Bible Geek Word Nerd - Obsessions

 March 16, 2023

The long, slow march through Jeremiah (will continue later)

 

This cozy corner of Facebook started as a way to express our love for the languages of the Bible, Hebrew in particular. At first, we thought about translating some words and writing some devotional thoughts about them, much like Lois Tverberg has done in her excellent “Listening to the Language of the Bible”. Except that is precisely what Tverberg has already done. It would be redundant.

 

It has become apparent, however, that whatever its original intent, this Facebook page has really become more of a harmless, victim-free outlet for our obsessive-compulsive attachment to translating English Text into Hebrew or Greek as we read along. We write these posts to avoid boring innocent family members to tears or death. Knowing that our obsession does not suit all tastes – or even any tastes – we confine our comments to this cozy corner of Facebook. And nobody gets hurt!  Except maybe the writers.

 

 

 

Yes, we realize that at times we appear a little “off”, a bit too obsessive when speaking or when writing these posts, like conspiracy theorists ranting about the Great Reset or UFOs. So in polite company, we bite the tongue. Often, we maintain silence and smile politely when someone mispronounces a Hebrew. And we retreat to this cozy corner to write a post.

 

We will return to the walk through Jeremiah (we are in chapter 3) in just a bit.

Bible Geek Word Nerd - Jeremiah 3 - Prostitutes and Lovers

A long, slow crawl through Jeremiah
Jeremiah 3: Prostitutes, Lovers

March 15, 2023
(four minute read)

 

If finishing something is important to you, let us advise you to move along to a different page. We will not finish. Because the Text is never really finished. You read through a book or a chapter today, and it means one thing. Read it next week, and it means something

different. The proverb has it that you never step into the same river twice. And so it is with Scripture. All that to warn you that we plan to slog through Jeremiah on this page, pausing to reflect on particular words in the Text that catch our interest…and we are only in Chapter 3…at the FIRST VERSE! This is going to take a while. But hopefully, the journey will be worth the read.

“‘If a man DIVORCES his wife and she leaves him and marries another man, should he return to her again? Would not the land be COMPLETELY DEFILED? But you have LIVED AS A PROSTITUTE with many LOVERS – would you now return to me?’ declares the LORD.”

Jeremiah 3:1 (the upper case words give us our words)

 

In yesterday’s post, we looked at DIVORCE (SHALACH (שָׁלַח)) and COMPLETELY DEFILED (CHANEPH (חָנֵף)) in the verse. In today’s post, we will examine PROSTITUTE and LOVERS.

The Hebrew word translated as “lived as a prostitute” is ZANAH (זָנָה). It means “to commit fornication, to be a harlot”. It occurs over 90 times in the Text. Its first appearance is in Genesis 34, when the sons of Jacob defend the honor of their sister, Dinah. Responding to the father, who complained that the family was now obnoxious to their neighbours, Simeon and Levi say:

 

“But they replied, ‘Should he have treated our sister like a PROSTITUTE?’”

Genesis 34:31

 

ZANAH is used both literally for people, as in the verse above, and figuratively for nations, such as the nation of Israel, as in both our verse in question, and in other places, such as this:

 

“Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land; for when they PROSTITUTE themselves to their gods and sacrifice to them, they will invite you, and you will eat their sacrifices. And when you choose some of their daughters as wives for your sons, and those daughters PROSTITUTE themselves to their gods, they will lead your sons to do the same.”

Exodus 34:15-16

 

The term, interestingly, is used to identify two heroes in Jesus’ genealogy: Tamar (Genesis 38:15,24), the daughter-in-law of Judah, and Rahab (Joshua 2:1, 6:17,22,25), the one who hid the spies.

 

Its final use is in the prophet Nahum, condemning the city of Ninevah, the city of blood and lies (according to the prophet):

 

“Charging cavalry, flashing swords, and glittering spears! Many casualties, piles of dead, bodies without number, people stumbling over the corpses – all because of the wanton lust of a prostitute, alluring, the mistress of sorceries, who enslaved nations by her PROSTITUTION and peoples by her witchcraft.”

Nahum 3:3-4

 

Of our two words in question, LOVERS is the more intriguing. Hebrew, like Greek (and really like most languages), has several words that describe affection. The most common word for “love” in the Hebrew Bible is AHEB (אָהַב), with 249 uses as a verb or a noun. DOD (דּוֹד) , meaning “beloved”, “love”, and oddly, “uncle”, appears 61, including many in the Song of Solomon (which should give you an idea of how it’s used). CHABAB (חָבַב) appears once, in Deuteronomy 33:3. RACHAM (רָחַם), which can mean love, is most often translated as compassion. AGAB (עֶגֶב) means sensuous love or lust, and is found only twice (Ezekiel 33:31-32). Finally, YADID (יְדִיד) is used nine times and means “beloved”, such as in Isaiah 5:1.

 

The word in our verse is none of these. Our word behind “lovers” is REA (רֵעַ), which is a fascinating word for all the ways that it is used in the Text. Here is the first of its 186 appearances:

 

“They said to each other, ‘Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.’ They used brick instead of stone, and bitumen for mortar.”

Genesis 11:3

 

Can you guess which word in the verse is from REA? It is “other”. REA means “friend, companion, or fellow”, but as with many other Hebrew words, it also has other meanings.

 

For a religiously observant Jew who knows his Scriptures, however, REA has a singularly important reference point in the TORAH. Let’s turn to an ancient Rabbi, who was asked about the TORAH's greatest commandment (MITSVAH). Here is his answer:

 

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Matthew 22:37-40

 

The two commandments are from Deuteronomy 6 and Leviticus 19, respectively. There are two things to mention here.

 

First, the Rabbis in Jesus’ day often linked verses that shared common words, particularly at the beginning. These two commandments begin with the Hebrew verb phrase, “you shall love”: WƎ-AHAB-TA (וְאָֽהַבְתָּ֥). They caJesus and others linked the verse in Leviticus with the verse in Deuteronmy as the two greatest commandments because of “you shall love”. They call this practice “stringing pearls”.

 

The second thing to mention relates to the second great commandment. The word for “neighbor” in this verse is REA. So when Jeremiah speaks of “many lovers”, he uses a term that will immediately remind his audience of the commandment they would doubtless know quite well. And its use in a pejorative sense would have been arresting. 

 

The Hebrew Scriptures are replete with surprises and confounding images that are (we think) designed to grab your attention, hold it, and make you think about what you are reading. The trick is to slow down and look.

Bible Geek Word Nerd - Jeremiah 3 - Divorce & Defilement

Walking through Jeremiah

March 14, 2023

 

We have been reading through the Prophet Jeremiah and pausing on certain Hebrew words or phrases that catch our attention along the way.  

 

Today, our journey takes us to chapter three of the prophet, where his words excoriate his brethren for their betrayal of the LORD. It begins with a shocking word picture:

 

“‘If a man DIVORCES his wife and she leaves him and marries another man, should he return to her again? Would not the land be COMPLETELY DEFILED? But you have lived as a PROSTITUTE with many LOVERS – would you now return to me?’ declares the LORD.”

Jeremiah 3:1 (the upper case words give us our words)

 

While English has (depending on your source) as many as 1 million words, Hebrew is a much narrower language. The Bible Jesus memorized has almost 8700 words, about 1500 occurring only once (linguists call these HAPAX LEGOMENON). Consequently, Hebrew words often pull double and triple duty when translated into languages with broader vocabularies, such as English. (Side note: this is why thinking of any translation as “literal” is ridiculous. Every Hebrew term conveys a meaning which translators attempt to understand in their native languages. But there are very, very few one-for-one exchanges.)

 

None of the 8700 words in the Text means exclusively “divorce”. Hebrew offers a variety of words that it uses to express the concept, one of which is in our verse in question. Here, the term is SHALACH (שָׁלַח), a verb which means “to send” (as in, to send one’s wife away).

 

As a verb, SHALACH is used almost 850 times in the Text, appearing first in Genesis 3:22, which gives us, “And the LORD God said, ‘The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed TO REACH OUT his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.’” In Genesis 8, Noah SENDS OUT a raven, two doves, and his hand. In Genesis 19, G-d SENDS the Angels to destroy Sodom. And its final use is in the triumphant promise of Malachi 3:1, “I WILL SEND my messenger, who will prepare the way before me.”

 

In this parable, who is doing the sending? And who is the sent? G-d is the one who has sent away Israel, and she has married someone else: foreign gods of their neighbors. And in doing this, Israel has polluted – or defiled, as the NIV has it – the land.

 

The word behind “completely defiled” in our verse is CHANEPH (חָנֵף). In its various forms, CHANEPH is used 26 times in the Text, with very few shades of meaning apart from “to be polluted or profane". In Numbers 35:33, its first use, we read, “Do not POLLUTE the land where you are. Bloodshed POLLUTES the land, and atonement cannot be made for the land on which blood has been shed, except by the blood of the one who shed it.” Its final use in the Text is Micah 4:11, “But now many nations are gathered against you. They say, ‘Let her be defiled, let our eyes gloat over Zion!’”

 

In Jeremiah 3:1, CHANAPH is repeated to emphasize it. So “completely defiled” is CHANAPH CHANAPH. Israel’s harlotry is doubly defiling, you might say.

 

Why you might ask, does the divorce-and-remarriage scenario lead to double defilement? The Torah forbids it, first of all. Deuteronomy 24:1-4 tells the reader: 

 

“If a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce (literally, a cutting-off), gives it to her and sends her from his house, and if after she leaves his house she becomes the wife of another man, and her second husband dislikes her and writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house, or if he dies, then her first husband, who divorced her, is not allowed to marry her again after she has been defiled. That would be detestable in the eyes of the LORD. Do not bring sin upon the land the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance.”

 

Clearly, this divorce-remarriage scenario is defiling because it is detestable to the LORD. But WHY is it detestable to God? We do not know for certain. Jewish and Christian interpreters offer different ways to read this MITSVAH. But one thing is clear, Jeremiah expects his audience to be familiar with Deuteronomy 24. And he’s reminding them that Israel’s harlotry with her many foreign lovers precludes her from ever returning to her one, true G-d again.

 

Tomorrow, we will pick up with the remaining two words in our verse: “prositute” and “lovers”.

Bible Geek Word Nerd - Jeremiah - See

Walking Through Jeremiah
I See So Clearly

03/13/23

 

As we mentioned in our previous post, we’re reading through the Prophet Jeremiah right now. And our current plan with this page is to dive into interesting or surprising words and phrases we meet along the way, and talk about them. The Text is like a diamond held up to the light, revealing different meanings as you turn it this way and that. Or to repurpose a metaphor that Jesus used, reading the Text is like walking through a field that holds gems, some lying about on the surface, others buried in the soil – some deeper than others. This Walk Through Jeremiah aims to present some of those gems to you as I find them.

 

Today’s post is about Jeremiah 2:31… But wait, you say. We did something from Chapter 2 already! Isn’t it time to move on? Yes, it is time to move. Nevertheless, we remind you that just as G-d is outside of time, so is this Facebook page. At this pace, we could be through with Jeremiah before Christmas…2024…maybe.

 

Back to the Text…

 

Go to Jeremiah 2:31, and read it in your favorite translation (maybe read the whole chapter for context). Then pick a different translation and compare the two versions of verse 31. Let’s take a look at part A of the verse in multiple translations:

 

• “You of this generation, CONSIDER the word of the LORD…” (NIV)
• “Evil generation, PAY ATTENTION to the word of the LORD!” (HCSB)
• “And you, O generation, BEHOLD the word of the LORD!” (NRSV)
• “O my people, LISTEN to the words of the LORD!” (NLT)
• “O generation, SEE the word of the LORD!” (NKJV)

Five English translations, with five different ways to render one Hebrew verb. What is going on here? 

 

The verb behind these various translations is the Hebrew word RAAH (רָאָה), which occurs more than 1500 times in the Hebrew Bible in various forms. Most often, it is a verb. But it can also be a common or proper noun (the Patriarchal name Reuben derives from RAAH). As a verb, it literally means “to see”. Repurposed, RAAH can mean “prophetic vision” and “seer”, depending on context. 

 

 

Our verse read literally then would say: “See the word of the LORD”. Which suggests a puzzle to a translator, particularly a modern one attempting to convert ancient text into something legible for contemporary readers. How can we see a word (unless it’s written, of course)?

 

One of the primary distinctions between ancient thinking and modern thinking lies in the difference between concrete and abstractions language. When the Hebrew Bible describes G-d, it does not prefer to use abstract concepts, but rather concrete ones, communicating with visual terms. Hebrew is much more comfortable with DOING things than with THINKING things. As an at-hand example, when modern Western thinkers use the word “meditate”, we have a mental frame that involves inner thought life. But the Hebrew words we translate into English’s “meditate” are SIACH (which means complain or talk) and HAGAH (which means growl or moan). 

 

So when the Hebrew of Jeremiah 2:31 commands you to “pay attention” to G-d’s word, it begins to paint a picture for you with vivid imagery (see verses 31-37a desert, a young woman with jewelry, evil women, bloody clothing, hands on your head, etc.). You look at a picture because G-d our Father communicates in pictorial language.

 

Now, let’s PAY ATTENTION to an ancient Jewish Rabbi, and LOOK AT His Words:

 

“‘CONSIDER CAREFULLY what you hear,’ He continued. ‘With the measure you use, it will be measured to you – and even more. Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.’”

Mark 4:24-25 (NIV)

 

Can you guess what verb Mark has Jesus saying at the beginning of this passage? Jesus says “BLEPÓ (βλέπω) what you hear.” Literally, LOOK AT what you hear. How can you look at what you hear? Well, you can if it’s a picture!

 

SEE you next time!

 

Bible Geek Word Nerd - HAPHAK is not a bad word

Overturned Expectations - HAPHAK

March 11, 2023

We are reading through the Prophet Jeremiah right now. It is the longest book of the Bible, with over 33,000 words. Of the prophetic books – the NEBI’IM – it is the most prose-laden (Isaiah and Ezekiel are mostly poetic), with significant historical narrative. The next several posts of this little Facebook page will highlight interesting and noteworthy Hebrew words used in Jeremiah’s writings. Because we did not think of this idea until this morning, we will begin in Chapter 2 because that is where our first word appears (three minute read). Jer 2:21 (NIV-UK, our preferred reading translation) says:

 

I had planted you like a choice vine

of sound and reliable stock.

How then did you turn against me

into a corrupt, wild vine?

 

This particular verse has many options: choice vine, sound, reliable stock, corrupt, wild vine. As we like verbs, however, we will begin with one of the verbs: turned against. This verb offers you, dear readers, perhaps the perfect euphemism for a common English expletive (taboo from dictionaries until 1965, the OED today names the English word as a “meaningless intensifier”).

 

The Hebrew word behind “turn against” is HAPHAK (הָפַךְ). If you say it fast enough, you will understand why it suits as a euphemism for the impolite term. HAPHAK is a verb which means “to turn” or “to overturn”. Occurring over 90 times in the Hebrew Bible, English

translators have rendered it in various ways.

 

Its first appearance is in Genesis 3:24, where the Text tells us about the flaming sword guarding the way to the Tree of Life. In the NIV, it says, “…and a flaming sword FLASHING BACK AND FORTH…”. The ESV gets closer to the so-called literal meaning with “…and a flaming sword that TURNED EVERY WAY…”.

 

In Exodus 7, HAPHAK is behind Mosheh’s staff, turning into a serpent and the water turning to blood. In Exodus 14, it is behind the changed mind of Pharaoh and his servants toward Mosheh and the people.

 

In Leviticus’s discussion of leprosy in Chapter 13, HAPHAK is used 13 times to describe the changing (negatively) of the skin’s and hair’s color: TURNED or CHANGED to white, signaling uncleanness.

 

In Deuteronomy 23:5, G-d TURNS Balaam’s curse INTO a blessing for Israel.

 

In Deuteronomy 29:23, we are told that G-d OVERTHREW Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim in His anger (something Nehemiah also points out in 13:2, in a sublime call-back).

With the Jewish holiday of Purim having just transpired on the calendar, we note that HAPHAK is used twice in Esther 9 to describe Haman’s murderous plot being overturned (verses 1 and 22).

 

We can also read about HAPHAK in Psalm 78:9, 44, and 57 in various forms (turned back, turned, and turned away, respectively).

 

G-d is a god of subverted expectations, ruling an upside-down Kingdom, where the weak become strong, the poor become rich, water is turned to blood (or wine), rocks are turned into water, the blind can see, the deaf can hear, and the lame can walk. Moreover, He has planted a garden wherein the wild, corrupted vine can be grafted into the native, choice stock – the root of Abraham – and flower, bearing fruit unto Eternal Life.

 

Blessed be the LORD.

Bible Geek Word Nerd is a Stoic

 March 10, 2023

Not from Scripture, but true just the same:

 

"What is the first task of one who pursues philosophy? To throw away self-conceit. For it is impossible for a man to begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows."

- Epictetus, Discourses, Book II ch. 17

 

The Early Church loved them some Stoics.

Bible Geek Word Nerd - Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday

February 21, 2023

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

TS Eliot, "Ash Wednesday"

Peter Leithart writes: 

 

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday.

 

"So what?" say some Christians. "To hell with Ash Wednesday, Lent, and all its pomp and show!" say (or imply) others. "Isn't it nonsensical folly to wear an ashen crown?"

 

Isaiah 61:3 sharpens the paradox. Returning exiles are anointed with oil and crowned with garlands, so ash must be the unglorious anti-crown of defeat, ruin, and death.

 

A paradox, yes, but a recognizable one. If we leave a residue of ash at death, life must be a form of burning. If ash signifies death, it’s because we’re sacrifices in life. 

 

Marked by ash, we display our union with Christ’s sacrifice.

 

And our ash crown points already to our share in the resurrection of Jesus. An anointed one turns to ash not because he dies but because he has lived.

 

Sharing Christ’s anointing by the Spirit, we’re living sacrifices, crowned with flame and ash, burning like the burning bush— burning, but not consumed. 

 

Is a crown of ash nonsensical folly? Yes, like the nonsensical folly of the cross, Jesus’ cosmic victory cleverly disguised as defeat.