A Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Enoch, Part 1

First I must make a correction to yesterday’s post: I misspelled the translator’s name. The proper spelling is Andrew McCracken. I am most grateful to Mr. McCracken for his work in making the prophecy and visions of the first recorded prophet of the Most High God accessible to modern English readers.

Let us start at the beginning with the Blessing of Enoch.

1) THE BLESSING OF ENOCH

1.1 These are the words of the blessing of Enoch; according to which he blessed the chosen and righteous who must be present on the day Of distress, which is appointed, for the removal of all the wicked and impious.

1.2 And Enoch began his story and said:

There was a righteous man whose eyes were opened by the Lord, and he saw a Holy vision in the Heavens, which the Angels showed to me. And I heard everything from them, and I understood what I saw: but not for this generation, but for a distant generation that will come.

1.3 Concerning the Chosen I spoke; and I uttered a parable concerning them: The Holy and Great One will come out of his dwelling.

1.4 And the Eternal God will tread from there upon Mount Sinai, and he will appear with his Host, and will appear in the strength of his power from Heaven.

1.5 And all will be afraid, and the Watchers will shake, and fear and great trembling will seize them, up to the ends of the earth.

1.6 And the high mountains will be shaken; and the high hills will be laid low and will melt like wax in a flame.

1.7 And the earth will sink, and everything that is on the earth will be destroyed, and there will be judgment upon all, and upon all the righteous.

1.8 But for the righteous: He will make peace, and He will keep safe the Chosen, and mercy will be upon them. They will all belong to God, and will prosper and be blessed, and the light of God will shine on them.

1.9 And behold! He comes with ten thousand Holy Ones; to execute judgment upon them and to destroy the impious, and to contend with all flesh concerning everything that the sinners and the impious have done and wrought against Him.

The prophet begins with a standard introduction, letting everyone know who it is that writes this scroll. Many modern scholars would have us believe that no book older than their own can be trusted to accurately report the name of the author and the time of the writing. They universally reject the idea that predictions could possibly have been made in the distant past (some recon the flood transpired as long ago as 15,000 BC) and come true in the near past. They would have us hold the belief that all such writings were made after the fact and lied about authorship and date.

To be sure, there are many works, pawned off as true, that were written under false pretense and in false names. There are ways to tell which is which. Since the Book of the Prophet Enoch was quoted so many times in so many books, both Old and New Testament, these scholars would tell us that the writer of Enoch is the one quoting and the others made up their material whole cloth. I find this a contrived house of cards built to house the rebellious refusal of said scholars to believe in God and obey His will.

Enoch admits to being in right standing with God, as he begins in the third person and reverts to the first person in the same sentence. As a shaman, Enoch would be hard pressed to remain righteous today, with all the spiritual darkness around us. But as we shall see, when Enoch began to explore the spiritual realm, those spirits of darkness did not yet exist. Enoch tells us they are the spirits of dead Nephalim, drowned in the flood of Noah. As we go along, you will understand better why this book was excluded in the early part of the current age from the cannon of the Old Testament where it rightly belongs.

Enoch was allowed to see a vision that is intended to warn those of us living today of the things around us and the things to come. In verse two he says,… but not for this generation, but for a distant generation to come. I believe without one iota of doubt that Enoch is referring to the present generation in this clause. God has brought the book out into the light of public knowledge today for a reason. That reason is that we are the intended recipients of the book and its many visions.

The rest of this chapter, verses three to nine, describe the end of the Earth on the Day of the Lord. Saint Peter was fond of this one as well as Saint Jude. But even Saint Stephen was inadvertently quoting this passage when he had a parallel vision in the chamber of the Sanhedrin during his trial, on the day they stoned him to death for the faith of Jesus Christ.

But the vision of destruction does not come without hope, as we see in verse eight. For those in right standing with God and their fellow humans, God will make peace, something lacking in today’s society for the followers of Jesus Christ. The salvation of God is not merely a Sunday morning before the football game event. It is eternal, both spiritually and physically.

Where will you be on that day, not too long from now? Will you be in right standing with God and your fellow humans, or will you be one of those upon whom God wreaks His vengeance? The time to decide is now, before the event, because when the Most High comes with ten thousand angels, it will be too late. Get ready!

Ol’ Fuzzy is not employable and was denied for disability benefits. The only thing I have is the blogs. But I don’t qualify for ads on the blogs until there is enough traffic on the blogs to interest advertisers (20,000 hits per month). If you like the scribbles I post, please help me keep it going. First, share, share, share. The more people who know about the blogs, the more who will visit them. And you can leave me a gratuity by dropping a buck or two in Ol' Fuzzy's Tip Jar. This is a PayPal account I opened on Wednesday, April 5, 2017.

A Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Enoch, Introduction

Over the course of my commentary on the Book of Hebrews so far readership of this blog has steadily dropped. So I shall table that for the time being and write on a subject that is not so blasé. When Jesus Christ walked the Earth, the Book of the Prophet Enoch was included in the Bible, both the Hebrew cannon used in the synagogues and the Septuagint translation everyone used in their homes. Many of the early Christian Fathers and Mothers of the Church quoted Enoch extensively. And the Book of the Prophet Enoch is the most internally quoted book in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation.

For a little background, Enoch was a shaman who lived before the flood. He was the seventh from Adam in line of descent. At the time Enoch practiced his faith, there were no evil spirits as there are today, because the Nephalim had not yet perished. Therefore, it was still possible for a spiritualist to walk with God as a friend. Enoch built a stone circle to observe the movements of the stars and planets and he sought visions to learn of the world around us and the world of the unseen.

The pharaoh who conquered Egypt and enslaved the Hebrew people must have brought the Book of Enoch with him from Mesopotamia, because Moses read it thoroughly before his mission. Although it is very possible Moses read the book only in his birth mother’s home or borrowed a copy from Jesse, his father-in-law, the Book of Enoch was too important a work to exclude from a royal library in the second millennium BC.

I am totally disgusted with the modern scholastic view that no book containing a fulfilled prophecy could possibly have been written before the event that fulfilled the prophecy it contains. In Wikipedia the various writers try so hard to discredit the prophetic nature of these books that they at one point claim that the Book of Enoch copied from the Book of Jubilees for the calendar and the Book of Jubilees copied from the Book of Enoch in another place. You can’t have it both ways, one of them must have been written first.

I hold the view that most of these books are what they claim to be, written by the author identified in the text and containing his own words. Doubtless there are many spurious works out there written for the purpose of leading God’s people astray. In my humble opinion, those are the ones most touted by the “scholars” as true examples of the faith of the times and suggested to be used to replace the canonical works in use for over sixteen hundred years. The blatant blasphemy of these so called scholars leads me to reject their hypotheses whole cloth and to stick with the textual explanation of authorship and date.

I shall use the excellent work of Andy McKracken as the text of my commentary. He has demonstrated a reverence for God and an intelligent interpretation of the dates and authors. So far as I have seen, there is no existing translation in the English tongue that surpasses McKracken’s work.

Tomorrow I shall start on the first chapter of the Book of the Prophet Enoch.

Ol’ Fuzzy is not employable and was denied for disability benefits. The only thing I have is the blogs. But I don’t qualify for ads on the blogs until there is enough traffic on the blogs to interest advertisers (20,000 hits per month). If you like the scribbles I post, please help me keep it going. First, share, share, share. The more people who know about the blogs, the more who will visit them. And you can leave me a gratuity by dropping a buck or two in Ol' Fuzzy's Tip Jar. This is a PayPal account I opened on Wednesday, April 5, 2017.

Apostasy and Heresy in Today's Christianity

Today I want to change topic in order to scratch the itch the Lord put on my heart. I look at today’s churches and see a great falling away, apostasy. And another problem that contributes to the first one is the rampant heresy in church circles, which leads those who follow into a path directly away from God. The last days of this present age are drawing to a close, and those who do not hold fast to the faith handed down to us from Christ through His apostles and their descendants in the spirit will find themselves locked out of the Wedding Feast of the Lamb in that day.

Let us touch on the second problem first since it leads the gullible into the first one. Heresy has plagued the Christian Church from the day after Pentecost AD 30. Just what is heresy and how do we recognize it? The most basic definition of heresy is the linguistic one derived from its etymology. The Greek word α͑ίρεσις (hairesis) means to chose. In the usage of the Christian Church throughout the ages it has the meaning to chose from among the truth and falsehoods a hodgepodge of doctrines to create a faith foreign to the truth. The many Pagan sects of Gnosticism filtered doctrines into the early Church to form many hybrid, heterodox beliefs that negated the truth of Christ for their followers. At the same time there were Christians who taught that one needed to convert to the Jewish faith before one could become a Christian. They placed supreme emphasis on keeping the feasts and Sabbaths of the Law of Moses.

We can see these and many others in operation in the United States of America and all over the world today. Most modern heresies cloak their heterodox doctrines in truthy sounding phrases and reason. To rationalize the truth is to negate it. For example, there is a teaching that has become popular among many practitioners of the Western Contemplative Prayer movement that states everyone and everything is a part of God. It is quite logical in its formulation, and just as completely wrong. To be separate from God is death, but it does not show that to be in God is to be a part of God any more than to build a house and enter it is to be a part of the house.

The essence of God is so different from the essence of humanity that it takes divine intervention just to commune with God. The Church has always taught from the beginning that the goal of Christ in His ministry and sacrifice is to make us become by grace what God is by nature. Not that we will ever share in God’s essence, but rather that we will share in God’s work. It is a false reasoning that to be in the image of God is to be a part of God. A mannequin is in the image of a person, yet I don’t see anyone arguing that a mannequin is a part of the person it resembles. The semblance of God in humanity is not physical, since God created that semblance before Christ became a human. Therefore, we can’t argue that we physically look like God. The semblance is rather a spiritual one, and there are parts of a human God did not possess before the Incarnation. Most remarkable is the human soul, the only created bridge between the spiritual and physical aspects of creation.

The insidious thing about this heresy is that it is a gateway to other heresies like universalism, the heresy of Origin, and deism, the teaching that everything is god. People who follow this heresy stop spreading the Gospel because they assume that all faiths lead to God (an idea that makes Jesus a liar when He said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one can come to the Father except through Me.”). In fact there is no heresy that is safe to follow if your goal is to satisfy God and become the person He planned for you to be.

All of these heresies lead people astray, a form of apostasy. Others are disillusioned by them and quit the Church to avoid the heretics. Apostasy comes from the Greek word ͗αποστάσις, which is a compound word meaning out of place, or off level. One commits apostasy whenever one leaves the true faith for any reason, whether to follow a heresy or to simply quit. You don’t have to become a Pagan or join a cult to commit apostasy. There are people in church every Sunday who are in a state of apostasy. Jesus said to hold fast to His teachings until He returns. And He promised rewards only for those who continue the course to the end. So if you sit on the sidelines and make no further progress in your pilgrimage, you are just as apostate as one who quit going to all church and renounced to faith.

How does one recognize heresy to avoid apostasy? First, know your faith. Saint Vincent of Larens wrote a book, Against the Heresies, that addresses these issues. In that book he put forth a method of recognizing the truth. Anything that was held from the beginning, by all Christians, in all places is the Orthodox faith. Some things may not be essential to that faith but remain harmless. But anything that contradicts that faith in any way is heresy. We Christians must study the faith as handed down from Christ, through the Apostles and their spiritual descendants, to us today in order to avoid being led astray by pretty words that satisfy some itch in our minds. It is easy to rationalize and misquote the Scriptures. The devil did it when he tempted Jesus in the desert after He was baptized. But only someone who is willing to submit to those in authority in the Church (who are not necessarily those running an apostate church) and study to show themselves approved is able to remain unswayed by the tides of heretical doctrine that sweep through the world.

How do you do it? Read. Read the Bible and the writings of the ancient Church fathers and mothers that are recognized as faithful and true. Pray. Not just recitation of someone else’s words written down in a book of prayers, or giving God a list of things you want Him to do for you. But pray from your heart, and listen to God when He answers you. A prayer done right is a conversation between you and God, not a monologue of you dictating to God. Know God as you know your friends and family. Not just a passing acquaintance, but a deep sharing of inner thoughts.

Just because the rest of the world is jumping off the cliff into the abyss is no reason to join them. Proverbs says, “There is a way that seems right to men, but the end of it is the way of death.” Don’t find yourself on the road to perdition, but continue to walk in the way of salvation. That is all I have to say on the matter.

A Commentary on the Book of Hebrews, Part 30

Moving on, let’s start chapter twelve.

CHAPTER TWELVE

1 Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, 2 Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds. 4 Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin. 5 And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: 6 For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. 7 If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? 8 But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.

Remember, the preacher is speaking to Jewish Christians who are contemplating abandoning the faith to return to the practices of the Temple sacrifices. In that light, let’s examine what is recorded here. The preacher reminds us that the light afflictions we think we suffer are nothing compared to the ones suffered by the examples he gave in chapter eleven. The Christian journey is compared to a race run by athletes in an arena. The problems and excuses that crop up, along with all of the transgressions we make, are to be set aside, not worth consideration, because Jesus is the One Who originated our faith, and He will complete it in us. Jesus willingly went to His death, knowing how much suffering it would entail, because He knew the joy that would come at freeing so many from the bondage to sin and death, and He gave little care to the shame of a judicial execution because He was going to sit back down at the right hand of God’s throne of glory.

The preacher urges us to contemplate on the sufferings of Christ, and the mocking and lies from those who served the enemy of our souls, as a means to focus our intentions on achieving perfection in Him. We are reminded that we have not shed our own blood in resistance to sin. Many have, and if you know one who has, let him also be an example, like the ones in chapter eleven.

The preacher also reminds the audience that a loving Father will correct His children. In American society, it has become non-PC to discipline our children, and look at the result, a generation of narcissists. But God does love us enough to correct us when we stray. Often we stray en mass, then He has to correct an entire group at once. People declare that these corrections prove that God doesn’t love them. That is a lie of the enemy, whispering in their souls. The things God does to us or allows to be done to us in order to correct us instead proves that He does hold us in the highest level of love. In the mindset of the culture from which the audience came, a child whose father didn’t love enough to discipline was not legitimate, but a bastard. If you are disciplined by God, that is proof of your legitimacy as His child, and coheir of Christ.

Do you often want to quit because of difficulties in your path? Do you deny God’s love for you because bad things seem to be happening to you? Examine your own heart. See if there is any of this negative influence of the enemy of our souls, and purge it from you.

Ol’ Fuzzy is not employable and was denied for disability benefits. The only thing I have is the blogs. But I don’t qualify for ads on the blogs until there is enough traffic on the blogs to interest advertisers (20,000 hits per month). If you like the scribbles I post, please help me keep it going. First, share, share, share. The more people who know about the blogs, the more who will visit them. And you can leave me a gratuity by dropping a buck or two in Ol' Fuzzy's Tip Jar. This is a PayPal account I opened on Wednesday, April 5, 2017.

A Commentary on the Book of Hebrews, Part 29

How about we finish the chapter.

30 By faith the walls of Jericho fell down, after they were compassed about seven days. 31 By faith the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not, when she had received the spies with peace. 32 And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of Gedeon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephthae; of David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets: 33 Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, 34 Quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. 35 Women received their dead raised to life again: and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection: 36 And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment: 37 They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; 38 (Of whom the world was not worthy:) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. 39 And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise: 40 God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.

That rounds out the roll call of faith. Look at the names of the examples of faith the preacher used. Rahab had no physical ties to the tribes of Israel. She was a prostitute, ostracized by her city. Perhaps she was a foreigner in Jericho, a Syrian or Chaldean. Perhaps she had learned of the Most High God in her youth and wanted to reconnect to people who worshiped Him. Perhaps she saw in the Israelites a way out of the sex trade. Whatever her reason, Rahab believed. And it was that faith that pleased God, and made her the ancestor to the line of Israelite kings, including Jesus Christ.

Gedeon was one of the Judges of Israel before the first king, Saul. If you take the time to read the Book of Judges, you will read how Gedeon was sent to expel an army of invaders with a smaller force, and God had him cut down the size of the force even further until there were only a few hundred Israelites versus thousands of invaders. God wanted to show that the victory was His, and set up conditions whereby there would be no mistake. Gedeon was aghast at the difference between the forces in numbers. Yet Gedeon still believed God and obeyed His command.

Barak was a soldier. He knew only the ways of battle, not the ways of God. Deborah was called of God to drive out the invaders who were persecuting the people, but as a woman she didn’t feel comfortable leading men in battle. So Deborah told God that she wouldn’t go unless He let her work through a male general, and she only trusted Barak. For his part, Barak told Deborah that she was in command because she had the word of God for the troops to follow. Barak would only relay Deborah’s orders. Realize the culture these people lived within, very much a male dominant one. For a man, and an important general to boot, to defer to a woman was unspeakable. But the faith of Barak was such that he trusted God through Deborah, femininity not withstanding.

Everyone in America should know the story of Samson, who was under a Nazarite vow from birth. God gave him great strength and battle prowess, so long as he never broke his vow. When Samson revealed his secret to Delilah, he gave away the blessings of strength and prowess. But it wasn’t Samson’s long hair that gave him the blessings, it was God’s grace. And when Samson’s faith was placed in God instead of his oath, the blessings returned, if only for a short time.

The reference to Jephthae is the Judge Jephthah who was of the tribe of Gilead. His story is tragic in many ways. The son of a harlot, he was thrown out of his father’s house by his brothers because they didn’t want to share the inheritance with him. He lived as a brigand in the land of Tob (wherever that is) until the people of Amman attacked Gilead to take away some of the land God gave to Israel. Then his brothers came and begged him to lead them in battle against the army of Amman. He made them promise to appoint him their judge if he lead them and won. As the battle against Amman was pending, Jephthah made a vow to God that if He delivered the Ammanites into the hands of the little army of Gilead, Jephthah would offer as a burnt sacrifice the first living creature that came out of his door to greet him upon his return home. Jephthah had only one child, a beautiful daughter, and when he returned home she burst through the door with timbrel and song to celebrate her father’s victory and safe return home. Although it tore his heart to do so, and the girl was still a virgin, Jephthah kept his vow and killed his only child to burn her corpse on an altar as a sacrifice to God. This foreshadows the sacrifice the Father made in sending the Son to die for us. Although Jephthah was unaware when he made the vow who or what would come through his door (he assumed it would be one of his livestock), he kept his vow in faith as a thanks to God for the victory.

The many examples of the faith of King David from the time he was a shepherd to the time of his death are too numerous to detail. You know most of the story if you read your Bible and go to Sunday school. Samuel the prophet was the last of the Judges, who anointed two kings for Israel, Saul and David. His faith is also well known. And I don’t have space in the blog to detail the faith of the many prophets who held to their trust in God in the face of persecution and oppression. The tortures they were put through were often as severe, if not more so, as the tortures the Romans subjected Christians to in the first three hundred years of the Church. But the preacher is saying these examples of faith are the ones we ought to emulate in our own life. They all knew of the Messiah Who was coming, while we know Him as historical fact. If they could maintain their faith in One who was yet to come, who are we to abandon that faith in Him Who came and died for us? Search your heart. Are you being faithful to the Lord? Is there something you are holding back from the old life, the dead religion, you once lived? Faith is more than mental ascent to the fact, but a deep, abiding trust in the One you believe and an eager willingness to do His bidding. Can you describe your own faith as obedient? Perhaps we should all examine our lives for any vestige of disobedience, and root it out before His immanent return.

Ol’ Fuzzy is not employable and was denied for disability benefits. The only thing I have is the blogs. But I don’t qualify for ads on the blogs until there is enough traffic on the blogs to interest advertisers (20,000 hits per month). If you like the scribbles I post, please help me keep it going. First, share, share, share. The more people who know about the blogs, the more who will visit them. And you can leave me a gratuity by dropping a buck or two in Ol' Fuzzy's Tip Jar. This is a PayPal account I opened on Wednesday, April 5, 2017.

The Prophet's Prayer for Revival, a Commentary on Chapter Three of the Book of Habakkuk

Today I am writing something different for a friend, a commentary on Prophet’s Prayer for Revival. Let’s look at Habakkuk Chapter three.

CHAPTER THREE

1 A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet upon Shigionoth. 2 O LORD, I have heard thy speech, and was afraid: O LORD, revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make known; in wrath remember mercy. 3 God came from Teman, and the Holy One from mount Paran. Selah. His glory covered the heavens, and the earth was full of his praise. 4 And his brightness was as the light; he had horns coming out of his hand: and there was the hiding of his power. 5 Before him went the pestilence, and burning coals went forth at his feet. 6 He stood, and measured the earth: he beheld, and drove asunder the nations; and the everlasting mountains were scattered, the perpetual hills did bow: his ways are everlasting. 7 I saw the tents of Cushan in affliction: and the curtains of the land of Midian did tremble. 8 Was the LORD displeased against the rivers? was thine anger against the rivers? wasthy wrath against the sea, that thou didst ride upon thine horses and thy chariots of salvation? 9 Thy bow was made quite naked, according to the oaths of the tribes, even thy word. Selah. Thou didst cleave the earth with rivers. 10 The mountains saw thee, and they trembled: the overflowing of the water passed by: the deep uttered his voice, and lifted up his hands on high. 11 The sun and moon stood still in their habitation: at the light of thine arrows they went, and at the shining of thy glittering spear. 12 Thou didst march through the land in indignation, thou didst thresh the heathen in anger. 13 Thou wentest forth for the salvation of thy people, even for salvation with thine anointed; thou woundedst the head out of the house of the wicked, by discovering the foundation unto the neck. Selah. 14 Thou didst strike through with his staves the head of his villages: they came out as a whirlwind to scatter me: their rejoicing was as to devour the poor secretly. 15 Thou didst walk through the sea with thine horses, through the heap of great waters. 16 When I heard, my belly trembled; my lips quivered at the voice: rottenness entered into my bones, and I trembled in myself, that I might rest in the day of trouble: when he cometh up unto the people, he will invade them with his troops. 17 Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: 18 Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation. 19 The LORD God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds’ feet, and he will make me to walk upon mine high places. To the chief singer on my stringed instruments.

Habakkuk lived in the Kingdom of Judah at the time that the Babylonians were overrunning the country in stages. Much of what he says in his prophesy is often dismissed as applying only to the time and place where he lived. The danger in dismissing any part of a prophesy is that all prophesy of God has manifold fulfillment. What Habakkuk said and what he prayed is as applicable to us today as it was in the days of King Zechariah, if not more so.

The prophet announced that his prayer is a rambling lyric (upon Shigionoth). Apparently Habakkuk was a Levite, one of the family charged with assisting in worship with music and labor, especially since he addressed the lyric to the chief singer on his (Habakkuk’s) stringed instruments. That would explain his qualifications for God to miraculously transport him to Babylon to comfort Daniel, as some of the oldest hagiography suggests he did (see Bel and the Dragon 33-37).

The prophet heard God speak, and he became afraid, even terrorized, by the pronouncement of the Lord. Thus, he prays for a revival, a sort of resurrection, of the work of God in Israel, especially God’s mercy. The King James Version renders the Hebrew word queren as horns, when a better translation from the context would be rays of light. So in the best rendering, God is seen by Habakkuk as having rays of light proceeding out of His hands. The word translated hiding in regards to God’s power is also poorly rendered. It should be rendered revealing or uncovering. The phrase before Him went… should have been rendered away from Him fled…. Making the passage read, Away from Him fled pestilence, and burning coals extended from His feet.

The rays of light extending from God’s hands could be misconstrued by the neo-heathen as lasers or some other sort of science fiction weapon. But God doesn’t need science fiction technology to emit light. God has been compared to light. The rays are the extension of God’s wrath upon the unrepentant rebels against His faith. The word rendered measured in verse 6 may better be rendered as surveyed. So it would read, He stood and surveyed the ground, or, He stood and surveyed the planet Earth. Either rendering is correct in the Hebrew, and both make sense in the context, but the latter one may fit better. The word translated as nations in verse 6 is goyim, an interesting word. The Hebrew word for person is yid, and goyim is literally those who are not yid. So taking it in its literal definition, the phrase in verse 6 would read, He drove all the non-Israelites apart. But it probably means, He drove all the unbelievers apart. The rest of the verse is a reference to earthquakes.

Cushan is a part of Arabia where the tribes of Esau lived and were always siding with the enemies of Israel and Judah. Midian is the land of Western Jordan that abuts Israel from Jerusalem to the Red Sea. Both of these places harbored enemies of Israel and Judah, and we can see them today as an allegory for any enemy of the faith in God, or for the Arab people who place themselves at enmity with Israel.

In prophetic symbology, the term sea is an allusion to the mass of humanity, Israel included. A river is a branch of the sea. So when Habakkuk asked God, Are you angry with the rivers? he was asking God if He was angry with certain nations or ethnicities. The horses and chariots are implements of war. That they are “of salvation” means that it’s a war of rescue for Israel and all believers. The bow is the primary symbol of war, the weapon that can reach out and touch someone. When God’s bow is naked, exposed, there is a war instigated by God. The oaths of the tribes refers to the joint defense pact that the tribes of Israel made at the end of the Book of Joshua. It could also refer to mutual defense treaties made in the modern era. Beware the people with whom you make a pact, they could draw your nation to its destruction on the plain of Jezreel.

The last part of verse 9, after the pause, is probably an allusion to the dividing of the world into nation states. It fits better with verses 10 and following than in verse 9. The beginning of verse 10 refers again to earthquakes, but the overflowing of water, especially waters that lift up their hands, must be referring to masses of people. Verse 11 talks of signs in the sky. The arrows of God are meteors falling to the ground, and the spear is a particularly large one, or perhaps a comet.

Verse 12 uses an interesting choice of words. Both the Hebrew and the Greek words that are translated with the English word tribulation refer to a narrow passage, a tight spot, or a group of people crowding one into a tight cluster. But the English word comes to us from the Latin language where it literally means threshing with the flail called a tribulum. The image of God threshing the sinners with a flail is one repeated often in modern prophetic utterance, but this is the earliest image of that I have found. Basically we can say this verse is predicting tribulation. The reference to God’s anointed in verse 13 is an obvious reference to the Messiah, the One Enoch referred to as the Son of Man, Jesus Christ. So with Jesus on the battlefield, Habakkuk is seeing the Battle of Armageddon. Striking the foundation of the neck may refer to the removal of the leadership of the resistance to God’s rule, or it could refer to simply decapitating God’s enemies.

The reference to the head of villages in verse 14 is obviously the leaders. Boy, Habakkuk definitely describes modern politicians well, secretly devouring the poor. The greed of those who put themselves up for office is well noted, and they have to do their avaricious activities in secret to get reelected. Once again, verse 15 is talking of God wading through the mass of humanity. I am unsure of the alliteration to horses in this verse, could be angels or human soldiers who fight on God’s side. But the horse is always a symbol of military power. Verses 16 and 17 are a good description of the fear the tribulation brings upon the prophet, and the desolation and famine that result from it. But the highest form of faith is expressed in verses 18 and 19. Oswald Chambers wrote a devotional that drew its title from verse 19, Hind’s Feet on High Places. The image is classic, of a deer on the mountainside or ridge top. And with that we come to the end of the prayer where Habakkuk gives instructions to the musicians.

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A Commentary on the Book of Hebrews, Part 28

Let’s look at more of the “Roll Call of Faith.”

20 By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come. 21 By faith Jacob, when he was a dying, blessed both the sons of Joseph; and worshipped, leaning upon the top of his staff. 22 By faith Joseph, when he died, made mention of the departing of the children of Israel; and gave commandment concerning his bones. 23 By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents, because they saw he was a proper child; and they were not afraid of the king’s commandment. 24 By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; 25 Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; 26 Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompence of the reward. 27 By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing him who is invisible. 28 Through faith he kept the passover, and the sprinkling of blood, lest he that destroyed the firstborn should touch them. 29 By faith they passed through the Red sea as by dry land: which the Egyptians assaying to do were drowned.

Here we have the four big names in the faith of God after Abraham. Isaac was not the sharpest tool in the drawer. You can tell by the way he was so easily tricked by his wife and son. Yet even though he had no physical evidence that the land promised to his father and him was going to be passed on to his children, seeing that the Canaanites, Amorites, Jebusites, etc. still possessed the land. Yet his faith in God’s promise to dad was enough for him to pass it to his son Jacob, even though he thought it was Esau that he was passing it to.

Joseph was Jacob’s favorite son. When the family was starving from a famine in the Middle-East, Joseph brought them all to Egypt, where he had made a name for himself by being true to God. It was comfortable in Egypt. There was no indication that things would change for the family from the land of Canaan. But Jacob remembered the promise God gave to his father and his grandfather before him. In faith that God would fulfill that promise, he made his children swear that his bones would be buried in the land of promise next to his father’s.

Now we come to Moses, the man of faith who saw God’s back on the Mountain of Sinai. Moses had all the advantages of the Pharaoh’s court. He was educated by the best tutors in Egypt, ate the best food in the land, slept in luxury and had every eligible batchelorette’s mother trying to marry him off to her daughter. Yet Moses was raised by his own mother, who taught him about God. Can I get you to praise God for faithful mothers? There is something to be said for having a loving Jewish mother. Everyone who is in Christ is an adopted son or daughter of God the Father, which makes him or her an adopted brother or sister of Jesus and an adopted son or daughter of Miriam bet Joachim. So all Christians who live in faith have a loving Jewish mother.

Moses identified with the people from whom he descended, not with the Egyptian people who made him a prince of the Pharaoh. It was Moses’s faith in God that led him to murder the Egyptian slave master who was beating the Hebrew workers building the city of Pharaoh. I call it murder, although God did not, because we can see it from both angles. Some things are illegal by the laws of humanity, such as witnessing for Jesus in Cambodia or Burma, handing out Arabic language translations of the Bible in Saudi Arabia, or defending a slave from cruel and harsh mistreatment in countries where slavery is still acceptable. So what Moses did was murder in the eyes of the Egyptian government. He thought he was unobserved, but the next day, when he tried to stop two Hebrew slaves from fighting between themselves, he discovered that all the Hebrew slaves already knew about his crime. So Moses fled Egypt.

With his education and bearing, Moses could have set himself up in luxury in any court in the Middle East. But Moses went to the land where God was still served, and took up working and living as a shepherd. God loves to train His leaders by giving them a shepherd’s crook. Think about the parallels between leading people and shepherding sheep. Both flocks will tend to get themselves into trouble they can’t get out of alone if left unattended, and there are many predators who lust after their juicy flesh. So the shepherd must guard the flock from within and without.

It turns out that God sent Moses to one of the last informal priests of His faith in the desert, Jesse, who married Moses to his own daughter. That Moses kept in touch with his family in Egypt can be surmised by the fact that when he was finally called of God, he knew his brother Aaron and sister Miriam well enough to tell them of God’s message and enlist them in telling Pharaoh. Remember, when Moses left Egypt, he was a murderer in the eyes of Egyptian law and a contender for the throne of Pharaoh. The Pharaoh on the throne when Moses returned was his childhood rival. There was a real chance that Moses’s status as an emissary of the Most High God would not be respected, and Moses would be arrested and executed for killing the evil slave master before he fled. It was an act of supreme faith to walk into the court of Pharaoh and pronounce the word of God.

And God protected Moses from all the wiles and tricks of the Egyptian court. The Pharaoh himself had cause to slay Moses as a rival to the throne, the law dictated that Moses must die for his crime, and the message Moses had to deliver was not one the Egyptians wanted to hear. All reasons to avoid Egypt at any cost. Yet it was the faith of Moses that led him into the very center of danger to his life. God had a mission for him, and he was going to do it no matter the cost. That is faith in practice.

It was by that faith that Moses instituted the Passover for all the Hebrew slaves, so God would not kill their firstborn sons. Think about the absurdity of putting blood on the doorposts and lintel of your home. No one had ever done that before. There was no reason a human mind could conceive for doing so. But it was in obedience to God’s command that the Hebrew people all did so, and they lived through the final plague God put on Egypt as Uriel slew each and every first born male in the land.

It was faith that led Moses to bring the people to the shore of the Red Sea where there would be no escape for them if Pharaoh’s army caught them. God rewarded that faith by opening a passage through the sea so the Hebrews could pass through on dry land, then He closed it when the last Hebrew reached to Eastern shore so none of Pharaoh’s army would get them. Soldiers, horses and chariots all were inundated by the closing up of the sea. And in their armor, they sank and drowned.

So we must all live, by faith. Ask yourself this: do you want to be like the Hebrews, although they were socially the bottom of Egyptian society, or like the army of Pharaoh, the cream of Egypt? Remember what happened in the end.

Ol’ Fuzzy is not employable and was denied for disability benefits. The only thing I have is the blogs. But I don’t qualify for ads on the blogs until there is enough traffic on the blogs to interest advertisers (20,000 hits per month). If you like the scribbles I post, please help me keep it going. First, share, share, share. The more people who know about the blogs, the more who will visit them. And you can leave me a gratuity by dropping a buck or two in Ol' Fuzzy's Tip Jar. This is a PayPal account I opened on Wednesday, April 5, 2017.