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Deuteronomy 7:18 · World English Bible

Deuteronomy 7:18 Meaning You Shall Not Be Afraid of Them

you shall not be afraid of them. You shall remember well what Yahweh your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt:

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What does Deuteronomy 7:18 mean?

The cure offered for fear turns the attention backward, to Pharaoh and all Egypt and what was done there, rather than ordering a man to feel brave. Fear runs on a picture of a threat too large to beat.

From the Cybernetics reading below.

Deuteronomy 7:18 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

CYBERNETICS

Cybernetics

The cure offered for fear turns the attention backward, to Pharaoh and all Egypt and what was done there, rather than ordering a man to feel brave. Fear runs on a picture of a threat too large to beat. Memory answers with a larger picture, of a power that has already broken a greater enemy.

When a person sets the record beside the dread, the dread shrinks to its own size. The mind cannot hold a clear memory of rescue and a story of certain defeat at once. The evidence returns. The fear loses its grip.

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Cybernetics lens

Live Deuteronomy 7:18 today

  1. Open your notes or photos and find a stretch you were sure would break you. Sit with the fact that you are reading about it from the other side.
  2. Ask someone who has known you a long time to remind you of a hard thing you got through. Let them tell it, and do not correct the parts that sound too generous.
  3. When the fear spikes at work today, write one line of actual evidence next to it. Keep the dread beside the record and watch it come back down to its real size.

What have you already survived that today's fear conveniently forgets?

The same truth in other traditions

Stoicism · Seneca

Recall how often you have come through what you were certain would ruin you. The record argues against the dread.

Zen · Hakuin

You are already standing in the water you are crying out for. Fear forgets what is already here and has already held.

Tao Te Ching 22

The yielding outlasts the forceful, and the thing that already survived once knows the way. Look at what has endured before you measure what is coming.

Mid-century illustration of Jesus teaching the crowd on a hillside above the sea

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