Main news for 22 January 2019

Yahwism knows traditional blessings, pronounced by priests during worship at the Tabernacle or in the Temple, in which the name of God always sounded. At some point they began to be treated as traditional ritual formulas, but originally all these blessings had their meaning and their purpose.

Such are the blessings we see in the Book of Numbers. Attitudes toward the sacred name in antiquity were generally special: it was thought that the name with which God reveals Himself to a person, if pronounced, unites the person with God. Pagans looked at the matter this way too, and sacred names in the pagan world were often even ascribed magical properties.

Yahwism, however, did not presuppose any magic: the issue was the intention that a person directs toward God by calling Him by name. To use sacred names casually, in passing, for effect or by habit, is a violation of the third commandment of the Decalogue, and in ancient Israel this was well known.

What, then, is a blessing? In its original sense, the corresponding Hebrew word means the transfer by the one blessing of his own, usually supernatural, power to the one being blessed. When God blesses a person, He gives him His power, and when priests bless the people, they wish for them that God, before whom they have just stood, would give them His power.

This power can preserve and protect, especially if God shows a person His face. To meet God face to face meant to undergo the experience of personal communion with God; such experience was known in every age. But this meeting could be not only joyful for a person: a sinful person stood before God as he was, and the outcome of the meeting could be utterly unexpected for him.

That is why words about peace and mercy sound in the traditional ritual formulas: both were absolutely necessary for a sinful person, so that a meeting with God face to face would not turn for him into a curse instead of a blessing. Of course, God never curses a person for his sins, otherwise no one would have a chance for salvation. But a meeting with God always turns out to be a test for a person as well, and not only a joy; and the traditional blessings pronounced by priests also included a request that the meeting with God become not destruction for those blessed, but spiritual renewal.