I Chronicles 16:11: “Seek the Lord and his strength, seek his face continually.” Whose doesn’t love hidden secrets from satires, allegories to metaphors. Who doesn’t love to search for hidden meanings. Hidden meanings has been a staple in literature from Jonathan Swift’s satire on human nature in Gulliver’s Travels, John Bunyan’s allegory of Pilgrims
Luke 1:32: “He shall be great and He shall be called the son of the highest, and the Lord shall give him the throne of his father David.” Ok, it is Christmas and I am compelled to study the Christmas story. This year I decided to read the story from the Peshitta or the
Isaiah 55:8: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.” The word for thought here is not sh’ar as it is in Proverbs 23:7: Here the word is chashav. Sh’ar has the idea of thinking to make a decision; this thinking is to invent or create
II Kings 5:15-16: Then he returned to the man of God, he and all his company and he came and stood before him. And he said: ‘Behold, I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel; so accept now a blessing from your servant.’ But he said: ‘As the Lord
II Samuel 16:11b-12: “Let him alone, let him curse for the Lord has bidden him. It may be that the Lord will look upon my affliction and that the Lord will requite me good for his cursing this day.” “If a man loses pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a
II Kings 22:19: “Because your heart was tender and you humbled yourself before the Lord when you heard what I spoke against this place.” Josiah was a king who not only sought to serve God, he loved God. He became King of Judah at the age of 8 years. Ten years into his reign
II Corinthians 5:8: “We are confident I say and willing rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.” I had a friend who was a retired Greek professor and Greek Orthodox. I was a retired Hebrew teacher and Baptist. We would get together once a week for a
II Chronicles 36:5: “Jehoiakim was twenty and five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem: and he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord his God.” Jehoiakim was the son of Josiah, king of Judah. Josiah was the last of the good kings.
II Chronicles 34:33: “And Josiah took away all the abominations out of all the countries that pertained to the children of Israel, and made all that were present in Israel to serve, even to serve the Lord their God, and all his days they departed not from following the Lord the God of their fathers.”
Jeremiah 42:11 “Be not afraid of the king of Babylon, of whom you are afraid; be not afraid of him, says the LORD: for I am with you to save you, and to deliver you from his hand.” Jeremiah 42-43 tells us an amazing story. Judah has now been conquered by Babylon. The Babylonian army has
