HEBREW WORD STUDY – WHAT’S
THE BIG DEAL?
Deuteronomy 7:12: “Wherefore it shall come to pass, if ye
hearken to these judgments, and keep, and do them, that the
LORD thy God shall keep unto thee the covenant and the mercy
which he swore unto thy fathers:”
Every promise in the book is mine
Every chapter, every, verse every line.
-Tradition Sunday School chorus-
This morning is Thanksgiving day and I woke up singing this
little chorus that I sung so often in Sunday School,
children’s church and VBS when I was child those many years
ago. I grew up attending a Baptist church on Waveland and
Damen Avenue in Chicago. My family and I attended that church
almost every day of the week and twice on Sundays. That was
home and the people in the church were an extended family who
taught me to love God and His Word with all my heart. My
fondest memories of childhood all revolve around that Baptist
church. The memories of white gloved ladies admonishing me to
“not run in the house of God” and Herman Bell dressing up as
the Duke of Paducah. I woke up this morning on Thanksgiving
with thanksgiving to God that I have these childhood memories
to cherish and that I still cling to the faith that was so
instilled in me as child by those people who loved me and
trained me in my faith.
It was, after all a fundamentalist Baptist church where we
were taught that dancing, drinking, smoking and theater
attendance was sinful. Well, after all those years I still
cling to two of those taboos.
I mean I cannot
help but
appreciate the art and skills of dancing and there have been
some pretty good movies lately with a strong Christian
message. So I guess I did slack off from a little bit of
that training. However, there are certain things that were so
instilled in me as a child that I will never let go of, that
are more precious to me than life itself and that is my belief
in the fundamentals of my faith.
I can still sign that
doctrinal statement from Moody Bible Institute without
flinching. The key line in that statement is “ARTICLE II The
Bible, including both the Old and the New Testaments, is a
divine revelation, the original autographs of which were
verbally inspired by the Holy Spirit. (2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Peter
1:21).”
Note is says, the original autographs not the
English version that we have. With over 120 modern English
translations and paraphrases of the Bible it would be
impossible to say that they are all the inspired Word of God
or that any one of them is the inspired Word of God. Yet, in
a wonderful way, they all really are the inspired Word of God
because the original language that it was written in is too
ambiguous to render in a word for word translation. Therein
lies my lifelong passion, to study not only every chapter,
every verse and every line, but to also study every word and
letter of the Bible for I believe that every word and every
letter as found in the original autographs are inspired by the
Holy Spirit and I have become obsessed with studying as many
words and letters of the Bible that I can during this life
time.
Let me give you an example. In Deuteronomy 7:12 the second
word in this verse in Hebrew is eiqev which is rendered in the
KJV as it shall come to pass. Some modern English translations
render this as, listen, pay attention, obey, after you have
heard, it shall happen, it has been, to name just a few
renderings. The word itself means because or on account of.
All the renderings by our many translations are correct. The
translators may render eiqev with different words but it all
means the same thing. The message remains unchanged.
Now here is what the Jewish rabbis and sages do that we
Christians do not do. We honor the Masoretic text and use it
as the basis of our translation, but we do recognize that the
Masoretic text, written 700 years after the birth of Christ is
not the inspired autograph. The inspired autographs no longer
exist or have not yet been found. We do know, however, that
Hebrew writing, at the time of the original autographs had no
vowels, it only used consonants. Three of these consonants
were used as vowels but that hardly offered us the precise
expression that the Masoretic text gave us. The Masoretic text
developed a series of dots and dashes to express the finer
grammatical points of the Hebrew language. These finer points
help us to distinguish whether the three consonants for eiqev
found in ancient text (Ayin, Qof and Beth) express a noun,
conjunction or an adverb. Oddly, the Masoretic text puts a
qammets underneath the Ayin and not a sere’. The ‘sere makes
it an adverb which would then render this as because, on
account of, pay attention, listen etc. But the qammets, which
the Masoretic text uses makes it a noun. This is the same
root from which we get the word Jacob. It means in its noun
form a heel or the hoof of a horse. In its Persian and
Akkadian form it means the rear of an army.
Now we as Christians just look at the word, say it is an
adverb, praise the Lord,
let’s move on. Not so with the
Jewish sages and rabbis, they believe every word is inspired
by the Holy Spirit in all its grammatical forms. “Ok,” some
ancient sages may say, “It is an adverb, we got that, but
what is God trying to tell us when this word is used as a
noun. Huh? Hey? One dimensional Western cultured Christian,
did you think about that?”
“Ridiculous,” we say, “In our
Bible colleges and seminaries we teach that the word heel or
horse hoof or even the rear of an army has nothing to do with
keeping the judgments of God. Come on, don’t be so unacademic
and reading into or sermonizing this text.”
But you see the sages and rabbis didn’t care about academics,
they cared about what God was saying, they wanted to know
every little bit of detail in what God was trying to say.
Some ancient rabbis teach that the heel, the horses hoof, the
rear of an army are not given much attention yet we are to
apply God’s ordinances even to those areas of our lives to
which we pay little attention. Perhaps God is saying we are
to trample the ordinances with our heel that is to break them
down into its finest detail and examine it piece by piece. Or
perhaps, like the heel is insignificant to other parts of our
body we are still to pay attention to for without the heel we
would not be able to walk. Perhaps God is saying we should pay
attention to even the seemingly insignificance parts of his
ordinances, for without them we would not be able to walk with
God.
I can see the sages shaking their fist at us Christians
saying, “Just an adverb indeed, mashugana, God inspired His
Word without vowels because He has a message for us with his
Words being used as verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions
and nouns, modern Hebrew syntax – a pox be upon you.”
Oh, just a footnote here. One rabbi actually counted all the
Hebrew words in the ten commandments and then calculated the
numerical value of the word eiqev and both came to 172. I
know, big deal, no message there, God didn’t design it that
way, just a coincidence, we’re sermonizing again. Right!(?)