Laetare
Ierusalem: et conventum facite omnes qui diligitis eam —
Oh, excuse me;
I was just singing the Introit, but it is true I promised you a homily, which
you have no doubt ardently expected, so I shall skip to it right quickly.
The passage
from the Letter to the Hebrews, with which the last post ended, hides a secret
that shall now be revealed. It is a dark passage, a warning to Christians who
reject the consecration and the spiritual riches they have received. After all,
we have come to know God, who said: ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay,’ and:
‘The Lord will judge his people.’
How do we know
God said this? From the Old Testament, obviously. The second sentence is quoted
from Deuteronomy 32:36, which reads in the Greek translation: Krinei Kyrios
ton laon autou. The author of the Letter to the Hebrews, who wrote in Greek,
lifted this sentence from its context to make his point. In its original
language, it meant something different.
Krinō means ‘to judge’. From this we
derive the words ‘critic’, one who judges; ‘crisis’, a process of judgment; and
‘crime’, a deed liable to judgment. A quick look at the etymological dictionary
shows that the word comes from an ancient root meaning ‘to sieve, discriminate,
distinguish’. It is an analytical sort of word that conjures up an image of an
impartial, impassive observer, looking carefully if the thing under scrutiny
meets standards.
The seventh
book of the Jewish Bible was called in Greek Kritai, ‘Judges’. In
Hebrew, however, it is called Shophetim, ‘rulers, leaders, chieftains’.
The connotation of this word is very different: not an impartial observer
applying a fixed measure, but a superior who demands obedience and is supposed
to work for the good of his people (or less suavely: to bring his tribe to
glory).
Similarly, the
verb used in ‘The Lord will judge his people’ is dīn, ‘bring justice,
put things to rights’. This sounds promising rather than threatening – and so
it is. The sentence quoted to terrify in the Letter to the Hebrews brings
deliverance in Deuteronomy:
For the
LORD will vindicate
his people
And take
revenge for His servants,
When he
sees that their might is gone,
And neither
bond nor free is left.
Our judge is
not impartial, but a deliverer; after he has taught us not to look for freedom
and protection elsewhere, He will (so the poem in Deuteronomy ends)
Wreak
vengeance on His foes,
And cleanse
the land of His people.
