Isaiah 55:6b “…call ye upon Him while He is near.”

Ok, I am still meditating on Isaiah 55:6 and this idea of calling on God while He is near. I would like to examine this phrase from a pre-Masoretic understanding which would give a little different twist to this verse from I have offered over the past two days and suggest to you another face to our seventy faces of Torah.

Every English translation I have read renders this pretty much the say way: Call ye upon Him while He is near. If we accept this rendering, then we have little choice but to believe that there are times when God is not near. There are times when He will distance Himself from us. Yet, that is so contrary to what we teach that God is an ever present and constant companion.

I find it very difficult to accept the shrug of the shoulder: “Well that is the Old Testament and of course we live under a new covenant now and this passage just doesn’t apply to us today.” I have two problems with this view. The first is that if this does not apply to us today and we can just throw it out, then how much more of the Bible do we throw out.  How much more of the Bible does not apply to us? Do we have a right to pick out what we want and toss out what seems contradictory to us? The other problem I have with this view is that if the Old Testament does not apply to us today, then I pretty well wasted my life studying something that has little meaning for us and who wants a wasted life?

So I am left to do my own excavation and see if I can find some meaning in this, at least something that makes sense to me.

This phrase: Call upon him while He is near is just three words in the Hebrew: qua’eu beiuthu qrub.  This literally means call him in become him near. Now, that sure makes a whole lot of sense. Obviously, no matter what English translation you use, you are going to end up with a paraphrase or someone’s opinion. A common question I get is, “What is the literal translation of this verse.” Well, here is a literal translation and even if you do a word for word literal translation, you are still going to have to make your best guess as to what it means. So I am going to make my best guess on what call him in became him near means and I will let the Spirit of God inside you guide you to your own personal understanding, as I am only sharing with you my personal understanding of what this phrase means.

My first question is why do we call upon the Lord? That seems to imply cupping our hands over our mouths to project our voice. When you call out to someone you usually do that because they are either at a distance from you or you are in a situation where it is hard for the person to hear you. The word in Hebrew for call is kara’ which really harkens back to an old English use of the word call which we do not use too much today. But was used quite a bit by Shakespeare and during the time of the translation of the KJV. This is a call in the sense of making a choice.  For instance, during the time of the military draft, someone would say they have been called to service when they got their Greetings letter. Today in Christian circles I often hear someone say: “God has called me to do such and such.” This is the idea behind kara’ a calling or choosing someone or something to come to your aid. So calling upon the Lord is calling upon Him to aid you in favor of calling on someone else like the arm of the flesh to come to your aid.

So we are to call upon God while he is (near). This while he is part is just one word in Hebrew, beiuthu. which is from the root word hayah and means to exist or to become.  In this form it is a qal infinitive construct. In the use of the qal infinitive construct in this verse we see an example of how the study of linguists of Biblical Hebrew have seriously suffered from the lack of attention paid to the pre-Christian primary versions of the Hebrew Bible, which, for example would be the Septuagint and the Targumim. Not only the syntax but the morphology (structure of a word) would be more correctly or better understood than the standard renderings offered by the Masoretic scholars. Modern translators have limited themselves to the methodology of linguistic per se, without the integration of other materials as mentioned to create a linguistic picture as a whole.  What I am saying is this. Although I acknowledge that the word beiuthu is in a qal infinitive construct form, I take issue with the rendering that is given to it as it is really a Masoretic rendering and opinion that has pointed this up as an infinitive construct. Principles noted in the Septuagint and Targumim, which predate the Masoretic text, would suggest a more proper rendering of this word to be he having made himself available [to us] is near…” rather than while he is near…

Finally, the word near is qarav which means near but it can also have a rendering which would mean to offer or make available. Thus you could have, he having made himself available [to us] is offering [himself to us].

Thus, another option we have in the rendition of this verse would be: “Choose to call upon the Lord who having made himself available is offering Himself.” I know, that is a far cry from Call upon the Lord while He may be found, but if you are one of those radicals who like to leave the reservation every so often, here is your chance. You can pick up a rendering which I believe was the real intent as understood during the time of Jesus and the latter is a rendering developed hundreds of years after the birth of Jesus through the application of the Masoretic text which was not a part of pre-Christian literature.

When I was teaching in a Junior High School, I would often call upon a student to take a note to the principal’s office. Of course looking for any excuse to get out of class I was besieged with raised hands and twenty five students all saying: “Me, me, choose me.”    This, I believe, is picture of what is being shown in this verse that when we get ourselves into a bind and we start to look for help, God and the arm of the flesh are both raising their hands: “Me, me, choose me.” God is the eternal volunteer who has made Himself available but He is not going to take that note to the principal’s office unless we call or choose Him. After all the arm of the flesh and the enemy are also offering their bids. We must choose who or what is going to help us.