You must be in fellowship prior to your Bible study, so that the spiritual information you receive can become a source, of blessing to your soul and produce spiritual growth.
5 Why
should ye be stricken [nakah] any more? ye will revolt [carah] more and more: [yacaph] the
whole head [ro'sh] is sick, [choliy] and the whole heart [lebab]
faint. [davvay] KJV-Interlinear
5 Where
will you be stricken again, As you continue in your rebellion? The whole head
is sick, And the whole heart is faint. NASB
Where will the next downfall come?
Once one has fallen into a pit of filth and misery, then there is but one failure after another. Ever seen someone who is accident prone, someone who seems to get things mixed up all the time? The common joke is, 'Where is the next accident going to be?'
We don't ask when will the next accident be, because that is presumed, due to their inability to recognize their failures, due to their lack of sense, or just due to the person's inability to learn. So it is with negative people.
Total darkness, total detachment from reality, total disconnection from reality.
The Israelites have a problem. They lack the sense of even the dullest of animals. They are weighed down with the production of their sin natures - iniquity. Why? Because their hearts are sick. Their whole heads are sick. Their soul is sick.
This overflows to the whole body, and the negative person, the person who has rejected God, the person who is therefore in rebellion to the spiritual life, has fallen into the pit of doom.
But is this sickness on the exterior of the body only? The bruises, the welts, the open sores, of the next verse, where do these originate from?
They are due to the failure of the soul to function properly. Recall that the Bible refers to two functions of the brain - the heart and the mind.
The Bible refers to the two aspects of the brain, or the soul.
The first is the heart or the pump. That is the function that circulates information around in your soul, your thinking process.
The second aspect is the mind. This is that function that stores, retrieves and applies that information which you have learned and possess to some extent.
Look at the charts on the web site, related to the soul of the believer and the unbeliever. These provide a picture of sorts, that show the circulation of Bible doctrine as it originates from God, is entered into your soul via your ears or eyes, and rerouted to the human spirit, then back into your soul and into a complex, or temple, or palace, or whatever you wish to call that construction project that is going on inside your soul.
From there you build up wisdom, or a house full of information.
Then you apply it to your life's experiences and learn from those experiences as well. Thus Bible doctrine flows throughout your soul, it circulates, it is applied, it is re-circulated, and your soul builds up spiritual muscle. You grow up and advance in your spiritual life toward maturity.
But, when you do not study your Bible doctrine regularly, then your soul misfires, it malfunctions, it starves.
Bible doctrine is the true energy that feeds the soul, it is the source of health and it maintains a healthy soul.
When you take away Gods Word from your life, then you are feeding your soul unhealthy foods. When your soul feeds on unhealthy foods alone, then it becomes sick. Just as a sick and unhealthy person becomes vulnerable to disease and far worse things, so the soul becomes vulnerable to spiritual disease, so to speak.
You have two states of health in your life. The first is your spiritual health, and the second is your physical health.
An unfit spiritual state of health will always overflow into the physical side of your life, including your mental health.
An unfit physical state of health cannot necessarily affect your spiritual state, unless you first have a spiritual defect of some sort, like a negative attitude toward your Bible study.
The physical side of your life will age through the natural process of your life span, but cannot ruin your spiritual life. You can be as old as Methuselah, and still be sharp spiritually.
If you ignore or disregard your spiritual life, then your overall health will plummet all the more. Your spiritual life will not prevent aging, nor even accidents that might occur in your life. But this verse is not proposing a fountain of physical youth, but merely pointing out the imagery to describe your soul, when it lacks the proper nourishment, by comparing it to the physical body.
Your true health begins with your soul. And your soul is only as healthy as the information that you put into it.
What you think is what you are.
The Israelites lacked doctrine, because they were indifferent. They lacked doctrine because they invented their own version of truth. They lacked doctrine because they pursued a life that was led by their sin nature.
Therefore, why are they strickened? Because their spiritual lives were dysfunctional, if they existed at all.
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