Folia Theologica et Canonica 10. 32/24 (2021)

Sacra theologia

I AM WITH YOU EVERY DAY... (GOD’S PROMISES ACCORDING TO THE SCRIPTURES) 41

by ‘justice and law’. Justice and lawfulness are correlative, corresponding concepts: while justice (sedakah) is the principle of merciful love (hesed), law (mispat) expresses the way in which it is implemented in everyday life. The divine law, the commandments, indicates the way man should behave. Love for God, on the other hand, is concretised in the keeping of the law, in fidelity to the divine commandments. The laws and commandments are therefore the consequences and the conditions for the unfolding of the community of the bérit. The covenant remains a free gift of God which man can earn only by his reciprocal love - which is realized in the keeping of the commandments - and only in this way can it be kept.

Although God, through his prophets, repeatedly warned his chosen people to walk in ‘the path of righteousness and justice’, they could not avoid national disaster. At the beginning of the sixth century BC, Jerusalem was destroyed, the temple burned, and its king and the ruling class of the people were deported to Babylon, a foreign land. The question then arose, were God’s promises of a land, a great nation and a nearness to God now suddenly and irrevocably shattered? What is more, is the Lord himself powerless against the gods of the peoples who conquered Israel? And when trust in the Lord had almost faltered, then God spoke to his people in captivity: he did not die, he was not silent, but he himself accompanied his people into the midst of the foreigners. God himself went on pilgrimage, and did not abandon his chosen ones.8 He raised up a prophet from among the people, who cried out in the name of the Lord, “I will give you hope and a future” (Jer 29:11). The prophet of consolation (the author of chapters 40-55 of the Book of Isaiah) boldly promises “new, mysterious and unknown” things (42:9; 48:6). He uses a variety of images to show that God’s purpose is steadfast: he will continue to remain with his people, and even to show his power in a hitherto unknown way by, as he puts it, “preparing a way in the desert and rivers in the wilderness” (43:19). The most expressive summary of these miracles is the New Jerusalem, mother of innumerable nations (54:3; 60:4), and “a house of prayer for all peoples” (56:7). In these biblical verses, too, we see that God is always present, explicitly on the side of life, and therefore offers man hope and a prosperous, fruitful future. He does not withdraw his promises, but only delays their unfolding because of human sin.

de Taizé, J., Le Chemin de Dieu. Etude biblique sur la foi comme pélerinage, Taizé 1990. 137-171.