"The LORD commanded through Moses that you give us towns to live in, with pasturelands for our livestock." – Joshua 21:2b

Today's Scripture Reading (April 12, 2025): Joshua 21

Prophecy is not always easily understood. It is why we find it easier to say that a prophecy has been fulfilled after the fact than to discern a prophecy that remains anchored solidly in the future. I know many people want to interpret biblical prophecy in a certain way, but I continually teach caution because it may not come true the way you believe it might. 

One of my favorite victims is the prophecy of a coming rapture of believers. While a few passages might speak of this event, one of the main ones arises from Jesus's teaching in Matthew. Jesus makes this comment;

But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left (Matthew 24:36-41).

According to our understanding of the rapture, believers are taken, while the evil or nonbelievers are left behind. The problem is that Jesus didn't say that. In fact, Jesus didn't make any moral judgment on the ones taken or those left behind. Jesus just commented that one would be taken and the other left. What complicates this even further is Jesus's invocation of the days of Noah. In the story of Noah, the revealed story describes the reverse of our idea of the rapture. The evil doers of the day were the ones who were taken; they died. In the story of Noah, the righteous Noah and his family were left behind on the earth; after all, it was the reason that Noah built an ark. I guess we will have to wait to find out who is left behind in the final days. 

Jacob prophesies over his sons. Two of those sons connected by Dad's prophecies were Levi and Simeon. Jacob prophecies that the descendants of both of these sons would be scattered among the descendants of their other brothers.

Simeon and Levi are brothers—

    their swords are weapons of violence.

Let me not enter their council,

    let me not join their assembly,

for they have killed men in their anger

    and hamstrung oxen as they pleased.

Cursed be their anger, so fierce,

    and their fury, so cruel!

I will scatter them in Jacob

    and disperse them in Israel (Genesis 49:5-7).

We have already discussed the plight of the Tribe of Simeon (check out the April 10, 2025, post on Joshua 19). For Simeon, the scattering was largely negative; the tribe appears to have disappeared among the other tribes. But it was a positive scattering for the Levites, like putting salt on food. The Levites would be scattered among the tribes so that the essence of God would remain present among all of Israel.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Joshua 22