Also, I’ve read a lot recently on the pros and cons of health care reform, and I haven’t seen any arguments as sincere and moving as yours. I wish this posting was required reading for anyone who supports a profit-driven and under-regulated insurance system.

Not even sure if you remember me, but I’m sorry to hear about Carol. However, it seems evident that God’s hand of provision is amongst you and your family. I’ll be praying for you and your family.

Glad to have your perspective on this issue. I will be praying for healing over Carol, and may God bring himself greater glory through your family’s faithfulness.

What does then appear in the passage? Well, there _is_ the sense that any victories have been long planned and long promised. They are not inherently dependent on obedience or fervent prayer or abundant sacrifices or anything like that. That would make a great sermon application, but tends to create some issues with other texts. Further, in performing this reading, is this logical, rational reading a faithful method of exegesis? Well, that’s a bigger question that might go beyond the scope of a post… then you bring up the rational demands of the idea that all the people will be at a banquet, though some are being vanquished and killed. The question of how to incorporate all people being blessed in a passage about their destruction – they seem to be blessed through the triumph of Israel and subjugation to Israel… that is, they fit into God’s plan finally. Well, that should remind us how modernist philosophy and post modern ethics do not provide a framework in which the scriptures can be interpreted as they would have been at the time of their writing, or their interpretation by Christ, or in fact, their interpretations over the millennia intervening.

The ultimate question of our hermeneutic actually has a very substantial impact on our daily lives, as a Christian. That should make us very nervous when we face the text with something at stake.

but the situation is more complex than this, since the book of ruth indicates a surprisingly close relationship between israel and moab – some think that even king david was partially moabite! even in this psalm, although it seems to exult in the destruction of foreigners, it says in verse 6 that God prepares a banquet for all people – so it shouldn’t be read simply as a victory song over moab because there is more to it than that.

in the end, this psalm follows a very similar idea as isaiah 22, that when God destroys something (whether it is jerusalem or moab), it is a work of God, planned far in advance, for the good of both Israel and foreign nations. and that is the point i was trying to make, to see God’s destructive actions as ultimately being constructive ones – i apologize if i wandered too far from the context in making that point!