#scripture analysis

We Jews are ever a pragmatic lot- we’ve spent our whole existence being pushed out and having atrocities committed unto us by other humans- we were driven out of Egypt, Russia in the 19th century, Italy in the thirteenth, and of course there was the holocaust. And this began in the Torah- a lot of our struggles and origin stories center around the evils of humans. We haven’t had the luxury of being surrounded by mostly good people and thus able to overlook the evil happening to others like those in western-centric, mainstream Christian, middle-and-upper-class communities that have historically made up most of the voice of Christianity since the days of Constantine. This is by no means an educated or informed thesis, since like I said, my family has never been super stringent on studying the scriptures, but from the experience that I HAVE had growing up Jewish and looking at the scriptures that we read whenever we went to temple, I’ve concluded that Jews don’t talk as much about the devil because we don’t see the devil as some creature who lives in hell- we see it as other humans, the ones who have persecuted us for our entire existence. We don’t need to look for a devil down below to blame things on because we have had overwhelming evidence and experience that humanity holds enough evil on their own not to need an external force to push them to evil- we reap it on our own well enough.

Micah’s language in chapter 1 verse 5 is not generic prose or rhetorical filler but a pointed indictment that assumes shared, concrete knowledge between prophet and audience; when he asks “What is the transgression of Jacob? Is it not Samaria?” he is not defining sin abstractly but locating it in a known system centered in Samaria—political power, economic exploitation, cultic practices, false prophecy, and elite abuse—which Micah later names explicitly throughout the book (land seizure, violence, dishonest scales, bribed judges, prophets for hire), and by pairing Samaria with Jerusalem he shows symmetry rather than contrast, signaling that Judah’s “high places” are not metaphorical but literal unauthorized worship sites embedded in Jerusalem’s leadership structure, meaning the capital itself has institutionalized covenant breach; this is why Micah does not list sins here—he doesn’t need to—because the cities function as shorthand for a whole catalog already under judgment, a technique shared with Isaiah and Hosea but sharpened in Micah by his courtroom style, where naming the locus of guilt is sufficient to establish the charge, so the force of the passage is precise and accusatory, not literary padding: the sin is visible, public, systemic, and geographically anchored, and Micah’s intent is to strip away any refuge in abstraction by saying, in effect, “You already know exactly what I mean, and where it lives.”

John 12:23-28. "Now my soul has become troubled. But what should I do about it? Pray and say 'Father, save Me from this hour?' This hour is the very reason I came! So instead I pray 'Father, glorify Your name.'" Jesus was scared when He faced having to perform the atonement. But he knew it was His very purpose. When the time came, He did ask the Father to let the cup pass from Him (Matthew 26:39), but only if it was the Father's will, only if there was another way. And there wasn't. So He submitted, despite the pain and the fear, focusing on the joy that would result from it (Hebrews 12:2). We may be scared when we face hardship. We may ask the Father to let it pass from us. But if that is not His will, let us submit faithfully, instead praying for strength to do His will and focusing on the joy we will one day have by doing so.