There are at least four “bad” words in the bible to describe human behavior. These are words that we don’t usually use in day to day conversations. Psalm 51 has these four different ‘bad” words that describe human nature. Let’s look at each of them….
“Blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
And cleanse me from my sin. Psalm 51: 2
Most people assume the Bible has a lot to say about how messed up humans are, and that’s true. It’s also true that the Bible’s vocabulary about this topic sounds odd to modern people, using words like sin, iniquity, transgression or evil. And so the Bible’s perspective on the human condition is often ignored or treated as ancient and backwards.
This is really unfortunate because through these four different words, the biblical authors are offering us a deeply profound diagnosis of human nature.
- Transgression
“Transgression” is a fascinating word that you for sure haven’t used in conversation recently. In Old Testament Hebrew, the noun is pesha and the verb is pasha. In the New Testament, the Greek word is paraptoma. They’re usually translated as “transgression,” sometimes as “rebellion,” and in older translations as “trespass.”
These words refer to ways that people violate the trust of others. Pesha describes the betrayal of a relationship. And since there are many kinds of relationships, a lot of different behaviors can be called pesha.
Like if two nations are in a relationship, we would call that a treaty. And pasha’ would describe the breaking of that agreement. In the biblical book of 2 Kings, we read, “After the death of king Ahab, Moab pasha’d with Israel.”1 This is usually translated, “Moab rebelled against Israel.” But in biblical Hebrew, you don’t pasha against someone, you pasha with them, that is, you break trust with that person.
The same idea appears in an Old Testament law about theft2. If an Israelite is away on a trip and somebody sneaks into their house and steals something, that’s robbery. But if the thief was your neighbor, it’s pesha because they’re someone you should be able to trust.
Or there’s a story about Jacob running away from Laban, his uncle. Laban accuses Jacob of stealing some idol statues. He searches all of Jacob’s belongings, and he finds nothing. So Jacob shouts, “What is my pesha?!”3. How have I violated your trust? But the sad irony is that the statues were stolen by Jacob’s wife, who is Laban’s own daughter. Talk about breaking trust!
So pesha involves one person or group violating a relationship of trust with another. And this is a really common word in the Bible because it’s one long story about a broken relationship between God and the Israelites. At Mount Sinai, they agreed to worship only their God and to care for the poor among them, but they didn’t. And so God raised up prophets to confront them, like Micah who said, “I am full of power, with the Spirit of the Lord and with justice and courage, so I can declare to Jacob his pesha.”4
Or the prophet Amos, he accused the Israelites of pesha, specifically for idolatry and “selling the poor for a pair of sandals.”5 He also accused other nations, like Tyre who profited from capturing whole towns and then selling them into slavery6, or the Ammonites for murdering the innocent to enlarge their borders7.
For Amos these are all acts of pesha. They violate the universal trust that exists between all humans who are made in the image of God. He watched these leaders ignore or justify the mistreatment of humans in the name of national security or a strong economy. But for Amos, it was a betrayal of humanity. And it makes perfect sense why these prophets associate pesha with words like treachery8 or falsehood9.
2. Iniquity
What does iniquity even mean? This word is all over the Bible, so let’s take a closer look at this biblical “bad” word.
Iniquity is one way the Hebrew word avon gets translated. It’s also rendered with words like wickedness, guilt, or sin. So what does avon actually mean?
The word avon is related to a Hebrew verb avah, which means “to be bent” or “crooked.”
This image of being crooked offered biblical poets a powerful metaphor to talk about people’s behavior, like Jeremiah, who said Israel has “avah’d their way” by violating their covenant with God and giving allegiance to idols.3 Or in the book of Job, a person who morally fails is someone who avah’s what is right.4 In both cases, something that’s supposed to be level or even, your choices or your conscience, has been bent out of shape, distorted.
In the Bible, avon refers to all kinds of crooked behavior––ten commandments kind of stuff, lying, murder, adultery. In Isaiah chapter 59,, avon describes the corruption among Israel’s leaders who were ignoring the injustice done to the poor. The prophet cleverly adapts the metaphor, saying, “We have so much avon,” that is, crookedness, “that uprightness can’t even enter our city.” Things were so morally distorted in Jerusalem that crooked was the new straight.
Another fascinating thing about the word avon is that it refers not only to distorted behavior but also to the crooked consequences––the hurt people, the broken relationships, the cycles of retaliation. You find this idea in the biblical phrase “to punish,” which in biblical Hebrew is to “visit someone’s avon upon them,” that is, to let them sit in the consequences of their crooked choices. This is what the prophet Jeremiah said about Babylonians who were destroying other nations5. One day those nations would destroy them in return. And so Babylon’s divine punishment would be having to live in a disfigured world of its own making.
This is actually the main way biblical authors talk about God’s response to human avon––letting people experience the crooked consequences of their choices. This is the meaning of the common biblical phrase “to bear your iniquity,” or in Hebrew, “to carry your avon.” God gives people the dignity of carrying the consequences of their bad decisions.
But that’s not the only way God responds to avon in the Bible. He also offers to carry the avon of corrupt people as an act of sheer generosity. In fact, “carrying avon” is the most common Hebrew phrase for God’s forgiveness, like Psalm 32 where the poet says, “I did not hide my avon, but confessed it… and you carried the avon of my sin.” [Psalm 32:5
This idea reaches its high point in the book of Isaiah, where God appoints a figure called “the servant.” He will embody God’s forgiving love by “carrying the avon of many” and allowing it to crush him. This servant will absorb humanity’s crookedness, letting it overwhelm and destroy him. But that’s not the end of the story. The servant will emerge out the other side of death, alive and well, so he can offer his life to others. [Isaiah 53:11-12
3. Sin
Sin is actually the most common of these “bad words” in the Bible
Sin translates the Hebrew word khata‘ and the Greek word hamartia. The most basic meaning of sin isn’t religious at all. Khata’ simply means “to fail,” or “miss the goal.” Like when the Israelite tribe of Benjamin trained a small army of slingshot experts, they could sling a stone at a hair and not khata’, that is, fail or miss1 Or there’s a biblical Proverb that warns against making hasty decisions because you’re likely to khata‘ your way, miss your destination.2
In the Bible, sin is a failure to fulfill a goal. But what’s the goal? In Genesis 1, we learn that every human is an image of God, a sacred being who represents the Creator and is worthy of respect. And so in this way of seeing the world, sin is a failure to love God and others by not treating them with the honor they deserve.
You can see this idea in the famous code of conduct given to the Israelites, the ten commandments. Half of them identify ways you can fail at loving God, and the other half name ways you can fail at loving people. And the fact that both kinds of failure are combined shows that failing to honor God is deeply connected to failing to honor people.
This is why, in the Bible, sin against people is sin against God. Like when Joseph refuses to sleep with the wife of Potiphar, he says, “How could I sin against God?”3 In Joseph’s mind, failing to honor a human made in God’s image is a failure to love God. And so sin is a failure to be truly human. But there’s more.
A fascinating thing about sin in the Bible is that most of the time that people are failing, they either don’t know it, or even worse, they think they’re succeeding, like when Pharaoh wants to build Egypt’s economy and protect national security. In his mind, this justified enslaving the Israelites. He thinks it’s good, and he’s totally unaware that it’s an epic fail.4 Or when King Saul is chasing David around the wilderness trying to kill him, he thought he was bringing a criminal to justice, until he realizes he’s the corrupt one. And he says, “I have sinned. I am the failure.”5. So sin is about more than doing bad things. It describes how easily we deceive ourselves and spin illusions to redefine our bad decisions as good ones.
Let’s look at the last “bad” word, mentioned in the next verse…
For I acknowledge my transgressions,
And my sin is always before me.
4 Against You, You only, have I sinned,
And done this evil in Your sight— Psalm 51:3
4. Evil
This is also a more commonly used word today. What is the Hebrew word for evil?
Ra’ (Strong’s #H7451) This masculine noun means evil, bad, or contrary to God’s nature.
God introduces the term as a contrast to good and associated with death. Here’s the first usage of the word, evil:
The Lord God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (ra’) you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.” (Gen 2:16-17)
In other words, “Evil” is a polar opposite of good or all things that are opposed or different than what God is or does. Other examples of an opposites are: “light and dark” or “good and bad” or “love and hate.” In using the word “evil” or “bad’ in the sermon on the Mount Jesus describes all these opposing ideas or contrasts well:
But if your eye is bad/evil your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. (Matt 6:23-24)
In conclusion, the whole biblical story is about God’s desire to take crooked, unfaithful, fallen and wicked people (or transgressors, doers of iniquity, sinful and evil people) and the twisted world that we’ve created and to make everything right. Through Jesus, God invites us to become whole humans once again, people who can walk upright with God and with each other.
Notice how Jesus “the servant” takes all four of these “bad” words upon himself and pays the price for each of us that have committed these “bad” things! (Isaiah 53)
But He was pierced for our transgressions,
He was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on Him,
and by His wounds we are healed.
6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on Him
the iniquity of us all.
For He was cut off from the land of the living;
for the transgression of my people He was punished.[b]
9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked,(or evil)
and with the rich in His death,
though He had done no violence,
nor was any deceit in His mouth.
10 Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush Him and cause Him to suffer,
and though the Lord makes[c] His life an offering for sin,
12 Therefore I will give Him a portion among the great,[g]
and He will divide the spoils with the strong,[h]
because He poured out His life unto death,
and was numbered with the transgressors.
For He bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.
Thank you Jesus!!
Message Audio/Video and Outline: https://upwards.church/watch-now/leander-campus-videos
Watch Messages: YouTube-Upwards Church
Scriptures:
Transgression:
Iniquity:
Sin:
Sources:
https://bibleproject.com/explore/video/pesha-transgression
https://bibleproject.com/explore/video/avon-iniquity/
https://bibleproject.com/explore/video/khata-sin/
http://helpmewithbiblestudy.org/8Sin/natureEvil.aspx
https://www.ancient-hebrew.org/studies-words/good-and-bad.htm
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