Monthly Archives: January 2021

What We Remember

I was sharing a couple verses from the Bible.

17 For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.  18 But be ye glad and rejoice for ever in that which I create: for, behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy.
Isaiah 65:17-18 (KJV)

My friend thought it was a low-vibration verse because she thought it meant that we would forget the wisdom learned in experiencing the errors of our ways.  I thought to use e-Sword to look up the word “remembered”.  H2142 is the reference to a listing in the Strong’s Concordance for the word that was translated here as “remembered”.  This is what I found:

H2142

זָכַר

zâkar

zaw-kar’

A primitive root; properly to mark (so as to be recognized), that is, to remember; by implication to mention; also (as denominative from H2145) to be male: –  X burn [incense], X earnestly, be male, (make) mention (of), be mindful, recount, record (-er), remember, make to be remembered, bring (call, come, keep, put) to (in) remembrance, X still, think on, X well.

Total KJV occurrences: 231

A careful reading of it is not about whether a memory exists so much as about whether that memory is noted or talked about.  Take special note of the first part of the definition, “to mark”.  So what is it that marks a memory?  It is the emotion associated with it.  The emotion makes the memory remarkable, whether that emotion is happiness or joy or fear or trauma.  From Merriam-Webster:

remarkable adjective

re·​mark·​able | \ ri-ˈmär-kə-bəl  \

Definition of remarkable

worthy of being or likely to be noticed especially as being uncommon or extraordinary

Without the associated emotion, an incident in memory is unremarkable.  There is no cause to bring it to mind.

Where there are emotions of fear or trauma tied to memories, those memories can have repercussions throughout life.  They can cause illness, poverty, social issues, or problems with relationships.  In some cases, memories such as these are buried in the soul.  They may be forgotten in the conscious mind, but they might still be in the unconscious mind where they continue to play havoc.  When this happens, we may think we have forgotten something; but in truth, we haven’t.

One of the purposes of healing is to remove the negative emotional charge from those memories so that they no longer manifest problems in our lives.  According to Troy Brewer in his book Redeeming Your Timeline: Supernatural Skillsets for Healing Past Wounds, Calming Future Anxieties, and Discovering Rest in the Now, it is possible to ask Jesus to be with us in those past moments of fear or trauma and to heal them.  When this is done in a true spirit of repentance, miracles can happen.

I then decided to play a bit with the second verse that was shared.

18 But be ye glad and rejoice for ever in that which I create: for, behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy.
Isaiah 65:18 (KJV)

I wondered if Jerusalem was not a city name, what else might it mean?  I found this article: “Jerusalem | The amazing name Jerusalem: meaning and etymology”.  Jerusalem ( ירושלם ) is a combination of two words.  This article directly translates Jerusalem as “In Awe Of Peace, Teaching Peace”.

But in order to read it this way, it would have to be that the original book was written without spaces.  My understanding was that spaces in text are relatively new.  So I wondered, was ancient Hebrew written without spaces?  According to BAS Library in their article “Were Words Separated in Ancient Hebrew Writing?”, this may have been true.

That opened the door to play a bit with the spacing.

The verse in Hebrew, according to e-Sword, is

כי־אם־שׂישׂו וגילו עדי־עד אשׁר אני בורא כי הנני בורא את־ירושׁלם גילה ועמה משׂושׂ׃

I dropped that into Google Translate to see what would happen, and I got my first surprise:

For if Jesus and his sons witness to me, I am the Creator, for I am the Creator of Jerusalem.

Well, that’s all very interesting because Jesus had not been born yet.

I found the word Jerusalem ( ירושלם ) in the Hebrew text.  I noticed that it did not stand on its own, but had been combined with some other letters ( את־ירושׁלם ).  I added the spaces, dividing Jerusalem into the two words and inserting a space between the additional letters as well.

כי־אם־שׂישׂו וגילו עדי־עד אשׁר אני בורא כי הנני בורא את־ ירו שׁלם גילה ועמה משׂושׂ׃

Then I dropped it into Google Translate again:

For if Jesus and his sons testify that I am a Creator, that I am the Creator of his whole age, he and his people from the sixth generation.

“Whole” is another way of saying “healed”.  “Whole age” might also be a way of saying “Age of Oneness”.  In this permutation, the verse is saying that Jesus is the Creator of the Age of Oneness.  In any case, the verse seemed incomplete, so I decided to try it with verse 19 as well.  There was another instance of Jerusalem in verse 19, so I added spaces to that as well:

כי־אם־שׂישׂו וגילו עדי־עד אשׁר אני בורא כי הנני בורא את־ ירו שׁלם גילה ועמה משׂושׂ׃

וגלתי ב ירו שׁלם ושׂשׂתי בעמי ולא־ישׁמע בה עוד קול בכי וקול זעקה׃

And into Google Translate it went:

For if Jesus and his sons testify that I am a Creator, that I am the Creator of his whole age, he and his people from the sixth generation.

And I was in the midst of the fire, and I cried with a loud voice, and I heard no more crying and crying.

Perhaps verse 19 is a reference to a solar flare that transforms everything?  It’s something to think about.

I did a search in the Hebrew text for ירו.  I did not find anywhere where these letters stood alone as a word.

I then dropped את־ירו into Google Translate.

You fired

OK, maybe I’m not very good at this.  It’s time to stop playing with the words.

The main point, though, is that healing fear and trauma in past moments can create a healed present and future in which those traumatic events are no longer remembered because they are no longer remarkable.  Also, these verses reveal that humanity is an important part of making it all happen.