Does God Forget?
Abandoned among the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom You no longer remember, and they are cut off from Your hand. Psalm 88:5 NASB
No longer remember – zākar. What an important Hebrew verb! Zākar means “to remember,” but the same consonants in noun form also mean “male.” It seems to me that Hebrew is suggesting that the role of the man is to remember, and, in fact, this is precisely what the first man failed to do. He was given instruction concerning one commandment, yet he failed to communicate it precisely to the woman. He didn’t remember. Moses picks up the same theme when he says that nothing should be added or taken away from his instructions. Remembering is vital to living according to God’s purposes. To forget is probably the first step toward sin.
Now notice how the psalmist uses this crucial word. God forgets. What? How can I even write that? God knows everything. How can a divine person with perfect knowledge forget? To forget seems to be a flaw, a mistake, a lapse in cognition. Certainly, I forget! But how is it possible for God to forget? Our Christian theology stumbles over something like this. God would have to know (since He knows everything) that He forgot, and to do so He would have to remember what it was that He forgot. You can see the logical dilemma here. Transcendent theology based in Greek philosophy rejected any suggestion of a lapse in divine cognition. That’s why these theologians have some trouble with Yeshua’s statement that he didn’t know the hour of his return.
But the psalmist isn’t Greek, and he isn’t a first century Jew either. He lives in a world where life is here and now, where the grave is the end, and any meaning to living has to be worked out before we die. As far as he is concerned, the other side of the grave (if there even is another side) is completely unknown, a place of forgetfulness. Since the exodus from Egypt, God took special care to remove His people from anxious concern about an afterlife. There was no interaction between the living and the dead. In fact, from the perspective of the living, it appears as if God Himself sweeps away any further involvement with those who have “passed.” Centuries later Greek philosophers like Pythagoras introduced ideas of the immortal soul and reward and punishment in another world, but it isn’t part of the psalmist worldview.
What should we say? Are we content to remain 10th-century BCE thinkers? Probably not. The Western world has evolved. Heaven and hell are now common terms in our religious vocabulary. We believe in an afterlife with God. We aren’t likely to give it up. But we do need to recognize the cry of the psalmist and ask ourselves if we really identify with him. Or do we use our Greek afterlife additions to sweep away his concern? Can you put yourself in his place or is there too much cultural interference?
Topical Index: forget, zākar, afterlife, Psalm 88:5
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