Welcome to Torah Today Ministries. My name is Grant Luton and I’m Robin and we’re here to talk about a humorous subject and we’re naming this episode Laughing Matters.
We were recently on a road trip and we happened to be in the Torah portion Lech Lecha (לֶךְ־לְךָ). And for those of you who follow the portions, you’ll remember that’s when there’s laughter. Abraham laughs, Sarah laughs. And so you and I just had a great time breaking down laughter. What is it? And why does it matter? And what does it accomplish? And it was a great conversation. So here we are.
And what we found fascinating is that in scripture in Genesis we find five different kinds of laughter. Some is healthy, some is not so healthy. And it’s fascinating to watch the progression of this.
What is Laughter?
And it’s fun to even just start with the question that we asked each other during that chat. We asked ourselves, what is laughter? What is it actually? Because it’s a strange thing. It is a very odd thing. It’s universal. You don’t have to teach a baby to laugh. It just is something that is hardwired into us.
It is and it’s like an emotional response to something and it bubbles up out of the deep part of you and because of what you just said, we know that God laughs or else he wouldn’t have hardwired that into our souls. Isn’t that amazing?
Yes. Yes. There’s one, I think it was Annie Dillard. I’m not sure. Don’t quote me on that. But she says, “One of the ways we know about how mighty God is is that he can stifle his laughter because he’s watching us, right? Because we’re ridiculous most of the time.”
Well, you know, all emotion, whether it’s laughter or sorrow, is given to us so we can connect with people on a deep level, right? If I’m entering into a business deal with somebody, we can connect through a business deal, but there’s no deep connection. But when we laugh together at the same thing, when we weep together at the same thing, when we rejoice over the same, and we’re told to rejoice with those who rejoice and to weep with those who weep and know the difference. You know, because that connects us. Emotion is used to connect, but to guide us.
Well, I was going to say we tend to allow emotion to dictate our thoughts and actions, and that isn’t what it’s meant to do. It’s meant to follow our choices and our wisdom, but to connect us to other people.
CS Lewis on Humor – The Screwtape Letters
So, let’s return to that question. Really, can we define laughter?
Well, I think CS Lewis has the best handle on what humor is, what laughter is. And it comes from his book, his classic book, The Screwtape Letters, one of my favorite books in the world. And most of our listeners probably know about this book, but it’s like tongue-in-cheek letters from a master tempter, a demon to his nephew Screwtape. And he’s telling him how to tempt people, trip up people, how to go after followers. Yeah. So each of these letters is on a different topic. Well, letter number 12 was about humor. Oh, and he’s teaching his nephew Screwtape how to get his subject, his client to misuse humor. And he talks about what it is and what it isn’t.
And when CS Lewis describes what makes us laugh, it’s the word incongruity. That’s the key word, isn’t it? Yes. When two things that don’t seem to go together suddenly are put together, something very unexpected. Yeah. Like when someone refers to a doctor who is ill. Well, doctors are supposed to be the people who show us how to be healthy. But when a doctor is ill, there’s something incongruous about that. Not that we should laugh at… I was going to say that’s not necessarily funny. Why are you laughing?
So, really laughter can be defined as an emotional response to incongruity.
The Bookstore Encounter
Like last night, you and I went out to eat and did a little shopping and you were in one part of the store and of course I was in the book aisle and you walked up to me later and you were just laughing. Yeah. And I told you this incident. You started to laugh. That made me laugh more.
But I was in the book aisle. I’m looking at a book and this African-American couple was up at the other end of the aisle. They were chit chatting and then the woman is talking and she comes down, she walks right behind me and past me and I’m just looking at this book and then she stops, turns around and says, “Oh, I’m talking to myself.” Which is funny enough. Yeah. And then I say, “Oh, no, ma’am. I’m listening.” And then she starts laughing and I start laughing. Because she didn’t realize her husband had wandered to the other end of the aisle. Yeah. He had not followed her down.
So now he comes down the aisle. He hears us laughing. And he says, “What did I miss?” And I said, “Oh, your wife was talking to herself.” But I said, “No worries. I’m listening in.” And he says, “Thanks for taking up the slack, brother.” As if my wife’s always talking, but I needed a break. I’m glad you listened to her so I could…
Well, that struck her funny, too, fortunately. Oh, and she started laughing and I said, “Well, I’m here for you, man.” So, and they went off laughing. I was laughing. And I laughed and we’re still laughing about it because it was just such an unexpected conversation and it was humble and sweet and it connected several strangers in the middle of… So connected. I don’t even know their names. I never seen them before. I’ll probably never see them again. But that little brief moment, that very human moment. Yeah. Where we just had this encounter and just laughter came out of it.
It’s a beautiful thing. It was so cool. And I thought, “These are my friends. I don’t know them and I’ll never see them again.” But somehow we knew we were friends, right? And that’s a beautiful kind of laughter.
The Thin Line Between Laughter and Pain
Well, you know, speaking of friends, there is no deeper kind of friendship than those with whom you’ve had shared laughter and shared tears together. Because there’s actually quite a thin line between laughter and pain, isn’t there?
As a matter of fact, we’ve all experienced laughing until you cry. Yes. And even the juxtaposition of being in the middle of grief and crying and for some reason blurting out in laughter. Some people respond to upsetting situations by laughter. And it’s very natural. And I think one of the reasons for that is because when we’re weeping or when we’re laughing, the walls are all down. Yeah. Yeah. And we’re very human. Yeah. We’re very human.
Real laughter, real humor requires humility. It does. It does. And going back to this couple, she turned around instead of just being embarrassed, she says, “Oh, I’m laughing at myself knowing I could hear that.” And so, and she could have chosen to be insulted when her husband made a joke and said, “Well, what are you trying to say? Are you trying to say that I talk too much?” Which she just laughed at herself. So it was delightful. Yeah. Yeah.
The Science of Laughter
But well, you know, I couldn’t resist studying a little bit of science on laughter because it just is fascinating to me and I learned a little bit about how it literally will swap out the cortisol in your bloodstream and it replaces it with wonderful chemicals like dopamine and oxytocin, endorphins, all of those connector hormones.
And dopamine as we know literally can enhance learning and motivation and attention. So when I’m thinking of some of my favorite teachers and you’re one of them and one of the things that makes an effective teacher effective is they are humble in the way they share stories and themselves and they make people feel comfortable and laugh. And if you can laugh, the walls come down and you feel more connected to someone who’s trying to share something important with you. Isn’t that true?
Oh, absolutely. And I think if we could go back in time and hear Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ) teaching. Oh, I imagine him laughing with his followers. Oh, absolutely. And with the children especially.
Yeshua’s Use of Humor – The Parable of the Mustard Seed
There are some things that if we can really understand what’s being said, we’ll find that there is a great deal of humor. One of them is when he tells the parable of the mustard seed. I imagine his listeners cracking up. Because everything he says in that story is wrong and all the people knew it was wrong intentionally. Yeah. And he’s making them laugh. He’s trying to drive a point home because he says, “The mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds.” No, it isn’t. And then he says, “And this person planted a mustard seed in his garden.” No, he didn’t. Nobody plants mustard seed. It’s a weed. So, he had their attention and it grows into this great tree. Well, no, it doesn’t. It’s a shrub. Yeah.
And so, they would have been laughing. Who’s this who’s planting a mustard seed in his garden? Planting weeds in his garden. So, he knew how to use irony. Of course, that’s beautiful. Yeah. So, I mean, there are many examples of that.
Proverbs on Laughter – A Cheerful Heart is Good Medicine
Well, you know, the Proverbs gives us many many little interesting facts about the importance of laughter. And one of my favorite and we’ve all heard it is from Proverbs 17 where we’re reminded that:
“A cheerful heart is good medicine.” (Proverbs 17:22)
And you know it’s literally true. It’s not only just metaphorically true, but literally true because they have learned that laughter decreases your heart rate. It changes your blood pressure and lowers it and it can actually relax muscle tension.
So, I’ve always said that one of the secrets to a really successful marriage is that you can laugh together. Oh my goodness. Because when you stop laughing together and take everything personal and take yourself too seriously, you are in a downward spiral. It is. Absolutely.
Well, you know, speaking of Proverbs, it also says that laughter is good for the bones. Yes. Well, that word for bones, I believe off the top of my head, I believe it’s the word etzem (עֶצֶם), but don’t quote me on that. But that word is also a word that’s used in the scriptures to refer to a person’s essence. Yeah. Yeah. So, I think it is physically good for your bones, but it makes your essence healthier. It makes your soul lighter and brighter. It really, really does. It’s so powerful.
The Five Kinds of Laughter in Genesis
So, let’s get back to our Genesis passage in our text because this is really more interesting than you realize at a first pass.
Well, whenever I want to study a subject in the scriptures, I look for the first place mentioned, but I don’t stop there. I want to see the second, third, fourth place. And if the following places kind of echo the first place, I know I’ve got a handle on the word. Sometimes the second place is very different from the first and then what’s the third and it’s very different from the first two. So God has given us a spectrum of what this word means and that’s the case when it comes to laughter.
So the studying principle of going back to the very first place that a word is mentioned particularly in our Torah studies because that gives you the essence of a word in particular. It does. But again sometimes a word will have two or three or four. So then you expand upon it. So you want to see the first, second, third, fourth place mentioned. But always keeping in mind the first is so important.
So the very first place that tzachak (צָחַק) laughter is mentioned in the Bible is in Genesis 17:17 in our portion Lech Lecha (לֶךְ־לְךָ). And this is when God speaks to Abraham and tells him that he’s going to be a father. He’s going to have a son through Sarah. And it says:
“Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed.” (Genesis 17:17)
I mean, what a picture is that? He literally fell on his face in laughter. You know that… And that’s humility, too. ROFL rolling on the ground laughing. Whatever it is. This comes from Abraham. It comes from Abraham. He fell down rolling on the ground laughing.
He was so full of joy. He laughed and said to himself, “Shall a child be born to a man who’s a hundred years old? Shall Sarah, who is 90 years old, bear a child?” and he’s laughing his head off. But there was humble delight that you see here in this description. He just believed him and he was overwhelmed by how amazing and wonderful it was. So the emotional response was laughter. Joy, just a joyful belly laugh. Yeah.
But now the next time laughter appears is in the next chapter, chapter 18, verses 12-15. Now here the word laugh is found four times and two times it’s Sarah talking about laughing and talking about laughter and also the angels discuss laughter. Now whenever we find Sarah in regards to laughter, laughter is mentioned twice. It’s always in pairs with Sarah. Okay? Always in pairs.
So here’s the first two pairs. Chapter 18 starting with verse 12. So, she hears the angel speaking to Abraham that Sarah’s going to have a baby. She’s inside the tent, but she’s listening. And when she hears this, it says:
“So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, after I am worn out and my lord is old, shall I have pleasure?” (Genesis 18:12)
It’s like, “Right, I’m 90 years old.”
“Adonai said to Abraham, ‘Why did Sarah laugh and say, Shall I indeed bear a child now that I am old? Is anything too hard for Adonai? At the appointed time, I will return to you about this time next year, and Sarah shall have a son.’ But Sarah denied it, saying, ‘I did not laugh,’ for she was afraid. He said, ‘No, but you did laugh.’” (Genesis 18:13-15)
So, we see the word laugh there four times. And so the question is, what was the difference between Sarah’s laughter and Abraham’s laughter?
And I’m intrigued by the fact that Sarah assumed that it was a private moment between her and herself. Yeah. But God knew. God knew. He knew. And he always… thoughts are the way that we communicate with him primarily.
Unlike Abraham who laughed in joy, right? Sarah laughed inside of herself and she gets rebuked for it. She doesn’t get punished, but she gets called out on it.
Now, the rabbis asked a question, why was Sarah rebuked for laughing at this announcement of a birth? And Abraham was not. And they said she wasn’t rebuked because she laughed, but because she did not laugh enough.
Ah, so you and I enjoyed unpacking this together and really analyzing what was the difference between his response and her response. And one of the things that I tend to think as a woman who would be inside my tent experiencing this seemingly private moment, which isn’t so private after all, after all, here we are talking about it. I think she was expressing kind of a disbelief because she was in pain, great pain, incredible pain.
And if we live out of our pain, which we all do to some extent because it’s just human, we’re going to have a truncated ability for joy. Yeah. And I really believe that any pain that isn’t transformed and really allowed to be transformed by the hand of God is going to be transferred to the people around us. So if it isn’t transformed, it’s transferred.
And in her case, she had been barren. In fact, there’s a legend that the reason she was in her tent even at this time was she hesitated to be outside and seen because she assumed that people were laughing at her because she was barren. And so she became paranoid. Yeah. Thinking people were mocking her in her barrenness because there was shame in that in her mind. And in that culture obviously it kind of was that way.
And then what’s worse, is that Abraham had fathered a child. So she knew the problem was not with him. The problem was with her. And on top of that, she had seen the joy in Abraham and in Hagar. So then she had to deal with that jealousy. Yeah. And so she says, “Why can’t I have that?” Yeah. And then to think I was the cause of him taking Hagar. It was my idea after all. Yeah.
So all of these conflicting emotions and she’s inside the tent and she overhears this conversation and she probably senses that Abraham is all over it and delighting in it and she’s thinking, “Oh my goodness, what in the world?” Yeah. And so she laughed, but it was not the kind of laughter that Abraham had expressed. It was not a laughter of joy. It’s laughter that came out of pain and doubt, right? Because the highest goal of any wife in ancient times was to become a mother. And in fact, back then, if you went 10 years married and hadn’t born a child, your husband was legally allowed just to divorce you. Yeah. And it’s hard for us to even understand the depth of that kind of pain.
Oh, but you know what psalm comes to my mind, Grant, as we have this conversation about Sarah and Abraham is that:
“Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.” (Psalm 30:5)
It does. And it came for Sarah, didn’t it? It did. Yeah. We’ll get to that a little bit later in chapter 21.
But we go to the next appearance of laughter. So, we’ve seen laughter of joy, but then there’s this kind of a laughter that just comes out like, “Yeah, right.” Just out of pain like whatever. Yeah. Like as if. But then there’s a third kind of laughter, just pure scorn and that’s in chapter 19.
This is when the angels come down to rescue Lot and his family. And they tell Lot and his family they’re in the house and they say get out of here now because we are going to destroy Sodom. It’s going to be totally destroyed. And they tell Lot, “Go tell your daughters, your wife, your two sons-in-law who are in the house.” And so he tells them in chapter 19:14:
“So Lot went out and said to his sons-in-law who had married his daughters, ‘Up, get out of this place, for Adonai is about to destroy the city.’ But he seemed to his sons-in-law to be jesting.” (Genesis 19:14)
And that word jesting is mitzachek (מְצַחֵק) which means just someone who’s telling a joke. They just didn’t believe it. They didn’t understand the real seriousness. They couldn’t see something for what it was.
And we were talking about laughter connects. The previous laughter disconnected, right? Because Sarah was disconnected from her husband. He’s laughing in joy. She’s laughing like “Yeah. Right.”
Don’t you think that all emotions have the potential to either be a connector or a disconnector? Oh yeah. Yeah. That’s what happens when we express emotion.
Well, that’s the reason I bring this up is because there were two sons-in-law. What if there had just been one son-in-law? Would he have looked at his father-in-law as a jester? Or did the two feed each other because it’s contagious. Yeah.
Well, the one might think, well, I think he might be right, but I don’t want to look like a fool in front of my brother-in-law. Right. The other one’s thinking, “He might be right, but I don’t want to look like a fool in front of my brother-in-law.” So, there’s that crowd effect. Yeah. They reinforce each other. Yeah. To just say, “Ah, he’s full of hot air. He’s nuts. He’s old.” We’re…
What a warning. What a warning. Because mockery, that dangerous emotion that makes more space between people happens when we don’t believe what is true. Yeah. And so these two brothers-in-law, they connected in their accusation, kind of laughing at Lot as if he’s making a joke, but they disconnected from… It cost them their lives. The Lord. Oh, yes. Absolutely.
Wow. Yeah. So, we see there’s a laughter of joy. There’s a laughter that comes out of pain. So, laughter comes out of scorning. And this is where laughter can so disconnect. When you laugh at someone who’s in pain, when you mock someone, when you embarrass someone, that can drive people apart and do incredible permanent damage.
That’s why when the word tells us that:
“There is a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.” (Ecclesiastes 3:4)
We need the wisdom and the sensitivity to know the difference, not only for our own emotions, but recognizing the appropriate response to other people’s.
Yeah, we’ve all experienced it being done wrong and we’ve all unfortunately been guilty of doing it wrong. I think of so many times in my especially in my youth, you know, my buddies or, you know, high school chums, college chums, and we would do things to embarrass each other. Yeah. And then… It crosses a line. It crosses a line.
Do Not Stand in Your Neighbor’s Blood (Leviticus 19:16)
In Leviticus 19, it says:
“Do not stand in your neighbor’s blood.” (Leviticus 19:16)
Oh. Or make them blush. Don’t make someone blush. That’s how the rabbis interpret it. Yes. They say standing in your neighbor’s blood means you do something that embarrasses them and the blood runs to their face and they flush and you’ve caused… They said that’s a form of bloodshed.
And so it really struck home with me and it’s like I never want to do anything ever again to embarrass somebody intentionally.
Even like supposed friendly sarcasm. Yeah. Always I think holds a seed of truth or anger deep in it and it’s hurtful. Yeah. I don’t think we should ever use it and unfortunately I feel like I’m too good at sarcasm to pass up a comment once in a while and later I always always regret it because it’s at the expense of someone. Yeah. Yeah. It’s not right. That’s right.
What’s the next example of laughter?
Return to joy again. You know these, there are six references here and so the first three are joy and then laughter in pain then laughter in scorning. Now we get three more but it starts again with joy. This time it’s Sarah laughing in joy. Good. In chapter 21 verse 6. She finally at 90 years of age has a child. Isaac is born. And Sarah said:
“God has made laughter for me. Everyone who hears will laugh over me.” (Genesis 21:6)
And what she’s saying, it was so neat is that laughter connects. She’s saying people over the years to come are to be connected with me because if they’ve gone through pain and disappointment and hurt and then what they’ve hoped for arrives, we’re going to be sharing a joke together. We’re going to be sharing the same laughter together. How wonderful.
Isn’t that incredible for her to go from feeling self-conscious and even paranoid and hiding from the world to saying, “The world will rejoice with me.” Because God showed his faithfulness and she humbly experienced his goodness and it changed everything. She had felt so disconnected, I think, from Abraham, from everyone. And now she’s saying, “I’m going to be connected to every single woman from here to the end of time.” And she does inspire me.
Oh, all these thousands of years later, we rejoice with Sarah in this. And again, you see the word laughter used two times with Sarah. It’s always so like she had twice the pain of a normal woman, but now she has twice the joy at the end. That’s really wonderful. Yeah.
The Woman of Valor – She Laughs at the Days to Come (Proverbs 31:25)
A scripture that came to my mind just this morning before we sat down comes from a text that I especially love and it’s the woman of valor in Proverbs. And such a fascinating phrase where we’re told that she dresses herself with strength and she puts on dignity and she’s able to what? Laugh at the day to come. Laugh at the day to come.
So as I unpack that and analyze that, I believe there are many layers to it, but one of them that is relevant to this topic is she realizes that there’s going to be a resolution to all the apparent incongruity in the world. Yeah. Because when we look around, there is a lot of apparent incongruity. Things that just don’t seem to make sense. Not in a way that makes us laugh in joy, but gives us pain. Yeah. And she’s able to see and trust. Yeah. And faith that there’s a purpose to everything and that everything’s going to be made right and there is no reason to sweat.
Well, one of the things because when you brought up that verse about the woman of valor in Proverbs 31:25, it got me to thinking that the laughter mentioned there includes all five kinds. That’s incredible. Yeah.
So, let’s look at the last two kinds and then we’ll look at the woman of valor more closely.
So, the next time we see laughter is in the same chapter, chapter 21. And Isaac has grown up to the place where he is now weaned. He’s grown some teeth and he can chew and eat. And so Abraham has a feast. He has a big feast to celebrate this. And it says in verse 9:
“But Sarah saw the son of Hagar, the Egyptian, whom she had born to Abraham, laughing, mocking.” (Genesis 21:9)
This is Ishmael. She saw Ishmael, the son of Hagar, the Egyptian, whom she had born to Abraham, laughing, mocking. And this is a mocking laughter.
So, here’s little Isaac. Here’s a much older Ishmael who should know better mocking his little half-brother and there’s a lot of mystery as to exactly what he was doing and both kind of, I think, both mothers were aware of the dynamic. Oh yes. And it was a dangerous dangerous dynamic. Yeah. Yes.
Because Hagar bore a son, Ishmael, but there’s nothing miraculous about that birth. Sarah has born a child when she’s 90 years old. This is a very miraculous birth. And Hagar wasn’t laughing to rejoice with Sarah. Apparently, it was Ishmael who was… I know, but I think his mother wasn’t correcting him because she wasn’t celebrating this wonderful blessing.
So there’s this mocking kind of a laughter. Now we look at it, it might sound like this is what Lot’s sons-in-law are doing as well. And it’s very similar, but this is a laughter that is not scorning. It’s just mocking. You little brat, you grew some teeth, big deal. Here I’m a grown man. It comes out of pride. Completely out of pride with the intent of diminishing. Of course, diminishing someone who’s having a very special day. Yeah. I hate that. Yeah. Yeah.
And then there’s the fifth kind of laughter. This is Isaac and Rebecca. This is great. There’s a famine. Yeah. And they like his father Abraham, they go among the Philistines and they go to King Abimelech in his land. And he tells his wife, tells Rebecca, “Okay, say you’re my sister. You’re very beautiful. I’m afraid they’re going to take you, kill me, and take you. So just say you’re my sister.”
So Abimelech is told, “Okay, this is his sister.” But it says:
“When he had been there a long time, Abimelech, king of the Philistines, looked out of a window and saw Isaac laughing with Rebecca, his wife.” (Genesis 26:8)
And everybody agrees. They weren’t out there telling knock-knock jokes in the garden. They were engaged in intimate activity. And then Abimelech calls him, says, “She’s not your sister.” Says, “No, she’s my wife.” Yeah.
And so this is the other form of laughter. Talk about incongruity between male and female, right? There’s nothing more incongruous. We’re from different planets. We’re like different species. Oh, it’s wonderful and terrible all at the same time. I mean, we’re so different and but for them to love each other, to become one flesh, the most incongruous thing in the universe and the Bible refers to that as tzachak (צָחַק) as laughter.
The Name Isaac – Yitzchak (יִצְחָק) Means Laughter
And let’s not miss the fact that Abraham and Sarah’s son is called laughter. His name is laughter.
Well, you know, why did they name him laughter? Well, of course, Abraham laughs and God even tells them, “You’re going to name him laughter.” And so he of the three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Isaac is the only one whose name was never changed. Abram was changed to Abraham. Jacob’s changed to Israel. Isaac’s name is never changed because he is named by God and he remains laughter.
So why is the middle one, you have Abraham, Isaac, and then Jacob. Why is Isaac’s name laughter? Because he connects Abraham and Jacob whose lives are complete opposites of one another. Isn’t that fascinating?
Abraham was blessed in so many ways, financially and all the stuff and he just followed God without too much of a wrestling match. On the other hand, there’s Jacob. Yeah. I mean, here’s Abraham who didn’t seem to… I mean, he didn’t have a son from his wife until he was 100 years old. Here’s Jacob. He sneezes at his wife. He has 12 sons for Pete’s sake. And nobody knows how many daughters. And their lives are complete opposites, but they’re connected through laughter. Wow.
The Hebrew Letters in Tzachak (צָחַק)
It’s so interesting. You know, I have to point out one thing about the word tzachak (צָחַק). And I wish people could see the word, but it’s spelled tzadi (צ), chet (ח), kuf (ק).
The middle letter is chet (ח) which is the letter for life. Life. But the letter on the one side is tzadi (צ) which means righteous. The letter on the other side is kuf (ק) which means monkey. I remember. Yes. Yes.
So, tzachak (צָחַק) laughter is the connection of the righteousness, the spirituality with the monkey. We all have monkey bodies. We have these bodies of flesh. And yet we also have this righteous spirit of God breathed into us as neshamah (נְשָׁמָה) breathed into us.
And this is what our life is. The monkey on one side and the righteous holiness of God on the other. And we bring them together and we elevate the physical, the monkey to the holy. We do hopefully. And so it’s… Or else we make ourselves monkeys. We act like monkeys and then we are laughed at in a way that we invite when we’re foolish. But when we submit our physical ape-like bodies to the holy righteous wisdom of God, there’s real laughter. Wow. Real joy. Real laughter.
The Woman of Valor – Proverbs 31:25
Well, woman of valor. Yes. So, this is what it says. Proverbs 31:25. It says:
“Oz v’hadar (עֹז וְהָדָר) strength and dignity are her clothing and she laughs at the day to come.” (Proverbs 31:25)
She laughs at the future. Now think about it. Why does she laugh? She has joy. Also she has strength and dignity given her victory over pain and doubt. Strength and dignity. She’s protected against the pain and doubt that’s always attacking all of us.
Well, it’s important to realize that she doesn’t just happen to feel those things. She chooses to put them on. Yeah. It’s a very conscious choice. Yes. Absolutely.
And when it comes to the future, you know, you look at the headlines, there’s always it’s a crisis. This is a crisis. That’s a crisis. Time to panic. We’re all going to die. The world’s going to come to an end. And she scorns and mocks at that because she knows the real end of the story.
And here’s the thing she’s not afraid of. We’re told the end of the story. We know the end of the story yet. We mock all the doomsayers if we choose to. Yes. If we have strength and dignity, right?
And then of course the fifth kind of laughter. She has an intimate relationship with her husband. Her husband is like a shadow that weaves through these verses about her. He’s kind of in the background, but she has a provider. She has a protector. One with whom she’s in an intimate relationship. She pictures the bride of Messiah. She does.
And so she is a woman who can laugh at the days to come, enjoying knowing what’s going to happen and mocking what they say is going to happen. I love that. Yeah.
Conclusion
So, there’s a lot more to laughter than we tend to think.
Well, I hope that we all choose more joy. Yes. And allow ourselves to laugh and to connect with others who have joy. Yeah. And learn to laugh at yourself. Seriously, it’s a very holy activity. Get you outside yourself so you can look back at yourself and be humble and laugh along with others.
You know, through the years, I’ll share this with our listeners. It used to… Are you going to embarrass me? Well, you do it to me all the time. No, I won’t embarrass you. I’ll embarrass myself a little because through the years whenever I’ve tried really hard to have a good fight or to be upset about something, your strategy from the very first day we were a couple is to make me laugh. And there’s nothing more aggravating than when you’re trying to have a good mad and someone is making you laugh.
But I’ve really come to appreciate that. It has saved us. It has saved us some bad times because as hard as I’ll try to stay angry and to have a little hissy fit, eventually we’ll end up just seeing the silliness and the funny nature of what has happened. Oh yeah.
And we laugh at ourselves. I mean, not every time, but very very often we’re able to laugh together about things that one or the other or both of us have gotten ourselves into. All right. Well, before people start writing to ask for particulars, we’re not going to answer those emails.
This has really been a fun conversation for me. So, well, here’s a little quote from Rabbi Jonathan Sacks of Blessed Memory. Oh, I love him. And he said:
“What we can laugh at, we can face. What we cannot laugh at, we often deny.”
Amen. It just becomes a source of pain. Yeah.
Humility and humor begin with the same three letters. And I don’t think that’s a coincidence. So, well, with that, this has been fun. Yes, it should be. You shouldn’t be serious when we’re talking about laughter. But this has been a lot of fun, Robin. Yeah.
So until next time. So until next time, shalom everyone. Shalom and God bless.
AUDIO ONLY
Join Grant and Robin for a new episode of “Bread Crumbs” in which we discuss various biblical issues that arise during our personal studies and conversations.