Follow Your Heart

What does your heart teach you and what do your eyes hint?  Job 15:12  Chabad

Heart teach – If you read this from the perspective of modern religion, you’d conclude that Eliphaz is telling us to look deeply into our “hearts” and follow the intuitions we find there.  Ah, but nothing could be further from the truth.  A religion of “heart throbs” is not what the Hebrew text affirms.  Such a view comes from the emphasis on Greek individuality where each person finds his own ethical clarity by introspection.  The Bible does not support this religious model.  The problem is how culture understands the word “heart.”

Here’s the Hebrew text:  מַה־יִּקָּֽחֲךָ֥ לִבֶּ֑ךָ וּֽמַה־יִּרְזְמ֥וּן עֵינֶֽיךָ

The word לִבֶּ֑ךָ is translated “heart,” but:

Concrete meanings of lēb referred to the internal organ and to analogous physical locations. However, in its abstract meanings, “heart” became the richest biblical term for the totality of man’s inner or immaterial nature. In biblical literature it is the most frequently used term for man’s immaterial personality functions as well as the most inclusive term for them since, in the Bible, virtually every immaterial function of man is attributed to the “heart.” . . . By far the majority of the usages of lēb refer either to the inner or immaterial nature in general or to one of the three traditional personality functions of man; emotion, thought, or will.^[1]

In the biblical sense, Eliphaz asks what the whole person teaches.  What do you learn from all your senses, your intellect, your emotions, your will, and every other aspect of your existence?

In a word, dependency!  Luzzatto calls this the “infinite debt” of being.  Your life is not under your control.  Everything about it depends on God’s graciousness.  Everything!  Anyone capable of reflection will quickly realize just how fragile and dependent life really is, and since we are not gods, all that we have, all that we are, all that we hope, depends on something and someone else.  That’s the point of the Shema.  To remind us of our dependency—and of God’s graciousness.  What does your “heart” teach you?  To love God with all your person, with all your abilities, with all your strength.

Eliphaz uses this reminder to cajole Job.  “Who do you think you are?  Why, everything about you depends on Him.  You should be grateful and stop pressing your questions.”  But at the heart of Eliphaz’ use of lēb is the idea of connection.  After all, if there were no connection with a Creator outside of myself, I wouldn’t be asking these questions in the first place.  The fact that Eliphaz emphasizes the evidence of my very being opens the possibility of conversation with the divine.  In a kind of backwards way, Eliphaz actually approves what Job desires.  You were created an inquirer.  Relish the thought.

Topical Index: lēb, heart, person, Job 15:12

^[1] Bowling, A. (1999). 1071 לָבַב. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 466). Moody Press.