When I was in middle school I received my first well-stated challenge to the Bible’s authority. It was not from a teacher or even an adult but a well-taught (in error) classmate. That was of course the first challenge of many. If you have spent any time thinking through the Word of God as a believer and interacting with the world on its contents you have come across the challenges in many different forms, from all quarters. Sometimes the challenge is from someone you love; sometimes you receive the attack from a personal enemy. It is rarely easy to handle, unless you have your prior commitments well-established and are ready to examine theirs. So it is, and so it has always been, back with our common ancestor Eve (Ishshah) in her infamous exchange with the Satan-possessed serpent (Gen 3:1-6).

I once heard a man say, “I don’t believe the Bible because no one is perfectly infallible so that he knows perfectly everything he writes about, especially stuff he didn’t see himself….” This is one pretty common challenge to Moses’ Torah, the Law. Such a challenge is really ignorant of the position Bible believers actually hold: Genesis-Deuteronomy, all written by Moses 3500 years ago are not only from Moses; they are God’s work through Moses, according to 2 Peter 1:21. God knows everything perfectly, and He alone is capable of insuring our works are consistent with His reality.

So I defend Moses with Peter, at least for my own satisfaction. Scoffers will scoff regardless.

The challenge I got in middle school, though, was more difficult. My friend stated with conviction and vigor that the Bible contradicts itself. Today I want to explore the supposed contradiction my classmate suggested–in the passage he quoted–and illustrate the difference between scoffing and reasoning.

The Command

“Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid; for God has come in order to test you, and in order that the fear of Him may remain with you, so that you may not sin.” ” (Exodus 20:20, NAS)

Do you notice the “contradiction”? Moses says “do not be afraid” as the initial instruction, but then he explains the purpose of the presentation on Mount Sinai that has the nation cowering in despair: the point is that they fear the Lord. “Do not fear…but you should fear.” Is this not a contradiction?

In a devotion that focuses on the commands of Scripture, we ought to notice the context: this is the part of the Bible where God gave the Ten Commandments to Israel, as discussed a bit in yesterday’s entry. This was a truly awesome scene, with smoke, thunder, lightening, and even “trumpet” sound all as accompaniment to God’s voice, as He delivered those great imperatives. Those “Ten Commandments” which founded their state and which undergird our civilization. After God spoke the “Ten Words” (Dabar = “word”) in vv3-17, the people asked Moses to be their mediator in v19, “or we will die.” Verse 20 is Moses’ response, which commands them not to be afraid.

“Maybe the resolution is in Hebrew” some who know a bit about the Bible will suggest. Friends, the answer is not in Hebrew any more than in English. Let me show you why:

Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid; for God has come in order to test you, and in order that the fear of Him may remain with you, so that you may not sin.”

At least in the New American Standard we have a different word used for both instances of “fear.” “Be afraid” is not the same English word as “fear.” They have much the same meaning and even share their origin, but the words are actually different. Not so much the case in Hebrew!

וַיֹּ֨אמֶר מֹשֶׁ֣ה אֶל־הָעָם֮ אַל־תִּירָאוּ֒ כִּ֗י לְבַֽעֲבוּר֙ נַסּ֣וֹת אֶתְכֶ֔ם בָּ֖א הָאֱלֹהִ֑ים וּבַעֲב֗וּר תִּהְיֶ֧ה יִרְאָת֛וֹ עַל־פְּנֵיכֶ֖ם לְבִלְתִּ֥י תֶחֱטָֽאוּ׃

If you just keep your eyes on the red letters in the above passage from the Masoretic Text, you will see the same root letters, Y-R-A. The first instance is the verbal command, “do not fear.” The second is the related noun, and the clause is literally, “And in order that it would be, the fear of Him, upon your (plural) faces, so that you would not sin.”

“Do not be afraid….but have the fear of Him on your faces” does not really settle the perceived contradiction. Are we supposed to fear or aren’t we?

No Contradiction

The problem is not really a problem for them that have “eyes to see.” We are dealing with two very different but related notions that the word ירא can be used to communicate. In other words there are two kinds of fear in v20, and one is prohibited! We might at this point think of taking our eyes off the Bible in order to figure out what the two categories of fear are, but that would only take us into speculation and subjectivity. The context and how Moses uses the words are our guides to what he means by the two uses of the same word. It has been well said that “words have meaning.” This is true, but only and specifically the meaning supplied to them by their author. In other words, we do not really use language by the “rules” of the dictionary; the dictionary is trying to describe the rules of the language as we use it.

The Language Lab: Stability and Ambiguity

Classic, pre-modern Biblical interpretation (hermeneutics) has always assumed that meaning is connected to the author’s intent rather than the reader’s response. Here is a great example of what we mean. There are several senses in which you could use the English word fear, and most would agree that some are healthy and some unhealthy. But when you use the word in a sentence communicating your thought, you have the sense in mind that you wish to convey with the word. This possibility of multiple meanings for the same words is what I’ll call ambiguity. Now there is a stability here that is just as important to recognize as the potential ambiguity. The stability is that within the language community, words tend to have an accepted range of possible meanings, and using them outside that range does not communicate anything.

“Bunny my bunny gilligans!” does not mean anything to the broad English speaking community. However, if I invented new meanings for bunny and gilligan and established a community that embraced those new meanings, then my sentence would communicate what I had intended. But only to the special community that knew the meanings! Let’s say I made up the following lexicon of words I coined: Bunny
used as a verb can mean either “to polish” or “hang wallpaper.” How is that for arbitrary and absurd?! As an adjective bunny means “new.” Gilligans means “a pair of shoes” or as slang “bare feet.” Now my crazy sentence means something I intended to communicate but only in the limited community that knows my word meanings. “Polish my new shoes!” in English is “Bunny my bunny gilligans” in Crazese. This is how language works, and God invented it. By the way, this is what mathematics really is. Math is a language that expresses in shorthand statements about quantities.

Lewis Carroll was ingenious at illustrating these kinds of things. So much literary humor is bound up in the continuum between latent ambiguity and stable range of meanings. Moses is not intending humor in Exodus 20:20, but he does use one word with two different meanings in the same sentence. The contradiction is only apparent to those who are looking for one, not for those who are looking for Moses’ meaning.

What Moses means by Fear

Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid; for God has come in order to test you, and in order that the fear of Him may remain with you, so that you may not sin.”

On the one hand, seeing the awesome power of God is cause for a healthy recognition that God is God and we are not. This is the “fear of the Lord” that both OT and NT writers assume as foundational to a person’s walk that pleases God. Standing in awe of God’s omnipotence is not the same as cowering in terror. Kneeling in reverence for your Creator is not the same as fallen Adam hiding from Him in the Garden “because I was afraid.”

If we could see infinite creative and destructive power like the children of Israel saw at Mount Sinai, we might be tempted to fear for our lives too, to be afraid of God. But Israel had already seen the Mighty Arm of the Lord deliver them from cruel Egypt, and this wonderful salvation was right before the Sinai experience. The “test” of v20 was God’s challenge to their thinking: Am I good? Am I loving? Am I consistent with My Word? They could see and hear that He is Omnipotent; the earth was quaking under their feet. Could they remember that He is good? The answer to that question is the difference between one kind of fear: I’m in terror that cripples me and destroys my soul and the other kind of fear: I am in awe of my wonderful Creator, Savior, and Judge.

If Israel should ever entertain the idea for a moment that God is not God, the awesome power they all saw at Sinai should have reminded them instantly not to mess with the Holy One of Israel. As the story of the Bible with its depiction of the state of theocratic Israel unfolds we see quickly that the memory of God’s awesome power faded until they were not motivated by God’s character at all. May it not be so with you.

Three Thoughts

1. God is Omnipotent, meaning He has infinite power. If that were all we knew of God we might have cause to be afraid, to hide in terror of Someone capable of doing anything He wants.

2. God is Love, Righteousness, and Goodness too. If He were only a “perfectly good guy” and not also infinitely capable (omnipotent) to bring about eternal good and righteousness, we would have reason to be afraid of evil, thinking He could do nothing to stop it.

3. The whole package is the truth; error will enter if we only accept parts of it. Taking what God has presented of Himself as a whole, simple presentation, our only appropriate response is the fear of the Lord, a recognition that He alone is awesome indeed.

Passage to Pray

Exodus 20

Memory Verse: Exodus 20:20

Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid; for God has come in order to test you, and in order that the fear of Him may remain with you, so that you may not sin.” (Exodus 20:20, NAS)