10 February 2024
In the Hebrew culture, the concept of holiness and purity was mostly a matter of separation. Something or someone was pulled apart from the common, high traffic use and reserved for God alone. This carries forward from the previous lesson on Pageau's book in which we talked about the mixing of the flood and simplicity of dry land, or the flow of time versus the stability of space.
The next concept we add to this is continuous versus discrete. It should be obvious: the flow of time is continuous, rolling forward relentlessly, mixing everything. The stability of space keeps order by separating things. This is part of the imagery when God said not to mix fabrics or to cross-breed animals (Leviticus 19). Mixing runs the risk of entropy, of pulling things back down to their chaotic state of being unrecognizable. The Lord set things in order; our duty is to maintain order on His terms.
Ambiguity is a threat. Is anyone surprised at how God commanded Israel to avoid gender ambiguity, for example? There should be no doubt which sex is the person you meet in any public space. The business of fluidity is a threat to stability. Concealing clarity behind confusing signals places too much power on the side of chaos and fluidity. We must testify to the truth.
There's a place for the washing of water that transforms, but it is part of destroying the mess of confusion so that stability can be built. We are granted not only the power, but a mandate to build structures that glorify God. And He is the one who defines His glory. If we voluntarily align with His ways, then He does not need to destroy what we do in order to seize His glory from us.
Thus, another pair of terms associated with change and stability is concealment and revelation, respectively. God becomes mysterious when we embrace chaos and darkness. He becomes clear to us when we embrace His revealed order. You can know Him face to face or you can know Him concealed behind His wrath.
Pageau notes that God in Esther was concealed; His actions became apparent only afterward. This is how He works when He is not honored as Lord. By the same token, in such a context we discern the absence of His rigor in His direct reign, but we also see His mercy and leniency when He is not (yet) recognized as Lord. His tolerance and long suffering is part of how He operates in the fallen realm of this world. His patience should not be taken as lack of interest. Rather, His very active interest is simply concealed by the lack of people embracing His purity.
This is wholly consistent with pagan conceptions in ancient times with the common symbolism of fire and water. Fire cleared out trash and dried up the sloppy puddles. Mist, rain and floods would turn things into muddy bogs. Thus, our utilitarian and materialist view keeps ignoring moral truth in Creation, but for ancient societies that placed moral truth first, the world looked totally different.
Comments
Jay DiNitto
It would've been nice if study Bibles included this information in its notes. I've never read these things before, at least summarized in this way. If anything, the information about the Hebrew way of thinking is implied and/or scattered.
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