John 4

¹¹ The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. So where do you get that living water? ¹² Are you greater than our father, Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself, as did his children, and his livestock?” ¹³ Jesus answered her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again,

¹⁴ but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst again; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.” ¹⁵ The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I don’t get thirsty, neither come all the way here to draw.” ¹⁶ Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.”

Jesus chooses to travel an unusual route to meet a woman¹ who is avoiding the rest of town to draw water midday²; and offers her living water.³ The woman asks him where she can get this living water (11) and Jesus tells her to go and call her husband (16).

Here’s an interesting thought. What if this woman is more of a renaissance lady: possessed of power to move from one husband to the next… As soon as one wears out his charm, she tries out the next.⁴ Maybe the woman remains fully possessed of her worldly desires!

Here, though, regardless of if she possesses her wordly desires or not, the woman faces Jesus who offers living water. This Jesus and the water he offers seem far more quenching to the physical “water” (gaining husbands) that the woman has needed to draw frequently. And even after gaining these husbands she still thirsts.⁵

Also, what is she thinking when Jesus mentions the woman’s husbands? By pointing this out he is drawing to the surface her deep desire. Maybe part of her takes offense at the rudeness of another person seemingly guessing at and revealing her deep desire.

If I similarly encountered Jesus, part of me would probably want to leave offended. The presumptuousness of this man! The difficult truth! Telling me to trust that the water he offers will cause me to never thirst. But part of her sees Jesus and the water he offers for truth and water that springs up to eternal life. And she turns to him.

If we too could see our chasing after worldly desires as leading to unquenchable thirst the second we encounter Jesus. Might we see Jesus and receive him who offers water that springs up to eternal life!

¹⁶ Saul and his son Jonathan and the men with them were staying in Gibeah in Benjamin, while the Philistines camped at Mikmash. ¹⁷ Raiding parties went out from the Philistine camp in three detachments. One turned toward Ophrah in the vicinity of Shual, ¹⁸ another toward Beth Horon, and the third toward the borderland overlooking the Valley of Zeboyim facing the wilderness.

¹⁹ Not a blacksmith could be found in the whole land of Israel, because the Philistines had said, “Otherwise the Hebrews will make swords or spears!” ²⁰ So all Israel went down to the Philistines to have their plow points, mattocks, axes and sickles sharpened. ²¹ The price was two-thirds of a shekel for sharpening plow points and mattocks, and a third of a shekel for sharpening forks and axes and for repointing goads.

²² So on the day of the battle not a soldier with Saul and Jonathan had a sword or spear in his hand; only Saul and his son Jonathan had them.

In the passage, king Saul and son Jonathan are facing against Philistines who send out parties to raid them. However, the Israelites lack a blacksmith in their whole land so they cannot make swords or spears (vs. 19); or sharpen everyday implements like plow points (20).

At some point, the Philistines had gained control of the abilities to both make and sharpen metal tools. The Philistines’ control over these basic abilities allows them to prevent the Israelites from raising up and training a single blacksmith of their own (19). And by controlling these abilities, the Philistines cause the Israelites to need to travel to Philistine land to sharpen tools; and pay prices the Philistines set (21).

How did the Israelites bring about the conditions leading to 1 Samuel 13? I’d guess that in earlier years, Israelite tribes probably learned about how to mine, refine, produce, and sharpen iron tools; and set up a localized set of systems in each tribe.¹

In this way, each tribe could possess the means to produce armaments and infrastructure to carry out the conquests described in Joshua, Judges,² and³ Ruth.⁴

But, as Joshua and Judges describe, the Israelite tribes neglected and failed to obey God’s commands completely; and as a result, reap the consequences of their failure.

If only the Israelites had completely obeyed God; and vigilantly protected their local and decentralized iron production and sharpening system!⁵

I wanted to learn how to self-host using my own storage and version control setup using git but not github.

So I followed a mix of tutorials on docker, git, runners, and blogdown. Big credit to the stack overflow and open source contributors.¹ I ended up using this simple and functional hugo prose theme created by Yihui.

This theme features sidenotes!²

In setting this up, I chose to use R blogdown package to access useful functions. For example, instead of needing to manually copy/paste passages and superscript verse numbers, I retrieve the text and output formatted text for Psalm 126:³

bibletext <- jsonlite::fromJSON(
   "https://bible-api.com/psalm+126"
) %>%
  bind_rows(.) %>%
  pull(verses) %>%
  mutate(
    text = paste0( gsub("\\b(\\d+)\\b", "<sup>\\1</sup>",verse), " ", text)
  ) %>%
  pull(text) %>%
  paste(., collapse = " ") %>%
  cat("<blockquote>\n", ., "\n</blockquote>")

¹ When Yahweh brought back those who returned to Zion, we were like those who dream. ² Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing. Then they said among the nations, “Yahweh has done great things for them.” ³ Yahweh has done great things for us, and we are glad. ⁴ Restore our fortunes again, Yahweh, like the streams in the Negev. ⁵ Those who sow in tears will reap in joy. ⁶ He who goes out weeping, carrying seed for sowing, will certainly come again with joy, carrying his sheaves.