HEBREW WORD STUDY – WOUNDS OF A FRIEND  – PATS’AI   ‘OHAV  פצעי אוהב  

Proverbs 27:6: “Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but deceitful are the kisses of the enemy.”

I have been obsessing  over trying to understand the heart of God so much, maybe I just was missing the obvious.   With life’s many difficulties and pitfalls, I find myself stressing out, and at times going into one of those  “O Lord, O Lord” routines.  Yet, did not Paul say that without faith, it is impossible to please God? (Hebrews 11:6).  I have a friend who is going through one of those “O Lord, O Lord” moments while watching a beloved pet die, suffering a cracked tooth, enduring this heat without air conditioning, forced to live on a fixed income, I mean you barely come up for breath when you are shoved down again with another one of life’s many crises. Maybe you can handle one, maybe two but when they come one right after the other you either begin to curse God or you grab tighter to Him. 

This morning as I pondered the difficulties of my friend and my feelings of helplessness in being able to offer any real support, I ran across Proverbs 27:6 where I found one of an interesting word, amen or faithfulness. Faithful or amen are the wounds of a friend.  Commentators will tell us that what this proverb is saying is that the honest truth of a friend, things like, “take a bath,” or “you have bad breath” can be very wounding, but are helpful and they are a lot better than an enemy telling you that you smell like a rose just to please you.

However, as my friend was relating all the difficulties being faced I heard the words, “Jesus is still my hope and trust.” In the midst of these troubles, my friend is remaining amen or faithful to God.  My friend is using this time as an opportunity to bring joy to the heart of god.  You see faithful or amen which has the idea of supporting, true, staying, and faithful.  To be faithful to God means that we are staying with Him no matter what.  God can deliver us from the fiery furnace, but if He doesn’t, let it be known that we will still be faithful to Him.  

Yet, note that this verse tells us something about faithfulness.  Faithful are the wounds of a friend.  The word wounds is pase which is the same word used for a eunuch.  A eunuch is one who voluntarily goes under the knife.  The Hebrew word rendered as friend is an odd word to use for friend.  It is the word ahav which is the word for love.  This is in a construct form and would be rendered as the loving one.  Thus you would read this as the loving one who voluntarily allows himself to be injured.  Let’s face it, we do not voluntarily enter a period of trouble unless it is to help someone we love.  A mother would voluntarily take on the sickness of her child if it would cure her child’s illness.  In battle, soldiers have voluntarily laid down their lives for the sake of their friends, their family or loved ones.  I think this verse is making a subtle reference to something even deeper.

Jesus did have to come to earth to be wounded and to die. He did this voluntarily for our sake.  I think this verse in Proverbs is revealing something about Jesus’s death on the cross that we do not really consider. There are many reasons why Jesus had to suffer and die on the cross, but one reason I never considered until I looked at this verse in Proverbs was that He wanted to show the amen or the faithfulness of His love. 

Jesus used His time of crisis as an opportunity to show His faithfulness to us. Should we not offer Him anything less?   We may get wounded in the process, but that wound is just a way to show our love to God, a way to discover the heart of God.