HEBREW WORD STUDY – WRATH – ‘AVAR עבר Ayin Beth Resh
Zephaniah 1:18: “Neither their silver nor their gold will be able to deliver them in the day of the Lord’s wrath. But the whole land will be devoured by the fire of his jealousy.”
There was a conference in France for a large number of international engineers. During a break, one of the European engineers came into the room and announced: “Have you heard the latest dumb stunt by the United States? They sent an aircraft carrier to Indonesia to help the tsunami victims. What do they intend to do, bomb them?
A Boeing engineer stood up and calmly replied: “Our carriers have three hospitals on board that can treat several hundred people, they are nuclear powered and can supply emergency electrical power to shore facilities; they have three cafeterias with the capacity to feed 3,000 people three meals a day, they can produce several thousand gallons of fresh water from sea water each day, and they carry half a dozen helicopters for use in transporting victims and injured to and from their flight deck. We have eleven other such ships stationed throughout the world ready to offer similar humanitarian assistance. A reporter said the room got very quiet.
Sure our military is trained for war and they are fighting a war in the Middle East, at least a small contingent of our military. We hear little of the other wars our military is fighting which is a much bigger picture. Our military wages war against piracy, smuggling, drugs, and human trafficking. We have a number of hospitals ships that in one year treated over 1 million non-military, non-Americans throughout the world. They built schools, provided protection and security to the defenseless and we can go on and on. Humanitarian aid is a key component to the U.S. military. Never in the history of the world has a world-class military force devoted so much time and effort to humanitarian aid. Yet, few in the world and even in this country realize this. That is because we don’t use this for propaganda, and very few people in the world bother to look beyond the surface. Thus, people see a warship and a powerful military, but without further information, they would never realize that the majority of our military is involved in humanitarian pursuits.
I mention this not to be political or wave the American flag (I realize many of my readers do not live the States) these are just facts that I found online. I mean I didn’t even realize our military engaged is some much humanitarian work. I mention this only to illustrate how the Old Testament suffers a similar lack of understanding. To most people, the Old Testament is a book of God’s wrath and anger. I have heard preachers condemn the Old Testament as a book filled with provincialism, elitism, tribalism, every nasty “ism” except communism and we all know who fathered that.
Yet, the love and mercy of God is mentioned many more times than the wrath of God. And just what is this wrath and jealousy of God? Just our surface understanding of the Old Testament leads us to see God as a warmonger killing innocent people by the thousands, yea, millions. Just as the appearance of an American aircraft carrier strikes immediate thoughts of war and destruction.
Zephaniah 1:18 is a good example of reading a verse in the Old Testament and jumping to the conclusion that God is a God that will strike you down if you don’t watch your step. “Neither gold nor silver will deliver one from God’s wrath.” Wrath, ooh that sounds bad. Let’s look at that word wrath. In the Hebrew it is avar. You can render ‘avar as wrath if you wish, but our English word wrath has little to do with the Hebrew word. This word is the same word used for passing over. Its Semitic origins come from a river that overflows it banks. It has the idea of going beyond your borders. In other words, God’s wrath is anytime He goes beyond The normal boundaries that He has set up. It doesn’t have to mean anger or rage as we think of as wrath. It could be that He is forced to do something He does not want to do.
I read where the average police officer will rarely pull his gun during his entire career. Rarer still will he actually fire his gun at someone. Many will go their whole career without firing their gun at a suspect. If he does, that is ‘avar.
Not to say the wrath of God encompasses anger and fiery rage, you can believe that if you wish, it would not be an incorrect translation. I am just saying that I find no rational reason to translate it as such. I prefer to translate it as God acting like a police officer who is forced to use His gun, it goes beyond the way He normally deals with man
‘avar, there are just those rare occasions when He must resort to using his gun to protect the innocents. We like to think and believe when a police officer fires his gun he is not doing it in anger or in a rage, he is only doing it to protect innocent life. If the internal investigation reveals he did it in a rage or anger, it would not go well for that officer.
Can we not give God the same consideration?
What about the word jealousy in this verse. I will pick up on that tomorrow.
Recent Comments