Hebrew Voices #133 – Yom Teruah Bible Study

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Hebrew Voices #133 - Yom Teruah Bible Study

You are listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon's Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

Nehemia: Can we jump to the book of Nehemiah, chapter 7; in the English it's verse 73, in the Hebrew it's verse 72? “So, the priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the singers, the Temple servants, all Israel settled in their towns.” This is the ingathering of the first exile. “When the seventh month came, the people of Israel being settled in their town, all the people gathered together in the square before the water gate.” So they're in this public square. “They told the scribe, Ezra, to bring the Book of the Torah of Moses which Yehovah had given to Israel.” I get chills, Keith, he brought this Torah with him back from Babylon, and now he's going to unroll it and read it for the first time to the people who have gathered. They've been in exile for 70 years, and there are people like Daniel in the exile who were hearing the Torah, but then most people in the exile probably didn't have a great access to the Torah.

“Accordingly, the priest Ezra brought the law before the assembly,” that's the Torah, “before the assembly, both men and women, and all who could hear with understanding. This was on the first day of the seventh month.” That's today, that's Yom Teruah. So the first day of the seventh month. “He read from it, facing the square before the water gate from the early morning until midday in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand. And the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the Torah.”

Verse 4. “The scribe Ezra stood on a wooden platform that had been made for the purpose, and besides him and stood Matityahu, Shema, Anaiah, Uriah, Hilkiah and Maaseiah on his right hand. And Pedaiah, Mishael, Malkijah, Hashum, Hashbaddanah, Zechariah and Meshullam on his left hand. And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was standing above the people, and when he opened it all the people stood up.” That's interesting, so they're standing up in honor of the Torah. “And Ezra opened the book in the center of all the people,” verse 6. “And Ezra blessed Yehovah the great God, and all the people answered: amen, amen, lifting up their hands. Amen, amen. Then they bowed their heads and worshipped Yehovah with their faces to the ground. Also, Yeshua and Bani and Sherebiah on the right, Akkub, Shabbethai, Hodiah, Maaseiah, Kelita, Azariah,” these are different priests or leaders, or Levites, “Yozabad, Hanan, and Pelaiah. And the Levites helped the people understand the Torah while the people remained in their places.”

And there's a question, what does that mean, they helped them understand, or they caused them to understand? A good question, we'll leave that for a different discussion. “So they read from the book of the Torah of God with...” and it says here, in this translation, “with interpretation”. And what it literally says in Hebrew is, meforash, clearly, unequivocally. “They gave the sense to the people so that the people understood the reading.” And what does that mean? There are different explanations of that, I don't know that we're going to get into that now.

One explanation is that that actually is just the intonation you use. So if it says in the Torah, you shall not murder, what it literally says is, “no, you will murder”. Lo tirtzakh. And you can read that as a rhetorical question, lo tirtzakh? Which means, shall you not murder? Of course you'll murder. So the very fact that I read it, lo tirtzakh! I read it as an imperative, as a commandment, that itself is giving the meaning.

Okay, going on. And it also is possible they were in Babylon for 70 years, they came back, the dialect of Hebrew they spoke in this period was slightly different than the Hebrew of the Torah, and how do we know that? Just read the book of Ezra and Nehemiah, it's a different dialect of Hebrew.