Main news for 11 January 2022

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

Such are the blessings we see in the Book of Numbers. In antiquity the attitude toward the sacred name was special in general: the name by which God reveals Himself to a person, when pronounced, was thought to connect a person with God. Pagans looked at the matter in the same way; sacred names in the pagan world were often even credited with magical properties.

Yahwism, however, presumed no magic: the issue was the intention a person directs to God when calling Him by name. To use sacred names just like that, casually, for a fine phrase 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 transmission by the one blessing of his, 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 experience personal communion with God; such experience has been known in every age. But this meeting could be not only joyful for a person: for a sinful person stood before God as he was, and the outcome of the meeting could be the most unexpected.

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