Psalms 19:9 “The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever.”

I read a story in Voice of the Martyrs magazine about a pastor in Uzbekistan who was preaching from Hebrews 10:34.  Nobody was listening to his sermon. Nobody was listening because no one was in his church, his congregation was too afraid of being arrested to attend church.  But this pastor was called to preach so he preached to a congregation of one, himself.

If God has called you to preach or teach, it doesn’t matter if you have a congregation or classroom, you will preach or teach just for the joy of proclaiming the Word of God in some overt way.  Even though the dashboard on my blog indicates that I have hits from over 200 countries in the world, I still approach my study every day with this thought, “Well, I am not sending this one out.” But usually I do. After I read over what I write I think, “Ah, what the heck” and hit the send button.  Still writing these little studies under the impression that no one will really read them gives me freedom to express my thoughts without fear of offending someone.

The fear of the Lord is a topic I have tackled on a number of occasions and I do so under the assumption I have a congregation of one, just me. However, in this case I have a congregation of two as I am responding to a question from someone who actually reads these things who wanted to know what it means to fear the Lord.

I personally believe the word fear in this passage is an unfortunate rendering.  The word fear in English has gone through an evolutionary process in the last 500 years.   Speaking of evolution, it was Charles Darwin who helped establish our modern definition of the word fear in his book: “The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals” in the early 1800’s. It was about this time that the definition of fear in English narrowed to mean an emotional response to a perceived threat. For most of the 19^th century and now into the 21^st Century Christians viewed the fear of the Lord as God being a threat to us.  It appears old Charlie damaged Christianity more with definitions than with his theories.

The Old English word for fear is fryhto which means an awe inspiring event. By the time of the King James Version the word fear in English was a combination of an awe inspiring event and a terrifying event. As the church depended very heavily on fear to keep its members in line, translators found the English word fear to be quite an adequate translation for the Hebrew word yarah and thus it is has entered into our vocabulary that fear is an emotional response to a danger or perceived threat and thus to fear the Lord means to see God as a danger or threat ie., the judge who can condemns us to eternity in Hell.

Fortunately, many modern translations are dropping this English word fear in favor of the word honor or respect which is more in line with the Hebrew word yarah. Still we can not adequately translate the word yarah into English with just one English word.

Take a look at the root word in the Hebrew for fear. It is yara spelled Yod, Resh and Aleph. The Yod is actually the word for hand and represents the complete power of God.  It was believed in ancient times that the heart rested in the palm of your hand. The hand is the one part of your body that you view the most. The word yara is rooted in an Ancient Akkadian word.  The ancient Assyrians were a warlike people and many an Assyrian mother saw their sons go off to war. Often an Assyrian mother would have the name of their sons tattooed on the palm of their hand before the son went off to war so that the Mother could continually be reminded of her son.

In its Semitic root to fear the Lord was to take the hand of God. That is, to fear the Lord is to accept His power, His love and His heart. The next letter is a Resh which represents the head, the leadership or authority.  To fear the Lord means to accept God’s leadership, headship and authority in our lives. The last letter is the Aleph which represents unity, and oneness with God.

In its Semitic root the word to fear yara the Lord means to accept His power, love and heart, let His hand rest upon you and submit yourself to His authority and become one with Him. Now if we are to look for one English word to fit yara, I think our English word honor, respect or reverence would be a better match than our English for fear as we use it in the 21^st Century.

But soft there is one more element to the word yara in its Semitic root. It originates with this Assyrian mother tattooing her sons name on the palm of her hand. It shows honor, respect and love for her son but something else.  She saw her son going off to war to protect her and the rest of her family. She also knew that because her son was fighting she was safe. There was no threat to her, but the threat was to her son and her fear was not for her safety but for the safety her son.  Yes, the word yara does mean to be afraid or to feel a threat but not a threat to us but to the one that we love. To fear God means to fear that we may in some way be a threat to God, the God that we love, the God that is protecting us. There is only one thing that can harm God and that is if we betray our love for him, if we abuse that love and break His heart.  We do not sin because we fear God will punish us but rather, we avoid sin because we fear we may wound God’s heart.

Oh, by the way Psalms 19:9 tells us that the fear of the Lord, that is to fear wounding God’s heart is clean. The word clean is tahar which means purifying. The fear of wounding God’s heart will purify all our motives for serving God and avoiding sin.