Isaiah 22: Warnings to Jerusalem and its leaders. The warnings stem from how the leaders behaved during wartime. They apparently stopped focusing on God and spent more time focusing on their defenses. At least this is according to the notes in the CEB study bible (p. 1124 OT).
Isaiah 19-21; Matthew 15-16
Isaiah 19: Threats concerning Egypt. So God strikes down Egypt because of what the people there are doing. We then see at the end of this chapter that the people turn (back?) to God and worship him again. As in, if you hold to a literal interpretation of the Bible, then you believe that the Egyptians followed God out of fear.
Again, strange way to view things. Doesn’t make any sense to me. It seems limiting.
Isaiah 13-15; Psalms 99-101
Isaiah 13: Even though I am struggling with Isaiah a little bit, I really do need to get into the history of this book. I need to figure out what scholars have learned about the historical setting of this book.
This chapter is about the overthrow of Babylon. We learn in the beginning that God intends to unleash his fury on Babylon. God will put together a huge army to take out Babylon. There is a lot of description here about the horrible things that will help to these people. It’s kind of intense. For example, this is pretty intense: “Their infants will be crushed before their eyes; their houses plundered, their women raped” (CEB, v. 16, p. 1114 OT). DAMN!
Continue reading “Isaiah 13-15; Psalms 99-101”Isaiah 10-12; Matthew 11-12
Isaiah 10: The overall message in this chapter is that Assyria will not escape God’s judgment. As I read this chapter and this book overall I can’t help but think of the book by Rob Bell, What is the Bible. He argues, convincingly, that the Bible is pretty much a metaphor and guide, not to be taken literally. I need to reread what he says about the amount of violence of the Bible. Because these chapters are all about God wanting to destroy entire groups of people. Yikes.
Continue reading “Isaiah 10-12; Matthew 11-12”9/19 Reading (Isaiah 7-9; Matthew 9-10)
Isaiah 7: Here we see the beginning of a story of Ahaz, King in Jerusalem, who is fearful of attacks from Israel and Aram. God tells Isaiah that he will protect him and to trust in him. Ahaz says that he will not test the Lord. Now I took this as a good thing, but according to the notes, Isaiah viewed this as Ahaz not trusting God.
9/8 Reading (Isaiah 1-3; Psalms 97-98)
Introduction to Isaiah: This is the first of the prophetic books. Introduction in CEB makes this book sound pretty interesting. I want to get into the text, but I need to definitely reread this later. In fact, I think that once I’m done and start to explore writing a book, I will come back to all of the introductions to each individual book, the introductions to different sections in the Bible, and the additional essays from each Bible. And I’ll read this source (here).
9/7 Reading (Song of Songs 7-8; Matthew 5-6)
Song of Songs 7: WOW! Now this chapter is where things get interesting. A friend of mine made a comment several months ago that there was references to all sorts of sexual acts in this book, including oral sex. And yep, here it is. The man first describes the woman’s body in a similar fashion to how he did in earlier chapters. Of course this focuses on her entire body.
Continue reading “9/7 Reading (Song of Songs 7-8; Matthew 5-6)”
9/5 Reading (Song of Songs 4-6; Matthew 3-4)
Song of Songs 4: This chapter is of the man celebrating the woman’s beauty. First half is pretty descriptive, focusing on her eyes, teeth, lips, cheeks, neck, and breasts. The second half continues with the man expressing his love for her as well as celebrating her beauty. At one point he refers to her as “my sister, my bride.” Now, according to the notes, the use of the word sister “is common in ancient Near Eastern love poetry. It doesn’t imply that the lovers are genetically related but is symbolic of their closeness” (p. 1081 OT). I wonder how Biblical literalists deal with instances like this?
Continue reading “9/5 Reading (Song of Songs 4-6; Matthew 3-4)”
4/6 Reading (Ecclesiastes 4-6; Matthew 11)
I MUST REREAD ECCLESIASTES WHEN THIS IS ALL OVER.
Continue reading “4/6 Reading (Ecclesiastes 4-6; Matthew 11)”
3/7 Reading (Proverbs 10-12; Matthew 4)
Looking in the notes revealed some really interesting aspects of the proverbs attributed to Solomon (Proverbs 10:1-22:16). First, the first half of Solomon’s proverbs (10:1-15:33) are contrasting statements (antithetic parallelism), in which the second line restates the first line in an opposite way and the second half are synthetic statements, in which the second line repeats or extends the message of the first line. Pretty cool. Second, there are many common themes in Solomon’s proverbs: “Along with the more generic wise/foolish and righteous/wicked themes, note the frequency of themes such as wealth/poverty, work/sloth, speech (truth/lying, etc.), relationships (neighbors, family, king), and attitudes (anger, love/hatred, etc.)” (from How to Read the Bible Book by Book).