No Offense #1: Don't Drink the Poison
August 13, 2023Pastor Patrick presented this morning's message in the new series "No Offense." His topic was "Don't Drink the Poison." A video of the message is here.
To extend Patrick's point, when you continue to live being offended, you can't ever get to considering that maybe you should think about why you were offended in the first place. It may have been that someone was speaking some truth to you that you needed to hear. And by remaining offended, you block off the valuable input, perhaps forever.
Among the 613 laws of the Torah, one law is to reprove wrongoders (Leviticus 19:17b). It reads "You shall surely rebuke your fellow, but you shall not bear a sin on his account." The gist of it is, if you do not at least attempt to straighten someone out, you take on some of the guilt/sin/blame by allowing the bad behavior to continue. In trying to "straighten out someone," there is clearly the possibility of offending that person. And if that person chooses to live in being offended, they will never understand or value the feedback you've provided.
When you look up "offense" in a concordance, you find many Hebrew words translated as such. Mashing all the core meanings into a group, you get: quilt, sin, foul thing, refuse, unseemly, another (strange), to think, to take account of, a king's name from a primitve root "to stink", loathsome, (offensive) weapons, neglect, horrid, disgusting, utensil, third (e.g. offensive on the third day), and remember.
Of those possible meanings, I was taken by "to think" and "to take account" (chashab, חָשַׁב) How you react to something, what you think about it, often leads to whether you take permanent offense or not. Likewise, from the one doing the possible offense, it can be good or bad depending on what was intended, depending on what they thought. Coincidentally, Pastor Starnes touched on this just last week with his reference to Genesis 50:20 (Joseph speaking to his brothers), "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives." The word translated as "intended" is one of those words that can also be translated as "offensive" and means how you think about or account for something. So, before choosing to live with an offense, give it some unbiased thought (as best you can).
Bonus
Timnath, CO
On our return from Wyoming, we stopped in the Fort Collins, CO area for coffee. Lynn found a non-chain coffee shop a bit off the beaten path, Public Market Coffeehouse. Turns out that this coffe shop is in a town called Timnath, CO (Wikipedia), a "statutory town" just southeast of Fort Collins, CO.
As we approached the shop, I noticed a fairly large entry sign that said Timnath something. It struck me as the name of a housing division. But a very odd name. So I asked the gal running the coffeeshop, "what does Timnath mean?" Her answer was, paraphrased, "It's an obscure Biblical name that the Presbyterian Church used to name the town" when a post office was established there in 1884. She pointed to a binder on a display shelf that provided the entire history of Timnath (the Biblical Timnath being a location within the area of Judah). The binder was fairly thick, I didn't read the whole thing by any means, but I got what I wanted - the Bible reference...
Judges 14. This chapter tells the story of Samson finding his soon-to-be Phillistine wife in Timnath. Among other things, the story tells the dangers of "love at first sight." The Judges 14 story has many angles (Nazirite vows, God's will, God allowing rather than making happen, honey in the carcass of a lion, a bachelor party, a riddle, anger and revenge, etc.); it's quite the story.
But then I was drawn back to the overall purpose of these essays, "What does the Torah say about that?" Is there any reference in the Torah to Timnath?
Turns out the answer is yes: Genesis 38:12-14. Here the spelling in the translation is usually Timnah (תִּמְנָה, meaning "territory"; the root, manah, means to count, number, or reckon). It's considered to be the same "place in the hill-country of Judah" that is referenced in Judges 14 and Joshua 15:10 and 19:43. Today the area is known as Tibneh and is about 15 miles southwest of Jerusalem.
The Genesis 38 reference is the story of Judah finding a wife and having three sons, one of whom is Onan. Onan's brother, Er, dies leaving his wife a widow. Onan is to fullfil his duty as a brother-in-law to the widow and provide her seed, but he "spills his seed" instead as he doesn't want the responsibility of children. As a result, she later tricks Judah (her father-in-law) into sleeping with her to get pregnant, which she does become, and has twin sons, Perez and Zerah. The story includes a pledge between Judah and Tamar. It's all quite fascinating.
Here are some of the interesting points or revelations in the Genesis 38 story:
Judah left his brothers (Joseph, Benjamin, etc.) to go to this area (Timnah), probably over the shame he had about what he did to Joseph. He married a Canaanite woman, expressly prohibited by Abraham and later Torah law. His son, Onan, did not obey his Levirate duty to act as husband to his brother's widow (later this became optional with a ceremnony). Onan's sin is often miss-interpreted as masturbation; it was not masturbation. Onanism came to refer to masturbation even though there is no masturbation in the Onan story. The incorrect use came from later interpretation, not from the story itself. Years later, the widowed Tamar tricks Judah (widowed himself some time earlier) into sleeping with her as a prostitute to get pregnant. Yet another story of a strong woman taking it upon herself to right a wrong. She convinces Judah to leave a pledge for payment, his seal and cord. The seal and cord later save Tamar from being burned as a prositute when Judah recognizes his "pledge" and makes good on it. The story ends with Tamar having twins (by Judah), including some detail about one coming out first, then withdrawing, then the other being declared "firstborn." This was Perez (which means "breach") and Zerah. According to the genealogy record, Perez is an ancestor of David and therefor an ancestor of the Messiah. This makes the Messiah a descendant of both a Canaanite mother (Tamar) and a Moabite woman (Ruth). As Prager points out, a key moral lesson of the Torah is that values matter far more than national identity.
You never know where an obscure reference may lead...