Blogging Bible Study: Heart of the Matter - Job, intro

 Posted to Beer Lahai Roi by Lisa Laree

Ok, folks, deep breaths here.  As there are no verses containing the words 'heart' or 'hearts' in the NIV translation of Esther,  we have arrived at the 'I am quite certain I have bitten off more than I can chew' portion of the study...the Books of Wisdom.  If I have counted right (and my squiggling notes could have messed up the count); we have, to date, covered roughly 160 verses.  In the five books of wisdom, I count something in the neighborhood of 234 verses; 120ish of those are in Psalms.

Just the fact that I even counted them kinda shows how much I am intimidated by this, lol.    Now, I know this is my study and I can adapt/ adjust as much as ever I want, but I really, really do want to just keep ploughing on.  I suspect we're going to see a LOT of repetition, especially in the Psalms.  I don't want to be a snooze fest over here, but neither do I want to overlook something just because I'm trying to do a Readers Digest Condensed Version.  As I've seen in the past, I just never know when some little gem is going to come up where I least expected it.  Like today, for instance....

So we are going to stick our collective toe in the water today with just one verse...because Job changes tone REALLY FAST and the first 'hearts' verse is not really related to the rest of the discussion.

The first two chapters are basically the introduction for the rest of the book, providing the context for the arguments that follow.  In that opening passage, we find that 1) Job was a righteous man 2) Job was a wealthy man 3) Job had 10 children and 4) Job was protected by God.  The scenario is that God showed Satan that Job was an example of a human who did what was right, and Satan taunted God, saying that Job would abandon his faith if that protection was removed.  So God gave permission for Satan to do as he pleased with Job life and family, but he was forbidden to harm Job himself.  Consequently, in very short order Job lost all of his livestock, all of his wealth, almost all of his servants... and all of his children.  When Job still blessed the name of the Lord even in the midst of all his loss, Satan sneered that Job was still protected and would certainly abandon his faith if he suffered physically.  So God gave the enemy permission to torment Job physically, but he was forbidden to take his life.  Job contracted a debilitating affliction, with boils forming all over his body.  He sat in the refuse pile and scraped the boils with broken bits of pottery.  But he did not sin in what he said.

He was joined there by three  (ultimately four, but we don't know when Elihu showed up) friends, Bildad, Eliphaz and Zophar, who sat with him at the dump for a week in silence.

Then the arguments started.

But today, I am just looking at that intro bit, and in it, as I said, there is one verse that mentions 'Hearts':

His sons used to take turns holding feasts in their homes, and they would invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them.  When a period of feasting had run its course, Job would send and have them purified.  Early in the morning, he would sacrifice a burnt offering for each of them, thinking, "Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts."  This was Job's regular custom.  -- Job 1:4-5; 'Hearts' is Strong's H 3824, Lebab, which we have seen repeatedly...the inner man, mind will, heart, soul, understanding.

I just want to point out something that I really hadn't considered before covering this today.  Here we are, in the opening verses of the oldest book of the Old Testament...and sin is described as something that happens in the heart.  This is not a New Testament concept.  Now, we know from the choice of David as king that God considered the heart to be of supreme importance, but I'm not sure this isn't really the first time we have encountered the concept of sin taking place in the heart. 

But that's just a function of how the books are arranged.  If we started with the oldest book, that concept would be introduced right from the git-go.

One can sin in one's heart... and that sin has to do with one's opinion of God. 

Yup, that's a concept I know we are going to touch again before we leave the Books of Wisdom...

Blogging Bible Study: The Heart of the Matter - Nehemiah

 Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

Nehemiah.  He was a character.  Crackerjack administrator...but the dude had a temper.  And he got rather...violent...at times.  I imagine people were rather afraid of him.  He didn't put up with ANY nonsense...not from the enemies of the people, and not from the people themselves.

When the story opens, he is a cupbearer to King Artaxerxes in the Babylonian capitol of Susa. That means he was one of the king's most intimate and trusted servants.  Nehemiah's brother had traveled to Jerusalem and returned, bringing word of how poor and unprotected the city was.

Nehemiah was sorely grieved to hear that news, and he began to fast and pray, first for the city, and then for favor with the king...because Nehemiah wanted to Do Something About It.

Sure enough, not too long after that, Nehemiah took the king his wine while he was pondering the condition of his hometown...and the king noticed.

so the king asked me, "Why does your face look so sad when you are not ill? This can be nothing but sadness of heart."  I was very much afraid, but I said to the king, "May the king live forever!  Why should my face not look sad when the city where my fathers are buried lies in ruins, and its gates have been destroyed by fire?" -- Neh. 2:2-3; 'Heart' is  the common Strong's H 3820 - Leb - 'the heart; also used (figuratively) very widely for the feelings, the will and even the intellect; likewise for the centre of anything' 

The king then responded, 'What do you want?' (verse 4), and Nehemiah had a moment in which he realized his prayer was being answered.  He breathed a quick prayer...the narrative doesn't say what, but I believe it was for favor and for the right words, then asked for  permission to go and rebuild the city, with the proper letters for safe conduct and for needed supplies.

The king only asked him to set a time frame for this, which Nehemiah provided,  and Nehemiah traveled with a military escort back to Jerusalem.

I went to Jerusalem, and after staying there three days I set out during the night with a few men.  I had not told anyone what my God had put into my heart to do for Jerusalem. There were no mounts with me except the one I was riding.  -- Neh. 2:11-12; 'Heart' is H 3820 again.

He inspected the wall, made a plan, and then shared that plan with the people, who immediately jumped  on board.  There were, however, foreigners nearby who were not happy to see Jerusalem rebuilt and who gave Nehemiah fits.  At first, it was just scorn heaped upon the folks doing the building, but the people ignored them, following Nehemiah's lead, and kept working.

So we rebuilt the wall till all of it reached half its height, for the people worked with all their heart. -- Neh. 4:6; 'Heart' is H 3820 again.

Then the jeering turned to threats...enough that the people began to be afraid.  Nehemiah set guards and the workers were armed as they went about building the wall.  There was a kerfluffle about borrowed money, and Nehemiah took the lenders to task for charging interest on the loans and the lenders agreed to NOT charge their brothers any interest.  Nehemiah pointedly did not get any financial advantage for his position...deliberately not taking the governor's allowance.

Then the opposition plotted against Nehemiah himself, trying to get him away from the job so they could kill him, but he refused to even answer the charges they trumped up against him and the wall was finished in 52 days (Neh. 6:15), which was such an astonishing accomplishment that everyone in the area knew that it was done with the help of God (6:16).

So the wall was built, and the schedule for the opening/ closing of the gates was set, but the houses had not been rebuilt inside the city and there weren't a lot of folks living there yet.  

So my God put it into my heart to assemble the nobles, the officials and the common people for registration by families.  I found the genealogical record of those who had been the first to return.  this is what I found written there:  -- Neh. 7:5; 'Heart' is, again, H 3820.  This is followed by a long list of names and numbers, concluding that there were 42,360 folks who were there (likely just counting the men, but that's not clear), with 7,337 servants and 245 singers.  Just for grins, I went back to Numbers to see how many folks came into the land originally...according to Numbers 26:22, the tribe of Judah alone had 76,500 men 20 and older.  So there was, indeed, a remnant that took up residence in Jerusalem.  Judgement had fallen hard on the people, but it was past.  

First, there was a holiday in which Ezra read from the book of the Law, with the Levites explaining so the people could understand (8:8).  The people, convicted by what they heard, were weeping, but Nehemiah encouraged them and told them to celebrate.  There was a later day in which the people came together to fast and repent, with a prayer that reviews their history and confesses their sins that comprises most of chapter 9, with the final mention of 'heart' being a reference to Abram/Abraham:

You found his heart faithful to you, and you made a covenant with him to give to his descendants the land of the Cannanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Jebusites and Girgashites.  You have kept your promise because you are righteous.  -- Neh. 9:8; 'Heart' here is Strong's  H 3824, lebab, which we have also seen used regularly, as it is the word from which  H 3820 is derived.

There is more in Nehemiah about Nehemiah's zealous actions to set the people on a path to prevent them from ever repeating the mistakes of the past...which did creep in a little, but he was FIRM in his refusal to allow the people to return that way.

It is worth noting that the people indeed, never fell again into the trap of pagan influences again.  Possibly due to Nehemiah's strict adherence to the Law in those matters.  Following generations were taught what to do and what not to do and the people remained on their land until 70 AD.  But that's a different circumstance and a different story for another day.

What impressed me going through this again is how much the heart matters in accomplishing God's will/plan.  Abram's heart was faithful;  Nehemiah's heart was grieved.  God put into his heart a plan that saw a miracle happen, because the hearts of the people were committed.

How committed/ receptive to God is MY heart?

Selah.

Blogging Bible Study: The Heart of the Matter - Ezra

 Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

Welp.  Best laid plans gan aft aglee...for a number of reasons, I haven't gotten to sit back down with the heart study (not the least of which was that I damaged myself again and am having difficulty typing). And, to be perfectly honest, the Psalms are looming and I'm really intimidated by the sheer volume of 'heart' verses that I have listed from that book.  It's almost as many as I will have covered in the study to date.  I think that is subconsciously messing with my motivation.

Maybe like some of the Hebrews returning to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple, once the local opposition kicked in?  

Hmmmmm...

But Ezra only has three verses that the NIV 84 renders with the word 'heart', so I'm taking a deep breath,  using the backspace button a LOT to correct those errors due to only having 9 functional fingers at the moment, and diving in.

The first two references are in Ezra 1:1 and 1:5

In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the LORD spoken by Jeremiah, the LORD moved the heart of Cyrus king of Persia to make a proclamation throughout his realm and to put it in writing

Then the family heads of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests and Levites -- everyone whose heart God had moved -- prepared to go up and build the house of the LORD in Jerusalem. 

Both of those verses use the same structure we saw in 2 Chron. 36:22 - 'Heart' here is actually ruah -- Strong's H7307  'Wind, breath, mind, spirit'.  As noted in that post, the NIV '84 renders the Hebrew as 'moved the heart', but the phrase is literally 'stirred up the spirit'.  I'm wondering if the scribes writing the postscript in 2 Chronicles actually used Ezra as the source, because it's nearly word-for word.

God moved the heart/ stirred the spirit of the king to  make the decree to rebuild the temple, and He moved the hear/stirred the spirit of the leaders of the people to leave the place they had been for 70 years and return to the land of destruction and begin rebuilding...starting with the temple.

Of course, the folks in the area were not at all happy that the temple was being rebuilt and began a campaign to get it stopped.  They began harassing the Jews and hindered their progress, and construction on the temple ceased until the 2nd year of Darius. There is an anachronistic parenthetical insert about a petition to Artaxerxes to forbid the Jews from rebuilding the city of Jerusalem, but the kings mentioned there follow Darius, so the inclusion of that passage here is rather confusing.  But the sources I found seemed to agree that this is out-of-chronological-order,  and it doesn't really affect the actual narrative we're looking at, so....  Anyway, the Jews resumed the work on the temple in the 2nd year of Darius, and the folks around them began the harassment again.  The Jews maintained that they had been authorized to build the temple by none other than Cyrus, so their enemies asked for an investigation, thinking, I'm sure, that nothing would be found supporting the Jews' claim.  However, king Darius did find the proclamation issued by Cyrus and affirmed it, telling those folks who had been resisting the Jews to not only leave them alone, but to provide anything they needed to proceed with the construction (see Ezra 6:6-10)

Had to be kinda humiliating, doncha think?

The temple was rebuilt, and the folks celebrated the Passover.  

In the seventh year of the reign of Artaxerxes (Ezra. 7:8, after the events recorded in Esther, who was married to Xerxes),  Artaxerxes sent Ezra and a delegation of retuning Jews back to Jerusalem with treasure intended to be used for the temple (Ez. 7:22-23), which brings us to Ezra's declaration of thanksgiving

Praise be to the LORD, the God of our fathers, who has put it into the king's heart to bring honor to the house of the LORD in Jerusalem in this way and who has extended his good favor to me before the king and his advisers and all the king's powerful officials.  Because the hand of the LORD my God was on me, I took courage and gathered leading men from Israel to go up with me. -- Ezra 7:27-28; 'heart' is the familiar leb, Strong's H3820, which we have seen often... the innermost part, the seat of emotions, decisions, thoughts, etc.

There is much more narrative in Ezra about the people repenting of intermarrying with the pagans, recognizing that it was that error that began the decline into the captivity, and they renounced the practice for good, but there is not another mention of 'heart'.

The thing that struck me from these verses is that...God is the one who instigates.  Even amongst those who don't necessarily fear him.  When the set time for the exile was up, God stirred the pagan rulers to allow the people to return home.  God stirred the people to leave what had to be a stable and prosperous home to return to the land of broken walls and burnt stones.

The actions followed because God moved in the heart/spirit of people.  At the time he chose.

Just ask the stone that was rolled in the garden what happens when God says, 'Move!'....Elevation Church, 'Rattle!'