Bible

John 2:16 reads, "Take these things away; do not make my Father's house a house of trade."

In the parallel incident in Mark 11:15-19, Jesus says “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.” He quotes Isaiah 56:7, but the cross references in my ESV point me to Jeremiah 7:11 for the latter half of that verse, “Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes?”

In Mark 8:33, Jesus rebukes Peter. Peter has just suggested that Jesus is mistaken in his need to go to the cross. Jesus rebukes him with those terrifying words:

• "Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man."
• Ὕπαγε ὀπίσω μου, Σατανᾶ, ὅτι οὐ φρονεῖς τὰ τοῦ θεοῦ ἀλλὰ τὰ τῶν ἀνθρώπων.

Jesus then (Mark 8:34-38) teaches the disciples of the need to deny themselves, take up their cross and follow him.

What I hadn't realised until recently is how closely related this call to the crowd is to his rebuke of Peter.

I've long found 1 Peter 3:19-22 really hard to understand. Much attention gets given to questions like who the spirits in prison are and so on. However my concern is to understand Peter's flow of thought throughout 1 Peter 3:18-22. 3:18 would flow nicely into 4:1 (“For Christ also suffered once for sins… made alive in the Spirit. Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same attitude.”), so why does Peter insert 3:19-22 in between here?

There's no day like New Year's Eve to release a new version of software that will draw up a Bible Reading Plan.

The changes from the previous version aren't massive (it's a minor release), but I think it makes it more usable.

Doug Wilson's post on the star followed by the wise men is most thought-provoking and insightful.

Enjoy!

Just spotted this for the first time: Luke 17:6-10 and Luke 17:11-19 are deliberately juxtaposed.

17:6-10 establishes that the right way to relate to God is as his servants. When we serve him, he doesn't “thank” us, because we recognise that we are merely giving him (a tiny part of) what he is due. As the commentaries point out, this is really about the fact that God does not owe us anything because of the service we have given him. Our service never puts us in his debt.

I picked up a second-hand copy of G B Caird's Penguin Commentary on Luke from 1963. Second-hand is all you'll get, but if you spot one in a second-hand bookshop, I'd say: Buy it!

Short. Insightful. Refreshing. Helpful.

How do we pray the Psalms as new covenant Christians? What difference does it make that they have been prayed before — now not just by king David but by king Jesus?

Is there any mileage in seeing the Lord's Prayer as a key part of this answer?

Having used it a little, Robert Alter's The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary looks to be a highly worthwhile book to have.

Robert Alter has done lots of work over the years on understanding how Hebrew poetry works. Here, he offers his own translation of the Psalms, together with a short commentary on the text. The comments are brief, but insightful. The translation is fresh, and where he differs significantly from most English versions he explains why he translates as he does.

Let me give an example, from Psalm 1:2

Translation:

But the LORD's teaching is his desire, and His teaching he murmurs day and night

Comment:

2. murmurs. The verb hagah means to make a low muttering sound, which is what one does with a text in a culture where there is no silent reading. By extension, predominantly in post-biblical Hebrew, it has the sense of “to meditate.”

I'm just discovering, and enjoying doing so, Goldingay's commentary on the Psalms. (Volume 1 covers 1-41, Volume 2 coverse 42-89, and Volume 3, not out until December 2008, will cover 90-150.)

Some snippets from the introduction: