HEBREW WORD STUDY – SENSITIZE – NAGAD נגד Nun Gimmel Daleth

Exodus 19:3: “And Moses went up unto God, and the LORD called unto him out of the mountain, saying, Thus, shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel;”

As I was preparing for this week’s Torah Portion Study for our Saturday Sabbath Weekly Torah Study with our All-Access members I ran across something very curious in Exodus 19:3. Why does God say to speak – ‘amar to the house of Jacob but to tell – nagad the children of Israel. For one thing, it seems that God has divided the camp into the house of Jacob and the children of Israel.

God is about to make a mighty declaration to the nation. They have now arrived at Mt. Sinai wherein three days they will receive the Torah. The Torah is associated with the number “3” The number “3” symbolically means unity which brings peace. This is the ultimate function of the Torah to unite and make peace. The number “1” implies exclusivity and singularity and the number “2” connotes diversity and plurality. The number “3” unites “1” and “2” to bring peace.

So here we are on the cusp of the ultimate uniting force and what does God do but divide the nation into two camps. But if we examine this closely, we find that God is not dividing the nation but taking a natural division and bringing them together.

God instructs Moses to merely speak – ‘amar to the house of Jacob. The word ‘amar is to speak in normal conversation, general talk or chit chat. He does not tell Moses to instruct or teach but merely to speak. But to the children of Israel, he is to tell them or nagad them. Nagad is to demonstrate and/or to sensitize. It would appear that the house of Jacob was already sensitive to God so all Moses had to do was speak to them. But to the children of Israel needed to have a demonstration to make them sensitive to God.

The Midrash sheds much light on this strange passage. For one thing, the children of Israel in Hebrew are beni yisra’el, that is they are the sons of Israel. The house biyth represents the home, the family and according to the Midrash represents the feminine or the women where the sons represent the men. Thus, Moses only needs to speak to the women of the house of Jacob, but to the men sons of Israel, he must demonstrate and sensitize.

Also, of interest is that he commands the women to be spoken to first. Why not the men since they were the ones who needed to be sensitized? The Midrash teaches that women are more diligent in the fulfillment of the commandments than men. They are also the ones, as mothers, who teach and introduce their children to God and His commandments.

The Talmud teaches that since women carry such a vital role in introducing their children to God and his Torah they are given a special understanding and sensitivity to God which men do not have and thus, must spend hours in Torah study to obtain. Women are given the role of being a gateway to God. In the love, caring and protective nature of men toward their wives they learn of the love, caring and protective nature of God. A woman’s response to her husband in love and submission to intimacy with him demonstrates how the natural person is to seek to respond to God’s longing and desire for us to submit to intimacy with Him.

Look around your church some Sunday. Do you not see more women than men? Norman Rockwell made a famous illustration of a mother dressed in her Sunday best carrying her Bible walking out the door of her house followed by her children also dressed in their Sunday best obviously headed to church while the husband sheepishly and guiltily sits in his overstuffed chair trying to read his newspaper. This was meant to be a stereotype of the difference between the father and the mother. The mother is seen taking the spiritual leader of the household. The Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago had a sign over the entrance to their sanctuary that read: “Your Mother’s Prayers Brought You Here.” How often do we hear of a mother on her knees before God pleading with God on behalf of her children? How many great men and women of God testify that it was their mother’s who influenced them early in life to commit their lives to God.

My father was the godliest man I have ever known. He loved God with all his heart, soul and might. He warned me away from the dangerous influences of the world, encouraged me to have Christian friends, to shun drugs, alcohol, tobacco and other devices of destruction to which I attribute reaching the age I am at now because I honored that fifth commandment ( fourth if you are Catholic or Lutheran). He set the example of a Godly life for me helping to start a rescue mission in the inner city of Chicago where he personally walked and sometimes carried broken men off the streets into the mission. Yet, it was my mother who came to my bedside at night when I was just a small child. She came with her Bible and read to me. It was my mother who put a cheap little wooden plaque on my wall with a picture of a lamb that she pasted on a piece of hand varnished wood with the words: “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.” Deuteronomy 31:6. That is the very first Bible verse I memorized and the verse that remains my life verse.

Women do have a greater sensitivity toward God and men need to understand and respect this. We need to pay attention to a woman’s take on the Word of God. For too long the enemy has tried to create women as secondary to men and men as the sole authority of the Holy Scriptures. In reality, women have just as much understanding of Scripture as men only coming at it from a different angle.

I know in these days it is not politically correct to talk of the differences between men and women, but I am grateful that there was a difference between my father and mother for their differences in their knowledge and understanding of God created a balance in my relationship with God.