Gary Gleans

Solomon was granted wisdom, riches and power over his enemies.  These gifts ended up brining him fame, pleasure and pride.  The gifts that should have resulted in gratitude were a contributing factor to his downfall.  He now comes to the end of his life and recognizes that all of the things that he pursued so passionately were all just vanity.  They brought him passing pleasures but at the end of his life he felt an abiding emptiness.  Solomon comes to recognize that life in general has no real direction or purpose apart from God.  The ways that we use to determine success and failure are of no true meaning or value.  It is so easy for us to get wrapped up in our own lives and focused on the goals we have established for ourselves.  However, unless these objectives draw us closer to God, we will end up with a constant sense of futility.  Regret is one of the most painful feelings that we experience.  It is a very sad thing to come to th...

Proverbs is a collection of wise sayings stated in a poetic form.  Hebrew poetry is not like modern poetry that rimes.  In Hebrew poetry there is a repetition or completion of meaning instead of a repletion of similar sounds.  As we read the Proverbs, it is important to remember that they are sayings that are generally true about life.  They should not be interpreted as unfailing promises from God that are without exception.  The majority of the Proverbs were written by Solomon, the son of David and king of Israel.  When God offered him a request, Solomon asked God for wisdom.  The book of Proverbs is clearly a result of that request.  Unfortunately Solomon did not always live by the Proverbs he wrote.  It is very hard to look for an organizational structure in the various chapters.  Instead there are various recurring themes throughout the book.  Instead of looking at Proverbs like an organized course notebook on wisdom as if it w...

Attempting to summarize the book of Psalms feels a little like trying to fit the ocean into a tea cup.  There is a natural structure provided in the five divisions that are seen in the book.  It seems best to stick with those divisions but it is also hard to distinguish a specific purpose or separate theme for each of the divisions.  Many themes recur in all of the books.  There have been attempts made to identify each of the five books of Psalms with the five books of the Pentateuch.  This is certainly an interesting observation but often seems to be a forced interpretation.  I really don’t think that the structure of the collection of Psalms is of vital importance.  My tendency in studying them would be to take each individual Psalm as its own unit and not worry too much about the section or book that it appears in.  David is the author of about half of the Psalms.  Asaph and the sons of Korah made significant contributions.  Many of ...

Job is one of the most difficult books in the Bible for us to read and understand correctly.  One reason for this is that it is simply agonizing for us to read of Job’s plight knowing the background of the situation when Job never seems to find out what was really behind the scenes.  Just the facts of the devastation of Job’s entire family and fortune are difficult for us to comprehend.  Another reason this book is so difficult is that the majority of the book is a dialogue between Job and his friends.  All of them wax eloquent about God and man and the way that they deal with one another.  Their theology and anthropology sound very good at times but in the end they are all criticized by God.  So as we read their speeches it is hard to recognize the difference between truth and error.  Our understanding of the book is also complicated by its placement in our Bibles.  It is important for us to remember that the Bible is not organized in a chronolo...