HEBREW WORD STUDY – FULFILL – MALA’ מלא
Exodus 23:26: “There shall be no one miscarrying or barren in your land; I will fulfill the number of your days.”
What does that mean that God will fulfill the number of your days? Our immediate thought fits that of the NIV which says: “I will give you a long life.” Some say God will give you a normal life.
The Talmud in Rosh Hashanah 11a has a different take on this. The Talmud teaches that this verse is saying that God fulfills the days of the righteous to the day. There is one modern English translation that renders this as the Talmud is teaching and that is the International Standard Version or the ISV which renders it as; “I will make every day of your life complete.”
You see the word fulfill in Hebrew is mala’ which means to be full, abundant, accomplished and satisfied. I don’t believe God is talking about a long life or a normal life but a life that full and abundant, one with accomplishments and when the time comes to pass from this life it will have been a complete life.
But soft he is not talking about your life but the days of your life. The Talmud is teaching that this verse is telling us that if you serve God then every day that we live will be a day of accomplishments, it will be a day of fulfillment of purpose. Stop and consider the profound nature of this statement. Each day when we go to bed at night, that is the end of a day that we will never have again, it will be one less day for our lives here on earth. Just one more day closer to our eternal home. We only have so many days in our backpack. Like it or not every day, we remove one more day. Do we toss it to the side of the road or do we give it someone to bring them closer to God?
Do you go to bed each night mala’ satisfied that your day was well spent or was it just another wasted day? Do you keep tossing those days to the roadside until your pack is empty and God calls you home? What are you going to say when God asks you: “What about all those days I gave you, what did you do with them?” Are you going to say: “Well too many of them were too heavy, too burdensome, to filled with pain, suffering, and fear, so I just tossed them out of my bag.” God is going to say; “But I gave you each one of those days. I know some had pain and suffering, even fear but they were all filled with opportunities. Did you see all those opportunities?”
Maybe you will say like most people: “Wow, I don’t know what happens to all those days. I just kept tossing them out of my bag figuring I would use some of them along the way to help others, but I just traveled down life’s road so quickly I lost track of all the days I had left and then one day when I went toss another day out of my bag, I discovered it was my last day.”
Every day of your life God gives you something on that day, no matter how painful or joyous, there is something he gives you. Search for it, be aware of it, find it, so at the end of that day, you are mala’ satisfied.
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