Will You do wonders for the dead? Will the shades arise and acclaim you? Selah. Psalm 88:11 (Robert Alter translation) Wonders – When is it too late? When does the power of the Lord cease to be effective? When you’re dead! Death ends it. As the Korahites sang, we can cry out to the Lord…
Abandoned among the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom You no longer remember, and they are cut off from Your hand. Psalm 88:5 NASB Abandoned – What an interesting choice of words! Sometimes translated “forsaken,” the Hebrew root is the verb ḥāpaš. Here it is ḥopšî, an adjective. What’s interesting is the basic…
And he said, “Naked I came out from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there. The LORD has given and the LORD has taken away. May the LORD’s name be blessed.” Job 1:21 Robert Alter Naked – “You can’t take it with you.” We all know that is absolutely true. We came into…
And I went back and saw all the oppression that is done under the sun: the tears of the oppressed who have none to console them, and from the hand of their violent oppressors there is none to console them. And I praised the dead, who have already died, more than the living, who are…
Then Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. Genesis 32:24 NASB Alone – Consider these: “Self-awareness is a supreme gift, a treasure as precious as life. This is what makes us human. But it comes with a costly price: the wound of mortality. Our existence is forever shadowed by the knowledge…
The king reflected and said, “Is this not Babylon the great, which I myself have built as a royal residence by the might of my power and for the glory of my majesty?” Daniel 4:30 NASB 1995 I myself – A man should not write down his thoughts until he has no time left to complete…
Therefore, my brothers and sisters, you also were put to death in regard to the Law through the body of Christ, so that you might belong to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. Romans 7:4 NASB Raised from the dead – Just when we thought we’d finally…
She weeps on through the night, and her tears are on her cheek. Lamentations 1:2 Robert Alter Weeps on – “If faith is to become real, catastrophe must be acknowledged and fully spoken.”[1] Perhaps you need to read that Zornberg statement again. Slowly. If you want a real faith, faith that matters, that has grit,…
Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all mankind, because all sinned— Romans 5:12 NASB Because –This next section (v. 12-18) is one of the most difficult and most debated sections of this letter. The argument is complicated and the implications are far reaching. See…
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…
