. Sort of.

Ex. 36-38 - "It's okay, you've given more than enough to the church. You can stop now..."

The readings - Day 29 - Exodus 36-38

Going into this project, I knew that there would be some pretty seriously mundane sections as I plodded through the doldrums of the Old Testament (I can practically hear the shudders that might've emerged from the shocked faces of some of my more fundamentalist friends back in the day - if it weren't for the fact that a goodly portion of modern fundamentalists are also somehow convinced that the Old Testament is largely ignorable, that is...) but I hadn't pondered the possibility that there would be pretty seriously mundane sections that were basically word-for-word repeats of previous seriously mundane sections.

With that in mind, this post is probably going to be A) somewhat shorter and B) somewhat more meta than previous entries, since Ex. 36-38 is just that: a repeat and sort of summary of the stuff in and around Ex. 25 where God's issuing his specifications for the tabernacle and other religious accoutrements.