Page 59 - Coincidences in the Bible and in Biblical Hebrew

COINCIDENCES IN THE BIBLE AND IN BIBLICAL HEBREW
38 38 COINCIDENCES IN THE BIBLE AND IN BIBLICAL HEBREW

Consider a few examples for words derived from this root:

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chalal (space)
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chalal (a fatally wounded person; a dead person; a fallen person)
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chiloni (secular)
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lechalel (to defi le, profane, violate one’s honor)
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lechalel (defame the name of God)
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mitchalel (being desecrated);

These words, some of which seem unrelated, cannot acquire their true meanings
unless premeditated design in the structure of Hebrew words is assumed. In other
words, all these words become naturally related to one another if one takes into
consideration Jewish philosophy, which regards absence of God, or denial of God,
as, allegorically, “empty space” or “a body without a soul.”

Midah (Virtue)
The Hebrew language has a unique position towards virtues. If virtues are perceived
as desirable traits of human conduct, then all human traits are virtues, and no trait
is absolutely and under all conditions unacceptable. This is expressed particularly
well in the Talmudic proverb “He who shows compassion toward the cruel would
end up being cruel to the compassionate.” The lesson of this assertion is simple:
all modes of conduct are permissible and acceptable as long as they are measured,
adaptable to the circumstances, and consistent with good moral judgment.
A similar and related concept—which, we believe, exists only in the Hebrew

language—is “villain with permission (or under the auspices) of the Torah.” What

this translates to, in simple terms, is that you can break no Torah law, yet remain
a villain. In modern-day term, this implies that in addition to being a law-abiding
citizen, one also has to exercise his or her own capacity to tell right from wrong—
to exercise moral judgment.
The word “virtue” in the Hebrew language may be perceived as the ultimate
embodiment of this attitude of Jewish philosophy.
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Virtue , in Hebrew, is midah. The same exact word also means “measure.”
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For example, “to measure” is limdod. To deliver something scarce to somebody
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would be expressed as, “I could give everything only bi-mesura [with a strict
measure].”
Thus, in Hebrew, a virtue means conduct with the right measure. The
latter is an essential ingredient for any human mode of conduct to become a