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Feb. 21, 2025

Not to 50!: Does the Punishment Fit the Crime? - Episode 115

What if we've all got an overdeveloped sense of vengeance?  How are guilt and justice portrayed in the Bible, especially in relation to God's character?  What does shame have to do with (legal) guilt?  How do these concepts develop?  And...why does Genesis 1-11 seem so Mesopotamian??         

**Website: www.genesismarksthespot.com 

My Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/GenesisMarkstheSpot 

Genesis Marks the Spot on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/genesismarksthespot 

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Music credit: "Marble Machine" by Wintergatan 
Link to Wintergatan’s website: https://wintergatan.net/ 
Link to the original Marble Machine video by Wintergatan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvUU8joBb1Q&ab_channel=Wintergatan

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Genesis Marks the Spot

What if we've all got an overdeveloped sense of vengeance?  How are guilt and justice portrayed in the Bible, especially in relation to God's character?  What does shame have to do with (legal) guilt?  How do these concepts develop?  And...why does Genesis 1-11 seem so Mesopotamian??         

**Website: www.genesismarksthespot.com 

My Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/GenesisMarkstheSpot 

Genesis Marks the Spot on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/genesismarksthespot 

Genesis Marks the Spot on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/genesismarksthespot/ 

Music credit: "Marble Machine" by Wintergatan 
Link to Wintergatan’s website: https://wintergatan.net/ 
Link to the original Marble Machine video by Wintergatan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvUU8joBb1Q&ab_channel=Wintergatan

Transcript

Carey Griffel: [00:00:00] Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot, where we raid the ivory tower of a biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel, and welcome to the podcast. This week we are going to be tackling a topic that is stemming from last week, where I had two different questions that I was responding to. But I really don't feel like I completely covered one of the questions. I think I adequately answered the shame and guilt question from a psychological perspective. But less so from a legal one.

So now let's talk about the legal perspective of guilt and shame, and also where these things originate from. Now, this episode might be a bit of a ride, because we're going to talk about [00:01:00] guilt, justice, culture, kings, hierarchy. And, really, a whole bunch of stuff.

And I kind of plan on cycling through the material a little bit so that it kind of builds and snowballs. So my hope is that all of the material is clear enough for you to understand and follow. If it isn't, then please feel free to contact me and complain about that because I'm trying to make it clear, but I'm also trying to give you a whole lot of material on this at one time. At least, that's the plan. I'm hoping it doesn't just end up being a disjointed conversation.

But really, I talked a lot about guilt and shame last time, but I didn't get into the concept of justice, and I think that's really integral to one of the questions, at least. So, we're going to flesh out guilt and shame a [00:02:00] little bit more, and I'm going to tip my hand here at the beginning a little bit. I'm going to say that being guilty does not necessitate punishment, even with the law in place. We see this in history playing out. We see this from the direct words of God through the prophets as well.

I'm also going to explain how justice entails more than punishing a wrong. It is a far bigger concept than that.

But remember last week, one of our questions did center on the two falls of Genesis three and six. And I understand where the question is coming from, at least to some degree, because there is a very big disconnect, or at least there feels like there's a big disconnect, between the immediate results of Genesis 3 and the results of Genesis 6, [00:03:00] which is the flood and whole scale death. How do we get from the one to the other? And how is it that we haven't all been wiped out again? Doesn't the judgment of the flood suggest we all deserve it? I know, God promised that he wouldn't, but why? How can he promise that when we deserve it so richly?

Of course, one of the things I'll mention here at the beginning is the concept of an eye for an eye. We presume in the Old Testament, at least a lot of us do, that justice is about one thing for the other thing, right? We hear the talk about an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth quite often, because that is a quote from Exodus.

Now, it's a quote from Exodus 21, and I'm not going to read all of these verses, but I suggest going to verses 22 through 25, where we have that language of eye for an eye. [00:04:00] But if you're reading through the law code in Exodus, it is not always really an eye for an eye. And honestly, that seems more like the code of Hammurabi.

In this section of Exodus 21, we have the problem of murder, right? If anyone strikes a man so that he dies, he will be put to death. And it kind of goes through some other details.

Down to verse 23. But if there is any further injury, and this is a different incidence of injury, if there is any further injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.

So, all of that kind of sticks in our minds because it's very poetic and, well, we kind of like this concept of justice, [00:05:00] right? You do something, you get something back in return. And so this is kind of where our brains today for the concept of justice.

So a bit of a reminder of our question that we were tackling. One of the questions was centered on nakedness. The other was centered more on the guilt shame aspects of things.

And it really is strange that shame is mentioned in Genesis 2 but it's not mentioned in Genesis 3. We don't have any mention of shame or guilt throughout the falls at least not explicitly using the words. Now, of course, we talked about nakedness and it seems that it has more to do with innocence than it does with shame in the garden prior to sin. The lack of shame does connect to the lack of need to be ashamed, it seems.

And so why is shame not mentioned post sin? Well, I would suggest, because [00:06:00] there's more going on, and it's not that we shouldn't be thinking these things, and that they shouldn't be ashamed. That's probably why it was mentioned initially, so that we would have that concept solidly in our brains when we read what's going on. But I think we need to note the mercy of God in the incident. Their shame, or hiding themselves, did cause them to turn away from God. So, was it in fact a healthy shame? So we'll talk a little bit about healthy and unhealthy shame.

Now, there's a few problems with shame as a concept. Not that it is necessarily entirely a problem itself, because as I said, it is a tool for society and community to use to keep people in line. And sometimes there's going to be things that you wanna keep people in line that are good, sometimes not [00:07:00] good, and that's another thing we're gonna talk about today.

Our modern concepts of shame versus guilt are not necessarily off from a biblical concept of shame. We are ashamed in community and in relation to what others think. And guilt can be the internal processing of that, which is not necessarily related to shame in community. Though, if we're honest, it probably is related because we learn what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior within a community.

But also in this framework, guilt is the feeling, and our feelings of guilt don't always line up with actually being guilty. Right? So shame is a cultural tool, and as a cultural tool, it's tied to culture, right? Societal standards. And not all [00:08:00] societies have the same standards, so what's shameful in one community isn't necessarily shameful in another.

And we might ask about universal standards. What about the situations we see in the Bible? If people are sinful, and if a culture is warped, then shame is maybe not necessarily going to be tied to something that actually has anything at all to do with morality.

And I'm going to say that culture that is warped from God's ideal has moved itself away from the image or the glory of God. And so its morality is going to be warped as a necessity for that move.

Okay, so what about guilt, not just as a feeling, but as a legal breaking of the law? So we go to Genesis 3. Were Adam and Eve guilty of breaking a law? Well, God had a command, and they broke that [00:09:00] command. Now, if you're like me growing up, you're going to want to see people feel bad when they're guilty so that their feelings of guilt line up with the guilt that they incur from actually breaking the law.

Again, this connects to the idea of repentance and, oh, I feel guilty for this. Why? Because by feeling bad, you acknowledge your guilt according to the law, but really, we see this as part of the punishment of sin, don't we? At least a lot of us do. I think it tracks along with our ideas of justice. We're guilty of breaking the law; part of our punishment or deserved suffering should be feelings of guilt.

What if we don't feel guilty? Well, guilt is a motivation for turning back to the path and not doing it again, in theory, so that might align to conscience, or the warning, [00:10:00] which is interesting because if our internal guilty feelings that should lead us to repentance, if that's our conscience, then that suggests that, contra Jordan Peterson, that conscience isn't external, and it's not the spirit, it's not God, it's us.

I mean, otherwise, why does feeling guilty become an indication of repentance? In that case, it seems to me that we are actually calling our conscience ourselves, and our ability to repent, and we're leaving the whole repentance thing up to us, and not the spirit.

You might disagree with my formulation there, and that's fine. I think that conscience as God calling us and warning us is a much better way of thinking about that. But on the other hand, it doesn't happen for everyone the same way, does it? And we know that people can [00:11:00] psychologically feel guilty about things that they should not feel guilty about.

So again, just because you feel guilty doesn't mean you are guilty. So, I would propose that conscience and guilty feelings aren't always the same thing.

Now, I did mention the feelings of guilt and how they're different from shame. And we might ask, is there the idea of guilty feelings in the Old Testament? And indeed there is. We actually have God feeling sad or feeling sorry in Genesis 6, before the flood. Now, there's two words here. We have the word sorry in the NASB, and we have the word grieved.

The word grieved is the one that I'm talking about. Genesis 6, 6 says, quote, The Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and he was grieved in his heart, end quote.

[00:12:00] Another incidence in Genesis, we have Genesis 45, 5, which says, quote, Now, do not be grieved or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. End quote.

Okay, so again, that's the incident with Joseph, and he's telling his brothers, don't be sorry that you did this, because God did something good with it. Okay, so we do have those guilty feelings, and they're not really tied to sin in either of these incidents that I've read. But you can still have those emotions. Right?

All right. So to be fair, let's get away from the emotional aspect, because those who hold to a model of justice or rightness where all wrongs need to receive punitive measures really focus on the legal proceeding of guilt and emphasize that. [00:13:00] Guilt is a legal proclamation and may not have anything at all to do with your feelings. So back to Adam and Eve and breaking the law. They were clearly guilty. God didn't just zap them with their full punishment immediately, but he granted them mercy. What was the punishment? Well, it was death. So they did get that eventually. Being punished, though, doesn't seem to have fixed the problems though, right? Do we see other forms of punishment here?

We actually read into the story a bit sometimes. Some supposed need to suffer beyond the punishment that God warned them about. And we do that because, not only do they eventually die, but there's all these curses. And God didn't warn them about that.

So we kind of, I think, subconsciously presume that justice being met means that they deserve to suffer [00:14:00] somehow. Doesn't say that outright here in the text. But not only do they eventually die, but there's also all these curses that lead to suffering in various forms, right? We have the suffering in childbirth, the suffering in toil of the land.

So their punishment is presumably over when they die, but it also includes all these bad things. Now we might say that their punishment really is being cut off from God spiritually, like a spiritual death. And in that case, it seems like they suffer punishment twice. I don't know. So I'm just pointing out how much we tend to read into the text and to make these presumptions when things aren't really stated there.

That doesn't mean that they're not there necessarily, because there is a lot of stuff that's packed into these narratives that isn't stated explicitly. But we do need to take a little bit of care there. So, [00:15:00] anyway, Adam and Eve, guilty of breaking the law, they receive punishment and consequences. Whether or not those are separate things, you can decide for yourself. But they also received mercy, and we shouldn't not notice that.

None of this really seems fair, quote unquote. So the guilt of breaking the law can lead to both punishment as well as mercy. And presumably, I think we can see all of that in the story in the garden.

Now I'm going to talk a little bit about righteousness and justice, and mercy and punishment. We're going to wrap all of this up together into a single concept, basically, because in the Hebrew Bible, in the Old Testament, using Hebrew, we have a couple of terms that are then translated into Greek, the Greek Septuagint, using one term. And [00:16:00] these two Hebrew terms that I'm specifically talking about are frequently seen in parallel in the Old Testament.

So the main word we're looking at here in Hebrew is the term mishpat. Mishpat is the term justice. Now let me read from the Lexham Theological Wordbook. It says, quote, In Hebrew, the concept of judgment and justice is mostly commonly expressed with the term shapat, which means to govern or to administer justice, and its related noun, mishpat, judgment. Another set of Hebrew terms related to justice in the Old Testament includes the noun tzedek, righteousness, and its related verb, tzedok. Or to be or make righteous. Depending on context, the Septuagint uses Greek words related to the terms righteousness [00:17:00] or to judge to translate these Hebrew words. The New Testament mostly follows the Septuagint's terminology for justice end quote.

Alright, so we have a really big conflation of justice and righteousness here. And I want to note that the judgment that is given can either be a positive judgment or a negative judgment. So already we have this word here, and it's not just about punishment.

Let me read from the Lexham Bible Dictionary about justice. Quote, Divinely righteous action, whether taken by humanity or God, that promotes equality among humanity. Used in relation to uplifting the righteous and oppressed and debasing the unrighteous and oppressors. Justice in the ancient Near East, in the ancient Near [00:18:00] East, the concept of divine justice was directly related to the word of the king. Whenever the king spoke an official word, the proclamation was considered good and righteous. According to the prologue to the code of Hammurabi, the king's primary role was to cause justice to prevail in the land, and to destroy the wicked and the evil, so that the strong might not oppress the weak. End quote.

Does a judgment of guilty always include the idea that the guilty person must be punished?

Back to Lexham Bible Dictionary for a second. Quote. In the Old Testament, the concept of justice refers to divinely ordained actions that promote the well being and equality of all humanity. Whether justice is served by punishing oppressors or by vindicating the oppressed, there is always the concept of returning humanity to [00:19:00] shalom, an equilibrium in which wrongs have been made right and the impoverished have been restored to prosperity. End quote.

Okay, now, listen. The laws do prescribe punishment for wrongdoing, right?

But most scholars do not think that the law in the Old Testament was always applied. Now, this could be just a failure in judgment, but it doesn't have to be. The law does not seem to have any space for mercy. It doesn't prescribe mercy in any way. Does that mean a judge can't grant mercy, though?

Judgment means that you are deciding a case. Judgment does not mean that the offender must be held to the letter of the law. Of course, we do have God who says to judge according to his law.

In Ezekiel 44, verse 24, it says, quote, In a [00:20:00] dispute they shall take their stand to judge. They shall judge it according to my ordinances. They shall also keep my laws and my statutes. In all my appointed feasts and sanctify my Sabbaths. End quote.

And Leviticus says there shouldn't be any partiality and even the poor shouldn't get away with things just because they're poor.

Leviticus 1915 says, quote, you shall do no injustice in judgment. You shall not be partial to the poor, nor defer to the great, but you are to judge your neighbor fairly. End quote.

So, justice and judgment, and you're supposed to judge according to the law, all right? Well, justice is also for those righteous people who cry out.

There's a parable in the book of Luke, in chapter 18. We have a judge who did not fear [00:21:00] God and did not respect man. And we have a widow who is crying out for legal protection from her opponent. The judge didn't care about her, but he was being bugged enough by her cries that he said, Okay, fine, I'll give her a hearing. So then it's like, well, if this unrighteous judge finally gave her a hearing, then, of course, God will hear his righteous people who cry to him day and night.

So again, we tend to think of punishment as justice. But it can't just be that. What is it about? It is about judgment against those who oppress. So yes, there is judgment and potential punishment here. But there is a larger picture we have to see. Guilt leads to the need to make things right, one way or another, either through mercy or punishment.[00:22:00]

And I would argue that there is more mercy than punishment. This is in accordance with God's character, where he is long suffering and merciful. That doesn't mean that justice, judgment, punishment isn't given to unrepentant people, because that does happen eventually. Now, if justice is just punishment, like you do something wrong, and you're punished for the wrong, and there's a presumption here that we're always doing things wrong, so we can't keep up with the amount of punishment that we owe, then okay, hey, the scales need to be balanced here.

Do we actually see that level of justice given in the law of the Old Testament? If there's room for mercy, even in the law, then what is the argument for drilling down into necessary punishment for every [00:23:00] wrongdoing. What scales are we even talking about here? The scales of justice, which presumably is a standard God has to meet in order to be just.

Now, how we understand these scales of justice, which that's not an Old Testament thing, okay? It's a modern concept that we have. But what are the scales of justice? How we understand them really matters. Like, what's the point of punishment? It is for God's righteousness or for the people who are oppressed.

Now we might say that just like God is love, if God is also justice, then it's not really that he has an exterior standard, but this is just intrinsic to who he is. Now is that what we actually see in his character in Salvation History? How does a long suffering God fit into that? [00:24:00] Like, if he still requires punishment for all of the wrongdoing, but he's long suffering, well, why is he long suffering?

Is he trying to increase the need for punishment? Like, you've gotta be kidding me with that. God's merciful. He doesn't want us to be judged and punished. So why isn't the answer to kill us before we infract more suffering upon ourselves? On the other hand, if he can actually be merciful and not always ascribe the punishment according to the law, that's a very different picture we have.

Okay, so before we get a little bit more into that, I'm going to loop back into the concept of shame. Shame isn't just about breaking the law. It's centered on communal life.

So guilt is a net negative, like you did something wrong. [00:25:00] Shame doesn't have to be based on performing a wrong action. It can be associated with normal things that happen in life. And there can be a concept of healthy shame. Toxic shame would be tied to that sense of self worthlessness. Healthy shame is like a conscience that is external to ourselves that is going to keep us culturally in line and lead to the flourishing of not only the community, but hopefully yourself.

Healthy shame like this isn't always tied to moral duty, but it's tied to cultural norms. It keeps people in line with group values, and it maintains social cohesion, and it doesn't always or necessarily have a psychological impact of feeling guilty about it.

I mean, one example might be modesty, and these are cultural standards that are intended to [00:26:00] keep women safe, whether or not that works out is another judgment call, but there is a good intention for this cultural norm. Since shame can be different from culture to culture, and it's centered on cultural mores, then again, like I said, it's not obviously or necessarily connected to morality.

Being ashamed only means that you've done something against your cultural norms. Did Adam and Eve's lack of shame have something to do with the lack of cultural norms, perhaps? I don't know. They really didn't transgress against each other or against their own community, per se. They transgressed God's law. Perhaps they were guilty, but not ashamed.

Okay, so guilt and lawbreaking is not always about morality either. In the first part of the Old Testament, there weren't many formal laws, but [00:27:00] those that existed, what were they for? They were about the flourishing of life, right?

Okay, so another thing I want to mention here about the idea of the law written on the heart. Does that mean that we all have this innate law, this complete law, I might say? In our hearts? Well, how specific is it when we're talking about the law written on the heart, because law can mean different things, right? It can mean the full letter of the law. It can mean Torah or wisdom.

The mention that we have of this concept in the Old Testament is in Jeremiah 31, verse 33. Quote. But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my law within them, and on their heart I will write it, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. End [00:28:00] quote.

Is that referencing morality and how everybody should know what's moral? It doesn't seem like it, because it's talking about covenant with the house of Israel, and the law in their hearts. So, that has to do with communal relation with God.

Of course, then we go into Romans 2. It seems a little bit different there. Starting in verse 14, quote, For when Gentiles who do not have the law do instinctively the things of the law, these, not having the law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the law written in their hearts. Their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them on the day when according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus. End quote.

Okay, so that is talking about conscience [00:29:00] and sin in general, it seems, right. But that doesn't seem to be what we have in Genesis to begin with. Now, that doesn't mean that there is no morality or conscience. And again, the question is, is that conscience the Spirit that's speaking to us? Or is it ourselves?

Now, let's move on to the concept of righteousness and this specific idea of being righteous in the Old Testament. If we have the law written on our hearts, let's say we do. Do we understand innately how to be righteous?

And just because we can't keep the law and we're going to break it doesn't mean we're not going to be judged by that law and judged for our failure to keep it. So fair enough. But we do have many people in the Old Testament who are declared righteous. How and why would that be? Is it because they never broke a law?

Well, it can't be [00:30:00] that. I mean, you have David who is a man after God's heart. He could have and should have been punished according to the law, but he wasn't. Well, maybe he received mercy, but he still suffered consequences for all that he did.

For instance, he wasn't able to build the temple. First Chronicles 22 verse 8 says, quote, But the word of the Lord came to me saying, You have shed much blood and have waged great wars; you shall not build a house to My name, because you have shed so much blood on the earth before Me. End quote.

IOkay, I'm going to presume that righteousness is, at least in large part, due to the idea of rightness or correct order. Also has a lot to do with worship. Now, if worship is written on the heart, then, should we expect to know how to properly worship God? That one's just kind of a bonus [00:31:00] question I want you to think about.

But beyond worship and to just morality, should we expect that Cain knew that murdering Abel was wrong? I think obviously we can expect that. And have you noticed that Cain doesn't get the death penalty? His sin was arguably worse than Adam and Eve's sin on our scale of eating fruit versus murder, yet he still also only gets banishment and presumably some protection from other people killing him. What did God tell him in regards to sacrifice and in regards to what he did after the fact? He got a chance, but we see the pattern of the garden happening here in this scene. And what was the consequence? Well, Cain got consequence and punishment in some form, but we also have the proliferation of evil and depravity.

All right, let's talk [00:32:00] just very briefly about the Hebraic concept of bad and evil. There's a word that has different formulations. The root of the word is ra, and it includes all kinds of bad things.

For instance, we see in Psalm 106, verse 32, quote, They also provoked him to wrath at the waters of Meribah, so that it went hard with Moses on their account. End quote.

Went hard there is the word ra. It went badly for Moses.

God can harm, or ra, those who worship foreign gods. In Joshua 24, 20, quote, If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, Then he will turn and do you harm and consume you after he has done good to you. End quote.

So bad can relate to punishment, but it can be used without moral [00:33:00] connotations to refer to an inferior quality of something. Jeremiah 24, 2 brings up bad figs. It's most common use does have moral connotations, but it doesn't have to. We have the concept of disaster and calamity, and of course a lot of times those are about judgment.

When something bad or morally evil happens, the answer is not just punishment, but making things right and putting things in order, and in fact, there can be further bad that is done within the punishment.

Now, of course, we have patterns of evil and typological formulations of those, right? We have Babylon, we have Pharaoh, we have rebellion, we have idolatry. And we also have patterns of good or typologies of good. We have salvation, deliverance, Messiah, intercession, and [00:34:00] priestly activity. We have the idea of crushing evil. But I also want you to note that evil, or bad, can be used in the service of good as a corrective or a punishment, like we see in the exile. So we have Babylon, who is punishing Israel because they were not faithful to God.

Are the good guys of the Bible actually morally good all the time? Well, we have Abraham, who allowed Pharaoh to take Sarai. And who did the whole thing with Hagar, and that's pretty questionable right there. Moses was a murderer. David committed adultery and murder.

So are the bad guys of the Bible actually morally bad? Well, yes, I think we can pretty much say that. But note that it's the leaders and this idea of the whole nation as being bad, that doesn't mean that every person within the nation was [00:35:00] bad, but there's a really big focus on leadership here.

So let's talk about leadership and culture and laws. Most people will agree we have a conscience or an innate sense of right and wrong that comes from somewhere and that keeps us on a path in some form. And we further tend to agree that laws should be based on this, and that culture should be based on that.

But we know that doesn't always work out. Neither shame, that's cultural, or guilt, that is a personal feeling, necessarily ascribes to morality, or conscience, or universal standards. And it's really difficult to separate universal standards from standards we were raised in. Even in the Old Testament, we have the law established, it's not actually always followed, and people don't receive direct punishment for every little [00:36:00] crime.

And in fact, often it's the children who get the effects of the ancestors actions. Think of the exile. The people weren't exiled immediately upon the desecration of the temple, for instance. In fact, there were reforms made, but the people still were exiled. At minimum, we can say that punishment doesn't follow crimes immediately, maybe it does follow eventually.

There's a whole lot of unfairness with what we see in the Old Testament, though. And we could just write that off as, well, this is the way people are and it should be what we expect. So, you know, sometimes we separate the physical punishment and consequences that we see actually happening in the moment versus a later punishment. And a lot of times we'll think, well, that later punishment is going to happen after people die.

And, you know, of course, for Christians, a lot of people will think that [00:37:00] you will later pay for this after you die if you don't pay for it in this life. Where do we get that idea from? Well, I mean from the fact that people aren't punished immediately and we're sure that they should be and that they will be, and we're not going to allow their kids to be punished for them in our mental framework of this. So surely they're going to pay for it after they die.

Okay. So like we see in Ezekiel 18 verse four, for instance. Which says, quote, behold, all souls are mine. The souls of the father, as well as the soul of the son is mine. The soul whose sins will die. End quote.

Okay, that seems to really line up well with what we're talking about here, right? If you sin, you'll die, and the fact that our souls belong to God means that He is going to get that punishment one way or the other. But we're going to [00:38:00] keep reading in this chapter in Ezekiel 18. Let's see what it says here. Now this is a long section, but I really want to read the whole thing.

This is Ezekiel 18, verses 20 through 32. Quote, The person who sins will die. The son will not bear the punishment for the father's iniquity. Nor will the father bear the punishment for the son's iniquity. The righteousness of the righteous will be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon himself. But if the wicked man turns from all his sins which he has committed, and observes all my statutes, and practices justice and righteousness, he shall surely live. He shall not die. All his transgressions which he has committed will not be remembered against him. Because of his righteousness which he has practiced, he will [00:39:00] live. Do I have any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord God, rather than that he should turn from his ways and live? But when a righteous man turns away from his righteousness, commits iniquity, and does according to all the abominations that a wicked man does, will he live? All his righteous deeds which he has done will not be remembered for his treachery which he has committed. And his sin, which he has committed, for them he will die. Yet you say, the way of the Lord is not right. Hear now, O house of Israel, is my way not right? Is it not your ways that are not right? When a righteous man turns away from his righteousness, commits iniquity, and dies because of it, for his iniquity, which he has committed, he will die. Again, when a wicked man turns away from his wickedness, which he has committed, and practices justice and righteousness, he will save his life. [00:40:00] Because he considered and turned away from all his transgressions, which he had committed, he shall surely live, he shall not die. But the house of Israel says, The way of the Lord is not right. Are my ways not right, O house of Israel? Is it not your ways that are not right? Therefore, I will judge you, O house of Israel. Each according to his conduct, declares the Lord God. Repent and turn away from all your transgressions, so that iniquity may not become a stumbling block to you. Cast away from you all transgressions which you have committed, and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. For why will you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone who dies, declares the Lord God. Therefore, repent and live. End quote.

Wow, that sounds a lot different than earlier in the chapter, doesn't it? Now, you could possibly [00:41:00] say that this is only talking about, like, the exile concept, right? The idea that if you do right, you won't die in exile, and maybe this has absolutely nothing to do with what we have after death. But like how do you disconnect those things? What's your hermeneutic here, right? Like we have the concept of salvation, exile, exodus, God saving the people, and repentance.

Now it seems also like a really big burden here, like oh, we're supposed to repent for every single sin and if we don't then we're still gonna die. I don't think that's the point here. I think that we tend to make very stringent differences between what happens here on earth and what happens later on after death and I don't think that makes exegetical sense. Eternal life is not just about life after death. [00:42:00] It is about life that starts here on earth. It is about being righteous and being in orientation to God to do the right thing.

Then, of course, you have things in the Old Testament that, even when you sin, here's how you deal with it, right? It's not about every sin needs to be punished. We have God right here saying every sin doesn't need to be punished because if you turn back to me, you will receive mercy. You will still receive life.

And again, I've seen people do this. I've seen people take this idea of life and death and say, well, sometimes it's talking about just mortality and death here and somehow that has nothing to do with life in the age to come. And I don't see any warrant of how you can decide when it's talking about which.

Now, look, no one here is saying that there's no punishment, right? Because there is. Like, what if you [00:43:00] don't turn away from what you're doing in your wickedness? John 5, verses 28 through 30. This is the hour is coming passage. Those who did good deeds go to a resurrection of life and those who commit evil go to a resurrection of judgment. Okay.

Now What about the idea of eternal conscious torment? I'm not going to read this whole passage, but you can go to Matthew 25, verses 31 through 46, and I want you to note that it is still about doing mercy.

Those who get life do so because they provided mercy. Those who get punishment do so because they did not provide mercy. It wasn't because they were just really, really sinful.

Skipping down to Matthew 25 verse 40, quote, The king will answer and say to them, Truly I say [00:44:00] to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of mine, even the least of them, you did it to me. End quote.

That is in response to those who offer mercy, and they receive life. Those who do not offer mercy to other people?

In verse 44 it says, quote, Then they themselves also will answer, Lord, when did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not take care of you? Then he will answer them, Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me. These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. End quote.

You guys, mercy is such a big deal. Taking care of the poor and unfortunate is such a big deal.

Now, [00:45:00] let's go back again to that concept of shame. What establishes these patterns in a culture? Well, I would suggest it is the patriarchs, or the leaders, or the kings, or the shepherds, like we see in Ezekiel 34, who establish these things. Ezekiel 34 is a really big judgment text on the shepherds of Israel. They made themselves fat versus the flock that they neglected.

Our biblical pattern here is that God is in charge. He puts shepherds over his flock. And doing right is caring for the people, and judgment comes upon those who do not do that. The shepherds here in Ezekiel 34 fatten themselves instead of caring for the people. We can see the same thing in Psalm 82. And is that about people and not spiritual beings?

Well, no, because there is always this idea of the mirroring of heaven [00:46:00] and earth. So when people go astray, it's reflected in the heavens and there is a cause in the heavens. If people are worshiping God, then God keeps them a righteous people. If people are worshiping other spiritual beings who are not God, then those rebellious spiritual beings are going to lead the people astray.

What do we see in history here, really? Also in relation to how we keep shame as a concept, it's wrapped up in narrative, right? So our identities are social and communities form in different ways and places, okay? And so obviously not everyone has the same stories. In particular, not everyone worships God, the Most High?

And what does it mean that not everyone worships God, the Most High? It means they don't have the right stories. It means they don't have the right [00:47:00] values. Stories and values are intimately related.

Back to Lexham Bible Dictionary about justice. Quote, For many in the ancient Near East, it was impossible to separate justice from law. In Mesopotamia, the law was described by joint terms kittum and mesherum. Kittum denoted something straight, true, or just. Meshurum alluded to a gift bestowed to Shemesh, the sun god of justice, which in turn could then be passed on to human kings. Thus justice and lawfulness become synonymous, paving the way for kings to abuse their power and claim it as their divine right. This is portrayed rather sardonically in Daniel 5, which depicts an unrighteous king more than a thousand years removed from his alleged ancestors. End quote.

[00:48:00] We have origin stories and other types of stories that create and demonstrate our worldviews and values. And I really think that's key. They both create it and demonstrate what's already there. Those stories are created, and they are taken upon by the community.

In the case of Israel and the exile, they acknowledged the shame in their community's past, and during the exile they formed a national identity that was centered on the fact that they had failed God and they need to repent.

Okay, so obviously in a culture, we have hierarchy, we have status, and as I mentioned a little bit ago, we have tyranny. If the person in charge is not doing right, the effects trickle down. And this is what we have in the pagan image of God. Who is only the [00:49:00] king, and not all of the people.

Our origin stories are connected to those who hold dominion over us, and history shows that we have a history of not very good dominion. We are slaves of various types, and we are participants in perpetuating those stories. And so it's a top down and a bottom up participation. Now I'm not saying all societies are tyrannically organized, but I'm saying that tyranny is a natural outgrowth of hierarchy and dominion when it is taken away from the source of life and order, God, and that society is not based on God's order. That's something I'm going to be talking about a lot more next week.

I mean, presumably in our cultures and our societies, we are vying for and trying for meeting some standards that are morally good. But in each society, there is [00:50:00] the tendency to have that power grab of, we're going to decide for ourselves what is good, and we're going to decide for ourselves what is shameful and what the law and morality should look like.

Alright, so let's wrap this back up into the narrative of Genesis 3 and Genesis 6. Genesis 2, they are naked and not ashamed. Genesis 3, they break the command and the law, and shame isn't mentioned, but we surely think that there is legal guilt because the law was broken, and so there's consequence for that guilt.

Now, part of the consequence is mercy as well as punishment. But either way, there's consequences for guilt, right? Presumably the guilt is taken care of in some sense. Even if we presume that the Messiah is going to be coming in the future to ultimately take care of it, we still see something happening that is [00:51:00] designed to alleviate that guilt.

But what really happens after that? Well, we have depravity. Depravity is associated with guilt and breaking the law, but it's this idea of culture building up to the point that people are now born into environments that are inherently bad.

Now, some people will say that it's because we have this fallen nature that we didn't have before and we're completely different. Well, our societies are different, which means that our identities are different because our identities are socially created. So in that sense, yes, there is a difference in people.

We are raised by parents who aren't perfect. We are in a state of scarcity and fear. We're in a state of shame, and needing to cover up for our actions, and being self conscious, and [00:52:00] blaming things on other people. We have trauma, and pain, and all of these things, bad role models, and things are going to snowball and get worse. This whole cycle of things that is built up in a community.

We don't need to have had a change in humanity in some physical form, but we had a change in society. We had a change in identity. We face death in all of its abject horror, and we face judgment, including cultural shame, which may or may not have anything to do with morality.

And we tend to be in a tyrannical dominion. Note the building of cities in close association with murder in Genesis 4. Now, am I talking about human dominion or spiritual dominion? Well, we have both. There is obviously human dominion and tyranny, but we also have spiritual influence. We have the serpent in the garden, the [00:53:00] sons of God coming to teach mankind, and that doesn't take away human responsibility. It just makes it easier to be a tyrannical villain, and it sinks culture and society into a deeper pit.

Now, what about mercy? Well, God relents and allows the world to be repopulated and promises not to destroy it again after the flood, right? So people were judged as harshly as we can imagine in the flood, but God relents, and God isn't saying that people are no longer evil.

God remembered Noah in the middle of the flood. It wasn't the sacrifice that stopped God from ever destroying every living thing later. And remember, we don't see wrath. We see sorrow. We see negative feelings. Mercy is given not because wrath is turned away, but because God decided to grant mercy. He just decided to. We don't [00:54:00] have much information beyond God decided to. God can grant mercy.

Exodus 33 19, Quote, and he said, I myself will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim the name of the Lord before you, and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will show compassion on whom I will show compassion. End quote.

Now interestingly, Exodus 33 isn't a judgment text. It's a story about Moses wanting to see God. Then you go into Romans 9, which quotes Exodus 33, 19. And this is in the context of Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.

And I'm not going to get into any Romans 9 controversy here, but judgment is God's and it's kind of as simple as that. We focus this text in Romans 9 on salvation and God's choice. But we can't discount the role of behavior and [00:55:00] repentance. God can choose to have mercy even without repentance? So why don't we focus on that instead of other things? I don't know.

We like to say, well, people who fall away from God weren't saved to begin with. Well, again, salvation isn't something that awaits us when we die, but is a present reality that we can be in. Not that it doesn't have to do with the post death things that go on, because obviously it does. But if we relegate salvation to only being about post death, being in heaven kind of situation, we're missing out on the entire biblical concept of salvation and how it is actually presented in the text.

Salvation, deliverance, mercy, justice, righteousness. God's sovereignty. All of these things have to do with one another, and they're all wrapped up in these formative stories.

Now, I [00:56:00] mean, what is repentance? It's turning to God, being allegiant, it is righting a wrong, it is becoming righteous. God is our judge and our savior. Remember how much judgment has to do with the messianic context in 1st Enoch. Remember the context of the mighty and the elect in 1st Enoch, the elect being oppressed by the mighty and the rulers. The elect really just being the righteous people of God.

Okay, so then we can bring together these concepts. Shame, guilt, tyrannical dominion. And that is not to take away the concept of personal guilt and personal responsibility and all humans being wicked and violent, right? I mean, that's what we see by the time of the Flood. Wickedness is orchestrated by culture and leaders, but that can't happen without the people's involvement in being wicked themselves as [00:57:00] well.

Now, in these different societies that you have, you can have different standards. Of course, we want to be measuring by God's standard, but we can imagine for a moment the standards that might have been in one of these societies before the Flood, picturing it like 1 Enoch describes, where they are violent, there's war, there's murder, there's seduction, there's drugs, there's magic, there's idolatry. So, their standards of shame and their laws are not going to be God's standards. We might picture it something like some of the things we see in the time of Judges, where we have some pretty horrific incidents where everyone did what was right in their own eyes. We can think of this as the time prior to the exile.

Would the people in those situations feel cultural shame? Probably not, because shame is an aspect of [00:58:00] culture. The idea of being shamed outside their own culture would have to come from another source.

And we might loop in this idea of conscience here, right? And the idea of God as conscience that's external to us and trying to keep us in line. Israel was able to come to a position of shame because they looked at their past from the perspective of the exile and the corrective of God. And this provided the identity they needed. Though, they didn't quite grasp what it meant to repent, and to recognize the coming of the messianic age in Christ, necessarily.

But okay, here's an interesting point that I think is really involved in all of this. And this has to do with the origin of the first part of Genesis. Right? So you have Genesis 1 through 11, which I don't think is 100 percent a Mesopotamian polemic because I do think it has some Egyptian context as [00:59:00] well, but the flood story and other things are clearly so very steeped in that Mesopotamic exile context.

And Why? Well, because during the time of the exile, Israel was reformulating its identity, and as such, they needed new origin stories. So I suspect this is why we have the primeval history as it is in the Torah. They needed to understand themselves and their origins in light of what they had learned about themselves and their shame about the past. So these stories, I think they're still old, but they are also current polemics to the time to speak of God and man in a correct way versus how the Mesopotamians were portraying gods and man.

And interestingly, even though [01:00:00] Israel was in a state of shame regarding who they were, the story of Genesis is one of positivity regarding the origin of man and who we are in relation to God, like, that's pretty amazing.

I mean, regardless of historicity, and I think it is historical, the story of Genesis could have been told in a way that didn't elevate mankind in the way that Genesis 1 actually does. Surely the story could have been told in a way where shame and guilt were far more pronounced and emphasized. And they're not. Not to say that those things aren't there, but they're within the pattern of history, and we don't see shame and guilt and the lowering of mankind in Genesis 1. And I think that is really important to notice.

Throughout the whole Bible, God is our Savior. Are we guilty? [01:01:00] Obviously. Should we be in a state of shame? Well, if our culture understood God's righteousness, we would have a good level of shame. Is guilt and shame the position that God wants to interact with us in? Is this his heart's desire?

No! I think God wants to grant us that mercy. But he's going to do it, usually, from the perspective of the one who has turned to him in repentance.

Okay, so, wrapping this up real quick. We do need to take responsibility for our actions. We need to know who's to blame and who's guilty. Of course, in the incident in the garden, Adam blamed the woman, he blamed God, Eve blamed the serpent. We don't know who the serpent blamed, but surely he blamed somebody.

And I would suggest that our depravity grows for several reasons. You could maybe loop these into three different reasons. We have [01:02:00] ourselves and our internal desires. We have external agents, either spiritual or human temptation and dominion. And we have a fallen environment that we're in, whether that's our society, the world, chaos at large.

And so we don't fix all of that on our own. We can't become paragons of virtue without a good model, and without the marrying of heaven and earth, and God and man, the Messiah and the Bride.

And so there is the need and the concept of justice in the form of punishing wrong things. But again, we have to have the concept of making things right and bringing things in proper order. Making a judgment that includes mercy doesn't neglect justice because the point of justice is not just punishment, but God's righteousness. So God is [01:03:00] allowing time for repentance. He's allowing people to come back to him.

We're going to end on just a couple of passages here. Let's look at Isaiah 56 verses 1 through 2. It says, quote, Thus says the Lord, preserve justice and do righteousness, for my salvation is about to come, and my righteousness to be revealed. How blessed is the man who does this, and the son of man who takes hold of it, who keeps from profaning the sabbath, and keeps his hand from doing any evil. End quote.

So we have justice and righteousness in parallel there. We're going to see that also in Jeremiah 22, verse 3. Quote. Thus says the Lord, do justice and righteousness, and deliver the one who has been robbed from the power of his oppressor. Also do not mistreat or do violence to the stranger, the orphan, [01:04:00] or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place. End quote.

So, yes, we have punishment. If you don't do justice, you're empowering those who are domineering over others, and you're allowing the oppression. Is the law not also about keeping things in order? If justice is about the law, and the law is about right order, then justice cannot be merely punishment. It can't be.

Go also to the story of the rich young ruler that we see in Mark 10, for instance. Following the law is not enough. Why was he told to sell all that he possesses and give to the poor? Well, because the law is about caring for others. It's not just about, I didn't break a law. It is about right order and community in living out a life of righteousness [01:05:00] that is in alignment with God and man.

Do we have a picture of God who cannot forgive or pronounce mercy where he sees fit? Do we have a picture of God who is concerned about law keeping for the sake of the law itself? No, the law has a purpose. It is a tool. It is a thing that is going to work to keep things in alignment.

What is justice about? The point isn't that bad can't be punished. The point is God's righteousness and order and the flourishing of mankind. And that is a complicated picture because you have people who are going to oppress other people and those other people are going to oppress other people and it's going to snowball into a societal tyranny that is both from the top down and the bottom up.

And all of that has to be [01:06:00] made right. And only an omnipotent and all caring and all loving God can do that in a right way. Our forms of justice here on earth are never going to be anywhere near the kinds of justice that God can perform and that God will manage to get through at the end of the day.

All right, so I'm going to wrap this up here, and I really hope that you kind of followed my train of logic and my thoughts there, and that it wasn't too discombobulated. Some of the takeaways I want you to have here is that our ideas of justice might be more related to vengeance rather than biblical justice and righteousness.

We do not have a picture of these scales that have to be balanced unless of course we're adding in the idea of mercy into those scales. Mercy can [01:07:00] balance the scales just as much as punishment can, and that's hard for us to see. But when we are in relationship to God and it is God's spirit who is working in us, that changes things immensely, I think.

Alright, so let me know if you guys have any questions or further rabbit trails you would like me to go down. More than happy to see what I can do for those. Thank you guys for the questions that you give, for the interaction you have, for sharing these episodes with others who might benefit from them.

That is a real blessing to me. And also, thank you, thank you, thank you to those of you who support me financially. To be honest, I've got a lot of things going on right now and I really appreciate you guys and kind of hoping for good things to happen here in this ministry in the future, as well as related things.

If you guys want to help [01:08:00] support me financially, you can find out where to do so on my website at GenesisMarksTheSpot. com. I have a Patreon. You can donate to me via PayPal, or if you have another idea of how to do that, let me know. You can contact me through my website, you can sign up for my newsletters there, you can go to my store, and you can buy things on my store, including artwork that I have up there. Or you can just go there and look at it and see what I've got. Again, thank you guys for listening, and thank you for all of your support. I wish you all a blessed week, and we will see you later.