8. Conscience and the bosom

Two smaller words complete the picture. Neither is used often, but each names something the others do not.

Conscience

The word syneidēsis appears only in the New Testament. It names the inner person as a witness: the part of me that sees what I have done and says something about it.

It testifies: "their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them" (Romans 2:15). "My conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit" (Romans 9:1). "Our boast is this, the testimony of our conscience" (2 Corinthians 1:12).
It is good or clear: "I have lived my life before God in all good conscience up to this day" (Acts 23:1). "I always take pains to have a clear conscience toward both God and man" (Acts 24:16). "Love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith" (1 Timothy 1:5).
It is weak, defiled, wounded, seared: "their conscience, being weak, is defiled" (1 Corinthians 8:7). To wound a weak conscience is to "sin against Christ" (8:12). Some have consciences "seared" (1 Timothy 4:2). "Both their minds and their consciences are defiled" (Titus 1:15).
It is cleansed: "how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God" (Hebrews 9:14). Gifts and sacrifices "cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper" (Hebrews 9:9). Baptism is "an appeal to God for a good conscience" (1 Peter 3:21).
It belongs to others too, and I must take theirs into account: "I do not mean your conscience, but his" (1 Corinthians 10:29). "By the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience" (2 Corinthians 4:2).
It follows what I reckon: "nothing is unclean in itself, but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean" (Romans 14:14). What I count as wrong binds my conscience, even where the thing itself is not wrong.

The word also means simply awareness: worshipers cleansed once "would no longer have any consciousness of sins" (Hebrews 10:2). Enduring unjust suffering "when, mindful of God" (1 Peter 2:19) uses the same word.

The Old Testament does this with the heart

The Old Testament has no separate word for conscience. There the heart strikes, reproaches and stumbles. "David's heart struck him, because he had cut off a corner of Saul's robe" (1 Samuel 24:5). After the census, "David's heart struck him" again (2 Samuel 24:10). Abigail warns David that killing Nabal would leave him with "grief or pangs of conscience", literally a stumbling of heart (1 Samuel 25:31). Job: "my heart does not reproach me for any of my days" (Job 27:6).

The New Testament joins the two words. John speaks of the heart doing the work of conscience: "whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God" (1 John 3:20–21). In Hebrews, "hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience" (Hebrews 10:22).

The heart can also acquit itself wrongly. "You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts" (Luke 16:15). Job "justified himself rather than God" (Job 32:2). Whether it condemns or justifies, "God is greater than our heart." And John speaks of the condemning heart being reassured (1 John 3:19).

The bosom

The Hebrew ḥêq is the chest, the lap, the fold of a garment, the embrace. It is a holding place.

It is where people hold those they love. A mother lays her child "at her breast" (1 Kings 3:20). Naomi "took the child and laid him on her lap" (Ruth 4:16). "Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse carries a nursing child" (Numbers 11:12). "He will gather the lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom" (Isaiah 40:11).

It is also where a person holds what they feel, above all what they would be better off letting go of.

"Be not quick in your spirit to become angry, for anger lodges in the heart [bosom] of fools" (Ecclesiastes 7:9).
"Remember, O Lord, how your servants are mocked, and how I bear in my heart [bosom] the insults of all the many nations" (Psalm 89:50).
"I prayed with head bowed on my chest [bosom]" (Psalm 35:13).

And in grief it is where life drains away: children faint in the streets "as their life is poured out on their mothers' bosom" (Lamentations 2:12).

The same word is used for holding a child and for holding anger and insults. Job adds: "The godless in heart cherish anger; they do not cry for help when he binds them" (Job 36:13). How long anger stays, and what ends it, is followed in Chapters 10.1 and 10.3.