Skyboxes

“Please do not let my lord pay attention to this worthless man, Nabal, for as his name is, so is he.  Nabal is his name and folly is with him.” 1 Samuel 25:25

Skyboxes

As His Name Is – khishmo kenhu says the Hebrew text.  It’s a phrase about you and me!  I don’t mean that we are fools like Nabal.  I mean that from a Hebrew perspective, names are not simply linguistic referral devices.  Names have intrinsic meanings.  This fact reveals something very important about the way the Hebrew Scriptures view the world.  It’s not how we see the world, and the difference makes all the difference.  If you want to see the world from God’s point of view, you’re going to have to shift your paradigm.

You remember that Greek is a static, analytic language.  That means that Greek looks at the world as things.  Greek language refers to these things with nouns, but the nouns themselves have no intrinsic connection to the essence of the thing.  In other words, we can refer to a person who resides without legal status in a country as an “illegal alien” or we can modify the wording and change the connotation of the words to “undocumented worker.”  Both phrases refer to the same person, but they have different meanings (Isn’t political correctness fascinating?).  The words that we use are not essentially connected to the thing that they refer to.  Try thinking about the shift in meaning of the word “gay” over the last fifty years.  Since the Greek world uses words only as referring agents, the words themselves can be manipulated without a change in the underlying thing.  This is what happens quite often in theology.  Liberal theologians change the words that refer to the virgin birth or the resurrection but still refer to the same thing.

Manipulation of language like this is not possible in Hebrew.  Why?  Because Hebrew began as pictures, images of what was essential to the object described.  When Adam named the animals, he didn’t just pull the names out of the air.  The names he chose revealed what made that particular animal what it was.  The same is true of names for human beings.  Nabal isn’t just any name.  It is a name that describes who Nabal is.  He is foolish as his name says.  So, what’s the picture behind the Hebrew N-B-L?  It means, “one who is pulled along (controlled) by activity in the house.”  In other words, this person doesn’t see beyond the daily grind.  His life revolves around what’s happening right now in his home.  His world is all about him, and from a Hebrew perspective, that is the essence of a fool.  Ah, maybe we’re not so far away from Nabal as we would like to think.

Now, notice that the Hebrew noun, Nabal, is really a description of actions.  It doesn’t just refer to a person who happens to be called by this word.  It reveals the actions of that person.  His name can’t be disconnected from how he lives.  Hebrew is a verbal language, focusing its attention on the actions that make up the flow of the world.  There are certainly things in the Hebrew world, but what they are is derived from what they do.  If you want to know the truth about God’s world, you have to investigate the activities in God’s world, not just have a list of nice little boxes to put things in.

Now that you begin to see how different this is, think about something else that is essentially Hebrew: God’s name.  God’s name is a form of the verb “to be.”  Let me assure you that God is not sitting in some noun “skybox”.  He is active in creation. That’s who He is!  And if we are going to be like Him, what do you think that means?  That you have the right theology, or that you are doing His work in the Kingdom?

Topical Index:  language, verbs, nouns, names, Nabal