Good Morning Yamon Ki Yesepar and Nevim Arith Hayomim:

Numbers 14:21: “But as truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord.”

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose. By any other name would smell as sweet.” – Romeo Montague, Romeo and Juliet Act II, Scene II – William Shakespeare

The Targum Ketuvim, which is a first century Jewish commentary or Syriac paraphrase of the Old Testament, is often used by translators.  This is an excellent tool as it dates to the first century and reflects the Aramaic understanding of the Hebrew Bible, but the author of this work, Jonathan b. Uzziel was a student of Hillel and took an anthropomorphic understanding in favor of a metaphoric understanding of this passage.  Thus, the phrase “truly as I live” is viewed as an oath taken by God, similar to a mother upon seeing her son’s messy room would say: “As I live, you are going to clean up this room.”  In other words she cannot appeal to anything greater than her own life.

Suppose we ignore the anthropomorphic understanding and take this literally, as I believe this was intended.  The word “live” is “chi” which speaks of a physical life and not a spiritual life.  God does not have a physical life, he is spiritual and transcends the physical.  Besides, if He takes on a physical life, then his glory cannot fill the earth since a corporal being can only occupy one space at a time. Yet, if we take this literally then God is referring to a time that He will be in a physical body, and yet his glory will still fill the earth.

How is that possible?  He is YHVH.  This word in the Hebrew is built on three words, hayah which means “was,”  hoveh which means “is”  and yiheyeh which means “will be.”  This is saying that God lives in the past, present and future simultaneously.  How is that possible?  Well, Einstein, a good Jewish boy, proved that time was relative, it is not absolute.  He is the creator of time and unaffected by time.   So while He was a man here on earth, He existed as a man, subject to the time reference of a man.  Yet, as God he just traveled to the time of 1-33 AD and co-existed with His human manifestation while still being able to encompass the who earth with His glory.

Thus, if we ignore the Targum’s interpretation and take a literal view of this verse, then what God is saying is that even when He exist in a human form, limited to the time constraints of a human being, His glory will still encompass the earth.

What this says to me is that even as He spends each moment, each second with me and me alone, giving me His undivided attention, without any attention to you, the world or the universe, He is still able to attend to the universe because when I finish with this natural life, He will just pick up move through time and then settle down with you and be your one and only for the full period of your life.   We can never, ever say: “Well, God I know you have to go help out old Bunkie with his financial problems, but if you get a few moments after helping Him out, could you maybe find a little time to attend to my problem?”  That will never happen because you have His full, undivided, every millisecond of His time all to yourself.  For even when in a human form, His glory can still encompass the earth and you personally.

Your Friends

Clyde and Laura