The Long and Winding Road
Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; for His lovingkindness is everlasting. Psalm 118:1 NASB
Everlasting – How long will YHVH show hesed toward us? How long will it be before His patience runs out and He gives up on us? David must have asked these questions, especially after his encounter with Nathan. Guilty! Deserving punishment! How could a God of holiness have anything to do with an adulterer and murderer? Certainly God would have to turn His back and walk away after such offenses.
“Though ʿôlām is used more than three hundred times to indicate indefinite continuance into the very distant future, the meaning of the word is not confined to the future. There are at least twenty instances where it clearly refers to the past. Such usages generally point to something that seems long ago, but rarely if ever refer to a limitless past.”[1]
This commentary on the word ‘olam should stop us in our tracks. We are Western linear thinkers, yet here is a word that means both past and future. How can this be? It isn’t sufficient to simply gloss over this anomaly by pretending the ‘olam just means “long duration” without temporally explicit direction. That’s not what’s happening here. The word forces us to reconsider how we think about time. It suggests that past and future are not so disconnected, not so intractable. What if we thought about God’s interaction with us in a non-linear temporal framework? What if beginning and end aren’t really so far apart?
Isn’t that what David is saying in this verse about hesed? Isn’t he saying that God “winds back the clock” so that whatever happened before can be seen according to whatever happened after? If God were to exercise strict justice, David should die. Certainly not David’s innocent child! But something happened that undid the verdict. It wasn’t that God set aside the punishment David deserved. Something else occurred. Could you imagine that God saw David’s past sin from the perspective of David’s future repentance? Doesn’t everlasting hesed imply that in some way the acts of a man afterward determine the outcome of the acts before? How could hesed be le’olam unless somehow hesed alters the direction of temporality?
In the past we have noticed that Hebrew has no abstract word for time. We pointed out that the Hebrew idea of temporal duration is cycloidal, neither linear nor circular. But have we really thought about what this means in terms of YHVH’s interaction with us? David is giving thanks for a lot more than just YHVH’s goodness and mercy. Perhaps he is hinting at YHVH’s ability to undo the past and redo the future—all at the same “time.”
Isn’t that what He’s done for you?
Topical Index: ‘olam, future, everlasting, time, Psalm 118:1
[1] Macrae, A. A. (1999). 1631 עלם. 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.) (672). Chicago: Moody Press.
N. Glueck defines hesed as: A conduct in accord with a mutual relationship of rights and duties, corresponding to a mutually obligatory relationship… This seems to be reflected in the following biblical excerpt.
Exodus 34:6 And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord! the Lord! a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abundant in loving-kindness and truth.
Could this be what David was hoping for rather than making a proclamation as a lot of his psalms reflect his wishes and understanding of the covenant with God rather than the proclamation of a fact. We desire this relationship based on our guilt feelings rather than our way of proclaiming and glorifying God.
Skip it would be that we need to trust more on God’s faithfulness than we can truly show our actions of faith. Any scriptural proposals on how we should show faith… Or should we just sing a long “Why me Lord…”
I forgot the following excerpt from Mark Kelly’s works on Covenant Hesed
In Romans 5:6 and 8, Paul describes it this way: “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
In other words, at the precise moment in our weakness to sin, while relationally distant from God, when we needed most to be rescued, the giver (God) delivered the only act of graciousness (Jesus Christ) that rescued us from the clutches of death and restored us to eternal life.
Hesed, steadfast love, loving-kindness, mercy – is not emotion, but an active participation in a time of need. True love produces sacrifice and action, not just emotionally charged sentimentalities…
Now, Skip, you are really messing with me! Thank you for a whole huge wad to chew. My interior jaw is aching just thinking about it!
In The Great Divorce C.S. Lewis hints at this, too. He writes:
“But I don’t understand. Is judgment not final? Is there really a way out of Hell into Heaven?”
“It depends on the way you’re using the words. If they leave that grey town behind it will not have
been Hell. To any that leaves it, it is Purgatory. And perhaps ye had better not call this country
Heaven. Not Deep Heaven, ye understand.” (Here he smiled at me). “Ye can call it the Valley of
the Shadow of Life. And yet to those who stay here it will have been Heaven from the first. And ye
can call those sad streets in the town yonder the Valley of the Shadow of Death: but to those who
remain there they will have been Hell even from the beginning.”
I suppose he saw that I looked puzzled, for presently he spoke again.
“Son,” he said, “ye cannot in your present state understand eternity: when Anodos looked through
the door of the Timeless, he brought no message back. But ye can get some likeness of it if ye say
that both good and evil, when they are full grown, become retrospective. Not only this valley but all
this earthly past will have been Heaven to those who are saved. Not only the twilight in that town,
but all their life on earth too, will then be seen by the damned to have been Hell. That is what
mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, ‘No future bliss can make up for it,’
not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a
glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say ‘Let me but have this and I’ll take the consequences’:
little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the
pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man’s past begins to change
so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man’s past
already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why, at the end of all
things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say,
‘We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven,’ and the Lost, ‘We were always in Hell.’ And
both will speak truly.”
I have found that when I make my peace with someone, it changes my memories of that person. I see them in a different light. When I confess my sins, I then see my past in a different light, but even more importantly, because sin binds, when it is gone, my future choices IMMEDIATELY change: right in front of my face! Where before there was desert, now I see a spring of water. To return to freedom IS to get the chains of the past removed and the future handed to you on a silver platter. May I, this time, choose in such a way that does not limit any more choices!
I have thought sometimes, on the edge of sleep, that sin bound us to time. Adam, before the fall, was the rightful Son of God representative of this planet, and assuredly we are not the only inhabited planet, else why is space so vast? Surely not just so we could enjoy it!. In Job, we see those representatives showing up at the entrance of heaven to make their reports. Among them was the current god of this world which had replaced Adam (and which was replaced yet again at the cross). I have thought also about how long it took Gabriel, in Daniel 9, when Daniel was praying for understanding, to return commissioned with the answer (the length of the prayer, which was about 2 minutes). Angels time travel. Before sin, people probably could, too, because after sin, we undoubtedly will again. Eternity is strange stuff, and the Tree and River of Life confer this ability to experience this difference of time. Gonna be interesting!
Brother Skip, could you share with us the Jewish perspective concerning the incarnation of the Christ?
Yes, I am writing a piece on it now. Will take a few days.
The God who is. Yes, His Name? ~ I AM* ~ Not I “will be” or “I was,” but the God who (eternally) is. The God of the (right) now. The same God of the Old(er) Covenant is the very same God of the new(er). His everlasting-eternal-enduring words? “I AM (the LORD) — I change not.” (Malachi 3.6)
What meaneth this? The God of the “then” is the God of the “now.” The very same God and the God of Abraham, Isaac and Moses and the God of Peter, Paul and Mary, the God who we now (because of the shed blood of our ever-living, ever-interceding Redeemer by a new and living way has opened for us through the curtain, that is, His body,) are exceedingly privileged to refer to as “our Father!..” is. And brothers and sisters, not only “our Father..” but our ABBA-Father! And there is no closer relationship or stronger parental bond (the blood-bond of hesed) between Father (Him) and child (us)!
What shall we say to these things? “If” God be for us? (#pishposh) NO!! Not at all! For God (our Father) IS for us!!! – and does for us (daily and moment-by-moment!) exceedingly abundantly above all that we could ask or think!! Friend, only one word comes close to describing this joy unspeakable and full of glory, and may these eternal “hallelujahs” never leave the wellsprings of my heart. Amen. It is only because “He is,” that “we are!”
~ Praise the LORD! Oh give thanks to the LORD, for He is good; For His lovingkindnesses are everlasting ~ (Psalm 106:1)
~ Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; and His greatness is unsearchable! ~
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d83RFgD31Fs&index=4&list=PLStl3uk5f1qMBAc1429OuPqL0e8ve1x3L
And more than just individually, “Romans 5:18 Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.
Romans 5:19 For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.” Olam?
The question was asked about who the Messiah is, not who He wasn’t. We’re getting a little closer.
YHWH bless you and keep you…….
A very similar verse in Ps. 103:17 was discussed Aug. 12, 2015. At that time I cited several uses of the word olam showing it cannot mean forever. In Jonah’s case, it was at most 3 days, although most often it refers to a long indefinite, but limited, period of time, e.g. an age or eon. Therefore God’s love is from age to age, not from an irrational, everlasting to everlasting. So, in the sense of an age or block of time, I can easily make sense of Skip’s suggestion that the, “word that means both past and future.”
However, what is frustrating is how to understand, “Could you imagine that God saw David’s past sin from the perspective of David’s future repentance?”
Is Skip saying God knew beforehand that David would repent? Does that not interfere with David’s freewill? Or, is God able to see David’s freewill choices, but in advance?
Or is Skip just saying, after David repented, then God saw David’s sin differently? (OK, but now we’re back to normal lineal time thinking.)
“Doesn’t everlasting hesed imply that in some way the acts of a man afterward determine the outcome of the acts before? How could hesed be le’olam unless somehow hesed alters the direction of temporality?”
This reminds me of travel movies. I love them but in the end I am usually hopelessly confused.
Hum…are we talking ultimate reality or perceptions of reality? Me thinks we are heading into esoteric perhaps ineffable realms with this one. But perhaps I’m focusing on the physical / temporal rather spirtual but wait are those mutually exclusive?
If we are going to go playing in this sandbox, we may profit from the experience of others who have played here, too. Back to Lewis:
“…all answers deceive. If ye put the question from within Time and are asking about
possibilities, the answer is certain. The choice of ways is before you. Neither is closed. Any man
may choose eternal death. Those who choose it will have it. But if ye are trying to leap on into
eternity, if ye are trying to see the final state of all things as it will be (for so ye must speak) when
there are no more possibilities left but only the Real, then ye ask what cannot be answered to mortal
ears. Time is the very lens through which ye see-small and clear, as men see through the wrong end
of a telescope-something that would otherwise be too big for ye to see at all. That thing is Freedom:
the gift whereby ye most resemble your Maker and are yourselves parts of eternal reality. But ye
can see it only through the lens of Time, in a little clear picture, through the inverted telescope. It is
a picture of moments following one another and yourself in each moment making some choice that
might have been otherwise. Neither the temporal succession nor the phantom of what ye might
have chosen and didn’t is itself Freedom. They are a lens. The picture is a symbol: but it’s truer than
any philosophical theorem (or, perhaps, than any mystic’s vision) that claims to go behind it. For
every attempt to see the shape of eternity except through the lens of Time destroys your knowledge
of Freedom. Witness the doctrine of Predestination which shows (truly enough) that eternal reality
is not waiting for a future in which to be real; but at the price of removing Freedom which is the
deeper truth of the two. And wouldn’t Universalism do the same? Ye cannot know eternal reality by
a definition. Time itself, and all acts and events that fill Time, are the definition, and it must be
lived. The Lord said we were gods. How long could ye bear to look (without Time’s lens) on the
greatness of your own soul and the eternal reality of her choice?”
May all of us learn to hold the reins of our own (and others’s) speculations lightly. And then, play away!
Hi Laurita and Mark
Someone once asked Skip to tell us how he sees Jesus Christ this post seems to be touching on that understanding.
PaRDeS
As reflected in Eph 3: 14 For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 15 Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, 16 That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; 17 That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth (P), and length (R), and depth (D), and height (S); 19 And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God.
Christ seems to be more than just Torah it is more about a personal relationship based on a mutual understanding of our God given role and responsibilities, knowing that we can never actual put this in words we can just continue revealing what we have been empowered to do but not why or how… GODS LOVING KINDNESS IN ACTION
Hi Skip,
You state: “…Hebrew idea of temporal duration is cycloidal, neither linear nor circular.”
Why is it not spiral?
Shalom
consider the differences in definition. Cycloidal suggests movement in a direction with circular rotation. Spiral does not suggest movement in a direction but only rotation around a point.
Thanks.
I was more thinking about 3 dimensional spirals, like a helix or vortex.
To accommodate “space-time”, a wave effect and the fact that the repeats of events are never exactly the same.