So you’re at the foot of a mountain, and you can’t see the top through the billows of smoke climbing higher and higher in the air. Suddenly the earth starts shaking and babies are crying. Men and women all around are screaming, calling out in fear for their children. You can hear the sound of rocks tumbling and trees snapping from every direction and the smell of smoke is distinctly starting to fill your senses. Is that the sound of a shofar? It’s sounds different—almost eerie. It’s getting louder and clearer. Waves of sound burst against you as you realize that the shofar is coming from the mountain itself! Wow, that’s really loud! It’s beginning to hurt. Suddenly it stops! Oddly, the shaking of the ground under your feet seems quiet. Then like a blast of unexpected wind, a concussion of voice explodes against you as the most powerful force you’ve ever felt resonates–“I AM ADONAI YOUR GOD THAT BROUGHT YOU OUT OF THE LAND OF EGYPT…” You can feel the voice pulling inside you and feel the heat of it all around you. Somehow unexplainable, you can sense the supreme purity of this ONE who speaks. The sense of your own filthiness becomes overwhelming and you grow weaker by the second. You’re helpless as you witness yourself falling to the ground before the Holy One. My God…My God—forgive me!
It would be incredibly difficult to express the importance that the giving of the Law at Mt Sinai has had on Judaism and Christianity. This pivotal event has shaped the course of history since its inception. Its importance to Judaism goes without saying. Every action, every thought and every fiber of the religious Jewish soul is taken up with the Torah (Hebrew word translated as Law in our Bibles). But what are we, as Christians, to make of the Torah? Does it have any significance for us? Is it passed away in some bygone era? Is it valued only in as much as it provides good stories to understand where we’ve come from?
I would argue that the Torah is far more important for most Christians than we realize. In fact, the Torah’s place in the life and teachings of Yeshua (Jesus) and His disciples is monumental. Yeshua spoke of and from the Torah every day. The apostles cited it to substantiate their teachings. So why don’t we know more about it? We, as disciples of Yeshua and imitators of His apostles should be familiar with the only Bible that they knew. Let’s take a few posts and examine the essence and value of the Torah to our lives as believers in Jesus.
Let’s start by considering the word ‘Law’. What do you think of when you think of the word? Unbending? Cold? Absolute standard? Merciless? Many of us see the law in this lens, but is that really the best translation of the Hebrew word torah? I think not. If you ask a religious Jew what the word torah means, they’ll tell you it means “teaching”. And this is accurate. Look at a couple of verses in Proverbs that uses this word:
“My son, hear the instruction of your father, and forsake not the law (torah) of your mother.” (Prov. 1:8)
“My Son, forget not my law (torah); but let your heart keep my commandments.” (Prov. 3:1)
These two verses are classic examples of Hebrew poetry. Specifically, they’re referred to as a Hebrew doublet. That means that the two lines of the verse are mostly parallel, with the differences emphasizing certain themes. For instance, the “instruction of your father” is parallel to the “torah of your mother”. Instruction and torah are synonyms, with father and mother being emphasized. In the second example, the phrase “forget not my torah” is paralleled with “keep my commandments”. Here, torah and commandments are the same thing, whereas forget not and keep are being emphasized. You can see that torah in this verse is likened to instructions and commandments. This becomes clearer when we look at the word picture for Torah.
The word Torah comes from the root word yarah (Strong’s #3384), which means “to throw” or “to shoot”. Yarah is spelled with a Yud (the symbol of a hand) and a Resh (picture of a man’s head). The picture of a hand and a man’s head is meant to convey the “hand of man”. Picture a man throwing a ball or a stone, or shooting an arrow. How does he do this? With his hands. A man may also be asked a question, “which way is…?” The response will be the man pointing, or throwing/extending his finger. In this way, the figurative idea of the word yarah became to teach. A teacher throws something out to his students—He points the way by throwing out the path. So this root word yarah means to throw, shoot, point or teach.
Now, if we add the prefix mem (sounds like an ‘M’) to the verb, we get the noun moreh (Strong’s #4175/4176). Moreh means “the one who throws, shoots, points or teaches”. Hence, this word can be translated thrower, archer, pointer or teacher. Our Bible usually translates this word as teacher. In fact, the plains of Moreh were the place Abraham first stopped when He came into Canaan. These were the plains of the Teacher.
If we replace the prefix mem with another prefix, tav (sounds like a ‘T’), we get our word Torah (Strong’s #8451). Torah means “what is thrown, shot, pointed or taught”. It’s the ball or stone of the thrower, the arrow of the archer, the finger of the pointer, or the teaching of the Teacher. This word is usually translated in our Bibles as teacher. The idea is that Adonai is our Teacher. He’s like a Father instructing his son in wisdom, like we find in the first few chapters of Proverbs. We, as His children, are expected to listen and obey our Father’s Teaching (Torah). Understand this, that when a man fluent in Hebrew reads the Scriptures, he doesn’t read the Torah as a Law like we tend to think of it. To the Hebraic mind, Torah is a loving instruction of a father to his children.
So just how did this word become translated as “law” in our Bibles? Well frankly, it evolved from Hebrew to Greek to Latin to English, losing a little more of its original meaning each time. When the Hebrew Scriptures (often called the Old Testament) was translated into Greek, the closest equivalent of torah was the Greek word nomos. Nomos is used to speak of something that is established. It can refer to an injunction or precept based upon reason. There was no exact match of torah in the Greek tongue, so nomos was chosen. But translating the word torah as nomos is like equating our word father with disciplinarian! Of course, a father is and should be a disciplinarian, but he’s much more than that! Likewise, the torah certainly contains precepts and injunctions, but it encompasses more than that. The Torah also contains stories of our ancestors, exhortations for us to obey Adonai, wisdom for life—everything that you’d expect a father to pass on to his son.
Nevertheless, this word nomos is used in our New Testaments to translate Torah. Interestingly enough, the Greek prefix “a” means “anti”. When this prefix is added to nomos, you get the word anomos, or the more frequent form anomia. We could translate this word as “anti-Torah”; our New Testament correctly translates the word as lawless.
“For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously and godly, in this present age; looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Yeshua the Messiah (Jesus Christ), who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all lawlessness (anomia—anti-Torah), and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.” (Titus 2:11-14)
Our Father, in His Torah, taught us the way of life. By spelling out to us how to relate to Himself and each other, how to behave in business affairs, how to teach our children, etc., He is giving us instruction for life. The Torah is our inheritance given to us by our loving Father. We, as Christians, should strive to understand the Torah’s standards and learn how to apply them. They are the teaching of our Father and they hold the keys to righteousness. We have been redeemed from lawlessness so that we can now establish the Law! (Romans 3:31)
More next time! Shalom…
John D.
