Israel Bible Center article “What is "holiness" in Hebrew?” by
Nicholas Schaser, part of a series called Israel Bible
Weekly. You can find this article through my link as well as
by going to IsraelBibleCenter.com and while you're there you can
sign up for their emails and maybe sign up for their school they
offer. I've been getting emails from them for about 2 months
and find them to be excellent.
In today’s terminology, “holiness” has become an ethical
category. Those who act “holier than thou,” for instance, behave as
though they are morally superior to others. Yet, this understanding
of holiness in terms of morality is a modern shift from the
ancient Hebrew definition. Rather than expressing ethics,
the biblical meaning of “holy” (קדושׁ; qadosh)
is set apart or separated. Related concepts like
“clean” (טהור; tahor) and “unclean”
(טמא; tame) have also undergone a modern
moralization, but these ideas have more to do with separation than
with either sin or salvation. In using these sorts of
terms, the authors of Israel’s Scriptures specified the
contours of cleanliness and contamination that allowed for the
closest possible bond between God and humanity.
In the middle of the Torah, God tells the Israelites through
Moses, “You shall
be holy (קדושׁים; qedoshim), for I the Lord
your God am holy (קדושׁ; qadosh)”
(Leviticus 19:2). What does this phrase mean? The command can
hardly mean that Israel must be as morally upright or righteous as
God in heaven. Shortly before this divine declaration, the Lord
establishes the sacrificial system
to make atonement for “all the iniquities of the children
of Israel” (16:21). God offers Israel a divine safety-net because
Heaven knows that humanity will tend to transgress the
commandments. Therefore, to be “holy” does not mean to be perfect
or sinless like God. Instead, “holy” means “separate” from
others: Israel was to be “set apart” from the nations around
them.
The words that follow God’s call to holiness are instructive for
understanding how the notion of “separation” functioned in ancient
Israel. Moses is told to inform the people, “You shall keep my
Sabbaths: I am the Lord your God. Do not turn to idols or
make for yourselves and gods of cast metal: I am the Lord
your God” (Lev 19:3-4). The nations other than Israel did not keep
Sabbath, and they fashioned metal idols to represent their various
gods in worship. Therefore, observing the Sabbath and refraining
from idol-making would help to set apart Israel from
their national neighbors; they would be a holy people to the Lord
their God—and to that God alone. Indeed, the invocation of Sabbath
is itself a nod to holiness since “God blessed the seventh day and
made it holy (קדושׁ)” at creation (Genesis 2:3)
— that is, “separate”
from the other six days of the week.
Understanding the separateness of Israel’s God can also help to
clarify what the Bible means by “holy.” When God commands Israel to
be holy because “I the Lord your God am holy” (Lev 19:2) this
assertion underscores the fact that the God of Israel was “set
apart” from the gods of other
nations. At the outset of the so-called Ten Commandments —
actually, in Hebrew they’re called the “Ten Words” (עשרת
הדברים; aseret hadevarim; cf. Exodus 34:28;
Deuteronomy 4:13; 10:4) – God commands Israel, “You shall have no
other gods (אלהים; elohim) besides me”
(Exodus 20:3; cf. Deuteronomy 5:7). Literally, the Hebrew says that
the Israelites should have no other gods before my
face (על-פני; al-panai),” meaning
that God’s people should not
worship any other deities alongside their own. While many
modern readers have understood these words to mean that no other
gods exist apart from the God of Israel, the verse asserts the
exact opposite: precisely because other options
for worship exist, God commands Israel to
keep their eyes only on the Lord’s face. Israel’s God was
“holy” or “set apart” from other gods; thus, the Lord’s chosen
people were to be “holy” just like their God.
Yet, Israel’s collective holiness does not denote any
inherent righteousness or ethical superiority, despite modern
misunderstandings to the contrary. Soon after Deuteronomy
describes Israel as “a people holy (קדושׁ) to the Lord”
(7:6), the very same book details the people’s lack of moral
preeminence among their peers. Moses tells his people, “Do not say
to yourselves… ‘It is because of
my righteousness (צדקה; tsedakah) that the
Lord has brought me in to possess this land.’ Rather, it is because
of the wickedness of these [other] nations that the Lord is driving
them out before you, not because of
your righteousness or
the uprightness (ישׁר; yosher) of your
heart” (9:4-5). Thus, the original Hebrew meaning of “holy” has
little to do with the kind of “holier than thou” attitude the word
conjures in contemporary conversation.
A similar point holds for the Hebrew references to
being clean (טהור; tahor)
or unclean (טמא; tame). In the Torah, the
state of being “unclean” described ritual impurity rather than
moral transgression. For instance, Leviticus advises
that if a person develops a
skin ailment in ancient Israel “the priest shall pronounce
him unclean (טמא)” (Lev 13:11). This status of
uncleanness does not denote any impropriety on the part of the
patient. Instead, to be unclean in this context means to be
ritually impure. However, such cultic contamination was not
the end of the world; once an afflicted person recovered and
underwent priestly inspection, one could simply “wash his
clothes, and be clean (טהר; taher)”
(Lev 13:6). Thus, cleanliness was a return to a state of external
purity, not an internal eradication of
sin. Leviticus itself clarifies this definitional
difference when it describes the oil for the tabernacle’s lamps
being “pure” (טהורה; tehorah) — the same word for the
“clean” person free from skin problems.
The categories of “clean” and “unclean” appear in tandem with
“holiness” in the Torah. God tells Aaron the
priest, “You are to distinguish between
the holy (קדושׁ) and
the common (חל; hol), and between
the unclean (טמא) and the clean (טהור)” (Lev
10:10). The parallel Hebrew terms in this verse suggest that “holy”
is conceptually similar to “clean.” Neither of these terms
denotes behavioral decency or ethical advantage. Instead, what
is “clean” is kept separate from what is ritually “unclean,” just
as what is “holy” is set apart from the “common.” The biblical
meaning of “holy” was very different from the way it functions in
popular parlance. In the original
Hebrew, holiness is a defining element of the divine-human
relationship that sets one’s life apart for God.
So that's the end of that article and I want to share a few
thoughts as this relates to our work.
You may get frustrated as I do sometimes when you're at work,
trying to live out your faith, and feeling like you're not
different than anyone else. Or worse, on days when you don't
feel so "good" you may think about others at work that are not
believers who are better at what they do than you, have a better
reputation than you, and seem to be overall nicer than you
are.
My advise is to stop thinking about your righteousness or even
how well you do your job, and focus primarily on your
holiness. In light of this article, your holiness is the
degree to which you are set apart in the way God has asked you to
be set apart.
As you read through the Bible and come across a commandment,
make a note that, that is God speaking to you about how He wants
you to be set apart. This applies to every aspect of our
lives, but I'm talking specifically about our work.
You may be thinking, well it's true that Jesus told us that we
love Him we should keep His commandments, but Jesus also told us we
only need to follow 2 commandments, love God and love
others.
Let's look at one of the passages that speaks to this:
Matthew 22:35-39 says "
35 Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a
question, testing Him, and saying, 36 “Teacher,
which is the great commandment in the law?”
37 Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love
the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your
soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This
is the first and great
commandment. 39 And the second is like
it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as
yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the Law
and the Prophets.”
Jesus did not do away with all the commandments He had given us
throughout the Bible, but rather showed us how to live them out
perfectly.
You cannot love God and love others without knowing how God
wants you to love Him and love others. Without His specific
direction, you can make up whatever you want as what this loving
God and loving others mean, or follow what the current culture is
telling you it means.
If you're smart, you'll love your wife as she wants you to love
her, and the same is true with our Creator.
So focus on being holy at work, but with a new understanding
that this means you are going to forget about how the world does
work, and instead do work the specific ways that God says to do
work.
If you're wondering how to do this, I have 3 suggestions:
1. First and most important and truly all you need is to
regularly read the Bible
2. Second, listen to past episodes of this podcast
3. Third, get my book "Jesus is at Work" having joy and purpose
at your current job. You can now purchase an audio version
through Audible and an ebook through Amazon and I'm in the process
of getting hard copies available through Amazon, but if you want a
hard copy you can email me support@christianmenatwork.com .
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