Blessing and Knees

 Every languague uses different body parts to symbolize things.  Some of these are common across many languages, and others are different from one culture to another.  Hebrew has its own set, and I will discuss them as I come across them in my studies.  

The first one I came across was knees. In English we may say someone goes "weak in the knees" to indicate they are so overcome with emotions that they might faint.  Recently "To take a knee" has meant someone decides to respectfully not show respect for something. 

In Hebrew, the knee is related to blessing. The word to for "to kneel" is the same as to bless, baruch רךבּ

That is why, in Hebrew, the Lord can bless us, as in the Priestly Blessing in Number 6:23

            May the Lord bless you and keep you...

And we can "bless" the Lord, as in Psalm 103:1

            Bless the Lord, oh my soul...

In both passages the word "bless" is a form of the same word, רךבּ

One might ask, how can we as mere mortals "bless" the Lord? We can't really do anything to give him something he doesn't already have.  But if we understand that "bless" means "kneel before" that makes sense. 

But wait?  Does it make sense that the Lord would then kneel before us?  I don't know how Jewish people feel about this idea, but as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we know that the Lord, who is יהוה Yaweh, (see my blog post on the tetragramton) is the same as Jesus.  Was there any time that he knelt before his followers?  Yes! He knelt when he washed the disciples feet, and when he prayed for the children at Bountiful in the Book of Mormon. In the Garden of Gethsemane, he didn't kneel, but was so overcome he lay prostrate, face down, on the ground.

If יהוה who created the earth and is our Savior, was willing to kneel for us, shouldn't we be all the more willing to kneel before him?

Psalm 27:1

 This Sunday is our Stake Conference (a biannual meeting of several local congregations). The stake president announced that the theme for the meeting will be Psalm 27:1 and urged us all to study it.

The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom  shall I be afraid?

As a way of studying the passage more deeply, I decided to memorize it in Hebrew. 

יהוה אורי וישׁעי

ממי אירא

יהוה מעוז חײ

ממי אפחד

The first word I came across that I didn't really know was the third word:  וישׁעי.

It sounds like "vayishi." The first letter ו just means "and."  The rest of the word,  ישׁעי means "salvation."  As I was first sounding it out  I thought, "that sounds like the word, "Jesus,"  and sure enough,  it is the root of the name Jeshua, which is what Hebrew speakers call Jesus.  So when Jesus said, "I am the light of the world," It would have immediately called his Jewish listener's minds to this psalm which basically says, "Jehovah is my light and my Jesus." It also explains why people would wonder if Jesus was the Messiah, when his name means "Salvation." 

The second word I didn't really know was מעוז.  It is pronounced ma'oz.  In KJ it is translated as "strengh" but what it really means is "a fortress."  It is often used metaphorically, but it is also used to describe a physical walled city. The next word חײ means life, and refers to an earthly life force, not really the soul (which would be nephesh). So the phrase means "Jehovah is my life's fortress" or "the thing that protects my life." I guess it isn't a huge difference, but I seams like a more impactful statement than just, "the strengh of my life."

Anyway, it adds another layer of meaning you just can't get reading a translation.  Can you tell I am having great fun with this stuff!