HEBREW WORD STUDY – LIKE CARRYING A BABY – ‘NE’EMAN 

 Numbers 12:7:  “My servant Moses [is] not so, who [is] faithful in all mine house.”

So yesterday I left the study after explaining that God did not enter the Tent of Meetings but left Moses, Aaron, and Miriam together to work things out between themselves. Then God appeared outside standing or ya’amod, standing in support.  He then calls Aaron and Miriam out of the tent to speak them. 

God explains that with prophets He speaks in visions and dreams. But with Moses it is different, he is ‘amen. You recognize amen I assume.  It means to confirm, be faithful, to support, to nourish, to be firm and establish, unmoving, lasting, trusting, assured and to be morally true.  Now think about all that next time you end your prayer or your pastor says something that makes you shout “Amen!”  Do you really know what you are saying? 

But let’s look at this word closer as it is used in the text.  It is ne’eman.  This is amen in a Niphal form.  As a Niphal it carries a picture of a mother carrying a baby.  This is important because why does God say something so unusual like Moses being faithful in all my house?  The word house is bayith which means a dwelling, a place that carries a family, a home.  It is also an abode of light and darkness.  I believe what God is telling Miriam and Aaron is that Moses has an important job of not only leading the children to the promised land but to also deliver His Torah through Him. This is more than any one man can handle so God must carry Moses like a baby through all the light and darkness that will come.  Because of this, he had to separate from his family for a time, a sacrifice on both the part of him and his wife. A sacrifice they were willing to make.  God left with this admonition, “Don’t interfere with Moses again because it is me you are interfering with.”  That I will explain in a later study.

But let’s pause now to go back to our use of the word Amen.  We throw that word out all the time, somehow our prayer is not complete until we utter that magic word “amen.”  Yet, Jesus uses it in the Lord’s prayer, well at least in some manuscripts.  In Aramaic, it means the same as the Hebrew.   The Latin Vulgate does not use that last phrase “For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever – Amen.”  Still, Amen is used among the Jewish prayers frequently.  The point is why bother with this practice of concluding your prayers with a word if you don’t really understand what you are saying?  Are you saying “Amen” as a sign of: “Well, I’m finished now we can eat, or someone else is free to pray.”  Are you doing it out of force of habit and never give it a thought?   

How about next time you pray you do not say “Amen” but define “Amen” by saying: “Lord we conclude this prayer by asking that you carry us like a little baby through light and darkness.” 

So I leave you until tomorrow, same time, same place for the next installment entitled: HEBREW WORD STUDY: DARK SECRETS.