Have you ever wondered to what extent you, as a child of God, should engage in the world? This is certainly an issue because of how churches over the years have shunned engagement in, for instance, the political arena. Churches may reach out to their communities and feed the hungry or clothe the poor, but…
Posts Tagged: Rephaim
Deuteronomy 2:34 – No Survivors
The book of Deuteronomy is the second telling of the Law. Often, what it provides is more detail from the narrative of the previous books that comprise the 5-volume Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy). We get a good dose of that in the first two chapters and learn some very interesting details about the…
Numbers 33:55 – Trouble in the Land
Because of what the Israelites had learned in Egypt over their 400 years of captivity, Yahweh had a deconditioning project to accomplish with them. They had been in the midst of a pantheon of pagan gods and gotten used to deities whose image they could see. The verbal history of their people had probably taken…
Ezra’s Conundrum
The story of Ezra returning to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple has a disturbing account at the end of the book. The leaders come to Ezra and inform him in Ezra 9:1-2 (ESV) that: “The people of Israel and the priests and the Levites have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands with…