HEBREW WORD STUDY – MY SOUL THIRST – NEPHESHI KAMAH  נפשׁי כמה

Psalms 63:1: “Psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness of Judah. O God, thou [art] my God; earnestly will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is;”

“My soul thirsteth for thee,” The word for thirst that is used in the Hebrew here is kamah which means thirst but stop and consider that this was written in the Middle East in ancient times where water came only for a well or a spring at an oasis.  Water was scarce in ancient times.  Not like today.  We have an abundance of water, enough to not only drink our fill when we are thirsty but to bath or shower in it as often as we like, wash our clothes, dishes, and water our lawns.

The temperature in Chicago today dropped to a record-setting -23 below zero Fahrenheit.  That is the standing temperature, not the wind chill. The windchill was around -50 F.  I mean that will frost ya.  I showed up for work but my passengers stuck their nose out the door of their homes and decided to cancel their ride.  At about 1:30 PM my dispatcher sent me home saying no one was going to seek a ride anywhere.  My landlord’s secretary personally called me, as did the landlord himself the next morning and later that afternoon to make sure I turned on all the taps in my apartment to let the water run.  That was kitchen and bathroom including the bathtub and I was to keep the water running for the next 48 hours until the frigid weather returned to just cold.  I mean to let my taps drool for 48 hours means I will be letting perhaps hundreds of gallons of water just waste away so the landlord’s pipes do not freeze. Ancient Semitic man would drool at the very thought of all that water going to waste. 

We do not know what it is like to go thirsty.  The closest experience I had was when I worked with Youth Guidance as a camp director. We took a group to what we called a primitive camp where there was no water, all the water we had was what we could carry.  This was a 24-hour adventure and we had to ration the water. We, of course, ran out of water on the way back to the base camp and it was close to 100 degrees Fahrenheit.  We were thirsty and I was thirsty, I never experienced such thirst and even though it was 40 years ago the very thought of that day sends me to the water faucet to down a glass of cool water.  I even heard one of our counselors call out to God: “Lord send Lazarus down to dip his finger in some water and place it on my tongue.”  

That might be close to what ancient man experienced constantly.  Ancient man’s thirst was rarely, if ever fully satisfied.  They were always in a state of thirst. The local wells were always busier than Walmart on Black Friday.  You were lucky to get just one vessel of water for you and your camels with enough left over for your family. 

When David says his soul thirst for God you have to put it into that ancient context.  When I was on that hike back to base camp all I could think about was a cold glass of water, with that frost on the sides of the glass and how wonderful it was going to taste.   I could think of nothing else, barely enough to check our compass to make sure we were heading in the right direction and the only reason I had sense enough to do that right is because I knew if I was off, we would have to wait longer for our water. 

David even explains it further by saying that he longs for God in a dry and thirsty – kamah (there is that word again) land where there is no water. A parched land. Have you even ever seen a parched land with the bones of animals laying around?  That is what David feels like without the presence of God.

Much more interesting about that word kamah thirst is that it not only means an obsession for water but the Septuagint uses the Greek word imeipetai which is sometimes used in extra-Biblical literature for a longing to fulfill one’s love, a passion that agonizes for fulfillment.  David not only compares his longing as a desire for God like a man dying of thirst and obsessed with just a cup of water, but as one who is so filled with passion for a lover that he just cannot wait for his lover to put her arms around him and let him fulfill that burning passion. 

I attended a church recently where only eight people were present when the worship service started.  By the end of the worship service, there were only a handful of people.  The rest arrived during the sermon.  The pastor had to collect the offering at the end.  Tell me, how does that picture compare to the picture of kamah?