Ancient
Hebrew Research Center
Biblical
Hebrew E-Magazine
December, 2005 Issue #022
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Issue Index
Biblical Word of the Month – Prayer (2)
Name of the Month – Nimrod
Question of the Month – False gods?
Verse of the Month – Exodus 16:10
________________________________________________________________________
Biblical Word of the Month – Prayer (2)
By: Kathy Nichols
The second word usually translated intercession is the
child root “paga” 
. You will recognise the 
(peh) which is
the picture of a mouth from last months article. The first new picture form in this word is
the picture of a foot which
means to walk, gather, carry etc. It has
the “g” sound. Paga means a chance meeting or encounter, or to place as a
meeting. This could be an impingement,
which figuratively means to attack with persistent requests. It can be persistently, even to the point of
annoyance! When we read
this, we are immediately drawn to the parables and sayings of Jesus concerning
asking, seeking and knocking. No doubt God loves us to impinge on His wonderful
grace to enable those we pray for to fulfill the role they were intended
for. An unripe fig becoming ripe! In actual fact the parent root of “paga” the
word pag means “Unable to
fulfill the role intended for. An unripe fig!”
The third picture added to this parent root is the picture of an eye which means
experience, to see, to know and understand.
In prayer we desire to ask for those who are living unfulfilled lives
without the Lord, or lives with affliction and inability, because we have
experienced and know what God can do for them.
Having received this experience from such a benevolent and kind creator
should challenge us to walk as close to Him as we can. This will enable God to touch our hearts in
prayer to experience at times how other people feel and also how He Himself
feels. This is an immense honour.
Is 53:12 “ while actually bearing the sin of many and
interceding for the offenders.”
Is 59:15b,16a
“..Adonai saw it, and it
displeased Him that there was no justice;
He saw there was no one, and was amazed that that no one interceded.
Therefore His own arm brought him salvation…”
Here the
words for intercession are “paga”.
So what
Isaiah is pointing out is that God desired to bring about justice, but there
was no intercessor – no-one willing to impinge on Him and because of the
terrible state of the land, and no-one praying, God was appalled and
disappointed.
A fascinating
use of “paga” is found in Isaiah 53:6
..the Lord laid (paga) on him the
iniquity of us all.” The word is meaning
our sins “fell” on Jesus, (so we could become what He intended). If one reads through all the verses using “paga” a good number of them are about
“falling on” someone and the person dying, so there is great intensity in this
word.
Interestingly,
the Latin word peccare “to sin”, is
associated with the Hebrew word “pag” (unripe fig). Some believe that the tree of knowledge was
the fig tree. Rashi (A well known Jewish
sage) says it has to do with the fact that they used fig leaves to cover
themselves: “..which they had eaten, and by the very thing by which they were
corrupted they were rectified.” Other
commentators deduce this because the fig tree was obviously nearest them when
they discovered they were naked.
Sources:
- The New Strongs Concordance
- The Ancient Hebrew Language and Alphabet – Jeff
Benner
- The Ancient Hebrew Lexicon – Jeff Benner
- Food at
the time of the Bible – Miriam Feinberg Vamosh
- Complete Jewish Bible –
Translated by David H. Stern copyright 1998.
- www.blueletterbible.org
- www.ancient-hebrew.org
- www.mechon-mamre.org
- www.jerusalemperspective.org
Special thanks to my ongoing
Hebrew teacher Fr John Durkan and also Jeff Benner for his awesome research and
personal encouragement.
________________________________________________________________________
Name of the Month - Nimrod
By: Jeff A. Benner
The name
nimrod is not Hebrew but it is a Semitic name and is therefore closely related
to Hebrew. The name comes from the Semitic root מרד
(MRD) meaning "to rebel". In the Ancient Hebrew/Semitic cultures a
person’s name was closely related to their character and therefore Nimrod's
name fits well with his personality. The name is formed by placing the letter נ
(N) before the root. A common means of forming words and names out of a root in
Hebrew is by placing the letter מ (M) before the root while other Semitic
languages use the letter נ (N). Because of this we know that Nimrod
is of a non-Hebrew Semitic origin.
The person
Nimrod is only mentioned in Genesis 10:8,9 but these two passages speak volumes
about the character of Nimrod. The standard translation for verse 9 is
something like "He was a mighty hunter before the LORD; therefore it is
said, "Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the LORD". It would
appear that there is nothing out of the ordinary about Nimrod. So, why is he so
often seen as such an evil person?
Only two
persons in the Bible are identified as "hunters", Nimrod and Esav,
the twin brother of Ya'acov. From the story of Esav and Ya'acov we know that
Esav was not the most respectful person. Not only did he despise his birthright
but to spite his parents married foreign women. From this we can conclude that
from an Hebraic perspective hunters are seen in a negative light. In verse 8 it
states "he was the first on earth to be a mighty man". The
Hebrew phrase may also be translated as "He made a profaning by being a
mighty one in the land". To add to this verse 9 states that he was a
"mighty hunter 'before' Yahweh". The word for "before" in
Hebrew is "liph'ney" and literally means "to the face of"
and in this case "to the face of Yahweh" and can mean that he was a mighty hunter in place of
Yahweh implying that he, rather than Yahweh is the provider of the people.
One final
clue into the character into the personality of Nimrod is how the Semitic root
MRD has been used even into our own time. The Ancient Semitic root MRD (marad)
is the origin of our words MaRauDer and MuRDer.
_______________________________________________________________________
Question of the Month – False gods?
By: Jeff A. Benner
Q: Which Hebrew words are used for God and which for false gods?
A: In reality, the modern western
concept, or what we think of as God or a god is completely foreign to the
Hebrew text of the Bible. There are three Hebrew words used for God. The word
"el" means one of power and authority and used for God in Genesis
1:1. The word "elo'ah" means one of power and authority which yokes
himself to another and is used for God in Job 3:4. The word "elohiym"
is the plural form of elo'ah and is used for God in Genesis 14:18.
These same
Hebrew words are also used for false gods. In Genesis 31:30 the word elohiym is
used for Laban's household gods. In Habakukk 1:11 the word el'oah is used for
the god of the goyim (nations). In Isaiah 45:20 the word el is used for a god
of the goyim.
________________________________________________________________________
Verse of the Month – Exodus 16:10
By: Jeff A. Benner
וַיְהִי
כְּדַבֵּר
אַהֲרֹן
אֶל־כָּל־עֲדַת
בְּנֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵל
וַיִּפְנוּ
אֶל־הַמִּדְבָּר
וְהִנֵּה
כְּבֹוד
יְהוָה נִרְאָה
בֶּעָנָן׃
And it came to pass, as Aaron spake
unto the whole congregation of the children of Israel, that they looked toward
the wilderness, and, behold, the glory of Jehovah appeared in the cloud. (ASV)
וַיְהִי (vay-hiy)
The root is היה (hayah) meaning to exist or be. When a root ending with the letter ה (h) is conjugated as a verb, the final ה (h) is dropped. The prefix ו (v) means "and". The prefix י (y) identifies the subject of the verb as masculine, singular, imperfect tense - he will exist. But because the verb is prefixed by the ו (v) the tense of the verb reverses to the perfect tense and becomes "and he existed" or "and he was". This phrase would be translated into English as "and it was" or "and it came to pass".
כְּדַבֵּר (ke-da-beyr)
The letter כ (k) is a prefix meaning "like". The base word דבר (Davar) is a verb meaning to speak. When a verb root is prefixed by a preposition, the verb is in the infinitive form meaning that the subject of the verb is not identified. The word would then mean "like speaking".
אַהֲרֹן (a-ha-ron)
This is the name commonly transliterated as Aaron, the brother of Moshe (Moses).
אֶל (el)
This word is a preposition meaning "to" or "toward".
כָּל (kol)
A very common Hebrew word meaning "all".
עֲדַת (a-dat)
The base word is עדה (eydah) meaning an assembly, but in its original sense is the flock of the shepherd. This word is used in the possessive (assembly of...). A possessive word ending with the letter ה (h) is changed to a ת (t).
בְּנֵי (be-ney)
The base word is בן (ben) meaning a son. In the plural form this word is written as בנים (beniym). Another grammatical rule when dealing with possessives is if the word in the possessive is written with the masculine plural suffix, ים (iym), the ם (m) is dropped.
יִשְׂרָאֵל (yis-ra-el)
This is the name commonly transliterated as
וַיִּפְנוּ (vay-yiph-nu)
The base word is the verb פנה (panah) meaning to "turn". When a verb ends with the letter ה (h) it is dropped when the word is conjugated. The י (y) in front of the base word and the ו (u) behind the base word identifies the subject of the verb as masculine plural imperfect tense (they turn or they will turn). The prefix ו (v) is the conjunction meaning "and" and also often reverses the tense, in this case from imperfect to perfect tense (they turned).
אֶל (el)
This word is a preposition meaning "to" or "toward".
הַמִּדְבָּר (ha-mid-bar)
The base word is מדבר (midvar) meaning "wilderness". The prefix ה (h) is the definite article meaning "the".
וְהִנֵּה (ve-hin-neyh)
The base word is הנה (hin-neyh) meaning "look here" and is often translated as "behold" and is prefixed by the conjunction ו (v) meaning "and".
כְּבֹוד (ke-vod)
This word is usually translated as "honor" or "glory" but literally means "heavy". When we give honor to another we are putting weight to that person.
יְהוָה (YHVH)
Commonly called the Tetragramaton, the name of God.
נִרְאָה (nir-ah)
The base word is the verb ראה (ra'ah) meaning to "see". The prefix נ (n) identifies the verb as a Niphal (simple passive), third person masculine singular perfect tense - "he was seen" or "he appeared".
בֶּעָנָן (be-a-nan)
The base word ענן (anan) is a cloud. The prefix ב (b) means in.
The following is a literal rendering of this verse from its Hebraic meaning.
And it came to pass, like a speaking
of Aharon to all the flock of the sons of Yisrael and they turned to the
wilderness and look here, the heaviness of YHVH was seen in the cloud.
________________________________________________________________________
Copyright © 2005
Jeff A. Benner
Ancient Hebrew Research
Center
Please feel free to use, copy
or distribute any material within the "Biblical Hebrew E-Magazine"
for non-profit educational purposes only.
________________________________________________________________________