Month: January 2024

Schizophrenic Psalmist

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You know that Psalm 119 is an acrostic, right?  Did you know the writer is a slippery eel? Of course not.  The writers can be forgiven for just saying what aligns and rhymes. He cannot say eight times “Teach me your statutes” and “Oh that my ways may be established To keep Your statutes!” (Psalms 119:5, NASB) and convince anyone that he has consistently kept the statutes.

Bring me back from the dead

Even more telling is the fact that he asks to be given life repeatedly and we have to conclude that he is dead. Quicken me, ζησον με, make me live, make me come alive, is a sinner’s cry, but a writer who is focused on making a creative song cannot be expected to write consistent theology.

Make me live is wholly consistent with being dead

Scaremongering, imperial, serial colonialist rapist, and genocidal characteristics make great leaders.

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What makes a good leader?

If I were in the current governing class in the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, the People’s Republic of China or Israel that would be my answer.  But I am from a far away galaxy where leaders are compassionate servants of the people with a dependence on plows not weapons of mass destruction, and do not use walls to divide citizens and do not use the levers of power to enrich themselves and their friends.

Shattered types and shallow stereotypes

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Overlooking the inadmissibility of certain types in the Bible happens far too often.  We take the experiences of the patriarchs, of the people of God, the various administrations in the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, as always applicable to the church of the Lord Messiah Yeshua.  Every utterance of Moses and the prophets is authoritative until Christ speaks.  In fact the eclipsing of the prophets occurs with John the Baptist.  Consider Zechariah’s Open Fountain prophecy as the landmark between prophets as authorities and predictors and the arrival of the desk where the buck stops.

The day of piercing; prophets kick the bucket

“I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn.” (Zechariah 12:10, NASB)

On the same day

It is a day of selfishness everybody is standing by himself; all entities turn inward. Count how many times “itself” or “themselves”appears in the following passage, showing how fragmented life in Israel became at the great turning point.

The land will mourn, every family by itself; the family of the house of David by itself and their wives by themselves; the family of the house of Nathan by itself and their wives by themselves; the family of the house of Levi by itself and their wives by themselves; the family of the Shimeites by itself and their wives by themselves; all the families that remain, every family by itself and their wives by themselves. (Zechariah 12:12-14, NASB)

  • the family of the house of David by itself
  • Davidide wives by themselves;
  • the family of the house of Nathan by itself
  • The house of Nathan wives by themselves;
  • the family of the house of Levi by itself
  • Levites wives by themselves;
  • the family of the Shimeites by itself
  • Shimeites wives by themselves;
  • all the families that remain, every family by itself
  • wives of the remaining families by themselves.

In that day a fountain will be opened for the house of David and for the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for impurity. (Zechariah 13:1, NASB)

On the same day

“It will come about in that day,” declares the Lord of hosts, “that I will cut off the names of the idols from the land, and they will no longer be remembered; and I will also remove the prophets and the unclean spirit from the land.” (Zechariah 13:2, NASB)

It gets more dire for the prophets

The prophet will deny he’s a prophet, saying, “I am Adam, I am Joseph”.

And if anyone still prophesies, then his father and mother who gave birth to him will say to him, ‘You shall not live, for you have spoken falsely in the name of the Lord’; and his father and mother who gave birth to him will pierce him through when he prophesies. Also it will come about in that day that the prophets will each be ashamed of his vision when he prophesies, and they will not put on a hairy robe in order to deceive; but he will say, ‘I am not a prophet; I am a tiller of the ground, for a man sold me as a slave in my youth.’ (Zechariah 13:3-5, NASB)