In this episode of Hebrew Voices #207 - Sounds like Freedom, Nehemia speaks to Deborah Henne on her "Sounds like Freedom" program on the Name of God and truth vs. experience.

I look forward to reading your comments!

PODCAST VERSION:

You are listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon's Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

Deborah: Welcome back to the Sounds Like Freedom podcast. I’m your host, Deborah Henne, and I’m here today with Dr. Nehemia Gordon, who is the creator and host of the Hebrew Voices podcast. He has written two popular books on the Hebrew origins of Christianity and is active in interfaith dialogue. Dr. Gordon earned his PhD from Bar Ilan University in biblical studies, writing his doctoral dissertation on The Writing, Erasure, and Correction of the Tetragrammaton in Medieval Hebrew Manuscripts. He also holds a master’s degree in biblical studies and a bachelor’s degree in archaeology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has worked as a translator on the Dead Sea Scrolls and a researcher deciphering ancient Hebrew manuscripts. He is currently working on cutting edge research utilizing Hebrew manuscripts of the Bible.

Welcome, Dr. Nehemia.

Nehemia: Hey, thank you. Shalom.

Deborah: Shalom to you as well. Now, I am a huge fan of your work. I’ve used some of your research and materials in some messages that I’ve preached. I’m a huge fan of your research and what you bring to the Hebrew word studies and the Hebrew origins of the Christian faith. In particular, I was actually introduced to you and your work through my cousin, who sent me your video about Yahweh and the origins of Yahweh. So, what I would love is for my listeners to hear what you discovered about the origins of Yahweh and the name of God.

Nehemia: So, Yahweh is… the Anchor Bible Dictionary puts it best; it calls Yahweh a scholarly guess. In other words… let’s back up. We have this challenge, which is that Rabbinical Judaism forbade Jews from pronouncing the name of God, which was written 6,827 times in the most accurate manuscripts. And it’s written with the consonants, but it’s not pronounced. So, the assumption is, we don’t know what the vowels are.

So, imagine if you had my letters N-H-M, and you didn’t know if it was Nuhumu or if it was Nihimi. And that’s because Hebrew has two different sets of writing; it has the consonants and the vowels which are written separately, and it’s generally believed that the vowels originally weren’t even written. Even today, if you go to a synagogue and you pull out the Torah scroll, it doesn’t have any vowels written. That is, it’s just the consonants.

So, where do you get the vowels from? Well, you go to a printed book, and you see what the vowels are, and you read it over and over until you know it. And then you go back and read the unvocalized text. That’s, in practice, how it’s done today when somebody reads in the public liturgy, in the prayers in the synagogue. Now, you can pick it up if you’re fluent in Hebrew and read it without even practicing, and you’ll get probably 90-95% of it right. You might make some mistakes, but maybe 98% you’ll get right.

So, the problem is, what are the vowels of God’s name? We know it’s Y-H-V, and then the last one is H, which is usually silent at the end of a word. Okay, so how do we pronounce that? The scholarly guess is that it’s Yahweh, and that’s based on a number of pieces of evidence. One of those is that there is a church father named Theodoret of Cyrus. For years I mispronounced his name, and then I met an expert in what they call the church fathers, and he says, “No, that’s ‘Thee-odd-urret.’” I always called him “Theodore-et” because I didn’t know how it’s pronounced. At least in English, they say “Thee-odd-urret.”

So, anyway, Theodoret says… he’s speaking about the Tetragrammaton, the four-letter name of God, which is in Hebrew Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, and he says that the Jews pronounce it Ayah, and the Samaritans pronounce it Yahveh. And scholars see that, and they say, “Oh, Yahveh. Well, the Jews don’t know how to pronounce it. Theodoret’s in the 5th century,” this is the assumption, “but he does say the Jews pronounce it Ayah. So, what is Ayah?” There’s a bunch of theories about it; we won’t go into that. But they say, “Yahveh, that’s Yahweh.” All right, that’s piece of evidence number one.

Then you have a church father named Clement, and he says… and he’s earlier than Theodoret. He’s like the 2nd century, and he says that the Tetragrammaton is Yah’u’eh. And so, they take those two and they say, “All right, what would that be in Hebrew? Yahveh isn’t a Hebrew word, and Yah’u’eh isn’t a Hebrew word.” So, they reconstruct that it’s Yahweh. That’s what they say today. They’ll say, “That’s the evidence. That’s the standard explanation. We have the Samaritan evidence from Theodoret, and Clement tells us…”

Alright. Now, first of all, they ignore a bunch of other church fathers who say that it’s Yah’oh, and actually the only Jewish piece of evidence has Yah’oh. Okay, well, Yah’oh isn’t a Hebrew name either. It’s not a Hebrew word. And part of that is because there’s a letter Hey, and Hey isn’t pronounced in ancient Greek, so the Hey automatically drops. So Yah’oh is something like Yeho- something. Something’s missing there.

So, if you look back at where they came up with Yahweh from, one of the great promoters of Yahweh was this really great scholar, a man named Gesenius. Gesenius was this German, who, in the early 19th century, around the 1820’s, he created what later becomes the definitive grammar of Biblical Hebrew. Also, the definitive lexicon of Biblical Hebrew. So, the lexicon that we used at Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel, where most of the students are… I’m from Chicago, but most of the students are native Hebrew speakers. The lexicon we used was based on Gesenius’ lexicon, in German, translated into English. They used the English translation, and it had gone through many different modifications, but basically it was based on Gesenius’ lexicon. So, he was a great scholar. I don’t dispute that.

In one of the versions of his lexicon, he gives the Clement argument of Yah’u’eh, and he gives Yahveh, and then he gives some other pieces of evidence. But he says, “Well, there must be some connection,” I’m paraphrasing here. But he basically says, “There must be some connection. You have all these ancient peoples in the Mediterranean, and they’re all in the same area. And if you go back to the earliest period, they’re all probably one big tribe.” And that was something they had come to through linguistics. They realized most of the European languages, and there are some exceptions like Hungarian and Estonian, but almost all the European languages are part of a single family of languages called Indo-European languages. And so, the assumption was, which is probably correct, they all go back to a single tribe thousands of years ago. I would say just after the flood, but they would probably say a different event, and they all spoke one language, and they all had a single god. And so, if you have a certain god from among the ancient Germans, and a different god among the ancient Latins, it must all be the same god.

And then they said, “Well, in the Mediterranean, you also have the Egyptians,” who today we wouldn’t say speak an Indo-European language. But they’re all part, maybe, of the same Mediterranean culture, and they must have had a god which was the equivalent of Jupiter. Why Jupiter? Because Jupiter was the main god of the ancient Latins, of the Latin language of the Romans. Okay, well, Jupiter actually means father. Pater is father. It’s literally the same word as father, because English is also an Indo-European language.

And then Yah’oh is actually Yahweh-pater; that’s actually where you get “Jupiter”. So, one of the forms of Jupiter is Yahweh. So, Gesenius says like this: “They all came from this ancient Mediterranean culture, and the Israelites, the Hebrews, must have gotten the name of Yahweh, the name of their god, from the Egyptians, which had the same god as the Latins, as the Romans. And therefore, the pronunciation is Yahweh, just like it is in Latin.” The young people say TLDR; too long, didn’t read.

So, the TLDR is, the Hebrews got the name of their god from the Egyptians, because they were slaves in Egypt, who had the same god as Yahweh-pater, which is Jupiter. So, he’s reconstructing the pronunciation of the Hebrew name of God, Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, from Latin. And in ancient Latin, it was Yahweh.

Now, he then puts that together with Clement, and he puts that together with Theodoret, and he says, “Okay, there you go. It’s Yahweh.” Now later, he drops that, because he’s like, “Wait a minute. That’s not going to convince a lot of Christians that the name of their god, as it is in the Old Testament, comes from Jupiter.” So, he drops that. But you can see his pattern of thought there, right? It has to be something that’s common to all the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean, and in Latin, we have Yahweh. Well, Yahweh stuck, but like I said, even in the late 20th century they’re calling it a scholarly guess.

So, my prayer was, I want to do better than a scholarly guess. There are actually a lot of scholarly guesses. I read all these very learned academic articles, where they say maybe it was originally Yah-vo, or Yah-wo. That’s based on the pattern of the name Pharaoh. That’s an example. Actually, Gesenius mentions that as a possibility that he rejects as well.

So, there’s all these different theories. And what they do is, they look at other Hebrew names, and they say, “Okay, what are patterns for names?” And that’s like the example of Pharaoh. Or they say, “Well, what does it mean?” And the real reason Yahweh stuck wasn’t because of Jupiter. The reason Yahweh stuck is because…

So, most Bible scholars come from, let’s say in America in particular, and in Germany even more so, historically at least, came from the field of theology. And in theology, they ask the question, “Okay, what is God? God’s a creator. So, whatever Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey is, however you pronounce it, it must mean creator.” Alright, well, how can we get those letters to mean creator? And they say, “Well, Hebrew has seven conjugations,” which is correct. They’re verbal conjugations. In English, if you want to change the meaning of a verb, you add words to it. I drink. I was drinking coffee. The coffee was drunk by Nehemia, who was thirsty. So, we have drink, drink, drink, was drunk, is to be drunk, is to be drinking? I don’t know, English isn’t my expertise. So, that’s what you do in Indo-European languages; you do that in English.

In Semitic languages, you have these verbal conjugations, so you change the vowels. That’s what you do. You add prefixes and suffixes and infixes; you do all kinds of things. You keep the three basic letters of the verb… sometimes some of them drop, but you keep the three basic letters of the verb. And then you add prefixes and suffixes and infixes, and you modify the vowels. Mainly you change the vowels.

I could take the same three Hebrew letters and make completely different words in English. But in Hebrew, it’s the same letters. So, I have shavar, “he broke”, shiber, “he smashed”, and shubar, “it was smashed”. And I didn’t change the three letters. It’s literally the same three Hebrew letters. All I did was change the little dots and points, and the vuh changed to a buh based on a little dot I added to it. That’s how Hebrew works.

So, they said, “Okay, how can we get Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey to mean ‘He’s the creator’?” Well, there’s one of the conjugations, called hifil, and it has a causative meaning. So, hishbir could theoretically… it doesn’t, but it could, theoretically mean “he causes to break”. It actually means “he exchanges in trade”, but whatever. So, they say, “Alright, Yahweh, or Yah’veh in more standard Hebrew pronunciation, would mean ‘He that causes to be.’” And there we go, Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, based on our philosophy, means “He’s the creator”. And that must be the original meaning.

Well, there’s one problem; that, in the entire history of the Hebrew language, the word Yah’veh, or any form of hifil, of that particular root, doesn’t exist. There’s actually one exception, but it’s not with a vuh. It’s complicated. But basically, it’s a made-up word in a poem from the 10th century. But other than that, it doesn’t exist in Hebrew.

And so, you have these seven conjugations, but not every root exists in all seven conjugations. And the root of the word “to be” doesn’t exist in that form, it’s just a made-up form. It was literally made up by scholars. So, it’s funny, because they’ll say Yehovah, which is what I found the vowels to be, and we can get to that if we have time. “Yehovah is,” scholars will say, “well, it’s an impossible hybrid form.” Okay. Why is it impossible? It’s only impossible if you say it’s a verb, a single form of a single verb, which it’s not. Nobody says that. Whereas Yah’veh is a single form of a verb, but it’s a made-up form. It’s an impossible form. I guess it’s not impossible, it’s just made up.

In other words, if you look throughout the entire history of the Hebrew language, you don’t find the form Yah’veh. You just don’t find it. So, how do we know it is that? Well, we just made it up. So, could it be? Sure, anything’s possible. It could be Yuhuvuhuh. If we don’t know what the vowels are, the vowels could be anything. They could be anything within the Hebrew vowel patterns, Hebrew consonant and vowel patterns.

What I say, my prayer was, I want to see this in one of the manuscripts. Where is a manuscript of the… Look, how do we have the Bible at all? There were scribes, Jewish scribes, who faithfully copied and transcribed the Bible over many generations. Where did they ever record it to be Yahweh or Yah’veh? They didn’t. So, that was my prayer. I wanted to see how it’s recorded.

So, here’s the problem. It’s recorded in the Hebrew manuscripts, in the earliest Hebrew manuscripts with vowels, with one of the vowels missing. And what I found is that sometimes that missing vowel isn’t missing, it’s included. In the most important manuscript of the Bible in Hebrew, the Aleppo Codex, it’s between six and eight times. Two of them, I think, are later additions. But it’s six times, originally. And some manuscripts, I later found, like, for example, the Damascus Crown, which is from the 10th century, it’s one of the key manuscripts of the Bible in Hebrew, in most places has that missing vowel not missing. It’s included in almost every place, which seems kind of important. And that makes the name Yehovah. Which actually, when you think about it, makes a lot of sense, because we have Hebrew names that are called theophoric names, and those are names which have God’s name in them.

Like my name, Nehemia, is “Yehovah comforts”. Well, why isn’t it Nehem’yeho? Why is it Nehemia? Or if you think about Netanyahu. Nehemia is actually short for Nehemya-hu, just like Netanya-hu. So, at the end of a name, it’s always Yahu, but at the beginning of a name, it’s always Yeho. And there are linguistic reasons for that I could go into if you want, but they’re a bit complicated. It has to do with the shortening of vowels when they’re distant from the place of the emphasized syllable. So, Yahu becomes Yeho when it’s at the beginning of a name.

So, the name Netanyahu is actually the same name as Yehonatan, or Jonathan. What do I mean it’s the same name? It means the same thing. Netanyahu means “Yehovah gives”, and Yehonatan means “Yehovah gives”. It’s just the word “give” and the word “Yehovah.” One’s at the beginning and one’s at the end, and then they switch. And then you get Yehonatan, which becomes Netanyahu. So, it’s always Yeho at the beginning of a name. And that’s because it’s distant from the place of the emphasized syllable, so the vowel is shortened.

In God’s name, it would not be Yahu, Yahuvah, that’s not how it would be. It would be Yehovah… that first syllable would shorten, basically. Or you could say it would elongate in the emphasized position. It’s just six of one, half a dozen of the other. So, long story… TLDR is, from the Hebrew manuscripts, as far as I can tell, it’s Yehovah. And I later found numerous rabbis say it’s Yehovah.

One of the things I was taught as a fact, which was common knowledge, is the Jews didn’t remember how to pronounce the name, and no Jewish source ever gives a pronunciation of the name. Well, I knew that wasn’t true, but what I didn’t know is there’s numerous rabbis who say it’s Yehovah. And then they refer to it as a secret, which is very interesting. Why is it a secret? Because the rabbis said it’s forbidden to pronounce, and it can only be transmitted by rabbi to disciple once every seven years. So, it was literally the secret that was transmitted from rabbi to disciple, according to what they’re saying. I don’t know if it was literally every seven years, but at some point, the rabbi would apparently reveal it to his disciple. And we have these interesting ceremonies how they did it… Anyway, go ahead, yeah.

Deborah: That’s amazing! The journey of uncovering the name of God. And so, I imagine, going against common culture, you got a little bit of pushback as you wrote books on this. I know you worked with Keith Johnson on this project, and it took years of study, from what I understand.

Nehemia: Just replace the word “a little bit” with “a lot of”!

Deborah: Yeah! Okay.

Nehemia: It’s quite funny. I get two types of pushback. Well, I get more than two. This morning, I got an email from someone who said, “I can’t believe you’re so stupid. Don’t you know, there’s no V in ancient Hebrew?” So, yeah, I’ve got that little PhD thing, but what do I know? I know there’s people who say there’s no V in ancient Hebrew. I don’t know that there was no V in ancient Hebrew, there’s a difference.

So, one of the types of pushbacks I get is, “Well, no, those are the vowels of Adonai, which is the Hebrew for Lord.” That’s the common pushback I’ll get from scholars. And then from the non-scholars, the pushback I’ll get is, “Nehemia, you’re deceiving people. You’re saying you discovered something, but everybody knows that’s the pronunciation of the name.” Okay, great! I didn’t discover anything new, I’m just stating the obvious. Wonderful. I don’t think I’m deceiving people, but because all the scholars tell me that it’s an impossible hybrid, and those are the vowels of Adonai, even though Adonai has an “ah” in it, not an “eh”, but okay.

So, it’s funny. I get the two opposite criticisms. One is “What you’re saying couldn’t possibly be correct.” And the other, usually from Jews who are academics, will say, “This isn’t a discovery, this is obvious. Why are you pretending you discovered something?” So…

Deborah: Yeah. So, this show is about living in the freedom of God. So, when these things come against you, I would imagine, maybe it’s just me being a female, but it can hurt, and be like, “I am dedicating years into this and money into this, and I’m doing my best work to share this powerful truth, because there’s power in the name of God.” There’s power in the name of God.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Deborah: So, what strategies do you use to overcome that and to stand strong in that place?

Nehemia: So, the one-word answer is autism. So, you’re saying it’s because you’re a female, and I have what’s called Asperger’s, which has been described as an extreme expression of the male mind. And this isn’t me saying it, psychologists say that. Women are very intuitive, and what they really mean by that is… usually male psychologists will say this; there are things that women just pick up on that men don’t pick up on just intuitively, naturally. I don’t know why, it’s how God created us. And autism is an extreme expression of the male mind that, if my beautiful wife is upset with me, she knows she needs to tell me that because I would never know in a million years, unless she tells me. She’s like… well, not she, but let’s say in previous situations, I had women say, “Can’t you tell I’m upset?” No, I have no idea. You have some sixth sense I just don’t have. That’s not how God created me.

Now, I can use my intellect to try to infer, and I’ll be right maybe 60% of the time. But the other 40%, “Maybe she just has a stomachache, and I think she’s upset with me.” So, I just don’t even try anymore. That’s the beautiful relationship we have. She’ll tell me if she’s upset with me.

So, one of the characteristics of Asperger’s… and I openly admit this… and they say that Einstein had this… not that I’m Einstein, but it’s a characteristic of Asperger’s, is that you kind of don’t care what anybody thinks. You do to some extent, but not the way most people do. So, if you know that you’re right about something, you kind of don’t care that everybody thinks you’re wrong. Einstein famously knew, and we would say he believed, but in his mind, he knew he was right about the theory of relativity. And they went to test his experiment with a certain observation of an eclipse and where the stars were, something like this, and they took a photo, and it proved him wrong. And he said, “No, I’m right. Redo the experiment.” And they redid the experiment, and he was proven right. He published this in 1905, and I believe it was something like 1919 until he was proven right. So, think about that. For 14 years there were people who were saying, “He’s an idiot. He’s crazy. He’s making this up. He’s a fool. He just doesn’t understand Newtonian physics, and we’ve proven him wrong.” And then he said, “Well, you did the experiment wrong.” And they redid the experiment 14 years later. I don’t remember the exact year, something like that, and he was proven right. And now today it’s just a given that he’s right.

Deborah: … a thread that we can pull out. Like, you’re going to Scripture. You’re doing your due diligence. You’re studying. You’re researching. And you have a belief in the truth that you’re finding in Scripture, and you’re standing on that. And I think that principle can still be applied across the board.

Nehemia: Oh, for sure.

Deborah: … it was different, like me…

Nehemia: I would say, and of course this is maybe a bit biased, but I would say everyone should have a little bit of Asperger’s and not be concerned with what other people think. The woke people have this expression, mansplaining, and what they really mean is that, when you explain something to someone in a way that’s… what’s the word I’m looking for? Is it demeaning? Condescending! That’s the word. When you explain something to people in a way that’s condescending… and I have people all the time, men and women, who explain to me in a condescending way, “Oh, don’t you know? There’s no V in Hebrew. I read that in Wikipedia. How can Nehemia not know this?” Okay. Well, I happen to know probably more than you do about Hebrew, that’s my expertise. Fine.

But I think everybody should have a little bit of autism in the sense that, who cares what everybody else thinks? You shouldn’t care. People are going to condescendingly explain things to you, and they’re going to be wrong. And boy, we’ve seen that a lot in the mainstream culture in the last few years, where people…

Let’s just take something… I don’t know if we want to get banned here, but I’ll take something that isn’t controversial, the masks. “Don’t use masks, they don’t work.” “Oh, we were lying because we wanted the doctors to have masks.” “If you don’t use masks, you’re killing old people.” “It turns out the masks really don’t help, and they don’t work.” And that whole progression is all from mainstream wisdom. I’m not talking about conspiracy theorists. The mainstream authorities said every one of those statements. I may be paraphrasing, but basically, they were saying, originally, “Don’t wear masks, they don’t work.” And they later admitted, “Well, it was a noble lie, because we wanted the first responders to have the masks, and there weren’t enough.” And “You better use a mask, or the old people will die and you’re killing people.” I used to hear that all the time. And then, “The mask didn’t actually prevent the spread.”

So, you’re being explained something in a condescending way that may or may not be true, and you should stick with what, in your gut, in your heart, you know to be the truth based on the best evidence you’ve seen. Now, if you see better evidence, you should change. You say, “Well, you’ve invested years in this and a lot of money,” and all that’s true. But if I found I was wrong, in a minute I would change, because I want the truth. That’s all I’m after is the truth.

Here’s what I say: I don’t have a recording of God speaking to Moses from the burning bush and saying, “This is My name forever.” I don’t have that. What I have is transcriptions that were transmitted for many generations by scribes. Are those the exact words that God spoke to Moses? I can say I believe that, but that’s a theological belief. It’s not based on, let’s say, empirical evidence and fact that I can prove. Based on the empirical evidence and the facts I can prove, to the best of my knowledge, His name is Yehovah and not Yahweh. Could it be Yahweh? Sure. It could be Yuhuvuhu, it could be anything. All I could do is stick with the best evidence I have.

And I think the one takeaway that’s important for everybody is, if you have this deep conviction in your heart based on reading Scripture that something is true, don’t let the experts tell you, “You’re killing old people if you believe that,” like with the masks, or, “that scripture doesn’t work, don’t bother putting it on your face,” and, “do put it on your face or you’ll harm people.” Don’t listen to the experts. You can hear what the experts have to say, but do they know what they’re talking about? They might know what they’re talking about, and it’s a noble lie because they have some other agenda.

And I don’t think that’s necessarily the case in biblical studies, but I hear experts all the time saying, “Well, we know that X, Y, and Z is true.” And what they really mean is, “My friends and I have come to a consensus among ourselves that all of that evidence you’re citing isn’t important and it’s not valid, but this other evidence that we focus on is important and valid.” Well, who cares what you and your friends decided? Fifty years from now, you and your friends won’t be around, and some other group of people will have some other consensus.

There’s this expression that I hear in the media, more in the alternative media, which is “Don’t believe your lying eyes.” You won’t hear that in the mainstream media. I won’t give examples, but people know what I’m talking about. So, it’s things you can see with your own eyes, and they use this term “gaslighting”, which, I like that term if it’s used correctly. What gaslighting really means… it was originally a play and later two different movies. And the plot was, there’s this woman who is very wealthy, and her husband is trying to get her committed to a mental institution so he can steal all of her wealth. And I don’t remember exactly, but he’s pulling some kind of prank on her, like, he has some thing that he hides, and he accuses her of stealing it. She’s like, “I didn’t steal it.”

And he goes, and he says, “Well, unlock your little cupboard,” or whatever. And she unlocks the cupboard, and it’s hidden there. And he says, “You don’t remember.” So, what he’s doing is changing reality on her. And it’s called gaslighting because he’s sneaking into the other apartment and messing with the lights, or it causes the lights to flicker, and she sees the lights flickering. And she’s like, “something’s going on.” And he tells her, “No, you’re just imagining that. The lights are not flickering.” And the lights were gas-powered back then, actually butane, or gas, or whatever.

So, people are doing this around us all the time. They’re gaslighting us. They’re telling us, “You saw something happening, but it didn’t really happen.” “You were wearing a mask, and you got that disease. No, no, it was because you didn’t wear the mask right. The masks work, they work. We said they work. You just didn’t wear it right. You weren’t really wearing it…” And you’re like, “I know I was wearing it… what?”

So, they’re gaslighting us in biblical studies as well. They’re gaslighting us in Judaism. They’re gaslighting us in Christianity. We can see things with our own eyes. We can feel them in our heart, and they’re telling us they’re not so. Maybe they are so.

Deborah: … in everyday life, our own lives that we can believe based on life experiences when I can gaslight reality and it can hold us captive in that bondage. But if we go back to Scripture, and we find the truth, and we cling to that truth, and cleave to that truth, we can live in freedom. And just bridging that scholarship to life, take feedback and evidence for growth, but always take it back to Scripture, and standing in the truth of Scripture. And one more thing I kind of wanted to talk about…

Nehemia: Yeah.

Deborah: Proverbs 31, and we were talking about marriage, relationships, husbands and wives. And so, in the Christian faith, most men, most fathers, will take their sons and say, “This is the woman you want to marry.” And every single female, or every single one I’ve ever talked to, and as a woman raised in a Christian home, I read that and I think, “I can never do it!” And we beat ourselves up. But one day, I read a book, and in it, the author…

Nehemia: Are you talking about the Woman of Valor?

Deborah: Yes!

Nehemia: And Proverbs 31?

Deborah: Yes, Proverbs 31. And in it, the author befriended a Jewish couple, and the Jewish woman was telling the Christian woman, “You got it all wrong. You’re using this to beat yourself up, and beat up every Christian woman, that they can never reach this ideal. But that isn’t how we, as Jews, read this poem.” So, I guess… I know this is not really scripted or planned, but as somebody who was raised and is Jewish, when you read that, what’s the filter for that? I’d love to hear a Jewish perspective.

Nehemia: So, here I’m at a bit of a disadvantage, because I don’t know what the Christian perspective is. So, I’ll just start from scratch.

Deborah: Okay.

Nehemia: So, Proverbs 31 verse 10, is “the Woman of Valor”, it’s usually translated as. That’s the translation I’ve heard. In Hebrew, it’s Eshet Chayil. And I have an interesting story about that. So, for years, my prayer to God was, give me the eshet chayil, put me together with the eshet chayil. And I met my wife, and we got engaged, and I put a post on Facebook, and I said, “I’ve finally met my eshet chayil… or I’ve finally met the eshet chayil.” And to this day, in fact, four years later, there are people who think her name is Chayil. They think her first name is Eshet, and last name is Chayil.

So, woman of valor, eshet chayil, who is she? What is she? So, I grew up in America, and there was this kind of 1950’s ideal. The woman stays at home, and she’s barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. And I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, if you can afford to do that, but frankly, most families can’t afford to do that today. And that’s not the ideal that’s described in the Eshet Chayil in Proverbs 31:10.

31:10 is really interesting, because it’s what’s called an acrostic poem. Acrostic is a fancy word for “the first letter of each line that represents something”, and in this case, it’s an alphabet. So, it’s an alphabetic acrostic. The first line, eshet, the first word is eshet, which is Alef. And then it’s Bet, Gimel, Dalet, Hey, Vav, so it’s the letters of the alphabet. So, why did they do that? It could be they were just trying to be cute. But in this case, it was because most people didn’t have scrolls. They couldn’t afford books. So, how do you have access to information? Well, you have to memorize it. So, how can I memorize a whole vast amount of information? One way to do that is an alphabetic acrostic. So, this poem is written according to the Alef-Bet so that young Israelite men 3,000 years ago would memorize this. And all they had to know was the Alef-bet, which most people apparently knew, and that would help them memorize the poem. If they couldn’t remember, “What’s the next line? Oh, that’s Dalet, because we just had Gimel. And then after that is Hey.”

So, what’s the poem about? The poem is about this woman who works really hard, because life is difficult, both in the ancient world and today. And she works hard and provides for her family, and she helps her husband. And he’s sitting in the gate with the other men. And what does that mean, “sitting in the gate”? That’s one of the metaphors there. Or maybe not metaphors; maybe one of the literal things. So, the gate of every city was where the elders would gather, and it wasn’t just like an opening in the wall. It was the gate house, so it was a court.

If you remember in the story of Ruth, Boaz takes Naomi to the city gate, and he proclaims to the elders, “This is my wife.” And that is what ancient marriage was; you would make a public declaration that the woman would accept. If she says, “No, I’m not!” Then it didn’t count. But he would declare, “this is my wife,” and then they would go home, and they would consummate the wedding. You didn’t get a piece of paper from the government. That didn’t exist. So, it’s a public declaration, along with consummation and then living together. So, where is he doing that? He’s doing that in the gate.

So, it says there that she’s working hard while her husband is sitting in the gate with the elders. He’s one of the judges. She’s such an amazing wife, she’s superwoman. He actually has the time, not just to toil in the fields all day, but he has the opportunity, at some point during the day, to go and sit in the gate with the elders. So, eshet chayil; how does that translate? Roughly something like “superwoman”. Now, not everybody can be a superwoman. My wife happens to be, but that is something you aspire to, and you strive to be. So, I don’t know if that answers the question.

Deborah: Yeah. So, in the book that I was reading, the women would be more like, it’s like a, “you go girl!” Like, “Yeah, you did that, and you accomplished that. You had a challenge, and you rose to the challenge. You go girl!” That kind of a thing, rather than this impossible standard that hangs over our heads of, “Yep, that’s why I’m not good enough. Yep. That’s why I can’t do that.”

Nehemia: That’s interesting. There’s this Christian idea that you have to be perfect. In the Tanakh, in the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, it says… Solomon is kneeling before God, when he dedicates the Temple in 1 Kings 8, and he says, “There is no man that does not sin,” and then he goes on to say, “and therefore God, it’s good that You’re merciful, because otherwise we wouldn’t have a chance.” And so, this is something to aspire to. Nobody’s perfect and nobody perfectly fulfills it, but it is something to aspire to, and the goal is not to say, “Oh, you’re so deficient because look at what eshet chayil does.” No, it’s okay. This is a model to aspire to. It isn’t a model that all cultures share.

In Afghanistan, they just passed a law that the voice of adult women is not allowed to be heard in public. That’s not the eshet chayil standard, that’s a completely alien concept. And women have to be covered so only their eyes are visible in Afghanistan, and that’s the law.

Well, in ancient Israel, you read the story of Judah and Tamar. A woman who covers her face is assumed to be a prostitute, otherwise, why is she hiding her face? She’s embarrassed that when she leaves her job, people will know who she is, that’s why she hides her face, in ancient Israel.

So, the point is, different cultures have different standards, and some men might think, “That’s the ultimate woman; the Afghani woman whom nobody sees her, nobody hears her.” That’s not the Tanakh. That’s certainly not the Proverbs 31:10 standard of eshet chayil, and the Tanakh standard is, “No, a woman should be seen. The woman who hides her face, it’s because she has something to hide. She’s doing something nefarious.”

So, there are different cultures with different standards, and I think that’s why if nobody, no human could possibly fulfill Proverbs 31 perfectly, nobody could live up to that, it does show you that this is the standard we should strive for. And there are different standards out there in the world, and it gives you, as you say, it’s a baseline. You might have something in your heart that’s wrong that you believe… and look, there’s wrong beliefs I have. Every day, I discover new things, and I say, “I was wrong. It’s wonderful. Now I’ve been corrected.” “That’s great, wow! Now I have the truth.”

One of the really powerful things about the modern world… there’s many things that are wrong with the modern world, and here’s where the post-modernist wokeism is undoing this. One of the greatest accomplishments of the modern world is this idea of the scientific method. “I have an idea, and I think I’m right about something, but I test it, and I see it’s wrong. Okay, I change it. I revise the hypothesis.” But the wokeism says, “Well, I have a lived experience, so it doesn’t matter about any evidence presented to me. That’s false, because I know in my lived experience, this is true.” That’s what led to superstition, like George Washington was killed because he was sick and they drained his blood because they thought, “You have bad humors,” they called it humors. “We’ll release those by making cuts in your arm.” Well, we know better now than that, because we’ve done experiments, and we saw that didn’t work.

And I think the beautiful thing about Scripture is, “I might have an idea and a belief. And if I see something different in Scripture, I have to revise my hypothesis.”

Deborah: Yeah.

Nehemia: So, if somebody says, “Don’t believe your lying eyes because we tell you that that Scripture is wrong,” well, I’m going to go with Scripture.

Deborah: Yeah, absolutely, every time. Yeah, because those facts of events don’t necessarily lead to truth. And I think that’s a key that we all need to keep in our minds as we go through life. Let me put your website up here, nehemiaswall.com. So, if people go to your website, what can they find?

Nehemia: So, I’ve got hundreds of hours of videos and podcasts and some old legacy things where they’re actually written, but the young people don’t read that stuff. So, they can go there. I have a podcast there called Hebrew Voices, where I interview all kinds of people. Everyone from experts in biblical studies to just regular old folks. Some really interesting things.

There’s a series I have there called The Open Door Series, which is nine of the best hours of teaching I’ve ever done. I’ve got something called the Pearls, three different series: Torah Pearls, Prophet Pearls, and Hebrew Gospel Pearls. So, check it out there, hundreds of hours of stuff on nehemiaswall.com.

Deborah: Yeah. Nehemia’s stuff is awesome. I’ve watched a bunch of the Hebrew Gospel Pearls, read some of your books. All just excellent, excellent, going deep into words and culture and history. I can attest; you definitely do your due diligence. I’m a huge fan of your work. So, go to nehemiahwall.com, check it out. Nehemia, would you mind doing a Hebrew blessing prayer to close this out?

Nehemia: Sure. So, in Numbers chapter 6, we have what’s called the Birkat Kohanim, the Priestly Blessing. And what’s interesting about it is it’s the oldest biblical passage that survived. It was on these two silver scrolls they found in Jerusalem, and it has the Priestly Blessing there. “Yevarechecha Yehovah v’yishmerecha,” “May Yehovah bless you and keep you,” “ya’er Yehovah panav elecha v’yichunecha,” “may Yehovah shine His face towards you and be gracious towards you.” “Yisa Yehovah panav elecha,” “May Yehovah lift His face towards you and give you peace.” Amen.

Deborah: Amen. Go to his website, nehemiaswall.com, check out all the amazing resources he has. And don’t forget to swipe, tap, or click over to deborahhenne.com. Follow me on social media at X, Instagram, or Facebook, DeborahHenneAuthor, and let’s walk in the Lord’s blessing until next time.

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