When my husband and I were in the early days of our
relationship, I remember finding it difficult to be patient whenever he would
tell me stories about his day or his past. It wasn’t that I wasn’t interested,
it was just that he seemed to be repeating the same details over and over in
the course of a few minutes. “Yes, I got it the first time,” it was hard not to
say. But thankfully a friend of mine, who had lived for a time in the Middle
East, mentioned one day how Arabs speak circularly and how that can be difficult
for Americans, who are very linear by nature, to adjust to.
In case you haven’t noticed, Americans are typically
get-to-the-point, cut-to-the-chase, keep-moving-forward kind of people.
Repeating the same parts of the story over and over again is a waste of time
and energy—and Americans (generally, as a whole) are all about efficiency,
productivity, and time. Arabs, on the other hand, are much more laid-back when
it comes to life in general. Time is more of an afterthought rather than the
ruler of the day; projects don’t have to be completed all in one day just
because they can be; community (socializing) and refreshment (rest and food)
often take precedence over productivity.
So when my friend mentioned how the different communication
styles are connected to these differences between the cultures, suddenly, it
all made sense. My future husband was just communicating in the way his culture
had trained him to. And my impatience was just a reflection of the way my brain
had been trained to communicate in my culture and how it hadn’t yet grown to
the point where it could adapt between the two.
I’m still a work in progress, but with God’s help, I’m
learning to be more patient, especially since now it’s not just my husband but
my whole community who communicate in a circular way. And while it can be
frustrating in the meantime as my brain continues to adjust, I have found that
once again a cultural difference has enlightened my understanding of God and of
the Bible.
Have you ever noticed particularly, it seems, in the Old
Testament how repetitive the Bible is? I’m not talking about the kind of
repetition that would indicate points of emphasis that we look for when studying
a particular passage of Scripture. I’m talking about instances like in Daniel 3
where the phrase “the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe, and
every kind of music” is repeated almost ad nauseum in the account of Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego and the fiery furnace. Like, really? We get it. When you
hear the music, you’re supposed to bow down. No need to tell us every single
instrument—every single time.
Another example is Ezekiel 21:1-5 (ESV):
The word of
the Lord came to me: “Son of man, set your
face toward Jerusalem and preach against the sanctuaries. Prophesy
against the land of Israel and say to the land of Israel, Thus says the Lord: Behold, I am against you and will draw my sword from its
sheath and will cut off from you both righteous and wicked. Because I will cut off from you both righteous and wicked, therefore
my sword shall be drawn from its sheath against all flesh from south to north. And all flesh shall know that I am the Lord. I have drawn my sword from its sheath; it shall not be
sheathed again.”
Do you see the repetition and circular language? Look at the
passage again, marked this time:
The word of
the Lord came to me: “Son of man, set your
face toward Jerusalem and preach against the sanctuaries. Prophesy
against the land of Israel and say to the land of Israel, Thus says the Lord: Behold, I am against you and will draw my sword from its
sheath and will cut off from you both righteous and wicked. Because I will cut off from you both righteous and wicked,
therefore my sword shall be drawn from its sheath against all flesh from south
to north. And all flesh shall know that I am
the Lord. I have drawn my sword from its sheath; it shall not be
sheathed again.”
I will draw my sword --> I will cut you off --> I will cut you off --> my sword shall be drawn --> I have drawn my sword.
And in Ezekiel 22:19-22 (ESV):
Therefore thus says the Lord God: Because you have all become dross, therefore, behold, I will gather you into the midst of Jerusalem. As one gathers silver and bronze and iron and lead and tin into a furnace, to blow the fire on it in order to melt it, so I will gather you in my anger and in my wrath, and I will put you in and melt you. I will gather you and blow on you with the fire of my wrath, and you shall be melted in the midst of it. As silver is melted in a furnace, so you shall be melted in the midst of it, and you shall know that I am the Lord; I have poured out my wrath upon you.”
Repeated again, with emphasis added:
Therefore thus says the Lord God: Because you have all become dross, therefore, behold, I will gather you into the midst of Jerusalem. As one gathers silver and bronze and iron and lead and tin into a furnace, to blow the fire on it in order to melt it, so I will gather you in my anger and in my wrath, and I will put you in and melt you. I will gather you and blow on you with the fire of my wrath, and you shall be melted in the midst of it. As silver is melted in a furnace, so you shall be melted in the midst of it, and you shall know that I am the Lord; I have poured out my wrath upon you.”
I will gather you --> as one gathers silver
to melt it --> I
will gather you in my wrath and melt you --> I will gather you and blow with my wrath, and you shall be melted --> as silver is melted
you shall be melted from my wrath.
See the circle?
To my American brain, these
passages are difficult to read, because it feels like God is just saying the
same thing over and over again unnecessarily. But once I realized that this
type of circular communication is a characteristic of Middle Eastern culture
(likely reaching back to ancient days), I realized that God was speaking to the
people in the way that they would understand. Daniel’s repetition of the phrase
about all the instruments was a reflection of the communication style of his
culture. And God’s words to Ezekiel were spoken in the form that fit the
culture they were being spoken into.
So not only must we evaluate the
Bible within its historical and cultural contexts, but also we can learn from
doing so how kind and considerate and wise the God of the Bible is. Being the
all-knowing Creator, He knows how every culture operates. And being the loving
Communicator, He reveals Himself to us, His creatures, in ways we will
understand. He did this in the days of the Bible, and He is still doing so
today.
For example, have you noticed
that there are so many more instances of people coming to know Jesus through
dreams in Middle Eastern and Eastern cultures than in Western ones? Why is
that? Perhaps it’s because dreams are an important part of non-western
cultures, whereas westerners tend to be skeptical of dreams and more reliant on
reasoning and written communication and because God knows this and provides
avenues of learning about Him that will be most meaningful to the receiver.
But the ultimate example of God’s
perfectly directed communication style is Jesus Himself. As Hebrews 1:1 says,
“Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the
prophets, but in these last days, he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he
appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world”
(ESV). God reveals Himself through the written word in the Bible, as he spoke
through the prophets in a way the people could understand. But God also
revealed Himself in the living Word (see John 1) when He took on human flesh
and lived a human life in a human culture so that we could have an intermediary
between us and God who can actually relate to us experientially—to our
emotions, our struggles, our joys—and to whom we can relate as well (see
Hebrews 2:17-18; 4:14-16).
So whether it’s the repetitive
passages in the Old Testament or the accounts of Jesus’ life in the New Testament,
each serves as a reminder to us of the depth of God’s love. As we read all of Scripture
in context and learn about Jesus, we see that God loves us enough to speak to
us and, beyond that, to speak in a way that we can understand—even when that
meant condescending to live bodily among us. What a wonderful, kind God He is!
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