LandonWillis

Category: Aramaic

  • Gilead: The Witness Heap

    When reading through the Bible, have you ever noticed how it just lists off the origins of all sorts of words? Often, we can’t make sense of the explanation without looking at the footnotes. And so, we commonly pass over these things without a second thought. But the history behind the words is fascinating and gives us something to think back on whenever we see that word elsewhere in the Bible.

    One great and detailed example is “Gilead”.

    In Genesis 31:43-49, we read about how Jacob and Laban made peace with each other after Jacob had fled from Laban:

    43 Laban answered Jacob, “The women are my daughters, the children are my children, and the flocks are my flocks. All you see is mine. Yet what can I do today about these daughters of mine, or about the children they have borne?44 Come now, let’s make a covenant, you and I, and let it serve as a witness between us.”

    45 So Jacob took a stone and set it up as a pillar. 46 He said to his relatives, “Gather some stones.” So they took stones and piled them in a heap, and they ate there by the heap. 47 Laban called it Jegar Sahadutha, and Jacob called it Galeed.

    48 Laban said, “This heap is a witness between you and me today.” That is why it was called Galeed. 49 It was also called Mizpah, because he said, “May the Lord keep watch between you and me when we are away from each other…”

    So, before anything else, the obvious. “Gilead” does not appear in this passage. And that’s true… sort of.

    Back in Genesis 31:23, we learn that this encounter takes place in “the hill country of Gilead”. But, remember, the Book of Genesis probably wasn’t written down until several centuries after this event. So, by the time that it was written down, it appears that the Hebrew pronunciation of the word had changed. Originally, the place was called “Galeed”, but after a few centuries of the language naturally changing, people started pronouncing it as something more along the lines of “Gilead”. And that’s why Genesis tells us that the place is Gilead and then goes on to tell us that they named it Galeed.

    Galeed/Gilead

    Alright, so now that we’ve figured out why this place is called both Galeed and Gilead, we can look at why it’s called these names in the first place.

    The Hebrew word gal means “heap” or “mound”. And the word ‛êd means “witness” or “testimony”. So, Jacob and Laban did indeed name the place after the pillar they set up as a covenant. Or, in other words, they made a heap of rocks to memorialize witness towards the peace they reached with each other.

    Jegar Sahadutha

    So, why on earth did Laban call this place Jegar Sahadutha?

    Well, that’s just Aramaic for “witness heap”, so it’s just a translation of Galeed/Gilead from Hebrew to Aramaic. Maybe Aramaic was the language that Laban was more familiar with?

    Mizpah

    But guess what! There’s another other other name for this place!

    As we see in verse 49, the place was also called Mizpah.

    Mizpah is Hebrew for “watchtower” (which lines up with what Laban says, also in verse 49). Mizpah is an interesting word used throughout The Old Testament for several different place names.

    Gilead, The Man

    To throw just one more wrench into this fascinating word, we can look at Numbers 26:29. Here, we learn that a man named Gilead was a great-great grandson of Jacob.

    Specifically, he was the grandson of Manasseh, who is the patriarch of the tribe of Manasseh.

    We also see a reference to the “Gileadite clan”. Thanks to this and the fact that the half tribe of Manasseh on the east of the Jordan controlled Gilead, it seems that the man Gilead was perhaps in some way named for this region. And, it was his descendants, the Gileadites, who would control the region as a clan in the half tribe of Manasseh.

    That last paragraph might not be entirely correct, but from what I’ve read, that seems to most likely be the case.

    Gal’azu

    During the Assyrian conquest of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, the Assyrians of course took the region of Gilead.

    When they did so, they also renamed it to the province of Gal’azu.

    Conclusion

    And so, we have seen that the word Gilead is a direct reference to a certain heap of rocks meant to bear witness to a covenant.

    It’s sometimes so easy to just pass over these etymologies that we see in Hebrew. But they are often fascinating and can serve to give us a greater understanding of what the word really means.

  • Word of The Week No 9: Hosanna

    We only see the word “Hosanna” in two places in our English translations of the Bible, Mark 11:9-10 and Matthew 21:9,15.

    These examples both happen during Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. Here are all the verses where we can find “Hosanna”:

    Mark 11:9-10: 9 Those who went ahead and those who followed shouted,

    “Hosanna!”

    “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

    10 “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!”

    “Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

    Matthew 21:9: 9 The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted,

    “Hosanna to the Son of David!”

    “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

    “Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

    And Matthew 21:15 15 But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did and the children shouting in the temple courts, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they were indignant.

    So, what on earth does “Hosanna” mean?

    Well, the word in the original Greek manuscripts is hosanna, which is just a transliteration of hosha’na, which is either a Hebrew word or an Aramaic word.

    Either way, this word, hosha’na, seems to be a contraction of the Hebrew word hoshi’ah-nna. And this word, hoshi’ah-nna, does appear in other parts of the Bible, specifically in Psalm 118:25.

    In Psalm 118:25-26, we read: 25 Lord, save us!
        Lord, grant us success!

    26 Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

    That first phrase, “Lord, save us!” (also translated as “Save, we pray”), is the Hebrew word hoshi’ah-nna. When this got shortened down to hosha’na, it started to be used by Jews as a common part of a hymn/prayer.

    And over time the word began to mean not just “Save us” but something more along the lines of “Honor to the one who saves”. This explains why the crowds were shouting Hosanna as a shout of praise. The crowds meant “Honor to the Savior” and “Honor to the Messiah” when they were shouting out Hosanna.

    Plus, as an interesting connection, Jesus’ Aramaic/Hebrew name was Yehoshua, which translates as “The Lord is Salvation” or “The Lord is deliverance”. So, the shouts of Hosanna had an extra connection directly to His earthly name.

    Also, notice how in Psalm 118:26, it says “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” This is exactly what the crowds shouted in both Mark 11:9 and Matthew 21:9. That is a major piece of evidence which lets us know that the word Hosanna does indeed originate from hoshi’ah-nna in Psalm 118:25.

    The Gospel of Luke, per usual, does not contain this Hebrew/Aramaic expression. But in Luke 19:38, we see again the slightly altered phrase “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”

    So, “Hosanna” was originally a cry of distress meaning “Save us!”, but over time it changed into a shout of praise to the Lord/Savior/Messiah. And this shout of praise was most fulfilled during Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, just a few days before He would in fact save us.

  • Golgotha, Calvary, And The Place of The Skull

    The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John all tell us that Jesus was crucified in a place called Golgotha.

    They also all tell us that Golgotha is a Hebrew word meaning “place of the skull”. (Technically, Golgotha is an Aramaic word, but Aramaic is commonly called Hebrew, since it was the common language of the Hebrew people at the time).

    Plus, the Gospel of Luke simply tells us that they crucified him at a place called “The Skull”.

    Every time we see the word “skull” in these passages, it is a translation of the Greek word Kranion, which means “skull” and is also where we get our modern word “cranium”.

    But, where do we get the word “Calvary” out of all this?

    Well, when the translator Jerome was compiling all the Bible into Latin in the late 300s AD, he properly translated that Greek word Kranion into the Latin word for “skull”, Calvaria.

    Then, as the centuries went by, some people translated the Latin Bible into English. When they did this, they just borrowed the Latin term and called the place “Calvary”, from Calvaria.

    Most modern English translations actually use the original manuscripts (Greek) when translating The New Testament though. So, now most Bibles will call it “the place of the skull”.

    But, we still have the word “Calvary” now, which is entirely unrelated to an army of horses, a “cavalry”.

    And, as for the place where Jesus was crucified, there’s been a whole lot of guessing about where it is and why it’s called the place of the skull.

    First, as a quick note, in the original Greek it’s more accurate to say “of the skull” and not “of a skull”.

    Anyhow, all four Gospels just call Golgotha/Calvary a “place”. Tradition has said that this was probably a hill, but we don’t really know for certain.

    A lot of people seem to think the place was called Golgotha because it was on a hill that kind of looked like a skull. Some other people say that it might have been because it could have been close to some tombs. And there are a good deal more guesses that scholars have made over the years.

    The gist of it is all pretty simple though. Jesus was crucified at a place called “place of the skull”. The Hebrew (Aramaic) term for “place of the skull” is Golgotha. And “Calvary” is just pretty much the Latin word for the same thing.

  • Word of the Week No 1: Targum

    Back when the Jews in the Old Testament were worshipping God, they spoke a language we call Hebrew. But, through a whole bunch of historical twists and turns, by the time Jesus was born, the common language of Judea was something called Aramaic.

    Aramaic is very similar to Hebrew, but it’s still a different language. One way I heard it described is to compare them to the Romance languages of Europe. For example, Italian and Spanish are both very similar languages because they come from Latin. But they’re still different languages. It’s the same way with Hebrew and Aramaic, different languages, but very similar.

    However, The Old Testament was written almost entirely in Hebrew, so the Jews needed some sort of translation to really understand it.

    This is very similar to how the Catholic Church would have their services in Latin during the Middle Ages. At a time when no one spoke Latin as a native language, the Catholics still taught in Latin and then translated verses later. Many religious traditions throughout history have tried to hold on to ancient languages and difficult to understand writings.

    So, the Jews came up with a solution for this language barrier. During their Synagogue services, one teacher would read a small section of scripture in Hebrew (think a verse or two), then some other guy would translate that into Aramaic for everyone in the crowd.

    That other guy who would translate the Hebrew into Aramaic was something called a hammeturgem, literally “a translator”. And the translation he gave was called a Targum. You can see that root word Targum in the word hammeturgem.

    However, the word in Hebrew can mean a little more than just “translate”. It can also more broadly mean “to interpret”. This is because the men who gave the translation into Aramaic would commonly add their own opinions of what the text actually meant.

    For this reason, the Jews did not allow anyone to write down any Targumim (plural of Targum), so that no one would start treating them as equal with scripture. But, over the centuries, some Rabbis broke this rule and wrote down massive Targumim, or interpretations, of The Old Testament.

    We also see this word used in Ezra 4:7, when it says:

    “The letter was written in Aramaic and translated.”

    That word “translated” is a form of the word Targum. And, if you read Ezra, you’ll see a footnote telling you that 4:8-6:18, which quotes the letter referenced in 4:7, is in Aramaic. This is one of the few sections of The Old Testament that was written in Aramaic rather than Hebrew.