Monthly Archives: March 2016

It Went South – Thank God!

Posted on by
Reply

Deuteronomy 33: 2 He came with myriads of holy ones from the south¸ from his mountain slopes. (NIV)

As Christians we get to look at things differently: we give and get more back, when hit in the face we are asked to turn the other cheek, when we are wronged we can forgive.  May I offer another thing we can look at differently; having things go south is not a bad direction.

I think that saying came about because of maps, north is up and south is down. In the Hands_of_God_and_AdamBible, especially the Old Testament, south is associated with the right hand.  God’s power hand is His right hand. (In the King James and other translations south is written as the “right hand.”) I personally think His throne faces east.  So when He is on His throne that would put His right hand to the south.  Being on the “right side” of God is not a bad place to be.

∞ Thank you Father that we can go to Your South side.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sistine_Chapel_ceiling

A Look at Holy Week

Posted on by
15

The ancient Hebrews used a lunar calendar, this means that the 1st of the month was during the New Moon phase and that would make the 15th of the month the Full Moon phase.  It was fun to connect the days of Holy Week with the lunar calendar; it just shows the orderliness of our God.

Day of our week Day of the  lunar calendar Passover Holy Week events
Sunday 10th Choosing and prepping the lamb The ride into Jerusalem, people prepared the way
Monday 11th Jesus cursed the fig tree and cleared the Temple courts,
Tuesday 12th Explained the dead tree and taught the people
Wednesday 13th He was prepared for his burial at the dinner
Thursday 14th Lamb is slaughtered and prepared at twilight Room prepared, Passover observed, prayed in the Garden
Friday 15th Burned any leftover lamb Trials and crucifixion
Saturday 16th Jesus preaching to the spirits in Hell
Sunday 17th He rose and showed himself to select people

The first Passover, when the Lord kept watch to bring the People out, they started for Succoth.  The starting point was Rameses; the distance is about 30 miles so that was a long walk on very short notice.  Pharaoh actually ordered them to leave.  The celebration observes seven days of bread with no yeast because that is what happened on the first Passover.

I have been writing for several years on numbers in the Bible.

  • Thirteen was about how new things started in association with that number.
  • Fourteen actually started events.
  • Fifteen is linked with cleaning things up to celebrate.
  • Sixteen was that God kept His eye on things

I found the connections between those studies and the days of the month for Holy Week interesting.

I have other studies on the days of the Holy Week – Thursday, and post labeled Easter 2015,

Moses’ Rod/Snake

Posted on by
5

A simple piece of wood, a tool of Moses’ occupation, but it would become part of miracles¸ signs, and wonders.  It became the symbol of spiritual authority for the Israelites and a bane to the gods of Egypt.

This piece of wood is introduced in Exodus 4 where God tells Moses to throw it on the ground and it becomes a nachash (from hiss) or snake.  Moses ran from it.  Since this was not in Egypt but in Midian, I am choosing the Black Desert Snake or Desert Cobra asSinai-Desert-Cobra the snake.  Since Moses was to go to Egypt with this “sign”, I don’t think it would have been an Egyptian Cobra.  No, I cannot prove that.  Either snake is poisonous, the Black Desert Snake has an LD50 or lethal dose that kills 50% of people bit with a 0.4 mg/kg; an Egyptian Cobra’s LD50 is 1.15 mg/kg but probably delivers more venom per bite. That would make the Black Desert Snake more poisonous.  I don’t really hold it against Moses for running, if it was a Black Desert Snake, he knew that they were deadly.  He did brave it up and grabbed the tail which is something that not many people would do.  Can you imagine carrying that rod around for the next several years?  I personally would have been very careful not to drop it on the ground, just in case.

In Exodus 4:3 and 7:15 it is just a snake, but in 7: 9, 10, 12 Moses does not use the word nachash but instead calls his rod and the magicians’ rods tanniym or monster.  (I would think the magicians’ rods were paralyzed Egyptian Cobras and Egyptian cobrathe throw brought them out of their trance.)   This word tanniym is translated in other passages as whale, dragon, and jackal.

Another thing I found was instead of saying that Aaron’s snake swallowed the other snakes; Scripture says his ROD swallowed the other rods.  The importance in that change of words says that Aaron’s spiritual authority, as the servant of God, defeated the authority of the magicians.

Pics from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walterinnesia_aegyptia and

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_cobra

Midian – Enemy and Instrument

Posted on by
3

Midian – Enemy and Instrument

Midian was a son of Abraham by his third wife Keturah (Genesis 25).  His descendants played an important role in the Exodus story and into the Judges’ time period.   Some experts think that Midian was several groups of people and or a geographic area and not just a single nation.  They start their part in the story of Israel when Joseph’s brother sold him into Egypt (Genesis 37).  This is also where Moses fled when he ran away from Pharaoh; his wife, father-in-law, and children were Midianites.

In Numbers 22 the story of Moab and Midian working together to stop Israel by bringing in Balaam is told.  It seems that Balak, king of Moab, takes the lead and even in Numbers 25 it first mentions Moabite women as being the lure to get Israel to sin.  A Midianite woman is killed in verse 8 and it stops a plague; in verse 16 the Lord says to treat Midian as enemies and kill them because of the deception with the Baal of Peor.  In Numbers 31 Moses is to lead a campaign against them and then he will die.  It must have been quite an attack because many important people including kings and Balaam were killed.

A thought that should disturb the people of God is that sex was used as a weapon in the name of religion to defeat God’s people.  The devil crossed and confused the lines then and is still doing it today.

The other big reference to Midianites is with Gideon in Judges 6, 7, and 8.  This story also ends with the Midianites being beaten severely.    There are references in Psalm 83, Isaiah 9, and 10 that talk about how badly Midian was beaten.  They don’t say if it was Moses or Gideon but the context makes it sounds like the beatings were bad and that a similar beating was wished on the current enemy.

Living in the “now” of troubles and testing compared to analyzing them later will produce two very different views.  This is a “later” point of view; God used the Midianites to push Israel to a deeper walk and expose things that still they needed to deal with.  One example is the army killing the men and keeping the women who were the instrument that got them into trouble.  Even later the Israelites were still dealing with the troubles of Peor, possibly, the girl slaves and the children born from them.  Midianite DNA and mindset were spread into every tribe of Israel, including Levi.  Be careful what you choose to live with no matter how you got it.