Lust for Life
The LORD does not let the appetite of the righteous go unsatisfied, but what the wicked crave he thrusts aside. Proverbs 10:3 (Bruce Waltke translation)
Appetite – What really moves you? What are the most important motivators in your life? What drives you to keep going? What inspires you to new heights?
In Hebrew, all of these questions involve the nephesh. Typically translated “soul,” this concept is much more about “passionate drives and appetites of all breathing creatures,”[1] than it is about the psyche (a Greek idea) or the spiritual dimension of human beings. Nephesh is about the yearning, the craving, the passionate desire for life. It includes food, shelter, sex, connection, safety and continuation. For human beings, it involves meaning and purpose, significance and worthiness. Nephesh is about what makes life worth living and what makes it possible to keep going. Now read this proverb again. YHVH does not ignore all those truly motivating elements of life. In particular, He will make sure that the righteous find fulfillment.
The traditional translation of this verse obscures nearly everything about its deeper meaning. “The Lord does not let the righteous go hungry,” makes the verse seems as if God is the equivalent of the local grocery store. Even casual observation proves such a claim is a lie. The righteous often go hungry. In fact, they starve. They die from lack of food. Where is God in all this? Translated without the Hebraic concept of nephesh, the verse turns God into a monster.
But in Hebrew the verse isn’t about food. It’s about fulfillment. It’s about finding meaning in living. It’s about what keeps me going. YHVH does not forsake life and He is involved in everything that makes life happen and gives it purpose. He doesn’t promise to put food on your table. He promises to make living worthwhile, somehow.
Does clearing up the translation help? Well, it helps us see that the apparent contradiction in the verse isn’t valid. Just because the righteous do go hungry does not mean the verse is a lie. But on a deeper level, the claim that God is so involved in life that the righteous will find satisfaction for their passions and drives still seems to be a problem. I might not be righteous but I know a few people who are, and their lives seem to be just as difficult as mine. At least it appears that way—until I really look. What I discover if I look hard enough is a sense of contentment, a kind of trust in the sovereign care of YHVH that permeates who they are. Yes, their lives can be hard, but they don’t look at it that way. They see God everywhere. They see nephesh in its widest application. Everything breathing reminds them of God’s involvement. And they rest in Him. That doesn’t mean life is any easier. It just means life is filled with grace. Maybe that’s what really keeps them going.
Topical Index: nephesh, soul, appetite, motivation, Proverbs 10:3
[1] Bruce Waltke, The Book of Proverbs, Chapters 1-15, NICOT, p. 90.
Cliff Notes: sustenance is more than necessities but perhaps only the truly poor know that. The ‘natural’ man, being tied to natural law as he is, is utterly convinced that life is about survival (necessities). It is almost impossible to get over that illusion UNLESS you have had an opportunity to experience what life looks like BEYOND those supposed necessities. Poverty provides the world with just such a valuable assistance in learning. You have never perhaps experienced the breathtaking scope of love until you have had a truly starving person take their only bite of food and put it in your truly starving mouth. Then you know what love is.
Job 23 contains some of the best statements of faith in the entire Bible; as in useful declarations in the middle of disaster. They give you an idea of HOW to hang on when the going gets tough by providing a picture of what that looks like. In it, Job freely acknowledges his bitterness and declares that what he wants most is a face to face confrontation to clear his case with YHVH (pretty bold!). He feels abandonment (cannot find YHVH), but states that he is sure YHVH knows where he is. He knows he is being tested, and he has the faith that the testing will refine him “as gold”. He finds, at the bottom, something that he may have never been sure about; namely, that he esteems the words of YHVH’s mouth MORE than his necessities. This may have been the first time in his life that Job had been tempted to esteem what his needs were more than YHVH. If he had reduced himself to just his needs, he would have lost his faith in YHVH, his confidence in himself, and his obedience to those words. I have thought sometimes that it is only the rich that have this problem.
Someone wise once said that the testing is for our sake. We are the ones that need to have the confidence that our faith and obedience are built on a Rock and a purpose that we esteem more than even our lives. In fact, we have to get over ourselves to get to a place where the nephesh CAN interact properly with the larger picture. This is why testing is necessary; to convince us of the REAL necessities, which are the words of YHVH. Love does make the world go round, but until the yetzer ha’ra has been dealt with, temporal necessities are still driving the ship.
I have met most of the truly beautiful people of my life who have gotten over themselves in the starving place. Once you have starved, you are sensitized to the hunger of others. When you see their hunger, you feel it as your own. Once you have met your own depravity, you see the depravity of others as if it were your own, and are sympathetic. In fact, we are all either too hard or too indulgent with ourselves (and therefore, by extension, with others) in all the places where we have not gotten over ourselves yet. Grace is the unimpeded flow of the love of God which only the selfish heart of man can impede. People who have NO security end up not needing it, for they have discovered grace. These people simply do not suffer about the lack of love like most of us do, for they naturally know what it is, and is not, and agree with it. I think the real reason we are told that the poor will always be ‘with us’ is that heaven needed to boost its percentages of the saved, for the rich are so very hard to save, and this may be why.
My brother is over in Thailand right now, and he has gotten to know some of the hill tribe people, who are not recognized as citizens of the country. They have no official ‘permission’ to be people; no papers that identify them, no passports, no work permits, no welfare, no money and no land ownership, but he says they are the happiest, most secure people he has ever met. They are subsistence farmers; the primitive slash and burn type who move on every few years. They live in bamboo huts and usually eat what they can pick or catch and put in their mouths. And they are happy, with no worries about their health, old age or the future. The grace for the day is sufficient. This is the gift that only the hand of the truly poor may be open enough to receive properly; as in with a matching gratitude.
Revelation 3 reveals to the Laodiceans their true poverty. This is us. We do not know how poor we truly are without that grace, for our fists are shut too tightly around our feeble attempts to provide for ourselves. The question then becomes; what are we truly missing? It is reliance on that grace that gets me into the next world, but that is not just grace for my soul (Greek), but also daily grace for my bread. The question then becomes, am I still eating temporal bread (which is the bread that I am insisting on supplying for myself) or have I gotten over that and so have plugged into the fact that my necessities are connected to all those around me? If I am still comfortable eating while others are hungry, I may still not be there yet. The Bread from heaven can take a little and feed a crowd but the bread from our own providence is not even enough with which to sustain ourselves.
Wow Miss Hayes sounds like a post in your Journal wonderful information thank you for opening up. Just a brief thought. In our prayer meeting last night people were asking this exact question. What makes you tick.? Well I said in response. I love to reach out and help people where and whenever needed and be moved by the spirit in doing so. It helps me understand the Deep things of God. That might natural mind does not understand. Moving in the spirit as opposed to living in the spirit that makes all the difference. I can’t just hang him up like a suit and put him in the closet that just won’t work it comes to be that I crave living in the spirit when I’m not outside I’m reading or praying yes I have my bad days and ups and downs but it still causes others to ask. I think the Lord is allowing me to make a difference. I love his Mercy and I seek his Justice amen and amen.
There are many verses in Scripture that trouble me, for what I perceive to be a ‘rational reason’ pertaining to ‘truth’. And with that, my reaction is “that just is not true or it doesn’t make any sense’, at least to what functions in my brain. But that’s ok. Maybe I’ll get it tomorrow or the next day or ‘sometime’. This verse, from Today’s Word, makes more sense to me, now that I reflect on what Skip has written. But it also brings into sharper focus, one of the key things the ‘church’ has done an awful job with. I am focusing in on the needs of the poor on our fair planet. The last time I checked, I believe that about 21,000 people starve to death each day and about 4,000 people die each day because of lack of clean water. I know we do some good and sometimes we do it with a lot of fanfare, as do organizations like Samaritan’s Purse, although I question how they can justify a $1.2 million salary for the head of the organization, thats purpose is distributing items to the poor and those in need. (That’s $650,000 from SP and another $550,000 from the Billy Graham Organization.) But, that’s a topic for probably another forum. We need to be a lot more mission’s focused on the day to day needs of the poor. We are very good with getting people to say a prayer, with a look to the ‘next life’ of disembodied bliss, but what about the needs of this life? The old saying percolates to the surface, “I believe in life before death.” The poor cry out to us, some living, but way too many from the grave.
I could not agree more. One year’s salary would completely restore an entire community of prostitutes and children, affecting directly hundreds of lives. But the ethical issue is not here for debate. That’s for another day. Right now we just need to make sure that this tiny little effort continues and maybe what we do with the children of these women will begin to affect their view of themselves.
” Nephesh is about what makes life worth living and what makes it possible to keep going.”
Absolutely! Nephesh is all about the way we feel, care, our passions/zeal, that makes life so meaningful.
“Everything breathing reminds them (us) of God’s involvement. And they (we) rest in Him.” Amein!
Thumbs up for this TW, Skip. Todah.