Category Archives: General
Anothe Mangled Passage – 2 Samuel 18
I must be sounding like a broken record, but I really dislike mangled passages. It is sometimes possible to quote part of a passage and just hit the highlights. That may be required by time limitations. But when the changes made to the passage change the intent of the story, or make nonsense of it, [...]
Steve Hill on 1 Samuel 12 (Pr 13B)
This is Steve Hill on David and Bathsheba, challenging us all …
Cutting out the Tough Stuff (2 Sam. 11:26-12:13a)
I’m returning to these notes after the busiest winter, spring, and half of summer that I have ever experienced. I wrote a couple of notes, getting back to them in fits and starts, but I haven’t been able to sustain the writing time. During this time my company released four books, one of them in [...]
The Problem with Being OK (Lent 5B)
Let me apologize for my failure to write this week. I was busy with book releases, and had little time to write. I did read and think, however! One of the great problems for Christianity in the world tdoay is our general feeling of being OK. Forgiveness is hard in a world where we find [...]
A Note on Types and Antitypes
If you aren’t acquainted with the concept of types and antitypes, you will find it much more difficult to see a connection between the lectionary passages and to build sermons that connect the overall story of the gospel. I’m just providing a brief note here, because I saw a good working definition in the Orthodox [...]
When a Sign Goes Bad (Lent 4B/Numbers 21:4-9)
Yesterday I wrote about the equivocal nature of the sign of the serpent lifted up in the wilderness, and how it was both a symbol of death, and a symbol of fertility and life in the ancient near east. Today in my reading I checked the notes in the The Jewish Study Bible and found [...]
The Ten Commandments in a Secular Society (Lent 3B/Ex. 20:1-17)
I find it very interesting to watch the way Christians handle the ten commandments. On the one hand, they have become an icon of our Christian culture, so that nobody wants to claim that they don’t keep them. They’re regarded as a foundational and basic icon, so we keep trying to make them the firm [...]
The Confession and other Gospels (Mark 8:31-38/Lent 2B)
Some of my readers who know that I employ historical-critical methodologies in my Bible study may be surprised to know that one of my most useful books on the gospels is Darrel Bock’s Jesus according to Scripture: Restoring the Portrait from the Gospels. There is a simple reason for this. I believe that before you [...]
Missing from Lent 2B
One thing that always interests me in the lectionary is the passages we don’t read. Often these are signaled by commas indicating a number of verses left out. At other times it may be interesting portions before and after. I see three interesting cases in the lectionary for Lent 2B. The first is in Genesis [...]
A Faith that is not Silent (Psalm 22:23-31, Lent 2B)
Psalm 22:23-31 is an interesting passage of praise. It’s easy to read these praise passages as kind of interchangeable–which Psalm shall we use to praise God today. But there are generally some special features of each passage. I believe that we are to focus on God when we worship and praise him. But at the [...]
