March 8

2009,2012

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Numbers 10:1-11:23
1. The silver trumpets.

a. For assembling the people or the elders (depending upon the number of trumpets sounded)

b. Matthew Henry provides an interesting reference to solemnity which ties in with my recent reading of C.S. Lewis' discourse of Beowulf & Homer in A Preface to Paradise Lost:

Upon what occasions the trumpets were to be sounded...(4)For the solemnizing of their sacred feasts, v. 10. One of their feasts was called a memorial of the blowing of trumpets, Lev. 23:23, etc. And it should seem they were thus to grace the solemnity of all their feasts (Ps. 81:3), and their sacrifices (2 Chr. 29:27), to intimate with what joy and delight they performed their duty to God, and to raise the minds of those that attended the services to a holy triumph in the God they worshipped. And then their performances were for a memorial before God; for he takes pleasure in our religious exercises when we take pleasure in them. Holy work should be done with holy joy.

Lewis writes:

Like solemn it implies the opposite of what is familiar, free and easy, or ordinary. But unlike solemn it does not suggest gloom, oppression or austerity...Feasts are, in this sense, more solemn than fasts. Easter is solempne, Good Friday is not. The Solempne is the festal which is also the stately and the ceremonial, the proper occasion for pomp-and the very fact that pompous is now used in only a bad sense measures the degree to which we have lost the old idea of solemnity.

c. The rabble with them began to crave other food

d.(2012) We should accept with joy even the trials God sends us:

1 Now the people complained about their hardships in the hearing of the LORD, and when he heard them his anger was aroused. Then fire from the LORD burned among them and consumed some of the outskirts of the camp. 2 When the people cried out to Moses, he prayed to the LORD and the fire died down. 3 So that place was called Taberah,[a] because fire from the LORD had burned among them.

Mark 14:1-21

Psalm 51:1-19
1. I wonder now having learned more about solemnity how much more a festal-solemn spirit is referred to in verses 18, 19:

In your good pleasure make Zion prosper;
build up the walls of Jerusalem.

19 Then there will be righteous sacrifices,
whole burnt offerings to delight you;
then bulls will be offered on your altar.

which is preceded by the the King's delight in a "broken spirit":

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart,
O God, you will not despise

2.(2012)

5 Surely I was sinful at birth,
sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
6 Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb;
you taught me wisdom in that secret place.

Proverbs 10:31-32

Years Read
2009, 2012