Day 92 – Judges 8-9
Woman with a millstone for the win! 😂
TLC’s video is tops today. “Abimelech” means “my father is king”. Interesting that Gideon would name his son that. Gideon, sir. 👀 You turned down the crown and then named your kid MY FATHER IS KING? 😂
Day 93 – Judges 10-12
I mean… I think be careful what you promise to the Lord, right? See Jephthah’s vow in Chapter 11. Dang.
Judges 12 is where we get the word “shibboleth.” You can cross the Jordan if you say it right; if you don’t – you die. Instead of “shibboleth”, the Ephraimites trying to lie and pass themselves off as Gileadites would say “sibboleth”. And so they died. Buncha fakers.
It’s like Mariska Hargitay. I know you don’t know her if you say “Mariska” as it is spelled. But if you know her, you know it is pronounced “ma-RISH-ka”. doink-doink🔨🔨 Don’t play.
The rest of this is just a succession/history of the judges the Lord appointed.
Day 94 – Judges 13-15
Samson has entered the chat! A bit of a Davy Crockett before Davy Crockett was Davy Crockett…
🎵 🎶 🎵 🎶
Born to a woman who could have no son,
Raised as a Nazirite, a chosen one
Tore up a lion with his own bare hands
Strongest man in all of the land!
Samson! Samson Samson! King of the Wild Frontierrrrrrr! 🤠
🎵 🎶 🎵 🎶
Nazirite: A person specially dedicated to God who followed particular restrictions – including no grape products, no cutting their hair, and no contact with a dead body.
I bristled at 14:18 – “If you had not plowed with my heifer…” I’m gonna have to pray about it.
Tara-Leigh’s video recap is worth watching today – every day, really.
Day 95 – Judges 16-18
Delilah. Ugh. What a cuss word.
How did Samson not wake up when she was binding him with the tendons and ropes and the web? Dude must have had a Tempur-Pedic. 😂😂
Did the Lord really depart Samson because his hair was cut? And not when he tore up the lion and killed people with a donkey jawbone? I mean…. being a Nazirite means no grape products, no cutting their hair, AND no contact with a dead body, and Samson had already “touched the dead”. But God didn’t depart from him then.
Only thing I can come up with is that his uncut hair was the publicly visible sign of his lifelong Nazirite dedication to God. It was the last outward sign, and Samson surrendered it to Delilah.
Day 96 – Judges 19-21
Judges 19 is a Game of Thrones episode. Rated R. Hide your kids, hide your wives. I did not like this chapter. Definitely my “least liked” Bible chapter. But it’s in here for a reason.
So the men of Gibeah did wickedness to this woman, and all kinds of battles ensued. Because of one woman, thousands and thousands died in war. Digging as deep as I can to get something out of today’s awful reading, I think part of the message could be – “even the small things matter”. Not that raping and killing this woman was a “small” thing. Not saying that. But it started an avalanche. Do right in all things because you don’t really know what follows. It could be nothing, but it also could be catastrophic. Don’t take that chance.
The other thing I see in these chapters is – this is what happens when God is not in your heart.
We keep seeing “there was no king in Israel” in some of these chapters. Israel did not have a human king, but they had access to the Lord. Yet they didn’t serve Him. The Lord was not ruling their lives. Therefore, “there was no king” for the tribe of Benjamin.
Day 97- Ruth 1-4
Glean: Gather what the main harvesters left behind.
Ruth 1:16-17 – …for where you go, I will go, and where you sleep, I will sleep, and there I will be buried.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the elevator pitch for “Fried Green Tomatoes“.
Ruth 4:16 – Then Naomi took the child and laid him in her lap, and became his nurse.
I am not lying. Just two days ago I was at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum and one of the two Judds items displayed was Naomi’s nurse jacket. The concert picture beside it is one I took myself from the second row of the Knoxville Civic Center in 1991 during the “Farewell Tour”.
One thing Naomi Judd said that always stuck with me was: “You might be the only Bible somebody ever reads“. So… sometimes I hope y’all don’t read my behavior, but most of the time we good.
Day 98 – 1 Samuel 1-3
Be honest – have you ever prayed so hard somebody thought you were drunk? 🙏🍷
Dang, 1 Samuel 2:12 says the sons of Eli were worthless men and didn’t know the Lord. They are priests!
Two things occur to me here. Just because somebody is around the church or the Bible a lot doesn’t necessarily mean they know the Lord. And the second thing is – churches need to be vigilant about who they are letting shepherd their flock. 👀⛪
1 Samuel 2:26 – Samuel is growing in stature and in favor both with the Lord and with people. 👀Who does that remind you of? I’ll give you three days – I mean guesses. (Luke 2:52)