Carey Griffel: [00:00:00] Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot where we raid the ivory tower of biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel, and first I'd like to thank you all for the kind responses that I got from my episode Laying out my journey of faith. It's a bit nerve-wracking to do that kind of thing when I'm not in the same room with the person I'm talking to, which is you.
So thank you for taking it like it was offered. Anyway, today I am going to address, well, I'm going to start to address a question I got from Gracie about generational blessings and cursings. This has led me down some rabbit trails, so , I'm not gonna cover the whole thing in this episode, and I'm going to take it a few different directions.
But also, this is a topic that gets abused. A lot in some circles and, and I want to address that as well while I'm talking about this. So [00:01:00] we're gonna start really basic. First, we're going to look at what blessings and cursings even are.
How do we define them and how are they seen and used by the people of the ancient world? And we could ask, were they effective? How and why would they be effective? Now, I'm not going to promise to be able to definitively answer that, of course, but even if we can't. Or shouldn't try to arrive at a definitive answer necessarily.
That doesn't mean we can't ask the question and explore relevant answers and be enlightened and probably find what doesn't work there. Uh, at least what doesn't work in large part, like with anything, the answer you're going to prefer is going to be connected to your interpretive framework and what you trust is true and trustworthy.
For the most part, I try to stick with biblical theology, which stresses the context of the ancient people. So those are the [00:02:00] kinds of answers we're going to be looking at primarily, and we'll be able to compare other ideas alongside that. Along with all of that, we are also going to be exploring the question of is, or was death a curse were Adam and Eve cursed with death?
And as part of doing that, we're going to need to look at what death is. Yes. I realize that seems a little silly because of course we know what death is, right? Well, our concept of death and what happens at and after death is, well, it's quite different from what the ancient person would have thought and believed.
And it also depends on the culture and time period that we're talking about. I'm going to warn you right now, it's complex and if you want some nice, neat pat little answers as to the structure of the unseen realm in the afterlife, you might be a little disappointed. Nonetheless, it's a fascinating topic and well worth our time.
Not only because death is one of those things we do [00:03:00] tend to think about, even if we don't want to think about it, but also because it quite obviously is connected to the work of the Messiah. What does it mean that he defeated death? And why do we still have to die today? And anyway, it, it's another big topic.
But enough of that, uh, for now, we need first to ask what is a curse? And we're also going to ask, what is a blessing? Because the two things are conceptually and maybe even procedurally linked. And what do I mean by that? What does it mean to be procedurally linked? Well, even knowing nothing much about cursing, we know that it's something that is done by one person or party to another.
And so the same would be the case for blessing. And obviously blessing and cursing would be opposites from one another, one intends good, and the other intense harm. Could they perhaps balance or cancel each other out in some way? [00:04:00] So that's an interesting idea. Uh, I'm going to start out with exploring the idea of curses before we talk about blessings.
Growing up like many people do. I suppose I connected the idea of cursing with bad words, naughty language. Like there were bad words you weren't supposed to say, and that was cursing. But the worst of it was if you used the Lord's name in vain, right? I read that commandment in the King James version when I was little In Exodus 20 verse seven, it says:
Exodus 20:7 (KJV 1900) 7Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
So that commandment to me was about swearing and also about using the word God in any kind of oath as well. Of course, it was all right to do so in a legal setting, because then it was binding on you. And taking that in vain would mean breaking that agreement in some way. Now these days, I have a much wider view of what that commandment is, thanks to the work of Dr. Carmen [00:05:00] Imes in her book, bearing God's name, in which she argues that taking the name of the Lord is actually about how we represent God in all that we do, because we have taken his name upon ourselves as followers of him. Now, that does include the language we use and the honor we give to our vows. So it encompasses the idea that I was talking about previously and the idea that I thought before, but those are only parts of a much greater whole as to how we live and conduct ourselves.
Those of us who take on the name of God in believing in him, in acting, in loyalty towards him. So we can't go to Exodus 20 to find out about curses specifically. That was just my gateway into the idea in general, aside from the basic cultural ideas that we have of what curses are, right? We see 'em in movies, we see 'em in TV shows, we see 'em all over the place, In popular media. The question is, is our idea of curses the same [00:06:00] as how the ancient person would have thought about it? Well, as we all know, language is complicated and transferring an idea from one language and culture to another isn't always a straightforward thing. So our basic definition of a curse is either the request of evil or misfortune to come upon someone, or it could also be the evil or misfortune that comes upon someone as a result of being cursed.
It can also be the source or the cause of an evil as well. So the word curse can either be the request or it can be the actual evil itself, or it can be the source or cause of that evil, three different things. The definition of curse as being profanity seems to stem from the Middle Ages, so that really doesn't have any bearing on our biblical understanding of cursing.
Of course, today we might have crossover in how we use profanity to wish ill of someone or something that's probably connected to the [00:07:00] etymology, right? But that's a different point. So in the Bible, there is not one single word that is used for the English word curse. In fact, sometimes the word bless is also used for the word curse.
It's used. Ironically, uh, the wife of job told him to bless God and die. So anyone who says there is no sarcasm in the Bible is incorrect. But in any case, the words used in Hebrew and Greek are similar to how we understand our English word curse. Basically, you are wishing or causing trouble or misfortune on someone, and the noun form would be the result of a curse.
Sometimes the object of the curse is also called a curse, though this is not as common.
The New International Bible Dictionary defines curse as "The reverse of “to bless.” On the human level, to wish harm or catastrophe. On the divine, to impose judgment.[00:08:00] In the oriental mind the curse carried with it its own power of execution. A curse was imposed on the serpent (Gen 3:14). Noah cursed Canaan (9:25). The curse of Balaam, the pseudoprophet, turned to a blessing (Num 24:10). A curse was placed on Mount Ebal for disobedience to the law of Moses (Deut 27:1–9). The cursing of one’s parents is sternly prohibited by Mosaic regulations. Christ commanded those who would be his disciples to bless and not to curse (Luke 6:28). When Peter, at Christ’s trial, denied that he knew him, he invited a curse on himself (Matt 26:74); this passage is often misunderstood by Western readers. Paul represents the curse of the law as borne by Christ on the cross for the believer [00:09:00] (Gal 3:13). The modern Western practice of cursing, i.e., using profane language, is never referred to in the Scriptures."
J. D. Douglas and Merrill Chapin Tenney, New International Bible Dictionary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1987), 244.
End quote. Okay, so let's talk here for a second about the use and limitations of a word study. We can do a word study in a couple of different ways. US English readers can take an English word and find all of the instances of that English word in our Bibles, and that can get us some places sometimes.
Then from there, we can find the underlying Hebrew and Greek words, and we can go and find all of the instances of those throughout the text. By doing word studies, we can get a sense of how a word is used, how it's defined, what its range of meaning is. Word Studies can also be a good gateway into a learning past a word study into doing literary design and literary patterns.
Because once you look at how these words are used [00:10:00] over and over in the text, you'll see the patterns that start to emerge. All right, so here in a second, I'm going to start looking at some of these instances of curse that the New International Bible Dictionary brought up for us. But we're gonna go ahead and ask, is that it?
Or are there other places that we can see the theme of cursing in scripture? Even if the word curse is not used? All right, so we are all familiar with the curses in Genesis three, right? The snake is cursed, the woman is cursed, Adam is cursed, the ground is cursed. Everyone's cursed, right? But of course, the word cursed is only used actually twice in that passage.
Let's go ahead and read it. We're gonna start in Genesis three 14. The Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed, are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field on your belly, you shall go and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put [00:11:00] enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring, he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel To the woman, he said, I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing, in pain, you shall bring forth children.
Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you. And to Adam, he said, because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten up the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it. Cursed is the ground because of you in pain, you shall eat of it all the days of your life.
Thorns and thistles. It shall bring forth for you and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face. You shall eat bread till you return to the ground. For out of it, you are taken for you dust and to dust you shall return. End quote. So out of this whole passage, the word cursed is used twice.
It is used for the serpent. He is cursed above all livestock and above all beasts of the field. And then the ground is cursed.[00:12:00] Cursed is the ground because of you and that you, that's masculine, singular. That means it is cursed because of Adam, not because of Adam and Eve together, but because of Adam.
Remember, I'm going to get into the question of whether death is a curse. Death isn't mentioned here at all. It's certainly not called a curse. What do we do with that? Well, first we're gonna ask the question, what do we do with the fact that it looks like the man and the woman aren't even cursed directly?
Isn't that odd because it was their actions who caused all of this? There's a couple of different ways we can approach this. One way is to say that the curses only happen when the word curse is used. Another way is to say, well, we're just gonna look at the theme and we're gonna say that these are all curses even if they don't use the word for the moment. I'm just going to leave those options out there for you to think about as we keep talking about cursing and blessing. And as far as death being a curse, [00:13:00] let's go back up into the text and see what it says about death from the beginning. So of course we have the two trees in the garden and in Genesis two 16 , God says you may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.
Then when the serpent comes along, he says to the woman, did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden.
Neither shall you touch it lest you die. And the serpent, of course, comes back and says, no you won't. You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you'll be like God knowing good and evil. And apparently this is what happened. They ate of the tree. Their eyes were opened.
They knew they were naked. They hid themselves away, but they didn't [00:14:00] die. People wonder a lot about that. Why didn't they die? Was this actually a spiritual death, a separation from God rather than a physical death? Or maybe it means that later on at some point in their lives, they will die. Another option that I don't hear brought out very often actually, which is a little bit strange, but we tend to take these very literally.
Uh, another option is that God simply decided to have mercy on them and they did not die. The judgment or the consequence, whatever this is simply was not carried out in this case. In the quote that I read from New International Bible Dictionary, it said that a curse from the perspective of the divine was for the purpose of imposing judgment.
So an important question when we're looking at the question of death and the curses from Genesis three, [00:15:00] are they judgments or are they consequences? And is there a difference between those two things? A judgment is going to have a purpose. It's going to want to bring about justice. It's going to want to bring about punishment, perhaps there's a verdict of good and bad, right? A consequence on the other hand, can be a judgment. A judgment is a type of consequence, but a consequence is just something that happens because another thing happened first. I think it's fair also to say that not all judgments are curses. So how do we distinguish between a judgment and a curse?
You can also see how word studies are going to fail us here as well, because how do we cross over from the original language using all of these terms into our language, and also what kind of difference do we have in our conceptual framework for these ideas versus what the original audience had in their conceptual frameworks As far [00:16:00] as curses versus judgment, I think we do have to allow for quite a bit of conceptual overlap between the two ideas, especially when we're talking about curses or judgment from God himself.
However, does that mean that everything that is bad, that happens every bad thing that happens in your life, is that a curse? I think we can definitively say that that is not the case. Let's look in the book of James in the first chapter, second verse, count it all, joy, my brothers. When you meet trials of various kinds for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness and let steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
Uh, a little bit later it says in verse 12, blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial for when he has stood the test. He will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. Let no one say When [00:17:00] he is tempted, I am being tempted by God. For God cannot be tempted with evil and he himself tempts no one.
But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived, gives birth to sin and sin when it is fully grown, brings forth death. End quote. Okay, so here we have the idea of trials and temptations, and these are not things that are curses that God has given us and pronounced upon us, and these things are what leads to death.
So I guess that's getting a little bit ahead of ourselves. I don't think that this is a slam dunk to say that death is not a curse, but it's a really important piece of the puzzle, I think. So not everything bad that happens is a curse. There are natural consequences that happen. Okay, so we can look at this text in Genesis three, and we can say, are these actual judgements and [00:18:00] thus perhaps curses, or are they something else?
Obviously, what happens to the serpent is a curse. It, it literally says that cursed are you above all livestock and above all the beasts of the field. It says on your belly, you shall go dust. You shall eat all of the days of your life, which is about mortality, which is about, uh, humiliation. I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring, he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. So that's a projection of what is going to be happening to this enemy of God, the enemy of mankind. So to the woman, God says, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing in pain. You shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.
There's a lot we could say about this. Um, people go into whether or not this is something negative to the woman , or negative to the man. Uh, but we're not really gonna get into those distinctions [00:19:00] here. But what is this targeting? This is targeting the woman's fruitfulness, which is of course, an important aspect to being human as Genesis one tells us, is this a judgment or is this a consequence? You can find commentaries and opinions on both sides of the equation. The same can of course be said, of Adam and his consequence targeted also is his ability to be fruitful and to exercise dominion over the earth. One of my reasons for hesitating to say that these are genuine formal judgments is that judgment tends to be for either punishment or restoration in some sense, and it's really hard to see how impeding mankind's ability to be fruitful is in the realm of being restorative in some sense, [00:20:00] or a straight up punishment, to be honest, because this is what God wants them to do.
It almost sounds like a punishment for God more than anything else because God's purposes are being hampered here. Maybe that's not really fair to say. Maybe it's better to say that for us to accomplish God's purposes, we need to do so through suffering. That's not really what we like to hear, is it? I mean, I, I was just on a panel this weekend with the YouTube channel, Faith Unaltered talking about theodicy, which is the formal problem of evil, right?
Why is there evil or suffering if we have a good God? Well, it seems like one of those reasons is a natural consequence or a punishment, or a judgment or a curse. However, you're going to look at this due to our sin, due to our [00:21:00] disobedience. It's like, well, God didn't have to do that, did he? Well, that's part of another conversation about theodicy.
The least we can say is that these things are not pointless. God does not do things without a point. He has purpose and he has intention, and he has good behind everything that he does. Okay unsurprisingly, I'm not super far ahead in my notes for this episode, and that's fine. Uh, this is actually a much bigger topic than it might seem at first.
The New International Bible dictionary said that in the Oriental mind, the curse carried with it its own power of execution. So let's get into a little bit of the ancient context of curses and how they were seen in the ancient world. I'm now going to read a quote from New Dictionary of Biblical theology.
It says, "In the ancient Near [00:22:00]East in general, life was dominated by the need to cope with the terrifying threat of curses and omens. Such curses were invoked by individuals who were at enmity with the one cursed or who acted in self-defence, seeking to pre-empt any curse being placed on themselves. The actions called for by the curses were thought to be performed by the gods, but the gods had no real choice. Once the words had been uttered, using the correct form and accompanied by the correct ritual, then the actions had to be performed. The accompanying rituals were often symbolic actions believed to reinforce the power of the curse in a way more reminiscent of magic than of religious faith as understood within Israel. Thus in the minds of the people a curse was ‘power-laden’, and their fear was understandable. In theory blessings too were inherently powerful, but they did not dominate society in the same p 398 way, and there was not the same conviction that a blessing once invoked would automatically be realized. One indication of the extent to which life was ruled by curses is the massive amount of liturgical material comprising rituals for the revoking of curses. The people could live normally only because there was a possibility of such revocation. For example, the Shurpu series of penitential prayers (*cf. W. Beyerlin [ed.], Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament [London, 1978], p. 131) are incantations designed to undo or reverse the effects of a curse."
M. J. Evans, “Blessing/Curse,” in New Dictionary of Biblical Theology, ed. T. Desmond Alexander and Brian S. Rosner, electronic ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 397–398.
end quote. The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary says, quote, "It was assumed in ancient times that curses derived their power from the gods (1 Sam 17:43). Merely expressing negative wishes had little force. For the orthodox Israelites, whose God Yahweh was universally sovereign (Gen 12:8, 9; Exod 9:14; Ps 95:3; Amos 1–2), no curse could have effect [00:24:00] without Yahweh’s superintendence, including that of a foreign or false prophet (Num 23:8). Yahweh could turn a curse against its speaker (Gen 12:3; 27:29) or turn a curse into a blessing (Deut 23:5). In the latter sense he is said by Paul to have made Christ “a curse for us,” i.e., a blessing via his taking the penalty of the Law’s curse upon himself in his crucifixion (Gal 3:13)."
Douglas Stuart, “Curse,” ed. David Noel Freedman, The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 1218.
This point of turning a curse into a blessing is an important one because as we see in Genesis three 15, the curse of the serpent is the first hint we get of the Messiah.
Now how it actually ends up that curses and blessings are interrelated and they form this mosaic. I don't know, [00:25:00] and I'm not really going to try and come up with an answer for that. Ultimately, however, we can see that God's goodness overcomes all of the badness that happens in the world. So I don't really have a satisfactory explanation as to why there's evil, why there's curses, why they exist.
However, we can look at the uses of curses and see how they might have been used. The problem with this is of course, that our perspective is not the ancient perspective, and so we're going to assign some value judgements and say, well, that's a really bad use and that's really stupid. Why did they do that? And this doesn't make any sense. And this would make more sense if you ask me. So we have to remember that our culture is not their culture. Our time is not their time. The way that we're looking at things is not the way that they looked at things. So if we could see how they understood the world and how they process things, and how they use these types of [00:26:00] speeches and pronouncements in order to affect some sort of good in the world from their perspective, then we can kind of understand them a little bit better, even if we're not going to agree, and even if we're really going to have a hard time with it sometimes here in America, we decide that justice should be done through a state sanctioned legal system, right? Well, that is not how the ancient world worked. The ancient world was dominated by supernatural forces, and those supernatural forces were what were supposed to keep things in check, basically.
So curses were part of covenant enforcement in the past. Um, they, they were attached to promises and to testimony and to oaths. Um, I'm gonna read a quote from the Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, quote, "In the Mosaic Law, one means of divine enforcement of the covenant stipulations incumbent on Israel was the curse. Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28–32 contain the sanctions portions of the covenant structure relative to their respective statements of the Law, and in these passages much is made of the many types of curses that will attend the Israelites if they abandon the covenant. Twenty-seven types of curses are found in these contexts, representing virtually all the miseries one could imagine occurring in the ancient world (Stuart Hosea-Jonah WBC, xxxi–xlii), but these may be summarized by six terms: defeat, disease, desolation, deprivation, deportation, and death. Such curses are warnings of what God will cause to happen to Israel if they sin. Thus, Jeremiah speaks of the curse that attends the Law (e.g., Jer 11:3) as does Paul (Gal 3:13), with the ultimate curse being that of death, as Rom 6:23 implies. The close relationship between covenant and curse led to a metonymic use of “curse” for “covenant” in Deut 34:12 and Zech 5:3."
Douglas Stuart, “Curse,” ed. David Noel Freedman, The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 1218.
End quote. Okay, so this quote is worth some unpacking and yes, we'll get to that weird word at the end of it. Metonymic, I'll be honest, I don't even know if I said that right. First, we're going to look at some of these curses. Let's turn to the last half of Leviticus 26. First, I'm not gonna read too much of this, um, but I, I'll pick out a little bit here.
Um, it says it's starting in verse 14, but if you will not listen to me and will not do all of these commandments, if you spur my statutes and if your soul abhores my rules so that you will not do all my commandments, but break my covenant, then I will do this to you. I will visit you with panic, with wasting disease and fever that consume the eyes and make the heartache, and you shall sow your seed in vain for your [00:29:00] enemies shall eat it.
I will set my face against you, and you shall be struck down before your enemies. Those who hate you shall rule over you, and you shall flee when none pursues you. And if in spite of this you'll not listen to me, then I will discipline you again, sevenfold for your sins. And I will break the pride of your power, and I will make your heavens like iron and your earth-like bronze and your strength shall be spent in vain for your land, shall not yield its increase.
And the trees of the land shall not yield their fruit. Uh, I'll stop there for a second. Notice this is against the fruitfulness of the land, just like we have in the curse in Genesis three. So we know that the people broke the covenant a lot, right? So our question could be now , well, did all of this happen?
Did did any of this actually get fulfilled in time? Or is this all just hyperbole or what is exactly going on here? Really? Well, first of all, I think it's fairly clear to say that [00:30:00] we don't actually know exactly what happened in history from time to time, right? So, so it's a presumptuous of us to say what did or did not even happen in the past.
As disturbing as all of this sounds, it is all actually stuff that happened to the people in the past, but we tend to want to see a curse as something that happens scientifically, right? If you do this, then this will happen to you, like it's some sort of magic spell. And indeed, a lot of people probably kind of thought of curses and blessings in this way.
You do this, then you get this result, like some sort of scientific experiment, but it's not an experiment because they really believe that it would fulfill itself. But we do have to remember that this is all wrapped up in ritual and culture, which is situated in time. It's also the case that God is the only one who can make sure that these things actually get fulfilled.
[00:31:00] And guess what? God can have mercy on people. I know that's super shocking, isn't it? This quote from Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary mentions Jeremiah 11 three indicating how the curse attends the law. Let's read that for a second. Um, actually, let's just start at the beginning of chapter 11.
The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord, hear the words of this covenant and speak to the man of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. You shall say to them, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel cursed. Be the man who does not hear the words of this covenant that I commanded your fathers when I brought them out of the land of Egypt from the iron furnace saying, listen to my voice and do all that I command you.
So shall you be my people and I will be your God that I may confirm the oath that I swore to your fathers to give them a land flowing with milk and honey as at this day. Then I answered, so be it Lord. Okay, I [00:32:00] read that in the E S V and the E S V makes it sound like that. People who are, who do not hear the words of the covenant are the ones who are cursed.
But that word "hear" has some very particular implications in, in Hebrew, it implies obedience. Okay, so let's turn to Galatians three verses 10 through 14. Quote, for all who rely on works of the law are under a curse. For it is written cursed to be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law and do them now.
It is evident that no one is justified before God by the law. For the righteous shall live by faith, but the law is not of faith. Rather, the one who does them shall live by them. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written, cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree so that in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so that [00:33:00] we might receive the Promised Spirit through faith.
End quote. So the curse of the law was still in place by the time of the New Testament. Trying to see this as a one-to-one scientific equation doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It seems necessary that we need to insert the idea that God can perform his actions within his appropriate time, right? That doesn't have to be our time.
It doesn't have to be immediate. The result of the curse doesn't happen immediately upon breaking of the covenant, although I suppose it could. But here in Galatians three, we see that the answer to the curse is not that, well, God pronounced a curse, and therefore everybody has to be cursed because they've all broken the covenant.
So sorry for all of you. No. The answer to the curse is Jesus Christ himself. Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary also presented the idea that death was a curse and it gave Romans 6 [00:34:00] 23 a proof text for that idea, uh, which says, for the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
But let's go back a few verses and read that in context of what we're looking at in Romans starting in verse 20. It says, for when you are slaves of sin, you are free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time? From the things of which you are now ashamed for? The end of those things is death.
But now that you have been set free from sin and have been become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end Eternal life for the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord. We could see this as a parallel between cursing and blessing, right?
We get the blessing of eternal life through Jesus Christ because we have been cursed by the circumstances of sin. I'm still wondering if it's in [00:35:00] fact better to see death as a, as a curse, legitimately or really rather, it's better to see it as a consequence. And by the way, I think this is legitimately talking about death, like physical dying.
So I don't think that what we're seeing in Genesis is just spiritual death separation from God, right? That that is part of what's going on there. No doubt. And separation and exile is absolutely equated with death. So I would not say that death is not a punishment. And absolutely it's related to judgment, but if we want to erase the distinction between curses and judgment, then that makes the word curse almost useless. And part of the problem with that is that we see curses as an opposite to blessings.
Now, they might not actually be entirely opposite, but we think of them that way. So when we have curse and blessing as [00:36:00] opposites in our mind, and curses is all about judgment, and anything that is about a judgment is about cursing, then blessing becomes the opposite of that or a good judgment. Curses are the bad judgment, blessing is the good judgment. So you get blessed when you do good things, when you deserve good things, when there are reasons for you to be blessed, right? So if we want to say that curses are all about judgments and entirely about judgments, then that's going to naturally skew our view of blessing as well.
Now, this is actually one reason why I think blessing and cursings are not exact opposites, like they're not two sides of the same coin, because God is blessing without any reason for his blessing, us. Beyond his nature of loving and his nature of creating and wanting to bless his creation, cursing does happen on account of something that we have done right.
I am not of the [00:37:00] opinion that God curses indiscriminately, but we'll just leave that there for now. Uh, so right now we don't have the time to get into the ways that Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary suggests that curses are presented in Deuteronomy, where we have the defeat disease, desolation deprivation, deportation, and death.
Those might actually be interesting to get into at some point. If you want me to do that, go ahead and let me know, but right now I'm not gonna go into all of those specifically. However, it is useful to see how all of those are used within curses. We don't need to take those things to mean that every time something like that happens, then a curse is going on, right?
So this is why I think it is useful to keep the word curse because it has a specific intention and a specific meaning that doesn't just mean something bad happened or even a judgment is occurring. I expect that [00:38:00] distinction is going to be useful when we start getting into modern ways of looking at curses.
All right, so what did Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary mean when it said, quote the close relationship between covenant and curse led to a metonymic use of curse for covenant? Metonymy is a figure of speech where you use the name of a particular thing to refer to something. If you say you're lending a hand, you're not really giving someone your hand.
I, I hope you're using the word hand to refer to the help you're offering someone. If you say that the White House said something, you're not talking about a talking building, but rather you're referring to the statements made by the office that is primarily associated with the White House. There's another figure of speech term called a synechdoche, and that is very similar to what we're talking about here, but in a synechdoche, you're using part of something to refer to the whole, like if you said the ABCs, you're referring to the entire [00:39:00] alphabet.
That's a synechdoche. In metonymy. However, the, the relationship is not that specific. It's more of a conceptual linkage, right? The pen is mightier than the sword. You're not really talking about pen and sword as literal things, as literal parts of what you're doing. Usually you're using those as conceptual links.
So in other words, what we're saying is the word curse can stand in for the word covenant because they're so closely conceptually linked. Now, I'm also gonna say that these kinds of figures of speech make word studies a little bit hard to do because when we are linking these words together, we don't know if it literally means this is exactly that, or are we talking more of conceptual links, because it makes a difference when you're looking at it from one perspective or the other.
I was actually thinking of this this week when talking to people about whether or not a [00:40:00] person is a combination of mind, body, and soul, which is of course often commonly believed. People point to a couple places in the New Testament where these things are listed out separately, and they take those to mean that the text is giving us a grocery list of how to make a person, but it could just as easily be the case that this is a figure of speech referring to the whole person rather than separating the person out into an ingredient list of sorts.
By the way, I don't think we're three part people, but I will get into that in another episode. If you wanna headstart on that, go into Genesis two and look really closely at what it says about the creation of Adam. Does it actually sound like God is inputting a particular spirit into Adam's body in order to animate him into the person that he is?
But there's a lot more that goes into the conversation. Anyway, my main point here and the point of Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary is that curse and covenant are so closely linked because [00:41:00] curses accompanied covenants. I'll just close out this section with a further quote by Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, which says, quote,
"Curses could accompany any sort of covenant, as part of the oaths made to bind all parties. Individuals who then V 1, p 1219 broke such covenants would be subject to the curses they had agreed to in binding themselves to the covenant (Judg 21:18; Neh 10:29; cf. Matt 26:74; Acts 23:12). A ceremony related to the covenant of marriage could involve the uttering of curses as a part of the process of determining marital infidelity (Num 5:18–27). Individuals could compose their own curses against other individuals, desiring thereby to hurt them (Job 31:30). They could, as well, give strength to a promise (Gen 34:14) or a legal testimony [00:42:00] (1 Kgs 8:31) by an oath."
Douglas Stuart, “Curse,” ed. David Noel Freedman, The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 1218–1219.
end quote. One of the passages that stands out to me here is the one in numbers five, because that's one that we read and we go, wow, that's weird.
I'm not gonna take the time to read it, but it's numbers five verse 18 through 27, and it's the test for adultery. So a woman was, would be drinking some liquid, and it was supposed to have some effect on her if she in fact was an adultress. This kind of thing was not an uncommon practice in the ancient world.
Yet we do get a little bit disturbed when we see this kind of thing in the Bible. Like, wait, Yahweh would actually want this to happen. Well, we, we forget that if Yahweh is supreme and he has commanded this or that his people are doing this, then they would trust that Yahweh would not allow the curse to fall upon the woman if she was innocent, right?
[00:43:00] So in fact, instead of this being some kind of cruel practice, this would actually be helpful for those who are innocent. Because if the woman is innocent of the charges, then nothing would actually befall her in, in this case. So the curse would only be active if the woman was guilty.
So we're still talking about the purposes of curses. Curses were often used as a form of defense. For instance, they're put on tombs, they're put on texts, uh, as kind of a, a defense mechanism for these things. And let me quote a, uh, let me quote apart from A Cultural Handbook to the Bible about this quote,
"Sarcophagi found in Egypt, Phoenicia, and Greece contain curses to protect the deceased against grave robbers and violators. In Babylonia and Israel such a curse was commonly placed on boundary [00:44:00] stones to guard against theft of land. “You shall not remove your neighbor’s landmark …” (Deut. 19:14). “Cursed be the one who removes the neighbor’s landmark,” pronounced by Moses (Deut. 27:17) in the passive voice, suggests that God is the one who will do the avenging. The passive voice is a respectful way of talking about God without mentioning God in situations where no human agent is in sight."
John J. Pilch, A Cultural Handbook to the Bible (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company: Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K., 2012), 165.
end quote. Curses can defend property, but they can also defend people quoting once again from A Cultural Handbook to the Bible, quote,
"People who perceived that they had no other means of protecting themselves (e.g., by lying or slander) would have recourse to a curse. “Do not slander a servant to his master, lest he curse you, and you be held guilty” (Prov. 30:10). Consider Proverbs 11:26: “People curse him who holds back grain, but a blessing is on the head of him who sells[00:45:00] it.” Western interpreters often view this verse anachronistically as an injustice in terms of a free-market economy. Middle Easterners identify in this verse a person of means who is refusing to be a patron. A patron is one who can obtain for a petitioner benefits that could not be gained by personal initiative, or on terms better than one could gain by personal initiative. The man in Jesus’ parable with the bumper crop who refused to be a patron but hoarded his surplus for his retirement received the ultimate curse from God: “Die, you fool!” (Luke 12:13–21)."
John J. Pilch, A Cultural Handbook to the Bible (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company: Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K., 2012), 165.
End quote. It looks like we're not gonna get too deep into the topic of blessing in this episode, but if you look at the ancient practice of patronage, it's a very different concept than what we have today in the Western world. And it's a shame that we have lost a lot of this understanding because this is where we have the concept of grace and what [00:46:00] grace means.
Uh, when I was growing up, I, I had no idea what grace actually meant. Like I read it in the dictionary in the back of my Bible and I said, Hmm, grace unmerited favor, or unmerited mercy, something like that. But I was like, okay, that. Doesn't really make any sense to me. It didn't have a connection to my life in a practical, everyday way, which is a shame that we, we've kind of lost some of that the fact that we don't understand what a patron really is and how that whole system works makes it a little bit hard to understand some aspects of, particularly the New Testament once we get into to the concept of grace specifically. Anyway, I wanted to point out that just like in our passage in numbers five, where the innocent woman had no need to fear the curse in general, that was the case.
If you were righteous, if you had done nothing wrong, you need not fear somebody else cursing you, especially if you were a follower of Yahweh.[00:47:00] Proverbs 26 2 says, like a sparrow in its flitting, like a swallow in, its flying a curse that is causeless does not alight.
Okay, a couple more points about the purposes of cursing. One could proclaim a curse on oneself in order to instigate an oath or sanction A promise. Lexham Theological Word book says, quote
"This relatively uncommon verb expresses the act of invoking a curse upon oneself or another person as a means of swearing an oath. In 1 Samuel 14:24, Saul makes his army swear (ʾālâ) an oath that whoever eats food before evening is cursed (ʾārar)."
Joshua G. Mathews, “Cursing,” ed. Douglas Mangum et al., Lexham Theological Wordbook, Lexham Bible Reference Series (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2014).
We also have the instance of Peter denying Christ in Matthew 26:73-74. It says, after a little while the bystanders came up and said to Peter, certainly you too are one of them for your accent betrays you. Then he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, I do not know the man. And [00:48:00] immediately the rooster crowed end quote, that's a pretty serious thing.
It, it, Peter didn't just deny it, but he vowed that he did not know Christ. Our culture puts a pretty big price tag on the act of lying if you lie, it's just a terrible wrong, no matter why you're lying practically. I mean, we give a a little bit of wiggle room for white lies and lies where we really can justify it in a really good sense, right?
But we don't live in an honor and shame culture like the ancient Near East and, and the time of the New Testament. In a culture like that, honor and shame are such big deals that lying and deception were actually normalized and used quite often. Uh, let me read once again from the Cultural Handbook to the Bible.
This is about the sanction of a promise. Quote:
"Since lying and deception were approved [00:49:00] cultural strategies for preserving honor, one could never be certain of statements made by people unless they swore to its truth with an oath: “Amen, Amen, I say to you” or “Truly, truly, I say to you.” These phrases are equivalent to a modern “curse”: “Cross my heart and hope to die, I am indeed telling the truth.” Similar oaths would be “by my father’s grave” or “by my mother’s womb,” meaning “may he not rest in peace” or “may she become sterile.” Abimelech and the commander of his army make Abraham swear by God to be honest and never deal falsely with him or his posterity. Abraham answers: “I swear.” This is equivalent to a curse on one’s self, “May God deal with me and avenge you if I do not keep my bargain, promise, etc.” (See also Ruth 1:16–17.) A similar “curse” appears when Abraham sends his servant to his kin to find a wife for Isaac and makes the servant swear by putting his hand under [00:50:00] Abraham’s thigh (a euphemism for the genitals; Gen. 24). The idea is that if the servant in any way does not keep his promise to Abraham, the servant’s source of fertility will dry up and become ineffective. In a culture where family (kinship) is the central social institution, threatened loss of fertility is a strong incentive to keep one’s promise. While the commandments are familiar to most readers of the Bible, the sanctions are less so. If Mediterranean human beings bind each other to their promises by means of curses, God does the same in spades. To assure that the twelve tribes will adhere to their commitments and keep their covenant responsibility, the Levites ceremoniously pronounced twelve curses which the people confirm: “Amen” (Deut. 27:15–26; also Deut. 27–32; Lev. 26). The curses are God’s sanctions to insure that the people will obey the commandments. Given the [00:51:00] number of times exhortations to obey the commandments are repeated in the Bible, it is fair to surmise that even the threat of sanctions was not always an effective motivating factor.
John J. Pilch, A Cultural Handbook to the Bible (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company: Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K., 2012), 166.
end quote. And I think that's something to keep in mind, that this is not some sort of magic spell that is legitimately binding God to act in a certain way, to produce a certain result.
Because even from the perspective of God, God is able to have mercy where he has mercy. And we see this over and over and over. So the fact that a curse is pronounced does not necessitate that the curse is going to be fulfilled. Now, I'm not saying that no curse was fulfilled at all, or that there is no point to them or or anything of that kind, but I think we need to be very careful in thinking oh, there's a curse, therefore there's going to be a resolution of that exact curse in every instance. When we see excommunication happening in the New Testament, this is also a type of [00:52:00] curse. I'm going to read from the New Dictionary of Biblical Theology, quote,
"Some NT passages speak of the curse of the law, or of certain people as being in a cursed state. In 1 Corinthians 5:5 Paul uses curse language when he instructs his readers to ‘Hand this man over to Satan’. Similarly in 1 Timothy 1:20 he says of Hymenaeus and Alexander that ‘I have handed them over to Satan’. This appears to refer to some kind of expulsion from the community, but the intention is clearly not to harm the individuals concerned but to encourage renewal and restoration. Perhaps Paul is arguing that anyone who behaves in a certain way cannot be in relationship with God. It is important to acknowledge that such a person is not part of the community of those who are blessed by being in relationship with God, but is under a curse."
M. J. Evans, “Blessing/Curse,” in New Dictionary of Biblical Theology, ed. T. Desmond Alexander and Brian S. Rosner, electronic ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 401.
End quote. Before I wind up this episode, I want to make sure I, I get in a little bit [00:53:00] of information about how sometimes curses were produced in the ancient world.
I mean, they could just be verbal pronouncements. They could be written on something that people could read like on the tombstone or on the boundary stone or on a text. What's interesting about texts is that usually the curse is at the end of the text. So it's like, well, they've already read the text and now they're being cursed.
Couldn't you have warned them to begin with? Anyway, um, an interesting thing to look at is the execration texts in Egypt. These were bits of pottery that were broken up. Uh, let me just read a little bit about this from the Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary quote,
"The formal cursing of persons deemed undesirable by the Egyptian state, and lying outside direct Egyptian control, a practice attested from the Old Kingdom into the early New Kingdom. The rite involved either figuring the individual in a terra-cotta, stone, or wooden representation (whether inscribed or uninscribed), or writing his name on pottery vessels. The curse formula was undoubtedly then pronounced and the object broken (cf. the rite of “breaking the red pots”; Schott and Sethe 1928; Borchardt 1929). In the Old Kingdom nearly every major pyramid temple reveals fragments of statues of bound foreigners (Nubians or Asiatics), but only one lot of inscribed figurines has come to light"
Donald B. Redford, “Execration and Execration Texts,” ed. David Noel Freedman, The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 681.
End quote. Also in the Lexham Bible Dictionary, it says, quote,
"Although the inscriptions themselves contain no explicit curses, the objects on which they were written would be ritually smashed to effect a curse against the people at whom the text was aimed (Grabbe, Ancient Israel, 42). The fate of the enemies mentioned in the texts was thus identified with the smashed vessel or image. It is likely that the texts were compiled by the state chancellery, as the texts reflect changes in rulers and territories (Hallo and Younger, Context of Scripture, 50)."
Will Briggs, “Execration Texts,” ed. John D. Barry et al., The Lexham Bible Dictionary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016).
End quote. All right, so curses were a big deal, but it seems like in general they could be reversed or mitigated in some sense. Another quote from the Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary quote,
"Because [00 :55:00] cursing was intended to produce negative results, the notion of reversal of cursing in the NT conveys the sense of the dawning of a new age of behavior and expectations. Jesus’ teaching, “Bless those who curse you” (Luke 6:28), called for a reversal on the part of his followers of millennia of tradition about personal response to cursing. Revelation 22:3 predicts the cessation of “the curse,” i.e., the results of the Genesis fall (sin, disease, death)."
Douglas Stuart, “Curse,” ed. David Noel Freedman, The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 1219.
End quote. When we read that line in Luke, bless those who curse you, we tend to think, oh, if we're being harmed, then we're just supposed to wish goodwill upon someone who is wishing ill will on us.
But if we think about in terms of the ancient person, it's not just a matter of somebody wishing ill will on us, But maybe something a little bit more stringent and serious than just some wishes floating out there in the ether. So in that sense, probably our blessing [00:56:00] of them is intended to be something legitimate and, and, and actual reversal of this rather than just, oh, send nice thoughts out there, right. I do think that in this, there is a sense of a new idea of justice that we should have in our minds. When we are harmed, we want justice to be done right. We, we want harm on the other person because they have done harm on us. The idea of an eye for an eye, but Jesus literally presents the opposite of that, not an eye for an eye. He says that there is a better law out there than that. When we're hurt, we want someone else to hurt that. That's human nature, right? That's a feeling and reaction that people have had forever. This sense of justice of when we are hurt, somebody else should be hurt.
When somebody else does something wrong, then then there should be a repercussion for that. We even carry that into the [00:57:00] cross of the work of Jesus. We often picture of justice being done through the punishment that Christ faced, through the sufferings and torment that he had through his experiences here as a human.
But instead of focusing on cursing, we are to focus on blessing, which is not an easy thing to do. But what's interesting is that when we pick up our Bibles, we open the first page, we, we hit that Genesis one chapter, and what is it? It is full of blessing. Now, of course, it does turn quite quickly over to cursing, but we have this kind of flipping of blessing and cursing back and forth.
Uh, let me read one other passage from A Cultural Handbook to the Bible, which says, quote,
"Scholars observe how blessing and curse structure the book of Genesis. The Priestly story opens with blessing upon all of humankind (Gen. 1:28). The Yahwist’s story" uh, [00:58:00] me breaking in here for a second. Remember we talked about if you listened to my previous episode on JEDP on the documentary hypothesis, this is what it's talking about, The Yahwehist source, the priestly source, and so on. All right, so back to the quote, "the Yahwehist story introduces a series of shifts between curse (from God on the first earthling and his consort, and on Cain) to blessing (on the survivors of the Flood). Curse reappears in the Tower of Babel story, but blessing returns in Abraham and culminates in Jacob’s (and God’s) blessing of the twelve sons."
John J. Pilch, A Cultural Handbook to the Bible (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company: Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K., 2012), 164.
End quote. The themes of blessing and cursing are one way that people track a structure throughout the book of Genesis. I have one more quote to read from the New Dictionary of Biblical Theology about the twin themes of blessing and cursing. Quote,
"Israel’s understanding of themselves as a people who are blessed stems from the blessing and promises given to Abraham in Genesis 12:2–3 and developed and [00:59:00] expanded in Genesis 15 and 17. Their very existence as a nation was a confirmation that God had kept his word to Abraham, that he would make him ‘into a great nation’. Their hope for ongoing blessing was also based on these promises. God was going to continue to work through them, bringing blessing to ‘all peoples on earth’. It is blessing, not cursing, that dominated Israel’s thinking. Israel, as the people of God, are inheritors of the blessing given originally to Abraham, confirmed in the Mosaic covenant to Abraham’s descendants and reaffirmed at the time of David. Their confidence is not unfounded; they are blessed. Prophets and psalmists alike expounded the meaning of that blessing and revelled in it (*e.g. Pss. 1:1; 32:1–2; 34:8; 65:4; 84:12; 106:3; 112:1–2; 128:4; Is. 19:25;[01:00:00] 30:18; 56:2; 65:23; Jer. 17:7; Ezek. 34:26; Mal. 3:12). The NT presents the coming of Jesus as the ultimate fulfilment of the promises to Abraham, and the way in which both Israel and all the nations receive the greatest blessing possible (see below). Problems arose only when Israel assumed that the blessing was automatic and forgot that they were totally dependent on their continuing relationship with God. Jeremiah’s fierce denunciation of those who took it for granted that the possession of the temple guaranteed national security (Jer. 7:4) shows that such assumptions were mistaken. The differences between the understanding of curses and blessings in Israel and that found elsewhere in the ancient Near East are more apparent in the OT outside its formal covenant documentation. In ancient Mesopotamia life was dominated by the fear of curses, but not in Israel. Nowhere [01:01:00] in the Bible is a curse-removing ritual put into effect or even mentioned. In fact there is very little discussion of the concept of cursing outside the stylized treaty chapters. Blessing, not cursing, was significant for Israel. Although the OT abounds with instances of God’s blessing being bestowed—on individuals, on families, on the nation—only rarely does God specifically curse any human being or artefact. God is the one who blesses. The Israelites were convinced of their position as those blessed by God. Language of judgment and punishment is used in the context of the people’s sin, particularly by the prophets, but language of cursing is not.
M. J. Evans, “Blessing/Curse,” in New Dictionary of Biblical Theology, ed. T. Desmond Alexander and Brian S. Rosner, electronic ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 399–400.
End quote. I genuinely think that's an important distinction and one that we should keep in mind. There is plenty of judgment to be had throughout the Old Testament for sure, and much of it is centered on the idea of death and [01:02:00] destruction and disease and all of these other types of things.
But a curse is a genuine pronouncement that is supposed to kind of have a life through time, a connection from the curse to its fulfillment in the end, and possibly a recurring consequence. So I think that if we subsume judgment under cursing and say that every bit of judgment is a curse.
I, I think that takes away from what the concept of a curse is and how the word is used in the text. and as has been pointed out in some of the quotes that I have read, much of the time there really was more of a focus on God giving blessing almost as if that's part of his character and his nature.
Yes, I was being sarcastic. I really do think that this is embedded within God's nature and his character, his desire to bless rather than his desire to curse rather than his anger and his punishment of people who did [01:03:00] wrong. I, I think that, Much more. We see that God wants to bring his people in, he wants to forgive, he wants to produce mercy, and he wants to produce a world where he is offering blessing to his people and to everyone who follows him.
It's crazy to me how often we still see non-Christians who come along , and, they act like God is so angry all the time. Like God is just waiting to punish everyone for all of the wrong things that they have done, rather than a God who is waiting with his arms open , for all of his people to come to him in joy and gladness and blessing. And while God is certainly bound by his oaths and he's certainly bound by his word, he is a God of mercy. He is a God of blessing. He is a God who sent. His son who, who came into the world himself in order to rectify things. We need not live lives of fear. [01:04:00] I'm not saying that there's no punishment or consequences to things, but the richness of God's blessings are simply unsurpassed.
Okay, I didn't get into any of the generational aspects of this topic yet, but I will be doing that in the future. I'd love to hear of anybody's thoughts or questions or reactions to this. Um, I am on Facebook. I have my own Facebook group for this podcast. , Genesis Marks the Spot Discussion Group. also feel free to email me at
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