May 3: Numbers 30-32, Psalm 50, Romans 11

Numbers 30-32  I wish I knew more about how the passage about women and vows has been interpreted in Judaism.  Women could make a vow to the LORD; and they would be bound to fulfill it--UNLESS their father or husband "disapproved" of the vow.  Then the woman would be let off the hook for her vow.    This provision may either be considered to be kind or it may be considered to demonstrate how men in the Hebrew world had ultimate control over women.  It was like being perpetually a child…  It makes me think, from my 21st century perspective, that women weren't even remotely equal in that time and place.

In Numbers 31, Moses receives one of his last assignments from the LORD (31:2): "Avenge the Israelites on the Midianites; afterward you shall be gathered to your people."  And we see terrible violence wreaked on the people, with women and children taken as booty along with livestock.  As we read the whole Bible, the behavior of the Israelites becomes more and more morally/ethically suspect.
As it becomes clear in the prophets that God is the one who looks with concern on those who don't normally receive justice: the widow, the orphan, and the alien, it is harder and harder to understand and countenance the acts of war that we read about in the Torah, Joshua, and (especially!) Judges.

Numbers 32 makes it clear that tribes who receive their allotment of land, that is, who conquer and subdue the peoples early on, must help the later tribes to receive their allotments, also.  No Israelite is really settled until everybody has a place.

Psalm 50  Famously, an earlier English translation (the RSV, I think…) translated v. 9 as: "I will accept no bull from your house."  During the 1960's and '70's, this became somewhat problematic among the younger generation, as "bull" was short for a more scatological term.

This is really a psalm about the attitude of the heart being essential to proper offerings of sacrifice.

Romans 11  This is the third of 3 chapters in which Paul considers the "problem" of his fellow-Jews who do not recognize Jesus as the Messiah in Paul's day.  Paul ponders this great mystery and comes to the conclusion that perhaps the (temporary) "stumbling" (11:11, 12) of the Jews has enabled the Gentiles to be grafted into the Great Olive Tree of the Kingdom of God.  And he makes a cosmically hopeful statement:  "If their [that is the Jews'] rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead!" (11:15).  God's plan is "to be merciful to all," says Paul.  And he concludes this section with the words: "O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!  how unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!" (11:33)