WORD STUDY – TO SAY TO TELL לנגד לאמ

 

Exodus 19:3; “And Moses went up unto God, and the Lord called unto him out of the mountain, saying: ‘Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, and tell the sons of Israel.’”

 What is the different between the house of Jacob and the sons of Israel? Moses is to relate the commandments of God to both groups.  Now Moses is to say  to the house of Jacob. The word say in Hebrew is ‘amar which is just to simply speak. However, to the sons of Israel he is to tell them.  This word tell in Hebrew is negad which also means to speak.  The Talmud teaches that there are no synonyms in the classical Hebrew. So if you have two words which means the same thing you need to examine these words to discover what the nuance of difference is between the two.  In this case to ‘amar is simply to speak, to declare as to get an emotional response, but  negad  is to make extremely clear, spell it out very clearly so there is no misunderstanding.

 The difference is sort of like the difference between poetry and science.  In poetry you have to experience the word to understand it. This would be like the word ‘amar which carries an emotional element to it.  In science you have to put the word under a microscope and examine it, this would be equivalent to the word negad.  The house of Jacob is only to be given the Word of God for an emotional response.  However, the sons of Israel are to be given the Word of God to examine it, put it under a microscope and take it apart. Both ‘amar and negad are needed to come to a complete understanding of the law or the Word of God.

 In our culture there seems to be such a division among Christians.  You have those who study the Word of God scientifically, they will analyze it in seminaries and graduate schools and take every word apart and put it together again. This is sort of like the Baptist or mainline denominations in the church. They are the ones who negad the Word of God.  Then you have those who  reject any scientific study and just want to experience the Word of God and not get hung up on the minute details.  This seems to fit the Charismatics. It would seem Exodus 19:3 is encouraging both, yet they must come together to be complete.  Sort of like what Chaim Bentorah Ministries is trying to do. We are trying to both ‘amar and negad the Word of God and find some sort of balance between the two.

 Of course at the time of the Exodus there were no Baptist, Charismatics or Chaim Bentorah Ministries. In a sense the Charismatics would be the house of Jacob and the Baptist would be the sons of Israel.  But obviously this passage is not speaking of the Baptist or Charismatics, so who are the house of Jacob and who are the sons of Israel?

 In Jewish tradition, it is man who studies Torah in the synagogue, but yet it is the women who are more important than men in religious training.  The women are to be taught first by their husbands, and then they pass this on to their children. The spiritual future and fate of  the children lies in the mother.

 The sages draw this from the word in the Hebrew for mother  which is em.  This is the same word im for if. If the mother is pious, in all probability the children will take after her and be pious. It is taught in Jewish tradition that if a mother is pious but the father is not, the children will still be pious.  However, if the father is pious and the mother is not chances are the children will not be pious. It is taught that the mother must devote her time to her children and thus she does not have the time to study Torah like the father. So the mother or women are given a special understanding of God that men do not have to compensate for their inability to study Torah due to their responsibility for raising their children.  The mother is the big if of family life.  In Jewish religious law, a child takes after the identity of his or her mother.  For a child to be considered Jewish, it is the maternal genealogy that is primary.  As the mother goes, so goes the child.

 Hence, the Talmud teaches that the house of Jacob represents the women and the sons of Israel represent the men.  Women by nature tend to guided more by their emotions than men.  Show me a church where there are more men in the congregation than women, it is rare. Usually it is the women who dominate the numbers and the men who dominate the teaching.

 Thus, Moses was to say to the women, in other words, let the women experience the law, feel it, enjoy it and understand it emotionally and pass it on to their children, while the men were to be told the law, or to analyze it and understand it from a scientific analysis.  The men will analyze the kashrut or dietary law in the synagogue and conclude what is kosher and what is not. Then they tell their wives who take this cold, scientific kashrut system and turn it into something that is tasty, wholesome, memory building, loving etc.  It is the men who study and understand the law, it is the women who turn it into something beautiful.

It is the role of the husband to help his wife understand the Word of God and it is the role of the wife to help her husband experience the Word of God.  The two must work together, hand in hand (yadiyad), heart to heart to enter into a completeness in their relationship with God.  The woman is the gateway to the presence of God, but it is the man who must led her through that gate.

 Proverbs 18:22: “Whoso findeth a wife finds a good thing and finds favor with God.” Sounds like finding a wife is like finding a decent used car.  Well over half our modern English translations follows the KJV and calls a wife a thing. Let’s get one thing clean, a wife is not a thing. The word thing is not in the Hebrew, just the word tov which means good. The Semitic understanding of tov, what we render as good means to bring into harmony, to be in tune.  So whoever finds a wife finds someone who can bring him into harmony with God.  As a result he will find favor with God.  That word favor in Hebrew is ratson which means to bring delight and pleasure.  Finding a wife who can bring a man into harmony with God brings delight and pleasure to God.

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