999.9

Your word is very pure, therefore Your servant loves it.  Psalm 119:140 NASB

Pure – Think of the ways we use the word “pure.”  “Pure as the driven snow.”  “Pure white.”  “Guaranteed pure.”  “Pure breed.”  Then there’s the jeweler’s view.  When is something “pure gold”?  24 karat and 999.9 fineness are considered pure gold, but in fact neither is 100 percent gold.  When the psalmist uses the verb ṣārap, he’s employing the vocabulary of the refiner, the goldsmith.  But he’s not claiming 100 percent purity.  Did you notice the adverb before the verb?  It’s mĕʾōd: “exceedingly, much, force, abundance, very.”  It’s the Hebrew idea of maximum increase.  “Very pure” is as good as it gets.  Not 100 percent, but as close as you can come to perfection.

We might have thought that the psalmist claims that God’s ʾimrâ (utterance) is perfect.  That’s how we’re likely to read this verse if we don’t stop to think about it.  Our perspective is shaped by the Western idea of inspiration and inerrancy.  Certainty demands perfection—at least that’s what we’ve been taught.  But the psalmist is a bit more realistic.  Nothing in this life is perfect.  Those things that we hold up as examples of “perfect” are typically abstractions.  Real life is always a compromise (and that’s not a bad thing).  Perhaps more theologians should read Brené Brown’s The Gifts of Imperfection.[1]  At any rate, the psalmist lives in the thick of things where even communication is often not as clear as we would like.  Therefore, when he chooses the Hebrew word ʾimrâ, he’s highlighting the fact that even God’s spoken words are not always understood.  There are plenty of examples in the Tanakh, but if we limit ourselves to those that occurred before the time of this written poem, we still have plenty to choose from.  Even the great leader Moses got it wrong sometimes. We’ll have to be satisfied with 999.9.

Once you’ve adjusted your idea of inspiration and inerrancy, you’ll discover something very important.  The text is human.  Oh, that doesn’t mean it isn’t God’s words.  It’s just that those words are given to human beings in human context with human filters.  Any attempt to treat them as sacrosanct because they have divine origin is really a doctrinal statement, not a linguistic or phenological one.  God speaks in human terms.  That’s what makes it possible for us to understand.  If the Wholly Other transcendent One spoke to us in a divine language, we wouldn’t have a clue.  So, the psalmist uses a verb that’s about refining metals, not pure abstractions.  This is rather important.  Hebrew isn’t Greek.  Nor is it like most Indo-European languages from that same family tree.  Hebrew is a language of the land, the dirt, everyday experiences, and everyday things.  Greek has the tendency to follow Plato by positing perfect abstractions in an otherworldly existence (like, for example, the idea of “chair-ness,” what it means to be a “chair).  I’m very glad that this poet is Hebrew.  I have a chance to understand what he is saying.  As Heschel so aptly put it, “The Bible tells us nothing about God in Himself; all its sayings refer to His relations to man.  His own life and essence are neither told nor disclosed. . . The only  events in the life of God the Bible knows of are acts done for the sake of man: . .”[2]

Topical Index: pure, perfect, ʾimrâ, word, utterance, language, essence, Psalm 119:140

[1] Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection (Hazelden 2010).

[2] Abraham Heschel, Between God and Man: An Interpretation of Judaism (Free Press Paperbacks, 1959), p. 111.