I feel like I’m getting a cold, so my points today will be brief.
1. Today is a Sabbath, the Feast of Trumpets, so I did a chapter from my weekly quiet time. I studied II Kings 22, which is about King Josiah of Judah. Josiah decides to repair the temple, but the priest Hilkiah discovers therein a book of the law. Josiah tears his clothes when he hears the words of the law, for he realizes that Judah has not followed it. He sends some of his officials to consult the LORD, and they go to the prophetess Huldah. Huldah says that Judah will be destroyed because of the nation’s worship of other gods, but that Josiah will die in peace.
How were people expected to know the will of God without a Torah? I mean, Josiah stumbled upon it accidentally, and he was surprised to hear the things in it. Did God hold Judah accountable for laws she did not know about?
But it wasn’t as if Judah had no light from God whatsoever. She had a temple to the God of Israel, so she knew who he was. There were prophets. Josiah felt it was possible to consult the LORD through a prophet, but he could also have done so through the priest, who had the Urim and the Thummim. Prophets told King Manasseh years before that what he was doing was wrong. King Hezekiah before him knew enough about the law of God to destroy the high places. And this was after the Torah scroll had been hidden to protect it from Ahaz’s anti-Torah rampage—or so say the rabbis.
At the same time, Manasseh could dismiss the prophets of the LORD, for there were false prophets speaking in the name of the LORD, or prophets for other religions. In short, there were competing claims for revelation, and could the will of God be clear to people in such a situation?
2. In my reading today of In the Beginning, Blocher says (if I’m understanding him correctly) that the author of Genesis 3 is taking a swipe at pagan religions of the ancient Near East, which viewed the serpent as a wise and healing being. At the same time, Blocher goes to great lengths to contend that Genesis 3 actually happened in history, using many of the fundamentalist arguments that several of us have heard (i.e., we need the Fall to be historical for redemption to be real, etc.). But can Blocher have it both ways? If Genesis 3 is a polemic, how can it be historical? Did God know that nations would honor a serpent, and so he created a serpent to be an antagonist to Adam and Eve? Or did the serpent come first, and nations then came to honor him?
3. In my reading today of Economics in One Lesson, Henry Hazlitt criticizes those who try to preserve jobs through inefficiency. Some in his day said that technology got rid of jobs. Union people tried to preserve jobs by making sure that workers stuck with the tasks they were assigned, rather than infringing on the tasks assigned to other people. They also pushed for shorter work-weeks so that there could be more workers.
Hazlitt believes that full employment can contribute to production, but he doesn’t like efforts to stifle production in the name of “full employment”. As far as he’s concerned, efficiency can create jobs. If a machine makes shirts, for example, the owner of a shirt-store may lay off those who sewed the shirts together, since a machine now does their work. But jobs are created to make the machines. The owner can expand his business and hire more workers. And, as more shirts get produced, the price of shirts comes down, and consumers can spend their money on other things, which helps the economy. Jobs are lost due to technology, but jobs are also regained.
But what if the shirts are made in China or Mexico? Does that help the American economy? Tomorrow, I plan to read Hazlitt’s thoughts on free trade.