I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Jonah 1-4 and Micah 1-2.

    Every time I read the Book of Jonah I am amazed at the number of lessons contained within this one short book. The first lesson we learn is that running away from God’s will for us will end badly, for us and for those around us (and we will end up doing it anyway). Next we learn (there is probably one or more I am missing both here and later) that if people genuinely mourn for the harm they have done and repent of their sins, God will be merciful. A third lesson we learn is that we often value material goods more than we value people. Jonah was more upset about the death of the plant which had shaded him than about the deaths he had prophesied for the people of Nineveh. The final lesson of this Book is that we should feel compassion and pity for those who do evil rather than hate. We should prefer that they turn from their evil and do good to them being punished and suffering for their evil.

    The first chapter of the Book Micah contains a series of prophesies where the prophet does one play on words after another. As I read it (and the notes), it seems to me that some of the towns mentioned are real towns whose names lent themselves to the desired play on words, while others are fictitious names which would have been understood by the prophet’s audience as applying to towns they were familiar with.
    Then we get into Micah’s full message, the reason the bad things he is prophesying will happen. In many ways, Micah’s message is much like Amos’. His audience is those who think that if it is not illegal it is not wrong, and if they don’t get caught it is not illegal…and if they don’t get punished, they didn’t get caught. I have a saying I often say to people, “Stay out of trouble…If you don’t get caught you aren’t in trouble, and if you do get caught but like the consequences, you still aren’t in trouble.” That is the philosophy of the people Micah is condemning. However, those who know me know that my philosophy has another corollary to that rule: If someone gets hurt as a result of what I did, I get caught, even if no one else knows I did it, and I do NOT like the consequences. If what you have done hurts others, you may get away with it for now, but God will hold you accountable. God is merciful and forgiving, but He is also just. Those who sin and hurt others (and those who sin ALWAYS hurt others) will pay for that sin…either through their own remorse and self condemnation, or through the judgment which God will bring upon them