Great Legacy

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16. “Great Legacy”

16. "위대한 유산"

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-2001년 7월
-July 2001
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Deuteronomy 26:5-11
5. Then you shall declare before the LORD your God: “My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down into Egypt with a few people and lived there and became a great nation, powerful and numerous.
6. But the Egyptians mistreated us and made us suffer, putting us to hard labor.
7. Then we cried out to the LORD, the God of our fathers, and the LORD heard our voice and saw our misery, toil and oppression.
8. So the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror and with miraculous signs and wonders.
9. He brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey;
10. and now I bring the firstfruits of the soil that you, O LORD, have given me.” Place the basket before the LORD your God and bow down before him.
11. And you and the Levites and the aliens among you shall rejoice in all the good things the LORD your God has given to you and your household.
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Among TV programs in the mid-1970s way over 30 years from now, there was the program titled ‘Bravo to Long Life’ whose master of ceremonies was the announcer Hwang Inyong. If many persons applied to local broadcasting stations, the program-concerned persons in charge selected 3 senior entries among the preliminary contestants, who were qualified for final competition. The outline of the program is as follows. After each participant’s own turn such as a song or a specialty ended, the final contest-qualified senior then had his or her descendant family members all appear on the stage so the whole family sang together. Because people in the 70s~80s or older appeared on the stage according to characteristic of the program ‘Bravo to Long Life,’ there were quite a few age-advanced descendants who had been settled down socially and economically.
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A certain old person among them introduced himself to judges in preliminary competition, complacently saying “My birthplace is somewhere deep in the mountains in Hamgyeong Province. To survive, I outcame down to Seoul and made my livelihood as a water-seller, sending all my 3 sons to famous universities.”
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In the final competition, however, the words of this old person did a complete about-face.
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In between the preliminary and the final, there was a few days of leisure. While other senior contestants-to-be were practicing their songs to sing in solo and unisons to sing with their descendents, yet this old man were concentrating on his self-introduction practice rather than song.
The final competition day at last, he introduced himself, “Born as a son of self-sustaining descent, I have led my life as a scholar reading solely books during lifetime.”
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Like his saying at the preliminary, his 3 sons were famous university alumni who rose in the world in each of their working circles to a name-recognizable degree.
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Yet, these sons reached the following thinking, their face might be lost, if the fact was known through TV to the world that “their father was born as a son of poor descent, broke away from an original home village to the south with everything behind, and subsisted on water-selling for the family livelihood and children.” To save their own face, the 3 sons all played brainwash(?) and pressure(?) upon the old person so they had their father do a complete about-turn concerning father’s background information.
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Through the Chosen era down in the 36-year colonial ruling times by Japanese Empire, there was the custom that the higher middle-class families making a fair amount of money used their currency to buy water.
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There were various reasons for this water-buying, such as digging a well was too expensive and too hard-workable. But one reason was, by using their currency to buy some loads of water regularly a day, they could use the chance to show off ‘how financially resourceful their family was,’ ‘in more frequent proportion to their reputation,’ even if they had a well in the house. By this reason, water selling in the capital was a commonly seen job.
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Bukcheong Water-bearer
북청 물장수

. by Kim Donghwan
김 동환
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Coming quietly over the dream every early in the morning
pouring down a gushing cool water by the bedside,
Bukcheong water-bearer soon goes afar over the beating heart.
새벽마다 고요히 꿈길을 밟고 와서
머리맡에 찬물을 솨아(쏴아) 퍼붓고는
그만 가슴을 디디면서 멀리 사라지는 북청 물장수
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If the dream wet in water
calls the Bukcheong water-bearer,
he is gone again
with a squeaking buckets with no trace behind.
물에 젖은 꿈이
북청 물장수를 부르면
그는 삐걱삐걱 소리를 치며
온 자취도 없이 다시 사라져 버린다.
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Every early in the morning,
How awaiting the Bukcheong water-bearer I am!
날마다 아침마다 기다려지는
북청 물장수
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The more painfully working manual job it is to remain alive, the more shameful it is, this idea is one of the still so far deeply-ingrained Korean emotions. Water-bearer too was regarded as one of such jobs in those times. The waves of civilization affected even the back country in Hwamgyeong Province. So the water-bearers, who had to be under a water-carrying yoke for the sake of children education even though they themselves are under pains and contempt since born in poor descent and grown in lowest education, yet didn’t mind to bear water loads on the shoulders with not a day off in rain or snow even early morning on coldest winter day, which was the life of water-bearers (Bukcheong is a location name in South Hamgyeong Province).
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With no education and no property of his own down in Seoul a strange land far away from home and in all the hopes and anticipation, “I will send each and every son of mine to university by all means even doing a water-bearer,” this old person, a used-to-be water-bearer on the shoulders, has overcome lowest class ladder’s toilsome hardships of water-bearing through his own industry and efforts.
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By virtue of that, he was able to have all 3 sons go up to university. Now, under the oppression of the sons, disappeared the old man’s glory, who had been complacent whenever he saw his sons grown up to be nice-looking persons. Growing up, the sons looked upon it as natural that one should be born as a son of noble descent and read books growing under parents’ care and under the father who led a decent scholastic life in the middle of nothing wanting in clothes to wear, food to eat and everything. So by converting the sons’ self-introduction too into the saying, “We entered famous universities as hard as we studied, and rose in the society as hard as we worked,” they replaced their old father’s original self-sacrificing toilsome life by mere a meaningless easy-going life.
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In this old man’s inverted words, it is hard to find the settlement of such words as devotion, sacrifice, diligence, care-taking and glory.
In their places, there rather occupies such words as family origin, social rank, face-saving and so on.
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For whom is the reputation, for whom is the social rank, and for whom is the care-taking position?
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If only the sons had given information to the world as it is about their father’s sacrifice and devotion for his sons instead of their selfish face-saving, the old person’s glory of self-sacrifice would have been a spiritual legacy inherited generation after generation.
Under the sons’ face-saving, however, the old person’s sublime spirit came to an end.
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By embellishing the history of our past like this old man’s sons did, there are times we try to save our faces. In recent days, papers and TV media have often dealt with the deepening antipathy against between Korea and Japan. There are some occasions where the Japanese themselves look down on Korea and China in their national consciousness that ‘the people of their own are distinctively superior to other nations and countries.’
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With these senses of superiority and lordliness, the authorities continually try to instill national superiority in the people by unscrupulously modifying and misrepresenting even the historic facts in schoolbook that their emotionally most sensitive adolescents will learn. The authorities insist that the ancient culture of Japan was more original and excellent than Korea and China’s so it had its influence reach from the Japanese Islands onto the Korean Peninsula.
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Dear listeners, please look at the map of the world.
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Upon geographic features of China, Korea and Japan even in the eyes of elementary schoolchild, the advanced one in China among the 4 Great Ancient Civilizations moved across Korea onto Japan. The Japan authorities’ contention that ‘their self-professed prior-developed culture in the Japanese Archipelago on the Pacific coast moved in the backward direction to original onto the main continent’ is near to an egocentric attachment for concealing their cultural inferiority as well as it is ludicrous. What the Japanese national sentiment is hard to accept of is but the fact that they received cultural transfer from a lower-developed neighbor country in their self thinking.
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Towards this sort of Japan, we Korean people are indignant and call names.
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To think in self-possessed calm reflection and mental balance, our culture on the Korean peninsula too has arisen from one of the Great Civilizations. When we describe the history of our country, we use such modifiers as ‘a single people’ or ‘a single people built upon the grounds of agricultural culture.’ But we should know that this sort of words as well is something that we Koreans have embellished the past history with.
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Hwangha Civilization has blossomed since far back in B.C. times. The Korean Peninsula was geographically under the influence of Hwangha Civilization. As one great ancient civilization in the Hwangha basin blossomed out and some tribes developed into a nation, afterwards turning into a strong power-centralized system, the people of lost vested rights or -- whether for any reason -- crowds of runaways gathered together. They made their way onto GoJoseon the First Tribal State or afterwards Goguryeo up at the north, and onto Baekje (the region of Mahan the federation of small tribes) down at the south. In so doing they competed for lots of land with the existing earlier settlers in the Korean Peninsula, or coexisted together peacefully, so they became early ancestors of the modern Koreans.
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It is necessary that some parts should be added, some parts distant from the generally-accepted paraphrases of our nation identity, like “Posterity of Dangun the Founding Father of the Korean Nation; 5000 Year History; A Unitary Nation Developed from upon Agricultural Culture.”
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“Owing to belonging to a frontier of the developed Chinese culture, the Korean Peninsula was influenced by settler people such as the political runaways and victims who had come in crowds from China,” -- are you sure we Korean people can proudly talk to our descendents as concerns this fact?
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Furthermore, in the process of looking into Korean ancestors’ genealogical record, one may find the ancestors are connected backwards to even the Hun tribes at the frontiers of Mongolian Plateau and the Altai Mountains. One of their common traits is the nomadic style of custom in their living. Nomadic tribes are very lagging behind in accepting civilization (see Genesis 46:3,4). If in TV you had ever watched the informatory scenes about the nomadic tribes somewhere in Central Asia and Africa, you would have found they have some life styles in which they still depend their mobility upon horses, oxen, sheep and the like, and still live in almost the same tents as those 1000 thousand years ago in this fast-progressing world. You might sometimes have felt how curious-looking theirs are, but might also have felt how stuffy-looking theirs are, those nomadic habits of living far behind from the civilization circles.
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Looking into cultural origins, one may find the facts that ancient Kazakhs (the Turkish tribes) living in the Kazakhstan region of now were connected to Mongols, that the Mongols influenced ancient Korea enormously, and that the ancient Koreans in turn moved onto Japan, according to genealogical records backwards.
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The reason why us Korean people are presently so indignant with is for the Japanese people’s arrogant moral code of conduct. To think in different shoes, the Korean too are thinking and acting similar to what the Japanese do. We wish that the culture that had influenced the Korean Peninsula would be ‘the Han race’ that had bloomed a bright and grand ancient culture in the Hwangha basin. But it is rather the culture of the Kazakhstan or Mongolian tribes who have even no water to wash face, let alone bathe, still living in the tents, still riding on horses up to this day, so that we are their descendents. This fact of real history is not easy at all for us to accept.
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This kind of example is seen also in some white people who want to think as if white Americans were always superior and righter than wrong, while black Americans were always inferior and wronger than right, despite the fact that they are all the same Americans. In like manner, there are some Koreans who want to think as if Koreans had been influenced by the culture of the world-renowned Hwangha Civilization rather than that of underdeveloped nomads in the plains, once at least influenced they have been. This might be in some Koreans’ unconscious thinking (the worship of the powerful.)
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Knowingly and unknowingly, we have the prejudice of ‘the worship of the powerful.’ If the civilization and culture which we think were lower and inferior and crude are actually the ones which greatly influenced our nation genealogically, then, are you sure you would easily accept and tell such historical fact down to the posterity?
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People have the disposition to beautify the past.
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Any country or nation has basically their myth of national birth or their epic of national heroes. Embellished than the real fact, these myths or heroic tales of national birth have been transmitted down to the descendents. The Roman myth of birth has a wolf having raised Romulus and Remus, a set of twins who were deserted in the mountains. Eating milk from the wolf in their baby days, the brothers were so courageous they later subjugated the Tiber riverside tribes, setting up the foundation of Rome.
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The ‘courageousness’ which the Romans boast of means ‘aggressiveness’ from a different view.
However, they emphasize the word courageousness instead of aggressiveness. This way, people tend to beautify their self-related past, handing this same embellished history down to their next generation.
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Speaking of one thing worth learning from Israel nation, they had often times told their next generation the fact itself rather than an embellished version of their past history. In Exodus Chapter 20 and Deuteronomy Chapter 5, the Ten Commandments, whose introduction says, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery,” the Bible delivers God’s message of salvation and commandments, which is possible only by confessing ‘their past history of slavery.’
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According to the character of Hebrews especially the Bible writers, instead of objectifying or objectively reporting a certain historical events, they rather give religious meaning to whether the texts of their having written are based upon historical facts (Confession of Faith), and they make their way creating new facts depending upon them (View of History).
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The history is only ‘God’s history of salvation,’ which is the historical view of the Bible writers.
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Today’s text Deuteronomy 26:5~9 starts from the confession that ‘the Israelite ancestry was drifters without possessions and wanderers without root.’ It refers to it that their ancestors were a few Aramaics who originally drifted about; they suffered any indescribable insult and ill-treatment when they went down to Egypt looking for edibles in the plains.
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They teach ‘God-wrought history of salvation’ to their descendents by repeating every year the historical consciousness in their confessing, “Then we cried out to the LORD, the God of our fathers, and the LORD heard our voice and saw our misery, toil and oppression. So the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror and with miraculous signs and wonders. He brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.”
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Deuteronomy 26:1~11 and Joshua 24:1~13 were the religious clauses which were annually repeated and recited in the Israelite general assembly.
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Inside these religious clauses is a short and brief outline of Israelite long history developing into a nation. Recorded in here is a historical account of Israel shaping up for a long time into a nation: the patriarchal age in which Israelite ancestors leaving from Ur of the Chaldea and wondering about with flocks of sheep over the whole Middle East area, the period of slavery in Egypt, the period of vagrancy across over the wilderness, and at length Israel entering the land of Canaan where the 12 tribes being assigned each land to stand on and settle down.
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This religious consciousness is lying underneath Israel’s thinking about land.
(see 1 Kings 21:1~3 Naboth’s Vineyard and Deuteronomy 19:14)
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The characteristic of this religious confession lies in the view that Israel’s experiences in the history are solely God’s activity. Instead of thinking the historical experience in the Exodus from Egypt was a sort of revolutionary determination and politically heroic revolution by Israelite descendents, they rather viewed it as ‘the salvation event by Yahweh God’ who led Israel out of Egypt through Yahweh God’s salvation providence, that is, with a mighty hand, an outstretched arm and miraculous signs and wonders.
Instead of thinking the passage through over the wilderness the desert of death was by virtue of their extraordinary patience and sturdy endurance, they rather viewed it as solely ‘God’s event’ performed by God in which Yahweh God having completely led them, led them and guided them with the miraculous signs and wonders of manna and quail and a pillar of a cloud and a pillar of fire.
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They view their Canaan occupation too as the land which they finally gained through God’s leadership and guidance as ‘a battler of the war’ rather than through man’s efforts (compare between Judges, Deuteronomy 7:17~23 and Exodus 23:27~30). As it were, the Exodus is God’s event; the passage through the wilderness is God’s event; and the occupation of Canaan too is one of God’s events.
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In past history, so many invaders and so many conquerors considered the victories in their wars to be their own. Jews’ historical characteristic is, however, the Bible writers consider even war to be God’s action.
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Further, they viewed their history in the ‘religious eyes’ (religious confession) that this world secular history too was for the sake of Yahweh God solely bestowing salvation upon Israel (view of history).
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This belief and faith about history became a fundamental source of power that brought a semi-nomadic herds of people wondering about without power and root into having survived as a nation which receives attention and concern from the world nowadays.
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Here now is the conclusion.
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Deuteronomy 26:5~11 has the record of “how they led their lives on and how they achieved rebuilding” in the vagrant history of Israel ancestry, that is, in so many occasions of sufferings such as being chased after, being pushed, being robbed and being displaced.
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There are many times when the Bible records how awkward, unattractive, and full of shames and sufferings their Israelite ancestors’ history actually was. Not enough of their recording as it was, they went even to the extent of holding the ceremony in which they annually recited the account of their past history full of shames and sufferings to their descendents.
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To identify themselves with their descendents through this ceremony of religious confession is not that they would prerogatively be given blessing in their lives because they were those who received God’s promise and the herd chosen by God’s calling, the purpose thereof is rather in order to teach their progenies to accomplish God’s promise and to receive and endure many historical trials and hardships coming about due to participation in the work.
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Another teaching is that ‘the subject of the history is God’ and ‘God’s ultimate objective in the history is salvation.’
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The text Deuteronomy 26:5~9 teaches even us living at the present that when we see things in the eyes of faith, we can have hope, even though ours are the one filled with shames and sufferings (view of history).
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‘History is the stage where God works’ and ‘God will bestow salvation upon his people’ whatever hardships they are in; these ultimate hopes were the ‘great legacy’ which Israelite ancestors handed down to their descendents from generation to generation.

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“The LORD your God is with you,
he is mighty to save.
He will take great delight in you,
he will quiet you with his love,
he will rejoice over you with singing.”
(Zephaniah 3:17)

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