Let’s cut to the chase: In this collection of hundreds of mostly short, fairly pithy sayings, there is no doubt about the best one. It’s number 43 in book XIV: “Yuan Jang sat waiting with his legs spread wide. The Master said, ‘To be neither modest nor deferential when young, to have passed on nothing … [Read more…]
The prophet Isaiah was considered “the greatest Old Testament prophet,” says my NIV study Bible, and he’s quoted “at least 50 times in the New Testament.” Isaiah was a prophet under five kings, and he talked about both the northern kingdom (Israel) and southern kingdom (Judah), while the other major prophets are predicting the fall of … [Read more…]
Moses is the central figure — besides God, of course — in the the four books of the Pentateuch following Genesis. And those four books have two strands: the historical narrative of Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt and to the Promised Land, and the laws given to Moses by God during that time … [Read more…]
I really liked this passage from Kevin J. Vanhoozer’s article, “Letter to an Aspiring Theologian: How To Speak of God Truly,” in the August/September 2018 issue of First Things: … [T]he best way to stay focused on the subject matter of theology is to stay focused on Scripture. John Calvin viewed his Institutes as help … [Read more…]
In one of our church’s weekly “small group” meetings, we recently discussed Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well, John 4:1-42. It occurred to me that this might be the first non-Jewish convert. My NIV study Bible has a table that puts all four Gospels in single chronological order, and that seems to … [Read more…]
As I noted elsewhere, these are the two post-Moses/pre-monarchical history books, and so it makes some sense to consider them together. What’s more, I think that together they address an important question, namely how Israel would and should deal with the non-Israelites in the Promised Land, and considering them together helps illuminate that matter. Joshua … [Read more…]
Overview I suspect that there are many who, like me, find daunting the twelve books that stretch from Joshua to Esther, between the Pentateuch and the Wisdom books. And no wonder: They cover more or less sequentially a thousand years of Jewish history, from about 1400 B.C. to about 400 B.C. So perhaps an overview of … [Read more…]
Overview David’s reign as king of Israel is recounted in II Samuel and I Chronicles chapters 10-19 (there is a fair amount of duplication between the two books). David’s life before he becomes king is found in I Samuel chapters 16-31, where it is very much intertwined with Saul’s. And David continues to have a … [Read more…]
In this post I’ll be writing about I Chronicles chapters 1-10 and I Samuel. But, despite the title to this post, these texts do not correspond exactly to Saul’s biography, for a couple of reasons. First, once David is introduced in I Samuel chapter 16, his story and Saul’s are intertwined until Saul’s death in … [Read more…]
This book is short (132 pages plus notes); the author says that it is drawn from a longer, earlier work by him, Money, Possessions, and Eternity. It is also straightforward and unabashed in its message: While faith is what gets us into Heaven, it’s works that determine how and to what extent we will be … [Read more…]