A Line in the Sand
January 5 God said, “Let the water below the sky be gathered into one area, that the dry land may appear.” Genesis 1:9
A Line In The Sand
Gathered – The flat-backed liquid Leviathan shows its white belly today, raging against its sandy cage. But God has shut the door and it can’t get out.
One of the most significant aspects of the creation account in Genesis is the fundamental place of order in the universe. This order is no accident. It is the work of divine intelligence and purposeful execution. It is not random, big-bang baloney. As soon as God begins to create, He brings structure and order to the cosmos. It’s His nature to do so. In ancient cosmologies, the sea is usually represented by some sort of monster. In fact, the pictograph for the letter mem is water and chaos. If you were part of a desert nomadic people and you stood on the shore of the ocean and saw its power, you might think the same thing. “This is uncontrollable, terrifying chaos.” There’s a reason that God’s Spirit hovers over the deep. The imagery is important. God does not engage a cosmic battle to gain control of chaos. He “mothers” the disorder and births order. No big fight between good and evil. No superpower mythology. God is fully in charge and completely at peace in His love for creation. But, there are limits.
Our Hebrew verb is qavah. It usually means “to hope, to wait,” but in this case, it is about drawing a line. God draws a line and tells the sea, “You will not cross here.” He sets the boundary, cages the beast and allow the dry land to emerge. There is no better ancient metaphor for God’s ordered existence than this one. What frightens us is constrained by the hand of the Almighty. How? By simply drawing a line in the sand.
Everything important happens in the first three chapters of Genesis (with an appendix for chapter 4). We need to return to the opening of the Word often to find the God who arranges all His creation to serve His purposes. There is great relief in this fact. I can have confidence that the God who can draw a boundary line for the sea can also manage my meager existence. He rules over it all. Why shouldn’t I trust Him with my small part in this cosmic drama?
Yeshua walked on the back of the Leviathan without a second thought. The beast has been tamed. It responds to His command. And He loves all that He has made. I need to hear this. I need to let it sink deep into my soul – and touch those places within me where the Leviathan still roams. The greatest need for order is not in the physical world that God created. The greatest need for order is inside me. God drew a line in the sand to make captive the most terrifying power of the ancient world. If I don’t let Him draw the same line on the beaches of my soul, that monster within me will become a tsunami of destruction, sweeping away everything in its path. God can draw the line where its needed, but I have to invite Him draw the line inside me.
Topical Index: Order, Chaos, qavah, Line, Ancient Cosmology
hey there.
Shalom Skip,
A line in this article about how all of the Scriptures can be found in the first three chapters of Genesis sparked my curiosity. Many months ago I sent you an email recommending a study done by Brad Scott of Wildbranch Mininstries wherein he takes the first four chapters (fourth chapter added on to his original three chapter study) of Genesis word-by-word to show how all the patterns of the Redemptive Plan of the Holy One is placed there in the “beginning”. Did you look him up? If not, a link to his site is:
http://wildbranch.org/
Continued blessings in your ministry
In His service,
Tom White
Thanks Tom. This will help everyone! I did take a look, but I’ll go back and look harder – a good Hebrew thing to do 🙂
Skip,
I was thinking of your interpretation of the woman as being the boundary setter in connection with the word neqeveh. I came across a christian blog that discussed the commonly believed meaning of neqeveh as to pierce, to designate, or to curse. As you know, this was based on the verb naqav. However, a poster, identifying himself as a sephardic jew said that most scholars are divided on the word neqeveh coming from naqav or the word qavah. He said verb qavah means to bind together while the noun means a line as you’ve noted above. He said most jews believe that neqeveh is from the word qavah. I looked up the word qavah and while it can mean a line, it is also used to translate the hebrew word circumference. In other words, it’s a line that can be go in a circular pattern I guess. Anyway, the word qanah is used in 1 Kings 723-26 to describe the measurements of the temple as a line that “compasses” about a molten sea or basin of some kind. Anyway, the word compass is cabab-the same word used in Jeremiah 31:22 “a female will compass
a male”. I also think the verb form to bind together is very relevant when you look at Genesis 2:24 and it tells the man to forsake his parents and “cleave” to his wife like glue. Anyway, I think this jewish guy is right that neqeveh comes from qanah rather than nagav because it seems more appropriate to describe the female as a boundary line to surround the male and bind them together. OTOH, you pointed out that naqav had a homophone that meant a setting for gemstones. In strongs, that word is described as a bezel. The bezel setting is the most ancient form of setting gemstones because it was a strip of metal that went around the circumference of the gemstone to protect and secure it. I can see where the two ideas can be connected.
Thanks Susan. This is interesting validation. Can you please provide the reference for the blog where yo discovered this?
ALSO A WOMAN ENCIRCLES A MAN [PHYSICALLY] IN THE BIBLICAL ACT/WAY OF “KNOWING” HIM…
Jan, I agree with you, but I think “knowing” him is just the physical representation of a more spiritual binding and cleaving of the man and woman. The blog where I pulled the meaning of qavah as the basis for neqevah seems to discuss the woman as nothing more than a hole for the man. That’s why I think the comment from the sephardic jewish guy is interesting in pointing out a different possible root word.
http://bajanpoet.wordpress.com/2007/10/20/zakar-a-word-study-and-reflections-on-manhood/
The poster yirmeyahu wrote this comment on the root word of neqevah:
“uh….no it doesn’t. hebrew verbs when they appear in the third person refer to some one in the third person doing something. in biblical hebrew zakar literally means ‘he remembered. this verb is in the perfect conjugation which means the act of remembering has already been completed. even in modern hebrew it still means he remembered such as in hu zakar. it never means sharpened or penis. sharp or sharpened is char. sharp point is niqorah char. neqevah does not mean recieving hole. naqav means to perforate. qavah mens to bind together. scholars aren’t sure which one neqavah actually comes from. most christians that naqav because it sounds perverted. most jews, like me (i’m sephardic) believe it comes from qavah means he bound together. hashem is doing the work here. he remembered adam and he bound them together as one flesh. in bereshit (genesis) 2:24 we are back to isha for woman, that is because the binding is already completed. shalom”
https://groups.google.com/group/soc.religion.christian.bible-study/browse_thread/thread/a1d88aca02e36ec0/e65d4ae462715fe0%3Fq%3D%2522Albert%2BHayden%2522%23e65d4ae462715fe0&ei=iGwTS6eaOpW8Qpmqic0O&sa=t&ct=res&cd=3&source=groups&usg=AFQjCNHIUNnqbVa_18H9ulXR4v_yOs59fg
In this thread discussing the value of pi according to the bible, a commentator by the name of Pascal Laverdiere says:
“This is taken from 1 Kings 7:23
He [Solomon] made the sea of cast metal,
circular in shape, measuring
ten cubits from rim to rim
and five cubits high. It took a line
of thirty cubits to measure around it.
As you see it’s seem in this verse that the pi value is
3 so the Bible would be false about this since pi value
is about 3.14159265. But if you take a closer look to the
jewish (original) text you see that the word for circumference
“QaVa” is written with an extra letter “QaVah”. Since hebrew
letters are numbers this give Qava a value of 106 and QaVah 111
and if you take 111/106 it’s almost equal to 3.14159265/3
giving only about 0.00026% not to bad for an approx done
1000 BC!”
Apparently, there are skeptics who are challenging the biblical value of pi as being inaccurate, but a mathmatician wrote a paper that is summed up in the comment above concerning the term qavah. Also, if you compare 1 kings 7:23, the word translated “around it or comass” in some versions is cabab-the same word meaning compass in Jeremiah 31:22.
Targum neofiti is a jewish translation of the Hebrew torah to Aramaic. Its date of origin is uncertain, but scholars think it could be anywhere between the first and fourth centuries CE with geographical and linguistic references that may be closer to the first century. In general, a targum is used so that an Aramaic translation of the Hebrew torah could be read to Aramaic speaking jews who no longer understand Hebrew. In targum neofiti, some greek loans words were used to further clarify the Hebrew translation in Aramaic since greek was a language also widely understood and spoken. In Genesis 1: 27, the targum neofiti uses the phrase “ male and his female partner”. The word for “female partner” is a greek loan word. It is understandable that a greek loanword is used in an Aramaic translation because Aramaic, like Arabic, does not have a specific word that means “female”. The greek word that means female is theylys. However, the greek loanword that is translated “female partner” in targum neofiti is not theylys. Instead, the greek loan word translated “female partner” is based on the greek word syzeugnymi. Syzeugnymi in its feminine noun form can mean “female spouse or partner”, and another noun form of this word syzgy can refer to a line in the astronomical sense like the planets line up. In the verb form, syzeugnymi means to join or fasten together. Jesus uses this verb in Matthew 19:6:
Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.
With all this in mind, why would the Aramaic translators in the targum neofiti translate the Hebrew word neqevah (female) with the noun form of syzeugymi that means “female partner” when the greek word theylys means specifically female? The greek word theylys female appears in Matthew 19:4:
And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female.
Again, I ask, why didn’t the targum neofiti translators use the word theylys to translate the Hebrew word neqevah especially when Aramaic does not have a word that means specifically female? Obviously, the Aramaic audiences of the targum neofiti would have understood greek to understand the greek loan words in the Aramaic translation. The targum neofiti translators were known to reproduce the linguistic information in the Hebrew in an exact translation. Apparently, the Hebrew word neqevah has deep linguistic nuances that the greek word theylys (female) does not cover, and the Aramaic does not have a precise word that means female. Going back to what the Sephardic jewish commentator, he said that neqevah may be based on the Hebrew word qavah meaning “to bind together”. Qavah in its noun form can mean a line. The greek word syzeugnymi can mean “to fasten together” in the verb form, and it can mean “a line” and “female spouse or partner” in the noun form. It may very well be possible that the targum neofiti translators knew that neqevah is based on qavah, and they chose a greek loan word that represents the deeper linguistic nuances of the Hebrew than the regular greek word for female can. After all, the targum neofiti translators had a better understanding of ancient Hebrew, greek, and Aramaic than modern day scholars and translators.