Hebrew Words

Tov Ayin – A Good Eye

Lois Tverberg 2 Comments

by Lois Tverberg

The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness! (Matthew 6:22-23 NIV)

Often things Jesus says in the gospels make little sense until we understand that they are Hebraic idioms and even lead to wrong interpretations. For instance, in the passage above, it isn’t clear why Jesus is talking about our eyes. The descriptive word for eye is translated “single,” “sound,” “healthy” or “good.” Some New Age teachers have said that Jesus was talking about the third “inner eye,” developed through meditation. An opthamologist has written a book to say that Jesus was describing a neurological condition!

Jesus’ saying appears, however, to be a Hebraic idiom that was used to describe a person’s outlook towards others. A person with a “good eye” (tov-ayin or ayin-tovah) was a person who looked at others with compassion and had a generous spirit, and gave to others as needed. The person with the evil eye (ayin ra’ah) is one who is stingy toward others and greedy with money.

This expression is still used in Hebrew today. When people go through Jerusalem raising money, they say, “Please give with a good eye!” The same idiom is also found in Proverbs: “A generous man (Literally, “A good eye”) will be blessed, for he shares his food with the poor.” (Proverbs 22:9) Jesus also uses it at the end of the parable of the landowner who pays the workers all the same, no matter how long they work. The landowner says to the complainers, literally, “Is your eye evil (greedy) because I am good?” (Matthew 20:15).

Understanding this idiom helps us understand the whole passage in Matthew 6 that begins with “Do not lay your treasures up on earth,” then talks about the good/evil eye, and then ends with “One cannot serve two masters – both God and money.” All three of these sayings are part of a greater teaching on having the right attitude toward money.

Now we know what Jesus means in terms how we can be filled with light and darkness. If we love others and help them by sharing our money and time, our life will be full of light. If we think only of ourselves and our bank accounts, turning a blind eye to the needs of others, we will be blind indeed.

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Further reading:

See Listening to the Language of the Bible, by Lois Tverberg and Bruce Okkema, En-Gedi Resource Center, 2004. This is a collection of devotional essays that mediate on the meaning of biblical words and phrases in their original setting.

For a friendly, bite-sized Bible study of five flavorful Hebrew words, see 5 Hebrew Words that Every Christian Should Know, by Lois Tverberg, OurRabbiJesus.com, 2014 (ebook).

Lechem – Bread

David Bivin

by Josa Bivin

For the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven, and gives life to the world. (John 6:33)

When Richard and Lucinda (our volunteer workers) first came to Israel, they noticed plastic sacks containing pieces of bread hanging from the sides of the trash containers along the street where we live. When they asked me about this, I couldn’t give an answer, but later remembered that people here do not throw away their leftover bread. I had heard that Jews consider it a sin to throw bread away, but never knew why.

I went to David’s library, pulled out the Encyclopaedia Judaica volume with the entry “Bread” and read that since biblical times, providing bread for the poor was regarded as a great religious duty (Isa. 58:7; Prov. 22:9); the withholding of it from the hungry, a sin (Job 22:7). The importance of sharing one’s bread with the poor has remained in the Jewish consciousness until today. Instead of dumping their bread along with the rest of their garbage into the garbage carts parked along the streets, they save the bread in plastic sacks and hang it from the metal projections on the sides of the carts. That way, the bread is potentially available to the poor. Not all Jews in Israel follow this custom, but lots do, especially here in our neighborhood of Maoz Zion.

It is not unusual to see hunks of bread or part of a roll lying on a curb, or on top of a wall. One day I noticed a young, poorly dressed man walking along the sidewalk. Suddenly, he turned around and proceeded to walk in the opposite direction. Without slowing his walk or turning his head, he raised his right arm and grabbed a piece of bread that had been lying on the ledge of the wall. This was the first time I had ever seen this happen and I realized that this poor man was truly hungry.

Bread has a special, almost sacred, connotation in Jewish life. Whenever bread is eaten, even a piece the size of an olive, a blessing must be said. Jesus referred to “bread” many times in his teachings, and he taught his disciples to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” “As bread cast upon the waters will return after many days” (Eccles. 11:1), so, “He that has a generous [lit., good] eye will be blessed; for he gives his bread to the poor” (Prov. 22:9). Let us think twice before we toss our leftover bread into the trash.

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Further reading:

See Listening to the Language of the Bible, by Lois Tverberg and Bruce Okkema, En-Gedi Resource Center, 2004. This is a collection of devotional essays that mediate on the meaning of biblical words and phrases in their original setting.

For a friendly, bite-sized Bible study of five flavorful Hebrew words, see 5 Hebrew Words that Every Christian Should Know, by Lois Tverberg, OurRabbiJesus.com, 2014 (ebook).

Makor – Source

Mary Okkema

by Mary Okkema

The fear of the Lord is the source of life. (Proverbs 14:27a)

The Hebrew word makor means “source, fountain, or spring.” When I began learning Hebrew, this word sounded very familiar. I knew I had used it or read it before. It is found in a book that many have read: The Source, by James Michener. The setting of this book is a fictitious location called Tel Makor. A tel is a mound that has been built up over centuries as a result of a city being rebuilt many times on the same location.

The Source weaves a story about the archaeological digs at this fictitious tel which has a source of water — the reason for its name. In Michener’s distinct style, as artifacts are discovered from each time period, the story explains how the artifact came to be in a particular location. I found it to be a great play on the word makor, because there were so many hints at its meaning. What does a tel have to do with the word “source”? A source of fresh water is a critical need for all civilizations; so where there is a tel, there will be a water source.

Interestingly, the Bible presents a frequent image of God as the makor of living water, which is often pictured as flowing out of Jerusalem:

My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring (makor) of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water. (Jeremiah 2:13)

How priceless is your unfailing love! … you give them drink from your river of delights. For with you is the fountain (makor) of life; in your light we see light. (Psalm 36: 7-9)

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day. (Psalm 46: 4-5)

And we will finally find the source at God’s throne in heaven!

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations… (Revelation 22:1-2)

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Further reading:

See Listening to the Language of the Bible, by Lois Tverberg and Bruce Okkema, En-Gedi Resource Center, 2004. This is a collection of devotional essays that mediate on the meaning of biblical words and phrases in their original setting.

For a friendly, bite-sized Bible study of five flavorful Hebrew words, see 5 Hebrew Words that Every Christian Should Know, by Lois Tverberg, OurRabbiJesus.com, 2014 (ebook).

Yod – One Very Significant Letter

Lois Tverberg 1 Comment

by Lois Tverberg and Bruce Okkema

Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished. (Matthew 5:18 NAS)

If you grew up hearing the King James Version of the Bible read, you would have heard the above passage with the words ‘… not one jot or one tittle … “. Perhaps you learned that this was some type of punctuation mark equivalent to our English apostrophe. The “jot” that Jesus was referring to was the Hebrew letter yod. It is the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet, just a half a line long. It looks like a small capital “L” rotated 180°. Furthermore, in what we translate “tittle” or “stroke of a pen,” Jesus was referring to “the thorn of the yod” which is just the small curve at the top of the letter, a slight embellishment on the yod. In our rendering of it above, when written with a bit of a flair it looks like a ram’s horn: a shofar.

So what Jesus was saying was, not the smallest letter or even a decoration on the letter will disappear. This is actually a well-known Hebrew expression, “lo yod v’lo kotso shel yod” which is, “not a yod or a thorn of a yod,” meaning “not the most insignificant or unimportant thing.”

What was Jesus saying by this? This is a difficult question, with a long answer. But briefly put, he was affirming the sanctity of God’s word to his people, that his coming was to bring the scriptures to their fulfillment, not to undermine them. While the Torah taught the people to live the life the way God wanted, Jesus would give them eternal life by repentance and trust in him, the Torah incarnate.

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Further reading:

See Listening to the Language of the Bible, by Lois Tverberg and Bruce Okkema, En-Gedi Resource Center, 2004. This is a collection of devotional essays that mediate on the meaning of biblical words and phrases in their original setting.

For a friendly, bite-sized Bible study of five flavorful Hebrew words, see 5 Hebrew Words that Every Christian Should Know, by Lois Tverberg, OurRabbiJesus.com, 2014 (ebook).

Avad – To Serve

Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. (Colossians 3:23-24)

We can get a lot of fascinating insights by looking at the Hebrew word avad, meaning to serve. It is used for several ideas that we consider separate, but in biblical cultures overlapped. The word avad means to serve, but it also means to work, and even to worship!

It has interesting implications for our daily lives. Unless we are in ministry, we tend to think of our jobs as secular concerns. Making money is our own business, not God’s, as long as we share a little bit of it in church on Sunday. How different is our perspective if we consider our work equivalent with our service to God, which is the way that we worship him! In this light it is interesting to hear God’s command about Sabbath again –

Ex. 34:21 “Six days you shall work (serve, avad), but on the seventh day you shall rest (shabbat – to cease or rest).

From my conventional perspective, I had always thought that God expected us to avad (worship) him one day of the week, and do secular work for ourselves the other six. Instead, God says we should serve him six days of the week, and rest on the seventh even from the work God has given us to do! Those in ministry especially should be happy to hear that God grants them rest.

We also should be thinking about how we use our working lives for serving God. Every aspect of our lives at work is a witness to the God we serve. Are we dedicated employees? Patient with our co-workers? Honest with company money? Do we share our faith when it is appropriate? Our worship of God on one day of the week should be just a small reflection of our worship of him the rest of the time.

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Further reading:

See Listening to the Language of the Bible, by Lois Tverberg and Bruce Okkema, En-Gedi Resource Center, 2004. This is a collection of devotional essays that mediate on the meaning of biblical words and phrases in their original setting.

For a friendly, bite-sized Bible study of five flavorful Hebrew words, see 5 Hebrew Words that Every Christian Should Know, by Lois Tverberg, OurRabbiJesus.com, 2014 (ebook).

Shalom – Peace

Lois Tverberg 1 Comment

by Lois Tverberg

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful. (John 14:27)

Like many Hebrew words, the word we commonly translate as peace, shalom, has a wider latitude of meaning than the English word. We tend to understand it as the absence of war or as calmness of spirit. But along with these ideas, the Hebrew word shalom also carries a greater connotation of well-being, health, safety, prosperity, wholeness, and completeness.

In modern Hebrew, the common greeting is, “Mah shalomkah?” Meaning, how is your shalom? How is your well-being? In the Aaronic benediction, when it is said “May the Lord look upon you with favor and give you his peace,” it is a much broader, wider blessing that we may think, talking about God supplying our physical and material needs as well as our emotional needs.

Knowing these broader meanings helps in our Bible study. For instance, God says to Abraham, “As for you, you shall go to your fathers in shalom; you will be buried at a good old age” (Genesis. 15:15). It doesn’t just mean that Abraham will not be at war, or even that he will have a calm spirit, but also that his life would end in well-being and completeness.

One important concept that has to do with shalom, peace, is that it also speaks about having a covenantal relationship with God. When the covenant was first enacted between God and Israel, some of the sacrifices were peace, shelem, offerings, to celebrate the relationship between the people and God. This is the Hebraic understanding of salvation, not just that we will go to heaven when we die, but that we have an unbroken, loving relationship with God here on earth.

Most sacrificial offerings were given entirely to God, but the peace (or fellowship) offering was different. Part of it is eaten by the worshipper, as if he is sharing a meal with God, the ultimate picture of friendship. The Passover meal was a type of peace offering, because it was a sacrifice that the people ate from. When Jesus held up the bread and wine as a new covenant, he was using this as a peace offering to show their new relationship with God. Through atonement by his blood, God offers all of us shalom, in all the many senses of that word.

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Further reading:

See Listening to the Language of the Bible, by Lois Tverberg and Bruce Okkema, En-Gedi Resource Center, 2004. This is a collection of devotional essays that mediate on the meaning of biblical words and phrases in their original setting.

For a friendly, bite-sized Bible study of five flavorful Hebrew words, see 5 Hebrew Words that Every Christian Should Know, by Lois Tverberg, OurRabbiJesus.com, 2014 (ebook).

Shema – Hear and Obey

Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg

Then [Moses] took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people; and they said, “All that the LORD has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient (shema)! (Exodus 24:7)

The word that means “hear or listen,” shema (pronounced “shmah”) is an excellent example of the difference between Hebrew, which stresses physical action and Greek and Western culture that stresses mental activity.

Listening, in our culture, is a mental activity, and hearing just means that our ears pick up sounds. But in Hebrew, the word shema describes hearing and also its effects – taking heed, being obedient, doing what is asked. Any parent who yells at their children, “Were you listening?” when they ignore a command to pick up their rooms understands that listening should result in action. In fact, almost every place we see the word “obey” in the Bible, it is translated from the word shema.

The word shema is also the name of the “pledge of allegiance” that Jesus and other observant Jews up until this day have said every morning and evening. It is the first word of the first line,

“Hear (Shema), O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might… ” (Deut. 6:4-5)

By saying this, a Jew would remind himself of his commitment to love God, to dedicate himself to following God and doing his will. Some Jews teach their children the Shema as soon as they learn to talk! It is the central affirmation for a Jewish person of his or her commitment to the Lord. The word shema here again means, “take heed!” or “listen and obey!”

This gives us a clue of why Jesus says,

He who has ears to hear, let him hear!” He is calling us to put his words into action, not just listen. He wants us to be doers of the word, and not hearers only. (James 1:22)

We as Westerners put all our stress on what is in our minds, and tend to consider action as “dead works.” But Hebrews understood that we have not truly put what we have heard into our hearts until it transforms our lives as well.

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Further reading:

See Listening to the Language of the Bible, by Lois Tverberg and Bruce Okkema, En-Gedi Resource Center, 2004. This is a collection of devotional essays that mediate on the meaning of biblical words and phrases in their original setting.

For a friendly, bite-sized Bible study of five flavorful Hebrew words, see 5 Hebrew Words that Every Christian Should Know, by Lois Tverberg, OurRabbiJesus.com, 2014 (ebook).

Don’t be a stench!

Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg

They said to them, “May the LORD look upon you and judge you, for you have made us odious in Pharaoh’s sight and in the sight of his servants, to put a sword in their hand to kill us. (Exodus 5:21)

The Hebrew language is very vivid and poetic because it uses physical imagery to describe the intangible, instead of abstract terms. Instead of being stingy, a person is “tight-fisted,” and instead of being stubborn, a person is “stiff-necked,” like an ox that refuses to let a yoke be put on by arching its neck.

One humorous example is that of the word ba’ash (ba-ash) which means “to be a stench; to emit a stinking odor.” The word was used to describe the Nile after the fish died when it turned to blood (Exodus 7:18). In the same story the Israelites use it in their anger at Moses after Pharaoh increased their labors. They said to Moses, literally,

May the LORD look upon you and judge you, for you have made our aroma to be a stench in the eyes of Pharaoh and his servants…

Often the word ba’ash is used when one person is despised by another because of something obnoxious they have done: a very graphic description! We have strong emotional responses to beautiful aromas and terrible smells, and the ancients used this idea to describe being praiseworthy and attractive as compared to being repulsive.

Interestingly, in the New Testament Paul uses this imagery as well:

But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him. For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life. (2 Corinthians 2:14-16)

When I was an immature believer, I remember that many Christian things “smelled bad” to me. I assumed that Christian authors would be judgmental and rude, and that religious people were hypocritical. I often sense that attitude in nonbelievers too — the more outwardly religious Christians are, the more they tend to convict and irritate those who are immature or unsaved. We smell like Christ: if a person rejects him, they will find us unattractive as well. This is something we need to take in stride when the world isn’t always kind.

On the other hand, just as we smell like Christ, Christ smells like us! Some Christians are rude and vindictive, or dishonest in business. To the world who doesn’t know Christ, this is a potent witness against him. We should always remember that our words and actions are an aroma that goes out into the world.

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Photo by Oziel Gómez on Unsplash

Further reading:

See Listening to the Language of the Bible, by Lois Tverberg and Bruce Okkema, En-Gedi Resource Center, 2004. This is a collection of devotional essays that mediate on the meaning of biblical words and phrases in their original setting.

For a friendly, bite-sized Bible study of five flavorful Hebrew words, see 5 Hebrew Words that Every Christian Should Know, by Lois Tverberg, OurRabbiJesus.com, 2014 (ebook).

Barak – Bless

Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg

When you have eaten and are satisfied, you shall bless the LORD your God for the good land which He has given you. (Deuteronomy 8:10)

Paul tells us that we should “always be giving thanks for all things” (Ephesians 5:4). This sounds impossible to us, but prayers of thankfulness at all times of day were part of Paul’s Jewish context. Each one of them is called a blessing, berakah, and they are brief prayers that acknowledge God as the source of every good thing.

From before Jesus’ time until today, Jews have “blessed the Lord” for every good thing. In Psalm 103 it says, “Bless the LORD, O my soul, And all that is within me, bless His holy name.”

This seems strange to us, because it seems that God should do the blessing. However, the word bless, barak, in Hebrew, tells us something about the idea behind this custom. The word is related to the word “knee,” berek, and the verb can also mean to kneel, as even a camel does (Genesis 24:11)! The idea is that when we bless God, we mentally bow on our knees to worship him, and we are acknowledging him as the source of all blessing. As with many words, the meaning of it has expanded so that the same word, barak, bless, is used when we thank God in prayer and when he gives us good things.

Before the time of Christ, the Jews developed a number of short blessings to be said whenever the occasion arises, in addition to saying longer prayers in the morning and evening. In the Gospels it says Jesus “took the bread and blessed.” (The NIV says “gave thanks” but more literal translations use the word “blessed.”) We know what words he said: most likely, “Blessed is he who brings forth bread from the earth.”

We read that when Jesus did miracles, the people “glorified God”: probably exclaiming, “Blessed is he who has performed a miracle in this place!” It was customary to pray the blessing before leaving the site where a miracle occurred, or to return to the place to say it. So when Jesus heals ten lepers and only one, a Samaritan, comes back and loudly blesses God, Jesus wonders why the other nine haven’t returned to do the same thing (Luke 17:12 -19).

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Further reading:

If you would like to read more about prayers that Jesus prayed, and how other Jews pray even today, see The Richness of Jewish Prayer.

See Listening to the Language of the Bible, by Lois Tverberg and Bruce Okkema, En-Gedi Resource Center, 2004. This is a collection of devotional essays that mediate on the meaning of biblical words and phrases in their original setting.

For a friendly, bite-sized Bible study of five flavorful Hebrew words, see 5 Hebrew Words that Every Christian Should Know, by Lois Tverberg, OurRabbiJesus.com, 2014 (ebook).

Beit – House

Bruce Okkema

by Bruce Okkema

The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul; He guides me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You have anointed my head with oil; My cup overflows. Surely goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever. (Psalm 23)

Probably like many of you, I learned Psalm 23 at a young age. I remember thinking then, and have to admit that even until recently, it seemed very strange that anyone would want to “dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” While this is poetically beautiful, are we really supposed to spend our entire life in a church building?

To make this phrase a little more palatable, I had reduced the concept to something like, “we are to dwell in the house of the Lord forever in spirit.” The New International Version Study Bible notes read, ‘the Hebrew for this word suggests “throughout the years.”‘ and cross reference another note which mentions “the joy of total security” (Psalm 23:6 Notes).

While these ideas are certainly true, perhaps a better understanding can be gained by using another meaning for the Hebrew word beit. Not only can it be translated “house” as we think of a residence, or “the House” as in the temple; but it also means family, lineage, or household. This particular usage is evident in the story of Jesus’ birth where we read,

Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David. (Luke 2:4, NASV)

With this additional insight, the cloud over the understanding of this phrase has been cleared away. So with thanks to all the people who have taught me this, I can truly say that I definitely want to “dwell in the house of the Lord forever!””

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Further reading:

See Listening to the Language of the Bible, by Lois Tverberg and Bruce Okkema, En-Gedi Resource Center, 2004. This is a collection of devotional essays that mediate on the meaning of biblical words and phrases in their original setting.

For a friendly, bite-sized Bible study of five flavorful Hebrew words, see 5 Hebrew Words that Every Christian Should Know, by Lois Tverberg, OurRabbiJesus.com, 2014 (ebook).