Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Platitudes are often sayings whose truthfulness is so apparent, so accepted, and so repeated that they are divested of their power and in fact become the object of ridicule. Their failure lies in their fame, and the contempt they invite is bred by their familiarity. To say that children are…
Click here to download the Translation Here we have the seven-fold Voice of Yahweh, bracketed by two sets of four lines about Yahweh. The central seven-fold Voice section uses "Yahweh" ten times, for a total in this psalm of eighteen usages of "Yahweh" (3 x 3 x 2). The psalm,…
As Adam and Eve walked to the Garden of Eden to meet with Yahweh on their first Sabbath they conversed about the origin and age of the earth. Adam: You know, honey, we spent a lot of time yesterday making preparations for this house, and we still have an awful…
Knowing His paths through Moses and David, in the darkness of the prophets we yet walk in His light. It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted…
These days, to be “candid” is to be frank, honest, genuine. But the word didn’t always mean that. It used to be the name for a virtue that we don’t really have a name for anymore. Its obsolete meaning is “kindliness”: a disposition to think well of others, a tendency…
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An English visitor to the Netherlands in the 1650s, Owen Felltham, remarked that the Dutch were “in some sort Gods, for they set bounds to teh Sea; and when they list let it pass them. Even their dwellings is a miracle. They live lower than the fishes. In the very…
Richard Popkin ( The History of Scepticism ) writes of a crisis of skepticism in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: “With the rediscovery in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries of writings of the Greek Pyrrhonist Sextus Empiricus, the arguments and views of the Greek sceptics became part of the philosophical…
Erasmus and Luther eventually squared off regarding the freedom of the will, but in earlier letters Erasmus cautions against judging Luther too hastily or harshly and pushes the burden of proof on Luther’s opponents. Erasmus was, after all, a reforming Catholic. For instance: “I do not suppose myself learned enough…
Isaiah tells Israel to prepare for the coming of Yahweh by leveling mountains and raising valleys (40:3-5), and when Yahweh comes the mountains melt away (Psalm 97:5; Micah 1:4). But the angel of Yahweh tells Zechariah that the mountains will give way to Zerubabbel (Zechariah 4:7), a true son of…
A couple of notes on the first vision of Zechariah 5, and then translation. 1) Verse 3 is difficult to translate, and is somewhat surprising. The scroll represents, the angel says, the curse going throughout the land, but the effect of the curse in verse 3 is not negative and…
Some notes on Zechariah 4, with a rough translation following. 1) Structurally, the passage is most clearly organized around the exchanges between the interpreting angel and Zechariah. Most obvious is the parallel between verses 4-5 and 11-13; together with the angel’s response, these questions form a frame around a central…
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