THE TANGIBILITY OF “SIN” (chata)

What does the word “sin” mean?  There are four main word roots in Hebrew (OT) for the basic semantic range and others in Greek (NT) that each express different nuances.  However, in English, we basically use two words, “sin” and “guilt.”  What might we be missing?

Warning: This is a technical “devotional” about the main Hebrew word root for “sin” (ḥṭʾ) and probably not for anyone feeling brain weary.  However, I have found the exploration of “sin” important for me, so I will share what I have learned.  (The brain-weary may skip to “Conclusion.”)

Technical Stuff
Problem: The main Hebrew (OT) verb translated in English as “to sin” is ḥāṭāʾ (pronounced chata).  There is a problem understanding and translating this word.  Hebrew has root words with three letters that have a basic (etymological) meaning.  For example, the letters lmd employed as a basic-stem verb has the nuance of “to come to an apprehension or become familiar.”  It is often translated, “to learn.”  When the root is modified for the “doubled stem,” it makes an intransitive verb (no object) factitive with an object.  Therefore, lmd becomes lmmd and now means “to make apprehension to someone,” or better “to teach.”

Here is the problem with ḥāṭāʾ.  Its basic-stem meaning as a verb is “to miss hitting/reaching the desired end, the goal.”  It can literally mean that someone misses one’s target.  However, it is mainly used figuratively for human personal failure in terms of some kind of life standard, whether it be legal, communal, covenantal (with God), or just according to the standard of God’s holiness.  Most contextual uses make sense in terms of a failure to meet an end goal (whether intentional or unintentional).  The problem arises when it is a doubled-stem verb ḥiṭṭēʾ (pronounced chittā).  In its figurative use, it appears to mean “to cleanse from sin” (e.g. Exod 29:36).  Moreover, the noun that is formed from the doubled-stem verb ḥaṭṭāʾt (pronounced chattat) is the main technical term for the “sin-purification offering” (Lev 4:26).  On the surface that conversion of meaning from “to miss the goal” (basic stem) to “cleanse from sin” (doubled stem) does not make sense.  One would expect a meaning like “to make missing the goal to someone.”  What is happening?
Note: Since in the NT, Paul, using a Greek equivalent term, calls Jesus the sin-purification offering (Rom 8:23; 2Cor 5:21), the concept behind the word is important to grasp.

Solution: (This is where it gets interesting!)  In its figurative use, the verb ḥāṭāʾ focuses frequently on the end failure, a negative consequence, more than on the action.  The noun that spins off this verb ḥēṭʾ (chāt) is also more about that negative result than the act itself.  Most importantly, words and concepts associated with the basic-stem verb and noun show that people envisaged sin-results as “tangibly” real.  They concretized the negative result.  For example: God sees the sin (1Sam 2:17); a person must bear one’s sin (Lev 20:20); when God forgives sin, God lifts it (Exod 32:32) or covers it (Ps 32:1) or washes it (Psa 51:7); or in the Temple symbol system, it is likened to filth polluting God’s dwelling place/altar and needing to be cleansed away (Exod 29:36).

A modern analogy would be the “sin” of running a red light.  No one was around to see.  There was no danger.  There appears to be no tangible result.  However, a camera caught you and now the consequence becomes tangible as a ticket and a fine.

With this focus on the “tangible” result in mind, the doubled-stem verb makes sense.  The verb means “to make the result (sin-weight) to someone/something.”  Used literally in Gen 31:39, Jacob says to Laban that regarding any sheep lost under Jacob’s care, Jacob will “make the ḥiṭṭēʾ (sin-result – here financial loss) to himself.”  That is, he move/removes the resultant sin-weight (financial loss) to himself.  That makes sense now in the figurative use of the tangible sin-consequence.  The consequence of sin (ḥāṭāʾ) is moved/removed, which in context basically means to “cleanse/purify from sin.”  So, too, the atonement-technical noun form from the doubled-stem (ḥaṭṭāʾt) refers to the ritual act that moves/removes the consequence (sin-weight) makes sense.  The focus is on what is happening to the “tangible” consequence.

Conclusion:
The concrete, root concept of ḥāṭāʾ is about failing to hit the end goal (e.g. Jud 20:16, stone-slingers miss their target; Prov 19:2, one misses the way).  Abstractly it is used in terms of personal behavior measured against standards (e.g. legal contract of social groups, Gen 43:9) or in terms of religious abstraction of God’s standard or spiritual wholeness (Lev 4:2).  The focus of the idioms is on the negative consequences.  Particularly in a religious context, that consequence is conceptualized as real and “tangible” like a weight (Lev 20:20) or like unclean pollution (Psa 51:2).  Sin (ḥāṭāʾ) results in real consequences for which one is accountable.  In particular, the atonement ritual system sought to concretize the nature of sin as well as God’s graceful acts of forgiveness.  Such concretizing of the intangible in rituals helped the Israelites to comprehend the utmost seriousness of sin and the amazing grace of God’s forgiveness.  I need this help as well.

Application
Every offense I commit, intentional or not, against others and against God, not only is a failure to achieve the right (righteous) end goal, but it also results in real consequences.  Whether I can see them or not, God sees them.  As one who sins, I bear the weight of those consequences whether I feel it or not.  I must accept the reality of sin.  However, when I seek God, confess and repent of my sins, my God merciful moves/removes that “tangible” consequence.  God “bears/lifts” (=forgives) my sin.

Note: this is also the meaning in 1 Peter 2:24: “For our sins he [Jesus] bore in his body on the cross….”  That verse is the same OT idiom of divine forgiveness.  It is not picturing a forensic transfer of one’s legal death-penalty onto Jesus.  It presents Jesus showing God’s mercy of lifting our burden.

Lord, please always show me the error of my ways, all of my sins (ḥāṭāʾ), unintentional as well as intentional.  Help me to see the weight, to see the filth, to see it as in Your eyes.  So that I might be ashamed and appalled.  So that I might bow before You, confess, and repent.  So that You in Your mercy might lift it away.  So that there might not be any impediment between me and You.  Amen.

I NEVER THOUGHT I COULD NOT HEAR (CONSCIENCE)

Today I read a devotional that suggested that our natural conscience faces the highest goal that a person knows.  Only when it is focused on God, though, is one on the best track.*  I was reminded of Proverbs 20:12, “Ears that hear and eyes that see – the LORD makes both of the them.”
Comments:
This proverb first teases people to think by creating a pause that makes the audience want more.  If I were to say in a conversation, “Ears that hear and eyes that see,” and stop, the listener would think or say, “OK, so what about ears and eyes?  What are you saying?  Finish your thought.”  Now that I have their attention, I finish, “They are made by God.”
Secondly, this conclusion challenges the audience to ponder what the point is.  The teaching here operates on two levels.  On the first level, it may cause one to pause and marvel at the wonder of our sensory perceptions.  How is it that we do hear and see?  Only God could do this!  The second level is deeper.  As a proverb, this saying is meant to impart wisdom.  Hearing and seeing are also spiritual faculties.  To really “hear” means to obey.  To really “see” means to have an enlightened path.  These, then, are faculties opened to their fullest by a person in relationship with God.  Therefore, this proverb prompts us to ask, “Do I really hear?  Do I really see?  Am I in close communion with God?”
Application:
I will leave the development of application to the reader.  Here, though, is a poem/song that I wrote in application to myself.

I NEVER THOUGHT I COULD NOT HEAR#

Verse 1
I never thought I could not hear, until I heard my Lord.
I never knew where I belonged, until he said, “With me.”

Chorus
The Lord who makes the ears that hear and forms the eyes that see.
He gently whispered in my ear and showed his love for me.

Verse 2
I thought I was a righteous man, until he came near me.
I never clearly knew my shame, until I knelt to him.

Verse 3
I never thought I could not see, until I saw my Lord.
And now my world has opened wide, with life and joy and peace.

Lord Jesus, I want ears that hear with obedience and eyes that see and follow your way.  Bless me with such ears and eyes.  Amen.
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*The devotional reading was from Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, May 13.
#If requested, I will send a simple musical score of the song with the melody line and the chords.

LOSS AND GRIEF: IN CHRIST

I have been thinking about the loss and grief one experiences over a loved one.  I do not claim that the following thoughts are explicit teaching in Scripture, but I think they cohere with it.

In regard to Adam and Eve, Genesis 2:24 states, “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and unites with his wife, and they become a new family [literally “one flesh”] (NET).  This translation has captured the sense of “one flesh” that is often misunderstood on a popular level.  It is not about sexual union.  It is about the beginning of a new kinship unit (“one flesh”).

I think there is a psychological truth about this relationship and its loss.  There are many examples in our natural world of discrete elements uniting to form a system in which new properties emerge.  The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.*  I suggest that in personal relationships something new emerges in the nature of our existence.  When I married, I did not merely have an identity label change to “husband.”  In a real sense, in my relationship with my wife, a new aspect of my existence emerged that would not be there were we apart.  Our relationship has formed part of who I am.  Therefore, when someone in a close relationship dies, we experience not just a loss of their presence, but also a loss to an aspect of our existence, to who we were.  The loss and grief are deep.

A theological truth about Christ helps with this sense of loss.  Faith in God creates a participatory relationship.  One entrusts one’s life in God.  The Greek NT expression of faith in Christ, pisteo eis. means “entrusting into” Christ.  It creates a new emergent reality.  Paul, particularly in Colossians and Romans 8, addresses believers’ struggles by teaching them about the significance of being a new creation “in Christ.”  Moreover, we are “in Christ” in community jointly with others.  What struck me recently was the thought that for those “in Christ,” when a loved one dies, our relationship with that loved one has not really come to an end.  Being jointly together in Christ means that relationship still exists.  Even though we miss that person’s presence, who we were in that relationship is still there within the being of God.  I find that thought comforting.

Father, bless those who are grieving over loss of loved ones.  Comfort them with your Presence.  Comfort them not just with the thought that they will once again meet those loved ones, but with the awareness that those relationships still exist in Christ.  Amen.
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*Probably the most universally known example of emergent properties is how the elements of hydrogen and oxygen (gasses at normal temperatures) come together to form water molecules with properties completely unlike the individual elements.

AM I MY BROTHER’S KEEPER?

 Last Sunday, at a healing service, a woman who hears with the “ears” of God came to altar broken hearted over the current administration’s treatment of the foreigner, the poor, and the oppressed.  We prayed for healing.

“Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Gen 4:9).  So spoke Cain to God after Cain had killed his brother, Abel, when God asked Cain where his brother was.  Feigned ignorance does not work with God.  God replied, “The sound of your brother’s blood is crying out (ṣāʿaq) to me from the ground” (4:10).

The Hebrew words for “to cry out” (ṣāʿaq [tsaach] and its synonym homophone zāʿaq [zaach] are key terms in the OT.  They are the cries of the oppressed for help, whose voices always reach to the heavens to the ears of God – in this case, even when dead.

These cries can be from the people of God.  In Judges, when the people have fallen away and under the hand of oppressors, God hears and sends deliverers (e.g. 3:9).  The psalmists tell of when they cried out and God heard (e.g. 107:13,19).  After Jehoshaphat had extended or restored an outer court of the temple, he prayed to God before the assembled people: “If disaster comes on us … we will stand in front of this temple before you, for you are present in this temple. We will cry out [‎zāʿaq] to you for help in our distress, and you will hear and deliver us.” (2 Chr. 20:9).  Isaiah even cried out to God on behalf fugitives of Moab (Isa 15:5).

However, these cries can also be from those oppressed by the people of God:

"You must not wrong a foreigner nor oppress him, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt.  "You must not afflict any widow or orphan.  If you afflict them in any way and they cry to me, I will surely hear their cry [ṣāʿaq], ²⁴ and my anger will burn and I will kill you …. (Exod. 22:21-24a)

Our administration’s cuts of aid to people, following the “mandate” of many voters, have already resulted in deaths of people overseas who needed our supply of food and medicines.  In our country, the poor will increasingly feel this oppression.  As with the blood of Abel, the cries of the dead along with the cries of the dying and oppressed, will be heard. 

Feigned ignorance does not work with God.

Lord, with my broken-hearted sister, I also cry out to you on behalf of the oppressed.  May I and all those around me have ears that hear, hearts that are moved, and hands that act on their behalf.  Amen.