Mr. YHWH’s Neighborhood

And they shall make Me a sanctuary and I will dwell in their midst   Exodus 25:8  Chabad

Dwell – There’s a first time for everything, only this “first time” changes it all.  “The verb ‘to dwell’ had never before been used in relation to God.  The root sh-kh-n means neighbor, someone who lives next door.”[1]  God’s transcendence, so obviously on display at Sinai, is now completely overcome.  He is the God who lives in the neighborhood with His people.

Think about this for a moment.  Sacks makes the point that this verb is never used before for the relationship between God and men.  That means through the entire book of Genesis, God never dwells with those patriarchs.  In fact, although He is often present, He is still the God outside.  But not now.  Now He comes to inhabit the place of His people.  Notice that the verb, šākan, is a Qal perfect.  It’s a completed action.  “I will dwell.”  Not just for the time being.  Not just for a season.  No, now forever.  He chooses Israel and makes Israel His dwelling place.  Anyone who suggests that God abandoned Israel over the dispute about the Messiah didn’t pay attention to Exodus.  Here’s the Hebrew text:

וְעָ֥שׂוּ לִ֖י מִקְדָּ֑שׁ וְשָֽׁכַנְתִּ֖י בְּתוֹכָֽם

Notice something about the verb grammar.  The verb itself is a past tense, but because of the prefixed vav, it is converted into a future tense.  This is termed the vav-conversive.  It switches past to future or future to past.  Buried in this verbal conversion is the wonderful implication that God has already dwelt with Israel (the past tense root) but now He makes explicit that He will dwell with Israel.  What was already the case is now revealed so that everyone will know.  God has chosen.  Of course, He already chose with Abraham, but now He declares that promise again in the building of the Tabernacle (btw, miškān, i.e., “tabernacle” is from the same root).  You might want to apply this to John 1:14.

Hamilton adds another element to this idea:

The verb šākan is used 129 times in the ot, most often in the Qal (111 times) and in the Piel 12 times, in the Hiphil (6 times). God is the designated subject of the verb 43 times. He may dwell on Mount Zion (Ps 74:2). He dwells among his people (Ex 25:8). He will dwell in Jerusalem (Zech 8:3). It is Jerusalem in which God has chosen to cause his “name” to dwell (Deut 12:11, etc.). On several occasions some symbolic representation of the divine presence dwells among the people: the glory (of God) is to dwell in the land: Ex 24:16; Ps 85:9 [H 10]. More often, the subject of the dwelling is the cloud: Num 9:17, 18, 22; 10:12, Job 3:5 in a different sense.

The verb is translated most often in the LXX by kataskēnoō rather than simply skēnoō “to tent” on approximately a two-to-one ratio. Why the longer prefixed form should predominate is not totally clear but one suggestion is that the longer form reinforces and lays further stress on the idea of a longer or permanent stay rather than an overnight hop (Michaelis, see Bibliography, pp. 387–88).^[2]

Furthermore, šākan is distinguished from the other Hebrew verb about habitation.

There is another verb in Hebrew that also means “to inhabit, dwell” and it is yāšab. What is the difference between the two’? Occasionally they are used in parallelism. Isaiah 18:3, “All ye inhabitants (yāšab) of the world and dwellers (šākan) on earth.” Jeremiah 49:31, “Arise, march on a nation that dwells (yāšab) in confidence … that dwells (šākan) alone.” Second Chronicles 6:1–2, “Lord has chosen to dwell (liškôn) in thick darkness, I have built a dwelling (mākôn lĕšibtĕkā) for you.” Basically the distinction is that yāšab is reserved for passages describing man’s dwelling among his people on earth. Seldom is yāšab used when God’s dwelling on earth is under discussion^[3]

Perhaps it is that God dwells with His people in a way that men can never dwell together.  Men can inhabit the same place, share the same culture and language, be neighbors, but they can never reach the same level of eternal commitment that God makes when He dwells in the midst.  When God is your neighbor, the community is never the same.

Topical Index: šākan, dwell, choose, vav-conversive, John 1:14, Exodus 25:8

[1] Jonathan Sacks  Covenant & Conversation: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible: Leviticus: The Book of Holiness (Maggid Books & The Orthodox Union, 2015), p. 11.

^[2] Hamilton, V. P. (1999). 2387 שָׁכַן. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament(electronic ed., p. 925). Moody Press.

^[3] Ibid