Five-minute study · Day 193 · Psalms 103
Psalm 103:12
A word worth stopping on: east מִזְרָח mizrach
'As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.' David picks the one directional pair that never converges. North and south meet at the poles. You can walk north and eventually reach the North Pole, and the next step takes you south. East and west have no such meeting point. On a sphere, if you walk east, you walk east forever. The Hebrew word for east is mizrach, from zarach, 'to rise,' because that is where the sun rises. David chose the infinite distance.
Word study: east
- Hebrew
- מִזְרָח
- Pronounced
- mizrach
- Strong's
- H4217
- Definition
- The east, the place of sunrise. From zarach, 'to rise, to shine, to come forth.' The direction from which the sun emerges each morning.
Mizrach appears 74 times in the Hebrew Bible. BDB defines it as 'place of sunrise, the east.' The root zarach means to rise or to shine, and mizrach is the place where that rising happens. In a culture that oriented itself by the rising sun, mizrach was the primary direction. The Hebrew word for orientation itself (qedem, 'east/before/ancient') confirms this: to orient yourself was to face east.
Allen's commentary on Psalms 101-150 in the Word Biblical Commentary series identifies Psalm 103:12 as a spatial metaphor for the completeness of divine forgiveness. David has already used the vertical image in verse 11: 'For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him.' Verse 12 shifts to the horizontal: 'As far as the east (mizrach) is from the west (ma'arav), so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.' The double image, vertical and horizontal, covers all of space.
The mathematical precision matters. North and south are bounded by the poles. A person walking due north from any point on earth will reach the North Pole after a finite distance. The next step goes south. North and south have a maximum distance: the distance from one pole to the other. East and west are unbounded on a sphere. A person walking due east will circle the globe indefinitely without ever arriving at a point called 'east.' The distance between east and west is, in mathematical terms, undefined. It has no maximum.
David may not have known the earth was a sphere, but his metaphor works on every cosmology available. On a flat earth with the sun rising on one edge and setting on the opposite edge, the distance between those two horizons is the widest measurement available. On a sphere, it is infinite. Either way, the psalmist chose the greatest possible distance to describe how far God moves sin from the forgiven person.
The verb 'removed' (hirchiq) is the Hiphil of rachaq, meaning to cause to be far off. God is the active agent. He does the removing. The transgressions do not drift away on their own. They are driven to the maximum possible distance by deliberate divine action.
Historical context · Iron Age Israel, approximately 1000 BC
Directional Theology in the Ancient World
Ancient Israelites oriented themselves by facing east, toward the sunrise. The tabernacle entrance faced east. Solomon's temple opened to the east. The glory of God departed to the east in Ezekiel's vision (Ezekiel 10:19, 11:23) and would return from the east (Ezekiel 43:2). East was the direction of God's approach.
The Hebrew language encodes this orientation. Qedem means both 'east' and 'before' or 'ancient.' The past and the sunrise shared a word. The west, ma'arav, comes from the root meaning 'to set' or 'to become evening.' Behind you was the west, the place of sunset and ending. Your right hand (yamin) pointed south. Your left hand (s'mol) pointed north. The body itself was a compass, and east was the face.
Psalm 103 is a psalm of David, structured as a sustained meditation on God's compassion. Verses 1-5 catalog personal benefits: forgiveness, healing, redemption, provision. Verses 6-12 expand to national scope: God's dealings with Moses, with Israel, with human frailty. Verses 13-18 use the image of a father's compassion. Verses 19-22 move to cosmic scope: God's throne in heaven, angels, all creation.
The verse sits at the climax of the section on forgiveness. Verse 10 says God has not dealt with Israel according to their sins. Verse 11 measures his mercy vertically, heaven to earth. Verse 12 measures the distance of removal horizontally, east to west. Allen notes that the two measurements together form a cross-shaped image: vertical mercy, horizontal removal. The entire spatial field, up, down, left, right, is claimed by the scope of God's forgiveness.
Other ancient Near Eastern texts describe divine anger and punishment in terms of distance. Babylonian prayers asked gods to send demons 'far away.' The specificity of David's image, choosing the one directional pair that has no meeting point, is distinctive. The psalm does not say God moves sin 'far away.' It says he moves it to a distance that cannot be measured or closed.
For reflection
David measured forgiveness with the one distance that never closes. East and west keep going. They have no meeting point. If God has moved your sin that far from you, what does it mean when you keep walking back toward it in your memory, trying to close the gap?
The verb is hirchiq: God actively caused the distance. He drove the sin away. Your job is to stop chasing it.
Sources: BDB; Allen, 'Psalms 101-150' (Word Biblical Commentary); Goldingay, 'Psalms 90-150'