Sponge Bob

Let them be wiped out from the book of life, and among the righteous let them not be written.  Psalm 69:29 [Hebrew Bible]  Robert Alter

Be wiped out – First, let’s be clear about the technique.  “. . . erasures in ancient leather scrolls were made by washing or sponging off the ink rather than blotting. ‘Wipe out’ is therefore more accurate for the idea of expunge.”^[1]  “Sponge, Bob, not the blotter.” 🙂

Secondly, let’s notice the force of this term.  “Almost all of the thirty-three occurrences of this verb are theologically significant. It is first found in the flood narrative. Every living thing on the face of the earth that breathed was blotted out (Gen 7:22–23) including all human beings, except eight.”^[2]  Then there’s the Golden Calf, God’s judgment of Jerusalem, the near elimination of the tribe of Benjamin, erasing sin in Isaiah, and finally God wiping away tears.  Now that we have the scope of this verb, let’s focus on the next phrase, “the book of life.”

It is clear that John’s vision employs the same metaphor, but does that mean that David was an apocalyptic thinker?  Or did John just borrow an idea from the Psalms?  What, exactly, is the sōper ḥayyîm?  Some Christian views incorporate Greek concepts of time, such as, “The Book of Life is a record written by God before the creation of the world, listing people who will live forever in the kingdom of heaven. The term appears in both the Old Testament and New Testament.”[3]  This kind of Christian interpretation represents the “book of life” in Judaism as contingent:

Jewish tradition tells how God opens the Book of Life and studies the words, actions, and thoughts of every person whose name he has written there. If a person’s good deeds outweigh or outnumber their sinful acts, his or her name will remain inscribed in the book for another year.[4]

Then there’s the Jewish Messianic/Christian view:

In Hebrew the words for Book of life is sofar chaim.   Chaim is a word we recognize as life and in its plural form represents both physical and spiritual life.  Every man has two lives, the one he lives here on earth and the one that he will live in eternity.  Hence this book of life is a record of one’s physical and spiritual life, it records everything you do in the physical realm as well as everything you do in the spirit.  Every time you pray, worship and express your heart to God, it is recorded.  The word sofar in its noun form means a book or scroll.  But it also means to write, to number, count, to speak or talk.   The whole idea behind the word “sofar” is to commit to memory or record something that is to be referenced at a later date.  In other words we will spend an eternity reliving all those wonderful times we shared with Jesus while we lived our life here on earth.  We will relive those joyous times of worship, those times when we felt the love, closeness and very presence of God at a time when we needed it most.[5]

Perhaps you will notice how much post-Davidic theology is read back into the psalms, even from a Jewish perspective.  As an exegete, do you think it’s reasonable to suggest that David had any of these later ideas in mind?  Do you suppose that Hebraic thinking in the 10^th Century B.C.E. imagined a heavenly record of your “two lives”?  I’m pretty sure we can thank Plato and the invention of hard drives for that.

When David uses the terms sōper ḥayyîm, he thinks in terms of observable, tangible, daily existence.  Of course, he’s asking God to wipe out his enemies so that they no longer have a place on earth, but since this is parallel to the previous verse about God’s bounty, it’s difficult to support the idea that David’s phrase has anything to do with Heaven or the afterlife.  David wants punitive damages now, not in some other unknown realm.  The plural of ḥāyâ isn’t about a “physical” versus a “spiritual” existence.  “The ot speaks of life as the experience of life rather than as an abstract principle of vitality which may be distinguished from the body. This is because the ot view of the nature of man is holistic, that is, his function as body, mind, spirit is a unified whole spoken of in very concrete terms. Life is the ability to exercise all one’s vital power to the fullest; death is the opposite. The verb ḥāyâ ‘to live’ involves the ability to have life somewhere on the scale between the fullest enjoyment of all the powers of one’s being, with health and prosperity on the one hand and descent into trouble, sickness, and death on the other.”^[6]

Comments by Smick are helpful:

There are indeed some verses that say the living, not the dead, praise the Lord, but these verses are expressions of simple physical observation. The fact is that in contrast to Mesopotamian ideas of creation where man was made to be mortal, in the ot man was created to immortal life, not as a spirit but as a whole man, body and soul (“Life,” ZPEBIII, p. 927). The entrance of death was viewed as unnatural. ^[7]

One of the meanings of the word ḥayyîm, “endless life,” has been generally recognized in the past only as a very late usage of the word. (See BDB on Dan 12:2, p. 313). M. Dahood (Psalms I, II, III, in AB, 16, 17, 17a) has brought the Ugaritic literature to bear on the early meaning of this word

(ḥayyîm). Life, as an abstract idea, meaning the state of being alive as opposite to being dead. Life at its best, health, endless life.^[9]

As you can tell, considerable debate rages around sōper ḥayyîm, usually concerning the later notions of an afterlife or Heaven.  And you might decide that this verse (and others) can be read in support of eternal life.  In fact, some of the apostolic authors do read texts like this one as justification for another world to come.  But that’s theology, not exegesis. The question we must ask, and we must ask it for all the pre-Babylonian material, is this: “Did the author have this in mind when he wrote it?” Not, “Can we as later readers use it according to our ideas?”

Topical Index: sōper ḥayyîm, book of life, wipe out, erase, blot, Psalm 69:29

^[1] Kaiser, W. C. (1999). 1178 מָחָה. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 498). Chicago: Moody Press.

^[2] Ibid.

[3] https://www.learnreligions.com/book-of-life-700739

[4] Ibid.

[5] https://www.chaimbentorah.com/2015/06/word-study-book-of-life-מספר-חיימ/

^[6] Smick, E. B. (1999). 644 חָיָה. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., pp. 279–280). Chicago: Moody Press.

ZPEB Pictoral Encyclopedia of the Bible, ed. M. Tenney, Zondervan, I–V, 1975

^[7] Smick, E. B. (1999). 644 חָיָה. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 280). Chicago: Moody Press.

AB Anchor Bible (cited by author and book)

^[8] Ibid.

^[9] Ibid.