Grammatical Marvels
Many, O Lord my God, are the wonders which You have done, and Your thoughts toward us; there is none to compare with You. If I would declare and speak of them, they would be too numerous to count. Psalm 40:5 NASB
Wonders – “Wonder rather than doubt is the root of knowledge. Doubt comes in the wake of knowledge as a state of vacillation between two contrary or contradictory views; as a state in which a belief we had embraced begins to totter. . . . In other words, the business of doubt is one of auditing the mind’s accounts about reality rather than a concern with reality itself; it deals with the content of perception rather than with perception itself. Doubt is not applied to what we have an immediate awareness of. We do not doubt that we exist or that we see, we merely question whether we know what we see or whether that which we see is a true reflection of what exists in reality. Doubt, then, is an interdepartmental activity of the mind.”[1]
Heschel’s insight confirms the underlying reality of Scripture. God is never in doubt. Just as it is impossible for me to doubt my experience of observing the Milky Way, the men and women of the Bible never doubt the reality of God’s involvement in the world. In fact, God is the given; the base assumption of all that exists. No Hebrew follower ever vacillated between God’s existence or non-existence. Such mental gymnastics were simply unthinkable. What struck the men and women of the Bible is wonder, the sheer awe of all that is. Without God, it was unexplainable.
The paradigm of the West is fundamentally a cognitive way of looking at the world. Since it is concerned with the relationship between thought and reality, it entertains that question, “How do I know that what I perceive is really real?” That question doesn’t make any sense at all in a worldview that begins with the validity of experience. Descartes might have followed his version of rationality to the place where only thinking exists, but no Hebrew would be so deluded. The real world presents itself in every moment. That real world is the context of life itself. I might not understand it at times, but I can never “doubt” that it is there. Its wonders fill my perceptions with the constant reminder that God is as real as my next breath.
The Hebrew text of this verse uses the word pala in the form nipleoteka. The word is a feminine participle. It really shouldn’t be translated “wonders.” That would make it a noun. What the Hebrew tells us is that what God is doing is acting. It is His “doings” that result in awe. It’s not the sun or the moon, the Milky Way or the tiny insects that declare who God is. It’s His “wonderings,” the fully active arena of all His involvement in my world. These are so far beyond my grasp, from the smallest to the greatest expanse, that I can only declare, “Who am I that You should care for me?” The verb pala basically means, “to be wonderful.” “In the Bible the root plʾ, refers to things that are unusual, beyond human capabilities. As such, it awakens astonishment (plʾ) in man. Thus, the ‘real importance of the miraculous for faith (is) — not in its material factuality, but in its evidential character … it is not, generally speaking, the especially abnormal character of the event which makes it a miracle; what strikes men forcibly is a clear impression of God’s care or retribution within it’ (Eichrodt). We may add that it is essential that the miracle is so abnormal as to be unexplainable except as showing God’s care or retribution.”[2] “Wondering” is the cosmic billboard of divine care. That’s what overwhelms—the fact that this God, the One True God of all creation—cares. His every act in nature and history is a declaration of His character. And for that there can be no doubt whatsoever.
Topical Index: wonder, pala, doubt, Psalm 40:5
[1] Abraham Heschel, Man Is Not Alone, pp. 11-12.
[2] Hamilton, V. P. (1999). 1768 פָּלָא. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer, Jr. & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer, Jr. & B. K. Waltke, Ed.) (electronic ed.) (723). Chicago: Moody Press.
Love is the thrill of the moment. Love is when the glove of the ever-protecting mind comes off and the shock of reality charges the soul with the sheerness of what is. All nature sings the wonder of love: all nature is connected. When we are healed of our fracture from what separates, we again are hooked back into that giant pulse of life. Life comes from beyond us; and all of reality, with everyone in it, feeds that life to us. I am poorer for everyone and everything that is cut off from me, for my appetite for the life that is only possible through that other is insatiable until it is quenched by all of what is. I don’t think the yetzer ha-ra creates that hunger and thirst or even IS that hunger and thirst. I think it, like the ego, is only the barometer of it.
I AM everything and everyone else! My identity is you! You hold who I am, and if I want to know who that is, I have to come to you to find out. Your uniqueness and mine are inseparable and only possible because of each other. I think the West has it exactly backwards: personality is only made possible by others. A person by themselves is no person at all (thank you, Skip!). I get who I am and what I need most from plugging in to God, you, and everything and everyone else. Hell is always hungry, angry, lonely and tired because its plug fell out of its wall (I think surely the Psalmist must have said that somewhere).
Laurita,
In reading your comments I find that we have points of agreement and points of disagreement, yet I most always enjoy your writings for their forethought and poetic qualities. The same is true of this one.
As regards your words that the West has it backwards regarding personality, I’ll offer some thoughts via analogy.
I’ve always been a music lover, and recently played some jazz of Charles Mingus, whose work is recognizable by its uniqueness, as is true of the best composers. His individual personality always comes through (and he had a very forceful personality in his interpersonal relationships!). On one quintet recording, I began listening specifically to the tenor saxophonist, Booker Ervin, which prompted me to listen to some Ervin-led recordings in a smaller quartet setting. Ervin’s music is less dense, but the individual personality of his horn became more prominent.
On the latter recording was acoustic bassist Richard Davis, and, recalling how his presence defined the sound of Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, I played that record. For the Astral Weeks session, Morrison’s producer assembled a group of musicians from the jazz idiom almost exclusively and provided just a bare sketch of his tunes, leaving it up to the musicians to play as each one felt. Musically, Davis took the reins, resulting in a recognized masterpiece. On the title track I specifically listened to Davis as he propelled the tune forward while playing melodic lines and fills. Yet as more musicians came in Davis played more economically, allowing the others to come to the fore.
In music, most especially jazz, the sum is greater than its parts, but the parts are integral to the overall sound. Exchange one member with another and the sound is altered. From an individual standpoint, the whole point of the jazz musician is to develop his own unique sound signature, not to merely copy another. (However, he certainly is influenced by others.) Yet, almost paradoxically, in a group setting each player is to listen to the others in order to accentuate the others via echo, counterpoint, etc. Each must listen to yet anticipate the other.
So, is it the chicken or the egg? Does the individual personality define the group or does the group define the individual? It seems a bit of both/and. Yet, as I was telling a friend earlier this year, if we think about it, we all relate to different people in different ways. In a sense, we accommodate ourselves to the other and vice versa.
Of course, our primary relationship is with God. As we submit, He will mold us into the individual person we are meant to be. Then, He will use us in community and vice versa.
…and the greatest of all the wonderings is the Echad of the Heavenly Family!
And the greatest marvel for me is how YHVH caters for the individual, uplifting him or her above their expectations while keeping the multitude fed….
Yes, Echad for all and all for Echad (Un pour tous, tous pour un) … that is why we are twice acknowledged in The Name (the H).
I sit and marvel and rest in speechlessness as I grasp the tiny portion of awareness of a magnificent YHVH, designer and builder and creator of all my eyes can and cannot see with the understanding that all that he is has chosen to care for me! My brain/being/self struggles and strains to embrace the reality of all that committed to me. Amazing. Awesome.
Abraham Heschel “wrote what he thought and lived what he wrote”:
“Our greatest problem is not how to continue but how to return. How can I repay unto the Lord all his bountiful dealings with me? Ps 116:12 What shall I return to the LORD for all his goodness to me? The deepest wisdom man can attain is to know that his destiny is to aid, to serve…. wonder leads to piety, and piety to holy deeds; for without the deed, wonder and piety are incomplete. And the deed is always possible because man is not alone; God is ever in search of him.”
“Several years before Heschel’s death he suffered a near fatal heart attack. I traveled to his apartment in New York. “Sam,”he said, “when I regained consciousness, my first feelings were not of despair or anger. I felt only gratitude to God for my life, for every moment I had lived. I was ready to depart. ‘Take me O Lord,’ I thought, ‘ I have seen so many miracles in my lifetime.’
Exhausted, he paused for a moment, then added: “That is what I meant when I wrote: ‘ I did not ask for success, I asked for wonder. And You, Hashem, gave it to me.’ ” – From: I asked for Wonder edited by Samuel Dresner.
Thus, the more holy deeds we do unto others, the more we will experience the “wonderings” of YHVH.