You have removed my acquaintances far from me; You have made me an object of loathing to them; I am shut up and cannot go out. Psalm 88:8 NASB An object of loathing – How do you effectively destroy what makes us human without killing the body? Isolation! There’s a very good reason why prisons employ isolation…
Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper [a]suitable for him.” Genesis 2:18 NASB Alone – We all die alone. From birth to death we struggle to find connection. Sometimes we succeed. Sometimes we don’t. But the drive is there, only to be extinguished at the…
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…
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 removed my acquaintances far from me; You have made me an object of loathing to them; I am shut up and cannot go out. Psalm 88:8 NASB An object of loathing – How do you effectively destroy what makes us human without killing the body? Isolation! There’s a very good reason why prisons employ isolation…
I did not sit in the gathering of revelers to make merry. Because of Your hand, alone I sat, for with wrath You filled me.Jeremiah 15:17 Robert Alter Alone – Brené Brown convincingly argues that being human means being connected. The greatest punishment a man can feel is isolation: “ . . . the most terrifying…
She weeps bitterly in the night and her tears are on her cheeks; she has none to comfort her among all her lovers. All her friends have dealt treacherously with her; they have become her enemies. Lamentations 1:2 NASB Weeps bitterly – Someone sent me a quote from Tzvi Freeman: “The first job of a teacher is to…
“We’ll just connect on Skype.” “We can do a ZOOM conference.” “All the classes are on-line now.” Oh, did you think that the issues fostered by the COVID-19 virus were limited to medical and economic? Did you believe that human isolation as a preventative measure was really a good thing? That it “saved” innumerable lives?…
So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed. John 8:36 NASB Free – Janis Joplin sang the theme song of an entire generation: “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.” Some days I think she was right. John uses a Greek verb with particularly dense meanings. Eleutheróō in the Greek world had…
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