The morning Manna
will be provided at 6am. Thanks.
Studying Psalms
in the SSnet.org series Lesson 8, may the Holy Spirit be the speaker to
your heart.
The Topic today
is: “Psalm 1 and Hosea, Jeremiah, Ezechiel and Wisdom of Amenope for Sabbath
School Lesson on the Psalms”.
The Opening Hymn
will be 229 "Spirit of the Living God."
The Sabbath School
Quarterly, downloadable from SSnet.org in the Teacher's Edition is on pages until
page 103-104
The SSnet.org site
allows anyone, anywhere to read the lesson in their own language. Choose your
own language to see God speaking also to your heart.
Why do you not
click on this now?
https://www.adultbiblestudyguide.org/pdf.php?file=2024:1Q:TE:PDFs:ETQ124_08.pdf
---Psalms 1, 112 and 128 are read for this
day. ---The righteous, says Psalm 1:3 will be as
a tree planted by streams of water. ---They yield their fruits. ---The leaves do not wither. ---The lessons are becoming very enjoyable.
Eschatology is featured in appropriately. It is real Adventism. Ellen White in The Great Controversy 675. ---This metaphor about the righteous can
also be found in Jeremiah 17:7-8 and Ezechiel 47:12. ---The source of yielding fruit timely is to
abide in the presence of God in His sanctuary. ---It secures an unbroken and uninterrupted
loving relationship. ---The wicked on the other hand, is in
trouble. ---The righteous has roots and eternal life.
---This metaphor used in Psalms, then later
by Jeremiah and the same time by Ezechiel, is actually also used in Hosea 14:3.
---Years ago I was living in Japan and in my
free time I wrote a serious academic/devotional commentary on Hosea. ---Source: https://www.academia.edu/38041770/Hosea_Commentary_and_Versions_Van_Wyk_1
around pp. 832-833 is relevant for the tree metaphor. ---I studied Egyptian at University so I
compared the tree metaphor in the Bible with that found in the Wisdom
literature of Amenemope. ---Scholars are trying to implicate that the
wisdom passages in Proverbs 22-24 is derived from this wisdom literature of
Amenemope but Proverbs antedate this literature in Egypt to c. 940 BCE which is approximately
300 years. ---Furthermore, there are no other texts in Late,
Middle or Old Egyptian that could substantiate the exact tradition as it is
found in Amenemope in order to claim Egyptian originality over this literature.
Am I clear? --- In this verse Hosea imagine a big tree
so big that inhabitants could dwell in its shade and revive the corn and grow
as the vine with a nice smell similar to that in the
Lebanon. ---In Daniel 4:8 in the dream
Nebuchadnezzar had nearly 130 years later, that big tree supplied the whole
world with food. ---This tree of Nebuchadnezzar had a shade for all created animals "under its shade
were all created animals". \ ---Since Nebuchadnezzar was not righteous the dew of heaven (Daniel 4:12) fell on him
and he had to eat with the animals. ---In Hosea 14:6 the Lord will be as dew to the righteous. ---The righteous of Psalm 1 is planted "upon streams
of waters" . ---In the Wisdom Literature of Amenemope
dating to ca. 650 BCE one can find a similar image of the wise as a tree
planted near waters. ---There are differences though since the
water supply system in Egypt differs from that in Palestine. ---In lines 96-101 and lines 102-109 of the
Wisdom literature of Amenemope are two units that portrays the life and
end-result of
the bad and good in a well known old ancient Near Eastern metaphor of
the fruit-bearing tree. ---Moses already used this metaphor
pertaining to the wicked in Job 21:18 referring to the agricultural phenomenon
of chaff in the wind. ---The classical pre-text for the 650 BC
text of Amenemope is Psalm 1. ---Notice how Psalm 1 is the shorter more complicated
of the two parallels implying seniority over Amenemope. ---Psalm 1:3 describes the righteous as a
tree by the waters that bears fruit in its season while the wicked is not
described in elaboration of the metaphor explicitly. Implicitly, the intention
of the words: 1:4 not so with the wicked ---Amenemope starts off with the
metaphor pertaining to the hot-tempered man but described in equal parallelism
the Ger Maa as the exemplary with a positive side of the same metaphor. ---Whereas the tree in Psalm 1 is planted
next to the streams of water for the righteous, here in Amenemope the noisy hot headed
man pɜ-šmm is planted in the courtyard of the house of the god. --- The Ger Maa is like a large leafy
tree planted not in the courtyard but in shining ground or m-thnt (line
103). ---The Ger Maā has his place before the lord
(owner). ---His fruit is sweet, his shadow is
pleasant. ---At its end it is carried into the parks
of the god. The god is not explicit as elsewhere but an ideogram added inside (m-mnw). --- It appears for me that what existed in
the consonantal text or our Hebrew Bible as separate pieces of literature in
the wisdom genre of the Hebrew tradition is pieced together as a mosaic in the
Egyptian literature under discussion almost as if the Egyptian scribe in 650 BC
was well versed in Hebrew Wisdom literature of not only the book of Proverbs
but also of Psalm 1. ---How does this work? Hebrews were in exile
since 723 BC and many ran to Egypt and lived there. Their second generation
kids learned Egyptian and worked in the government and educations systems of
the Egyptians. ---They brought with them a baggage of their
own childhood education in Hebrew from mom, and this rubbed off in the Wisdom
literature of Amenemope. Sorry SBL-ites. ---The Ger Maā is like
a large leafy tree that is planted in shining ground. ---The wisdom analogy of this comparison is
in Psalm 1:3 where the tree is planted by living waters. ---The topography and geomorphological
differences between Egypt and Israel demanded a different ideal image for the
former. ---The Utopia thought-pattern of the author
is moulded by the needs and desires of the audience. ---Each author lives under different
circumstances. ---The composer of Psalm 1 and the scribe of
Amenemope lives under two different settings. ---In Egypt, trees are planted in shining
grounds. Could it be that there was more water in
Palestine than in Egypt so that the wisdom thinker of Israel hoped for a certain
quality of water but the Egyptian wisdom thinker 300 years later could only
imagine a certain quality of ground. --- L. Griffith indicated: "The
teaching of Amenmophis the sonof Kanacht. Papyrus B.M. 10474," JEA 12
(1926): 191-231 at page 202 that in Egypt the pit in which a tree has been
planted in a garden is surrounded by a raised rim to retain the water. ---Psalms is the shorter metaphor with more
complicated aspects than the Egyptian later text hundreds of years later.
Psalms did not plagiarize Egyptian literature. There are scholars who claim
that. ---So Hebrew-Egyptian scribes adapted Psalm
1 to fit the milieu and audience of their country where they found themselves
in with modifications. ---In the end they are saying or implying
the same thing. ---Interesting. Correct? ---God’s word always is powerful around the
world wherever His people carry it. Public or underground, but the Bible is the
light to the nations. ---So where are you this coming Sabbath
morning? Sabbathschool near you. Is your phone out to navigate you there at
9h30? When? Check now.