07 January 2025
One of the oddities of Hebrew language -- odd for those of us born in the West -- is the paucity of adjectives. Everything is action and roles. This was noted recently in a post on Radix Fidem Blog regarding a chapter in Revelation that we naturally tend to read as a chronology, when John's intention was to identify roles in the context of how they act.
Instead of using a bunch of adjectives to describe the characters, John relies on the ancient Hebrew approach of inserting defining actions in the narrative. Keep in mind that when discussing events in Eternity, time and sequence mean nothing. What matters is the moral character of the figures. Thus, to provide an image of Satan in the context, John mentions things that Satan would typically do. He gives the same treatment to the faith community by characterizing it as a woman and how she acts in certain circumstances.
In other words, don't get lost in the narrative of Revelation 12, but notice how the characters are defined. There are very few adjectives in Hebrew, while the emphasis is on characteristic actions. What should you expect from Satan, from a covenant faith community, etc.? Then, I want you to notice how the word "church" has been hijacked so that it no longer refers to a genuine covenant faith community, but a human organization that may or may not exercise faith, and generally has almost no covenant idenity. You would identify a church by how it acts against Satan and his agenda. It requires you first understand how Satan operates and what matters to him.
Thus, in Hebrew reckoning, your Covenant identity rests on your attitude, not your performance. It's whether you treat it like a treasure, not on whether you can fulfill its obligations. To "keep" the Covenant means to guard it as precious; the concept of obedience is subsidiary. That's discovered in the root meanings of Hebrew language. Indeed, everyone expects you to make mistakes, and the Covenant is chock full of ways to repent from those mistakes. However, the concept of violating the Covenant is rooted in the Hebrew image of walking on it, treating it with contempt.
Thus, the Covenant becomes a sort of conceptual avatar for God and His will. As always, it's personal. How you treat the Covenant is a placeholder for your attitude about submission to God. The concept of "sin" is missing the mark. Sin is stumbling on the path, but not getting off the path. The Hebrew concept of "sin" does not cover contemptuously rejecting God's path; that's more like "wickedness".
The western obsession with performance and particular penalties is flatly contrary to the biblical imagery. Westerners tend to view punishment as a moral necessity, whereas Scripture simply notes that your mistakes can be forgiven if you sincerely regret disappointing God. We are at war with the fleshly nature, and there's no particular condemnation for combat failures. The point is that you are fighting and resisting.
There is no Hebrew obsession with detailed investigations of how you failed. The Bible assumes that some of this is simply unknowable. Our Enemy has tricks and superior awareness of moral issues, so we will always miscalculate. It's only when the absolutism of Hellenistic thinking got involved in the New Testament that we have that Gnostic heresy of thinking that the foibles of the flesh don't matter. It's the all-or-nothing of binary thinking. For the Hebrew mind, moral truth was not black-n-white objective; it was personal. The Hebrews never addressed such an obsession as binary thinking, but Paul was compelled to struggle with it. He had a tough time instilling a Hebrew outlook in Hellenized folks. Back then, the Greek language he used didn't have a wealth of expressions for dealing with such radical philosophical differences.
Let me summarize: The Hebrew mind says it's all about personal loyalty. This always trumps any consideration of objective logic. There is no standard outside God's personal will, and He is flexible on the particulars because what matters most is whether you love Him.
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