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.