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Ask a QuestionThis is the law of the house [of the Lord]: The whole area round about on the top of the mountain Moriah is identified in Gen. 22:2 as the region where Abraham prepared to sacrifice Isaac, and is identified in II Chron. 3:1 as the site of the temple built by Solomon.[Mount Moriah] shall be most holy, separated, and set apart. Behold, this is the law of the house [of the Lord].
MOREOVER, WHEN you shall divide the land by apportioned and assigned lots for inheritance, you shall set apart as an offering to the Lord a portion of the land to be used for holy purposes. The length shall be 25,000 The Septuagint (Greek translation of the Old Testament) so reads. The term "cubits" rather than "reeds" is supplied throughout this chapter only as the more probable reading. Neither is definitely designated in the Hebrew.cubits, and the breadth 20,000. It shall be holy (set apart and consecrated to sacred use) in its every area.
Of Naphtali he said: O Naphtali, For many centuries much of the territory of upper Naphtali was little more than a miasmic swamp, unfit for man or beast. But when the Jews returned to Palestine, they drained and redeemed the area, and by 1940 it was dotted over with thriving colonies, as Moses had foretold, "satisfied with favor and full of the blessing of the Lord."satisfied with favor and full of the blessing of the Lord, possess the Sea [of Galilee] and [its warm, sunny climate like] the south.
Seventy weeks [of years, or 490 years] are decreed upon your people and upon your holy city [Jerusalem], to finish and put an end to transgression, to seal up and make full the measure of sin, to purge away and make expiation and reconciliation for sin, to bring in everlasting righteousness (permanent moral and spiritual rectitude in every area and relation) to seal up vision and prophecy and prophet, and to anoint a Holy of Holies.
But [Lot's] wife looked back from behind him, and she Lot's wife not only "looked back" to where her heart's interests were, but she lingered behind; and probably overtaken by the fire and brimstone, her dead body became incrusted with salt, which, in that salt-packed area now the Dead Sea, grew larger with more incrustations--a veritable "pillar of salt." In fact, at the southern end of the Dead Sea there is a mountain of table salt called Jebel Usdum, "Mount of Sodom." It is about six miles long, three miles wide, and 1,000 feet high. It is covered with a crust of earth several feet thick, but the rest of the mountain is said to be solid salt (George T. B. Davis, Rebuilding Palestine According to Prophecy). Somewhere in this area Lot's wife looked back to where her treasures and her heart were, and "she became a pillar of salt." Jesus said, "Remember Lot's wife" (Luke 17:32).became a pillar of salt.
I will also make it a possession of the hedgehog and porcupine, and of The city of Babylon was in the midst of a very fertile area, and it would have seemed reasonable to suppose that, regardless of what happened to the population, the region would always furnish pasturage for flocks. But Isaiah said it would become the possession of wild animals and would be covered with "marshes and pools of water." This is how that prophecy was literally fulfilled: after Babylon was taken, the whole area around the city was put under water from neglect of the canals and dikes of the Euphrates River. It became stagnant "marshes and pools of water" among ruins haunted by wild animals, proclaiming to any who might see it that "surely, as [the Lord has] thought and planned, so shall it come to pass" (Isa. 14:24).marshes and pools of water, and I will sweep it with the broom of destruction, says the Lord of hosts.
You shall make a roof or Noah's ark possibly had a window area large enough to admit light and provide ventilation.window [a place for light] for the ark and finish it to a cubit [at least 18 inches] above--and the "Here can only be meant an entrance which was afterward closed, and only opened again at the end of the flood. And since there were three stories of the ark, the word is to be understood, perhaps, of three entrances capable of being closed, and to which there would have been constructed a way of access from the outside" (J.P. Lange, A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures).door of the ark you shall put in the side of it; and you shall make it with lower, second, and third stories.
Of Asher he said: Blessed above sons is Asher; let him be acceptable to his brothers, and The maps of the territory of Asher sometimes suggest the shape of the sole of a foot, sometimes that of a leg and foot; but in either case the Great International Iraq-Petroleum Enterprise, opened in 1935, crossed the area just at the toe of Asher's "foot." Oil brought nearly 1,000 miles across the sands from Mesopotamia began pouring through pipes into the Haifa harbor, a million gallons of oil a day. Jacob had prophesied about Asher, "... his bread shall be fat" (Gen. 49:20 KJV), and here Moses says of Asher, "Let him dip his foot in oil"!let him dip his foot in oil.
Therefore shall Zion on your account be In his book The Land and the Book, Dr. William Thomson wrote, "Mount Zion is now [in the eighteenth century], for the most part, a rough field. From the tomb of David I passed on through the fields of ripe grain. It is the only part of Jerusalem that is now or ever has been plowed." When Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem in \A.D./ 1542, the architect omitted Mount Zion, the City of David, from the area he enclosed, and strangely enough it was only partly built up again. How, except by divine inspiration, could Micah have foretold that this particular part of Jerusalem would be "plowed like a field"?plowed like a field, Jerusalem shall become heaps [of ruins], and the mountain of the house [of the Lord] like a densely wooded height.
So I [Moses] made an ark of acacia wood and hewed two tables of stone like the first, and went up the mountain One of the many misconceptions of articles and events mentioned in the Bible, innocently perpetuated by artists without adequate knowledge, is that of the size of the two tables of stone on which the Ten Commandments were written. They were not great tombstone-sized slabs, but probably small rectangular plates, two of which could easily be carried in one hand. Dr. George L. Robinson brought from the Sinai area a pair of "tables of stone" believed comparable to those mentioned here, which he put in his coat pocket. Moses says here, "I... went up the mountain with the two tables of stone in my [one] hand," and he confirms it in Exod. 34:4.with the two tables of stone in my [one] hand.
Son of man, set your face against Gog, of the land of Gog is a symbolic name, representing the leader of the world powers antagonistic to God (see also Rev. 20:8). Meshech and Tubal are understood to have been the same as the Moschi and Tibareni of the Greeks--tribes that inhabited regions in the Caucasus. Rosh, which some would identify with Russia, must have designated a land and people somewhere in the same area. And therefore the Gog of Ezekiel must be viewed as in some sense the head of the high regions in the northwest of Asia. (Patrick Fairbairn, The Imperial Bible-dictionary).Magog, the prince of Rosh, of Meshech, and of Tubal, and prophesy against him,
And This whole prophecy is generally conceded to have been written well over a century (170 years, according to archbishop James Ussher) before Babylon's downfall, when the circumstances necessary for its fulfillment seemed most improbable--but it has been literally fulfilled in detail. Human keenness of foresight could not possibly have foreseen that great Babylon would be wiped from the face of the earth (Isa. 13:19), become ruins infested by wild animals (Isa. 13:21, 22), be feared because of superstition by the Arabs (Isa. 13:20)--with only a small village near the area to mark the place where, since the days of Nimrod, mighty kings had exalted themselves above the God of heaven. Various conquerors during the centuries contributed to Babylon's downfall until, by the first century \B.C./, it was as utterly and hopelessly destroyed as Sodom and Gomorrah (Isa. 13:19).wolves and howling creatures will cry and answer in the deserted castles, and jackals in the pleasant palaces. And [Babylon's] time has nearly come, and her days will not be prolonged.
Say to the Israelites: These are the animals At first thought the laws given here seem only to have been made obsolete by Jesus. He taught that it is not what goes into the mouth but what comes out of it that defiles a man (Matt. 15:17-20), and Paul said that when the complete and perfect came, the incomplete and imperfect would become void and superseded (I Cor. 13:9, 10), for "there is nothing unclean of itself" (Rom. 14:14 KJV). But while all these specific laws have become void, we must not lose sight of the fact that they are "superseded" by the underlying spiritual principle, which is just as binding. Christ's teaching relates to the whole area of our living, including our eating and drinking, and is dominated by the principle, "Whatever you may do, do all for the honor and glory of God" (I Cor. 10:31). We do well to remember that it was Jesus Christ Himself who said, "Do not think that I have come to do away with or undo the Law...; I have come not to do away with or undo but to complete and fulfill" it (Matt. 5:17).which you may eat among all the beasts that are on the earth.
On the seventh day they rose early at daybreak and marched around the city as usual, only on that day they compassed the city Any walled town was called a "city" and its headman was called "a king" in ancient times, but the fact that Joshua's army could march around the whole of Jericho seven times in one day shows that it was a very small place. Sir Charles Marston (New Bible Evidence) echoes the reports of other archaeologists when he says that the excavations of ancient Jericho do not confirm the conceptions of our youth. Though the walls were so formidable, the area they enclosed only measures seven acres. The whole circumference of the city was about 650 yards. Our disappointment is somewhat modified by the fact that Jebusite Jerusalem, which David captured, was about the same size. Schliemann experienced a similar disillusionment in 1873 when he excavated the city of Troy, which Homer tells us so long withstood the Grecian hosts. Indeed it would almost seem that these ancient cities were more in the nature of places of refuge resorted to when an enemy approached. Under peaceful conditions a large proportion of the inhabitants would dwell outside the city's walls (Sir Charles Marston, New Bible Evidence).seven times.
Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when the city [of Jerusalem] shall be built [again] for the Lord from the Many times after the days of the Old Testament, Jerusalem was destroyed. Travelers in recent centuries reported it to be an almost deserted city--its buildings were ruins filled with rubble, its inhabitants numbered barely enough to populate a village. Yet not only did God's word declare that it would be rebuilt, but also definitely and in detail it drew a word map of the exact outline which the future city would follow--from a well-known tower to the gate at a certain corner, then on over a particular hill, coming now outside the walls of the original city and taking in a large area definitely marked out by familiar landmarks. Eight details are unmistakably given here, and Zechariah adds another (Zech. 14:10). Moreover, the city's enlargement was to be in one general direction--to the northwest. Twenty-five hundred years later, in \A.D./ 1935, the prophecy had been fulfilled to the letter, as if indeed with God's "measuring line" (Jer. 31:39). What a God, and what a Book! So unlikely seemed this prophecy's fulfillment that some commentators were of the opinion that it should be interpreted spiritually!Tower of Hananel to the Corner Gate.
"Many daughters have done... nobly and well... but you excel them all." What a glowing description here recorded of this woman in private life, this "capable, intelligent, and virtuous woman" of Prov. 31! It means she had done more than Miriam, the one who led a nation's women in praise to God (Exod. 15:20, 21); Deborah, the patriotic military advisor (Judg. 4:4-10); Ruth, the woman of constancy (Ruth 1:16); Hannah, the ideal mother (I Sam. 1:20; 2:19); the Shunammite, the hospitable woman (II Kings 4:8-10); Huldah, the woman who revealed God's secret message to national leaders (II Kings 22:14); and even more than Queen Esther, the woman who risked sacrificing her life for her people (Esth. 4:16). In what way did she "excel them all"? In her spiritual and practical devotion to God, which permeated every area and relationship of her life. All seven of the Christian virtues (II Pet. 1:5) are there, like colored threads in a tapestry. Her secret, which is open to everyone, is the Holy Spirit's climax to the story, and to this book. In Prov. 31:30, it becomes clear that the "reverent and worshipful fear of the Lord," which is "the beginning (the chief and choice part) of Wisdom" (Prov. 9:10), is put forth as the true foundation for a life which is valued by God and her husband as "far above rubies or pearls" (Prov. 31:10).Many daughters have done virtuously, nobly, and well [with the strength of character that is steadfast in goodness], but you excel them all.