Mike Blogs

We return to the conclusion of the story of Maacah, the only royal princess among David’s wives. She was in grief over the rape of her daughter Tamar by one of David’s other children, a son by a different wife. Amnon had tricked David to send Tamar to him. He faked being sick, but then overpowered Tamar. It was a deceitful and violent rape. However, King David, the leading judge over the land, did nothing to comfort Tamar and Maacah nor did he punish Amnon. The text says th

God spoke the last line of Chapter 5: "An appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land: prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule as the prophets direct; my people love to have it so, but what will you do when the end comes?” If God speaks to us through Scripture, and we believe that God does this, what is God saying to us today through the prophet Jeremiah? First comes a warning we should heed. “Prophets and priests” are religious personnel; so are today's p

Thanks to Luke, we have more insight into Mary’s thoughts, wishes, and suffering than we do for most other women in the Bible. Luke says that he “ investigated everything carefully from the very first.” My own guess is that, among his informants, that is, among the “ eyewitnesses and servants of the word” that he consulted, was Mary. Mary was young when Jesus was born, perhaps just 15, and we know that she lived into the AD 30s because she was at the cross. She could have li

God, through the prophet Jeremiah, is making his last call to the only remaining Jewish state in the ancient world: Judah. The northern kingdom, which was called Israel, disappeared from the annals of history in 721 BC, one of many conquests of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911-609 BC). The people living in Israel were deported in order to prevent them from organizing a rebellion against Assyria. They are sometimes referred to as ‘the ten lost tribes,” but they were not all lost