CREATURES OF HABIT Creatures of habit, Day after day Go about life, The same old way. Nothing disturbs Their orderly routine All must be neat, And all must be clean. They’re making their lists And checking them twice, Trying to make sure Their work will suffice. Impatient by nature They don’t suffer fools Gladly or otherwise Because of the rules. A place for everything For all there’s a place Don’t touch the guest towels But... Read more
Chapter 5 begins with a lengthy genealogy with this preamble, or re-run– “This is the book/scroll of the lineage of Adam: On the day God created the human in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them, and he blessed them and called their name humankind on the day they were created. And Adam lived a hundred and thirty years and he begot in his likeness by his image and called his name Seth. The... Read more
I’m beyond sick and tired of reading about our innocent kids being murdered in schools, and in various cases by teens who had a legal right to carry a gun. This Mennonite had this message for Congress—- i.e. PASS A DECENT LAW PROHIBITING THE SALE OF MILITARY OR AUTOMATIC WEAPONS, ESPECIALLY TO ANYONE UNDER 30. Other countries that are far more civilized than our, have such laws and they are doing just fine. People still have hunting rifles or pistols... Read more
THE BONDING A cold and listless season, And full of cheerless cheer, When hopes are raised and dashed again And joy dissolves in tears. The search for endless family The search for one true Friend Leaves questers tired, disconsolate With questions without end. Best find some potent pleasure quick Some superficial thrill Than search for everlasting love When none can fill that bill. So hide yourselves in shopping And eating ‘til you burst, Use endless... Read more
It is only at the beginning of Gen. 4 that we hear that ‘the human knew Eve, his woman, and she conceived and bore Cain, and she said “I have got me a man with the Lord”, and she bore as well his brother Abel.’ Most readers of the Bible will recognize the translation of the Hebrew term for having sexual intercourse as ‘to know’ implying sexual intimacy. Usually this term has a positive connotation but sometimes it refers... Read more
Gen. 3 begins with a bang by telling us that the serpent is most cunning of all the beasts of the field. Here Alter points out that the proper translation of what the snake said to the woman is as follows: “Though God said, you shall not eat from any tree of the garden…” and in the Hebrew it is an incomplete sentence cut off by the woman interrupting, and indeed it is a false statement by the snake. The... Read more
Certainly two of the more crucial chapters in the whole OT are Gen. 2-3. Here we will deal just with Gen. 2, and save Gen. 3 for the next post. Whole theologies of sin and human fallenness are built on certain readings of these chapters, and sometimes not even the right questions are asked of these texts. For example, if Adam and Eve are created immortal and lose that by sinning, why was there already a tree of life in... Read more
If we follow the advice of Robert Alter, we will avoid the pitfall of trying to do explanation in a translation rather than doing an appropriate literal translation and letting the commentary do the explaining. So let’s take a few samples from Alter’s renderings of Gen. 1-5. So in the very first verse of Genesis we have “the earth was then welter and waste’ a rendering of tohu wubohu. As you can see from the transliteration, the Hebrew rhymes, one of... Read more
A Sign outside a house I saw in Lexington yesterday. There are so many things wrong with this sign: 1) If you dealing with a criminal who is not right with Jesus, a threat with a gun is not going to fix that. You are more likely to be sending him straight to Hell, and do you want that on your conscience?; 2) this is totally incompatible with love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, turn the other... Read more
THE HARBINGER Quite quiet Unexpectedly The Harbinger appears Foreshadowing or foretelling Events of coming years. But for good or ill? The image is opaque The Harbinger relates Some kind of news But first or second rate? Hindsight seems much clearer The Harbinger does not A most unwelcome warning The future’s unclear Like shadows before morning? But if its undetermined Then there’s time to make a change Time to make amends For wrongs that have been... Read more
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