Song of Songs 1:1-7 The Beloved (or She) begins our trip through this book in Song 1:1-4 speaking to her Lover—his love is intoxicating, like wine, like perfume. Here he is a king, a typical trope in wedding songs of Semitic cultures, which will be woven through the rest of the Song. The friends or …
Monthly Archives: November 2022
Introduction to Song of Songs
Today as we start a new book, Song of Songs (or Song of Solomon), I will be sending daily comments, to which you are encouraged to add with your own thoughts. I hope you will. (Not sure how I got roped into this!) The introductory notes in my NIV study bible make a case that …
November 20 / Ecclesiastes 12
Ecclesiastes 12 Remember also your Creator… (v. 1) The first and hardest part of that for each of us is to truly understand that I am not my Creator. (And by “I” and “my”, I also mean “you” and “your”.) I am not the creator of my own universe, I am not the center of …
November 19 / Ecclesiastes 11
Ecclesiastes 11 “Be generous and don’t hoard, for you don’t know when the stock market will crash. Take circumstances as they come, be what may, and don’t wait around for everything to look just right before you act; otherwise, you never will. (Or, if you wait for all the stop lights to turn green, you …
November 18 / Ecclesiastes 10:12-20
Ecclesiastes 10:12-20 Ever the realist, the Preacher continues to set truth before us. Are we beginning to heed what he has to say? A fool multiplies words,though no man knows what is to be,and who can tell him what will be after him? Ecclesiastes 10:14 The notion that no one can know what is coming …
November 17 / Ecclesiastes 10:1-11
Ecclesiastes 10:1-11 With the exception of Ecc. 10:5-7, this whole chapter feels much more like Proverbs than Ecclesiastes, at least to me. Hence, I’m having a hard time discerning any particular flow to the Preacher‘s argument through today’s reading other than to note that: All of those things are certainly in keeping with the Preacher‘s …
November 16 / Ecclesiastes 9:11-18
Ecclesiastes 9:11-18 I have also seen this example of wisdom under the sun, and it seemed great to me. There was a little city with few men in it, and a great king came against it and besieged it, building great siegeworks against it. But there was found in it a poor, wise man, and …
November 15 / Ecclesiastes 9:1-10
Ecclesiastes 9:1-10 But all this I laid to heart, examining it all… (v. 1) By “all this” I assume the Preacher is referring to the previous 8 chapters, so it might be a good idea to go back and look those chapters over again. (It may have taken us 14 days to get to this …
November 14 / Ecclesiastes 8:10-17
Ecclesiastes 8:10-17 The Preacher lives in the real world. He declares those hard truths that we don’t want to face. We like to think, like Job’s friends, that “good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people”, but — like Job — the Preacher observes otherwise. He sees the reality that …
November 13 / Ecclesiastes 8:1-9
Ecclesiastes 8:1-9 Keep the king’s command… (v. 2) Today we get some very practical advice from the Preacher: Be a good citizen, keep your head down, don’t offend the authorities, and hope for the best. As usual, the Preacher’s advice is firmly rooted in reality — specifically the reality that crossing the most powerful person …