What We Don’t Know

Mankind in its splendor, yet without understanding, is like the animals that perish.  Psalm 49:20  NASB

Without understanding – In a Gallup poll in 2017, 86% of Americans said that they believe God exists.  Apparently His existence has almost nothing to do with how they behave.  Church attendance continues to drop.  Atheism is on the rise for the first time.  It’s politically incorrect to talk about faith—of any kind.  But the real tragedy is not found in some popular opinion poll.  It’s found in Heschel’s excruciatingly telling statement, “God is of no importance unless He is of supreme importance . . .”[1] This is precisely why we cannot translate this verse (or any verse like it) with the English word “understanding.”  If we do, we will entirely miss the point.

Live

The Hebrew bîn (understanding, consideration, perception, regard, insight) is not about cognitive acumen.  While lexicons may emphasize the intellectual aspects of the word, in Hebraic culture understanding is impossible without the accompanying changes in behavior.  In other words, I understand something only if and when it changes my life.  Gathering information is not understanding.  Claiming that I believe God exists is not understanding if it doesn’t change me.  That’s why the psalm can assert that Mankind’s splendor, the greatest achievements we know, don’t make men anything more than animals unless they act according to a commitment to the Creator.  Just as shema means both to hear and to obey, bin means both to know and to do.

Our Western Greek world thinks that understanding is a purely cognitive event.  If I say that I understand how an automobile works, I do not mean I can drive one.  I mean I have the technical knowledge of its mechanical processes.  Driving is another situation entirely.  That’s why you cannot get a driver’s license on the basis of a written test alone.  You must demonstrate your behavioral skills.  The West separates understanding from doing, but Hebrew doesn’t.  If you don’t do what you mentally know to be true, then you not only haven’t learned, you also do not understand.  There is no middle ground in Hebrew.

Now we can fully appreciate the last thought of this psalm.  Men are created to become god-like in their character and actions.  Insofar as this doesn’t happen, they remain animals, driven by instinct with no greater purpose than to live according to the moment’s desire.  When Genesis 1:26-27 proclaims that God created Man in His image and likeness, it does not mean all homo sapiens are human.  It means that all homo sapiens are intended to become human through understanding and obedience, through wisdom and character, through choices to model themselves after their Creator.  When they don’t, they remain the biologically animated material that should have developed into something more but didn’t.  Jude offers the same opinion: “But these people disparage all the things that they do not understand; and all the things that they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals, by these things they are destroyed” (Jude 10).  The sons of Korah remind us that we are to grow in God’s image, or perish as animals.

Topical Index: understanding, bîn, do, Psalm 49:20

[1] Abraham Heschel, Man Is Not Alone, p. 92.