Personal Passion
“Did he not fear the LORD and entreat the favor of the LORD, and the LORD changed His mind about the misfortune which He had pronounced against them?” Jeremiah 26:19 NASB
Entreat – What does it mean to entreat someone? Even in English we have a difficult time expressing this thought succinctly. Certainly the concept involves a gesture of respect, an act of petition, a plea for assistance and a hope for benevolence. But this does not exhaust the extension of the idea in the Bible. In fact, this word is the beginning of a special idiom (chilah phanim) that we translate “entreat the favor of.” It is literally “make gentle the face.” In other words, this phrase introduces an act that attempts to make God smile. That’s why you find it used in particularly stressful circumstances when it is very important that the prayers of men cause God to change His mind.
You might have some difficulty with the idea that prayers change God’s mind. You might think that what God determines to do is fixed from eternity past. That could mean you see prayer as a means to bring your heart and mind into alignment with the sovereign God, not a way for God to get into alignment with my puny, limited, self-centered, temporal-focused desires/wishes/requests, etc. You could cite Numbers 23:19 and 1 Samuel 15:29, noting that God is not a man who could change. This argument attempts to avoid what seems to be the logical conclusion of a changeable God. Can you imagine how fickle God would be if He were changing as a result of the prayers of millions of well-meaning, but finite men and women around the world? But there are consequences to this interpretation that have enormous implications for us as human free agents.
There’s something else that’s interesting about this particular idiom. It is not part of the specialized religious language of the Hebrews. It is not found in the temple language or the language that surrounds the sacrificial system of worship. It is a phrase that is used by common people, not by the priests. Making God smile is part of the prayer language of the non-professionals. It is the kind of thing that you and I do.
Just think about that. Why do you suppose the religious aristocracy of Israel doesn’t use this phrase but the laity do? Do you think it might be because this kind of action is like the action of a child before a father? You wouldn’t expect to perform an act of humbling petition in front of a stranger, would you? No, it is far more intimate than that! To come before God with prayers that hope to make Him smile is to assume a deeply personal and intense bond. It’s far more than asking for a favor. It emphasizes an inner expectation that God wants to listen and help. But it also has desperation in its mood. I entreat God when I am up against it, when I have reached my last resource. Did you notice that the verse suggests that attempting to make God smile is associated with the fear of the Lord? Of course it is! To fear the Lord is to honor Him as the ultimate authority and supreme ruler of my life. More than that, He is my loving benefactor. I seek His face because I know it is good for me to do so.
Have you prayed like this, detaching yourself from the religious rituals, the expected, sanctified vocabulary you hear in church, and opened your heart to the desperation of your soul? Have you come before your Father expecting to see Him smile? Have you asked God to change His mind on your behalf because your heart is breaking? Or are your prayers just too passive to be noticed?
Topical Index: prayer, chilah phanim, entreat, Jeremiah 26:19, Numbers 23:19, 1 Samuel 15:29
I have been bothered lately by the Greek-like ideal notion of ‘good’ as a state we are supposed to be striving for. We are supposed to think that God already is this ‘good’, too. ‘Good’, according to this definition, is a passive state. We tell a 2-yr. old “be good”. The child hears the passive ideal and immediately examines himself; “am I ‘good’?” He looks inside, sees that he does not actually FEEL ‘good’ (whatever that is) and concludes “I must be not-good” and promptly gives up. The problem may start here.
If the Greeks were right, and forms and ideal states (nouns) are reality, then all action, and even change itself, must conform to these end results – these ideal forms – including the ideal form of the ‘good’. According to this way of thinking, God is already there: already ‘good’, and waiting for us to catch up. There is nothing left for Him to DO. In fact, with this way of thinking, only not-good stuff can change, or, have any choices at all. To change MEANS to choose, or, act, but because God is already in the ideal state of ‘good’ He cannot choose to change that state. With this way of thinking, we are the ones who need to change over to “being good” (even the language is passive! I want to say if we are praying passive prayers, perhaps it is because we have been taught about this passive God. But, I digress.). If nouns such as “good” are the forms that choices have to conform TO, then God has no choices at all. But, there right in the Bible; the same Bible that tells us that God does NOT “change”, we also find the God that can be entreated to change! Something is going to have to give, here.
The only way I can read the Bible when it talks about God is to (thanks, Skip) read the nouns as verbs and the verbs as nouns. If “God” and “good”, then, are verbs instead of nouns, and if choices about reality are the driving forces OF reality – are the reality, or, function, itself (corresponding to our understanding of what THINGS, or nouns are) – then God, as well as good, are not the end results, or, ideal forms (nouns), but instead are the driving forces (verbs), or, the CREATION OF, nouns. We think nouns, or the results of change, are reality because we detect them with our senses (this is because we are limited to the experience of those senses, now, post-Tree), but what if reality is about what MADE those nouns? Wait! That would make reality about the liquid present, and not the ossified past that we can detect with our senses. Hmm.
I am a noun. A person is a noun; an end result of choice and action (specifically, creation – when it comes to us as persons, anyway). God, then, as a Person, would be a derivative of God as the force: the ACTION that resulted in that Person. God’s Personhood, then, is a result, or derivative, of God’s actions, or, choices. Good itself, then, is NOT a state of being (the noun of that Personhood), but instead is action, or, function. The Greeks would have had it exactly backwards.
The question then comes up; just what about God is the never-changing part? This means we have to go back and ask the questions “what is change?” “what is not-change?”. If God can change His mind – can be entreated, no less – then what about Him does not change? We say “God is always good” meaning that He is never not-good. But if both “God” and “good” are verbs, – action – then both are change itself!
I can only conclude that the PERSONHOOD (or, character) of God – the end result of His goodness, or, function (change) – never changes. All God’s functions (actions) end up with the same results (nouns) every time, whether they be the nouns of His Personhood, or the rest of what He creates, all is good, or functioning. It’s like saying that the results of God’s change (or, function) are totally predictable; they never change because they are always good. They are never not-good. When God says He never changes, He is saying that we can trust that His choices will always result in the same predictable goodness, which is His character. That character. or, Personhood, never changes (which is why the Law that reveals that character never will change, either).
I can safely entreat God to change His mind because I can have confidence that the end result of that change (His character) will be functioning, or, good, every time, no matter what it may result in. God has not only given us His Law to measure ourselves by; He has given it so that we can have a way to measure Him by, and He will never deviate from it. He will never change from what that Law reveals, for it reveals Himself. Halleluah!
I have a headache.
Would this not be the whole concept of may the Lord bless you and keep you and may his face shine upon you and give you peace.! One translation says the Lord is shining upon you and his face is turned toward you and he is giving you his peace. I think it’s very loose and its translation that God is fickle but is it not the paradigm shift.? We shift, we change we entreat God within the boundaries of what he has already proclaimed. His standard wow amen preach it . Skip
P.S. If we would learn more often to pray like this. Hmmmm!
My prayers, my heart poured out at the feet of my Lord are the path to find my way. Coming into His presence washes my soul of the ditritis of life in this disfunctional world- clearing my mind and eyes that I might see clearly agin. . His presences is where the light to see what is real is found. He smiles? Yes warmly, entreating me to come home where I am safe to simply be. Then in the great mysterious way of his his smiles and sayes let’s go back out into the mess together and bring some peace. I am with you, you don’t go alone.