HEBREW WORD STUDY COMPASSION

Transcription

1 HEBREW WORD STUDY COMPASSION רחמ- HEBREW WORD STUDY COMPASSION RACHAM Deuteronomy 22:6: If you come across a bird s nest beside the road, either in a tree or on the ground, and the mother is sitting on the young or on the eggs, do not take the mother with the young. You may take the young but be sure to let the mother go, so that it may go well with you and you may have a long life. Matthew 20:34: So Jesus had compassion [on them], and touched their eyes: and immediately their eyes received sight, and they followed him. What is interesting about this command in Deuteronomy 22:6 is that you are promised a long life if you obey this command of not disturbing the mother bird. There is only one other commandment which promises a long life if you obey it, and that is to honor your parents. Don t you find that a little curious? Christian commentators tend to take a very practical and pragmatic Western interpretation. They say that the desert breeds a lot of bugs, scorpions, snakes etc. and birds tended to keep these pests under control and to mess with a mother bird could drive a certain bird to extinction which will unleash swarms of bugs and other pestilences so you do not have a long life. Maybe. I take a more Eastern approach. I was reading something

2 interesting in the Talmud this morning. In Brachot 33b the sages teach that one is to be silenced while praying and asking God for compassion. The reason being is that God s compassion is a given, you need not ask for it because it extends even to the mother bird and thus all laws of God stem from compassion and not decrees. The sages teach that when one s children see their father showing compassion to a bird they will learn to show compassion to him in his old age. You see the word in both Hebrew and Aramaic for compassion is racham. Racham is the love a mother has for her child while still in the womb. If God has compassion, racham, tender loving care for even a small mother bird then how much for those created in His image. The Talmud goes on to say that in the keeping of such a seemingly minor commandment where the value of a mother bird is worth only a farthing such obedience will grant you a long life. If such a reward is granted in the keeping one of the least of the commandments, then how much more would God grant if you kept the laws which apply to those made in His image. In other words this passage is not so much about protecting the balance of nature as it is to teaching us compassion. For if we can learn compassion from the least of these commandments, to care for a mother bird, then how much more will we show compassion to those created in God s image. Once more if God cares enough and has such compassion for the least of his creation to give us such a commandment, then how much more would God show compassion to us?

3 WORD STUDY Racham Racham רחמ רחמ Jeremiah 31:20: [Is] Ephraim my dear son? [is he] a pleasant child? for since I spake against him, I do earnestly remember him still: therefore my bowels are troubled for him; I will surely have mercy upon him, saith the LORD. Most Christian commentators will say that God uses the name Ephraim to represent the Northern ten tribes of Israel, and sometimes to speak of the entire Jewish nation. However, I have not read any Christian commentators that really explain why God would use the name Ephraim rather than one of the other tribes like Reuben or Gad. I Chronicles 7:22 describes Ephraim, the person, as an affectionate and tenderhearted person. Perhaps God is appealing to the tenderhearted and sensitive nature of His people when he calls them Ephraim. The Jewish Talmud explains that God uses the name Ephraim when he is speaking of Israel as a nation that has broken his heart. Next to God s expression of love for His people in the Book of

4 Hosea this verse is probably the most tender expression of God s love that I have read in the original Hebrew. Our English translation just does not do it justice. I mean my bowels are troubled for him? Oh come on, like ick! I admit that is a literal translation and if you like literal translations then go for it. I would rather put it into terms that are more acceptable to my personal modern Western cultural thinking. Yet even in our modern Western Cultural thinking this is very difficult to express as 21 st century Western man has lost much of its sentimentality in the last 100 years. I am no anthropologist but I can read our works of literature from the late 1800 s and early 1900 s and compare it to our literature of today. I mean compare one of Gershwin s songs like, Someone To Watch Over Me from the 1926 musical Oh, Kay: I m a little lamb whose lost in the woods, I know that I could always be good to someone who would watch over me to one of Taylor Swifts hits songs today. Or E L James book Fifty Shades of Grey to the gothic early 20 th century romance novels of Grace Livingston Hill. We would listen to the music of one hundred years ago and the poetry of a hundred years ago and laugh at the sentimentality of the era. Yet people in those days took it very seriously. Since I am no anthropologist I can only speculate that the subtle change in our expression of sentimentality is due to our rapid paced society, or our technological advances that has reduced friendship to click of a mouse on a social media site. It may even be the advance of medical science where death is not an everyday occurrence as it was one hundred years ago. The reality that regardless of one s age they could be healthy one day and dying of some disease the next day, a

5 disease that has now been eradicated and we don t even think of it, made death something that was constantly on everyone s mind. This would cause one to cherish their time with loved ones. They were more open to expressing their hearts than we are today. I don t know I just know I was born a hundred years too late in trying to write about passages of Scripture such as Jeremiah 31:20. At least let me try. God calls this nation which has broken His heart His dear son. Some translations say darling son. This is a very tender loving expression. The word yakir which is rendered as darling is used to express something that is rare and very precious. It is something that is priceless. If you have an article that was given to you by a loved one, it might be a cheap little trinket that your loved one only paid a few dollars for but to you it was a symbol of that person s love, that trinket is priceless. If it were stolen and you would make an insurance claim for it they would only pay you the few dollars that is was valued at, they could not pay you in dollars the real value of that article to you. That is yakir. Although Ephraim had sinned against God, broke His heart, they were still a yakir, a precious child to Him. Then he says they are a pleasant child. Huh? Is that all the Hebrew word sh shua means? This word is used to express delight, and an object of great enjoyment. However from its Semitic root sha a it means to be blinded. This is a word used to describe a parent who is so blinded by their love for their child and a spouse for their mate that they fail to see their faults, all they see is their goodness and are blinded to their flaws. Sha a would be used to describe that wife who has a selfish, self-centered husband that chases after harlots. When that wife is taken into an intervention and told that this guy is just bad news she will insist that he

6 really is a very loving and caring person. Although God is all knowing, He loves us so much that He would prefer to just blind Himself to our sins such that even before we sin, He has already forgiven us. God doesn t send us to hell, we send ourselves, we are like that cheating husband who just keeps chasing after the harlot and never realizing the loving person we have at home who is ready to forgive and embrace us. It sounds crazy that a man will pursue harlots that will use him and abuse him over a loving wife waiting for him at home, but they do. It is about as crazy as a man choosing demonic evil activities and hell rather than going home to a loving God. It makes no sense except that people are just blinded to the love that is out there. Then God says that He earnestly remembers them. This is really the word zacar repeated two times. When a word is repeated two times it is used for emphasis. We read that He earnestly remembers us and we lightly pass over it. This double zacar means that we are constantly on God s mind. Every moment, every second of every day He is thinking on you, you alone. His bowels are troubled over you. Yuck! You want literal translation I will give you literal translation, His heart yearns for you. No that is not even getting close. It is the word racham repeated two times. The most romantic, the deepest expression of love is found in the word racham. At one point in the Psalms it is rendered as tender mercies and even that falls short of racham. Yet racham is repeated two times. It is the picture of that wife sitting by the window watching every car that passes, hoping upon hope that one of those cars will be driven by the husband that she loves and that he is returning to her. It the picture of that soldier who returns home from war and goes to the school room of his little child unannounced and when he enters that room his child see his father for the first time in many months and runs into his arms racham racham. It is the picture of when

7 we are tired, battered and worn down from the struggles of this life and we fall into the arms of a God, a God whose heart we have broken, who has been yearning to just love us, to give us a hug, hold us and whisper to us, Everything is ok now, it s all forgiven, my Son died for those sins, it s all ok now. Racham racham. WORD STUDY LOVE (CHAV, RACHAM) John 3:16: For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. John 21:20: Then Peter, turning about, seeth the disciple whom Jesus loved following; which also leaned on his breast at supper, and said, Lord, which is he that betrayeth thee? We are all familiar with the three words in Greek expressing three levels of love, Agape (unconditional love), Phileo (brotherly love, friendship) and Eros (erotic love). Hebrew actually has four words for love, but they are not always translated as love. You have Ahav (love), Racham (tender mercies) Dodi (beloved as spousal love), and Ra ah (brotherly love, or friendship). It would be wrong to try and make a parallel between the Greek words for love and the Hebrew words which creates a real problem in translation as love is at the very root and center of Scripture. I suppose we could say

8 the closest toahav is Agape, Ra ah is like Phileo and Dodi is like Eros. Yet this would not be accurate as Ahav is used in cases whereagape would not fit, Ra ah, although rendered as friendship, is also rendered as Shepherd and consuming passion and is often used by David to express his love for God, so it would be very inappropriate to consider Ra ah equivalent to Phileo in many cases. Dodi is used by Solomon toward his beloved to express a sexual desire, but it does not carry the lustful, self-gratification of Eros. There is a fourth word in Hebrew for love and that is racham which is often expressed as a romantic love or rendered as tender mercies. It is rarely used in the Old Testament but is frequently found in the Aramaic New Testament where it is spelled the same and sounds the same in Aramaic as it does in Hebrew. In the Greek New Testament, we find that the word used for love in John 3:16 is Agape. In the Peshitta or the Aramaic Bible, it is the word Chav which is similar to the Hebrew word Ahav and means love. However, in John 21:20 where we read about the disciple that Jesus loved the Greek uses the word Agape, but the Peshitta uses the Aramaic word Racham which is identical to the Hebrew word Racham. We know that Jesus and His disciples did not speak in Greek, but spoke in a Northern Old Galilean dialect of Aramaic. Aramaic is very difficult to translate into another language. I believe the original manuscripts of the Gospels were written in Aramaic and translated into Greek about twenty years later, but even if I am wrong and they were originally written in Greek, the writer would still have had to translate his words and those of Jesus directly from the Aramaic. We have Aramaic manuscripts that date earlier than our earliest Greek manuscripts which were lost around 300 AD (oddly about the same time as Constantine). Still, even if Jesus and His disciples used two different Aramaic words for love, the writer and/or translator putting his words into Greek would have been stuck with only one possible word that would fit and that would be Agape. So when Jesus said that God so loved the word He used the Aramaic word Chav but when speaking of the disciple that Heloved we have the word Racham. These are two entirely different words, both meaning love. The most logical

9 conclusion is that we are dealing with two levels of love and thus this would suggest that he either loved the world more than His disciple or he loved this disciple more than the world. In other words we face the old dilemma of Tommy Smother of the Smother brothers: Mother always loved you best. Is it true that God loves everyone, but does He have his favorites? Did He love Joseph more than me which is why he got to be a prime minister and I am just a bus driver for the disabled? Did God love Moses more than Miriam and Aaron which is why He spoke face to face with Moses but not with his brother or sister? Note John 21:20 does not say the disciple whom Jesus loved, but the disciple whom Jesus loved following. In the Greek and Aramaic it is more properly rendered as the disciple whom Jesus loved who followed Him. The world does not follow God, but this disciple did follow Jesus. The key difference between the words Chav which is used in John 3:16 as God loving the world and Racham as used in John 21:20 of the disciple that Jesus loved is that Chav is a love that is not necessarily returned. Chav is speaking of a love that flows from just one person and is not completed. For love to be completed, it must be returned. Racham is a completed love. Love can be pretty lonely and painful if it is not returned. A young teenage girl can moon over some handsome dude who doesn t even know she is alive and feel depressed, sad and broken hearted, she can Chav. But if that skinny little teenage guy looks into her eyes and says: I love you. She is immediately transported to cloud nine where birds sing and flowers look beautiful again. Love can exist if it is not returned, but it cannot sing until it is shared. As a pastor I performed many weddings. I have always been delighted to watch Chav turn into Racham as I spoke those words: I now pronounce you husband and wife. At that moment the reality sets in on this couple, that they have now declared to the world that they love each other and are committing their lives to each other. In that declaration they know that they are truly loved Racham. You see, God loves the word but the world does not love Him in return. It is when we love Him in return that His love is complete, it is when we love Him in return that he is able to

10 rejoice over us with singing (Zephaniah 3:17). Salvation is not just about getting saved and going to heaven, it is about completing the love that God has for us, bringing that joy and celebration to the heart of God that has been mooning over us for years, like that teenage girl and then to suddenly look into His eyes and say: I love you. Why do the angels rejoice over one sinner that repents? The same reason you cry at a wedding, you are rejoicing over seeing the joy of two people (not just one) who have found each other in love and share that love and return that love to each other. The angels rejoice for the same reason you read Jane Austen, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, or Grace Livingstone Hill, they love a good romance where two people love each other. It is not that God loves one person more than the other, He loves all equally, it is just that very few will love Him in return and complete His love, bring Him the joy of His love, awaken Him in that love, and cause Him to sing with joy in that love. You and I, simple little frail human beings, have the ability to bring joy to the God of the Universe by simply saying: I love you. Have you told Him today that you love Him? Is God s love for you just Chav (one-sided)? Or is it Racham (completed, shared)? Do you want to give the all mighty, allpowerful God a thrill and make His day? Tell Him you love Him. Happy Valentines Day! Ylang ylang (Cananga odorata) has a sweet, soft, flowery fragrance that has made it a romantic favorite. In Indonesia, the petals are often strewn across a marriage bed. Ylang ylang is extremely effective in calming and bringing about a sense

11 of relaxation, and it may help with releasing feelings of anger, tension, and nervous irritability. It has a long history in skin and hair care products, particularly in Asia, where it is used to promote luxuriant hair. This is my favorite scent and I love the fact that this flower is the most fragrant at night. Watch this video to learn more about this beautiful tree at Laura, Distributor # Write to us to order or visit our Essential Oils website by following this link If you enjoy our Hebrew Word Studies please LIKE us on FaceBook.Thank You! Devotional Lamentations 3:21-23 Good Morning Yamon Ki Yesepar and Nevim Arith Hayomin; Lamentations 3:21-23: This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope, It is of the Lord s mercies that we are not consumed. Because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning, great is thy faithfulness. Lately I have been going through many of life s transitions, actually too many. I sort of laid my journal aside as these transitions did not seem compatible with my journey in search of God s heart. But as the dust settled, I stopped to catch my breath and when I did it felt that the night time in my life had passed and the sun had again risen. As the sun rose it shed it lights on the wreckage that the night had brought, the changes in my health, the loss of both parents, the financial changes, job changes etc. I sat down in despair over these unwelcome changes that came during the night time of my life and I heard a voice gently whispering my favorite

12 verse in Lamentations 3: I heard something in that verse I had never heard before. I heard something in the syntax that struck me right to the core of my being. I had always assumed it was his mercies that never end. The reason I assumed this is because I always quoted this passage from the song by Maranatha which used the ESV and renders the Hebrew word racham as mercies. Not that this is wrong nor is the KJV rendering of compassions wrong, but translators often use the words love, mercies, and compassions interchangeably as if they all mean the same. Maybe in English they do, but in Hebrew they do not. The word generally used for mercies is Chasad which is the word used for that which is not consumed in this verse. But that which is new every morning is racham. First let me explain that this word new is chadosh. It is closely related to the word chodosh which means holy, but Chadosh carries the meaning of brand new. This is not a renewal, or a restoration, it is something that is new and different, something you have never had or experienced before and it is related to the word Chodosh or holy in the sense that it is separate from anything else. This is why it is important we do not confuse the word racham from Chasad (mercies or loving kindness) or Ahav (love). Racham is something that God will give us every morning, every time the sun rises either literally or metaphorically for that passing of night and day in life s journey. So what is racham? Racham is the closest word in the Hebrew that we have for romance. Romance is not just love, it is the way love is expressed. Every morning God has a new and different way to express His love to us and He is faithful every day to deliver this expression of love. You know you could probably fill Soldier s Field (Chicago s

13 football stadium) with all the romantic novels that have been written. Each one with a little bit of a different twist in the adventure of romantic love. There seems to be no end to the way romantic love is portrayed and God being the infinite God that He is has every day of our lives planned out to give us a new expression of His love. It is not the same only red rose every day. God created us to get tired of the same thing over and over. He did this so he could enjoy creating something new, some new expression of his love each day for us. Sure He may continue to give us that red rose every day if we enjoy it but we will soon tire of it and we might focus so much on that red rose that we miss the new expression of His love that is given each morning. The problem is that we do not expect something new, we expect the same old, same old. And it eventually gets old. That worship song that used to get us to dancing has no effect anymore, that Scripture verse that would light up our hearts leaves us with the been there done that attitude. We cry out to God: What s wrong? Why don t you speak to me like you did before? All the time God is saying: I do speak to you, but only in a slightly different way. I am speaking to you in a new way and a fresh why. Everyday of your life I am telling you in a new and different way that I love you. So back to this particular morning when the sun rose on my life and I sought for the presence of God and His love. I cried out to Him and he gave me Lamentations 3:21-23 and suggested I try something new. I looked on my wall and I saw a picture of Jesus giving a hug to a young man. I told the Lord, Well, I could sure use a hug from you. Instantly I experience a hug from Jesus that I never felt before. I liked it so much that every morning before I go to work I step through my little portal and get my morning hug from God and then I go out and try to find what new way He has created to show me His love. Perhaps one day that hug will get old, when it does, I will let it go and just pick up on something new.