Rina loves to swing 🙂 Sometimes when we go to a park that’s all she wants to do. Forget the slides, the playground, just let her swing!!! It is so much fun every day watching this little person grow and learning more and more what she’s like. We just love her 🙂
——————-
Before we jump back into the previous discussion there’s one more tangent I’d like to take. What is the “Law” or what does it mean? We see it in Scripture, talk about how we’re not “under the Law” but what in the world does it really mean? How can the Psalms repeatedly talk about “delighting in the Law,” “meditating on the Law day and night,” and even “putting my hope in the Law”?
The Hebrew word behind Law (in OT) is the word “Torah.” So every time you read “the Law” in OT you need to think “Torah.” I even tell people to scratch out “Law” and write in “Torah” if that helps 🙂 Bc you see, Law is an incredibly poor translation for Torah. To translate Torah as Law is like saying “parenting is all about discipline.” I know I’m a mom bc I discipline my child. My child knows who her mom is bc she knows who disciplines her. Now, discipline is an important part of parenting but it is just a PART. Parenting itself is a whole lot more!
The same is true of Torah. Law/commands are an aspect of Torah. They are in there, I won’t/can’t deny them. BUT Torah is so much more than the specific commands. Torah is better translated as “teaching, revelation, instruction.” The picture behind the word for Torah is ‘to shoot at a target with aim and accuracy” and as Dwight Pryor says “the aim of Torah is life.” In other words, God gave us Torah to teach us how to live!
Torah is God’s revelation of Himself. It’s all about God. To translate this word as Law misses so much of the heart and depth behind the word, it’s true meaning. Torah was given to bless Israel, to guide Israel in how to live, to teach Israel about what their God was like. Yes, commands are a part of that but only a part. Torah is God’s revelation of Himself to us. This is the way the Jewish people look at and read the OT. And I think they’re right.
So sad for us that all we can think of is “boy I’m glad ‘the Law’ is done.”