Bible Geek Word Nerd - Expelled

The Expelled

September 8, 2022

SHALOM! Peace be unto you.

 

The Summer has been…interesting. And it is time to renew this page. We have left things unfinished. Certainly, you have been waiting with bated breath for this very post, our first in nearly two months. August was a whopper of a month. But the doldrums have passed and we are, like Richard Nixon said, “Tanned, rested, and ready.” Except, we are not really tanned. And there’s been too much activity and too little vacation to be rested. But we are indeed ready to rumble.

 

We know we left off in a series about the Hebrew words for “to say” (and there have been many detours along that journey). This post will also be a detour. The “to say” series has three more posts (or three more words). But hang tight for this little sidebar. Don’t cast us out!

 

Hey, that leads us right to the sidebar! Talk about segue!

 

There are two Hebrew words for “to cast out” or “expel”: YARASH (יָרַשׁ) and GARASH (גָּרַשׁ). It’s nice that they rhyme. YARASH is by far the more popular verb in the Text, occurring 231 times to GARASH’s 47 instances. This is most likely due to YARASH having more shades of meaning. In addition to “cast out”, it means “take possession of” and its opposite “dispossess”.

 

 

 

So in Numbers 21, the children of Israel dispossessed the Amorites (verse 32) and took possession of their land (verse 35). Same verb, different renderings in English.

GARASH, though, is the word that interests us here. 

 

It first appears in Genesis 3:24 during the saddest, most tragic story in Scripture. “And He DROVE OUT the man…” from the Garden of Eden. Next, it is the verb Cain uses to describe what G-d has done to him: “Today you are driving me from the land” (Gen 4:14). In Exodus 6, G-d tells Moshe that Pharoah will “DRIVE OUT” from Egypt the children of Israel, because of G-d’s might hand.

 

It’s later in Exodus – after Pharaoh drove them out – where we want to focus your attention because the word has significant implications for understanding the context of Jesus’ story.

Exodus 23:28 tells us: “ I will send the hornet ahead of you to DRIVE OUT of your way the Hivites, Canaanites, and Hittites.” Exodus 33:2 says, “I will send an angel before you and drive out the Canaanites, Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites.”

 

All the “ites” living in the Promised Land will be expelled from the land. Where would they go? It is a question the Jews asked themselves, and in Jesus’ day, they answered it. The Galilean Jews of Jesus’ day assumed that all of the expelled “ites” drifted northeast across the Jordan to settle in that “far country” (see the Prodigal Son parable for that term). They called the land across the Jordan the territory of the GERASHIM (the expelled ones).

Those Six Nations driven out variously by the hornet and G-d’s Angel settled across the Sea of Galilee.

 

So, now read Mark 5 and Luke 8 about the demon-possessed man living across the Sea of Galilee. Consider how Greek (and English) have twisted the Hebrew name of YESHUA to become Jesus. Is it possible that the region of the GERASENES is supposed to be the region of the GARASHIM?

 

Maybe this offers a little insight into your understanding of that story.

 

(IMAGE: Grace Lutheran Church, Pasadena, CA)