Hope

Hope in the UPDV is a directed expectation set on Yahweh, on his Speech, and finally on Christ. It is not optimism in general; it is anchored to a person and a promise, and Scripture tracks both the anchored kind and its counterfeits. Hebrews names the anchor explicitly: "Now faith is assurance of [things] hoped for, a conviction of things not seen" (Heb 11:1). When the anchor is named — Yahweh, his Speech, his salvation, the resurrection of Jesus Christ — hope endures; when the anchor is set on flesh or gold or strangers, the expectation is the one that perishes.

Hope Anchored on Yahweh

The Psalter makes Yahweh himself the object: "For you are my hope, O Sovereign Yahweh: [You are] my trust from my youth" (Ps 71:5); "Happy is he who has the God of Jacob for his help, Whose hope is in Yahweh his God" (Ps 146:5). The act is a holding-on directed at the covenant name: "Be strong, and let your⁺ heart take courage, All you⁺ who hope in [the Speech of] Yahweh" (Ps 31:24). The same posture is given as the gaze of the eye: "Look, the eye of Yahweh is on those who fear him, On those who hope in his loving-kindness" (Ps 33:18). In dialog with the soul the psalmist commands hope as a self-address: "Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted inside me? Hope in God; for I will yet praise him, My salvation and my God" (Ps 42:11; the same refrain returns at Ps 43:5). The single-line confessions concentrate it: "And now, Lord, what do I wait for? My hope is in you" (Ps 39:7); "For in you, O Yahweh, I hope: You will answer, O Lord my God" (Ps 38:15); "Let your loving-kindness, O Yahweh, be on us, According to as we have hoped in you" (Ps 33:22). The corporate imperative addresses Israel as a whole: "O Israel, hope in Yahweh; For with Yahweh there is loving-kindness, And with him is plenteous redemption" (Ps 130:7).

The prophets say the same with the trust-vocabulary: "Blessed is the [noble] man who trusts in [the Speech of] Yahweh, and whose trust is [the Speech of] Yahweh" (Jer 17:7). When Zion goes through judgment, the answer is the refuge: "Yahweh will roar from Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem; and the heavens and the earth will shake: but Yahweh will be a refuge to his people, and a stronghold to the sons of Israel" (Joel 3:16). Sirach gives the wisdom-form of the same anchor: "Trust in him and he will strengthen you, Make straight your ways and hope in him" (Sir 2:6); "The spirit of those who seek the Lord will live, For their hope is on him who saves them" (Sir 34:14-15).

Hope in God's Word and Salvation

Where the object is named more narrowly, it is Yahweh's word and Yahweh's salvation. Psalm 119 makes the inner monologue explicit: "[KAF] My soul faints for your salvation; [But] I hope in your word" (Ps 119:81); "Those who fear you will see me and be glad, Because I have hoped in your word" (Ps 119:74); "Uphold me according to your [Speech], that I may live; And don't let me be ashamed of my hope" (Ps 119:116); "I have hoped for your salvation, O Yahweh, And have done your commandments" (Ps 119:166). The continuous-tense form is "But I will hope continually, And will praise you yet more and more" (Ps 71:14). And the catechesis-purpose is to plant this hope into the next generation: "That they might set their hope in God, And not forget the works of God, But keep his commandments" (Ps 78:7, the goal of the testimony established in Jacob in Ps 78:5-6).

Hope and Waiting

Hope and waiting are not two ideas but two faces of the same act. Lamentations folds them together: "It is good that a man should hope and quietly wait for the salvation of Yahweh" (Lam 3:26). The wait-vocabulary saturates the Psalter and the prophets: "Guide me in your truth, and teach me; For you are the God of my salvation; For you I wait all the day" (Ps 25:5); "Wait for Yahweh: Be strong, and let your heart take courage; Yes, wait for Yahweh" (Ps 27:14); "My soul, wait in silence for God only; For my expectation is from him" (Ps 62:5). The wait is a directed look: "as the eyes of male slaves [look] to the hand of their master, As the eyes of a female slave to the hand of her mistress; So our eyes [look] to Yahweh our God, Until he has mercy on us" (Ps 123:2).

The prophets build the same posture into national life. Hosea makes it a covenant practice: "you will turn to your God: keep kindness and justice, and wait for your God continually" (Hos 12:6). Isaiah hides the face but commands the wait: "I will wait for Yahweh, who hides his face from the house of Jacob, and I will look for him" (Isa 8:17); and the famous strength-renewal — "those who wait for Yahweh will renew their strength; they will mount up with wings as eagles; they will run, and not be weary; they will walk, and not faint" (Isa 40:31). Wisdom forbids the short-cut of revenge: "Don't say, I will recompense evil: Wait for Yahweh, and he will save you" (Pr 20:22). Sirach voices the fear-of-the-Lord form: "You⁺ who fear the Lord, wait for his mercy; And do not turn aside lest you⁺ fall" (Sir 2:7); "Give the reward to those who wait for you, That your prophets may be shown to be faithful" (Sir 36:16). The New Testament keeps the verb: "For we through the Spirit by faith wait for the hope of righteousness" (Gal 5:5); "if we hope for that which we don't see, [then] we wait for it with patience" (Rom 8:25).

Hope Deferred and the Door Opened

When the wait is long, hope stretches. "Hope deferred makes the heart sick; But when the desire comes, it is a tree of life" (Pr 13:12). Even so, wisdom forbids despair of the future: "For surely there is a reward; And your hope will not be cut off" (Pr 23:18); "So you will know wisdom to be to your soul; If you have found it, then there will be a reward, And your hope will not be cut off" (Pr 24:14). The proverb's contrast is sharp: "The hope of the righteous [will be] gladness; But the expectation of the wicked will perish" (Pr 10:28); and again, "The desire of the righteous is only good; [But] the expectation of the wicked is wrath" (Pr 11:23). Sirach echoes both proverbs: "The blessing of God is the lot of the righteous; And in time, his hope will blossom" (Sir 11:22); "Blessed is the man whose soul has not reduced him; And whose hope has not ceased" (Sir 14:2).

The covenant grammar of hope opens a door even in the place of trouble: "I will give her her vineyards from there, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope; and she will answer [my Speech] there, as in the days of her youth, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt" (Hos 2:15). Zechariah gives the returning exiles a name: "Turn⁺ to the stronghold, you⁺ prisoners of hope: even today I declare that I will render double to you" (Zec 9:12). And in the dirge of Lamentations, the turn comes mid-poem: "This I recall to my mind; therefore I have hope" (Lam 3:21); "Yahweh is my portion, says my soul; therefore I will hope in him" (Lam 3:24).

Despair: When the Anchor Is Cut

Where hope is anchored, the soul holds; where it is cut, the soul collapses. The dry-bones lament names the loss: "Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are clean cut off" (Eze 37:11). Job, in the depth of his complaint, repeats it: "My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle, And are spent without hope" (Job 7:6); "Where then is my hope? And as for my hope, who will see it?" (Job 17:15). Lamentations gives the same loss before its turn: "And I said, My strength has perished, and my expectation from Yahweh" (Lam 3:18). The prophets of judgment voice the city's despair — "Yahweh has forsaken me, and the Lord has forgotten me" (Isa 49:14) — and the people's resignation: "It is in vain; no, for I have loved strangers, and I will go after them" (Jer 2:25). Despair extends to enemy nations as well: Nineveh, "laid waste: who will bemoan her? From where shall I seek comforters for you?" (Nah 3:7).

The despair is shown to drive a series of behaviors. It generates the longing for death — Elijah under the juniper tree ("It is enough; now, O Yahweh, take away my soul," 1Ki 19:4), Job ("Who long for death, but it does not come, And dig for it more than for hid treasures," Job 3:21; "my soul chooses strangling, And death rather than my bones," Job 7:15), Jonah ("it is better for me to die than to live," Jon 4:3, repeated at 4:8), Moses ("kill me, I pray you, out of hand … and don't let me see my wretchedness," Num 11:15), the remnant in Jeremiah ("death will be chosen rather than life," Jer 8:3), and the fifth-trumpet vision in Revelation ("men will seek death, and will in no way find it; and they will desire to die, and death flees from them," Rev 9:6). Sometimes it issues in suicide — Saul falling on his sword (1Sa 31:4), Ahithophel hanging himself when his counsel was not followed (2Sa 17:23), Zimri burning the king's house over himself (1Ki 16:18). And it produces a settled weariness of life — "I hated life" (Eccl 2:17); "My soul is weary of my life" (Job 10:1); "Why is light given to him who is in misery, And life to the bitter in soul?" (Job 3:20); "What is my strength, that I should wait?" (Job 6:11); Rebekah's "I am weary of my life because of the daughters of Heth" (Gen 27:46). The book of Ecclesiastes pushes the observation toward a comfortless life: "the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter" (Eccl 4:1-2). Job rebukes his counselors as "comfort me in vain" (Job 21:34); Lamentations says "there is none to comfort me" (Lam 1:21). Sirach voices this exhaustion in a near-greeting to death: "Hail, Death, how welcome is your decree To a man of sorrows, and who lacks strength, Who stumbles and trips in everything, Who is broken, and has lost hope" (Sir 41:2); and the counsel for the dead: "Remember him not, for he has no hope; You cannot profit him, while you harm yourself" (Sir 38:21). In Exodus the same anguish silences attention: Moses spoke, "but they didn't listen to Moses for anguish of spirit, and for cruel slavery" (Ex 6:9). And the Deuteronomic curse names the mental end-state: "you will be insane for the sight of your eyes which you will see" (Deut 28:34).

The realm of the dead is the boundary: "For Sheol can't praise you, death can't celebrate you: Those who go down into the pit can't hope for your truth" (Isa 38:18). Hope works among the living, until — in the New Testament — the boundary itself is breached.

False Hopes and the Hope of the Wicked

Hope set on a wrong object is named and sentenced. Job rules out gold: "If I have made gold my hope, And have said to the fine gold, [You are] my confidence" (Job 31:24). The Joban discourses generalize the same verdict on the godless: "the paths of all who forget God; And the hope of the godless man will perish" (Job 8:13); "the eyes of the wicked will fail, And they will have no way to flee; And their hope will be the breathing out of the soul" (Job 11:20); "what is the hope of the godless, though he gets himself gain, When God takes away his soul?" (Job 27:8). Wisdom adds the same: "When [a] wicked man dies, [his] expectation will perish; And the hope of iniquity perishes" (Pr 11:7); "He says in his heart, I will not be moved; To all generations I will not be in adversity" (Ps 10:6). Apart from Christ, Paul gives the same diagnosis to the Gentile past: "you⁺ were at that time separate from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of the promise, having no hope and without God in the world" (Eph 2:12). And on the side of those who grieve over the dead without resurrection: "we would not have you⁺ ignorant, brothers, concerning those who fall asleep; that you⁺ do not sorrow, even as the rest, who have no hope" (1Th 4:13).

The disappointment of false hope is portrayed as crops that do not return their labor — "you have built houses of cut stone, but you⁺ will not dwell in them; you⁺ have planted pleasant vineyards, but you⁺ will not drink their wine" (Amos 5:11; the same form at Mic 6:15, Zeph 1:13, Deut 28:39); harvests that "flee away in the day of grief and of desperate sorrow" (Isa 17:11); and the diagnostic complaint, "We looked for peace, but no good came; [and] for a time of healing, and, look, dismay!" (Jer 8:15, repeated at 14:19). Job's accusation against the wicked man's gain: "That which he labored for he will restore, and will not swallow it down; According to the substance that he has gotten, he will not rejoice" (Job 20:18); "He may prepare it, but the just will put it on, And the innocent will divide the silver" (Job 27:17). Zechariah names the geopolitical shape: "Ashkelon will see it, and fear; Gaza also, and will be very pained; and Ekron, for her expectation will be put to shame" (Zec 9:5). Even the needy, however, are not finally without expectation: "the needy will not always be forgotten, Nor the expectation of the poor perish forever" (Ps 9:18).

A Living Hope: Christ and Resurrection

In the New Testament the anchor is named as a person: "Christ Jesus our hope" (1Ti 1:1). The scope is cosmic — "Now may the God of hope fill you⁺ with all joy and peace in believing, that you⁺ may abound in hope, in the power of the Holy Spirit" (Rom 15:13) — and the indwelling form is given to the Gentiles: "Christ in you⁺, the hope of glory" (Col 1:27). Paul rules out a merely-this-life version of the same hope: "If we have only hoped in Christ in this life, we are of all men most pitiable" (1Co 15:19). The grounding event is the resurrection itself: "Blessed [be] the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy begot us again to a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (1Pe 1:3); "who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead, and gave him glory; so that your⁺ faith and hope might be in God" (1Pe 1:21).

The triad of faith, hope, and love is fixed: "now these three stay: faith, hope, and love; and the greatest of these is love" (1Co 13:13); "remembering your⁺ work of faith and labor of love and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ" (1Th 1:3). Hope is an Abraham-pattern faith — "Who in hope believed against hope, to the end that he might become a father of many nations" (Rom 4:18) — and it is a tribulation-tested chain: "we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only so, but we also rejoice in our tribulations: knowing that tribulation works steadfastness; and steadfastness, validation; and validation, hope: and hope does not put to shame; because the love of God has been shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us" (Rom 5:2-5). The salvation of believers is itself given the modal shape of hope: "For in hope were we saved: but hope that is seen is not hope: for who hopes for that which he sees?" (Rom 8:24).

Hope of Glory, Hope of Eternal Life

Hope's content is finally eschatological — the appearing of Christ and eternal life. Paul calls it the blessed hope: "looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of Jesus Christ, our great God and Savior" (Tit 2:13); and "in hope of eternal life, which God, who can't lie, promised before eternal times" (Tit 1:2); "that, being justified by his grace, we might be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life" (Tit 3:7). Colossians locates it in heaven: "because of the hope which is laid up for you⁺ in the heavens, of which you⁺ heard before in the word of the truth of the good news" (Col 1:5). Paul prays for the eyes of the heart to see it: "that you⁺ may know what is the hope of his calling, what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints" (Eph 1:18); and as one of the seven unities: "[There is] one body, and one Spirit, even as also you⁺ were called in one hope of your⁺ calling" (Eph 4:4).

Hebrews fixes the figure of an anchor: the strong encouragement is for those "who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us: which we have as an anchor of the soul; both sure and steadfast; and entering into that which is inside the veil" (Heb 6:18-19) — guaranteed by "two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie." The same letter calls the church the house of Christ "if we hold fast our boldness and the glorying of our hope" (Heb 3:6), and asks for "the same diligence to the fullness of hope even to the end" (Heb 6:11). Even Proverbs anticipates this beyond-death dimension: "The wicked is thrust down in his evildoing; But the righteous has a refuge in his death" (Pr 14:32).

Hope as Practice

Hope shapes how the believer speaks, acts, and endures. It produces boldness of speech: "Having therefore such a hope, we use great boldness of speech" (2Co 3:12). It is a helmet in the armor: "putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for a helmet, the hope of salvation" (1Th 5:8). It steadies the tribulation-life: "rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing steadfastly in prayer" (Rom 12:12). It commands the testimony given to outsiders: "sanctify in your⁺ hearts the Lord Christ: [being] ready always to give answer to every man who asks you⁺ a reason concerning the hope that is in you⁺" (1Pe 3:15). It directs concentration toward Christ's return: "girding up the loins of your⁺ mind, be sober and set your⁺ hope perfectly on the grace that is to be brought to you⁺ at the revelation of Jesus Christ" (1Pe 1:13). It produces stability against drift: "if indeed you⁺ continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the good news which you⁺ heard, which was preached in all creation under heaven" (Col 1:23). And it produces self-purification: "everyone who has this hope [set] on him purifies himself, even as he is pure" (1Jn 3:3).

The instrument by which hope is sustained is the written word: "whatever things were written previously were written for our learning, that through patience and through comfort of the Scriptures we might have hope" (Rom 15:4). The blessing that names it as comfort: "Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace" (2Th 2:16). And the model of hope under threat of death is Paul's own: "according to my earnest expectation and hope, that in nothing will I be put to shame, but [that] with all boldness, as always, [so] now also Christ will be magnified in my body, whether by life, or by death" (Php 1:20). Sirach holds open the same generational verdict for the men of piety: "these were men of piety, And their hope has not ceased" (Sir 44:10); "You⁺ who fear the Lord, hope for good things, And for eternal gladness and mercy" (Sir 2:9).