The Wisdom Of Hebrew Words
The Hebrew words of the Bible are incredibly rich not only because of their history but also because of their meaning. Like all languages, words have meaning and are used to communicate; the Hebrew alphabet has a fascinating history and progression, originally the Hebrew characters were symbols and over the centuries they’ve changed form until they’ve resulted in the Hebrew alphabet that was used for the writing down of the Hebrew Scriptures. Modern Hebrew is only slightly varied from the ancient Hebrew which is attested by modern Hebrew speakers who can read the ancient manuscripts without an inordinate amount of difficulty.
One of the exciting facets of Hebrew for a Bible student is the gaining of deepened understanding of the Scripture.
A few months ago Steve Monro and I looked quite deeply at the meaning of Shema which is mostly translated to mean ‘hear’ which is true, but shema is also the same verb used to mean ‘obey.’ When you look at the phrase in Deut 6:4-5 that says ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord is God, the Lord is One. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might,’ God is not simply calling His people to ‘listen’ with their ears to hear Him speak to them, He is saying “listen to what I’m telling you and obey Me”. ‘Hear’ means ‘obey.’
It’s like when you’re trying to explain something to a child and they just won’t give you their attention, so you hold them by the shoulders and look straight into their eyes and say, “Will you please listen to me!!!” – what you’re communicating to the child is for them to stop being distracted, give you their full attention and listen to your instructions because you expect them to obey you.
Now the NC Scriptures were written in Greek so the Word of God could be easily assimilated throughout the known world which predominantly spoke Greek, but when you consider Jesus’ words to the seven churches in Revelation 2 & 3 where He said, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches,” you realise that His intention was to call those churches to heed what He said to them and obey Him. He didn’t want them to simply hear a message of encouragement, He wanted them to act on His words be they words of rebuke and correction or words of encouragement and approval.
If we hear the words ‘remembering’ or ‘knowing’ we tend to think of an exercise of the mind, but the Hebrew verbs for “remembering” and “knowing” have something in common in that they encompass physical actions too.
In the book Walking in the Dust of Rabbi Jesus, Lois Tverberg explains it well. She says that many verbs in Hebrew that we think of as only mental activities often encompass their expected physical result.
To “remember” can mean “to act on someone’s behalf.” For example, in Genesis 8:1 it says that “God remembered Noah, every living thing and all the livestock with him in the ark; so God caused a wind to pass over the earth and the water began to go down.” God didn’t just wake up one morning and suddenly recall that an ark was out bobbing around somewhere. He “remembered” Noah by coming to his rescue.
To “know” another person is to have a relationship with them, to care about them, even to be intimate with them. When Adam “knew” Eve, she conceived Cain so in this instance, the word ‘knew’ is talking about the physical union between Adam and his wife Eve. (Genesis 4:1)
Hebrew verbs stress action and effect, rather than just mental activity but this isn’t only unique to Hebrew. Lorrie Anderson is a New Covenant translator in Peru who searched for months to find a word for “believe” in the Candoshi language because there was no direct equivalent that existed in Candoshi for that all-important term in Bible translation.
What she finally discovered was that the word “hear” in Candoshi also means “believe” and “obey.”
Lorrie Anderson said that the question, “Don’t you hear His Word?” in Candoshi means “Don’t you believe-obey His Word?” In their way of thinking, if you “hear” you believe what you hear, and if you believe, you obey. These are not separate ideas in Candoshi and Hebrew as they are in English.
She and other Bible translators have shared the same observation. They often struggle to find words for mental activities that we see as all-important, but simply don’t exist in indigenous languages where thought is tied explicitly to an expected physical or practical outcome or action of obedience.
This is why it’s so incredibly important for believers in the west to dig into the Hebrew words, Hebrew culture and context so that the intended meaning and intention of the words can be understood correctly and then acted upon according to the original expection.
It’s our Western perspective that blocks our understanding. Many of our Greek cultural ancestors, like Plato, considered the mental world all-important and physical reality as worthless. As a result, our culture tends to exalt our intellect as critical and discount our actions as insignificant. Some of us even see actions as “dead works” that are irrelevant and maybe even opposed to faith.
The logic of Hebrew realizes that an action should result from what is in our minds. If you “remember” someone, you will act on their behalf. If you “hear” someone, you will obey their words. If you “know” someone, you will have a close and maybe even an intimate relationship with them.
Hebrew realizes that the longest twelve inches that your faith has to move is from your head to your heart and once your faith makes that move, it naturally comes out through your hands and feet.
How many times have we battled over the ‘faith vs works’ debate? In many ways, we’ve become so fearful that doing any kind of work is evidence that we’ve fallen under the law and away from faith. But James said that ‘Faith by itself, unaccompanied by actions, is dead. But someone will say that you have faith and I have actions. Show me this faith of yours without actions, and I will show you my faith BY my actions.’
I remember having a chat with an orthodox Rabbi in his little shop in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem, we always call in to see him when we’re there, he has some of the most beautiful Scripture and Biblical artworks, and he is very open to talking and studying the Bible with Christians. He knows the NC – chapter and verse – better than the overwhelming majority of Christians, and he shared with me about how confusing he finds Paul who constantly championed ‘faith’ not works despite the fact that he himself was constantly doing things to serve God and the church body; and how much he (and other curious Jews) love James because James explains the importance of a practical outworking of faith. If there is no practical outworking of faith, then there probably isn’t any faith there at all.
The Rabbi understood what Paul meant when he said saved by faith not by works, but couldn’t comprehend how anyone who claims faith in God can remain work-less. How can anyone looking on know of a person’s faith if there are no actions to go with it? A practical and physical response to faith in God has been the primary foundation of Judaism throughout the centuries…unfortunately an over-emphasis on works to be sure – but for the Jew, belief and trust in God is synonymous with obedient action.
Now Judaism today is nothing like the Judaism given to Moses who then taught it to his people and by Yeshua’s day, Judaism had become bloated and top heavy with corrupted legalism and a myriad of man-made traditions which were and are still wrong. It’s even more-so today because without a Temple and the sacrificial system, there’s no way for religious Jew to obey the commands laid out so Judaism adapted and came up with a temple-less, sacrifice-less system works-righteousness system. So I am not endorsing Judaism at all.
My emphasis is about our faith being practical and physical as much as it is spiritual. The Greek/Western mind thinks intellectually, analytically and philosophically while the Hebrew/Eastern mind thinks literally, practically, physically while at the same time stretching and expanding the intellect. Information and knowledge is gained for the purpose of living and serving and obeying not merely to become more knowledgeable.
An example would be some of the different educational institutions in Australia; some courses in some institutions provide the student with an incredible amount of knowledge and information and some institutions are competency based. In other words, some courses indicate that by the end of the course the student will know all they need to know about a particular subject and will have particular degrees at the conclusion; where as other institutions indicate that the student will have knowledge of a subject and will be able to perform x, y, z tasks by the end of the course. In other words, they’ll have been taught practical hands-on skills to accompany their knowledge rather than just obtaining knowledge.
The Hebrew words in our Bible are packed with depth and richness not just to provide us with knowledge and information but with a call to practical living, service and worship of God.
Shalom
Based on the writings of Lois Tverberg
