Page 48 - Coincidences in the Bible and in Biblical Hebrew

CHAPTER 1 THE STRUCTURE OF THE HEBREW LANGUAGE
CHAPTER 1 THE STRUCTURE OF THE HEBREW LANGUAGE 27 27

offerings brought by the tribes of Israel to the Tabernacle. But then, “And Nadav

and Avihu, the sons of Aaron, took each of them his censer, and put fire in it, and

put incense on it, and offered strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded

them not. And a fire went out from the Lord, and devoured them, and they died
before the Lord” (Lev. 10:1–2). The Bible then goes on to describe, succinctly and
respectfully, the brief dialogue between the comforting Moses and the grieving
father, Aaron: “Then Moses said to Aaron, This is it that which the Lord spoke,

saying, I will be sanctified in them that come near me, and before all the people I

will be glorified. And Aaron held his peace” (Lev. 10:3).
The third case of punishment for not obeying God’s command to the letter is
told in the unfolding story of Adam, Eve, and the serpent in the Garden of Eden.
God describes the punishment that would befall each for eating from the tree of
knowledge . But then the curse is extended to the earth: “Cursed is the ground for
thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life” (Gen. 3:17).
Jewish sages asked why the ground was cursed. What was the sin? The reply:
not obeying God command to the letter. For God commanded earth, “Let the
earth bring forth … fruit tree yielding fruit” (Gen. 1:11). But what came forth
instead was a “tree yielding fruit …” (therein, verse 12). The original intent of the
command was that both the tree and its fruit would be edible. The earth, instead,
brought forth just “a tree yielding fruit.”
The rest of the verse describes the realization of exactly that which was com-
manded in the preceding verse, word for word.
This is once again a lesson in linguistic precision, with clues hidden within
what looks to be innocent and uninformative text.

1.3.7 “Please be fruitful and multiply,” with Variations

As a last example for precision in scripture textual descriptions, it is interesting to
learn how Genesis describes God’s command to the living to multiply.
On the fifth day of creation, “And God said, Let the waters swarm abundantly

with moving creatures that have life, and let birds fly above the earth …” (Gen.

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1:20). And then, “And God blessed them, saying [le-emor ], Be fruitful, and
multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply in the earth” (Gen.

1:22).
Yet the word “saying” is a wrong translation from Hebrew, which again distorts
altogether the true meaning of the sentence. The exact meaning of the word
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le-emor is “that is to say” or “meaning.” It appears numerous other times in the
Bible, with no “saying” involved. For example, observe Reuben speaking to his

brothers in Egypt, in the presence of their estranged brother Joseph: “And Reuben
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answered them, saying [le-emor ], Did I not speak to you, saying [le-emor ],