WORD STUDY – BLOOD IS THICKER
THAN WATER
John 15:12-14, “ This is my commandment, That ye love one
another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than
this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my
friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you.”
I was reading in the Aramaic Bible this morning and I ran
across these verses. I find when I am reading the Word of God
in one of the Biblical languages it helps me to really focus
on things you would not normally consider when are just
reading a familiar passage in the English. What struck me is
the Aramaic word that we render as love and the word for
friend.
In the Greek the word use for love is agape which we all know
is an unconditional love and the word in the Greek that is
rendered as friend is philon which in our modern Western
thinking is a friendship type of love. However, according to a
recent dialogue between Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and
the Pope they agreed that Jesus spoke Aramaic and used Hebrew
as a ceremonial language. So according to these two experts
it is more than likely Jesus spoke the words in John 15:12-14
in Aramaic. The Aramaic Bible uses the word chav for love and
the word racham for friend. However, both chav and racham
could parallel the Greek word agape. These two words actually
break agape down into two levels. There is no direct parallel
in the Greek for chav and racham, agape is the only word in
Greek that you could use. However, the scribes who translated
this into the Greek needed to show a difference so they did
the best they could by using the Greek word philon for the
Aramaic word racham.
It is curious because racham is a
greater love than chav. We have no English equivalent for
racham just as the Greek has no English equivalent. We call
racham tender mercies.
In the Song of Solomon 4:9 Solomon refers to his bride as his
sister. I know that sounds creepy in our culture to call your
bride your sister, but in a Semitic culture this is the
highest compliment a man can give his bride. In Genesis 20
when Abraham introduces his wife Sarah as his sister to King
Abimelech he was not necessarily lying although deceit was his
intention. However, in the Semitic culture it was not unusual
to call your wife your sister. In our culture if a man were
to call his wife his sister, she would be a bit upset because
you chose your wife but you did not choose who would be your
sister. However, we have a saying, Blood is thicker than water
which suggest that your family bonds are tighter than that of
your friends or even your spouse. Actually, we have the saying
backwards as it really means the blood of a covenant is
thicker than the water of the womb, but be that as it may, in
most cultures, even ours, we look upon family ties as much
stronger than friendship and even marriage. You can get a
divorce and end a marriage but you cannot end the bond of a
brother or sister, you are joined together by blood. You might
not get along, you might even hate each other, but you are
still brother or sister. There is a blood bond that can never
be broken. So when Solomon called his bride his sister, he was
telling her that she was not only his bride, his chosen, but
his beloved forever, like with a sister nothing would break
that bond between them.
So the Greek word philon serves it purpose in these verses in
John if we consider the proper rendering for philon as not
friendship love but brotherly love. Greater love has no man
than this that to lay down his life for one he has brotherly
love, that is one that he is bonded to like a brother. That
really fits the word racham, for it does represent a tender
love as well as a love that is bonded like that of a family
member. The problem in this verse is not the use of the Greek
word philon for the Aramaic word racham, it is the English
word friend that is the problem. In our culture a friend has
really been watered down. Today you can go on Face Book and
with the click of a mouse just click up a whole bunch of
friends or you can unfriend with just a click of a mouse. We
have so watered down the word friend that we have taken on the
Semitic practice of calling someone a brother or bro to
indicate that this friendship is special, not simply hoody
doo friendship.
Sorority members refer to each other as
sisters which means they may have other friends on a college
campus but if your sorority sister needs help, you abandon
your other friends in favor of this sorority sister.
Given our flippant use of the word friend today I would
suggest that rendering the Greek word philon and the Aramaic
word racham as simply friend would no longer be a proper
rendering in our society today. We can no longer say philon
is friendship love as we have really blasted the heck out of
that word. We must return to the Eastern Semitic understanding
of philon as brotherly love.
Thus, to put this passage into modern English as we would
better understand, we should render this as “This is my
commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his
life for his beloved. Ye are my beloved if ye do whatsoever I
command you.”
Here is the crux of the issue. In the context of this passage
Jesus was instructing his disciples on their relationship to
each other after He has left them. They were to love each
other with the bonding of a brother, a blood relative. But
Jesus was also playing the good rabbi in laying down double
meaning with an important message. He loved us so much that he
considered us a racham, a blood relative, a brother or a
sister and he was going to confirm this blood relationship by
shedding his own blood for us.
Think of it, we can become a racham, a blood relative of Jesus
Christ Himself. We can become his child, his brother, his
sister, a relationship that cannot be divorced, and a
relationship that is eternal simply by saying to Jesus, “Yes,
I want to be your racham your brother or sister by blood.”
With that relationship, the blood of a covenant is indeed
thicker than the water of a womb. We are not just born again
into the family of God we are made a blood brother or sister
of Jesus.