It’s in Your Hand
“And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” Genesis 12:3 NASB
Bless/curse – On my last trip to Israel, I was delighted to meet Roi Ziv, a native Israelite who lives near Nof Ginnosar on Lake Kinneret (the “Sea of Galilee”). Roi and his sister spent a day with the group, sharing what it is like to be Messianic believers in an Israeli community. A few days ago, Roi sent me an email about his investigation of the Hebrew roots for “bless” and “curse.” He investigated the Paleo-Hebrew possibilities. He wrote:
Curse had 3 roots, as far as I know: ק.ל.ל , ק.ב.ב , א.ר.ר ( Q.L.L, A.R.R, Q.B.B )
Quph is a sun at the horizon (sunset? end?) and Lamed is a shepherd’s staff, in the sense of guidance and teaching. So, could one meaning of curse be “the end/dying/absence of teaching, discipline and guidance”?
Beit is a tent, meaning home, family, community. That with a Quph gives another meaning to curse: “the absence/ending of family and community life.” The last one sort of completes the other two: Aleph, Resh, Resh. Aleph is the ox head, meaning strength, control, leadership and Resh is a man’s head. So when man is in a place of power, when he is the leader, instead of God, El, Aleph Lamed, “the strength that teaches,” it is also a curse.
And all together: a curse in Hebrew is pride, man in control, and the lack of teaching and community life.
Blessing. Beit, Resh, Kaph. ב.ר.כ . A tent, man’s head and an open palm (meaning willingness to bend, receive, give and allow?). This gives the picture of a man’s willingness to submit to the life of family and community, to receive and give correction and to have all the other aspects of Hebrew community life. Or in other words: exactly the opposite of curse. I guess “to kneel” also connects to blessing, since knee is also ב.ר.כ
“For whoever exalts himself will be humbled and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 18:14)
What a great insight! Yes, there are issues with Paleo-Hebrew, but those issues shouldn’t prevent us from seeing the interesting connections in the consonants. Roi has given us all another level of understanding. Imagine that blessing and cursing are connected to willingness to be corrected, community and family.
Blessing means cooperation in concert with others, bending to advice, submission and welcoming dialogue. Curse means the absence of community input, exercising power without humility, refusing to be taught. With these insights we can see that blessing and curses are completely within our control. We determine if we are blessed or cursed by our attitudes and actions.
Are you waiting to be blessed? Are you feeling as if you are cursed? Now that you’ve had a chance to read Roi’s comments, who do you think is responsible for your present condition or your hoped-for situation?
Topical Index: bless, curse, Genesis 12:3, Roi Ziv
A SPECIAL TREAT FOR ALL SUPPORTS and READERS:
When Bob and I were in Israel in June, we had a chance to visit with the Voice of Israel station. The three key men there shared about their lives and perspectives. All was recorded and HERE IT IS, free to all of you. Enjoy!
So to be facing toward “cooperation in concert with others, bending to advice, submission and welcoming dialogue” is to be in the fence; in relationship; and to be facing toward the “absence of community input, exercising power without humility, refusing to be taught” is to be outside the fence. According to Webster’s 1828 Dictionary, the word “vilify” means to “lesson the blessing”. A villian, then, is someone who steals, kills or destroys your blessing. The three little baby goats in the fairy tale were told by their mama to not let anyone in who did not show their little white hoof through the crack under the door, and so they refused to open to the big bad wolf, even when he covered his paw with flour to whiten it. We are the ones who hold the key to the door of our heart. Yeshua said He stands outside the door and knocks. Politely. We open our door to the thief who claims to be the purveyor of love, and it is all downhill from there. Once he is in, he trashes the place.
We can be villified by the choices of others: I think this is a brutal fact of that web of community and home, working backwards. Children are often the victims of parental choices that result in their children being put outside the protection of the home: in so many cases, the home BECOMES the source of cursing. To cooperate in concert with evil; to follow the advice of coercion; to submit to someone who has the power to force you to submit, and to dialogue with the enemy, then, has the mirror effect of worsening the curse. Once the deceiver has the key, nothing right fits in the lock. You can try to be righteous all day long, but if you are outside the fence of protection, the net effect is just further destruction, for it is only within the context of trust: of community: that righteousness can work. The child who is the product of this villiany, then, so many times, grows up in either shame, illness, insanity, rebellion, or all of the above, for that is the only way he or she sees to survive the evil. You could even call these the natural fruit of the curse. They are the products of trust that has been destroyed.
A rebel learns to despise the community input that is aimed at victimizing him further. He learns to fight back against authority that is not protecting him, and he becomes closed to the instruction that is teaching him to submit to yet more abuse. This is a picture, then, of the mirror image of evil through the looking glass. This was my life, where ‘righteousness’ (without trust) did not work to protect me. The more I submitted, set my heart to purity, and followed the advice of an untrustworthy, clueless community who had determined that they were going to look the other way, the worse it got. I had been thrown away: I was trash. Others in authority over me had made a decision to curse me, and at that point, submitting to more was pointless. I eventually rebelled. I gave up trying to pray, after a decade or so. I saw that until I became a person who was recognized as the one who was in charge of the decisions of my life, others were just going to continue to villify me. I was “too young” (so I was informed), the wrong sex, and the wrong social, educational and economic demographic for a long time. I turned 30 years old, finally. I remember being so happy. I flung it in the teeth of heaven: “am I old enough NOW?” But by then, my face was set in rebellion against any and all, even though I was still trying to ‘be good’ on my own. Alone. (Didn’t work so well!) By that time, I was in a deep hole.
Where am I going with this? I think that until we can understand that those who are dependent upon others, for whatever reason, can suffer from the curses that result from the choices of those in authority above them, we are not going to have the full set of keys to be able to reach out to those in the ditches around us. So often, we look at the refuse of society and judge them as if they were the ones who had made all those decisions that resulted in all that disaster; all that lack of relationship, when, so often, they are actually in bitterness because of the choices of others. Powerlessness, where all of your options have been chosen away for you by others, is a hard place to pull up from. To have someone else choose your choices away before you ever even got a chance to have at them yourself is one of the hallmarks of evil, I think. The devil is no gentleman, and he targets the helpless among us. So often I think we are tempted to judge the results – the toxic fallout – of the failure of the home and the community to protect, and that judgment can be the nail in the coffin. It wouldn’t be the first time we confused the effect with the cause.
Why does this matter? The flesh naturally shuns the effects – the curses – of evil. It walks on the other side of the road of life, safely out of sight of the community’s failures. We use power to scrub out all reminders of cursing in our own lives, so as to make sure no one shuns us, either. We live in perfect houses, and install multiple layers of security around us, as insulation from any appearance, any EFFECTS OF, evil in our lives. But I think there is a price to pay, for with power, however gained – by fair means or foul – there comes responsibility to those around us – to those who lack power, or, choice. The responsibilities of community oblige us all, and to follow the penchant of the flesh to sanitize ourselves of the effects of the curses, is to remove ourselves from the blessings only true community provides, for before that Throne we are going to be asked about the widows and the orphans in that community we are in: specifically, those who are the most vulnerable to the curses, or, victimization and subsequent shunning, of others. We don’t get to pick our community: our community, or, NEIGHBOR, as defined by Yeshua in the parable of the Good Samaritan, is anyone who is lacking choice – is lacking power. In other words, anyone who is suffering from curses; from a lack of trustworthy community – anyone in fact, who is in a ditch. Big community!
This reminds me of a teaching of Rabbi David Fohrman, where he states that the first part of the above mentioned verse, “I will bless those who bless you”, is directly a result of the second part of the verse, “And in you all the nations of the earth shall be blessed”. According to R. Fohrman, all the families of the earth being blessed through Abraham (And later Israel. Remember Balaam’s prophecy?) is a direct result of the nations/families of the earth blessing Israel. AND in fact that IS what the verse says. The way YHWH blesses the nations is IF they bless Israel! If they curse Israel, then they don’t receive the blessing, but cursing. So the world blessing Israel is the mechanism of how the world will be blessed (or cursed).
He then explained it like this: YHWH gives Israel Torah and ask them to live it in order to become a light to the nations, by doing His will in the world. And if it succeeds, blessing will come to the world. Because some will see the light and love it, but others will see it and hate what it does. And this is how the world becomes blessed. Because those who see Israel’s life and mission and bless them open themselves up to the Torah life/model and receive the blessing that follows in turn blessing the world. But if you curse them, then you take the instructions they live by and their values and become an enemy of those values, bringing failure on yourself. In the end, Israel is asked to change the world by, literally, being One Nation Under YHWH. TO understand and Do Torah. Become the light so that others will be part of that blessing. (This is very paraphrased)
Now you add today’s TW to this thought and it all comes together very nicely.
Thank you for the recording. It was wonderful! Tex Maars is challenging Christians caring about Israel in recent video productions. I have men who I mentor in the Faith asking: Why care for Israel? My response will be for them to listen to this audio.
Hurrah for Paleo-Hebrew perspective! Shalom, Dennis
So very touched by the responses and questions on the links you have provided. To hear the Hebrew thought process with my own ears brought together with what I have been reading from you Skip, wow! I’m pushing the like and the thanks button.