Pick One

I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have placed before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants,  Deuteronomy 30:19  NASB

Choose – Consider the tone of Moses’ final remarks to the people.  “Witness against you,” doesn’t sound very encouraging, does it?  “Life and death” is on the line, and after forty years of leading God’s people, you would think he would be excited and encouraging on the eve of fulfilling the promise.  But he bellows forth with warnings, potential curses, and a generally dour outlook.  We might suppose that some of this comes from the fact that he will not be crossing the Jordan, but still, the people he addresses are not the ones who left Egypt, not the ones who demonstrated an inability to leave the slavery mentality behind.  These are the children, the ones ready to step into God’s land.  Where’s the fireworks, the band, the celebration?

Moses makes it very clear that a significant and fundamental choice lies before them.  Actually, the word is much stronger in Hebrew.  For us, choice is sort of a “pick one or the other” idea, as if both are rational and the difference is only in the perceived benefit.  We think of choice like we think of preferences, options, or possibilities.  But Hebrew isn’t quite so lackadaisical.  As Oswalt notes, “bāḥar is used only in a few instances without specific theological overtones.”^[1]

 . . . the word is used to express that choosing which has ultimate and eternal significance. On the one hand God chooses a people (Ps 135:4), certain tribes (Ps 78:68), specific individuals (I Kgs 8:16; I Chr 28:5; I Sam 10:24; II Sam 6:21), and a place for his name (Deut 12:5; etc.). In all of these cases serviceability rather than simple arbitrariness is at the heart of the choosing.^[2]

A derivative underscores the divine involvement in the use of this term:

(bāḥîr). Chosen, elect. This derivative is used exclusively to indicate the relationship of the subject to God. It commonly occurs in a direct quotation of God, having the first singular possessive pronoun suffixed to it. Thus, God himself attests that this person or nation is his own personal choice.^[3]

This choice has enormous consequences, now and in the future.  It cannot be made lightly as it will affect everything about us, for good or evil.  Perhaps that’s why Moses’ speech seems so brusque, almost as if he expects disaster.  But the point is: it’s still a choice.  In the end nothing truly compels us to go in one direction rather than the other.  We don’t choose this path because we’re afraid of punishment.  That kind of motivation doesn’t last long.  We don’t choose because there’s overwhelming evidence that demands this direction.  Evidence is always a function of the paradigm.  We won’t always see things the same way.  We don’t choose because God threatens us, forces us, cajoles us, or seduces us.  In fact, in some real sense we actually can’t quite articulate precisely why we decided to go this way rather than the other.  Maybe that’s why Moses’ speech seems so harsh.  Maybe there really isn’t an answer to the question, “Why do you believe?”  At least there isn’t a logical, evidential, rational, explainable answer—you know, the kind of answer that critics usually expect from believers, the kind that fits the Western idea of truth.  Maybe it’s more like, “I kind of started on this path somehow and it still makes sense to me, or at least most of the time, and I get something from this way that I can’t quite explain but it matters enough so I most likely won’t change direction.  I’m really not sure how it got going, but now it’s so much a part of who I am that I can’t imagine another me.  I might change some things along the way, but something fundamental occurred in how I understand my world and it’s that ‘something’ that makes all the difference to me.”

I wasn’t there when God defeated Egypt.  I wasn’t there when He descended on the mountain.  I didn’t cross the Sea of Reeds or the Jordan.  But I know what it must have been like.  I can feel it in my bones.  God chose me.  What could I do but respond?

Topical Index: choice, bāḥar, significance, evidence, rationale, Deuteronomy 30:19

^[1] Oswalt, J. N. (1999). 231 בָּחַר. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 100). Chicago: Moody Press.

^[2] Ibid.

^[3] Ibid.