When Jacob finished commanding his sons, he drew his feet into the bed and breathed his last, and was gathered to his people. Genesis 49:33 NASB Gathered to his people – I stand in the window of the second floor apartment in Glenview, looking at the snow. Suddenly I begin to cry. To shake. My whole life…
Be assured, the evil person will not go unpunished, but the descendants of the righteous will be rescued. Proverbs 11:21 NASB Be assured – You remember the old hymn, “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine. Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine.” Fanny Crosby clearly didn’t get the idea from this Hebrew verse. Why? Well, the…
Paul, a bond-servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the faith of those chosen of God and the knowledge of the truth which is according to godliness, in the hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised long ages ago, Titus 1:1-2 NASB For – Paul’s letter to Titus about qualifications for leadership. Easy to read, often skipped until…
Abandoned among the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom You no longer remember, and they are cut off from Your hand. Psalm 88:5 NASB No longer remember – zākar. What an important Hebrew verb! Zākar means “to remember,” but the same consonants in noun form also mean “male.” It seems to me that…
Abandoned among the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom You no longer remember, and they are cut off from Your hand. Psalm 88:5 NASB Abandoned – What an interesting choice of words! Sometimes translated “forsaken,” the Hebrew root is the verb ḥāpaš. Here it is ḥopšî, an adjective. What’s interesting is the basic…
If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. 1 Corinthians 15:32 NASB Raised– You hope it happens. You hope that the dead are raised, that there is something after the grave, that what you do now will matter later. But you don’t know, do you? You don’t really know,…
Soon afterwards, He began going around from one city and village to another, proclaiming and preaching the kingdom of God. The twelve were with Him, Luke 8:1 NASB The kingdom of God – “The kingdom of heaven [of God] resembles a concept in rabbinic Judaism called tikkun ha-olam, which literally means ‘mending the world.’ When one enters (or…
Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father. So the physicians embalmed Israel. Genesis 50:2 NASB The physicians – The NASB translation of the Hebrew ha-rof’im misdirects us. David Fohrman points out that the word actually means “healers.” The fact that we think of healers as physicians means that our conception of the…
For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For indeed in this house we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven, 2 Corinthians 5:1-2 Earthly tent – Mas. Chagigah…
This world is like an anteroom before the world to come. Prepare yourself in the anteroom so that you may enter the banquet hall. Rabbi Ya’akov, Pirke Avot 4:21 Prepare – “The nature of the afterlife has never been clear in Judaism.”[1] In contrast to the highly developed ideas of the afterlife in Christian literature…
