Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 128 · May 8
Gain the Whole World
“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”
Alexander of Macedon died at Babylon in 323 BC, thirty-two years old, holding more of the known world than any man before him. Inside a generation his generals had carved it up and his son was dead too. The whole world, gained, and the accounting on it took two decades.
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? The vocabulary is trade. Profit, and then in the next breath, Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? He is doing arithmetic before a crowd he called over to hear it.
Be careful with the English. The word printed soul here is the same Greek word printed life in the sentence before it: whosoever will save his life shall lose it. One word, psyche, carried two ways within three lines. Any teaching that sets a person's soul against their body stands on a seam in the translation. What is on the table is the man himself, what he would be if everything he owned were taken tonight.
He told the same arithmetic as a story: a farmer with a record crop, planning barns, talking to himself: Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. God answers with that word again, like a lender: Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee.
The world is not called worthless here, and the question grants that the man got it. What is questioned is the rate, and the rate is never quoted at the time. It is paid in instalments, none of which looks like a sale.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 128 is Wounded for Us (Isaiah 53:5).