Vengeance is Mine.
Somewhere I wrote about this and I also mentioned that it is better that we leave vengeance to God as He has more compassion than we can ever hope to have. With each one He has a plan of redemption.
I looked up the source of this in Deuteronomy and thought to share some things I found. The
context only folk break this "hallowed" rule when it suits them.
Deu 32:1 Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth.
Deu 32:2 My doctrine shall drop as the rain; my speech shall drop down as the dew, as the small rain on the tender plant, and as the showers on the grass;
Deu 32:3 because I will proclaim the name of Jehovah, ascribe greatness to our God.
Deu 32:4
He is the Rock; His work is perfect. For all His ways are just, a God of faithfulness, and without evil; just and upright is He.What an awesome declaration of who God is
Deu 32:5
They have corrupted themselves:
they are not His sons; it is
their blemish;
they are a crooked and perverse generation.
Deu 32:6 Do you thus give back to Jehovah, Oh foolish and unwise people? Is He not your Father who bought you? Has He not made you and established you?
Now I love this piece. Just like those who are called in
Matthew 25:33-46 as goats, many see the goats as the unrighteous yet goats were clean animals. The sheep He puts to the right hand, if we look at the parable of the lost "
goat" Sheep, and tie these two together, then we see the connection. I just thought on something; have you ever observed how sheep and goats graze? In Africa, the indigenous farmers prefer goats as they are hardy animals and require no shepherding. They essentially do their own thing, climb trees, rocky slopes etc. whereas sheep generally are herd/flock animals and require shepherding.
Deu 32:7 Remember the days of old; consider the years of many generations. Ask your father, and he will show you; your elders, and they will tell you.
Deu 32:8 When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when He separated the sons of Adam, He set the bounds of the people according to the number of the sons of Israel.
Deu 32:9 For Jehovah's portion is His people. Jacob is the lot of His inheritance.
Deu 32:10 He found him in a desert land, and in the deserted, howling wilderness. He led him about, He cared for him, He kept him as the pupil of His eye.
Deu 32:11 As an eagle stirs up her nest, flutters over her young, spreads abroad her wings, takes them and bears them on her wing,
Deu 32:12 Jehovah alone led him, and
there was no strange god with him.
Deu 32:13 He made him ride on the high places of the earth, so that he might eat the increase of the fields. And He made him suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock,
Deu 32:14 butter from cows, and milk from sheep, with fat of lambs, and rams of the sons of Bashan, and goats, with the fat of kidneys of wheat. And you drank the blood of the grape.
Wow notice all the good things. Many deeper spiritual meanings here, I may touch on this later.
Deu 32:15 But Jeshurun
(3484) grew fat and kicked. You grew fat, thick, and satisfied. Then he forsook God who made him, and
lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation.
Deu 32:16 They provoked Him to jealousy with strange gods; with abominations they provoked Him to anger.
Deu 32:17 They sacrificed to devils, not to God; to gods whom they knew not,
to new ones newly come up, whom your fathers did not fear.
Deu 32:18
You forgot the Rock who brought you forth, and
ceased to care for God who formed you.
H3484 ישׁרוּן yeshûrûn yesh-oo-roon'
From H3474;
upright; Jeshurun,
a symbolical name for Israel: - Jeshurun.
Amazing the upright word here with a negative context connotation. See also wheat and tares. A tare looks like wheat until pre-harvest, the wheat bows it's head while the tare cannot, it remains upright.
Deu 32:19 And Jehovah saw, and despised them because of the
provoking of His sons and of His daughters.
Deu 32:20 And He said, I will hide My face from them; I will see what their end shall be. For they are a
very perverse generation, sons in whom is no faithfulness.
Deu 32:21 They have moved Me to jealousy with a
no-god. They have
provoked Me to anger with their vanities. And I will move them to jealousy with a
no-people. I will
provoke them to anger with a
foolish nation.
Deu 32:22 For a fire is kindled in My anger, and shall burn to the lowest hell
[sheh-ole'], and shall consume the earth with its increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains.
Deu 32:23
I will heap evils on them. I will spend My arrows on them.
Deu 32:24 Exhaustion by famine, and consumption by burning heat, and bitter destruction, and the
teeth of beasts I will send on them, with the poison of crawling things of the dust.
Deu 32:25 The sword outside, and the terror inside, shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of grey hairs.
Deu 32:26 I said I would dash them to pieces; I would make the memory of them to cease from among men,
Deu 32:27 were it not the provocation of an enemy I feared, lest their enemies should misconstrue; lest they should say,
Our hand is high and Jehovah has not done all this.
Deu 32:28
For they are a nation without wisdom, neither is there any
understanding in them.
Deu 32:29 If they were wise, they would understand this; they would consider
their latter end! Deu 32:30 How shall one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight,
unless their Rock had sold them and Jehovah had shut them up?
Deu 32:31
For their rock is not as our Rock,
even our enemies themselves being judges.
(Note how unbelievers judge the Church today)Deu 32:32 For their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorrah. Their grapes are
grapes of gall. Their
clusters are bitter.
Deu 32:33
Their wine is the poison of serpents, and the cruel venom of asps.
Deu 32:34 Is not this laid up in store with Me and sealed up among My treasures?
Clusters
H811 אשׁכּל אשׁכּול 'eshkôl 'eshkôll esh-kole', esh-kole'
Probably prolonged from H810; a bunch of grapes or other fruit: - cluster (of grapes).
H810 אשׁך 'eshek eh'-shek
From an unused root (probably meaning to bunch together); a testicle (
as a lump): -
stone.
2Co 3:3 it having been made plain that you are the epistle of Christ, ministered by us, not having been written with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not on
tablets of stone, but in
fleshly tablets of the heart.
Deu 32:35
Vengeance and retribution recompense belong to Me. Their foot shall slide in time, for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come on them make haste.
Deu 32:36
For Jehovah will bring His people justice; and
He shall have compassion on His servants, for He sees that their power is gone, and only the imprisoned and abandoned remain.
Deu 32:37 And He shall say, Where are their gods, their rock in whom they trusted?
Deu 32:38 Who ate the fat of their sacrifices and drank the wine of their drink offerings? Let them rise up and help you; let it be your hiding place.
I see here justice to His people yet He has compassion on His servants. No matter if you do a flip-flop interpretation of this, it holds true for the righteous and unrighteous.
Let us look at vengeance but together with recompense, the NKJV retribution is wrong.
H8005 שׁלּם shillêm shil-lame'
From H7999; requital-
recompense: .
H7999 שׁלם shâlam shaw-lam'
A primitive root;
to be safe (in mind, body or estate); figuratively
to be (causatively make)
completed; by implication to be friendly; by extension to reciprocate (in various applications): - make amends, (
make an)
end, finish, full, give again, make good, (re-) pay (again), (make) (to) (be at) peace (-able), that is perfect, perform, (make) prosper (-ous), recompense, render, requite,
make restitution, restore, reward, X surely.
Wow where did the NKJV translators get retribution from
Websters
Main Entry: ret·ri·bu·tion
Pronunciation: re-trə-byü-shən
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English retribucioun, from Anglo-French, from Late Latin retribution-, retributio, from Latin retribuere to pay back, from re- + tribuere to pay — more at tribute
Date: 14th century
1: recompense, reward
2: the dispensing or receiving of reward or punishment especially in the hereafter
3: something given or exacted in recompense; especially : punishment
Main Entry: 1rec·om·pense
Pronunciation: re-kəm-pen(t)s
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): rec·om·pensed; rec·om·pens·ing
Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French recompenser, from Late Latin recompensare, from Latin re- + compensare to compensate
Date: 15th century
1 a:
to give something to by way of compensation (as for a service rendered or damage incurred) b: to pay for
2: to return in kind : requite
Deu 32:39 See now that I, I am He, and there is no god with me.
I kill, and
I make alive;
I wound and I heal;
and there is no deliverer out of My hand.
Deu 32:40 For I lift up My hand to Heaven and say, I live forever!
Deu 32:41 If I sharpen My glittering sword, and if My hand takes hold in judgment,
I will give vengeance to My enemies and
will reward those that hate Me.
Deu 32:42 I will make My arrows drunk with blood, and
My sword shall devour flesh, with the blood of the slain and of the captives, from the hairy scalp of the enemy.
Deu 32:43
Rejoice, O, nations, with His people; for He will avenge the blood of His servants, and will render vengeance to His foes and will be merciful to His land, to His people.
Boy if they only look at the deeper meanings, they shall see, God's vengeance is not directed to the unrighteous only, it is a double edged sword, it cuts both ways.
See when one is looking for retribution, pay-back, then carnally you will see hatred. If you are however looking for Justice, you will see Mercy, Love; You will see the Spirit at work not the flesh.
Therefore they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore
what God has joined together,
let not man separateBlessings
