Pitchfork Theology
You scrutinize my path and my lying down, and are intimately acquainted with all my ways. Psalm 139:3 NASB
Scrutinize– Been winnowed lately? When necessary, God takes us down to the threshing floor. The Hebrew verb, zārâ, is a product of the Israelite agrarian culture. It means, “fan, scatter, cast away, winnow; disperse, compass, spread, be scattered, dispersed.”[1] What usually happens on the threshing floor is not the story of Boaz and Ruth. It is the story of (as my South African friends would say) “being sorted.”
The term zārâ is used in various verbal forms to indicate a scattering or dispersing for reasons of purification or chastisement. Grain is cleansed of chaff by using a fan to blow it away. God’s covenant people require a purifying also, but it will be a chastening experience; hence the Lord is said, metaphorically, “to fan” his people (Jer 15:7), with the result that they will be scattered as chaff to various distant places.[2]
Remember bîn? Since God knows us from the inside out, He also knows precisely where we need to be sorted, where we need chastisement in order to align our lives with His purposes. That might sound acceptable in theory, but in practice it is no fun at all. This is the curse side of the coin. And there are days when we would like God to let up. We would like to take a vacation from the thorough moral inventory and just not think about our behavior and its implications. You know, sometimes I think God actually allows this. He knows when we are exhausted from spiritual growth (or pressure). Maybe He even pretends to look the other way for a time so that we don’t end up like David in Psalm 39:11, “Turn Your gaze away from me, that I may smile again before I depart and am no more.” Isn’t this what a good parent would do? “We’ve been pushing the kids pretty hard lately. How about giving them some time to just play and have some fun?” Don’t we have a saying about this: All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Do you think God is a worse parent than we are?
“Scrutinize” is a fearful word in the hands of a ruthless dictator. It means we never get a break. It means we are always under the watchful eye. It means there really isn’t any room for freedom of expression. Fortunately, God isn’t a ruthless dictator, even if we sometimes feel as if His watchful eye presses us into tight spaces. Fortunately, the stories in the Bible demonstrate that He is much more like the perfect parent, giving us just the space we need to become who we are. Unfortunately (or perhaps not), sometimes this leads to winnowing. But rather than feel the stab of the pitchfork, we need to feel the free air surrounding that exhilarating flight above the threshing floor where the chaff of life is blown to the wind and we land, once more, purified from our accumulated husks. Oh, the way up is marvelous. The burdens are blown away. But we still come down, down to the floor, down to being ground into something useful. Up and down. That’s the way life is. Maybe God planned it that way.
Topical Index: zārâ, scrutinize, winnow, Psalm 139:3
[1]579 זָרָה. (1999). In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer, Jr. & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament. 1999 (R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer, Jr. & B. K. Waltke, Ed.) (electronic ed.) (251). Chicago: Moody Press.
This is what all my friends have been telling me to do. Cut yourself some slack. You’re too intense. I feel like a man possessed, so hungry to learn, so hungry to grow, so hungry to bless !
Maybe this is when God says let’s all get into a car and go to the beach, skip rocks on the water, feel the sand between our toes and the kiss of the sun upon our faces ! Sort of a rendition of Psalm 23. He makes me to lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside still waters, he restores my soul! All of this totally and only with the security of His presence ! Shalom to all!
The KJV renders this word “compass”, which can also mean to completely engulf, or, surround. If we can consider “paths” to include what we now think of as the paths of probability, or, choice possibilities, then perhaps we could see that, while leaving us free to choose which probability to take, YHVH retains the capacity to meet us upon any of those paths.
In Jer. 7:31; 19:5; 32:35, etc. YHVH repeatedly declares that the evil choices people made “did not enter into my mind”. In other words, they were not agreeing with the will of God when they chose to agree with or participate in sin. God does not choose for us to sin – or others to sin against us – (which would inevitably include the hard times – curses – that sin unleashes upon us), but I believe He has built in, via His blessing by means of those curses, a ‘natural’ self limiting factor to all sin, in that those curses make it harder and harder for us to move forward on any path at all. We can see this in ‘paths’ that seem to go nowhere, such as addictive behaviors, or in repetitive ‘tics’ of nonsensical, nonresponsive maladjustments to reality we do over and over hoping for a better result, as well as the ever-worsening outcomes/train wrecks ahead of all wrong paths. I suspect that the ‘way’ of sin is still being supervised by the Maker – albeit at a distance: the distance (path) WE insisted upon determining – while the taskmaster we chose INSTEAD OF Him either whales (“winnows?) the living daylights out of us or the sense into us (our choice, as always).
I think when we choose the law of sin (which, unfortunately, would include the sin of unforgiveness against those who sinned against us) to be our schoolmaster, YHVH sits back and prays for us (or that schoolmaster) to hit our bottoms (hopefully hard enough to wake us up), but, honestly, a lot of the really hard stuff we find ourselves going through can be understood (as viewed through 20/20 hindsight) as being the ONLY THING it could have possibly taken to convince us to turn around. In other words, perhaps we had a bigger hand in choosing the switch of correction than we might want to think we did. Now, if we had agreed to let YHVH have His “way” (path) instead, that rod of correction might have – who knows – been more like a story on the lap of the Shepherd, Who insists on using only the rod of the Law of Life to “keep us FROM temptation”. However, if WE insist upon insisting (which the Good Book tells us we have all at least started out doing)…
“….. perhaps we had a bigger hand in choosing the switch (rod) of correction“. Thought provoking, Laurita. Sometimes an unruly child is looking for boundaries, restraint, correction to gain a sense of being loved, cared for, valued. And as the good book says, “no correction or discipline at present is joyous, but grievous, but AFTERWARDS it reaps the peaceable fruit of righteousness. Father, knows best!
I had somewhat of an “aha” moment yesterday in regards to “knowing “and “understanding”.
I was talking to one of the guys who I mentor and he was telling me some of the history of his father, who is struggling currently with the possibility of lung cancer. Now, I “know” his dad. I have talked with him, had dinner with him and the family, listen to him share etc. So I would say that I know him, but as his son was talking to me about his father and telling me about his past, how his dad‘s father left the family and his wife years before, I began to not only know his father, but I began to “understand“ his father. I began to understand why he was as he is, understand some of his behaviors and characteristics. Because I began to understand him, not only know him, I became much more compassionate and generous in my grace toward him. This seems to be just how God is toward us …. he knows our frame and therefore understands us. How incredible is that, to be understood by God ! So he knows exactly when to bless us whether or not that is through a spanking/discipline or lavished love and acceptance, which is continuously being poured over us to one degree or another, all the time, whether we see it, sense it, or know it!
Hope that makes some sense! Difficult to put into words, but necessary.
My computer’s been down for two weeks — just coming
up for air.
Good reminder today about ‘the watchful eye” that directs
our paths. He knows us like a book and although some pages
are painfully necessary, I like how He lovingly provides us the
choice as to how the story ends.