Approx 4000 B.C.: Do the Liver, Gall Bladder, Pancreas, and Spleen commemorate the Mosaic and Christian covenant?
Medical depictions vary a little, but here is a decent one for consideration.
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This is more of the 6th Day Series, in which we explore the idea that man is fearfully and wonderfully made by our Creator in a lot more ways than previously suspected. It seems that the parts of our body not only function, but also are symbolic, or illustrative. They illustrate the great plan of God - in other words, our bodies contain Holy Images made up of our organs, bones, fats, musclles, and ligaments...various combinations of those...and that the images show that our Maker foresaw the march of human history. The One Who designed us foresaw the end from the beginning, and in this late day, with hospital imaging equipment being so amazing, we can see some of the things God foreknew 6,000 years ago when He and Jesus made the Creation together, including us! It is late day proof that Jesus is the one He said He was, and that God truly was His Father.
For this account, consider how the human skull with it's two brain-halves which govern our human body are a little like God and Jesus seated in a white throne, governing all things everywhere. Jesus sits on the right side of God the Father we are told in scripture. Well, on a human body, the left side of our brain controls things on the right side of our body, and vice versa. So, I'm going to speculate that organs on our right side are left brain (Father) controlled, and things on our left side are right brain (Son) controlled (by the Father's will, of course.) So, in this following discussion, it stands to reason in light of that idea that we find organs on our right to be Old Covenant, and organs on our left side to be New Covenant - at least in this instance.
This account looks at how the Liver and Gall Bladder can seem to speak of the Old Covenant. After all, the Liver looks like a blood covered hill, strangely split into two by a ligament that has been named the falciform ligament. The 'shaped like a sickle' ligament. That's what it means.
Jesus is sometimes likened to a harvester (a sickle holder) and it is prophesied that He will one day descend upon the Mount of Olives, and it will split in two beneath His feet, moving to the North and the South. Besieged Jerusalemites will escape out of the city through that fissure which reaches to Mount Zion. Then they will cross east through the fissure as it passes through the Mount of Olives and escape their enemies that way! Cool huh? But here is the liver, like a bloody hill, with a ligament that cuts it in two and has the name 'falciform', meaning 'sickle shaped'. Maybe there is a connection.
And in the Old Covenant animal blood was sacrificed for the sins of each person, sin after sin, and person after person. That is enough blood to bathe an entire hill with blood. Is the Liver like this blood covered hill? But, the Christian scriptures say that that Mosaic Covenant 'kept' first the Israelites, including Judah and Benjamin, then later, largely just Judah and Benjamin with remnants of the other tribes of Israel (referred to collectively as 'the Jews') until a better covenant could come along.... until the Jews were ready to receive their Messiah.
And beneath the Liver is the Gall Bladder, looking like a green, unripe fig. Figs were used many times in the scriptures to symbolize the Jewish people. And Jesus even cursed a fig tree because He went to get some nourishment from a fig tree that He saw, went to pick some figs, but no figs were ready to eat. That unready tree angered Him, so He cursed the tree, and by the next day it was withered.
I believe that happened, but I also think it happened because Jesus knew it would become a Gospel illustration of the whole problem He was facing at that period of His ministry with the Jews: He had come to present Himself to them as their Messiah and the Son of God. He wanted them to accept Him and become part of the 'Body of Christ'. He wanted them to accept Him and the New Covenant that He brought, and to have them become His people - become part of Him, like a bride becomes part of her husband, like an eaten fig becomes part of your fleshly body. But the Jews, by and large, weren't going to accept Him. The rejected Him. They were that fig tree, I believe. They crucified Him, and so He was taken to the Gentiles, who were more willing to believe.
Just as a historical curiosity, one site I visited said that a fairly popular Roman dish was liver stuffed with figs. And that the current word for liver may have stemmed from that dish. Some other sources thought the word stemmed from different origins.
Consider how very many Jews must have been 'covered by with the blood' of animals all of their life, then buried somewhere on that hill or the valleys below. So, the hills below or beside Jerusalem really are sort of like a big 'liver' stuffed with 'figs'. A blood-colored hill with Jewish burial sites all throughout.
And so there on the one side of our heart, on the one side of our stomach (to the right side) is something that looks like a hill of blood (the Liver) and cupped protectively beneath it is an organ that looks like a green, unripe, not ready to eat fig (our Gall Bladder). Both help make flesh and fats acceptable (digestible) to our body by releasing 'bile' into the food that has just left the stomach and entered the small intestine. In the Old Testament days, it was the blood of animals that made the Jews acceptable before God again when they had sinned.
What about the Pancreas and the Spleen? They are on the left side. Remember, this idea is speculating that that side is meant to represent the New Covenant side of our body. I think they are both very connotative of the New Covenant brought by Jesus. The Pancreas (the word basically translates as 'sweet bread') is light colored like bread and is shaped like a human tongue to some extent, a tongue pointed upwards and outwards - as if speaking to heaven? - in our left side as it sits inside of us.
Jesus was the 'bread of life', and He spoke of Heavenly things. In the Old Covenant the blood could keep you alive and cover your sins. But in the New Covenant, believing the sweet words of Jesus can keep us alive; the praise of His people is an acceptable sacrifice to the Lord, we look in trust to Him for our forgiveness and righteousness, and salvation. His words are the words of life, His words are the Bread of Life.
The Pancreas helps us metabolize sugars. In the ancient days, a common sweetener was honey, and honey is sometimes a symbol of the Holy Spirit; Samson ate it from the chest of the dead lion, which had earlier attacked him when he was passing through Judah. (Judges 14:5) So it was honey from the inside of the Lion of the 'tribal area' of Judah. One day, blood and water from the inside of the Lion of Judah called Jesus would save a man and impart the Holy Spirit into the man or woman's life.
Later, after Samson, king Saul's son Jonathan ate forbidden honey when he was hungry from battling the Philistines in the forest, and it helped him. (1 Samuel 14:24) It brightened his eyes. We know that the Holy Spirit brightens the eyes of those who have it within them.
And the Spleen? It is a slightly cupped circle shaped reddish organ which destroys old blood cells and has some functions in creating new ones. Jesus replaced the blood of the Old Covenant (the endlessly shed blood of innocent animal sin surrogates) with His own blood. His blood needed only to be shed once - it was so very precious to God His Father, (who is our Maker and Father as well). That blood, once shed, was sufficient to atone for all the sins of all the sinners that ever would confess their sins, ask Jesus to be their Lord forever and get baptized in His name and follow Him and His teachings, and telling their neighbors who did not yet know as often as opportunity allowed.
Jesus replaced the Old Blood and provided the New Blood. The Spleen replaces the old blood and helps make the new. You don't put the new wine in old wineskins. It will give off its gasses and break the bag. You don't patch an old wine skin with new bag material, which we would be doing, in a way, if we tried to make a hybrid covenant which combined the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. Paul once rebuked Peter for refusing to eat with Gentiles when Jews were around who might look down on him for it. In the Old Covenant, Jews didn't eat with Gentile non-believers. But in the New Covenant, everyone who has chosen Christ are brothers and sisters-in-full with each other. All are one in Jesus, like the many parts of the body, though somewhat different in function, are all members in full of the same body.
With a wine skin, if you place a patch made of new material on an old wine bag that has a rip or tear, the new material will eventually shrink, it will tear the bag. No, you put new wine in new wineskins we are told by Jesus. The New Covenant has new boundaries which contain those living in it. Out with the old and in with the new! So, the spleen is like a bag which gets rid of the old blood (wine) and has a role in producing new blood (wine). It is a New Covenant sort of organ in those respects.
So, the two organs on the right side of our chest - the Liver and the Gall Bladder - speak of the Old Covenant, and of the Jews, who were unready when Jesus went to them. The two organs mentioned that are on our left side - the Pancreas and Spleen - speak of the New Covenant, Jesus' Covenant.
Or at least I think so. Presently!
Click on the thumbnail below to open up the picture. Use the little + and - buttons on top of the tool bar above the picture to size it to your taste. Right click on the picture and choose 'rotate clockwise' to orient it right. Enjoy and consider...perhaps you too will see it as a possible interpretation of why God formed this portion of our bodies as He did. But use your own discernment. I am only trying to use my own when I write about these things.
