Leviticus 26:12 I will walk among you and be your God, and you shall be My people. I was curious to know what word was used for walk, so I went into the Hebrew translation to find out (Blue Letter Bible – it’s awesome!). What I found was kind of cool, but it didn’t have much to do with walk. Essentially, from the words I’m given (the major nouns, verbs, etc. – no prepositions, etc.) the verse says: Go/walk between/among to exist as God to exist nation/kindred. Yup, there are a lot of “small” words missing. So, the “I” and “you” are implied in the formation of the word, which I can’t read because I don’t know Hebrew. I take for granted that they’re correct. What I thought was interesting is that the word used for “My people” translates to nation or kindred. It was the kindred part that made me think. When I read this verse, I usually see it in a proprietary way. Like God is walking among His people surveying His property. But if I use a word like kindred it makes me see the phrase “my people” differently. Now God is walking among family and countrymen. “We the people of the United States…” That’s how our Declaration of Independence starts. The people in this country are my people. Collectively we are a nation. My family are also my people because I come from their line, we love each other, and there are bonds there that are special. In society today we often refer to the friends we hang around with as my people (or sometimes, as with my students “my peeps”). It puts a different spin on Gd’s relationship with His people. He’s not necessarily looking down on them and surveying what He owns. He’s walking among them and between them. They are His people – His nation, His family, His friends. He is Gd, and yet He loves us and enjoys spending time with us. He makes a promise to the people of Israel that if they will keep His Torah and walk in His ways then He will make the land and them fruitful, He will walk among them, and they will be His people. I like that spin.
Leviticus 19:19 ‘You shall keep My statutes. You shall not let your livestock breed with another kind. You shall not sow your field with mixed seed. Nor shall a garment of mixed linen and wool come upon you. Okay, I get the livestock bit and mixed seed bit, but I have never understood the last part. Why does it matter what type of wool or linen or what I wear. Wool is from sheep, linen is from something that’s grown (I think). Why is it wrong to mix them. So, I tried to look at the Hebrew and I found something weird. The phrase “come upon you” is from the word ” ‘alah” and it doesn’t mean anything that could be construed as “to be worn.” It means (among many other things of a similar nature), to go up, ascend, climb, to be taken away, to bring against, to train, to offer as a gift, to exalt, to be inserted in, to lift oneself… none of these have anything to do with wearing garments of mixed linen and wool. Also interesting is the fact that the Hebrew word translated as garment is “beged” which means two things: garment and treachery or deceit. What?! What a weird diversity of meaning! I still don’t get it. The text seems to say that a garment (or treachery/deceit) of linen and wool should not be exalted or lifted up or taken away. Ai! This is when I wish I had access to other books to see what rabbis or other scholars who can actually read Hebrew have said. Is there something in the pictographic history of the word that explains this? Or is there something in the structure of the sentence? I’m going to have to read more. But it’s an interesting problem. Probably not really relevant, except in wondering if we do wear clothes of mixed linen/wool. Of course, if the verse isn’t about wearing them, then even that question is irrelevant. Man! I feel like Neo after he takes the red pill in the Matrix and realizes that everything he knows to be true is all imaginary! As fascinating as it is to learn all of this, it’s disconcerting to wonder how much of what I believed to be proper and true (based on the Bible) is really part of tradition started by Constantine in an effort to separate the Messianic Jewish sect from the Jewish people in order to create a state religion. Ultimately, God has used His people, even if our way of worship isn’t Biblical and even if some of our ways of thinking have been distorted or misled. He works despite our limited capabilities. I have to believe that He sees my heart and knows that I genuinely want to worship Him and please Him even if I’m not always sure about how to do that.
Psalm 28:7 (HNV) The LORD is my strength and my shield. My heart has trusted in him, and I am helped. Therefore my heart greatly rejoices. With my song I will thank him. I found a new version of the Bible on the Blue Letter Bible that I use when I read online. It’s called the Hebrew Names Version. I think it’s also called the Messianic Jewish Bible. It uses common Hebrew phrases in the place of some of the words. I also found a really cool tool – I can look at the Hebrew text and see what the words are in Hebrew. However, the salt of this is that the translation I get for the word is just that, a translation. It isn’t the image associated with the word, and sometimes our translated equivalent isn’t quite right because it takes a paragraph to really get the word’s true meaning conveyed. But, it’s interesting nonetheless. I found when I looked at it that “therefore” isn’t used. According to the Hebrew text it just says “My heart.” After listening to Skip’s teaching on the Hebrew World View I’ve also learned that leb (the Hebrew word for heart) doesn’t just mean our literal heart; it also means the mind and emotions and spirit. So, the heart that rejoices here is really the writer’s whole self. Maybe the “therefore” is implied because of the placement of the phrase? I went back and tried to match the symbols they had for each word with the picture of the textual sentence and also noticed that there seemed to be words that weren’t translated (or maybe they were variations on the translated words given – due to tenses or placement). And, the words weren’t necessarily translated in the same order as the original text (at least that’s how it seemed to my VERY untrained eye). I’d imagine that if I actually learned Hebrew, then a lot of these issues would go away because I would understand the grammatical side of things (like, for example, the Hebrew way of writing puts the important stuff first and the less important stuff later). Anyway, all the technicalities aside, I like the image here. God is a shield, my strength. A shield does nothing on the floor, and cannot protect me if I choose not to stand behind it. It’s the same thing with God. He loves me and wants to be my shield, but I have to choose to stand in His protection. That means two things – first, I have to be close to Him so that I am surrounded and within the radius of the shield, and two, I have to trust that shield not to let anything through. I think that’s a lot of the point of knowing God. Stay close to Him, be where He is, work where He works, and trust Him, that He is Holy and good and loving. When I start wandering off to look at rabbit trails and daisies, I get hurt because I’m no longer under the protective shield of God. Similarly, when I don’t trust Him I’m likely to try to find something else to shield myself with (not a good idea because nothing is as strong and true – I’m ultimately building an idol) or I’m likely to try and start dodging bullets out in the open (how I figure this is a better plan is beyond me). I think a lot of my tendency to move away from my shield stems from a desire to be in control (a Greek mindset) and a failure to recognize and truly understand the nature of God and His love for me. And maybe that is much of the purpose of reading His Words and listening to His voice – to learn and understand who He is (or at least as much as my fragile mind can handle).
2 Corinthians 2:12 And God has actually given us his Spirit (not the world’s spirit) so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us. I was reading a book by Skip Moen last night where he explains parts of the Bible in the context of the Hebrew world instead of the Greek. The Bible was written from a Hebrew context but translated into Greek later (I think). The problem arises when we try to understand the Bible from a Greek point of view because, as Skip points out, the Greek and Hebrew points of view are fundamentally different. The Greek point of view revolves around man and man’s ability to think and reason. The Hebrew point of view revolves around God and His ability to reason and do. Skip makes a chart for comparison purposes of some of the different ways this is shown in scripture and in the choice of words. It’s really interesting, because it’s something I hadn’t thought of before. I mention all this now because my first reaction when I read this verse was to focus on the last part where it mentions the wonderful things God has freely given us. Cool! Free stuff! And then I thought, I’ll bet that verse isn’t talking about stuff. At least, it’s not stuff in the sense of something I can touch. I think that free stuff is more like the Holy Spirit. It’s love and salvation, spiritual gifts, fruit of the spirit, etc. Sure, there might be some other, more tangible, stuff mixed in, but that’s not the whole point of the verse. I know I get so focused on material needs and wants that I forget that in the Hebrew world view, it was about God and the Spirit and His gifts – material and immaterial. We think Greek. The Bible thinks Hebrew. It’s a miracle we understand it at all. Although, I guess that’s why we have the Holy Spirit. When He speaks to us and moves in us, it’s like a translator shifting our minds from one way of thinking to another. That way we can shift our focus from ourselves and our lofty opinions of what we can do to God and how little we can do without Him.