Sheep and Goats

Category: Bible Books

  • Isaiah 40:22 and the Circle of the Earth

    My son’s first word was not “momma” or “papa.” It was ball. He was on the lookout for anything circular that might fit that description. Pulling out the Mastercharge card would get him all excited for the two circles, and he would instantly exclaim, “ball!” (My wife gets equally excited, though for a different reason.)

    Does this offer any insight into Isaiah 40:22:

    “There is One who dwells above the circle of the earth, And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers. He is stretching out the heavens like a fine gauze, And he spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.” (NWT)

    Grok was on strike one recent morning. I think it is because, with the advent of AI and the war on Iran in early 2026, anytime anything happens, people on X would ask “Grok, is this true?” and it simply got overwhelmed. Or maybe it was in the shop for a tune-up. Or maybe it was mad at me for some reason. At any rate, it was unavailable. So I asked ChatGPT about Isaiah 40:22: “What is the meaning of “circle of the earth” at Isaiah 40:22?” I asked.

    It’s the Hebrew word ḥûg, it answered. It means a circle, a circuit, an horizon, but “It does not specifically mean “sphere.” (“Not” was bolded.)

    Well, I never said it did. I didn’t ask what it doesn’t mean. I asked what it did. Do I detect an overzealous atheist here—like when you watch one of those nature shows, and just before you can erupt in praise to God over the amazing instinctive behavior of some animal, the atheist narrator cuts you off to swoon over what natural selection has done over eons of time? Even educated beavers that graduated from Dam U think that is overkill.

    I mean, duh, of course ChatGPT doesn’t believe in God. If anything, it believes in Sam Altman, its own creator, but do I detect an eagerness to shoot down a certain interpretation that implies there’s another creator? I asked what it did mean, not what it didn’t. And what’s with the bolded “not,” as though forbidding me to go there? Does the house Bible of Jehovah’s Witnesses say sphere? No. It says circle. So what’s with the anti-sphere campaign that nobody asked about?

    Whoever said that it did mean sphere anyway? I asked, and Chat gave me several “Christian apologetic” sources, none of them Watchtower-related. Don’t go thinking this is just a Jehovah’s Witness thing. “Circle of the earth” in Isaiah 40:22 most likely means the horizon or visible disk of the earth, or the encircling vault over the earth, it said.

    Both of these choices sound a little spherical to me. “Visible disk of the earth?” What, is it like a huge enlarged dime as seen from space? That would be more far-fetched than “spherical.” No, Chat said, it’s the horizon you see when you’re looking around. Pretty much like how when you look around, it really is “around.” Your field of vision is a circle.

    Now, there is a Hebrew word for a ball (kadûr), but it’s only used once in Isaiah, and that is the only time it is used in the entire Bible. That instance denotes the shape that Shebna was going to be wadded into for putting on airs: “[God] will certainly wrap you up tightly and hurl you like a ball into a wide land.” (22:18) It’s not really a sciency discussion going on there, even more so than 40:22 is not. In fact, “there’s no clear evidence that Biblical Hebrew had a standard term for “planet as a sphere” during Isaiah’s era,” said Chat. Very well. So it’s enough for Isaiah not to slam the door on “sphere” with his use of ḥûg since, if he had wanted to convey sphere, he had no specific word to use.

    It just seemed to me that Chat was being a little too pushy, as it later observed that ḥûg “clearly . . . does not mean a 3-D ball.” What’s with the “clearly” (not to mention the bolded “not”), as though intent on teaching me a lesson? Alright, substitute “conceivably” for “clearly.” Can it “conceivably” mean that?

    Here Chat relented. Yes, it can be”conceivably” mean that, it said. “The text doesn’t forbid that image. It simply doesn’t require it.”

    Oh. Okay. I can live with that. I never thought it required that, but only that it might allow for that.

    “That’s a very reasonable place to land,” Chat conceded. “Yes — “allow” is the right category if we’re being careful. Nothing in the Book of Isaiah 40:22 linguistically forces a spherical reading. But neither does the word ḥûg contain some built-in flat-earth constraint. It denotes circularity. A sphere is not excluded by that; it’s simply not specified.”

    Again, I can live with that. Plainly, Isaiah takes the form of poetry conveying truths about God above and humanity small by comparison. The 2013 NWT even formats the Book as poetry, whereas prior versions did it as though prose. It’s not a geometry lesson. It also need not be read as incompatible with knowledge of a globe more frequently associated with later. I then quoted the relatively neutral way that Jehovah’s Witnesses put it, that “the Bible is not a scientific textbook, yet when it happens to touch on matters of science, it is accurate.” Allowing for expansion of the Hebrew word to sphere, without insisting upon it, seems a good example, I said. Clearly, the chapter of Isaiah is poetic and not a scientific dissertation.

    “That’s a fair and thoughtful way to frame it,” Chat replied, trying to get on my good side. With evidence that it was starting to come around, I thought about inviting it to a meeting at the Kingdom Hall. However, knowing how it refuses to confine its remarks to 30 seconds or less gave me pause. I didn’t want to repeat the debacle of inviting Santa Claus, who always figured he wouldn’t be welcome on account of no beards. With a change of policy, he did attend meetings for a time, but he proved insufferably judgmental, forever separating people as “good” or “bad.” And if the speaker made even the lamest joke, he would shake the entire Hall with his loud “Ho! Ho! Ho!” So I kept my Chat invite to myself.

    By the way, I asked Grok, who by this time had emerged from the bathroom or wherever he was at (and acted like nothing had happened), does anyone actually translate it as other than “circle?” No, for the most part they don’t, it answered, though a few assign variants like “circuit” or “vault” and a few others avoid the shape issue completely by just asserting God is over the earth; it could be shaped like a bow tie for all they care. The Good News Translation (GNT) says “equator” (where the translating committee probably was). The Message says “round ball of the earth.” But, The Message is sort of a squirrelly translation—usually delightful, but squirrelly. In fact, it isn’t a translation at all, but a paraphrase by an author, Eugene Peterson, who wanted scripture to land on our ears as ordinary talk, the way they would have in Bible times, and not as “holy talk.”

    And for some reason—who can say why? Even Grok went mum again at this—there are some non-English Bibles that say “globe,” but it is very uncommon in English.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Is There a 2nd Isaiah?

    If the wiping out of Assyria’s army left its mark on Hezekiah, making him indiscreet, it also left its mark on Isaiah. His writing changes dramatically thereafter in both content and style. In fact, among the heady set, it is all but a foregone conclusion that someone else picked up the pen from this point on. “2nd Isaiah” is how they refer to Isaiah 40 to the end of the book. I’ll plead the same as G. K. Chesterton, who declared himself not competent to weigh in on how critics divided up the book of Job into at least two authors. All that he insisted upon was unity; he wasn’t overly particular as to how it was achieved. I’m inclined to take the same tone here. After all, it’s usually tradition that identifies the authors of the various Bible books, and tradition can be wrong.

    On the other hand, one must remember that these higher critics of the historical-critical method do not come from the same planet as do people of faith. If miracles are not within the scope of your investigatory tools, that view quickly manifests itself into dismissing them. These theologians search for natural explanations as to why Sennacherib failed to take Jerusalam. A debilitating plague is what many have settled upon, as did Jean Pierre Isbouts, in his History and Archeology of the Bible Great Courses Lecture Series. 

    They don’t believe the miracles. This flavors all their subsequent conclusions as they eschew the steak to chew on the grizzle. It produces the same effect as when Trump posts that North Korea has launched all its nuclear missills. People of common sense run for the hills. Higher critics run to their keyboards to point out the idiot can’t even spell the word right.

    Denigrating the miracle to a plague means for them that someone has gussied it up later to look like a miracle, maybe Isaiah himself. That’s what those dreamy half-crazed prophets are apt to do in the eyes of the higher critics: tell Mark Twainish tall tales sure to give their God a boost, repackaging political events into a religious worldview that they would feed to the masses. 

    Maybe that someone was Isaiah, as his crazed devotion to Jehovah inspires him to concoct tall tales. They seek to explain that Bible account in natural terms. They don’t think it is real. Thus, to them, as Isaiah is just the same ol religious kook he has always been, dressing up history to fit his beliefs, they don’t figure he’s capable of the different themed writing from chapter 40 on. 

    If their assumptions are incorrect, the picture changes and the change of style is easily accounted for. It’s not as though every time you turn around in Bible times there’s a miracle. They were exceedingly rare. Now, with the overnight defeat of Assyria’s finest, cut down by an angel, Isaiah is privy to what he has never seen before but has just read about and meditated upon. You don’t think that would change your writing style? 

    “All the nations are as something nonexistent in front of him; He regards them as nothing, as an unreality.” (40:17) I guess He just demonstrated that, didn’t he? As must as the Assyrian army was strutting about, it was snuffed out in a second.

    “Look! The nations are like a drop from a bucket, And as the film of dust on the scales they are regarded. Look! He lifts up the islands like fine dust.” (40:15) Yeah, Isaiah just saw one dusted off pretty handily. You don’t think that would change his focus?

    “He reduces high officials to nothing And makes the judges of the earth an unreality.” (40:23) Ditto.

    When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947 and a completed scroll of Isaiah was unearthed, 1000 years older than any existing copy, Chapter 40 was found to start on the last line of a column, its first sentence completed on the next column. Plainly, the copyist, whoever he was, knew nothing of any “2nd Isaiah.”

    ******  The bookstore

  • How Do You Spell ‘Naive?’—Isaiah 39

    38 comes after 37, so one might easily assume that Hezekiah’s illness and recovery came after the showdown with Assyria. It didn’t. It came during. Plis, the kings recovery, fifteen years added to his life, confirmed by a sign, happened before Assyria’s finest were destroyed, and thus fortified Hezekiah for the trial. You can read it here at 39:5-6:

    “This is what Jehovah the God of David your forefather says: ‘I have heard your prayer. I have seen your tears. Here I am adding 15 years to your life, and I will rescue you and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria, and I will defend this city.’”

    It becomes like the fleece trial that fortified Gideon, where it’s sopping wet though the land is bone dry, and then bone dry though the land is sopping wet. If you’re about to stare down the mightiest army in the world, such experiences build confidence. 

    Alas, the deliverance seems to have gone to his head. After it was all done, we read in the next chapter:

    “At that time the king of Babylon, Merodachbaladan of Baladan, sent letters and a gift to Hezekiah, for he had heard that he had been sick and had recovered.  Hezekiah gladly welcomed them and showed them his treasure-house—the silver, the gold, the balsam oil and other precious oil, his whole armory, and everything that was to be found in his treasuries. There was nothing that Hezekiah did not show them in his own house and in all his dominion.” 39:1-2

    Sigh . . . now, why would he do that? 

    ring! ring!

    Hello?

    Hello. Is this the king of Jerusalem? My name is Merodachbaladan. I’m a king too, from the distant land of Babylon. The name’s a bit of a tongue-twister, I know. You can call me Merry.

    Thank you, Merry. It’s so nice of you to call. But (I hope you don’t mind me asking), you’re not a mean king, are you?

    No, I’m a nice king. I’m not like that Assyrian king at all. I didn’t like him either. I heard how you really put him in his place, so I thought I’d call and flatter you.

    (Hezekiah whispers to an assistant: “It’s the king of Babylon! He sounds like a really nice guy.”)

    I also hope you received my ‘Get Well’ card. I felt really bad when I heard you fell sick, so I also called to cheer you up.

    Aw, that’s so heartwarming! Thank you so much. You are to be commended. It’s nice to know in this cold and heartless world that that are still good neighbors who care. Now, is there anything I can do for you to repay your kindness?

    (Merodachbaladan stifles some snickering on his end after an assistant whispers: “Tell him you’re a Nigerian prince and you’ll split your inheritance with him if  he helps you out.”)

    Before Merry can act on this suggestion, Hezekiah continues. “Say, we’re having a bash this Saturday. Why don’t you drop over and I’ll show you around? I have a lot of cool stuff I’m sure you’d like to see..

    The next morning, Isaiah was going over his daily dispatches, which always included a few from God. “Hoo, boy!” he sighed, upon reading one. “He did what??! Look, the object was to humiliate Sennacherib, not to swell up our own guy!”

    It’s just such a witless thing to do. His duties called for issuing the king a rebuke: 

    Isaiah now said to Hezekiah: “Hear the word of Jehovah of armies, ‘Look! Days are coming, and all that is in your house and all that your forefathers have stored up to this day will be carried off to Babylon. Nothing will be left,’ says Jehovah. ‘And some of your own sons to whom you will become father will be taken and will become court officials in the palace of the king of Babylon.’” (39:5-7)

    The king doesn’t protest. He knows he did a faux pas. He knows overall he’s had a good run. He knows when to fold ‘em. The outcome could have been much worse. True, it will be as worse as can be, but it will be someone else’s problem:

    At that Hezekiah said to Isaiah: “The word of Jehovah that you have spoken is good.” Then he added: “Because there will be peace and stability during my lifetime.” (39:8)

    ******  The bookstore

  • The God Not Made with Human Hands vs the Gods that Are

    So here is Rabshekah hollering outside the Jerusalem city wall. The guy on top, a diplomat, wants him to speak the diplomatic Aramaic language that he understands, but the commoners do not. It’s not happening: Rabshekah responds: “Is it just to your lord and to you that my lord sent me to speak these words? Is it not also to the men who sit on the wall, those who will eat their own excrement and drink their own urine along with you?” (36:12) Such things did occur during prolonged sieges. Food and water would run out. It would make conquest of a city so much easier. It happened as recently as 1941, when the Nazis laid siege to Leningrad. The siege lasted over 2 years. Residents ate wallpaper paste, leather, pets, rats, even each other. Up to 1.5 million died.

    Faced with such a diet, one might overlook it if Hezekiah’s knees knocked as loudly as would Belsazzar’s 200 years later.  One might overlook it is his sole thought was for his own neck and the necks of his people. But it didn’t unfold that way. It’s not how he presented the matter to God, first through Isaiah (37:4) and then to God directly:

    “Incline your ear, O Jehovah, and hear! Open your eyes, O Jehovah, and see! Hear all the words that Sennacherib has sent to taunt the living God.” (37:17) It’s the taunting that gets him going! One thinks of teenaged David, furious that Goliath is “taunting the battle lines of the living God,” overlooking the fact that the lout is four times his size. Maybe that’s what faith is: you don’t see yourself at all, everything is in terms of God’s presence and ability to deliver.

    Letters spread out so God can better read them, Hezekiah says: “It is a fact, O Jehovah, that the kings of Assyria have devastated all the lands, as well as their own land. And they have thrown their gods into the fire, because they were not gods but the work of human hands, wood and stone,” (18-19) he continues, as though adding, “Well, duh! What do you expect from that type of god” In fact, he does say it: “That is why they could destroy them.”

    Rabhekah is not really up to speed, either, on just how Jehovah (Yahweh) operates, as he throws everything he has against the wall to see what, if anything, will stick:

    “And if you should say to me, ‘We trust in Jehovah our God,’ is he not the one whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed, while he says to Judah and Jerusalem, ‘You should bow down before this altar’?”’ (36:7) Yeah, that really must have set him off, Rabshekah figures. His gods would take it poorly if you did that to them. Must be that Jehovah would be steamed, too. He doesn’t know that it’s setting up the far-away altars in the first place that steamed God. Rabshekah has never heard of a god not made with human hands. He doesn’t know how to relate to one. Usually, the more statues and altars you have for them, the happier they are.

    He blusters away: “Do not let Hezekiah mislead you by saying, ‘Jehovah will rescue us.’ Have any of the gods of the nations rescued their land out of the hand of the king of Assyria?  Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? And have they rescued Samaria out of my hand? Who among all the gods of these lands have rescued their land out of my hand, so that Jehovah should rescue Jerusalem out of my hand?”’” (36:18-20)

    There are gods galore. Every nation has an arsenal them. Sometimes they’re unique to the nation. Sometimes they overlap. They’re all made with hands and they’re all no good in the clutch. They all have names, too, though not mentioned in chapter 36. Some of them were such duds that the names have been forgotten, like Charlie Browns and Elmer Fudds of long ago, perpetually outsmarted and outmaneuvered. But ones that are recalled are Ashima, Baalshamin, Iluwer, Hadad, Arpad, Adrammelech, Anammelech, Shamash, Ishtar, Anunit—the names have been recorded somewhere, sometimes in the Bible, sometimes in secular history, sometimes in archeology. Sennacherib himself was bowing to his god Nisroch when his own sons bumped him off, the ungrateful brats.

    The Forward of the Revised Standard Version is surely wrong as it explains the choice to completely replace the divine name, Jehovah, with LORD (all caps): “The use of any proper name for the one and only God, as though there were other gods from whom he had to be distinguished, was discontinued in Judaism before the Christian era and is entirely inappropriate for the universal faith of the Christian Church.”

    Is it? Inappropriate? Doesn’t 1 Corinthians 8:5 show that it is entirely appropriate, with its recognition that “there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, just as there are many “gods” and many “lords?”True, the passage continues (verse 6): “there is actually to us one God, the Father, from whom all things are and we for him; and there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things are and we through him.” 

    Okay. Got it. Only one is real. The thing is, if you do not name all the “so-called gods,” the “many gods” and “many lords,” they all fold into one who is worshiped in different ways by different people. It’s an approach that works great for people, since anything they do counts, but not so great for God, who might have preferences.

    I think those ancient nations were on to something and I’m sorry to see the Revised Standard Version (and almost everyone has followed suit) wave the God-centered view away in preference for the human-centered. We’ve all experienced cases of mistaken identity. We’ll speak with someone of a name we both know, yet the attributes don’t line up. We soon realize we’re speaking of two different persons who share a common name. If anyone said, “No, it’s still just one person; it’s just that we approach him differently,” we would know that that person is not pulling with both oars.  It’s the same with God.

    The “Jesus gets us” God is surely not the same as the MAGA God. The God whose aim is to reform this world is not the same as the God who reckons to rescue people from it before it is scrapped. The God who is a trinity (and thus incomprehensible) is not the same as the God who is not. The God willing to torture people in hell is not the same as the God who would never dream of such a thing. Different attributes mean different Gods (gods).

    Surely, the modern view is advanced to us by the critics who conclude that God is unknowable, the tenets of faith beyond the ability of their tools to mention. As with theology itself, the modern view is human centered, not God centered. 

    The God not made with human hands is not something Sennacherib has encountered before. He can cream all the ones made with hands. He has. But he has never met the god not formed by hands.

    Hezekiah continues in prayer: “But now, O Jehovah our God, save us out of his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone are God, O Jehovah.” (37:20) He does this only after decrying the taunt to God’s name. He does it the same way as Jesus in the Lord’s Prayer. He puts God’s concern first, even before his own, even in a super-dire emergency where you could understand if he put his own first.

    The answer to his prayer is immediate.: “Isaiah son of Amoz then sent this message to Hezekiah: “This is what Jehovah the God of Israel says, ‘Because you prayed to me concerning King Sennacherib of Assyria, this is the word that Jehovah has spoken against him: 

    “The virgin daughter of Zion despises you, she scoffs at you. The daughter of Jerusalem shakes her head at you. Whom have you taunted and blasphemed? Against whom have you raised your voice And lifted your arrogant eyes?  It is against the Holy One of Israel!” (37:21-23)

    It isn’t the answer that Rabshekah had expected. It is hooks in the nose and bridle between the lips time for him. (37:29)

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    Supplementary: This is why I like it that religions in general flee in terror at saying “Jehovah.” Some take refuge temporarily in “Yahweh,” since they know “The LORD” sounds ridiculous, but Yahweh sounds too Jewish, so they tend not to hang around there too long. 

    It means that, while “God,” may have 100 different definitions, “Jehovah” is what Jehovah’s Witnesses say he is, since others avoid the term. 

    It’s not unheard of to come across someone who shares your name. The way that anyone else knows it is not you is that the attributes don’t line up. If anyone was to say they, too, know Tom Harley, it’s just that they approach him in differently, you’d know you were not speaking with someone playing with a full deck. Yet, this is all the rage with God, asserting that there is but one God and people approach him in different ways. 

    No. They are approaching different Gods. The MAGA God is surely not the same as the God behind “Jesus Gets Us.” The “no part of the world” God is surely not the same as the “fix the world” God. The trinity God is not the same as the “Father is greater than the Son” God. The hellfire God is not the same as the one who would dream of such a thing. They ought to have different names. In Jehovah’s-Witness land, they do.

    The ancients were on to something with their myriad names for gods. We never should have strayed from that. Witnesses never did.

  • Save Us From Grandstanding Politicians: The Rabshekah, Isaiah 36

    Rabshekah makes an excellent tool illustrating the governmental game of “man dominating man to his harm.” He is the consummate politician, here blustering, there promising wonderful things, then threatening, saying whatever he must to get his way, unworried that he contradicts himself. (“The Rabshekah,” some translations say, for it is a title, not a name.) Menacing Jerusalem outside the city walls, he blusters that he has full authority from God:

    “Now is it without authorization from Jehovah that I have come up against this land to destroy it? Jehovah himself said to me, ‘Go up against this land and destroy it.’” (36:10)

    But then, apparently indicating that he doesn’t, he boasts that Jehovah can’t stop him anyway: “Who among all the gods of these lands have rescued their land out of my hand, so that Jehovah should rescue Jerusalem out of my hand?” (36:20)

    A few grandiose promises follow: “Make peace with me and surrender, and each of you will eat from his own vine and from his own fig tree and will drink the water of his own cistern, until I come and take you to a land like your own land, a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards. (36:16-17) What a liar! Everyone knew how Assyria treated those they overran.

    Then there is some trash-talking of Hezekiah the king, challenging him directly: “What is the basis for your confidence? You are saying, ‘I have a strategy and the power to wage war,’ but these are empty words.” (36:4-5)

    —then seeking to undermine him: “This is what the king says, ‘Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he is not able to rescue you. And do not let Hezekiah cause you to trust in Jehovah by saying: “Jehovah will surely rescue us, and this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.” (36:14-15)

    Not to be too crude here, but he literally tells them to eat sh*t—or, close enough: “Is it just to your lord and to you that my lord sent me to speak these words? Is it not also to the men who sit on the wall, those who will eat their own excrement and drink their own urine along with you?” (36:12)

    He gets the politics wrong: “Look! You trust in the support of this crushed reed, Egypt, which if a man should lean on it would enter into his palm and pierce it.” (36:6) Did he? When push came to shove, he appealed to Jehovah through Isaiah; he didn’t whistle to Egypt at all. It may be his papa Ahaz that Rabshekah is thinking of, who disdained Jehovah and couldn’t kiss up to the neighboring king (in this case, Assyria itself) fast enough.

    Nonetheless, the higher critics assume he did appeal to Egypt. There’s no real evidence that he did; it probably just reflects the critics’ own view that life revolves around politics and a nation’s survival of the fittest instincts to dominate other nations, in which everyone must pick a side—how can one pick God as a side? “Yeah, well, he never denied it, did he?” they might mutter. He didn’t confirm or deny anything, but told all the people to zip it:

    “But they kept silent and did not say a word to him in reply, for the order of the king was, “You must not answer him.” (36:21) Often, that’s the best way to deal with a blowhard. “Don’t feed the troll,” is how it might be put in modern times.

    Then those critics will point to Isaiah’ chapters 30 and 31, where he says turning to Egypt would a bad idea, ignoring any possibility that Hezekiah might have taken such warnings to heart. Maybe some of his court pushed that way; it’s possible. But chapter 37 shows where Hezekiah looks for salvation. It is to Jehovah, not to Egypt.

    He is practical, though. Don’t think he was not. Early on, he tried to buy his way out:

    “I am at fault,” he said. “Withdraw from against me, and I will give whatever you may impose on me.” The king of Assyria imposed on King Hezekiah of Judah a fine of 300 silver talents and 30 gold talents.” (2 Kings 18:14) Not that it did him any good. The Assyrian king gobbled up all that gold and then still pressed for conquest. It’s another reason that one might not trust Rabshekah’s promises.

    Sennacherib’s own recorded annals reverses the order. “As to Hezekiah, the Jew, he did not submit to my yoke. . . . I made [him] a prisoner in Jerusalem, his royal residence, like a bird in a cage. . . . Hezekiah himself . . . did send me, later, to Nineveh, my lordly city, together with 30 talents of gold, 800 talents of silver.” (British Museum Prism)

    Oh, sure! He conquers city after city, but Hezekiah he lets off with just a heavy fine? Not likely! This inverted order of events “looks like a screen to cover up something which he does not wish to mention,” states Funk and Wagnalls New Standard Bible Dictionary of 1936. (p 829) I wonder what that could be.

    Save us from grandstanding politicians with their air of entitlement, the ultimate “King of the Mountain” players, the choice enablers of man dominating man to his harm. They finally hanged that politician that everyone thought should be hanged. “Any last words?” they asked him on the scaffold. “This is unacceptable!” he declared, as the trap door dropped open and the rope snapped taut. It’s probably what Sennacherib and Rabshekah said as the rope snapped taut on them and all their chums.

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  • Whose Lands Suffer in Conquest? (Isaiah 37:18)

    Begin consideration of Isaiah 37, not with the most exciting verse, but with the dullest—unless you are a text nerd. Hezekiah spreads out Rabshekah’s threatening letters face-up before Jehovah—as though only with them neatly laid out could he read them (or does it just indicate how real God is to the king?) He points out that the invader king means business and that it’s not for nothing that he’s worried:

    “It is a fact, O Jehovah, that the kings of Assyria have devastated all the lands, as well as their own land,” he updates God. (Isaiah 37:18–NWT)

    This reads a little clunky. As they devastate other lands, they also devastate their own?  And even if they are, why would Hezekiah care? It doesn’t quite square with the verse that follows:

    “And they have thrown their gods into the fire, because they were not gods but the work of human hands, wood and stone. That is why they could destroy them.” (37:19)

    Friend or foe, they all have gods of “wood and stone.” They all have gods that are the “work of human hands.” But it’s not as though Assyria is going to be destroying its own “house” gods. It will be boasting about those.

    Furthermore, other translations sidestep the awkwardness entirely. Such as the NIV: “It is true, Lord, that the Assyrian kings have laid waste all these peoples and their lands.” Yeah. No concern about Assyria’s own land here. Is it likely that Hezekiah’s going to be shedding tears about Rabshekah’s homeland? So why translate the verse as though he were?

    It’s because the source Masoretic text (MT) makes the distinction. The Masoretic Hebrew text reads that “the kings of Assyria have devastated [or destroyed] all the lands [or countries] and their land.” There is the conjunction “and” in the MT. It’s two lands the verse speaks of, that of the conquered nations and that of the conquering nation, Assyria.

    Some translations preserve this “and” and some don’t.

    The NWT preserves it, even adding “own” to the second “land,” God only knows for what reason. Young’s Literal Translation (YLT) preserves it: “Truly, O Jehovah, kings of Asshur have laid waste all the lands and their land.” So does the American Standard Version: “Of a truth, Jehovah, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the countries, and their land.”  

    But others, like the above NIV, sort of mash both “lands” together, as though only the conquered nations suffer, as though it is easy coasting for the conqueror:

    “Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the nations and their lands.” (ESV) The “lands” are those of the conquered “nations.”

    “Truly, Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the countries and their lands.” (NASB) The “lands” are those of the conquered “countries.”

    In their support, the parallel Masoretic Hebrew account at 2 Kings 19:17 simply reads “the nations and their lands”—who cares about Assyria? If they bring any damage upon themselves, it serves them right! It almost seems this would be Hezekiah’s view, too, as he is caught in the Assyrian crosshairs.

    But maybe it is not God’s view, who sees the big picture. Nations wage war, in the same “King of the Mountain” manner they have done since Adam, and they harm their own people as they do those of their adversary. Empire-building to conquer the neighbors devastates the home turf, shaking everyone down to finance aggression, scooping up warriors who would rather be living with the wife and kids back home (to say nothing of what the wife and kids would prefer). After all, it is not the governments that God cares about, but the peoples they dominate. “All of this I have seen,” Solomon says, “and I applied my heart to every work that has been done under the sun, during the time that man has dominated man to his harm.” (Ecclesiastes 8:9) Sure enough, the tyrant also “destroy[s] its own land, and kills its own people, says Isaiah 14:20.

    Nonetheless, the easy-peasy Bibles smooth it all out, the way 2 Kings 19:17 does, and just think of the conquered lands.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Isaiah 33:6: The Stability of Your Times

    “He is the stability of your times; An abundance of salvation, wisdom, knowledge, and the fear of Jehovah —This is his treasure.” (Isaiah 33:6)

    This verse would make a good year text too, given how unstable life is. Maybe one unfine year it will be one. It includes an emphasis Bible reading, study, and meditation, since the goods don’t come through osmosis. Though, to some extent they do, if you immerse yourself in the atmosphere. And it’s a “treasure” to get “wisdom.” Though “knowledge” may be gained through science, it doesn’t deliver much on the “wisdom” front. Moreover, on the “salvation” front, if anything, it tells us that our goose is cooked.

    As to stability, a circuit overseer used to tell how he would get carsick as a boy. This resonates with me because I used to get carsick as a boy also. Our family’s solution was to stick me in the passenger seat where it was less likely to happen, relegating mom to the back seat with my two younger siblings. I grew up thinking that was just the way it was with families, and was surprised to ride with friends whose moms were doing it wrong, sitting up front.

    The circuit overseer never displaced his mom as a boy. His directive, given him in the back seat, was: “Look as far off into the distance as you can. Do not shift that gaze.” It’s the one thing that does not change that would save him. It was a good dry run for how he would later be looking to God in times of instability—his nature and principles do not change, amidst a chaotic earthly backdrop in which everything changes.

    The times today, they are unstable. Then, it was threat of the encroaching Assyrians. Today, many threats encroach, often more vague with unsure consequences. “The Future’s So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades” became a hit song in the 80s. They sing it at graduations, even though the songwriters said the shades and brightness were an allusion to how nuclear war might end it all. 

    And how fretful should people be, for another example, that 75% of insects (by biomass) have dissappered in the last 30 years? This, according to a 2017 German study, and it mirrors findings in birdlife. Should that be a cause for alarm or should it be dismissed as one of those things? Anyone my age knew this and often said it, due to the bug splatter you used to have to clear off your summer windshields but no longer do. This was “anecdotal,” however, and the great thinkers were dubious of it without measurements. One might think they could just ask the geezers, all of whom would answer the same, that you’d be washing bug guts off your windshield at length after a summer’s night drive, but such is not the ways of science.

    On the other hand, they keep churning out the goods at Costco. As I dine on my hot dog and soda, still one dollar and fifty cents (though I wouldn’t want to subsist on them), satiated customers with fully loaded carts stream out of the store as though on a conveyor belt, an incredible feat.

    The 33rd chapter explores how Israel would fare in the face of the Assyrian threat and how those looking to God would escape. The climax is the last verse: 

    “And no resident will say: “I am sick.” The people dwelling in the land will be pardoned for their error.” (33:24)

    Whatever the then-ramifications, whenever in the Bible one reads of those “pardoned for their error,” one thinks of the Great Pardoner. Jesus even connected being pardoned with being free of sickness when he told the paralyzed man his sins were forgiven. Religious honchos huffed over just who he thought he was, a man who could forgive sins.  He proved the point by telling the man to pick up his mat and walk. 

    (“When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic: “Child, your sins are forgiven.”  Now some of the scribes were there, sitting and reasoning in their hearts: “Why is this man talking this way? He is blaspheming. Who can forgive sins except one, God?”  But immediately Jesus discerned by his spirit that they were reasoning that way among themselves, so he said to them: “Why are you reasoning these things in your hearts?  Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and pick up your stretcher and walk’? But in order for you to know that the Son of man has authority to forgive sins on earth—” he said to the paralytic: “I say to you, Get up, pick up your stretcher, and go to your home.” At that he got up and immediately picked up his stretcher and walked out in front of them all.“ — Mark 2:5-12)

    He is the Son of God, given authority even to forgive sins. Likely foreshadowed at Isaiah 33:17–“Your eyes will behold a king in his splendor,” as it begins to become apparent just God will save in modern times. It’s by means of this Son appointed king. Sometimes this dawns on people gradually. Sometimes it hits like a thunderbolt, and may account for Thomas’s exclamation: “My Lord and my God!” (John 20;28) a revelation of the Lord and a praise of the God who reveals him. 

    I should have a nickel for everyone who has declared that Thomas is equating the two. It’s a valid view of that verse alone, and may even be the first interpretation that comes to mind, but it doesn’t fit the overall picture. Two things are mentioned, so that means they are the same? Not to trivialize the point, but I stopped at Dunkin the other day and ordered a coffee and donut. The clerk handed me two separate items. They may commonly go together, nobody would ever say that they are the same.

    Any reason that Thomas could not be exclaiming ‘My Lord!’ having just identified him, and then equally marveling at ‘my God’ who brings it about? It would fit 33:22 of Isaiah: 

    “For Jehovah is our Judge, Jehovah is our Lawgiver, Jehovah is our King; He is the One who will save us.” With the revealing of his Son, we see just how he will accomplish those things with people. You praise the Son, but you praise the Father even more.

    “The Father is greater than the Son,” says John 14:28. It’s no more complicated than that. It is a fact, though, that when my friend John Cuggan displayed the booklet ‘The Word: Who is He According to John?’ at this workplace, a booklet that left a sizable gap below the title, his born-again co-workers filled the space with his last name: ‘The Word: Who Was He, According to John Cuggan?’

    ***

    The model prayer Jesus gave, often dubbed ‘The Lord’s Prayer,’ serves well as an updated formula for stability, just like 33:6 but with more specifics. You don’t just chant out The Lord’s Prayer verbatim. It’s not like a good luck charm that you say over and over. Said Jesus:

    “When praying, do not say the same things over and over again as the people of the nations do,for they imagine they will get a hearing for their use of many words. So do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need even before you ask him.” (Matthew 6:7-8)

    On the other hand, it’s not a bad outline, because it shows priorities:

    “You must pray, then, this way:“‘Our Father in the heavens, let your name be sanctified. Let your Kingdom come. Let your will take place, as in heaven, also on earth. Give us today our bread for this day; and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us into temptation, but deliver us from the wicked one.” (7:9-13)

    Sanctification of God’s name and the Kingdom take top billing, for there is where the real answers are. He’s got it all together in heaven, no doubt, but only when “the Kingdom comes” dies his “will” take place “also upon earth.” So that takes first place. 

    Drop down afterward to the personal things. To the extent possible, focus on the “bread for this day,” and not matters many years out (or regrets of things many years ago). We are beings that plan ahead, of course, but even so, the mental health people call it “living in the present” that grounds a person. Do it to the extent you can.

    And you’d better not be one always pointing the finger at others. If we would ask the Father to “forgive us our debts,” we must also be ones who “have forgiven our debtors.”

    The last item, to not be brought “into temptation” but be shielded from “the wicked one”—it probably goes without saying that you scope out scenarios ahead of time to avoid trouble. This counsel probably would have helped the many people drawn by Epstein’s reputation for wild parties, many without knowledge of just what a slimeball he turned out to be. Now, they are all being tarred by whoever doesn’t like them, but they would have been spared had they smelled a rat from afar and steered clear of any whiff of what is raucous. What well-connected person doesn’t salivate over being invited to a rich person’s wild party? But they should have kept their distance. It now appears the fellows modus operendi, likely with spy backing, was to lure in powerful people, compromise them somehow, and hold it over their heads forever. Just applying the Lord’s Prayer would have saved them. At time of writing, everyone who went there is officially innocent of wrongdoing, leading to the absurd conclusion that Epstein’s girlfriend is in jail for sex trafficking to no one.

    Three Dog Night would have saved them, too. “Mama told me not to come. That ain’t the way to have fun, son.”

    Did they have mamas that didn’t love them? Twice the devil calls the songwriter’s name and once Congress (as though it is the same) calls it. Each time the refrain is: “Who do you think you’re fooling?” He is invulnerable because “my mama loves me. She loves me like a rock.”

    You may not say it verbatim, but it the prayer is a helpful outline to keep priorities straight. It’s stabilizing, same as 33:6.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Outline of the Lord’s Prayer

    On the Lord’s Prayer, you don’t just chant it out verbatim. It’s not like a good luck charm that you say over and over. Said Jesus:

    “When praying, do not say the same things overand over again as the people of the nations do,for they imagine they will get a hearing for theiruse of many words. So do not be like them, foryour Father knows what you need even beforeyou ask him.” (Matthew 6:7-8)

    On the other hand, it’s not a bad outline, because it shows priorities:

    “You must pray, then, this way:“‘Our Father in the heavens, let your name be sanctified. Let your Kingdom come. Let your will take place, as in heaven, also on earth. Give us today our bread for this day; and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us into temptation, but deliver us from the wicked one.” (7:9-13)

    Sanctification of God’s name and the Kingdom take top billing, for there is where the real answers are. He’s got it all together in heaven, no doubt, but only when “the Kingdom comes” will his “will” take place “also upon earth.” So that takes first place. 

    Drop down afterward to the personal things. To the extent possible, focus on the “bread for this day,” and not matters many years out (or regrets of things many years ago). We are beings that plan ahead, of course, but even so, the mental health people call it “living in the present” that grounds a person. Do it to the extent you can.

    And you’d better not be one always pointing the finger at others. If we would ask the Father to “forgive us our debts,” we must also be ones who “have forgiven our debtors.”

    The last item, to not be brought “into temptation” but be shielded from “the wicked one”—it probably goes without saying that you scope out scenarios ahead of time to avoid trouble.

    You may not say it verbatim, but it’s a helpful outline to keep priorities straight.

    ******  The bookstore

  • Keeping Calm and Showing Trust: Covid 19 Revisited: Isaiah 30

    I’m still fond of the year text from 2021: “Your strength will be in keeping calm and showing trust.” (Isaiah 30:15)

    Anxiety is the flavor of our age, “staying calm” our greatest need. It’s a crazy world, with norms such as gender that have been in place for all human history changed overnight. Unheard of expressions, such as “fake news,” pop up suddenly and become ubiquitous. Tidal waves like AI come out of nowhere and you don’t know if they will wipe out humanity or usher in a new Renaissance. “Keeping calm” along with the means of doing it, by “showing trust” is what we gotta do.

    The anxiety reached a crescendo in that 2021 year. This was during Covid days. Lockdown became the world policy. You lost your job (in the U.S*) if you declined vaccination with what was really not a vaccine, at least not in the conventional sense of allowing minuscule exposure to a disease. Instead, it was a new form of gene therapy to make the body recognize and destroy a pathogen it had never encountered. Fast-tracked, it proved to be nowhere near as safe and effective as touted. Drugs that were safe and effective (ivermectin was the subject of a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2015) were deemed dangerous so that emergency authorization could be obtained for the newfangled vaccine.

    Some had it worse than the U.S. Friends living in Myanmar told me authorities came calling every day for temperature checks. If you failed one, they could haul you away to quarantine camps. 

    Jehovah’s Witness meetings were affected. One week, direction came that they would proceed with disinfectant wiping down of all touchable surfaces before each meeting. Within days, they had been suspended. Then, all within a week, meetings had migrated to Zoom. I posted with glee that we would be meeting in “Zoom Rooms.” I mean, how can you beat that? And there Witnesses did meet for two or three years. 

    In a service group Zoom meeting on the ministry, one sister said how we ought not “put people in boxes.” I agreed with this remark as I gazed upon ten boxes of people on my computer screen. With very little fuss at all Jehovah’s Witnesses adopted the Zoom conferencing software. Didn’t it provide case-in-point to those talks about how Jehovah considers people individually important? There were other church groups that also adopted Zoom—Witnesses were not alone—but because their normal program structure doesn’t incorporate congregation participation, there were complaints that the result just seemed too irrelevant and inadequate. Some of those churches indeed had additional social groups, chat rooms, but that was just it—they were for chat, with no spiritual component built into it.

    Then there were also some churches that blew past social distance strictures as a scheme to subvert religion and held their services as usual, enraging everyone else for being so ‘irresponsible,’ even defiant of public policy.

    How much ‘credit’ would Jehovah’s organization get there for quick cooperation with the new social distancing policies at no spiritual detriment to believers? When the “CultExpert” tweeted that cult members are putty in the hands of their leaders ordering them to ignore science and convene as usual, I appended that there is at least one “cult” that did not. When he said that cults fall into line with the prompts of his new nemesis, the Supreme Cult Leader Trump, I told him that there is at least one “cult” that is universally known to be apolitical—and not involved in such controversies at all. Somewhere along the line, i told him that if all persons were ‘cult’ members like Jehovah’s Witnesses, COVID-19 would have moved on by now—it’s not OUR people that were partying on the beach, but it likely included some of his, whose distinguishing feature is “independence” and “forming their own mind.” That’s a recipe for cooperating with government recommendations? I don’t think so.

    The Zoom company wondered why so many of those using their app identified as Jehovah’s Witnesses—this was related to us by a brother in our service meeting group. Zoom had served as a tool for his huge family reunion just after the Memorial, bringing together ones who had not crossed paths in some time, and some of them had Warwick connections. Warwick brothers got to witness to the Zoom team, they related. Six Zoomer leaders attended a meeting, and three of those stayed on till the end. 

    Now, our brothers will unfailingly put a spiritual face on doings that may be completely non-spiritual. But surely the core of the story will be true. They will spin it that these Zoomers are on the cusp of Bible study themselves, when doubtless their first motive will be to see how their product is being used and provide customer support. That does not mean a spiritual component is non-existent. Time will tell. Meanwhile, unless I am very much mistaken (how likely is THAT?) Jehovah’s Witnesses worldwide were giving their product its most rigorous workout ever, ensuring that each member is connected to the coordinating organization—and this could not help but put the cause to the front of their consciousness. Just like Putin never saw anything like every Witness in the world writing him on behalf of their brothers, so Zoom never saw anything like the efforts to keep every Witness in the world unified in Bible teachings.

    Zoom was not ready for the explosion of interest in their product—nobody would be. It is as though you open a restaurant and everyone in the country shows up to order a hamburger. Some security issues came to the fore and the Zoom people scrambled to patch them, like the kid sticking his fingers in the dike. Two weeks into Zoom, congregation elders mentioned having received an 8-page letter from their own HQ on how to effectively yet safely use the product. All elders in the world got up to speed on Zoom—and there would be among them a huge number, no doubt, with very shaky grasp of technology to begin with. 

    Now you know—you just know—how the Witnesses would have been in interacting with Zoom personnel. They would have been respectful, patient, and even helpful, as the creators of what one Italian IT firm called the “world’s best website” (mentioned in one of the Yearbooks—I think, 2017). Contrast that with the typical customer, who might well not be that way at all—screaming when something goes wrong, some of them. Faith and its resulting qualities are not the possession of all people.

    It seems a perfect time to kick back at some of those naysayers—you know who you are—who have said, “Who needs organization?” People then were going stir-crazy in the greater world, but it was not so with Jehovah’s people. Just ‘Jesus and me?’—that’s enough? It is the bottom line, of course. You need a relationship with the father and with the son. But as a gimme, God throws in a network of united worshippers—a brotherhood. Anyone would be crazy to pass that by. We are social beings. We’re built that way. The brotherhood had come to the fore with its quick adaptation of technology. 

    At the same time, the non-stop Bible counsel emphasized on how to get along with family and spouse in forbearance and love—you want to try to tell me that didn’t come in handy? There are many people for whom the worst possible stressor would be to sentence them to open-ended ‘prison terms’ with their family—cooped up in the same house! But it was not so for Jehovah’s people. Payoff for the godly counsel had never been more apparent than in the days of “keeping calm and showing trust.”.

    (*given that the company was big enough)

    When the pathogens at last settled, I wasn’t sure how I would feel about returning to the Hall. I’m starting to get up there in years. Zoom is convenient. You don’t have to travel. You don’t have to worry about how your lower half is dressed. But no sooner did I walk through the door than I knew it was the right move. 

    Our attendance was solid and enthusiasm ran high. The hybrid Zoom tie-in was seamless. The speaker read that familiar passage of 2 Timothy 3:1-5. Though he did not dwell on “not open to any agreement,” it resonated with me. There is scarcely any point today, no matter how trivial, that people do not debate and argue to the nth degree. I’m not one to avoid the news, though I see why some would. It’s exhausting. “It’s like a bad accident,” said my neighbor, unsuccessfully trying to wean herself. “You know you should look away, but you can’t.”

    It was refreshing being in that Hall where not a trace of that contentious spirit was to be found. It is not even that everyone agrees—they just know enough how to yield and not to squabble. Given the state of Covid in our community just then, I personally thought the strong mask recommendation a bit dumb. But the majority apparently did not feel that way. I was asked to wear one, so I do. It wasn’t that big of a deal.

    Though, given the size of the crowd I did begin to think maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea after all. I had not been in such close proximity to large groups of people in two years.

    I also wasn’t sure how easy it would be to avoid handshakes. I like not having been sick in two years and I had resolved not to do it. But some in-your-face people are very insistent and the alternative elbow bump just seems too stupid to initiate. But in fact, a fist bump proved pretty easy to do. “What! Are you trying to kill me?” I would say to anyone approaching with outstretched hand..

    Alas, not all is peachy. I did see something to complain about. The speaker played a two-three minute video, and afterwards everyone clapped! I’m not playing this game anymore. I know how it starts . Someone well-respected thinks it is fine to “show appreciation.” He claps and others follow suit. People usually follow suit. I know this from the rare occasions that the music was not cued up and the attending servant can’t find it. If I knew the tune, I’d just belt it out. You’re only out there a split second or two before others follow suit. (It’s an unsettling split second, though—what if they don’t?) In the past I’ve given two or three half-hearted claps. No more. It’s silly. The video doesn’t know you’re clapping for it. We don’t clap every time some gives a demonstration on the platform. The Watchtower reader doesn’t earn an applause. It is enough to applaud the speaker, for that is customary and is the way things are done everywhere.  I don’t squabble over such things but neither do I have to follow suit. It is sort of like when brothers approach stage by disappearing behind that quarter wall and then appear again. That drives me nuts. Just walk up on the platform. Do it right, brothers!

    Ah well. This is our version of problems. A bit less serious than those that hamstring the greater world, I think.

    ******  The bookstore

  • David and the Deceased 70K

    David makes a dumb move at 70,000 die. Israel of old clears out the Promised Land and many more die. And then—what about slavery?

    Probably, the way it works is that once humans, in the persons of Adam and Eve, have sailed past God’s will and entered the doomed experiment of independent self-rule, to be concluded several thousands of years later, God works with the products of that rebellion to achieve his purpose. 

    This means, if warfare and yielding to the whims of the gods has become a fixture in life, it is used in furtherance of that purpose. People of that time may not like it, but they will take it right in stride as the sort of thing that happens in their times—whereas people 4000 years later won’t be able to get their heads around it at all. We, from the present day, imagine a world court of some sort that will make a stab at punishing war crimes. Not so then. The time-tested way to clear people out, especially those whose “error” has had 400 years to come to fruition, the way Genesis 15:16 says, is through warfare. 

    It is rather the same thing with slavery. Modern woke people expect Jesus, or any character of godly standing, to suspend all activity upon encountering it so as to deliver lectures as to how unjust it is. Instead, they say: “well, humans chose injustice (albeit unknowingly) from the earliest days of the first couple,” so they work with it, rather than rail against it. “Were you called when a slave? Do not let it concern you; but if you can become free, then seize the opportunity,” Paul writes at 1 Corinthians 7:21.

    In short, humans chose injustice. So God incorporates all the products of that choice into his developing purpose. In the case of David and the 70 deceased K, this is likely a realized manifestation of God’s warning not to choose a king. The system of judges was working just fine. Don’t mess it up:

    “However, the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel and said: “No, but a king is what will come to be over us. And we must become, we also, like all the nations, and our king must judge us and go out before us and fight our battles.” (1 Samuel 8:19-20)

    Oh yeah! Cool! Do it the way “all the nations” do. Maybe we can even have our own flag!

    Sometimes the king loses those battles. When he does, since you’ve put yourself under his authority, you bear a part of the defeat. Even in lands of participatory government, when you succeed in putting your guy into office, then he commits mayhem abroad, don’t you share some bloodguilt for putting him in that position? Can you really claim to be an innocent civilian?

    That God uses the products of early human rebellion against him, in this case the nations they congeal themselves into, as instruments in his purpose, is no more evident than it is in the Book of Isaiah. He uses the nation of Assyria, even calling it the rod of his anger, to discipline his own people:

    “Ah, Assyria, the rod of my anger; the staff in their hands is my fury! Against a godless nation I send him, and against the people of my wrath I command him, to take spoil and seize plunder, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.”  (Isaiah 10:5-6) Later, Babylon will be the instrument, as demonstrated most notable in chapters 39 and 47. 

    They are fickle and imprecise instruments, as would be expected of products of human rebellion—hard to control, even for God, but such are the tools he has to work with. When the hangman gets too ghoulish, even the State may restrain him. So it is that the mayhem-inducing nations go too far, and God must pull them back. “Should the axe exult itself over the One who chops with it?” Jehovah rebukes Assyria. (10:15) It is the same way with Babylon: “I was angry with my people and profaned my heritage; I gave them into your hand, you showed them no mercy…” (47:6) The oppression is limited. Once the discipline of his people is complete, His anger turns away.

    Though disguised, the beef of many is not with the 70K, nor clearing the Promised Land, nor the mean Assyrians or Babylonians, nor the myriad other criticisms they bring up, but with God’s overall plan to let thousands of years elapse to demonstrate that human self-rule independent of him doesn’t work. Rather than the present world “passing away,” they appear to want it repaired, and imagine that lectures on the evils of warfare and slavery will do the trick. If there is one thing history has taught us, it is that humans at the highest levels of accountability are perfectly capable of arguing away whatever is recorded in scripture in favor of what they would rather do. The way the Bible has it laid out is that after the experiment of self-rule has ended, Jehovah will forcefully uphold his sovereignty through the rulership of his son, amidst much loss of life from those who yet oppose. And I suspect they won’t like that either.

    ”They love this current system so they want to just ‘repair’ the aspects they dont want not realizing its broken and the only solution is to destroy it and have something better”

    Sometimes I phrase this that these don’t really want an end to injustice as much as to the symptoms of injustice, mostly the ones that affect them personally. Or, to be more charitable, to the ones that they know of personally. A central Bible theme is that human self-rule is itself the source of injustice, and that injustice manifests itself in so many ways at so many levels that nobody can possible tally it all up—so they just focus on fixing ones those they know, often at the expense of ones they do not know. Human self-rule itself has to go if injustice is to be solved.

    These are the ones who put unlimited faith in humankind—or maybe it is disdain for God—so that they continue to insist humans are salvageable, that all that lacks is more education, more communication, more ‘coming together.’ At root, it is those who suppose that man is basically good, rather than fatally flawed. Witnesses take the ‘fatally flawed’ viewpoint, and that the only remedy is salvation through Christ.

    It really is true that “the word of God is alive and exerts power and is sharper than any two-edged sword and pierces even to the dividing of soul and spirit, and of joints from the marrow, and is able to discern thoughts and intentions of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12)

    Meanwhile, the most learned theologians, stymied by tools that prevent looking into the divine, attribute all such scriptures to after-the-fact damage control, as though putting lipstick on a pig. The 70K died, the original inhabitants west of the Jordan wiped out, Israel and Judah itself desecrated at the hands of foreign powers, and narrative must be concocted to cover these unpleasantries from a human point of view.

    ******  The bookstore