Row Boat Theology
“As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, And at the last He will take His stand on the earth. Job 19:25 NASB
At the last – When H. W. Wolff suggested that ‘aharit, the Hebrew word for “after part” or “back part” or “behind,” is like the view of a man in a row boat, he changed most of our conceptions about God and time. In Greek thought, the future lies ahead of us. We strain to peer over the visible horizon. We predict. We prognosticate. But if the future is truly behind us, then it is patently obvious that no man can see what is behind his head. And there is little point in trying if we are going to row a straight path.
Job recognizes this reality. He knows his go’el, his kinsman redeemer, is alive. Interestingly, the text says, “I know my living go’el.” The hay is an adjective, not a verb. Job knows there is a redeemer, a living one who will one day rescue him. “At the last” is ‘aharon, literally, “at the back” but metaphorically, “in the future.” We could also translate this as, “I know my living redeemer is coming after.” How would we understand such a translation? Is he coming after this date or is he coming after me?
Perhaps the end of the verse helps us decide. In the NASB it reads, “on the earth.” But the word is not ‘erets. It is ‘apar, a word that means “dust, soil, rubble” and even “the grave, the world of the dead.” “On the earth” suggests this redeemer will stand on our planet, make himself known in the land or have a place to abide. But what do we do with ‘apar?
The word first appears in Genesis 2:7 in the formation of Man from the dust. We often think of the connection between Adam and adamah, but the Genesis passage informs us that Man was made from dust. Perhaps this is the connection we need to understand Job. Perhaps Job is saying that his redeemer is coming to stand on the side of the dust, an idiomatic expression for the action of the redeemer to save Man from the grave. Perhaps Job is not envisioning the Redeemer standing on the planet but rather taking a stand for those who come from the dust and for whom the grave is a certainty.
Handel made this verse famous in his music. But Job may have had more insight than we typically understand. Yes, we can read the verse as a Messianic expression, but Job seems to point us toward the universal human issue of the grave and the confidence that a kinsman redeemer lives who will somehow remove the inevitability of being dust. We might not see him now because we are rowing backwards into our future, but he is there nevertheless—on this side of the grave. If Job can know that there is a redeemer for Man, certainly we can. We have the historical record he never had. His is a spiritual apprehension. Ours is event evidence.
God made me more than dust. He breathed His breath into dust and I was manifested a living being. He will not abandon me.
Topical Index: dust, ‘apar, redeemer, go’el, at the last, ‘aharon, future, Job 19:25
Hi Skip, on another take on row boat theology, would you say that when man attempts to try to plan out his future by taking steps (typically financially today) to secure it, is it futile? Aren’t we meant to live as Abraham did, one day at a time, dependent, “the land that I will show you?” Being in ministry with the poor, the buzz word today is to create ‘sustainability’ (i.e.. secure your finances so you won’t be a burden on others). What are your thoughts? Where does our responsibility and God’s provision meet when it comes to aharit?
Hi Dana,
In my view, this issue is less confusing if we think of different levels of experience
On the theological level, our job is to stay calm, cool, and collected
The God Father Has our back, and He protects us; so there is no need to worry
At the same time, because of the way we experience the world
On the existential level
Cool, calm, collected, behavior is not easy to maintain much of the time
Making the future difficult to plan
And financial planning seem almost irrelevant
On the other hand
Without some financial planning on the economic level
A responsible, productive, life for one’s self and family
Would be almost impossible to achieve IMO
Unless of course, you follow Hamlet’s angry advice to Ophelia and
“Get thee to a nunnery”
I think that we do live our lives as Abraham, as a devoted servant. We know servants don’t have to be concerned ultimately with their well being. A servant has to be willing to get up each day and commit their way to God’s purposes. This may result in a life similar to Abraham where a servant experiences great wealth as part of God’s purposes for their life. This could also mean that life as a servant is similar to Jeremiah where life is the opposite of great wealth.
Willingness is the answer to every new day. God directs our lives according to His purposes, His purposes never involve one of His servants being dependent on others in a “negative way”. We certainly can bring about negative burdens on others via our Yatzar Hara.
When looking at the lives of Abraham and Jeremiah we learn that both were used by God in very different ways. Both were devoted. Abraham had great wealth, Jeremiah was poor, so God’s provision falls somewhere between poor and rich. Either way He supplies all our needs according to His purposes. Your responsibility is to put forth a strong effort regardless of your life circumstances. God never misleads a “devoted” servant.
Stop, Wait, Listen, Act,
Hi Keith,
I think your points regarding Abraham and Jeremiah are very important and well stated
My only quibble would be with your point regarding “God never putting us in a position”
Of “being dependent on others in a negative way”
My daughter and I were just discussing the old “master slave dialectic”
Which many of us find ourselves caught up in from time to time
How we respond to this negative “slave” condition is important
Because even though the condition is unfair and painful in most cases
We are still free and therefore responsible for our reactions
Hi Michael,
I think maybe we can look at the idea of God never putting us in a position of being dependent upon others in a negative way in this light. God never puts us in a position that prevents us from fulfilling the commandments. We “always” have the opportunity to in all situations to love God or love our neighbor. The situation might be uncomfortable to us or appear to be negative. Yet I don’t believe God puts anyone through negative situations from “His” perspective. Everything God does is good, everything He engineers in our life is to bring about His ultimate good. Even when we are chastised its a positive situation, it just might seem negative at the time to us.
I can’t think of a scenario where a slave can be dependent upon its Master in a negative way. If a Master is unhappy with the performance of the slave the Master simply removes the slave. The slave may see the situation as negative, yet by thinking the situation is negative from the slaves perspective in no way burdens the Master.
Hi Keith,
I agree with this part of your equation, the one where God is master
My difficulty is with master/slave relationships where man is master
Desire to dominate another person in normal human relationships is
A negative product of the Yetzer Hara rather than the Yetzer Tov IMO
Faith has been such a hard thing for me to grasp. For many years, it appeared not to work for me at all. Everything that was loving and ‘right’ seemed to turn to dust in my hands and all around me. So many times I faced the temptation to “curse God and die”. I believed (fear/faith) that there was no way redemption could fix what was broken in my world.
But I was straining the whole time, in a frenzy of despair and desperation and SELF-DEFENSE to peer into that future so as to gain a measure of control over it. And it was doing nothing but backfiring on me. No matter how hard I tried, how much fear I invested into how to keep myself and those I loved ‘safe’, it did nothing but bring my worst fears upon. me. I was investing fear into the future, in the name of faith! And, frankly, where faith should have been, and what I feared most kept coming upon me.
To admit that I cannot divine the future, and to TURN AROUND and take an honest look at where I came from, is in itself an act of faith. And where faith starts for me. I was running from that past as hard as I could go. I was running from the present too, just as fast. Continually projecting fear into the future, in an attempt to divine it (divination runs on fear); define it; and above all, CONTROL IT, I was creating a continual present of all my worst fears. To admit that I cannot see the future releases me from attempting to control it. At that precise moment, the very space for faith to exist in my life opens up. Faith is not possible until I decide to lay down the fear that comes from the false belief that I can see or define or control the future.
I was a wet hen the years I believed that I could stop the ocean of the future from rolling over me. Faith does not fight the ocean: faith rides the wave, and in doing so, perfect control is possible. The flesh requires that the surrounding reality, including that illusive future, to conform to IT because it has no mechanism of changing itself. Faith recognizes that the biggest reason we cannot see the future is that the future is a plastic construct that is continually created, defined and delineated by what we are choosing in the present. All choices in the flesh are reactions to WHAT IS. All choices in faith, however, are projections of WHAT SHOULD BE. Faith lines up with the Law because that Law of Love gives us that picture of what should be. Faith is where we give it a place to operate. The action of faith is my Amen to the Law. Only through faith is it possible for the Law to exist in my life, because faith is where I choose for it to be true by resisting reaction to what is, and choosing instead to ACT AS IF what should be already existed. That action, that foot in the muddy, floody Jordan between me and the Promised Land, is what makes what should be, true. I really DO have ‘control’ over the future, precisely when I lay down all attempts to control it! (No way to explain this to the flesh….LOL)
Faith IS DOING what God’s asks. Nothing more, nothing less. It is not rules, propositions, creeds. It is not a bottle of spirituality on my kitchen shelf. It is just the doing of His will. When I do it, I have faith (although in Hebrew there is no verb for POSSESSING this). What we should say is probably something like, “When I do it I AM FAITHFUL.”
Skip, what a great bumper sticker that would make: “When I do it I AM FAITHFUL”!
At least for now, it goes on a post it note on the side of my filing cabinet!
He will not abandon us…..earth shaking words….or maybe more rightly, earth shaping words..He will NEVER, NEVER abandon us. I only wish I had understood years ago that even when I fail and my first and only reaction was self hatred and despair…I believe now, He cried for me. He was the only One who understood why I failed and how much I didn’t want to – and He loved me through it, and is still. Blessings over you all – Laurita, I totally understand! A real relationship is much easier to hold onto in a storm then an ethereal philosophy. My 2 cents for Dana – whoa – Skip pretty much just covered it! I have many examples I could use but this one comes to mind. The morning after I had fed some hungry travelers as Holy Spirit instructed and used all the money I had in hand to do it…I found my bank account had been emptied by theft. The only money in it belonged to someone else for whom I was to purchase an air ticket and travel money. Even now, I can feel the sense of total disbelief and panic. Before the day was over – all was covered w/o an ounce of effort on my part. There is something to be said in regards to being a good steward of what we’ve been given….but like Skip added – whatever He says to do – do it. That may be feeding the hungry or financial planning-how is He instructing us to steward it? – Whatever He says DO IT! Maybe He’ll have us save up more than we ever knew we could – then He’ll say, “Give it to this one.” 🙂 He will never abandon His own.
It would appear from the text that the words “He will take His stand on the earth” are connected to the words “at the last”. You have rightly questioned the background to the word ‘earth’. But even if it should be ‘dirt’ rather than ‘earth’ what does the text mean when it says “He will take His stand”? Because that seems to be the message about YHVH of that text. Is it a future accomplishment for YHVH, as the English implies? Or has He already taken his stand? For Job, it seems to be a future event. For us? Is it still future? Or already accomplished? Could it be a reference to the forthcoming Messiah who would take his stand on the earth and rule until all enemies have become his footstool? In which case, the event is future for Job and past for us, but in history, ongoing, so that we thus see the momentum of history: the reign of the Messiah established throughout the whole earth.
Ian – I am not sure that it is clear, according to the Scriptures, that the Messiah is reigning on Earth at this time. Satan is described, post-resurrection, as the prince of the power of the air, and he is credited with having power to inflict damage on individual lives. Christ has individual followers, filled with the Spirit and seeking after Him, but there is no evidence, either in the world, or in the scriptures, that his Kingdom on the Earth will be established until the end. Furthermore, it is not until the final chapters of Revelation that Yeshua returns to reign, after which he faces a final rebellion. I don’t know if you intend it this way, but your statement sounds very similar to Dominion/Replacement Theology which argues that the prophecies of Revelation are completed and we are to establish the Kingdom of the Messiah prior to His return. In order to agree with your statement that the Messiah has taken his stand on earth and now rule, we would have to agree that the prophecies of Revelation have been completed.
In the end I don’t necessarily think it matters if someone reads the Scriptures this way or not. Every follower of Yeshua is called to make it their goal to become increasingly like Yeshua. Whether the physical or spiritual Kingdoms are being established by our efforts are irrelevant. We are to Christ-like regardless of the response of other people. I will say, however, that Christ himself does not seem to indicate that his followers are going to face anything but persecution and that we are required to endure until the end. That doesn’t sound much like establishing a Kingdom as much as waiting for Him to return and “drop the hammer”.
As a aside, I actually recall having a conversation several years ago with a “Dominion” believer who told me that there are teachers within the Dominion movement who speculate that it will take somewhere in the range of 35,000 years for the sanctification process to occur before Christ returns. Sounds like the Theory of Evolution to me.
Hi Jordan
I am a postmillennialist who accepts a preterest (or at least partial preterest) interpretation of the book of Revelation and passages such as Matt. 24. And therefore, I accept that when the Messiah came, his first coming was the definitive point in history. A view, rather spectacularly put to music by Joseph Haydn in the Hallelujah Chorus.
Thank you so much, Dr Moen, for introducing me to the “row boat” way of looking at life. Teaching me the Hebrew way of looking at the future. I was raised on Proverbs 3:5-6. Knowing how Yehovah/Hebrews look at the future really reveals a new and true way of looking at this verse. To row without looking at where you are headed is to REALLY trust in The Lord! I see life like a row team. You have the people rowing, not seeing where they are headed. You also have the person who is facing the other way and does see where they are headed and yells out instructions for any course corrections. The rowers have to choose to trust that person. Just like that I, my husband, as we are rowing our boat, have to trust in The Lord, listen to His voice, OBEY His voice and just keep rowing! Knowing this, agreeing with this, really does lift a burden. Thanks again!
You’re welcome. It’s a powerful image and a great correction for most of us in the West.