By: Skip Moen, Ph.D.

August 9, 2021

Are You not from time everlasting, Yehovah, my Elohim, my Holy One?  We will not die.  Habakkuk 1:12a  NASB

We – What is a tiqun sofrim? As you might guess, it is a written restoration, a place where a scribe corrected the text because of the theological implication.  In this case, the Masoretic text reads “we,” but this has been corrected in order to avoid associating “Elohim” with “death.”  The text should read, “You will not die,” but that was viewed as scandalous, so the scribes changed the text to read “we will not die.”  Unfortunately, that little change altered Habakkuk’s comparison.

Habakkuk contrasts the gods of the pagan Chaldeans with the Elohim of Israel.  He points out that even if the Chaldeans are used by Elohim to bring judgment on mankind, their attribution to their own gods is a grand mistake.  Their gods are idols, nothing more.  The real Elohim, the true Elohim of Israel, is behind their success because it fits His plan, not theirs.  So, Habakkuk reminds his audience that the true Elohim is from everlasting (meqedem).  Unlike the pagan gods of Israel’s enemies, He does not die.

But the Masoretes didn’t like even the suggestion that Elohim might die, so they altered the text.  As a result, it appears that Habakkuk is saying that his audience won’t die.  Unfortunately, that wasn’t true.  The result makes us think that Habakkuk made a false prediction.  Israel did fall to the Chaldeans.  Many died.  But not Elohim.  Had the Masoretes left the text alone, we would have had a powerful statement of Elohim’s eternal existence and His everlasting involvement.  As it is, we get a watered-down mistake.

But there’s something else we can learn from the hyper-religious consciousness of the Masoretes.  It’s this: Elohim is not subject to the category of death.  The two ideas do not mix.  There is no possibility that death has anything to do with Elohim.  And that has a somewhat serious implication for the Christian view of Yeshua’s sacrifice on the cross.  If Habakkuk is allowed to say what he intended to say, then the claim that Yeshua as the second person of the Trinity died on the cross is theological nonsense.  Elohim does not die! 

Yes, of course, the Trinitarian view is that the man Yeshua died but the Elohim Yeshua didn’t, as if somehow just saying that erases the illogical and irrational assertion.  Fully Elohim and fully man?  Okay, so how does the “fully man” die and the “fully Elohim” not die and still be one person, not two?  And how does this doctrine find any correspondence in the Tanakh’s view of Elohim? 

The answer is frighteningly simple: rewrite the text, rewrite the history, rewrite the theology.  Make everything fit the doctrine instead of building the doctrine from the texts.  No one, Christian or Jewish, believes Elohim can die (despite the ridiculous “Death of Elohim” theology).  And no one, Christian or Jewish, imagines that Yeshua did not die.  The liberal theology opposing Yeshua’s claim isn’t about his death.  It’s about his resurrection.  But at this point, the ways parted.  The Trinitarian doctrine defines Christianity in opposition to Judaism.  If you give it up, you really can’t claim to be Christian in any sense of the way the Roman Latin Church defines the religion (you can be a Unitarian, however).  So, you can’t give it up if you want to stay in the Latin/Western Church.  You have to change the Bible to fit the doctrine.  You have to produce completely nonsensical “explanations” about a human being who dies while still being Elohim who cannot die.  

You have to embrace, as a fundamental element of your belief, statements that defy any sense of human rationality—and claim that the reason you believe them is because they are irrational (therefore, they must be from Elohim).  

Here’s my suggestion.  READ THE TEXT!  Stop trying to make it fit your theology.  Accept what it says.  Elohim doesn’t die.  Human beings do.  Elohim feels. Elohim changes His mind.  Elohim learns about reality because our choices change what will happen.  The Messiah acted, thought, taught, felt, and claimed to be an anointed agent of the most high Elohim, not Elohim Himself.