Category: Gospel Doctrine

Today, we’re focusing entirely on Ruth, and then just on a small section of Ruth. (I’d really like to write a long article for Ruth as I did for Judah and Tamar, but my list of projects is long.) Ruth is a short and masterful novella. If you haven’t read it yet, give it a quick read. It’s four chapters, minimal characters. I’ll assume you know the story for the rest of this post.

I do have a podcast on Ruth as well as Samuel 1! (links to old podcasts now fixed.) And I discuss the “redeemer” and atonement concepts found in Ruth in depth in my BYU Studies article on The Israelite Roots of Atonement Terminology.
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We are now out of the Pentateuch, into what’s called the Deuteronomistic History, or DH. This refers to the books of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. Continue reading

“Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

This is the first and great commandment.
And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. (Mat 22:36-40 KJV)

I begin with this familiar passage because it bears directly on our study of Deuteronomy. It illustrates two things. Continue reading

Insert here my usual gripe of “we’re trying to cover so much ground in so little time!” So let’s focus about The Ten Commandments. It’s a common-knowledge topic, and everyone’s seen the film, so we all know everything about them, right? Continue reading

I’m bumping this post for utility, although I haven’t had time to rework it.

Text: Moses 5:16-41; 6:26-63; 7:13, 17-47, 68-69

As always, time compels us to be selective in what we focus on. Today, it’s all about Cain.

First off, we need to understand that Cain has nothing to do with Canaan. That association is an accident of English transliteration and pronunciation. They sound similar in English, but in Hebrew Cain/qayin (accent on first syllable) has no relation at all with Canaan/kena’an (kuh-nah-ahn, accent on middle syllable.) If there’s any descent of Cain in the Bible, it’s… Moses’ father-in-law Jethro, who is a Kenite. Or rather, a Cain-ite, if we’re being more consistent.  As the intro paragraph of the Anchor Bible Dictionary article on Kenites says, “The Kenites—or more correctly the Qenites—were a community or clan whose ancestry was traced to an eponym, biblical Cain (Heb qayin ). The Kenites constituted a non-Israelite group, frequenting the wilderness near Sinai…” The text thus portrays Moses marrying  Jethro’s daughter Zipporah, a non-Israelite who is the namesake of Cain, if not a descendant.

If Cain has nothing to do with Canaan, he does have something in common with Cainan/qeynan who appears in Genesis 5:9-12. (See the genealogy discussion below.)

Cain and Master Mahan- I think this is a great opportunity to bring a human-centric and Christ-centric focus to the lesson. Continue reading