friendly skripture study

That Second Coming?

2012-01-28T11:17:00.000-06:00

As a child, I was reading Matthew's versions of these sayings (Luke 12.35-40 and the like...) and the natural reading was~ 'Something really scary is going to drop out of the 20th (now 21st) Century sky, catch you just sitting there fooling around, and if you aren't doing right, at that moment, are you ever going to be sorry!' No telling when-- or what to expect. I'd say people have been reading such passages in that sense from at least the time of Constantine, probably earlier. Certainly we've got Paul (& also the writer of Revelation) predicting that Jesus would come back, wake the dead, judge the Powers of the world (at least) and vindicate his followers "soon". So that must have been an expectation of many early Christians, as well.

NT Wright makes better sense of the 1st Century context. Jesus comes to Jerusalem, to the Temple, as an embodiment of prophecies (explicit in Malachi 3.1->) that "the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to His Temple; the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of Hosts. (etc.)

The "Little Apocalypse" in Mark, when the disciples are asking "When will these things be?"-- and Jesus is near the Temple talking about Jerusalem being surrounded by armies, about "not one stone left on another"-- That isn't about "the end of the world" (though it will look like it to many Jews of the time); it's a slightly later prediction, based on what he finds there, of the destruction of the Temple. Which happened,

The return of 'the Master'? Wright says [about a similar parable]:

"The king who leaves his subjects tasks to perform, and who then returns to see how they have got on, has of course regularly been read as a code for Jesus going away and, in due course, returning. The servants are then Jesus' followers, who will be judged on their performance, in his absence.... [but]

"First, in most parables about a king and subjects, or a master and servants, the king or master stands for Israel's God and the subjects or servants for Israel and/or her leaders or prophets. This is so both in Jesus' teaching and in some Jewish parables...

"Second, the idea of a king who returns after a long absence fits exactly into the context of the return of YHWH to Zion.... I suggest... that the best way to read the master/servant parables is in terms of their immediate context in all three synoptics, that is, of Jesus' journey to Jerusalem.

"...although the idea of Jesus' return (the so-called 'second coming' has a place in Luke's writings, it is neither central nor major, and in any case occurs [there].. only in Acts. It looks more like a post-Easter innovation than a feature of Jesus' own teaching."

...

"It all depends on where, within the story, the hearer is supposed to be located. It has usually been assumed, quite gratuitously, that the story is told from the perspective of the beginning of the process, when the master is going away. But is far more likely, in view of the emphasis of the parable, that the 'ideal hearer' [of Jesus' time] is located near the end of the story, when the master is about to return.

...

"the right way to take this whole kaleidoscopic sequence of parables is as further stories about the imminent return of YHWH to Zion, and the awesome consequences which will ensue if Israel is not ready." [as in: judgment on the rulers of Jesus' day, destruction of the land, the city, the Temple for example...]

------

The quote in Jesus' trial, about "the Son of Man coming on the clouds of Heaven"?-- The reference in Daniel is clearly to a symbolic event: the end of those human-man world-kingdoms symbolized there by the four beasts, the beginning of rule by a humane being. An outcome still in the future, alas!

------

Are we, then, to expect a Second Coming, of the sort I imagined?

Fireworks. Wailing, gnashing of teeth. A sudden realization of "Ooops, I really shouldn't have been doing that a moment ago! Dammit, I'm on my way now-- When do I get my accordion?"

It's good to keep in mind that God has not gone away, that we should maintain an alert expectation that whatever we do may be On The Exam.

Or that, as Stephen Gaskin put it, "the operation of the Law of Karma is like a man taking a full swing at a golf ball in a small tiled bathroom." God is not vindictive, is not sneaking up to catch us out-- but any little character flaw will certainly need to be fixed, or it will make us sorry!

But if we begin alertly expecting the presence of God... not just omnipresence (which is always, logically speaking, with us) but the ongoing, recognized activity of God at work in and around us-- Who knows what further miracles this world will see in the coming future?

Hosea 4

2012-01-25T10:40:00.000-06:00

Hear the word of the Lord, oh people of Israel;
for the Lord has a controversy
with the inhabitants of the land.

There is no faithfulness or kindness,
and no knowledge of God in the land;
there is swearing, lying, killing,
stealing and committing adultery;
they break all bounds
and murder follows murder.

Therefore the land mourns
and all who dwell in it languish,
and also the beasts of the field
and the birds of the air;
even the fish of the sea
are taken away.

Yet no one contend
and let none accuse,
for with you is my contention, oh priest!

You shall stumble by day;
the prophet also shall stumble with you by night;
and I will destroy your mother.

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.
Because you have rejected knowledge,
I reject you from being a priest to me.

And since you have forgotten
the law of your God
I also will forget your children.

The more they increased, the more they sinned against me;
I will change their glory into shame.

They feed on the sins of my people;
they are greedy for their iniquity;
and it shall be: Like people, like priest.

I will punish them for their ways
and requite them for their deeds.
They shall eat, but not be satisfied;
they shall play the harlot, but not multiply
because they have forsaken the Lord
to cherish harlotry.

Wine and new wine
take away the understanding.
My people inquire of a thing of wood,
and their staff gives them oracles,
for a spirit of harlotry has led them astray
and they have left their God to play the harlot.

They sacrifice on the tops of the mountains
and make offerings upon the hills,
under oak, poplar, and terebinth,
because their shade is good.

Therefore your daughters play the harlot
and your brides commit adultery.
I will not punish your daughters
when they play the harlot,
nor your brides
when they commit adultery

for the men themselves go aside with harlots
and sacrifice with cult prostitutes;
and a people without understanding
shall come to ruin.

Though you play the harlot, oh Israel,
let not Judah become guilty.
Enter not into Gilgal,
nor go up to Bethel,
and swear not, "As the Lord lives."

Like a stubborn heifer,
Israel is stubborn;
can the Lord now feed them
like a lamb in a broad pasture?

Ephraim is joined to idols;
let him alone.
A band of drunkards, they give themselves to harlotry;
they love shame more than their glory.
A wind has wrapped them in its wings;
and they shall be ashamed because of their altars.

Luke 12.35-40

2012-01-24T14:04:00.000-06:00

"Be ready for action, with belts fastened and lamps alight. Be like men who wait for their master's return from a wedding party, ready to let him in the moment he arrives and knocks.

"Happy are those servants whom the Master finds on the alert when he comes. I tell you this: He will buckle on His belt, seat them at table, come and wait on them! Even if it is the middle of the night, or before dawn when He comes, happy if He finds them alert!

"And remember, if the householder had known what time the burglar was coming he would not have let his house be broken into. Hold yourself ready, then, because the Son of Man is coming at the time you least expect him."

Hosea 3

2012-01-23T09:01:00.000-06:00

And the Lord said to me, "Go again, love a woman who is beloved by her friend and is an adulteress; even as the Lord loves the people of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins."

So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a 1/2 homer of barley. And I said to her, "You must dwell as mine for many days; you shall not play the harlot, or belong to another man; so will I also be to you."

For the children of Israel shall dwell many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without ephod or teraphim.

Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God, and David their King; and they shall come trembling to the Lord and to His goodness in the end of days.

Luke 12.33-34

2012-01-20T12:25:00.000-06:00

"Sell your possessions and give alms.

"Provide for yourselves purses that do not wear out, and never-failing wealth in Heaven, where no thief can get near it, no moth destroy it.

"For where your wealth is, there will your heart be also."

Hosea 1.14->

2012-01-19T12:33:00.000-06:00

Therefore, behold! I will allure her
and bring her into the wilderness
and speak tenderly to her.

And there I will give her her vineyards
and make the Valley of Achor ["troubling"]
a door of hope.

And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth,
as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.

And in that day, says the Lord,
you will call Me "my husband",
and no longer will you call Me "my Baal[lord, master]"

For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth,
and they shall be mentioned by name no more.

And I will make for you, on that day
a covenant with the beasts of the field,
the birds of the air, and
the creeping things of the ground;

and I will abolish the bow, the sword,
and war from the land; I will make
you lie down in safety.

And I will betroth you to me forever;
I will betroth you to me in righteousness
and in justice, in steadfast love
and in mercy. I will betroth you to me

in faithfulness;
and you shall know the Lord.

And in that day, says the Lord,
I will answer the Heavens
and they shall answer the Earth.

And the Earth shall answer
the grain, the wine, the oil
and they shall answer Jezreel--
[Jezreel == "Whom God Soweth" in my version of this from The Jewish Publication Society, 1955]
and I will sow him for myself in the land.

And I will have pity on "Not Pitied" [== "those I have not pitied"]
and I will say to my people: "You are
my people," and they
shall recognize their God.

Luke 12.32

2012-01-18T11:18:00.002-06:00

"Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom."

Hosea 2.1-13

2012-01-16T19:50:00.000-06:00

Say to your brother, "My people," and to your sister, "She has obtained pity."

Plead with your mother, plead-- for she is not my wife,
and I am not her husband--
that she put away her harlotry from her face
and her adultery from between her breasts,

lest I strip her naked
and make her as in the day she was born,
and make her like a wilderness,
and set her like a parched land,
and slay her with thirst.

Upon her children also I will have no pity
because they are children of harlotry,
for their mother has played the harlot;
she who conceived them has acted shamefully.

For she said, "I will go after my lovers,
who give me my bread and my water,
my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink."

Therefore I will hedge up her way with thorns,
and I will build a wall against her,
so that she cannot find her paths.
She shall pursue her lovers
but not overtake them;
and she shall seek them,
but shall not find them.

Then she will say, "I will go
and return to my first husband,
for it was better with me then than now."

And she did not know
that it was I who gave her
the grain, the wine, and the oil,
who lavished on her silver
and gold, which they used for Baal.

Therefore I will take back
my grain in its time
and my wine in its season;
and I will take away my wool and my flax,
which were to cover her nakedness.

Now I will uncover her lewdness
in the sight of her lovers,
and no one shall rescue her out of my hand.

I will put an end to all her mirth,
her feasts, her new moons, her sabbaths,
and all her appointed feasts

and I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees,
of which she said, "These are my hire
which my lovers have given me."

I will make them a forest,
and the beasts of the field shall devour them.
I will punish her for the feast days of the Baals
when she burned incense to them
and decked herself with her ring and jewelry;

and went after her lovers,
and forgot me,

says the Lord.

Luke 12.22-31

2012-01-12T12:16:00.000-06:00

And he said to his disciples, "Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life: what you shall eat, not about your body, what you shall put on.

"For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing.

"Consider the ravens: They neither sow, nor reap; they have neither storehouse nor barn; and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds?

"And which of you, by being anxious, can add a cubit to his span of life? If then you are unable to do so small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest?

"Consider the lilies, how they grow: They neither toil nor spin. Yet, I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

"But if God so clothes the grass which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown in the oven, how much more will He clothe you, oh men of little faith?

"And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink; be not of anxious mind. For all the nations of the world seek these things; and your Father knows that you need them. Instead seek His kingdom; and these things shall be yours as well."

Hosea 1

2012-01-10T12:06:00.001-06:00

The word of the Lord that came to Hosea the son of Beeri, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahz, and Hezikiah, Kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Johash, King of Israel:

When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea: "Go, take to yourself a wife of harlotry and have children of harlotry, for the land commits great harlotry by forsaking the Lord.

So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim; and she conceived and bore him a son.

And the Lord said to him, "Call his name 'Jezreel'; for yet a little while, and I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel, and I will put an end to the house of Israel. And on that day I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel."

She conceived again and bore a daughter. And the Lord said to him, "Call her name 'Not Pitied', for I will no more have pity on the house of Israel, to forgive them at all. ["But I will have pity on the House of Judah, and I will deliver them by the Lord their God; I will not deliver them by bow, nor by sword, nor by war, nor by horses, nor by horsemen." This comes next, but in my Oxford Annotated is said to be "a later addition."]"

When she had weaned 'Not Pitied,' she conceived and bore a son. And the Lord said, "Call his name 'Not My People,' for you are not my people, and I am not your god."

Yet the number of the people of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which can neither be measured nor numbered; and in the place where it was said to them, "You are not my people," it shall be said to them, "Children of the Living God." And the people of Judah and the people of Israel shall be gathered together, and they shall appoint to themselves one head; and they shall take possession of the land, for great shall be the day of Jezreel."

Luke 12.15-21

2012-01-09T17:19:00.001-06:00

Then he said to the people, "Beware! Be on your guard against greed of any kind, for even when a man has more than enough, his wealth does not give him life."

And he told them this parable: "There was a rich man whose land yielded heavy crops. He debated with himself: 'What am I to do? I have not the space to store my produce?

"'This is what I will do,' said he. 'I will pull down my storehouses and build them bigger. I will collect in them all my corn and other goods, and then say to myself, "Man, you have plenty of good things laid by, enough for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink, enjoy yourself."' But God said to him, 'You fool, this very night you must surrender your life! You have made your money, but who will get it now?'"

Amos Ends with 9.11-15

2012-01-08T23:13:00.000-06:00

[It isn't clear how this part relates to everything previous; my Bible notes says: "This section, so affirmative in its emphasis, is generally considered a later addition." Certainly "In that day" is not talking about the same time period.]

"In that day I will raise up the booth of David that is fallen
and repair its breaches,
and raise up its ruins,
and rebuild it as in the days of old--

that they may possess the remnant of Edom
and all the nations that are called by my name,"
says the Lord, who does this.

"Behold, the days are coming," says the Lord
"when the plowman shall overtake the reaper
and the treader of grapes
him who sows the seed;

the mountains shall drip sweet wine,
and all the hills shall flow with it.
I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel;
and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine;
and they shall make gardens and eat their fruit.

I will plant them upon their land
and they shall never again be plucked up
out of the land which I have given them,"

says the Lord your God.

Luke 12.13-14

2012-01-05T10:48:00.000-06:00

One of the multitude said to him, "Teacher, bid my brother divide the inheritance with me."

But he said to him, "Man, who made me a judge or divider over you?"

Amos 9.1-10

2012-01-04T15:41:00.000-06:00

I saw the Lord standing beside the altar, and He said:
"Smite the capitals until the thresholds shake,
and shatter them on the heads of all the people;

and what are left of them I will slay with the sword;
not one of them shall flee away;
not one of them shall escape."

"Though they dig into Sheol,
from there shall my hand take them;
though they climb up to Heaven,
from there I will bring them down.

Though they hide themselves on the top of Carmel,
from there I will search out and take them;
and though they hide from my sight at the bottom of the sea,
there I will command the serpent;
and it shall bite them."

"And though they go into captivity before their enemies,
there I will command the sword
and it shall slay them.

I will set my eyes upon them
for evil, and not for good."

The Lord, God of Hosts,
He who touches the earth, and it melts,
and all who dwell in it mourn;
and all of it rises like the Nile
and sinks again, like the Nile of Egypt,

who builds his upper chambers in the Heavens
and founds his vault upon the Earth,
who calls for the waters of the sea
and pours them out upon the surface of the Earth--
The Lord is his name.

"Are you not like the Ethiopians to me,
oh People of Israel?" says the Lord.

Did I not bring up Israel from the land of Egypt,
and the Philistines from Caphtor
and the Syrians from Kir?

Behold, the eyes of the Lord God
are upon the sinful kingdom,
and I will destroy it from the surface of the ground;
except that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob,"
says the Lord.

"For lo, I will command,
and shake the house of Israel among all the nations
as one shakes with a sieve,
but no pebble shall fall upon the ground.

All the sinners of my people
shall die by the sword,
who say 'Evil shall not overtake
or meet us.' "

Luke 12.11-12

2012-01-01T14:44:00.000-06:00

"When you are brought before synagogues and state authorities,do not begin worrying about how you will conduct your defense or what you will say. For when the time comes, the Holy Spirit will instruct you what to say."

Amos 8.9 ->

2011-12-31T19:45:00.000-06:00

On that day, says the Lord God

I will make the sun go down at noon
and darken the earth in broad daylight.
I will turn your feasts into mourning
and all your songs into lamentation.

I will bring sackcloth upon all loins
and baldness on every head;
I will make it like the mourning for an only son
and the end of it like a bitter day.

Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord God
when I will send a famine on the land--
not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water
but of hearing the words of the Lord.

They shall wander from sea to sea
and from north to east;
they shall run to and fro, to seek the word of the Lord
but they shall not find it.

In that day the fair virgins and the young men
shall faint for thirst.

Those who swear by Ashimah of Samaria
and say, "As thy god lives, oh Dan,"
and "As the way of Beersheba lives,"

they shall fall, and never rise again.

Luke 12.10

2011-12-30T17:23:00.000-06:00

"Anyone who speaks a word against this son of Adam will be forgiven; but for he who slanders the Holy Spirit there will be no forgiveness."

Amos 8.1-8

2011-12-29T20:11:00.000-06:00

Thus the Lord God showed me: Behold, a basket of summer fruit.

And He said, "Amos, what do you see?"

And I said, "A basket of summer fruit."

Then the Lord said to me:

The end has come upon my people Israel;
I shall never again pass by them.

The songs of the Temple shall become wailings
in that day, says the Lord God.
The dead bodies shall be many;
in every place they shall be
cast out in silence.

Hear this, you who trample upon the needy
and bring the poor of the land to an end--

saying "When will the new moon be over
that we may sell grain;
and the Sabbath,
that we may offer wheat for sale?

"That we may make the ephah small
and the shekel great
and deal deceitfully with false balances?

"That we may buy the poor for silver
and the needy for a pair of sandals,
and sell the refuse of the wheat?"

The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob:
"Surely I will never forget any of their deeds!"

Shall not the land tremble on that account,
and everyone mourn who dwells in it,
and all of it rise like the Nile,
and be tossed about, and sink again
like the Nile of Egypt?

Luke 12.8-9

2011-12-28T19:41:00.000-06:00

"I tell you this: everyone who acknowledges me before men, this son of Adam will acknowledge before the angels of God. But he who disowns me before men will be disowned before the angels of God."

Amos 7.10->

2011-12-26T13:48:00.000-06:00

Then Amaziah, the Priest of Bethel sent to Jeroboam King of Israel, saying, "Amos has conspired against you in the midst of the house of Israel; the land is not able to bear all his words. For thus Amos has said, ''Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel must go into exile away from his land.' "

And Amaziah said to Amos, "O seer, go! Flee away to the land of Judah, and eat bread there, and prophecy there. But never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the King's sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom!"

Then Amos answered Amaziah, "I am no prophet, nor a prophet's son; but I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees. And the Lord took me from following the flock; and the Lord said to me, 'Go, prophesy to my people Israel!'

"Now therefore hear the word of the Lord:

You say, 'Do not prophesy against Israel
and do not preach against the house of Isaac,'

Therefore thus says the Lord:
'Your wife shall be a harlot in the city
and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword
and your land shall be parceled out by line.
You yourself shall die in an unclean land
and Israel shall surely go into exile away from its land.' "

Luke 10.6-7

2011-12-25T18:09:00.000-06:00

"Are not sparrows five for twopence? And yet not one of them is overlooked by God. More than that: Even the hairs of your head have all been counted!

"Have no fear; you are worth more than any number of sparrows."

Amos 7.1-9

2011-12-24T13:23:00.000-06:00

Thus the Lord God showed me:

Behold, He was forming locusts in the beginning of the shooting up of the latter growth;
and lo, it was the latter growth after the King's mowings.

When they had finished eating the grass of the land, I said:

"Oh Lord God! Forgive, I beseech Thee!
How can Jacob stand?
He is so small!"

The Lord repented, concerning this.
"It shall not be," said the Lord.

Thus the Lord God showed me:

Behold, the Lord God was calling for a judgment by fire;
and it devoured the great deep and was eating up the land.

Then I said:
"Oh Lord God! Cease, I beseech Thee!
How can Jacob stand?
He is so small!

The Lord repented concerning this.
"This also shall not be," said the Lord God.

He showed me:
Behold, the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line,
with a plumb line in his hand.

And the Lord said to me, "Amos, what do you see?"

And I said, "A plumb line."

Then the Lord said:

Behold, I am setting a plumb line
in the midst of my people Israel;
I will never again pass by them.

The high places of Isaac shall be made desolate
and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste
and I will rise against the house of Jereboam with the sword.

Luke 12.4-5

2011-12-23T11:31:00.000-06:00

"To you who are my friends, I say, "Do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing they can do. I will warn you whom to fear: Fear Him who, after He has killed, has authority to cast into Hell. Believe me, He is the one to respect!"

Amos 6.4-

2011-12-21T12:55:00.000-06:00

Woe to those who lie upon beds of ivory,
and stretch themselves upon their couches,
and eat lambs from the flock,
and calves from the midst of the stall;

who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp
and like David, invent for themselves instruments of music--
who drink wine in bowls
and anoint themselves with the finest oils,
but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph.

Therefore they shall now be the first of those to go into exile;
and the revelry of those who stretch themselves shall pass away.

The Lord God has sworn by Himself
(says the Lord, the God of Hosts):

I abhor the pride of Jacob,
and hate his strongholds;
I will deliver up the city
and all that is in it.

And if ten men remain in the city, they shall die. And when a man's kinsman, who makes a pyre for him, shall take him up to bring his bones out of the house, and says to someone in the innermost parts of the house, "Is there anyone still with you?"-- He shall be answered, "No!" and told: "Hush! We must not mention the name of the Lord!"

For behold, the Lord commands:
and the great House shall be smitten into fragments,
the little house into bits.

Do horses run upon rocks?
Does one plow the sea with oxen?
But you have turned justice into poison
and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood--

You who rejoice in worthless things,
who say, "Have we not by our own strength
taken Karnaim for ourselves?"

For "Behold, I shall raise up against you a nation,
oh house of Israel," says the Lord, the God of Hosts,
"And they shall oppress you from the entrance of Hamath
to the Brook of the Arabah."

Luke 12.1-3

2011-12-19T00:13:00.000-06:00

Meanwhile, when a crowd of many thousands had gathered, packed so close that they were treading on one another, he began to speak first to his disciples: "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees-- I mean their hypocrisy.

"There is nothing covered up that will not be uncovered, nothing hidden that will not be made known. You may take it, then, that everything you have said in the dark will be heard in broad daylight; and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be shouted from the house-tops."

Amos 6.1-3

2011-12-15T23:40:00.000-06:00

Woe to those who are at ease in Zion
and to those who feel secure in the mountain of Samaria,

the notable men of the first of the nations
to whom the descendants of Israel come--

Pass over to Calneh, and see;
and thence go to Hamath the Great;
then go down to Gath of the Philistines.

Are they better than these kingdoms?
Or is your territory greater than their territory?

Oh you, who put far away the evil day,
and bring near the seat of violence!

Luke 11.45 ->

2011-12-14T16:54:00.000-06:00

One of the lawyers answered him, "Teacher, in saying this you reproach us also."

And he said, "Woe to you lawyers also! For you load men with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers.

"Woe to you, for you build the tombs of the prophets whom your fathers killed. So you admit and consent to the deeds of your fathers; for they killed them, and you build their tombs.

"Therefore also the Wisdom of God said, 'I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they shall kill and persecute,' that the blood of all the prophets, shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation-- from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, it shall be required of this generation.

"Woe to you lawyers, for you have taken away the key to knowledge; you did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering."

As he went away from there, the scribes and Pharisees began to press him hard, and to provoke him to speak of many things, lying in wait for him, to catch at something he might say.

Amos 5.21->

2011-12-13T15:25:00.000-06:00

I hate, I despise your feasts,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.

Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and cereal offerings
I will not accept them
and the peace offerings of your fatted beasts
I will not look upon.

Take away from me the noise of your songs;
to the melody of your harps I will not listen--
But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Did you bring to Me sacrifices and offerings
the forty years in the wilderness, oh House of Israel?

You shall take up Sakkuth, your King,
and Kaiwan your star-god,
your images which you made for yourselves.
Therefore I will take you into exile
beyond Damascus,
says the Lord.
whose name is The God of Hosts.

Luke 11.42-44

2011-12-12T11:48:00.000-06:00

"But alas for you Pharisees!-- for you tithe mint and rue and every herb, but neglect justice and the Reign of God. You could have practiced those, without neglecting the other things.

"Alas for you! For you love the best seats in synagogues, and salutations in the market places.

"Woe! For you are like hidden graves; men walk over you [and become unclean] without knowing it."

Amos 5.16-20

2011-12-10T11:58:00.000-06:00

Therefore thus says the Lord, the God of Hosts, the Lord:

In all the squares there shall be wailing,
and in all the streets they shall say, "Alas! Alas!"

They shall call the farmers to mourning,
and to wailing, those who are skilled in lamentation,
and in all vineyards there shall be wailing,
for I will pass through the midst of you,
says the Lord.

Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord!
Why would you have the day of the Lord?
It is darkness, and not light!

As if a man fled from a lion
and a bear met him,
or went into a house and leaned
with his hand against a wall
and a snake bit him!

Is not the day of the Lord darkness,
and gloom with no brightness in it?

Luke 11.37-41

2011-12-09T12:46:00.000-06:00

When he had finished speaking, a Pharisee invited him to dinner.

He came in and sat down. The Pharisee noticed with surprise that he had not begun by washing before the meal.

But [Jesus] said to him, "You Pharisees! You clean the outside of the cup and plate; but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You fools!-- Did not He would made the outside make the inside too? But let what is in the cup be given in charity, and all is clean."

Amos 5.1-15

2011-12-08T09:53:00.000-06:00

Hear this word which I take up over you in lamentation, oh House of Israel:

Fallen, no more to rise
is the virgin Israel;
forsaken on her land
with none to raise her up.

For thus says the Lord God:

The city that went forth a thousand
shall have a hundred left,
and that which sent forth a hundred
shall have ten left
to the House of Irael.

For thus says the Lord to the House of Israel:

Seek me and live!
But do not seek Bethel
and do not enter into Gilgal
or cross over into Beersheba;
for Gilgal shall surely go into exile,
and Bethel shall come to nought.

Seek the Lord, and live,
lest He break out like fire in the House of Joseph
and it devour, with none to quench it for Bethel.

Oh! You who turn justice to wormwood
and cast down righteousness to the dirt!

He who made the Pleiades and Orion
and turns deep darkness into the morning,
and darkens the day into night,
who calls for the waters of the sea
and pours them out upon the surface of the Earth,
'The Lord' is His name,
who makes destruction flash forth against the strong,
so that destruction comes against the fortress!

They hate him who reproves in the gate
and they abhor him who speaks the truth.
Therefore because you trample upon the poor
and take from him exactions of wheat

you have built houses of hewn stone,
but you shall not dwell in them.
You have planted pleasant vineyards
but you shall not drink their wine.

For I know how many are your transgressions
and how great are your sins:
you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe
and turn aside the needy at the gate.

Therefore he who is prudent
will keep silent in such a time;
for it is an evil time.

Seek good, and not evil,
that you might live;
and so, the Lord, the God of Hosts, will be with you!
As you have said, hate evil and love good
and establish justice in the gate;
it may be that the Lord, the God of Hosts
will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph!

Luke 11.34-36

2011-12-04T21:03:00.000-06:00

"The lamp of your body is the eye. When your eyes are sound, you have light for your whole body; but when the eyes are bad, you are in darkness.

"See to it, then, that the light you have is not darkness. If you have light for your whole body with no trace of darkness, it will all be as bright as when a lamp flashes its rays upon you."

Amos 4

2011-12-02T11:19:00.000-06:00

Hear this word, you cows of Bashan
who are in the mountain of Samaria,

who oppress the poor, who crush the needy,
who say to their husbands, "Bring, that we may drink!"

The Lord God has sworn by his holiness
that behold, the days are coming upon you
when they shall take you away with hooks,
even the last of you with fishhooks.

And you shall go out through the breaches
every on straight before her
and you shall be cast forth into Harmon,
says the Lord.

Come to Bethel, and transgress;
to Gilgal, and multiply transgression.
Bring your sacrifices every morning,
your tithes every three days.

Offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving
of that which has been leavened
and proclaim freewill offerings,
publish them-- For so you love to do
Oh People of Israel, says the Lord God.

I gave you cleanness of teeth in all your cities
and lack of bread in all your places
yet you did not return to me, says the Lord God.

And I also withheld the rain from you
when there were yet three months to the harvest;
I would send rain upon one city
and send no rain upon another city.
One field would be rained upon
and the field on which it did not rain withered;

so two or three cities wandered to one city
to drink water, and were not satisfied--
Yet you did not return to me, says the Lord.

I smote you with blight and mildew;
I laid waste your gardens and your vineyards.
Your fig trees and your olive trees
the locust devoured,
yet you did not return to me, says the Lord.

I sent among you a pestilence
after the manner of Egypt;
I slew your young men with the sword;
I carried away your horses
and made the stench of your camp
go up into your nostrils.
Yet you did not return to me, says the Lord.

I overthrew some of you,
as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah
and you were as a brand plucked out of the burning
yet you did not return to me, says the Lord.

Therefore thus I will do to you, oh Israel;
because I will do this to you,
prepare to meet your God, oh Israel!

For lo, He who forms the mountains
and creates the wind,
and declares to man, what is his thought,
who makes the morning darkness
and treads on the heights of the Earth--
the Lord, the God of Hosts, is His name.

Luke 11.33

2011-12-01T15:15:00.000-06:00

"No one lights a lamp and puts it in a cellar, but rather on a lamp stand, so those who enter may see the light."

Amos 3.12->

2011-11-30T09:26:00.000-06:00

Thus says the Lord:

"As the shepherd rescues from the mouth of the lion
two legs, or a piece of an ear,
so shall the people of Israel who dwell in Samaria be rescued,
with the corner of a couch and part of a bed.

"Hear, and testify against the house of Jacob,"
says the Lord God, the God of hosts,

"that on the day I punish Israel for his transgressions
I will punish the altars of Bethel,
and the horns of the altar shall be cut off
and fall to the ground.

"I will smite the winter house
with the summer house
and the houses of ivory shall perish,
and the great houses shall come to an end,"
says the Lord.

Luke 11.29-32

2011-11-29T11:57:00.000-06:00

When the crowds kept increasing, he said, "This is an evil generation. It seeks a sign, but no sign shall be given to it, except the sign of Jonah. For as Jonah became a sign to the men of Nineveh, so will I be a sign to this generation.

"The Queen of the South will arise at the Judgement with the men of this generation, and condemn them. For she came from the ends of the Earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and behold, something greater than Solomon is here!

"The men of Nineveh will arise at the Judgement with this generation, and will condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah. And behold, something greater than Jonah is here!"

Amos 4.9-11

2011-11-28T10:02:00.000-06:00

Proclaim to the strongholds in Assyria
and to the strongholds in the land of Egypt,
say, "Assemble yourselves upon the mountains of Samaria,
and see the great tumults within her,
and the oppression in her midst.

"They do not know how to do right," says the Lord,
"those who store up violence and robbery in their strongholds."

Therefore, thus says the Lord God:
"An adversary shall surround the land,
and bring down your defenses from you,
and your strongholds shall be plundered."

Luke 11.27-28

2011-11-27T22:28:00.000-06:00

While he was speaking, a woman in the crowd called out, "Happy the womb that carried you and the breasts that suckled you!"

He rejoined, "No, happy are those who hear the word of God and keep it."

Amos 3.1-8

2011-11-25T11:06:00.000-06:00

Hear the word that the Lord has spoken against you, oh People of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up out of the land of Egypt:

"You only have I known
of all the families of the Earth;
therefore I will punish you
for all your iniquities.

Do two walk together
unless they have made and appointment?

Does a lion roar in the forest
when he has no prey?

Does a young lion cry out from his den
if he has taken nothing?

Does a bird fall in a snare
when there is no trap for it?

Does a snare spring up from the ground
if nothing has triggered it?

Is a trumpet blown in a city
and the people are not afraid?

Does evil befall a city
unless the Lord has done it?

Surely the Lord God does nothing
without revealing his secret
to his friends the prophets.

The lion has roared;
who will not fear?
The Lord God has spoken;
who can but prophesy?"

Luke 11.24-26

2011-11-23T13:30:00.000-06:00

"When an unclean spirit has gone out of a man, he passes through waterless places seeking rest; and finding none, he says, 'I will return to my house from which I came.' And when he comes, he finds it swept and put in order. Then he goes and invites in seven other spirits more evil than himself, and they enter and dwell there-- so that the last state of that man becomes worse than the first."

Amos 2.6->

2011-11-17T18:09:00.000-06:00

Thus says the Lord:

"For three transgressions of Israel, and for four,
I will not revoke the punishment;
because they sell the righteous for silver,
and the needy for a pair of shoes--

they that trample the head of the poor
into the dust of the earth,
and turn aside the way of the afflicted.

A man and his father go into the same maiden,
so that my holy name is profaned;
they lay themselves down upon every altar
upon garments taken in pledge;
and in the house of their God they drink
the wine of those who've been fined.

Yet I destroyed the Amorite before them,
whose height was like the height of the cedars,
and who was as strong as the oaks;
I destroyed his fruit above,
and his roots beneath.

Also I brought you up out of the land of Egypt,
and led you forty years in the wilderness
to possess the land of the Amorite.

And I raised up some of your sons for prophets,
and some of your young men for Nazirites.
Is it not so, oh people of Israel?" says the Lord.

"But you made the Nazirites drink wine,
and commanded the prophets,
saying 'You shall not prophesy.'

Behold, I will press you down in your place,
as a cart full of sheaves presses down.

Flight shall perish from the swift,
and the strong shall not regain his strength,
nor shall the mighty save his life;
he who handles the bow shall not stand,
and he who is swift of foot shall not save himself,
nor shall he who rides the horse save his life;
and he who is stout of heart among the mighty
shall flee away naked in that day," says the Lord.

Luke 11.23

2011-11-14T11:18:00.000-06:00

"He who is not with me is against me;
and he who does not gather with me scatters."

Amos 2.4-5

2011-11-12T15:12:00.000-06:00

Thus says the Lord:

"For three transgressions of Judah,
and for four, I will not revoke the punishment;
because they have rejected the law of the Lord
and have not kept his statutes;
but their lies have led them astray
(after which their fathers walked)

so I will send a fire upon Judah,
and it shall devour
the strongholds of Jerusalem."

Luke 11.14-22

2011-11-10T14:44:00.000-06:00

Now he was casting out a demon that was dumb; when the demon had gone out, the dumb man spoke, and the people marveled.

But some of them said, "He casts out demons by Beelzebul, the prince of demons;" while others, to test him, sought from him a sign from Heaven.

But he, knowing their thoughts, said to them, "Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and a divided household falls. And if Satan also is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand?

"For you say that I cast out demons by Beelzebul. And if I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore they shall be your judges.

"But if it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.

"When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own palace, his goods are in peace; but when one stronger than he assails him and overcomes him, he takes away his armor in which he trusted, and divides his spoil."

Amos 1.6-2.3

2011-11-09T11:07:00.000-06:00

Thus says the Lord:

For three transgressions of Gaza,
and for four, I will not revoke the punishment;
because they carried into exile
a whole people, to deliver them up to Edom.

So I will set a fire upon the wall of Gaza,
and it shall devour their strongholds.
I will cut off the inhabitants from Ashdod
and him that holds the scepter from Ashkelon;
I will turn my hand against Ekron;
and the remnant of the Philistines
shall perish," says the Lord God.

Thus says the Lord:

"For three transgressions of Tyre
and for four, I will not revoke the punishment;
because they delivered up a whole people to Edom
and did not remember the covenant of brotherhood.

So I will send a fire upon the wall of Tyre
and it shall devour her strongholds."

Thus says the Lord:

"For three transgressions of Edom,
and for four, I will not revoke the punishment;
because he pursued his brother with the sword
and cast off all pity
and his anger tore perpetually
and he kept his wrath forever.

So I will send a fire upon Teman
and it shall devour the strongholds of Bozrah."

Thus says the Lord:

"For three transgressions of the Ammonites
and for four, I will not revoke the punishment;
because they have ripped up women with child in Gilead
that they might enlarge their border.

So I will kindle a fire in the wall of Rabbah,
and it shall devour her strongholds,
with shouting in the day of battle,
with a tempest in the day of the whirlwind;
and their king shall go into exile,
he and his princes together," says the Lord.

Thus says the Lord,

"For three transgressions of Moab,
and for four, I will not revoke the punishment;
because he burned to lime
the bones of the King of Edom.

So I will send a fire upon Moab,
and it shall devour the strongholds of Kerioth,
and Moab shall die amid uproar,
amid shouting and the sound of the trumpet;
I will cut off the ruler from its midst
and will slay all its princes with him," says the Lord.

Luke 11.5-13

2011-11-06T00:07:00.000-05:00

He added, "Suppose one of you has a friend who comes to him in the middle of the night and says, 'My friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine on a journey has turned up at my house at my house, and I have nothing to offer him'; and he replies from inside, 'Do not bother me; the door is shut for the night. My children and I have gone to bed; and I cannot get up and give you what you want.' I tell you that even if he will not provide for him out of friendship, the very shamelessness of the request will make him get up and give all [his friend] needs. And so I say to you: Ask, and you will receive; seek, and you will find; knock and the door will be opened. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.

"Is there a father among you who will offer his son a snake when he asks for fish, or a scorpion when he asks for an egg? If you, then, bad as you are, know how to give your children what is good for them, how much more will the heavenly Father give good things to those who ask Him!"

Amos 1-1.5

2011-11-04T09:21:00.000-05:00

The words of Amos-- who was among the shepherds of Tekoa-- which he saw, concerning Israel in the days of Uzziah King of Judah and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash King of Israel, two years before the earthquake.

And he said:

The Lord roars from Zion
and utters His voice from Jerusalem;
the pastures of the shepherds mourn
and the top of Carmel withers.

Thus says the Lord:
"For three trangressions of Damascus,
and for four, I will not revoke the punishment,
because they have threshed Gilead
with threshing sledges of iron.

"So I will send a fire upon the House of Hazael;
and it shall devour the strongholds of Ben-hadad.
I will break the bar of Damascus
and cut off the inhabitants from the Valley of Aven
and him who holds the scepter from Beth-eden;
and the people of Syria shall go into exile," says the Lord.

Luke 11.1-4

2011-11-02T10:48:00.000-05:00

Once, in a certain place, Jesus was at prayer.

When he ceased, one of his disciples said, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples."

He answered, "When you pray, say:

Father, thy Name be hallowed--
Thy kingdom come.

Give us each day's bread
and forgive our sins--
for we too forgive all who have done us wrong--
and do not bring us to the test.

Jonah 4

2011-10-31T11:52:00.000-05:00

But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry.

And he prayed to the Lord, and said, "I pray Thee, Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I know that Thou art a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, repenting of evil.

"Therefore, oh Lord, take my life from me, I beseech Thee, for it is better for me to die than to live!"

And the Lord said, "Do you do well to be angry?"

Then Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city, and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, til he should see what would become of the city.

And the Lord God appointed a plant, and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade ove his head, to save him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant.

But when dawn came the next day, God appointed a worm which attacked the plant, so that it whithered. When the sun rose, God appointed a sultry east wind, and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah so that he was faint; and he asked that he die; and he said, "It is better for me to die than to live."

But God said to Jonah, "Do you do well to be angry for the plant?"

And he said, "I do well to be angry, angry enough to die!"

And the Lord said, "You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night, and perished in a night.

"And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?"

Luke 10.38->

2011-10-30T23:14:00.000-05:00

While they were on their way, Jesus came to a village where a woman named Martha made him welcome in her home. She had a sister, Mary, who seated herself at the Lord's feet and stayed there listening to his words.

Now Martha was distracted by her many tasks, so she came to him and said, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to get on with the work by myself? Tell her to come and lend me a hand."

But the Lord answered, "Martha, Martha, you are fretting about so many things, but one thing is necessary. The part that Mary has chosen is best; and it shall not be taken away from her."

Jonah 3

2011-10-29T10:43:00.000-05:00

Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you."

So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days journey in breadth. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's journey.

And he cried, "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!"

And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them.

Then tidings reached the King of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, and covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.

And he made proclamation and published throughout Nineveh, "By decree of the King and his nobles; let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed, or drink water; but let mand and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them cry mightily to God. Yea, let every one turn from his evil way and from the violence which is in his hands. Who knows, God may yet repent and turn from His fierce anger, so that we perish not!"

When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God repented of the evil which He had said He would do to them; and he did not do it.

Luke 10.25-37

2011-10-28T12:15:00.000-05:00

But [the lawyer] wanted to vindicate himself. So he said to Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"

Jesus replied, "A man was on his way from Jerusalem down to Jericho when he fell in with robbers who stripped him, beat him, and went off leaving him half dead.

"It so happened that a priest was going by on the same road; but when he saw him, he went by on the other side. So, too, a Levite came to the place, and when he saw him, went past on the other side.

"But a Samaritan who was making the journey came upon him, and when he saw him, was moved to pity. He went up and bandaged his wounds, bathing them with oil and wine. Then he lifted him on his own beast, brought him to an inn, and looked after him there. Next day, he produced two silver pieces and gave them to the innkeeper, and said, 'Look after him; and if you spend any more, I will repay you on my way back.'

"Which of those three do you think was neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?"

He answered, "The one who showed him kindness."

Jesus said, "Go and do as he did."

"The Sign of Jonah"

2011-10-27T10:17:00.000-05:00

About that previous passage. Jesus (or his early followers) knew this story and associated it with "the belly of Sheol" and

"the land
whose bars closed upon me forever;
[yet Thou didst bring up my life from the Pit,]

that is, with death.

Jesus is quoted as having said ~These people are asking me for a sign, but the only sign they're going to get is "the sign of Jonah."

If this "sign" is 'spending time in death, then coming back,' it's an odd sort of evidence for Jesus to claim for his contemporary detractors. Odd, for one thing, because it arrives too late to prevent his execution, and also because it seems to be only his followers, those Jews who already love him, who see him as a resurrected person.

So I've felt for a long time that the real "sign of Jonah", to Jesus, would have been the fact that Nineveh, that most wicked of Wicked Cities, repents in this story.

For Jesus and his contemporaries, that would have symbolized the repentance of the Romans, in particular-- and of course, also those of his followers who'd been considered most sinful under the proto-Judaism of the time.

But here we have also a strong association with death, both literally and as a symbol.

Why is Jonah dead 'for three days and three nights'? Because he's been evading a divine call to give his message to the wicked foreigners: Change your ways or be destroyed. Jonah prefers to have God follow the second option; it's just what they deserve; while if they repent he knows God really will forgive them.

Look at how this resonates with the Jews of Jesus' day. Their nation has come to be politically dominated by pagans, who are systematically looting, oppressing, and corrupting their country. While their leaders are adopting Roman ways (much to the detriment of their own poor classes) there is also a widespread feeling that "God will get them for that, and serves them right." And that, people hope, will be their "return from exile," the restoration of Israel to its rightful relation with God.

And while Jesus is serving as a prophet specifically to his own people, he's been pointing out stories in which prophets found a sympathetic hearing among the wicked foreigners. And this has aroused strong hostility even in his own home village!

His nation (like any other nation!) wants to enjoy a uniquely blessed relation to God-- like Jacob before he repented and was renamed 'Israel', they want to steal their brothers' birthright and keep it for themselves. As the followers of a great many religions are tempted to do, to comfortably assume that "We've been given the straight truth, the outsiders weren't; isn't that nice!?" But there's this persistent refrain in their tradition about obligations coming with a blessed status; and they don't (like followers of any other religion) enjoy hearing that nearly as much. Friends (Quakers) come to mind in this connection.

And so this symbol of "death" also symbolizes that state, of being content to be "religious" in isolation. "Those people just wouldn't be suited to our way of worship" (as I've heard several Quakers say, in discussions of "outreach.")

The result of this kind of attitude, for any religion, is death. The religion becomes an ingrown sect, loses much of the spiritual value it used to offer its own members. (Not to all its members-- but to those content with that spiritual condition.)

Jonah 2

2011-10-25T21:22:00.000-05:00

Then Joan prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, saying:

I called to the Lord, out of my distress,
and He answered me.
Out of the belly of Sheol I cried,
and Thou didst hear my voice.

For Thou didst cast me into the deep,
into the heart of the seas;
and the flood was round about me;
all Thy waves and billow passed over me.

Then I said, "I am cast out from Thy presence;
how shall I again look upon Thy holy Temple?"

The waters closed in over me;
the deep was round about me.
Weeds were wrapped about my head
at the roots of the mountains.

I went down to the land
whose bars closed upon me forever;
yet Thou didst bring up my life from the Pit,
oh Lord my God.

When my soul fainted within me,
I remembered the Lord
and my prayer came to Thee,
into Thy holy Temple.

Those who pay regard to vain idols
forsake their true loyalty.
But I with the voice of thanksgiving
will sacrifice to Thee.

What I have vowed I will pay;
deliverance belongs to the Lord!
---

And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the land.

Luke 10.23-24

2011-10-24T14:14:00.000-05:00

On one occasion a lawyer came forward to put this test question to him: "Master, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

Jesus said, "What is written in the Law? What's your reading of it?"

He replied, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind-- and your neighbor as yourself."

"That is the right answer," Jesus said. "Do that and you will live."

Jonah 1.4->

2011-10-18T17:23:00.001-05:00

But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship threatened to break up.

Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried to his god; and they threw the wares that were on the ship into the sea, to lighten it for them.

But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had lain down, and was fast asleep.

So the captain came and said to him, "What do you mean, you sleeper? Arise, call upon your god! Perhaps the god will give a thought to us, that we do not perish!"

And they said to one another, "Come, let us cast lots, that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us!" So they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah. Then they said to him, "Tell us, on whose account has this evil come upon us? What is your occupation? And whence do you come? What is your country? And of what people are you?"

And he said to them, "I am a Hebrew; and I fear the Lord, the God of Heaven, who made the sea and the dry land."

Then the men were exceedingly afraid, and said to him, "What is it that you have done?" For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them. Then they said to him, "What shall we do with you, that the sea may quiet down for us?" For the sea grew more and more tempestuous.

He said to them, "Take me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you; for I know it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you."

Nevertheless the men rowed hard to bring the ship back to land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more tempestuous against them. Therefore they cried to the Lord, "We beseech you, oh Lord; let us not perish for this man's life; and lay not on us innocent blood, for Thou, oh Lord, has done as it pleased Thee." So they took up Jonah and threw him into the sea; and the sea ceased its raging. Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord, and made vows.

And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah; and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

Luke 10.23-24

2011-10-17T13:40:00.000-05:00

Turning to his disciples in private, he said, "Happy the eyes that see what you are seeing! I tell you, many prophets and kings wished to see what you now see, yet never saw it-- to hear what you hear, but never heard it."

Jonah 1-1.3

2011-10-16T09:39:00.000-05:00

Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, "Arise, and go to Ninevah, that great city, and cry against it-- for their wickedness has come up before Me."

But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid his fare, and went on board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.

Luke 10.22

2011-10-15T09:48:00.000-05:00

Then turning to his disciples he said, "Everything is entrusted to me by my Father; and no one knows who the Son is but the Father, or who the Father is but the Son. (And those to whom the Son may reveal him.)"

2 Kings 19.8->

2011-10-13T15:13:00.001-05:00

The Rabshakeh returned, and found the King of Assyria fighting against Libnah; for he heard that the King had left Lachish.

And when the King heard concerning Tirhakah, King of Ethiopia, "Behold, he has set out to fight against you," he sent messengers again to Hezekiah, saying, "Thus shall you speak to Hezekiah King of Judah: 'Do not let your god on whom you rely deceive you by promising that Jerusalem will not be given into the hand of the King of Assyria.

"'Behold, you have heard what the Kings of Assyria have done to all lands, destroying them utterly. And shall you be delivered? Have gods of other nations delivered them?-- the nations which my fathers destroyed, Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and the people of Eden who were in Telassar? Where is the King of Hamath, the King of Arpad, the king of the city of Sepharvaim, the King of Hena, or the King of Ivvah?'"

Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers, and read it; and Hezekiah went up to the House of the Lord, and spread it before the Lord. And Hezekiah prayed before the Lord, and said, "Oh Lord the God of Israel, who art enthroned above the cherubim, thou art the God, Thou alone, of all the kingdoms of the Earth; Thou has made Heaven and Earth.

"Incline Thy ear, oh Lord, and hear; open Thy eyes, oh Lord, and see. And hear the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to mock the Living God.

"Of a truth, oh Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste other nations and their lands, and have cast their gods into the fire; for they were no gods, but the work of men's hands-- wood and stone-- and therefore they were destroyed.

"So now, oh Lord, save us-- I beseech Thee-- from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the Earth may know that Thou, oh Lord, art God alone."

Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying, "Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Your prayer to me about Sennacherib King of Assyria I have heard. This is the word that the Lord has spoken concerning him:

"She despises you; she scorns you--
the virgin daughter of Zion;
she wags her head behind you--
the daughter of Jerusalem!

Whom have you mocked and reviled?
Against Whom have you raised your voice
and haughtily lifted your eyes?
Against the Holy One of Israel?

By your messengers you have mocked the Lord,
and you have said, 'With my many chariots
I have gone up the heights of the mountains
to the far reaches of Lebanon.

I felled its tallest cedars,
its choicest cypresses;
I entered its farthest retreat,
its densest forest.

I dug wells
and drank foreign waters
and I dried up with the sole of my foot
all the streams of Egypt.'

Have you not heard that I determined it long ago?
I planned from days of old, what now I bring to pass:

that you should turn fortified cities into heaps of ruins
while their inhabitants, shorn of strength
are dismayed and confounded

and have become like plants of the field
and like tender grass--
like grass on the housetops,
blighted before it is grown.

But I know your sitting down
and your going out and coming in,
and your raging against me.

Because you have raged against me
and your arrogance has come into my ears
I will put my hook in your nose
and my bit in your mouth,

and I will turn you back
on the way by which you have come.

"'And this shall be the sign for you: This year you shall eat what grows of itself; and in the second year, what springs of the same. Then in the third year, sow and reap; and plant vineyards, and eat their fruit. And the surviving remnant of the house of Judah shall again take root downward, and bear fruit upward-- for out of Jerusalem shall go forth a remnant, and out of Mt Zion a band of survivors. The zeal of the Lord will do this!

"'Therefore thus says the Lord concerning the King of Assyria: He shall not come into this city or shoot an arrow there, or come before it with a shield or cast up a siege mound against it. By the way that he came, by the same he shall return; and he shall not come into this city, says the Lord. For I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David.'"

And that night the angel of the Lord went forth, and slew a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians; and when men arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies!

Then Sennacherib King of Assyria departed, and went home, and dwelt at Ninevah. And as he was worshiping in the House of Nisroch his god, Adram-melech and Sharezer, his sons, slew him with the sword, and escaped into the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son reigned in his stead.

Prophets, Next...

2011-10-11T13:31:00.000-05:00

I do intend to finish the story we left off, halfway through, with 2 Kings 18 etc...

But I see we've already reached Isaiah, putting us out of strict chronological order.

That order is a bit elusive, and I'm not a competent authority on it. Trying to google this, I get chronologies by Swedenborg and a group of atheists... which are actually in fair agreement so far as they overlap.

I am proposing (& open to correction) that after we finish Isaiah's first appearance here, we go on in this order:

Jonah (fictitious but quite relevant to prophecy in general)
Amos
Hosea
Joel
Obadiah
Micah
Isaiah
Nahum
Habakkuk
Zephaniah
Jeremiah
Ezekiel
Daniel (fictitious, later, but set about this time)
Isaiah (2nd etc)
Haggai
Zechariah
Malachi.

Suggested changes?

Luke 10.21

2011-10-10T17:08:00.001-05:00

At that moment, Jesus exulted in the Spirit and said, "I thank Thee, Father, Lord of Heaven and Earth, for hiding these things from the learned and wise, and revealing them to the simple. Yes, Father, such was Thy choice."

Luke 10.17-20

2011-10-07T11:32:00.000-05:00

The seventy-two came back jubilant. "In your name, Lord," they said, "even the devils submit to us."

He replied, "I watched how Satan fell, like lightning out of the sky.

"And now you see that I have given you the power to tread underfoot snakes and scorpions and all the forces of the Enemy; and nothing will ever harm you.

"None the less, what you should rejoice over is not that the spirits submit to you, but that God has enlisted you for His kingdom." [I have changed the wording slightly, from "your names are enrolled in Heaven"-- to de-emphasize the pie-in-sky interpretation & bring out something closer to what I think was meant...]

2 Kings 18+

2011-10-06T15:32:00.000-05:00

[We get lots & lots of ~not doing right by the Lord, which mostly seems to mean 'letting people ignore the monopoly on religion that the Jerusalem priesthood would like to impose'-- but also some actual bad stuff, like alleged child sacrifice. "Yet the Lord warned Israel and Judah by every prophet and every seer, saying 'Turn from your evil ways and keep my commandments...'" We get lots of regime change in Israel, one murderous conspirator after another.

Assyria becomes powerful and conquers Israel-- and puts foreigners in charge of Israel's cities. "At the beginning of their dwelling there, they did not fear the Lord; therefore the Lord sent lions among them, which killed some of them... Then the King of Assyria commanded, 'Send there one of the priests whom you carried away thence; and let him go and dwell there, and teach them the law of the god of the land.'" (This later becomes the rationale for the hostility between Judeans and Samaritans, although the Samaritans themselves claimed to be descended mainly from Israelites who had opposed the Judean monarchy from the beginning.) Hezekiah becomes King of Judah and starts 'doing what was right in the eyes of the Lord': closing down high places, cutting down the Asherah, breaking a serpent statue said to have come down from Moses... ]

2 Kings 18.9:
And the Lord was with him; wherever he went forth, he prospered. He rebelled against the King of Assyria, and would not serve him. He smote the Philistines as far as Gaza and its territory, from watchtower to fortified city.

In the fourth year of King Hezekiah... Shalmaneser King of Assyria came up against Samaria and besieged it; and at the end of three years he took it. In the sixth year of Hezekiah... Samaria was taken. The King of Israel carried the Israelites away to Assyria, and put them in Halah, and on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes, because they did not obey the voice of the Lord their God but transgressed His covenant, even all that Moses the servant of the Lord commanded; they neither listened nor obeyed. ["We told you so!"]

In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib King of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them.

And Hezekiah King of Judah sent to the King of Assyria at Lachish, saying, "I have done wrong; withdraw from me; whatever you impose on me I will bear."

And the King of Assyria required of Hezikiah 300 talents of silver, and 30 talents of gold.

And Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the House of the Lord, and in the treasuries of the King's House. At that time Hezekiah stripped the gold from the doors of the Temple, and from the doorposts which Hezekiah King of Judah had overlaid, and gave it to the King of Assyria.

And the King of Assyria sent [the Rabshakeh & two other officials] with a great army to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem... And when they called for the King, there came out to them Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebnah the secretary, and Jah the son of Asaph, the recorder.

And the Rabshakeh said to them, "Say to Hezekiah, 'Thus says the Great King, the King of Assyria: On what do you rest this confidence of yours? Do you think that mere words are strategy for war? On whom do you now rely, that you have rebelled against me? Behold, you are relying on Egypt, that broken reed of a staff, which will pierce the hand of any man who leans on it. Such is Pharaoh King of Egypt to all who rely on him.

"'But if you say to me, "We reply on the Lord our God"-- Is it not he whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed, saying to Judah and Jerusalem: "You shall worship before this altar in Jerusalem."?

"'Come now, make a wager with my master the King of Assyria: I will give you 2000 horses, if you are able on your part to set riders upon them! How, then, can you repulse a single captain among the least of my master's servants, when you rely on Egypt for chariots and for horsemen?

"'Moreover, is it without the Lord that I have come up against this place to destroy it? The Lord said to me, Go up against this land, and destroy it.'"

Then Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, and Shebnah, and Joah, said to the Rabshakeh, "Pray, speak to your servants in the Aramaic language, for we understand it. Do not speak to us in the language of Judah within the hearing of the people who are upon the wall."

But the Rabshakeh said to them, "Has my master sent me to speak these words to your master and to you, and not to the men sitting on the wall, who are doomed with you to eat their own dung and to drink their own urine?

Then the Rabshakeh stood and called out in a loud voice in the language of Judah, "Hear the word of the Great King, the King of Assyria! Thus says the King, 'Do not let Hezekiah decieve you, for he will not be able to deliver you out of my hand. Do not let Hezekiah make you to rely on the Lord by saying, The Lord will surely deliver us, and this city will not be given into the hand King of Assyria. Do not listen to Hezekiah; for thus says the King of Assyria: 'Make your peace with me, and come out to me; then every one of you will eat of his own vine, and every one of his own fig tree; and every one of you will drink the water of his own cistern, until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of grain and wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive trees and honey-- that you may live, and not die. And do not listen to Hezekiah when he misleads you by saying, The Lord will deliver us. Has any of the gods of the nations ever delivered his land out of the hand of the King of Assyria? Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah? Have they delivered Samaria out of my hand? Who among all the gods of the nations have delivered their countries out of my hand, that the Lord should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?'"

But the people were silent, and answered him not a word, for the King's command was, "Do not answer him."

Then Eliakim the son of Hilkia, who was over the household, and Shebna the secretary, and Joah the son of Asaph, the recorder, came to Hezekiah with their clothes rent, and told him the words of the Rabshakeh.

When King Hezekiah heard it, he rent his clothes, and covered himself with sackcloth, and went into the house of the Lord. And he sent Eliakim, who was over the household, and Shebna the secretary, and the senior priests, covered with sackcloth, to the prophet Isaiah the son of Amoz.

They said to him, "Thus says Hezekiah, This day is a day of distress, of rebuke, and of disgrace. Children have come to the birth, and there is no strength to bring them forth!

"It may be that the Lord your God heard all the words of the Rabshakeh, who his master the King of Assyria has sent to mock the living God, and will rebuke the words which the Lord your God has heard; therefore, lift up your prayer for the remnant that is left."

Isaiah said to them, "Say to your master, 'Thus says the Lord: Do not be afraid o the words that you have heard, with which the servants of the King of Assyria have reviled me. Behold, I will put a spirit in him, so that he shall hear a rumor and return to his own land; and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land."

Luke 10.0-16

2011-10-05T14:44:00.000-05:00

After this the Lord appointed a further 72 and sent them on ahead in pairs to every town and place he was going to visit himself. He said to them: "The crop is heavy, but laborers are scarce; you must therefore beg the owner to send laborers to harvest his crop. Be on your way!

"And look, I am sending you as lambs among wolves. Carry no purse nor pack, and travel barefoot. Exchange no greetings on the road.

"When you go into a house, let your first words be, 'Peace to this house.' If there is a man of peace there, your peace will rest upon him; if not, it will return and rest upon you. Stay in that one house, sharing their food and drink-- for the worker earns his pay. Do not move from house to house.

"When you come into a town and they make you welcome, eat the food provided for you; heal the sick there, and say, 'The Kingdom of God has come close to you.' When you enter a town and they do not make you welcome, go out into its streets and say, 'The very dust of your town that clings to our feet we wipe off to your shame. Only take note of this: the kingdom of God has come close.' I tell you, it will be more bearable for Sodom on the great Day than for that town.

"Alas for you , Chorazin! Alas for you, Bethsaida! If the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. So it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon at the Judgement than for you. And as for you, Capernaum, will you be exhalted to the skies? No, brought down into the depths!

"Whoever listens to you listens to me; whoever rejects you rejects me. And whoever rejects me, rejects the One who sent me."

2 Kings 13.14->

2011-10-04T15:12:00.000-05:00

Now when ELisha had fallen sick with the illness of which he was to die, Joash King of Israel went down to him and wept before him, crying, "My father, my father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!"

And Elisha said to him, "Take a bow and arrows;" so he took a bow and arrows.

Then he said to the King of Israel, "Draw the bow," and he drew it.

And Elisha laid his hands upon the King's hands. And he said, "Open the window eastward;" and he opened it.

Then Elisha said, "Shoot!" and he shot.

And he said, "The Lord's arrow of victory, the arrow of victory over Syria. For you shall fight the Syrians in Aphek until you have made an end of them." And he said, "Take the arrows;" and he took them. And he said to the King of Israel, "Strike the ground with them."

And he struck three times, and stopped.

Then the man of God was angry with him, and said, "You should have struck five or six times; then you would have struck down Syria and made an end of it; but now you will strike down Syria only three times."

So Elisha died, and they buried him.

Now bands of Moabites used to invade the land in the spring of the year. And as a man was being buried, lo, a marauding band was seen-- So the man was cast into the grave of Elisha; and as soon as the man touched the bones of Elisha, he revived and stood on his feet.

Now Hazael King of Syria oppressed Israel all the days of Jehoahaz. But the Lord was gracious to them and had compassion on them; and He turned toward them, because of his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and would not destroy them; nor has He cast them from His presence until now.

When Hazael King of Syrian died, Ben-hadad his son became King in his stead.

Then Jehoash the son of Jehoahaz took again from Ben-hadad the son of Hazael the cities which he had taken from Jehoahaz his father in war.

Three times Joash defeated him, and recovered the cities of Israel.

Luke 9.57->

2011-10-03T10:05:00.000-05:00

As they were going along the road a man said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go."

Jesus answered, "Foxes have their holes, the birds their roosts; but this son of Adam has no place to lay his head."

To another he said, "Follow me," but the man replied, "Let me go and bury my father first." Jesus said, "Leave the dead to bury their dead; you must go and announce the kingdom of God."

Yet another said, "I will follow you, sir; but first let me say goodbye to my people at home."

To him Jesus said, "No one who sets his hand to the plough and then keeps looking back is fit for the kingdom of God."

2 Kings 8.25-[etc.]

2011-10-02T10:55:00.000-05:00

[Summary: Ahaziah King of Judah and Joram the King of Israel are both descendants (Ahaziah through his mother) of Omri, Ahab's father. Both went to war together against Hazael King of Syria.]

And King Joram returned to be healed in Jezreel of the wounds which the Syrians had given him... and Ahaziah... went down to see [him]... because he was sick.

Then Elisha the prophet called one of the sons of the prophets and said to him, "Gird up your loins, and take this flask of oil in your hand, and go to Ramoth-gilead. And when you arrive, look there for Jehu the son of Jehoshaphat, son of Nimshi; and go in and bid him rise from among his fellows, and lead him to an inner chamber.

"Then take the flask of oil, and pour it on his head, and say, 'Thus says the Lord, I anoint you King over Israel.' Then open the door and flee; do not tarry!"

So the young man, the prophet, went to Ramoth-gilead. And when he came, behold, the commanders of the army were in council; and he said, "I have an errand to you, O commander."

And Jehu said, "To which of us all?"

And he said, "To you, O commander."

So he arose, and went into the house; and the young man poured oil on his head, saying, "Thus says the Lord the God of Israel, I anoint you King over the people of the Lord, over Israel. And you shall strike down the house of Ahab your master, that I may avenge on Jezebel the blood of my servants the prophets, and the blood of all the servants of the Lord. For the whole house of Ahab shall perish; and I will cut off from Ahab every male, bond or free, In Israel. And I will make the house of Ahab like the house of Jeoboam the son of Nebat, and like the house of Baasha the son of Ahijah. And the dogs shall eat Jezebel in the teritory of Jezreel; and none shall bury her."

Then he opened the door, and fled.

When Jehu came out to the servants of his master, they said to him, "Is all well? Why did this mad fellow come to you?"

And he said, "You know this mad fellow, and his talk."

And they said, "That is not true; tell us now."

And he said, "Thus and so he spoke to me, saying 'Thus says the Lord, I anoint you King over Israel.'"

Then in haste every man of them took his garment, and put it under him on the bare steps; and they blew the trumpet, and proclaimed, "Jehu is King!"

Thus Jehu the son of Jehoshaphat the son of Nimshi conspired against Joram. [recap]... So Jehu said, "If this is your mind, then let no one slip out of the city to go and tell the news in Jezreel." Then Jehu mounted his chariot, and went to Jezreel, for Joram lay there. And Ahaziah King of Judah had come down to visit Joram.

Now the watchman was standing on the tower in Jezreel, and he spied the company of Jehu as he came, and said, "I see a company."

And Joram said, "Take a horseman, and send to meet them, and let him say, 'Is it peace?'"

So a man on horseback went to meet him, and said, "Thus says the King, 'Is it peace?'"

And Jehu said, "What have you to do with peace? Turn round and ride behind me."

And the watchman reported, saying, "The messenger reached them, but he is not coming back." Then he sent out a second horseman, who came to them and said, "Thus the King has said, 'Is it peace?'"

And Jehu answered, "What have you to do with peace? Turn round and ride behind me."

Again the watchman reported, "He reached them, but he is not coming back. And the driving is like the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi, for he drives furiously."

Joram said, "Make ready." And they made ready his chariot. Then Joram King of Israel and Ahaziah King of Judah set out, each in his chariot, and went to meet Jehu, and met him at the property of Naboth the Jezreelite.

And when Joram saw Jehu, he said, "Is it peace, Jehu?"

He answered, "What peace can there be, so long as the harlotries and sorceries of your mother Jezebel are so many?"

Then Joram reined about and fled, saying to Ahaziah, "Treachery, O Ahaziah!"

And Jehu drew his bow with his full strength, and shot Joram between the shoulders, so that the arrow pierced his heart, and he sank in his chariot.

Jehu said to Bidkar his aide, "Take him up, and cast him on the plot of ground belonging to Naboth the Jezreelite; for remember, when you and I rode side by side behind Ahab his father, how the Lord uttered this oracle against him: 'As surely as I saw yesterday the blood of Naboth and the blood of his sons-- says the Lord-- I will requite you on this plot of ground.' Now therefore take him up and cast him on the plot of ground, in accordance with the word of the Lord."

When Ahaziah the King of Judah saw this, he fled in the direction of Beth-haggan.

And Jehu pursued him, and said, "Shoot him also." And they shot him in the chariot at the ascent of Gur, which is by Ibleam. And he fled to Megiddo, and died there.

[After this we have a pretty thorough massacre, starting with Jezebel & including all of Ahab's friends & relatives. You had to be there to appreciate it... Ahaziah's mother seizes power in Jerusalem, over Judah, and rules until there's a coup in favor of his last surviving son, who has been hidden away for the six years of her reign.]

Luke 9.51-56

2011-10-01T09:48:00.000-05:00

As the time approached when he was to be taken up to Heaven, he set his face resolutely towards Jerusalem, and sent messengers ahead. They set out and went into a Samaritan village to make arrangements for him; but the villagers would not have him, because he was making for Jerusalem.

When the disciples James and John saw this, they said: "Lord, may we call down fire from Heaven to burn them up?"

But he turned and rebuked them, and they went on to another village.

2 Kings 8.7- 15

2011-09-30T10:14:00.000-05:00

[skipping again]

Now Elisha came to Damascus. Ben-hadad the King of Syria was sick; and when it was told him, "The man of God has come here," the King said to Hazael, "Take a present with you and go to meet the man of God, and inquire of the Lord through him, saying 'Shall I recover from this sickness?'"

So Hazael went to meet him, and took a present with him, all kinds of goods of Damascus, forty camel loads. When he came and stood before him, he said, "Your son Ben-hadad King of Syria has sent me to you, saying, 'Shall I recover from this sickness?'"

And Elisha said to him, "Go, say to him,'You shall certainly recover.' But the Lord has shown me that he will certainly die." And he fixed his gaze and stared at him, until he was ashamed. And the man of God wept.

And Hazael said, "Why does my Lord weep?"

He answered, "Because I know the evil that you will do to the people of Israel; you will set on fire their fortresses, and you will slay their young men with the sword, and dash in pieces their little ones, and rip up their women with child."

And Hazael said, "What is your servant, who is but a dog, that he should do this great thing?"

Elisha answered, "The Lord has shown me that you are to be King over Syria."

Then he departed from Elisha, and came to his master, who said to him, "What did Elisha say to you?"

And he answered, "He told me that you would certainly recover." But on the morrow he took the coverlet and dipped it in water and spread it over his face, until he died. And Hazael became King in his stead.

Luke 9.44-50

2011-09-29T10:18:00.000-05:00

Amid the general wonder and admiration at all he was doing, Jesus said to his disciples, "What I now say is for you. The son of Adam is going to be given up into the power of men."

But they did not understand what he said; it had been hidden from them so they should not perceive its drift; and they were afraid to ask him what it meant.

A dispute arose among them: which of them was the greatest?

Jesus knew what was passing in their minds, so he took a child by the hand and stood him at his side, and said, "Whoever receives this child in my name receives me; and whoever receives me receives the One who sent me. For the least among you all-- He is the greatest."

"Master," said John, "we saw a man casting out devils in your nam, but as he was not one of us we tried to stop him."

Jesus said to him, "Do not try to stop him, for he who is not against you is on your side."

2 Kings 6.24-7.17

2011-09-28T14:43:00.000-05:00

Afterward Benhadad King of Syria mustered his entire army, and went up and besieged Samaria.

And there was a great famine in Samaria when they besieged it, until an ass's head was sold for 80 shekels of silver, and the fourth part of a kab of dove's dung for five shekels of silver.

Now as the King of Israel was passing by upon the wall, a woman cried out to him, saying "Help, my lord, O King."

And he said, "If the Lord will not help you, whence shall I help you? From the threshing floor, or from the wine press?" And the King asked her, "What is your trouble?"

She answered, "This woman said to me, 'Give your son, that we may eat him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow.' So we boiled my son, and ate him. And on the next day I said to her, 'Give your son, that we may eat him,' but she has hidden her son."

When the King heard the words of the woman he rent his clothes-- Now he was passing by along the wall-- and the people looked, and behold, he had sackcloth beneath upon his body-- and he said, "May God do so to me, and more also, if the head of Elisha the son of Shapat remains on his shoulders today."

Elisha was sitting in his house; and the elders were sitting with him.

Now the King had dispatched a man from his presence; but before the messenger arrived, Elisha said to the elders, "Do you see how this murderer has sent to take off my head? Look, when the messenger comes, shut the door, and hold the door fast against him. Is not the sound of his master's feet behind him?"

And while he was still speaking with them, the King came down to him, and said, "This trouble is from the Lord! Why should I wait for the Lord any longer?"

But Elisha said, "Hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord, Tomorrow about this time a measure of fine meal shall be sold for a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, at the gate of Samaria."

Then the captain on whose hand the King leaned said to the man of God, "If the Lord himself should make windows in Heaven, how could this thing be?"

But Elisha said, "You shall see it with your own eyes, but you shall not eat of it."

Now there were four men who were lepers at the entrance to the gate; and they said to one another, "Why do we sit here until we die? If we say, 'Let us enter the city,' the famine is in the city, and we shall die there; and if we sit here, we die also. So now, let us go over to the camp of the Syrians. If they spare our lives we shall live, and if they kill us, we shall but die." So they arose at twilight to go to the camp of the Syrians; but when they came to the edge of the camp of the Syrians, behold, there was no one there.

For the Lord had made the army of the Syrians hear the sound of chariots, and of horses-- the sound of a great army, so that they said to one another, "Behold, the King of Israel has hired against us the kings of the Hittites and the kings of Egypt to come against us." So they fled away in the twilight and forsook their tents, their horses and their asses, leaving the camp as it was, and fled for their lives.

And when these lepers came to the edge of the camp, they went into a tent, and ate, and drank; and they carried off silver and gold and clothing, and went and hid them. Then they went back, and entered another tent, and carried off things from it, and went and hid them.

Then they said to one another, "We are not doing right. This day is a day of good news; if we are silent, and wait until the morning light, punishment will overtake us! Now, therefore, come let us go and tell the King's household." So they came and called to the gatekeepers of the city, and told them, "We came to the camp of the Syrians, and behold, there was no one to be seen or heard there, nothing but the horses tied, and the asses tied, and the tents as they were."

Then the gatekeepers called out, and it was told within the King's household. And the King rose in the night, and said to his servants, "I will tell you what the Syrians have prepared against us! They know that we are hungry; therefore they have gone out of the camp to hide themselves in the open country, thinking 'When they come out of the city, we shall take them alive and get into the city!'"

And one of his servants said, "Let some men take five of our remaining horses, seeing that those of us left here will fare like the whole multitude of Israel that have already perished; let us send and see."

So they took two mounted men, and the king sent them after the army of the Syrians, saying "Go and see." So they went after them as far as the Jordan; and lo, all the way was littered with garments and equipment which the Syrians had thrown away in their haste. And the messengers returned and told the King.

Then the people went out and plundered the camp of the Syrians.

So a measure of fine meal was sold for a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, according to the word of the Lord.

Now the King had appointed the captain on whose hand he leaned, to have charge of the gate. And the people trod upon him in the gate, so that he died, as the man of God had said when the King came down to him.

Luke 9.37-43

2011-09-27T11:07:00.000-05:00

Next day when they came down from the hills he was met by a large crowd.

All at once there was a shout from a man in the crowd: "Master, look at my son, I implore you, my only child! From time to time a spirit seizes him, gives a sudden scream, and throws him into convulsions with foaming at the mouth. It keeps on mauling him, and will hardly let him go! I asked your disciples to cast it out, but they could not!"

Jesus answered, "What an unbelieving and perverse generation! How long shall I be with you and endure you all? Bring your son here."

But before the boy could reach him, the spirit dashed him to the ground and threw him into convulsions.

Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, cured the boy, and gave him back to his father.

And they were all struck with awe at the majesty of God.

2 Kings 6.8-23

2011-09-26T12:23:00.000-05:00

[Skipping a brief miracle story in 6.1-7]

Once when the King of Syria was warring against Israel, he [The King of Israel?] took counsel with his servants, saying, "At such and such a place shall be my camp."

But the man of God sent word to the King of Israel, "Beware that you do not pass this place, for the Syrians are going down there." And the King of Israel sent to the place of which the man of God told him. Thus he used to warn him, so that he saved himself there more than once or twice.

And the mind of the King of Syria was greatly troubled by this thing; and he called his servants and said to them, "Will you not show me who of us is for the King of Israel?"

And one of his servants said, "None, my lord, O King, but Elisha, the prophet who is in Israel, tells the King of Israel the words that you speak in your bedchamber."

And he said, "Go and see where he is, that I may send and seize him."

It was told him, "Behold, he is in Dothan." So he sent there horses and chariots and a great army, and they came by night and surrounded the city.

When the servant of the man of God rose early in the morning and went out, behold, an army with horses and chariots was round about the city. And the servant said, "Alas, my master! What shall we do?"

He said, "Fear not, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them." Then Elisha prayed, and said, "O Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes that he may see."

So the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw; and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.

And when the Syrians came down against Elisha, he prayed to the Lord and said, "Strike this people, I pray Thee, with blindness."

So He struck them with blindness in accordance with the prayer of Elisha.

And Elisha said to them, "This is not the way, and this is not the city. Follow me, and I will bring you to the man you seek." And he led them to Samaria.

As soon as they entered Samaria, Elisha said, "O Lord, open the eyes of these men, that they might see."

So the Lord opened their eyes, and they saw; and lo, they were in the midst of Samaria.

When the King of Israel saw them, he said to Elisha, "My father, shall I slay them? Shall I slay them?"

He answered, "You shall not slay them. Would you slay those whom you have captured with your sword and with your bow? Set bread and water before them, that they may eat and drink and go to their master."

So he prepared for them a great feast, and when they had eaten and drunk, he sent them away, and they went to their master.

And the Syrians came no more on raids into the land of Israel.

Luke 9.28-36

2011-09-25T10:52:00.000-05:00

About eight days after this conversation he took Peter, John, and James with him and went up into the hills to pray. And while he was praying his face changed and his clothes became dazzling white.

Suddenly there were two men talking with him; these were Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, the destiny he was to fulfill in Jerusalem.

Meanwhile Peter and his companions had been in a deep sleep; but when they awoke, they saw his glory and the two men who stood beside him.

And as these were moving away from Jesus, Peter said to him, "Master, how good it is that we are here! Shall we make three shelters: one for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah?" (but he spoke without knowing what he was saying.)

The words were still on his lips when there came a cloud which cast a shadow over them; they were afraid as they entered the clous, and from it came a voice: "This is my son, my chosen; listen to him!"

When the voice had spoken, Jesus was seen to be alone.

The disciples kept silence and at that time told no one anything of what they had seen.

2 Kings 5

2011-09-24T09:17:00.000-05:00

Naaman, commander of the army of the King of Syria, was a great man with his master, and in high favor, because by him the Lord had given victory to Syria. He was a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper.

Now the Syrians on one of their raids had carried off a little maid from the land of Israel, and she waited on Naaman's wife. She said to her mistress, "Would that my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy."

So Naaman went in and told his lord, "Thus and so spoke the maiden from the land of Israel."

And the King of Syria said, "Go now, and I will send a letter to the King of Israel."

So he went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shields of gold, and ten festal garments. And he brought the letter to the King of Israel, which read, "When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you Naaman my servant, that you may cure him of his leprosy."

And when the King of Israel read the letter, he rent his clothes and said, "Am I God, to kill and to make alive, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Only consider, and see how he is seeking a quarrel with me!"

But when Elisha the man of God heard that the King of Israel had rent his clothes, he sent to the King, saying, "Why have you rent your clothes? Let him come now to me, that he may know there is a prophet in Israel."

So Naaman came with his horses and chariots, and halted at the door of Elisha's house.

And Elisha sent a message to him, saying, "Go and wash yourself in the Jordan seven times; and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean."

But Naaman was angry and went away, saying "Behold, I thought that he would surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of the Lord his God, and wave his hand over the place, and cure the leper! Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be clean?" So he turned and went away in a rage.

But his servant came near and said to him, "My father, if the prophet had commanded you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much, rather, when he says to you, 'Wash, and be clean'?"

So he went down and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.

Then he returned to the man of God, all his company; and he came and stood before him, and he said, "Behold, I know that there is no god in all the Earth but in Israel; so accept now a present from your servant."

But he said, "As the Lord lives, whom I serve, I will receive none."

Then Naaman said, "If not, I pray you, let there be given to your servant two mules' burden of earth; for henceforth your servant will not offer burnt offering nor sacrifice to any god but the Lord. In this matter, may the Lord pardon your servant: When my master goes into the House of Rimmon to worship there, leaning on my arm, and I bow myself in the House of Rimmon; when I bow myself in the House of Rimmon, the Lord pardon your master in this matter!"

He said to him, "Go in peace."

But when Naaman had gone from him a short distance, Gehazi, the servant of Elisha the man of God, said, "See, my master has spared this Naaman the Syrian, in not accepting from his hand what he brought. As the Lord lives, I will run after him, and get something from him." Sp Gehazi followed Naaman.

And when Naaman saw someone running after him, he alighted from the chariot to meet him, and said to him, and said, "Is all well?"

And he said, "All is well. My master has sent me to say, 'There have just now come to me from the hill country of Ephraim two young men of the sons of the prophets. Pray give them a talent of silver and two festal garments.'"

And Naaman said, "Be pleased to accept two talents." And he urged him, and tied up two talents of silver in two bags, with two festal garments, and laid them upon two of his servants; and they carried them before Gehazi.

And when he came to the hill, he took them from their hand, and put them in the house; and he sent the men away; and they departed. He went in and stood before his master.

And Elisha said to him, "Where have you been, Gehazi?"

And he said, "Your servant went nowhere."

But he said to him, "Did I not go with you in spirit when the man turned from his chariot to meet you? Was it a time to accept money and garments, olive orchards and vineyards, sheep and oxen, menservants and maidservants? Therefore the leprosy of Naaman shall cling to you and your descendants for ever."

So he went out from his presence a leper white as snow.

Luke 9.25-27

2011-09-23T11:36:00.000-05:00

"For what will a man gain by winning the whole world, at the cost of his true self?

"For whoever is ashamed of me and mine, the son of Adam will be ashamed of him, when he comes in his glory and the glory of his Father and the holy angels.

"And I tell you this: There are some of those standing here who will not taste death before they have seen the kingdom of God."

2 Kings 4

2011-09-22T12:11:00.000-05:00

Now the wife of one of the sons of the prophets cried to Elisha; "Your servant my husband is dead; and you know that your servant feared the Lord, but the creditor has come to take my two children to be his slaves.'

And Elisha said to her, "What shall I do for you? Tell me, what have you in the house?"

And she said, "Your maidservant has nothing in the house, except a jar of oil."

Then he said, "Go outside, borrow vessels of all your neighbors, empty vessels and not too few! Then go in, and shut the door upon yourself and your your sons, and pour into all these vessels; and when one is full, set it aside."

So she went from him and shut the door upon herself and her sons; and as she poured they brought the vessels to her. When the vessels were full, she said to her son, "Bring me another vessel."

And he said to her, "There is not another." Then the oil stopped flowing.

She came and told the man of God; and he said, "Go, sell the oil and pay your debts; and you and your sons can live on the rest."
----
One day Elisha went on to Shunem, where a wealthy woman lived, who urged him to eat some food. So whenever he passed that way, he would turn in there to eat food. And she said to her husband, "Behold now, I perceive that this is a holy man of God, who is continually passing this way. Let us make him a small roof chamber with walls, and put there for him a bed, a table, a chair, and a lamp, so that whenever he comes to us, he can go in there."

One day he came there, and he turned into the chamber and rested there. And he said to Gehazi his servant, "Call this Shunammite." When he had called her, she stood before him. And he said to him, "Say now to her, See you have taken all this trouble for us; what is to be done for you? Would you have a word spoken on your behalf to the King or to the commander of the army?"

She answered, "I dwell among my own people."

And he said, 'What then is to be done for her?"

Gehazi answered, "Well, she has no son, and her husband is old."

He said, "Call her." And when he had called her, she stood in the doorway. And he said, "At this season, when the time comes around, you shall embrace a son."

And she said, "No, my lord, O man of God; do not lie to your maidservant." But the woman conceived, and she bore a son about that time the following spring, as Elisha had said to her.

When the child had grown, he went out one day to his father among the reapers. And he said to his father, "Oh my head, my head!"

The father said to his servant, "Carry him to his mother."

And when he had lifted him, and brought him to his mother, the child sat on her lap until noon, and then he died. And she went up and laid him on the bed of the man of God, and shut the door upon him, and went out. Then she called to her husband, and said, "Send me one of the servants and one of the asses, that I may quickly go to the man of God, and come back again!"

And he said, "It is neither new moon nor sabbath."

She said, "It will be well." Then she saddled the ass, and she said to her servant, "Urge the beast on; do not slacken the pace for me unless I tell you." So she set out, and came to the man of God on Mt. Carmel.

When the man of God saw her coming, he said to Gehazi his servant, "Look, yonder is the Shunammite; run at once to meet her, and say to her, Is it well with you? Is it well with your husband? Is it well with the child?"

And she answered, "It is well." And when she came to the mountain to the man of God, she caught hold of his feet.

And Gehazi came to thrust her away. But the man of God said, "Let her alone, for she is in bitter distress; and the Lord has hidden it from me, and has not told me."

Then she said, "Did I ask my lord for a son? Did I not say, Do not deceive me?"

He said to Gehazi, "Gird up your loins, and take my staff in your hand, and go. If you meet anyone, do not salute him; and if any one salutes you, do not reply; and lay my staff upon the face of the child."

Then the mother of the child said, "As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you."

So he arose and followed her.

Gehazi went on ahead and laid the staff upon the face of the child, but there was no sound nor sign of life. Therefore he returned to meet him, and told him, "The child has not awakened."

When Elisha came into the house, he saw the child lying dead on his bed. So he went in and shut the door upon the two of them, and prayed to the Lord. Then he went up and lay upon the child, putting his mouth upon his mouth, his eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands; and as he stretched himself upon him, the flesh of the child became warm. Then he got up again, and walked once too and fro in the house, and went up, and stretched himself upon him.

The child sneezed seven times, and the child opened his eyes.

Then he summoned Gehazi and said, "Call this Shunammite." So he called her. And when she came to him, he said, "Take up your son." She came and fell at his feet, bowing to the ground; then she took up her son and went out.
---

And Elisha came again to Gilgal when there was a famine in the land. And as the sons of the prophets were sitting before him, he said to his servant, "Set on the great pot, and boil pottage for the sons of the prophets."

One of them went out into the field to gather herbs, and found a wild vine and gathered from it his lap full of wild gourds, and cut them up into the pot, not knowing what they were.

And they poured it out for the men to eat. But while they were eating of the pottage, they cried out, "O man of God, there is death in the pot!" And they could not eat it.

He said, "Then bring meal." And he threw it into the pot, and said, "Pour out for the men, that they may eat." And there was no harm in the pot.
---

A man came from Baalshalishah, bringing the man of God bread of his first fruits, twenty loaves of barley and fresh ears of grain in his sack.

And Elisha said, "Give to the men, that they may eat."

But his servant said, "How am I to set this before a hundred men?"

So he repeated, "Give them to the men, that they may eat, for thus says the Lord, 'They shall eat and have some left.'"

So he set it before them. And they ate, and had some left, according to the word of the Lord.

Luke 9.23-24

2011-09-21T11:05:00.000-05:00

And to all he said, "If anyone wishes to be a follower of mine, he must leave self behind. Day after day he must leave self behind and come with me. Whoever cares for his own safety is lost, but if a man will let himself be lost for my sake, that man is safe."

2 Kings 3

2011-09-20T08:55:00.000-05:00

In the 18th year of Jehoshaphat King of Judah, Jeroram the son of Ahab became king over Israel in Samaria, and he reigned twelve years. He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, though not like his father and mother, for he put away the pillar of Baal which his father had made. Nevertheless he clung to the sin of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, which he made Israel to sin; he did not depart from it.

Now Mesha King of Moab was a sheep-breeder; and he had to deliver annually to the King of Israel 100,000 lambs, and the wool of 100,000 rams. But when Ahab died, the King of Moab rebelled against the King of Israel.

So King Jehoram marched out of Samaria and mustered all Israel. And he went and sent word to Jehoshaphat King of Judah, "The King of Moab has rebelled against me; will you go with me to battle against Moab?"

And he said, "I will go. I am as you are, my people as your people, my horses as your horses." Then he asked, "By which way should we march?"

Jehoram answered, "By the way of the wilderness of Edom." [Notes: At that time the King of Edom was a vassal of the King of Judah, & Jehoram needed permission to march through their territories.]

So the King of Israel went with the King of Judah and the King of Edom. And when they had made a circuitous march of seven days, there was no water for the army or for the beasts which followed them. Then the King of Israel said, "Alas! The Lord has called these three kings to give them into the hand of the King of Moab!"

And Jehoshaphat said, "Is there no prophet of the Lord here, through whom we might inquire of the Lord?"

Then one of the servants answered, "Elisha the son of Shaphat is here, who poured water on the hands of Elijah." And Jehoshaphat answered, "The word of the Lord is with him." So the King of Israel and Jehoshaphat and the King of Edom went down to him.

And Elisha said to the King of Israel, "What have I to do with you? Go to the prophets of your father and the prophets of your mother[Jezebel]!

But the King of Israel said to him, "No, it is the Lord who has called these three kings to give them into the hand of Moab."

And Elisha said, "As the Lord of hosts lives, whom I serve, were it not that I have regard for Jehoshaphat King of Judah, I would neither look at you, nor see you. But now, bring me a minstrel."

And when the minstrel played, the power of the Lord came upon him.

And he said, "Thus says the Lord, 'You shall not see wind or rain, but that streambed shall be filled with water, so that you shall drink, you, your cattle, and your beasts.' This is a light thing in the sight of the Lord; he will also give the Moabites into your hand, and you shall conquer every fortified city, and every choice city, and shall fell every good tree, and stop up all springs of water, and ruin every good piece of land with stones."

The next morning, about the time of offering the sacrifice, behold, water came from the direction of Edom, till the country was filled with water.

When the Moabites heard that the kings had come up to fight against them, all who were able to put on armor, from the youngest to the oldest, were called out, and were drawn up at the border. And when they rose early in the morning, and the sun shone on the water, the Moabites saw the water before them as red as blood.["colored by the red sandstone of Edom," sayeth my Bible's notes.] And they said, "Surely the kings have fought, and slain one another. Now then, Moab, to the spoils!" But when they came to the camp of Israel, the Israelites rose and attacked them, till they fled before them; and they went forward slaughtering the Moabites as they went. And they overthrew the cities, and on every good piece of land every man threw a stone, until it was covered, and stopped every spring of water, and felled all the good trees, till only stones were left in Kirhareseth, and the slingers surrounded and conquered it.

When the King of Moab saw that the war was going against him, he took with him seven hundred swordsmen to break through, opposite the King of Edom, though he could not. Then he took the eldest son, who was to reign in his stead, and offered him for a burnt offering upon the war. And there came great wrath upon Israel; and they withdrew from him and returned to their own land.

Luke 9.18-22

2011-09-19T10:17:00.001-05:00

One day when he was praying alone in the presence of his disciples, he asked them, "Who do the people say I am?"

They answered, "Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, others say that one of the old prophets has come back to life."

"And you," he said, "Who do you say I am?"

Peter answered, "God's Messiah."

Then he gave them strict orders not to tell this to anyone. And he said, "The son of Adam has to undergo great sufferings, and to be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and doctors of the Torah, to be put to death and to be raised again on the third day."

Apology to a Rabid Conscience

2011-09-18T23:59:00.000-05:00

[for Larry Milligan]

You asked me once, could I read
my poetry to the ragged man
living in the cracks between our eyes

and I never answered you; I couldn't
say the ears are torn, open
to what I have and cannot give.

The men are outside the mission
waiting to earn stale bread
by the sweat of their ears;

I have nothing to say to them
sleeping in the all-night horror show;
I am sorry their hands were stolen
but the police station is locked
and only thieves are welcome.

I have no storage space for pain
where the ragged man could sleep
or gnaw my words in charity.

So call me hypocrite; you will
have to be true to your logic
which condemns all but victims,
saints and heroes.

I have no skill to comfort ghosts;
my words are for those with hands
firmly in their ears;
they refuse to become bread.

Nothing I say will open
the freezers where pride is kept
lest it melt in the eyes of the Sun.

It is too late for words
but there is nothing else
to heal the killers

Forrest Curo
1984

2 Kings 2.23

2011-09-18T15:55:00.001-05:00

[ELisha] went up from there to Bethel; and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying "Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!"

And he turned around, and when he saw them he cursed them in the name of the Lord.

And two she-bears came out of the woods and tore forty-two of the bears.

From there he went on to Mt Carmel, and thence he returned to Samaria.

Luke 9.10-17

2011-09-16T11:45:00.000-05:00

On their return the disciples told Jesus all they had done; and he took them with him and withdrew privately to a town called Bethsaida. But the crowds found out and followed him.

He welcomed them, and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and cured those who were in need of healing.

When evening was beginning, the Twelve approached him, and said, "Send these people away; then they can go into the villages and farms round about to find food and lodging; for we are in a lonely place here."

"Give them something to eat, yourselves," he replied.

But they said, "All we have is five loaves and two fishes, nothing more-- unless we ourselves should go and buy provisions for all this company." (There were about five thousand men.)

He said to his disciples, "Make them sit down in groups of about fifty or so." They did so, and got them all seated.

Then, taking the five loaves and the two fishes, he looked up to Heaven, said the blessing over them, and gave them to the disciples to distribute to the people.

They all ate to their hearts' content, and when the scraps were picked up, they filled twelve great baskets.

2 Kings 2.12- 22

2011-09-15T12:16:00.000-05:00

Then [Elisha] took hold of his own clothes and rent them in two pieces. And he took up the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him, and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan. Then he took the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him, and struck the water, saying, "Where is the the Lord, the God of Elijah?!" And when he had struck the water, the water was parted from one side to the other; and Elisha went over.

Now when the sons of the prophets who were at Jericho saw him over against them, they said, "The spirit of Elijah rests on Elisha." And they came to meet him, and bowed to the ground before him. And they said to him, "Behold, now, there are with your servants fifty strong young men; pray, let them go and seek your master; it may be that the Spirit of the Lord has caught him up and cast him upon some mountain or into some valley."

And he said, "You shall not send." But when they had urged him till he was ashamed, he said, "Send."

They sent therefore fifty men; and for three days they sought him but did not find him.

And they came back to him, while he tarried at Jericho; and he said to them, "Did I not say to you, Do not go?"

Now the men of the city said to Elisha, "Behold, the situation of the city is pleasant, as my lord sees; but the water is bad and the land is unfruitful."

He said, "Bring me a little bowl, and put salt in it." So they brought it to him. Then he went to the spring of water and threw salt in it, and said, "Thus says the Lord, I have made this water wholesome. Henceforth neither death nor miscarriage shall come from it." So the water has been wholesome to this day, according to the word which Elisha spoke.

Luke 9.7-9

2011-09-14T11:15:00.000-05:00

Now Prince Herod heard of all that was happening, and did not know what to make of it; for some were saying that John had been raised from the dead, others that Elijah had appeared, others again that one of the old prophets had come back to life.

Herod said, "As for John, I beheaded him myself; but who is this I hear such talk about?" And he was anxious to see him.

2 Kings 2-2.12 (There goes Elijah!)

2011-09-13T10:23:00.000-05:00

Now when the Lord was about to take Elijah up to Heaven by a whirlwind, Elijah and Elisha were on their way from Gilgal. And Elijah said to Elisha, "Tarry here, I pray you; for the Lord had sent me as far as Bethel."

But Elisha said, "As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you."

So they went down to Bethel. And the sons of the prophets who were in Bethel came out to Elisha, and said to him, "Do you know that today the Lord will take away your master from over you?"

And he said, "Yes, I know it. Hold your peace."

Elijah said to him, "Elish, tarry here, I pray you; for the Lord has sent me to Jericho."

But he said, "As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you."

So they came to Jericho. The sons of the prophets who were at Jericho drew near to Elisha, and said to him, "Do you know that today the Lord will take away your master from over you?"

And he answered, "Yes, I know it; hold your peace."

Then Elijah said to him, "Tarry here, I pray you, for the Lord has sent me to the Jordan."

But he said, "As the Lord lives, as you yourself live, I will not leave you." So the two of them went on. Fifty men of the sons of the prophets also went, and stood at some distance from them, as they both were standing by the Jordan.

Then Elijah took his mantle, and rolled it up, and struck the water; and the water was parted to the one side and to the other, until the two of them could go over on dry ground.

When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, "Ask what I shall do for you, before I am taken away from you."

And Elisha said to him, "I pray you, let me inherit a double share of your spirit."

And he said, "You have asked a hard thing. Yet, if you see me as I am being taken from you, it shall be so for you, but if you do not see me, it shall not be so."

And as they still went on and talked, behold, a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them. And Elijah went up by a whirlwind into Heaven.

And Elisha saw it; and he cried, "My father, my father! The chariots of Israel, and its horsemen!" And he saw him no more.

Luke 9.1-9.6

2011-09-12T14:31:00.001-05:00

[Jesus] now called the Twelve together and gave them power and authority to overcome all the devils and to cure diseases, and sent them to proclaim the kingdom of God, and to heal.

"Take nothing for the journey," he told them, "neither stick nor pack, neither bread nor money; nor are you to bring a second coat. When you are admitted to a house, stay there, and go on from there.

"As for those who will not receive you--When you leave their town shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them." So they set out and traveled from village to village; and everywhere they told the good news and healed the sick.

metatalk

2011-09-11T12:00:00.000-05:00

[Random Arrow has suggested I move Hear and Act to the top of the blog from time to time (something I hadn't known to be directly possible and don't mind any of us trying later!!!) but I think the discussion we've been having is on the nature of the universe we're embedded in...]

Specifically, we were talking about "How does communication work." Stephen Gaskin discussed two basic models:

1) An academically-fashionable one that works like this: RA gets an idea and codes it into words. He writes the words on a note, attaches the note to a handy rock, tosses the rock over the figurative wall to where my mind lives. I pick up the rock, unwrap the note, read and decode. From this I construct something in my mind vaguely similar to RA's.

2) "We're all telepathic." My ideas and RA's, the underlying meanings and understandings, are in the shared mental space Zen Buddhists call "Big Mind." Both of us access this space but are typically unconscious of the bulk of it. We enjoy a pastime much like model #1, because doing this helps us expand the domain of Big Mind we can consciously appreciate.

I mentioned an old friend who'd self-identified as "a psychic," whom I used to say "couldn't read his own mind." And realized that in Gaskin's model, this tends to be our common condition. We "see in a mirror darkly". We painstakingly draw in words, much as a working mathematician may scribble notes and doodles.

But if you take walks in the early morning, when there aren't too many people around, when all you're saying is at best "hello"... You may notice a semi-tactile 'aura', a feeling-tone to these varying encounters. Even when neither of you say a word, you go on feeling a little of who they are at the moment, and vice versa. [Capital-s "Skeptics" would insist that this is entirely done with subtle visual cues and imagination, but then there's a lot such people imagine not to happen. If life can't convince them, all I can suggest is that they occasionally look through this telescope, eyes open, just to reassure themselves it doesn't work!] We don't commonly send/receive text in this mode, because that isn't the sort of mental content that truly interests the part of our 'mind' that does this.

One troublesome implication is, as Gaskin says, that "This changes everything!"

If you posit a clockwork universe, there's no mechanism in it to carry those signals. (And neither is there a credible mechanism available in it for consciousness. For highly-complex, innovative, even 'creative' data-processing, yes. For the generation of entirely-convincing "personalities", yes. For someone "inside" to "read" and experience the activity and content of our own mind/heart/soul, no. We are the data who overthrows 'materialism'.)

We can still have a lawful universe, just as we can agree that "Pawns don't move sideways on this chessboard." But we may occasionally find ourselves playing Fairy Chess. If we don't cheat other sentient beings, there may be allowable forms of 'cheating'.

Working out the ramifications: "What are the ethical rules for telepathic beings?" Gaskin concluded that our common world-religions had already done the groundwork with rules-of-thumb like the Golden Rule & "As you sow, so shall you reap."

What think?

2 Kings 1.2-1.17

2011-09-10T20:33:00.000-05:00

["Ahaziah the son of Ahab began to reign over Israel from Samaria... He served Baal and worshiped him, and provoked the Lord, the God of Israel, to anger in every way that his father had done."]
---------
Now Ahaziah fell through the latice in his upper chamber in Samaria, and lay sick; so he sent messengers, telling them: "Go, inquire of Baalzebub, the god of Ekron, whether I shall recover from this illness."

But the Angel of the Lord said to Elijah the Tishbite, "Arise, go up to meet the messengers of the King of Samaria, and say to them, 'Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are going to inquire of Baalzebub, the god of Ekron?' Now, therefore, says the Lord, 'You shall not come down from the bed to which you have gone, but you shall surely die.'" So Elijah went.

The messengers returned to the King, and he said to them, "Why have you returned?"

And they said to him, "There came a man to meet us, and said to us, 'Go back to the king who sent you, and say to him, Thus says the Lord, Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are sending to inquire of Baalzebub, the god of Ekron? Therefore you shall not come down from the bed to which you have gone, but shall surely die.'"

He said to them, "What kind of man was he who came to meet you and told you these things?"

They said to him, "He wore a garment of haircloth, with a girdle of leather about his thighs."

And he said, "It is Elijah the Tishbite."

Then the King sent to him a captain of fifty men with his fifty. He went up to Elijah, who was sitting on the top of a hill, and said to him, "O man of God, the King says, 'Come down.'"

But Elijah answered the captain of fifty, "If I am a man of God, let fire come down from Heaven and consume you and your fifty." Then fire came down from Heaven, and consumed him and his fifty.

Again the King sent to him another captain of fifty men with his fifty. And he went up and said to him, "O man of God, this is the King's order, 'Come down quickly!'"

But Elijah answered them, " "If I am a man of God, let fire come down from Heaven and consume you and your fifty." Then the fire of Godcame down from Heaven, and consumed him and his fifty.

Again the King sent the captain of a third fifty with his fifty. And the third captain of fifty went up, and came and fell on his knees before Elijah, and said, "O man of God, I pray you, let my life, and the life of these fifty servants of yours, be precious in your sight. Lo, fire came down from Heaven and consumed the two former captains of fifty men with their fifties; but now let my life be precious in your sight!"

Then the Angel of the Lord said to Elijah, "Go down with him; do not be afraid of him."

So he arose and went down with him to the King, and said to him, "Thus says the Lord, 'Because you have sent messengers to inquire of Baalzebub, the god of Ekron-- Is it because there is no God in Israel to inquire His word?-- Therefore you shall not come down from the bed to which you have gone, but you shall surely die."

So he died according to the word of the Lord which Elijah had spoken. Jehoram, his brother, became King in his stead in the second year of Jehoram the son of Jehoshaphat, King of Judah, because Ahaziah had no son.

Hear and Act...

2011-09-07T11:45:00.000-05:00

We've got something really problematical in [a recent] post on prophets... (1 Kings 20) and then, [a recent] Jesus saying-- that his true kin are whoever 'hears and does' God's will-- seems to tie in somewhere.

A large chunk of the Bible can be read as Obedience Training for Humans!

It's that simple? Hardly!

Adam, Eve, every ancient Israelite could have been equipped from birth with an automatic, built-in, heads-up Commandment Display. 'Thou shall...' or 'Thou shalt not, and if you know what's good for you, you better not...' and so forth, in bright intercranial LED letters, for any conceivable occasion. God has power enough, but hasn't used it that way.

"Free Will"? Raymond Smullyan's 'God' [in "Is God a Taoist?"] says that He made people with free will because once you've decided to create a sentient being, that's the only kind possible. Okay, I'd say, rather, that if you're going to get a whiff of that Divine Breath, if there's going to be life in a person, there's going to be the whole Image of God living inside: which will be responding-to events, but not compelled-by.

I'm not sure how this works either. Douglas Hofstadter had a dialogue about a model of how the mind (not 'the brain') works... where his characters were arguing that if this model was true, everything they thought about themselves as conscious beings who did things by their own powers and wishes-- was an illusion. Really, there were only little sticky balls running through structures that said balls had formed and were constantly reforming by the way those balls were running through those structures. It wasn't at all a bad model; I think that there'd have to be a direct mapping between it and any other model capable of learning, continuing to do what it had learned, and learning to do something else instead... capable, that is, of any sort of coherent, ongoing mental process.

What to do about this? Say that our thinking-and-behavior doesn't follow any such model?-- Then we're logically pushed to say that our thinking-and-behavior is essentially random and effectively senseless. Say instead, that our thinking-and-behavior makes sense, is a coherent and appropriate response to what we experience (internal and external)-- And we're logically pushed to conclude that some such model must exist that would potentially account for it.

But God has no such constraint on divine behavior-- and is anything but 'senseless.' This seems to imply that while we innately must be able to construct mental models of how our minds operate, capable of 'explaining' why we operate as we do-- No such model can ever be the truth.

Couldn't we just have a model that sometimes made sense-- but was prey to random glitches? No, that's just a mechanical model with a limp. The glitches have to come from outside the model, from another category entirely... from whatever 'spirit' means.

Wow, long fertile digression! Anyway, God tells a prophet that he has to strike (and wound!) a colleague; he's really asking for it. Instead of striking-- or consulting a shrink, as we might recommend-- this prophet refuses. For that, he is eaten by a lion.

First off, this is an echo of Ahab's fate. Ben-hothead has been asking for it, but Ahab instead cuts a deal for a bazaar concession in Damascus. And that decision is going to cost him. Ahab is trying to do the right, the peaceful and practical thing, but that isn't what God is asking here; Ahab feels it isn't fair, and he's right.

Does this mean we should dash out and obey whatever claims to be a Divine Voice ordering us to smite our neighbor's loud stereo (and while we're at it, sacrifice him and marry his widow after a suitable mourning period?) We say we're supposed to "test" leadings, but our prophet here tries to do that, and he's lunch!

It isn't fair; we can't win? Well, there's a flaw in the model that poses that question. If God is outside of us making demands, and we are outside of God trying to decide "Are you sure you're You, God?" and "You say you want me to do what?" then in that model we really can't win. We have to find out how and why and what it means that God and we are one 'Thing'.

The Ching says about 'innocence': "Whoever acts from these deep levels makes no mistakes." Phew!

Please Comment

2011-09-04T21:03:00.000-05:00

I am asking for comments re: "The Bible is/isn't worth studying because..."

Partially this is because I don't get a lot of comments here-- and partially it's because I wonder from time to time myself: Not really buying any of the answers I've heard, why do I find this worthwhile?

Luke 8.40->

2011-09-04T15:31:00.000-05:00

When Jesus returned, the people were expecting him, and welcomed him. Then a man appeared-- Jairus was his name; he was president of the synagogue. Throwing himself down at Jesus' feet he begged him to come to his house, because he had an only daughter, about twelve years old, who was dying. And while Jesus was on his way, he could hardly breathe for the crowds.

Among them was a woman who had suffered from haemorrhages for twelve years; and nobody had been able to cure her. She came up from behind and touched the edge of his cloak; and at once her haemorrhage stopped.

Jesus said, "Who was it that touched me?"

All disclaimed it; and Peter and his companions said, "Master, the crowds are hemming you in and pressing upon you."

But Jesus said, "Somebody did touch me, for I felt power go out from me."

Then the woman, seeing that she was detected, came trembling and fell at his feet. Before all the people she explained why she had touched him and how she had been cured.

He said to her, "My daughter, your faith has cured you. God in peace."

While he was speaking, a man came from the president's house with the message, "Your daughter has died; trouble the rabbi no further."

But Jesus heard, and interposed. "Do not be afraid," he said. "Only show faith, and she will be well again." On arrival at the house he allowed no one to go in with him except Peter, John, and James, and the child's father and mother. All were weeping and lamenting for her. He said, "Weep no more; she is not dead; she is asleep."

But they only laughed at him, knowing she was dead.

But Jesus took hold of her hand and called her, "Get up, child."

Her spirit returned; she stood up immediately; and he told them to get her something to eat. Her parents were astounded; but he forbade them to tell anyone what had happened.

1 Kings 221.-40

2011-09-02T11:41:00.001-05:00

For three years Syria and Israel continued without war. But in the third year Jehoshaphat the King of Judah came down to the King of Israel.

And the King of Israel said to his servants, "Do you know that Ramoth-gilead belongs to us, and we keep quiet and do not take it out of the hand of the King of Syria?" And he said to Jehoshaphat, "Will you go with me to battle at Ramoth-gilead?"

And Jehoshaphat said to the King of Israel, "I am as you are; my people as your people, my horses as your horses."

And Jehoshaphat said to the King of Israel, "Inquire first for the word of the Lord."

Then the King of Israel gathered the prophets together, about 400 men, and said to them, "Shall I go to battle against Ramoth-gilead, or should I forbear?"

And they said, "Go up; for the Lord will give it into the hand of the King."

But Jehoshaphat said, "Is there not another prophet of whom we may inquire?"

And the King of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, 'There is yet one man by whom we may inquire of the Lord, Micaiah the son of Imlah; but I hate him, for he never prophecizes good concerning me, but evil."

And Jehoshaphat said, "Let not the King say so."

Then the King of Israel summoned an officer and said, "Bring quickly Micaiah the son of Imlah."

Now the King of Israel and the King of Judah were sitting on their thrones, arrayed in their robes, at the threshing floor at the entrance of the gate of Samaria; and all the prophets were prophecizing before them.

And Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah made for himself horns of iron, and said, 'Thus says the Lord, 'With these you shall push the Syrians until they are destroyed." And all the prophets prophecized so, and said, "Go up to Ramoth-gilead and triumph; the Lord will give it into the hand of the King."

And the messenger who went to summon Micaiah said to him, "Behold, the words of the prophets with one accord are favorable to the King; let your word be like the word of one of them, and speak favorably."

But Micaiah said, "As the Lord lives, what the Lord says to me, that I will speak."

And when he had come to the King, the King said to him, "Micaiah, shall we go to Ramoth-gilead to battle, or shall we forbear?"

And he answered him, "Go up and triumph; the Lord will give it into the hand of the King."

But the King said to him, "How many times shall I adjure you that you speak to me nothing but the truth in the name of the Lord?"

And he said, "I saw all Israel scattered upon the mountains, as sheep that have no shepherd; and the Lord said, 'These have no master; let each return to his home in peace.'"

And the King of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, "Did I not tell you that he would not prophesy good concerning me, but evil?"

And Micaiah said, "Therefore hear the word of the Lord: "I saw the Lord sitting on His throne, and all the host of Heaven standing before him on His right hand and his left; and the Lord said, 'Who will entice Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?' And one said one thing; and another said another. Then a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord. 'I will entice him.' And the Lord said to him, 'By what means?' And he said, 'I will go forth, and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.' And He said, 'You are to entice him; and you shall succeed; go forth and do so.' Now therefore behold, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of these prophets; the Lord has spoken evil concerning you."

Then Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah came forward and struck Micaiah on the cheek, and said, "How did the Spirit of the Lord go from me to speak to you?"

And Micaiah said, "Behold, you shall see on that day when you go into an inner chamber to hide yourself."

And the King of Israel said, "Seize Micaiah, and take him back to Amon the governor of the city and to Joash the King's son; and say, 'Thus says the King, "Put this fellow in prison, and feed him with scant fare of bread and water, until I come in peace."'"

And Micaiah said, "If you return in peace, the Lord has not spoken by me."

And he said, "Hear, all you peoples!" So the King of Israel and Jehoshaphat the King of Judah went up to Ramoth-gilead. And the King of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, "I will disguise myself and go into battle; but you wear your robes." And the King of Israel disguised himself and went into battle.

Now the King of Syria had commanded the thirty-two captains of his chariots, "Fight with neither small nor great, but only with the King of Israel."

And when the captains of the chariots saw Jehoshaphat, they said, "It is surely the King of Israel!" So they turned to fight against him, and Jehoshaphat cried out.

And when the captains of the chariots saw that it was not the King of Israel, they turned back from pursuing him.

But a certain man drew his bow for no particular reason, and struck the King of Israel between the scale armor and the breastplate; therefore he said to the driver of his chariot, "Turn about, and carry me out of the battle, for I am wounded."

And the battle grew hot that day, and the King was propped up in his chariot facing the Syrians, until at evening he died; and the blood of his wound flowed into the bottom of his chariot. And about sunset a cry went through the army, "Every man to his city; and every man to his country!"

So the King died, and was brought to Samaria; and they buried the King in Samaria.

And they washed the chariot by the pool of Samaria; and the dogs licked up the blood; and the harlots washed themselves in it, according to the word of the Lord which He had spoken.

Now ther rest of the acts of Ahab, and all that he did, and the ivory house which he built, and all the cities which he built; are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel? So Ahab slept with his fathers; and Ahziah his son reigned in his place.

Luke 8.26-39

2011-09-01T11:26:00.001-05:00

So they landed in the country of the Gergesenes, which is opposite Galilee. As he stepped ashore he was met by a man from the town who was possessed by spirits.

For a long time this man had neither worn clothes nor lived in a house, but stayed among the tombs. When he saw Jesus he cried out, and fell at his feet, shouting! "What do you want of me, Jesus, son of the Most High God? I implore you; do not torment me!"

For Jesus was already ordering the unclean spirit to come out of the man. Many a time it had seized him, and then, for safety's sake, they would secure him with chains and fetters. But each time he broke loose, and with his devil in charge made off to solitary places.

Jesus asked him his name.

"Legion," he replied, because so many spirits lived in him. And they begged him not to banish them to the Abyss.

There happened to be a large herd of pigs nearby, feeding on the hill; and the spirits begged him to let them go into the pigs. He gave them leave; the devils came out of the man and went into the pigs; then the pigs rushed over the edge and into the lake, where they drowned.

The men watching them saw this and took to their heels; they carried the news to the town and the country-side, so people came out to see for themselves.

When they came to Jesus, and found the man from whom the devils had gone out, sitting at his feet clothed and in his right mind, they were afraid. The witnesses told them how the madman had been cured. Then the whole population of the district asked him to go, for they were in the grip of a great fear.

So he got into the boat and returned.

The man from whom the devils had gone out begged leave to go in the boat, but Jesus sent him back. "Go home," he said, "and tell them everything God has done for you."

The man went all over the town spreading the news of what Jesus had done for him.

1 Kings 21

2011-08-31T11:02:00.003-05:00

Now Naboth the Jezreelite had a vineyard in Jezreel, beside the palace of Ahab King of Samaria.

And after this Ahab said to Naboth, "Give me your vineyard, that I may have it for a vegetable garden, because it is near my house; and I will give you a better vineyard for it; or if it seems good to you, I will give you its value in money."

But Naboth said to Ahab, "The Lord forbid that I should give you the inheritance of my fathers."

And Ahab went into his house vexed and sullen because of what Naboth the Jezreelite had said to him... And he lay down on his bed and turned away his face, and would eat no food.

But Jezebel his wife came and said to him, "Why is your spirit so vexed that you eat no food?"

And he said to her, "Because I spoke to Naboth the Jezreelite, and said to him, 'Give me your vineyard for money, if it please you, or else I will give you another vineyard for it,' and he answered, 'I will not give you my vineyard!'"

And Jezebel his wife said to him, "Do you now govern Israel? Arise, and eat bread, and let your heart be cheerful; I will give you the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite."

So she wrote letters in Ahab's name and sealed them with his seal; and she sent the letters to the elders and the nobles who dwelt with Naboth in his city. And she wrote in the letters, "Proclaim a fast, and set Naboth on high among the people; and set two base fellows opposite him, and let them bring a charge against him, saying 'You have cursed God and the King.' Then take him out and stone him to death."

And the men of his city, the elders and nobles who dwelt in his city, did as Jezebel had sent word to them. As it written in the letters which she had sent to them, they proclaimed a fast, and set Naboth on high among the people. And the two base fellows came in and sat opposite him; and the base fellows brought a charge against Naboth, in the presence of the people, saying "Naboth cursed God and the King." So they took him outside the city, and stoned him to death with stones. Then they sent to Jezebel, saying, "Naboth has been stoned; he is dead."

As soon as Jezebel heard that Naboath had been stoned and was dead, Jezebel said to Ahab, "Arise; take possession of the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite, which he refused to give you for money; for Naboth is not alive, but dead."

And as soon as Ahab heard that Naboth was dead, Ahab arose to go down to the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite, to take possession of it.

Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying "Arise, go down to meet Ahab King of Israel, who is in Samaria. Behold, he is in the vineyard of Naboth, where he has gone to take possession. And you shall say to him, 'Thus says the Lord, "Have you killed and taken possession?"' And you shall say to him, 'Thus says the Lord, "In the place where dogs licked up the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick your own blood."'"

Ahab said to Elijah, "Have you found me, O my enemy?"

He answered, "I have found you, because you have sold yourself to do evil in the sight of the Lord. Behold, I will bring evil upon you; I will utterly sweep you away, and will cut off from Ahab every male, bond or free in Israel; and I will make your house like the house of Jeoboam the son of Nebat, and like the house of Baasha the son of Ahijah, for the anger to which you have provoked me, and because you have made Israel to sin. And of Jezebel the Lord also said, 'The dogs shall eat Jezebel within the bounds of Jezreel. Any one belonging to Ahab who dies in the city the dogs shall eat; and any one of his who dies in the country the birds of the air shall eat.'"

(There was none who sold himself to do what was evil in the sight of the Lord like Ahab, whom Jezebel his wife incited. He did very abominably in going after idols, as the Amorites had done, whom the Lord cast out before the people of Israel.)

And when Ahab heard these words, he rent his clothes, and put sackcloth upon his flesh, and fasted and lay in sackcloth, and went about dejectedly.

And the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying, "Have you seen how Ahab has humbled himself before me? Because he has humbled himself before me, I will not bring the evil in his days, but in his son's days I will bring the evil upon his house."

Luke 8.22-25

2011-08-30T09:36:00.000-05:00

One day he got into a boat with his disciples and said to them, "Let us cross over to the other side of the lake." So they put out; and as they sailed along he went to sleep.

Then a heavy squall struck the lake; they began to ship water and were in grave danger. They went to him, and roused him, crying, "Master, Master, we are sinking!"

He awoke, and rebuked the wind and the turbulent waters. The storm subsided, and all was calm. "Where is your faith?" he asked.

In fear and astonishment they said to one another, 'Who can this be? He gives his orders to wind and waves; and they obey him!"

Luke 8.19-21

2011-08-28T18:04:00.002-05:00

His mother and brothers arrived but could not get to him for the crowd.

He was told, "Your mother and brothers are standing outside, and they want to see you."

He replied, "My mother and my brothers-- They are those who hear the word of God and act upon it."

1 Kings 20

2011-08-27T10:50:00.001-05:00

Ben-hadad the King of Syria gathered all his army together; thirty-two kings were with him, and horses and chariots; and he went up and besieged Samaria, and fought against it.

And he sent messengers into the city to Ahab King of Israel, and said to him, "Thus says Ben-hadad: 'Your silver and your gold are mine; your fairest wives and children also are mine.'"

And the King of Israel answered, "As you say, my lord, O king. I am yours, and all that I have."

The messengers came again, and said, "Thus says Ben-hadad, 'I sent to you, saying "Deliver to me your silver and gold, your wives and your children." Nevertheless I will send my servants to you tomorrow about this time, and they shall search your house and the houses of your servants, and lay hands on whatever pleases them, and take it away.'"

Then the King of Israel called all the elders of the land, and said, "Mark now, and see how this man is seeking trouble. For he sent to me for my wives and my children; and I did not refuse him."

And all the elders and all the people said to him, "Do not heed or consent."

So he said to the messengers of Ben-hadad, "Tell my lord the King, 'All that you first demanded of your slave I will do; but this thing I cannot do.'"

And the messengers departed and brought him word again. Ben-hadad sent to him and said, "The gods do so to me, and more also, if the dust of Samaria shall suffice for handfuls for all the people who follow me."

And the King of Israel answered him, "Tell him, 'Let not him that girds on his armor boast himself as him that puts it off.'"

When Ben-hadad was drinking with the kings in their booths, he heard this message, and said to his men, "Take your positions." And they took their positions against the city.

And behold, a prophet came near to Ahab King of Israel, and said, "This says the Lord, Have you seen all this great multitude? Behold, I will give it into your hand this day; and you shall know that I am the Lord."

And Ahab said, "By whom?"

He said, "Thus says the Lord, By the servants of the governors of the districts."

Then he asked, "Who shall begin the battle?"

He answered, "You."

Then he mustered the servants of the governors of the districts, and they were two hundred and thirty-two; and after them he mustered all the people of Israel, seven thousand. And they went out at noon, while Ben-hadad was drinking himself drunk in the booths, with his thirty-two kings.

The servants of the governors of the districts went out first. And Ben-hadad sent out scouts, who reported to him, "Men are coming out from Samaria."

He said, "If they have come out for peace, take them alive; or if they have come out for war, take them alive."

So these went out of the city, the servants of the governors of the districts, and the army which followed them. And each killed his man; the Syrians fled and Israel pursued them, but Ben-hadad escaped on a horse with horsemen. And the King of Israel went out, and captured the horses and the chariots, and killed the Syrians with a great slaughter.

Then the prophet came near to the King of Israel, and said to him, "Come, strengthen yourself, and consider well what you have to do; for in the spring the King of Syria will come up against you."

And the servants of the King of Syria said to him, "Their gods are gods of the hills, and so they were stronger than we; but let us fight against them in the plain, and surely we shall be stronger than they.

"And do this, remove the kings, each from his post; and put commanders in their places; and muster an army like the army that you have lost, horse for horse and chariot for chariot; then we will fight against them in the plain, and surely we shall be stronger than they." And he hearkened to their voice, and did so.

In the spring Ben-hadad mustered the Syrians, and went up to Aphek, to fight against Israel.

And the people of Israel were mustered, and were provisioned, and went against them; the people of Israel encamped before them like two little flocks of goats, but the Syrians filled the country.

And a man of God came near and said to the King of Israel, "Thus says the Lord, 'Because the Syrians have said, "The Lord is a god of the hills but he is not a god of the valleys," therefore I will give all this great multitude into your hand, and you shall know that I am the Lord.'"

And they encamped before each other another seven days. Then on the seventh day the battle was joined; and the people of Israel smote of the Syrians a hundred thousand foot soldiers in one day. And the rest fled into the city of Aphek; and the wall fell upon twenty-seven thousand men that were left.

Ben-hadad also fled, and entered an inner chamber in the city. And his servants said to him, "Behold now, we have heard that the kings of the house of Israel are merciful kings; let us put sackcloth on our loins and ropes upon our heads, and go out to the King of Israel; perhaps he will spare your life." So they girded sackcloth on their loins, and put ropes on their heads, and went to the King of Israel and said, "Your slave Ben-hadad says, 'Pray let me live!'"

And he said, "Does he still live? He is my brother." Now the men were watching for an omen; and they quickly took it up from him, and said, "Yes, your brother Ben-hadad." Then he said, "Go and bring him."

Then Ben-hadad came forth to him; and he caused him to come up into the chariot. And Ben-hadad said to him, "The cities which my father took from your father I will restore; and you may establish bazaars for yourself in Damascus, as my father did in Samaria." [!]

And Ahab said, "I will let you go on those terms." So he made a covenant with him and let him go.

And a certain man of the prophets said to his fellow, at the command of the Lord, "Strike me, I pray!"

But the man refused to strike him.

Then he said to him, "Because you have not obeyed the voice of the Lord, behold; as soon as you have gone from me, a lion shall kill you!"

And as soon as he had departed from him, a lion met him and killed him.

Then he found another man, and said, "Strike me, I pray!"

And the man struck him, smiting and wounding him.

So the prophet departed, and waited for the King by the way, disguising himself with a bandage over his eyes. And as the King passed, he cried to the King, and said, "Your servant went out into the midst of the battle; and behold, a soldier turned and brought a man to me, and said, 'Keep this man; if by any means he be missing, your life shall be for his life, or else you shall pay a talent of silver!' And as your servant was busy here and there, he was gone!"

The King of Israel said to him, "So shall your judgement be; you yourself have decided it!"

Then he made haste to take the bandage away from his eyes; and the King of Israel recognized him as one of the prophets. And he said to him, "Thus says the Lord, 'Because you have let go out of your hand the man whom I had devoted to destruction, therefore your life shall go for his life, and your people for his people!'"

And the King of Israel went to his house resentful and sullen, and came to Samaria.