Two Hebrew Hints
I don’t know Hebrew so this isn’t me pretending to be starter than I am, however it’s good to pass on what your learning… So this is 2 wee hints that I’ve picked up from James McKeon (teaches Hebrew and writes commentaries on the OT) in the past couple of weeks. I’ve been listening to couple of his lectures on pod-caste lately, so anyways here we go.
1.
I what you to look into someones eyes, gaze into them, (it might result in more than you bargain for) and have them gaze into yours, and what do you see? You should see each-others reflection. As if your silhouette is drawn on the back of their eye. A few times in the OT God says we’re the ‘apple of His eye’, maybe most famous in Ps 17 “Keep me as the apple of your eye, hide me under the shadow of your wings” The wee phrase (‘apple’ of my eye) in Hebrew actually says you are the ‘little man’ inside my eye… You see God was saying that He loves us so much that He never takes His eyes off us, He just can’t help looking at us, in-fact He watches us so much that we’re the silhouetted image at the back of His eye, we’re the ‘little man’ inside His eye. I don’t know if you’ve ever or are in love, but you can see it a weddings etc when the groom just can’t stop looking at his bride, she is the very centre of his attention, she is the apple of his eye, she is the ‘little man’ inside his eye. And so God is saying that we are the very centre of His attention, we’re the apple of his eye, if you could take a picture of God’s eye, on the captured reflection, there, would be your image, your face, you doing whatever you’re doing. What love, what a joy, what a sense of acceptance, surly He loves us and surly we should be challenged to know everything we do is seen by God.
We’re the apple of God’s eye/we’re the little man inside His eye!
2.
So in Ex 34 God reveals His name, now I’m increasingly being made aware of the
importance of God’s name, and even the meaning of names in the Bible. So when someone revealed their name they’d reveal their identity, their purpose, their character. So in the Bible Ex 34 is very very important, here is God revealing whoHe is, this is how God describes Himself, and since God doesn’t lie, like it or not this is (is His own words) who God is: Then the LORD came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the LORD. And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.” The wee phrase I want to dig into is ‘slow to anger’. So in the hebrew it simply says, “I’ve a long nose”… What? How come it reads ‘slow to anger’ in our Bible? What a funny way to describe yourself God! So what does that mean? Well, in Hebrew if someone was angry people would say they ‘wrinkled’ their nose. Think of a cross bull, I farm, and when I’m in a field with a bull who’s snorting and wrinkling his nose at me, I’m not long at getting out of his road! You see the image? like Jesus when He said you’ve heard it said do not murder, well I tell you don’t even look at someone with a wrinkled nose! This puts girls who give evil looks into diffs! But I think you’ve guessed what God is saying about Himself, he’s saying that His nose is so long that it’s very hard for Him to wrinkle it, it take’s him a long time to wrinkle it, it takes a lot to get Him angry!
God is slow to anger/God has a long nose!
Hope this helps
Standing on grace
andy lamberton 