From Pity to Praise

Bible Theology

We may have not noticed it, but the biblical authors have a lot to say about the weather. Weather various times has Figurative meaning involve the Old Testament and the New Testament. The following is not only a brief outline of the sizable subject, classified wearing two different weather phenomena.

God control of the weather in a prime testimony of His awesome power. Ancient warriors accepted and repeat the evidence.

When he thunders the waters in the heavens roar; he makes clouds rise in the end of the earth. Lightning with rain and bring it out the wind from his storehouses.

The Quest For Water

Because Ancient Palestine, as today, was a semiarid place, water management was always on everyone’s mind. The Israelites, only having recently arrived from Egypt, learned from the Canaanites about the storm god Baal. Images of him have survived to our day. He often brandishes a bolt of lightning as his spear. Israel’s prophets claimed that the Lord was the real provider of rain and fertility.

This conflict between the Lord and Baal reached its climax when the prophet Elijah confronted 350 prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:30-39). For 3 1/2 years before this confrontation, the people had suffered from a drought because Elijah had announced to King Arab, “ as the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, whom I serve, there will be neither Dow nor rain in the next few years except at my word” (1 Kings 17:1; Luke 4:35; James 5:17).

Elijah proposed a test between the rival gods: the people should serve whichever god was able to light the fire for a sacrifice offered to him. Ball’s prophets were unable to elicit from their god any response to Elijah’s simple prayer, however, God lit the wood of his sacrifice, even though at Elijah’s command had been doused with water three times. The people were convinced crying out. “The Lord, He is God! The Lord! He is God.” At Elijah’s request. God then send a torrential downpour, putting an end of the drought” (1 Kings 18:43-46).

The Psalmists celebrate this power of the Lord to strike the earth with lightning and to bless the earth with rain, Thunder, lightening, and dark clouds were prominent in God’s revelation of Himself to the people of Israel at Mount Sinai (Exodus 19:16-19). In Psalm 29, King David apparently uses a thunderstorm to declare qualities of the Lord it reveals, in verses 3-9, he speaks seven times of “the voice of the Lord.”

The voice of the Lord is over the waters, The God of glory thunders. The Lord thunders over the mighty waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is majestic. The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars; the Lord breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon. He makes Lebanon skip like a calf, Sirion like a young ox, The voice of the Lord shakes the desert;The voice of the Lord twists the oaks and strips the forests bare. And in His temple all cry, “Glory!”

Beck concludes in verses 10and 11 with his faith declaration:

The Lord sits enthroned over the flood;

The Lord is enthroned as King forever.

The Lord gives strength to His people;

The Lord blesses His people with peace.

Not only does God boot out Baal the usurper, but He endows His people with greater blessing than Baal ever claimed.

God in heaven causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends the rain on the the righteous and the unrighteous. “Matthew 5:45). This is a double-statement of blessing, not blessing in the first clause and cursing in the second.

The Storms

The prophets reveal that God uses storms to punish people for their sins, beginning in Scripture with the ultimate storm, the Great Flood in Genesis 6:9. In response to the sinful condition of human society, described as “every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time” (Genesis 6:5). God “opened the floodgates of the heavens,” causing a 40-day-long rain, combined with the loosing of “the springs of the great deep.” The resulting flood inundated the entire world. “All the mountains under the entire heavens were covered… to a depth of more that 20 feet (15 cubits) ( Genesis 7:11-12, 17-20).

Less extensive storms but less fierce served as instruments of God’s wrath in later times as in the case of Jonah and God showed His favor to the sailors who threw Jonah overboard (Jonah 14-15). An anonymous psalmist celebrates other times the Lord has done the same thing (Psalm 107:23-30).

The Hail

God uses hail as an instrument of punishment, including it among the 10 plagues against the Egyptians (Exodus 9:18-19, celebrated in Psaln 17 47-48), and using gigantic 100-lbs hailstones to kill more of the enemy than the swords of the soldiers did (Joshua 10:11; compare Revelation 8:7).

The Mighty Winds

Wind serves God to execute His wrath against the wicked (Exodus 15:10; Hosea 13:15), but He also uses wind to bless people, as when the wind parted the Red Sea to create as escape route from the Egyptian army (Exodus 13:21-22), when wind brings quail for the Israelites in the wilderness (Numbers 11:31-32), or when He symbolizes a return from Assyrian exile by a wind drying up the Euphrates (Isaiah 11:15-16). A mighty wind fills the observer with awe, and though God has used its sound to signify the arrival of His spirit during the Pentecost (Acts 2:1-2). He also has demonstrated that He is not always in such a wind.

Drought

Closely associated with the wind,especially wind in the desert, is the condition of drought. God uses it also as a punishment against evil doers.

‘If you will not listen to me. I will punish you for your sins seven times over. I will break down your stubborn pride and make the sky above you like a lion and the ground beneath you like bronze. Your strength will be spent in vain, because your soil will not yield its crops nor will the trees of the land yield their fruit” (Leviticus 26:18-20).

Such a drought befell the people of Israel at the time of the prophet Joel and in addition to the locust plague.

The fields were ruined, the ground dried up, the grain was destroyed, the new wine dried up, the oil failed to burn, the vines dried up, fig trees withered, the pomegranate, the palm and the apple tree of the fields dried up. The seeds were shriveled beneath the clods,the storehouse were in ruins. The granaries were broken down, for the grain was dried up. To You O’ Lord they called, for fire have devoured the open pastures, and flames had burned up all the trees of the field. Even the wild animals pant for you; the streams of water have dried up and the fire has devoured the open pastures (Joel 1:9-10; we:17-20).

Of course, the prophet calls on the people to repent (Joel 2:12-27).

Whirlwind

The prophet Nahum recognizes God’s way in the whirlwind (Nahum 1:3), and the prophet Hosea employs the whirlwind to symbolize the utmost of futility (Hosea 8:7). Yet on one occasion, God uses the whirlwind for blessing, when He caught Elijah up to heaven (2 Kings 2: 1, 11).

Snow

Only one historical narrative of the Bible mentions snow (2 Samuel 23:20; 1 Chronicles 11:22). Benaiah, one of King David’s mighty men, went down into a pit and killed a lion “in a day of snow,’ The context is ambiguous whether it was a single day in which snow fell or a time of snow, a particularly cold winter. Jewish commentators suggest two possible reasons for mentioning the snow: either Benaiah was able to track the lion’s footprints in the snow or the unusual severity of the weather is what brought the lion close to human habitation.

Despite how seldom it falls, the snow had figurative uses. The prophet Isiah promises the people of Judah to repent “Come now let us reason together” says the Lord. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow…” (Isaiah 1:28). Skin “white as snow” is a manifestation of leprosy (Exodus 4:6; Numbers 13:20; 2 Kings 5:27). It also serves as a symbol of refreshment (Proverbs 25:13), of cold (Proverbs 32:21), of fertilizing (Isaiah 55:10), and of habit (Jeremiah 28:24). Snow in summer symbolizes what it unfitting (Proverbs 26:1).

Predicting The Weather

Jesus laments the irony that people are able to predict the weather based on whether the wind is coming from the sea or from the desert but cannot see what’s ahead spiritually. He says, “Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and the sky. How is it that you don’t know how to interpret this present time?” ( Luke 12:54-56). He goes on to mention recent events – Pilate’s massacre of Galileans in the temple courts and an accident in which a tower crushed and killed 18 people. These victims, Jesus says, are no more guilty than anyone else. Twice He warns, “unless you repent, you too will all perish” (Luke 13:1-5).

The Difference Between Ancient And Modern People Regarding Weather

Just as ancient people were more tired to the land than we are today, they were also more dependent on the weather and more helpless to overcome it’s effects. We can nearly always escape to a place of comfort and safety. This makes us tend to be neglectful of the great weather-Maker. Only in the midst of the greatest of natural phenomena do most of today’s people turn their eyes upward. We only cry out when we are desperate, and the rest of the time, when the sun is shining and the birds are singing, we tend to take God for granted,

The Bible reminds us that our God is constantly there and that our minute-by-minute existence depends on His grace. If we should forget, a coming weather event may suddenly return His presence back to our consciousness.

We notice today that our weather patterns are getting worse and more bizarre. Would if God is trying to warn us of the things to come, but we are to busy with the world to listen.