Deuteronomy 30:2-3: “And shalt return unto the Lord thy God, and shalt obey his voice according to all that I command thee this day, thou and thy children, with all thine heart, and with all thy soul; that then the Lord thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all the nations, whither the Lord thy God hath scattered thee.”
James 4:8: “Draw nigh to God and he will draw nigh to you.”
There is one striking similarity between all these verses that talk of returning to God or drawing near to Him and that is that it is us who must make the first step toward God. The syntax of Deuteronomy 30:2 suggest that returning to the Lord is a separate step from obeying His voice. In other words the first step is to return to the Lord. We must return and obey with all our hearts and soul.
There is an interesting play on words for the word return. The word used for return is shabata, This word comes from the same root as the word for Sabbath which means to rest, except that the Masoretes pointed this with a pathah under the Shin rather than a qammits they made the root word shuv which means to return or restore. In the unpointed text, this word could come from either the root word shabat or the root word shuv and I believe the intent was both. We are to return to our resting upon God and not the arm of the flesh.
Note we must do this with all our hearts and souls. The word heart (Heb. Lavav) and the word soul (nepesh) when used together mean both your intellect or understanding and your passions. We can return to God with our intellect but not with our passions, or we can return to God with our passions but not our intellect. God is saying we must return to Him with both. There is an old saying, loving someone is not the same as being in love. It is not enough to just love God that we can do intellectually or with our souls. We must also be in love with God, which we can only do with our hearts.
The passage also says that we are to return to the Lord our God. In the Hebrew the word for Lord is YHWH and the word for God is Elohim. There seems to be a new fad among Christians and that is to use the Hebrew name of God YHWH as if there is some mystical benefit to speaking His name. The problem is that no one knows the correct pronunciation for the name of God. Vowel pointings were not added until 700 years after the birth of Jesus and then the Masoretes just added the vowels from the word for lord (adoni) to the word YHWH creating the word Yehoah or as we say in the Western world, Jehovah. What is interesting about the word YHWH is that it is in a feminine form. The word Elohim is in a masculine form. The sages teach that when the word YHWH is used it represents the feminine nature of God which is the mercy, nurturing and lovingkindness of God. The word Elohim represents the masculine nature of God, God’s protection and provision. The syntax suggests that we are to return to YHWH with our hearts, we are to be in love with YHWH His feminine nature, that part of Him that is nurturing, caring, and loving. Then we are to just simply love Elohim with our soul or mind. This is God in the masculine, the provider, the protector and the disciplinary. We are not gold diggers, marrying God for His money and His free ticket out of hell. We must also allow ourselves to fall in love with Him. A common scene played out in the movies and in books is a young man calling on his sweetheart who refuses to see him because she says, “You love me not.” The young man pleads. “But I do love ya, baby.” She still responds “You love me not.” Here is an example of how God created a woman to be a helpmeet or an ‘ezer (Genesis 2:18) for man. An ‘ezer is one who helps someone to understand something. In this case a woman was to help a man understand God, more specifically to understand the love of God and how to love Him in return. A woman can sense more than a man if a man loves her with his soul or his intellect. In other words he loves her because she is beautiful, he is attracted to her sexually or he is attracted to her because she may be rich. She knows if that is his only love or her, she will know if he loves her with his heart. In other words will he still love her even when her beauty fades, even if she lost all her money or she became physically incapable of providing sexual companionship, will he still love her because he not only loves her with his soul or mind but he also love her with his heart.
When we can love God not only because He is a good provider and will keep us out of hell, but also because we love Him with our hearts, that is to say even if there were no hell to escape and God did not pay us off with a new car, house and great prosperity, He will return to us. There is just one issue that bothers me. This business of returning seems very ambiguous. How do we really know that we do love Him or return to Him with all our heart and all our soul?
I have a friend who lost everything, she is a widow who lost her home in foreclosure, her late husband’s $100,000 life insurance policy went to his former wife and she ended up homeless. Yet she still clings to God, still loves God. She has not cursed God because He did not provide. Well, for her it is easy to prove she loves God not only with her soul but her heart as well.
This is true for many Christians who accept Jesus as their Savior and then their whole world falls apart. But how about those who seem to gain great financial and material benefit when they accept Jesus as their Savior. That makes it hard, how can they judge if they love Him with not only their soul but their hearts as well. I think there is a clue in that the word return which is in a qal form and not a piel. Thus this is a return with all your heart and soul that is the best you can give even, it may not be perfect, and it may even fall short. But if we come to Him in the best possible way that we can, telling Him we want to offer our heart and soul to him as best we can, that is enough. That young man who has just been rebuffed by his sweetheart because she believes he only loves her with his soul or mind and not his heart can be honest and say, “Honey, I am not sure, but I am sure of one thing, I want to love you with all my soul and heart and I will do my best to love you with all my heart. Come one, give me a chance to really learn how to love you with my heart.” That may just be enough to draw that young woman to him, particularly if she loves him in return with all her soul and heart. In the case of God, He loves us with His soul and heart and so all we must do is desire to love Him with all our heart and soul and He will draw near to us and we will soon learn to love him with all our soul and heart.
James tells us that we just need to draw near to God and he will then move into action to draw near to us. We just need to start the process and do our best. The Lord will take care of the rest.
There is a story in the Talmud about a king who had a disagreement with his son. The nature of this disagreement was such that the son left home to live in another kingdom. After a time the father sent a messenger to the son with this message: “Please come home.” The son sent the messenger back saying, “That is too far for me to come.” The Father then sent his messenger back with this message: “Then come as far as you can and I will meet you.” Come to God as best you can, it doesn’t have to be perfect, it doesn’t have to even be with your heart, maybe with just your mind if that is the best can do and He will still meet you.
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