Thursday, May 10, 2012

Finding the Big Story in the Psalms

So far Reading God's Story has spread out the psalms over the course of David's life. I have enjoyed seeing the psalms connected to events in his life, such as Psalms 35, 54, 63 placed after 1 Samuel 27, at which point David has gone to live with the Philistines in order to flee Saul's jealousy and wrath. Verses like "ruthless people are trying to kill me - people without regard for God" take on added meaning when you have just read about the way Saul has treated David. Many of the Psalms are situational; they are the psalmist's prayer to God based on his circumstances. The placement of the Psalms in RGS helps us to see how David does just that, crying out to God in the midst of persecution.

Other Psalms help us see the "big story" of the Bible. Psalm 78 looks all the way back to Israel's journey in the wilderness, the miracles God did for them there, and their unending demands and complaints against God. It contrasts God's enduring faithfulness to his people and their lack of faith in his provision. It describes what happened once they reached the land; the people turned to idolatry and God in his anger abandoned them to their ways. They lost the ark of the covenant in battle; their young men were killed; their enemies triumphed over them. But that did not last forever; God beat back their enemies. The psalm leads all the way to the events I am reading about right now - God's choice of David to be their shepherd. 

--------------

There is a wonderful music group in Durham, NC called Folk Psalm. They set the psalms to music. They played for us at Duke Divinity School a few times. Here is a video about their music and ministry:
http://www.faithandleadership.com/multimedia/sing-praises-god

Here is their website:
http://www.folkpsalm.com/

Monday, May 7, 2012

the Chronic(what?)cles of Israel

Chronicles starts out with a bang, doesn't it? Kidding :) It is tough going slogging through all those lists in the first 9 chapters of Chronicles (so it's nice that RGS spaces them out over several days). The genealogies is helpful because they give us a review and overview of the "big story" so far in the Bible - Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and all of his sons. There are also glimpses of the unusual twists and turns that the story has taken - sometimes the line takes a very untraditional twist. Whereas we would expect the line to continue after Jacob with Reuben, his firstborn, instead it goes through the fourth-born son, Judah. All 3 of Judah's son born by his wife die, so the line continues on through the child Judah has with his *daughter-in-law* Tamar. Again, we see that God does not insist upon a perfect, proper, pure genealogy; he accomplishes his work despite and even through the messiness of human behavior and relationships. At the beginning of Chronicles, the concern here is to trace the genealogical line from Adam to David. As Christians, this takes on added significance, because we will see the gospel writers using genealogies to show how that same line eventually leads to Jesus.

The story of David is told in two different places in the Old Testament. We began reading about it in Samuel, but now we are also reading it on a parallel track in Chronicles. Whereas Samuel gives that full picture of David I described earlier, Chronicles does not mention the sin, the brokenness, the mistakes in David's life. It is a more idealized picture of David as the Messianic king. It's therefore important to read both books in order to get a fuller portrait of David.

If you want to learn more about Chronicles, I just discovered that the introductions to each book of the Bible in the NIV study Bible are available online for free. Here is the one on 1 Chronicles.

(title of this blog post is a take on Andy Samberg's "Lazy Sunday" video on SNL.)

Thursday, May 3, 2012

Using Blue Letter Bible

One of the my goals with this blog is help you connect with resources that deepen your understanding of the text. Blue Letter Bible is my favorite website for digging into the Hebrew and Greek words of the original text of the Bible and understanding what those words meant in their original context. Don't worry, you do not need to know Greek in order to learn a lot through this website.

I am much more familiar with Greek and will therefore probably use this website more often once we get to the New Testament. (FYI, the Old Testament is written in Hebrew, and the New Testament is written almost entirely in Greek.) However, I want to introduce you to the website now in case you are interested in exploring words from our readings now!

Head to Blue Letter Bible and enter the reference for the text you are studying. You can either enter just the name of the book of the Bible and chapter number, or you can also add the verse number. (I have added screen shots below to help you.) This time I am using BLB to look up John 15, because that is the gospel reading for this coming Sunday and the passage that I have been writing about for our church's Easter blog Living Into Joy.


Once you ask BLB to search for that text, you'll see that a screen comes up with the chapter, with each verse listed separately.




You'll see that in the 6 little boxes to the left of each verse, one is labeled "C." That "C" is for "Concordance." Here I am going to choose John 15:11, because I want to look up the word for "joy" in Greek, so I click on the "C" next to verse 11.




Now the verse expands to show me the verse in Greek at the top and then each word in English listed separately with the Greek word to its right along with the Greek word's Strong's Number. (Strong's is a Bible concordance that's been since 1890; Dr. Strong assigned each Greek word a number for reference purposes. If you're interested, you can learn about its history here.) To learn more about the Greek word, click on the Strong's number. For example, here I will click on the G5479.




Now a new page opens filled with information about this one word in Greek. It is listed in Greek at the very top in large letters, but then it shows its spelling in English and gives an audio file of its pronunciation. It also gives a detailed definition of how the word is used in the Bible under "Outline of Biblical Usage" and lists how many times the word is used in the New Testament.

If you keep scrolling down that same page, you'll find a listing of all the verses in which that word is used in the New Testament.




This is helpful because it saves you the time of looking up each verse either online or in your Bible. I often use this to get a sense of how the same word is used in different contexts across the New Testament, both to see how it's used in similar ways and in different ways.

If you ever wondered what a word meant in its original context, give BLB a whirl and see what you discover. If you have any questions about how to use BLB, please feel free to contact me.

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

David at last!

I love the story of David. After the chaos of Judges and the disappointment of Saul, David emerges as a strong leader anointed by God to take Saul's place. I have been struck this week by just how long it takes David to finally reach the throne. Saul really makes things tough on him. I found it sad after the poignant portrayal of David and Jonathan's friendship, to learn of Jonathan's death through a list of names of Saul's sons who died in battle.

I love that Scripture portrays David in such an unflinching way. David is the greatest hero in the history of Israel from its time as a nation. The temptation would be to portray only his many strengths and victories, but the text does not shy away from his flaws and mistakes. It tells the whole story. It shows David needing to change his mind, to repent, to amend his life, time and time again. The contrast between David's willingness to change and Saul's repeated failure to change, despite his epiphanies here and there, is striking. In 3DM language, I'd say that David chooses to learn from life, but Saul passes over his kairos moments as though they were speed bumps :) David stops, reflects, and asks God is doing in his life and how he can respond to it. Saul admits at times that he's made mistakes and needs to change direction (how many times does he say, "David, you're right, I should really stop trying to kill you!"), but he ends up continuing down the same path, and it leads to his destruction.

As a resource for those who might want to study the story of David, I would recommend Rober Alter's translation of the David story which includes his commentary as well. He shows how this narrative is a cohesive and literarily brilliant one, rather than simply a patchwork of information about David from various literary sources. While his approach is more scholarly than faith-based, Alter's argument that the narrative is cohesive meshes well with the Christian view of the Bible as the inspired word of God. 


Maps in a Digital Age:
I have found myself slowing down while reading because I want to have a sense of where in Israel these events are happening. I had been mostly turning to the maps in Reading God's Story, but many places aren't listed on those maps, so I would spend lots of time searching the entire map in vain. I finally hit upon a good solution for me - the Glo App on my iPhone. The Glo Bible is software that is packed with information about the Bible set up in an interactive way, so that you can explore maps, timelines, historical information about the Bible. The app has various levels of content that you can purchase, but there is a free version. If you have an iPhone, check it out. When I type in a location name, it immediately shows me the location on a satellite map; I can then click on the name to get more information about the location.
My Progress:
I am catching up on my reading and have decided to simply blog about whatever I'm reading instead of trying to catch up before starting to post again. If you're on track and I'm posting about stuff you read a couple weeks ago, my apologies!