Musing - Why Did God Bless Our Father Abraham?

Hebraic Musing - Why Did God Bless Our Father Abraham?

When God blesses Abraham He gives His reasons …“because Abraham obeyed me and kept my requirements, my commands, my decrees and my laws."  In our Tuesday Torah study, my daughter Susan asked “Why did God use four different words?”

God entered a covenant relationahip with Isaac in Genesis 26:3–4 “I will be with you and will bless you. For to you and your descendants I will give all these lands and will confirm the oath I swore to your father Abraham. I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed,…”  NIV

Why did God grant Abraham these covenanted and many-faceted blessings?  God answered in the continuing verse 5 we read above… “because Abraham obeyed me and kept my requirements, my commands, my decrees and my laws."  Should we understand these four words and their Hebraic background for us to receive blessings?   

Requirements: Trmvm Mishmaret—watch, sentry, post; preservation, safe; observance, duty …”

Commands: tvxm Mitzvot —Good deeds, command, human or divine

Decrees, statutes: yjwqt Chuqowtay —an enactment; an appointment of time, space, quantity, labor or usage. (God used the expression “lasting ordinance” about twenty-four times in the Torah to specify set times, feasts, actions, and sacrifices we are to honor.)

Laws: ytrwt  Towrotaay—a precept or statute, especially the Decalogue (Ten Words) and Pentateuch (Torah). The Root word for Torah is “yarah” to flow as water; to lay or throw (i.e. to shoot); figuratively, to point out (as if aiming the finger), to teach. (Strong’s Concordance excerpts)

A related word used by God when speaking to Moishe in Exodus 21:1 “Now these are the judgments which you shall set before them.” NKJV  The Hebrew <yxpvm MishpaaTiym clearly means Judgments — verdicts (favorable or unfavorable) pronounced judicially, especially a sentence or formal decree (human or divine law, … including a participant's right or privilege…   The NIV translates <yxpvm (mish-pawtim)  in Exodus 21:1 as “law” instead of “judgments”; ESV translates it as “rules”; NASB as “ordinances.”  All three versions miss the real meaning.

Another translation clarification: According to Deuteronomy 6:6, in the NIV, this is what Moishe told the people: “These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.” However, the KJV, NKJV and the CJB use the word words instead of the word commandments. In Hebrew it is <yrbd h HaDav’rim, which we recognize as the Hebrew title for the book we call Deuteronomy; and the direct translation is “the words.” When we read that “commandments are to be on our hearts,” that is not the same as understanding that our loving Father God wants all His Word(s) to be on the hearts of His children.  Remember, “Do what Daddy says…”

Points to ponder

Can you fully appreciate the Torah when we use English translations?

Maybe this is why a rabbi once said,
“Reading a translation of the Torah is like kissing a pretty woman through a veil.”

Yosef   a.k.a.  Joe Brusherd                                                            August 26, 2014                          

Books author “Hebraic Insights” and  “Biblical Marriage”
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