You renew Your witnesses against me and increase Your anger toward me; Hardship after hardship is with me. Why then did You bring me out of the womb? If only I had died and no eye had seen me! I should have been as though I had not been, brought from womb to tomb. Job 10:17-19 …
A good name is better than fragrant oil, and the day of death than the day of birth. Ecclesiastes 7: 1 JPS Day of death – “Many individuals report that they rarely think of their own death but are obsessed with the idea, and the terror, of transiency. Every pleasant moment is corroded by the…
He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, without the possibility that mankind will find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end. Ecclesiastes 3:11 NASB Without the possibility – The highlighted phrase in this verse is a translator’s addition. Robert Alter’s translation reads: “Everything…
I know that there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and to do good in one’s lifetime; moreover, that every person who eats and drinks sees good in all his labor—this is the gift of God. Ecclesiastes 3:12-13 NASB Gift of God – Just one last thing to add—fulfillment. Qohelet (the Teacher) is the ultimate…
I thought you might be interested in what happened financially with At God’s Table and Children Under the Bridge in the partial-pandemic (sort of) year of 2022. Here’s the overview. Donors to At God’s Table dropped by 132 people. There are now 275 contributors. I am sure a lot of this is the result of…
So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. Genesis 1:27 NIV Male and female – A few weeks ago we explored this verse for its latent connection to ḥesed. Since we’ve just looked at the relationship between ḥesed, šāmar, and pāqad, determining that these words are…
You have granted me life and goodness; and Your care has guarded my spirit. Job 10:12 NASB Care – Be very careful with this one. “It has been said of this verb, which occurs more than three hundred times in the ot; ‘There is probably no other Hebrew verb that has caused translators as much trouble…
You have granted me life and goodness; and Your care has guarded my spirit. Job 10:12 NASB Goodness – As we discovered the last time we examined this verse, the translation “goodness” just misses the point. God doesn’t grant us goodness, at least not in this verse. What He grants is ḥesed—relationship, reciprocity, transitivity, and action. …
You have granted me life and goodness; and Your care has guarded my spirit. Job 10:12 NASB Life – Yesterday we examined the Qohelet’s claim that the animating spirit returns to God at death. This idea is an important correction to the popular Western conception of eternal life. It is important to note that this correction…
then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it. Ecclesiastes 12:7 NASB Spirit will return – Pythagoras, the Greek philosopher-mathematician, invented the doctrine of the eternal existence of the soul (in Greek psyche). The ancient world did believe in life after death (e.g., Egyptian burial…
