Tuesday, August 01, 2006

 

Israel and Whirling Dust

Associated Press reports a stunning find of ancient Biblical texts in an Ireland bog:

DUBLIN, Ireland - Irish archaeologists Tuesday heralded the discovery of an ancient book of psalms by a construction worker who spotted something while driving the shovel of his backhoe into a bog.

(snip)

"This is really a miracle find," said Pat Wallace, director of the National Museum of Ireland, which has the book stored in refrigeration and facing years of painstaking analysis before being put on public display.

"There's two sets of odds that make this discovery really way out. First of all, it's unlikely that something this fragile could survive buried in a bog at all, and then for it to be unearthed and spotted before it was destroyed is incalculably more amazing."

He said an engineer was digging up bogland last week to create commercial potting soil somewhere in Ireland's midlands when, "just beyond the bucket of his bulldozer, he spotted something."

(snip)

The book was found open to a page describing, in Latin script, Psalm 83, in which God hears complaints of other nations' attempts to wipe out the name of Israel.

Okay, for those of you who wouldn’t otherwise research the source, Psalm 83, New King James (courtesy of BibleGateway.com):

 1 Do not keep silent, O God!
         Do not hold Your peace,
         And do not be still, O God!
 2 For behold, Your enemies make a tumult;
         And those who hate You have lifted up their head.
 3 They have taken crafty counsel against Your people,
         And consulted together against Your sheltered ones.
 4 They have said, “Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation,
         That the name of Israel may be remembered no more.”
 5 For they have consulted together with one consent;
         They form a confederacy against You:
 6 The tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites;
         Moab and the Hagrites;
 7 Gebal, Ammon, and Amalek;
         Philistia with the inhabitants of Tyre;
 8 Assyria also has joined with them;
         They have helped the children of Lot.  Selah  

 9 Deal with them as with Midian,
         As with Sisera,
         As with Jabin at the Brook Kishon,
 10 Who perished at En Dor,
         Who became as refuse on the earth.
 11 Make their nobles like Oreb and like Zeeb,
         Yes, all their princes like Zebah and Zalmunna,
 12 Who said, “Let us take for ourselves
         The pastures of God for a possession.”
 13 O my God, make them like the whirling dust,
         Like the chaff before the wind!
 14 As the fire burns the woods,
         And as the flame sets the mountains on fire,
 15 So pursue them with Your tempest,
         And frighten them with Your storm.
 16 Fill their faces with shame,
         That they may seek Your name, O LORD.
 17 Let them be confounded and dismayed forever;
         Yes, let them be put to shame and perish,
 18 That they may know that You, whose name alone is the LORD,
         Are the Most High over all the earth.

I just want to point out for those not familiar, the place names and peoples referred to in verses 6-8 bear historical connection to a great many of Israel’s current enemies.

Hezbollah enjoys first class and insider access to Washington Post columnists (well, at least one). But if informed commentary has it right, that Iran’s proxies desperate, then it may well be that Hezbollah indeed find themselves “like the whirling dust, like the chaff before the wind.”

(Via Memeorandum)






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