A Space for Time
He has sent redemption to His people; He has ordained His covenant forever; Holy and awesome is His name. Psalm 111:9 NASB
Forever – How long is forever? Ah, that might seem like a strange question, but the term lʿôlām doesn’t always mean what we think of as forever. Note two explanations:
Forever does not always mean “without end” in biblical usage, but it does here [in this psalm]. Sometimes forever means “as long as conditions exist.” Here, we are talking about a covenant, commandments, and about righteousness that endure forever (verses 3, 8-10—and strongly implied in verses 5 and 7). In six out of ten verses, various words indicate ‘time without end’ and reinforce “forever and ever.”[1]
Then there’s the explanation by Allen Macrae:
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.[2]
Once again we have a Hebrew term that requires careful consideration of the context to determine its meaning. But this isn’t quite all there is to this word. Fritz Rothschild makes a comment about Heschel’s insight into Hebrew time:
. . . a paradox of our experience of time and space: we usually associate time with change, and things of space with permanence. Time flies, things last. But it would be more relevant to speak of the passage of space through time than to the other way around, since it is things which perish within time, while time itself is everlasting. “To the spiritual eye space is frozen time, and all things are petrified events.”[3]
Why is this important? Because there is a deep connection between God’s voluntary choice to create and our experience of temporality. “To be lasting does not mean to endure through a long stretch of time in isolation, but rather to commune with God. If reality is experienced as the act of God’s concern, then every present moment is not a terminal but a signal of beginning, an act of creation. ‘Time is perpetual innovation, a synonym for continuous creation.’”[4]
The Greeks viewed time like a line on a page. We have incorporated this idea in “timelines.” From this perspective, time stretches out from the present in both directions. While we experience only this present moment, everything that will change or that has changed marks a point on the line, either in the future or the past. It is this idea that leads us to think of the unchanging God as “outside” of time, but, of course, that is not only a logical error (treating time as if it were spatial) but also a biblical error (although not typically a Christian theological error). If Heschel is right, then God’s very being is fully saturated in temporality. That’s what it means to be a person, and it is no detriment to God at all, unless, of course, you insist that God be the transcendent, perfect entity of Greek philosophy. The biblical God is the creating God, and since He is the only Creator, everything that is depends on His continuing creation. We are part of that continuing creation and therefore, we should experience every moment, from God’s point of view, as an instance of continuing creation, the beginning of something new.
This is why Heschel says that despair is forbidden. If every moment is infused with God’s ultimate concern with His creation, then every moment brings newness to the world, to life. And the future is as open-ended as the God who started it all.
Live accordingly.
Topical Index: lʿôlām, forever, time, future, creation, Psalm 111:9
[1] John Rittenbaugh at https://www.bibletools.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Topical.show/RTD/CGG/ID/4503/Forever-Ever.htm
[2] Macrae, A. A. (1999). 1631 עלם. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 672). Chicago: Moody Press.
[3] Fritz A. Rothschild, “Introduction,” in Abraham Heschel Between God and Man: An Interpretation of Judaism (Free Press Paperbacks, 1959), p. 30.
