II Chronicles 16:30: “Fear before him, all the earth: the world also shall be stable, that it be not moved.”
All throughout the Bible we are taught to fear God. In this verse all the earth is commanded to fear God. Many modern translations render this as tremble before God. Young’s Literal Translation tells us to be pained before God. I have found no commentaries that will comment on this passage, they most likely assume it speaks for itself, that is, we must be afraid of God. This has been a church tradition, after all God is all powerful, omnipotent, all knowing, all seeing and who would not be afraid of a God like that. One little misstep and zap! You’re just a grease spot. And boy oh boy is He a demanding God; I mean look at those 613 commandments that he gave the Hebrew people for starters.
Every Sunday millions of people faithfully go to church and endure an hour of music they don’t like, a sermon that puts them to sleep and then confront an offering plate that is passed around where they have to throw in 10% of what the earned that past week to keep this thing going. What in the blazes motivates people to endure this? For far too many it is fear, fear that if they don’t do all this God will bop them on the head and they will lose their jobs, their comforts, their health and worse, they may spend eternity if a fiery hell. That hell business alone is enough to make a don’t smoke, don’t chew and don’t go out with girls that do believer out of you. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that there is no hell; I am just saying that you have no reason whatsoever to fear hell. God never intended hell to be your eternal home; it was created for the devil and his crew, not you. The only reason you go there is because you happen to like the devil’s company more than God’s. God being the gentleman He is will not force you to spend an eternity with Him if you prefer someone else’s company. In other words, it is your choice if you go to hell or not. God sent his very Son to take on a human form and die a horrible death just to make sure you can spend eternity with Him, all you have to do is say, “Hey, if anyone will do that for me, then that’s my Man, just you and me God, right?”
Yet, millions of people end up in hell because they just cannot figure out how a God can create a world filled with delights and then forbid them to partake of them, stick them in stuffy church listening to horrible music and to some guy telling them that if they don’t pay up 10% of their net worth to this boring institute they will burn for eternity.
The Bible screams out with example after example of the fact that God cannot be manipulated, that God only wants the best for us, that He created us to enjoy this life, and that He does not want our tithes and offerings but just our love and yet we fear and tremble before Him that if we cross Him up He will squash us like a bug. And yet this very same demanding, fearful and threatening God is perfect in love. Now you tell me that is not a contradiction. You tell me that our God Jehovah is not like any other god coming down the pike. The Hindus live in constant terror of their gods and do all sorts of crazy things to appease their gods. The Muslims strap bombs to themselves to win favor from their god. Is it any different for us to sit through an hour of pure torture every Sunday fearful that the preacher will overstep his limits and keep preaching past the kick off time? (I meant that as a joke).
Ok, I just blasted the church as a boring, controlling, demanding institution. But that is not the case for everyone. Believe it or not, there are people who look forward to that hour of worship, who actually hate to see it end. These are the very same people who would gladly follow all 613 commandments if it were required and even ask for more. These are the same people who weep for joy while worshipping to awful, loud and unendurably long music. These are the same people who will focus on every word coming from that preacher’s lips, take notes and shout Amen when he happens to say something that praises the God they love. These are the same people who walk out of those church doors smiling and feeling refreshed. They are the same people who throw 10% and more of what they earn in that plate and never look back. These are the ones who chilu (fear) before God as noted in I Chronicles 16:30.
You see, Hebrew has a number of words for fear and I fear we have overused this word fear in our translations. Let me just give you a list of words in the Hebrew that have all at one time or another in our English bible been lumped under the one English word fear that we automatically interpret to mean a concern for one’s safety. Here we go, tsala, pachdah, chilu, yir’ah, yara, da’al, yer’, chittah, mizzah, ra’ah, cered, zachal, chaphiz, mowir, ‘anacharath, berek, giyl, and gether. That is just the short list and all these words could be rendered as fear, as well as many other things. I have listed eighteen Hebrew words that have been rendered as fear. There are only 8,000 words in the Classical Hebrew and over 300,000 plus words in English with new words being added daily and all we can find to plug into these Hebrew words is one little English word fear?
My point is that the word used in I Chronicles 16:30 for fear is chilu. Chilu comes for a Semitic root, a word shared with all the Semitic languages that originally means to spin in a circle. It is the same word that is used for David when he danced before the Ark of the Covenant. It was used for the wild dance performed by the priest and priestesses before their pagan gods. They would not only spin in a circle but shake (tremble) their whole bodies while spinning. It was a frenzied, wild sort of dancing used to totally lose oneself in the presence of their gods until they worked themselves up into such a frenzy that they would totally lose control of themselves such that they would cut themselves or offer themselves as a sacrifice to their pagan gods.
That is what the translators render as fear or tremble before Him all the earth. It has nothing to do with concern for one’s own safety, but everything to do with totally surrendering yourselves before God. Over the last forty years I have studied these words that we render as fear in our relationship to God and I do not find the idea of standing before God fearful for our own safety. I do find we are fearful that we may wound the heart of the God we love, we tremble as a bride or bridegroom do on their wedding day as they anticipate the consummation of their love or we are fearful that we are not doing enough to express our love to God as a wife is fearful she has not made a pleasant home for her husband or a husband has not adequately provided for his wife. But to stand before God fearful of our wellbeing is just not found in the Scriptures, at least as I read them in the Hebrew and Aramaic.
You see if a man loves his wife, he is going to want to be with her every moment he can, he will want to spend time at home with her, sharing his life with her, sharing his joys and sorrows with her, sharing his secrets with her, in a word he will want to chilu or fear her, that is totally lose control of himself over her and surrender to her. But if a man does not love his wife he is going to find excuses and reasons to not be at home and he will spend his time in some hell hole like a tavern where he is at least away from her. So too with God, if we love Him we will want to be at home with Him which for many is a church or sanctuary that they interpret as God’s home. Eventually they will retire and be at home with Him for eternity in heaven. If they do not love Him, they will choose to spend their time away from him in some hell hole, and most likely in a hell hole for an eternity. It is simply a matter of choice as to whom or what they are going to love.
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