Forgotten or Not
And God remembered
This morning I was reading in Exodus and 2:24 stuck out to me…particularly the words ‘God remembered’.
So God heard their groaning and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Israel).
God never forgets unless he forgets on purpose such as when he chooses to forget our sin.
My thought at the time was there must be more meaning behind this word remember than we realize. And indeed there is.
The Bible was not originally written in a modern language. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew and the New Testament was written in Greek. Most of the references to God “remembering” something are in the Old Testament. So we really have to look to the Hebrew to deduce the meaning of the phrase “God remembered.”…
When the Bible says God “remembered,” the original Hebrew verb is zakar. Zakar does mean “to remember,” but it also means “to bring someone to mind and then act upon that person’s behalf.” The Hebrew idea of remembering always includes acting on behalf of the one brought to mind.
The biblical examples of “remember” including action on the other’s behalf are numerous. When God “remembered Noah… [He] made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided” (Genesis 8:1). God first turned His attention to Noah and then acted on Noah’s behalf. When “God remembered Rachel,… God listened to her and opened her womb” (Genesis 30:22). Similarly, when Joseph prophesied that Pharaoh’s cupbearer would be restored from prison to his previous position, he asked that the cupbearer “mention me to Pharaoh, and so get me out of this house” (Genesis 40:14). “Mention” in this verse is actually the Hebrew zakar, as in “remember me to Pharaoh” with the stated goal of getting Joseph out of prison.
When the Bible says that God “remembers” something or someone, it means He turned His attention to someone and acted upon their behalf. That is why the psalmist in Psalm 106:4 calls out, “Remember me, O LORD, when you show favor to your people; help me when you save them.” The cry is not that God has forgotten that the psalmist exists, rather it is a cry for God to turn His attention toward the psalmist and rescue him from his situation.
Similarly, in Jeremiah 31:34, when God describes the new covenant, He says “For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” Here God is promising not necessarily to forget sin, but rather to not act in accordance with what their sin deserves. He is “not remembering” in the very Hebrew sense of not acting upon that sin. In fact, Mary makes the connection of God’s “remembering” being a very physical act when she equates the living Messiah in her womb as God’s “remembrance of his mercy” (Luke 1:54).
We can be so thankful that God does remember us, has turned His attention to us and has acted upon our behalf by sending His son so He can “not remember against us our former iniquities” (Psalm 79:8). What a blessing! https://www.compellingtruth.org/God-remembered.html
I really appreciated the Matthew Henry Commentary:
The consideration of our brethren’s afflictions would help to reconcile us to our own. 2. The preface to their deliverance at last. (1.) They cried, Exod. 2:23. Now, at last, they began to think of God under their troubles, and to return to him from the idols they had served, Ezek. 20:8. Hitherto they had fretted at the instruments of their trouble, but God was not in all their thoughts. Thus hypocrites in heart heap up wrath; they cry not when he binds them, Job 36:13. But before God unbound them he put it into their hearts to cry unto him, as it is explained, Num. 20:16. Note, It is a good sign that God is coming towards us with deliverance when he inclines and enables us to cry to him for it. (2.) God heard, Exod. 2:24, 25. The name of God is here emphatically prefixed to four different expressions of a kind intention towards them. [1.] God heard their groaning; that is, he made it to appear that he took notice of their complaints. The groans of the oppressed cry aloud in the ears of the righteous God, to whom vengeance belongs, especially the groans of God’s spiritual Israel; he knows the burdens they groan under and the blessings they groan after, and that the blessed Spirit, by these groanings, makes intercession in them.
God remembered his covenant, which he seemed to have forgotten, but of which he is ever mindful. This God had an eye to, and not to any merit of theirs, in what he did for them. See Lev. 26:42. (3.) God looked upon the children of Israel. Moses looked upon them and pitied them (Exod. 2:11); but now God looked upon them and helped them. (4.) God had a respect unto them, a favourable respect to them as his own. The frequent repetition of the name of God here intimates that now we are to expect something great, Opus Deo dignum — A work worthy of God. His eyes, which run to and fro through the earth, are now fixed upon Israel, to show himself strong, to show himself a God in their behalf. https://www.biblegateway.com/resources/matthew-henry/Exod.2.23-Exod.2.25
They had chosen to turn their back on God and so God allowed them to do that. It would seem that He forgot them.
And yet He did not, He was ever mindful of them.
And when they were truly desperate, He brought them to a place of repentance, He put the desire to cry out to him in their hearts. For truly it is God who brings us to repentance when He knows we are truly ready.
I am so thankful that He is ever mindful of us, and He desires the best for us, watching over us even when we choose a different path He watches and waits until the time is just right and sends His Holy Spirit to bring us to the place that we once again seek the God who loves us.
When it comes to God, our loving father we can truly say I am not forgotten.
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