In the Book of Psalms sinners are often compared with chaff carried away by the wind. This comparison is fully justified if we keep in mind its spiritual meaning: the issue is what is usually called a person's spiritual fullness. And life itself in...
In the Book of Psalms sinners are often compared with chaff carried away by the wind. This comparison is fully justified if we keep in mind its spiritual meaning: the issue is what is usually called a person's spiritual fullness. And life itself in the Bible is usually perceived, on the one hand, as the breath that God "breathed" into a person "through the nostrils" at creation, and on the other hand as the force that fills a person while he lives. In the Synodal translation it is usually called "soul," although the corresponding Hebrew word has little relation to what we today usually call the soul, meaning the personal principle of a human being. When this force leaves a person, he dies, turns into a shadow, and only an empty shell remains of what he once was in the world of the living. Meanwhile fallen humanity, and people with spiritual experience have always felt this, shares in life in far from the fullness that would be accessible to it even in an untransformed state if it were free from sin. The path of righteousness that brings a person closer to God is called in the biblical books the path of life, including for this reason: it brings a person closer to the Source of life and gives hope that one day the one walking this path will receive life in all its fullness. The author of the Book of Ezra applies the same ideas to the people as a whole. But if with respect to an individual person one has to speak of his earthly path, which ends in death and resurrection on the day of Judgment, then with respect to a people one has to speak of its history, which must end with the coming of the messianic Kingdom at the Messiah's coming. But will the people live to that day? Will it not be scattered over the earth? As is clear, here too everything depends on spiritual fullness. The historical death of a people, like the physical death of a person, depends on the life force that God gives it, just as He gives it to an individual person. And just as in the case of an individual person, it depends only on the people itself how it will use this gift of God.
