Apologies folks (especially to Paul G. who wrote them), I was so distracted by having a physical service last night and confused by today being a Bank Holiday, that I forget to schedule these for this morning!
1 Samuel 14.4
On each side of the pass that Jonathan intended to cross to reach the Philistine outpost was a cliff; one was called Bozez and the other Seneh. 5 One cliff stood to the north towards Michmash, the other to the south towards Geba.
Why does the writer tell us so many details of things which are of no real consequence – the names of the two cliffs in verse 4, ⸻ or the fact that it was a pomegranate tree that Saul rested under in verse 2? The Bible often does this – think for example of the description of the ship on which Luke and Paul sailed to Rome: it was an Alexandrian ship and its figurehead was of Castor and Pollux (Acts 28.11) – why on earth are those details significant? – or the long list of names at the beginning of 1 Chronicles, most of whom play no active role in the story. Surely these apparently irrelevant details remind us that the story the Bible tells concerns real people, real events, real locations.
Thank-you Lord that our relationship with you depends on a real man who lived a real life two thousand years ago in a real country at the far end of the Mediterranean, who died a real death, and who then rose again to real new life, and whose real return we await.
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