Zāḵar: Cutting into the Mind

“You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.” (Deuteronomy 5:15)

Remembering is not a passive recollection of static memories and events in the past.

It’s not a journey back to somewhere you no longer are, but a journey inward to something that you still carry.

We reflect on the journey of our relationships and experiences and feelings and beliefs because their cumulative story remains alive within us in the present.

In the well-known words of writer William Faulkner, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

As we explore and behold our memories, we are shaped and reshaped by them, able to receive goodness and beauty and truth from God as he continually expands our perspective and understanding of them.

This is depicted profoundly in the Hebrew word for remember: zāḵar.

Hebrew, if you didn’t know, is a language that originally carried a pictographic component. Each letter in the Hebrew alphabet offers affiliated images that give deeper meaning to the words they form.

Specifically for zāḵar, it is made up of 3 letters - Zayin, Kaf, and Resh - which, when illustrated, are a knife or shovel, a head, and two open hands.

Together, these images are meant to portray remembrance as the act of cutting or digging into one’s mind with the anticipation of receiving what may be uncovered. It’s beholding our memories again, knowing that as each one is reopened, God will once more fill our hands and hearts with revelation and good gifts.

The events of the past never change, but when we remember, our understanding and interpretation of them expands, changing us.

But choosing to remember hard or upsetting memories - especially ones of individual or communal trauma - can be profoundly painful.

Consider how disheartening it must have been for the Israelites to hear the divine exhortation to remember centuries of suffering and oppression as a newly freed people.

As leading trauma expert, Bessel A. van der Kolk, puts it: “It takes enormous trust and courage to allow yourself to remember.”

There is something profound that happens when we, in curiosity and kindness, recall and feel and reframe our memories, particularly with an empathetic witness. It’s in these moments, over time, we begin to heal, and grow, and discover the truest self that God has made us to be.

As we open ourselves up to the light, our past wounds and shame lose their grip on us, allowing us to receive the invitation into a new level of freedom.

So we never stop remembering… because God is never done redeeming our story.

Book Recommendations:

For personal remembrance, I love the work of Dan Allender for understanding how God is moving in and authoring our story, particularly his books The Healing Path and To Be Told.

For communal remembrance, I find Mark Charles’ book Unsettling Truths sharply poignant and immensely important.