Among the minor prophets, Habakkuk displays more personality than most because we see an evolution in his thinking. He moved from questioning the Lord in chapter 1 to relying utterly on him in chapter 3. He speaks of the cycle of the Lord’s actions the defeat of the Babylonians at the hand of the oppressed…
Category: Adults
Condemnation to Babylon, warning to Israel: Habakkuk 2
Chapter 2 of Habakkuk answers the prophet’s questions of chapter 1. Habakkuk asked in ch. 1 how long the Lord would afflict them and why he would use such rotten means of affliction. Here in ch. 2 the Lord explained that the cycle of oppression is not about the participants but about their attitudes. If…
Why establish justice with the unjust?: Habakkuk 1
We continued to discuss the theme that has been developing in the past several books (Jonah, Michah, and Nahum), that the Lord is the entire mechanism of affliction and comfort, the storm and the shelter. Habakkuk continues to argue this point, but while questioning the Lord’s methods. This book takes place after the destruction of…
The uncomfortable question of self-preservation: Nahum 3
The Lord immediately comes after Nineveh in this violent, chaotic final chapter of the book of Nahum. The author justifies the attack and then brings the reader into the midst of battle. The Lord lays Nineveh open to her enemies, just as her enemies were once open to Nineveh’s attacks. The great city thought that…
Ominous delight: Nahum 3
The second chapter of the book of Nahum continues on the theme of the Lord as the whole system: the good and the bad, the up and the down, the victory and the defeat. As the whirlwind of the Lord becomes painfully concrete in war, the Israelites learn from their victory over Nineveh how easy…
The Lord: The storm and the shelter from the storm…(Nahum 1)
The Lord is a paradox with a nasty edge in Nahum. After everyone read through the first chapter of Nahum, I asked what struck everyone about this chapter. One person noticed that the Lord seemed malevolent with the narrative’s emphasis on “vengeance”; another noticed that the Lord’s promise here in the text to keep the…
Nahum and the Minor Prophets
This week I spoke to our adults and presented the book of Nahum in light of the other books we have been reading. I presented how reading Nahum in the context of the other Minor Prophets enhances the message of the opposing faithfulness of the Lord and the fickleness of Israel. In our Bible the…
Jude: Disagreeing to Agree
Falling in line with other epistles attributed to “the Pillars,” (Galatians 2:9) Jude, literally, Judas (Ἰούδας) is included in the canon as part of a larger narrative about Paul’s conflict with Peter and James. The obvious implications of the name Judas, the “brother of James” (1:1) and the adaptation of Jude’s phraseology by the letters of…
You Can Lead a Horse to Water
In every serious, lasting relationship, there comes a moment of truth in which at least one person must decide not to be the victim. Shunning the wisdom of Scripture, children supplant obedience with blame, squandering the due season of their adulthood with endless, poisonous rants about how others are responsible for their failures. Spouses wickedly…
Plato’s Wicked Scales
The most difficult rule of the biblical tradition–and the one most widely ignored–is Scripture’s insistence that its judgments can apply only to one’s self. In 2 Samuel, David quickly condemned the rich man for stealing a poor man’s ewe lamb, unwittingly accusing himself: Then David’s anger burned greatly against the man, and he said to Nathan, “As the Lord…