Hebrew Word Study – A Watch Tower – Bachan – בָּחן  Beth Cheth Nun

Psalms 17:3 “Thou has proved mine heart; thou hast visited me in the night.” 

The above passage was taken from the KJV.  It translates the phrase “thou hast visited me in the night as  the past tense. I checked through every translation I could find and practically all of them translated this in the past tense.  If you have ever celebrated the Sabbath evening with an orthodox Jewish family you will notice they leave their doors open during the Sabbath night prayers (or pray facing a door) to welcome the Shabbat Hamalka, the Sabbath Queen or Bride. 

I was reading something in the Talmud this morning in Shabbat 119a and found something of interest from a Christian standpoint. In the Talmud the Shabbat is compared esoterically to a bride given to us by God, whom we long for her arrival (Shabbat 119a).  Now that is something that we Christians can take to the spiritual bank. 

So what does this have to do with Psalms 17:3?  Well note carefully the words “Thou hast proved mine heart.”  The word for proved is in a perfect form which often is rendered in a past tense.  It comes from the root word bachan which literally means a watch tower.  In a sense a watch tower is built so someone can look out over the land and test his senses to determine if there is an enemy lurking around.  Yeah, maybe I am stretching it a bit to get the idea of testing but I would not be the first.  Still, we need to recognize the simple purpose of a watchtower, to provide protection or to guard over  a city. Hence this passage could be rendered: “Thou has guarded or protected my heart.  More literally, “Thou has been a watchtower over my heart.”

Why does God guard the heart of David?  David says that it is so God can visit him in the night.  This is where the rabbis get the idea that what David is referring to is a visit from the Sabbath Queen or Bride. The Jews have no problem seeing a feminine side to God unlike Western Christians who are hung up on the masculine father figure, the Jews see both a father and mother figure in God.  By the way, so do I.  I mean single women get to call God their husbands, why can’t single men call God their wife?  I know, that gets creepy but that is only our Christian Western culture and the way we were brought up getting in the way. In Talmudic literature,  Rabbi Yannai used to wrap himself up in festive clothes toward Friday evening as if to prepare to receive his bride. He would recite: Come, O bride, come O bride!”  He had no problem seeing God as a bride, he basked in it. It didn’t creep him out.  

More orthodox Jews believe we are encouraged to call upon God every day, but only once a week, the Sabbath, are we allowed to be in His presence.  Imagine just getting married and then having your bride go out on a business trip for 6 days a week.  You talk on the phone every day, but only one day of the week are you together.  You can bet you will not use that one day to mow the lawn, or fix the roof.  And you can bet you will spend the entire six days mowing the lawn and fixing the roof to prepare for the one day you will be in your bride’s presence.  That is the sort of expectation that the Sabbath was meant to create.

The word visit is really in a preterite form or what I would call prophetic perfect tense.  Not all Christian Hebrew scholars accept the fact that there is a prophetic perfect in the Hebrew, which is probably why it is not evident in most translations.  I tend to believe it does exist.  I have known rabbis who attest to it. The word for visit is pakad which literally means to visit, but also has the idea of watch care (fits the watchtower idea), to nurture, to lay with,  as well as all sorts of other good things.  So this visit is just not a “howdy do,  thought I’d just drop over and watch the Word Series with you” type of visit. I know with the Cubs in the World Series there are all sorts of good things, but it still does not apply. It is a visit that provides protection.   

So we have our bride, God,  protecting us as the husband. How can a bride protect her husband?  I know you are gathering wood right now to burn me at the stake, but hear me out.  In ancient times even today a bride could protect her husband by fulfilling such needs so that he will not be moved to lust, adultery, nasty little web sites etc.  A bride can protect her husband from sin.  This is the protection that David received from God.  God watches his heart and then visiting him in the night, the Sabbath Night, where God satisfies his needs and longings so he will not fall into sin.  When one is satisfied with his bride,  then money, fame, accomplishments and all the trappings of the world, mean nothing. The world has little to entice us when we are totally satisfied in our Bride Jesus. 

Matthew 22:30 suggest that there is neither male nor female in heaven, hence Jesus may have been male on earth but that does not mean he will be a male in heaven, particularly if there  is neither male nor female.  The ancient Jews believed God gave specific roles to women and men so as to show the diverse role that God can play in our lives. I mean why did Jesus come to earth as a male? One can speculate that if Jesus’s purpose in life was to lay down His life for us to protect us from the penalty of sin, He would have had to come to earth as a male.  If He were to come as just a demonstration of nurturing and loving alone, then He might have come as a female. He did not come as a male to demonstrate that the male was the dominate species. 

In fact according to Jewish tradition God is referred to in the Old Testament as Elohim and YHWH.  Elohim is in a masculine form and hence everytime the word Elohim in the Old Testament is used to refer to God it is referencing His masculine nature, the Fatherhood of God, His protection, His provision and His discipline.  Everytime the word YHWH is used for God it is a reference to His feminine nature, the Motherhood of God, the nurturing, the caring, the loving and lifegiving. 

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