Bible Geek Word Nerd - Formless

 In the Beginning: formless

May 11, 2022 

“Now the earth was FORMLESS and EMPTY, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”

וְהָאָ֗רֶץ הָיְתָ֥ה תֹ֙הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ וְחֹ֖שֶׁךְ עַל־ פְּנֵ֣י תְה֑וֹם וְר֣וּחַ אֱלֹהִ֔ים מְרַחֶ֖פֶת עַל־ פְּנֵ֥י הַמָּֽיִם׃

Genesis 1:2

Sticking with the theme of beginnings, let’s move onto the second verse in the Sacred Text, which gives us two of our favorite Hebrew words (favorite because they rhyme so pleasantly).

The earth was FORMLESS and EMPTY, say the NIV translators. The RSV has it “ without form and void”, which is close to the NLT’s “formless and empty”. The NASB renders those two as “a formless and desolate emptiness”. My favorite version of this verse, though, comes from the 19th century Emphasized Bible of JB Rotherham: “the earth had become waste and wild”.

Formless and empty. Waste and wild. What Hebrew words are behind these terms? They are two of my favorite because of their pleasing rhyme: TOHU (תֹּהוּ) and BOHU (בֹּהוּ). In this post, we will explore the first of these.

TOHU is a noun that occurs 20 times in the Hebrew Bible. It can mean formlessness, confusion, emptiness, and unreality.

In Deuteronomy 32, in the Song of Moses, TOHU describes the desert wilderness where G-d finds Israel and shielded him: “He found them in a desert land, in an EMPTY, HOWLING WASTELAND. (NLT)”

 

 

In 1 Samuel 12, Samuel is speaking to the people after they have asked for for King Saul. He says in verse 21: “Do not turn away after USELESS IDOLS. They can do you no good, nor can they rescue you, because they are USELESS.”

Isaiah used the word ten times, which the English translators of the NAS (to select one) render variously as “chaos” (24:10), “meaningless arguments” (29:21), “desolation” (34:11), “meaningless” (40:17), “emptiness” (41:29), and “confusion” (59:4).

So, clearly a word that does not easily carry over into English. The salient take-away is that TOHU seems to convey the absence of order, a place completely inhospitable to life. In the ancient near eastern theistic view of creation, the gods came to bring ORDER out of the primeval chaos in which the world began. Order allows life – and mankind – to exist and continue, to be “fruitful and multiply”.

But so many questions are left by the Text. Did G-d create the earth as “formless and empty”? Did something happen between verse 1 and verse 2, wherein the earth became “waste and wild”? The Hebrew Bible that Jesus read and memorized is a strange, wonderful, mysterious, and even dangerous Text. Read with care. Read with caution. Read with humility. Read with wise friends.

Next, we will look at the next word in our Hebrew “couplet”: BOHU.

Bible Geek Word Nerd - Beginnings

God created the Land

May 6, 2022

 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the EARTH.”

בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ׃

Genesis 1:1

As modern Western readers, we involuntarily bring modern Western presuppositions and biases to our understanding of the Text. This is unavoidable at first. We cannot help but be what we are. Moreover, our English translations do not help us stand apart from these biases. The problems arise when these biases shape (or misshape?) our understanding of the words, which might lead to errors in interpretation and application. For some readers, this will lead them to straining at making the Text mean what the Text was never intended to mean.

Today’s word from Genesis 1:1 is an almost perfect example of reading into the Text what was not meant to be there. The word is the Hebrew ERETS (אֶרֶץ), which almost every English translation renders as “earth”. ERETS occurs more than 2500 times in the Hebrew Bible, making it one of the most frequently used terms in the Text.

From the perspective of an Ancient Near Eastern audience, what would G-d have created in the beginning? We moderns see “earth” as a round globe, floating in the expanse of space (unless you are Kyrie Irving, of course); this picture represents the earth as we have known it for several centuries. But the original audience for the Text would not have seen it this way, in any shape or form. The term ERETS represented the solid ground – the land – on which they were standing. In more three-fifths of its 2500 occurrences, the English translators render it as “land”. In modern Hebrew usage the country of Israel is “ERETS YISRAEL” (which makes “earth” almost a comical rendering of ERETS).

Cosmologically speaking, the Text has G-d making the sky above and the land beneath that sky, not to mention (as the Text moves on) everything that exists in both of them.

Bible Geek Word Nerd - Heavens and Earth

Heavens and Earth

May 6, 2022

“In the beginning, God created the HEAVENS and the EARTH.”

בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ׃

Genesis 1:1

 

Keeping with the Text at its very beginning – its RESHITH – we turn to what G-d created (BARA) when he created it. The Text says “the heavens and the earth”, which seems simple enough. But we moderns pour meaning and inference into these terms that the Ancient Near Eastern audience would not.

 

The word translated as “heavens” in that verse is the Hebrew word SHAMAYIM (שָׁמַיִם). From an Hebraic perspective, the word refers generally to that whole expanse above our heads. So, it is also “sky”. From the ancient near eastern perspective, the term represents the place where the gods dwell, their domain. For the Jews, the word came to be a euphemism for G-d Himself, as in when Jesus the Messiah would speak of the “Kingdom of Heaven”.

 

The origin of the word is interesting and mysterious. Jewish tradition teaches that it’s a compound of two other Hebrew words: ESH (אֵשׂ) and MAYIM (מַיִם). ESH is the Hebrew word for “fire”, and MAYIM is the Hebrew word for “water”. So the heavens are where fire and water reside, which for anyone who’s watched a Spring thunderstorm roll across the landscape, is a perfectly apt description.

 

There are many more connotations to derive from the blending of ESH and MAYIM (how often G-d manifests as fire, either symbolically or literally, or how often water is associated with G-d). Perhaps in future posts, we can explore those connotations.

Bible Geek Word Nerd - God Created

God CREATED

 May 5, 2022

“In the beginning God CREATED the heavens and the earth.”

בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ׃

Genesis 1:1

 

The ancient Jewish sages wondered why the first word – BERESHITH – of their sacred Text begins with the second letter – that is, the B (בְּ) – of their ALEPH-BETH, rather than the first. Their whimsical answer is that God was reserving the first letter – the ALEPH (א) – for an even higher purpose than the physical creation: the giving of the Torah. And thus the Ten Words (i.e., the Ten Commandments) begin: “I am (אָֽנֹכִ֖י֙ ANOKHI) the LORD your G-d, Who brought you out from the Land of Egypt” ( אָֽנֹכִ֖י֙ יְהוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֑֔יךָ אֲשֶׁ֧ר הוֹצֵאתִ֛יךָ מֵאֶ֥רֶץ מִצְרַ֖יִם). 

 

This answer also hints at something more significant about the purpose of these first words of the Genesis text: they are not there to explain HOW things were created, only by WHOM they were created (pace, Ken Ham). The Scriptures were never intended to be “Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth” (for all you Evangelicals out there raised on Summer Vacation Bible Schools). Certainly, the Bible has instructions. But just as the Torah comprises much more than “law”, the Scriptures comprise much more than basic instructions.

Which leads us to today’s Bible word.: the word behind “created”: BARA (בָּרָא). 

 

BARA principally means “to shape, create”. It occurs more than 50 times in the Hebrew Bible, from its first appearance here in Genesis 1, to Psalm 51 (“CREATE in me a clean heart”), to Ezekiel 21 (“MAKE a signpost where the road branches off to the city”), to Malachi 2 (“did not one G-d CREATE us?”). 

 

BARA almost always refers to the making of something new (not necessarily something from nothing, but something which did not previously exist). And as a verb, it is almost always used in the sense of the Divine – G-d Himself – doing the creating.

Bible Geek Word Nerd - in the Beginning

 In the Beginning...

May 1, 2022 

“In the beginning, G-d created the heavens and the earth…”

בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ

The words from the first book of the Hebrew Scriptures are well known to Bible-reading communities. The Hebrew word translated as the English words “in the beginning” is RESHITH (רֵאשִׁית). RESHITH occurs over 50 times in the Hebrew Bible, from Genesis 1:1 quoted above, to Nehemiah 12:44, where it is translated as “firstfruits”, to Ezekiel 44:30, where it is translated as “the best”.

 

RESHITH derives from the Hebrew root noun ROSH (רֹאשׁ), which fundamentally means “head”. And like its English counterpart, ROSH can denote that thing which holds your brain and sits on your shoulders. But it also connotes other meanings, like beginning or chief or best. 

 

You might recognize ROSH from its annual usage in the Fall Days of Awe in the Jewish religious calendar. ROSH HA SHANA, the Jewish New Year, means “head of the year”.

ROSH occurs almost 600 times in the Hebrew Bible. You can read it in Genesis 3:15 (sometimes the verse called the protoevangelion): 

 

“And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will crush your head, and you will strike His heel.”

 

And though John the Revelator wrote his words in Greek (or at least, that is how we have them recorded), it is not too difficult to imagine that he was harkening back to this first sentence of his Jewish Scriptures when he closed his Revelation with the words of Jesus: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the BEGINNING (RESHITH) and the End” (Revelation 22:13)

Bible Geek Word Nerd - Feet, Feet, Feet

 On Obsessions and Fetishes

15 April 2022

It is confession time. Is it okay that I offer some transparency here?

 

I have a foot fetish. 

 

 Now that the shock has gotten your attention, let me explain. I do not really have a fetish in the strictest sense (the origin of the word – in Latin – describes a fetish as something artificial which has magical or religious significance). Nor do I have a fetish in the contemporary sense it is used today. But I do have an obsession for the word as it occurs in both the Hebrew and Christian Bibles. Weird, I know. But bear with me for a bit and you will learn why.

 

The Hebrew word for “foot” is REGEL (רֶגֶל). Like all Hebrew words, it does more work than simply denotate that thing at the terminus of a leg on which a person steps. The word itself occurs 245 times in the Hebrew Bible. As a noun, it actually derives from a verb: RAGAL, which means “to go about on foot”. The verb, used 26 times in the Hebrew Bible, is not nearly as important as the noun (Hebrew has other verbs to carry the meaning of walking about).

 

The first time the noun is used is Genesis 8, where the dove can find no resting place for the sole of her REGEL. It occurs nine (9) times in the context of washing feet. The word is also translated as “footstool”. It occurs more often than the more familiar Hebrew “peace” SHALOM (שׁלם) and “loyal love” CHESED (חסד), and less than “heart/mind” LEVAV (לבב) and “life” CHAYAH (חיה).

 

Some verses wherein REGEL or one of its forms is found:

Gen 8:9 – the dove Noah sent out could not find a resting place for the soles of her “REGEL”

Gen 18:4 – Abraham washed the “REGEL” of the three visitors

Gen 29:1 – Jacob went on his “REGEL” (journey by foot) to the sons of the East

Exo 3:4 – Moshe took the sandals from his “REGEL”

 

But my absolute favorite verse with REGEL – and the one which gave me my obsession – is Isaiah 52:7. For Christians, the prophet Isaiah is arguably the most important of the Biblical prophets, both from the scope and scale of his work, and from the number of times his work is cited in the New Testament.

 

How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, “Your God reigns!”

 

Whenever I read the English word “foot” or “feet”, I am immediately reminded of this verse from Isaiah and of the role we are supposed to play as proclaimers of the Good News.

Bible Geek Word Nerd - Patriarchy

Someone Else can Talk for a Change:

Peter Leithart on Patriarchy

4 March 2022

On ISH (אִישׁ) and ISHAH or ISHSHAH (אִשָּׁה) as it is often transliterated... "I now pronounce you man and wife..." The redoubtable Peter J. Leithart on patriarchy and its problematic meaning.

 https://theopolisinstitute.com/leithart_post/patriarchy-or-trinitocracy/