HEBREW WORD STUDY – YOUR CONSCIENCE – ‘ANAH ענה Ayin Nun Hei

Psalms 119:67-71: “Before I was afflicted I went astray: but now have I kept thy word. (68)

David is telling us that before he suffered affliction he went astray. Actually, the word astray is shogeg. Astray sounds so serious like he was backsliding. But shogeg really means to just err or make a mistake. Moreover, it is making an error unintentionally. This is in a participial form and should be rendered as: “Before I was afflicted I was making mistakes.” What type of mistakes is he talking about? In the following verses, we learn that this involves the laws of God, His statutes.

Let’s face it, as believers in Jesus Christ we want to please Him. Sometimes we just guess wrong and we end up doing something that is not pleasing to God. That is where his statutes come in. Paul speaks of the laws as a schoolmaster or guide Galatians 3:24. Something to help us please God and do what is right. David studied the law day and night, he found delight in the law of God, Psalms 1. Yet here is David saying he still made errors and mistakes in his judgment.

For instance, we are to keep the Sabbath day holy and not do any work on the Sabbath. That is straightforward enough but what happens if your ox falls in the mud or a more modern problem your car or trailer lands in a ditch. It will be work getting it out and it is the Sabbath after all, do you wait until Monday to pull it out?

I remember as a child my father was the most devoted man to God that I knew. He lived his life wanting to please God in everything he did and said. He also loved fishing and camping. One day he bought a camper. It was a fold-out tent in a trailer, not exactly an RV but my father was excited as a little kid on his birthday. There was a problem. My father was a milkman who owned his own route. He worked six days a week except, of course, on Sunday. He could not just take off of work to go camping. The only way he could take off of work was to hire what they called a “skipper.’’ He would pay him a day’s wages to run his route so he could have the day off. Well, my poor father spent so much money on the trailer he could not afford a skipper to take some time off to try out his new trailer. My father struggled with a decision. He reasoned that the sabbath was a day of rest. How much more restful than to spend the Sabbath camping. He and our family would skip church and leave Saturday afternoon and spend the Sabbath camping, fishing, and resting. It was anything but restful. Saturday night a big storm came through and turned our camping spot into a big mud hole where it took us half the day to push out the trailer stuck in a ditch. All the time my father was saying: “It is because we did not go to church that he happened.” Before he was afflicted he went astray or shogeg, made an error in understanding God’s law.

Do you know what I think? The affliction was not getting stuck in the mud. My father was an outdoorsman, he grew up on a farm. He pushed many a cart, car, trailer out of the mud. Of course, on this occasion, he did not get to fish as much as he wanted but we did enjoy a fish dinner that evening. No, getting stuck in the mud was just part of the camping game, it was not an affliction it was something else. It was that feeling of guilt that maybe he made a mistake by skipping church.

The word for affliction is ‘anah which can mean affliction but it is really more generally used for answering or responding, testifying and/or humbling. This is not affliction like suffering pain or torment. It is afflicting like being humiliated or humbled. You see my father’s really affliction was being humbled. When he made this mistake of taking his family camping rather than to church he realized what a poor example he was setting or his children. Never again did my father miss church. If we were on vacation, he made sure we found a church to attend. I mean my perfect attendance Sunday School pin had so many bars for each year of perfect attendance on it that it would have weighed an older man down. The muddy experience was only to humble my father and make him realize the mistake he made with his children. His affliction was his conscience, the testimony that came to him while pushing the trailer out of the mud.

Affliction is not an English word I would use here for ‘anah. I would add a word for it to modify which would be the word conscience. The word before is terem which means prior to. In other words, I would not render this as: “Before I was afflicted I went astray…” but I believe a more telling rendering is; “Prior to my conscience being afflicted I was making an error.” I remember watching The Wonderful World of Disney with my parents on television when I was just a small child. I barely remember some of the cartoons and stories, but one thing does stand out in my mind and that was Jimmy Cricket singing; “Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide.”

You know what? I think that is what David is saying in this verse. When we have to decide whether to go camping or to church, let your conscience, that part of you that God gave you to understand right from wrong, be your guide.

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