Written by T. M. Suffield |
Friday, June 17, 2022
Early on in the Torah we find “land” referring to all that God has made unless it is modified, for example, the “land of Egypt.” Later the “land” without reference is more likely to refer to Israel as originally given to the Hebrews by Yahweh, “The Land” as though it has capital letters. It’s almost a proper name.

“He’s no longer in the land of the living,” we say with great solemnity as we pronounce that our friend has fallen asleep on the sofa.
It’s a phrase we use fairly commonly, either to mean prosaically, “they’re dead”—which is actually uncommon because we prefer cleaner euphemisms that hide the reality entirely—or to refer to someone who is asleep.
We get that idiom of death and sleep being related from the Bible, though it plays the other way around in the Old Testament, with the dead being referred to as asleep. Like all idioms it hints at more than it shows, because only a culture with a profound ungirding belief in the resurrection of the dead would refer to the dead as sleeping.
We also get the phrase the “land of the living” from the Bible. I count 15 Old Testament occurrences of the word land (אֶ֫רֶץ) with the word living or alive (חַי). Which is not that surprising, the Authorised Version, which most of us know as the KJV, has had an incredibly large impact on the English language over the last 400 years.
Here’s the kicker, I’m not convinced the phrase “land of the living” means the same thing in Hebrew as we take it to mean in English.
Which is always a thought worth exploring. In fact, as those 15 references cross five different books of the Bible it’s possible that they don’t all use the term the same way, but we should always assume that those written later would be very aware of how the term was used in earlier parts of the Bible.
Why am I not convinced?
Hebrew has plenty of ways to say ‘alive,’ without the poetic flourish about the land added in. Which on its own we could dismiss as poetic language, especially in the Psalms, that is then picked up by Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. We could, but we shouldn’t. The Bible’s authors are often poetic and use the heights of rhetoric available to them to express the heart of God in beautiful language, and every flourish has purpose and meaning. There are no spare words.
So, what does it mean? My contention is that the land of the living is the New Jerusalem, and that it is us who live in the land of the dying.
We will need to nuance this a little along the way, but the first thing that should clue us in is the use of the word land. A very common word in the Old Testament, from the first sentence onwards (literally: from the head God created the sky and the land), and a word that as the story develops seems to change meaning.
Early on in the Torah we find ‘land’ referring to all that God has made unless it is modified, for example, the ‘land of Egypt.’ Later the ‘land’ without reference is more likely to refer to Israel as originally given to the Hebrews by Yahweh, “The Land” as though it has capital letters. It’s almost a proper name.
So, we have it modified by ‘living,’ where is this place? The place of the dead in the Old Testament is never referred to as a ‘land,’ which is of course because it’s under the ground. It’s the grave, even if ‘Abraham’s bosom,’ while the part of it for the righteous dead is not specifically unpleasant, even that is a place of waiting.
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Don’t be a pastor if you want a low-stress job. Remember the doctrine of providence. In addition to this being par for the pastoral course, they aren’t random sand traps. Nothing is outside of God’s sovereign control. God in his infinite power upholds, directs, disposes, and governs all creatures and things.” (2LCF 5:1) The trials are not merely permitted; they are ordained, for our good and his glory (James 1:2–3; Rom. 8:28). Far from being accidental, random, or pointless—they are, like everything else, according to the counsel of his will, to the praise of his glory (Eph. 1:11–12).  

[Note: this post is part of the series on enduring in ministry. Other posts can be found here]
It’s early morning, and you wake up with a knot in your stomach. Thinking about the difficult conversations from the day before has you reeling. You head over to make a cup of coffee and check your phone. Attempting to resist the inbox and get your mind on something else, you check the news for a few minutes. But soon enough, you give in and check your email. Two messages in there get your attention. The first is a cryptic request for a meeting from a person with whom you suspect there is trouble. And the other a summary of the giving trend, reflecting a substantial deficit for the year. You take a sip of coffee and wince. You want to return to bed, and the day hasn’t started. 
And right here, you have a choice to make. You may not realize it, but it’s an important decision. How are you going to respond to this?
What’s going on? You’re experiencing the stress of pastoral ministry. If you want to endure long-term, you have to be able to identify if and properly deal with it.
A Description of the Problem
Stress is our body’s response to difficulty. These are often undesirable circumstances. And if you think about it for a minute, pastoral ministry has many of these types of situations. 
Any of the following would be considered normal or routine in a 6–12 month span of ministry:

Seeing a church member fall into sin leading him away from Christ.
Watching a marriage implode over sin.
Trying to bring healing after abuse.
Counseling a grieving family after the death of a loved one.
Having key families leave your church.
Enduring uncharitable and untrue characterizations of your motives.
Watching church members argue about peripheral matters.
Receiving the estimate for the repair project in the church.
Looking at the calendar and seeing Sunday getting closer.

This is the pastor’s life, week after week, month after month, year after year. Like waves bringing debris from the sea, the pastor’s life is a steady wave of the residue from the fall.  
Any one of these, by themselves, gets our attention. But what if you get them in pairs or triplets or more?
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It is not a matter of strong or weak, but where we place our trust. If we are prideful then we will find ourselves in opposition to God. But if we humble ourselves, and see ourselves as we ought, then God gives more grace. May we be the blessed weak who lean on a strong God.

And his fame spread far, for he was marvelously helped, till he was strong. But when he was strong, he grew proud, to his destruction
2 Chronicles 26:15-16
Did you know that it is not only the weak who are in danger of a spiritual fall? There are those who think, “if only I were stronger, then I wouldn’t be so (fill in the blank).” But this isn’t true. Over and over again in God’s word, it is the strong who find themselves in the worst predicaments. Uzziah is one example. He was famous. He was helped by God. “Till he was strong.” Do you feel the warning?
What Makes the Strong So Weak?
Why is it that the strong find themselves so often in opposition to God? Because those who are strong are tempted to believe the lie that their strength is enough. Enough to fight sin. Enough to find wisdom.
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