{"id":2185,"date":"2012-09-24T08:36:19","date_gmt":"2012-09-24T12:36:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oldsandals.net\/?p=2185"},"modified":"2012-09-25T10:02:59","modified_gmt":"2012-09-25T14:02:59","slug":"a-baring-of-the-chest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/?p=2185","title":{"rendered":"A baring of the chest"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Then Shaphan the scribe told [Josiah] the king, saying, \u201cHilkiah the priest has given me a book.\u201d And Shaphan read it before the king.\u00a0\u00a0Thus it happened, when the king heard the words of the Law, that he tore his clothes.\u00a0\u00a0 2 Chronicles 34:18-19<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>He tore his clothes.\u00a0 <\/em>The ancient Israelites would do that to express their raw emotion, whether grief, anger or contrition.\u00a0 It often accompanied repentance.\u00a0 It must have symbolized something like a baring of the chest, an opening of one&#8217;s\u00a0heart for all around to see and understand how deep an emotion was being expressed.\u00a0 Perhaps, too, it symbolized the ripping away\u00a0of all pretense, all covering-up, all selfish concern with propriety.<\/p>\n<p>This was the king&#8217;s reaction to hearing the word of the Lord through the words of the Law.\u00a0\u00a0We\u00a0ought to have\u00a0a similar reaction when we come before the Lord to read the Scriptures or to pray, not that\u00a0we would tear our clothes off, but that we would humbly acknowledge our spiritual nakedness before the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Then Shaphan the scribe told [Josiah] the king, saying, \u201cHilkiah the priest has given me a book.\u201d And Shaphan read it before the king.\u00a0\u00a0Thus it happened, when the king heard the words of the Law, that he tore his clothes.\u00a0\u00a0 2 Chronicles 34:18-19 He tore his clothes.\u00a0 The ancient Israelites would do that to express &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/?p=2185\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;A baring of the chest&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2185"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2185"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2191,"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2185\/revisions\/2191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}