Psalms  91:5: “Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; [nor] for the arrow [that] flieth by day;”

night,terror

Matthew 15:2: “Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread.”

I have read a number of commentaries on what they believe the terror by night is.  I go into this with  much more detail  in my book on Psalms 91 but for this little study I will just offer my own take on what I believe the Psalmist is referring to as the terror by the night.

The word terror in the Hebrew is the word pachad.  This carries the idea of a dread or an object of dread. It is something that comes upon you suddenly. The word itself has a built in commentary.  The word is spelled Pei which in its shadow is a reference to being silent out of fear.  You are so terrified you cannot even talk.  The next letter is the Cheth which in its shadow has the idea of becoming incapacitated by fear.  So the word for terror in its esoteric form suggest a fear so great you cannot speak and you become incapacitated.  The final letter is the Daleth which in its positive mode is a doorway to the presence of God and in its shadow is a doorway or portal to the terrors of hell.

I read on the internet where a special forces officer was sent out on a mission to check out some disturbance that was believed to be a threat to the nation.  The internet is the Wild Wild West of the 21^st Century so I am not too sure how much weight to put on this, but according to this special forces officer his team came upon what appeared to be a portal to another dimension.  When he looked through that portal  he said  he saw was the terrors of hell itself.  He commented that as a special forces officer he has seen the worst possible terrors of mankind but what he saw through that open portal was far worse than all the terrors he had seen in is life put together.  I am not saying the story is true but I think that is a good example of the word pachad.

There is an actual phobia know as night terrors which is very common in children.  It affects over 20% of the families in America.  It is an episode where a child becomes extremely scared and frightened.  These episodes could last anywhere from a few minutes up to a half hour.  They are sometimes called nightmares on steroids.

The word night is layil in the Hebrew and means the opposite of the day. It is also a word for gloom.  As a metaphor it has the idea of weeping and suffering.  The word is also used to express the idea of a time of pious desires, prayer praise and meditation all with the idea of warding off the forces of evil.  Practically all cultures associate the night time as a time when evil demonic spirits roam.

Gideon even capitalized on these night fears as he attacked the Midianite army at night.  As a rule armies in ancient times did not fight at night. This was not because they could not see who they were fighting, they could easily torch the area to solve that problem but  they refused to fight at night because they feared the presence of evil spirits.  Even today in the Middle East many soldiers are so superstitious that they will refuse to fight at night. Just like in the days of Gideon, Israel capitalizes on this because they follow the promise of  Psalms 91:5 which tells then that they do not need to fear the terrors of the night and they will carry out covert operations at night.

I know I make a big deal about the Talmud and I am always quoting from it, but there are many many things in the Talmud that I just outright reject, as do many Jews.  The Talmud is the written record of Oral Tradition or what was known in the day of Jesus as the Tradition of the Fathers.  Jesus was always fighting against many of the teachings of the Traditions of the Fathers just as He was always referencing some of the positive things in the Tradition of the Fathers.  In other words Jesus was not throwing out the baby with the bath water but he was attacking those areas that violated the Torah or the Holy Scriptures.

A perfect example of this is Matthew 15 where the Pharisees accused Jesus of violating the Tradition of the Fathers by not instructing His disciples to wash their hands before eating bread.  This had nothing to do with good hygiene.   The Tradition of the Fathers, as found in the present day Talmud, took the Scriptures like Deuteronomy 18:10-12 declaring that consulting familiar spirits, necromancy, enchanting and witchcraft were an abomination to God and twisted them around to make it actually permissible as found in Sanhedrin 65a-b.   They actually cited the very Scriptural passage and reversed it presenting the idea that it was ok to call up demons or spirits to come to your aid with sorcery as this is not idolatry since the demons were not being worshipped.  Yeah, I know, bad Talmud and I agree.  Not only that Jesus also agreed this was not good and in fact a violation of the law of Moses.  This is what Jesus was blasting the Pharisees about in Matthew 15.  The Tradition of the Fathers/Talmud teaches that at night the demons will overcome a person when sleeping and when he awakes the demonic spirit moves into one’s hands and the tips of his fingers (really, I’m not making this up).  I was taught that the demons live in water and love water (remember the pigs that Jesus sent the demons into and they ran off a cliff into water?). So the sages taught that you needed to pour water over their hands three times to wash the demons away, especially before eating you wanted to wash any remnants of the demons away before you pass the demon to your bread and then ingest the demons.  I know, crazy, but remember they had no concept of microbes in those days so when a person got sick after eating they just assumed a demon got into him. The Pharisees explained every ill as something demonic which today we know as simply a virus or a microbe. Thus their Tradition of the Fathers observed that a person who washed his hands before eating did not come down with an illness so they assumed remnants of the demons were in your hands and you needed to sprinkle water over your hands and since the demons prefer water over a physical body you will in fact wash out the demons.  Actually, if we were to insert the word demon for microbes and viruses, you could understand how a primitive culture would come to associate the effects of microbes to demons.  I honestly do not know of any Jew who buys into this, but it was really popular among the Pharisees in Jesus’s day.

So in Matthew 15 Jesus is blasting the Pharisees for twisting the commandments of God around to the point where they were breaking the commandments and then accusing Jesus of breaking the Tradition of the Fathers which was violating the commandments.  And you thought some of our fringe religious teachings today are crazy.  Jesus really had His hands full.

This brings us to the terrors of the night.  I believe it is a reference to demonic activity or the fear of demonic activity and the promise of this Psalm is that we don’t need to fear even the demons of hell if we are safely wrapped in the shadow of His wings.  We are safely covered by the blood Jesus and we have no reason to fear any demonic activity.