God tells David through the prophet Nathan (new character?) that he should not build a temple for God. Instead, God will establish a dynasty that lasts "forever" (yes, I know the Christian interpretation. No I don't buy it.) and David's son will build the temple. David then thanks God.
We then read about more of David's military victories. Now, I consider David's habit of killing whole cities of people to be quite terrible, but today we read about something that is, in some ways, worse.
After this, David defeated and subdued the Philistines by conquering Gath, their largest town. David also conquered the land of Moab. He made the people lie down on the ground in a row, and he measured them off in groups with a length of rope. He measured off two groups to be executed for every one group to be spared. The Moabites who were spared became David’s subjects and paid him tribute money.David is using a pseudorandom method to save one third of the people and executing the rest. Imagine the scene. Lying on the ground, soldiers standing guard next to you. The rope is measuring people off. Some people could tell which group they were in before they were measured off. Others were nearer the boundaries. The boundary divides father from son, friend from friend, husband from wife, sending one to be executed and the other to live. It's cruel and sickening.
Also, David's armies crippled a bunch of chariot horses. Also cruel.
New Testament
Jesus continues blabbing. Currently, he is going on about the holy spirit. I am sure that all of this is very inspiring to those who believe, but to me, it's like hearing someone go on and on and on about the importance of having the right belief about pink unicorns. It is pointless and boring.
Psalms and Proverbs
ה (he) and ו (waw) today.
I don't know where the NLT is getting their transliterations for the Hebrew characters, but I would not have recognized them. Here are the pronunciations I was taught (letters in parentheses might not be included in the psalm) (ch should be pronounced like you're getting phlegm out of your throat):
ReplyDeletealef bet (vet)
gimel daled hay
vav zayin chet tet
yud [1] kaph (chaph)
lamed mem nun [1]
samech ayin pay (phay)
tzadeek koof raysh
shin sin tav
[1] The vowel in nun is like the one in nook or would; same for yud.
The NLT transliterations are completely alien to me. I wonder if that's the sephardic pronunciation.
The NLT transliterations seem to be consistent with the "Name of letter: Unicode" column on the Wikipedia Hebrew Alphabet page.
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