Turn Around or Turn Back
“And those who bow down on the housetops to the host of heaven,
and those who bow down and swear to the Lord and yet swear by Milcom, and those who have turned back from following the Lord, and those who have not sought the Lord or inquired of Him.” Zephaniah 1:5-6 NASB
Turned back – We might have expected to read shuv in this verse, the Hebrew verb used many times to express turning around from disobedience to following YHVH. But that isn’t the case. Here the verb is sug, a root that is employed in negative situations. Shuv is return to God. Sug is turning away from Him, turning back to the old way of life before grace redeemed. In some respects our lives are the interplay between these two verbs. Both are about turning. The only question is “In which direction?”
Think about the turning points in your life. Has your course always been in the same direction? Have there not been times when it seemed you were heading back to the things you intended to leave behind? Have you never felt as if you were covering the same old ground once again? Most of us seem to fit the déjà vu spiritual progress method. We go one way; we go another way, we go back again. That raises an important, and perhaps crucial, question. If YHVH proclaims punishment upon those who “turn back,” where does that leave us? Are we soon to experience His wrath? Or is sug something other than the back-and-forth craziness that seems to catch us. Perhaps looking at David’s assessment of sug will help us answer this distressing question.
Psalm 53:3 uses the same verb. “Every one of them has turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one.” Here the verb is translated “turned aside.” In spite of the fact that the verse claims “there is no one who does good,” David is speaking about the fool, not those who are aiming toward God. No fool does good. No worker of wickedness has true knowledge. No one who turns aside is accepted. And what other characteristic is common to these reprobates? They have determined that “There is no God.” In other words, they have decided that life is not under divine sovereignty. They are the masters of their own fate. Sug isn’t simply the up-and-down, back-and-forth struggle we experience in our attempts to walk in His ways. We might slip and slide but we know that He is real and that we are aiming toward Him. Sug is a verb about those who have rejected the very idea of God. They live for themselves, convinced that there is no heavenly justice, no final judgment, no one who oversees their actions. They do not do good because there is no reason to do good in a world without consequences. Sug is not just turning around. It is rejection of direction. It is going back to a world without a moral character or a moral creator.
Perhaps you know someone who fits David’s definition of fool. I doubt that you do. Most of the time our back-and-forth struggles are battles between the yetzer ha’ra and the yetzer ha’tov. They are not about the ultimate direction. They are about enlisting all our actions in God’s favor. That does not mean the warning isn’t serious. One step back can become two steps back, then three, then four. The warning matters. But shuv, not sug, is the solution to one-step-back. May your life be shuv today.
Topical Index: sug, turn back, shuv, return, turn around, Psalm 53:3, Zephaniah 1:5-6
That word, “direction”, assumes I have somewhere to go. The supremity of self, however, determines that I am just going to stay home. Change is all about the Other as my reference point, but I don’t have to do anything if I have decided that I am the end result anyway. Why, in the worship of Self I don’t even get the sensation that I am lost, for lost contains the connotation that I am not already there. Sin is the stuff that freezes me in my tracks and assigns me the task of acting in defense of that inability to move. Any direction, at that point, is all the directions I spin around in, in the orbit of myself; circling my own drain. Self forges the chains that pride binds me to the altar of my vanity with. The rest of my life, then, is what I spend in an attempt to convince myself that I am not bored to death. Literally.
What were you saying about some sort of DIRECTION again?
Paul warned us not to fall behind. He also warned we must not be misled by the comforting smooth talking gospel teachers (own words). Lot’s wife turned around and became a salt pillar. Yeshua said we are the salt if when salt becomes stale it can only we thrown out and trod on as has no more worth… These do not say reinvent the path, they teach invest well in what we are busy with for when we just follow because it is comforting to hear and easy to do we can fall when we are confronted with different opinions. Would sug be relevant to Lot’s wife’s case or these later warning of falling behind becoming stale or jumping from doctrine to doctrine as it suits me?
Lot’s wife “nabat”ed in Gen 19:26 ותבט אשׁתו מאחריו “va.ta.vet ish.to me.a.cha.rav” “but/and looked back his wife from behind him”. In all my translations, only Young’s Literal (1898) says ‘expectingly’ in an effort to better define ‘nabat’ as Strong’s does: A primitive root; to scan, that is, look intently at; by implication to regard with pleasure, favor or care: – (cause to) behold, consider, look (down), regard, have respect, see. Hirsch defines it as perceive, looking directly, move; with phonetic cognates meaning flow, totter, separate.
The Peshitta (Lamsa’a translation) footnotes “Aramaic: ‘pillar of salt’ means that she became petrified with fear and died”.
Keil and Delitzsch Commentary states: On the way, Lot’s wife, notwithstanding the divine command, looked “behind him away,” – i.e., went behind her husband and looked backwards, probably from a longing for the house and the earthly possessions she had left with reluctance (cf. Luk 17:31-32), – and “became a pillar of salt.” We are not to suppose that she was actually turned into one, but having been killed by the fiery and sulphureous vapour with which the air was filled, and afterwards encrusted with salt, she resembled an actual statue of salt; just as even now, from the saline exhalation of the Dead Sea, objects near it are quickly covered with a crust of salt, so that the fact, to which Christ refers in Luk 17:32, may be understood without supposing a miracle.
(Note: But when this pillar of salt is mentioned in Wis. 11:7 and Clemens ad Cor. xi. as still in existence, and Josephus professes to have seen it, this legend is probably based upon the pillar-like lumps of salt, which are still to be seen at Mount Usdum (Sodom), on the south-western side of the Dead Sea.)
F.B Meyer’s commentary states: Even his wife might have been saved, but her heart was inveterately wedded to the city.
She “looked back,” contrary to God’s express command (v17), perhaps with a hope of returning, loath (not merely reluctant) to leave her house and goods. Was she a backslider in heart (Pro 14:14)? Yeshua “intimates this to be her sin (Luk 17:31-32) she too much regarded her stuff. And her looking back spoke an inclination to go back; and therefore our Saviour uses it as a warning against apostasy…” (-Wesley)
Do Num 16:38 and Heb 10:38 give us more to consider? Perhaps it was Lot’s righteousness which was saving her and she opted out. Is that ‘sug’?
Yes…and then there’s that category of folks who, have rejected the idea of God (divine authority), they live for themselves and believe they are masters of their fate, but yet, they don’t “appear” to be morally bankrupt. They spend their lives doing good things, helping others, trying to rebuilt/repair the earth. Those are the tough nuts to crack. I live in a community surrounded by people like this and it’s often discouraging as I try to witness to them. Progress is painfully slow. I think ultimately, prayer is the primary answer.
Just noticed the “P” alliteration above. It was not intentional…but, I kinda like it.
Progress, painfully slow…prayer, primary answer for prideful people to imProve. :-)))
A disturbing post, my son… an only child…informed me two winters ago that there is no God,no life after death, no soul, and no spirit, he was raised in a Christian home and has had a personal encounter with the Master. He told me that nothing I do or say will change his mind, and has bluntly with mocking contempt denigrated everything his mother and I taught him from his youth up. I cannot begin to express the depth of sadness and depression I have gone through, I have quit attempting to change his mind, every effort has been met with verminous opposition. Is there hope for such a one? He is 34 and is very intentional in his attacks against God turning to Jen Buddism and science logic.
Bruce. I have a similar life struggle. I learnt to just remind him of the good things he does without second thought. God does not work in the ways we desire He equips and uses as He needs. I accept my son is aware of reality and a power stronger than he. I will only be doing more harm if I continue trying to get him to accept than to rather remind that he knows more good than bad. The foundation is laid, our task is to remind to build using righteous deeds not preaching.
Just some supporting comment as I out myself cannot do more… God is in control. Prayer supplications and thanks is all we can do.
God bless your actions to stand strong to carry the weaknesses of those that cannot carry there own…
Bruce A. , Seeker, and et.al, How my heart leaped in compassion to Bruce A. for the anguish he is going through; and Seeker is correct in his suggestions ” Lay Low-Pray honestly–check your own attitude-make sure that it is of a humble attitude, ask the Lord to show you His true love for you and your wife–no arguing with the son. Now with this 83 year old lady, with four grown children of ages 62–52, ten grandchildren and now ten great-grandchildren–and I just received a sonogram of a new one still a big secret, but the grandson knew I would not tell until they do–( to which I replied that of course I would not but that I did not know how to read a sonogram, so I couldn’t tell anyway!). I have experienced a lot of things, and one of our four went away from the morals of the Christian teachings we had faithfully taught her; it took many heart breaks, huge repentance of our attitudes & much kindness on our part ,sincere honest prayers, and now years later– she is totally restored to the Heavenly Father, and to us, and is absolutely the most faithful woman in actions of everyday living of anyone that I know- along with the husband of her four children and 8 grandchildren , and runs a very profitable business. She is 53 years old now
I hope that I am saying with the checks and balances of our own selves-the parents, grandparents- friends, against the teachings of the Scriptures God will restore that lamb (your son) to Him self. Bruce A. your son is still young, he is checking out lots of things in life. Life does not add up to him, and now with current high tech living methods-the world views are in his sight in a few seconds, he is looking at the options. But God will in due season lift that precious lamb to Himself, and ALL will rejoice! This goes for all those who have wayward children, grandchildren. I will pray with all who need this for it to be! I am indeed reminded to give thanks again to the Lord for what He has brought about in my own daughter’s life. WOW WHAT LOVE HE HAS FOR ALL OF US!