I will bless thee, and make thy name renowned, and name those who curse thee I will curse, and in thee all the races of the world shall find a blessing.
This is the Catholic Hour.
The Catholic Hour, the NBC television religious program, is produced in cooperation with the National Council of Catholic Men.
The Catholic Hour presents Journey Through Scripture by Richard Gilman, a series of four programs on the Bible.
Part Three, The Message of the Old Ism on Senior John J.
Daugherty, Doctor of Sacred Scripture and President of Seton Hall University.
Relation to man, given to a specific tree, and it profoundly shaped that history, how these people saw themselves and their unique destiny.
They came of Chaldean stock, but they made their abode in Mesopotamia, because they had no mind to worship the old gods of Chaldea.
Gods are many of their fathers worship owned, but they forsook it to worship one God only, the God of heaven.
He it was that them removed thence and dwell in Haran.
At a time when famine overspread the world, they took refuge in Egypt.
The king of Egypt oppressed them, so they cried out to this lord of theirs, and he smote the whole land of Egypt with plagues.
The Red Sea once passed, they took for their own the desert country of out Sinai.
There for 40 years, heaven itself sent them nourishment.
God fought for them and won the victory.
There was no beating down such a people as this, save when they forsook the worship of the Lord their God.
Even then, did they but repent of their revolt from his allegiance, the God of heaven would give them strength to resist their assailants.
The Old Testament is the book of this people, an inspired and visionary people, at times stiff -necked and rebellious.
It is the book of their relationship with God who single them out from all nations for a lofty mission.
God chose Israel.
This divine election is attested to on almost every page of the Old Testament.
Why God did so is at bottom a mystery of the divine will, just as why Israel was obedient and rebellious by terms is a mystery of the human will.
Yet from book to book, we see unfolding a purposeful history.
The key word that describes Israel's relationship with God is covenant.
In the world of the Near East, personal pledges are far more meaningful than abstract social laws.
It's always been customary for men to bind themselves together by mutual pacts, which are then solemnized in ritual.
God used these human things for divine ends.
It was a human local custom of making covenant that God employed when he brought Abraham to himself and gave himself to him.
And now God said to him, I am the Lord who brought thee out from war of the Chaldees to give thee possession of this land instead.
And when he asked Lord God, what assurance may I have that is mine? The Lord answered, bring me a three -year -old she goat and a three -year -old ram and a turtle dove and a pigeon.
All these he brought to him and cut them in half, laying the two halves of each on opposite sides, except the dove and the pigeon.
He did not divide these.
So the sun went down and when the darkness of night came on, a smoking furnace was seen, a torch of fire that passed between the pieces of flesh.
And the Lord that day made a covenant with Abraham.
This passage describes the old Babylonian covenant rite.
The smoking furnace is a symbol of the Lord passing through the severed pieces of the animals, thus binding himself by promise to Abraham.
Abraham, patriarch of a sheep herding people from Chaldea.
I am God Almighty, live as in my sight and be perfect.
Then on my part I will make a covenant with thee to give thy posterity increase beyond measure.
Thou shalt be the father of a multitude of nations.
No longer shall thy name be Abram, thou shalt be called Abraham, the father of a throng.
Such is the multitude of nations I will give thee for thy children.
I will make thee fruitful beyond measure so that thou shalt count among the nations.
From thy issue kings shall rise.
I will honor this covenant of mine with thyself and with the race that shalt follow thee generation after generation.
An eternal covenant that pledges me to be thy God and the God of the race which follows thee.
To thee and to that race I will give the land in which thou dwellest now as a land of Canaan, their inheritance forever and I their God.
Thus Abraham was called to the worship of the one true God from a family of pagans, probably moon worshipers like their Babylonian neighbors in Ur.
This took place about 18 centuries before Christ.
From now on he and his descendants will enact the divine plan in successive stages.
The divine plan unfolds gradually.
A son, Isaac, is born to Abraham.
From Isaac's son Jacob come twelve sons, the twelve men who give their names to the tribes of Israel.
Through Joseph, one of Jacob's sons, Israel went down to Egypt and there they dwelt in centuries of peace until there rose a Pharaoh that knew not Joseph and oppression of Israel set in.
The figure arose in their midst, an instrument of God to deliver them from bondage.
Through Moses was consummated the second stage of the covenant, this time with the nation.
Listen Israel, to the observances and the decrees I now proclaim in your hearing.
Learn them well and I am the Lord thy God.
I am the Lord thy God.
I am the Lord thy God.
I am the Lord thy God.
I am the Lord thy God.
I am the Lord thy God.
I am the Lord thy God.
I am the Lord thy God.
Listen my love, thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God lightly upon thy lips.
Observe this Sabbath day and keep it holy as the Lord thy God has bidden thee.
Remember that thou too wasst a slave in Egypt.
What constraining force the Lord used.
What a display he made of his power to rescue thee and now he will have thee keep this day of rest.
Honor thy father and my mother as the Lord God has bidden thee so thou shalt live long to enjoy the lands which the Lord thy God means to give thee.
Thou shalt do no murder.
Thou shalt not steal.
Thou shalt not commit adultery.
Thou shalt bear false witness against thy neighbor.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife.
Thou shalt not set thy heart upon thy neighbor's house or lands, his servants or handmaids, an ox or an ass or anything that is his.
All this the Lord proclaimed to the whole multitude of you there on the mountain speaking aloud out of the heart of the flame the cloud in the darkness.
And he wrote it down on a stone which he infested to me.
This law which God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai was to bind the people forever.
It was to this law that Jesus referred when he said I have not come to destroy the law but to fulfill it.
It was to this law that the Israelites referred and their ancestors and their successors do until this day in the title of the first five books of the Bible, the Torah.
In fulfillment of the covenant promised to Abraham, the Lord led the twelve tribes into the promised land.
The land promised to their forefathers, Canaan, a land flowing with milk and honey.
Under Moses and Joshua, the tribes took possession of this fertile country.
Joshua, like Moses before him, never allowed the Israelites to forget the author of their good fortune.
If you transgress the covenant of the Lord your God which he enjoined on you, serve other gods and worship them, the anger of the Lord will flare up against you and you will quickly perish from the good land which he has given you.
The consolidation of Israel's hold on Canaan was affected under military leaders called shofetim or judges.
At the end of this period, however, there arose a desire for a king among the people as they put it as the other nations have and their wish was granted.
The first king was Saul.
He was succeeded by David.
From him was to descend the true unending line of kings, culminating in the Messiah King, the King of Kings.
In David's dynasty has reached the third stage of the covenant.
The Lord's promise to the nation Israel is to be fulfilled through a line of kings.
The prophet Nathan confronts David the King.
A message to his servant David from the Lord of hosts.
Out in the pasture lands thou was tending sheep when I summoned thee away to bear rule over my people Israel.
Henceforth my people are to have a settled home, dwelling in it, taking possession of it, undisturbed, no longer harassed by godless neighbors.
No longer will thy enemies harass thee.
It is true the Lord has granted that thy line shall have continuance.
And when thy days are done and thou art laid to rest beside thy fathers, I will grant to thee for successor a son of thy own body established firmly on the throne.
He it is that shall build a house to do honor to my name.
I shall prolong forever his royal dynasty.
He shall find in me a father and I in him a son.
But if he play me false be sure I shall punish him.
Ever for man the rod, ever for the sons of Adam, ever for the sons of Adam the frailties of mortality.
I shall not shall not forgive my merciful promise as I did as I did banish it and withdraw it from Saul the king.
Throughout the ages as far as thy thought can reach, dynasty and royalty shall both endure.
Thy throne shall remain forever.
Unshaken.
Lord God, that one such as I am sprung from such a house as mine should have been brought by thee to such power.
But it was not enough Lord God thou wouldst do more.
Thou wouldst foretell the destiny of thy servants lying in days far hence.
Lord God, can mortal man deserve such right? No words can thy servant David find, such divine mercy thou show'st him.
In fulfillment of thy promise, in pursuance of thy will, thou dost bring about all these marvels which thou hast made known to thy servant.
So great thou art Lord God, none is like thee, thou alone art God.
Can any other nation say like thy people Israel, that its God came to buy it back for himself as his own people, winning such renown for himself, doing such deeds of wonder and dread against any nation and its people and its God as thou didst when thou didst buy back thy people from Egypt.
So didst thou pledge this people of Israel to be thy people eternally and thou Lord God didst become their God.
Israel's kings were men set apart, God's representatives on earth and the peoples delegate of the covenant.
Some of them are worthy of this role like King David, others were not.
No, were the people on the whole faithful to the demands that the law made upon them.
David was king in the United Monarchy from 1000 to 960 before Christ.
He defeated the Philistines, Israel's chief enemy.
He made Jerusalem the capital of the United Kingdom, both religious and political.
He was succeeded by his son Solomon who built a temple to the Lord in Jerusalem and ruled over a flourishing people.
But the United Monarchy did not last long.
After the death of Solomon and due to in part certainly to his follies, the kingdom was divided.
The ten northern tribes seceded, set up a kingdom of their own which they called Israel.
The two southern tribes, Judah and Benjamin, formed the kingdom of Judah.
The small kingdoms lived in peace and prosperity for a while but finally they declined, succumbing eventually to powerful neighbors.
Samaria, capital of the northern kingdom fell in 722 to the power of Assyria and the people were led away into captivity never more to return.
In 586 BC, Jerusalem, kingdom of Judah fell to Nabucadonisa, king of the Chaldeans.
The people were led away into exile which history records as the Babylonian captivity.
We sat down beside the streams of Babylon and wept there remembering Sion.
Willow trees grow there and on these we hung up our harps.
When the men who took us prisoner cried out for a song.
We must make sport for our enemies.
A stave there from the music they sing at Sion.
What should we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? Jerusalem, if I forget thee, perish the skill of my right hand.
Let my tongue stick fast to the roof of my mouth if I cease to remember thee.
If I love not Jerusalem dearer than heart's content.
Remember Lord how the sons of Edom triumphed when Jerusalem fell.
Overthrow it they cried.
Overthrow it till the very foundation is laid bare.
Babylon, pitiless queen, blessed be the man that deals out to thee the measure thou hast dealt to us.
The psalm expresses the loneliness and heart sickness of the people in their national and personal catastrophe.
Nor are the Old Testament books silent on the causes for this catastrophe.
Already in the desert of Sinai the people had abandoned their God and worshiped an idol.
Time and time again the people fell away from the demands made upon them from the uprightness demanded of them by the law.
Even going as far as worshipping pagan idols.
Kings arose, faithless kings like this one described in the book of Kings.
Manasseh was 12 years old when he came to the throne and his reign at Jerusalem lasted 55 years.
This Manasseh defied the Lord's will by courting the false gods of those nations which the Lord destroyed to make room for the sons of Israel.
Thereupon word came from the Lord through his servants the prophets.
King Manasseh of Judah shall not go unpunished.
I mean to bring such calamity upon Israel and Judah shall ring in the ears of all who hear it.
Level with Samaria shall Jerusalem lie.
I mean to efface Jerusalem as a wax tablet is effaced scraping it over and over.
I mean to abandon this poor remnant of the people that once was mine and let them fall into the hands of their enemies.
God was deeply involved in the fate of his people.
In the early days of the monarchy there rose in Israel men called prophets, spokesmen for God.
Function was to stand between God and men recalling to King and people the covenant and making known to them the Lord's will and above all his anger at their infidelities.
The prophet Osi or Hosea preached in the northern kingdom in the years preceding.
Listen sons of Israel to a message from the Lord.
Notice of a suit he prefers against all that dwell in this land of yours.
A land where loyalty and tenderness of heart and knowledge of God is none.
Cursed they and lie, murdered they and steal and live adulterously till there is no checking it.
Never feud ends but another feud begins.
What wonder the land lies widowed and its foal dwindled.
God, beast and bird and the sea beach piled high with fish.
And what of my people? See where they have recourse to tree stump or senseless wand for an answer to their complexities.
Lust for strange worship swept them away, made them false to their trust with God.
Wouldst thou to thy God return? A tender heart keep thou must and a right mind and wait for thy God's help continually.
In recalling men to repentance and reminding them of God's will, the prophets were instruments of a spiritual transformation among the people.
We must remember that the Lord had promised that He would never totally abandon Israel.
Before the fall of Judah, the prophets began to speak of a remnant that would return.
A purified segment of the people who would carry forth the covenant in a new spirit and a new worship.
The prophet Jeremiah spoke of this.
A time is coming, the Lord says, when I mean to ratify a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah.
It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to rescue them from Egypt.
That they should break my covenant and I all the while their master.
No, the Lord says, this is the covenant I will grant the people of Israel when that time comes.
I will implant my law in their innermost thoughts, engrave it in their hearts.
I will be their God and they shall be my people.
There will be no need for neighbor to teach neighbor or brother to teach brother the knowledge of the Lord.
All will know me from the highest to the lowest.
I will pardon their wrongdoing.
I will not remember their sins anymore.
A purified segment were the Jews that returned from the captivity of Babylon.
In the writings of the prophets of this period, we discover an ever increasing inwardness of religion and the spirit and elevation of it.
Among them, the greatest spokesman of the theme and indeed the greatest figure in their ranks was Isaiah.
We find Old Testament's most magnificent poetry and more.
Isaiah is the spokesman of the transcendence of God, of his holiness and mysterious being.
I had a vision.
I saw the Lord sitting on a throne that towered high above me, the skirts of his robes filling the temple.
Above it stood the figures of the Seraphim.
Each of them six -winged.
With two wings they veiled God's face.
With two his feet and the other two kept them poised in flight.
And ever the same cry rose between them.
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts.
All the world is full of his glory.
In Isaiah 2, we meet haunting descriptions of a righteous king who is to come of the line of David and a noble, far -seeing vision of a future in which God's reign will be established anew through one who will consummate in himself a new covenant embracing all men.
From the stock of Jesse, a scion shall burgeon yet.
Out of his roots, a flower shall spring.
One shall be born on whom the spirit of the Lord will rest.
A spirit wise and discerning.
A spirit prudent and just.
A spirit of knowledge and piety.
And ever fear of the Lord shall fill his heart.
Not his to judge by appearances.
Listen to rumors when he makes a ward.
Here his judgment will give the poor redress.
Here as a ward will right the wrongs of defenseless.
Word of him shall smite the earth like a rod.
Breath of him destroy the ill -doer.
Bright shall be the baldrick he wears.
Faithfulness, the strength that girds him.
Wolf shall live at peace with lamb.
Leopard should take its ease with kid.
Calf with lion and sheep in one dwelling place with a little child to herd them.
Cattle and sheep lying down together.
There young ones about them.
Lion eating straw like ox.
Child new weaned fresh from its mother's arms putting hand in viper's den.
All over this mountain my sanctuary no hurt shall be done taken.
Deep as the waters that hide the sea floor.
Knowledge of the Lord over spreading the world.
In the prophets the covenant which in the Old Testament had been deepened and reaffirmed takes on and full dimensions.
The Old Testament the book of the relationship of God with the chosen people is to be fulfilled they declare in a new covenant a new testament.
The voice of Isaiah is heard telling men of a wondrous child and of a vision exciting and radiant with promise.
For our sakes a child is born.
To our race a son is given whose shoulder will bear the scepter of princely power.
What name shall be given him? Peerless among counselors the mighty God father of the world to come.
The Prince of Peace.
Seven hundred years later God who spoke through the lips of the prophet Isaiah sent this message to a maiden in Nazareth.
Behold thou shall conceive in thy womb and shall bear a son and shall call his name Jesus.
He shall be great and men will know him as the son of the most high.
The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David and he shall reign over the house of Jacob eternally and his kingdom shall never have an end.
The Catholic Hour.
The NBC TV television religious program produced in cooperation with the National Council of Catholic Men has presented the third programs entitled Journey Through Scripture.
If you would like a copy of today's program write to the Catholic Hour Washington 5 DC.
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