Saturday, October 31, 2015

¹⁰  "Therefore you, O son of man, say to the house of Israel: 'Thus you say, "If our transgressions and our sins lie upon us, and we pine away in them, how can we then live?" ' “

As I read this, I wondered how our sins can cause us to “pine away”?

“pine away”-H4743 mâqaq maw-kak' A primitive root; to melt; figuratively to flow, dwindle, vanish: - consume away, be corrupt, dissolve, pine away.מקק

cf. Leviticus 26:36-39 “And as for those of you who are left, I will send faintness (fear) into their hearts in the lands of their enemies; the sound of a shaken leaf shall cause them to flee; they shall flee as though fleeing from a sword, and they shall fall when no one pursues; and you shall have no power to stand before your enemies. You shall perish among the nations, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up. And those of you who are left shall waste away in their iniquity in your enemies' lands; also in their fathers' iniquities, which are with them, they shall waste away.”

Note: the word is used ten times in seven verses, twice in Leviticus 26:39 (pine away=waste away) and three times in Zechariah 14:12. It is also in Psalm 38:5, Isaiah 34:4, Ezekiel 4:17; 24:23 and Zechariah 14:12. The verses in Psalms and elsewhere in Ezekiel also paint the picture of unrepented sin causing a person to waste away spiritually. Isaiah & Zechariah use the word more literally.

Zechariah 14:12 And this shall be the plague with which the Lord will strike all the people who fought against Jerusalem; their flesh shall dissolve while they stand on their feet, their eyes shall dissolve in their sockets, and their tongues shall dissolve in their mouths. (italics mine)

Isaiah 34:4 “All the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled up like a scroll; all their host shall fall down as the leaf falls from the vine, and as fruit falling from a fig tree.

Mentioned several times in Scripture that the created order will be done away with and there will be a new heavens and a new earth, seemingly consistent with the idea that our Universe is finite and that there is a greater reality beyond. Almost as if our reality is like a “virtual reality” within a greater reality. The aforementioned is not original to me. Others have suggested this before. The verse from Zechariah is interpreted by some as eschatological, referring to the end of the age. For now I'll focus on the interior, spiritual application of the word. Unconfessed sin is toxic, caustic that is life diminishing and makes me less human, less what I was meant to be. The prayer of confession is valuable for my daily spiritual life.