The Torah (8)
The essence of the Torah
according to Proverbs 3
André H. Roosma
7 October 2012
In the previous parts of this series we already stood still at various
aspects of the Torah and at what
Jesus considered the
most important of the Torah.
It suddenly occurred to me now that in this, Jesus did certainly not
bring a new teaching. He called justice, mercy and
faithfulness the weightier matters or important aspects of the Torah. Please, read with me now from Proverbs 3
(in a most literal translation):
1 My son, forget not
My Torah; but let thine heart keep My commandments: 2 For length of days, and long life, and shalom, shall they add
to thee.
3 Let not mercy and truth forsake
thee: bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart:
4 So shalt thou find favour and good
understanding in the sight of God and man.
5
Trust in YaHUaH with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine [own] understanding. 6 In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths.
7 Be not wise in thine [own] eyes: have deep reverence for YaHUaH, and depart from
evil. 8 It shall be health to thy
navel/umbilical cord, and refreshing fluid to thy bones.
It starts with: My son, forget not My Torah;
but let thine heart keep My commandments: For length of days, and long
life, and shalom, shall they add to thee. The son who feels appealed
will read on to see how his Father details this further.
That further
explanation comes immediately in the following verse, verse 3: Let not mercy and truth [chesed and ’emet; often translated as grace and
truth or as grace and faithfulness] forsake thee: bind them about
thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart:
The pair
chesed and ’emet we already discussed earlier.
חסד /    - chesed
is related to God allowing us entrance again unto the Life – in His
great grace in Jesus Christ.
And אמת /    - ’emet is the faithfulness and truth of God that remains
forever.
To stick to these two, the poet of Proverbs in fact writes,
forms the core or essence of not forgetting God’s Torah.
Remarkably, John starts his Gospel by noticing that exactly these two
traits of character are characteristic for Jesus; He was (and is) full of
them, he writes (1: 14).
In the mercy and truth that Jesus proclaimed and lively
demonstrated, He was the embodiment of
what God had already proclaimed in the Torah.
Whosoever still thinks to see a dichotomy as of ‘law’ and
‘grace’ between Jesus
and the Torah, let him/her say so, but according
this passage he or she does not have a leg to stand on...
Another remarkable issue we find in what the writer of Proverbs continues
to say here: Trust in YaHUaH with all thine heart;
and lean not unto thine [own]
understanding. ... Be not wise in thine [own] eyes: have deep reverence for YaHUaH. The Hebrew
word בינה - binah
- ‘understanding, discernment, mind’ has been translated by many
translations as: ‘own insight’ or something like that (at least in Dutch translations). Apparently, this verse
contests with all those elevated human reasonings and considerations that
are not open to be corrected by the Word of God Himself. But, when at the
core we cannot trust on our mind, how then do we know what is good?
The alternative is given immediately after this: In all
thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths.. The Hebrew
word used here for ‘acknowledge’ means a ‘being intimately
acquainted with’. Sometimes it is also used for having sexual
intercourse... The poet of Proverbs thus says: give God access to all
facets of your life. Let Him speak for Himself, what He thinks of it all.
Share everything and be open for His reaction.
That close intimacy with God in daily life, I encounter par
excellance in Jesus. And He says that it is also the way for each of us,
as tendrils closely attached to the vine (John 15; cf.
also John 17). No ‘works of the law’ here, but
‘intimate discourse’ and a desire to be correctable by God
Himself!
The imagery of the umbilical cord in the last verse that I showed, is
most fitting in this context. What the poet says is that the above will
contribute to the health of our spiritual umbilical cord, by which we
are nourished by God and can grow spiritually. It will make even our bones,
that is: the solidity in our life, flourish; by the refreshing fluid they
will be resilient and not hard or brittle.
This gives a totally different picture of what it means to not forget the
Torah, than what I had often heard...
This is a sequel to: The Torah
- (1) A series of laws and commandments?,
(2)
Throughout the First Testament,
(3)
Absolutely delightful!,
(4)
Yashu‘ah and the Torah,
(5)
The Ten Words – a special beginning,
(6)
Yashu‘ah and the Ten Words and
(7)
Chag Shabhu‘ót - The Feast of Weeks or Pentecost.
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