Ezekiel 9:9 (New Living Translation)
Then he said to me, “The sins of the people of Israel and Judah are very, very great. The entire land is full of murder; the city is filled with injustice. They are saying, ‘The Lord doesn’t see it! The Lord has abandoned the land!’
The situation: the sins of the people are very, very great.
The response: Yahweh has left. He doesn’t see this.
After all the the LORD had done, the people still don’t understand. They attribute to the LORD the same abilities as people have. The LORD is not here. If you are not here, you cannot see what is happening here.
The LORD is omnipresent, i.e., everywhere at once. The people, however, have limited the LORD’s presence and the LORD’s vision.
They didn’t understand the ways of the LORD.
Am I any better at understanding the ways of the LORD? I should be. I mean, I have these (hi)stories to read and contemplate. I should be able to learn from them. I guess I do learn, but then I become tired and angry and all those other things and I fall back into what the people described by Ezekiel are doing.
Tags: Ezekial · Old Testament
1 Corinthians 6:19-20 (New Living Translation)
19 Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, 20 for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.
A temple:
A building devoted to the worship, or regarded as the dwelling place, of a god or gods or other objects of religious reverence. (Google define)
The body is the place devoted to the worship of the Spirit of God. What does it mean to go to my body to worship the Spirit of God?
I don’t know.
Let’s list some possible answers:
- I’m always with my body, so I’m always worshiping
- I’m always with my body, so I should be always worshiping
- I should take great care of my body
- I should learn how to take great care of my body
- Maybe this is why drunkenness and gluttony are sins
- I can worship the Spirit of God as it is in the bodies of other Christians
This last one is something I’ve never considered before. The Spirit of God is in the bodies of other Christians. How do I treat those temples? How do I act when I see those people mistreating their bodies? How do I act when I see those people cherishing their bodies?
How is that I started with one question but ended with several that I can’t answer?
Tags: 1 Corinthians · New Testament
Colossians 1:21 (New Living Translation)
This includes you who were once far away from God. You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions.
Note, when I was not a Christian I was an enemy of God. I wasn’t someone who was ignorant or someone who disagreed about a few things or sat on the fence or whatever.
I was an enemy of God
Wait a moment here. Surely we can rephrase this with a fill-in-the-blank with something easier to accept than enemy. Nope. I was an enemy of God.
The situation changed with Jesus on the cross. Thank you God.
Tags: Colossians · New Testament
This post is a little different as it doesn’t contemplate any particular verse of the Bible. Instead, I look at a phrase:
The LORD of Heaven’s Armies
This phrase is all over the place in the New Living Translation (NLT). I decided to use the NLT this year as it has now supplanted the New International Version (NIV) as the most popular English-language Bible being read.
The NIV usually has this phrase as “LORD of Hosts” – a phrase that first appeared in the King James Version in 1611. In the 17th century, English-speaking people used the word “hosts” are “armies.”
The New English Translation uses the phrase
The LORD who commands armies
I found this one explanation of the phrases:
MONDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2011
Lord of Hosts: Lord of Heavens Armies?
The KJV rendered the Hebrew phrase yhwh tseba’ot by the English phrase “Lord of Hosts.” Since then, most English versions have simply followed the KJV. More recently, however, especially with the rise of “simple-language” versions, the phrase has begun to disappear from English Bibles. Admittedly, there is nothing especially sacred about the translation Lord of Hosts. Many people today may not even know that “host” in the seventeenth century meant “army,” or “great multitude.”
Thus, several of the newer versions have sought a translation that communicates more effectively and more accurately the meaning of the Hebrew phrase. Thus the New Living Translation (NLT) renders it as “the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.” The new Common English Bible (CEB) renders it “Lord of Heavenly Forces.” God’s Word translation uses “Lord of Armies.” The Good News Bible, the NIV, and the TNIV all render it as “Lord Almighty.” The New Century Version and the Contemporary English Version render it “Lord All-Powerful.” But how helpful, and how accurate, are these translations?
The NLT and CEB translations are clearly equivalent. Further, they add to the idea of army or force the idea that these are heavenly forces. The first word in the Hebrew phrase is Yahweh, the divine name. The second word in the phrase is a plural form of a noun that means “army” or “warfare.” Hence God’s Word translation Lord of Armies, omitting the idea of heavenly forces. The NLT and CEB are probably influenced by the fact that angels are sometimes referred to as a “host.” This appears, for example, in 1 Kings 22:19, where the prophet Micaiah says that he saw the Lord sitting on his throne with all the “host of heaven” standing by him. The reader should notice, however, that in this and similar verses, the word “host” is in the singular, and it is specifically identified as “the host of heaven.” Further, the Lord is not referred to as Lord of Hosts, but simply as Lord. When “hosts” is used in the plural (apart from the phrase Lord of hosts), it refers to the armies or military arrangement of Israel or other human armies. By usage, then the NLT and the CEB seem to be wrong in implying that the term is in reference to heavenly armies. In fact, one of the standard Hebrew lexicons says, “the thought of angels and stars as army of God is later.” Based on the views of the scholars who produced that lexicon (Frances Brown, S. R. Driver, and C. A. Briggs), it would appear they thought it unlikely that such a use (heavenly armies) appeared before the period of the exile. Even a more recent work (New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis) seems to find the evidence for such a view lacking.
The evidence for Lord Almighty or Lord All-powerful is even scantier. The NIDOTTE says, “Another approach would take ‘hosts’ as a plural of intensification or majesty, particularly in view of the LXX translation of hosts as ‘Almighty.” But such an abstraction lacks convincing evidence.”
When the reader further considers that Lord of Hosts does not appear in the Bible until 1 Samuel, it would seem to indicate that the epithet is particularly connected with the rise of the Israelite monarchy, particularly under David. Hence it refers to the armies of Israel as the covenantal hosts, or armies, of the Lord
Tags: Uncategorized
Psalms 51:4 (New Living Translation)
Against you, and you alone, have I sinned;
I have done what is evil in your sight.
You will be proved right in what you say,
and your judgment against me is just
This is from David’s famous prayer asking for forgiveness. He sinned by cheating with Bathsheba and having her husband die in battle.
Against whom did David sin? Uriah? The army? Bathsheba?
No, only against God did David sin. Sin is going against God. I can to terrible things to other people, terrible wrongs. Those wrongs, however, are not sins against those other people. Those wrongs are sins against God. According to this verse, I only sin against God. Sins are not labeled to anyone or anything else.
Tags: Old Testament · Psalms
1 Thessalonians 4:1 (New Living Translation)
Finally, dear brothers and sisters, we urge you in the name of the Lord Jesus to live in a way that pleases God, as we have taught you. You live this way already, and we encourage you to do so even more.
Paul writes to a church and urges them to do some simple things that please God. And what are these things that please God?
- Be holy (special)
- Avoid cheating on your spouse
- Don’t have sex with another Christian’s spouse
- Love each other
- Live quietly
- Mind your own business
There isn’t anything complicated here. It sounds like a refresher of things taught to small children (spiritually small children).
God is complex beyond my imagination. His desires for me are simple beyond my imagination.
Tags: 1 Thessalonians · New Testament
Isaiah 58:6-7 (New Living Translation)
6 “No, this is the kind of fasting I want:
Free those who are wrongly imprisoned;
lighten the burden of those who work for you.
Let the oppressed go free,
and remove the chains that bind people.
7 Share your food with the hungry,
and give shelter to the homeless.
Give clothes to those who need them,
and do not hide from relatives who need your help.
Fasting was a type of legal service that God’s people performed for God in the Old Testament. It showed humility and servitude. At least it was supposed to. God’s people turned it into a “check the box” exercise where they over indulged, fasted, and over indulged again. Sigh. Reminds me too much of myself.
No, these verses speak of the “fasting” that God wants.
Justice – Free those who are wrongly imprisoned;
lighten the burden of those who work for you.
Let the oppressed go free,
and remove the chains that bind people.
Mercy – Share your food with the hungry,
and give shelter to the homeless.
Give clothes to those who need them,
and do not hide from relatives who need your help.
It is simple, really. Do what is right to everyone. If you see someone suffering, do what you can to relieve the suffering. And the type of suffering doesn’t matter. Lend a hand. Extend some of the vast mercy that God has extended to me.
Tags: Isaiah · Old Testament
Psalms 130:3-4 (New Living Translation)
3 Lord, if you kept a record of our sins,
who, O Lord, could ever survive?
4 But you offer forgiveness,
that we might learn to fear you.
God doesn’t keep a record of my sins. That is a relief. God could keep such a record; He is capable of that. But, as the Psalmists writes, who could survive if God kept such records?
God, instead, offers forgiveness. I don’t fully appreciate the concept of forgiveness and what life would be like without it. I need to think on that one more often. For now, like the Psalmist, I thank God.
Tags: Old Testament · Psalms
Genesis 6:5-7 (New Living Translation)
5 The Lord observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth, and he saw that everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil. 6 So the Lord was sorry he had ever made them and put them on the earth. It broke his heart. 7 And the Lord said, “I will wipe this human race I have created from the face of the earth. Yes, and I will destroy every living thing—all the people, the large animals, the small animals that scurry along the ground, and even the birds of the sky. I am sorry I ever made them.”
There are several items I noticed when reading this passage (this time).
- When left alone, man moves towards evil
- God sees us
- God has feelings based on what we do
- God reacts
We should take care with how we act because, as in the flood, we may not like how God reacts.
One last thing, I affect God. I don’t want that to read like I have a certain power over God, because I don’t have power over God. God does, however, see me and He has feelings based on what I do. This seems like one of those questions (do I have power over God?) that theologians have discussed for centuries with no conclusion.
God, help me to please you.
Tags: Genesis · Old Testament
Genesis 17:3-5 (New Living Translation)
3 At this, Abram fell face down on the ground. Then God said to him, 4 “This is my covenant with you: I will make you the father of a multitude of nations! 5 What’s more, I am changing your name. It will no longer be Abram. Instead, you will be called Abraham, for you will be the father of many nations.
Let’s consider the meaning of the names:
Abram: exalted father.
Abraham: father of many.
God is changing Abram’s name to “father of many.”
Wait a minute. Abram had no kids. The name change didn’t change family status as for years he still didn’t have any kids. Father? Father of who?
Pause a moment or a few hundred years and Abraham’s descendants number in the millions. That’s the trouble with God sometimes. What we expect in a moment sometimes take a few hundred years. What’s the difference? It’s only a matter of time.
God, please help me understand time more like you understand it.
Tags: Genesis · Old Testament
