Notes for Meeting

<p>It’s Father’s Day, and we’re in the thick of studying through the book of Genesis together. Remember there was no reading assignment this week, we finished the first eleven chapters of Genesis last week, the sort of pre-history part of the story, and this week, we’re going to be introduced to Abram, whose name gets changed to Abraham.</p><p>We didn’t have reading assignments, and we’re not going to read any passages today, either. We’re going to start with a recounting of some of the major events in the last thirty-nine chapters of the book of Genesis and the book of Exodus, and we’ll sort of gloss over some of the parts we’ve covered previously.</p><p>You may recall that Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. This is another etiology, “where did we come from” sort of story. There’s a table of nations in the tenth chapter of Genesis, and it’s sort of a “hey, all the people we bothered to mention are descended from Shem, Ham, and Japheth in this way.” When I was a kid, I used to wonder, where are the Chinese people in this story? But I digress. Shem has kids, and their kids have kids, and after ten or so generations, Abram is born in Ur of the Chaleans, and marries Sarai.</p><p>Ur of the Chaldeans is in modern day Iraq, near the mouth of the Euphrates River, and there was a big ziggurat there too, maybe that was the Tower of Babel. Who knows!?</p><p>We’re going to dive into a few stories of Abram, but not this week. This week, we’re going for character arcs. Abram calls on Yahweh, though according to the earlier stories he’s not the first, but he calls on Yahweh, and eventually Yahweh makes a covenant with him and changes his name to Abraham, and changes Sarai’s name to Sarah. Abraham is ninety nine years old when this all goes down, and we learned earlier in the story that Sarah isn’t able to conceive, but she does, and they have a son named Isaac.</p><p>I will also note that Abraham has two sons, and God promises to bless both of them. One is his son with Hagar, and one is his son with Sarah. Notably, there are some differences in how Jews and Muslims tell this part of the story, but the canonical telling in the Bible is that God’s covenant is established with Isaac. Isaac marries Rebekah, and I will mention here that there’s quite a bit of the telling of this part of the story that involves this family being in Canaan, which is the land that their descendants will later take over, but not marrying Canaanites. Again, a bit of etiology going there.</p><p>So Abraham and Sarah’s Son Isaac marries Rebekah. Rebekah and Isaac’s son is named Jacob, though he also gets a new name later, Israel, hmm, wonder where I’ve heard that name? Jacob slash Israel marries two sisters named Rachel and Leah, and he eventually has a bunch of kids with the two of them and with Bilhah and Zilpah, who are handmaidens to the two sisters.</p><p>In some tellings of the stories, they’re half-sisters to the two wives, but that’s not in the Bible. Anyway, the five of them, Jacob, Rachel, Leah, Bilhah, and Zilpah, have twelve sons, and the second-youngest is a dreamer named Joseph.</p><p>Pausing for a moment here, I just want to observe that what we’re talking about is really the living memory of one person. Meaning, the story describes characters that would have literally known each other. It’s much further zoomed in than the last eleven chapters we read, it’s thirty-nine chapters for just four generations.</p><p>Okay, so who remembers what happens at the end of the story of Joseph?</p><p>That’s right, the whole gang goes on down to Egypt. And they stay there until Moses is born, Moses is a direct descendant of Jacob slash Israel through his son Levi, but we’re not talking about living memory now. The story, as it goes in the book of Exodus, is that they were in Egypt for four hundred thirty years. Then we dive deep again.</p><p>Moses leads the Children of Israel out of Egypt. This is the Exodus, which is famously depicted in the book of Exodus. So Genesis, the beginning, Exodus, the Exodus, and then on to Leviticus, which is where we get a real deep dive into the law they got during Exodus. We’re not going to spend a whole bunch of time in Leviticus, but it’s got some good, meaty bits in it.</p><p>Moses is sort of present throughout the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, as a character. He’s got numerous sidekicks, but the important one who emerges at the end is Joshua, who leads the Children of Israel into the Promised Land. Since you all remember the Lyle Lovett album from 1992, Joshua Judges Ruth, does anyone care to guess about the period just after the Children of Israel enter the Land of Canaan?</p><p>That’s right, Judges, the next part is the period of the Judges. We’re going to read parts of all of this, but after the Judges there are Kings, the Kings build the first temple, it’s eventually destroyed and the second temple is built, we’ve covered that part of the narrative, and on through the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, when our own Christian religion was becoming an offshoot of Judaism.</p><p>I will note that Jews and Christians do not have separate stories for this period, our religion literally forked off of theirs, so prior to that, our spiritual ancestors were Jews, Like Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. We do, however, have lots of separate interpretations.</p><p>When people talk about Abrahamic religions, they’re talking about Jews, Christians, and Muslims, but also some other, smaller religions. Druze have been in the news recently, and there are actually still Samaritans, as in the Good Samaritan, in the world.</p><p>Okay, so that’s the character arcs, and next week, we’re reading one story about Abram and Hagar and Sarai, everyone read Genesis chapter 16. Until then, I love you all so much, and let’s light our candles.</p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://notesformeeting.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&#38;utm_campaign=CTA_1">notesformeeting.substack.com</a>

<p>It was really fun to start our discussions on the Old Testament when everyone was home, and now we’re moving back to being spread abroad. I posted our last few weeks of meetings on Substack, and we’re going back to recordings at least while Tom is abroad.</p><p>This week’s reading was a little bit longer, four chapters, but all concerning one story, the story of The Flood, capital-t-capital-f, The Flood. I’m so interested to hear everyone’s take on it. I’m going to turn on comments in case anyone decides they want to comment on the Internet, and to remind everyone who’s following along but not here in person, the reading for this week was Genesis chapters 6, 7, and 8, and chapter 9 through verse 17. I reminded people to take particular note of how many animals were taken onto the ark, and how many days the flood covered. Everyone was also keeping an eye out for which parts of the story are interactions with God-slash-Elohim, and which are interactions with The-Lord-slash-Yahweh.</p><p>But before we dive into that, just a quick review of the story.</p><p>Right there at the start, we have the Nephilim, who are pretty enigmatic characters in some ways, but if we take the whole thing at face value, God has sons, those sons take human wives, and their sons are heroes. But there in verse five things take a turn and the Lord decides to destroy all the humans, so it goes.</p><p>Then for the rest of chapter 6, God tells Noah to build an ark and load the animals by twosies, twosies, elephants, and kanga-roosies, roosies, children of the lord. Oh, but it’s not children of the Lord at this point, they’re God’s people in chapter six, and then the Lord actually gives slightly different instructions in chapter 7, which Noah also follows, and then there’s a flood.</p><p>The numbers of days of things kind of vary throughout the story, it’s something like forty days of rain, plus 150 days of flood, plus forty more days on the top of Mt Ararat, plus a couple more weeks of waiting, but it’s also interesting to note that what we appear to have here is a couple distinct stories that were woven together into a whole, and some parts of the original stories were left as they were when whoever was weaving them together found them. So there are a couple different times that forty days, or fourteen days, or a hundred and fifty days get mentioned, but regardless there’s a long flood, then the flood is over, and then one of two things happens.</p><p>At the end of chapter 8, Noah has a barbecue and the Lord really loves the barbecue. Then at the end of chapter nine, there’s an alternate ending where God makes a covenant and ties it up nice with a bow. You all please don’t murder each other, and I will also never murder all of you again.</p><p>Okay, so that’s the sketch of the story, now I’d be interested in hearing what you all think of the story, and about how the story is woven together.</p><p>I’ve read at least one translation of the Book of Genesis where they actually pull the two stories back apart, and just present them as two different, but loosely related stories. It’s fun to think that maybe there were two flood myths that had been passed along, and then someone took the time and care to merge them back into a single story.</p><p>But it’s also fun to think about the fact that there are lots and lots of fun flood stories from all over the world.</p><p>For everyone who’s following along on the podcast or on substack, we’ve been spending more of our meeting time in discussion, which partly accounts for the shorter podcast this week. Next week, we’re only reading a very short section of chapter 11, verses one through eight. It’s the account of the Tower of Babel, which is a fun story.</p><p>For this week, let’s light our candles together or in our hearts, and consider what the flood story has to tell us. I love you all so much.</p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://notesformeeting.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&#38;utm_campaign=CTA_1">notesformeeting.substack.com</a>

<p>Today we’re going to finish talking about the five scrolls, which are Esther, Ruth, Lamentations, Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes. You’ll remember that Esther is about Esther, our Jewish Heroine who saves her people from Xerxes the jerksy and his awful advisor Haman. Lamentations is a book of laments, in the form of acrostic poetry. Song of Songs is the other scroll besides Esther that doesn’t mention God. Song of Songs is mostly about kisses and things related to kisses. And Ecclesiastes is the wisdom of someone named Kohelot. The five scrolls are short and beautiful, and in a minute we’re going to start talking about my favorite of the five, Ruth.</p><p>But first, before we do, a word on organization of the Bible overall, and of these books In particular. Ruth, the eponymous hero of Ruth, is the great grandmother of King David. So when Christians were sorting books, instead of putting it with the other writings, it was kind of organized chronologically. That is to say, it’s sandwiched between the book of Judges, which chronicles the period before Israel had Kings, and the book of I Samuel, in which we meet the first and kings of Israel, Saul, and David, and learn of their interactions with Samuel, who anoints both of them.</p><p>So in terms of overall organization, we have the Torah or the Law, which is the period from Adam and Eve through Moses. Moses brings everyone out of Egypt, but never enters Canaan, he hands off the reins to Joshua, who takes the Hebrews into Canaan, don’t worry we’ll learn more about this later, but after they enter the land, there’s a period where there are judges but no kings, described in the book of Judges. So the Torah or the Law are Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. Then Joshua, Judges, Ruth, like Lyle Lovett’s fourth album. That makes Ruth the eighth book in the Bible as we typically count it. Chronologically, it puts Ruth right on the edge between the period when Israel is governed by Judges, and when it’s governed by Kings. Samuel is the final Judge, and Ruth’s great grandson David is the second king, who’s just a boy when he begins his journey. The point there being that Ruth and Samuel are probably about the same vintage.</p><p>Does that all make sense? Thematically this scroll is part of the writings, but we put it chronologically sandwiched in with the prophets between the judges and the kings. Hopefully the way we’ve approached this doesn’t cause confusion, but I think it’s more fun to encounter the scrolls somewhat together even though they’re all different in chronology and style.</p><p>So what kind of a scroll is Ruth? Well for starters the story is set hundreds of years before Esther, but they were probably actually written pretty close to one another. in her story, Esther is a Jewish woman in Persia. Ruth is also a foreigner, but the opposite kind - a non-Jew in ancient Israel, and at the beginning of her story, instead of having just ascended to be queen, she’s just become destitute.</p><p>In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land. So a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab. The man’s name was Elimelek, his wife’s name was Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Kilion.They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem, Judah. And they went to Moab and lived there.</p><p>Now Elimelek, Naomi’s husband, died, and she was left with her two sons. They married Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other Ruth. After they had lived there about ten years, both Mahlon and Kilion also died,and Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband.</p><p>Strong start, right? I told Dan’l earlier that it would be a feminist story, certainly all the main characters are women and most of the men in the story die in those first two paragraphs But it’s also a feminist story set in a culture where women don’t have a great deal of autonomy. Which I suppose is why the author would have killed off all the men.</p><p>The story has a few elements that are interesting to consider. It features the marriage of a Jew and a non-Jew, which might have been controversial when it was written. Same as Esther, actually. But Ruth is also a beautiful story of friendship. The other sister-in-law is named Orpah and here’s her brief but lovely story:</p><p>Return home, my daughters; I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me—even if I had a husband tonight and then gave birth to sons—would you wait until they grew up? Would you remain unmarried for them? No, my daughters. It is more bitter for me than for you, because the Lord’s hand has turned against me!”</p><p>At this they wept aloud again. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung to her.</p><p>Ruth clung to her. Here’s one brief side note about the story of Orpah, her name is spelled O-R-P-A-H, just like Oprah, except with the p and the r reversed. The funny thing is that Oprah Winfrey’s birth certificate actually says Orpah, but people just pronounced it the other way and eventually she settled on it. So Orpah goes back to Moab, and Ruth clings to Naomi.</p><p>Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.”</p><p>But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.” When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.</p><p>So the two women went on until they came to Bethlehem.</p><p>We’re not going to read the rest of the story today, because that’s your homework for next week. It’s very short and very lovely, and it will be an introduction to the next thing we’re going to go through together, which is that we’re going to trace through a timeline of the events of the Old Testament, as narrated in the Old Testament, which is understandably somewhat different than the timeline of the same or closely related events from other sources.</p><p>Before we head back, let’s review, though. We’ve lightly covered eight books so far. Three poetry books, which are smack in the middle, Job, Psalms, and Proverbs. And these scrolls, which are mostly arranged around the poetry books, so the order in the Christian bible is Esther, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs. Lamentations, the acrostic lament poems, is attributed to Jeremiah and is usually placed right next to the book of Jeremiah, which we’ll get to when we start talking about prophets.</p><p>And then today, we talked about Ruth, which as I explained earlier, is situated chronologically in the Christian Bible, right after Joshua and Judges, and right before we start talking about the last judge Samuel, and the first kings, Saul and David.</p><p>There are three or four other books that the Hebrew Bible counts as writings, which we’re going to read in chronological order instead, even though we didn’t do that with Ruth.</p><p>I love you all very much, and I’m really enjoying our tour of the Old Testament together. Read Ruth chapters 2, 3, and 4 this week, and next week, to quote Inigo Montoya, we’ll go back to the beginning. But for today let’s light our candles and consider the beautiful friendship between a mother-in-law and a daughter-in-law.</p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://notesformeeting.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&#38;utm_campaign=CTA_1">notesformeeting.substack.com</a>

<p>My darlings, I’m so enjoying our whirlwind tour through the Bible. As a reminder, we’re currently talking about the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible, which we divide into three chunks: the law, the prophets, and the writings. We started our tour in the very middle, with three of the writing books that are written in poetry, Job, Psalms, and Proverbs. And this week, you all read Job chapters 1, 2, and 42 in preparation for diving into the characters a little bit.</p><p>We’re not doing a quiz or anything, but you should all remember by now that Job, Psalms, and Proverbs are smack in the middle of the sixty-six books of the Bible that most Christians consider canon. Psalms is filled with psalms, Proverbs is filled with proverbs, but Job is not filled with jobs, instead it’s filled with the character Job, along with other characters who fill very different roles. From your pre-reading, you’ll all recall that Satan is one of the main characters, and due to some conversations between Satan and the Lord, Job is rather badly smitten at the outset of our story.</p><p>By the very end of chapter two, the five main characters are introduced: Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite, of course Job, and the Lord. What follows is a back-and-forth between these five characters, and you already know how it ends, because you read chapter 42, but let’s dig in to some of the meaty bits of the poetry.</p><p>After the introduction in the first two chapters, Job opens the poetry with a lament. It’s the saddest of sad poems, and it’s beautifully constructed. Job’s lament ends with these lines:</p><p>What I feared has come upon me;</p><p> what I dreaded has happened to me.</p><p>I have no peace, no quietness;</p><p> I have no rest, but only turmoil.”</p><p>When I was in college, I took a class called Job and the Joban Tradition, it was taught by Peter Machinist, and one of the things we learned in that class is that Job is a theodicy. It grapples with the question of why do bad things happen to good people?</p><p>This term, theodicy, incidentally, was coined by Gottfried von Leibniz, the inventor of calculus, who in addition to being interested in infinitesimals, was also interested in the problem of evil. How can there be evil if God is all powerful.</p><p>The first response to Job is by Eliphaz the Temanite, whom I will remind you, sat on the ground without eating or speaking for a week, just to be with his friend Job. None of these characters are slouches as friends. The overall structure of Job is that Eliphaz speaks and then Job responds, then Bildad the Shuhite, then Job, then Zophar the Naamathite, then Job. This repeats three times, and for the most part the friends are pretty supportive, although Eliphaz does get a bit grumpy toward the end. Even though the whole plot is that Job never sins, Eliphaz feels the need to judge. Here’s a snippet of it:</p><p>“Submit to God and be at peace with him;</p><p> in this way prosperity will come to you.</p><p>Accept instruction from his mouth</p><p> and lay up his words in your heart.</p><p>If you return to the Almighty, you will be restored:</p><p> If you remove wickedness far from your tent</p><p>We don’t have time to read all of the back and forth, but what we find is that everyone who starts out consoling Job eventually does the same thing as Eliphaz. Bildad and Zophar both get a bit accusatory, and then Job is forced to respond.</p><p>“As surely as God lives, who has denied me justice,</p><p> the Almighty, who has made my life bitter,</p><p>as long as I have life within me,</p><p> the breath of God in my nostrils,</p><p>my lips will not say anything wicked,</p><p> and my tongue will not utter lies.</p><p>I will never admit you are in the right;</p><p> till I die, I will not deny my integrity.</p><p>I will maintain my innocence and never let go of it;</p><p> my conscience will not reproach me as long as I live.</p><p>You get the point here. Job is like, nah bro, it’s not like that. There’s a somewhat strange interlude in chapter 28, which almost feels like a standalone song or poem, but that is also beautiful. It’s not attributed to any of the characters, and it’s asking a question:</p><p>Where then does wisdom come from?</p><p> Where does understanding dwell?</p><p>It is hidden from the eyes of every living thing,</p><p> concealed even from the birds in the sky.</p><p>Following this is another long poem by Job, and then we get a surprise! A character who wasn’t introduced in the beginning steps out of the crowd, and he gives a rousing speech that begins like this:</p><p>“I am young in years,</p><p> and you are old;</p><p>that is why I was fearful,</p><p> not daring to tell you what I know.</p><p>I thought, ‘Age should speak;</p><p> advanced years should teach wisdom.’</p><p>But it is the spirit in a person,</p><p> the breath of the Almighty, that gives them understanding.</p><p>It is not only the old who are wise,</p><p> not only the aged who understand what is right.</p><p>He makes a good point, but he also brings it home in a way that’s like ten times more judgmental than the three friends, which is looking pretty grim for Job. But don’t worry, the Lord arrives on stage now, and I’m going to switch to the King James version, which you remember is an older translation, but this is some of the most beautiful poetry in the Bible, and it’s a more beautiful translation. It’s so beautiful it’s hard to know where to stop, and I’d encourage you all to read it all on your own if you like what you hear.</p><p>Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said,</p><p>Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?</p><p>Gird up now thy loins like a man;</p><p>for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me.</p><p>Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?</p><p>declare, if thou hast understanding.</p><p>Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest?</p><p>or who hath stretched the line upon it?</p><p>Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened?</p><p>or who laid the corner stone thereof;</p><p>When the morning stars sang together,</p><p>and all the sons of God shouted for joy?</p><p>Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?</p><p>Eep!</p><p>Now you already know that in the end of the story, Job and the Lord are cool, but I do want to point out a couple quick little nuggets. The first is that only his daughters are mentioned by name, and Job gives his daughters an inheritance with their brothers. That’s pretty cool</p><p>The second is that the end of the story is one of my favorite endings: Job died, being old and full of days. I hope that’s how my story ends, although without the middle part, ideally, where Satan and the Lord collude against me.</p><p>Okay, it’s been a slightly longer Meeting than usual, but one more quick piece of business. The three books of poetry are only part of the writings. There’s no assignment for pre-reading for next week, but we’re going to introduce five short books that are easy reading, and if you wanted to read ahead, the one we’re going to focus on is the book of Esther.</p><p>The book of Esther is interesting for a bunch of reasons, but one of the reasons it’s most interesting to me is that it actually contains no mention of God, which is, you know, somewhat unusual for being in the Bible.</p><p>I love you all so very much, and I can’t wait to continue our tour next week. For now let’s light our candles and think about what the Lord might say to each of us if he called us out of the whirlwind.</p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://notesformeeting.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&#38;utm_campaign=CTA_1">notesformeeting.substack.com</a>

<p>After some discussion with everyone during Lent, we’re going to start a tour of the Old Testament in Meeting today. There seemed to be some general agreement among all the Bruntons-east that having an overall sense of it could be fun and interesting. Today we’re going to do a quick orientation, and then we’re going to start exactly in the middle with the poetic books, mostly because I like them and I think they’re a fun starting place.</p><p>So first it’s worth noting that when Jesus talked about scripture, and when he quoted from scripture, what he was quoting was what we call the Old Testament, or Hebrew Bible. You’ll be unsurprised to hear that it was all written in Hebrew, whereas the New Testament was written mostly in Greek.</p><p>Remember that Jesus grew up in Second Temple Judaism, which we’ll come back to later, but one way you can think of the Christian religion is that it’s an offshoot of Second Temple Judaism, and the reason we say “Old Testament” and “New Testament” is that we inherited the Old Testament from our Jewish roots, and the New Testament was all written after the time of Jesus.</p><p>There are some theological implications about calling the two parts of the Bible the Old Testament and New Testament, but it’s still a convenient way to group the books, and it’s been a grouping for a long time. In Judaism, the grouping is called the Miqra, or the Tanakh. The Tanakh is a convenient name because it’s actually an initialism of three words, Torah, Nevi’im, and Ketuvim. The Torah is the first five books, the Nevi’im are the prophets, and the Ketuvim are the writings. We’re going to come back to the writings in a minute.</p><p>But get that in your head for a minute. There are five books at the beginning that we group together called the Torah or the Pentateuch, or the Law. The story of the creation of the world is there, and the flood, and the story of Moses leading the Hebrew children out of Egypt. The story of Moses receiving the ten commandments on stone tablets is in there, and a lot of additional rules that weren’t on the tablets, but cropped up along the way.</p><p>You might remember that Jesus says “Do not think that I have come to destroy the law and the prophets” - when he says “the law” there, he’s talking at least in part about the Torah, and when he says “the prophets” he’s talking about the next broad division of books. When you think about prophets, you might think about Jonah who got swallowed by a whale and barfed out in Ninevah, or Isaiah who unknowingly wrote most of Handel’s Messiah a few thousand years before Handel was born, or you might think about Elijah who fasted for forty days and who at the end of his life ascended into heaven in a chariot of fire.</p><p>We’re going to talk about the prophets later, but that’s another broad division of the Old Testament, you’ve got the law and the prophets. When we talk about the prophets, we’re going to talk mostly about characters, because that’s how I think of them, but we’ll also talk a bit about what prophecy means.</p><p>The third and final broad category is called the writings, or the Ketuvim, and this is eleven books that are all wonderful. The eleven books include many of my favorite parts of the Bible, in part because we sing them and recite them more than other parts. In particular, there are three books in the middle of the writings that are books of poetry and that’s where we’re going to look today.</p><p>But first, one more quick recap. Law, that’s the first five books. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. The Torah and the Pentateuch are two other names for it. Prophets, that’s a big chunk of the Old Testament, and when we come back to talk about the prophets, we’re going to talk about a lot of individual characters like Jonah and Elijah. And the writings.</p><p>In the Christian Bible, the poetry is exactly in the middle, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, those three books, and because of that they’re also easy to find. My recollection is that if you calculate the exact center of the Christian Bible that Protestants use, it’s in Psalm number 117.</p><p>There are 150 psalms, and every single one is a beautiful poem or series of poems. In many Christian denominations, it’s traditional to have a psalm sung or spoken in every single service. You might remember that the very first book published in North America was the Bay Psalm Book, which you can think of as kind of a hymnal. Psalms have been set to music many thousands of times throughout the past several millenia, and many of my own favorite hymns are Psalms translated into English and set to music.</p><p>Some Psalms are long, some are short, and they’re surprisingly varied as poetry, and they’re the part of the Hebrew scriptures that has most made me want to learn more Hebrew.</p><p>Proverbs is the book right after Psalms. Since Psalms is full of psalms, you won’t be surprised to hear that Proverbs is full of proverbs. Aphorisms for living, and you have undoubtedly heard many proverbs from the book of Proverbs recited by people you know. They often have two parts, the this is like this, but the that is like that. My own favorite proverb from Proverbs is, “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones,” and it’s sort of what I think about when I’m proceeding through hard times with good cheer.</p><p>“Iron sharpeneth iron” is another good one from Proverbs, the second half of that one is, “so one person sharpens another.” We’re glossing over Psalms and Proverbs a little bit, but not because they’re not awesome. They’re awesome, but you just don’t need much orientation to them. Open the book of Psalms and start reading, and you’ll probably like it. Open the book of Proverbs and put your finger on something, and it will probably sound like a proverb. Both books are extremely approachable.</p><p>Job is the other book of poetry in the Bible. Don’t get me wrong, there are other poems, but Job is the third book that’s dedicated to it, and unlike Psalms and Proverbs, it’s actually framed as a story about a guy, and you’ll be unsurprised to hear that the guy’s name is Job. Job is spelled just exactly the same as the word job, but it’s pronounced Job with a long o. Unlike in previous meetings, this week we’re going to make a short reading assignment, it’s not the whole book of Job, but it’s a little at the beginning and a little at the end.</p><p>Next week, we’ll do a slightly deeper dive into the book of Job, and we’ll read some of the poetry in the middle. The part of the story I’d like everyone to read is the first and second chapters, it will take about five minutes, they’re really short chapters. Then skip to the very end, and read chapter 42 starting at verse seven until the end. These two parts of Job are sort of a prologue and an epilogue of a conversation between Job, his three friends, and the almighty, which is written in verse. Next week we’ll read some of the verses together, but you’ll understand it all better with a bit of the story in your mind.</p><p>Okay, before we light our candles, just one more quick repetition. The law, that’s the first five books. The prophets, that’s actually most of the other books. The writings, that’s eleven books total, but the three we talked about today are the poetry books that are smack in the middle, Job, Psalms, and Proverbs. You’re going to read the first, second, and forty-second chapters of Job this week, and if you find yourself wanting to read something else, just turn to a random Psalm, or a non-random one and just read the Twenty-Third Psalm.</p><p>I love you all so much, and I’m very tickled at this idea. My current thinking is that we’ll spend eight or ten weeks on a whirlwind tour of the Old Testament, and then maybe we’ll go back to our regularly scheduled programming, or maybe someone will want to do something different and they’ll tell me!</p><p>For now let’s light our candles and think about poetry.</p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://notesformeeting.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&#38;utm_campaign=CTA_1">notesformeeting.substack.com</a>