Category Archives: Bible Study

Five and Two

Posted on by
Reply

Five and Two, this combination of numbers is found in the Old and New Testament, and in narrations and parables. A young lad’s lunch is the main course for this study, but the side dishes and appetizers are just as important.

In a sermon I heard recently, it was noted that the early Church Fathers liked to interpret the New with the Old and assign meanings to things; really things have not changed that much. St. Augustine of Hippo has the first recorded use of five and two with the Feeding of the 5,000. He saw the five loaves of bread as the Five Books of Moses and the two fish as the Psalms and Prophets. That is not a bad interpretation, and I am sure St. Augustine worked that into his commentary very well. Is that the only way to look at those numbers in that story?

No; here are a few other ways to look at that number combination.

  • A mother or aunt overpacked a young lad’s lunch; since he did not eat all of it, he shared it with his uncles and Jesus.
  • Five can represent grace, provision, and readiness. Two may represent unity, truth confirmed by witnesses, or divine order.
  • The first use of this combination is in Genesis 45:6 and there it is associated with famine. Well, that idea does not really work here.
  • Numbers 7 has this pair of numbers used several times in association with a sacrifice for the individual tribes. That might be a real stretch.
  • Judges 20:45 uses these numbers in describing how many Benjamites were killed.
  • 1 Samuel 25:18 list the amounts of provisions Abigail prepared to stop David and his men from killing off her husband’s household. This one is more in line of suppling provisions.

In my study I noticed a contributor named I. M. Rite who focused on one explanation and dismissed any other insight to these numbers. I think he got his version from his favorite preacher, The Right Reverend Wright. Well, Jesus used these numbers in several of His parables so we should look at them.

  • Matthew 25:15 has bags of gold being assigned to trusted servants who were to use this wealth to increase their master’s holdings.
  • Luke 7:41 has two people owing a man some money; one owed 500 and the other 50.
  • Luke 12:6 teaches us about five sparrows being sold for two pennies.
  • Luke 12:52 has a family of five divide into groups of two and three.

Yes, there are other examples of five and two. The translation you search in may give you more or less verses to look at, so try several.

This post is like the leftovers the disciples picked up; they were good food and should not be wasted, but they looked a little different than what was packed in that lunch. My point, STUDY, go Berean, and do not put God in your little box. His Word fits nicely in-between the covers of my Bible, but as soon as I open it ‘my world’ fills up and overflows. Sounds like provision and witness to me.

BibleGateway – Keyword Search: five two

Bread in the Bible

Feeding the 5000

Egypt

Posted on by
1

Egypt. This topic has been in many of my posts. It played key roles in my Out of Egypt and Passover to Pentecost series. So, this is not really a new study as I have been laboring on this topic a long time and with this series I cannot see me exiting the subject of Egypt soon.

Egypt is one of the three major oppressors of Israel (Assyria and Babylon), and one of two of the longtime antagonists of Jacob and his children (Edom/Esau is the other). So, in reading/studying the Prophet Isaiah it was not surprising to find all of these players in that Book, but there are several massa and amar (God said or oracles) that Isaiah records that are surprising as to how Egypt and Assyria will act in God’s story. (I wanted to write Godstory instead of history. Well, I guess I did.)  

My study starts in Genesis 10:6 and instantly becomes a HOT mess; this is because of the name Egypt or Mitsrayim. 10:6 is a list of the children of Ham, Noah’s son. All of these children are associated with the Levant and Africa. The names Egypt or Mitsrayim are used in various places and translations, but both are the lands along the Nile River or Ham’s son. Explore these Bible Hub references.

All sorts of thoughts have flooded my brain because of Genesis 10 and the Tower of Babel. Archeology, history, and shared human experiences are not being ignored, but they are not my main subject in this post. I will put this down as an example, pyramids and ziggurats share a common shape, but academics do not like to state they may have a common origin. I have watched shows where the shared shape is mentioned and marveled at, but no one has said the Tower of Babel and a shared human activity. Why would they make a statement that points to the Bible.

God directs Terah (from Shem) to go to Canaan (from Ham), we are not told why he was to go but Terah never made it. Abram (Terah’s son) does go and the Godstory gets a new chapter entitled FAITH. So, in Genesis 12 we see a famine and Abram and company going to Egypt (from Ham). Egypt now is a place of refuge and this repeats with Joseph/Jacob and Jesus. The refuge changes into a place of problems and slavery.

With all of that in mind it is interesting that Jehovah warns Jacob’s children to NOT go back to Egypt for help. Israel responds to that degree with marriages, treaties, trade, looking to Egypt for military assistance, and running away from Babylon.    

In general, most references from Joshua to David, are references to what had happened and how God had done great things for Israel. From Solomon to Isaiah is a different story, and then comes the time of Babylon and bad things happened as the people thought Egypt would help them. Two very telling verses for the time from Joshua to David are: Joshua 24:14 and 1 Samuel 8:8; both paint the picture of the People forsaking God and worshipping and serving other gods.

Much has been and could be said about Joseph and Mary taking Jesus to Egypt. In God’s story it is a reset in the action to bring salvation to the world, and the Gentiles into the Family, and compares with Abraham and Issac, and then Moses/Joshua and the taking of the Promise Land.

Egypt had history before Abram and stayed a world power right into the time of Rome. The Bible does not record much of that history because it is a different story. One thing they were good at was fighting; they had major conflicts with the Hittites, the Sea People, Assyria, and then Babylon at the time of Josiah. Trade was another thing that Egypt did and it had an effect on the world around it.

Fruit and Nuts – Apples and Solomon

Posted on by
Reply

This edition of Fruit and Nuts pairs apples and Solomon; this works well because most of the mentions of apples was made by Solomon in Proverbs and the Song of Songs. Just for the record, I do not think the medieval artists were right in making the forbidden fruit in the Garden an apple.

Apples – Yes, there were apples in the Levant during Bible times, they seem to have come from the Persia area. I have read several references that suggest that term has more to do with the shape of the fruit than a specific species. No, they were not like what we think of as apples in this modern era. This reference mentions that the pome order of plants may have also been given that title. Strong’s Hebrew: 8598. תַּפּ֫וּחַ (tappuach) — apple tree, apples The smell of the blossoms was important and highly prized in gardens.

The phrase ‘apple of the eye’ is used several times in the Bible and refers to the bulging, rounded shape of our eye. It is connected to how sensitive the eye is and how we protect it by blinking to keep it moist and closing our eye lids when something flies at it.

Apples and apple trees are connected to God’s protection for His people and His love towards them (Song of Songs). Even the verse of Joel 1:12 has that idea when it talks about those trees drying up, when they were doing good it was a blessing. This is one reason I do not think the forbidden fruit was an apple.

Solomon – The fruits of his life are a mixed bushel of apples. Some were very good and he made some so bad that they should/could not be eaten; like the figs in Jeremiah 24. His behavior after a good start is what got him the nut portion of this post.

Honestly, Solomon has always puzzled me. He had parents who loved him. God loved him, 2 Samuel 12:24, and gave him wisdom and wealth, he built the temple that was used for several hundred years, plus he wrote books of the Bible. But he went off base and angered God.

His journey is recorded in 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, and 1 and 2 Chronicles; the Books of Proverbs and Song of Songs also give us insight to his life. He had some of his many psalms be used in the Book of Psalm; he wrote more but we do not know where they went. He started strong, but his decline is well documented and references several times.

His legacy is seen in a few other spots in the Bible. Hezekiah’s men collected some of his proverbs and included them with the others. Any mention of the temple should bring him to mind; that may be one reason Herod named part of the temple he built as Solomon’s Colonnade. Most of the times you find his named used is in connection to things he made for the temple or families of people he had serving in the temple. Jesus is quoted by Matthew and Luke about the wisdom given him; plus, there are references to Proverbs in prophetic books and in the New Testament. So, it is not like he was forgotten, but he sure does not compare with the memory of David. You may have noticed I did not mention Ecclesiastes; he only identified himself as ‘the Teacher son of David’. I hope that this book was written at the end of his life and maybe he returned to the Lord.

As I pondered all of this, I came up with this idea; please humor an old man as he straddles the edge of ‘the box’. David is a Messiah-figure in the beautiful song I call the Old Testament. Solomon was the favored child of David and was given many things and did many things for God and still went bad. Jesus is the Messiah and ‘birthed’ the Church. Have we ‘The Church’ followed in the footsteps of Solomon? We have acquired wealth/gold and show it off, been consumed with wisdom and knowledge, and have married ourselves to 1,000 different things other than Jesus and His Gospel and the Father’s Kingdom that is to come.

In the early days of kings of Israel, the Levant and the Middle East had many things happening. International trade, international terrorism, and the weather created change in the region. One country that was always present was Egypt. One of the first things Solomon did was marry an Egyptian princess; that may have been good politics, but God had commanded not to go back to Egypt for help. That was the beginning of Solomon going off base.

These verses are from Bible Gateway and are in the NIV. They really are not in any order.

  •  2 Samuel 12:24 Then David comforted his wife Bathsheba, and he went to her and made love to her. She gave birth to a son, and they named him Solomon. The Lord loved him;
  • 1 Kings 10:23 King Solomon was greater in riches and wisdom than all the other kings of the earth.
  • 1 Kings 3:3 Solomon showed his love for the Lord by walking according to the instructions given him by his father David, except that he offered sacrifices and burned incense on the high places.
  • 1 Kings 9:24 After Pharaoh’s daughter had come up from the City of David to the palace Solomon had built for her, he constructed the terraces.
  • 2 Chronicles 30:26 There was great joy in Jerusalem, for since the days of Solomon son of David king of Israel there had been nothing like this in Jerusalem.
  • 1 Kings 11:11  and 14  So the Lord said to Solomon, “Since this is your attitude and you have not kept my covenant and my decrees, which I commanded you, I will most certainly tear the kingdom away from you and give it to one of your subordinates.
  • 1 Kings 11:1 all of chapter 11 is a list problems
  • 2 Kings 23:13 The king also desecrated the high places that were east of Jerusalem on the south of the Hill of Corruption—the ones Solomon king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth the vile goddess of the Sidonians, for Chemosh the vile god of Moab, and for Molek the detestable god of the people of Ammon.
  • Nehemiah 13:26 Was it not because of marriages like these that Solomon king of Israel sinned? Among the many nations there was no king like him. He was loved by his God, and God made him king over all Israel, but even he was led into sin by foreign women.

GOOD

Posted on by
Reply

What does an excited teenager describing something, me talking about my blood pressure, and a lukewarm conversion about a movie have in common? Well, good could have been used in all of those moments. (The teenager used slang that in my old mind does not fit.) Then I thought how God describes things and Genesis, especially Chapter 1, took over. This will help you in your own study. Hebrew Concordance: ṭō·wḇ — 271 Occurrences   Strong’s Hebrew: 2896. טוֹב (towb) — Good, pleasant, agreeable, beneficial, beautiful, best, better, bountiful, cheerful, at ease, fair, favor, fine, glad, goodly, graciously, joyful, kindly, loving, merry, pleasant, precious, prosperity, ready, sweet, wealth, welfare, well-favored

In Genesis 1 God uses the word tov. God bless translators. As you can see the base-word for tov is used in many applications. If you look in a thesaurus or dictionary, in English, there are many listings for good; add in adjectives that go above ‘good’ and the compound words of good, the idea is huge. In Hebrew those jots and tittles, and prefixes and suffixes are used by the translators to help us out. I am finding that the ‘occurrences’ list helps me with the understanding of specific uses of a word. Back to Genesis.

I have taken classes, read, and studied the first part of Genesis many times. So, I may have seen this before, but I do not remember it. Tov surprised me with its various forms, and where it was absent in the first three chapters.

Day 1 and 7, according to the Bible app/Englishmen’s Concordance that I use is ט֑וֹב. The sky/expanse is not called tov, at this time. Day 3 through the animals in Day 6 are called tov, but it is written טֽוֹב׃; the best explanation I found for those two dots was it may be a pronunciation mark. In Day 6 man got blessed but not called tov. Day 7 pronounces everything very tov, and God rest; Day 1 is light. I have more questions than answers at this point, but now maybe a time to keep silent. The only thought I had about Day 2, and the air was in Ephesians 2:2.

Chapter 2 – the food from the trees was a form of tov, but spelled וְט֣וֹב. The ‘good’ used with the Tree of Knowledge is ט֥וֹב. Hebrew Concordance: wə·ṭō·wḇ — 15 Occurrences

All of these words are tov. So, why did the Holy Spirit use these different forms of tov? The easy and possible explanation is grammar and tenses, but I find the associations of these various forms of tov in Scripture interesting.

With all that said, I now have no problem calling something tov without trying to beef up my comment using many adjectives or ‘better’ words.  

Fruit and Nuts – Date Palms and Israel

Posted on by
Reply

This post has grown from my repeat reading of Psalms and Isaiah. Dates and especially palm trees are mentioned with several important places and practices in Israel. Please, do not get your metaphorical hackles raised because of my choosing Israel as the ‘nuts’ in this post; it is not about all of the Children of Jacob.

Once again, I am telling on myself. I was comfortable with the level of study I had done on dates; can’t say Father God was. So, with the Small Voice in my heart, I dived into the subject like I should have done at first.

The Fruit – Dates and the Palm Trees

  • The Hebrew words connected with palms are Strong’s H8558 to H8561. H8558 is the main root word, more on that later.
  • Dates as consumable food is mentioned twice in the Bible and the references tell the same story. The occasion is when David brought the Ark of God to Jerusalem: 2 Samuel 6:19 and 1 Chronicles 16:3. He gave a date cake and a raisin cake to every man and woman who joined in the party. I would guess it was to make sure the people had food on the trip back to their houses. That act of concern reminds me of Jesus feeding the multitudes after teaching them in the wilderness. That had to be a lot of dates and raisins. Given the archeology and historical evidence, I find it unusual that there are not more references to them as food. Strong’s Hebrew: 829. אֶשְׁפָּר (eshpar) — Finger joint, knuckle date rolls or cakes. 2 Samuel 6:19 Hebrew Text Analysis men and women got a set.
  • In Song of Songs 7:7+8 it talks about palm trees and then it seems to switch to grape vines and clusters of grapes; actually, it is ‘clusters on the vine’. As I have looked at Hebrew words and their roots, the great imaginations that formed them are amazing.    Song of Solomon 7:8 Hebrew Text Analysis  Judean date palm – Wikipedia The fruit on the tree has a draping quality that could resemble a cluster of grapes hanging on a vine, the stem looks like a vine. You will need to find a picture of a date palm in fruit:) Many translations could be better because they just assumed it was grapes.
  • Tamar is the name of several women in the Bible. It comes from the palm tree’s quality of standing tall and erect. Find these women’s stories in the Bible, one is grandmother of Jesus.
  • There is an associated word that connects the upright quality of Palms to buildings. The art work in the Solomon’s Temple is rooted in this word. He put palm trees as decorations on the panels of the Temple, 1 King 7:36. Strong’s Hebrew: 8561. תִּמֹרִים (timorah) — Palm tree, column, pillar
  • Date and Palm Trees – Yes, there were other types of palms in the Levant, but the date palm was the most abundant, it seems okay to think of all references to palms as date palms. (Think H8558) Strong’s Hebrew: 8558. תָּמָר (tamar) — palm trees, palm, palm tree The first use of this word is the comforting oasis in Exodus 15:27 and Numbers 33:9; it was a green spot with flowing water in the middle of a sand-sea. The last use of this word is in Joel 1:12 where locusts are ravishing the land. That thought is a good segway into the ‘Nut’ portion of this post.
  • Jericho needs to added into the ‘first’ list for palms. Jericho is one of the oldest cities in the world. The name places it as an oasis with palms trees. So, the Children met palms when they left Egypt and when they entered the Promise Land; a good place to compare and contrast for teaching purposes.
  • Branches from these trees are included in two customs in the Bible. With a connection to the oasis, the Festival of Booths (Day of Atonement) encourages the building of their booths using palm branches. The second custom is welcoming the king by laying down palm branches in his path, that would include David and Jesus’ ride into Jerusalem. A practical aspect here is to cut down on dust.
  • Isaiah 9:14 uses palm branches as a metaphor for the elders and prominent men of Judah, the ‘head of society’; while the false prophets are portrayed as reeds or the tail of society for teaching lies.

BibleGateway – Keyword Search: palm

The Nuts – Israel

This “nut” was not picked lightly and has been hard for me to crack. To break this one open and see the meat inside has proven difficult. I will extend the metaphor a little further; part of any nut is not edible, but even the non-edible part can be useful. The Father has always reserved part of Abraham and Sarah’s children for Himself, even as most of them fell from the faith-tree that this couple planted and rolled after other gods. Spiritual Israel this might be a good time to check your stock in this family tree.

Israel started out as Jacob and the use of both names needs to be considered as part of any lesson where both appears. Many will break them apart as a function of history, but it is a good time to “be still and know God”. As northern Israel and southern Judah cracked apart, they still shared the rootstock of Jacob/Israel, so, look a little deeper.

I picked these talking points from the withered, dead nuts that choose to drop from the faith-tree. You may have others or even call them something different, I am okay with that. Were they the root problem or the bad fruit? I may think about that for a while.

  • Eye Candy – This problem showed up as Israel camped under the Cloud in front of Mt. Sinai and reappeared in Judges all the way through to the Assyrian/Babylonian exiles. The People wanted a god they could see and party around; the nations that surrounded them had idols, a physical thing they could touch, kiss, and make. Psalm 106 (a historical psalm) is a good reference, but they are mentioned in many Books of the Old Testament. Psalm 106:19,20 talks about the golden calf and verses 35 to 39 add references to continued unfaithfulness by making gods.
  • Prostitution – Along with the ‘eye candy’ came burning incense and sex. It may have been in the high places, sacred groves and gardens, or pagan temples, male and female prostitutes were part of demon worship; they even made it in to the Temple in Jerusalem under some of the bad kings. Judah, son of Jacob, worshipped with a shrine prostitute, or so he thought in Genesis 38:13; it was Tamar his daughter-in-law (you still need to find the others). Isaiah 2:6-8 and 65:1-12 also talk about this prostitution. Christians like to spiritualize this subject, and Father God also accuses Israel of spiritual prostitution. Unfortunately, some churches and denominations have placed worldly agends over Jesus’ Resurrection and the work of the Holy Spirit. Also see 2 Kings 17:9. John in the Book of Revelation quotes Jesus confronting this problem in His church at Thyatira with a woman who claims to be important, Jezebel. I see no reason to believe that this was just a “spiritual prostitution”. Please, note that not all in that church were led astray.
  • Greed – Another topic that may not get a lot of pulpit-time. Did ancient Israel have a problem with greed? Yes, and with the rest of humanity God gave us the Ten Commandments, Exodus 20; the last few cover the subject very well. Jesus in Matthew 19:16-22 covers the topic again for us with the rich young ruler. If you need a reference in between those check out Isaiah 3:14-15 and read Proverbs, Solomon does talk about things connected to being greedy.

The relationship between Israel and God has had its problems, just read Kings and Chronicles. But they are God’s chosen people through Abraham and some always look to the Father; Elijah thought he was alone but God had 7,000 that had not worshipped Baal, the servant girl who bragged on Him to Naaman, Nehemiah and Ezra, Esther, and the Prophets, the list is long. The seven Christian churches in Revelation tell a very similar story; some had problems, some did not. There is good inside that hard outer shell.

Jacob/Israel and his family are this study. I try to study this name change and how it is used many times in Scripture, when it shows up in another study. This time, I found connecting words and stories in Genesis 32:22-31 and Hosea 12:3. I found the words in these two passages very interesting.