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A Heaping up of Individual Requests
… asking for something, occurs only peripherally in the Psalms, if at all. Almost always petitions of the Psalms are concerned with deliverance from acute trouble. We never meet what is so common and entirely natural in our modern prayers: a heaping up of individual requests. Claus Westermann, Psalms (Chapter 1, “The Community Psalm of…
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God is Neither a Rescue Machine …
God is neither a rescue machine nor a supernatural force. God is a person, and one can ask him for help only when that personhood is taken seriously. Claus Westermann on the Community Psalm of Lament, Psalms (Chapter 1, “The Community Psalm of Lament”) Related – Check out some of my other Psalms posts from…
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Some People Drink and Some People Don't …
But regardless what you do, someone is going to find fault with you: For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they said, ‘He is possessed by a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking and they said, ‘Look, he is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’…
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Psalm 1.1 – Translation Comparison
The Responsorial Psalm for today is Psalm 1 as you might have gathered from my previous post. In reading through Psalm 1 in the New American Bible (=NAB), I felt like it obscured the progression to be found in verse 1, so I took a look at the verse in parallels. It turns out that…
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Psalm 1.4 – A Video Illustration of Chaff
Psalm 1.4 But not the wicked! They are like chaff driven by the wind. (NAB) Have you ever wondered what chaff being driven by the wind looks like? Of course, modern Africa is not Ancient Israel, but I doubt chaff being driven by the wind has changed much. Here is a video that shows chaff…
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Isaiah 41 – An Interesting Translation Issue
I was reading the lectionary passage this morning from Isaiah 41 and came across an interesting translation issue in verse 14. The issue revolves around the translation of the word mªtey (sorry couldn’t find a superscript “e” in my special characters). So, I checked out the text in parallel versions. Isaiah 41.14 in Parallel Versions…
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Psalm 103 & Prosperity Thought
I was reading Psalm 103 from the lectionary and was particularly struck today by verse three. It contains a pretty big, bold sounding statement that without looking I’m sure has probably been seized upon by prosperity preachers. Now, I would be the first to tell you that I think health-wealth and prosperity preaching is a…
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Psalm 98 and Assonance
I glanced at the lectionary readings earlier in the day, but spent a little more time with them tonight, especially the response, which was Psalm 98. I wanted to point out one feature of verse 1 in particular that struck me, and this is one of the types of things I think we miss in…
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BibleWorks 8 Overall Evaluation
I have recent versions of both BibleWorks 8 and Logos on my laptop as well as an older version of Accordance. Of these three programs, my two favorites are BibleWorks 8 and Accordance, though I cannot speak to soundly on Accordance for reasons I’ll make clear below. I realize that a significant amount of this…
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God, What's with All the Questions?
If you’ve been following my blog recently, you will know that I have just finished reading Brueggemann’s An Unsettling God: The Heart of the Hebrew Bible. In the book, one of his primary points is the Old Testament picture of God is as partner in dialogue in contrast to the picture of God within classical…