Wholehearted

Blessed are those who comply with His [b]testimonies, And seek Him with all their heart.  Psalm 119:2 NASB With all – It’s the last bit that counts.  bechol-lev yidreshoohoo—“with all their heart.”  “All their heart” is interesting in itself because we would expect the plural “with all their hearts” but we get the singular bechol-lev.  It’s a common heart, that is,…

Watchfulness

אַשְׁרֵי נֹֽצְרֵ֥י עֵ֜דֹתָ֗יו בְּכָל־לֵ֥ב יִדְרְשֽׁוּהוּ   Psalm 119:2 נֹֽצְרֵ֥י – Blessed are those who comply with His [b]testimonies, And seek Him with all their heart (NASB).  This verse poses a serious question.  It comes without a rhetorical answer.  Here’s the question (but don’t answer too quickly): Do you want to be happy?  Pause!  Ask yourself again: Do you really want to be…

A Way of Life

Blessed are those whose way is [a]blameless, who walk in the Law of the Lord.    Psalm 119:1  NASB Walk – It really doesn’t matter what you think.  It’s what you do that counts.  In the Hebrew worldview, it’s not necessary to understand why you should do the things you are asked to do.  It’s nice when they…

Toil and Tears

Blessed are those whose way is [a]blameless, who walk in the Law of the Lord.   Psalm 119:1  NASB Blameless – The Hebraic world knows no systematic theology.  That’s a Greek invention.  What it knows is the lived reality of God’s interaction in the everyday world of men and women.  The Hebraic world doesn’t have creeds or hard-and-fast doctrines…

God’s Loan

And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.  Matthew 6:12 NIV Debts – The Greek term translated “debts” in Matthew’s version of the Lord’s Prayer is not a word that means “sins.”  It’s opheílēmata, from the root opheílō.  “Etymologically obscure, this word means ‘to owe someone something,’ e.g. loans, debts, sums,…

The Hidden Noah

But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. I certainly will require your lifeblood; from every animal I will require it.  And from every person, from every man as his brother I will require the life of a person.  Whoever sheds human blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made mankind.  Genesis…

The Fall

How then can mankind be righteous with God?  Or how can anyone who is born of woman be pure?  If even the moon has no brightness and the stars are not pure in His sight,  Job 25:4-5 NASB Righteous – Perhaps Moses was delusional.  Or maybe just egotistical.  He certainly seems to have been affected by some mental mistake when he…

The Standard

How then can mankind be righteous with God?  Or how can anyone who is born of woman be pure?  If even the moon has no brightness and the stars are not pure in His sight,  Job 25:4-5 NASB Righteous – Before we try to answer Job’s rhetorical question, we need to know the standard he employs.  That is the Hebrew term…

Read It Like This

For His wrath lasts but a moment; life results from His favor; in the evening, weeping may tarry, but in the morning there is joyful singing.  Psalm 30:6  Hebrew Bible  Chabad A moment – No vowels.  Remember that.  The absence of vowels leads to some interesting, and important, alternatives.  Note the Hebrew (pointed) translation from…