♫ ☼ The
City of God
☼ ♫
From Arthur & Rosalind Eedle
www.oxleigh.freeserve.co.uk
1st March
2008
You have come to Mount Zion, City of the Living God, heavenly Jerusalem. Heb.12:22
Chapter 14. No more curses (Part 2)
"Unto the woman He said, 'I will greatly
multiply your sorrow and your conception; in sorrow you shall bring forth
children.'" (Gen.3:16)
The A.V. accurately follows the Hebrew. But the Revised Standard Version decided it would write
its own commentary on this verse. It reads - "I will greatly
multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth
children." Now let's stop here for a moment, because women will
tell you they call labour pains "the
curse." For centuries in the Western World this has been the common
understanding. But the Hebrew word was "sorrow", not
"pain." Were the RSV translators exceeding their brief in this
respect?
I was discussing this passage with my wife. She said,
"I'll not accept that God increased a woman's pains after the
fall. That suggests she would have had pains before the fall, which I
can't accept." And so I was sent back to the Hebrew Lexicon and
Young's Concordance to examine these words. Here is what I found.
There are no less than 26 different Hebrew words translated
"sorrow" in the O.T. Our word is number 18 in the list. It is ETSEB.
There are but 10 references to this word in the O.T.,
and a few quotes will satisfy us of the word's meaning. (ETSEB is the underlined
word)
"Lest your labours
[i.e. work, exertions] go to the house of an alien."
(Prov.5:10)
"The blessing of the Lord makes rich, and He
adds no sorrow with it." (Prov.10:22) Margin -
"and toil adds nothing to it."
"In all labour
there is profit, but mere talk tends only to want." (Prov.14:23)
"A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh
word stirs up anger." (Prov.15:1) Those who "labour" the point?
"Lamech said, 'Out of the ground which the Lord
has cursed, this one [i.e.Noah] shall bring us relief
from the work and toil of our hands.'" )Gen.5:29)
"To Adam He said, 'Cursed is the ground because
of you. In toil [A.V. sorrow] you shall eat of it all the days of your
life.'" (Gen.3:17)
There can be no doubt of the correctness of the Lexicon,
which says the word means toil, labour,
exertion. Therefore it would be best if we translated Gen.3:16 as
follows. "I will greatly increase your toil and your
conception [better, pregnancy]; in toil you shall bring forth
children." "Labour" is truly
the right word to describe the act of giving birth. No doubt Eve would have
toiled to give birth before the fall, but after the fall the Lord said
it would be "hard labour." However,
there is no indication of pain in the word .
This is where we need to be careful in our translation. Not all women have
a difficult time during labour. Some speak of it as
an exhilarating experience, even though hard work! If most experience pain,
then we must realise that we are 6,000 years down the
line from Adam and Eve, and the human race has deteriorated.
Now we must move on. The first thing to state is that this
curse is removed entirely from the inhabitants of Paradise.
But some will say, "in resurrection there will be
no need to consider the problem any more, because we shall be as angels who
neither marry nor are given in marriage, so there will be no more bearing of
children." So, are we to imagine that heavenly places will become
devoid of children eventually, and that they will never again be seen?
Can we really imagine that, after hearing the Lord's words, "See
that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I tell you that their
angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven."
(Matt.18:10) And again, "Permit the little children,
forbid them not, to come to me, for of such is the Kingdom
of Heaven."
(Matt.19:14) I could spend some time explaining our Lord's words
in Luke 20, when He addressed the Sadducees, but let it be sufficient to say
that the current interpretation cannot be sustained. There will always be
little children in the Holy City.
Why, even the Hebrew word for Cherub means "like children", and it is
not without significance that many artists have painted cherubim as little
children with wings. Married women in the Holy
City will certainly be able to have
children, and in doing so will find the experience of giving birth
exhilarating, and although still quite an exertion, it will be free of pain.
Above all, let Zechariah speak from the fullness of his
prophetic heart. "I will return to Zion,
and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem,
and Jerusalem
shall be called The Faithful
City,
and the mountain of the Lord of Hosts, The Holy
Mountain.
Old men and old women shall again sit in the plazas of Jerusalem,
each with a staff in hand for very age, and the plazas of the City shall be
full of boys and girls playing in the plazas." (Zech.8:3-5) (See
additional note at the end)
The 26th chapter of Isaiah is most helpful. The chapter
starts by looking ahead to the City of God.
"We have a strong City, and He sets up salvation as Walls and
Bulwarks. Open the Gates, that the righteous nation
that keeps faith may enter in." (Verses 1-2) Then we are
given a glimpse of the Judgment scene, when the Kingdom begins. "When
Your judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of
the world will learn righteousness." (Verse 9) But as for the
present time, those of the "righteous nation" (perhaps "the
invisible church", the Remnant) are still being chastened by the Lord, and
they say, "Like as a woman with child, drawing near to the time of
her delivery, is in pain, and cries out in her pangs, so we have been in Your
sight, O Lord. We have been with child, we have been in pain, we have as it were brought forth wind. We have not wrought
any deliverance in the earth, neither have the inhabitants of the world
been brought to birth,* [i.e.new birth, as Nicodemus
was meant to understand.] The remnant cries to the Lord, wanting
to see the world flooded with righteousness, as depicted in verse 9, when the
Kingdom is fully operative, but no matter how sensitive they have been to the
Lord's leading, they admit to the fact that they have not seen the glorious
vision transpire. "[But the Lord says] Your
dead men shall live, together with My dead body they shall arise."
Jesus is the firstborn from among the dead. His resurrection is the guarantee
for the rest. "Awake and sing, you who lie in the dust, for your
dew is like the [revivifying effect] of dew on herbs." Here is
God's promise to His elect. They will be raised to immortality. Then they will
(corporately) be with child, and (without labour
pains) bring forth the deliverance of the world's people, and see multitudes
brought to new birth.
Isaiah 60 speaks eloquently of this glorious time. "Arise,
shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord is risen
upon you. Behold darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the
peoples, but the Lord will arise upon you, and His glory will be seen upon
you." We are now living in a day when these words are very
applicable. Isn't the earth covered in spiritual darkness? Are not
millions living in gross darkness, which God's missionaries find almost
impossible to penetrate? At such a time, the Holy
City will be completed, and the
glory of the Lord will arise. Reading on in this chapter we find figurative
language being used. "Lift up your eyes round about, and see - they
all gather together and come to you!" Who? Four
different classes are mentioned. 1. Sons and daughters. 2. The
abundance of the sea. 3. Camels, flocks, rams.
4. Doves flying as a cloud. Where else do we
read about Men, Fish, Animals, and Birds? In the
resurrection sequence in 1 Cor.15:39, the four orders of terrestrial
resurrection, after the three heavenly orders have been taken up, i.e. Sun,
Moon, and Stars. And so, Isaiah has once again spoken about the glory of
the resurrection morning, and the way in which the resurrected sons of God will
"bring forth" the inhabitants of the world to "new birth",
exactly as our Lord described to Nicodemus.
Yes, the Holy City
will always be full of children, full of boys and girls playing the
plazas of the New Jerusalem. Praise the Lord for the promise of the curse being
removed from women in resurrection, the curse of multiplied effort in the bringing
forth of children that was placed upon Eve, and all women subsequently. Never
again will there be sorrow in bringing forth children. Never again will there
be pain and hard labour, but the exhilaration of
creative joy. But in addition to this "family joy" there will also be
the great corporate joy of bringing forth earth's multitudes to new birth.
Truly she will be "the Mother of God's New Creation."
* "brought to
birth". The A.V. and several other versions translate this
verse literally, "neither have the inhabitants of the world
fallen." But other translations have recognised
the force of this word "fallen." They realise
it is a common expression for being born. We speak about animals
"dropping" their young. Farmers speak of "the entire drop of the
lambs for the year." Eastern women either stand or kneel in giving birth,
and the baby "falls" from the womb. NEB - "no one will be born to inhabit the
world." Amplified Bible - "the inhabitants of the
world are not yet born." Rotherham's Emphasised Bible - "neither
were born the inhabitants of the world." French Bible - "et ses habitants ne sont pas nés."
Additional
note on children in the Holy City. An article appeared in the "Public
Library of Science", dated 27th Feb.2008, entitled
"Why do we love babies?" How appropriate this
should appear just now! Briefly, the article speaks of research being
carried out at U.Ks Aston University, using a neuroimaging
method called magnetoencephalography. Participants
were required to monitor the colour of small red
crosses, and press a button as soon as the colour
changed. The images shown were interspersed with infant faces for just 300 ms,
but were not important to solving their task. However, the participants
responded positively to these infant faces within one seventh of a second,
which is far too rapid to be consciously controlled, and therefore must be
based upon some inbred instinct. The part of the brain which responded is known
as the medial orbitofrontal cortex. If God has
so placed this instinctive response to the beauty of the infant face, then He
did so for some beautiful purpose. Shall we suppose that in resurrection this
response is removed? I found the scientific paper very interesting to
read.