Pride of Ownership

I am Yours, save me; for I have sought Your precepts.  Psalm 119:94  NASB

I am Yours – While the English captures the idea, the Hebrew isn’t quite so straightforward.  The phrase is l^ekā-‘ănî’.  It’s really a preposition (l – “to, towards, in regard to”) and two pronouns (kā – you, and ănî  – I).  Literally, “to You, I.”  There is no copula in Hebrew, so there is no “am.”  It’s understood, of course, but perhaps we move too quickly to the English construction.  Let’s pause and consider the Hebrew syntax.

What kind of relationship is this?  We could gloss it as “I am Yours,” simply reading the English verb into the phrase, or we could pause long enough to reconsider what otherwise looks like two individuals connecting.  In fact, that’s how we view most personal relationships—one separate, individual person with some kind of connection to another separate, individual person.  Since our Western language supports this kind of thinking, we rarely imagine relationships in any other way.  The focus is on the connecting verb.  There are two things and the verb tells us that these two things share something in common.  But what will we think if we remove the verb?

Years ago Thorleif Boman wrote a rather controversial book about this interesting twist in Hebrew grammar.[1]  He argued that without a copula the relationship is much more than an accidental connection.  It is, in fact, an essential and integral identification.  An example is the text of Genesis 2:23 which reads, “Then the man said, ‘At last this is bone of my bones, And flesh of my flesh; she shall be called “woman,” because she was taken out of man.”  I have pointed out that this is the first place in the Torah where “man” is not the Hebrew adam, but rather ʾiysh (ʾish).  Since we know that ʾish is not a gender designation but rather the nexus of all the relationships that make up the character of the person, we discover in this verse that Adam alters his identity on the basis of the presence of the woman.  He is no longer adam but rather ʾish.  The relationship is one of essential being—of identity, not accidental connection.  On this basis the rabbis can say that an unmarried man diminishes the world.  Something essential to his very being is missing.

The poet seems to employ the same Hebraic thinking.  “I am Yours” suggests an accidental connection.  “I” would still be “me” even if I were not related to God.  In other words, God and I exist independently of each other and we just happen to be connected because I choose to make it so.  But the absence of the copula suggests something else.  It suggests that my very identity is wrapped up in God in such a way that “I” do not exist without Him.  If He should cut off the relationship, there is no “me.”  And that, of course, is precisely what Genesis 2:7 suggests.  It is not the independent composition of ʿāpār (dust) from the ʾădāmâ (ground) that makes a man.  It is the breath of God’s spirit infused into this heap of dust.  Should the spirit depart, what is left returns to its origin—dust.  In Hebrew thought, man is not a biological creature.  He is a spiritual manifestation embodied in a biological expression.  I carefully avoided writing “a spiritual being embodied in a biological shell” because that would be a Greek mistake, treating human beings as if they were combinations of distinct elements.  Hebrew does not think like this.

What do we learn?  First, we learn to be much more careful with our theological formulations.  Man is not body, mind, and soul, as Greek thinkers are apt to suggest.  He is nepeš, homogenized.  Second, we learn that my very being, my existence, is thoroughly and completely tied to God’s breath.  I am because He is.  That should help us gain some perspective about self-sufficiency.  And finally, we learn that God saves because He is rescuing His own reflection.  He is reclaiming what is His—me!

Topical Index: l^ekā-‘ănî’, pronoun, copula, identity, nepeš, Genesis 2:7, Psalm 119:94

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Hebrew-Thought-Compared-Greek-Thorleif/dp/0393005348