So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught, whether by word of mouth or by letter from us. 2 Thessalonians 2:15 NASB Traditions – Craig Allert’s book, A High View of Scripture?, goes a long way toward settling the mythology of an early Christian canon of the New Testament. …
The Lord’s lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. Lamentations 3:22-23 NASB Faithfulness – We end at the beginning. This entire lament starts here, with a declaration of God’s faithfulness. But that’s what makes it so strange. Here, in the midst of a book of poems about the tragedy of…
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “Therefore I have hope in Him.” Lamentations 3:24 NASB My portion – When everything is stripped away, what sustains you? That’s the kind of question Job had to ask himself. It’s the same question the people of Israel needed to ask when Babylon erased their world. Maybe it’s our question as…
The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the person who seeks Him. Lamentations 3:25 NASB Discovering Despair – Hebrew Scripture uses two words for the concept of seeking. Translated identically, they actually have important differences. The two are bāqaš and dāraš. TWOT notes: Our word is distinguished from its frequent parallel and equivalent bāqaš (q.v.)…
It is good that he waits silently for the salvation of the Lord. Lamentations 3:26 NASB Salvation – The goal of silence is freedom. Really? Do you experience silence that way? Or is silence a fearful thing, a place where you just don’t have any answer to your puzzles, a place where God was jailed for vagrancy and…
It is good for a man that he should bear the yoke in his youth. Lamentations 3:27 NASB Yoke – This is not a “my yoke is easy” verse, The loss of an entire nation is a heavy price to pay. The burden isn’t light. Since Lamentations is reflection on the exile and the destruction of…
Let him sit alone and be silent since He has laid it on him. Lamentations 3:28 NASB Since – Like good Hebrew exegesis, we start at the end to discover the beginning. No sense beginning at the beginning since Hebrew has a way of turning the tale upside-down at the end. So let’s start where it ends in…
Let him sit alone and be silent since He has laid it on him. Lamentations 3:28 NASB Since – Consider these words from Buechner: “What deadens us most to God’s presence within us, I think, is the inner dialogue that we are continuously engaged in with ourselves, the endless chatter of human thought.”[1] Aren’t they so true? Most…
“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I shall return there. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Job 1:21 NASB Naked – Job was right. We come into this world with nothing. We leave with nothing. What happens in between birth and death is the interaction of the…
In the beginning God . . . Genesis 1:1 (various translations) God – Over the last decade I haven’t engaged very much with the typical arguments for the existence of God. There’s plenty of material written about these classical arguments, mostly to no avail since I don’t really know of anyone who was ever convinced…
