Study of Job 12:17
He leads counselors astray, stripped of reason,
And causes judges to foolish madness.
Since it is Thanksgiving week, I wanted to give a shout out to my old memories of watching the Cowboys and Redskins playing on Thanksgiving Day. Sad that we are now divided by these terms on a political level when for me it was so long just a football rivalry.
On my recent painting adventure, I found some western novels to try. One was garbage, even though it said “best selling author” and there were a ton of different ones of his there. The other two were good, and I bought the rest by that second author. Between recent tv shows, and movies, and paintings, and now these books, I am being re-exposed to the native American culture I felt some kinship with growing up in West Texas.
‘Leads’ was also ‘makes’ and ‘drives’. ‘Astray, stripped of reason’ was ‘away stripped’, ‘away plundered’, ‘away spoiled’, ‘about naked’, ‘go mad’, ‘astray’, and ‘mad’. The ‘astray, stripped of reason’ was my own creation based on an alternate source and trying to get the idea across rather than picking a single word.
Like ‘leads’, ‘causes’ was also ‘makes’ and ’drives’. I tried to pick two different words, but the choices seem wrong in retrospect. ‘Foolish madness’ was ‘fools’, ‘mad’, ‘rave’, or such like that.
I’ll need to update to:
He leads counselors astray, stripped of reason,
Drives judges to foolish madness.
One of the words I struggled with as a kid was pagan. In my adult mind it became ‘non-Christian’, but that’s not entirely appropriate or as clean as Jew and Gentile. Somewhere along the way I realized the early religions of Native Americans were most closely aligned with my view of the word pagan before they had been exposed to Judaism, Islam, or Christianity, and I had a clear differentiation between their beliefs and belief in Yahweh. The new books I am reading back up this clear delineation.
The cultural gap between the Native Americans and the invading whites in what is now the United States was more confrontational than the similar gap between the Natives South of Texas and the wave of Spanish missionary forces. Both native groups were conquered, but the resulting religious beliefs of those in the North differ greatly from the “Catholic” church in Mexico and further South. I once made a foray into learning about Native American religions only to find that there were too many to learn about, and many too complex for me to gain a better relationship to God by studying.
A similar adventure that I was informed about yesterday was the example of the Rekabites. Their forefather helped overthrow an evil king in Judah before moving out of the cities to live a nomadic life apart from the poison impacting the rest of Judah caused by not removing the pagan religions from the area. This family held to their beliefs for hundreds of years and were rewarded by God to always have someone to serve God. Of course, they were protected by God during the hundreds of years so that they could survive this nomadic lifestyle, but that is really no different from God protecting anyone, anywhere they are for being faithful to Him.
As I plan to spend some time getting ready to discuss Jewish Myths in my Bible Study, I know that I have paradigms on what that means that may not match the rest of the group. (I did test my theoretical basis with another Bible Study leader before charging forward.) But I know that God not only gave us the world around us to display His Glory and engage us in search of Him, gave us the Bible to tell His story for us, and gave us the Holy Spirit to discern truth, I also know He also gave us neighbors to learn from: To learn about Him, to learn about ourselves, and to learn about those who also need Him. So do not forget to learn about those around you before you try to ‘conquer’ them for God.
Written 11/20/23 Posted 12/26/23 Job 274