קול VOICE WORD STUDY Psalms 130:2: Lord, hear my voice: let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications. Let thine ears be attentive Stop and think about it for a moment. Does God have ears? Why would a spirit need ears? Ears simply pick up sound waves and send them to the brain which creates what? We call it sound. Now some of the sounds are just noise, some make some sense to us like words or the voice of a loved one. I have a friend that I call on my phone. When she says Hello I instantly know it is M. I recognize the sound of her voice. I instantly feel good because I know that voice carries a sense of friendship, acceptance and the anticipation of a pleasant conversation. Think about it, six billion people in the world. If it were possible for me to listen to the six billion people in this world say Hello, I will still recognize the voice of M. I heard the voice of a movie star on the radio the other day.
I recognized the voice but I just could not place with who it was. I may have watched this person s many movies but I am still at a loss as to just which star it is. Yet, when I hear M s voice I instantly know who she is because we have a relationship. Jesus said in: John 10:27: My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: The word voice in Greek is phone, guess which English word we get from that. It means a voice, but it also means a sound or utterance. It is an intelligible sound. The Aramaic word qala has an identical meaning. It is identical to the Hebrew word qol used in this verse. It is basically an intelligible sound. What is a sound? It is vibrations that travel through air. What is the substance of these vibrations? It is called energy. This energy causes air particles to bump into each other and this creates sound. But God can live in space and there is no air in space so not air particles can bump into each other and hence no sound in space. How does his voice travel in space? Of course to communicate with a satellite or astronaut we use radio waves? Radio waves are electromagnetic radiation that are converted to mechanical vibrations to produce sounds. Electromagnetic radiation is a form of energy. Radiation is the emission or transmission of energy in the form of waves or particles through space and material medium. This includes the many variations of light, visible, x-rays gamma etc. Light still remains a mystery but in the technical sense it transports energy from one location to another. That is why nothing can travel faster than the speed of light because light is energy and energy cannot travel faster than energy. To travel faster than light you enter a realm where time does not exist (I am a real science fiction fan), maybe even another dimension which the quantum physicist at CERN are trying to do. They actually theorize that if they can send a particle at the speed of light they could punch a hole into
another dimension. I believe God, heaven, angels and the saints all live in this dimension, just beyond the time space continuum. Bong, back to the sounds in your head. Those sounds are nothing but energy. God s voice is nothing but energy. John 8:10 Jesus said: I am the light of the world. Jesus is the energy of this world. Jesus is, of course, God and all of this world comes the energy of God. When God speaks to us he does not speak with sound energy, that which is produced with a tongue, vocal cords, air and a diaphragm. He speaks with light energy which can pass through that time space continuum. He simply just sends energy into our brain and we can recognize it as just as I recognize the voice of M. When M speaks to me I know her voice because we are friends and I am more in tune with her than those who are not her friends. My brain recognizes the sound energy she sends to me. Do you ever have anyone glare at you? You feel something don t you. We are always giving off energy to other people, sometimes it is so powerful we can actually feel it without saying a word, like love or hate. There is an old saying, the home team has the advantage. The advantage comes from the energy given off by the crowd who are almost willing their team to push hard. Actually in a subtle way the home team is responding to that energy given off by the crowd which gives them that little bit of extra strength. So God does not have to speak to us with an audible voice produced from air, a tongue, a diaphragm and vocal chords because sound energy does not pass through that continuum. Therefore He speaks to us with light energy which can pass through the time space continuum. It is like a radio that
receives radio waves into a device known as a radio receiver and mechanically produces sounds. There is software that allows for a computer to be turned on and off just by thinking on or off. When you think, you are sending electrical energy into a receiver that is tuned into your thoughts and interpret them and turns the machine on or off. Everyday doctors are reading the electrical energy your brain sends off in and electroencephalogram (EEG). I am not sure how far they advanced with this but I did see a demonstration of a computer being turned on and off by someone just thinking on or off. Such is how God communicates with us only using light energy. But we have to be so tuned into His wavelength, just as that computer is so tuned into the electrical waves the human subject is transmitting. If not we may not really interpret the sound of God s voice and we may miss it. Note in John 10:27 he says that My sheep hear my voice and I know them. Should it not be they know Him? That word know in the Greek ginosko which is the same word used in Luke 1:34 where Mary says: How can this be since I do not know a man. This gal knew plenty of men, brothers, father uncles and besides how can just knowing a man produce a child. Mary was referencing an intimate relationship, a sexual relationship. It is interesting that the Hebrew used the same word yadah for knowing and an intimate relationship. Unlike our 21 st Century Western Culture which has turned a sexual relationship into a slam bam thank you ma am the ancients recognized that a sexual relationship was the ultimate experience in knowing someone. A husband and wife will not have a satisfying intimacy if they are harboring secrets from each other, if they are secretly measuring their mate up with the experience with another person, if they are harboring bitterness or anger etc. If a man and woman really yadah, ginosko know each other, know each other s thoughts, their heart, their deepest secrets, then the greater the depth of the intimacy that they find. When a man
and woman share a sexual intimacy with each other they may not say a word, but believe me there is a whole lot of qol, phone or voice or intelligible communication taking place without making a sound. God does not need to speak to us audibly. I believe 130:2 is not a cry for God to listen and pay attention, it is a cry for intimacy, such intimacy that communication will take place without a sound, without words being spoken. When we are on the same wavelength with God, his voice is very clear, but if we harbor secrets, sins, and other interferences that disrupt those wavelengths, we will not hear His voice. WORD STUDY HEAR MY VOICE שׁמעה בקולי Psalms 130:2: Lord, hear my voice: let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications. Maybe it is just me but I grew up in a Christian home, and went to church all my life. My earliest memory of Tiny Tots Sunday School is Mrs. Metzger telling us that God knows everything. He not only hears everything we say, he knows what we are thinking. Then I read a Psalms like this where writer is crying out to God for God to hear his voice. Really? I know better than that. I know from Tiny Tots in
Sunday School that God hears every voice. Does this make me smarter than this guy who wrote this Psalm and if so why is it in the Bible? I read this in the Hebrew this morning and I found something very interesting. There is a Beth in front of the word Qol (voice). The Beth is a preposition in or on. I sent a text to a couple friends of mine asking what it would mean to them if we rendered this as: Listen in or on my voice. One wrote back with one word eavesdropping. At first I thought she was joking but as I thought about it, why not? How many of us when we pray it is almost as if God has to eavesdrop on us to hear what we are saying. I mean in group prayer, how many of us are not conscious of the fact that other people are listening to us? We want to be sure and say the right words, make sure we sound pious and holy. After all we have a reputation to protect and we want the pastor to take notice so he might offer us some really responsible job around church and he will not give it to just anyone but someone who is holy and pious. Maybe the writer is not asking God to listen to him so much as he wants to express the fact that what he is saying is for God s ears and not to impress the brethren with his piousness. Of course I don t expect most of you to understand what I mean, I am sure whenever you pray in public you are just so tuned in to God you are not aware of the others around and what they might be thinking. It is probably just me and my own immaturity and need to feel accepted. So this verse is really for me. When I pray in public I need to say to God: Listen in on my voice, because I am really trying to our pastor the pastor here with the prayer and really impress old Charlie who thinks he is such a spiritual giant that I too have loft spirituality. I fear I am so focused on them that you will not hear the cry of my heart. Only if you are like me will you understand. If you are not then just go with God hear my voice and figure out for yourself why the writer is
asking for something he obviously knows is happening. I had another response which is one we should give consideration to. The writer is saying; Listen in or on my voice. In other words listen to the pain, the sorrow, the fear, the agony in my voice. Listen to my tears, my total emotion that is expressed in my voice. Have you ever gone to God with a broken heart and prayed with a voice filled with tears? I have and I said something like this. Oh God, I don t have words to express what I am feeling, I will use the best words I can but only so you can hear the cry in my voice, so you will hear what I am feeling. Have you ever received such bad news that all you could pray is: Oh Lord, oh Lord, oh Lord. Such words are meaningless, but if God is listening in or on your voice, the cry of your voice says it all. This leads to my other friend s key word that she shared with me, wavelength. In other words the writer is asking that he and God be on the same wavelength. Now this really caught my attention. Perhaps when the writer is saying: God listen in my voice he is saying, I want to be in tune with you. I want to speak my heart which is joined with your heart. I want only to ask what you want me to ask. I think this interpretation is very important, particularly to those of us within the faith and Charismatic camps. People are always coming to each other for prayer. Perhaps they are sick and want to be prayed over for a healing. We all jump right in and start praying, but perhaps we are praying amiss. Would it not be better to first pray as this Psalmist prayed: Lord listen in or on my voice bring me in tune with you, put me on your wavelength so that what I pray and how I pray is what is on your heart.
In Mark 5:21-43 Jesus is touched by a woman who had a serious illness. Jesus immediately said; Someone touched me. The disciples said: Master, a lot of people are touching you. But Jesus said: No, I felt virtue flow out of me. Jesus spoke these words in Aramaic and I examined this word virtue in the Aramaic, chayala. I even went to the library at the University of Chicago to see how this was used in other Semitic languages and I found something very interesting. Chayala has its origins in vibrations. Everything that exist vibrates. Even a solid rock is made up of the very same thing we are made up of, atoms and molecules that vibrate chayala. Radio waves are simply vibrations and when you tune your radio which is a receiver to the same vibrations as the sender you pick up the music and voices. The more in tune the two vibrations are the clearer the reception as we call it. Perhaps this is what the writer is saying, the words he speaks are simply sound vibrations and he is asking that they vibrate in the same wavelength of God. The closer his vibrations match that of God s the clearly the reception is to God. So I don t believe the writer is asking God to hear his voice because he thinks God is not listening or He will not hear him unless he asks. I think his words Listen in or on my voice encompasses all three of my responses. He wants God to eavesdrop only on those words which are charged with his true emotions and feelings so that only those words tuned into the wavelength of God will resonate and all the other pompous and pretty words spoken to impress the brethren will be overlooked.