Take a Guess?

Make me know Your ways, O Lord; teach me Your paths.  Lead me in Your truth and teach me,  Psalm 25:4-5a  NASB

Know/teach – “The whole of Torah, writes Sefat Emet, is a complex of hints, allusions to the unattainable.”[1]  The rabbi’s statement shocks us.  Don’t we need to know the truth in unambiguous ways so that we can properly follow God and communicate His message to others?  How can all those instructions in the Bible be hints at something else?  To answer the questions in the implication of Sefat Emet’s claim, we need to know (pun?) what “know” and “teach” mean in Hebrew.

We start with yādaʿ, a very familiar Hebrew term. 

This root, occurring a total of 944 times, is used in every stem and expresses a multitude of shades of knowledge gained by the senses. Its closest synonyms are bîn“to discern” and nākar“to recognize.”^[2]

Since yādaʿ covers the entire umbrella of knowing, it certainly must cover unshakeable truth, right?  When David pens, “Make me know,” he must have firm convictions in mind.  He can’t be asking to be taught fuzzy math applied to Scripture.  David links lāmad, a word that helps us clarify what he has in mind.

While Greek uses two different words for “to learn” (manthanō) and “to teach” (didaskō), each having its own content, goal, and methods, Hebrew uses the same root for both words because all learning and teaching is ultimately to be found in the fear of the Lord (Deut 4:10; 14:23; 17:19; 31:12, 13). To learn this is to come to terms with the will and law of God.^[3]

How does God teach us?  You might reply, “Well, He gives us the Bible and we learn from reading it.”  Yes, that’s true—but—it isn’t quite true in Hebrew. In Hebrew, to know something is to incorporate it into your daily living.  In other words, knowing transforms how I act.  If it doesn’t, then I really don’t know. And, of course, that means God teaches by changing our behavior.  This is especially important for adults.  Our ability to learn (to know) is hampered by what we think we already know (and how we already act on what we think we know).  That’s why a child is the best student.

“The adult, too familiar with the shapes of the letters, will approach them with less imaginative excitement.  Few adults are privileged to sense the wonder of the letters themselves; it is children who are inspired to reveal mysteries within their shapes.  Indeed, says R. Shapira, only one who is learning something new can be said to be learning directly from God.  In the Talmud, Rebbe says, ‘ . . . I have learned most of all from my students.’  One’s student is the source of the greatest revelations, simply because what he is learning is new to him, and therefore he is being taught by God.  Similarly, when one relearns Torah that one has already learned, one should learn something new for it, so that God is again given the opportunity to be the teacher.”[4]

We recently investigated the idea of joy.  We spent a lot of time examining the words in Scripture that express this idea, but perhaps we could have saved all that energy by doing something quite simple.  We could have watched children play.

If you want to know or be taught, it’s the doing that matters.

Topical Index: yādaʿ,lāmad, know, teach, Psalm 25:4-5a

[1]Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg,  Bewilderments: Reflections on the Book of Numbers, p. 27.

^[2]Harris, R. L., Archer, G. L., Jr., & Waltke, B. K. (Eds.). (1999). Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 366). Chicago: Moody Press.

^[3]Kaiser, W. C. (1999). 1116 לָמַד. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament(electronic ed., p. 480). Chicago: Moody Press.

[4]Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg,  Bewilderments: Reflections on the Book of Numbers, p. 28.