Page 43 - Coincidences in the Bible and in Biblical Hebrew

COINCIDENCES IN THE BIBLE AND IN BIBLICAL HEBREW
22 22 COINCIDENCES IN THE BIBLE AND IN BIBLICAL HEBREW

society, one cannot shake off responsibility for what is transpiring in
the world at large, for the iniquity, violence and evil there. By not
protesting … you become responsible for any harm arising therefrom,
and thus have violated the prohibition of ‘Lifnei Iver’ ” (“before the
blind”).

It is interesting to note a similar case of usage of words in the Bible that con-
veys the exact sense of what is really meant—a sense devoid of the trivial meaning
that one would expect. In Exodus, we have “And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying,
Speak to the children of Israel that they bring me an offering” (Exod. 25:2). This
sounds innocent enough, until one examines more closely what is really said in
the Hebrew text, literally: “speak to the children of Israel that they took me [ve-
22
yekchu li ] an offering.”
This sounds bizarre. The Bible does not talk about giving, or bringing, an
offering, but rather about “taking.” Not taking from fellow citizens, but “taking
to God” (a bizarre form of speech, as you commonly “take from,” not “take to”).
Does this insinuate that although the final physical outcome is the “giving” of the

offering, in fact the “giver” is at the same time “taking” from God, being blessed
because of the offering?

1.3.4 “And Thou shalt not favor a poor man in his cause”
(Exod. 23:3)
The Bible is replete with warnings that the poor, and the widow, and the orphan,
and the foreigner must all receive justice and decent conduct from fellow men and
women, and that their relative position in society must not be taken advantage of
in immoral ways. The Jewish prophets, in particular, repeatedly warn, “Learn to
do well, seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the
widow … they judge not the fatherless, neither does the cause of the widow reach
them” (Isa. 1:17, 23); “Oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow,
and shed not innocent blood in this place … Thus said the Lord … deliver the
robbed out of the hand of the oppressor: and do no wrong, do no violence to the
stranger, the fatherless, nor the widow, neither shed innocent blood in this place”
(Jer. 7:6, 22:3).
One would expect that when the law of God is first revealed to the children of

Israel while still in the Sinai desert , the Bible would likewise emphasize that the
less fortunate of society should get fair treatment in all walks of life. Although the
Bible does do this occasionally (for example, Exod. 22:21, Deut. 24:17), when
it comes to formal institutions, the Bible takes a very strange position: it simply
does not relate to the obvious, to the trivial. One would expect that warnings