Er, Um, Hmmm

Er probably meant something different 3000 plus years ago than it does now. Or there is a good chance it is still the same. Either way, how about Er for a name? Er is a part of one of the most bizarre stories in the bible.

Backing up a bit…Judah was one of Jacob’s 12 sons. Judah had three sons. One was named Er. Judah got Er a wife, named Tamar.

But Er was displeasing to the LORD, and the LORD took his life.

Judah says to his second son, Onan, to do his duty and “Join with your brother’s wife…and provide offspring for your brother.” The duty was to carry on the family line for his brother. But Onan didn’t want to do it. Well, he didn’t want to seal the deal. Whenever he ‘lay’ with Tamar, he would spill his seed. (Here we have the first biblical reference to birth control!)

God didn’t like this either so he killed him too.

So Judah says to Tamar, I have one more son, but he is young. Go live with your father until he grows up and then he’ll take care of things. So she does.

Time goes by. Judah’s wife dies and he mourns. He travels to the city that Tamar has gone to. She finds out her father-in-law is coming and goes out to the city gates covered in a veil and wrapped herself up.

Judah saw her and took her for a harlot. So naturally he says, “Here, let me sleep with you.” And offers her a goat for payment.

She becomes pregnant.

Judah, apparently unaware that it was Tamar he was with, finds out she is with child. He wants her brought out and burned. He then finds out it is his child and has a change of heart. The scriptures add he wasn’t intimate with her again.

Finally, she goes into labor. She has twins. While in labor one of them put out his hand and the midwife tied a crimson thread on that hand, to signify he came out first. But just then he drew back his hand, and out came his brother, Perez.

It is from Perez that King David was descended.

I’m Feeling A Little Jewish

Oi!

I’m still keeping up with my daily Bible reading. My goal is to read through the bible this year. I started January 1 and I’m still on track. 3 chapters each day, 5 on Sundays and I will finish on December 31st. I don’t read every day, but make up for the days I skip.

For the old testament I’ve been reading from the Jewish Study Bible, Tanakh Translation. All the books are the same that I’ve been used to growing up reading my NIV. The order is a bit different. After 2 Kings it goes to Isaiah. 1 and 2 Chronicles are in the third division known as Kethuvim (Writings).

Reading through and following along with the commentary has given me a different view of the old testament. For most of my life I’ve followed the lead of people in my church in trying to figure out what to make of the old testament. I was always told that we were not ‘under’ the old law. Which seemed to be code for all of the old testament. We (as a church) read from it, but let go of so much of it. It didn’t apply anymore. We only used the parts that were convenient.

And the old testament, the Hebrew Bible, is much more than just old law. Yes, there is plenty of law in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, but there is so much more.

Reading it through new eyes I have a greater appreciation for the Jewish people and how for them that is the end of it. No new testament needed.

I’m full of great old testament stories now. Some that definitely wouldn’t make the old flannel board.

A Man In His Life

by Yehuda Amichai

A man doesn’t have time in his life to have time for everything.
He doesn’t have seasons enough to have a season for every purpose.
Ecclesiastes was wrong about that.
A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment,
to laugh and cry with the same eyes,
with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them,
to make love in war and war in love.
And to hate and forgive and remember and forget,
to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest what history takes years and years to do.

A man doesn’t have time.
When he loses he seeks, when he finds he forgets,
when he forgets he loves, when he loves he begins to forget.

And his soul is seasoned, his soul is very professional.
Only his body remains forever an amateur.
It tries and it misses, gets muddled, doesn’t learn a thing,
drunk and blind in its pleasures and its pains.

He will die as figs die in autumn,
Shriveled and full of himself and sweet,
the leaves growing dry on the ground,
the bare branches pointing to the place
where there’s time for everything.

The Old is New Again

I have slowed down on my postings here, but I’m still on track to read the entire bible this year. And the more that I read the more I come to realize how little I walked in its footsteps before now. More specifically I referring to the old testament. What I mean is that I viewed it through ‘Christian’ eyes until now. I lost sight of the fact, or never saw it, the book is Jewish. Very tribal. God’s promises were for the here and now. That is this life, this world.
As a kid I remember thinking the old testament had all these crazy laws that didn’t apply anymore and some fantastic stories to boot. It is so very different from the new testament. I realize hundreds of years separate the writings of old and new testaments and the old covers hundreds of years during the writings, whereas the new was written over a span of less than 100 years. The world views really changed drastically.

I’m only up to the period of King David, but so far there is no idea of a heaven or hell. No afterlife. This theology doesn’t seem to come about until later.

Which raises many other questions for me. Why didn’t the writers of the old testament write anything about it? Did they know of anything after this life? Did they not believe in it? Who first wrote about this? Jesus spoke about it at length. He obviously believed it to be true. Why the shift?

The other thing that really stands out is the amount the first few books write about serving other gods. The bible slams and decries other religions/gods and implores the Israelites not to serve or worship these other gods. I guess I always imagined these gods as symbolic. They couldn’t be real, right?

The bible never says they aren’t real. Several times it refers to Yahweh as the true and living God, but doesn’t go out of its way to say that these other gods are thin air or someone’s imagination. They worshiped this one god without denying the existence of others. One thing I keep reminding myself of is the idea of just having one God was a revolutionary moment in the history of man. There were many gods to serve and they were in charge of different things. This view lasted through the time of the Greeks. Paul even addressed it during his time in Athens.

I used to wonder why modern day Jews didn’t have the new testament in their bibles.  I beginning to realize the two are a lot further a part then just a few pages.

Roll Back Sinners

Are you saved brothers and sisters? Well, are ya? Do you know what that means? Do you honestly want to go another day playing dice with your eternal salvation? No, you don’t.

Put your hands on the computer screen. Go ahead. Do it. Take a deep breath and say, “I am pond scum. I deserve to go to h-e-double hockey sticks! Please save me, oh, great church going atheist!” And if you want, add, “Help me Obi Wan Kenobi. You are my only hope.” But don’t you worry about sending me any money. “Because the God I believe in isn’t short of cash, mister.”

Ok. You see, I’m jaded. All this week, everywhere I go, church signs, church folks, you name it…they are pushing Easter.

Tonight, outside of Target stood a man handing out Easter Eggs with candy inside and a note asking me to attend Easter service with them. That was a new one for me.

I understand the resurrection story is a central theme in Christianity. Easter is the Superbowl of the Christian calendar. And this week certainly does have the feeling of a big game.

I Often Wondered About That…

Are prayers effective? The results.

Hillary Clinton’s Faith

Hillary Clinton gave an interview to a NY Times reporter last summer about her faith.

I think the whole Bible is real. The whole Bible gives you a glimpse of God and God’s desire for a personal relationship, but we can’t possibly understand every way God is communicating with us. I’ve always felt that people who try to shoehorn in their cultural and social understandings of the time into the Bible might be actually missing the larger point that we’re supposed to take from the Bible.

Q and A

I’m finding it harder to have conversations about life with folks I’ve known for a while. It seems my questions are not going over well. Questions strictly about the world and how I see it, statements meant to help form my understanding of life and its meaning for me, feel like an attack for others and their beliefs.

I’m not trying to move anyone off of their position…I do want to know why they are where they are. Not because I think it is wrong, but just so I can get my bearings.

The First Leap Day

One of the most fantastic stories in the bible is the day God stopped the sun for a day so that Israel could kill more people. It is told in the book of Joshua.

Israel had this pact with the people of Gibeon. Gibeon comes under attack from a coalition of kings and sends word to Israel for help. So Joshua marches the troops all night to surprise them. Joshua does indeed take them by surprise and the LORD “threw them into a panic before Israel.”

They flee down the mountain and God decides to help out .

the LORD hurled huge stones on them from the sky, all the way to Azekah, and the perished; more perished from the hailstones than were killed by the Israelite weapons.

At some point Joshua addresses God in the presence of the Israelites. He says, Stand still, O sun, at Gibeon, O moon, in the valley of Aijalon!”

(The scriptures make a reference to the Book of Jashar. These are Hebrew writings that have not survived but are referenced here and in 2 Samuel.)

Thus the sun halted in midheaven, and did not press on to set, for a whole day; for the LORD fought for Israel. Neither before nor since has there ever been such a day, when the LORD acted on words spoken by a man.

It is hard to know where to start with all of this. Obviously the sun couldn’t just stop in the sky without a great deal of other things happening. This ancient mindset of the sun rising and setting wasn’t able to take into account an earth that rotates and orbits around the sun and a sun that finds itself in a much larger galaxy in a much larger universe.

I have no problem with poetic license. I have one myself. I believe that is what this is. And if it is, then it is easier to find out what is important about the story in the eyes of the author. Obviously the main point is Israel won with the help of God, but it is more than that.

This is a point in the history of Israel in which they were living out their manifest destiny. They had the promise from the almighty that this land was their land and they would be numerous as the stars. God was on their side. So much so that He will even get in on the battle with a volley of hailstones. So much so that He will stop all the laws of nature, stop the sun, stop the earth dead in their tracks to kill off everyone to make victory possible. So much so that He would fight for one of his children over another…up to the death of the other.

That is some point of view.

What is 400 Shekels Between You and Me?

According to Genesis, Abraham’s wife Sarah lived 127 years. She died and Abraham mourned and bewailed her.  Living in a foreign land at the time, he had no place to bury her. He asks for someone to sell him a burial site.

I am a resident alien among you; sell me a burial site among you, that I may remove my dead for burial.

They tell him to bury Sarah in the choicest of their burial places. That no one will withhold his burial place from Abraham.

Abraham says ok, I know just the place.  A guy named Ephron has a cave that will do just fine, I will pay full price.

Ephron says, “No, my lord, hear me: I give you the field and I give you the cave that is in it….bury your dead.

Abraham says, “Hear me out!” and offers again to pay for it.

Ephron then replies,

My lord, do hear me! A piece of land worth four hundred shekels of silver - what is that between you and me? Go and bury your dead.”

So Abraham accepted his terms.

It is the biblical equivalent of, I’ll get the check, no I’ll get the check, No really, I’ll get it. Ok, if you insist.

Was this fair market value? The scriptures don’t say. But compared to the 17 shekels Jeremiah pays to redeem ancestral land, it seems a bit high.

So Abraham buries Sarah. Soon he too is buried next to his wife. Eventually joined by his son Isaac and daughter-in-law Rebekah, and grandson Jacob and his wife Leah.

God promised Abraham that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars of heaven and the sands on the seashore. Early on,  from the vantage point of the Judean hills,  he viewed  the panorama of the promised land, as it extended  in every direction of the compass, but, at the end of his life, was constrained to bargain for a small plot of land were he, his wife and family would be buried.