Week 8 Numbers 23
Lots of times things just inexplicably register in my mind and today something registered inexplicably with me: God is not a man that he should lie. That’s only half the verse but that was the key phrase: God is not a man that he should lie.
Bible-readers read for different reasons but it’s probably a pretty common goal to read the bible to find things out. So the idea that God isn’t like a man since he tells the truth is a pretty useful thing to know.
It’s a contrastive comment. Contrast #1 is that God isn’t a human being. God and human beings aren’t the same.
I can flip-flop it: human beings aren’t the same as God.
I can personalize it: I’m not like God.
It’s a pretty clear-cut distinction: God and I aren’t the same.
Contrast #1 is developed a bit in Contrast #2: God is not a human being that he should lie.
So one specified point of difference between God and me is that he doesn’t lie.
I can flip-flop it: one specified distinction between God and me is that I do lie.
I can personalize it: I’m not like God because I don’t tell the truth.
There’s a number of ways that God is different from me (creative capacity…knowing everything…endless existence…like that) and those are things I can’t really relate to.
But God being different because I don’t have the capacity he does to tell the truth? That I can understand.
Note: quote from Numbers 23:19 (NLT).