I think (I’m not always sure) we have shared on the OT terms for “hope” in the past. But today’s post has some new things (never trust an old guy when he says he learned something new; at least it was new for today 😊). I am sharing this here because it came up in my journey through Ezra.
To begin with, the word “hope” in Ezra 10:2 is
powerful. Here are God’s people,
confessing their disobedience to God in the matter of marriage to pagan
women. They had only recently finished
70 years in captivity for similar sins.
What they had done here was so offensive we read that Ezra himself “tore
my garment and my robe, and plucked out some of the hair of my head and beard, and
sat down astonished” (9:3). Yet, “there
is hope in Israel in spite of this.”
What kind of hope is this?
In the past I know we have talked about “tikvah.” The first use of this word for “hope” is in
Josh. 2:18,21 where Rahab was instructed to hang a “tikvah” (the scarlet cord)
from the window so that she and her family could be saved in the destruction of
Jericho. Here, the emphasis is on “faith”
as fundamental to “hope.” (By the way: this
word is used in Ezra 10:15 but it’s someone’s name: Jahaziah the son of
Tikvah. And something tells me he had no
hope of salvation because he opposed the planned repentance for the sins of the
people.)
The Pilgrim Psalms (Ps. 120-134) speak of hope
several times, but it’s never “tikvah.”
Rather, the term there is “yaked” (Ps. 130:7; 131:3). The essence of that “hope “is expectation;
it emphases the need to wait for the LORD.
That makes sense because our Pilgrimage requires a lot of waiting it
seems.
But so far, in “tikvah” and “yaked,” we have
not come to Ezra 10:2. Here, the word is
“miqveh.” How are we to understand this “hope”? Let’s do what usually answers that question:
look at the first use. It’s in Gen. 1:10
which says, “And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of
the waters He called Seas. And God saw that it was good.” There!
Did you see the word “hope”? In
the NKJV it’s the words, “and the gathering together.” It’s used 12 times in the OT and in most of
those uses it has to do with a gathering of water, as in a pool or ocean, etc.
In the remainder of
today’s post and in the next I want to share some of those uses. In that way you can understand why the term
is generally translated “hope.”
·
Gen. 1:10: the gathering together of the waters
on the third day of creation.
·
Ex. 7:19: the waters of Egypt (streams, ponds,
etc) became blood. In Egypt bodies of
water were critical for life. They lived
by irrigation from the Nile and the many ponds they created. Do you see? Their livelihood was at stake
here when all the water in the gathered places turned to blood.
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