Job 1

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1:1-5 - Job's success attributed to his Godliness.

1:1 - "blameless and upright", "feared God and shunned evil".

1:2-4 - Job's extreme abundance and wealth is stunning to behold - each one of his sons has a feast on a separate day; together, they feast all week.

1:5 - We see his extremely reverential and respectful attitude towards God - fearing that his children might have sinned, he made offerings and sacrificed for them.

1:6 - Satan originally means "accuser". In Job, his role is as a tester - to test something through stress and adversity to ascertain its worth. In Job's case, God esteems his worth highly.

1:8 - The LORD calls Job "blameless and upright", and also "that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?" (KJV).

1:9-11 - Do we love God for Himself? or for what He has done in our lives? Satan argues that Job is so Godly because God has blessed him exceedingly - "But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face." (1:11, KJV).

1:20-22 - Job had three responses to his first test: 1) he "fell to the ground in worship", 2)praised the name of the LORD, and 3) "did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing."

We see that Job was indeed truly reverential and respectful to the LORD. He loved God for Himself, and not for the material things.

1:20 - "the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD." (KJV).

Job praised God for acting in his life - be it to give or to take away. He was so passionate and so grateful for God's work in his life. He repeats this sentiment in 2:10.

Genesis 1 - 3

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GENESIS 1

1:2 - The Spirit of God was present at the beginning.
1:3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24, 26 - The Word of God does the creation.
"according to their kinds" - suggests:
1) animals are to follow their natures (which suggests that Man is separate/distinct from the animals because we are to DENY our sinful, fleshly natures.) [actually, our initial nature is not sinful, it is only disobedience and the eating of the apple that transformed us, and distanced us from god.]
2) God's creation is also an act of SEPARATION - making one thing distinct, and different; God CHOOSES - see the parallel to the Israelites chosen from all the peoples of the earth, and the Levites chosen from among the Israelites. (Gen 1:4, 6, 9, 14, 18).
3) our God is an orderly God - see Leviticus.


1:28 - the original commandment is threefold:
1) Be fruitful and increase in number,
2) Fill the earth and subdue it,
3) rule over the fish, birds and animals.


1:29 - we are given the gift of the earth's bounty - every seed-bearing plant, every fruit-bearing tree is ours for food. This suggests the abundance and the generous nature of God.
This gift is later taken away (or in some sense limited) (Gen 3:17-19, 4:12) as a punishment for sin and disobedience.
This gift is described in 2:9, given to man in 2:16. Man is given a command (2:17), but disobeys (3:6). This gift later removed for his disobedience in 3:17.




GENESIS 2

2:7 - "breath of life" - suggestive of the Holy Spirit? However, in Genesis 7, God speaks of creatures with 'the breath of life' within them...
Given the breath of life, Adam's task is a scaled-down version of God's - he names and chooses the animals, separating them according to their kinds, as it were (2:19).
The awesome power of this word is shown in 2:19-20:
1) Whatever Adam called the creatures, that was the name after.
2) Adam gave names to ALL the creatures.
Adam is like God because he has the breath of god within him, and his word has power because the same breath that God uses to speak His word is also within Adam.


2:9 - bounty of the earth (mentioned above in 1:29)


2:17 - God forbade them to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good & evil, but not the tree of eternal life! There is hope of eternal life for us yet!


2: 18-20 - naming the creatures. (mentioned above in 2:7)


2:25 - "felt no shame" - What does this mean? Does it mean that they:
1) were not embarassed?
2) had no knowledge of nakedness? Did this mean that they had no concept of clothing or of covering themselves? (Not so. We see later that they cover up their nakedness with fig leaves - 3:7.)
3) perhaps it means that they had no knowledge that nakedness required shame or guilt as a response. The concept of shame or guilt was foreign to them.
Shame and guilt come only with disobedience - where is the man who feels guilty while doing good? Hence, it might not have existed before the original act of disobedience. Hence, without the knowledge of good and evil, shame did not exist for them, nor the need to feel guilty.




GENESIS 3

3:1-3 - The Fall of Man began with the questioning of God's word (3:1), and the inability of woman to answer accurately (3:2-3). The Word is the Sword of the Spirit - we must we well versed in it to use it correctly, lest it be used against us.


3:4 - The snake directly contradicts the known Word of God (2:17).


3:5-11 - After they ate the fruit, "the eyes of them both were opened", they ended up "knowing good and evil". Was the fruit a magic fruit? Or was it the ACT of disobedience that opened their eyes? Previously, all they knew was good - God's abundance, God's presence, God's blessing - with no knowledge of evil - they were only forbidden to do one thing.
Once the deed was done/the fruit was eaten, they were ashamed and afraid:
1) They "knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons." (3:7).
2) When God was walking in the garden, the couple "hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God". Also, "I [Adam] was afraid, because I[Adam] was naked".
Their shame, guilt and fear made it immediately clear to the LORD that they had sinned (3:11).

We see something similar when Paul talks about the Law in Romans 3:20, 23:
"for by the law is the knowledge of sin", and "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God."
Again in 4:15: "where no law is, there is no transgression".
His meaning is that only through our knowledge of good and evil can there be sin, and its associated corruption. Similarly, only when God's commandment had been broken did Adam and Eve come to know of evil - where before all they experienced was good.


3:12-13 - pushing the blame: Adam blames Eve, and through her, God (3:12 - "the woman thou gavest to be with me"); Eve blames the serpent (3:13 - "The serpent beguiled me").


3:14-19 - God punishes all three.
The serpent is:
1) cursed above all beasts
2) condemned to crawl on its belly, and
3) eat dust all the days of its life.
4) It is the enemy of woman, and its offspring are the enemies of the offspring of woman.

Woman will
1) give birth to children with pain,
2) desire to control her husband,
3) but her husband will dominate her.

Because of Man,
1) Cursed is the ground
2) He can only eat of it with painful labour.
3) It will produce inedible thorns and thistles,
4) and only with sweat will it produce grain for bread.
5) Man is condemned to return to dust.

Both were expelled from the Garden, and distanced from God (3:23)


3:21 - The LORD God clothed the two before banishing them - He made garments from skin for them. Though we sin and grieve God, He still loves us and cares for us - this speaks of His love and compassion.


3:22-23 - Now knowing sin, Man was expelled from Eden - he was distanced from the presence of the LORD God.

A Pig in Provence: Good Food and Simple Pleasures in the South of France by Georgeanne Brennan

Imagine a pregnant sow, majestic, stately and heavy with fourteen pink piglets. Similarly, Georgeanne Brennan’s book is slow-paced, but filled with delicious writing. First published in 2007, A Pig in Provence captures the pace and rhythms of life in Provence to perfection, and through the episodes Brennan describes, manages to immerse the reader in the culture and daily life of the south of France.

Brennan’s book traces her life in Provence from her first impressions as a fresh-faced university graduate turned first-time farmer eking out a living selling homemade goat cheeses. In eight chapters, she takes us through rituals like the jour du cochon (the day the family pig is killed), seasonal events like the gathering of the wild mushrooms, and the annual trek of shepherds herding their sheep to greener pastures.

We feel a sense of intimacy with Brennan as we are both inducted into the mysteries of a culture centered on the relationship between field and table. Heavy with detail, each episode reads like a Steinbeck short story. We share her first experiences – struggling to make goat cheese, her first sip of bouillabaisse (a rich fish soup whose origins are hotly disputed), cooking and eating sheep’s feet. Her writing’s steady pace is like the interminable march of the seasons and of time. Reading her book is like listening to stories by the fireplace at the feet of a grandmother in her rocking chair.

Georgeanne Brennan is a James Beard Award winner and has been a finalist numerous times. In 2000, she opened her own cooking vacation school in Provence to share the Provencal way of life with the wider world. For a week, participants gather and cook from the kitchen garden, gather wild herbs and mushrooms, and enjoy the good food and simple pleasures in the south of France.

This book is definitely going on my bookshelf. I might not be referring to it for its recipes (there are only eight, one per chapter), but I will definitely re-read it for a short vacation in Provence.

Rating: 4.5/5

In Search of Perfection, by Heston Blumenthal

Sleekly bound in black, Heston Blumenthal’s book, In Search of Perfection, promises a scientific and clinical look into an ambiguous and darkly emotional area – the perfect comfort food. Covering classic dishes such as pizza, Spaghetti Bolognese, the steak, bangers and mash, this book aims to reveal their most intimate secrets: why do we love them? what do we love about them? Potatoes are tested for their dry matter percentage, chickens are , and fish flesh is poked and flaked apart in search of perfection.

Blumenthal is certainly someone who knows his stuff. His restaurant, the Fat Duck, was voted Best Restaurant in the World in 2005 by fellow chefs. In later years, he has been an annual runner up, losing narrowly to Ferran Adria’s El Bulli. His restaurant is world famous for its scientific approach and experimental style of cooking.

In his search for perfection, I feel Blumenthal goes a little too far. His travels to New York and Italy are fine: his interviews with pizza chefs and flour mill owners are filled with feeling and good humor. I appreciate how rich, vivid and detailed his writing is. I could taste the sweet red ripeness of tomatoes, smell the aroma of roasting cocoa beans and feel the juicy steak-ness as I turned the pages.

However, when he returns to his lab to fry potatoes and modify his oven, we begin to lose interest. His techniques, while interesting, are at best only partially relevant to the home chef without his equipment or obsession with perfection.

Few of us will taste-test 8 different varieties of potatoes to find the best chipper, the best mashed potato or the best Pommes de Puree. Even fewer will attempt to make ice-cream by freezing it with liquid nitrogen. In his recipes, there is even a section titled ‘Special Equipment You Will Need’.

The more adventurous, however, might want to fry their chips twice, first at a lower temperature, then at a higher one, to get better chips. Others might slow-roast their chicken to perfection. Perhaps you might be inspired to make your own pizza. This book certainly isn’t short on good ideas.

In his defense, the book’s title is In Search of Perfection. His techniques might not be relevant to you and me, but how many of us can claim to be close to perfection?

In short, while it is a good read, I’m not going to put this book on my bookshelf. Some of his techniques are useful to take note of, but this isn’t a book that I would refer to over and over again for inspiration.

Rating: 3/5