Last summer, I read John Steinbeck’s East of Eden and found it to be a intriguing book. Since then, the words timshel and “thou mayest” have been ringing in my head from time to time.
Timshel is a Hebrew word that has”thou mayest” as a translation of it. If you have read East of Eden, you know the prevalence of those words within the story and their significance to it. If you have not, I will avoid spoiling the end of the novel, but I will explain those words a bit within this essay. The exact plot details of the novel itself are less important to my purposes here than those words and the musings that they provoked within me are, although I would highly recommend reading East of Eden still.
In the first book of the Christian Bible, Genesis, God tells the man Cain that “thou mayest” overcome sin. Said another way, Cain, his descendants, and Man on a general level, will have a choice in the matter of morality. Man can be evil or he can be good, or even somewhere in-between at different times. This applies as far down as the level of the individual, not merely at the macroscopic level of a race, population, nation, etc. Each man has the ability to sin or to not sin, to choose God or to not choose God, to live or to die, to be merciful or to be cruel, and so on.
Thousands of years after the fact, I possess that same choice. I cannot escape that choice. I cannot ignore my own moral responsibility for my actions.
Nobody can.
When East of Eden takes up the question of how the directive, “thou mayest,” works, it reflects the value of fictional, creative literature. Writers are frequently in conversation with past authors and works, often examining the same subject or age-old human question, but from slightly different angles according to each specific author’s perspective, life experience, and gifts. It is possible to read about something in one manner and consider it utterly boring or fail to grasp its meaning, only for a story or another style of explanation to bring the subject into clearer relief.
We definitely owe John Steinbeck for his laudable ability to display the significance of the Bible’s timshel within a work of fiction. Certainly, the times I have read through Genesis, I have not focused so closely on the individual words, as he must have done. Nor am I a Hebrew scholar, ready to pull apart the meanings of the original language of the Bible and clarify them for others. Left to my own devices, I would be tempted to call such parts of Genesis boring (along with much of the Old Testament) and, rather, skip happily onward to reach the New Testament and what I would more easily consider “applicable” messages.
Reading additional literature approaching the same subject from other perspectives changes that tendency. While the Bible is complete in itself, the works of great authors of the past can express some of its meaning, beauty, wonder, and gravity in more palatable ways, thus contributing to the kingdom of God as well, so long as they are based in Truth . That is why I would defend–and do often defend–the importance of the traditional “Great Books” and literature in education, even for people who are more interested in science or who would tend to consider the humanities to be useless and impractical. Authors like Dante, Milton, Shakespeare, and countless others, provide us with excellent fictional literature from a reader’s perspective, but more than that, point us to timeless truths about God and the human condition.
Accordingly, the ordinary, sinful, human author John Steinbeck wonderfully supplements any purely biblical reading of Genesis, the Bible’s story, and the simple word timshel. East of Eden assuredly sparked my thinking.
In the remainder of this essay, I want to focus on the two parts to that short but complete clause, “Thou mayest,” and explicate what they mean for me and for us.
Let us first look piecemeal at the two words and emphasize the “Thou,” making the clause “Thou mayest.” In orienting my attention to that pronoun, I place the impetus on me and make the direction personal. It is almost as though I am speaking to myself from outside of me when I read those words out loud or within my mind. Thou mayest–I may. Whispering those words, attentive to the thou, I realize that I am beset by Adam’s sin like any other human. I am a child of God like any other saved human. I am a sinner. I am saved. I am me. I am God’s. I cannot escape the burden of moral responsibility and the necessity to combat sin. “Thou mayest” addresses me, a single, ordinary person among billions of people on this entire planet and urges right action from me.
Yet, I cannot just land permanently on the “thou” and turn the statement into a self-centered exercise about my power and role. It cannot just be read as “Thou mayest.”
In the Christian world, we live under the assumption that we humans can do nothing without Grace and without God’s blessing. If “thou,” or “me,” were the determining factor in overcoming sin or in living well in this world, it would be the case that all may but none would. It would be “all cannot-est.” We might as well remove the “mayest” and give up all hope if we are going to underscore our roles in it. But timshel includes not just “thou,” but “mayest.” It is “thou mayest.” I, and each of us, may, and can, overcome sin and engage in the right journeys of life. Each choice can make a difference; each decision to follow God or to not has consequences. We cannot decide on our own, however.
Who makes it so that I may?
Only God Himself.
Alone, I am a cursed, powerless human being who certainly cannot defeat sin. It is a gift that I am able to overcome sin. After all, God could have condemned all of fallen humanity, rejected them utterly, destroyed them forever. But He gave us the chance–He allowed us to try–to follow Him and to know Him. Through Christ and His death on the cross, we may obtain eternal life and cast aside our sinful natures. He provides the Grace, and we respond accordingly. This does not negate our part to play, as we are the actors who may overcome sin, but it does explain how mortal, insufficient beings can stand against and drive back a vicious, supernatural Evil (namely, the Devil).
It is an interesting thing indeed. Timshel is a fascinating word, but we cannot look at just part of its translation, lest we either lose sight of God and Grace, or negate our responsibility for making right moral choices. Sin is so hard to defeat, but hope must remain in the Overcomer, Jesus Christ.
Any gate can open and close, even the barred gates to Eden.
Thou Mayest.
The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.”
Genesis 4:6-7, English Standard Version