Fair Warning (3)
A worthless person, a wicked man, is one who walks with a perverse mouth, who winks with his eyes, who signals with his feet, who points with his fingers; who, with perversion in his heart, continually devises evil, who spreads strife. Therefore his disaster will come suddenly; instantly he will be broken and there will be no healing. Proverbs 6:12-15 NASB
No healing – How do you repair a civilization and prevent it from internal collapse? That’s the topic of more and more scholars and politicians because this question is on most people’s minds. We see what’s happening. We feel what’s happening. But we seem powerless to prevent it. Well, this question isn’t new. It’s been asked by virtually every civilization that is now nothing more than pages in history books. The Bible has an answer . . . but it’s not an answer that most societies want to hear much less employ. The answer is found in Isaiah 44:22. “I have wiped out your wrongdoings like a thick cloud and your sins like a heavy mist. Return to Me, for I have redeemed you.” The crucial verb is šûb (shuv), “return.” If a civilization wishes to survive—and thrive—it must come back to God. No civilization has ever recovered from the loss of its religious glue, no matter what gods might be involved, and in particular, no empire can hope to survive unless it recovers its connection to the one true God. So, Proverbs tells us that without šûb, there will be no marpēʾ.
This is a purely Hebrew root which appears over sixty times in the ot and is cognate only to a few later forms in Afro-semitic dialects. The meaning is straightforward in virtually all passages.[1]
In many of the occurrences, it is God who causes healing or afflicts with disease or catastrophes which cannot be healed but by divine intervention.[2]
Here’s the bottom line. With God we can hope to survive
“The only way of bridging these perspectives [the world seen from more than one point of view] is through conversation. Hence the idea of truth as dialogue. In Genesis, when speech breaks down, violence—the attempt to impose my version of the truth on you by force—is often waiting in the wings.”[3]
Sacks notes that an economic system must exist within a moral framework. It doesn’t need to aim at economic equality. Its goal must be respect for human dignity. If it becomes tribal, endorsing only those who agree, it will ultimately fail to survive. God will see to it. “A nation cannot worship itself and survive. Sooner or later, power will corrupt those who wield it. If fortune favors it and it grows rich, it will become self-indulgent and eventually decadent. Its citizens will no longer have the courage to fight for their liberty, and it will fall to another, more Spartan, power.”[4]
Topical Index: healing, marpēʾ, šûb, return, Jonathan Sacks, Proverbs 6:12-15
[1] White, W. (1999). 2196 רָפָא. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 857). Moody Press.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Jonathan Sacks Covenant & Conversation: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible: Leviticus: The Book of Holiness (Maggid Books & The Orthodox Union, 2015), p. 384.
[4] Ibid., p. 420.
