“The stars fought”?
Daily Scripture
Judges 5:3, 19-21, Psalm 89:11-14
Judges 5
3 Hear, kings!
Listen, rulers!
I, to the LORD,
I will sing.
I will make music to the LORD,
Israel’s God.
19 Kings came and made war;
the kings of Canaan fought
at Taanach by Megiddo’s waters,
but they captured no spoils of silver.
20 The stars fought from the sky;
from their orbits they fought against Sisera.
21 The Kishon River swept them away;
the advancing river, the Kishon River.
March on, my life, with might!
Psalm 89
11 Heaven is yours! The earth too!
The world and all that fills it—
you made all of it! North and south—you created them!
12 The mountains Tabor and Hermon
shout praises to your name.
13 You have a powerful arm;
your hand is strong;
your strong hand is raised high!
14 Your throne is built on righteousness and justice;
loyal love and faithfulness stand in front of you.
Daily Reflection & Prayer
“The ‘heavenly hosts’ made famous by English translations of the Bible have two distinct meanings: one is a reference to the stars; the other to God’s celestial armies, presumably of angels.” * Keep in mind: in Biblical times there were no telescopes, and people didn’t think of stars at all in the way we do. One way ancient Hebrews thought of the vast number of stars they saw in the night skies was as mysterious heavenly beings who served God.
- Judges 5:20 was from a prophet named Deborah’s poetic celebration of a victory over Sisera, a foreign general who had oppressed the Israelites. The poem rejoiced that heavy rain, probably a flood, made Sisera’s chariots ineffective against the Israelites. Deborah’s song implied poetically that the stars sent the rain. But unlike many pagan nations, she didn’t worship the stars. They served God: “to the LORD I will sing” (Judges 5:3). Do you think God can, at times, work through what we might call “natural” events? *
- Psalm 89, like many others, saw the “natural world,” including major mountains, joining in praise to God. But they didn’t just praise beauty or majesty, but “righteousness and justice” as guiding God’s divine reign. “The pair of words summarizes the content of God’s will for the world (see Psalms 5:8; 9:4; 72:1-4; 82:3; 96:13; 98:9; 97:2). See Psalm 36:5-6, where they are mentioned with ‘loyal love and faithfulness.’” ** Are you thankful that the Creator’s will is for “righteousness and justice”?
Prayer
Creator God, today we know that you did not just make a lovely world for us to live in. You created a vast universe, with awesome beauty and profound mysteries. Help me rejoice in your amazing creativity! Amen.
GPS Insights
Kaitlin Green
Kaitlin Green is a returning intern this summer at Resurrection, working in Public Relations. She is a junior at the University of Missouri-Columbia, studying Journalism with an emphasis in Social and Audience Strategy and minoring in English. When she's not cheering on the Tigers as a Golden Girl dancer or hanging out with her Alpha Delta Pi sorority sisters, she loves to spend her time reading, taste-testing KC coffee shops, and finding new TV shows to watch from start-to-finish with her parents.
This past March, I got the opportunity to travel to Ireland as a member of the Golden Girls dance team with the University of Missouri’s marching band to perform in the Dublin St. Patrick’s Day Parade. The day after the parade, we traveled to Ireland’s west coast to visit the Cliffs of Moher. If you Google photos of the Cliffs, you’ll be met with stunning images of sheer, vertical drops from the countryside into the ocean, waves lapping up against the rocks below and a backdrop of baby blue skies and wispy clouds. One might look at these images and be reminded of God’s gentle love.
Of course, this was not the version of the Cliffs that I saw. My visit consisted of 30 mph winds and torrential downpour, leaving me chilled to the bone—and, to top it all off, I didn’t bring a jacket with a hood. Rather than be met with a pleasant and idyllic day, I left with pants soaked through, cheeks red from wind burn and pelting rain, and hair that looked like I had just stepped out of the shower. There was nothing gentle about that visit, and it certainly wasn’t what I had anticipated.
But looking back on that day, what I remember most is being utterly awestruck by the world that God created—not a gentle world, but a powerful world. I have to imagine that standing on the edge of the world and facing those winds is akin to standing in front of the “powerful arm” and “strong hand” of God described in Psalm 89:13. Everything about the Cliffs of Moher reminds me that God is a builder who decided that if He were going to create a world and a universe, then they would be a reflection of God and God’s powers.
The world God created isn’t always gentle, and we see that all the time—from hurricanes and tornadoes, droughts and fires, nature often isn’t kind. However, as today’s Scripture reminds us, we must praise the “righteousness and justice” of God’s power and creation, simply because we get to experience a world and a universe God deemed fit for us to exist in. Even if I may not comprehend this world and its forces, I am grateful to witness a visual reminder of God’s love for us each and every day, and for that I’ll rejoice!
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Scripture quotations are taken from The Common English Bible ©2011. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
References
* Use care—Judges 5 was not the Bible’s final word about violence. “The Lord is here presented as the divine warrior who uses stars and flash floods to defeat Israel’s enemies. Using elements of nature as divine weapons is common in some of the divine warrior traditions in the OT (e.g., Psalm 18:12-19; Psalm 68:7-10). Such violent language stands in tension with other biblical perspectives (e.g., Leviticus 19:34; Isaiah 2:1-11; Matthew 5:38-48).” Brad E. Kelle, study note on Judges 5:20 in The CEB Study Bible. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2013, p. 378 OT.
** J. Clinton McCann, Jr., study note on Psalm 89:14 in the CEB Study Bible. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2013, p. 939 OT.
