The Good Old Days

From long ago I have known from Your testimonies that You have founded them forever.  Psalm 119:152  NASB

Long ago – The Hebrew perspective on time isn’t concerned with uniformity, event progression, or exactness.  We, on the other hand, are time possessed.  Since the industrial revolution, our days are consumed with the exact hour, minute, and second, so much so that we’ve invented not only 24 time zones (so we can all get to work at the same time) but even “leap seconds” so that the non-uniform rotation of the earth matches our atomic clocks.  But in the agrarian culture of the ancient world, exact time didn’t much matter much.  So, Hebrew’s words for temporal experience are much more phenomenological.  “A long time,” “a new age,” “in the past,” “the world to come,”—expressions like these are pretty loose.  Perhaps we should keep that in mind when we think about prophecy (in addition to the contingency of prophetic announcements).  In this particular verse, we have two temporal expressions, qedem and ʿôlām.

We’ve looked at ʿôlām, “indefinite continuance into the very distant future”^[1] or the past.  “Indefinite” is the key word.  Now we encounter qedem, and not surprisingly, it too is indefinite.  This is the insightful imagery of H. W. Wolff.  “H. W. Wolff likens the Hebrew conception of time to the situation of a man rowing a boat. He sees the past as before him (qedem); the future is behind his back (ʾaḥărît). There is truth in this, except that this was not necessarily the concept of time of the Hebrews, for this etymological usage was determined before the Hebrews adopted the language (H. W. Wolff, lecture notes).”^[2]  Even if this idea was imported into Hebrew, it still explains the Hebraic notions of past and future.  The visual perspective of temporality is what I can see, not what I can’t see, and what I can see is where I have been and where everyone who came before me has been.  This is the “long ago” Hebrew orientation.  What I can’t see is the future, and therefore it’s as if it were behind me.  But it’s not completely unknown.  Why?  Because the God of the past is also the God of the future, and His “testimonies” (ʿēd^ewōtê) continue.  In other words, I’ve seen what God has done for a long time in the past, and that gives me confidence that, even though I can’t see what will happen, I know He will continue to act as He has in the past.  When we realize that ʿēd^ewōtê is about His history with Israel, His appointed times, His choice of Israel itself, then I know that His promises concerning all these things are not going to change.  I don’t have to have a five-year calendar.  I have a 5000 year history.

Once again we’re confronted with the psalmist’s insistence that what God gave Israel will not change.  His instructions, intentions, and appointments carry on into the ʿôlām, however long that may be.  Qedem looks back to those times with a kind of nostalgia.  God was good to us yesterday.  He will be good to us to tomorrow.  History is identity.

Topical Index: qedem, ʿēd^ewōtê, ʿôlām, past, future, testimonies, Psalm 119:152

^[1] Macrae, A. A. (1999). 1631 עלם. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament(electronic ed., p. 672). Moody Press.

^[2] Coppes, L. J. (1999). 1988 קָדַם. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament(electronic ed., p. 785). Moody Press.