Tabitha

“This is the epitome of the stories that seem far too ugly to be in the Bible. This is not trickery of treachery at its most abysmal. It should be said, first of all, that the Hebrew Bible does not romanticize the history of the people of create it, to whom it is addressed, and who have preserved it faithfully over millennia. It is as if America

“For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs." (George Eliot, Middlemarch)

“If Jacob had been a little less envious, if Esau had been a little less boorish, this epochal turn of things, this wholly unimpressive moment, would never have entered sacred history. This is an instance of the fact that the covenant is not contingent upon human virtue, even human intention. It is sustained by the will of God, which is so strong

Who are our debtors, literal or figurative, and what do they owe us? Most of us could probably come up with a list. The verse makes us God’s debtors. What do we owe Him? Everything. More than we can conceive of. But a debt is an obligation. The prophets make it clear that sacrifice does not satisfy the Lord’s requirement of us. Doing justice and

“But rationalizing what God does involves the risk of losing its difficulty and otherness to human expectations. His great forgiveness of the first criminal offends people’s sense of justice, unless they can find a way to read vengefulness into the tale. We are instead to learn that mercy is nearer than justice to Godliness, and that mercy can