Tag: curse

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Discussions Torah

Deuteronomy 11:26–16:17: Learning to live a blessed life

Decisions (Photo by FreeImages.com/Paul de Bruin)

Blessing and cursing are very important Biblical principles. There are two ways of life, either under God’s blessing or under His curse. Emphasized in the Torah reading כי רְאֵה Re’eh (“see,” Deuteronomy 11:26–16:17) is we want to live under His blessing.

We live under God’s blessing when we read and apply Torah. When we screw up, we still apply Torah to deal with our screwups. We are under God’s curse when we refuse to follow Torah. We all have experienced how bad life is when we refuse to obey God and walk in Torah. God can’t bless us when we are walking in sin. He can only bless obedience. He teaches us like we teach our own children.

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Discussions Torah

Numbers 22:1-25:9: God sent emissaries to the Gentiles too

Cartoon of Balaam and the King of Moab by Jack Foster of MrBibleHead.blogspot.com via Creative Commons License.

The prophet Bilam (Balaam) is not an isolated individual, an anomaly in Scripture. He was not the first or last emissary to the Gentiles. God did not leave them without guidance. Bilam is a foreshadowing of the ministry of Saul of Tarsus, aka the apostle Paul, whose experience on the road to Damascus echoes the account in the Torah reading בָּלָק Balak of Bilam’s experience with a “recalcitrant” she-donkey.

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Discussions Prophets and Writings

1st Kings 9: Prophecy of the cursed blessing of Israel, the Temple

Daniel Agee

1st Kings 9 and its parallel in 2nd Chronicles 8 read like reports on building projects, yet God is communicating something extremely important that would ring true over thousands of years to our day: Something that is a great blessing — Israel and the Temple — could become a curse, yet something cursed can become a blessing.

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Discussions Torah

Genesis 9: God blesses Noach and his sons; Noach curses Canaan

Studies in Torah

At first, it’s puzzling why Noach cursed Cana’an for something his father, Ham, did. Is this a generational curse, with the sins of the father being meted out to future generations? Is something else going on here? The answer seems to be in the meaning of the Hebrew words for curse and Cana’an.

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Discussions Torah

Genesis 2:17-24: A helper for Adam

Richard Agee

What kind of woman was Eve? She was just as smart as Adam. God says through Paul that Adam was the one who sinned, but it was Eve who was deceived. She was created to be Adam’s opposite. She was created to be an intelligent, hard-working woman.

Adam and Eve made a terrible mistake. Was Eve’s mistake greater than Adam’s? No, Adam’s mistake was greater than hers. For those who have more knowledge, when they sin, they will be “beaten with many stripes.”

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Discussions Torah

Deuteronomy 27-28: Blessings and Curses before entering the Land

These two chapters are very heavy and they record far more curses than blessings. The previous chapters we covered tell us how God expects to treat one another and today’s chapters show us how God will either reward or punish the people depending on how well they put His words into practice.

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Discussions Torah Trumpets

Numbers 10-11: Two silver trumpets; curse of craving quail; distributing the Spirit from Moshe

In chapter 10, use of two silver trumpets is explained, such as calling together the people to celebrate the New Moon and other appointed times. In chapter 11, the people of Israel call out for more than meat and manna, and God curses the cravers with copious quail followed by a plague.