Whose Counting?
This is the day that the Lord has made Psalm 118:24
Day – Yom, the Hebrew word for “day”, is the most common word for time in the Old Testament. You might think that this is to be expected. After all, the common experience of life is day by day. The regular occurrence of day and night not only establishes the routine of our world but also affects the biological clocks of all living things. If you don’t think that is true, just trying staying up for three or four days.
So far, so good. But now we run into a very interesting oddity. In spite of the fact that “day” is so common, no words exist for the names of days in Hebrew. In fact, in Hebrew, the days are simply numbered one to seven with all of the emphasis and reference taken from the seventh day, the Sabbath Day. Our words for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc. all come from other languages. All of our day names were originally associated with the names of gods. The names of our days carry with them what was once the worship of a false god. Isn’t it interesting that Hebrews never had any names like these? In the Hebrew mind, all days were equally the same except one, the one day that God called for rest, the day set aside for Him.
Cultural worldview is revealed in the distribution and emphasis of the culture’s language. For example, the language of some Eskimo tribes have more than forty words for various kinds of snow. We have one word. Why? Because snow is not a major determining factor in our lives. But we have hundreds of words for machine and technology. What does that say about what is important to us? Now think about the names of days in our culture. In the Hebrew mind, only one day really mattered and no day deserved to be held in respect to another god. God was in charge of all the days equally. But what about us? Do we treat every day as equally unimportant with respect to God’s day of separation and rest? Or do we think of the horrors of Monday (the beginning of the work week), the Wednesday hump, the Friday relief and the weekend of freedom? Have we not really assigned deities to each of these days? Are we not actually serving the false gods of named days as we prioritize, categorize and idolize some days more than others? And here’s the real revelation: Do we evaluate all of our days in reference to the only day that God named? Do we have the same view of days that God does?
The world serves its own gods. Some of those gods are deeply hidden in our language. God’s point of view asks us to see our world through His eyes. What does that mean for the way you think about the days of your life?
