Monday quote

We have enough youth. How about a fountain of smart?

Monday quote

Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything the can be counted counts.

Monday quote

Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.

Robert Frost

Monday quote

The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right place but also to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.

Dorothy Neville

Monday quote

Never attribute malice to what can be explained by simple incompetence.

Monday quote

Your heart is not the compass Jesus sails by.

Samuel Rutherford

Monday quote

O God, I am thinking your thoughts after you.

Johann Kepler

Monday quote

To claim ‘humanitarian motives’ when the motive is envy and its supposed appeasement, is a favorite rhetorical device of politicians.

Helmut Schoeck

Monday quote

Both fiction and nonfiction can speak truth—and both can lie.

Andrew Le Peau.

Monday quote

Diligence in a chosen vocational activity is a combination of hard work, enthusiasm, and competence.

Douglas Wilson.

Monday quote

The object of the Christian's faith is unseen reality.

AW Tozer (1897–1963), The Pursuit of God.

Monday quote

What men find compelling is often the result of what they want to find compelling.... The antithesis governs epistemology.

Douglas Wilson

Monday quote

Do you brighten a room just by entering or just by leaving?

Monday quote

Christian values praise voluntary self-sacrifice for the benefit of other people, because even if we die in the process, the duration and quality of our eternal reward greatly exceeds the "light and momentary afflictions" of this present life. Pagan ethics praise coerced sacrifice from people.

Tom Pittman.

Monday quote

Never confuse the will of the majority with the will of God.

Monday quote

This is the final test of a gentleman: his respect for those who can be of no possible service to him.

William Phelps

Monday quote

Better to illuminate than merely to shine, to deliver to others contemplated truths than merely to contemplate.

Thomas Aquinas

Monday quote

The motto of chivalry is also the motto of wisdom; to serve all, but love only one.

Honore de Balzac

Monday quote

...prosperity foregone is invisible. In other words, we can never tell how much richer we would have been.

Walter Williams

Monday quote

No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up.

Lily Tomlin

Monday quote

…medicine is not just about fixing. Sometimes it is about being compassionately honest.

Susan White (geneticist).

Monday quote

Risk becomes meaningless when profits are private, but losses are socialized.

Mark Call

Monday quote

A leader can be said to be doing his best – when he is willing to surrender tasks to those who are more adept.

Kenneth Boa

70 or 50070 men struck dead?

There is a textual and translational debate concerning the number of men slain in 1 Samuel 6:19 after the ark of the covenant was returned from the Philistines.

The Philistines and Israel battled between Aphek and Ebenezer. The Philistines killed 4000 Israelites. So the elders requested that the Ark be brought to the camp. The Israelites were still defeated, this time losing 30000 men, and the Philistines took the ark to Ashdod and placed it in the temple of Dagon. Dagon fell before the ark twice, the second time losing his head and hands. There was a plague in the land causing swelling in the body and killing many people. So the Ark was taken from Ashdod to Gath where the plague continued, then from Gath to Ekron and the plague continued there. The men of Ekron asked for the ark to be taken away because of the plague.

After 7 months the ark was returned to Israel on a cart pulled by two milk cows, previously unyoked. This was to provide evidence that Yahweh had sent the plague. Alongside the ark were 5 golden figurines of mice and 5 of swellings (tumours). When the ark arrived in Israel the men of Beth-shemesh broke up the cart for wood and offered the cows as a sacrifice to Yahweh. Then the men placed the ark on a rock and took down the box with the golden figurines.

The Greek of the passage differs in places.

The 5 golden swellings are for the 5 cities, though they probably represent the rulers of the cities (1 Samuel 6:4-5); the Greek has golden seats. The 5 golden mice are for the 5 cities. The swellings were probably outbreaks on the body due to the plague. Some commentators suggest haemorrhoids, others tumours in the groin. Mice (or rats) clearly infested the region,

So you must make images of your tumors and images of your mice that ravage the land, and give glory to the God of Israel. (1 Samuel 6:5)

Though it is not clear whether the rodents carried the plague or that they destroyed the crops.

Which brings us to verse 19.

And he struck some of the men of Beth-shemesh, because they looked upon the ark of the LORD. He struck 70 men of them, and the people mourned because the LORD had struck the people with a great blow. (1 Samuel 6:19 ESV).

And the descendants of Jechoniah were not pleased with the men of Beth-shemesh because they saw the ark of the Lord, and he struck among them 70 men and 50000 men, and the people mourned because the Lord struck with an exceedingly great plague among the people. (1 Samuel (1 Kingdoms) 6:19 Greek).

The Hebrew has 50070 men, though some Hebrew manuscripts have 70 men. Josephus has 70 (Antiquities 6.1.4). Yet the Greek shows that the larger number has an ancient pedigree. Syriac and Arab versions have 5070. The Vulgate has 70 men and 50000 common people.

The large number is also more likely because the term "great blow" is used here and the same term in 1 Samuel 4:10 for the death of 30000 men.

Translators note that the town of Beth-shemesh could not have contained 50000 people and many think this is a textual error, numerical variants being quite common in biblical manuscripts. There are various other explanations including,

1. 70 men, 50 of a thousand (implying 1 in 20 from a total of 1400)
2. 70 elders: having the importance of 50000 common men (Rabbinical tradition)

Others have noted that the Hebrew has an unusual construction. Numbers in Hebrew, like in English, usually have the larger units first: thousands before hundreds before tens before units. However there are exceptions. As Ashby notes, exceptions repeat the item the number is qualifying and include the word "and" between the items.

At the end of thirty years and four hundred years (Exodus 12:41).

Except that the number in 1 Samuel 6:19 does not have the word "and". A literal translation is,

he struck some of the people, 70 men, 50000 men.

A very literal translation of the Hebrew, maintaining word order,

And he struck some of the men of Beth-shemesh, because they looked upon the ark of Yahweh, and he struck some of the people (nation): 70 men; 50000 men. And mourned the people (nation) because had struck, Yahweh, the people (nation) a blow great.

God's judgment had killed the Philistines; that same plague then killed 70 men of Beth-shemesh, then killed 50000 people in Israel.

Monday quote

The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right place but also to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.

Dorothy Neville.

Monday quote

If your income is dependent on you not understanding something, it is very easy not to understand something.

Otis Brawley.

Monday quote

A weak conscience is an over-scrupulous conscience. And although, even when mistaken, it is not to be violated, it does need to be educated.

Stott, Between Two Worlds.

Monday quote

She is always married too soon who gets a bad husband, and she is never married too late who gets a good one.

Daniel Defoe (1660–1731), Moll Flanders.

Monday quote

But the price of self-deception is eternal vigilance, because there are so many things he must not allow himself to think about.

J Budziszewski (1952–).

Monday quote

The principal source of my melancholy, however, is my firm conviction that today's most obstreperous infidels lack the courage, moral intelligence, and thoughtfulness of their forefathers in faithlessness. What I find chiefly offensive about them is not that they are skeptics or atheists; rather, it is that they are not skeptics at all and have purchased their atheism cheaply, with the sort of boorish arrogance that might make a man believe himself a great strategist because his tanks overwhelmed a town of unarmed peasants, or a great lover because he can afford the price of admission to a brothel. So long as one can choose one's conquests in advance, taking always the paths of least resistance, one can always imagine oneself a Napoleon or a Casanova (and even better: the one without a Waterloo, the other without the clap).

David B. Hart

Monday quote

Evil talks about tolerance only when it's weak. When it gains the upper hand, its vanity always requires the destruction of the good and the innocent, because the example of good and innocent lives is an ongoing witness against it.

Charles Chaput

Monday quote

You can be sincere, but still be stupid.

Dave Ramsey

Monday quote

God’s foreknowledge of his own acts does not render them necessary, and destroy his free agency, how can it be consistently argued that God’s foreknowledge of the acts of men renders them necessary, and destroys their free agency?

Thomas Ralston

Are Genesis chapters 1 and 2 separate creation accounts?

Some people raise issues with the supposed incongruence of Genesis chapters 1 and 2 saying that the chapters represent different creation accounts. There are several reasons that show that Genesis 2 is complimentary not contradictory to Genesis 1.

The two chapters do show some stylistic differences. The first chapter is highly structured, uses repetitive motifs, and functions as introduction to the book of Genesis. But stylistic differences need not mean differences in content.

There are several reasons to note the continuity of chapter 2, and the rest of Genesis, to chapter 1. The first and most obvious is that we have received Genesis as a unit. If the author (or compiler) of Genesis wrote Genesis 2 after Genesis 1, which he did, then he knew what was contained in both. It would seem strange that moderns can identify significant differences that he supposedly did not notice.

Secondly, Genesis 1 describes creation repeatedly as good, and after the completion of all of creation as very good. This motif of "good" throughout Genesis 1 is then contrasted with the man's lack of companion which is not good.

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” (Gen 2:18)

To propose a different creation account in Genesis 2 disregards the author's obvious contrast.

Next, Genesis 5 gives the chronology of the antediluvian patriarchs. It begins,

This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created. When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. (Gen 5:1-3)

This directly quotes Genesis 1

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them. (Gen 1:26-27)

Thus the command to be fruitful and multiply (Gen 1:28) describes the beginnings of its fulfillment in chapter 5 and the author repeats the earlier text when naming the descendants of Adam. Genesis 5 has obvious continuity with Genesis 2, yet the phraseology also borrows from Genesis 1.

Further, Jesus reads Genesis 1 and 2 together. He does this when refuting the Pharisees on divorce.

Jesus answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, [Gen 1:27] and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh [Gen 2:24]’?" 

The unity of Genesis as a book, the contrast of good with not good, the connection between genealogy and creation, and the unifying approach of Jesus to both chapters, show that it is preferable to read Genesis 2 as an expansion of the Genesis 1 creation account rather than as a different, contrasting creation account.

Monday quote

I have observed over the years that the unanticipated consequences of social action are always more important, and usually less agreeable, than the intended consequences.

Irving Kristol (1920–2009).

Monday quote

Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.

Euripides (c. 480 BC)

Monday quote

If [the agnostic] says that it is impossible to know anything about God, he contradicts himself, for to know God's unknowability would be to know something about God.

J. Budziszewski (1952–)

Monday quote

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true.

Monday quote

A great deal of labor goes into the denial of the obvious: for the obvious is an affront to intellectuals whom it threatens with redundancy.

Theodore Dalrymple, "Dubai, Havana and Choosing Between Evils."

Monday quote

It cost God nothing, so far as we know, to create nice things: but to convert rebellious wills cost him crucifixion."

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity.

Monday quote

History will show you not all the answers, but it’ll tell you a lot of the questions to ask and furthermore, it will show you how other people have dealt successfully or unsuccessfully with similar type issues.

mad dog

Monday quote

There are three things you can do with money: spend, save and give. And when you reach a point where you can give well, it's the most fun you'll ever have with money!

Dave Ramsey

Monday quote

Copying the outside culture is not the same thing as engaging with it.

Douglas Wilson

Monday quote

The peculiar thing about prudery is that, the less the fortress is under threat, the more it puts sentries around.

Victor Hugo, Les Misérables.

Monday quote

For myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political.

Aldous Huxley

Monday quote

A person who has never lied because their tongue is cut out is not what we hope to become when we strive for honesty.

Isaac Morehouse

Monday quote

It is one of the innumerable shallow phrases of the modern and mercantile peace, that when people are sincere they should not be attacked. Why, it is exactly because they are sincere that they should be attacked. If a man pretends to be your wife’s previous and lawful husband, you can laugh at him as at any other amusing fraud. If he really believes that he is, you will take prompt action to prevent his acting on his belief.

GK Chesterton. Illustrated London News, 12 September 1914.

Monday quote

To be too wise in your own pursuits to come to Jesus is to be a fool.

Doug Wilson.

Monday quote

Gratitude makes everything enough.

Monday quote

Keep that tongue for your boys woman. I didn't tell you my mind to get flayed for it.

Robert Roy MacGregor, Rob Roy.

Monday quote

It's not abundance that is the problem it is the love of abundance. The attachment to abundance.

Arthur Brooks

Monday quote

So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall! Christian freedom can too easily become licence. And licence will destroy you.

Trevor Geddes.

Monday quote

Man is the only animal of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid...There is no harm in a well-fed lion. It has no ideals, no sect, no party...

George Bernard Shaw

Monday quote

Great unfaithfulness begins with small driftings.

Douglas Wilson, Hebrews Through New Eyes.