Monthly Archives: January 2022

Daily Bible Study

January 22, 2022 Bible Study — When Trouble Comes, Remember What God Did The Last Time Trouble Came

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 13-15.

When the Israelites left Egypt, it seems to me that they expected the Egyptians to pursue them.  The passage tells us that they left Egypt ready for battle and that they traveled both day and night.  Nevertheless, when Pharaoh’s army overtook them, they were terrified and angry with Moses.  They accused Moses of leading them into the desert to die.  They did this despite the great signs which God had done to get Pharaoh to allow them to leave in the first place.  Then after Pharaoh’s army was destroyed in the sea, the sea which they had crossed on dry land, they praised God for their rescue.  Yet a short time later when the springs at Marah were undrinkable, they grumbled about not having anything to drink.  This sets a pattern which they followed the entire time they were in the wilderness.  How often do we do something similar in our lives?  We cry out to God because of our troubles, He rescues us in ways we could never have foreseen, yet a short time later we are once again afraid that our troubles are too big for God to handle?

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

Daily Bible Study

January 21, 2022 Bible Study — God Rescued More Than Just The Descendants of Jacob From Egypt

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 10-12.

I started out today’s blog by writing a paragraph about the Plagues discussed in today’s passage, but when I got to the end of it I realized that it had not actually gone anywhere: nothing I had written in that paragraph said anything interesting.  So, I deleted that paragraph and decided to write just on my thoughts about what this passage says about the Passover.  My first thought on reading the instructions which Moses gave concerning the Passover is that some of them seem to be things he would have told them after they left Egypt.  I suspect that the instructions about celebrating Passover every year going forward was probably something Moses told the people while they were on their way, not something he told them when they were preparing for that first Passover.  I also want to write about where the passage mentions that many other people joined the Israelites when they left Egypt.  I wonder, did any of those non-Israelites who left Egypt with the Israelites follow Moses’ instructions regarding the Passover?  How many of these non-Israelites were choosing to join themselves with Israel to worship God vs how many were just taking advantage of this situation to escape bondage of one sort or another in Egypt?  Were any of those who joined with the Israelites Egyptians who wished to worship God who had performed these wondrous signs?  Personally, I think that there were some from all three groups among those who joined the Israelites when they departed Egypt and that some of them had prepared their houses according to Moses’ Passover instructions.  When Moses followed God’s commands in order to free the Israelites he inspired others to worship God as well.  In the same way, when we do God’s will today we may lead those who observe us to come to know the Lord.

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

Daily Bible Study

January 20, 2022 Bible Study — God Gives Us Warnings Before Disaster

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 7-9.

When Aaron’s staff turned into a snake, the Pharaoh’s magicians were able to do the same thing, and Pharaoh was not impressed.  I suspect that some of the magicians took the fact that Aaron’s staff swallowed their staffs as a bad omen.  Then when Aaron and Moses turned the water in the Nile to blood, Pharaoh’s magicians turned some water into blood.  I have long assumed that Pharaoh’s magicians accomplished this using something that Penn & Teller would do, some kind of trick.  However, when Aaron and Moses summoned frogs and then gnats, Pharaoh’s magicians recognized that something was going on that they could not duplicate, but Pharaoh refused to listen to them.  By this point, Pharaoh had become committed to his position and was unwilling to admit that he had been wrong and his people were willing to stand with him on that.  However, when Egyptian livestock suffered, but Israelite livestock did not followed by Egyptians breaking out with boils, but Israelites did not, the minds of the Egyptian people began to change.  Such that when Moses predicted that hail would soon fall killing every animal and every person who remained outside, many of the Egyptian nobles believed him and took action to protect their possessions.   We see in the account of the Plagues a lesson in how God deals with humanity.  The Egyptians, in the form of the Pharaoh, were doing wrong.  God warned them in small ways at first, but in steadily increasing disasters.  Pharaoh could have, at any point along the way, chosen to do the right thing, but he did not.  When we do wrong, God acts similarly.  He puts minor problems into our lives to call us to change our ways.  Those problems will get ever worse, but at any point we can turn to God, away from our sin, and things will stop getting worse, but if we do not change our ways we will experience calamity.

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

Daily Bible Study

January 19, 2022 Bible Study — Sometimes Failure From Our Perspective Is Success From God’s Perspective

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 4-6.

In yesterday’s passage it mentions that Moses discovered an Egyptian beating an Israelite and Moses killed the Egyptian.  This resulted in Moses needing to flee Egypt.  It has struck me for some time that Moses killed the Egyptian because he was feeling God’s calling to help his people, but it was not God’s timing.  On two occasions in today’s passage Moses objects to God sending him to speak to Pharaoh because he is not well-spoken.  The first time Moses used his lack of eloquence as his last excuse in an attempt to convince God that he was the wrong man for the job.  God replied that since He had made people able to speak in the first place, He would be able to give Moses the ability to say the right thing at the right time: Moses only needed to put his faith in God.  The second time Moses used his inability to speak eloquently was after Pharaoh had rejected his initial request and the Israelites blamed Moses for Pharaoh’s reaction.  Moses had tried to do God’s will and had failed (as people would look at things).  At this point, Moses had “failed” twice to help the Israelites, once as a young man and now a second time as a mature adult.  He would “fail” nine more times before God would give him success.  These first two failures both made Moses want to give up, but God had other plans for him.  I want to highlight that even though from a human perspective Moses failed eleven times before he accomplished what he set out to do only the first of those failures was a actually a failure.  The first time Moses attempted to help his fellow Israelites, he acted on his own.  The other times he acted according to God’s command, and his “failure” was not a failure.  It was part of God’s plan.  So, if God has given you a mission and things do not go as you think they should do not be convinced that you have failed.  Continue to do God’s will, even when it doesn’t “work”, because success in God’s eyes is often not the same as success in our eyes.

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

Daily Bible Study

January 18, 2022 Bible Study — God Was, Is, And Is To Come

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 1-3.

As I read this my first thought is about something I came across a few days ago when I was trying to determine about when Joseph would have lived.  I found a website which claimed that there was archeological evidence of a settlement in what would have been the region of Egypt Genesis says that Jacob’s family settled in of a group of people connected to Canaan living there.  Further, they claimed there was evidence of a period of time where that group had an extraordinary increase in infant mortality, especially for male babies.  I am unsure how reliable this source was, but it’s links to supporting documentation seemed to indicate there was at least some basis to their claims.  However, the archeology of this passage is only incidental to what struck home to me today.

No what interested me was that when God spoke to Moses out of the burning bush, Moses asked God who he should tell the Israelites had sent him.  The more I read this passage the more it seems that Moses was asking God, “Which on of the many gods I know about is the god of our fathers, is the god of the Hebrews?”  God’s reply was a rejection of the idea that He was one of many different gods, just the one who had taken the Hebrews under his wing.  This exchange reads to me like there were stories passed down among the descendants of Jacob, stories which we now have as the Book of Genesis, which spoke of a god who did all of those things and was the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Further, it reads like perhaps the Hebrews in Egypt debated which one of the gods of Egypt, and elsewhere , that god was.  Here God is telling Moses that the reason none of those stories identify Him with one of those other gods is because He is not like any of them.  We have a record of various civilizations throughout history making connections between gods in their pantheon and the gods of other pantheons.  Sometimes it was one civilization saying that this god in their pantheon matched up to that god in their pantheon (for example the Romans said that Jupiter and Zeus were the same god).  Sometimes it was one civilization saying that yes, the gods of other civilizations are valid gods, but they are subordinate in the hierarchy  to our gods (or perhaps only subordinate to our chief god.  I cannot at the moment think of an example, but I know I have seen such references).  But here God was saying that He had no connections to those other pantheons.  God was, and is, and is to come, the Beginning and the End.

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

Daily Bible Study

January 17, 2022 Bible Study — The Stories Which Forged The Descendants Of Jacob Into A Nation

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Genesis 48-50.

I realized as I started writing that my thoughts on today’s passage do not really tie together.  So, I will just write them down as I come to them. I find it interesting that Jacob blessed the second of Joseph’s sons over the first born son, just as his father had blessed him over his elder brother Esau.  I am unaware of any significance to this fact other than that the tribe of Ephraim, the younger of Joseph’s sons, was more prominent in the nation of Ancient Israel than the tribe of Manasseh.  Then, Jacob’s predictions/blessings of his twelve sons seem prescient in a way that might lead one to think they were attributed to Jacob by someone from a later era who knew how things turned out.  Except, that I would expect someone who knew how things turned out in the Israelite settlement of Canaan to mention the connection between the descendants of Levi and the priesthood.  Further in looking at these blessings, the blessing of (or perhaps just prediction about) Judah contains elements which clearly connect to the Gospel accounts.  I cannot help but see the mention of the donkey connecting to Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. And between the phrase about washing his garments in wine. the blood of grapes connects in my mind to what Jesus said about wine and His blood at the Last Supper.  Additionally, it seems to me that the account of the Egyptian mourning for the death of Jacob and the recording that many officials of Pharaoh’s Court accompanied Jacob’s sons to Canaan for Jacob’s burial represents something which will at some point match up to some archeological record.  Finally, we have Joseph’s deathbed command to his brothers (personally, I suspect that this actually referred to the descendants of his brothers as much as to his actual brothers, but “brothers” was less cumbersome to write).  Joseph both demonstrated his faith in God and provided a “myth” for the descendants of Jacob to rally around.  The way I am using “myth” here I mean a story, which may be true or may be false (in this case I believe it to be true), which provides a basis for a group of people to unite around and for them to have hope when bad times arise.

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

Daily Bible Study

January 16, 2022 Bible Study — Joseph Did Not Waste Time Blaming Others For His Suffering

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Genesis 45-47.

When Joseph revealed himself to his brothers, they were terrified that he held a grudge against them for what they had done.  Their reaction on their first visit indicates that they had been living with guilt for having sold their brother into slavery all of these years.  Now, he had chance to pay them back for their treachery, and they could not blame him.  However, instead of having lived with a grudge against those who had wronged him, Joseph had lived his life making the best out of every situation and worshiping God.  So Joseph saw what had happened to him as part of God’s plan.  Instead of seeking payback against his brothers, Joseph used his position, and his understandings of Egyptian bias, to get his family the land in Egypt best suited for them.   Joseph did not spend his life bemoaning his fate and seeking to inflict suffering on those responsible for his suffering.  In fact, he did not assign blame for his suffering to anyone.  Instead he chose to look at his suffering as necessary steps for God to put him in the place where he could do the most good.  Let us live our lives similarly.

Another interesting thing about this passage is that it allows us to look at the archeological record to see if we can confirm it.   Interestingly, there was a period in Egyptian history where power shifted from a  group of nobles to the Pharaoh in a manner which might match up to that described as happening under Joseph.  In addition, a group of people with ties to Canaan occupied the area of Egypt referred to here as Goshen in a time frame which might be consistent with the way this passage describes Jacob’s descendants settling there.  However, the timing of those two archeological findings are currently believed to have occurred earlier than the biblical account records Joseph as having lived (there are a couple of events which are recorded later in the Bible for which we have solid archeological evidence and dating, and the biblical account gives us a pretty solid idea of how long before those events Joseph lived–it is actually a window of time, depending on how you interpret several passages which give length of time between events).  On the other hand, some recent developments in archeology have led archeologists to question whether a significant portion of early Egyptian history occurred as far back in time as currently believed (to understand this one must understand that the dates for events in much of early Egyptian history are arrived at by counting backwards from certain events which are reliably dated and recent findings suggest that some of that counting backwards was based on faulty assumptions).

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

Daily Bible Study

January 15, 2022 Bible Study — God Has A Plan

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Genesis 42-44.

I am not sure that I ever noticed this before: when Joseph insisted that one of them remain imprisoned in Egypt until they returned with their youngest brother and chose Simeon, Joseph’s brothers returned to their father and families with the food they had bought.  They remained in Canaan until they ran out of food.  However, when Joseph demanded that they leave Benjamin, they all returned to Egypt and Judah, whose idea it had been to sell Joseph into slavery, offered himself up as a slave in Benjamin’s place.  I am not sure I can word the importance of this difference in how they responded to Simeon’s imprisonment and Benjamin’s potential enslavement.  In addition to that I want to note that when he sent his sons to Egypt a second time Israel thought he had lost a second son with Simeon’s imprisonment…he did not think that Simeon would be alive to be released when his brothers returned to Egypt.  Part of the difference in the reaction of Joseph’s brothers to the imprisonment of Simeon vs the potential enslavement of Benjamin was the fact that they believed the situation was punishment for what they had done to Joseph.  Simeon shared their guilt in that, but Benjamin did not.

Looking at the story one might wonder why Judah’s offer to be enslaved in place of Benjamin moved Joseph more than all of the brothers offering to be enslaved with Benjamin.  The latter was not exactly what a simple reading of the passage suggests.  If Joseph had enslaved all eleven of them as they “offered” it would have had serious negative consequences for the Kingdom of Egypt in dealing with other foreigners.  The brothers understood that when they made the offer.  Understand, I do not want to diminish the fact that they were united in standing up for their brother Benjamin.  So, while Joseph was touched by his brothers standing up for Benjamin, who had clearly taken his place as his father’s favorite, it was Judah’s willingness to suffer in Benjamin’s place which moved Joseph to tears.  His brothers had changed.  They had become a family.  And it was at this point that Joseph understood why he had experienced the suffering which he went through.  God had a plan to forge Jacob’s family into a nation.  Abram and his brothers went their separate ways.  Isaac and his brothers went their separate ways.  Jacob and Esau went their separate ways.  But Jacob’s sons stayed together and became a nation.

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

Daily Bible Study

January 14, 2022 Bible Study — Despite Suffering Injustice, Joseph Remained Faithful To God

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Genesis 39-41.

It feels like I write this every year, but I want to focus on how Joseph gives us a model on how we should deal with set backs in our lives.  Despite the many set backs Joseph experienced in his life he never stopped doing the best he could.  When his brothers sold him into slavery and he ended up in Potiphar’s house, he worked hard and to the best of his abilities so that he rose to a position of importance in Potiphar’s household.  Then he was falsely accused of attempted rape and thrown into prison.  Once more, he worked hard and to the best of his abilities, rising to a position of importance.  Then God gave him an opportunity to bring himself to the attention of those who could get him released from prison, and they forgot him and left him to rot.  Finally, in God’s time, he got the opportunity to be released from prison.  And at every step along the way Joseph honored God and gave credit to Him for his success.  When Potiphar’s wife tried to seduce him, he rejected the offer on the basis that he would not sin against God.  When he interpreted the dreams of Pharaoh’s two servants in prison, Joseph gave credit to God.  When he interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams, he once again gave credit to God.

Yesterday, I wrote about how very recent archeology shows that there was indeed a kingdom of Edom in the time period covered by the kings of Edom listed in yesterday’s passage.  Today, I spent a little time to see what modern archeology might say about Joseph.  I found that while we do not find a record of someone who matches Joseph we do find a record of a period of good years and famine years which fit that described here.  As importantly, we do not have record of who served in the role which the Genesis account of Joseph suggests that Joseph filled.  But there is a record of a Canaanite (Joseph would have appeared as a Canaanite in Egyptian records) serving in a similar role.  We have no reason to believe this particular Canaanite was Joseph, but it confirms that a Canaanite could fill have risen to that role in Egypt.

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

Daily Bible Study

January 13, 2022 Bible Study

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Genesis 36-38.

I have never understood why this passage contains the genealogy of Edom’s kings.  Today it occurred to me that this might provide information which can be checked against archeological finds.  So, I did a little looking and discovered that, until the late 1990s, the consensus in the field of archeology was that Edom did not exist as a kingdom this early in history.  However, recent finds indicate that there was indeed a kingdom there at the time these kings would have ruled.  Which makes this yet another example where archeologists and historians were convinced that a civilization mentioned in the Bible never actually existed, only to have discoveries confirm that the Biblical account was more accurate than they had wanted to believe.

For a long time I thought that Joseph was a spoiled brat in the account of his behavior before his brothers sold him into slavery, that his brothers’ animosity towards him was partly his fault.  But as I have re-read the passage over the years I have come to the conclusion that he genuinely did not understand that his dreams suggested he thought he would rule over his brothers and father.  The other thing I find interesting is that Joseph’s brothers were pasturing their flocks in the vicinity of Shechem, where a few years earlier they had killed most, if not all, of the men of the town, and Jacob sent his favorite son there without an escort.

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