"oil to make his face to shine"

Psalm 104 is a great nature poem, probably written by David. I've read it many times, and you probably have, too. Here's part of it that recently struck me:

14 He causes the grass to grow for the livestock,
    and plants for man to cultivate,
    that he may produce food out of the earth:
15 wine that makes glad the heart of man,
    oil to make his face to shine,
    and bread that strengthens man’s heart. (World English Bible, public domain.)

OK. Grass for pasture for livestock, plants for garden vegetables and fruit, wine, and bread for food. But oil to make our faces to shine? Where did that come from?

The Bible Gateway, using the World English Bible, indicates that the word, "oil," occurs about 200 times in the Bible, with only a few of these in the New Testament. Oil was used as fuel for lamps, and was used on people who had been injured. It was also used in cooking, and to anoint people, as a sign of honoring them.

The first use of the word, in the Bible, is in this verse:
Genesis 28:18 Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put under his head, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil on its top.

Jacob was fleeing from the wrath of his brother, Esau, and this use was a form of worship, of thanking God for showing Jacob a vision. It is interesting that Jacob, presumably running away with only essential possessions, would have had oil among those possessions.

Leviticus mentions oil more than any other book in the Bible does. It was to be used in some types of offering to God, and was also to be used to anoint the priests, as a sign that they were separated for the Lord's work.

I Samuel tells us that Saul was anointed with oil, as a sign that he was to be the first king of Israel. David, who took Saul's place when Saul didn't obey God, was also anointed as a sign of God's calling.

1 Kings 17 tells the story of how a widow fed herself, her son, and Elijah, by cooking or baking them a mixture of oil and meal, for at least several days. The containers of meal and oil were miraculously kept from being empty.

Luke 7 tells the story of how a Pharisee invited Jesus to eat with him. Jesus rebuked the host because he hadn't anointed His head with oil. (A woman anointed His feet with her tears.)

OK. Back to Psalm 104. That Psalm doesn't mention oil as an offering, oil for food, or oil for healing. It probably doesn't imply using oil for anointing. It just says "to make his face to shine." A couple of thoughts on that. One is that, although the Bible doesn't say that cleanliness is next to godliness, God apparently appreciates cleanliness, in spirit, and in body and in our surroundings. The other is that Psalm 104 seems to be endorsing the use of cosmetics. Like so many other things, cosmetics can be, and are, over-used. But making our faces look good seems to be part of God's best plan for us, and doing so by application of at least one substance seems to be endorsed by Psalm 104.

Thanks for reading!

Sunspots 511

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to

someone else:
Christianity: Todd Wood considers the question of whether it would matter if we discovered intelligent life on other planets, somewhere.
A Lenten meditation on dust (i.e. ashes) in the BioLogos forum.
Computing: Gizmo's Freeware tells about alternativeTo. The idea is that you type in the name of a software application, and the web site can respond with a list of alternatives that do more or less the same thing, and indicates whether they are free or not, and what platforms they work on.
Gizmo's Freeware also recommends Print My Fonts! Our computer has over 300 of them, which I didn't know until I ran the program. We don't need them all. (Actually, our computer says that some of the ones I thought I didn't need are protected system fonts.)
Health: National Public Radio reports that there are bacteria in your soap.
(or cooking) I'm not a "foodie," but you may be. Wired has reviewed 5 meat thermometers.
Humor: (or something) Wired reports that a beehive that is made so that honey will flow from it, without the necessity of removing the combs, has been developed.
Science: FiveThirtyEight Science considers the question of whether or not we can taste fat.
Wired reports that the Amazon basin depends on the Sahara desert for it's continued existence as a diverse ecosystem. Who knew?
Relevant reports that NASA has found two lights on Ceres, a large asteroid. (There's a photo.)

Image source (public domain)

Julie & Julia: my take on the movie

No car chases, no one gets killed (or even dies), no aliens, just French cooking. Julie & Julia was hilarious! (The link is to the review on the Christianity Today movies web site. There's a real ampersand in the title. Blogger won't allow me to use one in the labels of this post. Oh, well.)

Amazing for 2009, the movie features two married couples who love each other, in all senses of the term. The story is about the wives, but the husbands are acted well, and written as supportive to the point of being saintly.

Meryl Streep was Julia Child. Amy Adams seems to have been sanitized as Julie Powell, the 2002 young married with a hopeless job who starts blogging through Child's book, but Amy Adams is cute, and the movie shows lots of (probably realistic, and really amusing, so long as you are watching someone else) frustration with the cooking. It also shows Powell realizing that she had gotten pretty self-centered. Not much of Child on TV, although there is some.

A plus for me is that Powell's blog is a major part of the movie. It's a real blog. The posts for August, 2009, are found here. (She gets a lot more comments than I do!) Powell's first post is here. (She switched hosts a few years ago.)

For those concerned about such things, both the married couples are shown having some implied sexual activity, there's a little language that I would not use, and Child and her husband (and most of the other people in the 1950s) are both shown as smokers, which they most likely were.

No one prays, or goes to church, or worships anyone but themselves, their goals, or food cooked in lots of butter, but it was an uplifting movie. It showed two women pursuing their dreams, and loving, intelligent, and supportive husbands.

I recommend Julie & Julia to you.