Old Testament

August 4, 2025 | Leave a Comment

Stiff-neckedness

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about stiff necks. And not because I have a stiff neck. No, I recently spent time in a room, facing some stiff-necked people. It was not fun.

This is a post about stiff-neckedness.

The dictionary defines stiff-necked as “haughty or stubborn.” But the Bible gives the word a lot more nuance. In fact, the word comes from the Old Testament. It’s qāšê, pronounced “kawsheh,” and it can mean hard, cruel, severe, obstinate, difficult, severe, or rough.

We readers of the Old Testament most associate it with the Israelites who, having been released from slavery, followed Moses into the wilderness to the promised land. They’d been delivered out of Egypt and carried through the waters to safety from Pharaoh’s armies. You’d think they have been grateful and happy, but instead they only got impatient waiting for Moses to receive the tablets. Off came the jewelry to be molded into an idol shaped like a calf, and God saw it all unfold. “The Lord said to Moses, ‘I have seen this people, how kawsheh they are’” (Exodus 32:9).

Haughty, yes, because they thought they’d found a better solution than God. Stubborn, yes, but a blind kind of stubborn.

But there was more.

They were hard. They couldn’t allow the possibility that they might have been wrong. Cruel. There was cruelty in the ways they treated each other and Moses, disrespectfully, meanly. And severe. They had judged both Moses and God without understanding. Obstinant, yes, of course. Difficult and severe and rough. They were all these things because they had forgotten God, failed to trust God, and flung themselves at the mercy of false gods that were going to let them down.

It’s easy now to look back in judgment of the Israelites at this moment. The problem is that the same word kawsheh is used again to describe some far more sympathetic people.

Take the woman Hannah in 1 Samuel 1. She was desperate for a child. She took her despair to the Lord, weeping and pouring out her petitions before Him with such passion that she lost her voice. Only her lips moved. Eli the priest took her for drunk. “But Hannah answered, ‘No, my lord, I am a woman deeply kawsheh; I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord’” (1 Samuel 1:15).

Here, in this verse, kawshew meant sorrowful. It turns out that there’s sadness lurking behind stiff-neckedness too.

Ain’t that the truth? Behind all that hardness, cruelty, severity, and obstinacy lurks sadness–

Things didn’t work out the way I wanted. I did my best. Things still fell apart. Maybe if I deny it. Maybe if I refuse to look, it will all go away. Just make it go away.

Kawsheh shows up again in another unlikely place. A king Jeroboam fears losing his son. He sends his wife to a prophet Ahijah. She tiptoes to his room, afraid of what he will tell her.

“But when Ahijah heard the sound of her feet as she came in at the door, he said, “Come in, wife of Jeroboam; why do you pretend to be another? For I am charged with kawsheh tidings for you” (1 Kings 14:6).

The message Ahijah delivers is kawsheh indeed. The boy would die. Jeroboam would father no more sons, because he had turned away from the same God who had granted him that throne in the first place.

It turns out that there’s some fear behind stiff-neckedness too.

Don’t tell me I helped make it happen? Did my own decisions lead me to this place? Do I have the strength to admit what I did wrong? No, so make the truth tellers leave. Just make it go away.

But the only way out of stiff-neckedness is truth telling and repentance. It’s facing our sadness and fear, our pride and wrong actions, with strength and courage, compassion and love.

And all those stiff-necked people–the Israelites, Hannah, Jeroboam and his wife–God didn’t give up on them. He stayed faithful. In the fullness of time, He even sent His son for the stiff-necked people who came after them.

Stiff necks don’t have to stay stiff.

October 13, 2021 | Leave a Comment

Scripture never disappoints

It’s early. I do my Bible reading first in my day, which means I’m often still shaking off last night’s dreams. My coffee’s on my left; our two sleepy dogs are on my right, and words are swimming in front of my eyes.

I’m in Genesis 10, the list of Noah’s descendants. Noah had three sons, and his three sons had sons. I search the names, looking for a foothold, someone whose name calls to mind meaning in a chapter that otherwise seems perhaps less important but certainly less exciting than the previous chapter’s account of the covenant and rainbow.

My eyes slide down the names of the sons of Japheth, Ham, and Shem. Some are familiar; many are not.

“These are the sons of Shem, by their clans, their languages, their lands, and their nations” (Genesis 10:31).

Clans. Languages. Lands. Nations. Is this how the world knows us? Is this how we know ourselves? By our family, by our words, by our homes, by our nations?

My family is complicated. By birth, adoption, and marriage, my family extends farther now than it ever has, into the past and into the future. I stop and pray for them all.

My words? I love words. I use words all the time. In a recent assessment, I scored high in the need to express myself, but then I’m reminded that this blog hasn’t been updated since July. Maybe it’s less a fire in my belly and more a dead ember. But I’m reminded, and I’m motivated, so here! I’m sitting down to write.

My land isn’t much. It’s my one lot on a short street in a small town. I don’t know that I want to leave it ever, but I have to go where God calls me. For now, though, I’m safe here. The doors swing wide for friends, and the walls tell stories of my children. I’ve got work to do later to take care of it.

And my nation, well, my nation is a crazy mix of blessing and challenge, as I’m sure all nations are. I’m glad to live here. I marvel at the principles upon which it was founded. They’re good bones. I’m thankful.

The dogs are still sleeping, but my coffee is running low. I’ve been led to pray, to make a plan, to care, and give thanks, all by one verse tagging the end of a long list of names.

Scripture never disappoints.

May 19, 2020 | 1 Comment

Fires, Locusts, and COVID-19: A Closer Look at 2 Chronicles 7

This is the transcript from a weekly v-blog posted to the Facebook page of the First Presbyterian Church of La Junta, Colorado.

“You get what you get”

My daughter was not an easy toddler. Or preschooler. Or youngster, for that matter. But let’s start at the beginning.

At her first preschool, at the age of 2, she staged what her teachers called “the great candy raid,” involving several children in the scaling of a half-wall, into a storage area of their classroom, during naptime. The teachers complimented her on her leadership and organizational skills before calling the school psychologist, whose advice to us amounted to, “Good luck with her.”

At her next preschool, she exhibited a similar lack of remorse for wrongdoing. Sent to the director’s office for some wrongdoing and told to sit against the wall, she managed to find a spare thread and began unravelling the carpet, row by row. By the time the director returned, a decent sized square of her office was down to the padding. It wasn’t pretty.

At her third and final preschool before beginning kindergarten, we registered her and then waited for the phone call. And waited. And waited. Finally, after about a month, I approached the new director. “Any problems?” She looked at her curiously. No. “Really?” No. “You haven’t had any problems with her?” No. I explained some of the problems she’d had at the other preschools. The director looked at her surprised. “No, no. She’s fine. We just tell her, ‘You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit.’” The director shrugged. “That’s all it takes.”

You get what you get, and you don’t throw a fit. If she behaved, she was rewarded. If she misbehaved, she was punished. Period.

It worked on my daughter, because it was clear and predictable. No negotiation. No room for response. No so-called love and logic. An eye for an eye. A tit for a tat. Period.

This is human reason at its simplest: cause and effect. But, as David Hume was quick to point out long ago, the effect we predict is not necessarily, well, necessary. Our ideas of cause and effect are formed by habit, largely, rather than real observation or experience.

I’m digressing a little bit, and you’re wondering where this is going, so let me just cut to the chase and show you what I’ve been ruminating on, several times, during this coronavirus quarantine.

Here it is, in the form of a meme I found on social media this morning, though it’s been forwarded to me several times in different media.

It’s simple cause and effect: We’ve been wicked, so God is punishing us. If we humble ourselves and pray, God will bless us. It’s “you get what you get and you don’t throw a fit” taken to a cosmic level, right? But does it hold up?

Let’s dig deeper.

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