Deuteronomy 9:2 · World English Bible
Deuteronomy 9:2 Meaning A People Great and Tall
a people great and tall, the sons of the Anakim, whom you know, and of whom you have heard say, “Who can stand before the sons of Anak?”
What does Deuteronomy 9:2 mean?
A certainty borrowed from other people's mouths will run a life as hard as one a person earned. Hearsay becomes a reference, references stack into a feeling of certainty, and certainty about the size of an obstacle sets the state a whole generation meets its future in.
From the Self-Help reading below.
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A certainty borrowed from other people's mouths will run a life as hard as one a person earned.
Hearsay becomes a reference, references stack into a feeling of certainty, and certainty about the size of an obstacle sets the state a whole generation meets its future in. Dread narrows what a person will attempt, and what is never attempted is never disproved, so the fence holds by being obeyed.
The height was real. The verdict fastened to it was borrowed, taken secondhand and never once tested against the promise that God would cross over ahead of them. Forty years got paid out for a sentence nobody checked. Let the borrowed verdict go and the giants stay exactly as tall, while the question of what can be done in front of them reopens and has to be answered by going instead of quoting.
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Live Deuteronomy 9:2 today
- Take one belief about yourself you can trace to somebody else's mouth, a teacher, a parent, an old boss, and write down whether you have ever actually tested it. The thing may be real, the verdict on it is probably borrowed.
- When the group chat or the office agrees that something is hopeless, ask simply whether anyone has tried recently. Shared dread holds mostly by not being questioned.
- Facing the thing people have warned you about, go anyway and let the result be your evidence. The obstacle stays exactly as big, and the question of what you can do in front of it reopens.
Whose sentence about your limits are you still serving?
The same truth in other traditions
Buddhism · Kalama Sutta
Do not accept a thing because many repeat it, or because it is old, or because a respected voice said it. Test it against what you can see for yourself.
Stoicism · Epictetus
People are disturbed not by things but by the opinions they have taken about things, most of them picked up secondhand and never examined.
Taoism · Tao Te Ching 71
To mistake what you have heard for what you know is the sickness. Knowing you have not checked is the beginning of health.
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