This line evokes one of the earliest lyrical verses from the Book of Genesis. But the experienced reader of the Bible picks up on the fact that with Jesus’ pithy saying we are now in the presence of poetry. At first glance his response needs little explanation, one can understand that forgiveness runs deep and exceeds human limitation. Jesus’ response needs unpacking, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times” (Mt 18:22). Jesus had just finished an explanation of discipline towards an offender in the community, but Peter required further clarification, “How often must I forgive? As many as seven times?” (Mt 18:21). Poetic pedagogy appears in this Sunday’s Gospel reading as well, when Peter asks a difficult question about forgiveness.
Like most children of his day, Jesus would have learned from his mother biblical passages like this one from Psalm 103. At the time of Jesus, the two most read and studied books from the Bible were, in fact, the Psalms and Isaiah. The second half of the parallel focuses or intensifies the first indeed, the Lord shows mercy and God’s compassion is rich. Many people know well and have even memorized the refrain of this Sunday’s responsorial psalm: “The Lord is kind and merciful / slow to anger, rich in compassion” (Ps 103:8). In theory, the ancient teacher could quiz students from any of Sirach’s 51 chapters. It is easy to visualize this ancient practice as one reads the lines, “Wrath and anger are hateful things / yet the sinner hugs them tight,” and “Forgive your neighbor’s injustice / then when you pray, your own sins will be forgiven” (Sir 27:30, 28:2). An ancient teacher would recite the first half of the poetic line and the pupil would recite the second half. The author took witty or common wisdom sayings and set them in verse form, probably to help students memorize them. The book of Sirach forms part of the corpus of wisdom literature in the Bible. Have you grown more or less forgiving over time?įor example, take the parallel lines of biblical poetry from this Sunday’s first reading. How can you expand the scale of your forgiveness? If you were to memorize a line or two of Scripture today, which verses would you choose?
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