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Mindful of Meaning

18 Monday Jul 2022

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Hello and welcome back to Renaissance Woman!

This week I am continuing my study of Isaiah 45:7 looking specifically at the meaning of peace.  Since I have begun focusing my attention on not only the meaning of peace but its nature, I realize how often I have used the word peace without taking time to think about what exactly I meant.

For instance, over the last week, there was a situation I did not have peace about and yet I held my peace.  I saw others involved keep the peace-despite provocation-and strive to make peace.  I am using the same word to say what I mean and yet I mean different things each time.  I’ve been pondering the six definitions of peace in the dictionary.  Each definition is not diametrically opposed to the other: the dictionary tells me “peace” comes from the Latin pax (pacis, pangere) which means to fasten and the Latin pacisci to confirm an agreement. 

The first four entries under “peace” in the dictionary are, freedom from war, a treaty or agreement to end war, freedom from public disturbance, and freedom from quarrels.  Each one of these reflects that idea of confirming an agreement but, as I previously shared, does not necessarily mean the parties are in accord; merely the parties have agreed not to fight.  Entries five and six-an undisturbed state of mind, absence of mental conflict, calm, quiet, and tranquility-do not conform as well to the idea of confirming an agreement.  It made me wonder if it didn’t make more sense to use different words for these concepts.

Out of curiosity, I checked my thesaurus to see what words I could find to better express the substance of my thoughts.  I could say:  I was upset and uneasy when I found myself confronted with a situation ripe for conflict.  I remained silent and watched while others refused to be provoked, responded amicably, sought accordance and reconciliation rather than discord, and averted hostilities.  While my mind is still not tranquil, I find the more I offer the situation up to Jesus the closer I come to ataraxia. 

I admit I got a bit carried away at the end there but, as a side note, ataraxia is a great word and I am now going to practice interjecting it into my everyday conversation.  I do think my second description is more precise than the first where I only used “peace”.  As I began to study “peace” in the Hebrew and Greek, I found both languages to be equally precise.

I looked up “peace” in the Strong’s Concordance and took a look at the list of Hebrew and Greek words.  Holding one’s peace is charash (H2790) which has a range of meanings.  It does mean “to be silent” or “to let alone” but also, oddly, means “to scratch, to engrave, plow”. Leviticus 10:3 which records Aaron as “holding his peace” uses the word damam (H1826).  This word means “to be dumb…astonished…to cease…quiet self…tarry”.  2 Kings 2:3, Psalm 39:2, and Isaiah 42:14 (among others) use the root chashah (H2814) for holding one’s peace while Nehemiah 8:11 and Zephaniah 1:7 use the root hacah (H2013).  Both of these words mean “hush, keep quiet”.

The other words translated peace all come from the same family. “Making peace” or “being at peace” is the root shalam (H7999) except for Joshua 9:15 where Joshua makes peace and a covenant with the inhabitants of Gibeon.  The Strong’s has shalom (H7965) listed here.  The word for “peace offerings” is shelem (H8002).  Shalom then is the word translated “peace” the most often except for two instances in Daniel (4:1 and 6:25) where the word shelam (H8001) is used. 

The Greek also has different words that have been translated “peace”.  The word used most often in the New Testament, and the word I find in the Septuagint in my study passage, is eirene (G1515).  This word means “peace, prosperity, quietness, rest, to set at one again” and the Strong’s suggests it comes from the primary verb eiro which means “to join”.  Related to eirene and also translated “peace” are the words eirenopoios (G1518) and eirenopoieo (G1517).  Eirenopoios means “pacificatory, peaceable, peace maker” and eirenopoieo means “to harmonize, make peace.” 

There are four Greek words for “holding one’s peace”.  The first is siopao (G4623) which means “silence, muteness” but is an involuntary stillness or inability to speak.  This word is contrasted with sige (G4602) which is a refusal to speak but sige doesn’t appear in the Strong’s list.  Sigao (G4601) which comes from sige does and means, “to keep silent”.  Phimoo (G5392) appears in Mark 1:25 and Luke 4:35 and means “to muzzle”.  Hesuchazo (G2270) appears in Luke 14:4 where it is translated “held their peace” or “kept silent”.  Jesus has asked the lawyers and Pharisees, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?” and they kept silent.  The word hesuchazo does mean “to keep still” but this stillness is in the sense of refraining from labor, meddlesomeness of speech, rest.

I find all of this riveting.  It’s not like I don’t know what these passages mean when I read them in English and read the word “peace”: I can glean the meaning from the context.  And yet, I am missing subtleties by not knowing all of these are different Greek and Hebrew words with unique meanings.  Does it really matter?  I think it does.  I have seen written and heard said that scripture “means exactly what it says”.  I have also heard the word “infallible” used when it comes to scripture.  I cannot commit myself to agree with those who claim the aforementioned until I know exactly what they mean.  If they are referring to their English translation, I have to disagree.  Not that I do not value my English translation: I do and I enjoy reading it.  My quibble comes when dogmatic statements are made based on the English translation when it does lack the subtlety and precision of the Hebrew, Greek, and even Aramaic.

Last week I mentioned Jeff A. Benner and his YouTube channel.  In a few of the videos I’ve watched, he puts up a picture of a fast food meal and another of a steak dinner.  He asks if he were to invite us to dinner, which would we choose?  He then compares reading a translation of scripture to the fast food meal and reading it in the original language to the steak dinner.  Both will fill you up and satisfy hunger, but which would you prefer?

As I study, I find I agree.  I have used the word “peace” in all of its meanings throughout my life.  I’ve read scripture and had an intellectual grasp of what the passages meant when I read “peace”.  I understand but it’s a surface understanding and is like a fast food meal: something I’ve grabbed on the run because I don’t have the time to prepare a meal and sit down to consume it.  It satisfies at the moment but is not all the food there is and, stretching this analogy further, a diet of fast food is unhealthy. Studying, questioning, and looking up the different words and their meanings: this feels like the steak dinner with the trimmings (or a lovely lentil and vegetable meal for my vegetarian friends).  It’s not the word consumed on the run but it’s me taking the time to savor the different flavors and textures.  

What about those who cannot study the ancient languages, for whatever reason? I am so grateful for the opportunities I have to study but nothing compares to being in the presence of the risen and ascended Lord Jesus Christ. The best meal of all is the one we partake of in and by the Holy Spirit living and working inside of us. There is no better food than that which comes directly from the hand of He who made it.   

As I move forward in my study, I will be focusing on shalom and eirene, exploring beneath the definitions and usage, and seeing what can be unearthed.  I have seen eirene coming from eiro means “to join” and here I finally see the idea of “to fasten” found in the dictionary.  I am curious if I’ll find the same idea in shalom. 

To be continued…

References

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, 1970, 1976

Rodale, J.I., The Synonym Finder, Warner Books, Rodale Press, Inc., Emmaus, Pennsylvania, 1978

Strong, James, LL.D., S.T.D., The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1990

Going With the Flow

30 Monday May 2022

Posted by in Isaiah 45:7, Studies

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“I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create calamity; I, the Lord, do all these things.” 

This is Isaiah 45:7, my study passage.  I am moving on from darkness and have begun looking at “I make peace”.  The first thing I did was look up “make” in the Strong’s Concordance to see what the Hebrew word is.  It is asah (H6213) and I think it’s worth noting this is the same word used in Genesis 1:26 where God says, “Let us make man in Our image and after Our likeness.”  I was thinking of the difference between God creating the heavens and the earth but making man.  Creating took intent and thought but Making, to me, suggests personal attention, like an artist deliberately fashioning something to delight in.  Making sets mankind apart from the rest of Creation because God paid special attention to us.  I wondered if I’d find this idea contained in the meaning of the Hebrew letters.

I may.  I haven’t made it too far because my attention was arrested when I looked at the first letter of asah which is the Ayin. Mr. Haralick’s book defines Ayin as Insight and Consciousness and the word itself (spelled Ayin, Yod, Nun) means “eye, face, look, appearance, sight, aperture, bud, sparkle, or gleam”.  While looking at darkness, I had spent some time in Matthew 6 verses 22 &23 so I have had eyes on my mind-so to speak.  I am looking into “make” so did not want to get sidetracked but I couldn’t help it: I had to know what Ayin had to do with eyes and sight and whether or not I would find a repetition of the picture I’d seen of the eyes of our heart being enlightened by the Holy Spirit and thus our seeing being intertwined with His. 

Mr. Haralick defines Ayin and then says, “And when we know the eye we realize that the eye is more than the eye.  We become conscious of something deeper for ‘The eye is not satisfied with just seeing’ (Eccl. 1:8).  This is because it is by the light of the eye that we can see and follow the correct path.  Therefore, the eye is deep and protected.  ‘Guard me like the apple of Thine eye’ (Psalm 17:8)…When we turn our eyes to God, what do we see?…We see eye to eye.”

In many of his teachings, Malcolm Smith talks about the meaning of with God and God with us often using the term “eyeball to eyeball.”  Reading “we see eye to eye” made me remember Mr. Smith’s words which made me think of John 1:1; “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”  Since I had determined to go with the flow, I decided to look at with. 

With, in the Greek, is sun (G4862) and the Strong’s defines it as, “union, with or together, companionship, process, resemblance, possession…completeness”.  Surely here I see a confirmation of being braided together with the Holy Spirit, One with Jesus Christ and The Father in union with the Holy Spirit.  Except sun isn’t the Greek word translated with in John 1:1.  The Strong’s doesn’t help me here except to not include John 1:1 in the list of occurrences of with.  I have to look at the Interlinear Greek New Testament in order to see that the Greek word translated with in John 1:1 is pros (G4314).

Pros is a directional word.  It means “forward to, toward, the side of, pertaining to…the place, time, occasion, or respect which is the destination of the relation…motion towards, accession to, or nearness at.”  The entire Greek phrase translated “with God” (in anglicized spelling) is pros too Theos.  The too (G5120) is a word I’ve written about before.  It is the same word many Bible translations have as “in” in Galatians 2:20: “the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God” whereas that word in the Greek is too and means “of this person-his”.  I’m delighted whenever I come across this tiny word because, as I’ve mentioned before, one of my study resources declares it to be of no importance when conducting a study and I wholeheartedly disagree.  Both of my Interlinear Greek New Testaments appeared to agree with that study resource as neither bothered to translate it.  Too hangs out in the sentence with nothing but blank space underneath it while “with” is under pros and “God” is under Theos. 

I put myself in the place of the translators and think I understand the difficulty.  How to properly translate this phrase into English?  We’ve got The Word which is Logos and has a meaning difficult to express in one word.  It’s the communication, the Divine Expression, the very thought belonging to God in a special and specific way coming to us out from God and yet, at the same time, pointing back to God.  “With” cannot begin to express all that is contained in this tiny phrase yet it does the best it can: The Word was with God and He is the promised God with us.  Emmanuel.  That name begins with the Hebrew for with which is Im and begins with the letter Ayin.

I allowed my thoughts to flow without hindering them and I am brought full circle to where I started with the letter Ayin.  I read further into Mr. Haralick’s description and read the gematria of Ayin is 130.  What is Gematria?  How is it different from Numerology? It’s important to first define the term.  I’ll include some links at the bottom of this post so anyone interested can further look into this.  Put simply, Numerology is a way of using numbers in an attempt to foretell the future and Gematria is the method of assigning numbers to Hebrew letters and then looking for patterns between words that share the same numerical value.  I found some articles that spoke disparagingly on gematria and an equal number considering it a valuable tool.  

As for me, I love patterns and was curious what point Mr. Haralick was going to make.  He writes, “the gematria of Ayin is 130.  The word cullam has the gematria of 130 and means ‘ladder’.”  Here is a pattern indeed.  The word cullam (H5551) occurs in Genesis 28:10-19 which is the story of Jacob’s dream where he saw a ladder set upon the earth.  Its top reached to heaven and the angels of God were ascending and descending.  In John 1:51 Jesus is speaking to Nathaniel and says, “Most assuredly I say to you hereafter you shall see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”  Here, I think, is a wonderful picture of the meaning of pros too Theos.  Jesus is the One in Whom Heaven and Earth meet.  He is the One in Whom life flows in two directions.  What do I mean by that?

“No one has seen God at any time.  The only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him” (John 1:20).  “God who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets has in these last days spoken to us by His Son whom He has appointed heir of all things through whom also He made the worlds; who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Hebrews 1:1-3).  These are two scriptures that show the flow from the heart of God to us.  Jesus is the Gift of God who comes to us out of the very heart of God.  This same God who is Infinite Love chose us in Jesus Christ before the foundation of the world, predestined us to adoption according to the good pleasure of His will…which He purposed in Himself that in the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ-In Him (Ephesians 1:3-10).

Andrew Murray includes this quote by Tauler in his commentary on the Hebrews: “Did not Jesus say, “I am the door of the sheepfold’ (John 10:1)?  What to us in the sheepfold, dear children?  It is the heart of the Father, whereunto Christ is the gate that is called Beautiful.  O children, how sweetly and how gladly has He opened that door into the Father’s heart, into the treasure chamber of God!  And there within He unfolds to us the hidden riches, the nearness and the sweetness of companionship with Himself.”  That is what I mean by life flowing two ways.  He is the light which is our life come from the Father and, in Him, we are lifted up, seated in heavenly places, brought eye to eye with the Father.

“By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us because He has given us of His Spirit” (1 John 4:13).  Ayin also means “spiritual insight” (Bentorah) and it is only when our eyes are enlightened by the Holy Spirit that we know that He is in us and we are in Him: One the same way He and the Father are One.  With our eyes enlightened, we see Jesus.

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 130-134

Haralick, Robert M., The Inner Meaning of the Hebrew Letters, Jason Aronson Inc., Northvale, New Jersey, 1995, Pages 229-240

Marshall, Rev. Alfred., The Interlinear Greek-English New Testament, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1958, 1970

Murray, Andrew, Holiest of All: A Commentary on the Book of Hebrews, Whitaker House, New Kensington, PA, 1996, 2004, Page 370

Strong, James, LL.D., S.T.D., Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1990

What Is Gematria? | My Jewish Learning

Numerology Definition & Meaning – Merriam-Webster

Gematria Definition & Meaning – Merriam-Webster

What is the difference between gematria and numerology? | Bethsheba Ashe | The Blogs (timesofisrael.com)

Gematria: It’s Not Numerology — Daf Aleph

What Are You Looking At?

09 Monday May 2022

Posted by in Isaiah 45:7, Studies

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Hello, Readers!  Welcome to another post on darkness.

Part of my word study process is reading every scripture where my study word appears.  I did so with both the Hebrew and Greek words translated “darkness” and did read some things that made me wonder: what does this passage mean?  Once such passage is in Luke’s Gospel: “Therefore take heed that the light which is in you is not darkness” (11:35).  I’ve been turning this verse over and over in my mind for weeks all the time wondering just what Jesus is saying here.

The verse occurs within a point Jesus is making about the eye.  He says, “The lamp of the body is the eye.  Therefore when your eye is good, your whole body also is full of light.  But when your eye is bad, your body also is full of darkness.  Therefore take heed that the light which is in you is not darkness.  If your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, the whole body will be full of light, as when the bright shining of a lamp gives you light” (Luke 11:34-36)

This same speech is quoted a bit differently in Matthew: “The lamp of the body is the eye.  If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light.  But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.  If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” (Matthew 6:22-23)

Having already read these passages, they were foremost in my mind when I read through the “darkness” entry in the Dictionary of New Testament Theology and found this: (on skotos) “The words are given a clearly negative sense in those passages which contrast a sound eye (as the organ which guides) in a body full of light with an evil eye in a body full of darkness (Matt. 6:22 f, Lk. 11:34-36).  By looking in the wrong direction the body succumbs to the power of darkness.”

The idea expressed here made more sense to me when I looked at the same passages in the King James Version where “good” as in “if your eye be good” is translated “single”.  Having a single eye must mean an eye undivided, meaning not having our attention divided, meaning gazing always and forever into the face of Jesus and thus being full of light.  If we look away from Him and focus our attention on the things of this world, then our eye is no longer single and we are full of darkness.  It’s like the song says: “Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face, and the things of earth will go strangely dim…”

This idea of the body succumbing to the power of darkness because the eye looks in the wrong direction also made sense when I considered how the human eye works.  Our eye is complex and functions by bending and focusing light rays.  The light rays enter the eye via the cornea which is curved so the light is bent slightly.  Light then passes through the pupil, which is actually a hole surrounded by the muscular structure of the iris which contracts and relaxes to let in more or less light.  Behind the pupil is the lens where the fine focusing is done.  The lens is a clear disc held in place by suspensory ligaments and ciliary muscles which contract to bend the light more or relax to bend the light less.  All of these parts of the eye serve to focus light on the retina which responds to the light by sending electrical impulses to the brain via the optic nerve.  There are two types of light sensitive cells in the retina: rods and cones.  Rods are found mostly in the periphery of the retina, are used in peripheral vision, are more light sensitive than cones but cannot distinguish colors.  Cones are concentrated in a small, central area of the retina, provide color vision, and work best in bright light.  The eye, if deprived of light, does not properly function.

All of this reminded me of a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne titled The Great Stone Face.  This story is about a rock formation in the mountains overhanging a village.  The rock formation is shaped like a wise and noble face.  There’s a prophecy among the villagers that, one day, a man would come who would be the exact image of the Great Face.  There’s a young boy fascinated with the Face and the prophecy and spends as much time as he can gazing at the Face.  As he grows, there are some who come to the village who are proclaimed as the embodiment of The Face but that proves to be false.  The young boy grows to manhood and then old age, always waiting for the One prophesied to come, always gazing on the Great Face, not realizing the he himself was growing into the same image.  It’s a beautiful story and, again, the idea expressed does seem to make sense of the scripture passages.

Except…

The Greek word translated “single” in the KJV and “good” in the NKJV doesn’t mean undivided or focused.  The word is haplos (G573) and the definition in Strong’s is “folded together, single, clear.”  Haplos is a compound word comprised of alpha and pleko.  Pleko (G4120) is a primary word meaning “to twine or braid.”  When I read this, I was reminded of one of the Hebrew words translated “wait” in the OT.  The word is qavah (H6960) and one of its meanings is, “to bind together by twisting”.  This particular word is the one used in Isaiah 40:31: “But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”  This isn’t a twiddling the thumbs sort of waiting: it’s being intertwined with the very life of God.

I am not saying fixing our attention-our sight, if you will-on Jesus Christ is wrong.  There is a moment in our lives when the light of Jesus Christ shines into our darkness and we see what we never saw before.  And yet, there is so much more to the passages in Matthew and Luke.  Ephesians 1:18 says, “the eyes of your understanding being enlightened.”  This passage is not speaking of our physical human eyes or our ability to fix our attention on Jesus but is referring to a kind of seeing possible only by the action of the Holy  Spirit.  I think the passages in Matthew and Luke are making the same reference.  They are not speaking about us gazing at a Jesus located outside of ourselves but rather being knit to Him so that we don’t see with our eyes only but our vision is intertwined with His. The best quote I’ve found that puts into words what I am seeing in this passage is one I copied from Malcolm Smith’s teaching series The Search for Self Worth.  He says, “In that moment of miracle (meaning the moment the light of the truth of Jesus Christ shone in my life) I have been taken out of the darkness.  Now, that process begins of taking out of me the ways of darkness.”

Skotos, the Greek word for darkness, carries the meaning of obscurity and the Greek word for “single” or “good” also means clear.  When I looked at the Hebrew letters comprising “darkness” in my original study passage of Isaiah 45:7, I saw the picture of God joining Himself to us and transforming us.  I see the same picture in the passages in Matthew and Luke: Jesus Christ Himself coming into our darkness and joining Himself to us.  His life is formed in us.  In Him we are a New Creation. This life that He is in us is ours through His Spirit in us. We are full of light when we abide in Him and His Spirit is the river of life within us. It is my firm conviction this light becomes darkness when His Spirit is quenched. Truly, how great is that darkness.

I meditate on all of this and no longer think the question I am asking myself is “what are you looking at?” but “how are you seeing?”

I see Jesus.           

Unless noted otherwise, all scriptures are quoted from The New King James Version of The Holy Bible, Thomas Nelson, Inc., Nashville, Tennessee, 1982

References

Brown, Colin, The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, Volume I, Regency Reference Library, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1967-1971, Pages 420-425

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, The Great Stone Face, Greatest Short Stories, Volume I, P.F. Collier & Son Corporation, New York, New York, 1915, 1940, Pages 89-120

Pilcher, Dr. Helen, Mind Maps Biology: How to Navigate the Living World, Unipress Books Limited, China, 2020, Pages 74-75

Strong, James, LL.D., S.T.D., The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1990

The Ways of Darkness

02 Monday May 2022

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Welcome, Readers, to the Month of May and the return to my study of Isaiah 45:7. 

I am still looking at the second part of the first line of this passage: “I create darkness”.  I’ve already looked at the meaning of the Hebrew letters comprising the word translated “darkness” and was curious what I might discover in the Greek. 

A brief recap: the Hebrew word for darkness in Isaiah 45:7 is choshek and, in the OT, is used for the darkness of night as well as metaphorical darkness.  The NT does use separate words to express these concepts.  In a previous post, I mentioned there are five different words for darkness in the New Testament.  I ought to have been more specific and I will endeavor to be so in the future.  There are five reference numbers for darkness in the Strong’s Concordance but only two unique words used: zophos and skotos.  The other three words corresponding to the Strong’s numbers are all related to skotos.  They are skoteinos, skotia, and skotoo.  “Night” is nyx (or nox-pronounced noox).  I looked up “darkness” in the Dictionary of New Testament Theology and found nyx can also have the metaphorical meaning of “darkness” equivalent to skotos in some passages (John 11:10, 9:4, 1 Thess. 5:5-7) which made me wonder just which word would correspond to choshek in Isaiah 45:7.  I purchased a copy of the Septuagint and found the word was skotos. 

The Dictionary of New Testament Theology says this about skotos:  “In classical Greek, darkness applies primarily to the state characterized by the absence of light (phos) without any special metaphysical overtones.  The thought is chiefly of the effect of darkness upon man.  In the dark man gropes around uncertainly (Plato, Phaedo, 99b), since his ability to see is severely limited.  Thus the man who can see may become blind in the darkness and no longer know which way to turn.  Hence darkness appears as the “sphere of objective peril and of subjective anxiety”. (H. Conzelmann, TDNT VII 424).  Since all anxiety ultimately derives from the fear of death, the ominous character of darkness culminates in the darkness of death which no man can escape (cf. Homer, IL., 4, 461).  Darkness is therefore Hades, the world of the dead, which already reaches out into our world in the mythical figures of the Eumenides, the children of Skotos and Gaia (Soph., Oedipus Coloneus, 40).

A little further into the entry for “darkness”, I found a mention of Gnosticism and read; “Here the concept of darkness goes beyond the purely relative to become an independent force, seen as the unlimited ruler of the earthly world.  This world is so filled with darkness that even its luminaries are but skoteinon phos-dark light (Corp. Herm. 1, 28).  In radical contrast to this world of darkness shines the transcendent world, the priority of which is stressed in Gnostic literature.  Man has been endowed with a soul, coming from a spark of light.  It is his task by means of gnosis (knowledge) to attain to enlightenment.”

I went through a period of time where I was fascinated by the stories of the Greek gods and goddesses and read everything I could get my hands on.  Thus, I was already aware Nyx was the Night goddess but did not remember coming across Skotos.  Darkness was deified by the Greeks as Erebus and such was the information I could find in the volumes I have.  Once I went online I did find websites that told me Scotus (or Skotos) was another name for Erebus.  I find this fascinating.  It’s important to remember the Bible was not written in a vacuum.  These Greek words were part of a vibrant culture and had ideas and belief systems connected with them far and beyond the way they were being used by the writers of the NT. 

So many passages in the NT equate darkness with a way of thinking.  Looking at two examples; Romans 1:21 says, “they…became futile in their thoughts and their foolish hearts were darkened” and Ephesians 4:18 says, “having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart.”  As I read the section on darkness in the Theology Dictionary, I thought about the belief systems the NT writers were so steadfastly against: Gnosticism, Pantheism, etc.  One of my Bible Teachers recently spoke on the way our thought processes come down to us from our ancestors as well as being formed by the world around us.  I have been thinking about how true that is.  I believe words mean certain things because of how I’ve heard them used.  There are words spoken that evoke pictures in my mind and these pictures come from movies or books.  Anyone who has seen my bookshelves know I am not one to eschew books or movies because of the messages contained in them but I think making the realization is important.  Everything I hear and see affects my thought processes.  It is only through careful study and learning to discern the voice of Jesus Christ in the midst of innumerable other voices that I come to see which of my own thought processes are resting on a foundation of lies.  This is true of the world at large: age-old thought processes are still with us.  I read sermons preached today that sound a great deal like the excerpt on Gnosticism.  I hear fellow believers saying things that sound a great deal like Greco-Roman Pantheism. 

Isaiah 45:5 says, “I am the Lord and there is no other; there is no God besides Me.”  This is a truth universally recognized among believers except when it comes to talking about Satan.  Satan is spoken of in terms that infer he is somehow God’s opposite.  He is said to be the Prince of Darkness and ruler over hell.  I do understand where these ideas come from.  John 12:31 and John 14:30 speak of the “ruler of this world”.  Ephesians 2:2 uses the term “the prince of the power of the air” and then there is Ephesians 6:12: “For we do not wrestle 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.”  I acknowledge there are spiritual powers of darkness at work but let us who know the Living God not give Satan more power than he is due and let us never in our words equate him with God.

The Theology Dictionary says, “The key to the OT view of light and darkness is faith in God as Creator who stands above both.  He is not only the Lord of light; darkness also has to bow before Him.”  In the NT, in the very Day we are living in, we see Jesus who, “Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:4).  Finishing out the passages in John, we find the ruler of this world is “cast out” and “has nothing” in Jesus.  Whatever usurped rule the devil might have had, he is utterly defeated.  He is filled with fury because he knows his time is short and it is Jesus Himself who holds the keys to death and hades (Revelation 12:12, 1:18). 

The entire NT proclaims Jesus Christ’s total victory and it also speaks against this Gnostic idea that we attain enlightenment.  We cannot because “the carnal mind is enmity against God” (Romans 8:7) and “the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14).  Left to ourselves, we would forever walk in darkness.  Praise God our Father and the precious Lord Jesus Christ that we are NOT left to ourselves!  “God demonstrates His own love toward us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). 

What about the Gnostic idea that darkness is the ruling force here on Earth?  All I have to do is turn on the news to see that much is true, right?  No.  All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Jesus (Matthew 28:18).  There is no other power beside Him.  Why then are people still in darkness?  The Strong’s defines skotos as “shadiness, obscurity”.  Skotos comes from the root skia which means “darkness of error or an adumbration”.  I had to look up “adumbration” and found it means, “shadow or faint image…concealment or overshadowing.”  The darkness obscures and mars what is true.  Its power is based in lies but, again, I do not discount it.  Human beings are capable of terrible things when they believe a lie. 

“Test everything,” Paul says in 1 Thessalonians, “hold fast to what is true.”  What is true?  Jesus Christ Himself is “the way, the truth, and the life.” (John 14:6) and each one of us must know Him for ourselves.  Study is important.  The Bereans in Acts took everything Paul said and compared it to the scriptures to see if it was true.  I cannot stress how important it is not to accept anything anyone says, especially if they are telling you who Jesus is, and to search the scriptures for yourself.  More importantly, know Him.  It is the will of God for everyone to know Him (Jeremiah 31:34, Hebrews 8:11).  You do not need someone with a long string of letters attached to the last name to tell you who He is.  The Holy Spirit does that.  (John 15:26, John 16:13). 

Let us ask to know Him and trust His promise is sure that in asking we will receive.  Let us trust in our Glorious Heavenly Father who knows how to give good gifts to His children.  Let us know that, having received His Spirit, the same mind that was in Christ Jesus is in us.  And then, let us marvel at how He transforms us as He renews our minds.

Unless noted otherwise, all scriptures are quoted from The New King James Version of The Holy Bible, Thomas Nelson, Inc., Nashville, Tennessee, 1982

References

Erebus | Classical Mythology Wiki | Fandom

EREBUS (Erebos) – Greek Primordial God of Darkness (theoi.com)

Greek & Roman Mythology – Tools (upenn.edu)

Adumbration Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com

Brown, Colin, The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, Volume I, Regency Reference Library, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1967-1971, Pages 420-425

Bulfinch, Thomas, Bulfinch’s Mythology, Avenel Books, Crown Publishers, Inc., USA, 1978, Page 4

Cotterell, Arthur, The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Mythology, Hermes House, Annes Publishing Limited, London, UK, 2005, Pages 41, 55

Strong, James, LL.D., S.T.D., The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1990

Discovering the Light

14 Monday Feb 2022

Posted by in Isaiah 45:7, Studies

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This week I am returning to my study of Isaiah 45:7 and am continuing to look at the word “light”.  I have written about seeing a picture of The Word being compressed into the human Jesus.  More than that, a cell in the womb of the Virgin Mary.  One of my Bible teacher’s recently mentioned there is a spark of light when a sperm fertilizes an egg.  This phenomenon was first recorded in mice but has since been recorded in humans as well.  It is sparks of zinc exploding and the effect is like fireworks.  This is an amazing discovery and yet this explosion of light is something that takes place on a biological level.  It’s a mechanism of creation. 

What took place when the Creator became the creation?  I cannot imagine.  All scripture gives me is a taste of the miracle that took place.  Scripture states the Holy Spirit “overshadowed” Mary.  That word in the Greek is episkiazo (G1982) and means “to cast a shade upon, to envelop in a haze of brilliancy, to invest with preternatural influence-overshadow”.  The picture of Mary being enveloped in a haze of brilliancy-light-and the Light of the world bursting into being in her womb is beautiful to me.  Light begat Light.

Fascinating as this thought is, I must put it on a back burner as I am in danger of digressing from my study.  I see the light that is Jesus in Isaiah 45:7 but perhaps I am way off.  Perhaps God is merely declaring Himself as Creator. Reading further in the chapter I find verse 12 where God says; “I have made the earth and created man on it” so the idea of Creator and creation is in the chapter.  I have read commentaries and other blog posts on this passage and, almost to a one, I find the insistence that what is meant here is that God permits darkness and evil but is not responsible for it.  And yet, the English word “create” is the translation of the Hebrew word and is translated the same in other places.  The Hebrew is bara (H1254) and is the same word found in Genesis 1:1: In the beginning, God created (or bara-ed) the heavens and the earth.

I find the same Hebrew words for darkness and light in my Isaiah passage in the verses 2 and 3 of Genesis.  In Genesis 1:1 God baras the heavens and the earth.  In Genesis 1:2 darkness-choshek in the Hebrew-is on the face of the deep.  In Genesis 1:3 God says “Let there be light”-owr in the Hebrew-and there is light.  The words are the same as my passage in Isaiah but the pattern is different.  Darkness is mentioned before light and, in Genesis, the light is brought into being and not formed.  The word yatsar does not appear anywhere in the story of creation.  I think something other than the act of creating is being spoken about in my Isaiah passage but I’d like to be certain.

An integral part of any study I do is to look to other translations of the Bible to see how verses have been rendered.  As I read through, I do have my thought strengthened that Isaiah 45:7 is not referencing creation.  Every translation carries the idea of a way of living.  Consider the New American Standard: “The One forming light and creating darkness, Causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the Lord who does all these.”  The Young’s Literal Translation is especially interesting because instead of using the word “creating”, Mr. Young says “preparing darkness” and “preparing evil”.

While the translations are helpful, they are not at all helpful.  In fact, I find I am confused.  Whether or not this passage is referencing the act of creation or is speaking of Jesus, how can that same God who the New Testament stresses IS love create darkness and evil?  Some translations have disaster or calamity in the place of evil but the different words don’t soften what feels like a blow.  The Amplified appears to share my confusion because that translation renders this verse as; “I form the light and create darkness; I make peace [national well-being. Moral evil proceeds from the will of men, but physical evil proceeds from the will of God], and I create [physical] evil-calamity; I am the Lord Who does all these things”.  I like the Amplified Bible and use it a great deal but in this passage I do not get the sense the translators are expanding the text to show the nuances of the original language. Rather, this feels like an insistence that God didn’t really mean what He says here.  What He REALLY means is…I move on to other sources.

I look up the meaning of light (Strong’s number H216) in Wilson’s Old Testament Word Studies.  At first, Wilson’s appears to be directing me back to the light created in Genesis 1:2.  The entry begins with, “…light is that subtle fluid, called into existence the first day of creation; as this material element of nature was created before the sun, so it appears to subsist independent of that body (see Job 38: 19, 24) to which it is attracted as a centre, and flows back in powerful agency through the solar system to every planet included in it.”  If the definition stopped here, so would I and yet, I read further: “Light is put for life, natural and spiritual…life signifies prosperity, honour, joy…light in darkness is encouragement, comfort, or good hope in adversity…light, in a spiritual sense, attributed to God, to Christ, hence the saving knowledge of God and of Christ.”  This is helpful for me to gain understanding of the nuances of the meaning of light but I don’t feel as if I yet understand. 

I move on to the Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon and find the first precise attribution of the definition of light to the Messiah.  I read the entry and, under #9, find, “light of instruction so the Messianic servant is light, the advent of Messiah is shining of great light”.  Rabbi Benjamin Blech writes, “What was the original light of Day One in the week of creation?  It could not have been sunlight.  The sun was not created until the Fourth Day.  It was a light of far greater intensity.  It was a light, according to our Sages, set aside for the future of Messianic fulfillment.”

Am I certain that Isaiah 45:7 is speaking of Jesus and thus holds spiritual truths to be discovered? I am certain there are truths to be discovered but am still not certain as to the meaning of the passage, especially considering the fact that the Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic the Bible was originally written are all dead languages and thus translations and renderings are subject to debate regarding their preciseness.  I have seen enough to say there’s solid reasoning to believe there is something more than God’s creating light meant here but then I’ve seen enough to wonder if the light mentioned in Genesis 1 doesn’t mean something more than light created.

Chaim Bentorah shares a story of a man who asked a rabbi a certain question.  The rabbi gave his answer and the man excitedly said, “You’re right!”  Then another rabbi, overhearing the answer, joined the conversation and explained why the first rabbi was wrong and gave his own answer, which was the total opposite of the first.  The man who’d’ asked the original question got excited again and declared to the second rabbi, “You’re right!”  A third rabbi entered the conversation and said, “He’s right, and he’s right?  They both can’t be right.”  The man pointed to the third rabbi and announced, “You’re right.”

It’s a story that makes me chuckle but one I think all believers should take to heart.  As I seek to discover the meaning of Isaiah 45:7, I am certain of one thing: there is nothing to fear because this passage makes clear there is no power above God.  Does the fact that this passage states God creates both darkness and evil shake my faith in any way?  No.  This is where relationship is so important.  I know Him.  He is real in my life and has proven Himself trustworthy, faithful, and good in the midst of both well-being and calamity.  Because I know Him, I do not doubt His character or His love for me.  I also know I have a great deal to learn and thus, praying for the Holy Spirit to guide me and interpret for me, I continue my study.

References

Scientists Just Captured The Flash of Light That Sparks When a Sperm Meets an Egg (sciencealert.com)

New American Standard Bible, A.J. Holman Company, La Habra, California, 1960-1977

The Comparative Study Bible, Zondervan Bible Publishers, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1984

Bentorah, Chain, Hebrew Word Study: Revealing the Heart of God, Whitaker House, New Kensington, PA, 2016, Page 317

Blech, Benjamin, The Secrets of Hebrew Words, Jason Aronson, Inc., Northvale, New Jersey, 1991, Page 30.

Brown, Francis, D.D., D. Litt., The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon, Hendrickson Publishers, Peabody, Massachusetts, Eighteenth Printing-September 2018, 1906

Green, Jay P., The Interlinear Bible Hebrew Greek English Volume One, Authors for Christ, Lafayette, Indiana, 1976-1985

Strong, James, LL.D., S.T.D., The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1990

Wilson, William, Wilson’s Old Testament Word Studies, Hendrickson Publishers, Peabody, Massachusetts

Young, Robert, Young’s Literal Translation of the Holy Bible, Revised Edition Old Testament, Baker Books, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1898, Reprinted 1995