Psalm 23, just in time for Halloween.

Since we were supposed to write about someone else's blog, I thought I'd mention Lisette's on Psalm 23. She centered on the more gentle-natured themes of the Psalm. My thoughts were a bit darker.

I remember watching a show on the History channel (Dr. Sexon's favorite-haha) once about supernatural occurrences, and Lisette's blog made me remember a connection that one of the men on the show made with the "shadow of death" verse and supernatural stuff. I've always had an interest in the macabre, so I decided that now was the perfect time to do some research.

I didn't find much. Apparently, others aren't as interested in this connection as I am. I found one nonfiction book, called Cabinet 24 by Sina Najafi, and I read the summary for the book. The summary mentioned that one person in the book explained that, since we are all in "the valley of the shadow of death," it could explain people seeing ghosts and the like. It makes sense to me. If we really are in the shadow of death, it means death is all around us.

Maybe I'm just crazy, but it was an interesting thought I wanted to run with. I with I could have found more information on the subject, or remembered what the History channel show was called. Oh well...

With that, I will wish all of you a Happy Halloween. Fear no evil...

Proverbs

I always liked Proverbs, even when I was little. I don't know exactly why; I think it's just because it's a generalized "guide to life," if you will. I just always found it comforting.

Verse 11 of Chapter 1 reminded me of an Anne Rice novel (my favorite author): "Come with us, let us lay wait for blood." Let's see the stupid Twilight author come up with a line like that.

I noticed one thing right away about Solomon: if there's one thing he is not, it's sexist. Solomon loves women, and anything female for that matter. In the first Chapter of Proverbs, and throughout the rest of the book, he even refers to Wisdom, the thing that matters the most to Solomon, as "she."

"For I was my father's son, tender and only beloved in the sight of my mother." So David didn't really pay much attention to his special son, even though he took the throne away from Absalom for him?

Even though Song of Songs is generally the "marriage" book, I thought this verse was really...well, romantic: "Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roa; let her breasts satisty thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love."

More "empowering women" info: "Every wise woman buildeth her house: but the foolish plucketh it down with her hands."

We need to tell high school rumor-spreaders this verse: "A fool's mouth is his destruction, and his lips are the snare of his soul."

"Whoso stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor, he also shall cry himself, but shall not be heard." Kind of Dickens-esque, is it not? Scrooooooge....

"Be not thou envious against evil men, neither desire to be with them." I think this verse has a lot of relevance today, because it seems like everyone is envious of bad men (and women), like celebrities and politicians. A lot of times, we're jealous of those with more money than us, regardless if they're good or evil.

"He that delicately bringeth up his servant from a child shall have him become his son at the length." Interesting verse.

Solomon says a virtuous woman has a price "far above rubies." I wish men still thought like that today...why isn't virtue a virtue anymore?

Psalms

Psalm 3 contains the lyrics to one of my favorite songs that we sing in church: "Thou, O Lord, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head."

I thought this was a funny verse: "O my God: for though hast smitten all mine enemies upon the cheek bone; thou hast broken the teeth of the ungodly"

In Psalm 9, the writer says, "thou hast rebuked the heathen, thou hast destroyed the wicked, thou hast put out their name forever and ever." But this verse is an out-and-out lie. God didn't rebuke the heathens, he didn't destroy the wicked (except for Sodom and Gomorrah), and he certainly didn't put out their name forever because we certainly still have them now. It seems like a lot of these Psalms are appeals to God's vanities--perhaps in hope of help with battles and wars, perhaps?

Jesus' last words occur in Psalm 22: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" That verse always used to make me cry when I was little, just because I thought it was so sad that God would leave Jesus during the toughest time. When I was older, I understood, but this line used to really get me before I was old enough to understand.

It sounds like the Psalmist is being a little sarcastic in Psalm 51: "Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice." Well, it's somehow your fault that I have a broken leg, God, but at least you let me win the big game....

Around the mid-50s, David (or whoever...) gets a little whiny: "Save me, O God (54)," "Give ear to my prayer, O God (55)", "Be merciful unto me, O God (56 and 57)", "Deliver me from mine enemies (59)," and so on and so forth. Sounds like he's getting a little demanding. It must have been frustrating for God. It reminds me of this episode of Family Guy where Peter is looking at a bag blowing in the wind and talking about how beautiful it is, and God says something like, "It's just a piece of trash! Do you know how complicated your circulatory system is?" I could see God saying something like that to David.

Why does every important Biblical character have to wander around in the desert?

I just thought this line was really beautiful: "The waters saw thee, O God, the waters saw thee; they were afraid; the depths were also troubled."

There's a lot of singing and dancing going on here. Again, I wondered why the puritans had such a problem with dancing when it's all over the Bible...

Another "bribe" to God: "The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger." Slow to anger? Really?

Shortest Psalm: 117. Longest Psalm: 119. I counted 19 parts to this Psalm. It could be a book of the Bible by itself!

"Behold,how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity" (133). Unless your brethren are Philistines...

My Crappy Day...

Last Tuesday, I went to work at 9 like a good little employee, and went to class at 9:30, like a good little student. Around 10, my stomach started cramping up. My boyfriend was feeling sick too, so we both went home. Hoping it was just food poisoning, we took the rest of the day off. Well, luck would have it, I woke up the next morning with a sore throat, fever, and stuffy nose. He, of course, fought it off and was fine. So I took Wednesday off, and called the doctor. They said not to bother coming in, because I wasn't a "high-risk" patient, so they wouldn't give me any Tamiflu; I just had to drink a lot of juice and sleep. So I did. Went to bed that night, woke up on Thursday feeling even worse. Slept all day, felt a lot better that evening and hoped I would be able to go to work on Friday because I had plans to go out with friends after work. I went to bed.

And, guess what? Woke up on Friday feeling like I couldn't breathe. Friday was my bad day, because it was also my birthday. Talk about karma, right? So my mom took me to the ER, thinking I had pneumonia. For some reason, they made me put on one of those gross hospital gowns and everything before listening to my chest and telling me I didn't have pneumonia. They really couldn't have done that in my normal clothes? Anyway, they told me I couldn't breathe because of my athsma, and to take an athsma treatment with this really loud annoying machine we have (because my whole family has athsma...) every four hours.

So that was my very bad day. But actually it got a lot better in the evening. Even though I felt terrible, I was happy because my mom ordered pizza (we almost never have pizza) and my boyfriend brought a cake and ice cream (and more orange juice) over, then we went and got some movies and watched Monty Python and MST3K until the wee hours.

But it's ok, because I have a lot of fun things planned for Halloween, and that's a birthday party enough for me...

It's amazing how much a bad day can make you appreciate the little things.

Job

I'll admit: Job wasn't easy to get through. It took me over a week to read, which is pretty long for me. Most of it is basically just Job arguing with his various friends. Depressing and boring....

The first thing that jumped out at me is Job's wife famous phrase "Curse God and die." My mom says this all the time, and I never knew it was from Job. I was confused about the connotation of the phrase, though. Is Job's wife saying "If you curse God, you will die because He will kill you," or is she saying "Just curse the damn Lord and die already!" Judging from what happens to her, I think it was option #2. But I had to laugh, because my mom always means it like the first example, so I don't think she gets what it means in context.

I found an interesting allusion from The Slave in Job: 6:8-9: "Oh that I might have my request; and that God would grant me the thing that I long for! Even that it would please God to destroy me." This is pretty much the same thing Jacob repeats in the first few chapters of Singer's novel (which is a great read by the way, and pretty easy too).

Throughout the book of Job, I was reminded of Northrop Frye's stages of language. Job is definitely full of metaphors. Some are pretty comical, actually. Here's one: "Hast thou not poured me out as milk and curdled me like cheese?" Kind of entertaining.

"Wherefore do I take my flesh in my teeth, and put my life in mine hand?" I think this is where the "by the skin of his teeth" saying came from. I still don't understand what it's supposed to mean...

Even after God does all this horrible stuff to Job, he's still faithful "My lips shall not speak wickedness nor my tongue utter deceit." I guess this is why, whenever something bad happens to you and you ask your pastor about it, he/she will always say--and I guarantee this--"You need to read Job."

Job mentions an organ. I didn't know they had such advanced instrumentation back then...

Elihu, the youngest of the friends, actually turns out to be the wisest. God seems to be a man of extremes: his heroes are either very young, like David, or very old, like Abraham.

"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgment." I think we need to apply this verse to our Congressmen...

Since it says Job lived to be 140, I'd have to agree with Dr. Sexson that this book belongs way back, that it's chronologically out of place.

And if Job's wife died, and his sons died, then why does it say at the end "And [he] saw his sons and his sons' sons." Where did they come from?

Poetry and the Bible

For this blog, I read Susanna and compared it to the poem. Obviously, the first two stanza's of Wallace Stevens' poem are just a retelling of the original story. The last stanza is the really important one. He seems like he's almost blaming Susanna for her beauty; "in the flesh it [beauty] is immortal," "Susanna's music touched the bawdy strings/ Of those white elders." I didn't see it that way at all. Poor Susanna was only trying to take a bath in her own back yard, and she had two old, perverted peeping toms. I guess this story landed a little close to home for me, because I had a stalker, a friend's father, when I was 15, so I know how she feels. Only mine was never punished for anything, and the elders were chopped in half....
The other thing we were supposed to do is find a connection between a modern poem and a Bible Story. The first thing that popped intomy head was T.S. Eliot, my favorite poet. I remembered that in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (the poem I used for my Poem Analysis paper my senior year of high school that ended up being 22 pages long....) he makes a brief mention of Lazarus. I looked for another Eliot poem; the most obviously Biblical being "The Journey of the Magi." On the surface, "Magi" retells the story of the three wise men who came to see Jesus. But there are plenty of other allusions dispersed throughout the poem. The first other allusion I came across was the mention of the white horse; there is a white horse in Revelation.

The second one is a bit less obvious. Eliot says that there is "a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel," an obvious representation of the lamb's blood the Hebrews smeared over their doors when God came and smote the firstborn children of Egypt. Just after this line comes a mention of "pieces of silver," an allusion to how Judas sold Jesus to the Jewish elders for 30 pieces of silver.

He mentions "empty wine skins." It's a stretch, but I think he's alluding to Jesus turning the water into wine.

The last stanza says that when the people die, they "returned [...] to these Kingdoms." I think this is an allusion to the Kingdom mentioned in Revelation.

You've got to love Eliot.

Esther

Esther, as I've said before, is my favorite book of the Bible. I love a great story about a brave woman who single-handedly saves a bunch of people.

I've loved the book of Esther since I was a little girl. In fact, it was even my favorite VeggieTales movie! My brother and I had all of the DVDs when we were kids, and I loved to watch Esther; it was funny, it was inspiring, I laughed, I cried...so I was kind of excited to get to it now.

I wonder what the King actually wanted Vashti to do. He says that he wants to show them "her beauty." Does that mean he wants her to get naked for everyone? The ancient version of Hooters? In the VeggieTales video, the king throws the queen out because she won't make him a sandwich. Just thought I'd throw that in there...

Another question I had is why Esther must touch the top of the King's sceptre every time she comes into contact with him. Is that some kind of phallic symbol?

I was always inspired by Esther's bravery. She could have been killed just for seeing the King unannounced, not to mention accusing his right-hand man of plotting murder.

Also, why did the King sign the order to kill the Jews when he never wanted to? Did Haman trick him or did he just not read it?

Greatest irony ever: Haman is hanged on the gallows he built to hang Mordecai on. That didn't happen in VeggieTales...

Ezra and Nehemiah

Spoiler Alert: Ezra and Nehemiah are really bad. Just like Dr. Sexson said. In fact, I think Dr. Sexson may have even sugarcoated a little bit...

I really didn't catch much from either of them, but I'll see what I can come up with.

The only thing (seriously, the one and only thing) I found interesting about Ezra is how Cyrus, the King of Persia, decides he's a Jew and heads down to Jerusalem to build a temple.

In the first verse of Nehemiah, he ays he was in the month of Chisleu. I'd be interested to see how the Jewish Calender works and compare it to the Roman Calender we use.

I thought the last line of Chapter 1 was cool "For I was the king's cupbearer." It 's a nice transition statement, and I thought I was getting ready for a great story. Needless to say, I was disappointed.

That's all I've got. Even though Ezra and Nehemiah are really, really boring, I'd still suggest chugging though them, because after Nehemiah comes Esther. And Esther, by far, is my favorite book. Short, sweet, and to the point, it tells one of the best stories in the Bible. So just remember that Ezra and Nehemiah are only a means to an end...

1st and 2nd Chronicles

1st and 2nd Chronicles are, sorry God, the most pointless books of the Bible. I'm not kidding. They are the exact same story as 1st and 2nd Kings. Only told in much more boring language and with a lot of genealogy thrown in.

I'm kind of surprised that Chapter 13 mentions trumpets. I wonder if the author really meant the kind of trumpets we know today or if the instrument was merely lost in translation.

I thought it was kind of cool that God assigned different talents to different tribes. For example, the Levites were good singers, according to Chapter 15.

One important part of 1st Chronicles: chapter 17, where God outlines his plan for Jesus. Kind of interesting.

I think Chapter 21 is one of the first times in the Bible we actually hear about Satan, when he tempts David to take a census...I don't get it...what's satanic about taking a census?

Even though David does some really stupid things, it is obvious that he found such favor in God's eyes because he was such a moral man, demonstrated when Ornan offers to give him things for his offering but David insists on paying for them.

The first part I liked about 2nd Chronicles was how the Israeli people welcome the Gentile with open arms and invite him to pray with them.

It was interesting learning that Soloman received "gold, silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks" from Tarshish. Somehow I can't see the wise Soloman playing with a monkey...

In Chapter 13 of the second book, Abijah says that God gave Israel to them "by a covenant of salt." I wonder what that means...

2nd Kings

Elijah pulls a Moses in Chapter 2 and parts the waters for him and Elisha.

He pulls another Moses in Chapter 3: "And they rose up early in the morning, and the sun shone upon the water and the Moabites saw the water on the other side as red as blood. And they said, this is blood."

Then Elijah pulls a Jesus in Chapter 4 when he miraculously fills up the ladies' pots with oil.

There's a lot of fire imagery in relation to Elijah, just like there is a lot of water imagery about Jesus. I'm sensing a theme here. Maybe Moses's image was earth, because he spent a lot of time on the mountains.

I see a parallel between Jehosheba and Joash and Moses's being hidden from Pharaoh.

Isaiah is really really cool. He actually turned back time. All this time we've dreamed of time travel...Isaiah had it figured out way back then!