Psalms 11:5: “The LORD trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth.”

 

I really hate when our Modern Translations use the word hate in association with God. I mean if He can hate even a violent person then what is it going to take for Him to hate me?  Just what line do I need to cross before God moves from mere intolerance to hatred.  I know I am getting old and eccentric and worrying about things that I should not have to worry about.  I mean I would really have to do something absolutely horrible  for God to hate me.

 

What is the worst a person can do, be a mass murder?  Well, the Apostle Paul falls right in that category and yet Jesus reached out to him with a blinding light and transformed his life. God’s salvation is for anyone, no matter how bad they are.  God is no respecter of persons.  He does not sit up there in heaven and suddenly jumps out of throne, “Hooky smokes, angels stop that guy before he goes into that revival meeting.  He hears about all my love and forgiveness and he just might pray that old sinner’s prayer and I will have to save him and I hate that guy. He gets up here to heaven and he will just ruin everything.”

 

So if this passage is true then God is capable of hating and we are in danger of being hated by God. Not a thought you would like to take to bed with you tonight.  I looked up this Hebrew word for hate sane’ in every lexicon and they all say hate. Sigh, I guess I go back to a life of fear that I will one day cross some line and God will begin to hate me.

 

What I am building up to is to point out that our modern translations of the Bible are just that, a translation and any translation is still at best a paraphrase. Hebrew became a dead language in 500 BC and with any dead language we can only guess as to what certain words means. We look at a word through its context and how it is traditionally rendered.  We examine the context of the word in many different documents representing hundreds maybe thousands of years and then draw some conclusion.  Even if we have the right English word someone may have a different spin on the word.

 

Some time ago I had a woman on my disability bus who was dressed in a Western outfit.  When she stepped off the bus I said, “Good luck Kemosabe,” using the name that the Lone Ranger’s side kick Tonto would use.  She responded with “You too, Tonto.”  I suddenly heard some of my Hispanic riders start to laugh. I asked what was so funny and they said she just called me a fool in Spanish.  Well, that depends upon the context in which the word tonto is used.

 

In tracing this word for hate sane’ back to its Semitic root I discovered it has its origins in a briar or prickly thorns. The original idea of a sane’ is an irritation. It is really in a later use of the word that it became associated with hate as you really hate an irritation.  So the word can run a gamut from being just an irritant, someone who has an irritating habit that you wish they would change but you in no way wish harm upon them  to outright hate where you wish harm upon a person. So for myself, when I see the word sane’ associated with God I prefer to plug in the mildest form of the word sane’ which would be behavior that God wishes He could change.

 

Can I get away with that in this verse?  I think I can.  I was reading in the Jewish Commentary Genesis Rabbah s.55 where a rabbi was commenting on Psalms 11:5 and indicated that this verse is drawing from a common picture of a potter who is constantly working the flaws out of his clay pots.  The word for evil is rasha’ which is not really a word that is commonly rendered as evil, although evil is not entirely wrong to use.  But the intent of the word is for one who is hostile in this case against  God.  It is one who is consistently ignoring God and saying that he wants nothing to do with God.  The word rasha’ could be applied to the atheist who devotes his life to suing anyone or any organization that uses religious symbols on public property. Some atheist don’t care if you sing Silent Night on the Capital lawn during Christmas, they are above that, they will humor us ignorant folk while they live in their blissful world of the enlightened. That is not rasha’Rasha’  is that atheist who comes unglued when their first grader has to be exposed to a classmate who draws a picture of a cross on Easter and is ready to bring the whole public education structure down if that first grader’s picture of a cross is not removed from board with the other children’s pictures of bunny rabbits and Easter eggs.  That is the rasha’ or evil one shown in this Psalm.

 

The rasha’s and those that love violence are specifically signaled out here.  The word violence in Hebrew is hamas’.  Doesn’t that sound a bit familiar?  Hamas as we know it today is an Arabic word meaning enthusiasm which is an acronym for Harakat Al Mugawamah Al-‘Islamiyyah  or as we know in English as the Islamic Resistance Movement, a terrorist organization that is dead set on reeking violence upon Israel. It is only by some strange coincidence (divine?) that it is also the Hebrew word for violence. It also means to be cruel and oppressive and unjust. In the Aramaic it means to be very hard and   unsympathetic to someone. I read an article yesterday where a ten year old child was expelled from a private school because she missed too many days of classes and her grades were failing.  The child has cancer and was going through chemotherapy.  But rules are rules and she was expelled from the school and will not be allowed to return. I am sure there is another side to the story, but as it was reported, that is hamas.   Basically a hamas person is one who shows no mercy, no understanding, is so self-centered and self-absorbed that they care for no one else but themselves.  Such people are a really an irritant to God.

 

In Genesis Rabbah s.55 the rabbi points out that the reason such people, the rasha’ and the hamas,  are such an irritant to God is that they refuse to change.   That is such an irritation to God because he can make them better. Sure, like the potter, you have to crush the vessel a few times to get rid of the flaws, but in the end you have a beautiful vessel.  The thing is that the clay has not choice. It is going to be made into a beautiful vessel whether it likes it or not.  However, we do have a choice, we have a free will and it is very irritating to God that He stands there with the wherewithal to make us into something beautiful but because we are rasha’ or hamas with a free will, he can’t do it.  He sent his very Son to suffer and die on a cross to make a beautiful vessel out of us and what do we do we are rasha’ hostile to this God who loves us and are hamas, so self-centered and self-absorbed we will not allow the Great potter to mold us into a beautiful vessel.

 

We don’t need to worry about God hating us, what we do need to worry about is God being disappointed in us.  Like the woman who spends all day in the kitchen meticulous preparing a special dinner for her husband, anticipating his delight and pleasure over her gift and he takes one bite and says, “Too much salt.”  That man is rasha’ and hamas. And what we do to God when we reject His offer of Salvation to make us beautiful is a million times worse.

 

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