Category: Old Testament

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As always, there’s a lot going on in these chapters.

First, and majorly, is the issue of Second Isaiah. Continue reading

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First, to continue from last week, is Isaiah’s love of wordplay and pun, which drives much of Isaiah’s word choice. Although we call this “wordplay” in English (or paronomasia, if you’re being technical) this was for literary effect and making it memorable; not for cleverness or frivolous entertainment. For example, in 24:17 we read Isaiah speaking of “terror, a pit, and a snare.” These nouns are pachad, wa-pachat, wa-pach (wa meaning “and” here, a conjunction) See the  Anchor Bible Dictionary article, “Wordplay”. Continue reading

Elijah and da Bearss: 1
Obnoxious Teenagers: 0
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Here’s the link to my combined podcast of lessons 29-30, and transcript. These chapters are about the transition from Elijah to Elisha and some of Elisha’ prophetic acts, which raise questions about the varying nature of prophets and prophetic succession. The manual suggests that in 2:1-10, “Elijah prepares Elisha to become the new prophet.” This kind of language assumes several things, namely, that there is only “one” prophet, namely,“the prophet,” the one prophet who is THE Prophet. Continue reading

In these chapters, “the golden age” of Israel comes to an end as United Kingdom of David splits into the Divided Kingdom, and things generally start going downhill. No one remembers the names of all the kings that follow Solomon, and there are two parallel kingdoms to keep track of.

The way the lesson’s stated purpose frames these chapters, you might expect that Solomon is the ideal leader but then his son goes bad. And indeed, in many ways, Solomon is portrayed as quite good. But in other ways, the things he accomplished (following in David’s footsteps) certainly had a heavy price that was not popular with his people at the time. Let’s look at this. Continue reading