LandonWillis

Category: Hebrew

  • The Millo

    In 2 Samuel 5:9 we read:

    9 So David lived in the stronghold, and called it the city of David. And David built all around from the Millo and inward.

    We see this term “the Millo” also mentioned in a handful of other places.

    So, what is the Millo?

    Well, that’s where this gets a wee bit complicated.

    We’ve got three verses and some archaeology that all help to give us some idea. First off, we have the verses 2 Kings 12:20 and 2 Chronicles 24:25 which both tell about the assassination of Joash, King of Judah:

    20 And his servants rose up and formed a conspiracy; and they struck and killed Joash at the house of Millo as he was going down to Silla.

    25 …his own servants conspired against him… and they murdered him on his bed.

    Because he was assassinated in his bed and in “the house of Millo” these verses seem to tell us that the king lived in the house of Millo.

    Remember that. We’ll come back to that idea in a moment.

    Next, let’s look at the final verse which helps us, 2 Chronicles 32:5:

    5 And he resolutely set to work and rebuilt all of the wall that had been broken down and erected towers on it, and built another outside wall and strengthened the Millo in the city of David, and made weapons and shields in great numbers.

    That verse is talking about King Hezekiah’s preparations to defend Jerusalem. Nestled in the middle of a description about how Hezekiah was fortifying the city, we can pretty safely say that the Millo was some sort of fortification.

    Now, let’s take a look at the archaeology that can help us out here.

    Not too long ago, an archaeologist in Jerusalem discovered what she thinks is the remnants of the Palace of David and the Millo. She discovered two different remains of connected buildings.

    The first, she called the Large Stone Structure. It’s shaped like a large palace, and thanks to some hints from the Old Testament, she thinks it might have been King David’s palace.

    The second, she called the Stepped Stone Structure. It’s connected to the Large Stone Structure and looks like a large wall bending inwards, like a rampart (you can look up pictures of the excavation; it looks neat). It seems to be some sort of retaining wall, something used to keep all the dirt and debris behind it from moving and shifting. She thinks that this retaining wall/fortification was likely the Millo.

    And remember how 2 Kings 12:20 mentions “the house of Millo”? Well, that archaeologist believes this is because the palace connected to the Millo could be called the house of Millo.

    There’s also another theory I read which makes the claim that the Millo might have been located a bit farther away, in an area known as the Gihon Spring.

    Also, many scholars think that “Millo” comes from the Hebrew word ml’, which means “to fill”. This might be in reference to filling with earth (like an earthen fortification), or some think it means the Millo had something to do with water (like, “to fill with water”).

    Overall, we don’t know exactly what the Millo was, but it seems very likely that it was some sort of fortification. Plus, it must have been in the city of David and was likely nearby, if not part of, the king’s palace.

  • Who Were The Sopherim?

    Over the course of thousands of years, Jewish scribes wrote copies of the Old Testament over and over again. Scholars have now split these thousands of years of scribal tradition into several different time periods.

    You’ve probably heard of at least one group that scholars have sectioned off: the Masoretes, authors of the Masoretic Text.

    The Sopherim (or Soferim), however, refers to the Jewish scribes who worked from around the 400s BC to around 200 BC.

    There is one good starting point that historians use though. Many simply say that Ezra the High Priest (of the books of Ezra and Nehemiah) was the first Sopher (singular of Sopherim).

    Then, scholars give the name of “Sopherim” to the next couple centuries of scribes also. This lasted until the Pharisees took over in the second century BC. Scholars give different names to the periods of scribes during the time of the Pharisees.

    So, what does Sopherim actually mean?

    Well, it’s the Hebrew word translated as “scribes” throughout the Old Testament.

    The word sofer also just means “to count”. Some people think this is because the Sopherim would count every letter in the Torah as part of their process to make sure they copied it precisely right.

  • Ophel

    In the book of 2 Chronicles, 27:3, we read:

    3 He [Jotham] built the upper gate of the house of the Lord, and he built the wall of Ophel extensively.

    So, what does Ophel mean?

    Well, it is obviously not a translation but rather just an English rendering of the Hebrew word עֹפֶל (pronounced something like “Opel”).

    The reason it’s not translated is because there’s a decent bit of debate as to what exactly the word means. There is, however, also a lot of agreement on what the term probably means.

    To give you a quick idea, one source I read described it this way:

    “an elevated, royal, administrative or religious acropolis of, specifically, a capital city“

    Let’s break this down.

    First, most scholars agree that it has something to do with the idea of being “elevated”. This is because when we see forms of the word “Ophel” being used in other parts of the Old Testament, it sometimes has a medical sense of “tumors” or “swelling” (see 1 Samuel 5:9 for one example).

    Most people take this to mean that when “Ophel” refers to a place, it’s talking about some sort of “swelling” area, such as a hill or a rounded fortification (or a lot of people say “a fortified hill”). This ties in with the definition above of “acropolis”. An acropolis is a high (elevated), fortified point in a city. You might have heard of the acropolis of Athens. If this theory is right, then an “Ophel” is basically just the Hebrew word for an acropolis.

    Next, the definition above says that it was probably a “royal, administrative, or religious acropolis”. This is because, first of all, an acropolis would generally serve one of those purposes. In other cities, an acropolis would usually be the seat of government (administrative/royal) and would sometimes have the most important temples (religious).

    But, there’s another reason for that part of the definition. According to descriptions of the location of Jerusalem’s Ophel given in the Bible, combined with modern archaeology, we can say quite confidently that the Ophel specifically referred to the ridge between the City of David (where David set up his citadel after conquering the fortress of Zion) and the Temple Mount. Some scholars though think that the term Ophel would have also included the City of David (administrative/royal). Others think it would have included the Temple Mount (religious).

    And some think that “Ophel” would refer to both mountains, plus the ridge between them. That would probably be the closest definition to being an acropolis. But, almost everyone agrees that the short ridge (a couple thousand feet long) between them is the Ophel of Jerusalem. Some archaeologists even found old fortifications there. That lends to the idea of it being a “fortified hill”.

    Now, in the earlier definition, there was one last sticking point. “of, specifically, a capital city”. 

    What does that mean? Weren’t we talking about some place in Jerusalem?

    Well, yes. But, we actually have two other examples of the word “Ophel” being used as a place name. Both times for a place in another capital city.

    The first is in 2 Kings 5:24:

    24 When Gehazi came to the hill, he took the things from the servants and put them away in the house. He sent the men away and they left.

    “Wait a minute”, you’re saying. “Ophel isn’t in that verse”.

    And you’re right. At least, in English. You see, the word translated “hill” in that verse is actually the same Hebrew word for Ophel. It’s just that translators decided to translate it here instead of just writing Ophel like they did in 2 Chronicles 27:3 at the start of this post.

    When you read 2 Kings 5:24, you might imagine that Gehazi meets Naaman’s servants on some random hill out in the country. But remember. We can probably translate that word accurately as “acropolis” or “fortress” or even “tower”. So, this “hill” is probably some sort of elevated place inside of the city of Samaria itself (you can get more context from the rest of 2 Kings 5 to see that they’re in Samaria).

    And, since Samaria was the capital of Israel, just like Jerusalem was the capital of Judah, the definition of “an acropolis of, specifically, a capital city” rings true.

    Plus, we also have a non Biblical, archaeological source that talks about an Ophel in the capital city of Moab, Dibon.

    In the end, Ophel is a somewhat mysterious word that is sometimes translated in your Bible and sometimes just left as “Ophel”. A good translation would probably be “acropolis”. But other good translations could be “hill”, “fort”, “elevated place”, and “fortified hill”.

    Nowadays, it’s a term used by archaeologists to talk about the ridge between the Temple Mount and the City of David.

    If you want a much more in depth and very interesting article about this subject, try https://armstronginstitute.org/907-what-is-the-ophel. I got a lot of my information from them and found it to be very well written.

  • Alamoth And Sheminith

    In 1 Chronicles 15:20-21 we read:

    …Maaseiah and Benaiah were to play the lyres according to alamoth, 21 and… Jeiel and Azaziah were to play the harps, directing according to sheminith.

    So, what on earth do Alamoth and Sheminith mean?

    Well, if you’ve got footnotes in your Bible, you might see a note on both these words which says something like “probably a musical term”.

    Or, in other words, we’ve got no clue what they mean. But they’ve got something to do with music.

    Plenty of scholars have taken some pretty solid guesses about what they mean though.

    Alamoth

    First, Alamoth.

    It likely comes from a word meaning something along the lines of “young, unmarried women”.

    So, a lot of people take this to mean that Alamoth refers to the pitch of the lyres. Specifically, soprano. Like the pitch of a young woman’s voice.

    I read another source describe Alamoth as probably sounding like a bunch of girls laughing.

    Alamoth also appears in the heading to Psalm 46.

    Sheminith

    Sheminith is even more difficult to nail down than Alamoth.

    It seems to come from the Hebrew word shaman, which could mean either “eight” or “dripping fat/oil” (don’t ask me why it means both those things).

    So, most scholars apparently think that Sheminith means “eighth”.

    If that’s correct, it might refer to an eight-stringed harp/lyre. However, others think it is a reference to a specific note, like how the word “octave” in English just comes from the Latin word octo, also meaning “an eighth”.

    I saw one source that suggested Sheminith was meant to stand in contrast to the soprano of Alamoth; so, it specifically means a note “one eighth (one octave) below the tenor”. In other words, bass.

    But, there are also potential connections between the definition of “dripping fat/oil” and Sheminith. Overall, nobody really knows for sure what these words mean.

    And Sheminith also appears in the headings of Psalm 6 and Psalm 12.

  • What Was The Masoretic Text?

    When you’re reading through your Old Testament, you’ve probably noticed how the footnotes will commonly mention the “Masoretic Text”.

    So, what on earth is the Masoretic Text?

    Well, in the centuries following Christ, there were many Jews who still tried to maintain the Old Testament. These Jews would act as scribes, copying the entire Old Testament line by line.

    Eventually though, a number of scribes decided that they didn’t like certain aspects of the process of copying the Old Testament. So, starting around the 5th century AD they began to try and fix certain flaws they saw in the copying process.

    First of all, they added something called the Masorah. The word Masorah appears to come from two other Hebrew words. The first word, Masoret, means “a bond” or “chains”, while the second Hebrew word, Meser, means “a message”. When combined, we end up with the word Masorah, which could literally mean “a chained message”.

    But, a better translation for Masorah would be “tradition”.

    So, these scribes added the Masorah (tradition) in the 5th century. What does that mean? Basically, the Masorah was a whole bunch of notes made in the margins of the paper or in-between lines of text or at the end of a scroll or book.

    What were these marginal notes? Mostly notes about things like pronunciation, spelling, and statistics (for example, how many times a certain word is used in the whole of the Old Testament).

    Since these scribes added all these Masorah notes, they became known as the Masoretes (or Ba‘aley Hammasora, literally, “Masters of the tradition”). Then, the copies of the Old Testament that they created earned the name of the Masoretic Text, because it was made by the Masoretes.

    But, the Masorah notes weren’t all that the Masoretes added. They also created section, chapter, and verse divisions for the Old Testament. Most of the chapter and verse divisions that they made are still what we use in our English Old Testaments (there are slight differences for certain verses though, especially in the Psalms).

    Plus, the Masoretes added a system of vowels to the Old Testament. Now, this might sound strange to us. But Ancient Hebrew didn’t use vowels in its writing system. They just left vowels out and spelled everything with consonants.

    As you could imagine, this created some confusion over the centuries. So, the Masoretes created a system where they could add vowel sounds to their copies of the Old Testament without messing anything up. To do this, they represented vowel sounds with little dots and lines that they could put underneath letters. This allowed them to show how something was supposed to be pronounced without having to really take up more space on the paper since they just could just fit small dots right under letters in a preexisting manuscript.

    In addition to all this, the Masoretes were famous for their accuracy in making copies. They developed processes where they would count how many letters were supposed to be in each Book of the Old Testament. And they would count to see what the middle verse, middle word, and middle letter were supposed to be. This helped ensure that they could copy every single letter correctly every time.

    Now, they still made mistakes on occasion, but their copies are considered very reliable and accurate. Even so, they didn’t start their work until the 5th century, so they were making copies of copies of copies…

    Because of this combination of great accuracy with the fact that they were stuck with copies that might have already had small mistakes, the Masoretic Text is very useful for making translations of the Old Testament, while still not being a perfect source.

    Throughout your Old Testament, you’ll see footnotes referencing how the Septuagint, Masoretic Text, and Dead Sea Scrolls might disagree with each other on minor issues of wording. It’s all very interesting to study, but we also need to always remember that all of our ancient manuscripts agree on almost every point. And no major point of teaching is ever really at stake when it comes to these issues of which translation is right.

    I hope I didn’t make any of that too confusing. And I hope that you now better understand what the Masoretic Text is.

  • Why Do Certain Numbers Mean Words In The Bible? Thanks To Gematria And Isopsephy.

    You’ve probably heard about some famous examples of numbers being used as codes in the Bible. Specifically, you’ve likely heard that the number 666 was probably a reference to the Emperor Nero.

    But why on earth do numbers mean words? And how does this “code” work?

    Well, a lot of people try to make it sound all complicated, but it’s actually pretty simple.

    In English, we obviously use a certain system of numbers (also called numerals): 1,2,3,4,etc.

    What you may not know is that these numbers (1,2,3,4,etc.) are Arabic numerals. A system of numbers that comes to us from Arabic.

    So, before we began using these Arabic numerals just a few centuries ago, what did we use?

    Well, think back to the Romans. They had a system of Roman numerals (ring a bell?). In this system, the Romans used numbers such as I,V,X,L,C,etc.

    As you can see, all of their numbers were just letters. The only way to tell whether something in writing was meant as letters or numbers was through context. If you saw V CANES, you could assume that the “V” represents “5”, so you could translate the phrase as “5 dogs”.

    This system of Roman numerals is very similar to what the Greeks and Hebrews did.

    Records are unclear, but it appears that the Greeks were the first to develop this system of counting (using their letters to represent numbers instead of spelling out the full name of the number).

    The Greeks called this “isopsephy”, which comes from isos, meaning “equal” and psephos, meaning “count”.

    Then, it appears that following Alexander the Great’s conquest of the east, the new Hellenistic (hellenistic just means Greek) Jews began to develop their own system of isopsephy.

    However, just to keep us a little bit confused, the Hebrews made sure to change the name of isopsephy to “gematria”. Gematria still comes from Greek, but specifically it derives from the word geometria, which is also where we get our word “geometry”. It’s basically just a word that had to do with math, so naming a number system after a math word makes sense.

    So, these systems of isopsephy (for Greek) and gematria (for Hebrew) were pretty much just the same sort of thing as Roman numerals.

    The only big difference is that for the Romans, only a few letters were used as numbers and the rest were always just letters. For Hebrew and Greek though, every letter had a numerical value to go along with it.

    Because of this, you could take any word in Hebrew or Greek, add up all the numbers/letters, and get a total value. This was done pretty commonly for different purposes. Again, the famous example of 666 alludes to Emperor Nero because if you add up the letters of his name in Greek, Neron Kaisar, you get 666.

    Overall, a lot of people like to make this stuff sound all confusing, but just remember, it’s pretty much the same as Roman numerals.

  • 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.

  • What Is The Shema?

    The Shema is a famous and still very important prayer in Judaism. It comes from Deuteronomy 6:4, where it is written:

    “4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.”

    In Hebrew, that first word “hear” is the command Shema, which itself comes from the Hebrew word “to hear”, Shama.

    The modern Jewish prayer consists almost entirely of Deuteronomy 6:4-9, Deuteronomy 11:13-21, and Numbers 15:37-41. And since the first word of this prayer is Shema, the whole thing is now just referred to as “the Shema”.

    Even during Jesus’ time, the Shema was recognized as a very important section of the Scriptures. Think of when Jesus said in Mark 12:29 that the greatest command was “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.”

    And, strangely enough, the word Shema was also the name of four men and one city recorded in The Old Testament. You can find all references to these men and this city in 1 Chronicles 2:43, 1 Chronicles 5:8, 1 Chronicles 8:13, Nehemiah 8:4, and Joshua 15:26.

    It seems that the name was probably from the noun form of Shema, which would mean “sound”. So, their names were something along the lines of “sound”, “hearing”, or “fame”.

    Plus, this is where we get the modern names Simeon and Simon.

  • Difference Between Christ, Messiah, And The Anointed One

    Messiah comes from the Hebrew word mashiah, which means “the anointed one”.

    This idea of anointing is seen all throughout both The Old Testament and The New Testament. There are many examples of God commanding different people to anoint kings, prophets, and priests in The Old Testament.

    “Anointing” literally means “to smear with oil” (it comes from the Latin word unguere, meaning “to smear”). God ordered this ceremony of rubbing people with oil (apparently usually a special kind of oil for which he gives us the recipe in Exodus 30:22-33) many times, seemingly as a special ritual to show that someone or something is set apart for God.

    This process was especially important for men of high standing, like men who were about to become king or about to become priests.

    So, when we read in The Old Testament about how The Messiah is coming (think Daniel 9:25-26), we can know that “Messiah” is just being used as a catchall term to describe the one who is specially chosen and set apart for God. We know that this Messiah was Jesus, and even though He was anointed with oil at times (like Mary of Bethany anointing Jesus’ feet/smearing his feet with oil), He was called the Messiah because the term “anointed one” had just become a general term to describe someone set apart and chosen by God.

    Now, that’s for the Hebrew.

    When The New Testament was written in Greek, though, the authors properly translated the word mashiah into Greek as khristos, which also means “the anointed one”. This Greek term is where we get the English word “Christ”.

    There are also two instances in the whole of The New Testament where the word “Messiah” is used, John 1:41 and John 4:25. In both of these verses, the author of John uses the word messiah because he’s recording what someone who spoke Hebrew or Aramaic was saying. He does also immediately follow it up both times by saying that “Messiah” is just the Hebrew word for “Christ” (in English “anointed one”).

    Also, the word “Messiah” had a real interesting history. As it traveled through Greek and Latin, it became Messias. And this used to be the English word for “Messiah” too. But, when the authors of the Geneva Bible (one of the first English Bibles) were translating it into English, they decided to make the word look more Hebrew. So, they replaced the ‘s’ with an ‘h’, giving us our modern English word for Messiah.

    I’m not entirely sure why most translators choose to not translate the words “Messiah” and “Christ”, but I hope that this is some useful information for you.

  • 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.