Bible In A Year: December
Advent Bible in a Year Blog: Devoted to Destruction

Deuteronomy 7-9 Why did God choose the Israelites as his “treasured possession?” In Deuteronomy 7:6-8 we hear the comforting word of God’s promise to the Hebrew children, but the reasons behind the promise are a little deflating. God did not choose the Israelites because they were great in number or because of their strength, their […]
Advent Bible in a Year Blog: Thou Shalt Love…?

Deuteronomy 10-13 “Love me.” The intonation of the libretto flattens when love is demanded. How exactly is love required? Moreover, is such a command effective? The very notion of demanded love is the material of despots and totalitarian regimes where repression, not affection, is the aim. Or put it in more pedestrian terms, a spouse […]
Advent Bible in a Year Blog: His Treasured Possession
Advent Bible in a Year Blog: Direct Access vs. Mediation

Deuteronomy 17-19 We find ourselves in the part of Deuteronomy where we run into a lot of “you shalls” and “you shall nots.” And though we might groan a little, the people of Israel initially had cried out for such “boundaries.” Moses reminds them that God would raise up another prophet, “just as you desired […]
Advent Bible in a Year Blog: Laws of Warfare, Unsolved Murders, and Cross-dressing
Advent Bible in a Year Blog: Three O’Clock in the Morning
Advent Bible in a Year Blog: Reversals
Advent Bible in a Year Blog: But the Lord Keeps Coming Back

Deuteronomy 29-31 In Deuteronomy, we’re standing with the people of Israel on the far side of the Jordan, listening to sermons from Moses. He’s speaking to the second generation out of Egypt, the children of those who were delivered out of Egypt but who fearfully and faithlessly refused to enter the Promised Land. Moses has […]
Advent Bible in a Year Blog: Death of Moses

Deuteronomy 32-34 [above: Death of Moses, Alexandre Cabanel, c. 1851, click picture for larger image] The days of Moses draw to an end and a new day begins for the people of Israel. Moses shares God’s words of blessing to his people and the baton of leadership is passed to Joshua, the son of Nun. […]
Advent Bible in a Year Blog: A Quaint Little B&B in Jericho
Advent Bible in a Year Blog: Walls Came a-Tumblin’ Down

Joshua 4-6 Israel is a weak and tired people, hungry after all their wanderings, but hopeful as they cross the Jordan River to enter the Promised Land under the new leadership of Joshua, Moses’ assistant. Through the parting of the Jordan, the Lord reminds the Israelites of his past faithfulness, when he intervened to part […]
Advent Bible in a Year Blog: Achan’s Sin and the Gibeonite Deception
Advent Bible in a Year Blog: Good Reading for Boys
Advent Bible in a Year Blog: Closing the Deal – Mostly…

Joshua 13-15 Most of the text in these three chapters is about real estate, and it documents the inheritance of specific parcels of the promised land to the individual tribes of Israel and Judah. There are two additional narratives that are much more personal in nature, along with a rather understated but very poignant last […]
Advent Bible in a Year Blog: A Golden Era?

Joshua 16-18 Deuteronomy and Joshua are divided along canonical lines. Though the narrative of Israel’s wilderness wanderings continues into Joshua’s provenance, a significant theological and canonical caesura exists between Deuteronomy and Joshua. The former is in the Torah. While the latter is located in the section of the Hebrew Scriptures properly identified as the Nevi’im […]
Advent Bible in a Year Blog: Who’d You Get?

Joshua 19-21 There is a great tradition at my daughter’s former school. On the Thursday afternoon in August prior to the first day of school, the list of teachers and their classes is posted in the school window. The Ice Cream Man comes, and all the families come, and kids crowd around the windows, straining […]
Advent Bible in a Year Blog: Choose this day whom you will serve…
Advent Bible in a Year Blog: Lefty vs. Hefty
Advent Bible in a Year Blog: Gideon (not exactly Heisman material)

Judges 4-6 God used Deborah, Barak, and (although not a judge) Jael, to slay an enemy king and to lead the people—not the mighty, but those thought of as weak. Gideon is no exception. The Lord calls Gideon while he is threshing wheat in the winepress in order to hide from the Midianites. Not only […]
Advent Bible in a Year Blog: Gideon and the 300

Judges 7-9 The book of Judges describes Israel steadily bending further in upon itself—curvatus in se, writ large. Though there are occasional periods of faithfulness, the book is a steady regression, culminating in the haunting final line: “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” […]
Advent Bible in a Year Blog: Some Good News about Jephthah’s Rash Vow
Advent Bible in a Year Blog: Samson

Judges 13-16 [Above: Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr in Samson and Delilah (1949)] I don’t know about you, but I think the story of Samson is the most bizarre story in the Bible. Balaam’s talking donkey and Jonah’s nauseous whale have nothing on Samson. Twice we are told that Samson judged the people of Israel for twenty […]
Advent Bible in a Year Blog: The Downward Spiral Continues

Judges 17-19 Judges 17-21 delivers the final summary of the book in an upsetting portrait of the depraved conditions of the era. We are reminded several times that there is now no king (judge) in Israel and that “everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judg.17:6). The dereliction of Israel is illustrated in […]
Advent Bible in a Year Blog: A Text of Terror

Judges 20-21 There is never an easy moment to turn to Judges 20-21. For there we encounter a Levite whose concubine is violated by a group of Benjaminites. Disturbingly, the Levite dismembers the concubine’s corpse to send to the other tribes of Israel as tokens bearing witness to his outrage. Part of the challenge of […]
Advent Bible in a Year Blog: Possible Impossibility

Luke 1 Psalm 40 Have you ever seen a great artist embellish his work with a flourish? The best painters can mix colors and brushwork to depict beauty and truth on multiple levels. An Olympic figure skater can land the most difficult axels with both technical skill and deceptive ease. A jazz pianist starts improvising […]
Advent Bible in a Year Blog: A Marshmallow World

Luke 2 Psalm 41 On Christmas Day, this joyous day, the Word’s Incarnation and death’s long shadow are linked, hinged in the dark stable like the reality of God’s kingdom on the one hand and the fruit of our self-delusion on the other. Jesus was born, fully God and fully man, for one purpose only: […]
Advent Bible in a Year Blog: Wreath vs. Wrath?

Luke 3-4 Psalm 42-43 During this Christmas season you have probably placed money in the red Salvation Army kettle. And in response, the bell ringer probably said – what? “God bless you and have a merry Christmas.” But what if he said, “Flee from the wrath that is to come!” It would be startling, an […]
Advent Bible in a Year Blog: La Pêche Miraculeuse
Advent Bible in a Year Blog: Uncaged
Advent Bible in a Year Blog: Who Do You Say That I Am?
Advent Bible in a Year Blog: O Zion, That Bringest Good Tidings!
Advent Bible in a Year Blog: No Re-solutions!

Luke 13-14 Psalm 50 I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions, if only for the simple fact that they are usually a recipe for ambivalence and disillusionment at best, and will often even tend towards disappointment and fantasy. It is a fantasy to believe that I can look inside of myself and muster the inner […]