Category Archives for "Miscellaneous"

Hezekiah

By Mark Morgan | Miscellaneous

About 250 years after David died, Hezekiah became king over Judah as the fourteenth king in the dynasty David began. Not many of those kings imitated King David’s wholehearted devotion to God, but Hezekiah was one who did.^[1]2 Chronicles 29:2 He was a rare beacon of light, who promoted godliness in the face of growing idolatry as the kingdom declined.

Nowadays, most national leaders are old, but Hezekiah was only 25 years old when he took over from his father, king Ahaz.

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Kings of Israel and Judah

By Mark Morgan | Harmonies , Miscellaneous

Bible records of the kings of Israel and Judah

This page includes two tables:

• The first shows the order, age at accession and length of reign of the kings in three sections: the combined kingdom of Israel, the kings of Judah (two tribes), and those of Israel (10 tribes).
• A second shows time links (synchronisations) between the kings of Israel and Judah.

All of the Bible references displayed are links to the text of the passage in the ESV. On desktop computers, the text will show as a tooltip when you hover over it.
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David’s family problems

By Mark Morgan | David , Miscellaneous

Success and failure

Children are born with faith. Without knowledge or strength of their own, they rely unquestioningly on others. As they mature with growing life experience, faith commonly fades, outshone by the glow of self-dependence and a confidence that human opinions are the best available. Faith – the certainty about what has not been personally experienced or cannot be directly proved – slowly trickles away. And so we arrive at adulthood where, for most people at least, personal and communal experiences or opinions become boundaries and limit the possibilities of life.

King David, however, avoided this decay and reached adulthood with his faith intact. For him, killing Goliath was not only possible but essential.

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Joab, the son of Zeruiah

By Mark Morgan | David , Miscellaneous

Joab, King David’s nephew and army commander, is an enigmatic figure in the Bible. He has always fascinated me.

When Bible characters fascinate me, I want to write novels about their lives. Why? To make them more real to me! And while doing so, my perfectionist tendencies force me to find out everything I can from the Bible to avoid any glaring errors. The resulting extensive research is very helpful for me.

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Pairs of Opposites

By Mark Morgan | Miscellaneous

Pairs of Opposites

We like using pairs of opposites.

Up and down; yes and no; right and wrong; left and right; male and female; to and fro; first and last; plus and minus; night and day; these are all examples of pairs that roll smoothly off our tongues. We feel comfortable with them and they help us to locate ourselves in a world full of choices and contradictions. Many, like left and right or up and down, are physical opposites.  Others are more abstract concepts like right and wrong or good and bad. Some, like ups and downs, sweet and bitter, or black and white, describe physical opposites, but are also often used as representations of more abstract or spiritual concepts.

The Bible is full of word pictures and parables and uses many of these opposites to help us locate ourselves in the world of spirituality.

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David – a shepherd

By Mark Morgan | David , Miscellaneous

What is God like? Do you know how he thinks or what his character is like?

When we are looking for friends, we want them to have characteristics we appreciate or admire – often ones that will match or complement our own.

God does the same.

When God rejected Saul as king over Israel, he told him that he had found a man after his own heart to be the next king.^[1]1 Samuel 13:14 This man was David, the son of Jesse^[2]Acts 13:22 from Bethlehem, who became famous when he used a sling to kill Goliath the giant.

The expression, “a man after his own heart”, reveals a kinship of thought and fellowship of mind between God and David.

For me, it prompts the question: what was it about David that God liked?

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Moses’ and Aaron’s family trees

By Mark Morgan | Exodus , Family trees , Jeremiah , Miscellaneous

Many people – perhaps most – have heard of the Ten Commandments or the Law of Moses. Fewer would know much about Aaron, Moses’ brother. In this article, we present Moses’ and Aaron’s family trees. Being brothers, the main difference is the central character – as you’ll see below.

We learn about the life of Moses in the Old Testament of the Bible, since he was born about 1,500 years before Jesus.  However, the name of Moses was still known by everybody who lived in or around Israel in Jesus’ day, and the New Testament contains many references to the law which God gave through him.

So where did Moses come from and why was he so famous?

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Unexpected instructions from God

By Mark Morgan | Jeremiah , Miscellaneous

Recently, my oldest daughter suggested that it might be good to write an article on some of the unconventional, unexpected or peculiar things that God told people in the Bible to do.

We discussed the idea and came up with quite a long list of cases where the instructions of God were completely unexpected by the people who received them and in many cases would have seemed bizarre.

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The Stewardship of Money

By Mark Morgan | Miscellaneous

Based on a booklet “The Stewardship of Money” written in England during the 1940s by F. Mitchell and revised by Mark Morgan, November 2021.

Chapter 1 – Why Should We Give?

a.    Because we ourselves, and all we have, are God’s

The Christian life begins when we receive Jesus Christ as our personal saviour. It was by his coming into our lives that we became Christians at all. No doubt when we first came to him, it was with a sense of frustration or a burden of sin and helplessness, and our conscious need was to receive forgiveness, peace and power. These, we discovered, were available only in Christ, and, receiving him, we enjoyed the gifts he always brings.

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How should Christians use money?

By Mark Morgan | Miscellaneous

Money is mentioned more than 200 times in the Bible, starting with God’s requirement that even slaves bought with Abraham’s money had to be circumcised as part of God’s covenant with him (Genesis 17:12-13).

Money in the Old Testament

In the Old Testament we are often told of God blessing those whom he loved by giving them riches: Abraham (Genesis 13:2; 24:35); Isaac (Genesis 26:12-13); Job (Job 42:10); David (1 Chronicles 29:28); Solomon (1 Kings 3:13; 10:23); Jehoshaphat (2 Chronicles 17:5; 18:1); Hezekiah (2 Chronicles 32:27). In fact, there is frequently a connection between righteousness and the blessing of riches, particularly in Psalms and Proverbs (Proverbs 10:4, 22; 22:4).

Yet in all of them, there is the repeated warning not to set our heart on riches. There is a warning that if riches are too important to us, we will fail (Psalm 62:10; Proverbs 11:4, 28; 27:24).
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Moving the Ark of the Covenant

By Admin | David , Miscellaneous

The Ark of the Covenant was a gold-plated wooden box that God told Moses to make in the wilderness. On top was a lid with two cherubim facing each other and made of pure gold.  Two tables of stone sat inside the box, with God’s law written on them.  The ark represented the presence of God and was a place where God met with his people. As the most holy of the articles of worship, it sat in the innermost room of the tabernacle.  However, the Israelites packed up the entire tabernacle – including the Ark of the Covenant – when they travelled in the wilderness.  God gave special rules about moving the Ark of the Covenant – they had to be very careful. Continue reading

Obed-edom the Gittite

By Admin | David , Miscellaneous

King David wanted the Ark of the Covenant of God near him, so he arranged to bring it into Jerusalem on a cart as part of a huge celebration. However, the oxen pulling the cart stumbled and the ark wobbled. Tragically, a man called Uzzah who was driving the cart put out his hand to steady it and was struck dead by God.

David cancelled the celebration and moved the ark into the nearby house of a man called Obed-edom. This event is the subject of a micro-tale found in Fiction Favours the Fact – Book 3.

Since I wrote that story, several people have asked me questions about this man, Obed-edom.

These questions have revolved around who Obed-edom was, his nationality and possible genealogy. The reasoning behind the questions seems to be that David would not be likely to put the Ark of the Covenant in the care of a man who was not even an Israelite. As an intriguing follow-up to this idea, a search of the Bible shows that the name Obed-edom is not unique, but we’ll get to that later. Continue reading