Bible Geek Word Nerd - the Hope of the Nations

 Hope, #1

 June 29, 2022

One of our favorite concepts in Scripture is the idea of “hope”. Hope is less certain, less convinced, than faith is. The old preacher Doug Wead used to say that hope is adolescent faith…faith that has not yet grown up. We see it in Paul’s writing:

 

“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” 1 Corinthians 13.

 

The English word “hope” is from a Proto-Germanic word “hopon”, which in Old English became “hopa”. In the Old English, etymologists will tell us that it means “confidence in the future” or the “expectation of something desired”, even “wishful desire”.

 

In the language of Jesus’s Bible, there are three Hebrew words which the English translators render as “hope”: YACHAL (יָחַל), SAVAR (שָׂבַר), and QAVA (קָוָה), with a wildcard fourth word, NAVAT (נָבַט). The simple English “hope”, which seems so familiar conceptually, has rich precedents in the Hebrew.

 

Let’s take these one at a time, for the sake of keeping these posts manageable.

 First look at QAVA (because it’s the first one we learned in our study of Hebrew). For what it’s worth, QAVAH is unrelated (insofar as we know) to the fabulous Mediterranean culinary brand, CAVA, though everytime we think of CAVA, we hope for a chance to eat there.

 

Fundamentally, QAVA means “to wait for”. For instance, in Genesis 49:18: “I wait for Your salvation, Lord.” It occurs 49 times in the Hebrew Bible, the majority of those occurrences being translated as “wait” (which, as Tom Petty would tell you, is the hardest part).

But the origin of the word is very interesting (at least it is to us).

 

Hebrew scholars tell us that the word derives from an earlier root which means “twist” or “stretch”. QAVAH gives us TIQVAH and MIQVEH. It is a TIQVAH that Rahab uses to demonstrate her house is the one that gave refufe to the Hebrew spies in Jericho. (Joshua 2:18: “unless, when we enter the land, you have tied this scarlet CORD (TIQVAH) in the window through which you let us down, and unless you have brought your father and mother, your brothers and all your family into your house.”)

 

One can imagine Rahab and her family letting down the scarlet TIQVAH and then waiting (QAVAH) in anticipation of their deliverance from the destruction promised to Jericho.