//This is a verse that troubles a lot of people. Will your little boy be condemned to everlasting hellfire because of a few “goddamns?”

No. First, get it out of your head that “eternal sin” means hellfire. A more precise interpretation of the passage is that your cussin’ son is sinning against the new age of God’s rule; he is living as if Jesus had never come. But even this doesn’t fit the flavor of the verse.

If you’re wondering what it really means to blaspheme against the Holy Spirit, this passage in Mark contains an example. Those watching Jesus heal others were saying that Jesus was using the power of Satan to cast out demons. Jesus warned them about blasphemy “because they said, He hath an unclean spirit.”

Picture the scene. Jesus is waving his arms, shouting at demons to chase them away, embarrassing his family and friends with his antics. The people mock him, laughing that he looks like he’s demon-possessed himself. Worse than those he’s curing! The prince of demons himself has hold of him! Ha!

So Jesus says don’t you know you’re laughing at the Holy Spirit? Don’t you realize that we’ve entered the age of abundant life, when the Spirit is to come back to earth? You are making fun of God’s new age! You are stuck in the past, in danger of never understanding, never entering into the life God has planned for you!”

//These are the words of Job, written … well, we don’t know when. There are precious few clues in the book of Job about its authorship and dating. Scholars generally conclude the book of Job was written between the third and fifth centuries BCE, and continue to argue about where it came from and how the story became part of Hebrew literature.

One possible clue to the dating of Job is today’s verse. It sounds like it was inspired by the famous Behistun Inscription, authored by Darius the Great toward the end of the sixth century BCE, when it was carved in a limestone cliff face. It’s a giant autobiography of Darius, including a description of his military victories, written using lead and iron pins. The inscription measures 15 by 25 meters, and sits about 100 meters up the cliff.

Does Job dream of his own story being preserved in like manner? Graven in rock with lead and iron? Does this give evidence, at the very least, that the book of Job postdates this famous rock inscription?

//According to the Babylonian Chronicles, Nebuchadnezzar reigned from 605-562 BCE, and he began a siege of Jerusalem in 599 BCE (it eventually fell in 597 BCE). About King Jehoiakim, we read this in the Hebrew Chronicles:

Jehoiakim was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem eleven years. He did evil in the eyes of the LORD his God. Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon attacked him and bound him with bronze shackles to take him to Babylon. –2 Chronicles 36:5-6

Thus, Jehoiakim reigned from perhaps 608 to 597 BCE. His third year would be 606 BCE. Of course, at that time, Nebuchadnezzar was not yet king, and was several years away from besieging Jerusalem. So, the author of Daniel appears to be in error.

Here’s my question: If Daniel was the last of the Hebrew scriptures written, at about 165 BCE as most Bible scholars surmise, how could he have made so obvious an error? Jehoiakim reigned eleven years, not three. Did he not bother to check his research in the Chronicles?

Or was Daniel written much earlier, before the Chronicles, as some linguists insist?

//In Judges chapter four, a female warrior named Deborah predicts that an enemy general named Sisera will die by the hand of a woman. Perhaps she imagines that she, herself, will slay Sisera; we don’t know.

Her prediction comes true. A few verses later a woman named Jael lures Sisera into a tent with her, covers him with a rug and gives him some milk. When he falls asleep, she quietly drives a tent peg through his temple.

“Most blessed of women be Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, most blessed of tent-dwelling women. He asked for water, and she gave him milk; in a bowl fit for nobles she brought him curdled milk. Her hand reached for the tent peg, her right hand for the workman’s hammer. She struck Sisera, she crushed his head, she shattered and pierced his temple. At her feet he sank, he fell; there he lay. At her feet he sank, he fell; where he sank, there he fell–dead.” –Judges 5:26-27

While the peg is still colored with blood, the legend is already growing. In Deborah’s rendition, Jael taunts Sisera with curdled milk before striking his head with a hammer, and he falls down at her feet, dead. Perhaps that is the version Deborah was told?

Deborah then wraps up the victory hymn by mocking the mother of Sisera, who she imagines peering through a window waiting for her son to arrive back from battle. Yikes! Guys, there’s a lesson, here … don’t anger the women.