In my current studies, I wish to spend some time looking at death and the various ways it is used in the Scriptures. Unfortunately many Bible readers see the English word death and immediately assume it to always be speaking of literal end-of-life scenarios...but is it? Most all Christians know that there is both a spiritual and physical death spoken of in Scripture, but even breaking it into those two categories is still a pretty "physical" and literal meaning for the words. What other ways do we find it used throughout scripture? What other ways is it used that might be commonly misunderstood outside of a deep rooted understanding of Hebrew culture? I know I for one, have gotten confused over the many ways the Scripture uses the same word to refer to many different kinds of "life" other than just physical and spiritual, like when it is used to refer to someone outside of God's covenant...an understanding I know I am not always quick to catch due to my "Greek-ness."
Some examples I hope to dig deeper into and examine are things like:
- God promised Adam in the garden regarding the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that "in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." Obviously this has nothing to do with physically dying, for we know he ate and did not physically die. So, we know he spiritually "died" as his eyes were opened that same day. However, then in the NT we are told that Christ came to fix/reverse the death that was brought by Adam...and we always assume that to mean physical death, yet it was not physical death that Adam gave us...so what are the implications?
- Quite often in the OT, when the people of God were breaking covenant with God, they are referred to as "dead" and without life; and when they return to faithfulness, they are said to be restored to life, raised from the dead, resurrected, etc. Yet we are too quick to assume these terms always means something physical, especially in the NT.
- Jesus says in John 8:51: Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death. yet first century Christians who believed and followed him have long since died...physically at least. What "death was Jesus referring to that they would never "see."
Jeff,
ReplyDeleteI look forward to your future posts on this. I have had conversations in the past dealing with this and even last night was reading through Genesis again trying to obtain a better understanding of what the literal translation means where it is written in Genesis 2:17 "dying thou dost die". I know most Bibles translate this as " you shall surely die". I find it interesting though that Genesis 2:16 isn't translated as "of every tree in the garden you shall surely eat" since the literal translation is "eating thou dost eat", but instead is usually written as "you may freely eat". Seems to me that the translations should be the same. Of course I know allot of that has to do with the original writings done in Hebraic. This is just me translating from the english but the two verses should either be written "you may freely eat/die" or "you shall surely eat/die". But again I know its not that simple. The only other place in a literal translation of the Bible where I have found the phrase "dying thou dost die" is in Genesis 20:7 where Abimelech had been deceived by Abraham into thinking Sarah was not Abraham's wife and in a dream God tells Abimelech to return her to Abraham or "dying thou dost die". Which again is usually translated as "you shall surely die". I will comment later on some thoughts I have on spiritual and physical death when you get into that portion of your study.