Ahithophel and Judas

Ahithophel seems to be--almost--a mixed character. He is wise, which would intimate godly, especially when his counsel is said to be as the very words of God, and his betrayal of David is a just betrayal, if such a thing exists, in light of the offense done to him by David. He is also a parallel to Judas, as will be shown a bit more later on.

To begin with, Uriah was one of David's mighty men, and his wife was Ahithophel's granddaughter (2 Samuel 11:3, 23:24, 23:39, 1 Chronicles 11:41). (On a side note that I may pursue later, the fact that Uriah's home could be seen from the palace suggests that the most loyal/mighty men were given homes surrounding the palace in which the king dwelled, which could possibly mirror the guard of the Tabernacle in which God dwelt, Num. 3:38 among others. And anyone that doesn't immediately embrace this is a heretic.) Due to the wisdom of Ahithophel and the public nature of David's sin (2 Samuel 12:14), there is no conceivable way that Ahithophel was not aware of what David had done, and no doubt had some feelings about it that could be described as "less than ecstatic." His granddaughter's husband, a very prominent, noble and godly man, was murdered, and his granddaughter was getting married to the murderer.

So, when Absalom rebelled, how would that look to a wise man who was well acquainted with the justice of God, and had explicit and personal knowledge of David's gross sin? Obviously, God had judged David unfit to be king, and was replacing him. After all, David's decline, which is brutally marked, began with Bathsheba. He is never again portrayed in a kingly fashion. His weakness is what is noted, his lack of leadership, his lack of strength, his lack of initiative, his lack of knowledge of the affairs of his kingdom, his lack of foresight, even his lack of sexual interest, in bitter irony: through grasping for sex he loses his taste for sex (which is a pattern of God's judgment: we follow an evil desire with an evil action, and God lets us, but our judgment is the natural result of that action). Or, should we wish a less favorable light for Ahithophel, when Absalom rebelled, Ahithophel had the only chance he would ever get for revenge.

In either case, he betrayed David (who had horrifically betrayed him), and aimed to kill him with counsel: blood for blood. As a result of betraying God's anointed, he is overthrown and chooses to kill himself. This draws an illuminating parallel to Judas, which gives us a new angle on the well-known story of Judas' betrayal, as shown in the next post.

They Seek Him Here...

The Scarlet Pimpernel, by the illustrious Baroness Emma Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála "Emmuska" Orczy de Orczi, no, I'm not joking, read from October 08 to 09, 2010

Very obviously written by a woman, with a hefty dose of the romantically absurd/absurdly romantic (a guy actually kissing the ground that his wife walked on, and the balcony she rested her hand on, stuff like that). Kinda reminded me of the "romantic idealism" of the 18-19th centuries, and as such, was utter tripe. But, if you took it in a tongue-in-cheek fashion, and if you have a dangerously high tolerance for romantic nonsense (hint: if I said, "Cat: f-o-x: cat," and you knew what I was quoting, then this is you. Obviously, it is me, as I can both quote this and watch Pride and Prejudice in a single sitting), then you'll probably enjoy it. I wouldn't spend more than a couple days on it, though.

I've noticed: the ridiculously sappy romantic stories always make better movies than books, as you can't portray all the nonsense driveling out of the lead male characters deep, piercing, sensitive eyes, or how the lead female character is so torn between being stupid or demonstrating that she has a functioning brain cell or two. The Ian McKellan (Chauvlin) and whoever else adaptation of this was more well done and more enjoyable than the book in many ways.

All in all, a fun read, but nothing to write a three-paragraph review about. (less)

Thank you Mr. Belloc

A delightful remark from Hillair Belloc while he was moderating a debate twixt Chesterton and Shaw. And yes, I did just use the word twixt. More than that, I said it, though you probably didn't hear me.

"If the League of Nations could make a war it would be the only thing it ever has made."

Maybe I'll Get Posthumously Published...

Not really; I have no great desire to ever be published. It is this type of occasion, however, that convinces me to put down my pen and pick up a book. Another unknown, probably never to be known poet that can produce something of this nature? Maybe I'll start writing prose. Her name is Colleen McGarry, and she has been teaching in Iraq for the last four years. Click on my title for a link to the poem on her blog.


After Sorrow comes Hope.

HOPE

Hummingbird heartbeats, hoof beats, a whirring thrum and thrill.
Flight of flicker, fancy, fantasy, fantastic flying yet fearful
Blink and blush, quickly and quietly, keep it buried, keep it below
It could get away, you know.
Skipping, tripping, flipping swiftly slowly silently sounding
Uncatchable; uncageable; unimaginable; so unreal
Barely beyond the brink of minds eye, mine eye
Moody and mopey and dusk, yet merry and maypoles at rising,
My time flies and butterflies and ladybugs and it flies.
Landing only lightly lately like lightning
In a flash, fearsome fire, and it is far fled
Or maybe not, it is near still, to burn and bleed and blossom.
Which peerless path shall it pick to plod or plough?
To turn and till the hearts of all the helpless heavenless hosts
And gift them heaven, a priceless precious princely gift:
Continuing courage, dauntless drive to do what can be done,
But also to bloom, petting petals out upon themselves
To keep and continue, constant, cheerful, cherubic
To lose it is like the loss of life and love and laughter
Celticly knotted, tied and woven with warp and weft
A tearless tapestry of dawning delight.

Guitar Music

I've recently been going through Bart Hopkin's album After Seven Years, and have found it to be quite good (if you like good guitar with minimal accompaniment). Click on my title for samples. I liked it a great deal, and would highly recommend it. My favorite is his rendition of She's Not There by Rod Argent of The Zombies.

Rough Draft of Daft Stuff, Referring to John 1

John is probably the most interesting of all of the gospels. He's my favorite NT writer, and ties with Solomon (Cantica Canticorum) for my favorite Scriptural author. So, here is a brief intro to reading his gospel, and then a briefer overview of John 1.

John should be read as a יוֹם כִּפּוּר (yom kippur) entrance into the temple: the first five chapters deal with water (ceremonial washing), then light and bread (holy place), then the blood and death, then the High Priest returning from the presence of God alive, signifying the Divine acceptance of the offering and the atonement for the sins of the nation. Of course, this is simplistic: taken with Revelation, it forms a chiastic whole, it has tremendously complex themes of marriage (as the Second Adam follows the footsteps of the first up a hill, into a deep sleep, has his side opened and a bride created from it as well as obeying God on a tree to be the faithful guard of the garden), Eden (his resurrection occurs in a garden, he is seen in a garden, etc), and many more that I've never discovered, but it still works well for a general overview.

Now, for chapter one. Or rather, as far into chapter one as my sleep-deprived mind feels like going. The first two divisions are quite interesting, and are made numerically: the three repetitions of Word in 1 is the foundation of 1-3, then the seven repetitions of light in 4-9 lead to the natural division that takes place between 13 and 14. 14 is lightly distinguished from what came before by a very explicit chiasm (14-18: only begotten, only begotten; grace and truth, grace and truth) that centers yet again--just in case you happened to miss the rather prevalent preceding theme of the Divinity of Christ--that centers yet again on the eternal existence of Christ: "He who comes after me is preferred before me, for He was before me." It also calls himself as his first witness, along with Peter and James. His second witness he calls immediately after; John the Baptist.

19 is the opening bookend of another chiasm that closes in 28: from Jerusalem, Bethabara; Christ Elijah and the Prophet, Christ Elijah and the Prophet; those who sent us, those who were sent; you say, Isaiah said, with the center being focused on the office of John as the prophesied forerunner of the (Incarnated) Deity.

Verse 29 opens another chiasm, in which is a trilogy of John's actions: said, bore witness, testified. It is also the first mention of the Spirit, making this the end of the natural section of 1-34 as an exposition of God, and of Christ as God. Christ was in heaven with God; the Spirit of God is with Christ on earth. This could be viewed as another witness, but the text flows far better as a chiasm: The Word with God in the beginning, the Spirit (of God) on Christ (the Incarnation of the Word) after John; the witnesses (which are bookended by the "He who comes after is preferred before") are at the center.

29-34 (Lamb of God, Son of God); 30-33b (He was before me, He who baptizes with the Holy Spirit); 31-33a (I did not know, I did not know); Center, 32: And John bore witness, saying, "I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and He remained upon Him."

Also, I don't yet know what to make of it, but the trilogy of "He who comes after me is preferred before me, for He was before me" is repeated for emphasis, but probably also for some structural theme. Were I to guess, it is a part of the overall chiastic structure, the damning Arche chiasm of the passage: 1. only begotten, 3. Lamb of God: center: 2. you don't know Him. But that's a guess, and I haven't yet gotten to the big picture, to the loose chiastic structure.



That is as far as I will go with the structural analysis for the moment. The prevalent, inescapable theme is the utter Deity of Christ, which John asserts completely by verse 14.

So, this is the focus of the first section of John 1. The Word, the second member of the Godhead, was with the First, and comes bearing the Third, as witnessed by a couple of John's, and the Pharisees, parallel to the darkness, did not comprehend the One standing among them (5, 26).

Wimpy Winston

Churchill by Paul Johnson

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


All in all, rather badly done. Well researched, but his focus couldn't have been more limp-wristed and pathetic.

He wrote this book to answer the question, "Did Churchill save England?" The answer, if you were wondering, is yes. He saved not only England, but the world. If it weren't for Churchill, you wouldn't even exist. And neither would puppies or kittens or butterflies or ice cream. I was hoping to hear about the man, or at least some funny quotes from the legend. I got very little of either. I found out a few interesting facts, such as the fact that he took up painting and was good at it--about 500 of his paintings survive--and that--get this--he had between eight and ten million words in print by the time he died. Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was absolutely dwarfed by his account of the first world war: 1,100,000 words to 2,050,000. The last Harry Potter book, by comparison, has fewer than 200,000, and that's just cause the editors decided to sit back, drink gin and practice saying, "why yes, I am the editor of the most successful books in the civilized world" in front of a mirror instead of actually editing the book. Hardcovers are more expensive.

But Churchill comes across looking kinda like a pansy by this guys account. A pansy is the last thing he was: he was the one who specifically ordered the bombing of Dresden. He was the one who brutally suppressed the Irish, causing more civilian casualties than anyone seems likely to admit. He was a violent, brutal, bulldog of a man, but this author spends half the book explaining that though Churchill was always smoking a cigar, he never inhaled. Seriously? Why on earth would we care? I was looking for Churchill: the "blood, toil, tears and sweat" Churchill, the "never has so much been owed by so many to so few," the Churchill that almost singlehandedly built up both the British navy and RAF, the one that was so determined to win that he would have nuked every city between Berlin and Belfast if he'd had the bombs, the one that said "If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons."

And, if our author was too concerned with explaining how he watered down his whiskey so he didn't actually drink as much as it seemed, too concerned lest our freshly whitewashed hero(?) (he got plenty of exercise) be human, then he could at least have given us some comedy. I mention Churchill to the most uneducated person--to the governmentally schooled among us--and he'll even start fumbling around with, "'you may be drunk, but I'm...' no, wait... 'Madam, you're ugly, but I'm Winston...' no..." Churchill was hilarious, quick witted and could be downright vicious with his comebacks, but we're given so little of that in this book that I would never have guessed he had a sense of humour at all (yes, I spell it with a "u", just like honour and valour and all those others. I'd spell dog with a "u" if it wasn't my pastor's name). So, the book was simply boring. I'd hoped for better.

But, if you're more interested in Churchill's policy than his person, in his chronology than his character, this book is well researched, and I have no doubt--no doubt--that it's accurate. It simply has to be.



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My Mommy Loves Me

One of my favorite poems as of yet (if you don't do this already, click on my titles, for therein is hidden great treasure).

A Second Childhood

When all my days are ending
And I have no song to sing,
I think I shall not be too old
To stare at everything;
As I stared once at a nursery door
Or a tall tree and a swing.

Wherein God's ponderous mercy hangs
On all my sins and me,
Because He does not take away
The terror from the tree
And stones still shine along the road
That are, and cannot be.

Men grow too old for love, my love,
Men grow too old for wine,
But I shall not grow too old to see
Unearthly daylight shine,
Changing my chamber's dust to snow
Till I doubt if it be mine.

Behold, the crowning mercies melt,
The first surprises stay;
And in my dross is dropped a gift
For which I dare not pray:
That a man grow used to grief and joy
But not to night and day.

Men grow too old for love, my love,
Men grow too old for lies;
But I shall not grow too old to see
Enormous night arise,
A cloud that is larger than the world
And a monster made of eyes.

Nor am I worthy to unloose
The latchet of my shoe;
Or shake the dust from off my feet
Or the staff that bears me through
On ground that is too good to last,
Too solid to be true.

Men grow too old to woo, my love,
Men grow too old to wed:
But I shall not grow too old to see
Hung crazily overhead
Incredible rafters when I wake
And find I am not dead.

A thrill of thunder in my hair:
Though blackening clouds be plain,
Still I am stung and startled
By the first drop of the rain:
Romance and pride and passion pass
And these are what remain.

Strange crawling carpets of the grass,
Wide windows of the sky:
So in this perilous grace of God
With all my sins go I:
And things grow new though I grow old,
Though I grow old and die.

-G.K. Chesterton

John Adams

John Adams by David McCullough

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book I picked up because it was available, not because I had any particular interest in the man. That has changed. From his deeply loving and tender marriage to his obsessive political career to his troubled children to his tumultuous friendship with Jefferson, this is the story of a brilliant, flawed, real man, for whom I now have the greatest respect.



Without this man, we most likely would not be a nation: he was the one that fought ceaselessly for a declaration of independence, and yet he harbored no delusions regarding the length of the conflict or the effort that it would require. He alone of all the proponents for the war declared that it could take upwards of ten years.



This also contains the origins of John Quincy, and they are fascinating.



Excellent book, with perhaps not so many original quotes as I would have liked.



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In Cold Blood

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This last and greatest work of Truman Capote is truly horrific. The greatest shock to me was the lack of distance between the mind of the criminals and my own mind. I somehow always expect villains to be clear-cut black hats, despite the fact that I am often one of them. But our minds have the ability to justify anything.



I don't quite know what it was that the book did to Capote, but in the course of writing it, he became close friends with the one that actually pulled the trigger, then used and abandoned him at the last second. He didn't show up to the hanging, and he didn't file the final appeal that he could have filed. He is reported to have said to Harper Lee that he couldn't save him, and she responded (accurately) that he didn't want to: he wanted an ending to his book. A terrifying read.



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Perfecting Prose

There are a couple of quotations that I've been trying to improve, and am at the stage where I'm looking for the opinions of other wordsmithish peoples. Be brutal, have fun: if you think a different word works better to convey the same meaning, tell me. If you think the meaning is stupid, it's probably because God hates either you or me; smart money's on me. After the quote, I'll list the words that I'm already debating. Input is desired. It's kind of the point.


Why do we kill to dissect? Do we not know the bird better on the bough than beneath the blade?

1. kill
2. dissect
3. know the bird better / better know the bird
4. bough


Always remember: the only difference between you and the ones you pity is grace;
the only difference between you and the ones you despise is a choice,
and, but for the choice of God, you would have had no grace,
and, but for the grace of God, you would have had no choice.

1. Always remember
2. difference / distance / something else
3. ones
4. pity
5-6 see # 2 and #3.
7. despise / loathe / something else
8. and, but for
9. would have had


The first one is obviously more refined, with a lot less wiggle room. The second one I want to remain chiastic (A B B' A'), and I want it to end on our choice being allowed by the grace of God, as that is more offensive to us than our grace being dependent upon God's choice. Beyond that, I'm looking for other opinions as to the overall aesthetics of the acoustics.

All input will be valued; some will be valued a lot more highly. It's not a competition, but Sproul already lost. Sorry Sproul. It's just the rules.

Blessings,
Jesse Broussard

Jane Austen Has it Right

In Genesis 2:24 we are told that a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and that the two shall become one flesh. The reason for it is the first poem of Scripture, the first words of man: "bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called אסה (i-sha) for from 'מעיס לקחה זאת' (me-ish lu-ko-cha zot: man was taken she)."

The curious part comes in the NT reference of Paul's, in Ephesians 5:31 (by the way: Paul is not the name Saul was given when he stopped using Biblical heroes for target practice a la Braveheart; Paul is the Greek [Gentile] form of the Hebrew Saul). Because Paul, in his wonderful Greek (for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and "προσκολληθησεται προσ την γυναικα:" shall be cleaved to his wife), adds on a lovely little addendum: Ephesians 5:32. "This is a great mystery, but I speak of Christ and the church."

I don't know how many times I have read that, and it is quite simply put, but I don't think it ever really sank in. Just think of the ramifications of this analogy: a son leaving his family is compared to Christ's incarnation. Please, if one of my four faithful readers (moving up in the world, aren't we?) notices some random bit of heresy thrown in, don't start stacking the faggots: it's actually hard to speak of things like this without coming dangerously close to an edge somewhere or other, and I'd really prefer not to be burned at the stake quite yet.

Now, we always gravitate to the second half of the Genesis reference: the great mystery is Christ and the Church as husband and wife, and this is true, and this is glorious, and this is astounding. But we completely gloss over what had to happen for this even to be possible: Christ, the Second Person of the Godhead, had to leave His Father and--figuratively--Mother (forgive me and keep in mind, I hate The Shack), and become human. On top of this, He never leaves that humanity behind. He is glorified, yes, He is Deity, yes, but he never leaves His human flesh behind.

Allow me to quickly qualify the rest of this post: God is God, and we aren't, and we never will be, and He'll never not be. All clear? There is an infinite distance between God and us, always has been, always will be. God to us is infinitely greater than we are to whatever is eaten by the bacteria dying at the hands of our white blood cells right now, and always will be, okay? I don't even like fire.

So, this is the narrative arc of the story. God created humans in His Image, to become like Him. Not only did we not continue in His Image, but we defiled and defaced it. Now, picture this: you have the Infinite, the Creator, the Αρχε of all: He can do whatever He wants, He can write us off and start over from scratch; He can skip the whole process and simply create the result; He can do things that we could never even think of, or He could just say forget it. After all, it's not as if He needs us for anything. But no. He does none of this. He completes His purpose; He makes us like Him. How? By making Himself like us.

As humans, we were created to be like God--it was no false temptation--but we fell where He stood: "being equal with God, He did not consider equality with God something to be grasped..." Humans were created to ascend into a (lesser, finite, limited) type of equality with God, but we fell. So God jumps down into a (greater, dual natured μυστεριον) type of equality with us so that He might become a fitting Bridegroom, then ascends into what we were supposed to be, that He might lead us thence, and the story be completed in a Wedding.

This is indeed a Great Mystery; this is indeed The Great Mystery. Let us be grateful: our story does not start with birth and end with death. Our story starts with birth, dies, is reborn into a greater life, and then gets eternally married.

Merry Lewis of the Weather

Undaunted Courage by Stephen E. Ambrose

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I found this to be an engaging, thoroughly researched and very good review of the Lewis & Clark expedition. It taught me a good deal more than I'd expected to learn, and did so without being dull or heavy-handed. N. D. Wilson is rumored to have said that teaching is loving something in the presence of others, and Ambrose does exactly that.



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Mo Chridh

I recently finished Pawn in Frankincense by Dunnett. I know of one other book that can have the same effect on me, and it was written by Tolkien. The chess game and its horrific ending. How does one subject his character to so great a suffering? And how does the character survive? And how does the author live with himself? I don't know that I could.

In my opinion, one of the most devastating climaxes of prose ever written. "Say goodnight to the dark."

Only Slightly Summoned

The Summons by John Grisham

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Holly once complained that some of Wodehouse's books wouldn't exist except for people lying. Well here's another. And, to make matters worse, it's not Wodehouse.



Don't get me wrong: Grisham can construct a sentence, but he's better at constructing plots. However, in this one, his usual nail-biting suspense failed me greatly. About twenty minutes into it, I could have written the ending myself.



Still, it was enjoyable, and if you're even slightly less cynical than I am (do flowers wither as you walk past? When you step outside, do you darken the sun?), you'd probably greatly enjoy it.



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"Nature and Her Laws Lay Hid in Night...

God said 'Let Newton be,' and all was light." --My favorite little monster.

Isaac Newton by Mitch Stokes

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I picked this book because my math teacher wrote it, not out of any inherent interest in Newton. That lasted about the first two chapters. From that point on, I was fascinated with the little guy: obsessive, neurotic, reclusive, a genius with a few slight misanthropic tendencies--he really is an astonishing character. Nothing at all like I'd pictured him, and I highly recommend this book to anyone even remotely interested in anything at all (though it is somewhat weak on dragons).



Stokes obviously knows what he's talking about, and he does a magnificent job of getting a well rounded review of Newton into so small of a book. Not only do we get the big picture, but we get an enormous amount of personality as well, which is fairly unusual.



My one complaint would have to be the somewhat inconsistent prose: Usually an author has a particular tone that he maintains. You can tell the difference between a paragraph written by Jorge Luis Borges and one written by Oscar Wilde; between Chesterton and Tolkien. Stokes' writing seemed to vary a good deal: none of it was at all bad, but there is a difference between a well researched author, and a well published researcher, and Stokes falls into the latter category. But if you approach his book with that in mind, you will not be disappointed.



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Like a Sheep With a Secret Sorrow...

Jeeves and the Old School Chum by P.G. Wodehouse

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Technically, it's Jeeves & the Old School Chum (and other stories), but Goodreads couldn't find it, and no, I did not mean the Other Scholl Chum; thank you anyway.



It was typical Wodehouse: delightful. I was laughing the entire time, and of course highly recommend it. Also includes The Ordeal of Young Tuppy, Episode of the Dog McIntosh, The Love That Purifies, and The Spot of Art.



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How Does One Beck a Stein?

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Wow. That was the happiest thing I've read this side of Notes From the Underground. Brilliantly written, almost a bit predictable after the introduction of the wife, but still it unfolds like a persian rug being unrolled on a hardwood floor: lovely and intricate.



This once again reinforces in my mind the absolute necessity for writers to have the entire story mapped out before they begin the writing of it. How else the conversation regarding who should have shot the dog; how else the introduction of the self-same luger? It is a small, tight-knit plot that is tragic and all-too believable. The chief flaw of course is the utter lack of redemption.



The title, by the way, is an afterthought: originally titled "Something that Happened," the current name is from one of--in my opinion, anyway--Burn's greater poems, and one that is quite simply delightful: To a Mouse.







Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim'rous beastie,
O, what panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi' bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murd'ring pattle!

I'm truly sorry Man's dominion
Has broken Nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle,
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An' fellow-mortal!

I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen-icker in a thrave 'S a sma' request:
I'll get a blessin wi' the lave,
An' never miss't!

Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!
It's silly wa's the win's are strewin!
An' naething, now, to big a new ane,
O' foggage green!
An' bleak December's winds ensuin,
Baith snell an' keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an' wast,
An' weary Winter comin fast,
An' cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro' thy cell.

That wee-bit heap o' leaves an' stibble,
Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
Now thou's turn'd out, for a' thy trouble,
But house or hald.
To thole the Winter's sleety dribble,
An' cranreuch cauld!

But Mousie, thou are no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men,
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

Still, thou art blest, compar'd wi' me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e'e,
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess an' fear!



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Another Explanation

This time, of a question I never asked.

God appears to Moses in a burning bush: a bush that is on fire, but is not consumed. God could have appeared to him in any way, shape or form (just look at Ezekiel). So why the bush? And why was it on fire? And why was it not being consumed?

Well, let's look at typology. Trees (and bushes?) are righteous men or nations: if you doubt me, just read the Bible looking for references to trees, and attempt to do so in an intelligent manner, not in a wooden and literal fashion as if you had no brain. No, not every tree in the Bible is a person; Jonah isn't sitting under a guy with some type of fatal parasite; Absalom doesn't get nabbed by some remnant of the nephilim; but when the Bible presents a tree, it is often referring to a righteous person or nation (a basic rule would be that if the typological reading does no violence to the text, but opens it up in a manner that is consistent with the rest of Scripture, then go for it. If your typological reading leads you to the conclusion that locusts are obviously helicopters, or that you should drink the cool-aid, then maybe not so much.). The fact that this particular specimen is on fire but not consumed, along with the context of the story, makes it quite possible that it is a representation of the nation of Israel. It is on fire; they are persecuted; it is not consumed; God will save them. Just another thought from Sumpter. Or Leithart. Or someone else; I don't know, nor do I particularly care, as it's four in the morning and I have fifteen minutes of break left before I go back to work.

Also interesting is what He tells Moses to do: "Take your shoes from off your feet..." Men wear shoes to protect their feet, yes, but symbolically (or typologically) the shoes represent the separation of men from the cursed ground (see the list of clean animals: those separated from the ground, those fish with scales to separate them from the water, and those birds that don't step on dead animals--though, yes, there is more to it. See Jordan's Through New Eyes for a fuller treatment). Yet where God is, the ground is holy (tangentially, this bears enormous weight with Leviticus 5--the dust from the floor of the tabernacle is holy--and Jesus' treatment of the woman caught in the act of adultery all by her lonesome), so Moses must take off his shoes.

I am sure there is also something more to the disciples being commanded to shake the dust from their feet when leaving towns that did not receive them, but my break is almost over. I'll explore later. Or I'll just ask Leithart. Or Sumpter. Or someone else.

Blessings,
JB

Possible Explanation

In 1 Samuel 20:30, Saul makes a very confusing accusation against his son Jonathan in the wake of discovering that David had escaped his hand by Jonathan's aid (the whole feast followed by shooting arrows into a field scenario). It is an accusation whose language Saul takes directly from Leviticus 18:7, and it refers to having sexual relations with ones mother, Oedipus style.

This is all clear enough. The confusion is why the accusation is made, and why it is made here, and I came across the (possible) answer purely by accident. I had gotten off work on Saturday morning, and, purely on a whim, decided to have breakfast before going home and going to bed. So, I went to the Breakfast Club and was invited into a Bible study taking place, which Peter Leithart was leading at the time. Anyway, here is the theoretical explanation given.

By explicitly contradicting his father's wishes, Jonathan is acting as if he had no paternal obligations to Saul, which could in turn give rise to the theory that Saul was not his father. Saul's accusation is far-fetched, but Leithart's explanation fits, and, as I know of no other that does, I am adopting that as my working theory of the verse until I find something else that fits better (this is me hinting to all three of you--readership is climbing--to suggest alternate theories in the comments section).

Blessings,
JB