Every student at Bethlehem learns to read their New Testament in the original Greek. Seminary students and some college students also learn to read their Old Testament in Hebrew. Learning these languages requires an enormous investment of time initially and regular use thereafter, or the language memory will fade. Is it worth it?
My answer is twofold: Most Christians would be better equipped for life and ministry if they spent those hundreds of hours memorizing and maintaining chapter after chapter of the Bible in English instead of memorizing and maintaining Greek and Hebrew vocabulary words and grammar. BUT for Christians whose main ministry is studying and teaching the Bible, the time spent learning Greek and Hebrew develops a tool far beyond comparison for rightly handling the word of truth.
One of the ways that learning Greek and Hebrew enables students to better understand the Bible is that it reveals connections between passages that are invisible or obscure in English. For example, in Genesis 22:2, Yahweh commanded Abraham, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you.” That is a huge ask—arguably the most difficult thing recorded in the Bible that God asked any of his people to do. How did Abraham do it? Hebrews 11:8, 17–19 and James 2:21–23 indicate that Abraham did it by faith—the same faith by which he obeyed God’s call to leave his homeland in Genesis 12 and the same faith in God’s promise of a seed that God counted as righteousness in Genesis 15:6. Thus when God asked Abraham to trust him in Genesis 22, Abraham had a history of trusting God and God proving himself to be trustworthy. Here is where knowing Hebrew is helpful.
In Genesis 22:2, God’s command to Abraham ‘Go!’ is the exact same wording as his command ‘Go!’ in Genesis 12:1. The command translated ‘Go!’ occurs 246 times in the Bible, but the wording used in Genesis 22:2 (לֶךְ־לְךָ lekh-lekha) occurs only one other time in the Bible: Genesis 12:1. By using the exact same unusual wording that he had used before, when God asks Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, God is reminding him, “Remember how I asked you to go in faith before. You went and I proved myself faithful. Now I’m asking you to go again. Trust me again.” And so Abraham went. According to Hebrews 11:17–19, Abraham trusted God to keep his promise to give him offspring through Isaac, so he obeyed God’s command to sacrifice Isaac. That is the obedience of faith. And that faith is grown in part by remembering how God has proven himself trustworthy in the past. “He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all [=past grace], how will he not also with him graciously give us all things [=trust in future grace]?” The unique shared Hebrew wording of Genesis 12:1 and 22:2 helps us see that dynamic at work in Abraham’s obedience of faith.
As another example, students in third-semester Hebrew spent the last four weeks of the semester reading the book of Ruth in Hebrew. One verse we discussed at length is Ruth 3:9, when Ruth asks Boaz to marry her. A word-for-word translation of Ruth’s wording is “Spread your wing over your servant.” What does that mean? Furthermore, the translations of Ruth’s request vary wildly: “Spread your wings” (ESV), “Spread your garment” (NASB), “Spread the corner of your garment” (NIV), “Marry [me]” (NET). What is going on? Naomi’s setup (Ruth 3:1–5) and Boaz’s response (Ruth 3:10–13) indicate that it is a marriage proposal. But how is that a marriage proposal? Ezekiel 16:8 uses the exact same Hebrew wording of a man “spreading his wing” over a woman as a symbolic action to indicate marriage, akin to “putting a ring on her finger” in our culture. So the NET Bible translation “Marry [me]” clarifies the symbolic action for readers. But what is the “wing” in the symbolic action?
The wing is the edge of one’s outer garment, as the NASB and NIV translations make clear, allowing readers to see the physical significance in the context of Ruth uncovering Boaz’s feet and sleeping at his feet (Ruth 3:7). The ESV translation “wing” forgoes both of those clarifications, but lets attentive readers see the connection to Ruth 2:12, when Boaz blessed Ruth for having taken refuge under the “wings” of Yahweh, the God of Israel. Ruth’s seeking to follow Israel’s levirate marriage law (Deuteronomy 25:5–10) by marrying the redeemer, Boaz, is an outflow of her taking refuge in Israel’s God. So Ruth 3:9 is (1) a request for marriage (2) using the symbolic action of a man covering a woman with the hem of his outer robe (3) described as covering her with his “wing”—which is how Boaz described Ruth’s faith in Yahweh. Translators must choose which of the three to communicate, but pastors who can read Hebrew can see all three.
If your heart sings at seeing connections like these in the Bible and showing such riches to God’s people as a pastor, come to Bethlehem and learn to read!
John Beckman, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Old Testament
Prayer Requests:
- Pray that we each would treasure and memorize the word of God.
- Pray for the faculty and students traveling to and presenting at the annual Evangelical Theological Society meeting.
- Pray for the full funding of The Serious Joy Scholarships needed for this academic year.