Deuteronomy 3 – They move on to the region of Bashan. I think the entire region discussed in these early chapters of Deuteronomy is along the eastern side of the Jordan River. They are moving North of the Arnon River. Og, King of Bashan, marches against them and loses. They take 60 towns and again do a lot of killing – men, women and children. And there seems no shame in Moses or in the writer of this book in stating this very matter-of-factly. Moses divides Gilead between the…

Deuteronomy 2 - Moses and his people return to the wilderness in the highlands of Seir for a while; but soon they are ordered north again. The Lord makes clear to Moses the people who are to be left in peace and those he intends to displace, so that the Hebrews can take some of the land.  The Edomites (descended from Esau) are to be left alone; the Moabites and Ammonites (descended from Lot, nephew of Abraham), and are  also to be by-passed. It is the Amorites who are  to lose their…

Deuteronomy (Introduction) -  The ancient name for this book was “mishne tora” or “copy of the Torah.  But it goes beyond that according to editors of the Schocken Bible [modern English translation]. The whole mission and destiny of Israel is “recast” here.  Here the man who thought of himself as halting of speech gives a series of eloquent speeches.  Though Moses died on the steppes overlooking Jericho, its outlook seems to entail a knowledge and reverence for the…

Psalm 144 – My Lord protects me, trains me for battle and is my shelter. “Lord, what are mortals, that you notice them; mere mortals, that you pay attention to us? We are like a puff of wind; our days are like a passing shadow” (144:3-4).

Tear open the sky, Lord, and come down to us. “Reach down from above, pull me out of the deep water, and rescue me; save me from the power of foreigners, who never tell the truth and lie even under oath” (144:7-8).

I…

Psalm 142 – A prayer for God’s help. To Him I bring all my complaints, all my despair. No one seems to care for me, so I cry to God, “you are all I want in this life” (142:5). I hear David's cry for help from his enemies, but it is his cry for freedom from distress that can relate to more.

Psalm 143 – Do not put me on trial, Lord, “for no one is innocent in your sight” (143:2).

He has suffered a defeat from his enemies and is in a dark prison. He…

Psalm 137 – “By the rivers of Babylon we sat down; there we wept when we remembered Zion” (137:1). How many times have I sung these words? In Zion, the Babylonians forced the Jews to sing, to entertain them. And then the psalm ends with a horrendous plea for vengeance – “Happy are those who pay you [Babylon] back for what you have done to us – who take your babies and smash them against a rock” (137:8-9). It is very hard to read these words and know how truly they…

Psalm 135 – Praise the Lord for He is good; He is kind and greater than all the gods. He move the clouds, makes the lightning flash and the wind blow. In Egypt, God “performed miracles and wonders.” It is God who brings down nations and opens space for His people. The God of the Jews, creator of nature and the power behind all history is not like the “gods of the nations,” gods made of silver or gold. Those who worship such gods – may they all become like these gods - ineffectual.…

Sticking to a fairly demanding schedule of scripture readings can seem a bit challenging. I am trying to stick to a schedule that has worked for me over the years since I discovered it. It was first published in 1952 and is published by the Liturgical Press of St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota. I am not a scripture literalist, but I have found over the years that the advice given by the "cloud of witnesses" that have gone before us - from the earliest years to the present day - is…

Psalm 120 – Save me Lord from liars and deceivers. David speaks of the people around him as people who hate peace. Just imagine what it would be like to be a ruler in these days with attacks coming from all sides and having to deal with them. If you loved God and wanted to live in peace, how torturous would that be.

Psalm 121 – Famous words: “I look to the mountains where will my help come from? My help will come from the Lord who made heaven and…

Psalm 119:89-176 - The word of the Lord, His faithfulness, His law - while never experienced without sufferings and doubts - are the most precious things the psalmist - thought by many to have been King David - has in his life. God is our teacher, and "how sweet is the taste" of all He imparts to us. Again, as I said yesterday, this psalm sounds to me as if it were really written by a king or political leader who wants so badly to be faithful, obedient and appreciative of…

Psalm 118 - "Give thanks to the Lord, because he is good, and his love is eternal" (118:1). Everyone should have these words on their lips. "It is better to trust in the Lord than to depend on people. . . on human leaders" (118:8-9). The very famous words that Jesus repeats in Matthew are here: "The stone which the builders rejected as worthless turned out to be the most important of all"(118:22).



I wasn't sure what the psalmist was talking about here, so I…

Psalm 114 - The liberation of God's people from slavery and their dedication to Him made all of nature change - the sea "ran" from them, the river stopped flowing, the mountains "skipped like goats." Transformative - that is a word that captures what commitment to God's "leadings" in one's soul is like.

Psalm 115 - Trust in the Lord - trust. Do not be afraid of anything. That is not a problem for me, mostly. There are times when I go through turmoil,…

Things have gotten a little too complicated trying to do a scripture blog on Quaker Quaker AND  a separate one on my Catholic-Quaker blog AND on the one I do for our Westbury Monthly Meeting blog, which I call the Narrative of Scripture. I'm on blog overload. Plus there is the Thursday Bible Study my husband and I have going on here at home. We will probably start doing some extra-biblical readings from the early church "fathers" or other more contemporary commentaries. Too many going in too…

If you would like to have some organized schedule for reading scripture, I found this years ago and it has been a great resource. It will take three posts to get it all up but I hope some find it useful. This is OT - Year One.

Old Testament Readings

Year One [You can jump to January]

December:

1  – Isaiah 1

2  – Isaiah 2-4

3  – Isaiah 5

4  – Isaiah 6-7

5  – Isaiah 8-9

6  – Isaiah 10

7  – Isaiah…

Old Testament Readings - 

Year Two

December:

1  – Psalms 1-5

2  – Psalms 6-8

3  – Psalms 9-11

4  – Psalms 12-16

5  – Psalms 17-18

6  – Psalms 19-22

7  – Psalms 23-25

8  – Psalms 26-29

9  – Psalms 30-32

10 – Psalms 33-34

11 – Psalms 35-36

12 – Psalms 37-39

13 – Psalms 40-42

14 – Psalms 43-45

15 – Psalms 46-49

16 – Psalms 50-53

17 – Psalms…

Exod 20 – The Ten “Words” or Commandments:  The Schocken Bible points out that they are unusual in that no penalties are attached for breaking them as in the more detailed regulations that will follow.  They are the framework against which the more detailed infractions must be understood.  The order differs for Jews as it does for Catholics and Protestants.  The following is the Jewish division:

Tablet 1

• I am YHWH “who…

Exod 16 – The Israelites take the “long way around” to Canaan, through the Wilderness of Shur, around the western coast of the Sinai Peninsula through the towns of Marah and Elim, then to the Wilderness of Sin - see the map if you are as unfamiliar with this territory as I was: http://www.wall-maps.com/bible/232783-over.htm - you have to love the internet.  Here they begin to grumble: “Would that we had died at the Lord’s…

The journey of the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt to new life in the land of promise is a journey that will take 40 years - a symbolic number again, a number that seems to embody the sense of completeness, fullness. This exodus journey, which in some ways, has come to represent spiritual journeying generally will not be a journey planned out in any kind of detail. It will be rooted in faith and trust in the God Moses looks to.

Exod 13 – The journey will be celebrated and…

The narrative of Moses going before Pharaoh to demand release of his people is perhaps the most central part of the Old Testament biblical narrative and one of the most influential stories ever. The debate as to whether it actually happened exactly as told is intense. There is little if any supplementary historical data to support it but the memory of it in the history of the Jewish people is also so intense and important that it is hard to believe it has NO basis is fact. It is the memory…