Today I corrected the error in yesterday’s post, however, its
presence (in connection with the correction) does not diminish the
importance of the topic and its elaboration. See the corrected version
at the link:
01032023.html
The key idea of today’s reading is the pride of
men will be humbled, and the Lord will be exalted
at God’s judgment. If
compared with the Gospel, in particular regarding what is written at the
link:
https://www.facebook.com/Oleksandr.S.Zhabenko/
then it becomes clear that now the Lord is long-suffering and lovingly
waits for our (all humanity) approach to Him, at the same time, people
tend to overestimate their achievements. But this does not mean that
everything from the humans is bad, or that every human value is ghostly,
illusory, pretended, unreal, exaggerated. Just not. But what is really
pretended, what is false, untrue, not from God – everything will be
judged and none of it will stand in court. And everything good will
persist and be glorified.
It is also an important place for at least one other reason — to
better understand what is the subject of people’s pride and
self-aggrandizement. In fact, almost any creation can be – it just needs
certain features of it for people to consider it high
. Such
considerations lead to the idea that idolatry is possible not only in
obvious paganism, but also everywhere where the creation begins to
replace
the Creator.
It is important to see again the multifacetedness of the prophecy - because the fact that people will throw away their idols concerns only this age, not the eternal future – that is, it also refers to the First Coming of Christ, which has already happened in humility, but also in truth and also judges sin through the truth of the Gospel, through the gifts of grace, through all God’s economy, God’s Church building.
Yesterday I made a mistake, today I corrected it,
see the updated text with the information added:
01032023.html
Today’s reading describes Paradise, as well as man’s first steps
in
Paradise, before the creation of Eve. As I already mentioned, the
gradualness can be due to the importance of relationships and
communication in general for a person, and in particular due to the
importance of them with God.
The verses of Genesis II, 4-6 are very similar to a geological description of the epochs that preceded the appearance of human, if only to understand that in the time of Moses there was no real knowledge of the atmospheric mixture of various gases, including oxygen and water vapor, but to describe the process of changing the composition atmosphere for the readers of that time was possible realistically and visually only in connection with atmospheric phenomena, in particular rain, as well as changes under the ground – related to springs.
The following, on the breath of life and the living soul, are
extremely profound, and have no parallels so distinct in all Scripture,
and are therefore all the more important. in the face
– literally in
the nostrils
, that is, the openings through which breathing occurs.
A very symbolic description of the emergence of man’s eternal soul is
as if the breath of God (which is not actually God, but comes from Him),
which is life, that is, the source of life as a value, as such, passing
through the narrow bodily nostrils of a person’s face (connection with
hypostasis, personality), as if humanized
, takes the form
of a
person’s respiratory tract and becomes his / her (here, in particular,
Adam’s, but for everyone it is the same) own source of life – his / her
own soul. This is immaterial breathing, and the description is
completely physical
, physiological
. We can say, therefore, that the
text is a symbol that points to the eternal intelligent soul, but also
to the connection with God.
Also important is the poem in Ukrainian at the link, dedicated to the
theme of the soul (dedicated to a person I know, regarding her
birthday).
https://www.facebook.com/Oleksandr.S.Zhabenko/
After the creation of man (in today’s text, only Adam), he was
settled by God in Paradise, in Eden (translated as pleasant
).
Again the multi-layeredness of the text is evident, as it is known
that physical rivers never divide, but can only merge. The fact that the
one paradise river was divided into 4 rivers again indicates its
immateriality
to a certain extent, perhaps it is like God’s care for
the pure earth in general, inflates its waters
.
An interesting detail is that the rivers flow in the lands that are
distant neighbours of Israel’s territories — that is, in fact, Moses
includes
the neighboring lands in the areas of Paradise.
A kind of
invitation and love for guests, hospitality.
Names to animals are given by human, not by God – also a very deep
text (for example, according to ancient ideas, knowing someone’s name
meant having a certain power
, so naming names could be said to be a
manifestation of human as the crown of creation). Elsewhere in
Scripture, it says that God knows each star by name (where a star can
mean a cosmic object, an angel, or even more figuratively – everything
and everyone who can have a meaningful name).
Another interesting point – Adam did not need to learn God’s names for creation – that is, the process of natural knowledge in Paradise was blessed by God and (hu)man was called to it by God Himself. And it is also important that a person had to cultivate Paradise and take care of it – that is, to live in harmony with nature, fruitfully interacting with it.
See also:
16032023.html
(Added on 2023-03-16 09:59 PM EET).
Many important and profound instructions.
I will dwell only on Proverbs III, 11 – Son, do not neglect the
Lord’s punishment and do not get weaker when you are punished by Him.
Actually: 1) do not pretend that nothing happened (do not devalue), do
not be inattentive, indifferent, remember the important things – in
particular, study the lessons of history, preserve memory; 2) let any
sad events not discourage, demotivate in the pursuit of God, in the
desire for good, truth and beauty, let them not cause despair, loss of
hope and love.
Can every sad event be considered God’s punishment?
If a person sees the direct connection of events with the violation
of God’s will, His commandments, with spiritual decay, sees that sad
events are caused by earlier sins, then in his / her eyes these events
can really be seen as God’s punishment
. In order to give good advice
to such a person in his / her condition, Solomon speaks to him / her
with these words.
In the Gospel, Christ reveals the topic more deeply, there is a part
of it in a nice essay at the link:
https://www.facebook.com/Oleksandr.S.Zhabenko/
Many people understand that God’s permission in the Old Testament is
often called God’s will, so that even what God does not want, but
allows, can be called God’s
in the Old Testament.
More on this topic can be found at the link:
https://oleksandr-zhabenko.github.io/en/DialogueOnWordsChristFear.html
teaches… and punishes
– according to the contemporary understanding
of education, punishment was a necessary part of education (this is how
people of that time differ from modern ones). In fact, the point is that
you need to be able to learn a lesson
from everything and be able to
see the educational value of various events.
Glory be to Thee, our God, glory be to Thee!