In-Depth Study – The Charam Principle 

Isaiah 34:2: “For the indignation of the LORD is upon all nations, and his fury upon all their armies: he hath utterly destroyed them, he hath delivered them to the slaughter.”

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On Thursday, October 19, 2023, on our All Access Subscription Learning Channel, we will have a live class where we will continue to further develop this understanding of the Charam Principle in relationship to Genesis 12:3 and what it means to bless Israel and to curse Israel. Consider joining us in our growing online community. Hope to see you there www.HebrewWordStudy.com (click on blue link to join) Chaim & Laura

Johnathan Edwards lived from 1703-1758. He was a theologian, intellectual, and an evangelist. After he graduated from Yale University and Divinity School, he traveled around the world as an evangelist. He is credited with ushering in the Great Awakening in 1733. He pastored churches, preached, and lectured throughout the United States, Canada, and Great Britain.  A real anointed of God evangelist who brought many into the Kingdom of God.  He is one of my heroes of the faith as he is for many in the Evangelical community. 

He eventually became the third president of Princeton University in 1758 succeeding his son-in-law Aaron Burr who was the grandson of the Aaron Burr who became vice president of the United States.  Edwards was a regular Dr. Fauci who advocated for the smallpox vaccine and encouraged others to take the vaccine took it himself in 1758 and according to medical records died of smallpox shortly thereafter.  Well, let’s face it, no one is perfect. I say that to indicate that we often so glorify our heroes that we think they are infallible.  Following the science did not always work in those days like today. To many people, it was crazy talk to take a vaccine with a live virus to prevent getting the virus which is what the early smallpox vaccine was and is the basis of our immunizations today only we use a dead virus.  The idea is that once you have the virus you build immunity.  Johnathan Edwards was so revered as a man of God that the intellectual community convinced him he would save hundreds, yea thousands of lives if he took the vaccine as others would follow his example because he was so revered and honored. Well, shows how that played out.  Although I greatly admire Jonathan Edwards and his achievements, he did have feet of clay as we all do and not everything he did was perfect and he is open to question as we all are. 

Something I question is his most famous sermon delivered on July 8, 1741, at the age of 38 entitled: Sinners In The Hands of An Angry God.   This sermon has become the poster child for our fire and brimstone preachers today although it was not delivered with the force, terror, horror, and alarming delivery used by our modern-day preachers. Johnathan Edwards was a soft-spoken, gentle, compassionate orator and his words would not carry the horror that a more animated preacher would deliver. Also, the word angry did not carry the same emotional impact as it does today. Three hundred years ago the word angry was not always used to express hostility as it does today, but it was often used to express a strong annoyance and/or displeasure.  Although to be fair preachers have scared a lot of people into salvation, however, I find it hard to believe in a God who gets so angry and irrational over someone breaking one of his rules that he would destroy them at a moment’s notice. 

I once heard a preacher preach on the love of God and say; “You have nothing to be afraid of with God —— but you had better be afraid of God.” Anger has a way of creating fear and if God can get angry with us then He is creating fear in us and it is that fear that drives us to get our act together and get in line with the Ten Commandments. But then how do we bring that in line with I John 4:18: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.” The word fear in Greek is phobos where we get on modern English word phobia. Phobos has the idea of withdrawing from something out of fear of the consequences.  In the Aramaic, the word is dachalatha’ from the root word dachal which is the same root for the word used for scarecrows.  A scarecrow is a non-living object that is frightening to birds and causes them to avoid entering the cultivated area surrounding the scarecrow to feed on the seeds and grain that are growing there. In other words, dachal carries the same idea as phobos, which is something that creates fear causing you to avoid something. It is not a bad fear, but a fear to protect oneself.

For example, why should we fear death?  After all the promise of a heavenly home with streets of gold, pearly gates, mansions, and eternal peace can be quite inviting compared to the daily drudge of this physical life.  Think of it, no more pain, no more anxiety, no more worries over the next presidential election, all would be at peace and harmony.  What keeps someone from grabbing the first train out of this world? There is a natural dachal that God puts into the human being. A fear of death. In light of a heavenly home, it is an unreasonable fear, but it is there nonetheless. Had God not put that dachal – fear in us we would have jumped out of this life at the first hint of trouble and never fulfilled the purpose for which God put us in this natural world in the first place.  

Dachal fear is what makes skydiving so exhilarating. I had a student who was an Airborne Ranger and he told me how he loved jumping out of an airplane with a parachute.  I asked why and he said that his jump master told him not to worry and that the parachute will open 99.9% of the time, but when he got to the door of that airplane looking down at the ground that was two miles away he could not help but think: “What if my parachute is that one-tenth of one percent.” He went on to explain that you are suddenly filled with that sense of terror but when you jump there is that exhilarating feeling, the rush of adrenaline that creates an unbelievable high.” Then there is that feeling of joy and satisfaction of overcoming your fear of heights.  Dachal is not a bad thing as it is a warning against danger as well as a means of great elation when you overcome it.

Perfect love casts out all fear.  The word cast out in Greek exo for outside and ballei for cast away, in other words, perfect love causes you to cast all your fears outside, a picture of tossing them away from you and any influence on you. In Aramaic, it is the word shua which means to expel, throw out, eject, and/or excommunicate.  It is to have no contact or communication at all with fear.  Perfect love, the love of God which is perfect expels, throws out, ejects, or excommunicates all dachal from you. This word is in a Pael form. It is used in this verse as an active participle. Like the Hebrew Piel, Pael intensifies a verb.  Hence this is not just casting away, it is totally eliminating all fears. The context of this verse is speaking of death and the perfect love of God will totally eliminate all your fears of death.  

At this point, most of us have not yet experienced that perfect love of God, that chav love that reaches the level of racham, a love we can only know when our spirit is released from this sinful, corrupt body.  But as we draw closer to the racham through the perfection of chav, that fear of death starts to disappear until we reach that moment when God decides to take us home where chav turns into racham and we experience that exhilaration, joy euphoria of being released from all fears, a moment the Jews call the Divine Kiss. 

There is a word in Hebrew that is related to racham, that perfect heavenly love that we can only know when our spirits leave our bodies. It is the word charam.  It is spelled with the same consonants as racham but the Resh and Cheth in racham exchange places to form Charam.  Racham is spelled Resh Cheth Mem and charam is spelled Cheth Resh Mem. The Resh in racham that perfect love of God represents repentance that leads to the Cheth which is a new beginning by bonding with God, living in His presence in eternity.  However, in charam you exchange the Resh which in its shadow is self-righteousness for the Cheth which is arrogance, refusing to repent, and binding yourself with God.  The result will be total and utter destruction. 

Both words end with a closed Mem which represents the hidden knowledge of God.  It is not until that final moment in this world that we either experience the eternal complete joy of racham which is hidden from us now or that charam total and utter destruction which is hidden from those who arrogantly refuse to repent. 

Therein lies this principle of charam. Utter destruction.  Our study verse teaches in Isaiah 34:2: “For the indignation of the LORD is upon all nations, and his fury upon all their armies: he hath utterly destroyed them, he hath delivered them to the slaughter.” The word anger in Hebrew here is qetseph which Rabbis Samson Hirsch, a nineteenth-century linguist and Hebrew master teaches is a word used for frustration over failure to live up to one’s expectations.  Some translations render this as anger, wrath, or rage.  However, I side with Rabbi Hirsch who takes an earlier understanding of anger as more of a frustration over His creation not living up to His expectations. 

In Genesis 6, we have an account of a generation that failed to live up to God’s expectations and as a result, He sent a flood to wipe out the entire population, except for one fellow named Noah and his family. Noah lived up to God’s expectations of righteousness. It was 120 years from the time God gave the command for Noah to start building the ark to the day the rains started.  God gave the world 120 years to repent, to turn from their evil ways. When the time came for the flood Noah’s only converts were his family. The rest were beyond any hope of turning from their evil.  

Paul shares with us this knowledge in Romans 1:18-32: “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, (18) since what may be known about God is plain to them because God has made it plain to them. (19) For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. (21) For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. (22) Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools (23) and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal human beings and birds and animals and reptiles. (24) Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. (25)They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. (26) Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. (27)“In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men and received in themselves the due penalty for their error. (28) Furthermore, since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, He gave them up to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. (29) They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, (30) slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant, and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents;(31) they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. (32) Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.” 

I felt it necessary to recite the entire passage as this is the basis for the principle of charam, total and utter destruction.  We have recently seen evil revealed in the Middle East. Hamas will not negotiate, they will not accept even a divided state of Israel and Palestine.  Their stated purpose is to wipe the Jews from the face of the earth.  They want only to kill the Jewish people.  I saw a clip where a reporter interviewed children from an elementary school in Palestine and they responded to the reporter’s question about the Jewish people by saying they want to kill them, they are willing to be suicide bomber to kill Jews, they believe they are serving God by killing the Jewish people, they look forward to the day they will be old enough to go to war against the Jews.  We have seen pictures of Hamas decapitating and burning babies, killing innocent people and citizens, children, and the elderly. Pure evil.  

This is no different than the time before the flood when God instituted the charam principle. They were given 120 years to repent and after 120 years God knew their hearts and knew they would never repent. Rather than allow them to continue their existence on earth and turn another generation to evil he destroyed the earth. 

Humankind still continued to embrace evil even after the flood. In my doctorial research in Biblical Archeology, I studied early civilizations and warfare.  Hamas has nothing on the ancients when it came to evil.  The cruelty and inhumane torture of human beings and disregard for God’s creation make Hamas look like choir boys. 

God showed his patience.  According to the Apostle Paul, God revealed Himself throughout his creation, they had no excuse, they had the opportunity to turn to God. But they arrogantly continued in their evil ways, refusing to acknowledge God. As a result, God gave them up to their desires and passions.  

The word in Greek for gave them up is paredoken from the root word paradidomi which means to commit or surrender to, to abandon. God simply backed away, withdrew his Spirit from them, and left them to face the consequences of their evil ways. In Genesis 6:3: “And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be a hundred and twenty years.” Note in the Hebrew God uses the word ‘amar for said. This is not an expression of his heart, it is not His heart’s desire, He has no choice, it is something He must do.  The word for strive in Hebrew is din which means to convict, to plead, or to try to convince someone of something. It is a legal term used for an advocate pleading the case for another. A person will not come to God without the convicting power of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit that reveals one’s need for repentance. However, there comes a time when the Holy Spirit is so grieved that He will abandon the person to his own lust and desires and no longer plead with him to repent.  We often refer to this as the unpardonable sin. It is literally when someone in their heart tells the Holy Spirit to just leave them alone, they will do what they want to do and have no intention of repenting. 

It is at this point that God institutes His charam principle that leads to total and utter destruction. In some cases, the person’s own sinful ways eventually take their lives. In other cases where it appears as if such persons, people, or nation continue to live in this world and they will cause others to turn away from God they must be removed. 

We read of God commanding Israel to totally destroy everything when they conquered a city or nation.  Everything meant every man, woman, child, livestock, and possessions. As we have witnessed with Hamas, even the children devote themselves to evil, the women continue in their ways of occult practices, and livestock and possessions have been turned over to the evil one. All had to be utterly charam, destroyed so as not to corrupt God’s people, those who have a possibility of repentance. God provided a way to escape the charam.  In Jericho, Rahab and her family were spared because she acknowledged God.  In battle, Joshua was commanded to only surround three walls to allow for an escape of those who chose to acknowledge God.  So long as there is a hope of repentance, God will keep the door open but if there is no hope, God will abandon them to their lustful desires and if they are in danger of causing the righteous to turn away from God, God will have to remove them from this earth. As shown in the flood, by the time Noah entered the ark, the entire world was corrupted to the point that God had to abandon them and institute his charam. 

Sodom and Gomorrah faced God’s charam.  Abraham plead with God to spare the cities if there were even ten righteous people and God agreed that even if there were ten (the number equal to Lots wife, daughters, and husbands) he would spare them.  But once the ten were spared, the cities and all its inhabitants were toast. 

The Charam principle sounds like God is being heartless, cruel, and brutal but I believe after what we have seen happen to Israel in the past few days, the brutal, heartless slaughter of innocents even the most forgiving of us will cry out to God for justice and plead with God to remove the evil before even more our slaughtered. 

God is a just God. He had to command Israel to charam. Instituting the charam principle was even considered an offering to God. The Jews were raised and practiced the Torah all their lives, they were filled with God’s love and mercy that even they could not stomach the charam so God had to command them to do what His very Torah trained them not to do, but He knew the outcome if this evil was not removed. In the Book of Joshua we learn of a group of people called the Gibeonites who were aware of the destruction being done by God to the people around them. They appealed to Joshua to have mercy and spared their city.  They promised to behave and be their servants. Joshua showed them mercy and spared their city.  He disobeyed God and history shows that this disobedience led to a future where the Gibeonites did not behave and turned the people against God. 

In our thinking, the charam seems so terrible, how could a loving God institute such a principle? But this is instituted through an ‘amar, not dabar, not from His heart.  He does not desire to institute charam. So long as there is the hope of some Hamas terrorist surrendering to God, He will continue to show mercy. But He is also a just God and a God who will protect His children and He knows what we cannot know, the hearts of the human creature and He knows which ones are given over completely to evil and he will institute His charam complete destruction. 

It is not sinners in the hands of an angry God but sinners in the hands of a frustrated God who can’t alter the free will of those who have chosen to embrace evil. Either way, the results, however, are the same, eventually in this world or the world to come there will be charam for those who do not repent of their evil.    

Don’t forget: On Thursday, October 19, 2023, on our All Access Subscription Learning Channel, we will have a live class where we will continue to further develop this understanding of the Charam Principle in relationship to Genesis 12:3 and what it means to bless Israel and to curse Israel. Consider joining us in our growing online community. Hope to see you there www.HebrewWordStudy.com (click on blue link to join) Chaim & Laura

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