Bible Read Thread

Well, this is certainly an earful of words, being seeing six chapters of prophecy, and it would probably take eons for man to be able to completely, perfectly understand it all.

Forgive me as I must make my initial observations short due to having to be at work here in a bit (and Dr. Pepper, while seemingly cool as an employer overall, is like the Nazis when it comes to time management ).

I'll be honest, I have no idea at all when Isaiah's time is. At even generally what point in history that he lived and had this vision from God that begins here in Isaiah 1. I mean, all I see here to help me with that is verse 1:
The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz concerning Judah and Jerusalem, which he saw during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

And I unfortunately do not recollect when these kings reigned in Judah, either. So if one of the more Bible-studious such as Miss Book apparently is knows better, please enlighten me.

Isaiah 1:18 is certainly familiar to me, however, and it probably should be to all sinners. It is indeed a beautiful-sounding verse to all those humans who recognize their sin and imperfection and find a part of their hearts crying for redemption and mercy, guiding them (perhaps even without their knowledge) towards Christ to become believers saved by His grace.


I also deduce that Isaiah 6:6-7, where an angel touches a burning coal to Isaiah's lips in his vision and declares his sins forgiven, is a good verse to demonstrate that God's fire as mentioned throughout Scripture, is often, if not always, a purifying one, to actually bestow mercy and remove sin from His children rather than to destroy or cause pain for the simple sake of retribution. Of course, this may also be a picture of the coming Christ whom God gave authority to forgive all sins by His death on the cross. In that, yes, just like that, your sins are forgiven and you are restored to God if you believe in Christ and Him crucified. We certainly cannot say God is demanding of us with burdensome rules and rituals in order to keep on His good side, now can we? As simple as touching a burning coal to your lips, your belief in Christ has rendered you forgiven.

LadyOfMystery said:

Reading currently, will post commentary later. Sorry I've been so lax on this.

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It's fine, Jennie. It's not like you swore in blood to participate every single day in this thread without fail. ^-^ Just come on in whenever you find the time to make some observations.

Swan7 said:

There is a lot of talk about renewal in the Bible as well, He will make Zion new, we will be resurrected with new bodies, ect.

I had more on these chapters... but my PC restarted on me, and realized I didn't save.... *sigh*

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Oh, sorry about that, Sheena. It's actually an unusually frustrating thing to have some of your best thoughts be erased because of errors like that. Because you really want to put them out there for other people to read and see about you, how you think, but then you believe you cannot write the words the same way again, and probably feel it isn't worth it to try to rewrite the lost post.

Still, I appreciate that you recognize this as well: that even in the midst of the prophecies of punishment of desolation and destruction and severe chastisement upon God's people for their hard-headedness shown here in just the first six chapters of Isaiah alone, there is still also a lot of talk of God's plans to eventually bring us hope for restoration and reconciliation, even for stubborn Judah and Jerusalem. (And if any of us were to be honest, we too would have to say that as an individual each of us have surely been just as stubborn in our lives against God's goodness and instruction as the His chosen people the Israelites throughout the Old Testament have. Perhaps even more so sometimes.)

Quieted said:

Maybe some of this was already mentioned in the discussion, I'll try to read through everyone's posts and thoughts here tomorrow if I can. I feel like I am doing a horrible job keeping up with everyone here on CF lately.

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Don't worry about it, Miss Quieted.

Glad to have you aboard, too. Like I said to Jennie earlier, just feel free to come in with observations on previous readings whenever you can. You simply expressed enthusiasm to be involved in the reading; you did not sign a contract in blood to be here every single day.

Forgive my lateness this morning as it is the weekend and I was able to sleep in.

As it is Saturday, we will begin reading from the Gospels. Today is Matthew chapters 1 and 2.

Ah, the first Gospel describing in detail how Jesus came to be among us. Matthew is likely one of those books most familiar to even casual readers of the Bible. There are several things (besides the obvious, of course - the glorious heralding of Christ coming to save us, His people, from our sins) I like about the beginning of Matthew here.

For one, in chapter 1 we have the entire genealogy of Christ all the way back from Abraham to Jesus' earthly father Joseph, including our beloved figures from the OT such as King David, Rahab the faithful, and Boaz the man of great kindness and integrity despite his position of power (Boaz is my personal hero in Scripture, if I may state that here ) among Jesus' ancestors. One thing I also noted here before in the NASB is that many of the names included in the genealogy have the shorthand term "Gr" preceding their name as put in the parenthetical portions that the NASB has at the end of passages to give further explanation of some terms in those preceding passages. For example, in one of the passages in the genealogy:

Abraham a was the father of Isaac, b Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of c Judah and his brothers. 3Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, Perez was the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of dRam. 4Ram was the father of Amminadab, Amminadab the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon the father of Salmon. 5Salmon was the father of Boaz by Rahab, Boaz was the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse. 6Jesse was the father of David the king. [2 aLit fathered, and throughout the genealogy bLit and..., and throughout the genealogy c Gr Judas; names of people in the Old Testament are given in their Old Testament form 3 dGr Aram]

The part giving "Gr" before Juhah's name is highlighted. I actually do not know what "Gr" is supposed to mean there, so if someone can assist me on that, I would be grateful.


A second thing of note here is Joseph's reaction to discovering Mary to be with child being described as righteous (which I think is really the same as meant by how the NASB says it:
19And Joseph her husband, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, planned cto send her away secretly.

He was called a righteous man in not wishing to disgrace Mary publicly for what he perceived to be the sin of her betraying him with another man (at least as far as he knew), so he intended to send her away without letting the public in on it so that she would be chastised and humiliated by everyone else. I think this is a good example set in Scripture that, contrary to what some may believe, it is generally the righteous thing to do to try to help someone who is in obvious sin with gentle admonishment and in private, instead of loudly finger-pointing and judging to where others will comes in and bully the wrong-doer, forgetting about what is really important in this situation. (Let's be honest; in all of us we have a part of our hearts that secretly gets a bit of enjoyment in finger-pointing, and having others in on it to do the same, like a mob mentality, and I believe it is a primal urge that should be avoided as much as giving in to physical lust.) It is also very encouraging to see Joseph's faith here in his readily believing and acting on the advice of what most people would think merely a dream instead of an actual messenger from God speaking to them, when the angel in his dream tells him it is okay to take Mary as his wife, as she is actually still a virgin and the one to be born from her will be the Messiah. Can you imagine something so grandiose occurring with Joseph? To be in his shoes? And he just says, "okay", and obeys the messenger of God in complete faith, even when it would normally seem absurd that a woman could bear a child without having known a man.


There are also a few instances here in chapter 1 and 2 that actually explain which prophecy the events depicted here stemmed from, almost like God is doing our homework for us instead of leaving it for us to study the Bible on our own enough to get a grasp for ourselves of which OT prophecies correspond to what events that have occurred in the world since the beginning of Christ's birth. For instance, in Matthew 2:1-6, King Herod, as unfortunately a troubled and paranoid man as he turned out to be, gathers his advisers to inquire of where Christ was to be born, and they answer to him that it will be Bethlehem, due to a prophecy given that says:
6‘ AND YOU, BETHLEHEM, LAND OF JUDAH, ARE BY NO MEANS LEAST AMONG THE LEADERS OF JUDAH; FOR OUT OF YOU SHALL COME FORTH A RULER WHO WILL SHEPHERD MY PEOPLE ISRAEL.’ ”

Goodbook said:

Some things
1. Interesting that bathesheba isnt mentioned by name in the geneology.

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Oh, really? She is mentioned by name here in the NASB. It's good to get an idea of how translations differ from each other like this. This is how Matthew 1:6 goes in the NASB:
Jesse was the father of David the king. David was the father of Solomon by Bathsheba who had been the wife of Uriah.