Good Morning Yamon Ki Yesepar and Nevim Arith Hayomim:
Psalms 118:10: “All nations compassed me about, but in the name of the Lord I will destroy them.”
The letter “Beth” can be used as a preposition for “in,” “on” or “with.” No English translation I know will render the Beth in this passage as “with.” However, the Jewish sages do that very thing. David could very have said: “With” the name of the Lord I will destroy them. We, of course, will not render it this way because David is literally saying that by speaking the name of the Lord he will destroy the nations that compassed him.
Such a rendering sounds just too mystical. Yet, a recent study showed that the biggest complaint people have about the church in America is that it is not spiritual enough. People want to connect with their creator is some, shall I say, mystical way. They want to feel His presence, they want to experience His power, they want a mystical experience.
Ok, here is a mystical experience. I Samuel 17 tells us the story of David defeating Goliath. We all know the story, he went to the brook, chose five smooth stones and used one of them to kill Goliath with his sling shot and then chopped off his head. My study partner and I took a very close look at this story and we found that the words used in I Samuel 17:49 could tell a very different story, but that is too mystical.
I Samuel 17:49 is rendered in our KJV as: “And David put his hand in his bag and took a thence a stone and slang (it), and smote the Philistine in his forehead that the stone sunk into his forehead; and he fell upon his face to the earth.” I have a few problems with the syntax of this translation but it is an accepted translation. However, right from the Hebrew we could render this as: “And from the Name, David made words with power and clapped his hands and sent the words to the mockery of the Philistine, slandering it. And he sent out the strength (of the words) upon him and the power penetrated his mockery and he fell to earth.”
In other words David did not kill Goliath with the stone in the forehead. The passage could be telling us that David clapped his hands and spoke the name of God sending out a power which overcame Goliath such that he fell under this power and while under this power, David chopped of Goliath’s head and killed him. He killed by chopping off his head not by a stone in the forehead.
The Jewish midrash tells us that: “Knowing God’s name implies knowing how to actually make use of it.”
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