Several peoples of antiquity knew the Only, Who created the heavens and the earth the Egyptians, the Sumerians, the Greeks, the Indians. But none of them adored Him: he was too far from earth and from people with their life and their problems. Such a distant God was practically...
Several peoples of antiquity knew the Only, Who created the heavens and the earth the Egyptians, the Sumerians, the Greeks, the Indians. But none of them adored Him: he was too far from earth and from people with their life and their problems. Such a distant God was practically inaccessible, that is why it is as if He didn’t existed at all: what man has to do with a God, Who does not have the time of man? His laws act in the world as an inexorable power, but addressing Him is useless: he will not still hear and will change nothing in His world created once for all, world living according to the once and for all asserted, unwavering and inexorable laws.
Many people believed in the existence of such God later, already in the new time, sometimes covering with this believe their practical atheism, sometimes suffering from the idea that the world is ruled by a merciless Lord, to Whom it is useless to ask for anything. The originality of the Bible consists not of what it tells us about the only God who created the heavens and the earth: it was not news nor in the time of Abraham, or in the time of Moses. The originality of the Bible - in the tradition kept by it, a unique tradition, in the basis of which lie the revelation of this unique God and the experience of the living relationships with Him. God remains not only a kind of transcendent being, He condescends to man, He, according to the words of the hymnography, "inclined to glance on the heavens and on the earth", inclined from His transcendent eternity in order to meet face to face with man, with this same man whom He created, whom He freed and who he wants to see now as His son.
Here they are in particular living relations, relations, in which any thing can happen: acceptance and rejection, "yes" and "no", the ups and downs, which is not always a joy not only to man having forgotten for a long time God, but also to God Himself often receiving from the man who forgot Him not at all answer such as He would have wanted to hear. But without these living relations God's plan remains impracticable, and the life of man loses any sense, that is why God comes to them, no matter what. Comes in order to save man from sin and offer him a new life - the life of His Kingdom, which He prepared for those who He loves.
112 This also is an alphabetical psalm. We have here the character and blessedness of the righteous, Psa 112:1-9. The iniquity of the wicked, Psa 112:10.
112:2 Generation - The posterity.
112:3 Righteousness - The fruit or reward of his righteousness, which is God's blessing upon his estate.
112:4 Darkness - In the troubles and calamities of life.He - The upright man.
112:5 Lendeth - Gives freely to some, and lends to others according to the variety of their conditions. Affairs - His domestick affairs.Discretion - Not getting his estate unjustly, nor casting it away prodigally, nor yet withholding it from such as need it.
112:6 Moved - Though he may for a season be afflicted, yet he shall not be eternally destroyed.
112:7 Evil tidings - At the report of approaching calamities.
112:9 Dispersed - His goods, freely and liberally.Righteousness - His liberality, or the reward of it.Ever - What he gives is not lost, but indeed is the only part of his estate, which will abide with him to all eternity.
112:10 The desire - Either of the misery of good men; or of his own constant prosperity.