Today’s Word

A Pessimist’s Requiem

Go, eat your bread in gladness, and drink your wine in joy; for your action as long ago approved by God.  Ecclesiastes 9:7  JPS Go – Walk the path.  Take the journey.  Move along.  Hālak is the Hebrew term here.  You are the traveler on your life’s path, and there are some good things along…
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Reel Life

Utter futility!—said Kohelet—utter futility!  All is futile!  Ecclesiastes 1:1-2  JPS Utter futility – bavel bavalim.  Literally, “vapor of vapors.”  “Utter senselessness” translates Michael Fox in the JPS commentary.  “Ecclesiastes is a strange and disquieting book.  It gives voice to an experience not usually thought of as religious: the pain and frustration engendered by an unblinking…
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Shut Up (Times Two)

And You have not given me over into the hand of the enemy; You have set my feet in a large place.  Psalm 31:8  NASB Not given me over – What does it mean to fall into the hands of the enemy?  Pay attention to David’s parallelism and you will understand just how much Hebrew is…
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The Ides Have It

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…
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Facing Reality

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…
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The Theme Song of Life

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…
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