Proverbs 21:21: “He that followeth after rigteousness and mercy findeth life, righteousness, and honour.”
Last night as I was studying, I don’t know how late it was, but I suddenly heard fireworks go off. I thought, “My gosh, the Fourth of July is still three weeks away and they are setting off fireworks already.” It wasn’t until the next day that I saw everyone around Chicago wearing red and black jerseys and whooping it up. I finally put two and two together and realized that the fireworks the night before were because the Chicago Black Hawks Hockey Team won the Stevenson Cup, I mean the Stewart Cup.
I think I had one of those moments when it suddenly dawned on me that I am turning into an eccentric prudish old man. I mean maybe I need to get a life. It seems that lately all I do revolves around the Word of God. Everything I do relates to the Word of God, everything that happens I relate to the Word of God, which is all I do anymore. I can’t wait to get home from work to look up all the Scripture passages that have come to my mind during the day. I can’t even have a decent conversation lately without relating it to something I studied in the Bible. I swear another bus driver asked me what I thought of the Hawks and I found myself saying something like, “You know in the Semitic languages the same word for hawk is the same word for a vulture and an eagle. That hockey team is nothing more than a bunch of vultures fighting over a silly old tin cup that they will not be allowed to keep anyways. Besides they had that thing a couple years ago isn’t it someone else’s turn to have that cup. If they weren’t such greedy vultures they would let some other team have it for a year, no need to hog the crazy thing.” I guess I did deserved that look he gave me.
It was when I opened the Bible this evening that I really came to the realization that I was obsessed. I read Proverbs 21:21 and I thought wait a minute. He that follows righteousness finds righteousness? How can you follow righteousness if you haven’t found it yet? Suddenly I knew what was happening, no sleep tonight until I resolve that issue.
So I made a decision to reform. I am going to brush some of the dust off this old professor and I will make an effort to at least find out who the winning pitcher was for the Black Hawks and on top of that I will even relate their victory to my study tonight, you watch me.
Here goes. Some translations say he that pursues righteousness will find it. Now that would make more sense than follow righteousness. The Hebrew backs this up because the word for follow is radaph which means to chase, follow after and even pursue. The word is used as a participle so if you are pursuing righteousness, you are going to find it. It is just like the Black Hawks spending the last many months pursing that tin cup. That little cup was on everyone’s mind and was the ultimate goal of those players as they beat the living daylights out of each other. All that sweat blood and tears so they could hold a tin cup and give a toothless grin to the cameras. Well more power to them, I hope it was worth it.
I personally think a pursuit of the prize of righteousness is worth the effort. Righteousness is the word tsedaqah which is truth, justice and the American way (I just threw that American way stuff in there to show you I am normal). It has to do with moral conduct. It is exactly what you think of when you think of righteousness, doing the right thing, doing what will bring pleasure to the heart of God. But doing it not so you can hold some reward and give a toothless grin into a news camera, but simply to express your love for God by doing what will please Him. I have been on a seven year search for the heart of God and as I draw closer to understanding the heart of God the more I am drawn into the Scriptures and the more I am drawn into the Scriptures the more I see just who far away I am from really bringing that pleasure to God’s heart which only prompts me to spend even more time in His Word. A real snowballing effect.
I recalled something I read in the Talmud about this verse. It is in Baba Bathra 9b. Rabbi Isaac asked the same question I did, “Because a man follows after righteousness shall he find righteousness?” It is curious how the learned rabbis answered that question. “The purpose of the verse, however, is to teach us that if man is anxious to give charity, the Holy One, blessed be He, furnishes him with money with which to give it.” Then God sends him those who are fitting to receive this charity so that he may be rewarded for assisting them.
That is right, I said charity not righteousness. All our Christian commentaries and lexicons tells us that tsedaqah means righteousness and justice. But I checked the English translation of the Talmud and found a footnote by a rabbi who said that tsedakah when taken in a Rabbinical sense or understanding of Hebrew means charity. This is followed, in true Rabbinical sense with a question, “Because he gives charity, shall his reward be that he shall obtain charity when he requires it?”
That creates a whole new spin on this verse. In other words if we pursue charity, we will find charity returned to us if we are ever in need of it. I mean that is only common sense. So if I pursue my study of the Word of God so as to discover ways to bring pleasure to God’s heart, whenever I am in need I will find that same pleasure and need fulfillment as I gave to God.
Well, now that is a lesson for those Hawk guys. I heard that they have no intention of sharing that cup with any other team and not only that they have every intention of hanging on to that cup next year. Now how fair is that?
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