Have mercy on me, LORD, for I am wretched. Heal me, for my limbs are stricken. Psalm 6:2 Robert Alter My limbs – On the 30th of April of this year, I wrote a piece about the excruciating pain I was experiencing in my left knee. I asked for your prayers (thank you). I wrote…
Through all this Job did not sin nor did he blame God. Job 1:22 NASB 1995 Nor did he blame – But the Hebrew isn’t quite what we think of when we read these words in English. We think of “blame” as assigning responsibility or finding fault. So, in our Western theology, if God is…
You have removed lover and friend far from me; my acquaintances are in a hiding place. Psalm 88:18 NASB You have removed – A short excursus into enemy territory followed by an immediate return to the major theme: God is sovereign. This poem describes whatever happens as under God’s control and direction. Therefore, even if…
They have surrounded me like water all day long; they have encircled me altogether. Psalm 88:17 NASB They – Suddenly, a change. Through seventeen verses the psalmist has decried God’s absence. His lament holds God responsible for the sorry state of his life, for the nearly impossible burden he must carry, for the approach of death. But now,…
For if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly practice justice between a person and his neighbor, if you do not oppress the stranger, the orphan, or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place, nor follow other gods to your own ruin, then I will let you live in this place, in the land that I…
Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” Genesis 28:16 NASB I did not know it – lo yada’etti. But how could he not know? Isn’t God everywhere? How could Jacob think for a moment that God wasn’t in the place where he…
“The Lord said to him, ‘How?’ And he said, ‘I will go out and be a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.’ Then He said, ‘You are to entice him and also prevail. Go and do so.’ Now therefore, behold, the Lord has put a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; and the Lord has proclaimed disaster against…
And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. Romans 8:28 NASB Causes – “God is the God of the entire cosmos; God has to do with every creature, and every creature has to do with God, whether they recognize it…
Then all the wicked and worthless men among those who went with David said, “Because they did not go with us, we will not give them any of the spoil that we have recovered, except to every man his wife and his children, that they may lead them away and depart.” 1 Samuel 30:22 NASB…
Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” Genesis 28:16 NASB I did not know it – lo yada’etti. But how could he not know? Isn’t God everywhere? How could Jacob think for a moment that God wasn’t in the place where…
