And she's buying a stairway to heaven
In late 1971, English rock band Led Zeppelin released one of the greatest rock songs ever written or played, “Stairway to Heaven”. Nearly eight minutes in length, the song is beautifully crafted and magnificently played, with three movements, from folk to classic guitar rock, slowly rising to its crescendoing climax.
It would be a fair question to ask what Robert Plant and Jimmy Page’s composition has to do with Bible words. Well read on, good friend! Read on!
We have been talking about Samson, and have been exploring several of the words from this passage in the Book of Judges:
Now see to it that you DRINK no WINE
or other FERMENTED DRINK and that you do not EAT anything UNCLEAN. YOU WILL BECOME PREGNANT
and HAVE A SON whose HEAD is never TO BE TOUCHED by a razor because the boy is to
be a NAZIRITE, DEDICATED to God from the WOMB. He will take the lead in DELIVERING
Israel from the HANDS of the Philistines.'
Judges 13:4-5
Today, let’s take a look at the phrase (from the NIV) “his head is never to be touched by a razor”, but with a focus on the verb. The NASB, ESV, Amp, and KJV translate the Hebrew phrase as “no razor shall come upon (or “on”) his head”. The HCS and NLT simply say, “his hair must never be cut”. It is clear from these various translations what the point of this phrase is, but it’s interesting what different choices the translators have made to describe this simple prohibition. There is a mysterious choice of Hebrew the author has made in crafting this phrase, and that Hebraic mystery might say more to us than the simple act of not cutting hair suggests.
There are many, many words in the Hebrew lexicon that mean “to cut”. Pair any of them with the Hebrew for “no” (e.g., LO, AL, AYIN), and you say “do not cut” as the NLT says it. The author had choices to convey the plain meaning (PSHAT) of “do not cut his hair”. But we are suggesting there might be some symbolic meaning that we miss with the plain wording of English.
Here are some of the words for “to cut” which the author chose not to use in this expression:
KARATH (כָּרַת) – “to cut, cut off, cut down”, 289 uses in the Hebrew Bible; it is the verb behind the expression “make a covenant” because to do that, one has to cut up an animal. The expression literally means “to cut a covenant”.
On that day the Lord MADE
a covenant with Abram and said, ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the
Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates…
Genesis 15:18 NIV
QATSATS (קָצַץ) – “to cut off, cut in two”; 14 occurrences, including this one which is about cutting hair:
Egypt, Judah, Edom, the sons of Ammon,
Moab, and all who dwell in the desert that CUT
the corners of their hair; for all these nations are uncircumcised, and all the
house of Israel is uncircumcised in heart.”
Jeremiah 9:26 RSV
NATHACH (נָתַח) – it can mean “to cut”, but most often, it means to cut into pieces or divide:
[Saul] took a
yoke of oxen, and cut them in pieces
and sent them throughout all the territory of Israel by the hand of messengers,
saying, “Whoever does not come out after Saul and Samuel, so shall it be done
to his oxen!” Then the dread of the Lord fell
upon the people, and they came out as one man.
1 Samuel 11:7
GAZAR (גָּזַר) – “to cut, divide”
So he went with them. And when they came to the Jordan, they CUT DOWN trees.
2 Kings 6:4
GADA (גָּדַע) – “to hew, hew down, cut, cut off”
“I will go before you and level the mountains, I will break in pieces the doors
of bronze and CUT ASUNDER the
bars of iron…”
Isaiah 45:2
Each of these verbs could have worked in the phrase, but the author did not choose them for some reason. He chose a different verb, coupled with the rarely used noun for “razor” (MOWRAH (מוֹרָה) always used in conjunction with a vow of this nature). Nothing the LORD does is random or haphazard. His Holy Spirit chose the verb with deliberate intent, which might tell us something about this particular Text and the deeper purpose of this separation to G-d.
The Hebrew verb in question is ALAH (עָלָה), which sounds exactly as you think it sounds (as the Arabic name of the god is Islam). The homophonic closeness of the two words is not surprising. ALAH, as a Hebrew verb, means “to ascend, to go up, to climb”. It is used 888 times in the Hebrew Bible, beginning on the second page of the Text:
…but
a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the
ground…
Genesis 2:6
ALAH is the verb related to travel. People “go up” to Jerusalem because of its elevation, including ways that strike modern readers as odd:
but ‘As the Lord lives who BROUGHT
UP the people of Israel out of the north country and out of
all the countries where he had driven them.’ For I will bring them back to
their own land which I gave to their fathers.
Jeremiah 16:15
ALAH sounds odd in this context because we are accustomed to modern maps, where travelers come DOWN from the North, and UP from the South. But obviously, the ancients did not have maps with an overhead perspective to study. They had sunrise and sunset for their orientation and the heights of hills to give them perspective. To reach Jerusalem or any high place, you must ascend (ALAH). This notion lies behind Psalms 120 – 134, which are called “songs of Ascent” (MA ALAH – what comes up) – you ascend to reach Jerusalem.
ALAH is the verb in the famous passage about the Shining One (sometimes translated as Morning Star – son of the dawn):
You said in
your heart, ‘I WILL ASCEND to heaven; ABOVE the stars of G-d I will set my throne on high; I will sit on the mount of
assembly in the far
north; I WILL
ASCEND ABOVE the heights of the clouds, I will make myself like the Most
High.’
Isaiah 14:13-14
In Genesis 28:12, the angels of G-d ASCENDED to the Heavens in Jacob’s dream (a stairway to Heaven – one imagines Robert Plant’s vocals). In Genesis 35:13, G-d Himself ASCENDED from Jacob. In Exodus 2:23, the prayers of G-d’s people ASCENDED to G-d. And Moshe ASCENDED the Mountain of G-d to meet with the LORD there throughout the TORAH.
The verb is obviously flexible in its use, meaning much more than “ascend” and similar English words. For instance, how do translators make sense of ALAH in this context?
Every animal
that parts the hoof and has the hoof cloven in two, and CHEWS the cud,
among the animals, you may eat. Yet of those that CHEW the cud or have the hoof cloven
you shall not eat these: the camel, the
hare, and the rock badger, because they CHEW
the cud but do not part the hoof, are unclean for you.
Deuteronomy 14:6-7
It does not make sense until you consider cow or ruminant biology, and why they chew the cud. Cows eat fibrous grass and hay, which are actually quite difficult to digest. The first section of the cow’s stomach has a bacteria called rumen, which break down the fibrous grass and hay into what we call cud. The cud is regurgitated – that is, it ASCENDS up the digestive track – into the cow’s mouth, where she chews it again, before sending it back to her stomach to complete digestion. The cud ASCENDS…which explains ALAH in the nine verses in Leviticus and Deuteronomy translated as “chew the cud”.
ALAH can also mean “offer”, as it does in Genesis, when Abraham prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac.
He said, “Take
your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Mori′ah,
and OFFER
him there as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains of which I shall tell
you.”
And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a
ram, caught in a thicket by his horns; and Abraham went and took the ram, and OFFERED IT UP as a
burnt offering instead of his son.
Genesis 22:2,13
ALAH is also “to offer” in several other passages in the TORAH: Genesis 8:20, Exodus 30:9, Exodus 32:6, Exodus 40:29, and more.
Now let’s return to the question of why the author of Judges chose ALAH in this passage instead of another verb that means “to cut”. It seems that the answer might lie in ALAH’s association with that which is above us.
In ancient cosmogony, the Israelites imagined a three-part universe. There is the land – HA ERETS (הָאָֽרֶץ) – where man and all created life dwells. Then there is the underworld – SHEOL (שְׁאוֹל) – the place of the dead, which is under the land. And finally, there is the Heavenly space – HA SHAMAYIM (הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם) – where the gods and G-d dwell. Each space is divided from the others. Created life is separated from the Heavenly realm by the RAQIA (רָקִיעַ). SHEOL is separated from ERETS by the ground.
Things that ASCEND – smoke, vapors, Moses up the mountain, angels on ladders – move closer to G-d’s space in the Heavenly realm. It seems that the author of Judges wants to draw our attention more to LIFTING a blade to the Nazirite’s head than he does to the act of cutting. He wants to remind us, in subtle ways, that the Nazirite – Samson in particular – is devoted to Him who dwells in the Heavenly spaces.
Connecting ALAH with ROSH, one does not approach that summit
because it is Holy (QADOSH) and set apart. One does not simply buy a stairway to Heaven...
