Day 6: Pages 16-18

This is a late post - Sorry! It's been a long day with a very cranky boy.

Get excited, your first reward is coming tomorrow. I'll stop by your houses sometime tomorrow to drop it off. It's okay if your not there. Talk to me briefly on Sunday and tell me what page you are on so I can update my information.

As usual, I'm going to focus in on something not so obvious in today's reading. In Chapter 10 verses 12-14 we get a little preview of the marathon chapter Jacob 5 (the olive tree chapter that takes like 5 days to read). In these verses Lehi makes a brief comparison saying that the Jews or those who currently live in Jerusalem will be scattered and then gathered like an olive tree "whose branches should be broken off" and taken all over the place and then grafted back in.

What's interesting about Lehi using this simile is very revealing as to what Lehi may have done as an occupation. Lehi, we find out in a previous reading, is from the tribe of Joseph. We find out later, he is specifically descended from Manasseh. Well at this time in history, the Northern kingdom of ancient Israel (commonly called the 10 tribes - including Joseph) had already been taken captive by the Assyrians (they were "lost"). This is why Lehi was in Jerusalem. His ancestors must have fled from the Assyrians and ended up with the tribes of Judah and Benjamin in the South. However, coming back to the olive tree, the growing (and grafting) of olive trees was primarily done in the North. Lehi must have learned about this occupation from his father and then passed on the "northern" tradition to his sons even though they never lived in a area where olive tree cultivation thrived.

Okay that was probably a bit confusing - here is the bottom line - Lehi was preserved from the Northern destruction as well as the Southern destruction. The Lord knew the role Lehi needed to play so his ancestors were saved from the Assyrians, just as Lehi was saved from the Babylonians (who take over Jerusalem shortly after Lehi and his family flee).

SO WHAT? I just think it is cool to see how the Lord works! (And I love olive trees and will probably write a VERY long blog about them in the future).