. . . “remember” with its implication of prior forgetting is perhaps a
misleading translation of the Hebrew זכר , at least much of the time. Take, for
example, Jeremiah 14:10 (JPS): “Thus says Yahweh concerning his people: Truly
they love to stray, they have not retrained their feet; so Yahweh has no
pleasure in them. Now he will remember (זכר) their iniquity and punish their
sin.” In this verse, Yahweh is the one who declares that Israel has done wrong,
and that he is unhappy with them. Yet “now” Yahweh will also remember their wrong
doing. There is no space for getting here, and thus זכר can hardly mean “remember”
in its usual sense.
We are all aware that there is a difference between forgetting about
something and simply not thinking about it in the moment. For the most part, we
are capable of thinking about—really thinking about, concentrating on—only one
thing at a time. Multitasking is hard! It isn’t the case that whatever we aren’t
thinking about right this second has been forgotten. It has just been set aside
momentarily. When we come back to it, it isn’t really remembering. It is,
instead, focusing; bringing it to the center of our attention. And what is what
זכר really means.
The Psalms, where זכר appears a full fifty times, attest to this.
. . .
What the זכר of God and of Israel have in common is that it is not
mere thought, but also entails a corollary action. Whatever it is that is
brought into focus is concentrated on not simply for the pleasure of
contemplation but in order that something should happen. The psalmist pleads to
be “remembered” so that Yahweh will rescue him. Israel is to “remember” so that
they will correctly follow the law. God “remembers” Noah in the flood so
that the waters subside; “remembers” Abraham so that Lot might be rescued; “remembers”
Israel so that they might be taken out of Egypt. To “remember” is to focus on
the past so as to make a difference in the present. “Remember” is an active
verb. (Joel S. Baden, Lost in Translation: Recovering the Origins of
Familiar Words [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2025], 38, 39)
