Main news for 18 July 2017

In the Bible, the wicked is rather often compared with the husk taken by the wind. Certain commentators saw in the Hebrew corresponding word the indication not on the wind, but on the spirit of God (the wind and the spirit in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament are really indicated by the same word). But it does not change the heart of the problem: whether it is the wind sent by God, whether it is His own breath, - the wicked will be carried away in the same way far. The godlessness, the rejection of God is associated for the prophet, and for the hymnographers with the ease, the weightlessness of the outcast, with its emptiness. Sometimes this emptiness is discovered in the day of the last Judgment, sometimes - in the days of disaster, which the prophets rather often see as the prior day of judgment, not yet final, but already significant: because every of such judgment becomes the indication of God on human sinfulness and godlessness.

What is behind the emptiness of the godless? One can, of course see in it only a literary image, understanding it in this sense, in which in English one can speak of an empty person, as a person, presenting nothing of himself. But the problem is not all the same, we think, only in the literary image. Indeed, in the biblical books rather often is spoken about death, as about the devastation of the one who dies, who loses the life force and is transformed more and more into shadow, into empty envelope of the old oneself. And death, as it is spoken about it in the prophetic books and in the Book of Psalms, begins often not when somebody dies physically (a man can leave this world, being on the contrary "filled with life", as says for example the Torah about the demise of the patriarchs), but when he loses God, turning away from Him.

And it is not surprising: because the fullness of life is to God, and the one who ignores God or resists Him, naturally, stops gradually having relationship with life, at first spiritual, and then physical also. And the first thing that gets lost in the process of the loss of God's life is stability, at first spiritual, then psychological, and finally sometimes and physical. And then man already begins not to rejoice during the sacrifice, but to be ashamed of his state: because to discover weakness at a solemn and responsible moment is not the most joyful event in life. Therefore, the loss of the spiritual core destroys man, making him an easy prey for any wind blowing on him.