ISRAELITES OR JACOBITES??

HEBREW HONEYCOMB

William Andrew Dillard

Much is heard of Israel in their present conflict with a radical segment of Arabic people. Most of the Christian world, and this writer, too, are pro-Israel. The children of Abraham through Isaac and Jacob were the recipients of the Law Covenant from God, and though left desolate in their official rejection of the Messiah, the nation has a future in the work of God. However this should not blind the Bible student to obvious truth regarding the subject, and how that applies to the present people of New Testament Covenant relationship with Him. Please put on your thinking cap!

To be anti-Israel is to be anti-Semitic. But wait, to be anti-Arab would also be anti-Semitic since both descended from Abraham and are by virtue of that Semites. However, Bible students know that God rejected Ishmael, the father of Arabic people as the heir of Abraham, choosing instead the son of Promise: Isaac. To Isaac was born two sons: Esau and Jacob. Covenant lineage is traced through Jacob due to the faithless rejection of Esau of his birthright. Stay with me in this thinking.

“Jacob” (trickster) received a name change from God to that of “Israel” (He who contends with God and prevails) in his wrestling with an angel all night, signifying his hot pursuit of heavenly help in view of what he considered the Imminent, murderous wrath of Esau. Thus does his name have such marvelous and practical meaning. Quite naturally, Jacob’s children then became known as the children of Israel whether their faith and deportment merited the name or not. Happily, much of the time it did.

But in the fullness of time, God sent them the promised Messiah whom they rejected on a wholesale basis officially. While their rejection of Him is more than ample evidence that they were no longer Israel in meaning, a remnant of the faithful received the Messiah, and were by virtue of their faith and obedience to Him the sole nucleus of the New Covenant expression of God on earth, His New Testament Church. They were then the true Israel, and the New Testament Church continues to be so today. Gal. 6:16. What about the political nation that rejected Jesus, the Messiah? Jesus said their house was left to them desolate (devoid and separated from the presence and protection of God as they had known it). This precipitated the massacre and destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 by the Romans. It caused the great diaspora of the last near 2,000 years. It precipitated the holocaust in WWII. It has brought on them the many and continued conflicts with Arab nations presently. The present political nation is mainly the children of Judah; hence, Jews. They have chosen to use the term Israel, but they do not have its meaning. They are in fact Jacobites. But, one day, the nation will become Israelites again. May the Lord hasten that glorious day when they shall look on Him Whom they have pierced, know true repentance, and be brought into New Covenant relationship with Him to once again be “Israel” in the sight of God.

LORD Is My Shepherd [Jehovah-Rō‘iy]

 

Yāhweh Rō‘iy

 

Psalms 23 is another great psalm of comfort, to many readers the greatest of all, for in it we find another “Jehovah-compound,” the LORD Is My Shepherd. The Hebrew behind shepherd (rō‘iy, or rō‘eh, H7462) is one of many words that have a truly ancient history. It goes all the way back to the Akkadian (re‘û) (an extinct Semitic language that existed in Assyria and Babylon), and is then subsequently found in Phoenician, Ugaritic, Aramaic, and Arabic.

 

Appearing some 170 times in the OT, rō‘iy pictures the simplicity of ancient civilization. Shepherding was the most common occupation throughout ancient Palestine, and this common, ordinary word simply refers to the feeding of domestic animals. Such a mundane word, however, was transformed by biblical usage. It was used to describe the true function of the leaders of God’s people. A true leader is not a despot or dictator who not only drives his sheep but sometimes even slaughters them. Rather, a true leader is a shepherd who leads, tends, feeds, and protects his sheep at the risk of his own life.

 

Our Lord, of course, is the Great Shepherd. As Charles Spurgeon writes in his The Treasury of David, “What condescension is this, that the Infinite Lord assumes towards his people the office and character of a Shepherd!” Think of it! God descended and assumed one of the lowliest occupations in the ancient world. Likewise, the true function of the king of Israel was to be a shepherd (2Sa_5:2; 2Sa_7:7; Jer_3:15), as was that of other leaders, although at times they did it badly (Jer_2:8; Jer_22:22; Eze_34:2-3; Eze_34:8; Eze_34:10).

 

Coming to the NT, the word pastor is the direct descendant of that OT precedent. The word “pastors” in Eph_4:11, in fact, is a translation of the Greek poimēn (G4166), which means shepherd (poimēn is used to translate rā‘â in the Septuagint). In Classical Greek, it referred to the herdsman who tended and cared for the sheep. It was also used metaphorically to refer to a leader, a ruler, or a commander. Plato, for example, compared “the rulers of the city-state to shepherds who care for their flock.” This meaning was carried over into the NT. A pastor leads, tends, feeds, and protects the sheep that God has entrusted to his care. What a solemn responsibility!

 

Scriptures for Study: Read the “Shepherd Trilogy,” noting that in Psalms 22, the Great Shepherdredeems the sheep (cf. Joh_10:11); in Psalms 23, He rescues the sheep (cf. Rev_7:17); and in Psalms 24, He rewards the sheep (cf. 1Pe_5:4).

 

 

 

HEBREW WORDS – Name

 

Name (1)

 

šēm

 

Today we begin a study that will continue throughout the month, one which I pray will touch our hearts and lives like nothing else can, namely, a study of the names of God used in the OT. This is critically important in our day, for many of the problems we see in the church come from a wrong conception of God. We simply do not know who He is. To combat this, instead of the shallow fluff (and even heresy) that lines the shelves of many Christian bookstores, would that pastors encouraged their people to read books such as A. W. Tozer’s The Knowledge of the Holy, or Arthur W. Pink’s The Attributes of God. To go deeper, Puritan Steven Charnock’s, The Existence and Attributes of God, will furnish them with a lifetime of depth and meditation.

 

Before plunging into the many names of God in the OT, however, let us first consider three words that will help lay a foundation: name, remember (January 5), and meditation (January 6). While the etymology of the root šēm (H8034), which appears some 864 times, is uncertain, some scholars believe that it comes from “the Arabic root wšm ‘to mark or brand,’ hence an external mark to distinguish one thing or person from another.” Names in the Semitic world—the “Semites,” descendants of Noah’s son Shem, were the racial family to which Israel belonged—were much more significant than in our Western culture. A person’s name, in fact, “often carried more significance than an identification mark; it was considered to be a description of character or conditions.” Nabal’s name, for example, reflects the fact that He was a fool (1Sa_25:25);Eve means “the mother of all living” (Gen_3:20); Isaac means “he laughs,” a reminder of his parents’ laughter at the thought they could conceive a child in their old age; and Babel means “confusion,” hence the name of the tower where God confounded earthly languages.

 

The names of God, therefore, are extremely significant. So important are His names that some theologians call this “name-theology.” I like that term. “Theology” is the study of God, and to know His names is to know Him. As we study “name-theology,” let us seek God with a dedication of mind, devotion of heart, and depth of soul.

 

Scriptures for Study: What do Psa_20:5; Psa_44:8 encourage us to do concerning God’s name? What, then, is our responsibility, according to Exo_9:16?

 

 

 

Hebrew Words

 

River

 

nāhār

 

A river invokes images among the most serene in nature. Humans are irresistibly drawn to rivers, a source of refreshment and even life itself.

 

The Hebrew nāhār (H5104), which is found in several Semitic languages, appears about 120 times in the OT. The first is when “a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads” (Gen_2:10). Think of it! Flowing through the perfection of Eden was a river, undoubtedly a quite large one, for it fed four others. That river probably made the “Mighty Mississippi” look like a creek.

 

Several other great rivers are mentioned in Scripture, including the Euphrates (Gen_15:18; Gen_31:21), the Nile (Gen_15:18, “river of Egypt”), and the Tigris (Dan_10:4, “Hiddekel”). Nāhār also refers to ocean currents, as Jonah was tossed about by the “floods . . . billows . . . and . . . waves” (Jon_2:3).

 

At least one major reason rivers were so significant in Jewish thinking was because there were so few of them in their territory. Unlike the rich, fertile lands of Egypt and Mesopotamia, which existed solely because of their rivers, Israel was “a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven: A land which the LORD thy God careth for” (Deu_11:11-12).

 

Psalms 46 is a case in point. Why is God “our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Psa_46:1)? Because in the midst of raging, cataclysmic chaos (Psa_46:2-3), “There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High” (Psa_46:4). While Jerusalem, of course, has no river (cf. October 22), God Himself is the river and brings it many blessings. This verse looks forward to the millennial Jerusalem and was obviously in John’s mind as he penned the book of Revelation (Psa_22:1-2; cf. Zec_14:8-11).

 

We defer to Spurgeon in closing today: “Divine grace like a smoothly flowing, fertilizing, full, and never-failing river, yields refreshment and consolation to believers. . . . It is no boisterous ocean, but a placid stream, it is not stayed in its course by earthquakes or crumbling mountains, it follows its serene course without disturbance. Happy are they who know from their own experience that there is such a river of God.”

 

Scriptures for Study: Psalms 46 (January 14) is one of thanksgiving and trust. Read it through prayerfully, noting that God is our refuge (Psa_46:1-3), our resources (Psa_46:4-7), and our ruler (Psa_46:8-11).