HOMO ADORANS AND BIBLICAL LANGUAGES

By Matthew Dau

hwhy rme)yo,wa “And God said”

This short Hebrew phrase (pronounced va-yo-mer Yahveh) is extremely common in the Old Testament. In fact, these two words, God’s name and the verb “to speak”, make up about 4% of the entire vocabulary of the Hebrew Bible. This is obviously significant. Why is it that speech is such a common theme in the Scriptures, and why is God so often depicted as speaking? It seems that words and speech are essential to our understanding of who the God of the Bible is. Scripture tells us numerous things about God, and many of them are described in terms of words and speech. God is the Creator, but how exactly did He create the heavens and the earth? Genesis 1 shows us that He spoke them into being. God is our Redeemer, but how did he accomplish our redemption? John 1 says that Christ is the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us. God has made Himself known to His people, but just how do we know things about Him? 1 Cor. 2 says that God reveals Himself to us through His Word, the Scriptures, and enables us to understand it by the Holy Spirit.

Since language and speech are an important attribute of God, I think it is safe to assume that they are important attributes of us as well, being created in His image. Language is something that we use to create, to convey knowledge and meaning, to relate to and do good to others. Language study is therefore a very large aspect of what a school does, and how we teach it ought to be considered carefully.

Now, every school ever established has surely included language study as a part of its curriculum. It is in Christian societies, however, that education has historically placed a greater emphasis on language than in most other societies of the world. The Puritans required each child to learn how to read because they understood that “the most basic knowledge is of the Word of God, and of every area of life viewed in terms of God’s Word.”¹ For them, language study was not just one subject among many. It was of the utmost importance because it enabled the student to read and understand Scripture. Without a knowledge of the Bible, which is the foundation for all knowledge, they believed that instruction in other areas was useless.

Likewise, when it came to study of foreign languages, the Puritans started with Greek and Hebrew, often as early as age 6. If their purpose of studying language was to understand Scripture, why should their purpose of foreign language study be any different? Why not study the languages which would enable students to gain a greater knowledge of the Bible as they read the original text? These are questions which we ought to ask ourselves today as well.