HEBREW WORD STUDY – REMEMBRANCE WITH A PURPOSE  – ZACAR – זכר Zayin Kap Resh 

Ecclesiastes 2:16: “For [there is] no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool forever; seeing that which now [is] in the days to come shall all be forgotten. And how dieth the wise [man]? as the fool.”

“I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”  The Wasteland  T.S. Eliot

When I was teaching literature in high school I often gave a homework assignment for my students to try and figure out just what T.S.Eliot meant when he said: “I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”   It drove them crazy.  High school teachers can really be sadistic at times. The truth is that no one is really sure what T.S. Eliot meant but when I interpret this from a Christian context I see something a little different than many of my literature professors saw.  I saw that the Bible teaches that man is simply made from the dust of the ground. Dust is a reference to death and what I believe T.S. Eliot was saying was that man’s greatest fear is not dying but dying unremembered.

I was also a drama teacher in High School and we put on the play, Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.  Charles Dickens was also required reading in my literature classes. I tried to help my students understand the heart and soul of Charles Dickens, I tried to get them to look beyond the story of a man getting his head chopped off in Tale of Two Cities and understanding what Charles Darnay meant at the end of the book when he stood before the guillotine and said, “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”  As with any high school class, I had varying degrees of success. Hopefully, I will be more successful with you.

You see, when you examine the life of Charles Dickens you find a close resemblance to Charles Darnay, in fact, Charles Darnay sounds an awful lot like Charles Dickens. Dickens related to Charles Darnay as he did with Scrooge. Do you ever wonder about the ending to a Christmas Carol?.  An elderly man who will soon die just from old age is reformed when he sees his gravestone and realizes he is going to die.  There is a reoccurring theme all throughout the works of Charles Dickens and that is not the fear of death, but dying alone, having no one to weep for them when they die. 

Man has this knowledge that he will one day die and knowing he cannot escape death he struggles to build a legacy so he will be remembered.  At some point in our lives we wake up and realize that the hourglass is running out of sand, the train is pulling into the last stop and so we begin to evaluate our lives and wonder if our life here on earth had any real value at all. 

King Solomon faced the same struggle and yet he realized in Ecclesiastes 2:16 that both the wise and the fool will not be remembered. Odd, after almost 3,000 years later we do remember Solomon.  He has not been forgotten.  There are many historical figures that are not forgotten.   Taking a close look at this word remembrance reveals something very deep about Solomon. Something we all realize. The word for remembrance is zachar.  This word does mean to remember, to call to mind.  But Solomon says that there is no remembrance of a wise man, yet we remember him. To put this in a proper context we need to look at the Semitic root where this word is used for a recalling to mind for a present feeling or thought, a remembrance for a purpose. We remember events of history to learn from history so we do not repeat the mistakes of history.  We remember a person, a loved one for a purpose, to bring us comfort or to call to mind things that they taught us.  I don’t think Solomon was talking about people remembering him or us after we die, but that in eternity, whatever we accomplish in an earthly materialistic sense is not going to amount to a hill of beans in eternity

Charles Dickens, T.S. Eliot pointed us to one of the most misdirected motivations of mankind, wanting to be remembered after we die when in reality, it will no longer matter to that person after he is gone.  The only thing that will matter is how much time we spent on earth getting to know the One we will spend eternity with. 

Every time I see a funeral go by I wonder just how many cars will be lined up for my funeral. Not many, I am sure. Fifty years from now no one will remember Chaim Bentorah, but fifty years from now I will be remembering stories of God’s faithfulness and love with people who are in heaven because of something God used Chaim Bentorah to say, do or write. That is what zachar remembrance is all about, what will be remembered in eternity.