Golgotha and Calvaria

I missed another Ash Wednesday service. Unfortunately, I was traveling for work this past Wednesday and didn’t take the time out to find a church in San Francisco and go consecrate these days. Nonetheless, I pray that they will be for me and for you as much a preparation as Advent is each year.

Recently on VerseNotes

How the Books of the Bible Got Their Names

Last time, I said I was about halfway through a post about the names of the books of the Bible. This week, I’m… still about halfway through, but it’s posted to the website now and you can read it! That’s progress, right? I’ll keep moving on it as soon as I can.

Since you’re being so patient, I’ll include a graphic I’ve built as part of my reading that isn’t on the website yet:

Delight in the Details

An unnamed man of God warned King Amaziah of Judah that God was not with him in his upcoming war with Edom, More specifically, Amaziah had raised an army of 300,000 Judeans and hired 100,000 more men from Israel. The man of God says that any army including men of Israel would be defeated regardless of the enemy.

Amaziah, in a stunning and rare display of trust in God, actually sends the Israelite mercenaries back!

The story doesn’t end there, but it involves another very minor prophet, so we’ll leave it for now.

Et Cetera

Things I learned in my reading this week, in no particular order.

Honey was forbidden as part of food offerings

Leaven shows up significantly in the Old and New Testaments, and honey does too, but usually in the Psalms 19:10 sense of being desirable. However, in Leviticus 2:11, God forbids honey as well. I found a bunch of possible reasons, from setting Israel apart to the fact that honey ferments, that probably make a better post than newsletter snippet.

“Eagle owls” or “ostriches” are “daughters of the wasteland”

In Leviticus 11:16, we learn some of the various unclean birds. The NET translates the first bird “eagle owls”, while ESV translates it “ostriches.” In any case, the Hebrew is actually “daughters of the wasteland,” which is more fun than either bird.

The name Calvary comes from the name Golgotha

Maybe everybody but me knew this already. We read in Luke 23:33 that Jesus is crucified at “the place called ‘the skull’”, known as Golgotha. Well, Golgotha was the Aramaic name. The Greek name, which also means “the skull”, is Kranion. The Latin name, which also means “the skull”, is Calvaria, from which it’s a short hop, skip, and jump to Calvary.