The Bible
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘The Bible’
While the owner is away, the men he has hired to tend his vineyard conspire to seize it for themselves.
In the Old Testament, Israel is frequently represented as a vineyard, a vineyard so mismanaged by God’s hired tenants that the grapes are small and sour: the shrivelled, acid fruit of corruption and injustice among Israel’s kings and high priests. God sent prophets to warn them; now he has sent his own son. What, Jesus asked his rapt audience, will the owner do when his tenants kill his son, too?
A Jewish man is left for dead by bandits, but help comes from a most unexpected quarter.
‘Love thy neighbour as thyself’ is a commandment of the Law of Moses; but one lawyer wanted to know whom Jesus thought his neighbour was? Jesus, as was his wont, answered with a question of his own. When a man was left for dead in a notorious crime blackspot between Jerusalem and Jericho, which of three men proved to be his neighbour? Which of them did as he himself would be done by?
The Israelites under Philistia’s rule might have blended with their heathen masters had not Samson kept stirring up trouble.
Samson was one of the Judges, charismatic rulers of Israel before the Kings. In his day, Israel had been worshipping the Philistines’ gods, and their punishment was to fall under Philistia’s government. To make sure that the Israelites were not absorbed by Philistine society, however, God prompted Samson to keep tensions high.
The Israelites turn to Deborah for help after twenty years under the harsh rule of King Jabin and his stern general Sisera.
Deborah was the fourth of the Judges, a series of prophets who ruled Israel when they first entered Canaan, their Promised Land. The message of their stories was that if Israel turned from God to worship the gods of the nations, then God would let the kings of the nations have their way until Israel repented.
Jonah is sent to Nineveh to decry the wickedness of the city, but the prophet is more worried about his reputation than their cure.
In the synagogue, the Book of Jonah is read in its entirety on the Day of Atonement. It is a tale about repentance and forgiveness. It is a tale about the intrinsic value of all life, even that which seems worthless. But above all it is a tale about doing the God of Israel’s bidding whatever it may cost, because although he is infinitely merciful his arm is very long.
Jonah grudgingly fulfils his calling to preach repentance in Nineveh, and God tries to make him as comfortable as possible.
After the famous incident of the whale, a much chastened Jonah agreed to fulfil his commission and go to Nineveh in Assyria. His task was to upbraid the people for their wickedness and prophesy certain destruction, but he suspected that God would not actually do it, and harboured regrets for the effect this would have on his reputation.