Bible Geek Word Nerd - Comfort Ye, My People

Comfort

June 20, 2022

We’ve been away for too, too long. Working on some new stuff, but all the while working on some cool Hebrew and Greek words (we cannot read the Psalms without translating the terms – it’s like an addiction).

 

We’re going to take a break from Genesis 1 and beginnings and jump to a word that has been inspired by a friend’s great loss. Her son has become a widower, and she is grieving. Death stalks all of us, until our Lord comes again. And our friend has suffered a devastating, almost inexplicable loss. Parents should not gieve at the death of their children. That is disordered. But our friend lives that disorder and suffers greatly.

 

Our prayer for her is that the G-d of all comfort will comfort her. And the word we wish to look at is the Hebrew word for “comfort”: NACHAM (נָחַם) which means to be sorry or to console oneself.

 

NACHAM occurs over 100 times in the Hebrew Bible as a verb, most famously in Isaiah 40, which occurrence should ear worm us with Handel’s “Messiah”:

 

“Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.”

 

The context of the verse of a powerful promise of forgiveness and restoration, not to mention a promise to the Coming One who puts an end to death itself. And at the end of the chapter comes the ultimate promise:

 

“but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”

 

Our friend’s suffering does not magically end with the words from Isaiah. But the G-d of all comfort, who enjoins His people to be comforted, can bring TANCHUM (תַּנְחוּם), which is a noun form of “consolation” or “comfort”.

 

Death is a monster. But “be of good cheer”, the Master says. He has conquered death.