“After the death of Joshua the people of Israel inquired of the Lord.” Opening words of the Book of Judges with respect to seeking a successor to the charismatic Joshua. The verb for “inquire” is sha’al, to ask. It’s used with the preposition “in” (b-) prefixed to “the Lord” which literally reads, “in the Lord.” No indication is given as to how this inquiring was done, but certainly it was a communal event. In vs. 2 the Lord responds to the people as a whole nominating Judah. One can only imagine the nature of this sha’al, of how long it took for the Lord to respond and the means by which he effected it.

Today is the first of two days of the weekend during which I worked at the post, 8am-2pm. Tomorrow it’s 11am-5pm. This happens about once every two months, not bad, because business is slow.

En route home I saw about thirty vintage American cars pull out going to some kind of rally. All were in tip-top shape. This interest is fairly widespread in Iceland, i.e., American as opposed to European autos from the 50s and 60s. With the advent of “summer” as noted in a mid April entry, bikers are out as well. They have the usual black leather, grungy beards and biker-dolls on back. However, there’s something naïve about them compared to their American counterparts whom they try to imitate but come up short. As I’ve said often, don’t pay attention to signs, etc (in Icelandic), and you think you’re in the States.