Preaching with Hebrew

Nehemiah 8 is the scene every student of Hebrew is preparing for. The exiles have come home and rebuilt the wall, and the people gather in the square and ask for the Book of the Law. Ezra reads from daybreak to noon. Beside him the Levites move among the standing crowd, and the anchor tells us what they did: 'So they read from the Book of the Law of God, explaining it and giving insight, so that the people could understand what was being read.' Reading was not enough. Someone who knew the text stood between it and the people and opened it.

The Hebrew of the verse rewards a careful look, and it also teaches modesty, because its key word is uncertain. In the Westminster Leningrad Codex (WLC) the word behind explaining it is מְפֹרָשׁ (mephorash), a Pual participle, masculine singular, of the root פרשׁ. The same root in the Pual describes a case where 'it had not been declared' what should be done (Numbers 15:34), and in Leviticus 24:12 the Qal describes waiting for the will of the LORD to be 'made clear'. So the word has to do with making something distinct or plain. But what exactly did the Levites do? Some take it to mean that they read distinctly, clearly enough to be heard by a crowd. Some take it to mean that they read section by section, pausing to explain. And a very old Jewish tradition, recorded in the Babylonian Talmud (Megillah 3a), takes it to mean translation, an Aramaic rendering for people whose Hebrew had weakened in exile. That last view gains some support from Ezra 4:18, part of the Aramaic section of Ezra, where the Aramaic word from the same root is rendered 'translated'. Scholars still weigh these views, and the text does not settle them. Hold them open.

The next phrase is clearer: וְשׂוֹם שֶׂכֶל (vesom sekhel, and giving insight), a Qal infinitive absolute of שׂים, to put or set, with the noun sekhel, insight or good sense. Then the verse ends with וַיָּבִינוּ בַּמִּקְרָא (vayyavinu bammiqra, and they understood the reading). That last verb is worth a moment, because it shows something the parsing codes cannot always settle. For a verb of this kind the simple stem and the causative stem can look exactly alike here. The Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible tags it as a Qal, so the people understood, which is how the BSB renders it. The King James Version, which is in the public domain, reads it as causative: 'and caused them to understand the reading'. Either way, the root is בין (bin), to understand, and as the inquiry showed, it runs through the whole chapter, in verses 2, 3, 7, 8, 9 and 12. The people are those who could understand; the Levites are those who made them understand; and the chapter ends with the people rejoicing 'because they understood the words that had been made known to them' (8:12).

That is the purpose of Hebrew in a sermon in one word: understanding. Not admiration for the preacher, not the thrill of a secret meaning, not proof that the preacher has been to seminary. A Hebrew point earns its place in a sermon when it helps the people understand what is being read, and when it does not, it stays in the notebook. Everything else in this lesson is an application of that one principle, which comes from the square before the Water Gate.

This lesson is narrow on purpose. The larger questions of how to preach the Old Testament belong to the Homiletics track, and you should read its lesson Preaching the Old Testament before or after this one. That lesson takes Paul's sermon on the wilderness in 1 Corinthians 10 as a model, sets out the roads from an Old Testament passage to Christ that the New Testament itself travels, and marks the two ditches on either side: allegory, which makes the text mean whatever the preacher likes, and a sermon without Christ, which treats the Old Testament as if the cross had not happened. Nothing here replaces that lesson. This one asks a smaller question: once you have studied the Hebrew of your passage, what, if anything, should you say about it on Sunday?

If you have taken the Koine Greek track, you will know its lesson Greek in the Pulpit, and much of what it says applies here unchanged. The four tests it gives for a Greek point apply to a Hebrew point too: does it change the meaning the hearers would otherwise take; do the translations in the room differ; does it let them see something in their own Bible; does it guard against a misreading they have probably heard. This lesson does not repeat those tests at length. It adds what is particular to the Old Testament: the myths that cluster around Hebrew, the special problem of the divine name, and the kind of point that Hebrew gives most often, which is not a single word but the shape of a passage.

That last point matters more than it first appears. In the Greek New Testament, much of the value of the language lies in the grammar of single sentences: a tense, a case, a preposition. In the Hebrew Old Testament, a great deal of the value lies in patterns a congregation can see in English once someone points them out. A key word repeated through a story, as you saw with understanding in Nehemiah 8. A chain of narrative verbs that suddenly stops. A line of poetry whose second half sharpens the first. The same verb used for two different characters. These are the observations the lessons Key Words and Repetition, The Narrative Chain (Wayyiqtol) and Parallelism taught you to make, and they are among the best uses of Hebrew in a sermon, precisely because you can show them without saying a word of Hebrew at all.

The first is the letter picture. The letters of the Hebrew alphabet descend from an older alphabet whose signs began as pictures, and the names of some letters still recall those pictures. From this some preachers build hidden messages: the word for father is made of the letters for ox and house, so father means the strength of the house, and so on. The lesson Hebrew Myths and Word-Study Traps showed why this is false. By the time any book of the Old Testament was written, the letters had long been signs for sounds, not pictures, and no Hebrew speaker heard pictures in his words any more than you hear the history of the letter A when you read the word apple. A meaning built from letter pictures is a meaning the author never meant.

The second is the claim that Hebrew has no word for something. It is offered as if it revealed a deep difference in how Israel thought: there is no Hebrew word for this, so the Israelites did not think in that way. Usually the claim is either false, because the word exists and a concordance would have found it, or it proves nothing, because every language expresses some ideas with phrases rather than single words. English has no everyday single word for the day after tomorrow, and English speakers have no difficulty thinking about it. The third is the root fallacy, which treats the history or root of a word as its meaning in every sentence. Genesis 2:7 really does play on the likeness of אָדָם (adam, man) and אֲדָמָה (adamah, ground), and a preacher may point it out there. That does not mean every use of adam in the Old Testament is a reminder that we are made from soil. The play is made where the text makes it.

The fourth is the over-read verb. The lessons The Seven Stems and Perfect and Imperfect warned against making a verb form carry a sermon by itself: claiming that because a verb is in the piel God did something with special intensity, or that a perfect proves an event was certain, or that an imperfect proves it was continuous. Those labels describe tendencies, and scholars still disagree about how the Hebrew verb system works. A form may support a reading that the context already suggests. It rarely creates one.

The fifth is the hardest to avoid, because it can be done with perfectly accurate Hebrew. It is the phrase the Hebrew really says, followed by something that makes the hearers' Bible look wrong or timid. Even when what follows is true, the phrase teaches the congregation that the Bible in their hands cannot be trusted without the preacher's private key, and that is a lesson they will remember long after they have forgotten the word. A preacher who has done the Hebrew work well should leave his people trusting their Bibles more, not less. Say the word the psalmist chose, or the word Moses uses here, rather than the Hebrew really says. The first points to the author. The second sets the Hebrew against the people.

There is one pulpit question particular to the Old Testament, and it deserves a word: the divine name. The lesson The Vowel Points explained why the four letters of the name are read as Adonai, Lord, and why most English Bibles, the BSB among them, print LORD in small capital letters where the Hebrew has them. The form Jehovah arose much later, from reading those consonants with the vowels that had been written to remind readers to say Adonai. A congregation can be helped by one short explanation of the small capitals, once, early in a series on an Old Testament book, because it lets them see in their own Bible every place where God's covenant name is used. What they do not need is a lecture that mocks those who say Jehovah, or a preacher who insists on a pronunciation the church has long been careful about. Explain the capitals, show them Exodus 3:15 if you like, and move on.

Psalm 46:10 is one of the best-loved verses in the Old Testament: 'Be still and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted over the earth.' It is printed on cards and painted on walls, and it is usually heard as an invitation to quiet: slow down, be silent, rest in God. Here is how the Hebrew work goes, and what it should and should not do to a sermon.

First, a practical note. In the WLC this is verse 11, because the Hebrew counts the psalm's title, the line addressed to the choirmaster and naming the sons of Korah, as verse 1. The verse begins הַרְפּוּ וּדְעוּ (harpu ud'u, be still and know). The first verb is a Hiphil imperative, second person masculine plural, of רפה, a root to do with sinking, slackening or letting go. The second is a Qal imperative, second person masculine plural, of ידע, to know. Notice the plural: whoever is being addressed, it is not one person at prayer but a group.

Second, the concordance. Search for the same verb in the same stem and the BSB shows you its range: 'Leave Me alone' (Deuteronomy 9:14), 'Stop!' (1 Samuel 15:16), 'Enough! Withdraw your hand now!' (2 Samuel 24:16), 'Refrain from anger' (Psalm 37:8). The Hiphil of this verb is about letting go of something, stopping, taking your hand off. Then search the English phrase be still, and notice that it translates different Hebrew verbs in different places: in Exodus 14:14, 'The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still', it is another verb, and in Psalm 37:7, 'Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for Him', yet another. An English concordance would have joined three Hebrew words into one. The interlinear separates them.

Third, the context. Psalm 46 is a psalm of war and upheaval. The earth is transformed and the mountains topple into the sea (46:2-3); 'Nations rage, kingdoms crumble' (46:6). Then the hearers are invited to 'Come, see the works of the LORD', who 'makes wars to cease throughout the earth; He breaks the bow and shatters the spear' (46:8-9). Verse 10 follows directly. In that setting, the command to let go and know that he is God sounds like a command to stop fighting, to drop your weapons, to cease striving against him. Some translations bring that out: the NASB, for example, has cease striving. And the Septuagint used a verb meaning to be at leisure or to cease from work.

Who is being addressed? Here careful readers differ, and your honesty column should say so. Many take the speaker to be God, addressing the raging nations of verse 6: stop your warring, and know that I am God, who will be exalted among the nations. Others hear it addressed to God's own people, frightened by the upheaval: stop your anxious striving, and know who is your fortress, as the refrain of verses 7 and 11 says. Some think the psalm deliberately leaves both in view. What the Hebrew rules out is not comfort but a particular kind of comfort. The verse is not first of all about stillness as a technique of prayer. It is about God's sovereign power to end the wars of the world, and the right response to that power, whether for an enemy or a frightened believer, is to stop fighting and to know him.

Should any of this go into a sermon? Apply the tests. Does it change the meaning hearers would take? Yes, plainly: most of them hear a call to quiet devotion and the context gives a call to surrender. Can they see it in their own Bible? Yes: verses 6, 8 and 9 are on the same page. So this point has earned its place, and it can be made almost entirely in English. You might say: this verse is often heard as an invitation to quiet. Look at the verses just before it. The nations are raging and God is breaking bows and burning shields. The word behind be still is used elsewhere for letting go, for taking your hand off something. God is telling the world, and telling us, to stop fighting him and to know who he is. That takes a minute. It does not tell anyone their card on the wall is wrong; it tells them the verse is bigger than they thought.

When you do use a Hebrew point, say it so the people can follow it, check it and keep it. Pronounce a Hebrew word once, if at all, and then use the English. Never parse in the pulpit; nobody needs to hear Hiphil imperative second masculine plural, and everybody can understand this is a command to a whole crowd. Keep the explanation to a sentence or two. Bring the people back to the text in their hands, and when you can, show them the point in English, as with the war verses around Psalm 46:10 or the six uses of understand in Nehemiah 8. Say your confidence honestly, using the column in your notebook: a certain point plainly, a probable one with a word like most likely, a possible one as a suggestion or not at all.

Where the church or the scholars are divided over a word or a verse, the pulpit is not usually the place to argue the case. If the debate matters for your sermon, state the readings briefly and fairly, say what they agree on, and preach that. In Psalm 46:10, all the readings agree that God is sovereign over the raging world and that the right response is to stop striving and know him; you can preach that with full confidence and mention, if it helps, that the verse can be heard as spoken to the nations or to God's people. If the debate does not matter for the sermon, leave it for a class where people can ask questions.

Many students of this course preach in a language other than English, from a Bible in Swahili, Hausa, Amharic, Tagalog, Portuguese or another tongue, sometimes through an interpreter. There the Hebrew is even more useful and even more open to misuse. Use it to understand what your people's translation has done, and to explain it well. If you become convinced the translation in your language has a real error, not merely a different choice, do not announce it from the pulpit first. Check it with someone who knows more, speak to the translators or the Bible Society if you can, and in the pulpit explain the verse rather than condemn the book. A congregation with one Bible in its language needs to be able to trust it.

The Levites of Nehemiah 8 are a good last picture. They did not stand on the platform; Ezra did. They moved among the people in their places, reading, explaining and giving insight. Nobody remembers what they said. Everybody remembers that the people understood and went home rejoicing. That is the measure of Hebrew in the pulpit: not whether the people were impressed, but whether they understood and rejoiced.

Your practical step this week. Take the Old Testament passage you studied with the routine in Hebrew in the Study, or Psalm 46 if you have none. Go through your notebook and list every Hebrew observation you made. Beside each one, write which of the four tests it passes, if any. Choose the one that passes the most, and write out, in no more than four sentences, exactly what you would say about it in a sermon, ending by pointing to a verse in the hearers' own Bible. Then read your four sentences aloud to someone who has never studied Hebrew and ask them to tell you, in their own words, what you meant. If they cannot, rewrite it until they can.