A merciful person does himself good, but the cruel person does himself harm. Proverbs 11:17 NASB Cruel – Who is the cruel person? The torturer? The egotistic dictator? Men like Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin? When we think of the antonym of “cruel” these days, what term comes to mind? Kind? Forgiving? Merriam-Webster lists “tender, warm, warmhearted, charitable, clement, lenient, merciful, pitying, pacific, peaceable, peaceful.” The…
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…
They did not remember His [w]power, the day when He redeemed them from the enemy, Psalm 78:42 NASB Not remember – In the next ten verses Asaph lists all the mighty works that God did to redeem His people from Egypt. You might notice that his list isn’t quite the same as the sequence of events in Exodus. For…
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…
Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. Genesis 2:7 NASB A living being– In the Hebrew text, these significant words are nepeš ḥayyâ (for us, sounds like nefesh hayyah). The words themselves are fertile ground for all kinds of translation assumptions. …
And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.Genesis 2:25 NASB Not ashamed– We like to think that before the Fall the world was perfect. There was no sin. Human beings (only two of them) lived in the Garden of delight. Everything was wonderful. In fact, we think if we could just get…
Then the Lord said, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know.” Genesis 18:20-21 NIV See– God knows everything, right? God sees everything without error, right? Then why does God…
About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Matthew 27:46 NASB My God – Why does Yeshua cry out from the cross? Some time ago we discovered that his words are really the opening statement of a psalm of…
In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; Romans 8:26 NASB Groanings too deep – It’s there. You know it’s there. Down deep inside you somewhere that you really can’t look. It’s not…
For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. 1 Corinthians 13:12 NASB Fully known – “It costs so much to be a full human being that there are very few who…
