I’m not sure what you mean when you ask the question are matriarch and patriarchs good role models, but I will take a guess. I do think that mothers and fathers are good role models if they are setting good examples for their children and other people around them. But if these mothers and fathers doing wrong things, then that isn’t a good role model. Everyone has their share of mistakes and everybody is human. No one is perfect, so even if your mother or your father makes a mistake, you can learn from the mistake and now that you would never want that to happen to you. Even if people do make mistakes, they can still be held in high esteem. A good example of a bad role model is Lot. Lot slept with his daughters, and that’s not setting a very good example for others around him. I noticed that the people in the Bible were some really dysfunctional people. They did a lot of things that were very bad and unacceptable in our culture today. But once again I want to emphasize that even though these parents made these bad decisions, such as Lot, he probably learned from his mistakes in the end and realized that he shouldn’t have done that. There is a lesson in everything that you do. I hope that answers the question pretty well. Short and sweet. I will now move on to my favorite commandment in the Decalogue. This may seem kind of weird, but my favorite commandment is you shall not commit adultery. The story behind why I choose this is because I didn’t know the full meaning of what this commandment really meant. I know what it means and have known since middle school. This commandment not only means that you shouldn’t sleep with someone else’s husband or wife, but it also links to the topic of the Bible about fornication. I say that because when you commit fornication, its like you are committing adultery at the same time. Because when you sleep with someone and you aren’t married, you may be sleeping with someone’s future husband or wife. I know that maybe kind of hard to understand, but it’s true and makes sense when you think about it. God has made someone special for everyone in this world, so sleeping with just anybody before you are married is breaking the commandment of Thou shall not commit adultery as well. I finally understood this commandment after listening to a sermon at a friend’s church. The fact that God has divinely made someone special just for you, is enough to make you not want lust with someone who isn’t your husband or wife.
The Decalogue fits into Near Eastern Suzerain Treaties in that the framework of the two are essentially the same. In the Decalogue, God has given his people 10 things that they shall and shall not do in their life time. Treaties are the same thing; there are outlined things that should be done by the people who follow these principles. If you think about these two principles in a different light you could almost parallel it to being like feudalism. Which it almost is like that. God has given the commandments so that we shall obey them and by obeying them we get rewarded in some kind of way. It’s almost as we are paying a tribute to our Lord and in exchange for something we need to survive or a reward. Covenants are also other things that are just like treaties. They are both agreements. One party agrees to do one thing and the other agrees to do something else. Both of the people do these things and they are rewarded in some kind of way. There is a good example of entering into a covenant with God. One is when you as a new believer make a promise to serve him for the rest of your life. At that moment you have entered into an agreement with God. Another example is the Ark of the Covenant. To me that represents God’s half of the agreement to his people. There the 10 Commandments are held which is God’s governing law for our lives and his believers. Ive answered everything that needs to be answered and I still don’t have 1000 words yet so I guess I can talk about something else. I’m going to talk about this class. I think it is really interesting the way this class is setup. We get to blog our ideas about certian things which is really cool. It beats writing everything down and turning it in. Writing 1000 words every week wouldnt be a fun task at all. I also like this class in that Dr. Homan really teaches the stories of the Bible really well and then parallels it to something going on in the world today. That always adds a nice touch to things and gives us a sense of how the people in the Bible even though it was a very long time ago are in many ways just like us. They went through many of the same things we face today. Thank God that the Bible is here to give us answers about many of the things that are going on today. We learn a lot in this class and I think that its a valuble tool in learning the stories of the Bible and understanding about the world today. The 10 Commandments is a great tool that God gave us. It essentially tells us how to live our lives so that we can seek eternal rewards in Heaven. Things couldnt get any easier then this right?? Not exactly, living today is hard, especailly is you are tyring to live the right way and not the wong way. Temptation is all around us and it may be hard to keep our heads on straight and focus on the things that matter in life that will get us into Heaven. But you just have to believe in the word of God and things will work out fot your good. PEACE!

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