Tags
Bet, Bible Study, Biblical Hebrew, Biblical Languages, Book of Isaiah, Create, Creation, Hebrew Letters, Holy Spirit, Indwelling Spirit, Isaiah 45:7, Kingdom Life
Enough with the Latin!
Hello and welcome-or welcome back-to Renaissance Woman where, this week, I continue my study of the Hebrew word bara which is most often translated “create” in the Old Testament. The root bara is spelled Bet (ב) Resh (ר) Aleph (א). I have briefly examined Resh earlier in my study of Isaiah 45:7 but did find it interesting that, according to Mr. Haralick’s book, Bet means “container”, Resh means “cosmic container”, and Aleph means “the pulsating unbridled force.” Container and Cosmic Container seem a bit redundant and I was curious what I might learn as I studied each letter. I began with Bet.
Bet is the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet and the word itself-spelled Bet Yod Tav (בית )-means “house, dwelling place, or home.” In his entry for Bet, Mr. Haralick quotes Exodus 25:8: “And let them make a sanctuary that I may dwell within them.” I looked up this verse in the New King James version and found the word used is among rather than within. I checked the scripture in the Comparative Study Bible and each of the four translations contained therein also have the word among. I looked up among in the Strong’s concordance and found referenced the root tavek (H8432) which means, “to sever, a bisection, in the center, among, between, in the middle, midst.”
I must take a moment and urge anyone who wishes to go deeper into Bible Study to get an Interlinear Bible. The Strong’s is an invaluable reference but it doesn’t give prefixes or suffixes or, in some cases, tell you which word is used in the scripture. Case in point: John 1:1 says “In the Beginning was the word…and the word was WITH God.” If you were to look up “with” in the Strong’s you’d have to go to the Appendix where you will find listed all the words used so frequently they’d make the concordance very unwieldly if every occurrence was included: words like A, He, Her, They, and With. The Appendix would tell you that “with” in the Greek is sun and there’s actually an interesting lesson to learn by considering the meaning of sun in the first verse of John’s gospel. However, an Interlinear Bible would show you the word translated “with” in John 1:1 is not sun at all but pros. There is a different mind picture painted when the meaning of pros is meditated on in the passage.
It’s the same looking up the Hebrew letters. When I look up “among”, the Strong’s gives me the root tavek spelled Tav Vav Caph but my Interlinear Bible shows me the root appears with Mem as a suffix and Bet as a prefix. The addition of the prefix and suffix make the root third person masculine plural and it would be pronounced be-tow-kum. The Bet as a prefix means ”in, at, by, among, with, by means of, through”. Among is a perfectly fine translation but so is within or in or in the midst. All of this is fascinating but the word Bet means house and I have the promises of Jeremiah 31:33 and Ezekiel 36:27 ringing in my ears and so I return to my study.
2 Corinthians 6:16 says, “What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, ‘I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people’.” The words the Apostle Paul quotes are found in Leviticus 26:12, Jeremiah 32:38, and Ezekiel 37:27. First there was the Tabernacle and then the Temple which served as Houses of the Lord but there were also these promises from God that the day would come when there would be no external Tabernacle or Temple but God Himself would live within us.
Then comes the Incarnation where “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). The Amplified uses the word “tabernacled” instead of dwelt which I like. The Old Testament promises are beginning to be fulfilled but are not yet. Jesus gives wonderful promises in the upper room of the One He would send: the Comforter, the Teacher, the Spirit of Truth who would guide us into all truth. He would speak not on His own authority but will take everything that is of Jesus and declare it to us. (See John Chapters 13-17). The same night He gives these promises, Jesus is arrested, tried, and crucified. He dies but before dying declares “It is finished!” What is finished? There is far more to be said about what was happening on the Cross than I have room for here. I think the Book of Hebrews has the best explanation for what is referred to as the “finished work of the cross”:
Hebrews 7:26-27: “For such a High Priest was fitting for us, who is Holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and has become higher than the heavens; who does not need daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins and then for all the people’s, for this He did once for all when He offered up Himself.”
Hebrews 9: 24-27: “For Christ has not entered the holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us; not that He should offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood of another-He then would have had to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now, once at the end of the ages, He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.”
Hebrews 10:12: “But this man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God.”
I used the term “the finished word of the cross” because I’ve heard it said so often but if we stop there, there are still some of God’s promises not yet fulfilled. The Old Testament promises of God putting His Spirit within us, giving us new hearts, writing His law on those hearts, and enabling us to walk in His statutes are not fulfilled in the death of Jesus. As the Apostle Paul writes, “If Christ is not risen, then your faith is futile; you are still in your sins!” (1 Corinthians 15:17) Our faith is NOT futile and we are NOT still in our sins because Jesus is risen from the dead! He is not only risen but ascended to the right hand of the Father. After His ascension came Pentecost where the Holy Spirit rushed upon those gathered together. At last, with the lavish shedding abroad of the Spirit, the promises of God were fulfilled.
“For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Amen, to the glory of God through us” (1 Corinthians 1:20). “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation…” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of every promise of God which means that now, today, His Spirit is within me. He has given me a new heart, He has written His law on it, and He is causing me to walk in His statutes. I am in Him and thus am a new creation. How is this possible? Because Jesus Christ has risen from the dead, ascended to the right hand of the Father, and poured His Spirit into me. The same Spirit that is there in Genesis 1:1 is within me. He sends forth His Spirit and I am not only created but re-created and renewed (See Psalm 104:30).
After his experience with the Centurion Cornelius, Peter says, “In truth I perceive that God shows no partiality” (Acts 10:34). What is true for me is true for every other believer. The Spirit of the Living God lives within each and every one of us. Without Him, the Christian life is impossible. There is no ability to love anyone, especially our enemies. There are no streams of living water flowing out of us and into the world around us. Without Him we do not know we are in Christ and Christ is in us and thus we have no hope of glory. We can look at scripture and do our best to keep the rules so hopefully we get to go to heaven when we die but there is no LIFE. We can read and memorize and know about Jesus, we can even try our hardest to be like Him but, without the Spirit of truth and wisdom and revelation; we won’t ever intimately KNOW HIM because the things of God are spiritually discerned (1 Corinthians 2:14).
“Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” That is 1 Corinthians 3:16 and the question is asked again later on in Paul’s letter: “Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?” (1 Corinthians 6:19). If the books written by Christian authors I’ve recently read are any indication, believers do not know the Holy Spirit lives within them. May He open all of our eyes to see what is the hope of our calling.
Bereshit bara Elohim…In the beginning, created God the heavens and the earth. But these were not His house. “This saith the Lord, ‘The heaven is My throne, and the earth is My footstool. Where is the house that ye build unto Me? And where is the place of My rest?’” (Isaiah 66:1). “For thus says the Lord, Who created the heavens, Who is God, Who formed the earth and made it, Who has established it, Who did not create it in vain, Who formed it to be inhabited…” (Isaiah 45:18). “Everyone who is called by My name, Whom I have created for My glory; I have formed him, yes, I have made Him” (Isaiah 43:7).
Do you declare Jesus is Lord? Do you know God is your Father and you are His child? Do you know He has adopted you and is placing you as a Son? Yes? Then know the Spirit of the Lord lives within you. You are the house of the Lord, a living stone in His temple, a member of that great city described in Revelation whose maker and builder is God!
Hallelujah! God has done this! Let the House of the Lord sing praise!
Amen.
Unless noted otherwise, all Scriptures are quoted from The Holy Bible, New King James Version, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1982
References
The Comparative Study Bible, The Zondervan Corporation, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1984
Green, Jay P. Sr., The Interlinear Bible: Hebrew, Greek, English, Volumes 1-3, Authors For Christ Inc., Lafayette, IN, 1985
Haralick, Robert M., The Inner Meaning of Hebrew Letters, Jason Aronson Inc., Northvale, New Jersey, 1995
Strong, James, LL.D., S.T.D., The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1990
Renaissance Woman 
Jewish Oral Torah law goes by the Hebrew of משנה תורה. This term means “Common Law”. What separates Torah commandments from Torah Law/משנה תורה. A basic fundamental that neither Jesus nor Paul correctly understood.Paul, for example, opposed brit melah/circumcision. He also declared that Goyim were not under the Law. But his religious rhetoric/propaganda – it “conveniently” (half-truth), failed to distinguish the difference between Jewish Common Law from Roman statute law. Big ‘mistake’ made on purpose.
Jesus struggled with the Pharisee concepts of Shabbat mitzvot observances. The Pharisees, (Greek translation of P’rushim. P’rushim means separated; like a person separates t’rumah and tithes.), they serve as the forerunners of the rabbis found in Talmudic Torah common law codification. Jesus, like Paul, clearly did not understand the logic system which defines the whole of משנה תורה, also known as the Book of דברים, the Oral Torah Common Law. Why?
Shabbat observance centers upon not doing מלאכה, translated as “work”. The Talmud of tractate Shabbat defines מלאכה as not doing the 39 principal labors required to build the Mishkan in the days of Moshe the prophet. Jesus clearly failed to grasp that the Oral Torah functions as a logic system format which compares commandments as precedents to determine law.
The logic by which the sages compared Torah commandment precedents to other Torah commandments to determine the Law, known as middot. Based upon the revelation of the 13 tohor middot at Horev. This logic system stands as the יסוד/foundation\ of making logical דיוקים/logical inferences.
The Ramban, his introduction to his commentary to the Chumash/5 Books of the Torah\, refers to the kabbalah of white fire on black fire. This metaphor of kabbalah compares to taking a picture with film. Such a pre-computer Age picture has a negative. From that negative, it’s possible to make duplicate pictures. Making the logical דיוק goes by the term of reference known as משל\נמשל or parable/moral. That’s how the whole of the Oral Torah/משנה תורה logic system interprets the k’vanna of the Written Torah.The Written Torah contains commandments. The Oral Torah employs commandments as legal precedents to derive Torah common law. Roman statute law has no such logic system format as Jewish common law. Roman law relies upon the logic formats established by the ancient Greek philosophers, Plato, Aristotle and others.
The Rambam’s halachic code, known by the perverse name as משנה תורה, learns halacha by Roman statute law rather than Jewish common law. A fundamental mistake copied by the Tur and Shulkan Aruch Roman statute law codifications of Talmudic common law. The Apostle Paul, not alone in making the gross error of assimilating and embracing the culture and customs established by the Roman and Greek empires.The Opening commandment of the Sinai revelation: the thesis statement to the entire Torah! Jesus clearly did not learn this most basic fundamental; he confused the commandment to love as the greatest of the commandments.
The Talmud of tractate Baba Kama/First Gate\ teaches the משל of hanging a mountain by a hair. The דיוק, the נמשל of this משל, hanging a mountain by a hair: all the other 612 Written Torah commandments depend upon obeying the 1st Sinai commandment. What defines the 1st Sinai commandment? Doing the other commandments לשמה.Herein distinguishes the vision of Law Moshe received outside the land of Israel, from the actual practice of Law as justice within the oath sworn lands. Observance of Torah commandments לשמה, the 1st Sinai commandment a person can only do them within the oath sworn lands. Hence the revelation of the Torah at Sinai/Horev exists as only a prophetic vision of mussar, and not a historical fact.
In the Name of the 1st Sinai Commandment, includes a reference of the deliverance from Egypt. The mitzva of shabbat too expresses this identical k’vanna. (Do not know a simple translation for this extremely abstract term, other than the “dedication of tohor middot”. But that’s a completely different discussion).
The Torah commands: do not do מלאכה on Shabbat. How did the Talmud interpret the meaning of the term מלאכה? Torah logic functions by means of making דיוקים/logical inferences. Tractate Shabbat teaches the משל of the 39 principal labors required to build the Mishkan/Tabernacle of the Congregation. But the deliverance from Egyptian slavery, directly addressed in the 1st Sinai commandment, refers to a completely different set of מלאכה … the מלאכה by which Par’o enslaved Jews to make bricks to build his cities!
The term שבת can mean 7th day. But the דיוק on the word שבת also, something like a pun has two or more different words which sound alike, (((foul and fowl for example. The word fowl has one meaning for Odor and another meaning for baseball))), shabbat also means “week”. To keep shabbat entails a dedication.
The idea of a sacrifice burnt offering dedicated upon an altar – too most essentially entails the act of swearing a Torah oath. A brit Jew, (cannot cut a brit without swearing a Torah oath), commits to not doing forbidden work on the day of Shabbat, as a משל to not doing forbidden work on the week of Shabbat נמשל!Meaning a brit Jew dedicates not doing any of the 39 forbidden labors required to build the Mishkan on the day of Shabbat, a משל. As a compound dedication to not doing the מלאכה of slavery of the rest of the days of the week/known also by the name שבת, the נמשל or the דיוק which defines the k’vanna of keeping and observing the mitzva of shabbat.
Jesus did not understand this basic fundamental of shabbat observance. Shabbat exists as both a single day and also the whole week in one word. To keep shabbat means that a person commits to not doing forbidden labors on the rest of the days of the week, such as theft, oppression – such as slander, violence – such as murder or rape, and perversion of courtroom justice, the remembrance of Egyptian slavery … during the rest of the days of the shabbat week!
Because the church fathers relied upon Greek logic and denied the Oral Torah logic system, they erroneously assumed that shabbat existed as a single day of the week. The church does not stand alone in this huge error, the Rambam, Tur, and Shulkan Aruch made the identical mistake, they too assimilated to Roman statute law and abandoned Jewish common law.
The Jewish concept of Moshiach. Jewish common law/משנה תורה\ this law legal system stands upon precedents. The concept of Moshiach/messiah, a powerful commandment. What Torah precedent defines the anointing by the prophet Shmuel/Samuel\ of both Shaul and David as Moshiach?
The New Testament failed to ask this basic, fundamental question. A big ooops mistake. Moshe anointed the House of Aaron as Moshiach! The prophet Isaiah teaches a huge mussar interpretation of the Written Torah: No Torah commandment to offer sacrifices!!!!
So, what explains the anointing of the House of Aaron as Moshiach and the 3rd Book of the Written Torah??? The concept of the Mishkan – דיוק – teaches the נמשל of ruling the oath sworn lands of conquered Canaan with righteous lateral Sanhedrin courtrooms. These courtrooms function through Common law and not Statute law. British courts compare to ancient Israeli courts in that both legal systems function by way of common law. French and German courts function by way of Roman statute law.
The British Parliament, whatever law it passes, defines the Constitution of the British nation-state. American law by contrast has a written Constitution. Hence the US Supreme Court can and has overruled laws passed by Congress and the President. It can and has disqualified law passed by the other 2 Branches of the Constitutional American government.
The Supreme Court can and has negated some of those laws and declared them unconstitutional. British courts cannot overrule a law passed by Parliament. Because a law of Parliament defines the Constitution which British courts must uphold.British common law stands upon legal precedents as does ancient Israeli משנה תורה common law. But the 5th Book of the Torah, דברים, empowers Sanhedrin courtrooms with the additional power known as ‘legislative review’.
The Sanhedrin courts like the US Supreme Court can declare a law passed by the Government/the king\ as unconstitutional. But more than the enfranchisement of the American Supreme Court. The Sanhedrin courts have the mandate to rewrite a disqualified Unconstitutional law passed by both Houses of Congress and supported by the Executive branch of the Government.
The Sanhedrin lateral common law court has the power to define the original intent of the Torah Constitution. The Sanhedrin courts not only interpret, but they can also turn and impose their reinterpreted qualified-law upon the nation as a whole — the power, intent and purpose of ‘legislative review’!!
Talmudic common law, for example employs the prophetic mussar instruction contained within the Aggadic portions of the Talmud to accomplish ‘legislative review’ of the halachic precedents the Gemarah employs to interpret the intent of a Mishna which the Gemara reviews.
Therefore, the משל of the Mishkan, as found in the 2nd Book of the Written Torah teaches a נמשל — the establishment franchise within the Sanhedrin Federal lateral common law courtrooms of legislative review!!!
King Shlomo made a big oops mistake when he ignored the mussar which the prophet Natan commanded. When he decided to ignore the prophet Natan and built the 1st Temple, rather than establish the Sanhedrin courts legislative review authority across his kingdom. The last mitzva achieved by Moshe before he passed, he built three of the Cities of Refuge. The Cities of Refuge contain Small Sanhedrin Courts which try Capital Crimes Cases.
Hence, based upon the context of this Torah precedent commandment, the prophet Isaiah later commanded the mussar, that Israel never received any commandment within the Torah to dedicate sacrifices!!!! The concept of known as “Beit HaMikdash” only serves as the משל to the Federal Sanhedrin Court system נמשל.
Righteous judicial Sanhedrin courtroom rulings which fairly compensate victims for damages inflicted, these tohor judicial rulings have the power to manifest and transform the Torah Sinai vision unto Torah historical facts.
The New Testament presents the messiah story of Jesus as a sacrifice. Another ooops huge mistake. Torah faith centers upon the obligation to conquer the land of Canaan and thereafter rule this land with righteous common law courtroom justice!!! A radically different concept of faith than that preached by Xtians and Muslims theological Creeds and Dogmas.
The prophet Shmuel cannot add or subtract from the Torah commandments. Just as Moshe anointed the House of Aaron to make oath dedications through the משל medium of sacrifices, to rule the conquered lands of Canaan with: נמשל righteous lateral common law courtrooms, so too the anointing of Shaul and later David follow the parameters established by this Torah precedent. Moshe anointing the House of Aaron as Moshiach/messiah. The mitzva of Moshiach — the establishment of the Sanhedrin Federal Court franchise.
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