Translation & Sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ The Redeemer Church, Manhattan, KS, 27 Nov. 2016
v Story about being courteous – from George Macdonald’s book, The Princess & Curdie
v So we come to our 7th sermon on Leviticus 19! That’s over twice as many sermons for chapter 19 than I did for any chapter previous, but think it has been good because chapter 19 covers such a wide range of applications on the subject of personal holiness. To review, we’ve studied:
1. Loving your neighbor by creating margin (vs. 9-10)
2. Loving your neighbor by protecting their property (vs. 11-12)
3. Loving your neighbor by not exploiting his or her weaknesses (vs.13-14)
4. Loving your neighbor by keeping fairness and impartiality in justice (v.15)
5. Loving your neighbor by protecting his life and reputation (v.16)
6. Love your neighbor by keeping your heart open to him (vs. 17-18)
7. Loving your neighbor by valuing divinely-created boundaries (v.19)
8. Loving your neighbor and loving God by mirroring God’s character of being a redeemer and reconciling cursed people and things so that they can worship God (vs, 20--25)
9. And, in the last two sermons, Loving God by separating yourself from the pagan cultural practices of unbelievers, particularly in the matters of
§ information-gathering,
§ Personal Grooming,
§ Grieving practices,
§ Treatment of women,
§ Holidays,
§ and relating to the spirit world.
10. Chapter 19 closes by returning to three more principles having to do with loving your neighbor by being courteous to them, specifically
§ Showing respect to elderly people,
§ Showing hospitality to visitors,
§ and Showing honesty to business customers.
Before the presence of an aged woman you should rise, and you should exalt the presence of an old man, thus you shall show respect before your God; I am Yahweh.
v The Hebrew word for “aged” (shaybah) seems to have a root meaning of “gray,” so it is often translated “hoary hair” or “grayheaded,” but it occurs in parallel with zaken, the Hebrew word for “elderly,” so it is obviously referring to old age here.
v Furthermore it is referring to a person, not just to hair, and it is feminine, not masculine, so I translated it “aged woman.”
v The purpose for standing up is to show respect, not only to that person but ultimately to God[1], as the last part of the verse states.
Ø In many circles it still shows respect to stand up when a venerable person enters the room.
Ø Gentlemen still stand and make sure a chair is available for a lady.
Ø As people get older, our bodies break down and we become more and more uncomfortable, so you younger folks should do what you can to help the older folks not feel as much pain and confusion around you, even if you younger folks would not need those extra levels of comfort for yourself.
Ø Furthermore, the presence of an elder or an elderly man is something any wise young person will take extra trouble to welcome, because it is the calling of godly elders to impart wisdom to the younger folks. Failing to exalt the elderly – that is, a failure to show them that kind of honor and respect – could result in them feeling like you don’t want them around, and if they don’t want to be around you, you will be deprived of their wisdom and you will be the looser.
Ø The least you can do is listen when they speak and be slow to contradict them. People with two or three or four times your life experience know things that you haven’t even heard of yet, and you will do well to take that into account!
Ø Caroline Montgomery was an elderly widow in the church in which I grew up. I remember as a child, when my brother and I greeted her on Sunday morning, she would give us M&M’s candies from her purse, so we liked her, but there were more important reasons to appreciate her. She had a heart for prayer and hospitality and generosity. I will never forget one day when I was in Junior High school, she walked into our school cafeteria, a very old woman by this time, bought lunch and sat down at a table in the midst of a hundred or so schoolchildren. The boy next to me said, “What’s that old bag doing here?” And he was answered with snickers. Well, I’ll tell you what she was doing there. She had come there to pray for us, but my classmates didn’t want her around. I’m glad she didn’t leave.
v Now, it is possible to go overboard and show too much honor
Ø by compromising the truth with flattery,
Ø or compromising justice with prejudicial treatment of them,
Ø or by compromising piety to God through ancestor-worship.
Ø V. 15 of this same chapter notes the balancing principle using the same words, “you shall not ‘inflate the face of’ the great.”
Ø Don’t be so effusive in your praise for older people that they get puffed up with pride (or, more likely, disgusted with your insincerity), but do let them know you appreciate them being around.
v Then when you get to be old, maybe the young folks will treat you with the same respect that they saw modeled by you!
v This runs across the grain of our secular culture.
Ø Secularism despises maturity and old ways of wisdom, and it intentionally separates the youth from the elderly in order to brainwash the youth into a culture of humanistic revolution.
Ø “[A] society which fails to honor the old is on the brink of destruction.” ~ Wenham, NICOT
Ø God’s word, on the other hand, creates a beautiful culture that integrates us as humans across our stages of maturity through the self-discipline of humility and respect and care for older women and men.
33 Now, when a visitor visits you in your land, y’all may not take advantage of him. 34 The visitor visiting with y’all shall be [treated] by y’all like a native among yourselves, and you shall love him as yourself, because visitors are what y’all were in the land of Egypt; I am Yahweh your God.
v Remember the feeling of travelling somewhere and then trying to take care of a problem and realizing that you were helpless to meet your own needs? Remember having to rely on somebody who offered to help you, and you had no idea whether they were being nice and showing hospitality or whether they were really just taking advantage of you?
Ø I remember that helpless feeling a couple of times in the taxi cabs in Uruguay this past Summer. I put my life and the lives of my daughters in the hands of this stranger to navigate us through the cutthroat traffic of Montevideo, and when we got to our destination, I handed him the smallest bill I had in the local currency, knowing it should be about four times as much as he should charge. The taxi driver shook his head and pointed to a sign on his dash which was written in Spanish. I am not fluent in Spanish, so I wasn’t sure what the sign said, but he obviously was not happy with my payment. The sign apparently said that he could not offer change for a bill that size, which was ridiculous because there is no way he wasn’t carrying that much in change with all the cash transactions he had to do that day. I ended up having to pay almost four times what the taxi ride was worth because he refused to give me change.
Ø I’m sure we all have our stories about mechanics that charged us for repairs we didn’t need or mean kids that took advantage of the fact that we were new. (Has anyone ever sent you snipe hunting before?)
Ø People have done a lot worse to foreigners…
v Yanah is a relatively-specialized verb in Hebrew, occurring only 20 times.
Ø In Isa. 49:26, this verb indicates to “wage war against,”
Ø in Psalm 74:8, it is used to describe burning and sacking the temple,
Ø in Jer. 22:3, it is used in context of committing robbery, violence and shedding innocent blood,
Ø and three times in Ezekiel 18 to describe robbery, usury, and withholding a garment taken in pledge (Ezekiel 18:12-13 NKJV “If he has oppressed the poor and needy, Robbed by violence, Not restored the pledge, Lifted his eyes to the idols, Or committed abomination; If he has exacted usury Or taken increase—Shall he then live? He shall not live! If he has done any of these abominations, He shall surely die; His blood shall be upon him.”).
Ø In perfect consistency with justice, God brings back these verses from Leviticus 19 in His court case against the nation of Israel in Ezekiel’s day, laying out the sentence as their judge: Ezekiel 22:29-31 NKJV “The people of the land have used oppressions, committed robbery, and mistreated the poor and needy; and they wrongfully oppress the stranger. So I sought for a man among them who would make a wall, and stand in the gap before Me on behalf of the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found no one. Therefore I have poured out My indignation on them; I have consumed them with the fire of My wrath; and I have recompensed their deeds on their own heads, says the Lord GOD.” (Then in Ezekiel chapters 45-46, we see God promising to institute the Prince of Peace who will never oppress His people.)
v You are to be different. You are to show as much consideration to strangers/ aliens/ sojourners/ visitors, as you would to a local or even to yourself. How can we do that practically?
Ø In a university town, we have an easy opportunity to show hospitality to foreigners through friendships with international students…
Ø Simply noticing if a freshman looks lost and giving them helpful directions makes a huge difference for a newcomer who is barely coping with how bewildering our town is.
Ø International students typically have a hard time getting driver’s licenses and may not be able to afford to buy an automobile at first, so providing rides to church or to stores can be a very practical way to help.
Ø Sharing meals together is another very simple and practical way to show hospitality. I’m told that most international students never see the inside of an American home. You can change that statistic for a few of them. Or if you aren’t up to inviting them into your home, offer to buy them a meal at a restaurant. These simple gestures of hospitality may be the only ones they ever experience here in America.
v Obviously, there are limits in how much risk it is wise to expose yourself to with a stranger – it would probably not be wise to hand your credit card to the guy with the cardboard sign at Walmart, but to the extent that it is appropriate, show hospitality.
v Whenever you run into someone who isn’t from around here, remember what it was like for you to be a stranger in a strange place, and let that memory of your own time of helplessness give you the sympathy to show hospitality to them, all the while drawing upon the love of the God who cares for the alien and the stranger[3] to empower you to love these people.
v Ultimately, our hospitality is not just to be nice and make the world a more peaceful place; it is to introduce outsiders to the blessings of being made right with God through faith in Jesus.
Ø “The Israelites were to hold out encouragement to strangers to settle among them, that they might be brought to the knowledge and worship of the true God…” ~JFB
Ø “Strangers shall be welcome to God's grace, and therefore we should do what we can to invite them to it, and to recommend religion to their good opinion.” ~Matthew Henry
35 Y’all may not do what is unfair in justice with the measurement of size, with the measurement of weight, or with the measurement of volume. 36 [Scales that are right,] weights that are right, bushel-baskets that are right, and a gallon-jug that is right are what y’all should own. I am Yahweh your God. It is I who caused y’all to get out from the land of Egypt.
v Three words for standards of weights and measures are found in verse 35:
Ø The first Hebrew word is middah, and about 75% of the times that it occurs in the Old Testament it is describing something measured in cubits, so while it could be referring in general to metrics of any sort (as the LXX & NASB translate it), I think it is more likely to be referring to measurements of length, height, or width (as the KJV, NIV, and ESV render it).
§ Particular applications in Bible times includes fabric and clothes-making (Psalm 133:2), construction work (Ezek. 40, Neh. 3), even the measurement of gemstones in 1 Kings 7.
§ It would also apply today to us in measuring distances in real estate, or in any field of engineering or even in sports refereeing.
Ø The next word, mishqal, specifies weight. The unit of measurement for weight in the Old Testament was shekels or talents.
§ Weight measurements were important for people who used gold and silver as money, so God’s command to exercise honest and fair and righteous standards in weight metrics includes not only weighing things properly – such as we weigh vegetables that are sold by the pound, trucks are weighed when they use the Interstate, and staples like flour and sugar that are also sold by the pound, but it also applies to not cheating in payments of money – returning the excess if the cashier returns too much change, paying laborers what they are worth, and paying bills on time.
Ø The third Hebrew word describing metrics is meshurah, which indicates capacity or volume.
§ In Ezekiel 4, which is one of only two other passages where this word is found, it is in the context of measuring amounts of drinking water, and the unit of measurement is the hin.
§ The other passage is 1 Chron. 23:29, which is in the context of baking breads. I can tell you that measuring ingredients accurately is important with baking because I have never been able to successfully make baked goods, even though I consider myself a pretty good cook with other types of food, and it’s because I like to be creative and spontaneous when I cook. That doesn’t work when you need just the right balance of leavening and salt and other things.
§ Our water suppliers also need to be accurate in measuring how much treatment chemicals go into our drinking water and in measuring how much water to charge your household for.
§ And when you go to the gas pump, you want to know that you’re actually getting a gallon of gas when the meter charges you three dollars per gallon.
§ At the grocery store, you may have noticed certain brands are cheaper than others, only to discover that they dropped their price relative to their competitor brands by making the size of their container smaller than the standard size sold by competitor brands, so you think you’re getting a cheaper price, but you’re actually buying less product and paying the same amount or more!
v So you see, fairness in all these areas is a very practical matter! The world says that beating the competition and making more money is the goal, but God says that the ultimate goal is to conform to His character, and that includes being truthful, honest, and fair.
v “[D]eception in weights and measures destroys and sweeps away all legitimate modes of dealing…. If the laws of buying and selling are corrupted, human society is, in a manner dissolved…” ~Calvin, Harmony of the Pentateuch, v.3, p. 120[4]
v The Bible talks about this kind of fairness as tsadik “righteousness”
Ø Proverbs 11:1 NKJV “Dishonest scales are an abomination to the LORD, But a just weight is His delight.”
Ø Proverbs 16:11 NKJV “Honest weights and scales are the LORD's; All the weights in the bag are His work.”
Ø Proverbs 20:23 NKJV “Diverse weights are an abomination to the LORD, And dishonest scales are not good.”
Ø Ezekiel 45:9-12 NKJV Thus says the Lord GOD: “Enough, O princes of Israel! Remove violence and plundering, execute justice and righteousness, and stop dispossessing My people," says the Lord GOD. You shall have honest scales, an honest ephah, and an honest bath. The ephah and the bath shall be of the same measure, so that the bath contains one-tenth of a homer, and the ephah one-tenth of a homer; their measure shall be according to the homer. The shekel shall be twenty gerahs; twenty shekels, twenty-five shekels, and fifteen shekels shall be your mina.”
Ø Amos 8:4-14 NKJV “Hear this, you who swallow up the needy, And make the poor of the land fail… Making the ephah small and the shekel large, Falsifying the scales by deceit, That we may buy the poor for silver, And the needy for a pair of sandals—Even sell the bad wheat?" The LORD has sworn by the pride of Jacob: "Surely I will never forget any of their works. Shall the land not tremble for this, And everyone mourn who dwells in it?... I will turn your feasts into mourning, And all your songs into lamentation… Those who swear by the sin of Samaria… They shall fall and never rise again.”
Ø Micah 6:11-13 NKJV “Shall I count pure those with the wicked scales, And with the bag of deceitful weights? For her rich men are full of violence, Her inhabitants have spoken lies, And their tongue is deceitful in their mouth. Therefore I will also make you sick by striking you, By making you desolate because of your sins.”
v The Hebrew words in verse 36
Ø literally describe putting stones on a balance scale to measure weight. Nowadays we measure weight by other means of comparison,
§ such as compared to the pressure of a metal spring that moves a needle to point to a range of numbers painted on the scale,
§ or compared to the weight it takes to depress a certain material that emits electrons the more it is deformed, and the resulting electrical current interpreted by a computer on a display screen.
§ Deuteronomy 25:13-16 NKJV "You shall not have in your bag differing weights, a heavy and a light. You shall not have in your house differing measures, a large and a small. You shall have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure, that your days may be lengthened in the land which the LORD your God is giving you. For all who do such things, all who behave unrighteously, are an abomination to the LORD your God.”
§ One way to do this is to use high-quality measuring instruments and take good care of them. One way the ancient Jews kept their weights accurate was to use polished stones for weights instead of metal weights that could rust and become lighter[5].
§ Today, we are not so concerned with rust as we are with inflation. America’s early problems with the devaluation of the Continental dollar led to the wise precaution in the U.S. Constitution that nothing but gold or silver shall be legal tender, based upon Levitical law. The founding fathers thought that this would prevent their descendents from ever devaluing U.S. currency again, but now we have a government which flagrantly violates this law, daily robbing you by printing more dollar bills and making supposed loans of money that it didn’t have in the first place, inflating the amount of currency in circulation and therefore deflating the buying power of your hard-earned money. Until Americans elect true constitutional conservatives, this robbery by inflation will continue to get worse.
§ Of course cheating can happen in many other ways too. I have also read about farmers feed their cows salt water just before market so that the cows drink extra water and weigh more – and it’s not just the farmers that do that but the meat-processors too, who soak the meat in water so that it weighs more. All such dishonesty is condemned by God.
Ø Hebrew words in v.36 which are often transliterated into English letters without being translated into words we would recognize are:
§ The epah – a bushel-basket used to measure food,
§ And the hin – a jug a little larger than a gallon, used to measure oil and other liquids.
v So God says in v.36, the way to keep your units of measurement honest/just is to chuck the ones that are not right. “Keep/own/use” only the ones that will give a correct measurement.
v Why?
Ø So that you are always right and nobody can win in a disagreement with you? No?
Ø So that you can be a nice person and everybody can be nice to each other? No.
Ø The reason is because the Lord is your God. He has intervened to bring salvation into your life, and He expects that you will reciprocate by reaching into His personal character and bringing out into the world His justice, fairness, and righteousness. Believers should use accurate standards of weights and measures because it shows what God is like.
v When the world fudges on its accounting or on its inventory and you don’t, you are participating in the holiness of God and showing the world what holiness is.
37 So y’all shall keep all my statutes and all my judgments, and y’all shall do them; I am Yahweh.’”
v Loving your neighbor by Showing respect to elderly people, Showing hospitality to visitors, and Showing honesty to business customers brings blessing to the whole fabric of a nation, but never forget that the reason we do these things is because honor and love and justice flow from the character of God, so we do these things because we love God!
|
LXX |
Brenton |
KJV |
NAW |
MT |
|
32 ἀπὸ προσώπου πολιοῦ ἐξαναστήσῃ καὶ τιμήσεις πρόσωπον πρεσβυτέρου καὶ φοβηθήσῃ X τὸν θεόν σου· ἐγώ εἰμι κύριος [ὁ θεὸς ὑμῶν]. |
32 Thou shalt rise up before X X [the] hoary [head], and honour the face of the old man, and shalt fear X thy God: I am the Lord your God. |
32 Thou shalt rise up before X X [the] hoary [head], and honour the face of [the] old man, and fear X thy God: I am the LORD. |
32 Before the presence of an aged woman you should rise, and you should exalt the presence of an old man, thus you shall show respect before your God; I am Yahweh. |
32 מִפְּנֵי שֵׂיבָה תָּקוּם וְהָדַרְתָּ פְּנֵי זָקֵן וְיָרֵאתָ מֵּאֱלֹהֶיךָ אֲנִי יְהוָה[6]: פ |
|
33 Ἐὰν
δέ τις |
33 And if
there should |
33 And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. |
33 Now, when a visitor visits you in your land, y’all may not take advantage of him. |
33 וְכִי-יָגוּר אִתְּךָ[7] גֵּר בְּאַרְצְכֶם לֹא תוֹנוּ אֹתוֹ: |
|
34 ὡς
ὁ αὐτόχθων ἐν
ὑμῖν ἔσται X X ὁ
προσήλυτος
ὁ |
34 The stranger that |
34 But the stranger that |
34 The visitor visiting with y’all shall be [treated] by y’all like a native among yourselves, and you shall love him as yourself, because visitors are what y’all were in the land of Egypt; I am Yahweh your God. |
34 כְּאֶזְרָח מִכֶּם יִהְיֶה לָכֶם הַגֵּר הַגָּר אִתְּכֶם וְאָהַבְתָּ לוֹ כָּמוֹךָ כִּי-גֵרִים הֱיִיתֶם בְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם אֲנִי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם: |
|
35 οὐ ποιήσετε ἄδικον ἐν κρίσει ἐν μέτροις καὶ ἐν σταθμίοις καὶ ἐν ζυγοῖς· |
35 Ye shall not act unrighteously in judgment, in measures and X weights and X scales. |
35 Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in meteyard, in weight, or in measure. |
35 Y’all may not do what is unfair in justice with the measurement of size, with the measurement of weight, or with the measurement of volume. |
35 לֹא-תַעֲשׂוּ עָוֶל בַּמִּשְׁפָּט בַּמִּדָּה בַּמִּשְׁקָל וּבַמְּשׂוּרָה: |
|
36 ζυγὰ
δίκαια [καὶ]
στάθμια
δίκαια [καὶ]
χοῦς δίκαιος X X ἔσται
ὑμῖν· ἐγώ
εἰμι κύριος ὁ
θεὸς ὑμῶν ὁ
ἐξαγαγ |
36 There shall be among you just balances [and] just weights [and] just liquid measure X X. I am the Lord your God, who X brought you out of the land of Egypt. |
36 Just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin, shall ye have: I am the LORD your God, which X brought you out of the land of Egypt. |
36 [Scales that are right,] weights that are right, bushel-baskets that are right, and a gallon-jug that is right are what y’all should own. I am Yahweh your God. It is I who caused y’all to get out from the land of Egypt. |
36 מֹאזְנֵי צֶדֶק אַבְנֵי-צֶדֶק אֵיפַת צֶדֶק[8] וְהִין צֶדֶק יִהְיֶה לָכֶם אֲנִי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם אֲשֶׁר-הוֹצֵאתִי אֶתְכֶם מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם: |
|
37 Καὶ
φυλάξεσθε
πάντα τὸν νόμ |
37 And ye shall keep all my lawX and all my ordinances, and ye shall do them: I am the Lord [your God]. |
37 Therefore shall ye observe all my statutes, and all my judgments, and do them: I am the LORD. |
37 So y’all shall keep all my statutes and all my judgments, and y’all shall do them; I am Yahweh.’” |
37 וּשְׁמַרְתֶּם אֶת-כָּל-חֻקֹּתַי וְאֶת-כָּל-מִשְׁפָּטַי וַעֲשִׂיתֶם אֹתָם אֲנִי יְהוָה: פ |
When a translation adds words not in the Hebrew text, but does not
indicate it has done so by the use of italics (or greyed-out text), I put the
added words in [square brackets]. When one version chooses a wording which is
different from all the other translations, I underline it. When a
version chooses a translation which, in my opinion, either departs too far from
the root meaning of the Hebrew word or departs too far from the grammar form of
the original Hebrew, I use strikeout. And when a version omits a word
which is in the Hebrew text, I insert an X. (Sometimes I will place the X at
the end of a word if the original word is plural but the English translation is
singular.) I occasionally use colors to help the reader see correlations
between the various editions and versions when there are more than two different
translations of a given word. Hebrew text that is colored purple matches the
Dead Sea Scrolls, and variants between the DSS and the MT are noted in endnotes
with the following exceptions: When a holem
or qibbutz pointing in the MT is
represented in the DSS by a vav
or a hireq pointing in the MT is
represented in the DSS by a yod
(the corresponding consonantal representation of the same vowel) or when the
tetragrammaton is spelled with paleo-Hebrew letters, I did not record it a
variant. In Chapter 19, 11Q1 paleoLeviticusa contains
verses 1-4, 1Q3 PaleoLev-Num contains verses 30-34, 4Q26a Leviticuse contains verses
34-37, and 4Q23 Leviticus-Numbersa contains
verses 3-8.
[1] “[S]ome sparks of [God’s] majesty shine forth in old men, whereby they approach to the honor of parents.” ~Calvin, Harmony of the Pentateuch iii.18
[2] It seems to be the consensus of Jewish and Christian commentators that the vocabulary refers specifically to proselytes, but I believe the principle extends to any visitor.
[3] Psalms 146:9 NKJV The LORD watches over the strangers; He relieves the fatherless and widow; But the way of the wicked He turns upside down.
[4] I also appreciated Rushdoony’s critique of the atomistic economics of Capitalism and Communism (p. 249ff) and of libertarian laissez-fair economics and of Progressive state-interest economics (p. 469-470) in his Institutes of Biblical Law.
[5] John Gill cited Maimonides (Hilchot Genibah, c. 8. sect. 4) on this tradition.
[6] See added words in LXX (S and U also adds it) but DSS 1Q3 does not.
[7] S.P. and LXX make the “you” plural, but it is singular in the DSS (1Q3)
[8] The LXX and the DSS omit the first item on the list, perhaps indicating that the MT contains an addition, but if it is an addition, it does nothing to change the meaning of the necessity of righteousness in the standards of weight and measure.