The Creator using chemistry to teach His creatures about Himself and His ways, to demonstrate that the same design that causes the predictable nature of chemicals just as inviolably underlies the other realms of human existence
The Creator not only intends that each person He creates experience success, but He actively seeks that success in each individual. He does this by seeking to bring the individual into conformity with Himself and His success-giving design. His design gets its enduring characteristics and power for success from its inherent relationship to God Himself. He not only brought the substances of the creation into existence and holds that substance together in existence but also all the wisdom, that is, the design, that underlies the whole, the design that stems from His own nature and existence. The design did not have a beginning, as something conceived at a finite point in time by God but has always existed in Him. Said another way, God’s design is inherently a part of Him, His person, His nature, and can never be otherwise. It, therefore, expresses who He is. It reveals Him. Nothing within the design of God is arbitrary or capricious whatsoever. All is founded, rooted, established in unique and absolute relationship with the eternal person of God.
His design encompasses every possible activity in the creation; nothing can escape that design, nor should desire to do so. God not only foreknew but designed each possible human interaction and the ensuing results of each action.
Sadly, multitudes of believers are left without a specific, detailed knowledge of the Creator’s design criteria.[1] Without an active knowledge of His design, believers are left to guess at the specific response to the situations that arise. Ignorance combined with a heart naturally inclined away from God’s ways brings about predictable failure. Since man did not design life, unless his heart genuinely desires to learn from its Creator, life will appear confusing to him, just as a complex machine appears confusing to someone who had no part in designing it. Believers have often experienced the same confusion that unbelievers have in their marriages, in their jobs, in all realms of their daily life. Without God’s knowledge, even helping hurts. One spouse offering what that spouse deems to be comfort becomes astonished and offended that the other took it as trouble. As in marriage so in all of life’s relationships, good intentions alone are insufficient. Further, they are not truly “good intentions” unless those intentions intend to learn and grow and develop in all that the Spirit of God has to teach them.
Thus, intentions alone are entirely insufficient to achieve success. These intentions must be aligned with God’s design in order to be successful.[2] Thus, in relationships, the specifics of God’s design for those relationships must be known and skillfully applied in order to find “good success.”
Since God intends for man to succeed, He, the Creator, makes available to him the specific applications of His design criteria, including those that concern how to successfully care for the troubled heart of another, a delicate and fail-prone area of man’s activity. By getting from God the specific manner in which he should treat a troubled heart, a person is delivered from the wrong result inherent in ignorance.
This particular likeness is made up of three distinct thoughts that all express a relationship. The last thought, the one that concerns singing songs to a “heavy” heart, has no conclusion apart from its relationship to the other thoughts, which give it an unmistakable clarity by defining it from two highly diverse directions. As the relationship between these activities that seem to be widely divergent from each other becomes apparent, the meaning of the last line takes on an unmistakable significance and equips the seeker with discernment that distinguishes the inner workings of not only his own life but also into that of countless situations which make up life around him.
The first two sets of terms of the first two lines, namely, taking a garment and vinegar, communicate things neither right nor wrong in themselves. (A garment may be taken for good reasons and vinegar may be used for good purposes.) Yet, these terms are not left to themselves. For each of them, God provided a defining prepositional phrase, namely, “in a cold day” (lit.) and “upon nitre.” Thus, the first two sets of terms and their prepositional phrases appear so when laid out:
In this case, the defining context is the prepositional phrase that follows each term, and, importantly, the interrelationship of each distinct term its parallel in the corresponding line.
Thus, the first line yields a negative meaning, for simple idea of “taking a garment” is given the context of “in cold weather,” and becomes an action certain to deprive someone of needed warmth. In other words, it becomes harmful.
The second line also yields a negative meaning, for the terms “vinegar” and “nitre” are chemicals that are incompatible, reacting strongly against each other.
Taking the garment of another under certain conditions can be right, without harming the health or necessary comfort of another but when it is done “in cold weather” and the warmth of that individual is dependent upon that garment, it is a contradiction of the will of God for that situation. Even if the first person’s garment is “owed” to the second, the second person is not to exercise his right to take the first person’s garment when it will fundamentally detriment or endanger him. When a garment that is keeping a person warm is taken in the cold, the person will become cold, but not because of a deficiency in the person, not because of his choice, but because of the built-in relationship between cold temperatures and a body that has nothing to insulate it from the cold, that is, because of God’s preestablished design for the physical world. The person’s warmth is dependent, in that situation, upon his garment and the weather, not his attitude. He is not expected to be assume an “attitude of warmth” when the conditions for his being so are not met.
Likewise, in line two, vinegar reacts with nitre in a predictable manner, being so designed by God Himself and not caused by a deficiency in the nitre. When vinegar is placed in contact with nitre, the nitre becomes troubled, but not because of a shortcoming in its nature, but merely because God so designed it that when placed in contact with vinegar it chemically reacts.
Thus, line 1 introduces a troubling agent (someone taking away a garment in cold weather) and line two introduces a widely differently troubling agent (vinegar). Only by seeing these agents correctly and the negative reaction they bring about physiologically and chemically does line three become comprehensible.
So, the one singing songs is clearly the troubling agent, whose affect will be unavoidably difficult to the one with the “heavy heart.” This, then, uncovers for man the seeming mystery of why his words and actions so often further trouble those whom he seeks to comfort or help, why damage surprises his results instead of the expected fix he assumed he was bringing about, why he is repelled instead of welcomed.
Yet, how is singing songs to a “heavy” heart a troubler by design? The explanation rests in the knowledge that singing songs is a picture, given in the Creator’s wisdom, to take in numerous activities regularly occurring in man’s life. The picture-nature of this expression makes it highly adaptive to other situations, for the mind of man was designed to see and correlate the likenesses and dis-likenesses that appear in visual form very rapidly. Thus, God presents a situation to man’s mind as a picture, which man’s mind is to relate to other pictures in his mind with the same nature.
Singing songs presents a picture of a cheerful, celebrative attitude. This attitude can be expressed in innumerable ways but is summarized by God as song-singing. This picture is not to exclude but include other activities that resemble it. Approaching a heart that considers itself to have experienced detriment (לֶב־רָֽע) with a celebrative attitude has the effect of discounting the wrong, the trouble, of the other’s heart. “It’s ok!” “Everything will be just fine!” “Look around! No one else is sad!” These light-hearted, singsong approaches to a troubled heart may even seem to work, may put a smile on the face of the other, but the effect of them on the heart is perfectly predictable. They aggravate the sorrow, sometimes driving it deep into the person where it will resurface into life, sometimes in shocking ways. Insufficient clothes in the cold distresses the human body; vinegar distresses nitre (soda); and carelessly cheerful attitudes further distress troubled hearts. But often, the failure of this approach is rather obvious. The reaction coming from the heavy heart to such a singing attitude may be severe, even suicidal. This must be clear: the reaction will take place, whether obvious or hidden from view. The “singer” who blunders into such an error must perceive the error of his or her own way and see that blaming the response of the other on that person’s selfishness is no different from going to someone already in the cold and further aggravating the person’s hardship by taking that person’s source of warmth.
Does this mean that an individual is never to speak words of hope or sing actual songs to those suffering? Should a mother never sit by the bed of her sick toddler and sing to him or her? Never cheer him when he is sad?
The answer rests in the actual relationship between the singing and the heart. When the singing is pressed upon the heart of the other in a manner that resembles to the troubled heart that the other is making light of its trouble, whether purposefully or inadvertently, it has formed a vinegar upon nitre relationship and taken the jacket away in the snow. The body will be cold. The heart will be further harmed.
If, on the other hand, the one consoling has entered into the pain of the other and let it touch him as well, and through that medium of sharing in the genuine sorrow of the other, presents true hope and comfort, the results are not the same. He has not made light of the other’s pain.
Thus, God has fixed the relationship between the chemical reactions of the elements, the physiological responses of the body, and lightly treating the troubles of others into an inseparable, revelatory relationship. This likeness, this proverb, then stands as a warning concerning attempting to fix someone’s problem without personally taking part in that problem, without taking the problem’s affects personally, or trying to fix the problem of another by ignoring it, by acting like it is not a real a problem, as, indeed, they often are not problems from the singers removed, altered, or even matured perspective. The father may have never experienced the rejection that his 9-year-old daughter is facing. The problems of a husband are often foreign to a wife, and the problems of a wife are often not problematic to a husband. The problems of the rich are invisible to the poor, and the rich forget what it was like to be poor.
[1] Criteria, that which is necessary to the success of anything. Everything has criteria associated with it. Cooking is one example. The ingredients and the cooking instructions represent “criteria.” Following them leads to success.
[2] Consider Uzzah touching the ark to stabilize it and his death that followed. His intentions did not align with God’s design.
Biblical Return 