I'd always assumed there was some numerological reasoning behind the numbers in Mark's stories of Jesus feeding the multitudes (6:30-44 and 8:1-10). A quick look through the New Oxford Annotated Bible answers some of my questions:

As he had fed the earlier crowd in the wilderness, implicitly composed of Jews, now Jesus also feeds the surrounding peoples in the wilderness. Seven is symbolic of the surrounding peoples, as twelve was of Israel. The two wilderness feedings echo thte two accounts of the giving of food to the Israelites in the wilderness.

I still wish I knew what the specific numbers of loaves of bread and fish meant—that's a question for later.

I discovered this verse shortly after Christmas. It's now one of my favorites:

My son, sow not upon the furrows of unrighteousness, and thou shalt not reap them sevenfold.
—Ecclesiasticus 7:3

Ecclesiasticus, an Apocryphal example of Hebrew wisdom literature, is one of my favorite Biblical books, probably because the Jesus ben Sirach's cynicism meshes so well with my own.

I can think of nine whom I would call blessed,
and a tenth my tongue proclaims:
a man who can rejoice in his children;
a man who lives to see the downfall of his foes.
Happy the man who lives with a sensible wife,
and one who does not plough with ox and ass together.
Happy is one who does not sin with the tongue,
and one who has not served an inferior.
Happy is one who finds a friend,
and one who speaks to attentive listeners.
How great is one who finds wisdom!
But none is superior to one who fears the Lord.
Fear of the Lord surpasses everything;
to whom can we compare one who has it?(25:7-11)

The New Oxford Annotated Bible complains about Sirach's attitude towards women: "androcentric at best…at times he expresses an untempered misogyny"$mdash;parts of Ecclesiasticus leave one wondering if he had someone specific in mind; take for example 25:13-26:

Any wound, but not a wound of the heart!
Any wickedness, but not the wickedness of a woman!
Any suffering, but not suffering from those who hate!
And any vengeance, but not the vengeance of enemies!
There is no venom worse than a snake’s venom,
and no anger worse than a woman’s wrath.
I would rather live with a lion and a dragon
than live with an evil woman.
A woman’s wickedness changes her appearance,
and darkens her face like that of a bear.
Her husband sits among the neighbours,
and he cannot help sighing bitterly.
Any iniquity is small compared to a woman’s iniquity;
may a sinner’s lot befall her!
A sandy ascent for the feet of the aged—
such is a garrulous wife to a quiet husband.
Do not be ensnared by a woman’s beauty,
and do not desire a woman for her possessions.
There is wrath and impudence and great disgrace
when a wife supports her husband.
Dejected mind, gloomy face,
and wounded heart come from an evil wife.
Drooping hands and weak knees
come from the wife who does not make her husband happy.
From a woman sin had its beginning,
and because of her we all die…

He crosses to the large, leather chair reserved for him, takes the key out of his pocket, fumbles with the ornate leather-covered box that stands on the table beside the chair. He inserts the key, opens the box, lifts out the Bible, an ordinary copy, with a black leather cover and gold-edged pages. The Bible is kept locked up, so the servants won't steal it. It is an incendiary device: who knows what we'd make of it, if we ever got our hands on it? We can be read from it, by him, but we cannot read.
—Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale (Everyman's Library) (as quoted in The Bible: A Very Short Introduction by John Riches)

That phrase—incendiary device—is one of my favorite descriptions of the Bible. It's something unpredictable, and dangerous in the wrong hands.

And here's my favorite definition of our favorite book, from Crazy Talk: A Not-so-stuffy Dictionary of Theological Terms:

A book that Christians believe is so holy and inspired that they almost never read it for fear that it might draw them closer to God and neighbor or change their lives in some other inconvenient way.

So I didn't keep up with reading last year, partly because I was sidetracked by a job search after being laid off (I'm now newly employed, with a much better job than the last one), mainly because of my inherent laziness.

I'm not planning on reading the entire Bible this year; my plan right now is more modest. I'm reading the Daily Office lectionary readings each day, which shouldn't be difficult, as I (semi-regularly) read the offices anyway. I'll still be sporadically posting my reactions to the daily readings and any other Bible commentary I encounter. Hopefully, I'll do a better job than last year.

There were times when Noah and his sons got quite hysterical. That doesn't tally with your account of things? You've always been led to believe that Noah was sage, righteous and God-fearing, and I've already described him as a hysterical rogue with a drink problem? The two views aren't entirely incompatible. Put it this way: Noah was pretty bad, but you should have seen the others. It came as little surprise to us that God decided to wipe the slate clean; the only puzzle was that he chose to preserve anything at all of this species whose creation did not reflect particularly well on its creator.

—Julian Barnes, A History of the World in 10½ Chapters

Barnes's stowaway's (a termite who was forced to hide on the Ark because Noah decided he wasn't interested in saving that species) description of Noah—and his contemporaries—reminded me of Amy-Jill Levine's opinion of him.

That same night I washed myself and went into my courtyard and slept by the wall of the courtyard; and my face was uncovered because of the heat. I did not know that there were sparrows on the wall; their fresh droppings fell into my eyes and produced white films. I went to physicians to be healed, but the more they treated me with ointments the more my vision was obscured by the white films, until I became completely blind. For four years I remained unable to see.
—Tobit 2:9-10 (NRSV)

This is possibly the weirdest cause of blindness I've ever seen.

Another of the disciples said to Him, "Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father." But Jesus said to him, "(D)Follow Me, and allow the dead to bury their own dead."
Matthew 8:21-22 (NASB)

R.T. France points out an interpretation of these verses which I hadn't seen suggested before. "To bury one's father" could be read as an idiom meaning "fulfilling one's filial responsibilities for the remainder of the father's lifetime, with no prospect of his imminent death." This would indicate that the disciple quoted above was seeking an "indefinite postponement of discipleship, likely to be for years rather than days."

In the third month they began to lay the foundation of the heaps, and finished them in the seventh month.
2 Chronicles 31:7 (KJV)

For the thoughtful reader, I recommend Dave Walker's profound exegesis of this, the most underrated verse in the Bible (now the 30642nd most popular, according to Top Verses).

Andrew provides another take on heaps and Top Verses.

Roll of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham:

Abraham fathered Isaac, Isaac fathered Jacob, Jacob fathered Judah and his brothers, Judah fathered Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar, Perez fathered Hezron, Hezron fathered Ram, Ram fathered Amminadab, Amminadab fathered Nahshon, Nahshon fathered Salmon, Salmon fathered Boaz, whose mother was Rahab, Boaz fathered Obed, whose mother was Ruth, Obed fathered Jesse; and Jesse fathered King David.

David fathered Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah's wife, Solomon fathered Rehoboam, Rehoboam fathered Abijah, Abijah fathered Asa, Asa fathered Jehoshaphat, Jehoshaphat fathered Joram, Joram fathered Uzziah, Uzziah fathered Jotham, Jotham fathered Ahaz, Ahaz fathered Hezekiah, Hezekiah fathered Manasseh, Manasseh fathered Amon, Amon fathered Josiah; and Josiah fathered Jechoniah and his brothers. Then the deportation to Babylon took place.

After the deportation to Babylon: Jechoniah fathered Shealtiel, Shealtiel fathered Zerubbabel, Zerubbabel fathered Abiud, Abiud fathered Eliakim, Eliakim fathered Azor, Azor fathered Zadok, Zadok fathered Achim, Achim fathered Eliud, Eliud fathered Eleazar, Eleazar fathered Matthan, Matthan fathered Jacob; and Jacob fathered Joseph the husband of Mary; of her was born Jesus who is called Christ.

The sum of generations is therefore: fourteen from Abraham to David; fourteen from David to the Babylonian deportation; and fourteen from the Babylonian deportation to Christ.

Matthew 1:1-17 (New Jerusalem Bible)

Normally, I couldn't be bothered reading the genealogies (I just finished half-skimming, half-skipping-over the first half of I Chronicles). But in this case, R. T. France points out something interesting not-too-deeply hidden in this passage. The four women mentioned here, as asides to this patrilineal genealogy, "certainly make a strikingly unconventional group to find within the pedigree of the Messiah of Israel, in that probably all four of them were non-Israelite (Tamar and Rahab were Canaanites, Ruth a Moabite, and Bathsheba the wife of a Hittite)." [The Gospel of Matthew, 36-37] Their inclusion can be seen as an intentional effor to advance Matthew's theology of the universality of the Messiah, preparing "the reader for the coming of non-Israelites to follow Israel's Messiah which will be foreshadowed in the homage of the magi in 2:1-12 and will be a recurrent and increasing theme throughout the gospel until it reaches its climax in the mission to all nations in 28:19."

"You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. 41And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. 42 Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.
Matthew 5:38-42 (ESV)

I've been reading R. T. France's volume on Matthew for the New International Commentary on the New Testament for guidance through the first Gospel. His commentary on the Sermon on the Mount—which he terms "The Discourse on Discipleship"—has been interesting, but I found Jesus' teaching on retribution in the verses above especially enlightening:

"Those who have understood the true thrust of Jesus' teaching here have often declared it to be not only extreme and unwelcome, but also practically unworkable in the real world. You cannot live like this. It would be to encourage the unscrupulous and the feckless and so to undermine the proper ordering of society....But instead of therefore dismissing Jesus teaching as starry-eyed utopianism, a proper response to this challenging section is to ask in what practical ways Jesus' radical principles can be set to work in our very different world. Our answers will vary, but if they are true to Jesus' teaching they will represent an essentially non-self-centered approach to ethics which puts the interests of the other before personal rights or convenience (pp. 217-218).