I have begun looking at the word “Truth” as I continue my study on the Whole Armor of God with particular focus on “having girded your waist with truth”.
Unfortunately, circumstances were such that I could not devote the time I had planned to study. Therefore, there isn’t a blog post ready this week.
I hope to continue in my study and have something for next but, until then, I invite you to read a post from 2021.
Hello Readers and welcome-or welcome back-to Renaissance Woman where, this week, I am taking another look at the Hebrew word sane (saw-nay) which is often translated in scripture by the English word “hate”.
An interesting passage in Psalm 139 kicked off this study. I read in verses 21-22: “Do I not hate them, O Lord, who hate You? And do I not loathe those who rise up against You? I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies.” King David appears to be saying his hate is a good thing and something that honors God. How can this be especially since the words of Jesus in Luke 6 conflict? “Love your enemies,” Jesus instructs. “Do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who spitefully use you” (Luke 6:27-28). I do not believe the Bible contradicts itself. I believe when and if passages appear to contradict each other, it is my understanding that is incomplete. What then, did I understand about hate? Was there ever a time when hate might be considered a good thing? What is meant by “perfect hatred?”
The definition of “hate” in my New World Dictionary didn’t help in my attempt to find an answer. The English word hate means “to have strong dislike or ill will for, loathe, despite, bear malice toward.” I read through some scriptures containing the word sane and it did seem as though that definition was accurate. Consider these passages:
Deuteronomy 19:11: “But if anyone hates his neighbor, lies in wait for him, rise against him and strikes him mortally, so that he dies…”
1 Kings 22:8 (also 2 Chronicles 18:7): “so the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, ‘There is still one man, Micaiah the son of Imlah, by whom we may inquire of the Lord; but I hate him, because he does not prophesy good concerning me, but evil.’”
Psalm 25:19: “consider my enemies, for they are many; And they hate me with cruel hatred.”
Psalm 41:7: “All who hate me whisper together against me; Against me they devise my hurt.”
Each one of these passages, and others like them, appear to bear up the definition of “ill will, strong dislike, malice” and it is obviously not considered to be a good thing. But then, in contrast to each one of these passages, there are others where sane/hate is considered to be a good thing. Consider:
Psalm 97:10: “You who love the Lord, hate evil!”
Psalm 101:3: “I will set nothing wicked before my eyes; I hate the work of those who fall away; It shall not cling to me.”
Proverbs 8:13: “The fear of the Lord is to hate evil; Pride and arrogance and the evil way and the perverse mouth I hate.”
Ecclesiastes 3: 1, 8: “To everything there is a season…a time to love and a time to hate.”
As I have studied the Hebrew word sane, I have found various scholars who say “hate” is not an appropriate choice to translate sane. A better one would be “reject” or “turn aside.” I read through the Strong’s concordance listing of scriptures containing sane with that definition in mind and…okay; I can see where that definition might be appropriate. And yet I am not satisfied. Few of the passages accurately represented what I think of when I hear the word “reject” in that the ones “hated” were not ostracized or left utterly alone.
One article I came across said something that struck me and which I have been pondering all this week. The article is posted on the Light of the World blog and says, “The original Hebrew Picture shows us what Hate does, not how it feels.” The author quotes Psalm 139:22 and says, “Our English definition of Hate does make it appear that King David Detests, abhors, and Despises, בוז Buz his enemies.” She then quotes Proverbs 14:21 which says, “But he who despises his neighbor sins; But he who has mercy on the poor, happy is he.” The author points out, “He (King David) would have known that it is Sin to Despise your Neighbor because it missed the Mark of the Commandment to Love your Neighbor: ‘You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall Love your Neighbor as yourself: I am YHVH’ Leviticus 19:18. This means שנא Sane cannot include the emotion of Despising anyone. In context, we see that he parallels Turning Aside, סורSur, With Hate, שנאSane, Psalm 139:19.”
The Light of the World blog compares Exodus 20:12, “Honor your Father and Mother” with Luke 14:26, “If anyone comes to Me and does not Hate his Father and Mother…” The author writes, “Apparent contradictions like this one should alert us to our misunderstanding of the original meaning. With the meaning of Hate being to Turn Aside, it is possible to Honor our parents, while Turning Aside From the lies they have inherited, in order to Obey the Commandments of our Eternal Creator.”
I can see how defining sane as “to turn aside” could work and yet it doesn’t entirely fit especially when it comes to God. His promise to never leave nor forsake stands and His turning aside never meant utter abandonment. As I look at the Hebrew letters comprising sane which are ש Sin נ Nun and א Aleph, I see the picture of a fire rooted and emerging from God. The ש Shin carries the meaning of a process of destruction and consumption until completion. Hebrews 12:29 states “our God is a consuming fire” and I am convinced the love and hate of God are two aspects of the fire that He is.
There is an idea circulating that the love of God is this saccharine thing: that He is some ancient drooling entity confined to a celestial rocking chair where He bestows vacant grins on His children and just loves them. No. He is alive and passionate and because He loves so utterly and completely, He hates. Last week I quoted a bit of Romans 2 from the Message and I like how this is rendered: “God is kind, but he’s not soft. In kindness he takes us firmly by the hand and leads us unto a radical life-change” (MSG). Hebrews 12:5-6 quotes Proverbs 3: 11-12 saying, “My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, Nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him; for whom the Lord loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives.” There is a dark side to the love of God, for lack of a better word. Certainly there are experiences that don’t feel all that great but they can be endured because we know He loves us and the consuming fire that He is only destroys those things that would hinder us from growing into His image. The ש Shin is a comfort here in that the process repeats itself over and over. In His love and mercy, He doesn’t burn through our lives all at once. He is, above all things, agape and His lovingkindness endures forever.
As creatures made in the image of God, we are capable of hate and it is right that we are. Hate burns within us when we see a loved one suffering from a disease or when we see pain and injustice. Hatred burns within as a “No! These things shall not be!” That fire within us burns the apathy out of us and we are roused to take action. I think hatred only becomes a bad thing when it causes us to sin and fall short of the glory of God. I think of the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians where he quotes Psalm 4:4; “’Be angry and do not sin’: do not let the sun go down on your wrath, nor give place to the devil” (Ephesians 4:26-27).
It is so important that we realize that God, in his ultimate hatred, cried “No! These things shall not be!” and that this hatred looks like Jesus. “For God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved” (John 3:16-17). What did Jesus do? “…once, at the end of the ages, He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself” (Hebrews 9:26). Jesus Christ is “Himself the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world” (1 John 2:2). “…For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8) and “through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14).
The cry of “It is finished” heard from the cross echoes through the ages. It was the ultimate victory and it is now made a reality in our lives through the processings we experience. We know these processings are not to utterly destroy us but are necessary so that Jesus Christ present us, The Church, to Himself not having any spot or wrinkle but are presented holy and without blemish (See Ephesians 5:27). We embrace the consuming fire that He is knowing when He has tried us we shall come forth as gold!
Just as He is so are we in this world. We have the same mind in us that was in Christ Jesus (See Philippians 2:5) and therefore, because Jesus Christ is alive in us, we love as He love and hates as He hates. We hate with perfect hatred. We go out into the world and we make war. What is crucial to remember is “we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). It is also crucial to remember we do not conduct our warfare after the way of this world. “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:4-5).
We seek to know Him as we are known and then, with our confidence in the finished work of Jesus Christ, we take up the full armor of God.
Unless noted otherwise, all Scriptures are quoted from The Holy Bible, New King James Version, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1982
Guralnik, David B., Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, Second College Edition, William Collins + World Publishing Co., Inc., Cleveland • New York, 1972, 1976
Haralick, Robert M., The Inner Meaning of the Hebrew Letters, Jason Aronson Inc., Northvale, New Jersey, 1995
Peterson, Eugene H., The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language, NavPress, The Navigators, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 1993, 2002, 2018
Strong, James, LL.D., S.T.D., The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville Tennessee, 1990
Hello and welcome-or welcome back-to Renaissance Woman where, this week, I continue looking at the Hebrew word sane (saw-nay) often translated by the English word “hate”.
In last week’s post, I shared an article by Chaim Bentorah where he says a nineteenth Century Hebrew master and linguist named Samuel Hirsh applies the English word “rejection” to sane rather than hate.A post on the Light of the World blog (linked below) says a closer translation of sane would be “turn aside”. This post also points out the original Hebrew picture of the word sane shows us what Hate/Rejection/Turning Aside does, not how it feels as that picture is not one of an intense negative emotion. This is a subject I’d like to explore in the upcoming weeks. For the sake of this post, I want to share some thoughts I had as I considered the different ways to translate sane.
I wasn’t sure “rejection” was thoroughly supported by the context of the passages in which sane appeared. For example, Leah was “hated” but she was not “rejected” in the sense that Jacob had nothing to do with her. On the contrary; Leah was obviously the recipient of Jacob’s attentions as she bore him children. So, she was not “rejected” in the way I think of the word which is “to have nothing more to do with” but she did not have Jacob’s heart.
I saw the same picture where scripture states God “hated” Esau. I can see a bit more support for the idea of rejection in the story of Esau but there is a passage worth noting. It is Deuteronomy 2:4-7 where God warns the Israelites to take care as they passed through the lands of the descendants of Esau saying He had given Mount Seir as their possession and not one bit of their land would be given away. The Israelites were also admonished not to meddle with them in any way and to buy any food and drink that might prove necessary. So, God “hated” Esau but did not utterly reject him in the sense that He had nothing more to do with him or his descendants. However, Esau didn’t share in God’s heart the same way Jacob did.
Since “rejection” didn’t sum up the meaning of sane for me, I looked it up on thesaurus.com hoping a list of synonyms might help fill in some of the gaps. I was especially curious to see if “incompatible” was included in the list. It was not but “cast aside” was. This fascinated me and I was reminded of something I’d just read in Andrew Murray’s commentary on the Book of Hebrews. He was speaking on Hebrews 12:1 which says, “Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us”. Andrew Murray quotes the latter part of that passage and writes:
“One of the first thoughts connected with a race is the laying aside of everything that can hinder. In the food he eats and the clothing he wears, how resolutely the runner puts aside everything, the most lawful and pleasant, that is not absolutely necessary to his success. Sacrifice, self-denial, giving up, and laying aside is the very first requisite on the course. Alas, it is this that has made the Christian life of our days the very opposite of running a race. The great study is, both in our religious teaching and practical life, to find out how to make the best of both worlds, how to enjoy as much as possible of the wealth and the pleasure and the honor that the world offers. With many Christians, if their conversions ever were an entering through a straight gate, their lives since never were, in any sense, a laying aside of everything that might hinder their spiritual growth. They never heeded the word, “Whosever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:33). But this is what we are called to as indispensable: “lay(ing) aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily best us.” Yes, laying aside every-sin-however little it seems, however much it be our special weakness; it may not be spared. Sin must be laid aside if we are to run the race. It is a race for holiness and perfection, for the will of God and His favor; how could we dream of running the race without laying aside the sin that so easily bests us?” (Murray, Page 493)
Andrew Murray had spoken on the idea of perfection in an earlier chapter where he was discussing Hebrews 11:39-40: “’That apart from us they should not be made perfect.’ He writes, “The better thing God has provided is perfection. The word ‘perfect’, or forms of it, is used fourteen times in the epistle. The law made nothing perfect. Jesus Himself was, in His obedience and suffering, made perfect in His human nature, in His will and life and character, to us. As the Son, perfected forevermore, He is our High Priest; having perfected us forever in His sacrifice, He now brings us, in the communication of that perfection, into real, inner, living contact with God. And so, He is the Perfecter of our faith, and He makes us His perfect ones, who press on unto Perfection. And our life on earth is meant to be the blessed experience that God perfects us in every good thing to do His will, working in us what is pleasing in His sight. Apart from us, they might not be made perfect; to us, the blessing of some better thing, of being made perfect, has come.” (Murray, Page 489).
This idea, of running the race for holiness and perfection and that that perfection is ours in Jesus Christ, the Perfect One, is one that has stuck with me as I’ve sought to understand the meaning of sane. The Hebrew letters comprising sane are the Shin (ש), the Nun (נ), and the Aleph (א). The picture of the Shin is of teeth representing Sharp, to Eat, Devour, Destroy, Consume, like a fire, and is also representative of a process that repeats. The Nun represents a seed, sperm, sprout, continuation, offspring, life, activity, and emergence. The Aleph is a picture of an ox and represents strength, power, leader, master. It is also the letter that represents God Himself and Unity with God.
Thinking of sane as a devouring, consuming fire rooted in and springing from God, I am reminded of Hebrews 12:29: “our God is a consuming fire.” I am also reminded of a passage in Romans 2 which, from The Message, is, “God is king, but he’s not soft. In kindness he takes us firmly by the hand and leads us into a radical life-change. You’re not getting by with anything. Every refusal and avoidance of God adds fuel to the fire. The day is coming when it’s going to blaze hot and high, God’s fiery and righteous judgment. Make no mistake: In the end you get what’s coming to you-Real Life for those who work on God’s side, but to those who insist on getting their own way and take the path of least resistance, Fire!” (Verses 4-8, MSG).
I recently conducted a study on the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares where I shared scriptures that spoke of each one of us being tried by the same fire. The results of this testing were good or ill based on whether or not we were united to Christ. I wonder if sane isn’t the same? Again, the Light of the World blog pointed out the original Hebrew picture of sane shows us action rather than feeling. Perhaps the same fire I welcome into every aspect of my life feels like rejection to someone who does not long to, or perhaps does not feel able to, know the heart of God. Perhaps whether we experience the consuming fire of God as sane or ahab (love) is akin to the idea expressed by Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians: “For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. To the one we are the aroma of death leading to death and to the other the aroma of life leading to life” (2 Cor.: 15-16.) Perhaps the fire of God is life to us pressing ever deeper into Him but rejection to those who are not.
It is something I will meditate on in the coming days and I hope this has been food for thought for each of you as well. I will continue looking at sane next week. Until then, let us each one go on unto perfection, that perfection that is Christ in us, our hope of glory.
Amen.
Unless noted otherwise, all Scriptures are quoted from The Holy Bible, New King James Version, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1982
There is a moment in all of my studies where I come to a realization that I don’t know anything at all and, in fact-borrowing from that great sage Yoda-I must unlearn what I have learned. As I have come to know this great Father revealed in Jesus, to actually know Him personally via His Spirit living in me, to know him not as a second-hand or merely intellectual knowing; I have discovered that what I have been taught to believe about Him is not true. Not only do I discover God Himself to be very different than what I’ve been taught but I find great many other things I’ve been taught to believe do not, in fact, have their foundation in the bedrock of Jesus Christ.
Moving from an intellectual knowledge and study of God, as if He’s an object to be studied like one of my school day science experiments, to a vital relationship with the Living God is terrifying. There was a moment, years ago, when the God revealing Himself to me and the image of the god I’d been taught to know came face to face with each other. The false image was burned away by the vitality of He who is Alive Forevermore (Revelation 1:18) and I could feel Him moving from my head to my heart. I know, it sounds odd but it was a real experience. At once, I felt as if I was dying and being made alive. It was again, at once, a terrifying and electrifying experience.
I do try not to be negative in these blog posts but I do have to say the god I’d come to know in religious institutions was utterly destroyed by the consuming fire God is. This is not a pleasant experience in many ways. There were Christian friends who were genuinely concerned that, if I continued down the path I was being shown, I would lose my salvation and end up spending eternity in hell. These are subjects for another time. For the sake of this post, I want to say to anyone having an experience like this, God is faithful. The Shepherd isn’t going to let any of His sheep be consumed in the wilderness. I had to cling to a handful of scriptures while my world was shaken to bits and stripped to the bedrock of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. One is Isaiah 41:10; “Fear not for I am with you; be not dismayed for I am your God. I will strengthen you. Yes, I will help you. I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.” I also clung to the various passages in Psalms which promised God wouldn’t allow me to fall, that He wouldn’t lose His grip on me, etc. I pictured myself held tightly in His hand and submitted to whatever the Holy Spirit thought was necessary.
Which is not at all what I’d intended to say in this week’s post! Perhaps all of that relates to my study of Isaiah 45:7 because I continue to come to places where I feel cast adrift. I see that I believe something I didn’t even know I believed and I see that belief is-rather than “wrong” should I say “mistaken”?-that scriptures aren’t saying what I’ve been taught to believe they say and that I don’t know anything. I am no longer afraid of these places of not knowing because I know I am held fast in the righteous right hand of the Father who loves me and that His Spirit will open my eyes to the Truth. I also anticipate because my Heavenly Father loves surprises and I know there will be a Wow! moment.
That moment came when I looked up the meanings of the Hebrew letters comprising my study word darkness. The Hebrew word is choshek (H2822) and the three Hebrew letters are Chet (ח), Shin (ש), and Caph [in its final form (ך)]. Mr. Haralick’s book The Inner Meaning of the Hebrew Letters defines the three letters as Chet = Life, Shin = Cosmic Nourishment, and Caph = The Crowning Achievement. I had just finished looking up the definition for darkness in the Strong’s Concordance and read through the various scriptures and was still wrestling with my thinking of the darkness as something bad. These meanings made me sit back in my chair and think, “Wow!” Not only was there nothing bad here but these letters comprising my study word darkness actually contained the word life. I couldn’t believe it. I needed verification.
I have another book on the meaning of Hebrew letters titled Hebrew Word Study: Beyond the Lexicon by Chaim Bentorah. I looked up the three Hebrew letters and was fascinated by what I found. Mr. Bentorah’s book defines Chet as “new beginnings” and “the binding together of man with God”. The entry for the word Shin says, “The word Shin (note: the Hebrew letters themselves are spelled with Hebrew letters so there are meanings within meanings) means urine and if you drop the Yod in Shin you have Sen which means to chew, tooth, or jaw. This tells us that the Shin represents a totality of an overall process from eating, to digestion, to the elimination of waste. Thus, the Shin has the meaning of whole, entire, intact, or complete.” I looked up Caph (or Kap in Mr. Bentorah’s book) and found: “The Kap is shaped like a container that is empty and ready to be filled…this is the word for palm, hollow of hand, a pan, dish or a container.” This might make more sense when you see that my study word uses the final form of Caph and that the regular form of the letter is shaped like a backwards/sideways U: כ.
I am such a beginner in my studies of Hebrew and Greek that using the word beginner gives me too much credit. I always verify because the final forms of letters can look like the normal/regular forms of other letters and want to be sure I am looking at the correct letter. The internet is extremely helpful and, while verifying, I found two more sources that helped to further define these letters. The website alittleperspective.com defined Chet as “the wall, thus outside, divide, half”, Shin as “two front teeth, thus sharp, press, eat, two, again”, and Caph (spelled kaph) as “the open palm, thus bend, open, allow, tame”. I found a YouTube channel for studying Hebrew words called Rock Island Books and they defined Chet as “sanctuary or inner room designed to protect, a place of refuge, or a place of separation, cut off”, Shin as “crushed, pressed down, destroyed”, and Caph as “palm of the hand which either covers or uncovers.”
All four of my sources allow for both a positive or negative interpretation of darkness. Mr. Haralick writes of our lives being the manifestation of our thoughts and those thoughts either coming from the human mind or the divine mind. Mr. Bentorah speaks of a shadow meaning to Chet where that life of being bonded to God can turn to arrogance and rudeness or an addiction to newness. Both internet sources speak of Chet as being a place of protection, an inner sanctuary, or place of refuge but it can also be a place of being cut off like a prison. The same holds true for Shin and Caph as well. Which is true? Is Darkness positive or negative? Good or bad?
I think it’s a matter of perspective. Both darkness and light exist simultaneously in our present lives. This is true on a natural plane where one side of the earth experiences night while the other experiences day and this is equally true on the spiritual plane. The entire world lies in darkness. We believers once walked in darkness and there are a host of ideas, thought processes, and identities associated with the darkness. When our eyes are opened to the light that is Jesus Christ and we enter that light, we are confronted with an entirely different set of ideas, thought process, and identity. His light shines in our darkness, our death is swallowed up in His life, and we are transformed through the renewing of our minds. The process doesn’t always feel good: remember the chewing, crushing, destruction of Shin but also remember that Shin means whole, entire, intact, and complete.
“Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you” (1 Peter 4:12). “We are hard pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed, always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifest in our body” (2 Corinthians 4:8-10). “Being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6). “But he knows the way that I take; when He has tested me, I shall come forth as gold” (Job 23:10).
What a hope we have! Truly, in Jesus, God our Father has given us treasures of darkness. And, I thank Him that this purging and processing and transforming takes place in His sanctuary, a place hidden from the eyes of those who do not see and cannot understand. He keeps us safe. He is our covering as He fills us with Himself. We are filled to overflowing until “as He is, so are we in this world” (1 John 4:17) and we too shine His light into the darkness.
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Amen.
Unless noted otherwise, all scriptures are quoted from The New King James Version of The Holy Bible, Thomas Nelson, Inc., Nashville, Tennessee, 1982
References
Bentorah, Chaim, Hebrew Word Study Beyond the Lexicon, Trafford Publishing, 2014, Pages 92, 108, 148
Haralick, Robert M., The Inner Meaning of the Hebrew Letters, Jason Aronson Inc., Northvale, New Jersey, 1995, Pages 113, 161, 293
I have great fun studying the Bible. I never know what I’m going to learn and yet I always know I’m going to learn something new about the Father revealed in Jesus. It’s an adventure every time. Which doesn’t mean it’s easy. I will start studies and find I’m utterly confused. It is difficult to come to a study without preconceived notions about what the study passage means. I have a background where I’ve experienced different denominations and each one has left behind echoes of its belief systems. I read commentaries and expositions on the passages I study that tell me these passages mean one thing and then, through conducting my own studies, I find these passages mean the exact opposite.
I have already mentioned reading interpretations of Isaiah 45:7 where I’m told God is saying he “permits” or “allows” darkness. The Hebrew word there is “create” and is translated such in other passages. That God says He creates darkness was not easy to understand once I discovered I came to this passage with a bone deep conviction that the light is good and the darkness is bad. I wasn’t aware I felt this way until I was deep into the study and analyzing just what it was I already believed compared to what I was uncovering. Just over the last week there have been multiple times I’ve either read or heard someone say “Jesus is the light that shines in our darkness”. That is absolutely true: He is. Yet I’ve been listening with every fiber of my being not just to the words but the intent and feeling of the context in which they are spoken and I find others have this same conviction that the darkness is bad the light is good. More than that, I see this conviction carries into how we believers view ourselves: I was bad while in darkness and now that I’m in the light Jesus makes me good. Is this true? If God created the darkness, and Isaiah 45:7 directly quotes Him as claiming He did; did He create something bad?
The Hebrew word in Isaiah 45:7 for darkness is choshek (H2822) and is defined in the Strong’s Concordance as: “from 2821, the dark; hence (literally) darkness; figuratively misery, destruction, death, ignorance, sorrow, wickedness–dark(-ness), night, obscurity.” This doesn’t sound good at all and yet this exact word is the same one for darkness in Genesis 1 which God calls “night”. Night isn’t bad, it just is. And yet, if I read slowly and carefully, I find that in verse 4 God sees the light, that it was good and then divides the light from the darkness. In verse 5 He calls the light “Day” and the darkness “Night” and then the First Creation Day comes to a close. God never actually calls the darkness “good” although verse 31 says, “Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good.” These are all interesting points, but I don’t find an answer to my question.
I open the Strong’s Concordance to the scripture listings of occurrences of “darkness” and begin to look at them. At once, I find the subject of darkness to be far more complicated than I imagined. There are eleven Hebrew words translated “darkness” in the Old Testament and an additional five Greek words in the New. I am currently focusing on the Hebrew words and some aren’t distinct per se from choshek but rather are familial words and come from the same root. For example, Psalm 139:12 says, “Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You, but the night shines as the day; The darkness and the light are both alike to You.” The first occurrence of darkness is my study word choshek but the second is chashekah (H2825). According to the Strong’s Concordance, this word is also from 2821 and is defined as “darkness, figuratively misery”.
The two words translated “darkness” in Job 28:3 are a different story. My New King James Version has this verse translated, “Man puts an end to darkness and searches every recess for ore in the darkness and the shadow of death.” The first occurrence of darkness is again choshek but the second is ophel (H652) and means, “dusk–darkness, obscurity, privily.” For those of you wondering: privily is the adverb form of privy and means, “private, hidden, secret, clandestine.” Here we do have two different words coming from different roots and with different meanings although they’ve been translated by the same English word. As I continued to look at scriptures containing my study word, I found plenty more to confuse me. There are scriptures where my study word means physical darkness or night. This is true in Genesis 1 and is also true in passages like Exodus 14:20. And yet, while the meaning of darkness or obscurity doesn’t change, there are far more occurrences where “darkness” is used in a metaphorical rather than physical sense. I found this to be true in many passages of Job, Proverbs, and Psalms but reading all of these did not make it any easier to discern whether darkness was good or bad.
Chapter 20 of Job is titled “Zophar’s Sermon on the Wicked Man” and verse 26 states, “Total darkness is reserved for his treasures”. Those who lose their treasures would call this bad but there are many who would call it good. Then I read in Isaiah 45:3 quotes God as saying, “I will give you treasures of darkness and hidden riches of secret places.” There is nothing bad here at all. Proverbs 2:13 speaks of men who “leave the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness,” which of course is bad. But then Psalms 107 speaks of those who rebelled against the words of God (very bad) and thus sit in darkness and in the shadow of death; when they cried out to the Lord in their trouble He saves them out of their distresses and “brings them out of their darkness and the shadow of death” (verses 10-16). That’s good: the darkness was no match for God. Then, most confusing of all, I read in Amos: “Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord! For what good is the day of the Lord to you? It will be darkness, and not light” (Amos 1:18). The darkness does sound bad in this passage but how can it be in any way associated with such a certainly good thing as the day of the Lord?
Good or bad. How can I know? I certainly can’t rely on my own judgment because there have been so many bad things that have happened to me and yet, as the transforming light and life and love of Jesus has come in to the circumstance I called bad and redeemed it, it has become good. I can attest to the truth of Romans 8:28: “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.” Nor can I rely on anyone else’s judgment because one person will say a thing is bad and another will say the very same thing is good. I can attest to the truth of Isaiah 5:20: “woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.”
I think a great deal about the first few chapters of Genesis, specifically the two trees named in the Garden. There was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life. I have a book I have not yet read in its entirety but there’s a passage that has stuck with me. The book is Is God to Blame? by Gregory A. Boyd. He addresses the Serpent’s lie in the first chapter and writes, “Our role as God’s creatures is to receive, enjoy and reflect our Creator’s love and goodness as we exercise the authority over the earth he entrusted to us. But we can’t do this if we try to be wise like God, “knowing good and evil”. To fully reflect God’s image in the way he intended, we must resist the serpent’s temptation to be “like God” in the way God has forbidden. Unlike God, our knowledge and wisdom are finite. We simply are not equipped to make accurate and loving judgments about good and evil…When we try to go beyond this boundary and try to know what God alone can know, when we try to be “wise” like God, it destroys us.”
I don’t yet know whether I agree or disagree with this statement. Perhaps the truth is closer to I see where Mr. Boyd is coming from but, in Jesus; I have His life and mind and wisdom because His Spirit lives in me and teaches me to think as He thinks and know as He knows. “In Jesus” is, I think, the key. I find my confusion begins to clear when I cease trying to understand darkness in terms of good and bad and begin to think of it in terms of Life of Jesus Christ and Not-life of Jesus Christ. Can there be life in the midst of darkness? Since life is Jesus, His life is the light of us all, and the life and light that He is shines in the darkness, then I would say that answer is yes. I would also say this subject of darkness requires further study.
Unless noted otherwise, all scriptures are quoted from The New King James Version of The Holy Bible, Thomas Nelson, Inc., Nashville, Tennessee, 1982
References
Boyd, Gregory A., Is God to Blame? Beyond Pat Answers to the Problem of Suffering, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois, 2003, Page 23
Guralnik, David B., Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, William Collins + World Publishing Co., Inc., Cleveland • New York, 1970/1976
Strong, James, LL.D., S.T.D., Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1990
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