HEBREW WORD STUDY – USELESS – HAVAL הבל Hei Beth Lamed

Job 27:12: “Behold, all of you yourselves have seen (it), why then are you altogether vain?” 

As a teacher in a Bible College I had many future pastors and missionaires.  Many anxiously looked forward to the day they would have their own church and would preach evey Sunday. How they loved and long to preach. I understood their passion  but also warned them, “If you really want to be an effective preacher, you must live every sermon you preach.” My daily studies are nothing more than a personal journal, I live every study I write. I have a small audience.  Sometimes, I have only 16 or 17 views on my daily Facebook page, but I still still give a five to ten minute devotional every weekday morning and Saturday because I am preaching to myself not to 16 or 17 people. If they want to listen in fine, if you want to read my presonal journal, well here it is, every day on my blog. In a way, that is what Job is talking about 27:12.

I ran across something quite interesting in the Talmud this morning, in Baba Bathar 15.  No one knows much about Job, who he was, or what time he lived.  We are not even sure if he was a Hebrew.  That Talmud, which consist of information passed down through many generations, suggest that Job was one of the advisors to the Pharaoh including Jethro and Balaam.   Balaam advised the Pharaoh to enslave the Hebrew people, Jethro advised against it Job was struggling as to the advice he would give.  It is suggested that Job went through his trouble so he would understand the trouble that the Hebrew people would experience under Pharaoh should if he side with Balaam.  If this were the case, Job may well have understood the reason for his suffering.  This could very well have prompted what he said in Job 27:12 and why the sages used the illustration of addressing the splinter in your brother’s eye without removing the board in your own. 

He tells his friends that they have all seen. The word “seen” is chazah which is the same word for vision, prophecy, seer etc.  So Job is telling his friends, “You have given a prophetic word and yet it is vain.”   How could a prophetic word be vain?  Job said: “Zeh hevel tehevalu.”  This phrase literally means: “This vain thing has become your vain thing.”   The Talmud in teaching about judges told the story of a corrupt judge accusing a man of a matter that was not even criminal. When the accused was allowed to speak he said to the judge, “You tell me about the speck in my eye but ignore the board in yours.”  This is what the sages in the Talmud were saying that Job was telling his friends in 27:12, “You have spoken a prophetic word, or a word from God, but you must first speak that word to yourself before you speak it to me.  As a judge over the fate of the Hebrews I am suffering what they will suffer should I deliver a word against them to the Pharaoh, so too must you suffer what I suffer before you deliver your word to me. The sages were establishing a very important rule of giving a prophetic word.  If you are given a prophetic word, it is first meant for you and you must apply it to yourself, before you give it to someone else.

Why must a prophetic word be first applied to the one giving it?  The word vain in Hebrew is  haval useless or foolish which is applied to  “self deception through feelings of spiritual superiority and self importance.   Let’s say a preacher is not struggling with unanswered prayer, thus if he preaches a sermon on stuggling with unanswered prayer would he not tend to feel a little spiritually superior to those who were having the struggle? Then his words of prophecy would become “vain” (haval – useless or foolish).  But if he were struggling with unanswered prayer, it would be a little hard to feel spiritually superior to someone who is also walking the same road. 

I believe what Jesus is saying in Matthew 7:3 is what Job is saying in Job 27:12 ”You will have to live every sermon you preach, every song you sing for others, every piece of spiritual advice your give, every prophetic word you share or even  every devotional you write.”  If not, your words will be just as vain (useless, foolish) as the words of Job’s friends.