Whom do you serve? Notes

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1. As hellfire was pouring onto the cities of the plain, Lot's wife looked back.
Genesis 19:26

But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.

Some believe Sodom, Gomorrah and the other cities are now somewhere under the Dead Sea. One can imagine a volcano somewhere along the Rift Valley exploding – rather like Mount St. Helens exploded – and raining fire and brimstone in the region. We might reflect that God is not prohibited from using Nature to inflict punishing catastrophes if he deems it proper.

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2. Taxmen were contractors who took a profit on taxes they collected and turned over to the Romans. They were despised not only for helping the Romans, but also because many of them routinely overcharged so as to fatten their profit.
These days we might loathe a loanshark the way ancient Jews loathed taxmen.

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3.
Deuteronomy 24:1-4

1 When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her: then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house.
2 And when she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another man's wife.
3 And if the latter husband hate her, and write her a bill of divorcement, and giveth it in her hand, and sendeth her out of his house; or if the latter husband die, which took her to be his wife;
4 Her former husband, which sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after that she is defiled; for that is abomination before the Lord: and thou shalt not cause the land to sin, which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.