Writings by Barri Cae Mallin

Confidence - Kesel

Tuesday 28 March 2006 - 13:22:39

For the LORD will be your confidence,
and will keep your foot from being caught. Prov. 3:26

When I was about ten years old, I took ice-skating lessons. There was a new ice rink near my home, and my mom allowed me to sign up for some lessons. Even though in my head, I could jump, spin and twirl, it certainly was another experience when I actually got out on the ice and tried to skate. Taking one foot off the ice was expected; crossovers, backward crossovers and half jumps were frightening maneuvers for me. And all it took was one fall on the ice, just one episode when my head met the ice to show me that I was not cut out for that sport. I was never confident on my feet, trusting in that little blade to keep me vertical.

The Hebrew word for confidence is kesel (keh-sehl) and it is a very unusual word because it has opposite meanings. It can mean foolishness, fatness or confidence. Webster's defines confidence as the quality or state of being certain. When we have confidence in another, we rely on that person to act in a certain way. When we have confidence in God, we rely on Him to always act in His perfect way. Although we may not like His timing or His plan or His will, His ways are always perfect, and we can trust Him.

Kesel can mean fatness, stoutness or firmness. My Jewish father would have called this the kishkas, the innards, the guts. One has a knowing in the depths of one's being, an assurance that God is. The idea here is one of fatness, full satisfaction of trust in God.


The LORD can be trusted as your confidence, as He is at your side, When we trust in our own strength, we lose confidence. We know that we are human, and to rely on one's strength is kesel — foolishness, but to have kesel in God is confidence, stoutness, and surefootedness. The LORD is our hidden source of surefootedness.

The Hebrew in this verse reads Adonai YiYeh — the LORD will be. That is a promise for you and for me. He is promising to be our confidence, our surefootedness, and our confidence. No matter what we are currently facing, or will encounter, He promises to be our kesel, our confidence. He guards our foot from being caught, captured, or taken by the enemy.

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned,
but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment;

and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness,
with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly;

and if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing
them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives thereafter;

and if He rescued righteous Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men for by what he saw and heard that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by their lawless deeds,


then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation,
and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the Day of Judgment,

II Peter 2:5-9

Copyright © Barri Cae Mallin.