Psalms 65:2: “O thou that hearest prayer, unto thee shall all flesh come.”

The use of the word shama (hear) has a number of possible English equivalents.  You really need to consider the context before deciding what English word to plug in. For instance the word shama rendered in Psalms 65:2 as hear in relationship to the  Lord hearing our prayers.  In Isaiah 1:19  shama is rendered as obedience.  Of course we are not going to render shama in Psalm 65:2 as obey.  We certainly do not want to give the impression that God is at our beck and call which is what our English understanding of the word obey conveys to us.  To say the Lord obeys my prayers takes us a little bit out of our comfort zone.  This word shama itself is very difficult to translate as we really don’t have a good English equivalent. This is because the intent of the word is to hear and obey, again that sounds a bit out of character to call on God to hear and obey us.  We have two English words we could use for shama. If we render it as hear that is not really expressing its true nature as it conveys the idea that God is listening but does not necessary act on what he hears.  Yet, to render the word as obey  is more accurate but how can we say obey without really implying that God is being subservient.   The word shama finds itself somewhere in the middle.  Let me put it this way.  Give me a word for a loving mother preparing for her child’s birthday party.  The child is all excited about getting a birthday cake, ice cream and a new video game.   The child never questions that he will get a birthday party.  To him the positive response to his request for a birthday party is just a given, he would be absolutely surprised if he did not get one.  The only thing is that when the birthday party comes, instead of getting  a birthday cake and ice cream he gets carrot sticks and celery and when he opens his present in front of all his friends he finds it is not the latest version of the video game Man Slaughter, but a new pair of underwear.  Give me a word for that and you have a good word for shama.

I may pray: “Lord give me a candy apple red Porsche.” But instead I get a broken down Ford Focus.  The Lord obeyed my prayer but in a way that was the most benefit for me and Him. He wanted me to break down in front of a 7/11 at 10:00 at night and wait 10 hours for a tow truck not only to teach me humility but so I could witness his love to the Middle Eastern proprietor who offered me refuge, free coffee, a charger to my phone to keep it alive so I could keep wearing out the Auto Club and a chance to tell him that he was showing the love of God to me and to encourage him to submit to God.  Now if I had a brand new candy apple red Porsche my Muslim friend would not have given me the time of day as I was driving a dependable car.

Note what this verse says in Hebrew “You who hear prayer all flesh will come to you in prayer.”  All flesh will come to God but not all flesh will pray to God.  Then like my new Muslim friend he prays to God but does not really come to Him. If we take a closer look at this word used here for prayer you will see something very interesting.   The root word for prayer is  palal which has the idea of interceding and supplication, ie., to earnestly and humbly plead or beg. 

This gets complicated when we find that the word basar (flesh)  is used rather than adam or ish which is the more common word for man.  Basar speaks of the inner part of natural man.  This is not the soul but one’s natural inner desires.  It doesn’t take any stretch of the imagination that all people at sometime or another in their lives come to God with petitions.  Everyone get’s themselves into some sort of bind where they inwardly call out to God with a petition.   And this passage says that God hears and acts on all these petitions.  It seems to be quite obvious God does not act upon all petitions.  Yet, this verse says that He does act on all petitions.

This is were we see that there is a difference to prayer and coming to God.  A lot of people come to God but not everyone prays to God.  You see the word prayer (Heb. palal) is found in an unusual form here.  In this verse the form it takes is tepilah. Now tepilah can come from the root word palal or it can also take the root word tapel.  Where palal has the idea of a sincere, humble petition and supplication to God, tapel carries the idea of  unseasoned, unsavory, foolish or impiety.   When we come to God it is in either one of two ways as “palal” or as “tapel.” Yet, God will still hear and act.

The difference is that we may be coming to God as tapel with a request a candy apple red Porsche and God will hear and act on that prayer only we end up getting broken down Ford Focus so we could break down in front of a 7/11 to share and befriend in the name of Jesus a Muslim proprietor. God has acted on out request, but since it is so far removed from what we asked for we don’t even recognize it as God responding to our request.

When we come to God with our petitions are coming to Him in palal humility and supplication or tepel foolishness and impiety?  Either way He will act on our request, but if you come to him in tepel  you will most likely not ever recognize that God is responding until you made a new friend.  The important thing to keep in mind, is that God does hear and respond when we come to him.  It is just that most of the time we come to him in tepel and not palal and we don’t even recognize the response.