Daily Bible Reading: 1 Kings 3-4 and Ephesians 1

1 Kings 3 – Solomon takes one of the Pharaoh’s daughters in marriage.  Asimov says the 21^st Dynasty in Egypt was in a state of decline. They “ruled only the Nile Delta, while upper Egypt was under the domination of the priests of Ammon, who ruled as virtual monarchs from Thebes” (323). 

People in Israel are still sacrificing “at the high places . . .because no house had yet been built for the name of the Lord” (3:2). The king sacrifices in Gibeon, “the principal high place” (3:4). But one night when he is there, the Lord comes to him in a dream and asks Solomon what he should give him.  He says, “Give your servant. . .an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil; for who can govern this your great people?” (3:9) This pleases the Lord, and because he asked for something worthy, he also gives Solomon what he did not ask for—“riches and honor all [his] life; no other king shall compare with you” (3:13). When he wakes, he goes to Jerusalem before the ark of the lord and offers sacrifice there.

Two prostitutes come before the king to have him decide a case they have: they both recently gave birth to children, but one child died, and now they both claim that the surviving child is hers.  No one else was there—only they know the truth.  Exercising the wisdom he has just been promised, Solomon orders the baby cut in two so that each woman can have half.  When one of the women protests, she is awarded the child because her love for the child gives away her true identity.

1 Kings 4 – Officials of Solomon’s administration: Azariah (son of Zadok) – priest; Elihoreph and Ahijah – secretaries; Jehoshaphat – recorder; Benaiah – commander; Zadok and Abiathar – priests; Azariah (son of Nathan) – over officials; Zabud (son of Nathan) – priest and king’s friend; Ahishar  - in charge of the palace; Adoniram – in charge of forced labor.  Each of 12 officials was responsible for getting food for the king and his household for one month of the year (12 food districts). “Judah and Israel were as numerous as the sand by the sea; they ate and drank and were happy” (4:20). Solomon’s kingdom extends from the Euphrates to the land of the Philistines, to Egypt even.

                 

The requirements of Solomon’s household – food and other provisions. “God gave Solomon very great wisdom, discernment, a breadth of understanding as vast as the sand of the seashore” (4:29). He composed 3000 proverbs, and his songs numbered a thousand and five.  He wrote of trees and animals. He sounds like a lover of nature. And people came from everywhere to hear him. 



Introductory Information to Ephesians: The theme of this letter, written between 61 and 63 AD, is the nature, origin and purpose of the church in its most universal sense.  Having touched in Colossians on the ascendancy of Christ over not only the church on earth but over all the principalities, dominions and powers that co-exist with God in the cosmos, he returns to the theme of how this “pleroma” concept transforms the deepest notion of the church.  It is in the increasingly “mysterious” sense of Christ’s place in the universe that Paul sees the inexhaustibility of God’s love and the glory of His redemptive work in Christ.

Ephesians 1 - The letter introduces its theme more quickly than in most of Paul’s letters – it is the eternal nature of God’s plan.  We believers were chosen in Christ from the beginning, before the foundation of the world. The “we” to whom Paul refers are called blessed because we were chosen “in Christ” to be holy and unblemished, chosen to be adopted “to Himself” and redeemed by his blood. In Christ, God has “made known to us the mystery of his will . . . a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (1:9-10).

What does it mean to be “chosen in him”? That the people who were to find their salvation were somehow joined in Christ’s body even from the beginning of time? The God of this letter is a God whose purposes cannot be thwarted.  What his intentions are, nothing can change or deflect, even all the sin and misunderstanding and darkness that man’s will can throw out at God.  He says too that the gift of the Holy Spirit is but the first installment of our redemption inheritance.  The word “redemption” implies being returned to God as his possession. Paul focuses his mind on the importance of “knowing” or just seeing into the mystery he describes, more than on conforming one’s behavior to a certain set of rules.  The behavior is important—that is amply clear from his words in Colossians 3:5-9 and here again in chapters 4 and 5 of Ephesians—but the root of this transformation in behavior and character is to be found in “the spirit of wisdom” here in 1:17 and 18.

The Church is Christ’s Body (1:23).  Paul asks that we who are part of the body may be given wisdom and knowledge of him through “the eyes of our hearts” (Jerusalem Bible translation) - that knowing him we may have a hope for all the riches of his inheritance.  It is the mighty power of God that raised Christ from the dead and set him at God’s right hand, giving him authority over all things spiritual in heaven and on earth.

Daily Bible Reading: 1 Kings 2 and Colossians 4

1 Kings 2 – Before he dies David tells his son, “Be strong, be courageous, and keep the charge of the Lord your God, walking in his ways and keeping his statues, his commandments, his ordinances, and his testimonies, as it is written in the law of Moses, so that you may prosper in all that you do. . .Then the Lord will establish his word that he spoke concerning me: ‘If your heirs take heed to their way, to walk before me in faithfulness with all their heart and with all their soul, there shall not fail you a successor on the throne of Israel’” (2:2-4).

                 

He is not happy with Joab. He leaves to Solomon the task of punishing him for his faults: his ill-dealing with Abner and Amasa—“retaliating in time of peace for blood that had been shed in war” (2:5). But he tells him to reward Barzillai’s sons. But Shimei too (the man who cursed him on the road to Mahanaim) should be brought down to Sheol in blood (2:9). Why? He stood by David in the rebellion of Adonijah. Then David dies after a forty-year reign. JB note says the ideas here about blood revenge and lasting efficacy of a curse are added “in the deuteronomic style” to the original narrative. The king and his descendents are “liable to blood-revenge until the true culprit has been killed.” And Shimei’s curse will lie on David’s descendents’ head in the same way a blessing would have. Only by turning it against its originator can it be undone. David’s oath has prevented him from doing this, but Solomon is free.

Adonijah goes to Bathsheba. Apparently all of Israel had expected him to be the king when the matter was turned around.  Adonijah is willing to see this as the Lord’s work, but he asks if she will ask Solomon if he can have the woman Abishag as his wife.  She agrees, but when she does Solomon is angered.  He sees it as a move on the throne. Benaiah is sent to strike Adonijah down (2:25).

                 

He also sends Abiathar to his hometown (banished) for having given his support to Adonijah.  He deserves death, but he reprieves him because he carried the ark before his father David and shared in his hardships in the past.  Joab, realizing the time of vengeance has come, seizes the horns of the altar too; but Solomon orders his death.  Benaiah finally does it.  Benaiah takes Joab’s place and Zadok takes the place of Abiathar as priest.  As for Shimei, Solomon tells him to stay in his house in Jerusalem or die.  Three years later, he gets careless and goes in search of two runaway slaves.  Solomon has Benaiah kill Shimei.

Colossians 4 – In a verse that belongs more appropriately to the preceding chapter, masters are admonished to treat their slaves justly and fairly “for you know that you also have a Master in heaven” (4:1). As with marriage Paul urges believers to make God and Christ the model of their lives—mastering as he masters, heading as he heads, serving as he serves, loving as he loves.

           

Paul asks for our prayers, “that God will open to us a door for the word, that we may declare the mystery of Christ, . . . so that I may reveal it clearly, as I should” (4:4). I will add my prayer to theirs.  He is still declaring that mystery and opening the doors of faith in people today. He closes with commendations of Tychicus and other friends—Aristarchus (in prison with him), Mark (Barnabas’ cousin), who may visit them, and another man named Jesus—all Jews.  Luke must be with him, for he greets the church through Paul, as does Demas as well.  The letter is to be passed along to the Laodiceans.

Daily Bible Reading: 2 Samuel 24 and Colossians 2

2 Samuel 24 – The Lord gets angry at Israel and incites David to take a census - always a bad thing in Israel. It's interesting to ponder why it was seen as a bad thing, something "satan" would put into David's head. Numbering of people in one's "land" was tied with military service, and the whole concept of "state sovereignty," or organization of a people under the rule of a monarch was not something that flowed easily from Hebrew monotheism. Samuel warned against it as something not wished by God. God is the only "sovereign" power finally. It could be that some remnant of this concern lingers here. Joab warns against it (24:3), but the king insists. 

After nine months and 20 days, they return with the results—in Israel there are 800,000 “able to draw the sword” (24: 9) and in Judah, 500,000. After it is done, David become conscience-stricken. Gad, David’s prophet at this time, comes to him and asks what penalty he wants the Lord to exact - he can choose: 3 years of famine; 3 months of flight before his foes or 3 days of pestilence in the land. David chooses the last.  When he sees the devastation wrought, however, he says to God, “I alone have sinned, and I alone have done wickedly; but these sheep, what have they done? Let your hand, I pray, be against me and against my father’s house” (24:17).

David buys the threshing floor of Araunah, a Jebusite whose place is threatened by the pestilence, and builds an altar there; he also buys the oxen to sacrifice and makes sacrifice there to the Lord.  The Lord answers David’s supplication and spares Israel any more suffering.

Colossians 2 – Paul tells the community, “As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.  See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness in him . .” 2:6-9).  This is fabulous writing, incredible articulation of exactly what it is to see and to live “in Christ.” Paul goes on to describe the mystery of Christian baptism.  “You have been buried with him, when you were baptized; and by baptism, too, you have been raised up with him through your belief in the power of God who raised him from the dead. You were dead, because you were sinners and had not been circumcised: he has brought you to life with him, he has forgiven us all our sins” (2:12-13).

The next passage is one that Quakers make a great deal of: “Therefore do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food and drink or of observing festivals, new moons, or sabbaths.  These are only a shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ” (2:16-17). “Why do you submit to regulations, ‘Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch’? All these regulations refer to things that perish with use; they are simply human commands and teachings.  These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-imposed piety, humility, and severe treatment of the body, but they are of no value in checking self-indulgence” (2:20-23).

Everyone lifts what they want from Paul’s words, and some among Friends especially simply dismiss the words as “human teaching.” Early Friends did not dismiss Paul; they felt that they grasped the message he gave in a way most Christians of their day did not. It is true Friends made a great deal about the irrelevance of “human commands and teachings” – the shadow world of “outward” religion, but Paul’s words about Christ in this epistle were not this kind of “human teaching.”  Friends rooted themselves in this cosmic Christ and they experienced him as Paul did but in a different time.

Personal Reflection: The deep revelation of Christ as Logos, Light, Word and Spiritual Savior, the revelation that energized the apostles and built the community that was the early church is every bit as inexplicable (naturally) as the OT "exodus event" was for the Jews.  You will not find any easy verification of that event in historical records, but acceptance of it was the seed around which God brought together his first people – the Jews.  Acceptance of Christ’s incarnation, death and resurrection is similarly not an event you will ever find validated as simple history, but its reality, experienced by these first apostles, is the event around which “the nations” will eventually be drawn to the one God.  Like the Israelites before us, we accept the truth of it through trust in those who were there at the event, those who knew him, saw him risen, were given the gospel first hand; and we trust them because in some deeply interior way, we too encounter God in Christ as an incarnate, loving and saving God.  His face and voice and touch in us reveals God’s reality, discloses His nature, draws us powerfully toward Him and toward the lives we were meant to live as His people.  The Holy Spirit is the power and mystery of God present with us now even though the bodily Jesus is no more. But these are truths of a different order from the truths our mind and mouths are accustomed to dealing with.  They smash against the barriers our logic and materiality (corporality) present to them.  But it is the job of faith to stand even in the absence of every human aid.