Who Were The Nephilim? Part 5 - Jude and the Hebrew Scripture Connection

Ruins from Bashan

Before we left Jude behind, I wanted to pause and address the two passages that are cited to refute the idea that Jude is quoting from the Book of Enoch. As I studied these passages, I quickly realized that the information presented ties the passage in Jude to the Nephilim as firmly as any Enochian quote. The link is not as straightforward, but just as real. Furthermore, as these are canonical they do carry more weight.

So let’s jump in. The first passage is:

He said, “The LORD came from Sinai and dawned from Seir upon us; he shone forth from Mount Paran; he came from the ten thousands of holy ones, with flaming fire at his right hand. Deuteronomy 33:2

This chapter is Moses’ blessing upon the Hebrew people prior to their entrance into Canaan, the Promised Land. He is giving his final words before he retreats to Mount Nebo and dies. He would have chosen his words carefully. Dying men who are still in possession of all their faculties do not speak lightly or without purpose. And as readers, we need to ask why did Moses reference these two locations, Seir and Paran?

To answer that we have to back up to Genesis 14:1-16, sometimes referred to as the War of Four Against Five Kings. I want to direct you attention specifically to verses 4-6:

Twelve years they had served Chedorlaomer, but in the thirteenth year they rebelled. In the fourteenth year Chedorlaomer and the kings who were with him came and defeated the Rephaim in Ashteroth-karnaim, the Zuzim in Ham, the Emim in Shaveh-kiriathaim, and the Horites in their hill country of Seir as far as El-paran on the border of the wilderness. 

Notice who was defeated: the Rephaim, Zuzim, Emim, and the Horites. Why is this important? Who are these people? According to Josephus, ancient Hebrew historian, they are “offspring of giants”, (The Antiquities of the Jew 1.9. 174), and his conclusion is supported by Deuteronomy 2:17-25:

The LORD said to me, ‘Today you are to cross the border of Moab at Ar. And when you approach the territory of the people of Ammon, do not harass them or contend with them, for I will not give you any of the land of the people of Ammon as a possession, because I have given it to the sons of Lot for a possession.’ (It is also counted as a land of Rephaim. Rephaim formerly lived there—but the Ammonites call them Zamzummim—a people great and many, and tall as the Anakim; but the LORD destroyed them before the Ammonites, and they dispossessed them and settled in their place, as he did for the people of Esau, who live in Seir, when he destroyed the Horites before them and they dispossessed them and settled in their place even to this day. As for the Avvim, who lived in villages as far as Gaza, the Caphtorim, who came from Caphtor, destroyed them and settled in their place.) ‘Rise up, set out on your journey and go over the Valley of the Arnon. Behold, I have given into your hand Sihon the Amorite, king of Heshbon, and his land. Begin to take possession, and contend with him in battle. This day I will begin to put the dread and fear of you on the peoples who are under the whole heaven, who shall hear the report of you and shall tremble and be in anguish because of you.’

Now think about this with me for a moment, when the original twelve spies were sent into Canaan they came back with a report:

So they brought to the people of Israel a bad report of the land that they had spied out, saying, “The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height. And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.” Numbers 13:32-33

Moses had already watched the first generation to escape Egypt miss entering the Promise Land because they feared the giants. He understood that this time they could not afford to let fear rule. They needed to rise up and face this enemy confident in God’s power to defend and advance their cause in the fulfillment of the promise God had made to Abraham so many years ago. So when Moses speaks in Deuteronomy 33, he reminds the people that these sons of giants, the children of Anak, who come the Nephilim, were not invincible. They could be defeated. It had happened before, and it would happen again.

In Deuteronomy 33, we find a connection between the “ten thousand holy ones” and the land where the Nephilim lived. Not only that, we see that the holy ones are coming to defeat the Nephilim with God fighting at their side.

This brings us to the second passage using the phrase “ten thousand holy ones”, Psalms 68:17:

The chariots of God are twice ten thousand, thousands upon thousands; the Lord is among them; Sinai is now in the sanctuary. 

If you take the time to read the entire chapter one thing becomes clear, the central theme of this Psalm is God’s victory over his enemies. Within it we find direct references to the Exodus, the wilderness wanderings, and the conquest of Canaan, tying it back to the same events presented in Deuteronomy. However, there is an additional curiosity – the mention of Bashan in verses 15 and 16.

In Deuteronomy 3, we find the battle between the Hebrew people and Bashan, a land ruled by King Og. Verse 11, provides some interesting information about him.

For only Og the king of Bashan was left of the remnant of the Rephaim. Behold, his bed was a bed of iron. Is it not in Rabbah of the Ammonites? Nine cubits was its length, and four cubits its breadth, according to the common cubit.

The thing I almost missed was where King Og lived, you know the precise street address. Thankfully, Joshua thought to write it down.

…and Og king of Bashan, one of the remnant of the Rephaim, who lived at Ashtaroth and at Edrei… Joshua 12:4

If the city of Ashtaroth sounds familiar, it should. Look back to Genesis 14:5, Ashteroth-karnaim was city in Bashan, east of the Jordan River. The same place where the original war against the offspring of the giants went down. And what is David hoping to accomplish with his Psalm? The same thing Moses was doing in Deuteronomy 33, he was reminding the people that God is victorious no matter what enemy tries to stand before him.

No matter how we slice it, Jude is referencing the Nephilim. Whether we base his quotes on the Book of Enoch or those from the Bible. He wants his readers to make the connection between the unholy ones of Genesis 6 and the judgement that will be executed by the ten thousand holy ones. Now who exactly are these ten thousand holy ones? We will look into that next time.

Part 6 of our series: http://misdirectedmusings.blogspot.com/2016/09/who-were-nephilim-part-6-who-are-holy.html

Who Were The Nephilim? Part 1 Or: The Post I Did Not Want To Write

I do not want to write this post. I have literally been putting it off for years. Don’t get me wrong, my excuses were top notch: I needed to do more research, I didn’t want to disseminate false or inaccurate information, it’s a peripheral issue within the Bible, and I certainly didn’t want to be lumped with all the crazies out there who are going nuts over this. Yet, even as I tried to tell myself that it wasn’t a deadline on this, that I could wait to write about it until I felt more comfortable, I kept being bombarded with questions about this issue. Online, in the grocery store, sitting around the campfire, random phone calls, and at a friend’s wedding – someone every single week, and sometimes daily, asks me the same question: Who were the Nephilim?

Grab your Bibles, kids, and follow along. We start our journey in Genesis 6: 1-4:

When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters were attractive. And they took as wives any they chose. Then the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh and his days shall be 120 years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men of old, the men of renown.

Now if you pulled out your Bibles, which I hope you did, and you let your eyes wonder down to the sections heading you will know that these verse precede the Flood narrative. This is going to be a rather important bit of information, for now just file it away until we need it.

So let’s begin with the obvious questions first, and the one that must first be addressed before we can get into the Nephilim – who in the world are the “sons of God”?

The first rule of Biblical study is “Scripture interprets Scripture.” This means any time we run up against a word or phrase whose meaning is unclear, we find that word or phrase elsewhere in the Bible to see how it is used there. By doing this we keep our interpretations consistent, and it helps us approach the Bible with integrity while not allowing us to explain away uncomfortable truths.

Thus we begin by doing a search of the Scripture, where else do we find the term “Sons of God” and how is it used? We will begin by looking at how this phrase is used in the Hebrew Scripture. Later, we will consider it’s use in the New Testament.

Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them. Job 1:6. (Job 2:1 says almost exactly the same thing.)

When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy? Job 38:7

Ascribe to the LORD, O sons of God, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength. Psalms 29:1 

Who among the sons of God is like the LORD? Psalms 89:7 

I said, “You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, like men you shall die, and fall like any prince.” Psalms 82:6 (This verse does not contain the exact Hebrew phrase for “sons of God”, but I believe that intent conveyed is the same.)

But I see four men unbound, walking in the midst of the fire, and they are not hurt, and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods. Daniel 3:25

Now, I have only provided snippets, but I suggest that you go back and read the entire passages I have cited here. Ask yourself a few questions: Who presented themselves before God in Job? Who was present when God laid the foundations of the earth? What beings are also described as “morning stars” in Scripture? In your Bible, what differences do you see in the translations, does it say “sons of God” or “Heavenly beings”? Who was the fourth man in the fiery furnace? Was it just another man? Why would he be likened to a son of the gods?

I would be remiss not to note that there is some resistance to accepting this phrase as universal reference to supernatural beings. God refers to Israel as his son (we will address this point when we get to the section over the New Testament uses of sons of God), and some believe that this title can also refer to the judges of Israel, men not necessarily anything greater. However, I believe that in doing so the plain reading of the text is rejected in favor of explanations that are easier for us to accept. Furthermore, the entire Bible is a history of supernatural events, so why should we resist this one point as too far out there while accepting things like the plagues of Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea, Daniel’s deliverance from the lion, a fish who found Jonah nauseating, or above all, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus? Aren’t they all just a little crazy if you really stop and think about it?

Proponents of the idea that the sons of God were simply men are adherents to what is known as the Sethite theory. In other words, they believe that the sons of God were descendants of Seth and the daughters of men were the descendants of Cain. This leads to some interesting questions that must be answered if anyone is to approach this passage with intellectual integrity. Why was it wrong for the sons of God to marry the daughters of men? There has been no Biblical prohibition against intermarriage at this point, and there will not be any for some time yet. Why did these union produce such noteworthy offspring? What is the biological and spiritual reasoning for such an event? Was there such a marked difference between the daughters of Seth and Cain? Was Cain inherently evil? Go back to Genesis 4:17-22, the names are interesting study in a person’s attitude towards God. (I discuss this in Leah's Romance.) I am not going to do an in-depth analysis of each name, but note how many end in “el” which is a direct reference to God.

As you can tell, this not a simply question to answer. Oh, sure, I could give you my thoughts, but I want you see more than just my opinion. I want you to be able to see the Biblical reasons I hold this view. We are going to be camping out here for a while, because as I have studied this, I have come to believe it is far more than a peripheral issue and has a significant bearing on how we read the Bible, how we view God, how we view the existence of good and evil, and even our own reality.

Be sure to post your questions in the comments. I will try to address each one in turn. Having them here, instead of scattered across the internet will help me not to miss any of them. I also welcome opposing views. I am more than willing to entertain the idea I might be wrong. Blessings, everyone.

For the next post in this series, click here: Who Were The Nephilim? Part 2

The Cost of Dreaming Big

There is an inherent risk in dreaming big, something no one ever talks about but is unavoidable and devastating, and that is the inevitable reality of disappointment. Now, I am old pro at dreaming big. I have constructed masterpieces whimsy in my mind that would shame Da Vinci. I have woven together grand and glorious schemes out of nothing more than a whisper of hope that make the Sistine Chapel look like a mere coloring book.

And it more than conjecture or what if’s. I can see myself there in the moment. I can feel the texture of the clothing I shall wear as it all comes to fruition. I can smell the air that crackles with the energy of realized potential, and if I am still enough, I can feel the weight of all the toils and heartaches endured to reach that moment roll off my back.

It is the fuel that keeps me going. It is why I do what I do and why I fight so hard to keep moving forward when everything around me tries to hold me back. I need to dream, like I need to breathe and even more than I need the nourishment of food for my dreams are far richer. In my mind it is not a question of if, but rather of when. For me, it has already happened and I am only waiting for that moment when you shall be able to enjoy the dream with me in this reality.

And then there are days like today.

Days when I realize I don’t have a play left. Facts, reality, the truth, whatever you wish to call it, are greater than my dreams and I have to admit that, at least for the moment, I have been defeated.

Days like this aren’t frequent. They are a strange and unfamiliar land, one that I have managed to dodge more times than any human has a right to – a fact I am grateful for, but it does not make it any less painful to be here. Maybe it is my lack of experience with this place that causes me to freeze, to set back and watch the sky fall bit by crumbling bit with nothing more than remorseful resignation.

Days like this make me doubt, not my faith, but my ability to trust God. And yes, there is a difference. For I have all the faith in the world that God is greater than my mind can comprehend. Questioning his power, his holiness, and his sovereignty never crosses my mind. I have faith that when I pray on your behalf that he will move mountains to care for you, to provide for you, and to demonstrate his love for you. Faith is not an issue. Faith is as real to me as gravity, an undeniable and powerful force not be ignored.

But trust? That is another matter.

Trust means that I am willing to believe no matter what the evidence or circumstance says that everything that is will be for my good. That is a harder thing to believe, particularly when the circumstances hurt. And they do hurt when you watch your dream evaporate.

This is where most Christian blog writers would give you some great spiritual insight. Sorry, but today, I have none. It just hurts. And my sadistic little brain keeps running through all the ways that life is unfair, making a tally of all the things that I have sacrificed and balancing against all that I think I have gained. I am involuntarily running down the list of people who have gained so much more and done so much less, and I am trying not to drown in self-pity or get puffed up with sanctimonious outrage that life isn’t fair – that God isn’t fair.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. I know all the right Christian answers and I can quote all the appropriate verses for you. And I have lots of people in my life who are willing to quote them back at me, but you know what? When it hurts this bad, all of that is nothing more than salt in a bloody wound, and while I know that everyone means well, it feels like I am being told that my emotions in all this do not matter, like my disappointment and pain should just be swept under the rug and ignored.

I know my dream was unrealistic and that there were too many obstacles standing in the way to ever think that it might be done in this life. I get it, but do you think for one second I would be feeling this way if I did not have faith enough to dream in the first place? If I did not think for one second that my God was strong enough and great enough to accomplish all that I believed could happen? Of course, I did or I would not be facing disappointed now. The question was never faith. It’s not the question now.

The question is can I trust him? My mind started out screaming yes – decreeing it if we want to use the right church vernacular, but after the past few years that scream has become a whisper lost in the storm. For no matter how much I know what the right answer is, my heart is bleeding with the wounds that faith has dealt me, that daring to trust has cost me.

So I turn the pages, find the Psalm that reminds me that I am not alone. There was another who felt this way, another who dared to ask that dreadful question that only the truly brave can ask, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Because sometimes, you don't need answers, you just need to know that you are not alone. 

For He Is Good - Psalm 107

Well, I haven’t totally forgotten our study of Psalms 107. If you are just joining us or if you need to refresh your memory, here are the links to the past three posts: Oh, Give Thanks To The LORD, Digging Deeper Psalm 107, and What's In A Name?

Oh, give thanks to the LORD for He is good, for his lovingkindness is everlasting. Let the redeemed of the LORD says so, whom he has redeemed from the hand of the enemy say so. Psalms 107:1, 2

Today, we are going to take a part the phrase “for He is good.” The first thing you want to do when making a serious study of anything is to define your terms, and let’s face it, good is a rather subjective term. Often we tend define “good” as anything we like and bad is anything we don’t like, but when we are studying Bible we need to define our terms according to how they are used within the Bible. We do this by finding other passages of the Bible where the same word is used.

The easiest way to do this with your English translations is to look up the word good in a Strong’s Concordance. If you do not have one, don’t worry it is available for free online, but if you are going to do any amount of serious Bible study I recommend you grab one for your library. When you do this, remember our rule of first mention, and go to the first verse where we find this word. You should be turning to Genesis 1:4.

“And God saw that the light was good.”

Obviously, we are in the creation account. God is going to continue creating the universe and after each creation he is going to see that it is good. From the dry land and the creatures that inhabit to waters and the skies and beasts that will live there, all of it will be seen and all of it will be found good. Then we get to the creation of man, (Genesis 1:26 – 31), and you see that there is no declaration that man is good.

This leads to an interesting question, why is everything else God created good but man isn’t?

Really, stop there and think about the question. Consider the possible answers. When you encounter something like this in the Bible don’t just rush by it and say, “That’s just the way it is.” Remember this book is crafted with the intent and purpose to hold as much truth as possible in very finite space, everything in here was included to teach us something. While you are rolling that around in your mind, let’s skip ahead a millennium or more, or few books as it may be, to the story of Jesus and the
Rich Young Ruler found in Luke 18: 18--30. As always, go look it up and make sure I am not ripping anything out of context because I am only including the key verse here.

And a ruler asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.”

Did you catch that? “No one is God except God alone.” Go on and read the rest, and you find that Jesus is making a point about what is required to follow him. Sure there are some rules like honoring your mother and father, and not bearing false witness against your neighbor, but the it all boils down to one final step – you have to follow him. Nothing in this world must come between you and being in his presence for when you are in his presence you are in the presence of God, (John 1:1-7, John 14).

Jump on over to see one instance of how Paul uses this word good:

And we know that all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first born among many brothers. Romans 8:28, 29

We could go on with other examples, but for the sake of time, space, and the average adult attention span, let’s just put together the pieces we have collected so far.

God calls his creation good, with the exception of man, but why is it good? To answer that question we have to look at the purpose of creation. God did not need an earth. We did. Everything he placed within this grand creation we inhabit was perfectly designed to house, feed, and shelter us. Everything he called into existence fulfilled its purpose perfectly and without flaw.

Man, on the other hand, is created with potential and that potential lies dormant within each of us until we choose to activate it by become conformed to the image of his son. And we don’t do this by works, we do it through relationship, by coming to know him, and through a process of renewing our minds through the words of truth. The earth was given to us as place to walk through this process and deeper into this relationship, even in its fallen state it still serves this purpose.

God’s greatest desire is to be known by humanity. The wonders that he done so that we might know span throughout history and continue today. Jesus declares that no one is good except God, and when we look at the things that God calls good we see that they are the very things that facilitate our ability to know him.

When I realized this a few years back, I tried to redefine my understanding of good. I came up with this working definition:

Anything that draws me closer to God is good. Anything that drives me from his presence is evil.

This radically changed my perspective of everything. Because when I step back and look at this world, I see how so many of the things we call good are driving people away from God. Money, health, relationships, family, technology, work, and leisure have lured people away from him. At the same time, how many times has disease, heartbreak, and hardship driven us to our knees to seek him? I realized that I have the authority determine what is good and evil in my life by my choice to draw nearer to him or to reject him, and in making that decision, I am also defining my intentions to be good or evil.

The only thing outside of my ability to redefine by this choice is God. For his intent is always that I draw nearer to him, he never changes, and he never waivers in that desire. Everything he has done or will do is for the singular purpose of knowing him. In this he proves that he is always good, and for that reason, giving thanks is the appropriate response in all things.

What's in a name? Psalm 107

“Oh, give thanks to the LORD for he is good.” Psalms 107:1a

In the past two posts, we have looked at the background for this Psalm and the first word.. In this one we are going to look at the next key word in the verse, “LORD.”

Now, there have been volumes and libraries written on this particular name of God, and there is no way that I could begin to share everything this name has to teach us about the nature and person of God. However, we can get a glimpse into the significance of its use here, and in doing so, we can establish some principles for understanding when we encounter it in other passages.
Before we go any further, I would ask you to take the time to grab your Bible and to simply read this verse. As you do look for anything that you might consider strange.

Do you see it?

If you have a newer translation of the Bible, you probably noticed that the word LORD is in all caps. Did you ever wonder why the translators chose to do that? After all, none of the other names for God get this treatment, so why this one? To find the answer you have to dig back into the Hebrew, or know someone who will do it for you. (You’re welcome.)

If you were to read this in the Hebrew the name you would find is יהוה, sometimes referred to as the Tetragrammaton or the unspeakable name of God. So what do you do if something is unspeakable? You come up with a code word, a substitution, and the substitution in Hebrew is Adonai. So when you read the text in Hebrew, you see the name of God written out as יהוה but when reading it out loud you simply say Adonai in its place. The reader is fully aware of which name is being used, but it is just not spoken.

This posed a bit of a problem for English translations. How do you convey what is in the original text while still honoring the command that would Hebrew readers would have followed, not to speak this name? Translating it as Adonai would not work since adonai is a rather a generic term of respect that simply means lord. We find it used throughout the Hebrew Scriptures: Abraham is called lord, there are Philistine lords, and Jael even called Sisera lord - right before she pounds a tent peg through his skull. So there is no guarantee that when we see this word in the English that the Bible is talking about God. The solution? Translate adonai as lord, but when the Tetragrammaton is used write LORD in all caps so that the English readers would know the real name being used.

Now, back to our text, and we begin with a question: Why did the Psalmist use this term for God? There are a multiplicity of names that he could have chosen from. Elohim, for instance, is the name Moses used for God when he wrote Genesis, so why not chose that name? You know, one were allowed to say or sing in this case? This is a song lyric after all.

In Biblical theology there are rules for interpretation, and one of these is known as the “Law of First Mention.” Basically, it boils down to the way are to understand a word, term, idea, or even the letters of the Hebrew alphabet is to look at when it was first mentioned or appears in the text. Elohim, for example, is first mentioned in Genesis 1:1 when God is creating the heavens and the earth. So when we see this name we are to think of Creator God, and if we were to look at every passage where this name of God is used we would find that is somehow connected with the concept of creation.

In contrast, we do not encounter the Tetragrammaton until Exodus 3 when Moses encounters God at the Burning Bush. Think about what is going on at that time. God’s people are trapped in slavery.
There is no hope for them aside from his direct intervention. They need a miracle that will change not just the circumstances of their life. They need a new identity, or more accurately, they need to be returned to the identity God had given them so long ago as the children of Abraham and live as people of promise once more. To use a theological term, they needed to be redeemed, and it all begins here with God revealing himself to Moses with name יהוה, “I am that I am” or more precisely, “I will be what I will be.” And as the story unfolds, we see God revealed as redeemer and king. A God who can change realities and give identity and purpose. A God who changes slaves into a nation, and the oppressed into the means of deliverance for the whole world in the person of Jesus.

So what is the Psalmist trying to tell us? He wants us to think of God in the context of redemption. He wants us to remember that burning bush and the revelation of God’s loving response to his people. He is asking us to recall how God fought on behalf of his chosen one, and how through his love they became something so much greater than who they were. He is uniting us to a history that testifies of God’s goodness. He is reminding us that this history is our history, and we serve the same God as those who witnessed the plagues of Egypt and the miracles in the desert.

I think that we could all stand to be reminded of this truth. I know I have days when I am standing somewhere between the Red Sea and armies of Pharaoh that try to destroy my life, terrified there is no way out, and that is when I need the reminder. The God who split the Red Sea is the same God I serve. He did not change. He is still in the business of deliverance and redemption. He is just waiting for me to call out, to confess that I need him in my world and circumstance, and allow him some room to work. The history of Israel’s redemption is the story of my redemption, and it is the stories of others that we are encouraged to believe there is redemption for all who seek him.

I, too, am nothing more than a runaway slave. Each and every time, I make my escape it chases after me trying to drag me back to a place where I am defined by sins decrees. I need a God who will who will part the waters and make a way for me into the wilderness, a place where I become something new in his presence, and do what only the free can do – sing the praises of the LORD whose lovingkindness is everlasting.

Digging Deeper Psalm 107

Well, I bet you thought I was done writing about Psalms 107:1, 2, but yesterday's post barely scratched the surface. One of the really amazing things about the Bible is that has been so perfectly crafted that each and every part ties in with every other part. How deep and far you go with a Bible study is determined only by your strength of character and will. I can honestly say that I have never fully exhausted the significance or beauty of a single verse no matter how many times I have dissected it. There is always something marvelous to discover.

Let’s begin with the first words, “give thanks”.  In the Hebrew this is a single word, הֹדוּ, which conveniently enough means “give thanks”, but one the things you quickly learn about Hebrew is that is rarely that simple. It is a language of pictures and images that take us beyond the abstract and move us into realm of action.

Allow me to demonstrate. If I were simply to list the definitions provided in the Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB), you would find that the root of this word means to throw or to cast, confess, or to shoot an arrow as well as to give thanks. When you find such a diverse definition you have to fight off our rather English speaking tendency to focus simply on one while ignoring the rest. For someone who grew up speaking Hebrew all of these images would have been brought to mind even as they understood the primary meaning intended by the speaker or writer. It was in the multiplicity of images that the nuances that escape the translators grasp that the original audience would have understood the directive within this word.

To cast or to throw and to shoot an arrow are terms of warfare and precision. Remember that this song was commissioned by David, and what is he best known for? I believe it had something to do with a stone cast at a giant. Do you think it was an accident that a Psalm written at his behest included this term? Neither do I. We could pause here and consider the Hebrew word for sin, חׇטׇן, which includes a definition of “missing the goal or way”. Is there the implication that giving thanks is how we strive to hit the mark? Maybe. I think a case could be made, but I will let you ponder that while we move on.

Confess, now there is an interesting definition. As a reader, we should ask how this fits into the theme of the verse. If read further, we find that “the redeemed of the Lord (should) say so.” When you start putting the pieces together you begin to see that thanksgiving requires an acknowledgment of what has been done, and in this case God has been in the business of redeeming what was lost – the Ark of the Covenant and his people. So what did they have to confess? That they had been lost, that in a symbolic way they had lost him and his presence, that they needed redemption, and without that component they have nothing to be thankful for because God would have had nothing to do.  

If we do some more digging, we find that this word is used again in the Proverbs. (And who wrote Proverbs? Solomon, David’s son. Do I detect another connection?) Proverbs 28:13 says, “He who covers his faults will never succeed. He who confesses (הֹדוּ) and gives them up to the LORD will be shown compassion.” Compassion, lovingkindness…I think I beginning to see a theme.  

And all of these things would have been communicated with that single word! To anyone who grew up speaking this amazing language, and they would have never needed all the two hundred and seventy six study guides I have my shelves or the five years I spent in seminary to figure it out.

Now if you still think you aren’t digging deep enough, let’s look at the letters for a moment. Remember Hebrew was not always written the way we see it today. It originated in pictographs and each letter has not only picture that is associated with it, it also has a concept embodied by that picture.

Let’s take the first letter of the word, ה. (Oh, and you should know that with Hebrew, we read right to left.) It is pronounced “hey”. To explain how we get to this letter’s meaning, we would have to make two trips around Katy’s barn and one to Egypt, so I’ll just let you look that up if you are so inclined, but it means revelation or breath – both concepts bound up tightly together throughout the Bible.

The second letter in our word is the ד, and it represents a door. Doors are places of entry, and the guest that we would desire to enter into this life and world is God. We invite him in through our actions and prayers.

The final letter is the ו, pronounced vav. It is a hook. Some say it is a peg or a nail, but the principle is the same. It is used to join things together.

Now that you know what each letter symbolizes, you can put them all together. God reveals (or manifests) himself, to enter into our lives and world, so that we might be joined with him.

(This is where I totally geek out.)

What else has the power to move a person to give thanks than God’s manifest presence? What could be more natural than to be thankful that he has enter our world? Could there be a more compelling reason to sing our thanksgiving than God joining with us? What else could drive us to confess our need of him than a revelation of our redeemer and king, and do so not in abject despair but in joyful thankfulness?  

But it is not a one way street, for intrinsic to the design is God’s response to our thanksgiving and confession. For as we move towards him, he is moving towards us. The lovingkindness that we had only glimpsed from afar, perhaps a vague memory of time before our birth, floods into this world as he enthrones himself on our praise. The goodness that had been a mere shadow before now manifest in dazzling splendor as he joins with us to redeem us as his own. As our outpouring of love pierces his heart like an arrow, he responds according to his nature causing us to delight in presence ever more deeply.

All the opposing, complimentary, completing, and balancing concepts bound up so tightly in a single word! Everything affirming that God’s ultimate desire is to live among us, to move and be moved by those who love him. At once, he gives us the action and result so that we can know they are but two sides of the same coin, concurrent and indivisible is his presence and our thankful confession of his love.

*There is so much more to go with these two verses. If you are interested in more of what I am learning in this homework assignment, let me know in the comments so I will know to keep sharing.

"Oh Give Thanks To The Lord"

Oh, give thanks to the LORD for He is good, for His lovingkindness is everlasting. Let the redeemed of the LORD say so, whom He has redeemed from the hand of the enemy say so.  Psalm 107:1, 2

You don’t have to hang around my friend, Dennis Jernigan, very long to realize that this is probably in his top ten of favorite Bible passages. So I wasn’t surprised when he gave us this passage as our homework two weeks ago.

Now, I will be the first to admit that when I think of an in-depth Bible study Psalms is one of the last books I turn to. I mean, after all, its songs, right? How much analysis does a song really need? Either it speaks truth or doesn’t, case closed. And these verses seem pretty straight forward to me. So with a barely suppressed eye-roll, I dove in – more out of obligation than enthusiasm.   

But guess what? It seems I had a thing or two to learn after all. (Don’t make me start naming names of people who need to stop being so smug. I can feel your smirks through the computer, and you don’t know it all either.)

First of all, we were asked to look up the writer and the circumstance that lead to the writing of this particular Psalm. Easy enough, right? Wrong. Unlike many of the Psalms there is no intro included for this one, and if you go to the popular commentary sites you are going to find something that has run amuck in Biblical scholarship – the attempt to suppress anything prophetic within the Scriptures. Most sites are going to tell you that this was written sometime after the return of Babylonian exiles to the land of Israel. However, there is a major flaw in this argument, and if you take the Bible as a reliable source of history you have to dismiss what all the cool kids are saying and go by what is in the Word.

Which leads us to 1 Chronicles 16. I won’t type it all out here, but if you go and read it yourself (which I always recommend) you will find that David has just recovered the Ark of the Covenant from the Philistines. The man is stoked. He is dancing in what is roughly the ancient equivalent of his tighty-whites, he has offered up sacrifices to God, and he is dishing up some sweet raisin cakes for the ladies. If this wasn’t enough, he decides that old tunes just aren’t going to cut it anymore and he commissions Asaph and his kinsmen to write up some new songs – the first of which is recorded right there in 1 Chronicles 16.

If you take some time and do some deep reading the first thing you are going to discover is this is a medley of Psalm 96, 105, 106, and 107. The Psalms and the passage from Chronicles share verses that are similar and some that are verbatim. Time and space prohibit me from going over them all, but let’s just look at one verse:

O, give thanks to the LORD, for He is good; for His lovingkindness is everlasting. 1 Chronicles 16:34

Ring a bell?

So why is this important? I am so glad you asked. The reason is that it shows us the magnitude and greatness of Scripture. This Psalm was written in celebration. The Ark of the Covenant was home! The importance of this cannot be overstated. God’s presence was manifest over the Ark as he led them through the wilderness, the tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments were inside of it, Aaron’s rod, and a pot of manna – all the things that reminded them of God’s redeeming power demonstrated in the Exodus from Egypt and in the birth of their nation.

Yet, even as they sang these songs in the time of their joy, it would function as a prophetic word for the time to come. When Babylon swept in and stole, not only the Ark of the Covenant, but the people of the Covenant. God’s true treasure on this earth, and where he desires to be most manifest, in the hearts and lives of his people. It was in remembering God’s promises that the people found the courage and strength to keep going and to cling to their identity in a foreign land. They would sing these songs in their homes, over themselves, and each other reminding them of what God had done in the past and would do in the future.

For us there is an incredible lesson in this. As believers, we live in a land where we don’t belong. We may not even know what our true home looks like, we just know that it isn’t here. Everyone around us wants us to forget, to just give up and fit in. No more fights about abortion, homosexuality, and transgender bathrooms. No more squabbles over red cups, pagan holidays, and legalized marijuana. Life would be easier, simpler if we just forgot who we were and what we believe.

But to do that we would have to forget the God who redeems, the God who delivers, and the God who never forgot we are his. So how do we remember him? How do we remember who we are? We proclaim it, even when we can’t see it. We sing the songs of truth, of his promises fulfilled in the past with faith that we will see them in our future. We have been redeemed once as we stepped into relationship with him, and we will be redeemed again out of this exile in a strange land. So until then don’t stop singing, don’t let anyone steal the truth of your song, and sing for those who have yet to hear the music of his love so that they may know the truth.