WORD STUDY LOOK TO THE ROCK הביטו צור

Transcription

1 WORD STUDY LOOK TO THE ROCK הביטו צור Isaiah 51:1: Harken to me, ye that follow after righteousness, ye that seek the Lord, look unto the rock from whence you were hewn, and to the hole of the pit, when you are digged. If you want to know faith and be attached to this righteousness, do not look at it directly as do others who cause themselves to die, rather, look at the rock from where you were hewn. Zophar 3:222b. The above Jewish commentary on this verse gives an insight I never really considered, but is one that truly offers an opportunity to glimpse into the heart of God. The key lies in that phrase written by Isaiah: You that seek the Lord, look unto the rock from whence you were hewn. This is not

2 just those who follow a righteous life, all good church people want to follow a righteous life. The word follow is radaph which is in a simple qal form and has the idea of simply following after something. However, for those who are following righteousness but are also seeking the Lord, Isaiah gives a little clue as to how to fill this void you feel within yourself. The word seek is bakas which is in a piel participial form, which is much more intense than just following after, this has the idea of being driven, or obsessed. As a participle it would put it in a present tense, you are now obsessively seeking the Lord. I am beginning to discover that most the Christians I meet seem to have one thing in common. We all feel this driving urge to know God, to be intimate with Him. Well for any among you who are reading this and you have this drive in your heart, an obsession or radaph for you. to know God then this verse is To really know the Heart of God you must look to the rock from whence you were hewn. The word look is navat which means to look upon or behold. However, this is in a Hiphil form and as such, it is more than just looking upon, it is attaching oneself to. Reattach yourself to the rock from which you were hewn. The Jewish commentators in the Zophar explains it this way. When you suffer pain, you must realize that God, as a loving Father, is also suffering the same pain. If a man s wife is unhappy, then he will also be unhappy no matter how good his

3 fortune, for when he becomes one with his wife, he will share her happiness as well as her pain. It would then follow that if we are the bride of Christ, then Christ as the bridegroom will not only feel our every hurt and sorrow but it will grieve him just as the hurt and sorrow of a man s bride would grieve him. However, the commentator goes on to say that we must look beyond our own pain and sorrow to the pain and sorrow God feels on our behalf and pray for His sorrow and pain as a wife would seek to comfort her husband who was feeling pain and sorrow on her behalf. You must remember that the Jewish concept of prayer is much different than ours. To the Jew, prayer is uniting yourself with God, not just offering up petitions. In that unity with God you share his joy and his peace, that is prayer. When you share that joy and peace with others, that is also prayer for you are doing it in unity with God. Thus, when you feel pain, the Rock from whence you were hewn is also wounded. The word hewn is chastav which has the idea of being cut off. By reattaching yourself to the rock it will heal the wound that both you and the Rock or the Heavenly Father feels. When you are lonely, broken, hurting; then pause to look at the Heavenly Father, He is feeling your loneliness, brokenness and hurt, He too is in pain. Do you ever stop to consider His pain or are you too focused on your own pain demanding the Heavenly Father do something about it. But what can you do for the Heavenly Father s pain? The same thing a hurting wife

4 can do for the pain her husband feels on her behalf, she will let him hold her, stroke her, comfort her and say gentle things to her to ease her pain. When he is able to ease her pain, the pain he feels because of her is also eased. When you seek the heart of God, look to the Rock from whence you were hewn. In other words try to understand what He is feeling when you are frustrated, angry, lonely or heartbroken. Seek His comfort first, for His comfort comes from being able to comfort you. Please check out and share with friends Chaim s #1 Best Seller on Amazon just released by Whitaker House :) As an instructor in both ancient Hebrew and Aramaic, Chaim Bentorah is convinced that there are powerful truths buried in the original language of God s Word that most Christians have never been exposed to. The Word of God is like the heart of God: it is a well that never runs dry. In this book, you will discover things about God and your relationship with Him that you may never have considered. By delving into the multiple layers and nuances of the ancient Hebrew language, you will discover that God is revealing His heart to you through the depths of His Word in new and exciting ways. Hebrew is a language of poetry and pictures. With Bentorah s expertise, you will see how to examine not just word definitions, but also the origin of the words, their place in the culture and idioms of the day, and even their emotional context. Through this devotional, you will walk the road less traveled as you uncover the deeper spiritual messages in God s Word. In the process, you will discover the heart of God toward you and come to know Him better. You will see just how beautiful the Word of God is and, most of all, you will see the beauty of God Himself and love Him all the more.

5 /ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid= &sr=8-1&keywords=cha im+bentorah WORD STUDY INTO THE PIT יורדי בור

6 Psalms 28:1 Unto thee will I cry, O Lord my rock; be not silent to me: lest if thou be silent to me, I become like them that go down into the pit. Like them that go down into the pit. Many commentators feel that this is just a poetic expression for death. In fact some translations just say that if God remains silent to him he would die. Yet, there are some translators who have a different idea. The word for pit is bore which could mean a well, a prison, or a crypt. A prison in those days was often a pit that someone was just thrown into and you were left there to rot. The only way out would be if someone would throw you a rope. It would be the same case if you fell in a well, in fact old abandoned wells were often used as a prison. Sometimes when a well would dry up it would be abandoned. It was not a well like you see in those phony pictures, a nice brick structure with a crane to lower a bucket. Wells were mainly just holes in the ground. Many times people would dig a well and after going down ten or fifteen feet with no water they will abandon it. Someone not paying attention could fall into the well and if no one comes around to hear your cries for help you are left

7 without hope and become desperate. There are commentators who believe this is the intent of the passage and I agree. David is not saying that if God is silent he will die, but that he will lose all hope and become desperate. A crypt was pretty much the same thing, it is a place you go into and you usually do not come out. Do you ever feel like David, you have entered a dark place and you just seem separated from God. If you have enjoyed a close walk with God, falling into a spiritual bore or well could prove very terrifying. But what does that mean to call on God and he is silent? The word silent is karash. It is closely related to the word karas which means to be rough. Maybe it is not so much that God is silent but that David feels God may really being rough with him. In fact taking karash (silent) to its Semitic root we find that is it a word referring to a plow or till which makes an engraving into the ground. In a noun form it is describing a cutting instrument. Rabbi Hirsch indicates that it is related to a similar word with a Sade at the end and means to lacerate, or wound. Karash is also used for an enchanter, magician, or to be artificial. When a husband gets the silent treatment from his wife, he often feels like she is giving him a deep cutting wound. Even though he knows the silence is really artificial, she will eventually talk with him, she is using silence like a magician to get a desired result to convey to him that he has wounded her heart. Silence from God may just be artificial, but like the wife giving her husband the silent treatment she is conveying a message that he has wounded her heart and that knowledge is like the cutting of a deep wound to him if he loves his wife. Silence from God can be a deep cutting wound to us if we love Him and realize we have wounded His heart.

8 The context would indicate that David is experiencing deep emotional distress from people who are saying things about him that are not true. David is crying to God not so much to be delivered from the problem. The following verses seem to indicate confidence that God has taken care of that, but it is this present emotional stress that he is seeking deliverance from. This would be the worry, the fear, the deep hurt. Do you ever feel this sense of overwhelming oppression? There is no reason for it, after all God is in control, He has never failed. Yet, you are so filled with a sense of fear and dread that you just can not enjoy life itself. You really just wish God would take you home and away from it all. I think that is what David is feeling. He just wants to go out and get drunk, but in this case to get drunk in the Spirit. Something a little more difficult to explain is the use of the preposition from rather than to. The word silent itself is used as a participle. Hence David is literally saying: I cry, O Lord my rock and you are being silent from me. To build on that word silence, it would seem that David is wanting more than deliverance, he just wants to feel the presence of God. Note in the next verse he speaks of his supplications (Heb. canan ). He is doing this with uplifted hands. Supplication here or canan is to show favor. David is saying that he is showing favor to God. Think about it, when you go to God with a need, who do you want to favor, God or yourself? In verse 5 David is asking that he not be drawn away from God by the intentions of the wicked. To David the pressures of his job, his relationships, or health, were not that important to him. In fact is did suffer a loss of his job under a broken relationship with his beloved

9 son Absalom. He did suffer a loss of his health. The problem David faced in this verse was not the loss but how that loss affected his relationship with God. To sum up David s prayer as I see it here in 98:1, David is praying: Lord, you are my rock. My rock is not my job, not my relationship, not my health. I may lose my job, my relationships, or my health, and I can handle that, I will go on living, but Lord, if lose you, I can t handle that, I will go into a dark pit of hopeless and despair. O my God, don t leave me. WORD STUDY MERIBAH MASSAH מסה מריבה AND Psalms 95:8 Harden not your heart as in the day of provocation (Meribah), and as in the day of temptation (Massah) in the wilderness.

10 There is a very interesting poetic device used in this Psalm. The writer is using proper names from an actual place and using the meaning behind those proper name to describe and event that took place. In this case the writer refers to two places that are named Meribah and Massah. Meribah means provocation and Massah means temptation. The event that is being described here is the story in Exodus when Israel was encamped at Rephidim and Israel started to complain because they had no water. When you examine this story in the Hebrew you discover that the people were no yet thirsty. They were anticipating their thirst. They were encamped in a place where there was no water and their water supply was running out and they felt they should be moving on to find water, yet the Lord commanded them to remain right where they were. As the days passed they began to murmur and complain that God had led them out to the wilderness to abandon them and let them die. Finally God told Moses to strike a rock and water would come out. Yet Rephidim was given the spiritual name of Meribah provocation and Massah temptation because of their murmurings. These two names were also given at Kadesh-Barnea where they faced similar circumstances. What is interesting is that the Septuagint and the Targum (Aramaic translation from the Hebrew) both use these two words as nouns rather than proper names in the story of Kadesh-Barnea. Lately I have been feeling like I am wandering in the wilderness in my journey to the heart of God. I have been strangely led to this passage in Psalms to this warning to not harden my heart in the day of temptation and provocation as I journey through this wilderness. Like Israel, I am not yet

11 thirsty, but I can see my supply running out. I don t see anyway God can provide the water I am going to need and I feel as if He has led me out to this wilderness to die of thirst. I have found myself voicing my complaint to God, almost like Israel I have been murmuring. I find I am terrified as I look at the warning in this verse to not harden my heart in the day of temptation and provocation. I am terrified that if I do harden my heart, my journey to the heart of God will end. This six year journey to the heart of God has been painful, yet joyful, selfrevealing while at the same time very revealing of the nature of God s heart. This journey has brought rest and comfort as well as an anxiousness to move forward. If my journey to discover the heart of God ends I will end. I have spent countless hours of study in the Word of God as well as written four books describing my journey to the heart of God. This journey is now my life s journey, a journey that must only end when I stand in the presence of God, I don t want this treasure hunt to end. Every day I find a new clue that shed new light on this mysterious treasure map that we call the Word of God or the Bible. So, yes, I am terrified that I may harden my heart and bring this journey to a screeching halt. So I pause in my journey right now. It is approaching midnight, but I cannot sleep, I must leave for work in a few hours, but I have to know and understand what this hardening of the heart is really all about. I have heard this phrase all my life but only now I find I must really consider and explore just what it means to harden one s heart. The word harden in Hebrew is kasa, which has the idea of stiffening. Yet when I trace this to its Semitic root I

12 discover its origins lie in the a sense of heaviness or depression. There is another word we can attach to kasa and that is discouragement. Ah, there it is, discouragement. The people of Israel allowed the temptation and provocation at Rephidm and Kadesh Barnea to discouragement them. Note that his word is in a Hiphal form. Their hearts were caused to be discouraged. They allowed it to happen and they became discouraged. A discouraged heart is a hardened heart and a discouraged heart no longer has faith. It no longer believes that God has everything under control. A kasa heart is a heart has lost all hope and has given up. There is a sense of pathos in this verse as if God is saying, Please, don t allow your hearts to become depressed and discouraged. The natural result of a hardened or depressed and discouraged heart is disobedience for once discouraged you will no longer follow the lead and voice of God. My father used to tell me a story. Satan decided to go out business one day and have a big garage sale where he would sell off all the tools of his trade. He laid out his tools and the demons came, examined them, looked at the price tags and began to purchase all of Satan s tools. At the end of the sale there was only one item left. The price tag on that item was just too great. Every demon longed to own it but the price was just too high and none could afford it. The devil looked at this item and realized that he could stay in business with just this one item. He decided to reclaim this one item, this one Meribah provocation and one Massah temptation and use it against the saints. He is still using it today, he is using on you and on me. That one tool is called discouragement. Nothing can harden your heart quicker than if you allow discouragement to enter your heart. The word meribah, provocation comes from a root word rayav which has the idea of

13 causing contention, being adversial and judgmental. I drove a woman to a doctor s appointment today in my disability bus who had allowed meribah to enter her heart. She complained all the way to the appointment about the people in the community, the government, the taxes, the students leaving school. She would have some racist comment about every driver who pulled in front of me. By the time we reached our destination she had me convinced that every driver was stupid, every scholar leaving school was stupid, all the parents were stupid, the government was stupid, the whole world was stupid. The only one that wasn t stupid was the one that really was. I felt exhausted and absolutely miserable when I dropped her off to her appointment as she made her way to the doctor s office to make everyone in that office just as miserable as her. The children of Israel did not murmur or complain because they had no water, they were complaining that God was not providing it for them in the way they wanted. It was all God s fault. He brought them into the wilderness to abandon them. Not only that they started to massad. Actually it was medivar massad which is the Wilderness of Massad. Medivar really means no understanding, massad means to flow down, dissolve or melt. Your understanding of God becomes distorted when you harden your hearts. That is how the enemy uses his tool of discouragement, he whispers in your ear, Yeah, God came through in the past, but don t kid yourself Bunkie, He just wanted to bring you to this point in the wilderness to abandon you. He is just toying with you. How do you know there even is a God. You scratch your head and say, You know you re right. Well it is your choice, you can listen to the enemy and let you heart become discouraged or hardened or you can point your finger at him and say, Devil you re a liar. I am going to trust in God even if I have no water and end up a like a dried up old prune. I will just pucker up and say Praise the Lord. I will not allow my heart to harden or

14 become discouraged. I am choosing God and not a hardened heart even if I end up in Rephidim with no water in my cup. So, I will call it a night confident that I am continuing on my journey to the heart of God through this dry and thirsty land. As the old hymn goes, Jesus is the Rock in a weary land. WORD STUDY WHAT CHURCH? לעדת IS THE Matthew 16:18: And I say unto you, thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my church. Someone asked me a question about the word for church in the Aramaic. The word in the Greek is ekklesia which is a legal word and simply means the called out. Jesus most likely spoke these words to Peter in his native language of Aramaic and used the word ladoth. Yet, within its context Jesus was likely making a play on two Aramaic words od and y od. Both

15 sound the same when spoken as lodoth as most likely the disciples heard Jesus say two different things at the same time in a very clever use of this word. A play on words comes in many forms. We encounter a play on words in our language every day without even realizing it. For instance, this morning I was transporting a blind client to the doctor s office. He was telling me about recent medical bill he received that really surprised him. Without thinking I said, Boy I ll bet you didn t see that coming. He replied, As a matter of fact, I didn t see it. The Aramaic word used for church is an old Semitic legal term from the root od which means to assemble or gather together for the purpose of testifying, instructing in a matter of law or to call a witness to testify. When we think of the reason for the existence of a church, this seems to fit quite well. The church is a gathering or an assembling together of believers to learn about God and what He expects from us or what He expects us to do. It is also a place where we can testify or bear witness as to what God is doing in our lives. I read a secular article by a reporter who visited various churches in the Chicago area and he found the most successful and growing churches were those churches that allowed its members to stand up and share or testify. I remember as a child testimony time was always an important time in our church meetings. It was not so much in the morning worship service but our evening services and Wednesday prayer meetings where things were not as formal that a certain amount of time was given so members could share what God was doing in their lives. I always found this very interesting and looked forward to these times, because it showed that others were struggling with the same issues I was. As a young teen I struggled with the assurance of my salvation and it was very helpful to hear others share the same struggle and how God helped them over their struggle.

16 Churches have gotten away from testimony times today because churches have become larger and some people tend to preach their own sermons rather than just give a brief witness. Testimony time is also a wild card, you never know who might pop up and generally if the floor is given to someone with a couple lose screws, and it could prove to be rather unnerving for the congregation. So you generally find you testimony times in smaller congregations where the preacher knows everyone and can feel comfortable that no one is going to freak out the congregation. The word od also means a gather to receive some legal instruction. Indeed we come together to listen to our pastor share and expound on the Word of God. Sure I can do that myself. After all, I have been a pastor, I spent years teaching in Bible college training pastors, and I have advance academic degrees on the Bible, so why do I need to sit under the teaching of a pastor? The same reason a judge may lecture an attorney. That attorney may know the law just as well as that judge, maybe better, but he does need to be reminded of it and understand the application of the law as it is viewed in that courtroom. I don t care if a pastor never finished high school. If he has been allowed by members of the congregation to stand in that pulpit, I will listen and I will learn. Ultimately, it is the Holy Spirit who teaches me, not a preacher, the Holy Spirit just uses that guy or gal standing up there as His mouthpiece and as they speak I carefully listening to what the Holy Spirit has to say, He is after all better educated than I am. In researching this word od through its Semitic origins I found a later use of the word which was used during the time of Jesus and that was to exhort or encourage one another. It is used for an assembling together to affirm and uplift each other, like a pep rally. Indeed that is another function of the church. We come together to encourage and pray for one another. No man is an island according to the English Poet

17 John Donne. This is especially true for Christians. If we seek to isolate ourselves the enemy can really put us into a funk. We need the talents and gifts of other believers to keep us on that narrow path. I believe from the context of this word lodoth Jesus was also making a play off the word y od. The word lodoth could easily come from the root word y od and only the context will tell you the root word is od or y od. In Semitic languages it could be both. I believe that is the case here y od is used, as in Exodus 21:8-9 as a reference to a betrothed or a bride. When Jesus said he would build his church upon the rock of Peter he had just declared that Peter would be his best man for his wedding with His bride. For Jesus was saying that the assembling of the believers would be his y od, his bride. WORD STUDY SILENT WHEN GOD IS Psalms 28:1 Unto thee will I cry, O Lord my rock; be not silent to me: lest if thou be silent to me, I become like them that go down into the pit. The word for pit is bore in Hebrew which could mean a well, a prison, or a crypt. A prison is that day was often a pit that someone was thrown into and you could not get out of it without someone sending down a rope. It would be the same case if you fell in a well. In fact old abandoned wells were often used as a prison. A crypt was pretty much the same thing, it is a place you go into and you usually do not come out.

18 It is a little hard to say that if God remains silent David will either die or enter a place where he will not be able to return. Although I believe most of us at one time or another have felt like we entered a dark place from which we would never come out, if we did not get some direction from God. What is it that David wants from God here? What does it mean when David says that he calls on God and God is silent? Does it simply mean that when he offers his request to God, God does not answer his prayer? With a testimony like that, I doubt any pastor would give David the pulpit to testify. The word silent is karash. It is closely related to the word karas which means to be rough. I think I can relate to that: God why are you being so rough with me? Karash is not only used for silence, but in it primitive form it is referring to a plow or till which makes an engraving into the ground. In a noun form it is describing a cutting instrument. The word karas spelled with a Sade at the end and means to lacerate, or wound. Karash is also used for an enchanter, magician, or to be artificial. Silence from God is like the cutting of a deep wound. The context would indicate that David is experiencing deep emotional distress from people who are saying things about him that are not true. David s cry to God is not so much for a deliverance from his problem. The following verses seem to indicate confidence that God has taken care of that, but it is this present emotional stress that he is seeking deliverance from. This would be the worry, the fear, and the deep hurt. Do you ever feel this sense of overwhelming oppression?

19 There is no reason for it, after all God is in control, He has never failed. Yet, you are so filled with a sense of fear and dread that you just can not enjoy life itself. You really just wish God would take you home and away from it all. I think that is what David is feeling. He just wants to go out and get drunk, but in this case to get drunk in the Spirit. Something a little more difficult to explain is the use of the preposition from rather than to. The word silent itself is used as a participle. Hence David is literally saying: I cry, O Lord my rock and you are being silent from me. To build on that word silence, it would seem that David is wanting more than deliverance, he just wants to feel the presence of God. Note in the next verse he speaks of his supplications (Heb. canan). He is doing this with uplifted hands. Supplication here or canan is to show favor. David is saying that he is showing favor to God. When you go to God with a need, who do you want to favor, God or yourself. In verse 5 David is asking that he not be drawn away from God by the intentions of the wicked. To David the pressures of his job, his relationships, or health, were not that important to him. The fact is that David did suffer a loss of his job under a broken relationship with his beloved son Absalom. He also suffered a loss of his health. The problem David faced in this verse was not these losses but how these losses affected his relationship with God. To sum up David s prayer as I see it here in Psalms 98:1, David is praying: Lord, you are my rock. My rock is not my job, not my relationship, not my health. I may lose my job, my relationships, or my health, and I can handle that, I will

20 go on living, but Lord, if I lose you, I can t handle that, I will go into a dark pit and just die. O my God, don t leave me. In the words of Bill Cosby s old routine about Noah, Ok, God you and me, right? Devotional Psalms 88:1 Good Morning Yamon Ki Yesepar and Nevim Arith Hayomim: Psalms 88:1 (verse 1 in the Hebrew text) A song or Psalm for the sons of Korah, to the chief Musician upon Mahalath Leannoth, Maschil of Herman the Ezrahite. I often challenge my Hebrew students to pick out any passage in the Old Testament, no matter how unlikely it would be that you could find some spiritual value in it and I guarantee by the end of the class you find a deep hidden spiritual truth. Almost everyone in reading the Psalms will wonder about the strange words in the heading of some of the Psalms and shrug it off as some musical connotations and move on. But any self respecting Yamon Ki Yesepar is going to say, Wait a minute, this is the Word of God, every letter, word and sentence comes from God for a reason, there must be a reason for this. Ever see the old saying on a package: Do not open until Christmas? Well Psalms 88 is such a package: Do not open until you are really in despair. As I said earlier, I write under the assumption that no one reads these devotionals and I am hoping and praying no one reads this one as I am going to

21 be very very candid. I would not even put this out on the web if it were not for such a stirring in my spirit to do so. So if you do read this, I am praying you will understand that this is coming from deep within my spirit as I reach out to touch the heart of God and unless you are walking the same road as I am on my spiritual journey, you may not understand how I draw such comfort from this. But, what the heck, here goes. I was in such deep despair this morning over the spiritual warfare I have been going through. I told God I was tired of being the good soldier, tired of trying to move forward, tired of fasting, spending hours in the Word and in prayer and getting very little results. I was just going to my office and crawl under yon rock from whence I came and not do any study. Suddenly I felt compelled to sit at my desk in front of that one eyed monster computer monitor and I think I actually heard the numbers 19, 8,8. 19 is the number of faith, 8 represents salvation and it also represents new beginnings. Start a new beginning in my salvation? Where is yon rock? The Book of Psalms is the 19th book in the Bible and Psalms 88 is, well you can read it for yourself. One wonders just what spiritual value there is to this Psalm, it is filled with despair, suffering and disappointment. It is written by a man who cries out to God and hears no answer and it ends with: Lover and friend, hast thou put far from me, and my acquaintance into darkness. Not a happy note to end with. I heard some preacher say that every Psalm may begin with despair but it ends in joy. Not this Psalm. What is it doing in the Bible in the first place? It offers no hope, no encouragement. It is the cry of man who has spent a life time praying and never hearing an answer to that prayer. The heading of this Psalms seems to provide the answer, and in our English Bible it is not even given the dignity of being called verse one. In the Hebrew Bible it is verse 1. First

22 we learn this is a song and a Psalm. The word or as given in the KJV is not in there. The word song is sur which means song and the root word for Psalm is zamar which also means song. Yet sur is a song of peace, joy, and celebrating the power of God. Zamar is a song of praise that comes when one is involved with God. We find that this is written by Heman the Ezrahite. We find in I Kings 4:31 that Heman was a man whose wisdom was on par with that of Solomon. We learn from Jewish literature that Heman was a gifted musician and vocalist. He was also a leper. From this Psalm we learn he developed his leprosy as a young man such that he never knew the touch of a woman, the joy of playing with friends, the satisfaction of sharing his talents before a congregation. Instead he was doomed to a life of solitude, living in poverty, shunned by all. Yet, this Psalm was written as a praise to God. It was given to the sons of Korah, who made up the temple choir and to the chief musician. It was given upon Mahalath. Some say mahalath is a musical instrument. No translation is really given in the English for this word. It is uncertain if the root word is chalah which means to be exhausted, diseased, weak, feeble and afflicted, or it comes from kul which means to be in pain, to tremble or shake. Either way it was given to the choir and it s director in great distress. The next word is leannoth which comes from the root word anah which means to be humbled by affliction. This word is a piel infinitive, he has been humbled like no other man. The next word is Maschil which comes from the root word shacal which means to prosper, and to understand. This word is in a Hiphil participle. In other words it has caused him to understand. Here is the picture, Heman is a diseased, broken, poverty stricken beggar, he has called out to God all his life to be healed, but he was never healed. Yet, God did do a great healing in him, He healed his soul. Although God gave him a beautiful voice, he was not allowed to sing in the temple because of his affliction, but he could sing on the street

23 corner and if Jewish literature is correct, that is what he did. He stood on the street corner a dying, broken, poverty stricken man, never knowing the love of a woman, the joy of having children, celebrating with friends, but He had God and to God he could share the deep hurt of his heart in complete humility and in sharing the deep hurt and pain in his heart to God, this purity in honesty, opened God s heart to his so that he was caused to understand, to understand that his suffering brought him to the point of humility so that he could know God s heart. Heman is still singing on that street corner today. Do you hear him. I do. I hear him singing a joyful song of praise and worship. I see him winking at me as saying: You think you got it rough, check me out and yet I can praise and worship God. So what s wrong with you? Nothing, Heman, nothings wrong with me except I have neglected to worship and praise my God.