Judges 15:16-19
And Samson said, “With the jawbone of a donkey, heaps upon heaps, with the jawbone of a donkey I have killed a thousand men.” And it happened when he had made an end of speaking, he threw away the jawbone out of his hand, and called that place Hill of the Jawbone. And he was very thirsty and called upon Jehovah and said, “You have given this great deliverance into the hand of Your servant. And now shall I die with thirst, and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?” But God cut open a hollow place and water came out there. And he drank, and his spirit came again, and he revived.
I’ve spent most of my life ignoring the Old Testament,
(or the “Hebrew Scripture” as many are calling it now).
When I became a Christian I assumed that everything I needed to know would be found in the New Testament. To be honest, I never realized that Jesus was Jewish until I was nearly 40 years old. I just thought of Him as the first Christian!
Now I’m thinking that I might develop a deeper understanding of Christianity by reading the history of Jewish culture in the older books of the Bible, and I can’t help feeling that I will be ashamed of myself if I die without reading it at least once. If I suddenly appeared in the afterlife, fully believing that the bible was the most important collection of writing in the world, blessed with a life that afforded me plenty of spare time, but I never took the time to read it, would I be embarrassed?
“Sorry God, I was too busy entertaining myself to read your messages!”
So I’ve assigned myself the task of reading the Bible B. C. at least once, and I hope I don’t run out of time before I finish. I know I’m about to read some stories that won’t make sense to me, and I’m afraid that I will misinterpret the reasoning behind them.
This painting represents one of those stories.
But I’m willing to listen, and I’ll try to have an open mind.
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