Isaiah 26:1-9
Focusing Our Imagination

On that day this song will be sung in the land of Judah:

   We have a strong city;
      he sets up victory
      like walls and bulwarks.
   Open the gates,
      so that the righteous nation that keeps faith
      may enter in.
   Those of steadfast mind you keep in peace --
      in peace because they trust in you.
   Trust in the LORD forever,
      for in the LORD God
      you have an everlasting rock.
   For he has brought low
      the inhabitants of the height;
      the lofty city he lays low.
   He lays it low to the ground,
      casts it to the dust.
   The foot tramples it,
      the feet of the poor,
      the steps of the needy.

   The way of the righteous is level;
      O Just One, you make smooth the path of the righteous.
   In the path of your judgments,
      O LORD, we wait for you;
   your name and your renown
      are the soul's desire.
   My soul yearns for you in the night,
      my spirit within me earnestly seeks you.
   For when your judgments are in the earth,
      the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.

New Revised Standard Version

I was drawn to this passage by just one phrase: "steadfast mind". The concept of keeping our focus on God, of disciplining our minds and our thoughts, is vital to Christianity. That seems to me to be even more important in our age when our businesses value "snap" decisions, our entertainment flourishes on rapid visual cuts and intense stimulation, and the virtue of patience seems to have been replaced by a "need for speed."

In exploring the concepts and threads of "mind" and "thought" in the Bible, I came across this passage in Isaiah, unique for the Hebrew word that is translated here as "mind". Elsewhere in the Old Testament, the word leb is translated as "mind" (see Nehemiah 4:6), but it can also mean "heart" or "center", the drive behind a person. Another Hebrew word, nephesh, means pretty much the same thing, with its root in the word for "breath" or "spirit". In fact, nephesh is the word translated as "soul" in this passage in the phrase "my soul yearns for you". The word most often used for "thoughts" is machashebeth, derived from the word chashab, which originally meant to weave or fabricate. Machashebeth was usually associated with thinking about work or intenting to work. Chashab was also used for thinking, but it was generally used negatively, referring to contriving or devising. Almost always in the Old Testament, the concept of an intellect apart from body and breath doesn't exist -- but it does here.

In this passage, the word for "mind" is the Hebrew word yetser, meaning imagination, taken from a root word that means to build or fashion a frame around something. This word gives insight to a time when thoughts could be freed from the daily survival of a wandering band of nomads, or the neverending toil of farmers and laborers. We see educated men, secure and reasonably wealthy, with opportunities and resources to invent, to experiment, even to let their creativity run free. This isn't the same "mind" of Greek philosophy, the "true" self independent of the flawed and imperfect body. This one is more fun!

And there, too, we find that focusing our imagination on God gives us peace that surpasses anything we can imagine. We build all our thoughts on a firm trust in the never-changing, graceous God, who always rewards and cares for the faithful. In our labor, in our intellect, and in our imagination, let us keep God the Lord of all of us!