My All-time Favourite Bible Verses

Day 5 of the Bible verse challenge.

My all-time favourite Bible verses from my all-time favourite Bible chapter: Isaiah 40.

Isaiah 40 is mind-blowing. It has inspired poets and musicians from Handel (Messiah) to U2 (“Drowning Man” from the “War” album… before they sold out, man!). The book of Isaiah is often divided by Bible scholars in three – Proto-Isaiah for Chapters 1-39, Deutero-Isaiah for Chapters 40-55 and Trito-Isaiah for Chapters 56-66. This is, then, the start of the Deutero-Isaiah section. Preceding chapters have been warnings of coming dangers and mentioned Isaiah a lot, but now Isaiah stops being mentioned and the suffering has come, yet the message is of great hope when all seems hopeless. It is generally assumed that this part of the Book was written by an anonymous writer near the end of the Babylonian exile. And what a writer! This is the writer who introduces the idea of the Suffering Servant dying as a sacrifice for all which is (of course) so important for Christians. So, just for the unusual and striking theology alone this would be a significant writer but the imagery is beautiful too. To tell the truth, I’ve never got much out of the poetry of the Psalms – others do, but I don’t but I am amazed at the gorgeous rhetoric of Deutero-Isaiah. I would like to quote the whole of Isaiah 40 to prove it – its message of comfort, its forecast of John the Baptiser, the “all flesh is grass” – but I’ll leave you to look that up and just quote the final verses:

30-31 Even youths grow tired and weary,
and young men stumble and fall;
but those who hope in the Lord
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.

Wow!

Not what Peter Cushing chose

Day 4 of the Bible verse challenge.

I admit it – I struggled on Day 4. I was happy with my first three choices and had my favourite verses saved for the last day but what should I choose for Day 4?

I remembered that in the 1980s a school asked celebrities for their favourite Bible verses. I knew that Arthur Scargill was one of the celebrities but that Peter Cushing had chosen something that sounded really good from the Book of Revelation. I tried in vain to find anything online about this and then decided I would have to choose something myself.

So I chose Revelation 21.3: And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling-place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.” In Genesis God is described as walking in the garden of Eden and, at the end of the Bible, He is again that close to His people.

I still would have liked to have found what Peter Cushing chose.

Dangerous Driving Spells Doom!

Day 3 of my Bible verse challenge.

Today a very unspiritual passage: 2 Kings 9.20.

King Joram, who allows idolatry (and is, therefore, a baddy), has been wounded and is recovering from his wounds in Jezreel when a lookout notices somebody approaching with troops. That somebody is Jehu, a captain in the Israelite army, who has just been anointed king by a disciple of the prophet Elisha (and is, therefore, a goody).

Joram sends out a messenger to find out if the man comes in peace. Jehu orders the messenger to fall in behind him. When the lookout reports the non-return of the messenger, Joram sends a second messenger, who is also ordered to fall in behind. Then comes the verse: “The lookout reported, “He has reached them, but he isn’t coming back either. The driving is like that of Jehu son of Nimshi—he drives like a maniac.””

Imagine Joram’s mounting fear as the chariot races ever closer. He is about to be overthrown and killed. His mother, Jezebel, will be thrown out of the window by her eunuchs and eaten by dogs so that only her skull, her feet and the palms of her hands can be found. It’s a thrilling tale, excitingly told.

As I said, not spiritual, but I like it.

Bible Verse Challenge Introduction

I was challenged on Facebook to take on a Bible verse challenge, where I had to choose my favourite Bible verses for five days. What I’m probably supposed to do in this challenge is to pick spiritually edifying bits – verses to “encourage the Christians and convert the heathens” – but I’m not going to do that. I certainly don’t like “evangelistic blasts” – I don’t like getting them and I’m not going to give them. Instead, I’m going to pick my favourite verses – some of them spiritual, some not. I want to pick verses that are interesting because of the drama or the humour behind them. I want to pick verses that make people think “Does the Bible really say that? I must take a look.” A lot of the Bible IS boring, some of it seems unjust, some of it takes a lot of work to comprehend… but it also contains some of the best poetry in any literature, gripping stories and even some not bad jokes. I hope my choices will help both Christians and non-Christians to appreciate that better. So I’ve chosen a joke, a lament, a sentence that could be out of a thriller novel and some stunning poetry. The links are:

Of shaggy dogs, elephants, camels and cows … but not whales!

David grieves for Jonathan

Dangerous Driving Spells Doom!

Not what Peter Cushing chose

My All-time Favourite Bible Verses

David grieves for Jonathan

Bible verse challenge – Day 2

Today, I’m picking one of the few Bible verses where I can remember the exact chapter and verse without looking it up: 2 Samuel 1.26 “ I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother; you were very dear to me. Your love for me was wonderful, more wonderful than that of women.” It is part of a beautiful, heartfelt lament by the new king, David, for his friend Jonathan, son of the last king Saul, both of whom have just been killed. The relationship between Saul and David was an uneasy one. One minute David was seen as Saul’s most loyal servant and the next Saul was throwing a spear at him. However, the relationship with Jonathan remained a constant one of loyalty, support and love.

Were David and Jonathan lovers, then? Who knows? To modern ears, a man who declares the love between himself and another man to be superior to heterosexual love is defining himself as homosexual but, in other ages which were, depending on your viewpoint, more repressed, or less slutty, than ours, it would have been less clear-cut. Often, throughout history, people have had “romantic friendships” with members of the same gender – Tennyson, Eleanor Roosevelt, Queen Anne and the Ladies of Llangollen for instance. Some of these were, no doubt, sexual but, with others, the members of the couple would have been outraged at the very thought. In a patriarchal society, love between equals, with similar levels of education and engaged in similar tasks, could only be between members of the same gender. Both David and Jonathan fathered children and David was even prepared to commit murder as a consequence of the passion of his heterosexual lusts but, for true companionship, they turned to one another and their love was “more wonderful than the love of women”. And the Bible, so often used to condemn same-sex love, celebrates it and celebrates it beautifully!

Of shaggy dogs, elephants, camels and cows … but not whales!

Day 1 of the Bible verse challenge.

Do people still use the phrase “shaggy dog story”? I don’t think I’ve heard it used in over 30 years. What it means (or meant) is a rambling anecdote which ends in an anti-climax for comic effect. I think the Book of Jonah is a shaggy dog story and I think it’s a very good one. For most sceptics, the Book of Jonah is just a fairy story about a man swallowed by a whale and, of course, that couldn’t happen because it is impossible for a whale to swallow anything larger than a grapefruit. For many Christians it’s a foreshadowing of Jesus’ death and resurrection – just as Jonah emerged from the belly of the whale after three days and three nights, so Jesus came out of the tomb on the third day after, erm, two nights. However, the sea-creature (specific genus not clear) is one of the least important elements in the tale of a reluctant Jewish prophet’s successful conversion of the capital of Assyria.

Here is a plot summary: God tells Jonah to preach to Nineveh. He boards ship to run away. A storm blows up. The crew cast lots to find whose fault it is. The lot falls on Jonah who is thrown into the sea where a large fish or a whale or a sea-serpent swallows him and pukes him (yes, it’s a crude word in the original) on the shore. Jonah tells the Ninevites that God is angry with them and will destroy them in forty days’ time. The Ninevites repent and God changes His mind. A vine grows up and Jonah uses it to shield himself from the sun. The vine withers and Jonah is angry with God. God asks why Jonah is so concerned about a vine that grew up overnight when he expects God not to be concerned about the great city of Nineveh which has thousands of people who don’t know their left hand from their right and which also has (prepare for the final climactic point) a heck of a lot of cows.

Wait! What? Cows? Yes, those unwieldy, bulky, not very bright and not very attractive beasts – the ones Gary Larson so often poked fun at in his “Far Side” cartoons. Bulky, aesthetically-wanting animals have been a staple of humour for millennia – Jesus told camel jokes and we still tell elephant jokes (or at least we did when I was young. Are elephants now as passé as shaggy dogs?).

Yes, God cares about the cows. We’re used to the idea that God cares about dying sparrows – pretty, vulnerable, sweet little things. We can even take on board that God cares about sinful non-Jews like the Ninevites and, erm, us, but cows? Yes, God made them and He cares for them. As so often (eg Jesus’ camel jokes), the Bible uses humour to make a serious point. And the point here is that God loves more than we may think becoming. Get used to it!