Good Morning Yamon Ki Yesepar;
Psalms 17:3 “Thou has proved mine heart; thou hast visited me in the night.”
The above passage was taken from the KJV. It translates the phrase “thou hast visited me in the night as the past tense. I checked through every translation I could find and practically all of them translate this in the past tense. Is it just me or am I the only Christian who has ever celebrated a Sabbath evening with an orthodox Jewish family? I tend to think not. If you have ever celebrated the Sabbath evening with an orthodox family you will notice they leave their doors open during the Sabbath night prayers (or pray facing a door) to welcome the Shabbat Hamalka, the Sabbath Queen or Bride.
In the Talmud the Shabbat is compared esoterically to a bride given to us by God, whom we long for her arrival (Shabbat 119a). Orthodox Jews don’t like to tell us Christians about that because they know what we will do with it. Can you fault a Christian just because he happens to find Jesus inscribed all over the Old Testament?
But let’s take a look at Psalms 17:3. “Thou hast proved mine heart.” The word for proved is in a past tense from the root word “bachan” which literally means a watch tower. In a sense a watch tower is built so someone can look out over the land and test his senses to determine if there an enemy lurking around. Yeah, I know, that is stretching it to get the idea of testing. How about the simple purpose of a watchtower, to provide protection or to guard over a city. Hence this passage could be rendered: “Thou has guarded or protected my heart. More literally, “Thou has been a watchtower over my heart.”
Why does God guard the heart of David? So he can visit him in the night. This is where the rabbis get the idea that what David is referring to is a visit from the “Sabbath Queen or Bride.” This is depicted as the feminine side of God. In Talmudic literature, Rabbi Yannai used to wrap himself up in festive clothes toward Friday evening as if to prepare to receive his bride. He would recite: Come, O bride, come O bride!” More orthodox Jews believe we are encouraged to call upon God every day, but only once a week, the Sabbath, are we allowed to be in his presence. Imagine just getting married and then having your bride go out on a business trip for 6 days a week. You talk on the phone every day, but only one day of the week are you together. You can bet you will not use that one day to mow the lawn, or fix the roof. And you can bet you will spend the entire six days mowing the lawn and fixing the roof to prepare for the one day you will be in your bride’s presence. That is the sort of expectation that the Sabbath was meant to create.
The word “visit” is really in a prophetic perfect tense. Only in recent years have Christian Hebrew scholars began to accept the fact that there is a prophetic perfect in the Hebrew, which is probably why it is not evident in most translation. The word for visit is “pakad” which literally means to visit, but has the idea of watch care (fits the watchtower idea), to nurture, to lay with, as well as all sorts of other good things. So this visit is just not a “howdy do thought I’d just drop over and watch the super bowl with you” type of visit. It is a visit that provides protection.
How can a bride protect her husband. In ancient times as even today a bride can protect her husband by fulfilling such needs that he will not be moved to lust, adultery, nasty little web sites etc. A bride can protect her husband from sin. This is the protection that David received from God. God watching his heart and then visiting him in the night, the Sabbath Night, where God satisfies his needs and longings so he will not fall into sin. When one is satisfied with his bride, then money, fame, accomplishments and all the trappings of the world, mean nothing. The world has little to entice us when we are totally satisfied in our “bride” Jesus.
You women think you get all the fun claiming Jesus as a husband and being His bride while we men sit around feeling a bit uncomfortable calling ourselves a bride and referring to Jesus as a husband. Matthew 22:30 suggest that there is neither male nor female in heaven, hence Jesus may have been male on earth but that does not mean he will be a male in heaven, particularly if there is neither male nor female. So we men, like David can see Jesus as a bride to whom we look forward to spending our Sabbath evening with. A bride who will give us such satisfaction that the sin of the world will not seduce us.
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