Category: POETRY

WHEN CLOUDS FURROW YOUR BROW

WHEN CLOUDS FURROW YOUR BROW

When dark clouds crease your brow in your life’s path,
Lessen not your pace walking in the dark,
Shadow’s gloom may cover your face awhile,
Heaven’s Son that made them has watching smile,
Hidden from downcast eyes of transfixed gaze.

Sun’s rays make silver linings in cloud’s maze,
No matter your waiting for rendezvous,
Pain endures the soul for a night! It’s true!
But in the morn’ comes joy’s radiant sight!
Soon ‘twill be dawning day of hope and light,

Then your own woe will not long be your plight,
Your knees may be feeble, hands hung not right,
But grace will lift them! Soon will go the frown.
He makes straightened paths for your feet’s new sound.
Lame steps once cowered in grief, He makes bound;

Once a flagging dawdler, now leaps on ground,
Former hapless walk becomes a quicker stride,
Vim’s vigour born on hope’s rising tide.
“Laugh at impossibility!” faith cried.
The fading night of darkness has belied:-

Righteous faith, stark, leaping grace from on high.
Where is your flight carrying sparks of light?
Youth renewed, mounting up in eagle-flight?
Will-o-the-wisp has gone; true glow leads on:
The Lord has taken your hand with a song.
John David 2020

WHEN CLOUDS FURROW YOUR BROW

1st BOOK OF SAMUEL (1)

PREFACE TO THE BOOK OF 1ST SAMUEL.
For a more comprehensive understanding of the background to this fourth book of biblical Israeli history, the reader should first read the Epilogue review of the preceding three books at the end of this article. It is paramount that the sequence of the chronological saga be grasped by the reader to understand the divine sovereign election of:-

1. Abram the father of faith;
2. The lineage of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Israel)
3. The saga of Israel after the Exodus
4. The vicissitudes of success and failure by Joshua settling the Promised Land
5. The repetitive cycle of deviance by God’s chosen people responding to their patriarchs, prophets, priests, judges, and kings;
6. The propensity of each succeeding generation to more grave godlessness, despite the divine system of Israel’s theocracy, or monarchy centred around the tabernacle/temple worship of God’s manifest presence;
7. God’s covenant, then later breach of covenant, with Israel and His afflictive chastisement on its people for its apostasy, rebellion, and idolatry;
8. God’s wrathful vengeance upon Israelite impenitence tempered by God’s merciful overtures;
9. God’s irrevocable promises, of which He was oft reminded by the godly prophet, priest or king who dared intercede or mediate on their people’s behalf;
10. God’s final limit of mercy upon the Land of Promise, David’s tribe, and Jerusalem’s eternal city of David. As if the reign of Ahaz wasn’t bad enough, King Manasseh crossed the red line and the fate of Judah became that of the earlier elimination of Israel in Samaria besieged by Assyria over a hundred years before Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem and its hinterland of Judah;
11. God’s dispersing the Jews of the scattered Diaspora as testimony to His wrath upon them for their marring the Land He had given them;
12. God’s everlasting promise that when everything else had failed He would send a Saviour to stand in the gap to rescue His people and those outside the ‘wall of partition’ under the legacy of Abraham: the Gentiles. Thus in the books of history, the Psalms and the Prophets the unabated divine overtures of promise and mercy intermittently continued. In the thirty-nine books of Old Testament sacred canon this gave His people one remaining hope of return, restoration, and salvation. This was catalogued by:
a. The election of David as ‘a man after God’s own heart;’
b. God’s tryst and covenant with David to eternally preserve, his tribe of Judah and Jerusalem with its temple which had superseded the tabernacle in Solomon’s time;
c. The irrevocability of God’s promise to David, despite:-
i. The splitting of the kingdom into Israel in Samaria and Judah in Jerusalem;
ii. Assyria’s siege of Samaria and the imprisonment, abduction, and deportation of Jewish citizenry,
iii. Similarly, one hundred and twenty years later, the Chaldean captivity of Judah wherein the city of Jerusalem was razed to the ground, a burning heap.

For background, readers can review the previous books of Joshua, Judges and Ruth.

PROLOGUE TO THE BOOK OF 1ST SAMUEL.
CHARACTERS: (not including Saul)
1. ELI
the priest who is described by the text as apostate and cold like so many of the clergy today in the church:-
a. He misunderstood the travail of true prayer and treated the saint suspiciously as an aberration or non-conformist among the status quo.
b. He ostracizes Hannah and condemns her for her burden of prayer because it is beyond his life’s experience. This too is typical of the modern preacher who would write such as charismatic psychosis.
c. Eli was highly judgmental of any resurgence of new life in the congregation, in which he had wounded the sheep or driven them away (Ezekiel 13 & 34).
d. Eli was compromisingly ‘blind’ to his sons’ grievous infidelity and protected them and himself from the embarrassment of exposure.
e. Eli protected his family name, rather than the name of the Lord God Almighty, and was more an obstacle to worship than a help.
f. Eli had access to the testament and testimony of God’s Word, within the Ark, but he kept it hidden from the people and there was no ‘open vision’ because, by his indolence, the Word of God was precious but scarce.
g. Eli was more concerned about perpetuating the family name than the testimony of God’s Word;
h. Eli set up his own dynasty based on tradition instead of seeking God’s sovereign will.
2. ELKANAH
a. He was a dedicated god-fearing Jew from the tribe of Ephraim, a descendant of the tribe of Joseph, who spared no expense for his family to be faithful to the annual gathering at Shiloh, wherein lay the tent of the tabernacle (called ‘temple’ in the text).
b. He took notice of his wife’s sacrificial tendencies and yielded to them, though he himself was equally committed to the tenet of Matthew 6: 33.
3. HANNAH.
a. Though barren, she dared to believe for the impossible conception of a son, whom, when born would be loaned to the Lord at the Tabernacle, despite the priesthood’s wayward ways.
b. Hannah was consumed with a passion for the will of the Spirit in the dark days that ensued the anarchy of the Judges.
c. Hannah wholeheartedly loved the Lord with her mind, soul, strength and might and she contritely trembled at God’s Word as precious despite it being in common neglect.
d. She was burdened to ‘strengthen that which remained,’ rather than censoriously advocate reformation or a boycott of the Tabernacle. (Revelation 3:2a) This too has application to today’s congregations suffering from the predicted ‘falling away’.
e. She was neither pragmatically judgmental, nor a feministic protestor, but subservient to her husband and her minister, while at the same time resigned to prioritize the Lord’s will at His behest.
f. She was a woman of God.
4. SAMUEL THE PROPHET-PRIEST
appeared concurrently at the time of the Spirit’s awakening and restoration of a broken theocracy.
a. Though very young he had been taught to ‘worship God in spirit and truth’ before he arrived to serve Eli in Shiloh.
b. Like Joshua, Moses’ servant, Samuel would spend much time in the Tabernacle.
c. In adulthood, Samuel moved in a circuit as a judge, priest, and prophet until his old age.
d. Sadly, in his senior years, he began to compromise. Unlike the preceding period of Judges in which the Holy Spirit raised up the successor to judge Israel, Samuel set up a dynasty appointing his two sons: Joel and Abiah judges.
e. As both sons succumbed to offers of bribery their priestly office became debased and untenable.
f. This had been preceded by the earlier loss of the Ark to the Philistines.
g. But, whether Tabernacle or church, when an assembly reaches the stage of being ‘Ichabod’, God forsakes it, as the Psalmist would later describe Shiloh. (Psalm 78:60) Whereas the Tabernacle had been at Shiloh for 400 years.
h. Nonetheless, the aged Samuel fell into the same trap as Eli and inadvertently followed his precedent by appointing his own sons to continue his legacy.
i. It was this misjudgment that led to the end of the theocracy and made the people clamour for a monarchy instead.
j. Once Saul was anointed as the first king Samuel went to Gilgal, not Shiloh, to renew the kingdom. This was nearby to the Jordan, and Jericho and had been Joshua’s first encampment after crossing the flooded Jordan River. It had been the place where the manna ceased and the Exodus minors were circumcised.
k. Samuel was devastated that Israel had rejected the theocracy and this was compounded by the failure of Saul to act within the boundaries of his remit as a king and was soon marked as God’s reject for his stubbornness and impetuous disobedience, refusing to submit to Samuel or God.

TO BE CONTINUED: Part 2.

1st BOOK OF SAMUEL (1)

FOREWORD: ISAIAH 21

Foreword: Isaiah 21
Isaiah envisions final fall of Babylon to Nebuchadnezzar.
Though Assyria was centred in Nineveh it used Babylon to house its captured prisoners. It took the captive Jews from Samaria to Babylon when General Tiglath-Pileser captured Israel and placed Judah under tribute. This was in the time of Judah’s wicked King Ahaz.

One hundred and twenty years later the Chaldean King, Nebuchadnezzar would destroy all trace of the southern Kingdom of Judah, sacking Jerusalem in the process and taking captives to Babylon too, the jewel of the East.

He would abduct its citizenry in stages, Daniel being among those of the first captivity, whilst Jerusalem still stood. About a decade later the prophet Ezekiel would be in another batch of captives sent to Babylon. The prophet Jeremiah, who succeeded Isaiah, would remain in Jerusalem to the end, and was treated favourably by Nebuchadnezzar’s General and allowed to stay in the devastated ruins of the city. Both these prophets predicted the fall of Babylon:-
1. to the Assyrians at first;
2. to the Chaldean Empire later;
3. to the Medo-Persian army led by Darius for Cyrus the Great;
4. and finally to Alexander the Great, of the rising Greek Empire who would leave Babylon in ruins fifty miles south of current day Baghdad, where it can still be viewed today.

Of interest also are Isaiah’s allusions and predictions of the First Advent of Christ when Jerusalem was under the reign of the Roman Empire that succeeded the Greek Empire’s control of Palestine.

It is important that the reader acquaints himself with the historical sequence of four empires to understand the eighteen Books of the Prophets:
1. Syria,
2. Assyria,
3. Chaldea,
4. Medo-Persian.
It is also helpful to remember the two empires that succeeded these four:
5. The Greek Empire under Alexander the Great (favourable to Jews)
6. The Roman Empire under the Caesars.

7. In grasping these six historic eras and their protagonists one can appreciate more the prophets’ predictions of Christ’s First Advent during Roman times and better fathom the rather indirect poetic references and allusions to different regions and countries under the merciless:-
a. attack upon the two Jewish kingdoms;
b. attack upon one or another anti-Semitic hostile nation chosen by God to humble the Jews into repentance;
c. attack upon Syria by Assyria;
d. attacks upon Israel of Samaria by Assyria;
e. attacks upon Jerusalem (Judah) by one or other of the empires, including other nearby neighbouring peoples:
i. Moab
ii. Egypt,
iii. Ethiopia,
iv. Idumea (Mt. Seir/Seir)-Esau’s descendants;
v. Samaria;
Yet there are two more dimensions to be necessarily understood within the writings of the Prophets:-
8. The prophesied return to the Land of scattered Jews (Diaspora):
a. led by Nehemiah and Ezra by permission of Persian Kings;
b. encouraged by the Greeks who also ordered preservation of the Hebrew Old Testament into the Greek Septuagint (LXX) by appointment of 72 Hebrew translators of the literati;
c. led by a trickle of European Jews to migrate to Palestine early in the 19th C;
d. encouraged by the British between 1917 and 1944 after General Allenby took Jerusalem and Palestine away from Turkish Muslim control;
e. encouraged by the USA (5/1948 onwards) who arranged massive global air armadas of returning Jewish refugees from anti-Semitic states after the 1948 State of Israel’s Independence;
(* a considerable number settled in New York)
f. to be drawn back to the Land after the great apocalyptic battle of the northern alliance (Gog and Magog) for control of Jerusalem, when Christ will descend to the Mount of Olives to rule and reign over the nations at the end of the end times in which we live.

All of the above is paramount to understand the messages of the sixteen Prophets in relation to the rise and fall of the Israelite divided kingdoms after the death of Solomon.

Judah in the south had its capital Jerusalem, and Israel to the north had Samaria, but merely a place where the royal seat was situated. Jeroboam in the past had at first rejected Shechem as unfortified chose Tirzah instead.

Later King Omri built a fortress in Samaria, and Ahab had his palace there. Though only forty miles square Samaria was occupied by all ten rebel tribes of Israel. Jeroboam had set up Dan in the north and Bethel in the south as the two religious centres for the worship of his golden calf. Bethel, however, was only twelve miles north of Jerusalem.

Ancient Babylon successively came under the control of Assyria, Chaldea, Persia, and Greece before being razed to the ground by the latter. Awareness of the above information on the one hand; and on the other hand grasping the timeline of both Israel and Judah’s demise, the reader will then be able to comprehend the gist of the three Major Prophets, and the thirteen Minor Prophets.

The fall of Babylon in Isaiah can either mean the defeat of the Assyrians, or the Chaldeans depending upon the context. In Isaiah the context usually points to Israel’s nemesis: Assyria.

This twenty first chapter offers certain geographic clues that point to the imminent defeat of the Assyrians whose capital was Nineveh, but they used a puppet king to rule Babylon where captives from many nations were held

FOREWORD: ISAIAH 21

ISAIAH 15: FOREWORD.

FOREWORD: ISAIAH 15.
Isaiah’s enigmatic diatribe against Moab.
Moab was the arch enemy of Israel and a constant thorn in her side wherever possible. Its territory was situated on the east of Jordan River and south of Gilead which can often be found in a modern Atlas. Midia and Moab conspired together to curse Israel using the soothsayer Balaam on its last stop before entering the Promised Land after its forty years wandering in the wilderness.

Though the false prophet Balaam refused to curse Israel, Moab then entrapped it at Baal-Peor, enticing the Hebrew men to fornicate with the prostitutes of the Baal’s idolatrous and sensuously erotic worship of devils. (See St. Paul’s comment in his letter to the Church of Corinth). The reader will remember that Moses’ father-in-law came from Midia and that Gideon with his 300 men in the Book of Judges fought a battle with the Midianites.

As Joshua forded the Jordan River it banked up and ceased to flow until all of the Israelites had finished walking over the dry river bed. It then returned to its normal flow, brimming over its banks.

This chapter has a plethora of literary devices in the prophet’s poetic, but sometimes enigmatic description. A host of geographic names within Moab, but forgotten mostly in time, can daunt the reader, as can the typical obliqueness of his indirect syntax, but it is well worth persisting with the attempt of grasping Isaiah’s message in its rich historical beauty.

Describing the coming attack on Moab by Assyria’s armies from Nineveh, the prophet goes into great detail over the devastation and destruction of cities and landscape. Even after Moab’s successful demoralization of the children of Israel with the treachery of Baal-Peor, Moab continued to be a hostile thorn in Israel’s side. God’s wrath moves slowly at times, but He never forgets to rewards Israel’s enemy nations with his wrath.

You will remember that the last stop of Moses before crossing Jordan was in Moab where he went to Pisgah’s Peak on Mt. Nebo to view the Land before he died. Remember also that Moab had enlisted Midia and its soothsayer Balaam to curse Israel and stop Moses in his tracks.

However, when this plan did not work Balaam and Balak conspired to lure Moses’ people into immoral actions that would prevent Jehovah from letting them into the Land of milk and honey (the Promised Land) for which they had marched some forty years. Geographic reference points: Kir, Dibon, Nebo, Medeba, Heshbon, Elealeh, Jahaz, Zoar, Luhith, Horonaim, Nimrim, and Dimon all relate to Moab’s towns and topography within or adjacent to Moab like Zoar, next to, but now under, the Dead Sea.

ISAIAH 15: FOREWORD.

UNDERSTANDING 16 PROPHETS: Obadiah.

BRIEF PROLOGUE TO BOOK OF OBADIAH.
Obadiah the prophet to Edom, where the inhabitant descendants of Esau had settled in and around Mt. Seir, decries the wicked past of Edom’s enmity towards Israel. From earliest times the animosity had grown from year to year.

We think of the initial wilderness wanderers journeying at last to their long promised Land of milk and honey after forty long years wherein a generation had died in the wilderness. When merely seeking permission to walk through the adjacent region en route to Pisgah’s Peak and Mt. Nebo before crossing the Jordan River, Israel was treated with open hostility instead of hospitably allowing their brethren, the children of Jacob, to drink from their wells of water.

That hostility had become endemic and now the prophet warns that judgment by the wrath of God, according to the curse of Genesis 12:3, was imminent. Ironically God used hostile neighbour nations to chastise and discipline wayward Jerusalem, he then as a sequel poured out his vengeance upon the same instruments that had brought so much tribulation to the Jews. This is a mystery wherein Jehovah God never forgets to repay those who have cursed his people Israel.

FOREWORD TO OBADIAH 1.

The Prophet Obadiah’s Vision of the descendants of Esau within the Palestinian territory of Mount Seir. They were commonly called Edomites as the region they occupied was named Edom. Confusing to the reader is the interchangeable use of Esau, Edom and Seir to poetically describe the Edomites. Under poetic licence Obadiah alternates between each of the three names when indicting Esau’s descendants. In the same way he calls Mount Seir the ‘Mount of Esau.

The prophet takes Edom to task for its long standing hatred of their brethren the Israelites, called: “brother Jacob” because he was the patriarch of Israel once the angel had changed his name from Jacob to Israel when he prevailed in prayer wrestling with the angel to protect him from Esau’s murderous intent on Mt. Peniel.

God had told Abram in Genesis 12.3 that all those who will bless his descendants will be blessed, but all those who oppose (curse) them will be cursed. The children of Esau, who became Bedouin Arabs in league with Ishmael’s children, had joined with other nations and tribes hostile to Jerusalem’s people during the past.

As things went from bad to worse in the tribe of Judah after King Manasseh’s abhorrently wicked reign Edom and others had gone to Jerusalem to pillage and add to the already existing mayhem from Assyrians, and later the Chaldeans. Sadly, the ten rebel tribes of the now divided kingdom of Israel had also attacked, kidnapped, and killed hundreds of thousands of their fellow Jews in Judah and Jerusalem to the south.

As a result of these atrocities and their idolatrous worship of the golden calf in Dan and Bethel, they had been all (but a handful of the poor) taken away captive by Tiglath Pileser to Assyria’s city of Babylon about 600 miles to the North West
.
Yet whether it was the Jews in Samaria or the Jewish cousins in Edom (Idumea) the vengeance of God was severe for their treasonous acts against the tribe of Judah and its eternal city of Jerusalem.

The rebel ten northern tribes were massively depopulated and deported while a Stalin-like forced immigration of Assyrians replaced the wayward children of Israel. Thus the wrath of God upon Esau’s children was unrelenting without any measure of mercy offered to others at enmity with Jerusalem.

UNDERSTANDING 16 PROPHETS: Obadiah.

PROLOGUE TO BOOK OF JOB

NoteS on the Book of Job.
This is the first poetic book generally regarded as being outside the Mosaic covenant and part of the Wisdom Literature. Not all books in that category made it into the canon of holy writ. The book was written by an unknown author, who has been either dated as in the time of David, or much earlier in the primeval period of biblical history. Its outspoken theme of God being seemingly tempted by His arch foe Satan, is unprecedented and unrepeated in any of the ensuing poetic books or other divisions of the Bible.

Puzzling conundrums in the book of Job are:-
1. The ability of Lucifer to gate-crash the assembly of the saints meeting to worship.
2. The willingness of God to discuss His people with the devil.
3. The enigma of Job’s victimization.
4. Satan’s provocations of his creator.
5. God first provoking Satan to test the validity of Job’s upright motives
6. God then accepting Satan’s ploy to destroy Job’s, property, and lives of his servants and his ten children.

These controversies are unprecedented in Scripture. They do compare with much of another Wisdom Book: Ecclesiastes where the lapsed Solomon offers sceptical philosophic questions so atypical of the rest of Scripture and in direct challenge to his father’s wisdom in the Psalms recommended by Christ in Luke 24. We must also keep in mind that quite a number of Wisdom manuscripts were found unacceptable to include in the canon of sixty six books when compiled, and placed instead in the Apocrypha, which appear in Roman and liberal editions of the Bible that reject the scholarship of Erasmus and the Puritan Reformers.

The book of Job, however, makes neither God a victim of temptation, nor the righteous exposed to the unpredictable malice of Satan. The book does, nevertheless, reveal how God will provoke Satan to carry out the Lord’s divine sovereign purpose. Tragedy, bereavement, and illness were used to show future posterity down through the ages the purpose of suffering and how God’s refining fire is for the greater glory of the kingdom. Though servants and children perished, we do not read that they were righteous. The seven sons and three daughters were excessive lovers of pleasure, revelry and wine day after day. They were lost before calamity took them. They godlessly refused to walk in the upright steps of their father, Job. Drunken debauchery is strongly condemned in Scripture.

* * *

CHAPTER ONE OF JOB from the King James Version of the Bible 1611 (Public Domain).

Righteous Job made a divine example of saints’ patience in suffering.
1 There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil.
2 And there were born unto him seven sons and three daughters.
3 His substance also was seven thousand sheep, and three thousand camels, and five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she asses, and a very great household; so that this man was the greatest of all the men of the east.
4 And his sons went and feasted in their houses, every one his day; and sent and called for their three sisters to eat and to drink with them.
5 And it was so, when the days of their feasting were gone about, that Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning, and offered burnt offerings according to the number of them all: for Job said, It may be that my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts. Thus did Job continually.

A holy remnant of Jehovah’s followers gather to worship.
6 Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them.
7 And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.

God provokes Satan to react with malice towards Job.
8 And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?

Lucifer impugns a selfish motive to Job’s righteousness.
9 Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, Doth Job fear God for nought?
10 Hast not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land.
11 But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face.

The Lord, for His own purpose, allows Satan to bring calamity.
12 And the Lord said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand. So Satan went forth from the presence of the Lord.
13 And there was a day when his sons and his daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house:

God gives Satan freedom to ruin material wealth and property.
14 And there came a messenger unto Job, and said, The oxen were plowing, and the asses feeding beside them:
15 And the Sabeans fell upon them, and took them away; yea, they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.
16 While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The fire of God is fallen from heaven, and hath burned up the sheep, and the servants, and consumed them; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.
17 While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The Chaldeans made out three bands, and fell upon the camels, and have carried them away, yea, and slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.
18 While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, Thy sons and thy daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house:

God gives Satan freedom to use nature’s violence for His purpose.
19 And, behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.
20 Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped,
21 And said, Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.
22 In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.

Notes, headings, sub headings and foreword by John David.
Job 1: from the King James Version Bible 1611 (Public Domain-ex biblegateway.com)

PROLOGUE TO THE BOOK OF JOB

EZEKIEL CH. 26 & 27 notes

FOOTNOTE Ezekiel 26:2.
Tyrus is the name of Tyre, a Phoenician kingdom of antiquity an island off the south western coast of Lebanon from which Hiram had sent his fleet of ships for David and Solomon. In later times it had resisted Nineveh, gained autonomy, and for a time repulsed the Chaldean armies of Babylon. Later it became a dependent state of Babylonia. Its Persian successors to power then used Tyre’s naval strength to aid its conquest of the east.

Finally, when Tyre repelled Alexander the Great’s empire, his Greek forces built a causeway by which he was able to eventually storm the city and break its power, so aptly described by Ezekiel in following chapters. The contempt of Tyrus for Jerusalem’s demise and imminent predicament would bring upon it the vengeance of God for gloating over the fate of Judah.

FOOTNOTE. Ezekiel 27: 13-23.
The names mentioned show the immense influence of this pivotal sea port on the Mediterranean dating back to primeval period of history. Tyre’s opulence and magnificent seafaring vessels together with its key location made it a very rich trading city. And the envy of many a nation.

*NOTES on the King James Version of the Bible (1611).
KJV is public domain (ex biblegateway.com).
Notes, headings and sub headings, & footnotes by John David.

The King James Version was the last of the six Puritan printed Bibles of the Reformation in the 16th & 17th century based on the Greek Text of Erasmus and published in Britain, France, Germany, and Geneva when translators and publishers had to flee for their lives.

Due to the Enlightenment of the 18th Century and its damning effects all subsequent modern English versions since the 19th C, translators have rejected the work of Erasmus and used instead the sub-standard 19th C Greek text of Westcott & Hort. Thus subtle Roman scholarship effectively muted the authoritative voice of the Puritan Reformation and Protestantism itself.

EZEKIEL CH. 26 & 27 notes

EZEKIEL EXPLAINED: 23rd Ch.

Foreword to Ezekiel 23.
Two promiscuous women are the allegory in this chapter. In an analogy of Jerusalem (the kingdom of Judah), and Samaria (the rebel breakaway ten tribes of Israel), Aholah represents Jerusalem, and Aholibah Israel. They are either called whores, or prostitutes, because both the southern and northern kingdoms had fallen prey to the idolatry and devil worship of the cult of Baal. Instead of vanquishing all the Canaanites, in the original conquest by Joshua, those allowed to remain became a snare to both Jerusalem and Samaria.

In God’s eyes such idolatry was equated with the actions of an unfaithful wife. Thus Ezekiel’s prophecy uses the terms whore, and whoredom to describe how they had prostituted themselves to alien gods. Both kingdoms paid a terrible price for their infidelity: God provoked the nations of Egypt, Syria, Assyria and Chaldea to lay siege to Jerusalem and Samaria with disastrous consequences, ending finally in the destruction of both cities of Samaria first, and Jerusalem 120 years later. The Lord regarded the Jews as his own people and calls them his wife, and himself as husband many times in both Old and New Testaments.

When Isaiah uses the word RETURN he speaks of the future regathering of the scattered Jews (Diaspora) throughout the nations. It is clear that God has judged both the kingdom of Israel and the kingdom of Judah for their grievous apostasy in adopting the pagan worship of other nations. Despite God’s merciful pleas through His prophets to repent they resorted to the worship of sun, moon, stars and idols of the cult of Baal. Under the reign of King Manasseh Judah had passed the point of no return, that Samaria had reached four generations earlier.

The despicable decadence of God’s chosen people: the Jews infuriated the Lord. Though his judgments were harsh he promised never to totally abandon the Jews even in their respective bondage and captivity. Jerusalem would be destroyed, the cities would become ghost towns, and the once fruitful Land would become barren and unproductive, yet in His afflicting chastisement He would not and could not forget His covenant with David, (the perpetuity of the Kingdom of David), or Solomon (the eternal preservation of Jerusalem).

The King James Version was the last of the six Puritan printed Bibles of the Reformation in the 16th & 17th century based on the Greek Text of Erasmus and published in Britain, France, Germany, and Geneva when translators and publishers had to flee for their lives. Due to the Enlightenment of the 18th Century and its damning effects all subsequent modernizing translators have rejected the work of Erasmus and used instead the sub-standard 19th C Greek text of Westcott & Hort. Thus subtle Roman scholarship effectively muted the authoritative voice of the Puritan Reformation and Protestantism itself.

Bible Reference: King James Version 1611- Public Domain (ex biblegateway.com)
Foreword by John David.

EZEKIEL EXPLAINED: 23rd Ch.

FOREWORD TO ISAIAH 14.

This chapter covers three areas of prophecy. Despite the Latinized English syntax, and Isaiah’s poetic and geographic allusions this chapter is crucial to understand the sequence of consecutive empires in the Middle East and Far East of Isaiah’s past, present, and future nations hostile to the Jews of the land under the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah in Isaiah’s ministry. Extra biblical history declares he died a martyr at the hands of Manasseh, the successor to Hezekiah. Living under four different kings the enemy activity against Jerusalem was both constant and varied in its source. This background may assist the readers difficulty in fathoming a difficult book.

Though sometimes obscure and puzzling the three areas in his prophecies covered are:

1. The Diaspora’s promised return to the ‘Land of Israel.
2. Isaiah predicts Cyrus the Great releasing Babylon’s captives.
3. Isaiah’s proverb of future judgment and God’s coming vengeance against the new future king of Babylon after Nineveh was sacked and the Assyrian puppet king of Babylon fell to the Chaldeans.

When Isaiah uses the word ‘return’ he speaks of the future regathering of the Jews scattered through the nations. This would occur on five historic occasions:

1. When Cyrus the Great took away control of Babylon by defeating the Chaldeans released the captive Jews, after 70 years of bondage;

2. When Alexander the Great of the Greek empire defeated the Persians, and totally destroyed Babylon, never again to be inhabited as prophesied by Isaiah in the previous chapter. This was accompanied by the benevolence of the Greek ruler Ptolemy II, who translated the Old Testament into Greek;

3. When in modern times at the beginning of the 19th C he Diaspora of Europe slowly began to return to Palestine, then occupied by the Turks for Islam;

4. When in 1917 the WW1 British General Allenby took Jerusalem away from the Turks and made it a UN Protectorate of Great Britain, increasing the Jewish flow of the Diaspora from a trickle to a stream that increased until 1944, and from 1948 to the present;

5. When finally in the future at the end of the age, following the apocalypse and the Battle of Armageddon, Christ’s Second Coming to Jerusalem will occur.

It is clear that God had already judged both the kingdom of Israel and Judah for their grievous apostasy in their adopting the pagan religions from other nations. Despite God’s merciful pleas through his prophets to repent, they had resorted to the worship of sun, moon, stars and idols of the cult of Baal. The despicable decadence of Jews infuriated the Lord.

Though his judgments were harsh he promised never to totally abandon the Jews even in their respective bondage and captivity. Jerusalem would be destroyed, the cities would become ghost towns, and the once fruitful land would become barren and unproductive. The captivity of Judah’s populace was progressive. Not all were taken to Babylon. Assyria had taken Manasseh and others to Babylon before he repented and was released. Hundreds of other captives were abducted by several surrounding enemies of the Jews. However, the bulk of those deported went to the city of Babylon and the final purge of Jerusalem’s population came under Nebuchadnezzar, whose forces completely destroyed the city.

Yet, in God’s afflicting chastisement he would not, and could not, forget either his covenant with David over the kingdom of Judah, or his irrevocable promise to Solomon over Jerusalem. There are many difficulties for the reader herein. What do we think of when we hear the term Babylon? Though this city is the subject of the prophet’s diatribe of doom a historical perspective may prevent puzzlement or misunderstanding.

The rulers of the city and its territory of Babylonia reach back into antiquity. Babel was mentioned early in the book of Genesis and archaeologists and the literati propound that Babel and its tower was an early part of the Babylon to which Isaiah refers. Over the millennia the city was destroyed and rebuilt many times as invaders and new empires extended their reach into Mesopotamia, where it was located at the time of Isaiah, the rejected prophet of Judah.

It had long been under Assyrian control as a vassal state that played tribute to Nineveh. The Assyrian kings had sacked the city on two separate occasions: 689 BC, and 651 BC. Amazingly, over time on each occasion it was razed to the ground it was rebuilt more splendidly than before. Eventually, by the time of the Chaldean Regime, under Nebuchadnezzar, it became the jewel of the East with its wondrous hanging gardens, built for the King of the Medes’ daughter, Nebuchadnezzar’s wife.

The prophet was making his predictions and prophecies under the reign of Ahaz, the second most evil King of Judah, except Manasseh, the son of Josiah, the last good king of the kingdom’s existence. The fact that Isaiah was cut in half by Manasseh’s saw has been substantiated by extra-biblical documents.

The main problem understanding this and other chapters of the book is the time gap between Isaiah’s adjacent visions of the future. They often follow one another so quickly that the sequencing is a mystery, to say the least. Imminent future, near future; distant future; the First Advent of Immanuel; the last days of the present modern era; the final apocalyptic judgment of the anti-Semitic nations’ armies surrounding Jerusalem; and, finally the Second Coming of Christ to the Mount of Olives to rule and reign from Jerusalem.

Amid the vast time panoply covered by Isaiah, the reader is given glimpses of the historical present on the one hand, and concomitantly, if not simultaneously, intermittent glimpses of near and future time slots that seem to be unrelated.

God used foreign powers to end the northern kingdom of Israel 120 years before the final ruin of Jerusalem. Afterwards, in his wrath and vengeance against Judah he would judge and destroy each hostile invader, with no exception. This may give further insight into the books of the three Major Prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, each repeating these themes.

HOLY WRIT OF SCRIPTURE.
Isaiah: Chapter 14.
1 For the Lord will have mercy on Jacob, and will yet choose Israel, and set them in their own land: and the strangers shall be joined with them, and they shall cleave to the house of Jacob.

2 And the people shall take them, and bring them to their place: and the house of Israel shall possess them in the land of the Lord for servants and handmaids: and they shall take them captives, whose captives they were; and they shall rule over their oppressors.

3 And it shall come to pass in the day that the Lord shall give thee rest from thy sorrow, and from thy fear, and from the hard bondage wherein thou wast made to serve,

4 That thou shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon, and say, How hath the oppressor ceased! the golden city ceased!

5 The Lord hath broken the staff of the wicked, and the sceptre of the rulers.
6 He who smote the people in wrath with a continual stroke, he that ruled the nations in anger, is persecuted, and none hindereth.

7 The whole earth is at rest, and is quiet: they break forth into singing.

8 Yea, the fir trees rejoice at thee, and the cedars of Lebanon, saying, Since thou art laid down, no feller is come up against us.

9 Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming: it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations.

10 All they shall speak and say unto thee, Art thou also become weak as we? art thou become like unto us?

11 Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee.

12 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!

13 For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:

14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.

15 Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.

16 They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms;

17 That made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house of his prisoners?

18 All the kings of the nations, even all of them, lie in glory, every one in his own house.

19 But thou art cast out of thy grave like an abominable branch, and as the raiment of those that are slain, thrust through with a sword, that go down to the stones of the pit; as a carcase trodden under feet.

20 Thou shalt not be joined with them in burial, because thou hast destroyed thy land, and slain thy people: the seed of evildoers shall never be renowned.

21 Prepare slaughter for his children for the iniquity of their fathers; that they do not rise, nor possess the land, nor fill the face of the world with cities.

22 For I will rise up against them, saith the Lord of hosts, and cut off from Babylon the name, and remnant, and son, and nephew, saith the Lord.

23 I will also make it a possession for the bittern, and pools of water: and I will sweep it with the besom of destruction, saith the Lord of hosts.

24 The Lord of hosts hath sworn, saying, Surely as I have thought, so shall it come to pass; and as I have purposed, so shall it stand:

25 That I will break the Assyrian in my land, and upon my mountains tread him under foot: then shall his yoke depart from off them, and his burden depart from off their shoulders.

26 This is the purpose that is purposed upon the whole earth: and this is the hand that is stretched out upon all the nations.

27 For the Lord of hosts hath purposed, and who shall disannul it? and his hand is stretched out, and who shall turn it back?

28 In the year that king Ahaz died was this burden.

29 Rejoice not thou, whole Palestina, because the rod of him that smote thee is broken: for out of the serpent’s root shall come forth a cockatrice, and his fruit shall be a fiery flying serpent.

30 And the firstborn of the poor shall feed, and the needy shall lie down in safety: and I will kill thy root with famine, and he shall slay thy remnant.

31 Howl, O gate; cry, O city; thou, whole Palestina, art dissolved: for there shall come from the north a smoke, and none shall be alone in his appointed times.

32 What shall one then answer the messengers of the nation? That the Lord hath founded Zion, and the poor of his people shall trust in it.

FOOTNOTES.
Isaiah 14:12 In this proverb against Babylon personifies it as Satan incarnate. ‘O Lucifer, son of the morning! ‘ To say otherwise is to be blind to the text and commit popular bibliolatry for doctrines of extra-biblical demonology. The future Babylonian king will: ‘weaken the nations’, exalt himself into a deity to ‘ascend into heaven’. He will ‘exalt (his) throne’..’above the stars of God’, and before Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego try to be ‘ like the most High’. (Cp. Book of the Prophet Daniel.)
Isaiah 14:25 Babylon in central Mesopotamia 50 miles south of modern Baghdad was controlled by successive powers of Assyria, and Persia. The Babylonian empire under Persian rule would be one of the seven great empires of the time. Babylon had attacked and pillaged Assyrian, Syrian, Israeli, and Egyptian cities. It was almost thought to be omnipotent. This may explain the vague poetic reference: ‘I will break the Assyrian’. God, on the one hand used foreign powers to discipline Judah (& Israel), but on the other hand Jehovah later punished such hostile anti-Semitic nations.

(King James Version 1611-Public Domain)

FOREWORD TO ISAIAH 14.

FOREWORD: Isaiah 13

Foreword to Isaiah 13
The prophet envisions in the future the inevitable destruction of Judah and Jerusalem under the Chaldean armies of Babylonia and the citizens taken away captive into Babylon for seventy years. Then after the heathen Chaldees would accomplish God’s purpose against idolatrous Judah God would in turn dispense with the Babylonian empire by sending the might of Cyrus the Great (the Persian) with the Medes to capture Babylon and break its power. Isaiah also glimpses the final destruction of the city itself under ensuing Greek emperor, Alexander the Great. Though Cyrus would take Babylon without a fight the city remained habitable until Alexander routed and destroyed its buildings. Today it remains an uninhabited heap of rubble fifty miles away from Baghdad for all to see the fulfilment of God’s prophecies and promises.
Isaiah 13
Persia to capture Babylon and Greece to finally destroy it.
1 The burden of Babylon, which Isaiah the son of Amoz did see.
2 Lift ye up a banner upon the high mountain, exalt the voice unto them, shake the hand, that they may go into the gates of the nobles.
3 I have commanded my sanctified ones, I have also called my mighty ones for mine anger, even them that rejoice in my highness.
4 The noise of a multitude in the mountains, like as of a great people; a tumultuous noise of the kingdoms of nations gathered together: the Lord of hosts mustereth the host of the battle.
5 They come from a far country, from the end of heaven, even the Lord, and the weapons of his indignation, to destroy the whole land.
6 Howl ye; for the day of the Lord is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty.
7 Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every man’s heart shall melt:
8 And they shall be afraid: pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth: they shall be amazed one at another; their faces shall be as flames.

The Vision of Jacob’s Trouble and the apocalyptic judgment in the end days.
9 Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it.
10 For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine.
11 And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible.
12 I will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir.
13 Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the Lord of hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger.

A separate glimpse of Babylon’s destruction by the Greek empire of Alexander.
14 And it shall be as the chased roe, and as a sheep that no man taketh up: they shall every man turn to his own people, and flee every one into his own land.
15 Every one that is found shall be thrust through; and every one that is joined unto them shall fall by the sword.
16 Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished.
17 Behold, I will stir up the Medes against them, which shall not regard silver; and as for gold, they shall not delight in it.
18 Their bows also shall dash the young men to pieces; and they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their eyes shall not spare children.
19 And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees’ excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.
20 It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there.
21 But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there.
22 And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces: and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged.

FOREWORD: Isaiah 13