Numbers 14:21: “But as truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord.”
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose. By any other name would smell as sweet.” – Romeo Montague, Romeo and Juliet Act II, Scene II – William Shakespeare
The Targum Ketuvim, which is a first century Jewish commentary or Syriac paraphrase of the Old Testament, is often used by translators. This is an excellent tool as it dates to the first century and reflects the Aramaic understanding of the Hebrew Bible, but the author of this work, Jonathan b. Uzziel was a student of Hillel and took an anthropomorphic understanding in favor of a metaphoric understanding of this passage. Thus, the phrase “truly as I live” is viewed as an oath taken by God, similar to a mother upon seeing her son’s messy room would say: “As I live, you are going to clean up this room.” In other words she cannot appeal to anything greater than her own life.
Suppose we ignore the anthropomorphic understanding and take this literally, as I believe this was intended. The word live is chi which speaks of a physical life and not a spiritual life. God does not have a physical life, he is spiritual and transcends the physical. Besides, if He takes on a physical life, then his glory cannot fill the earth since a corporal being can only occupy one space at a time. The word fill in Hebrew is yemale’ which means to be full or to fill up, to totally encompass. It is interesting to note that this word is in a Niphal imperfect form. For one thing as an imperfect form or an incompleted action this would mean that He has not yet filled the entire earth with His glory, this is some future event. Then as a Niphal this filling becomes reflexive. So it is not that he will fill the earth with His glory, the earth will fill itself with His glory. Either way this suggest that there will be a time when God will be on this earth in a physical body and yet the earth will still be able to fill itself with the glory of God.
So How would this be possible? I believe the answer lies within the last word of this verse. The earth will be filled with the glory of Jehovah or YHVH. This word YHVH in the Hebrew is built on three words, hayah which means was, hoveh which means is and yiheyeh which means will be.” This is saying that God lives in the past, present and future simultaneously. How is that possible? Well, Einstein, proved that time was relative, it is not absolute. God is the creator of time and unaffected by time. So while He was a man here on earth, He existed as a man, subject to the time reference of a man. Yet, as God he just traveled to the time of 1-33 AD and co-existed with His human manifestation while His glory was still able to encompass the whole earth.
Thus, if we do not need to take an anthropomorphic interpretation to explain this passage. We can take a literal view of this verse, where God is saying is that even when He comes to this world in a human form, limited to the time constraints of a human being, the entire earth will still be encompassed with His glory.
Now you may wonder why that is so important. Well think of it this way. God is going to spend each and every moment of my life with me and me alone, no one else. Now his glory is not restrained by time so it will still encompass the earth even while He is spending each moment with me personally giving me His undivided attention. Yet He is still able to attend to the universe because when I finish with this natural life, He will just pick up move through time and then settle down with you and be your one and only for the full period of your life. Once you finish this life’s sojourn He will just move through time and attend to the affairs of the universe.
You see what God is telling us in Numbers 14:21, a Book of the Bible that few Christians ever stop to read, is something very, very profound. We can never, ever say: “Well, God I know you have to go help out old Bunkie with his financial problems, but if you get a few moments after helping Him out, could you maybe find a little time to attend to my problem?” That will never happen because you have His full, undivided, every millisecond of His time all to yourself. For even when he came to this earth in a human form and was limited in His confinements of a human body, His glory was still able to encompass the earth and you personally because He is YHVH, He is, He was and He will always be.
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