Tag Archives: Mesopotamia

Ancient and Irrevocable

August 22, 2025 Tom Vander Well Leave a comment

“From the rocky peaks I see them,
    from the heights I view them.
I see a people who live apart
    and do not consider themselves one of the nations.
Who can count the dust of Jacob
    or number even a fourth of Israel?
Let me die the death of the righteous,
    and may my final end be like theirs!”
Numbers 23:9-10 (NIV)

The other day I was flipping through the channels and happened up on some kind of dating game in which the young men and women who were “in play” where identified on their name tags by their astrological signs. It took me all of a few seconds to realize that astrology played a role in determining the outcome of which young people would end up as couples. So funny to think how ancient belief systems still resonate in our modern world.

In ancient Mesopotamia, where our chapter-a-day trek finds the ancient Hebrews on the road through the wilderness, “seers” or “diviners” like Balaam were common. Every king had seers at his side to speak for the gods in “oracles.” It was believed that a seer could spiritually influence the gods and therefore the earthly outcome of battles and circumstances. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, Balaam was a popular seer for hire, and he’s been hired at great cost to curse the Hebrews for Balak, the king of Moab.

Instead of cursing the Hebrews, God demands that Balaam offer a blessing, which Balaam subsequently does. Balak demands a prophetic mulligan, dropping his religious ball in a different location hoping for a better outcome. Again, Balaam offers a blessing rather than a curse.

A couple of thoughts on Balaam’s first two “oracles” or messages in today’s chapter:

First, “I see a people who live apart and do not consider themselves one of the nations” speaks back to what God has been telling the people through Moses from the very beginning. They are going to be different. They are game changers. The priestly guidebook of Leviticus spoke of being a people unlike any other people, showing the world who God is and how God and His people operate differently.

Next, Balaam says, “Who can count the dust of Jacob or number even a fourth of Israel?” As Balak and Balaam view the Hebrew camp, it is so vast they can’t see it all. This echoes God’s promise to the childless Abraham and Sarah:

“I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.”

These wandering tribes are the literal fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham.

Moving on, Balaam finishes his first oracle by saying something curious: “Let me die the death of the righteous, and may my final end be like theirs!” The wealthy and famous guru for hire wants the eternal blessing God has graciously bestowed on the Hebrew people, but he doesn’t want to live the life of daily obedience and fidelity God has required of His people in Leviticus. It reminds me of many people I observe today who want little or nothing to do with living for God but they certainly want to go to heaven when they die.

Finally, in Balaam’s second oracle, he states “God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind.” God is in the midst of fulfilling His promise to Abraham. He’s authoring a Great Story and He isn’t changing His mind. Even a non-Jewish Gentile seer is left completely impotent in his own divination. He’s been hired to curse, but instead he is forced to bless.

In the quiet this morning, my heart and mind flits back to the astrological dating game and the reality that the ancient is very much present in our every day world. Thousands of years later, the Hebrew people and the nation of Israel find themselves in the same land, surrounded on all sides by enemies perpetually cursing them and hell bent on their annihilation. Over the past two years, the rise of global antisemitism has modern day seers spewing oracles and curses against the descendants of the very same people in the very same land. God continues to author the same Great Story. I just happen to be in a very different chapter.

I want to be a part of God’s irrevocable blessing and promise that even Balaam acknowledged in his oracle “cannot be changed.”

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

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Chapter-a-Day

God in (and Out of) a Box

July 29, 2022 Tom Vander Well 1 Comment

…the following morning when [the Philistines] rose, there was [their god] Dagon, fallen on his face on the ground before the ark of the Lord! His head and hands had been broken off and were lying on the threshold; only his body remained. That is why to this day neither the priests of Dagon nor any others who enter Dagon’s temple at Ashdod step on the threshold.
1 Samuel 5:4-5 (NIV)

For many years, I’ve had an idea for a book about the things the contemporary church continues to get wrong. If I ever do write this book, one of the chapters would be about church buildings themselves. From an early age, I was taught to treat a church building as a sacred space. The church building was and sometimes is, referred to as God’s house or the house of God.

In yesterday’s post/podcast I spoke of treating God like a good luck charm. I like to think of our perception of church buildings as God’s House as the notion of “God in a box.”

The problem with believing the church building is “God’s house” is, of course, that Jesus was very clear that He was changing the paradigm. In His conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus addressed her question about the “right” place to worship God by saying, “…believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem...a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.“

Jesus doubled down on this when He and the disciples were leaving the Temple in Jerusalem. His disciples commented on the magnificent Temple and Jesus replied that it was all going to be reduced to rubble, and it was just 40 years later.

Jesus’ taught that the “church” was not bricks and mortar but flesh and blood. When the Jesus Movement was changing the known world in the first two centuries, it had no churches or temples, no basilicas or cathedrals. The “church” was millions of followers who met, almost clandestinely, in people’s homes. It was only when the church became the Holy Roman Empire that the institution decided that God needed opulent cathedrals. The motivation wasn’t divine. It’s what human institutions do to centralize power and control masses of people. Jesus’ successful paradigm was that of Spirit-filled people loving, serving, and sharing in every home, neighborhood, and business. God was released from a box and carried by flesh-and-blood “temples” everywhere in the world. Jesus was wherever His followers happened to be. In Jesus’ paradigm “sacred space” was now the coffee shop, the office, the home, the pub, the park; It was wherever a believer, filled with Spirit and Truth was physically present in the moment. This is what Jesus meant when He said, “Wherever two or three of you are together, I’m there, too.”

The Holy Roman Empire put God back in a box. Then they made sure that only an institutionally educated and approved class of elites were qualified to be God’s representatives. Way too many people still believe that God is confined in the building on the corner and that only educated men in robes represent Him.

Today’s chapter is also about “God in a box.” The Ark of the Covenant was literally a box that represented God’s presence among the Hebrew people. The Hebrews reduced the notion of God’s holy presence to a good luck charm that would secure victory. They were defeated and the box was taken by the Philistines who put the Ark in the sacred space of their patron god, Dagon, underneath Dagon’s statue. Mesopotamian peoples routinely saw battles as not just contests between peoples, but contests between deities. The Hebrews’ God was now subject to Dagon.

But, God will never be contained inside a box of human design. The statue of Dagon fell, its head and hands breaking off. This was significant because heads, hands, and limbs were often cut-off and brought home by victorious armies as proof of victory and as a way of tallying up the body count. It was an omen the Philistines would have instantly understood. There was also a plague of tumors that broke out among the Philistines, which is ironically the outcome God warned His own people about in Deuteronomy 28, should they stray from His ways.

In the quiet this morning, I’m reminded that if I truly believe what Jesus taught, then my home office where I’m writing/recording these words is sacred space because God’s Spirit indwells me. I take Him with me everywhere I go today. God’s temple isn’t a building, it’s my body, and that should change my perspective on everything in my daily life.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.