I love this quotation from Gerard Wilson (paid link). He's commenting on Psalm 5.
By relentless goodness I mean that from the beginning, God’s only intent was and still is to bless his creation. Judgement and mercy, therefore, are not two competing characteristics of Yahweh but are two inseparable consequences of his holiness. Relentless goodness is the flip side of incompatibility with evil. (Page 167)
I think I've finally worked out what is going on in Ruth 4. I'll make a note here as a place where I can come and find this again when I need it. Do comment below if I've missed something.
There are 3 Old Testament laws in play here.
Leviticus 25:23-28 says that, because all the land is really God's, should someone sell part of their land to alleviate their poverty, the buyer cannot regard it as theirs absolutely. A relative of the person they bought it from must be allowed to redeem, or buy back, that land, and the price for that is to be calculated fairly.
Psalm 95:1-7c inverts the categories of creation and salvation. Roughly, the pattern of the Psalm goes like this:
- Come, let us shout joyfully to the Lord, the rock of our salvation (1-2)
- For, he is a great God who holds, owns and formed everything (3-5)
- Come, let us bow and kneel before our maker (6)
- For he is our God, and we are his people, under his care (7a-c)
I thought it might help if I wrote down my thoughts so far on the Psalms: What kind of literature are they? How are they to be read and interpreted today?
I think this post from Steve Jeffery is very helpful
2 Samuel 6 describes what King David did when the Ark of the LORD was brought into the city of Jerusalem.
The Bible repeatedly says that idols, being false gods, are little use. There is plenty of mockery of them to make the point. I love this detail...
The next day, when the Philistines came to strip the slain, they found Saul and his sons fallen on Mount Gilboa. And they stripped him and took his head and his armour, and sent messengers throughout the land of the Philistines to carry the good news to their idols and to their people. (1 Chronicles 10:8-9)
We are forever looking for things God has done for us for which we can give him thanks. Things he has done for us and for no other people. That could be a temporal thing - we want things he has done for our generation and not for previous ones. That could be a spatial thing - we want things he has done for our village / town / county / nation and not for others. It could be both at once - things he has done for me and me alone.
Psalm 105 is a total contrast. It starts
Oh give thanks to the
Lord ;
call upon his name;
I find Motyer (paid link)'s proposed structure of Exodus 32-34 more convincing at some points than at others, but it definitely contains some useful observations about how the section as a whole is working:
A1 Moses doubted (32:1-6)
B1 Covenant under threat. Moses’ intercession (32:7-14)
C1 The broken tablets (32:15-19)
“It is most fitting that the Sabbath be the sign of this covenant. Israel, as we have noted, is a new creation. This is a new people of God, whom he intends to use to undo the work of the first man. Also, the tabernacle is a microcosm of the created order, a parcel of edenic splendour established amid the chaos of the world. The Sabbath is not just a reminder of the original creation in Genesis 1 and 2, but a reminder of God’s re-creation of the cosmos in the tabernacle.”
“To put it another way, the tabernacle is holy space. The Sabbath, by contrast, is holy time. By building the tabernacle and setting apart one day in seven, God is truly recreating heaven in space and time. Weekly Sabbath worship is on holy ground in holy time. There is no more holy spot on the face of the earth than the tabernacle on the Sabbath… By entering the tabernacle, Israel entered God’s house; by keeping the Sabbath, Israel entered God’s rest.” (Peter Enns (paid link), pages 544-546)
A bit of background information for those who are interested. This coming Sunday I will be preaching on Exodus 25-31. Desmond Alexander's book, From Paradise to the Promised Land (paid link) has some very helpful things to say. Below are some excerpts
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