You’ve tried Ezekiel Bread.

“Take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and spelt; put them in a storage jar and use them to make bread for yourself.” (Ezekiel 4:9).

You’ve tasted Genesis 1:29 Bread.

Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.

You’ve done the Daniel Diet, based on Daniel 1:8-16:

But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine, and he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this way. Now God had caused the official to show favor and compassion to Daniel, but the official told Daniel, “I am afraid of my lord the king, who has assigned your food and drink. Why should he see you looking worse than the other young men your age? The king would then have my head because of you.”

Daniel then said to the guard whom the chief official had appointed over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, “Please test your servants for ten days: Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food, and treat your servants in accordance with what you see.” So he agreed to this and tested them for ten days.

At the end of the ten days they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men who ate the royal food. So the guard took away their choice food and the wine they were to drink and gave them vegetables instead.

And still, you’re dissatisfied. You don’t really feel any better. And you don’t really feel any closer to God.

Well we’ve got some good news! It’s what you’ve been waiting for all along. The thing you’ve been missing! What is it that will finally make you a good and healthy person?

Yes, you too can eat like a prophet of God, a man who prepared the way for the Lord. A man who was willing to die for his faith—and did. It is a simple diet. Uncomplicated–since there are only two things you can eat when you’re on the John the Baptist Diet:

1. Honey

2. Grasshoppers

His food was locusts and wild honey. (Matthew 3:4b)

While you’re at it, you probably are feeling as if you need to make other changes in your life. Perhaps you feel as if modern fashion is unbecoming and dishonoring to God. Well, we’ve got some more great news for you!

Yes, you too can dress like a prophet. Choose our most popular line, The John the Baptist Collection: It’s simple. Sturdy. Obviously the kind of clothing God likes, since one of his most faithful servants wore it.

John’s clothes were made of camel’s hair, and he had a leather belt around his waist. (Matthew 3:4a)

Another favorite is The Isaiah Three Year Line, a clothing choice that God actually demanded of his prophet. Isaiah was obedient. Will you be obedient, too?:

At that time the LORD spoke through Isaiah son of Amoz. He said to him, “Take off the sackcloth from your body and the sandals from your feet.” And he did so, going around stripped and barefoot. (Isaiah 20:2)

Or, perhaps, just perhaps, you’ll decide that maybe all these weird diets, foods and clothing choices have nothing to do with what you should eat or what you should wear–or with your relationship with God. Perhaps, just perhaps, you’ll realize that Jesus really paid for all your sins and there’s nothing left that you have to do to get closer to God. You’ve got as much of the Spirit and as much of God as you can get.

His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. (2 Peter 1:3-4)

You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh? Have you experienced so much in vain—if it really was in vain? So again I ask, does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard? So also Abraham “believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” (Galatinas 3:1-6)

Perhaps, just perhaps, you will realize that all the passages about food and clothing have been wrenched out of context and not one of them means “go and do thou likewise.”

And perhaps, just perhaps, you’ll take to heart the words of Paul:

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. (Ephesians 4:14)

Send to Kindle

We will sometimes believe that we have failed, and perhaps we have. But that can be okay. Look at Joseph. In the book of Genesis, Joseph was a teenager. Next to the youngest son, he was favored by his father, which led to resentment from his older brothers. Their resentment was not lessened by his attitude: he tattled on them, and he told stories about how he was going to someday be their boss because of the dreams that God had given him.

So, one day, when the opportunity presented itself for the brothers to get rid of him, they took it: they sold him as a slave to some passing traders. The traders took him down to Egypt and sold him to one of the Pharaoh’s officials named Potifer.

He was a slave, but at least it was in a nice place; and he was an indoor slave, rather than working in the fields. So he accepted his lot, did his job, and performed his duties—and managed to do them so well that he was soon promoted to being the head slave, in charge of everything in the household. Still a slave, but he was in the best slot that a slave could get to.

And then Potifer’s wife started attempting to seduce him. When he refused, she accused him of attempted rape, which got him fired from being a slave. One might not think one could be more of a failure than being sold into slavery by your own brothers. Now, he had lost even that “job” and found himself bound and tossed into jail.

So, he accepted his lot and did as he was told, and somehow he managed to gain some responsibility and notoriety in the lockup, to the point that he became the top inmate, a trustee, running everything inside the walls, under the supervision of the warden.

Notice that his life has been a downward spiral: one step forward, two steps back. He’s constantly losing ground. He had been his father’s favorite, supervising his older brothers. Then he became a slave, but he managed to be a supervising slave. Then he got himself arrested, and now he’s a supervising prisoner. Things are definitely not looking up for him.

At the age of thirty, his prospects for upward mobility are gone. He has no career, and no prospects of ever getting one. His future is grim, and, based on his track record, likely to get grimmer. This, despite the fact that it was hard for him to see how things could get much worse. But then, he thought there couldn’t be anything worse than being a slave.

Boy, had he been wrong about that.

One day, a couple of men—a butler and a baker—who had, till then, served in the Pharoah’s palace got dumped in the prison. They suffered bad dreams—not surprising given the turns for the worse that their lives had taken—and they told Joseph their dreams.

Joseph interpreted them. The butler would be restored to his position. The baker, sadly, would be hanged. Joseph asked the butler to put in a good word for him with the Pharaoh, since Joseph was in prison unjustly.

And things happened just as Joseph predicted.

But the Butler just forgot all about Joseph. For three years.

Then, one day, Pharoah had a dream. When no one was successful at interpreting it, the Butler told him that he knew a man who would be able to help. The Butler recognized this as an opportunity to ingratiate himself with the Pharaoh (“see, I was the one who solved your problem!”) So, Pharaoh called Joseph from prison.

After Joseph got cleaned up and dressed up, he was presented before Pharaoh. He interpreted the dream, warning of a coming famine and suggesting a course of action to help the nation survive it. The Pharoah was impressed and put Joseph in charge of overseeing things, making Joseph second in command in the nation, second only to Pharaoh himself.

Later, when his starving brothers showed up, he tormented them a bit, before revealing himself and offering them a place to live in Egypt with him in prosperity. Though they were fearful that Joseph would seek vengeance, he explained that while what they had done, they had done to hurt him, and that indeed, he had suffered a lot over the years—he recognized that God had been at work through the whole thing: not only had he personally risen to a place of power and comfort, more importantly, he was able to save not just his family from starvation, but an entire nation. His decade or more of suffering had led to the salvation of millions. His seeming failure had, in fact, been a rousing success story: riches to rags and back again.

Send to Kindle

After hoping that God would do something to fix the nation of Israel, and after learning from God that his “solution” is to have the nation suffer the destruction of a Babylonian invasion and conquest, the prophet Habakkuk is feeling unhappy and stressed. He concludes his book with a statement—or perhaps a prayer—for when nothing is going right, when everything is going wrong, and there doesn’t look to be anyway out and nothing about your circumstances make sense. This is for when you wonder where God is and why he has apparently forgotten you:

Though the fig tree does not bud
and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen
and no cattle in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the LORD,
I will be joyful in God my Savior.
The Sovereign LORD is my strength;
he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
he enables me to tread on the heights. (Habakkuk 3:17-19)

When all you have is your faith in God, that’s a hard place to be. But it’s okay. God is there, whether you can feel him or see him or recognize his hand at work in your life. He’s there even when you think he couldn’t possibly be. He’s there even when you’re certain that it’s hopeless.

Send to Kindle

When I teach biblical interpretation, one of the things I use to help explain the difference between biblical narrative and biblical poetry is to ask the students to compare Judges 4 and Judges 5. These two chapters make my job easy, because both chapters describe the same event: Barak and Deborah’s victory over Sisera.

I point out that the purpose of poetry is not to clearly describe events or to give us instructions. Instead, poetry is emotional; it gives us a feeling—it is not propositional. For instance, the Afordible Healthcare Law, usually called Obomacare, is not written in poetry. Likewise, autorepair manuals are not written in poetry, nor are history books or newspapers. But music lyrics are poetry—and what you expect from listening to the lyrics of songs is not what you expect when you’re listening to a news report on the latest horrors in Egypt.

So, consider the contrast between these two descriptions of the same event. First, Judges 4:17-21 which gives us the narrative form of the event:

Sisera, meanwhile, fled on foot to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, because there was an alliance between Jabin king of Hazor and the family of Heber the Kenite.

Jael went out to meet Sisera and said to him, “Come, my lord, come right in. Don’t be afraid.” So he entered her tent, and she covered him with a blanket.

“I’m thirsty,” he said. “Please give me some water.” She opened a skin of milk, gave him a drink, and covered him up.

“Stand in the doorway of the tent,” he told her. “If someone comes by and asks you, ‘Is anyone in there?’ say ‘No.’ ”

But Jael, Heber’s wife, picked up a tent peg and a hammer and went quietly to him while he lay fast asleep, exhausted. She drove the peg through his temple into the ground, and he died.

Judges 5:24-27 relates the same event, but as poetry:

Most blessed of women be Jael,
the wife of Heber the Kenite,
most blessed of tent-dwelling women.
He asked for water, and she gave him milk;
in a bowl fit for nobles she brought him curdled milk.
Her hand reached for the tent peg,
her right hand for the workman’s hammer.
She struck Sisera, she crushed his head,
she shattered and pierced his temple.
At her feet he sank,
he fell; there he lay.
At her feet he sank, he fell;
where he sank, there he fell—dead.

Hebrew poetry is dependent on what is called parallelism—the rhyming of ideas rather than the rhyming of sounds, and thus it seems repetitious to modern western readers. What we would express in a single concept, perhaps with some added adjectives or adverbs, gets stated twice in slightly different words. More obviously, the death of Sisera is described much more violently, with Jael as violent, and overpowering him in an epic battle. The point of the poetry is to suggest the emotions of the event, rather to to give a blow by blow description of how the event occurred. It gives us insight into how Jael felt about what she did, and how the Israelites felt about it: how they saw it as a triumph over their humiliated opponent. Poetry makes more use of metaphor and allegory, the painting of pictures with words. One can get into a lot of trouble trying to understand poetry literalistically.

What is interesting to consider when you see the difference in poetry versus narrative is when it comes time to read the prophets of the Old Testament. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the 12 minor prophets—most of what they write, most of the “word of the Lord” is presented as poetry. Don’t read the prophets (or Psalms, or Proverbs) then the same way you’d read the narratives of 1 and 2 Chronicles; don’t expect them to give you the same sort of information.

Thus, be very careful how you understand what is going on. The same with the Psalms, Song of Solomon and the wisdom literature, such as Proverbs and Ecclesiastes: recognize that you’re dealing with poetry. Be careful to allow for unusual idioms and twists. For instance, the prophets will occasionally talk about “adultery” and how Israel or Judah are “adulterous.” The prophets are not talking about the behavior of married adults in ancient Palestine. Rather, the terms are used metaphorically to describe how unfaithful to God the Israelites have become. Instead of worshiping Yahweh exclusively, they’ve run off and started worshiping other gods as well, while still coming back to the Temple and going through the rituals as if nothing is wrong. “Adultery” is a perfect picture of the religious situation in Israel and Judah.

Send to Kindle

In reading the Bible, as with reading anything, context is important. I don’t like to rain on people’s parades, but it disturbs me sometimes when I see people take a comforting passage and apply it to themselves or others as some sort of universal promise, but completely ignoring the actual context of the passage. Because of that, those sorts of verses don’t do a whole lot for me, not anymore. For instance, this passage from Jeremiah is a favorite:

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. (Jeremiah 29:11)

While this passage is rarely invoked:

I will punish you as your deeds deserve,
declares the Lord.
I will kindle a fire in your forests
that will consume everything around you. (Jeremiah 21:14)

But the context of both is the same: God’s judgment on Judah at the hands of the Babylonians.

And of course it is easy to see why: Jeremiah 29:11 promises comfort and the idea that God has only good things in store for us. However, in context, the passage was given to the people of Israel as they were being carted off to captivity, assuring them that God would take care of them and bring them back. It is in the context of the contract God has with Israel, which promises punishment for disobedience because they are his people—and that they are his people, regardless of their actions.

Certainly it is in keeping with such New Testament passages as Romans 8:28:

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

But even that is not a blanket promise that everything will be peaches and cream for us here. One should consider such passages as Hebrews 11:35-40:

There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were put to death by stoning; they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated—the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground.

These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.

The promises of God are long term in both the passage in Jeremiah 29:11 and the one in Romans 8:28. We will prosper not because God will grant us jobs, houses, health and comfort here on Earth. Even if we have such things, it is certain that someday we will lose them all: we will grow old, we will grow sick, and we will die. The reason we will prosper is because we are part of God’s family and will live with him forever. It is in the kingdom—both the kingdom we experience now within us (Luke 17:20-21)—as well as in the future kingdom that prosperity is ours. Our hope is in God, not in now. Our comfort is in the fact that God is with us always, no matter what we face. We are never alone. And certainly it is the case that God has our best interests in mind. He loves us, and that’s what love is all about. So in that way, the passages in Jeremiah make sense as comfort: that God’s actions are always for our best.

“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. (Matthew 7:9-12)

Send to Kindle