Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi
I have four references total between the two books, Leviticus and Numbers, so I thought I'd just stretch one post to cover them. Then I went way into the weeds on the first reference in Leviticus. It's worth a post by itself. So much for covering two books in one post...
The first reference is Lev. 19:17, one verse in a long list of 'do nots':
"Do not hate your brother in your heart. Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in his guilt."
The NIV 84 lists those two thoughts in the same paragraph, which kind of makes me think they are supposed to be connected. And those are two interesting directives to be connected.
First, the concept of 'hating in one's heart'...That's a tough one. How many of us have folks that we can be civil towards, even treat kindly, but if you get down to it...our personal opinion of them is not good. Whether we want to admit it or not...it's hatred. Doesn't show, we would never express it, but, nonetheless, when some misfortune falls on someone that occupies that dark place...somehow it feels justified. If you read on down, the very next verse has the 'instead'. Instead of hating in your heart...love your neighbor as yourself (yeah, that's where that comes from).
But how is that connected w/ 'Rebuke your neighbor frankly'? Clearly, this verse implies that the neighbor is engaged in wrongdoing. Or maybe not engaged in rightdoing?
I pulled up Blue Letter Bible to check the original language and...oy, this one is a puzzler. The Hebrew word translated 'rebuke' is yakah (Strong's H 3198) : reprove, rebuke, correct, plead, reason, judge, convince, argue. It is a primitive root, and I fear my feeble attempts to squeeze deep meanings out of this are going to go astray. Instead, let's consider some other English translations of this phrase and see what true scholars made of it:
KJV: "Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart: thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbor, and not suffer sin upon him."
ESV: "You shall not hate your bother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him."
NASB 77: "You shall not hate your fellow countrymen in your heart; you may surely reprove your neighbor, but do not incur sin against him."
And finally, I went looking for and found a Bible translation done from a Jewish viewpoint on Bible Study Tools Dot Com (which has annoying pop up ads, but I found what I was looking for)... the Complete Jewish Bible:
CJB: "Do not hate your brother in your heart, but rebuke your neighbor frankly, so that you won't carry sin because of him."
Notice that in several of those translations there isn't even a full break between those thoughts; they are the same (compound) sentence. So there is definitely a connection there. Pulling them all together, it seems that one is not to carry hatred or resentment against someone, but to go to that person and honestly share why one is offended.
We are not to carry secret offenses or opinions but to speak honestly with one another and if there is something that needs reconciling, we are to be honest and speak about it.
Easier said than done, I fear. We all hate confrontation. But if an offense can fester into resentment can blow up into hatred, so much better to have the uncomfortable conversation and resolve it. Most of the time it's all a misunderstanding anyway.
But what if the attempted discussion/ reconciliation goes awry? The other party is determined to remain at odds?
Do not hate in your heart. Forgive anyway...and that individual then will not cause you to be in sin if your heart is clear of offense/ resentment/ hate.
Yeah, this one needs a selah.
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