~ Being Real ~

Disciple: Day 2

Our assignment today is to “sample different styles of Biblical literature” without “[trying] to understand the message” and to simple “enjoy the variety in style and begin learning how to read different material.

It’s funny how even though I’ve always loved English (I won English awards in high school, took English as a major in university, and was/am an English teacher), I’ve never really applied what I’ve learned about analyzing literature to the Bible.

Anyway, here are my thoughts on the various passages:

PSALM 84:

Of course, there is no way to read this without thinking of the song ‘Better is One Day,’ so it’s easy to understand/imagine that this psalm was originally set to music. This psalm is particularly lovely because it’s so positive and upbeat.

A lot of the Bible matches good with bad: these are the rewards for good, and these are the punishments for evil; or, these are all the bad things that were going on, and then these are all the good things you did.

But the emphasis of this psalm is almost completely positive; the one mention of something negative is in the line “I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God/than dwell in the tents of the wicked” (verse 10b). It mentions “the wicked” but doesn’t expound on them.

Another thing that stuck out to me was the mention of birds in verse 3:

Even the sparrow has found a home,

and the swallow a nest for herself

where she may have her young—

a place near your altar,

O Lord Almighty, my King and my God.

It just occurred to me that one of the many motifs in the Bible is birds and how God cares for them. The other “bird passage” that immediately springs to mind, of course, is ‘Do Not Worry’: “Look at the birds of the air; they do no sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” (Matthew 6:26).

In fact, now that I think of it, a lot of motifs and other imagery are nature-based—water and animals (sheep) and such. In Psalm 84 there is a reference to springs, which reminds me of Psalm 23: “As they pass through the Valley of Baca, /they make it a place of springs; / the autumn rains also cover it with pools. /they go from strength to strength/till each appears before God in Zion” (verses 6-7).

Given their lifestyles, it would only be natural that they, the Israelites, would frequently, if not daily, come into contact with the nature used to describe God and his relationship with his people, and these sights must surely remind the Israelites of as well as reinforce the teachings of the Bible. (Though, of course, it wasn’t put together as the Bible then but was just a collection of different types of teachings.)

HOSEA 11

Two things in this passage really stood out for me: verses 4 and 8.

Verse 4, to me, exemplifies that paradoxical concept of freedom through submission to God: “I led them with cords of human kindness/with ties of love; /I lifted the yoke from their neck/and bent down to feed them” (emphases added). On the one hand, God is freeing the Israelites from slavery in Egypt—“the yoke”—but he is also binding them to him “with cords of human kindness” and “ties of love.”

It reminds me of Milton’s Paradise Lost. Actually, if I had my Norton’s Anthology right now, I would like to re-read Paradise Lost. It’s an amazing piece of literature that I read through far too quickly in my Major British Writers course.

Verse 4 also brings back memories of Major British Writers. We looked at Shakespearean sonnets and discussed how there is always a turn/change towards the end of the sonnet. In Shakespearean sonnets, the turn, or “volta” usually occurs after the three quatrains in the final rhyming couplet, whereas in the Italian or Petrarchan sonnet the volta usually occurs after the eighth line (coinciding with the transition from the octave to the sestet). The volta is defined as the “'turn' . . . in the argument or mood of the poem” in The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms.

So yes, verse 8 (almost like a Petrarchan sonnet, but one line early) marks the change in the tone of Hosea 11. Verses 1-7 build up the image of the wickedness of the Israelites in forgetting all that God has done for them and talks of the surety of their destruction. But then in verse 8 it’s as if God has had a change of heart, and, instead of allowing the Israelites to be destroyed, proclaims “My heart is changed within me; / all my compassion is aroused.” Verse 9 further states “I will not carry out my fierce anger/ nor will I turn and devastate Ephraim. / For I am God, and not man— /the Holy One among you. /I will not come in wrath.”

The shift, then, serves to emphasize God’s compassion and “love for Israel” (as described in the sectional heading) although the Israelites are an undeserving and ungrateful people. (Gee, does that sound familiar?)

EXODUS 15:1-8

Can’t you just imagine Levites and/or other leaders of Israel singing/reading aloud this “Song of Moses and Miriam” to remind the Israelites of their history and to admonish them to remember and revere the Lord always?

I don’t know if it’s blasphemous to say this or not, but it’s kind of propagandistic, isn’t it? But, I mean, given the historical short-term nature of the Israelites’ memories, I can totally see how their leaders would need a song or something catchy to teach to the people to remind them of God’s goodness.

And aren’t we like that too? I mean, don’t our contemporary worship songs serve a similar purpose? I’m not saying that’s their only purpose, but surely it is one of them.

This is a digression, but I think doing this Disciple study and writing my reflections on this blog are a good idea. I started my devos at about 8pm, and an hour and a half later I’m just finishing. Having to put my thoughts into writing for public consumption definitely makes me spend more time thinking/reflecting.

Anyway, final thought: reading and analyzing these passages as literature has definitely reinforced my sense that the NIV is an excellent literary translation. In the Preface, The Committee on Bible translation stated that one of its goals for the NIV was to provide a translation that “would have clarity and literary quality” and I believe they have succeeded in that. It will be interesting to see the difference between the NIV and other versions tomorrow (when we are supposed to “try some different Bible translations if available”).