Hebrew Word Study – Grow Old – Bilah   בלח  Beth Lamed Hei

Lamentations 3:4 “My flesh and my skin hath he made old, he hath broken my bones.”

“Why not? They are the only ones who can take it.”  C.S. Lewis when asked why the righteous suffer.

Tradition ascribes the Book of Lamentations to Jeremiah who wrote this book just as Judah fell to the Babylonians.  If anyone takes a trip to Israel your tour guide may take you to the cave where Jeremiah lived while writing the Book of Lamentations.  Perhaps that is true, but chapter 3 is more of a personal reflection than a lament over Judah.  Where he should have been rejoicing over the fact that his prophecies have proven true, it was, after all, his home and homeland that has fallen.  There was no joy in this vindication.

One thing I can say for sure, God will never be sued for false advertisement. He clearly points out in his word that the righteous will suffer and it is through those fires that we are purified as gold.

The Council of Nicaea in 325 AD seems to have entered popular conversation today, particularly since the publishing of the Da Vinci Code. The book and the movie are very historically inaccurate. The Council of Nicaea in 325 did not canonize Scripture or establish the church structure as indicated in the Da Vinci Code. Nor did it venerate Mary. It did establish a date for Easter and a couple of other minor things.  But the major accomplishment of the Council of Nicaea was to just confirm (not establish) the deity of Jesus.  It did establish the Nicean Creed which is still our statement of faith and belief in the fact that Jesus Christ is God incarnate, born of a virgin who died for our sins on the cross and rose from the dead.   

I do not believe there was anything evil that took place in the Council of Nicaea, there were no hidden agendas or political maneuverings.   I call as my witnesses 306 of the 318 delegates who attended the Council of Nicaea. Constantine issued an invitation to 1,800 bishops throughout Europe and only 318 showed up.  These were not the beautifully robed, pompous, king-like leaders that we would picture.   Actually, we are dealing with a  period just twelve years after the Edict of Milan (313). The Edict of Milan ended the horrendous persecution of Christians under the Roman Emperors. These 318 bishops who attended the Council of Nicaea were survivors of this persecution.   

Of these 318 delegates, 306 were missing one or more of their physical limbs, (arms, hands, legs, feet, or eyes).   All bore physical evidence of the torture they endured for refusing to deny their faith in Jesus Christ.  They boldly traveled to Nicaea to declare to the new emperor and to confirm their common belief that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, born of a virgin who died on the cross for our sins and rose from the dead.  That was the first order of business and it was that which was established as the foundation of the church.   These delegates clung to this belief at great sacrifice and personally witnessed friends and family who died clinging to this belief. 

If I cannot endure suffering, then these bishops who attended the First Council of Nicaea had something that I do not have.

Jeremiah states in Lamentations 3;4 that “He” makes my flesh grow old and “He’ breaks my bones.  That “He” is referring to God.  The word old is a verb bilah which is in a Piel perfect form.  Hence it would more appropriately be rendered as “waste away in terror.” I read a news article that talked about the stress of the Presidential office.  It showed pictures of various presidents before and after office. Not only did they appear much older at four or eight years their hair had turned almost 50% grey.  All the Presidents pictured show tremendous signs of aging after a couple of years in office (except Reagan and Trump who somehow looked like Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray).  It is a common belief that the stress of the office ages a person.   That is bilah in a Piel form.  Jeremiah aged before his time due to the stress he was under in the office of a prophet.

We also learn that God broke his bones. The word for a break is shavar but if you look in your Hebrew Bible you will see a dot inside the Beth of that word.  That and the seghol under the Shin, puts the word into a Piel perfect form. God did not just break his bones, but “painfully” broke his bones. Under torture breaking, bones can be made a lot more painful than breaking a bone during an athletic event. 

Did God inflict a painful breaking of Jeremiah’s bones, did He painfully break the bones of the 318 delegates to the Council of Nicaea?   In a sense, yes.  By choosing to believe in and love God, these men suffered great affliction.  Had they not chosen God, they could have enjoyed a peaceful life. Yet, had they chosen the path of less resistance, they may have ended up like Dorian Gray.

Elizabeth Clephane wrote the following poem and dedicated it to St, Christopher.  It could have been dedicated as well the to 318 members of the Council of Nicaea and Jeremiah.  I pray that I too can claim these words.

I take O’ cross thy shadow

For my abiding place,

I ask no other sunshine,

Than the sunshine of your face,

Content to let the world go by

To know no gain nor loss

My sinful self, my only shame.

The glory all the cross.

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