Sep 18

Reference links:

Isaiah 28:14-30:11 Galatians 3:23-4:31 Psalm 62:1-12 Proverbs 23:19-21

Overview of the Book of Isaiah Overview of the Epistle to the Galatians Overview of the Psalms Overview of the book of Proverbs

Old Testament

No unifying thread today. Just a bunch of one line thoughts.

I wonder if this is where the phrase, "You've made your bed, so now you have to lie in it" came from:

The bed you have made is too short to lie on.
The blankets are too narrow to cover you.

Apparently it's God who gives farmers knowledge about farming. Funny. I thought it was trial and error that developed farming techniques.

I wonder if Paul was inspired to talk about clay vessels by this verse:

How foolish can you be?
He is the Potter, and he is certainly greater than you, the clay!
Should the created thing say of the one who made it,
“He didn’t make me”?
Does a jar ever say,
“The potter who made me is stupid”?

Note however that Isaiah, unlike Paul, does not imply that the potter can use the created vessel however he wishes.

Also, various blessings and curses. Making alliances with Egypt is bad.

New Testament

Paul continues to talk about why the law existed in the first place if it is so useless now. Apparently, it was a temporary guardian. So because the law was like a guardian, the people who accept Jesus are like children of God. Or something like that.

Paul then mentioned his great concern for the former gentiles in the church. After that we get a typically Pauline bit of exegesis. Paul, as usual, stretches our credulity when he tries to use examples from the Hebrew scriptures to illustrate his point.

Today he does this by comparing people to Abraham's two children: Isaac, the son of his wife and Ishmael, the son of his concubine. Paul states that

The first woman, Hagar, represents Mount Sinai where people received the law that enslaved them.

Right... so Hagar represents Mount Sinai and the law and, symbolically, the Jews who still follow the law. Despite the fact that by Jewish tradition it is Sarah, mother of Isaac, who is the ancestor of the Jews. In short, Paul is just taking a story about a slave woman and a free woman and tearing it away from the original context to make his point.

And people complain when atheists quote from the Bible without, they claim, providing the proper context.

Psalms and Proverbs

Don't hang out with drunkards and gluttons.