Zephaniah 1:18: “Neither their silver nor their gold will be able to deliver them in the day of the Lord’s wrath. But the whole land will be devoured by the fire of his jealousy.”
There was a conference in France for a large number of international engineers. During a break one of the European engineers came into the room and announced: “Have you heard the latest dumb stunt that the United States has done? They sent an aircraft carrier to Indonesia to help the tsunami victims. What do they intend to do, bomb them?
A Boeing engineer stood up and calmly replied: “Our carriers have three hospitals on board that can treat several hundred people, they are nuclear powered and can supply emergency electrical power to shore facilities; they have three cafeterias with the capacity to feed 3,000 people three meals a day, they can produce several thousand gallons of fresh water from sea water each day, and they carry half a dozen helicopters for use in transporting victims and injured to and from their flight deck. We have eleven other such ships stationed throughout the world ready to offer similar humanitarian assistance. A reporter said the room got very quiet.
Sure our military is trained for war and they are fighting a war in the Middle East, at least a small contingent of our military. We hear about that all the time in the news. But we rarely hear of the many other wars that the bulk of our military is fighting which is a much bigger picture. There is the war against piracy, smuggling, drugs, and human trafficking. We have a number of hospitals ships that in one year treated over 1 million nonmilitary, non Americans throughout the world. They built schools, provided protection and security to the defenseless and we can go on and on. Humanitarian aid is a key component to the U.S. military. Never in the history of the world has a world class military force devoted so much time, effort and financial resources to humanitarian aid. Yet, few in the world and even in this country realize that when our young men and women join the military, more often than not if their lives are endangered it will be in serving a humanitarian role more than a war against other nations.
The Old Testament suffers a similar lack of understanding. To most people the Old Testament is a book of God’s wrath and anger. I have heard preachers condemn the Old Testament as just a Jewish book filled with provincialism, elitism, tribalism. Bad Old Testament contains every nasty “ism” except communism and of course we all know who father that.
Yet, the love and mercy of God is mentioned many more times than the wrath of God. And just what is this wrath and jealousy of God anyways. Zephaniah 1:18 is a good example. Neither gold nor silver will deliver one from God’s wrath. Wrath here is ‘avar in the Hebrew. You can render ‘avar as wrath if you wish, but our modern English word wrath has little to do with the Hebrew word. This word is the same word that is used for passing over or passing through. When used to express anger, it is really referring to the idea of allowing oneself to go beyond the limits. To go to the other side, or beyond. In other words God’s wrath is anytime He goes beyond His limits, and is forced to do something He does not want to do.
You will notice that the word ‘avar is spelled Ayin, Beth and Resh. My old friend Ayin shows that God’s wrath is not an irrational impulse, a moment of rage or God losing it or running out of control. Ayin is telling us that this is a calm, calculating God who does not act out of an emotional outburst but only with discernment and when there is no alternative.
The next letter is Beth which tells us that whatever is displayed with this move of God, it is ultimately meant to be a blessing. If you lose your job and consider the possibility that that job loss and the inability to find another is a demonstration of God’s wrath against you for something you did wrong, then you cannot ignore the fact that the second letter in the word for wrath is a Beth which declares that it is really a blessing.
The final letter for wrath is a Resh. Which reminds us that any demonstration of ‘avar (wrath) is under the complete control of the Holy Spirit and that its primary goal is to bring us to repentance. So perhaps we need to search for another English word rather than wrath.
I mean I keep hearing on the news that if the stock market drops, billions of dollars will be lost, thousands of jobs will disappear, 401K’s will go belly up, businesses will go bankrupt and the economist calls that a correction in the market. Then maybe if I lose my job, house, health etc., why should I use such a harsh word as wrath for ‘avar. I think I will just say that, God is making a correction in my life. I am not under God’s wrath, I am under His correction. If you want to call it something else, then go right ahead. If you want to call our Navy Seals, the most well trained, well equipped warriors in the history of the world rescuing children who are being sold into sexual slavery as an act of war, go right ahead. I prefer to call it a humanitarian effort. You see every word in Classical Hebrew has a wide range of meanings. You can say God is a wrathful God if you like or you can say He is a God who must perform certain acts He would prefer not to in order to correct our behavior.
And how about this fire of jealousy business, yeah now that is real bad, right? The word in the Hebrew for jealousy is qana’. The word means jealousy but is that always bad? Qana’ really carries the idea of burning with such passion for someone or something that you will not allow anyone to come close to your object of passion. I picture jealousy as someone grabbing hold of someone or something and saying; “Mine, all mine, everyone get away, no one can have what is mine.” What a nasty attitude, but you know if God wants to feel that way about me, then just between Him and me, I won’t object. You can call it bad if you wish, but I won’t. Think what you want, but I kind of like the idea of having a jealous God. You can cross your fingers and say “Tisk Tisk, what a terrible God who is jealous and full of wrath. Mercy Maude, such a selfish God.” But you know what? When you see an aircraft carrier what do you see? A warship capable of wrecking great destruction and loss of life or a humanitarian vessel? God can send his aircraft carrier my way anytime.
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