Jeremiah 23:23 · World English Bible
Jeremiah 23:23 Meaning Am I a God at Hand
Am I a God at hand,” says Yahweh, “and not a God afar off?
What does Jeremiah 23:23 mean?
Tanzīh: Declaring God beyond all comparison The term names God as beyond every picture we can form. People quietly shrink God to the size of their own wishes, then treat that small version as the whole of Him.
From the Sufism reading below.
Jeremiah 23:23 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Sufism
SUFISM
Sufism
Tanzīh: Declaring God beyond all comparison The term names God as beyond every picture we can form. People quietly shrink God to the size of their own wishes, then treat that small version as the whole of Him. Keeping some distance in mind stops the shrinking, and leaves God larger than anything a person can arrange or predict.
Tashbīh: Speaking of God as near and knowable Tashbīh is the other half, God described in terms a person can grasp. Ibn Arabi held that either side alone goes wrong. Distance by itself leaves a God who touches no one's day, while nearness by itself leaves a God shaped by whoever imagines Him. Both at once give someone a God near enough to speak to and bigger than any idea of Him.
We are nearer to him than his jugular vein: closeness no one has to earn The line comes from the Quran, and Sufis repeat it constantly. Someone can spend years assuming God sits off at a distance, reachable only after enough effort has been made. The closeness named here is already in place before any of that, and it does not switch on when a person finally behaves well.
Worship God as though you see Him, for if you do not see Him, He sees you: the sense of being watched The words come from a saying of the Prophet. Much of what people do quietly assumes nobody is looking: the private thought, the small dishonesty, the sentence said when it seems safe. Carrying that gaze in mind changes the private hours more than the public ones, and a person starts behaving the same whether or not anyone else is in the room.
Ḥijāb: The veil Ḥijāb names the covering that hangs between a person and God. Al-Ghazali's point was that it sits on our side, not on God's; the light never dims, our eyes just turn elsewhere. Feeling that God has gone far away usually says more about where someone's attention has been than about any move God has made.
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Live Jeremiah 23:23 today
- When God feels far off today, treat it as information about where your attention has been for the last few days rather than a verdict. Nothing has moved away from you.
- Say something true and unedited out loud in the car or the kitchen, as you would to someone sitting beside you. It does not need to sound like prayer to be one.
- When you want to skip the line, round the number, or say the thing that is safe only because the right person is not in the room, act as though they are. The private hours are where this changes.
Have I shrunk God down to something that fits my plans?
The same truth in other traditions
Tao Te Ching 1
The way that can be put into words is not the way itself, yet it is in everything, right here. Both are said at once on purpose, because dropping either one gives you a false picture.
Hinduism · the Upanishads
The teaching says it is smaller than small and larger than large, further than the far and right here in the heart. Nearness and vastness are the same fact described from two sides.
Judaism · the Hasidic masters
They taught that the whole earth is full of glory and no place is empty of it, so distance is never the issue. When it feels far away, something on our side has turned, not the light.
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