Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi
Back after a bit of a chaotic couple of weeks; all is well, it's just been...hectic, lol. But we are diving back into our cruise through the words listed in the Exhaustive Concordance of the NIV 84 translated as 'heart/hearts' and we are starting today in Jeremiah 29: 13, one of the most encouraging promises we have encountered in this study; the original audience was the nation of Judah, who had neglected to follow the commandments of God fully and was on the brink of disastrous judgement...I am actually going to include the whole context here:
This is what the LORD says: "When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you," declares the LORD, "and I will bring you back from captivity." - Jer. 29:10 - 14a.
I am going to take just a second here and go a little more in depth on the word translated as 'heart' here. It is Strong's H 3824, Lebab - inner man, mind, will, heart, soul, understanding. It is the second most common word translated as 'heart/hearts', but we haven't had it come up for a while and I have stumbled onto a little more info about that word in the meantime. I have been using Chaim Bentorah's Hebrew Word Study: Revealing the Heart of God as a devotional study off an on for a while and I recently read the essay he'd written about this very word. This word is spelled, in Hebrew, Lamed Beth Beth (I don't have the Hebrew alphabet available) . Bentorah writes "I have read in Jewish literature that when you find the word Heart with a double beth after the lamed, it indicates your heart and God's heart joined together." The word we have seen used the most frequently, Leb, is spelled Lamed Beth.
Which all puts a slightly different spin on this phrase...you will find me when you seek me with all your heart...if we put that context on it. Seeking God with one's whole heart is actually melding one's heart with God's. Which kind of implies not holding back any part of one's heart from God but yielding the whole lot to him. And it is significant that God is telling this to them on the front end: seventy years, then they will call to him and yield to him and they would be restored, not only back to their land, but, ultimately, to the relationship God and his people were meant to have.
But...the people had neglected the Sabbaths, they had mixed their worship of God with the local pagan deities and they had rejected the true prophets who brought words of warning and calls for repentance. There was judgment coming.
The fierce anger of the LORD will not turn back until he fully accomplishes the purposes of his heart. In days to come, you will understand this. -- Jer 30:34; 'Heart' is that Hebrew word we have seen translated as 'Heart' the most often, Strong's 3820, Leb -- inner man, mind, will, heart, understanding.
Over and over again, the residents of Judah were warned that God's judgment was coming. They'd already seen the exile of the northern kingdom of Israel, and had been told over and over that, unless they repented, they would not escape a similar fate.
God never stopped loving his people, though, even when they were suffering the consequences of their actions.
"Is not Ephraim my dear son, the child in whom I delight? Though I often speak against him, I still remember him. Therefore, my heart yearns for him; I have great compassion for him," declares the LORD. -- Jer 31:20. This is another one of of those instances in which the NIV renders a word as 'heart' because that makes more sense to modern readers than a literal translation. The Hebrew word translated as 'heart' here is Strong's H4578 - Me'e - internal organs, inward parts, bowels, intestines, belly. We folks of the late 20th and early 21st century do not think about yearning for someone with the bowels, but that was a common idiom/imagery in ancient Israel.
Ephraim was a reference to the ten tribes that made up the northern kingdom of Israel, which had fallen to the Assyrians during the reign of Hezekiah in the south. By Jeremiah's time, there was little remaining of those folks in that area as the Assyrians had carted most of the people off and left them scattered about their empire, bringing in other folks from foreign countries to work the land there. The genealogies were lost and the folks who were now living in what used to be the northern kingdom now had no way to determine their ancestry...and they became what was later known as 'Samaritans'. But God remembers Ephraim. He knows where those descendants are. Their story isn't over, despite it looking like they have all been lost to history. God hasn't lost them.
There is a new covenant is coming, as we see just a few verses later:
"This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time," declares the LORD. "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people." -- Jer. 31:33; 'Hearts' is, once more, H 3820
A new covenant...written upon the heart. This, of course, refers to the new covenant Jesus sealed with his sacrifice.
One more passage to look at today...
"I will give them singleness of heart and action, so they will always fear me for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never stop doing good to them, and I will inspire them to fear me, so that they will never turn away from me. I will rejoice in doing them good and will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and soul." -- Jer. 32:39-41 ; both instances of 'heart' are H 3820 again.
"Singleness of heart and action"...I think this is still in the future, because even Paul writes about doing the thing he knows he shouldn't do, and not doing the thing he knows he should do; a war in his spirit between the old and new nature (Romans 7). But in the coming eternal kingdom, the old nature has gone and there is no more internal battle. That will be at the fulfillment of all things, when the enemy has been routed and God truly reigns in all the earth.
