Structures in Psalms: God, His Attributes, and His Actions

In Psalm 19 and Psalm 20, passages distinguish themselves as components within their respective larger contexts by a degree of parallelism which exceeds the usual parallelism of Hebrew poetry. In Psalm 19 a series of noun-adjective pairings form a definite subunit with the Psalm:

The law of the Lord is perfect,
converting the soul;
The testimony of the Lord is sure,
making wise the simple;
The statutes of the Lord are right,
rejoicing the heart;
The commandment of the Lord is pure,
enlightening the eyes;
The fear of the Lord is clean,
enduring forever;
The judgments of the Lord are true
and righteous altogether.

Each couple begins with a noun (law, testimony, statutes, commandment, fear, judgments). The pattern is formed by two singular nouns followed by a plural noun; the pattern occurs twice. All six times, the noun is modified by “of the Lord” and after the noun phrase, an adjective appears as a predicate for the initial noun (perfect, sure, right, pure, clean) in the first five instances. In the sixth instance, two adjectives appear (true, righteous).

After the first clause of the couplet, a present participle follows in the first five occurrences (converting, making, rejoicing, enlightening, enduring). The final occurrence abandons the participle for a present tense indicative verb.

The sixth couplet, violating the pattern of the first five in order to signify the end of the passage, doubles the number of adjectives in order to compensate for the omitted participle.

The question poses itself: If this is a more-or-less accurate analysis of the English text, is it also true of the underlying Hebrew Vorlage?

The reader will not be burdened with a detailed and nuanced discussion of Hebrew grammar, but will rather be given the conclusion of that discussion: The English translation of these verses is good enough.

Using the usual understanding of Hebraic parallelism, one might tentatively conclude that:

§ In the mind of the Psalmist, “law, testimony, statutes, commandment, fear, judgments” are, if not perfectly synonymous, then at least words with related and overlapping semantic fields.

§ Likewise with “perfect, sure, right, pure, clean, true, righteous.”

§ So then also the following phrases: “converting the soul,” “making wise the simple,” “rejoicing the heart,” “enlightening the eyes,” and “enduring forever.”

It would therefore be possible to take this well-defined structure and salva veritate rearrange its parts, as in the following examples:

The law of the Lord is perfect.
The testimony of the Lord is sure.
The law of the Lord is sure.
The testimony of the Lord is perfect.

Likewise, the second clause of each couplet could be arbitrarily replace and become the second clause of another couplet, to wit:

The testimony of the Lord is sure,
rejoicing the heart;
The statutes of the Lord are right,
making wise the simple.

To be sure, these arbitrary rearrangements will have different nuances than the original text. Yet they will be true. The result is fruitful for meditation and preaching. The Psalmist was doing his best to capture God’s majesty in human words; yet it is known that human words are incapable of doing that fully.

Commenting on Psalm 19, Franz Delitzsch and Carl Friedrich Keil note that the subunit in question sets itself apart from other parts of the Psalm by using “YHWH” instead of “Elohim” to refer to God. They also report that Torah “does not in itself mean the law, but a pointing out, instruction, doctrine or teaching, and more particularly such as is divine, and therefore positive.”

Psalm 20 offers a similar text-within-a-text. A series of optative clauses are presented as parallel:

May the Lord answer you in the day of trouble;
May the name of the God of Jacob defend you;
May He send you help from the sanctuary,
And strengthen you out of Zion;
May He remember all your offerings,
And accept your burnt sacrifice.

Selah

May He grant you according to your heart’s desire,
And fulfill all your purpose.

We will rejoice in your salvation,
And in the name of our God we will set up our banners!

May the Lord fulfill all your petitions.

The pattern here is perhaps more complex than in Psalm 19. The first three clauses are parallel and synonymous: “May the Lord …” and “May the name of the God of Jacob …” and “May He …”

But the fourth iteration omits the subject, allowing the “He” from the previous line to be distributed to the next optative verb “and strengthen you …”

Here the English can be somewhat misleading. In several of these lines, the English clause has two verbs, “may” and “answer,” or “may” and “defend,” or “may” and “send.” In Hebrew, the optative is achieved with a single verb: the English “may” is a modal auxiliary which is replaced in Hebrew with a one-word verb form. The other option for a translator is equally structured: “Let the Lord answer you …” or “Let the name of the God of Jacob defend you.” Again, two English verbs, “let” and one other, replace a Hebrew structure which has only one verb.

Occasionally, English achieves a structure similar to the Hebraic one-word optative, as in the well-known song:

Love and joy come to you,
And to you your wassail too;
And God bless you and send you a Happy New Year.
And God send you a Happy New Year.

In this song, the phrase “God bless you and send you …” is a true optative, replacing the more cumbersome “Let God bless you and let Him send you …” or “May God Bless you and May He send you …”

In this text from Psalm 20, the first two lines are neatly parallel, and offer an economy of structure. The next six lines, i.e., lines three through eight of the larger subunit, offer a variation of that structure, the first, third, and fifth lines stating the grammatical nominative subject, and the second, fourth, and sixth lines distributing that subject by means of the conjunction “and” over the second clause.

The “Selah” seems oddly placed, intervening within a structure rather than marking a change of structure. It will be left as an exercise for the reader to determine the logic of this placement.

After the eighth line of the passage, i.e., of the larger subunit, the structure is temporarily abandoned altogether. A couplet appears with no optative verb, but rather with indicative verbs. Here, too, the logic of the placement of this couplet demands exploration.

A final single line, not a couplet, returns to not only the structure, but the exact wording, of the first line of the passage, i.e., “May the Lord …” and works in a summative capacity with the phrase “all your petitions.”

Again, the question must be posed, whether this analysis of the English translation applies with equal validity to the Hebrew Urtext. It has already been seen that the Hebrew one-word optative form appears in the more cumbersome English two-word forms, “May He remember …” or “Let Him remember …”

Are there other issues in the translation? Certainly there are, but are they relevant to the present discussion? Probably not.

It could be noted that, e.g., the Messianic over- and undertones are stronger in Hebrew, given that the noun “salvation” is a form of the name “Jesus.”

Generally, the Hebrew text exhibits that marvelous economy of words which Hebrew generally has in contrast to English. Often a single Hebrew word requires two, three, or even four English words to make a reasonable English translation.

Using again the principles of Hebraic poetic parallelism, the reader may deduce synonymies:

To write that God will “answer you in the day of trouble” is to write that He will “defend you.” To write that He will “send you help from the sanctuary” is to write that He will “strengthen you out of Zion,” and so on.

Franz Delitzsch and Carl Friedrich Keil explain that Psalm 20 is “closely attached” to Psalm 19. The subunit within Psalm 20 has “a synonymous parallelism of the members,” and they suggest that the placement of “Selah” within the text might be explained by the Psalm’s ritual use: if it were sung during worship, the “Selah” might indicate a pause for the actual physical placement of the sacrifice.

By extension, if the “Selah” indicates the physical performance of a sacrifice as part of the rhythm of worship, then the seemingly disruptive placement of the couplet that begins with “We will rejoice …” may be perceived as more fitting inasmuch as it functions to begin the conclusion of that particular phase of the worship service. The final optative clause could be seen as the end of that phase.

In sum, the understanding of parallelism and synonymy in these two Psalms has importance both for devotional reading and for theological reading.

What Does It Mean to “Bless” Someone?

The word “bless” is often used, and yet despite this frequent employment — or because of it? — a precise definition is often absent from the minds of those who write or say it. The lack of an exact understanding of this word can lead to misinterpretation and conceptual errors. On a practical level, it can lead to wasted time and energy, or worse, to a disappointment with God.

A close reading of Scripture shows that God blesses humans, humans bless God, and humans bless each other. That is a first clue.

Another clue is that rarely — perhaps even never — is anything besides God or a human blessed. There are misleading phrases, like “blessing a house,” which means that not the physical structure but rather the people who live in the house receive the blessing. The “house” can even refer to the family itself, like the “House of David,” which simply means a dynasty or royal family.

Likewise, one does not properly “bless a meal.” At the Last Supper, Jesus did not bless the bread (cf. Matthew 26:26, Mark 14:22, Luke 24:30). English translations can be deceptive on this point. Jesus took the bread and blessed God. This is more clear in the Greek text of the New Testament, which in turn represents a transcription of the Passover prayer which Jesus uttered in Hebrew or possibly Aramaic. Jesus spoke a common Hebrew mealtime prayer, something like this: “Blessed are You, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, Who brings forth bread from the field.” From this it is clear that the words, or the people who utter them, are blessing God, not the food.

Likewise, in I Samuel 9:13, the expression “to bless the sacrifice” is an elision. The words spoken at a sacrifice bless God to whom the sacrifice is made, and the person on behalf of whom the sacrifice is made.

So it stands that one does not bless inanimate objects.

As to what exactly a “blessing” is, Semitic philology offers clues. The root word is related to “knee” or the act of “kneeling.” One kneels to show respect and honor to someone. Blessing shows one’s respect or honor for another. This is easily plausible for humans blessing God, and for humans blessing each other. It can be surprising to conceptualize God as “showing respect and honor” to a human being. It seems to be an inversion of hierarchy. Yet it is so. Theologically, it points to God’s grace: the bestowal of unmerited and unearned gifts: certainly, humans do not deserve to be honored or respected by God, yet He does so. Christologically, this connects to the humiliation of Christ: that Jesus consented to be made flesh, to be born as a human being, which was a cataclysmic downgrading of His status, and at the same time an upgrading of what it means to be human.

So God blesses people: He honors and respects them.

This sense of ‘honor’ and ‘respect’ in no way limits God or makes Him subservient to humans. This is a type of honor and respect which a superior can show to his subjects: a generous king.

Instead of identifying “blessing” as showing “honor and respect,” it may be helpful to rephrase it as “unconditional positive regard,” a wording invented and popularized by Stanley Standal and Carl Rogers.

While the word ‘bless’ can be used in conjunction with the giving of a gift, a blessing is not synonymous with a gift beyond that honor, respect, and positive regard. One might say that God has “blessed a person with much money,” which means two things: God has blessed the person, and God has given much money to that person. The money is not the blessing, and the blessing is not the money. God might give because He blesses, or as a sign of His blessing, but the giving is one action, and the blessing is another. The two are distinct.

Blessing should not be confused with the giving of material gifts: “Blessed are the poor.” Jesus is and was blessed, yet suffered. Ordinary people, too, can simultaneously be blessed and suffer. One can be blessed and endure pain, poverty, rejection, loneliness, etc.

God is the source of all blessings. Blessings bestowed by God are primary. When humans bless each other, it is a secondary blessing, a regifting of God’s favor.

Blessings are often accompanied by physical symbolic acts: the laying-on of hands, a sacrifice, etc. Such acts are not blessings, but rather sensory cues to alert people that a blessing is taking place.

After the Incarnation, some formerly symbolic acts became efficacious and powerful: Bread and wine no longer merely symbolize God’s work, but rather become God’s work. The waters of baptism no longer merely symbolize the washing away of guilt, but rather actually wash away guilt.

This one vocabulary word is used often and in a wide variety of contexts. It has a large and elastic semantic field, yet a field with some precise boundaries. ‘Bless’ often overlaps with ‘thank’ (cf. Psalm 103:1-2). It can also overlap with ‘praise.’

When God bestows His blessing, He Himself is at work and is present in a non-trivial way, above and beyond His baseline omnipresence. A blessing is certainly a “giving,” yet a giving not of material benefits.

God is certainly the source and generous Giver of all physical benefits: houses and clothing and food, etc. Yet these gifts are not the primary referent of ‘blessing.’

In blessing, God perhaps gives Himself. In placing His name onto people (Numbers 6:27), He blesses them. When God blesses a person, that person receives gifts, but not material gifts. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit is a blessing (Luke 11:13, Hebrews 2:4).

When humans honor and respect each other, and do so out of merely human power, the effect is salutary but limited. When God blesses, He changes the person whom He blesses. To be blessed is to receive more of the Holy Spirit. To be blessed is to be made more like Christ.

Productive Conflict: When God Uses Division to Implement His Plans — Sometimes Disagreement Is Salutary

Jesus clearly directs His people toward unity (cf. John 17), or rather, toward “oneness,” which might have a slightly different connotation than ‘unity.’ In any case, He is not directing people toward uniformity, which is a cheap substitute for unity.

Uniformity is to have an appearance of sameness. This can be achieved voluntarily or by means of manipulation or by that sinister mixture of the two which leaves one wondering. Etymologically, uniformity is to have the same form, like plastic parts stamped out by a machine in a factory.

Unity, by contrast, speaks of purposes and goals which unite people who are detectably different in any number of ways. Those differences can even lead to significant disagreement.

Any group of people who are united — not uniform — will be devoted to their common goals, and that devotion may lead them to conceptualize those purposes in different ways, even mutually exclusive ways, and to conceptualize the best means to those goals in likewise distinct and even conflicting ways. These frictions are not sinful. Rather they can be used by God to move His kingdom forward.

Note Paul’s words in his letter to the Romans:

I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them.

Paul is not instructing the Romans to “watch out for” and “avoid” divisions. Rather, he instructs them to watch out for, and avoid, “those who cause divisions.” It is not the divisions which are the problems, but rather those who foster division.

What’s the difference? What is Paul trying to communicate? What’s he getting at?

Differences can be sincere and honest attempts to seek God’s will, but those who “foster” divisions are doing so, not to serve God, but rather to aggrandize themselves. Paul continues:

People like these are not serving Christ our Lord. They are serving their own desires. By their smooth talk and flattering words they deceive unsuspecting people.

Those who amplify disagreements, or who plant disagreements where none need be, are sowing the seeds of chaos in the church. They do so because they hope for opportunities to elevate, not Jesus, but rather themselves.

Paul asks us, then, to avoid those who cause divisions. Paul simultaneously, however, affirms that there must be divisions among us, and that such divisions can be part of God’s plan to reveal His will.

In his letters to the Corinthians, Paul writes:

There must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized.

God’s method here may be vaguely similar to Hegelian dialectic. Finding textual evidence for or against the plausibility of such a comparison will be left as an exercise for the reader.

One can imagine a group of disciples — this could be a formalized organization like a congregation, or an informal gathering of believers in a home, or a large multinational network of churches — facing a decision. It could be a major interpretation of doctrine, or the setting of a goal for significant use of resources to minister to the larger world outside the church, or an insignificant choice about which color to paint the hallway.

Paul’s point is that there needs to be differing options, and argumentation in support of those various options. In this process, the views which are genuine “may be recognized.” The process of debate can be used by God to reveal His plan.

This is seen already in the book of Proverbs:

Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.

While Paul has stern words about those who “create divisions,” he does not direct similar judgment against those who take sides in those divisions. Unlike the ones who create needless divisions, and amplify divisions more than necessary, those who support one side or another in a division are operating out of a sincere desire to seek God’s will — may in fact be driven by the Holy Spirit to engage in a debate which will ultimately reveal the truth.

Without divisions, there could be no debate, and without debate, some elements of truth would remain undiscovered.

The mere mere presence of divisions does not signify a lack of unity. The military leadership of the UK and the US during WW2 were united in their goal to end National Socialist aggression. But there were certainly lively debates between Bernard Montgomery, Arthur Harris, Louis Mountbatten, and Eisenhower, MacArthur, Omar Bradley, Patton, Nimitz, Mark Clark, Halsey, and others. There were passionate disagreements, which were not always entirely resolved, and moments of chaos. But none of that indicates a lack of unity. In fact, the energy of those conflicts was driven by the strength of their unity.

On the other hand, mere uniformity can often be free of disagreement. But it is also often free of the power to move toward a goal.

Church history is full of disagreements and conflicts. It can look like 2,000 years of chaos. Sometimes, those disagreements were the needless type which Paul condemns. Other times, they were productive and were God’s way of showing the path forward.

Despite the church’s many failings and sins, the result has been 2,000 years of feeding the poor, educating children, rendering medical care, and infusing all of that with the spiritual peace which comes only from Jesus.

The workings of the church can seem messy, inefficient, and at times doomed to failure. Yet God has used precisely these workings to bestow both temporal and eternal blessings upon people.

Inseparable Unions: Semitic Semantics Reveals God’s Grand and Mysterious Ontologies

Starting with the earliest texts in the Hebrew canon, the concept of the “Word,” spreads into the entire Tanakh (Old Testament), into the New Testament, and into Christian life, theology, and spirituality in general. This rich and fertile concept has shaped the experience of faith, and the life of faith, for several thousand years.

The English word — like its parent, the German Wort — has a relatively specific and small semantic field. It refers to linguistic entities, spoken or written. The Greek logos is somewhat more expansive.

The Hebrew dbr, however, has a semantic field larger by orders of magnitude. This semitic root is capable of referring to things which have no linguistic nature at all. It is necessary therefore to work on expanding the concept of “The Word of God” into something much larger than the English “word” can ever completely circumscribe.

The Semitic root dbr can form a variety of verbs and nouns which equate roughly to “events and things” in English. Thus the “Word of God” is also the “Things of God” and the “Events of God.”

There is in such Hebraic thought no sharp distinction between word and object, in contrast to some schools of modern thought, which see such a distinction as foundational to knowledge. The philosopher Quine titled his book Word and Object, but much of modern philosophy would be more aptly characterized as dealing with “Word or Object.”

In Semitic thought and culture, it is not that dbr can mean word or event. It is that dbr means word and event — both equally and simultaneously. When a Hebrew prophet writes of the “Dbr of the Lord,” he writes of the “Word and Action” of the Lord.

The conjunction and refers here to a co-extensiveness. Where God’s Word is, there also is His action and His events. Commutatively, where God’s action and events are, there also is His word. This gives ground for a fresh consideration of those stock phrases which are used in spiritual life.

When Christians speak of a ministry of “Word and Sacrament,” these are not two separate things like “hammer and nail” or “salt and pepper.” Where the written and preached Word truly is, there also will be Sacraments, and vice-versa.

Likewise, the analysis of “Law and Gospel” does not refer to two separate doctrines, but is one doctrine in itself. The “Law” does not have meaning or existence without the “Gospel,” and the reverse is true as well. Both Law and Gospel are present, and inextricably intertwined with each other, in the very foundational text composed of the first eleven chapters of Genesis.

The Incarnation, so central to Christian thought, articulates Jesus as both God and man, being thoroughly God and thoroughly man, so much so that the post-Resurrection and post-Ascension Jesus is understood to still be fully human and fully divine. The and of the Incarnation is not the and of “ketchup and mustard.”

Because leaving one nation-state entails entering another, every immigration is also an emigration, and vice-versa. This example might shed light: the and of “immigration and emigration” is more similar to the and of “Wine and Blood,” as the communicant receives both, and they cannot be sorted out or separated one from another.

So it is that, continuously throughout the Tanakh, the dbr refers to the “Word of the Lord” and the “Events of the Lord” and the “Things of the Lord” simultaneously and co-extensively throughout. It is not a case of “either/or” but a case of “both/and.”

If the dbr of the Lord is God’s Word, and God’s Things, and God’s Events, then where the dbr is, God Himself cannot be far off. So John writes that “the Word was God.” The Incarnation, so simply phrased as “the Word became flesh,” uses an intransitive verb with two nominative subjects: “Word” and “flesh” are coextensive and simultaneous.

So it was that Semitic philology led Martin Luther to find these key insights in Scripture, as author Frank Seilhamer writes:

This concept of “speech” or “Word of God” being God himself, Luther grasped from his study of the Old Testament. Though not a critical scholar in the modern sense Luther was quite cognizant of the root meanings involved in the terms used by the writers of the Scriptures. He was, therefore, quite careful to point out the implication involved in the Hebrew word dabar used by the writer, or writers, of Genesis that referred to God’s activity in “speaking.” He noted in his commentary on this book that dabar had two meanings. Not only does it mean “Word,” but it also means “thing.”

Man being made in God’s image, there is a similar, but much weaker, connection between a man’s being and a man’s words.

If a man’s character and honor — and in some real ontological sense, his being — are inherent in his words, then how much more so is this principle true of God and His Word!

Frank Seilhamer continues:

Luther was cognizant of the fact that the term therefore implies substance and power, as well as message. When a man “speaks,” dibber, he “makes works.” But this means more than that he makes sounds that convey thoughts or ideas. In the Hebrew mind “words” are messengers that carry not only a man’s thoughts, but his honor, his pledge, his essence. In a real sense his “word” conveys his personality; they are an extension of his personality!

The insight that dbr reveals that God’s Word and God’s Actions and God’s Events are inseparable from one another, and intrinsic in one another, hints at why several key Christian doctrines are formulated as pairs: Law and Gospel, Wine and Blood, Jesus is God and Jesus is man, ministry is Word and Sacrament.

Brokenness vs. Sinfulness — The Difference and Why It Matters

As humans, we are both sinful and broken. This is true of all of us. It is part of the inescapable human condition. Jesus was broken. Jesus was not, and is not, sinful. So it can be seen that these are two different qualities.

This might be a potential definition of brokenness: It is the inescapable effect of living in a fallen world. Jesus is perfect, yet He was impacted by the fallenness of the world. This demands another distinction: the one between sinfulness and fallenness.

We might hypothesize that fallenness is the inclination of the human heart toward sin: its susceptibility to temptation. Human nature as it exists in the post-Fall era is fallen. Jesus is fully human, but possesses the original human nature from the pre-Fall era. Fallenness is the predisposition to sinfulness.

The reader should note that the above-stated attempts at definitions are tentative guesses and not mature positions supported by documentation and argumentation.

These concepts are rattling around in the first few verses of chapter nine in John’s gospel:

As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

So also in chapter thirteen of Luke’s gospel:

There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”

Jesus is confronting our tendency to link suffering — and the brokenness of the world makes suffering ubiquitous, inevitable, and apparently random — to direct moral responsibility. He’s telling us that suffering is often, not always, not the specific result of a specific sin. Humans experience brokenness — financial, physical, emotional — not as a consequence of their sins, but as a consequence of the world’s fallen condition. The experience of brokenness is the result of having been born into a fallen world.

In contemporary idiom, Jesus is warning against “blaming the victim.”

Yet human thought patterns often direct us to do precisely that. Why did that person get cancer? Did he smoke cigarettes, or fail to eat an all-organic non-GMO diet? Why did this person suffer from disabling musculoskeletal pain? Did she exercise too much? Or not enough?

Jesus blends His omniscience with His mercy when he says, “neither.” Neither this man nor his parents.

Our faulty human thinking, in its tendency to subtly blame the victim — and here subtlety is the most damning and the most damaging aspect of this inclination, because it is couched in seemingly pious language with the alleged purpose of comforting, and in its most subtle form, the speaker may not even be aware of what the words logically entail — is itself fallen, and blind both the damage it causes and to the absurdity it requires. For, if some connection is asserted between the sufferer’s misery and sinfulness, then the speaker would have to ask reasonable questions, like, those who need contact lenses, or “lasik” surgery, or eyeglasses — do they experience these things because of their sinfulness? If one has bunions on the feet, or has an allergy to certain foods, do we draw a connection between those conditions and the individual’s sinfulness?

All humans are impacted, in one way or another, by the fact that they were born into a broken world. In working to have compassion for those who suffer, we realize that they differ in degree, not in kind, from those who may have little suffering.

Practical ministry to those in misery must include an assurance that they, like the man born blind, like those on whom the Tower of Siloam fell, did not bring this upon themselves, and are not to be reckoned worse than other people.

There is a connection between sin and suffering. Adam and Eve brought suffering into the world because they chose disobedience. But we have no logical basis from Scripture to say to the suffering person today that her or his actions brought suffering into her or his life.

Adam and Eve are to blame for this world’s fallenness and for the brokenness which works misery in the lives of people. The suffering individual to whom we minister is in no way to blame.

There are those whose actions — whose sins — have brought pain upon themselves. But we must be hesitant to give that diagnosis. Even in cases when it may seem obvious that an individual’s sins have brought suffering upon him or her, we do not know, and we cannot know, all the variables in the individual’s history, and all the unseen and unseeable spiritual forces which have worked and which are working in that indiviual’s life. Hence Christ’s command to visit those in prison with compassion. It may seem obvious that their crimes have landed them in jail, and that they’re getting what they deserve, but only God knows the heart perfectly.

If then we are to treat those in prison with such grace and respect, how much more so those who suffer physical or emotional pain which is in no way a consequence of their actions?

Jesus suffered. Jesus was broken. Jesus experienced the effects of living in a fallen world. Yet Jesus was, and is, sinless. He sets the tone for our ministry to those in misery.

The focus of our ministry is to be compassionate words and compassionate actions. We can admit that we don’t know — we don’t have all the explanations — about why suffering in a particular case has invaded the life of a particular person. We can show that we care about that person. We can serve that person. We can listen to the suffering person. We can give them the valuable gift of our time. That is appropriate ministry to those who suffer.

Jesus Gives An Elevated Status to Human Beings

Among the documented actions and words of Jesus, there are many surprising and puzzling instances. Scholars have been wrestling with these texts for two thousand years, and the perennial questions remain. It is as if Jesus delights in stumping us: He keeps us guessing.

One such text includes His enigmatic comments about His family. This event is recorded in all three synoptic Gospels, but not in John. Luke’s version, in chapter eight, looks like this:

Then his mother and his brothers came to him, but they could not reach him because of the crowd. And he was told, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, desiring to see you.” But he answered them, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.”

One individual, or perhaps a small group of people, come to Jesus with the information that His mother and brothers would like to see Him. Which answer did they expect from Jesus? As a faithful Jew, and a Rabbi, Jesus would have been expected to know not only the obvious commandment (Exodus 20:12, Deuteronomy 5:16, Leviticus 19:3), but rather also the deep attachment between parent and child — and between siblings — which is taught throughout all Scripture: e.g., the devotion which Jacob’s twelve sons show him, and which Joseph shows to his brothers, in the text of Genesis.

This devotion is not weakened by the sins which parents and children commit against each other, or which siblings commit against each other: Jacob’s sons sinned against Jacob by selling Joseph into slavery and then fabricating a deception about Joseph’s alleged death. Jacob sinned against his sons by favoring Joseph and Benjamin over the others. Joseph sinned against his brothers in his arrogance. The brothers sinned against Joseph.

Yet, in all this plentiful sin, the attachment of the children to the parents, and of the siblings to each other, was strong: The brothers are clearly concerned about how Jacob will react to any of the possible outcomes of their trip to Egypt. Joseph is clearly motivated by love toward his brothers.

A variety of words can be used to label this familial love: bond, fondness, duty, tenderness, attachment, devotion, commitment, warmth, loyalty, affection, etc.

Jesus certainly knew all this, and those who brought the message to Him — the message that His mother and brothers were waiting for Him — expected that He would know all this. They probably expected — this is a bit speculative, and methodologically, a little speculation is permissible, especially if it is prudent and informed speculation — that Jesus would react with instinctive affection and reverence for His mother and brothers.

The answer which He gives is indirect. He does not say, “I’ll interrupt what I’m doing now, and greet them.” He also does not say, “I don’t care about them and I’m not interested in them.” Instead, He doesn’t speak directly about them, but rather about His followers.

Given His rabbinic status, He didn’t need to explain that He had a deep affection for His mother and brothers, and His listeners didn’t need it explained to them. That is already an intrinsic part of His Hebrew piety.

Instead, Jesus takes His high regard and deep loyalty to His mother and brothers, and making that a standard reference point, bestows upon His followers a profound compliment: He raises them to the level of His mother and brothers.

In now way is Jesus demoting His family: On the contrary, He is indicating that their centrality in His life is a fixed point, and now has honored His followers by acknowledging them as having the same high status.

It is, in effect, as if He were saying: “My mother and brothers are here, and desire to see Me, and I desire to see them, and My affection for them is great. And now, I also say that My affection for My followers is so great that it has reached the high level of affection which I have for My mother and brothers.”

Matthew offers his account of this event, in chapter twelve, with slightly different wording:

While he was still speaking to the people, behold, his mother and his brothers stood outside, asking to speak to him. But he replied to the man who told him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”

In this text, it is detailed that the message was brought to Jesus by one man. The importance of this small detail will be left to the reader as an exercise.

Jesus responds to the information with a question — most likely, a rhetorical question. He probably didn’t expect a literal answer from the man who brought the message to Him, or from any bystanders. He goes on to answer His own question.

He announces that His followers, at the moment, those present with Him at that place, but in general, all His followers, are being elevated to the status of His family. As if He were saying: “I have such fondness for My disciples, that I am going to raise them to the level of My mother and brothers. My family has always rightly had My highest level of affection, and now I lift My followers to that same high level.”

Jesus is not lowering His mother and brothers; rather, He is promoting His disciples to the level of mother and brothers.

He adds that “whoever does the will of My Father in heaven” has this status. Scripture clearly shows us that on the one hand, His disciples routinely failed to do or say the right things, and on the other hand, there is at least one example in which His family fails to understand who He is, and expresses doubt or skepticism. Therefore, neither His family nor His disciples did “the will of My Father in heaven” completely, perfectly, or consistently. What does He mean?

To be justified in the sight of God — the grammatical passive is important — is to be declared righteous. Jesus is attributing His own perfect actions to His family and to His followers. His family was already among His disciples, and so He completes the logic by placing His disciples among His family. Both in the synoptics and in John, His mother Mary and His brothers are reckoned among the early church: and in the rest of the New Testament as well.

Mark’s account is similar to Matthew’s:

And his mother and his brothers came, and standing outside they sent to him and called him. And a crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers are outside, seeking you.” And he answered them, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.”

Mark’s account has more than one person — “they” — delivering the message to Jesus, in contrast to Matthew’s stipulation of a single messenger. Like Luke, Mark specifies that His mother and brothers arrived, i.e., they were not there by chance; they had made a planned journey, whether it was short or long. They would not have made such a journey unless they had an established and good relationship with Jesus.

What happened immediately after Jesus spoke the words recorded? Taking into consideration other passages both in the synoptics and in John, it is clear that Jesus generally enjoyed a good relationship with His mother and brothers. To be sure, they were not perfect, and did not follow Him perfectly — exactly as the disciples were not perfect. In no way does Jesus attribute superiority to His disciples over His family; in no way does He prefer the company of the one to the company of the other. He has a profound attachment to them both.

It is safe to conclude that, after Jesus was notified that His mother and brothers had arrived, and after He said words in reply — the words recorded in the three synoptics — He then proceeded to meet with them. He did not ignore them; He did not shun them. This can be seen, e.g., in John chapter two:

This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him. After this he went down to Capernaum, with his mother and his brothers and his disciples, and they stayed there for a few days.

Jesus makes the trip from Cana to Galilee “with” His family and disciples. Jesus is an itinerant Rabbi; traveling is His way of life. It seems that this travel was habitually in the company of His family and disciples.

Notice also that the statement that Jesus was traveling with His family is woven into the narrative of the miracle at Cana, including the explicit detail that the disciples “believed in Him.” It is to be concluded that His family also already “believed in Him,” because the family and disciples are blended into one group — the group which traveled from Cana to Capernaum was not segregated: it is one group, with Jesus as the focal point. They traveled together, and “they” stayed in Capernaum.

Jesus in no way downgrades His family. In His words, He first elevates His disciples to the level of His family, and then ceases to distinguish between the two. With His rhetorical question — “Who are my mother and brothers?” — He is in effect saying, “My family is precious and dear to Me,” and He does His disciples the honor of promoting them to the status of family members.

Rhyme, Meter, and Jesus

Poetry is an intrinsic aspect of following Jesus. Certainly, not everyone who follows Jesus is a poet! Nor need they like or study poetry.

In some form, however, poetry is ubiquitous in the faith. Both the Old Testament and the New Testament contain poetry, and in noteworthy quantities.

Outside of the canon of Scripture, poets in various languages, cultures, times, and places have expressed their faith in verse.

But a huge amount of poetry is hiding in plain sight, so to speak, because the lyrics to a worship song - the words of a hymn - are poetry. Many worshippers might answer in the negative if asked about regular encounters with sacred poetry, but those same worshippers might volunteer that great quantities of song fill their worship.

The style of music does not matter - from Gregorian Chant to the Hip-Hop praises of artists like LeCrae and Trip Lee, from Baroque chorales to tobyMac and Hillsong UNITED. Songs have texts, and those texts are poetry.

One aspect of poetry is structure. Some, but not all, poetry rhymes. Most, but not all, poems have some metrical structure. Ancient Hebrew poetry is structured around comparison and contrast of ideas in couplets. Much poetry is built, in some way around sound. It is meant to heard as much as, or more than, it is meant to be visually read.

Because Jesus followers are diverse across languages and cultures, the reader is confronted with poetry which is not in his idiom. The question of translation is one with spiritual significance. How best to render devotional poetry in another language?

Because worship songs and hymnody are used around the globe, translation is often done with an eye toward a musical setting. This requires relatively strict syllable counts and often includes rhymes.

Confining a translation to metrical patterns and rhyme schemes can do violence to faithfully rendering the ideas into another language. One can successfully fit the words into a musical setting, but at the price of misrepresenting the propositional content of the text.

To this end it can be salutary to make or read free-verse translations of sacred verse. A free-verse poem, or a free-verse translation of a poem, has neither rhyme nor meter. These might complement the standard translations of hymns and songs.

On the other hand, one might take Hebrew poetry, e.g., the Psalms, and translate them into structured poetry which has both rhyme and meter. Hebrew poetry has no rhyme, and generally has no meter, although there are some scholars who suggest that it has, in some instances, a subtle form of meter, which is a rhythm more of ideas than of syllables.

In any case, it is good to be aware of what is happening structurally in a poetic text, whether that text is treated as a poem or as a piece of vocal music. In the case of Scripture, poetic texts can often be clearly contrasted to prose, e.g., Mark 1:4-7 are prose, and set apart from Mark 1:2b-3, which is poetry; Mark 1:1-2a are again prose.

Awareness of poetic forms can help the reader to discern meanings. Hebrew poetry is often constructed around couplets, and those couplets often contain parallel meanings. If a line seems ambiguous or mysterious, it can help the reader to know that it may well be echoing the meaning of the preceding line, or foreshadowing the meaning of the following line.

Psalm 88:18 is a clear couplet:

You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me;
my companions have become darkness.

If the reader is unsure of what it means for people to “become darkness” in this context, the preceding line, i.e., the first line of the couplet, reveals that the phrase refers to isolation or ostracism.

The reader would be well advised to consult Robert Lowth’s Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews and George Buchanan Gray’s The Forms of Hebrew Poetry.