Shared Riches

One of the absolute delights of this season in my life comes from the convergence of two gifts: the gift of unhurried time to bask in God's Word and the gift of a set of books - Keil and Delitzsch's Commentary on the Old Testament, 10 volumes of inestimable value. I share so often from the things I've gleaned from K&D that Pete has suggested that I write a book that simply highlights my sifted riches from their writings. I see merit in the idea because their commentary is not an easy one to read. Most people simply do not have the time to comb through discussions of the innuendos of different Hebrew words and the comparison of various commentators' exegeses of passages to arrive at the nuggets of truth buried at the heart.

I happen to have the luxury of doing exactly that and every day my heart beats a little quicker in anticipation of the riches I know I am likely to find. These godly expositors had an amazing gift for putting each passage of the OT into the overall context of salvation history. One might expect biblical scholars from the mid-1800's to have written something that, while accurate and scholarly, was dry and dusty. In reality, their words have an amazing freshness of truth, faith and devotion. When I die and my children go through my books I'm sure they will wonder at my worn copies and at all the red pencil lines highlighting passages of explanations.

All of that as a foundation for what I really wanted to write about. But perhaps that should be a separate post...