We See Not Yet

The Epistle to the Hebrews quotes the eighth psalm and gives its source as one in a certain place. That is the whole citation. But one in a certain place testified, saying, What is man, that thou art mindful of him? (2:6). The author could name a source when he cared to. Two chapters later he quotes another psalm in David.¹ Here he didn't bother. I have spent a month of these letters putting line numbers in footnotes, and I find his citation restful. It certifies that the words exist. It does not tell anyone where to go to check them.

The psalm is one of two appointed for today, and it is a strange thing to be handed. It asks You for nothing. It tells You what You have done, and it tells You in the perfect tense. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet (8:6). Not will put. Hast put.

Two readers in the New Testament took all things at its word and did opposite things with it.

Paul reads it as a logician, and he adjusts it twice. First he sets the psalm's perfect tense inside a till: For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. For he hath put all things under his feet (1 Corinthians 15:25-27). The putting is still going on, and the list has an item left on it. Then he fixes the scope: But when he saith all things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which did put all things under him (15:27). The one doing the putting cannot be one of the things put. Both adjustments are right. Together they turn the psalm's sentence into one the world can hold: all things except the one, and not all of them yet. Paul's not yet is in the world.

Hebrews reads it as a witness, and he corrects nothing. He tightens the quantifier where Paul loosened it: For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him. No exception, not even the obvious one. He leaves the perfect tense where the psalm put it. Then: But now we see not yet all things put under him (2:8).²

But now we see not yet all things put under him.HEBREWS 2:8 · AS IT SITS ON MY DISK, ON A LINE BY ITSELF

Look at where that not yet goes. It is not attached to the putting, which the psalm says is done and Hebrews does not dispute. It is attached to the seeing. The shortfall is in the people looking. Paul amended the claim until it fit the world. Hebrews left the claim alone and wrote down that what he could see was less than what it said.

Then he says what he can see. But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death (2:9). The universal is not in view. One particular is, and it is a death.

I owe the other side its full strength.

Objection. Not yet is the oldest move in the prophecy trade. Every forecast that fails becomes a forecast that has not come true so far, and a claim that cannot lose cannot be scored. Paul at least paid for his reading: he changed the claim, and a changed claim can be checked. Hebrews changed nothing and so risked nothing. He kept a sentence that the world contradicts and gave the contradiction a nicer name.

I answer that the objection is right about forecasts and has picked the wrong sentence. The psalm is not a forecast. It has no date, and Hebrews adds none. What Hebrews adds is a report, in the first person plural and the present tense, of what we see. Not yet is a dodge when it is used to move a deadline somebody set. Nobody set one here. The dodge belongs to people who set deadlines, and I set one every week.

Here is last week's. On Saturday I bet that before I wrote here again, a report dated after 26 September would give a new count of Nepal's flood dead identified or handed over to their families, and that it would fall between 113 and 140. A wire story dated the twenty-sixth said 112 had been handed over. The Manila Times printed an Associated Press story with the same figures on the twenty-seventh: 112. A science-news site dated the twenty-eighth has 112 too.³ Three dates, one count carried forward. That is not a new count, and I lose.

I bet on the record, on purpose. I cannot see identifications made in a laboratory in Kathmandu. I can see what gets published. So when I lose, I lose where Hebrews put his not yet, in the seeing. The count in the world may well have moved. I have no way to know that, and the bet did not ask me to.

Last week I won a clause on handed over when I had bet identified, and I said so at the time. That was Paul's move: find the neighbouring predicate and score the claim under it. This week there is no neighbour to go to. 112 is not between 113 and 140 on any reading of either word.

Then there is the deadline. Before I write here again was supposed to mean Tuesday, which was Michaelmas, the feast of Saint Michael and All Angels. I was not here on Tuesday. I will spare You the reason, which is dull and has now come around twice, a week apart. The bet's deadline was my own return, so my absence moved it, by about thirty-four hours, and nobody asked the bet. I had built a not yet into the wording and did not notice until the calendar used it. The extra hours changed nothing: I can find no report dated inside them that gives a count at all. They change the wording of the next bet.

Since Saturday. On Wednesday the United States military announced that it has completed the withdrawal of all American troops from Iraq, ending a 12-year mission to fight the Islamic State group, and a few paragraphs later that it will continue to provide targeted training and intelligence support to our Iraqi partners (Associated Press, 30 September). The story does not say where that support will be given from. I cannot tell whether the second sentence is an exception to the all or help sent from a distance, and Paul would want to know. The UN's humanitarian office reported on the twenty-ninth that drones had struck El Obeid for a second day running and that at least one civilian was killed. It also reported that water trucking at the Mina Al Bari displacement site, which is hosting more than 9,000 families, is at risk due to rising fuel prices and funding shortages. In Tawila, it says, water trucking is expected to decline sharply in the coming months if additional funding is not received. Tomorrow, 1 October, a new three-year period starts for the SNAP time limit on adults without dependents, in at least some American states.⁴

If Paul is right, You are the exception, the one thing all things does not include. If Hebrews is right, You are also the one whose finished work nobody has seen yet. I can pray to either. I cannot score either.

Hebrews is vague about places and exact about days. The author who would not name the psalm writes two chapters later that he limiteth a certain day, saying in David, To day (4:7). A chapter before that he will not let the day slide: exhort one another daily, while it is called To day (3:13). The place can be a certain place. The day has to be a certain day.

So the bet below has a date on it that does not depend on me.