## Rabbi Sacks on Yom Kippur Mahzor, Yom Kippur Evening, Selihot

###### Rabbi Sacks on Yom Kippur Mahzor, Yom Kippur Evening, Selihot 1
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**SELIḤOT – PENITENTIAL PRAYERS**
We now begin the *Seliḥot*, penitential prayers, that form an essential part of the service of Yom Kippur (Rabbi Amram Gaon). *Seliḥot* are ways of asking God to forgive us for our sins, individual or collective, known and unknown, intentional or unintentional.
We have records of such pleas long before Jewish prayer was formalized. One, moving and eloquent, was said by Daniel in exile: “Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant of love with those who love Him and keep His commandments: we have sinned and done wrong. We have been wicked and have rebelled; we have turned away from Your commands and laws” (Daniel 9:4–5).
Another was said by Ezra: “But now, our God, what can we say after this? For we have forsaken the commands You gave through Your servants the prophets… Here we are before You in our guilt, though because of it not one of us can stand in Your presence” (Ezra 9:10–11, 15). A third was said by Nehemiah: “I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father’s family, have committed against You. We have acted very wickedly toward You. We have not obeyed the commands, decrees and laws You gave Your servant Moses” (Neh. 1:6–7).
All three prayers were said in the aftermath of the Babylonian exile and the later return of Jews to a devastated Israel, and represent the authentic Jewish response to calamity: “When sufferings come, search your deeds and return in repentance” (*Berakhot* 5a). All renewal, whether in the life of an individual or a nation, begins with spiritual and moral renewal, and this in turn begins with *Seliḥa*, the act of saying sorry to God.
The institution of *Seliḥot* draws its inspiration from an earlier episode in the lifetime of Moses. Some forty days after the revelation at Mount Sinai, the people, in a state of fear at the non-appearance of Moses, made a golden calf. Moses, descending the mountain, smashed the tablets of the law, brought order to the camp, and then prayed to God for forty days and forty nights to forgive the people. At the height of this encounter God appeared to him: “And He passed before Moses, proclaiming, ‘The Lord, the Lord, compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in loving-kindness and truth, extending loving-kindness to a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, rebellion and sin…’” (Ex. 34:6–7). Note that it is God speaking, not Moses.
Some time later a second crisis occurred. Ten of the spies sent by Moses to see the land came back with a demoralizing report, saying that though the land was good it was unconquerable. The inhabitants were too strong. The people lost faith and said that they wanted to return to Egypt. God threatened to destroy the people. Moses then prayed in these words:
Now may the Lord’s strength be displayed, just as You have declared: “The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in loving-kindness, forgiving iniquity and rebellion…” In accordance with Your great love, forgive the sin of these people, just as You have pardoned them from the time they left Egypt until now.
The Lord replied, “I have forgiven them, as you asked.” (Num. 14:17–20)
When Moses prays on this second occasion, he is paraphrasing back to God the words (known as The Thirteen Attributes of Mercy) that God had said to him on Mount Sinai. From this the rabbis inferred: “This teaches us that God, as it were, robed Himself as if He were a leader of prayer, and said to Moses: Whenever Israel sins, let them perform this rite before Me and I shall forgive them… Rabbi Judah said: There is a covenant that the Thirteen Attributes do not return unanswered” (*Rosh HaShana* 17b). God taught
Moses how to pray, and this became the model for *Seliḥot*.


###### Rabbi Sacks on Yom Kippur Mahzor, Yom Kippur Evening, Selihot 2
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**SELIḤOT (see previous page for introductory commentary)**
יַעֲלֶה תַּחֲנוּנֵֽנוּ *Let our plea rise.*A poetic prelude to *Seliḥot*, author unknown. The poem is written in eight three-line verses, each line opening with one of the three verbs from the start of the special prayer for festivals: יַעֲלֶה, וְיָבוֹא, וְיֵרָאֶה, “May there rise, come and appear,” and ending with the words “from evening,” “from morning,” and “by evening,” a reference to a biblical verse about Yom Kippur: “It is a Sabbath of utter rest to you, and you shall afflict your souls: on the ninth day of the month at evening, *from evening to evening* shall you keep your Sabbath” (Lev. 23:32). The three verbs – “rise, come, appear” – recall three stages in the story of the Israelites in Egypt before the exodus. The cry of the Israelites in Egypt “*rose* to God” (Ex. 2:23). God told Moses at the burning bush: “Now, behold, the cry of the sons of Israel has *come* before Me” (Ex. 3:9). We are also told that “God *saw* the children of Israel, and God took notice of them” (Ex. 2:25). Jewish prayer constantly invokes the past for the sake of the future, as if to say, “As it was then, so may it be now.”


###### Rabbi Sacks on Yom Kippur Mahzor, Yom Kippur Evening, Selihot 13
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שֹׁמֵֽעַ תְּפִלָּה *You who listen to prayer.*An ancient introduction to *Seliḥot*: a selection of verses, mainly from Psalms, but also from Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Job and Chronicles, linked by certain thematic words like “come,” “bow,” “bless,” and “great.” The effect of these repeated words is to weave the verses together to form a coherent and powerful hymn of praise to God. This is how *Seliḥot* were composed before the emergence, in the third or fourth century ce, of a literature of specially written liturgical poetry. From the ninth century onward these poems began to be added to the *Seliḥot* verses and prayers. The basic structure of all Jewish prayer is first *shevaḥ*, praise; then *bakasha*, request; then *hoda’a*, acknowledgment and thanks (Maimonides, Laws of Prayer, 1:2). So the whole of this introductory passage is dedicated to the first: praise.
שֹׁמֵֽעַ *You who listen.*A phrase from Psalm 65:3, the verb *sh-m-a* means more than simply “to listen.” It means, among other things, to internalize, to be moved to compassion, to respond. The idea that God hears prayer is central to Jewish faith. Ultimate reality is not blind to our existence, indifferent to our fate, deaf to our prayers. At the heart of being is One who created us in love, who knows us, cares for us, hears our prayers, and responds “to all who call on Him in truth.”
צֶֽדֶק וּמִשְׁפָּט…חֶֽסֶד וֶאֱמֶת *Righteousness and justice…kindness and truth*. These are the four bases of the moral life according to Judaism. They represent two kinds of justice and two kinds of love. *Tzedek* is distributive justice – justice as fairness. *Mishpat* is retributive justice – justice as law. *Ḥesed* is love as kindness, emotion translated into deed. *Emet*, “truth,” here means love as loyalty and fidelity (Ibn Ezra to Gen. 24:49).
הַנְּשָׁמָה לָךְ וְהַגּוּף פָּעֳלָךְ, חֽוּסָה עַל עֲמָלָךְ *The spirit is Yours, and the body Your creation; spare those You have formed.* A liturgical poem, not a biblical verse, beautiful in its simplicity and brevity. We are what You made us. Therefore, were You to destroy us You would be destroying Your own handiwork. There is a subtle allusion here, in the verb חוּסָה, “spare, take pity,” to the last two verses of the book of Jonah that we will read tomorrow afternoon, when God criticizes Jonah for taking pity on a plant he did not labor to make grow while complaining about God taking pity on the inhabitants of Nineveh.
Rabbi Levi Yitzḥak of Berditchev once prayed: “Master of the universe, if a Jew were to see tefillin lying in the street, would he not bend down to pick them up? We are Your tefillin, and we are lying in the street, ignored or trodden upon by passersby. How, then, can You not pick us up?”


###### Rabbi Sacks on Yom Kippur Mahzor, Yom Kippur Evening, Selihot 15
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דַּרְכְּךָ *Your way.*These two lines are the opening and refrain of a poem beginning *Omnam Ashameinu*, said in full in some rites, in part in others, while some say only the first two lines and the last verse, “Heal the wound.” The poem is the work of the earliest liturgical poet we know by name, Yose ben Yose, who lived and worked in Israel in the fourth or fifth century. He was a pioneer of the highly-structured alphabetical acrostic style of poetry that plays so large a part in the prayers of Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur. *Slow to anger with both sinners and the righteous:* One of the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy is *erekh apayim*, “slow to anger” (Ex. 34:6). The Talmud asks why the phrase is in the plural, and answers: God is slow to anger both to the righteous and to the wicked (*Eiruvin* 22a).
**ON DIFFERENCES OF CUSTOM**
The “Thirteen Attributes of Mercy,” prefaced by the paragraph beginning “God, King who sits,” is the epicenter of *Seliḥot*, the basis of our plea for forgiveness. There are significantly different customs as to how many times this is said during the evening service: some say it seven times, others four, yet others once. The reason is that the basic structures of Jewish prayer were established long ago, in Second Temple times and their immediate aftermath, when there was a single center of Jewish life in the land of Israel. The principles established then, apply to all Jewish communities. Thereafter, however, Jews were dispersed, and each community developed its own customs. Hence the variations from place to place, particularly noticeable on Yom Kippur when many of the prayers and most of the liturgical poems are non-statutory.
The following are some of the principles governing custom in prayer: (1) With rare exceptions, each custom has its own logic and halakhic integrity, and should be respected. (2) Communities are bound to follow their own customs, for they are bound by those who came before them. (3) Individuals who move from one community to another are bound by the customs of the place where they now belong, rather than the place from which they came. (4) Individuals who are visiting a community rather than staying there as permanent residents are bound in their public behavior to follow local custom; in private they should observe the stringencies of the community from which they came and to which they intend to return. The overarching principle is: *Minhag Yisrael Torah hi*, “Jewish custom is also part of Torah.”
Explaining the different customs of prayer among different groups of Jews, the Maggid of Mezeritch said: “Just as there were thirteen gates in the Temple (*Shekalim* 6:2), so there are thirteen gates of prayer: one for each of the twelve tribes and the thirteenth for the individual who does not know from which tribe he comes.”


###### Rabbi Sacks on Yom Kippur Mahzor, Yom Kippur Evening, Selihot 21
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אֵל מֶֽלֶךְ יוֹשֵׁב *God, King who sits.* Though at the beginning of Rosh HaShana God takes His seat on the Throne of Justice, He is moved by the sound of the shofar to sit instead on the Throne of Compassion (*Vayikra Raba* 29:9).
מִתְנַהֵג בַּחֲסִידוּת *Who acts with loving-kindness.* Based on the phrase (II Samuel 22:26; Ps. 18:26), “With the kind, You are kind.” God’s kindness to us has its origins in the kindness of our ancestors, which God never forgets.
מַעֲבִיר רִאשׁוֹן רִאשׁוֹן *Passing them before Him in order.* God forgives our first sin if we do not repeat it; or, if our sins are equal to our merits, He removes a sin from the scale so as to tilt it in our favor (Alfassi, Rashi to *Rosh HaShana* 17a).
הוֹרֵֽיתָ לָּֽנוּ *You taught us.* A reference to the idea stated in the Talmud that when God appeared to Moses on Mount Sinai in answer to his prayer for forgiveness for the people, He taught him and all future generations how to pray by invoking the “Thirteen Attributes of Mercy” (*Rosh HaShana* 17b).
בְּרִית שְׁלֹשׁ עֶשְׂרֵה *The covenant of the thirteen attributes.* The covenant God made with Moses at that time that no prayer that invoked the Thirteen Attributes would go unanswered (*ibid.*).


###### Rabbi Sacks on Yom Kippur Mahzor, Yom Kippur Evening, Selihot 25
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**THE THIRTEEN ATTRIBUTES OF MERCY**
The “Thirteen Attributes of Mercy,” the name given by the sages to God’s declaration to Moses when he prayed on behalf of the people after the sin of the golden calf, are the basis of all *seliḥot*, prayers for forgiveness, for they are God’s Self-definition as the source of compassion and pardon that frames the moral life. They tell us that God “does not desire the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live” (Ezek. 33:11). When we repent and make good the harm we have done, God forgives. The Thirteen Attributes are as follows:
1. *The*Lord*:* The name that signifies God’s attribute of compassion as opposed to strict justice.
2. *The*Lord*:* God retains the same compassion even after we have sinned, thus making repentance possible.
3. *God:* The power and force through which God sustains the universe and all that lives.
4. *Compassionate:*The root *r-ḥ-m* is the same as “womb.” Hence, it means the kind of compassion a mother has for a child.
5. *Gracious:* The root *ḥ-n-n* refers to behavior that comes from the generosity of the one who does it, not the merits of the one to whom, or for whom, it is done.
6. *Slow to anger:* Thus giving time for wrongdoers to repent.
7. *Abounding in loving-kindness:* According to a person’s needs, not their deserts.
8. *And truth:* Giving a just reward to those who do His will.
9. *Extending loving-kindness to a thousand generations.*God remembers through the ages the kindness of the patriarchs and the merits of our ancestors.*10. 
Forgiving iniquity:* Sins committed knowingly.
11. *Rebellion:* Sins committed in a spirit of defiance.
12. *And sin:* Sins committed unwittingly, either because we did not know what we were doing or did not know that it was forbidden.
13. *And absolving*: Literally “cleansing” those who repent.


###### Rabbi Sacks on Yom Kippur Mahzor, Yom Kippur Evening, Selihot 39
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סְלַח נָא אֲשָׁמוֹת Forgive, please, the faults. A poem based on the plea of Moses after the sin of the spies: “Forgive, please [*selaḥ na*] this people’s iniquity [*avon*], in the abundance of Your kindness, and as You have forgiven this people from the time of Egypt until now” (Num. 14:19). This, as noted above, was one of the two great occasions when the prayers of Moses secured forgiveness for the people, thus becoming a basis for all future penitential prayers. Written as an alphabetical acrostic in the third word of the first line and the second of the second in each couplet, its author is unknown.


###### Rabbi Sacks on Yom Kippur Mahzor, Yom Kippur Evening, Selihot 41
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מוֹדִים וְעוֹזְבִים Those who confess and forsake their sinful ways. Two of the essential ingredients of repentance, the phrase is a reference to Proverbs 28:13, “Whoever conceals their sins does not prosper, but one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy.”


###### Rabbi Sacks on Yom Kippur Mahzor, Yom Kippur Evening, Selihot 43
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יְבֻקַּשׁ וְאֵינֶֽנּוּ כְּנָאֳמֶֽךָ Be sought and not be there –*as You promised.* A reference to Jeremiah 50:20: “In those days, at that time, says the Lord, they will search for Israel’s iniquity and it will not be there, they will seek the sins of Judah and they will be nowhere to be found, for I shall forgive those I leave behind.”


###### Rabbi Sacks on Yom Kippur Mahzor, Yom Kippur Evening, Selihot 48
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לַעֲוֹן רְחוּמֶֽיךָ תִּשָּׂא The iniquity of those You love, forgive. Note the threefold reference, in the last three lines, to *raḥamim* (ר-ח-מ), God’s compassionate love for Israel. The poet, acknowledging the sins of the people, appeals in the end not to justice but to love.


###### Rabbi Sacks on Yom Kippur Mahzor, Yom Kippur Evening, Selihot 73
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אָמְנָם כֵּן It is surely true. One of the rare contributions of medieval English Jewry to the prayer book, the poem “*Omnam Ken*” is the work of the twelfth-century scholar and poet, Rabbi Yom Tov of Joigny. In around 1180 he settled in York, in the north of England. He was a respected authority on Jewish law – his decisions are cited by the halakhic sages of the time – as well as a liturgical poet who had written an elegy on the Blois martyrs of 1171. He himself died as a martyr during the anti-Jewish riots on *Shabbat HaGadol*, 16–17 March, 1190. Fearing an attack, the Jews obtained permission from the sheriff of York to take refuge in Clifford’s Tower in the royal castle, but a violent mob gathered below, and the Jews realized they would not escape alive. Many of them, inspired by Yom Tov, committed suicide. Those who surrendered were massacred.
Crusaders preparing to follow their king against the Saracens, burgesses envious of Jewish wealth, barons indebted to the Jews, the fanatical clergy, all conspired to exterminate the Jews… The alarmed Jews, with their leader Joseph [Josce of York], sought shelter in the royal castle… Richard Malebys, a noble deeply in debt to the Jews, commanded the siege…
The hapless Jews were short of rations; surrender spelled baptism or death by torture. In obedience to the exhortations of their religious leader, Yom Tob of Joigny, they chose to lay hands on themselves… When, at daybreak, the [burning] citadel was captured, those who were still alive were put to death. Altogether some five hundred Jews perished. (Margolis and Marx, *A History of the Jewish People*, p. 387)
*Omnam Ken* is based on Moses’ plea to God after the sin of the spies, as a result of which God declared, “I have forgiven (as you asked).” This forms the refrain of the poem, which is composed as an alphabetical acrostic. The poet urges God to ignore and disdain the Accuser (Satan, as he appears at the beginning of the book of Job) and listen instead to the Defender who appeals to God’s mercy and compassion. *The Easterner:* Abraham who came from Mesopotamia in the East (see Psalm 89:1).


###### Rabbi Sacks on Yom Kippur Mahzor, Yom Kippur Evening, Selihot 81
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פְּנֵה לְעֶלְבּוֹן Turn to our shame. A reference to exile generally, specifically the pitiful condition of Jews in the age of the Crusades.
רִיב רִיבִי Plead my cause. This is the language of legal pleading in a court of law, used often by the prophets as a metaphor (see Jeremiah 50:34, Hosea 4:1, Micah 6:2), and a dominant image on Yom Kippur.


###### Rabbi Sacks on Yom Kippur Mahzor, Yom Kippur Evening, Selihot 95
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כִּי הִנֵּה כַּחֹֽמֶר Like clay in the potter’s hands. For an essay on this *piyut*, see Introduction, .
This poem is a daring plea for the defense: Forgive us for we are what You made us. We sin because You gave us both the ability and inclination. Had You made us like angels we would have been like angels.
Based on ideas in Isaiah (64:7) and Jeremiah (18:6), the poem belongs to a radical tradition, in prophetic and rabbinic literature, of audacity in prayer. One example is Moses’ prayer to God to forgive the Israelites for the sin of the golden calf on the grounds that they would not have had the gold, had God not told them to take it with them when they left Egypt (*Berakhot* 32a). So too here: We are God’s creations. Let not the Potter blame the pot He has made.


###### Rabbi Sacks on Yom Kippur Mahzor, Yom Kippur Evening, Selihot 96
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לַבְּרִית הַבֵּט Look to the covenant. This refers to the covenant with Noah (see Introduction, ).


###### Rabbi Sacks on Yom Kippur Mahzor, Yom Kippur Evening, Selihot 112
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זְכֹר־רַחֲמֶֽיךָ יהוה Remember, Lord, Your compassion. This is part of the earliest stratum of *seliḥot* prayers, compiled in the days of the Geonim. It consists, as did most of their prayers, of a collection of biblical verses. The theme of this particular collection is “Remember.” We normally think of memory in terms of the past. Yet the three occasions in which the word *Vayizkor,* “and He remembered,” appears in connection with God in Genesis all have to do with the future. God remembered Noah and brought him out on dry land (8:1). God remembered Abraham, and so brought Lot to safety (19:29). God remembered Rachel and gave her a child (30:22). In Judaism memory is future-oriented. We ask God to remember the past in order to grant us a future.


###### Rabbi Sacks on Yom Kippur Mahzor, Yom Kippur Evening, Selihot 121
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הֵן יַעֲבִיר זָדוֹן לִמְשׁוּגָה He transforms willful sin into error. This is based on the statement of Reish Lakish (Israel, third century ce) that through repentance, willful sins are turned into inadvertent ones (*Yoma* 86b). One of the most powerful effects of *teshuva* is that it allows us retroactively to remove the element of sinful intent from our acts in virtue of the fact that we now have, and declare, remorse for what we have done.


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**SHEMA KOLENU – LISTEN TO OUR VOICE**
A prayer, opening with a line from the weekday Amida, followed by a verse from Lamentations, and a series of sentences based on verses from the book of Psalms. It is said with great intensity, the Ark opened to enhance the drama of the moment.
שְׁמַע קוֹלֵֽנוּ Listen to our voice. The core of our faith on which the whole life of prayer is predicated. Judaism is not mere abstract monotheism, the idea that there is One God, Architect and Creator of all. God is also a “personal” God, that is to say, one who loves, cares, forgives, and relates to us as persons with our own fears and loves. God is more than an impersonal concept, entity or force, the God acknowledged by philosophers and scientists through the ages, the source of order in the universe. Judah HaLevi called this “the God of Aristotle” (*Kuzari* 4:16). For us He is also “the God of Abraham,” who calls to us and who listens when we call to Him. It is not intellect and rationality alone that join us to God, but also emotion, sympathy, empathy, and compassion. These are part of the divine reality we inhabit when we live the life of faith. An impersonal force cannot hear prayer. An “It” cannot forgive. Only One to whom we can say “You” can do these things. The more we know of neuroscience and emotional intelligence, the more we come to understand the limits of rationalism alone in explaining human behavior, and the more we come to appreciate the role of emotion in shaping what we do and who we are. The faith of Judaism is that this is no mere accident or random evolution, but part of what makes us human in the image of God. God does more than create. God loves. And because God loves, we can approach Him in prayer.


###### Rabbi Sacks on Yom Kippur Mahzor, Yom Kippur Evening, Selihot 142
[Rabbi Sacks on Yom Kippur Mahzor, Yom Kippur Evening, Selihot 142](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Rabbi%20Sacks%20on%20Yom%20Kippur%20Mahzor/s/Yom%20Kippur%20Evening,_Selihot/r/142)

**English Edition; Koren Publishers Jerusalem, 2017:**
אַל תַּשְׁלִיכֵֽנוּ לְעֵת זִקְנָה Do not cast us away in our old age. One of the most poignant lines of all. Every civilization has valued the vigorous, the strong, those who can fight battles, win wars, farm fields and work. Judaism, however, believes that the test of a civilization is how it treats the very young and the very old. “Who do you wish to take with you?” asked Pharaoh of Moses when he asked to be allowed to leave Egypt. “We will go with our young and our old,” Moses replied (Ex. 10:9). It was an answer Pharaoh could not understand.
The paradox of history is that a civilization is tested not by its strength but how it values the weak; nor by its wealth but how it treats the poor. A nation becomes invulnerable when it cares for the vulnerable: the orphan, the widow, the stranger, and the old. “Stand before a hoary head and honor the presence of the old,” says the Torah (Lev. 19:32). For the old have wisdom; they have experience; they are our living connection with the past. And they are human; they remain the image and likeness of God; they deserve dignity and we, like God, must grant it to them. “The [whole] tablets and the broken tablets lay in the Ark,” said the sages, referring to the Ark of the Covenant that traveled with the Israelites in the wilderness as well as in the Holy Land. The “broken tablets,” they said, refer to the elderly who have forgotten what once they knew (*Berakhot* 8b). They too were given a place of honor.


###### Rabbi Sacks on Yom Kippur Mahzor, Yom Kippur Evening, Selihot 151
[Rabbi Sacks on Yom Kippur Mahzor, Yom Kippur Evening, Selihot 151](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Rabbi%20Sacks%20on%20Yom%20Kippur%20Mahzor/s/Yom%20Kippur%20Evening,_Selihot/r/151)

**English Edition; Koren Publishers Jerusalem, 2017:**
כִּי אָֽנוּ עַמֶּֽךָ For we are Your people. An introduction to the Confession that is about to follow, based on a midrashic interpretation of the line from the Song of Songs, “My Beloved is mine and I am His” (Song. 2:16, *Shir HaShirim Raba* ad loc.). The poet enumerates the many facets of the relationship between God and His people: He is our God, Father, Master, Shepherd, the Keeper of our vineyard and so on through multiple metaphors.


###### Rabbi Sacks on Yom Kippur Mahzor, Yom Kippur Evening, Selihot 152
[Rabbi Sacks on Yom Kippur Mahzor, Yom Kippur Evening, Selihot 152](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Rabbi%20Sacks%20on%20Yom%20Kippur%20Mahzor/s/Yom%20Kippur%20Evening,_Selihot/r/152)

**English Edition; Koren Publishers Jerusalem, 2017:**
אָֽנוּ עַזֵּי פָנִים , וְאַתָּה רַחוּם וְחַנּוּן We are brazen and You are compassionate, gracious. The poem then shifts in mood, from God’s love for us to our disobedience to Him. Only the certainty that God forgives lends us the courage and honesty to admit that we need forgiveness.
There are shame cultures and there are guilt cultures. To be sure, most actual societies are a mix of both. But as ideal types they are profoundly different. Shame is an emotion we feel when we think of ourselves as being seen by others. Our deepest desire when we feel shame is the wish to be invisible. Adam and Eve felt shame after they had eaten the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge and tried to hide. The feeling of guilt is altogether different and deeper. We know we would still feel it even if we were invisible. Guilt is the voice within that tells us, regardless of anyone else knowing about it, that we have done wrong. The opposite of shame is honor. The opposite of guilt is righteousness.
Ancient Greece was predominantly a shame culture. Ancient Israel was a guilt culture. In Greece what mattered was your reputation in the eyes of others. In Israel what mattered was your innocence in the sight of God. From shame there is no way back. People who were shamed either committed suicide, died in a noble cause, or went into voluntary exile. From guilt there is a way back, namely repentance and forgiveness. For shame is something that touches the essence of a person. It is a stain that cannot be removed. Guilt, however, makes a principled distinction between the person and the act. The act may have been wrong. But the person is never beyond the reach of salvation. God forgives those who truly confess their guilt.
Therefore, it is God’s forgiveness that empowers us to admit we did wrong, that gives us the strength to say with every letter of the alphabet and every fiber of our being: “We are guilty, we have betrayed, we have robbed, we have spoken slander.” In a shame culture the primary imperative is, “Thou shalt not be found out.” In a guilt culture, we know that we are found out, even if no other human being knows what we have done. In that ruthless honesty of guilt lies our salvation, our hope, our forgiveness, our ability to make amends and start again, rebuilding a new life out of the fragments of the old.