Comments on Forgiveness In an article titled “Evil and Forgiveness,” Rabbi Jonathan Sacks cites Hannah Arendt’s insight into the absolute necessity of forgiveness. I offer these citations today, in a world where forgiveness seems an antiquated idea, where past sins are hauled before the public in order to force submission through humiliation, where the politics…
A worthless person, a wicked man, is one who walks with a perverse mouth, who winks with his eyes, who signals with his feet, who points with his fingers; who, with perversion in his heart, continually devises evil, who spreads strife. Therefore his disaster will come suddenly; instantly he will be broken and there will be no healing. Proverbs 6:12-15 NASB No healing…
Then he took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people; and they said, “All that the LORD has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient!” Exodus 24:7 NASB 1995 We will do – Do you remember Sacks’ comment: “The entire drama of Torah flows from this point of…
So Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite did what the Lord told them; and the Lord accepted Job’s prayer. Job 42:9 NIV Accepted – What is implied in the verb “accepted”? Interestingly, the Hebrew root is nāśāʾ, the same verb that is used for carrying away sin. When the text tells us that God accepted Job’s prayer, it is telling us…
If the God of my father, the God of Abraham and the fear of Isaac, had not been for me, surely now you would have sent me away empty Genesis 31:42a NASB Fear – It seems that everyone wants to rescue Isaac from the text. Jonathan Sacks’ statement may be Jewish, but it is reflected over…
So if the Son sets you free, you really will be free. John 8:36 NASB Free – Jonathan Sacks offers some insight into the Hebraic understanding of freedom; insight that we must embrace if we’re going to avoid reading the words of Yeshua as if they belonged in the Greco-Roman culture of the West. Sacks writes:…
Now the man named his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all the living. And the Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them. Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out with his hand, and take fruit also…
Now the man named his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all the living. And the Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them. Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out with his hand, and take fruit also…
Different cultures tell different stories. The great novelists of the nineteenth century wrote fiction that is essentially ethical. Jane Austen and George Eliot explored the connection between character and happiness. There is a palpable continuity between their work and the book of Ruth. Dickens, more in the tradition of the prophets, wrote about society and its…
one Lord, one faith, one baptism, Ephesians 4:5 NASB One faith – “‘Religion’ comes from the Latin ligare, meaning to join or bind. Religion binds people within a group – Christian to Christian, Muslim to Muslin, Jew to Jew. More specifically, since some of the most bitter conflicts take place within a faith, it bonds…
