Elzee:
John 9:31 “Now we know that God heareth not sinners: but if any man be a worshipper of God, and doeth his will, him he heareth.”
Can someone tell me what this means? When does God 'not hear sinners’? Unless I’ve just walked out of a confessional, does this mean God won’t hear my prayers?! Can someone explain this verse in context? Thank you!
Since Judaism was a religion in which there were sin-offerings of various kinds, it folows that Jews could not have been unaware that they were liable to sin.
If the verse were to be understood strictly, to mean sinning at all, this would make a complete nonsense of the sacrificial system of Judaism - for anyone who sinned, would be wholly incapable of benefiting from that system, because God “does not hear sinners”: not even sinners who offer sacrifices a precisely in order to make expiation for their sins.
As this strict interpretation makes nonsense of the text, it must be incorrect.
So, a less strict intepretation is indicated:
Either:
- Unrepentant sinners are meant
or
- the sort of folk mentioned in Isaiah 58 (& 1) who are criticised for offering sacrifice and prayer while living unrighteously and oppressing the poor & needy
or
- “Sinner” is used as semi-technical term; meaning “persons who do not keep the Law and all things connected with it” (such as the various traditional expansions and enlargements & applications of it) which were observed by strictly observant groups among the Pharisees.
The Pharisees in the gospels tend to come out as spiritual snobs, looking down on those who were less observant than they were:
they were pious, and that was what mattered. So that if they were the
Chasidim, the “pious ones”, those less observant than they were by contrast
not “pious”; and were therefore “sinners”. Hebrew thinks in black and white: to love someone less than someone else is to hate them - not to love them less than the other. So to love Jacob, is to hate Esau. To love one’s relatives more than God, is to hate God - not to love God less than one’s relatives. To be less pious than some - is not to be pious at all. So if you don’t belong to the Chasidic Pharisees - you are no better than one of those Gentiles who does not know the Law at all.
The text would then mean, paraphrased a bit: “God does not hear that unobservant lot, who don’t do all the ritual washings, are ritually unclean, get mixed up with unclean folk like Gentiles & lepers & such; but only us pious folk, who fast twice a week, keep the law in all its strictness, including the traditions of the fathers, and keep ourselves clear of every kind of moral and ritual impurity”.
IMO, there is an implied criticism of Jesus - who mixed with all kinds of ritually unclean people: the woman with a haemorrhage whom Luke mentions in chapter 18, would have made Jesus “unclean” purely by touching Him.
It is worth pointing out that the distinction between moral impurity and ritual impurity was not made in ancient Israel - we treat the former as sin, but not the latter. Both were regarded as breaches of “holiness” in antiquity - so both were “sin”: menstruation made one as impure as murder did. Which is why, in Leviticus, menstruation “cut off” the Israelite from Israel as fully as murder or blasphemy - both meant one was no longer a member of the holy people of God; except that the death sentence made one “cutting off” permanent, while the “cutting off” resulting from menstruation was temporary (FWIW, this is why Catholic mothers used to have to be “churched” after being delivered of their children).
The passage is probably not talking specifically about unrepentant sinners - but we can use the passage as a warning not to live in unrepented sin even so. ##
