Contemplative Bible Reading

1 Samuel 19:23-24 (New Living Translation)

²³ But on the way to Naioth in Ramah the Spirit of God came even upon Saul, and he, too, began to prophesy all the way to Naioth! ²⁴ He tore off his clothes and lay naked on the ground all day and all night, prophesying in the presence of Samuel. The people who were watching exclaimed, “What? Is even Saul a prophet?”

Picture Saul in verse 24. He lay naked on the ground all day and all night prophesying.

Try to picture the President of the United States or just about any elected official or noted leader doing something like this today. Lying naked on the ground all day and all night.

I would react with much skepticism in such a case. Still, no one seems to react that way in this passage.

1 Samuel 19:4  (New Living Translation)

The next morning Jonathan spoke with his father about David, saying many good things about him. “The king must not sin against his servant David,” Jonathan said. “He’s never done anything to harm you. He has always helped you in any way he could.

I find this to be an interesting choice of words:

The king must not sin against his servant David

Jonathon doesn’t say “murder” or “hate” or some other thing that he knew his father Saul was was doing against David. This translation uses “sin.”

Ouch, sin is serious, sin is religious. Murder is just plain old stuff that people do without regard to a God or a spiritual world of any type.

How often do I sin against another person? How often do I consider my attitude towards another person as sin?

1 Samuel 17:45-47 (New Living Translation)

⁴⁵ David replied to the Philistine, “You come to me with sword, spear, and javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies—the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. ⁴⁶ Today the Lord will conquer you, and I will kill you and cut off your head. And then I will give the dead bodies of your men to the birds and wild animals, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel! ⁴⁷ And everyone assembled here will know that the Lord rescues his people, but not with sword and spear. This is the Lord’s battle, and he will give you to us!”

We talk a lot about David vs Goliath—the little guy vs the big guy. That is our culture, that is our cultural spin on the (hi)story from 1 Samuel.

What, however, does the Bible tell us about the battle (oh, here we go again, back to the Holy Bible thing). A few phrases from the Bible:

• Today the Lord will conquer you
• the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel!
• everyone assembled here will know that the Lord rescues his people
• this is the Lord’s battle

There is much in the Bible regarding David and Goliath about the LORD. There isn’t much in there about the little guy and the big guy, the underdog and the odds-on favorite.

Sometimes we need to go back to the Bible and try to remove the filters of our culture.

Joshua 2:8-11 (New Living Translation)

8 Before the spies went to sleep that night, Rahab went up on the roof to talk with them. 9 “I know the Lord has given you this land,” she told them. “We are all afraid of you. Everyone in the land is living in terror. 10 For we have heard how the Lord made a dry path for you through the Red Sea when you left Egypt. And we know what you did to Sihon and Og, the two Amorite kings east of the Jordan River, whose people you completely destroyed. 11 No wonder our hearts have melted in fear! No one has the courage to fight after hearing such things. For the Lord your God is the supreme God of the heavens above and the earth below.

This is one of the occasions in the Old Testament when an average person speaks to a Hebrew about YHWH. There are many cases when a noble or royal, e.g., Pharaoh, speaks to a Hebrew, but not as many like this one.

Here we have Rahab, distinguished only by her vocation, speaking to the Hebrew spies about YHWH. Notice her testimony:

• YHWH gave you this land (that my people live on now)
• We are all afraid of YHWH and His people
• We live in terror
• YHWH made a dry path through the sea
• YHWH enabled you to completely destroy kings and kingdoms
• YHWH is the supreme God

Odd how an uneducated castoff from society knows so much about the God of an obscure people who have wandered the desert for two generations. Word seems to have spread.

Today, yes, I come back to today again, well, what can I write? It seems fashionable to deny the existence of Jehovah God and all other spiritual beings. It is fashionable to dismiss any “morality” taught be Jehovah. But perhaps those denials are only from the main-stream media. Perhaps the average person on the street believes differently about the supreme God.

Deuteronomy 34:12 (New Living Translation)

With mighty power, Moses performed terrifying acts in the sight of all Israel.

I like the words used in this translation. Moses terrified the people.

Moses had a difficult job. That is an understatement as Moses had a job that, without the help of Jehovah God, was impossible. He was trying to pull a million stubborn people through a hike that lasted 40 years.

Now and then, Moses had to do something that caught the attention of the people. Some of these acts were simply terrifying.

Terrible things happen in our world everyday. Perhaps if there were a Moses that everyone was watching everyday, we would see that person perform some of them. As it is, we tend to assume that these terrible things happen to someone else. Sometimes we assume that the object of the terrible act deserved it, and, since I don’t deserve it, no such thing will happen to me.

How foolish of us.

Judges 13:6 (New Living Translation)

The woman ran and told her husband, “A man of God appeared to me! He looked like on of God’s angels, terrifying to see. I didn’t ask where he was from, and he didn’t tell me his name.

We seem to think that angels are glorious. We show our children pictures of cute little angels on clouds. Those pictures are in stark contrast to how this woman, Samson’s mother, describes the angel God sent to her. The angel she saw was terrifying.

Seen any angels lately? I believe we all have, but we weren’t able to know that we were seeing angels. Seen any terrifying people lately? Maybe they were angels.

Those are guesses, maybe wild guesses. We have, however, words from the Bible describing angels that don’t quite fit how we often think angels should be.

Deuteronomy 23:1-2 (New English Translation)

23:1 A man with crushed or severed genitals may not enter the assembly of the LORD. 23:2 A person of illegitimate birth may not enter the assembly of the LORD; to the tenth generation no one related to him may do so.

This is harsh. Certain people with physical differences were prohibited from the assembly of the LORD. In addition—yes, there is more severity—no ancestor of that person to the tenth generation may enter the assembly of the LORD.

Harsh? Yes. Cruel? Yes. What is the point? I don’t know.

Here is one possible reason: to show the wonderful grace of Jesus the Messiah. There is no harsh punishment like this. A person, regardless of origin or physical condition, is accepted by God via the sacrifice of the Son. There is no punishment to the tenth generation or to the next generation or to anyone else.

The wonderful grace of Jesus—someone should write a song about that (already have).

Joshua 24:27 (New English Translation)

Joshua said to all the people, “Look, this stone will be a witness against you, for it has heard everything the LORD said to us. It will be a witness against you if you deny your God.”

Joshua tells the people that the stone heard what the LORD said. The stone would be there for thousands (millions) of years. The stone would be a witness to what the LORD had said.

Okay, let’s get real. Stones don’t hear things, right? Well, I’ve never had a conversation with a stone, so I can’t prove they do hear. Can you prove that stones do not hear? Of course you can’t. It is impossible to prove a negative. So here we are in the 21^st century with all our “gee whiz” science and technology, and someone asks us to believe that a stone can hear the LORD.  Later in the New Testament we are told that the stones would cry out the glory of the LORD.

These must all be figures of speech, right? I’ll go 98.6% to the figure-of-speech theory, but not 100%. After all, just because I haven’t spoken with a stone doesn’t mean it is impossible.

Deuteronomy 12:1-3 (New English Translation)

12:1 These are the statutes and ordinances you must be careful to obey as long as you live in the land the LORD, the God of your ancestors, has given you to possess. 12:2 You must by all means destroy all the places where the nations you are about to dispossess worship their gods – on the high mountains and hills and under every leafy tree. 12:3 You must tear down their altars, shatter their sacred pillars, burn up their sacred Asherah poles, and cut down the images of their gods; you must eliminate their very memory from that place.

The LORD is speaking to His people as they are about to enter the land He promised them. People live in the land already. Those inhabitants worship gods they have made with their own hands. The LORD knows how people tend to worship things they see, things in front of them. The LORD knows that these hand-made gods must be eliminated.

Note in the end of the above passage what the LORD requires: you must eliminate their very memory from that place. No trace can be left. No statue bearing the name of a god, no book discussing a god. Nothing.

Today? We keep history. We unearth objects that are thousands of years old. We don’t tend to worship those things, but we do keep them and study them. Perhaps, if things fall apart, people might go back to old gods. That is speculation, but I wonder about it given God’s instructions to His people.

Leviticus 26:36  (New Living Translation)

And for those of you who survive, I will demoralize you in the land of your enemies. You will live in such fear that the sound of a leaf driven by the wind will send you fleeing. You will run as though fleeing from a sword, and you will fall even when no one pursues you.

Those are chilling words:

you will live in such fear

What can be worse? The sound of a leaf hitting the side of your house causes you to jump off the coach and kneel behind a wall hoping that no one is smashing into your home.

God knows how to punish the disobedient. Boy, does he know how to punish. Live everyday afraid of everything. What could be worse?

And everytime I realize how debilitating the LORD’s punishment can be, I have a little better hint at the magnificence of His grace.