😇 Epiphany 2
Readings: 📜Isaiah 49:1-7; 🎶Psalm 40:1-11; ✉️1 Corinthians 1:1-9; 🦅John 1:29-42
From the TRNG Room:
Armor of God for Isaiah 49 reading
On the John 1 reading, see GruntGod 2.2.4 (there’s no “lamb” that takes away sin…)
Also, check out uswithoutThem, a podcast exploring the discography of mewithoutYou!
Central Thesis/Theme:
I explore the tension between institutional control and personal moral responsibility through the lens of my martial hermeneutic. This episode is less about exegeting specific texts and more about revealing the infrastructure behind my paraphrase project and why I ground biblical interpretation in the experience of ordinary believers—the "grunts"—rather than institutional authorities. My military experience taught me that individual conscience and responsibility cannot be surrendered to systems, even when those systems claim divine authority.
Key Textual/Historical Insights:
Isaiah 49 contains dense armor of God imagery that I'm still unpacking: the mouth made sharp as a sword, hidden under the shadow of God's hand, made a "choice shaft." I'm investigating whether this connects to the martial staff (shepet shofar) that Zebulon holds in Judges 5, part of Deborah's victory song. These military breadcrumbs throughout Hebrew scripture point to families and lineages with martial vocations—like Barak from Kadesh in Naftali's tribal territory. I prioritize the Septuagint as our oldest manuscript tradition, older than the Masoretic texts we have from the ninth century.
Theological Argument:
The Hebrew Bible reveals moral coherency through a pattern of elevating the lowest to positions of significance—not because of their strength, but because God chooses them first. David didn't slay Goliath to earn kingship; he was anointed while still a shepherd, and his greatness came from owning his mistakes rather than justifying them. This challenges our assumptions about appointed versus anointed authority. What makes someone worthy isn't their position or power, but their character—specifically, their willingness to listen to conscience, take responsibility, and not hide behind systems that let them claim "somebody else made me do it."
Contemporary Application:
My experience preparing to deploy with a unit whose commander announced he'd plant weapons to protect soldiers by breaking the law taught me to trust that small still voice inside. When Lieutenant Colonel Browder later led troops who shot detainees with hands tied, it confirmed what my gut already knew. I can't redeem broken systems alone—redemption takes collective action. But I also won't surrender my responsibility or privilege as though that absolves me. We must hold both: we're not in control, but we remain accountable for how we use whatever power we're given. This applies whether you're a grunt in Iraq or navigating institutional Christianity.
Questions Raised:
How do we distinguish between legitimate authority (anointed) and mere institutional power (appointed)?
What does it mean that God chooses David before he demonstrates conventional qualifications for kingship?
Can individuals maintain moral responsibility within corrupt systems, or does participation itself implicate us?
Why does scripture repeatedly feature military families and martial imagery if these details aren't theologically significant?
How do we practice "togetherness" when harmony requires addressing rather than ignoring tension?
Reflection
Hello and welcome to Epiphany 2. This is Brother Logan Isaac, broadcasting from the chapter house in Albany, Oregon. This morning's readings come to us from Isaiah 49, Psalm 41, 1 Corinthians 1, and John 1. I have to apologize—I did not interpret as much as I usually try to do this week. There's no excuse. I had the time and I did other things. I want to go back and do this properly by the time I upload them to pewpewhq.com.
A bit on that as I do this in many more forms than I did First Formation, to include video. You can see this podcast on YouTube as well under Fighting Words. I think I'll put the link in there. You can just click on the video wherever you see it.
To give an overview of where this is taking shape for me: I'm going to continue to do the Sunday readings for the three lectionary years I've already started, and I'll continue and hopefully be better about doing it consistently. What I do is take a public domain Septuagint translation and pull it into Notion. That's my digital notebook—I like it, I'm happy to tell you why. This isn't a paid advertisement, but I like Notion and I use it. You can see all of the background work that I'm doing. You can go to pewpewhq.com/tfw and I think the entire Notion workspace is in there. You can click on it and visit in your web browser. You can just stay on /tfw on the website, but that's my brain center.
I import the public domain version—the Septuagint, or the World English Bible for the New Testament. At the beginning of the week, I begin paraphrasing. I check against the words and verbs and my own hermeneutic, my martial hermeneutic. Then usually I have that ready by this time. I read it on camera and on the microphone. Then I take the entire chapter, including the part that I didn't paraphrase that wasn't part of the lectionary readings, and I put that on the website. Every chapter of the Bible will have its own page on the blog at pewpewhq.com/tfw.
I'm not going to go over the structure right now, but this is all making sense for me. This is me helping to share with my audience—if you want to follow my lead, follow my thinking, it's all there. Anything that has been interpreted or paraphrased online, I'll put in bold. If it's not bolded, I don't know if I've paraphrased it. Maybe I will in the future, but I'm using the website as the publication, the stuck-in-time version. Notion will remain my active, living paraphrase project. So you can look at—and when I link to the readings, that will be linked on the website. It won't be linked in Notion anymore, but I'm going back through and making sure all of my readings are updated on the website. Those, again, are stuck in time. Notion will remain my living paraphrase that I'm continuing to work from.
This morning, reading Isaiah 49—whether anybody notices it but me or not, I don't care—but it's loaded with this armor of God imagery. "He has made my mouth as sharp as a sword"—the sword of truth in Isaiah 59, Isaiah 11, I think killing the wicked one with the breath of his lips. "With a sword hid me under the shadow of his hand, but has made me a choice shaft."
I want to look—I haven't, but I will and I should have—at whether or not this is also evoking the same Greek as the martial staff in Judges 5 that Zebulon holds. Part of my hermeneutic—martial being spelled M-A-R-T-I-A-L, as in military—the shepet shofar, which is what the pewpewhq.com staff is. In Judges 5, people haven't really done a whole lot of work on that, but it's fascinating to me because it's the victory song. The Song of Deborah is remembering not the day of Midian, but Sisera and Jael and Barak. It's remembering that, and it talks about all the tribal clans that came out to help at the battle. It was Zebulun and Naphtali primarily. Barak is from Naphtali. The city he is from is called Kadesh, which also means holy—a holy city in the town or the tribal allotment of Naphtali in the north.
Anyway, there's all these tiny little breadcrumbs that are pointing to military families in the Old Testament and the New Testament. When I notice these, I hope it's not just because I'm a weird freak and I'm curious about weird things. I'm looking for moral coherency. I'm looking for moral coherency in these texts. Does it stand up to what I need to believe in? I need to believe that all of this has meaning, because if it has meaning, it has reasoning.
So much of what I appreciate about the Hebrew Bible—and I use the Greek Septuagint only because it's the oldest manuscript we have. The Hebrew Masoretic text and the textual variance that the Jewish Publication Society bases it on—we don't have any manuscripts past the ninth century. The Septuagint is much older than the manuscripts we have in Greek anyway. To me that makes sense. I am an outsider. I'm not a Jew. I tried to be a good Christian theologian, and that didn't work out—not because I failed to meet some moral standard, but because I did meet the moral standard.
I wanted to be... I knew what it felt like to not listen to my conscience and to betray my own conscience and make mistakes and not repent. Whether that's because we justify what we do, like war—I don't have to say it wasn't my fault because somebody else made me do it. That's third-grade rhetoric. You did it. Just own it. I did violence. I went over to Iraq for stupid reasons. I did my best. And still, nobody can redeem a broken system. The system has to be redeemed. And that takes a whole lot of people.
This draws me back to my martial hermeneutic: I am not in control. As a grunt, as a forward observer in an infantry platoon, in a light infantry unit for six years, I had very little control, and I made my peace with that. There was a certain time I wouldn't question an officer if I trusted him. But if I lost my trust in that officer, if I stopped believing in that officer, I wouldn't trust him. Sure enough, the people that I didn't trust showed later to be untrustworthy.
In general, if you want to look up Lieutenant Colonel—I can't remember his first name—Browder, I was supposed to deploy with that unit. I think it was 2nd of the 35th Infantry out of Schofield. He sits us down and tells us how he's going to break the law. He's going to protect soldiers by planting weapons. He said that in NTC, on pre-deployment training. Then when we came back from NTC and went back to Hawaii, I got pushed out of the military as a Conscientious Objector. But then he led troops to combat, and several of them shot detainees with their hands tied behind their back.
Trust your gut. I trust my gut. I trust that small still voice inside me as though it were the most important word that I could possibly receive. But I cannot distinguish that from my surroundings, from my relationships, and so I listen to them as well. I try and let go of the idea that I'm in control, but I also will not let go of my own responsibility. Any power that I'm given, any privilege that I receive, I'm not just going to let go as though that's going to make everything better. I'm going to use my privilege, I'm going to use my power as responsibly and conscientiously as possible. And that's what I see these texts doing.
The core of these texts are a tiny backwater, upside-down, uncivilized group that has this interesting history of raising the lowest up to the top. The eighth son of Jesse becomes the king. And he's not a king in the contemporary—or he is. He is a king in every sense of the word, both all its bad and also all its good. But if you think that kings make a person good—no. David was good. He was made king. He was still good. He made mistakes. But what made him good was that when he made mistakes, he would own up to them. That is what makes David a worthy king. But don't get caught up in kings. Get caught up in character.
I remember listening to this podcast, "Us Without Them." It's a wonderful podcast. I don't know if it's on video—I only listen to it—but they're interpreting the music of mewithoutYou, which is a rabbit hole I want to get down to. But you should listen to Us Without Them. It's an incredible podcast. I love the music that they're interpreting, and they do an excellent job of interpreting it. Both the presentation of the ideas, the sound ecosystem—it's great.
Anyway, they were talking about David. I think they said, what is a common assumption or expectation? The reason that David becomes king, or the meaning we're supposed to attribute—the reason we're supposed to give to it—is that he slew Goliath. That's what kings do. Kings show themselves to be strong, right? He didn't slay Goliath until after he had been chosen and anointed by God.
So I'm something of an originalist, and I know that's a word in tension. But let's take the story that is given to us chronologically. He was chosen from out of the field as a shepherd. And when he was then empowered or validated—whatever you want to say—by God, that's after that is when he slays Goliath and he does all these other great things.
It's about God choosing the lowest and the least to bring them in front. Just like you take the slowest runner in a formation, in a PT formation, put them in the front so everybody stays together. Together is goodness. And if you don't have harmony and concordance or conciliation, the togetherness becomes difficult. But you don't just break up. You've got to deal with that tension. You've got to take responsibility for the power you have.
And that is a long sermon off some readings that I forgot to paraphrase. But I wanted to give you all a sense of what's behind this—practically, how I'm uploading these to the internet and how they'll reside online in public, but also how it matches up with what I've always been doing and how I see it going for the next three years.
Everywhere I can, I'll put the pewpewhq.com URL, and that's where you'll get everything. You'll get the video, the audio, the readings, the reflection. That will be the one-stop shop for anything and everything exegetical from me, to include the Greek and Hebrew Strong's words, the paraphrased Bible content. All of that will be at pewpewhq.com/tfw.
This has been Epiphany 2, E-2, private E-2, Week of Epiphany Tide. Appreciate you for listening. I'm glad that there's some people—even if there's only, I think there's six of you that consistently download, at least on Spotify.
If you have any questions, thoughts, comments, feel free. Don't hide. You can find me on Bluesky. My DMs are open at @iamloganmi. You can also search "The Martinalian" with an A at the end. But yeah, this is a conversation I am having in public with the text, which I think is what theology and reasoning with God is. I find God in myself in relationship with other people, and so I welcome any feedback and interest you might have. I'm happy to keep paraphrasing all on my own—that's a net gain for me. But I also want to be sure that I explicitly invite anyone into this conversation, because this isn't just a conversation out into the void. I don't believe the void exists. This is a conversation that is occurring in public that is open to all.
