Many of the individual psalms in Book 2 are laments, as in Book 1, but there are also psalms that call down blessings on a human king and psalms that insist that God is king over both Israel and other lands. Again, like Book 1, Book 2 contains a number of psalms associated with David, …
Book 1 of Psalms is a book in a book in a book. Introduction to Psalms, book 1. Yes, Psalms Book 1 is just part of the book of Psalms, which makes it a book in a book. But both books are part of the book called the Bible, which makes Book 1 of Psalms …
Psalms was the Jewish playlist in Bible times. When Jews wanted a worship song to sing at the Jerusalem Temple, or alone at home, or on the road to Jerusalem, or at a celebration honoring the king, they could find one in this collection of 150 Hebrew poems. These were poems written in lyrical style—fit …
Intro Notes to Ecclesiastes King Solomon—reportedly the world’s wisest human ever—searches for the meaning of life. Like it’s a science project. He writes up his finding: There is no meaning. Humans exist. Then they die. The contrarian’s Bible This is one of those contrary books that doesn’t belong in the Bible, some Jewish scholars have …
Intro notes to Esther Sometimes stories in life go wild, for real. And we couldn’t write them any better even if we were free to take a left turn at fiction and go a little crazy. Esther reads like the flipped side of that pancake, some scholars suggest. They say it’s just a little too wild …
Nehemiah is one odd story. He’s a Jew serving wine to a Persian king in what is now Iran. Who saw that coming? The king, Artaxerxes, trusts this Jewish man with his life. How did Nehemiah get there? Likely he was the descendant of Jews taken captive to Babylon (Iraq) about 150 years earlier, when Babylon …
For an entire generation, half a century, Jewish priests like Ezra were jobless in their fields. For priests, work revolved around the Jerusalem Temple. But it had been a busted rock pile since Babylonian invaders leveled it in 586 BC. Then along came an Iranian (Persian in Bible times). He conquered the Iraqis (Babylonians in …
God picks three longshot characters to star in the stories of 1 Samuel. Those three men—Samuel, Saul, and David—are longshots in the sense that if God ever bets on a horserace, he’ll pick the one with the worst odds. It seems God likes to win big. And he likes to make a splash that people …
Ruth’s story Drought in Israel forces a Bethlehem family to leave for greener pastures of Moab, a nation across the Dead Sea in what is now Jordan. And home of a woman named Ruth. The Bethlehem husband and wife have two sons. They marry local Moabite women. But within 10 years, all the men are …
Joshua is dead Cue the leaders of Israel known as judges. Israel has no formal leader for the first time since Moses walked the Israelites out of Egypt two generations earlier. Joshua did, however, leave them with a mission: “Tribes still need to conquer all the territory” (Joshua 23:4). “Follow all the laws Moses wrote …
God made a promise he didn’t deliver on for 600 years or more. He waited for Joshua. God told Abraham, sometime around the 2000’s BC, “Take a look around you. Look in every direction: north, south, east, west. It’s all yours. Every bit of land you can see is yours. I’m giving it to you …
This is how Moses dies. He calls the 12 tribes of Israel together to remind them one last time that if they want to capture and keep the land God is giving them, they need to stay on the good side of the Landowner. They need to follow his Law. They signed onto that contract. …
This should have been the story of Moses leading the Israelite invasion into Canaan. But Moses never steps foot in Canaan. The entire generation of adults age 20 and above misses the invasion, too. Joshua and Caleb are the only exceptions, because of their confidence in God. The plan was to march north out of …
It’s the Law! And it comes from God himself, Leviticus reports. “The LORD talked to Moses in the Meeting Tent” (Leviticus 1:1) Having built a Meeting Tent (at the end of the Book of Exodus), where he can communicate with God, Moses learns and passes on to the people the ways God wants them to …
Plagues of locusts and frogs, with rivers of blood. Then death to every family’s oldest son. That’s what it takes to jumpstart the Exodus, and to get the Israelites on the road and out of Egypt, headed to the Promised Land. Four hundred years have passed since Jacob, also known as Israel, moved his family …
Ezekiel is perhaps most famous for his vision of a new Temple and a resurrected Jewish nation organized around the 12 tribes of Israel. Dream that never came true Never happened. His dream never came true. At least not yet. Jews did eventually rebuild a modest Temple. And King Herod the Not-So-Great expanded it. But …
Job’s story starts with a devil of an angel in heaven who seems part lawyer and part thug. He prosecutes Job in Creation’s Supreme Court, with God as Chief Justice, and then he gets God’s permission to beat Job into the dirt by wiping out his family, wealth, and health. It’s an odd story that, …
Jeremiah was the prophet who predicted and witnessed perhaps the worst tragedy in ancient Jewish history—on a scale with the Holocaust of the 1940s. Israel erased from world map Jeremiah, a man perhaps in his mid-50s, watched helplessly as Babylonian invaders from what is now Iraq erased his nation from the map. These invaders executed …
Bible book of Daniel introduction DANIEL MAY HAVE BEEN A TEENAGER, likely from a Jerusalem family of nobles, when invaders took him away forever to what is now Iraq. Babylonian invaders wanted “some of the best people Israel had to offer, especially from among the royal family and the nobles” (Daniel 1:3). They recognized Daniel’s …
People looking for dirt on Bible characters don’t spend much time in the Jewish history book of 1-2 Chronicles. Stories in Chronicles come from an optimist’s view of history. Optimist prime The Chronicles writer would brag King Solomon red in the face. This book puffs the king’s wealth, wisdom, and fame. But it fails to …
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