Opus 2025-314: Read with Your Eyes Open

I had two experiences this week separated by a couple of days.  The first took place on a zoom call.  We’re a bunch of us old guys were talking about whatever came into our heads.  Israel and its current crisis came up, and of course, that brings out the eschatology geeks who tend to think that they have it all figured out.  I didn’t bother putting my two cents worth in.  There are certain questions which can stop the discussion in its tracks, and they were having so much fun, expressing their views that I didn’t want to ask them in light of Romans,

Romans 11:26 (KJV) And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob:

Just who is Israel?  Who is a part of Israel?  Another way of saying it is, “Who is a Jew?”

Then this morning I was reading in Jeremiah and I came across one of those passages which the eschatology nuts just love to ignore and act like they don’t exist.

Jeremiah 44:27-28 (KJV) 27 Behold, I will watch over them for evil, and not for good: and all the men of Judah that are in the land of Egypt shall be consumed by the sword and by the famine, until there be an end of them. 28 Yet a small number that escape the sword shall return out of the land of Egypt into the land of Judah, and all the remnant of Judah, that are gone into the land of Egypt to sojourn there, shall know whose words shall stand, mine, or theirs.

If you take the time to read this, you’ll notice, there are two statements which cannot both be true.  The first one says that all the men of Judah will die.  The second statement is it a small number will escape.  Now either Jeremiah had an editor who was drunk that day and didn’t see the discrepancy or we’re talking about hyperbole and other types of literary devices.  You see logic says that if everyone is killed there is no one left to escape and conversely, if there’s someone left to escape everyone is not killed.

This is just one of many places where we see this kind of thing in scripture.  We need to start off with an awareness that the people who wrote this knew what they were writing and, not being stupid, they were aware of the discrepancy.  They also were aware that if they saw an angry father chasing his child across the yard, yelling, “I’m going to kill you”, he didn’t mean it.  He knew he didn’t mean it.  The kid knew he didn’t mean it.  All the bystanders knew he didn’t mean it.  They didn’t have to write an explanation. They just knew what was obvious.

So when you get involved in these kinds of discussions, have a good time.  Stick a broom handle in the spokes.  Be the odd man out.  Who knows, maybe you’ll get them to think a little bit.  Who knows, maybe you’ll learn something.

homo unius libri