WORD STUDY – OLD – זקנ
Genesis 24:1: “And Abraham was old, [and] well stricken in age: and the LORD had blessed Abraham in all things.”
When you enter those senior years you begin to notice things you never noticed in your younger years. For instance, just what does it mean to be old and well stricken in age? Different translations handle this differently. Some say Abraham was advanced in age, advanced in years, or the NIV very old. No offense to the NIV, but there are days I feel old and then there are days I feel very old. I am convinced once you enter your sixties, your age number, that is the number of years you have walked on this earth, are no longer important. You are now measured by how well you get around. President Elect Trump is 70 and I heard reporters say: “Youthful.” Mitt Romney will be 70 in March and I heard a woman reporter say, “Hot.” Franklin Roosevelt died at 63, you see pictures of him at sixty and you think zaqan ba bayamim, old and well stricken in age.
Why does this passage not simply say Abraham was zaqan old, why add the ba bayamim, stricken in age. Actually stricken in age is merely a paraphrase. Literally it is come in the days. I mean is it not a redundant statement to say someone is old and advanced in age? If he is old he is advanced in age. I don’t believe the Bible lowers itself to redundancy, as much as the translators would like to think. Jewish Rabbis and sages agree, if we translate a passage showing redundancy we are missing out on a much deeper and meaningful message.
First let’s look at that word zaqan for old. It is really the word used for elders. It is a reference, not to so much to -one’s years on earth but to one’s acquired knowledge. For instance I have spent the last 40 years studying the Word of God in Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic for a minimum of 3-4 hours a day. Just by sheer number of hours in research I have a 30 year old beat. For instance, for the last forty years I have felt that the Aleph and the Ayin are often interchanged in Semitic languages as they pass from language to language and even within the history of one particular Semitic language. However, I had not credible bases to say such a thing. Finally, after forty years of research I have now ran across reliable, credible Jewish sources from linguistic masters who confirm this conclusion. In the process of this research I have learned many other things that I could not learn in one evening. This is the reason I did not begin writing my books until I was 62 years old. Now I can start to write from some acquired knowledge that took forty years to acquire. You never stop learning, it is just that the more hours under your belt, the more knowledge you accumulate, but there is still a storehouse of knowledge to be acquired. Zaqan does not mean old, it means one who has many years of acquired skill and knowledge. That is why the word zaqan is followed by ba bayamim, come in the days.
A ship’s captain may be called the “old man” and be only 45 years old, but if he has sailed for some 30 years he is old in knowledge of the sea. He is zaqan. If he is growing feeble and unable to perform many tasks because of declining health he is ba bayamim come in the days.
In reading the works of some ancient Hebrew masters, however, I found another take on this expression ba bayamim, come in the days, that adds an even greater depth of understanding. In this report from Jewish literature the expression zaqan ba bayamim is an idiomatic expression not to be really taken as a very elderly man who is too feeble to accomplish anything, but an expression of one’s life. In other words by saying sticken in age or advanced in age, one is missing the point entirely. The phrase is meant to say that this person made every day of his life meaningful. This is why for the last forty years I committed myself to studying the Word of God in Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic for a minimum of four hours a day, not to acquire knowledge but so I can look back now over my life and know that I did something meaningful each day of my life. I write a word study every day, I will revisit words I wrote about two or three years ago and rewrite my study, trying to improve on it.
I do this because I know that every day I have on this planet is a gift from God. I don’t want to stand before Him one day and have to account for the many days I just wasted away. I have many regrets for many days, I have done foolish things on many of these days God gave me, but one thing I try to accomplish is that there are at least three to four hours of those days where there was something accomplished.
Genesis 25:1 does not just tell us Abraham became an old man. I think we could assume that. Rather Genesis 25:1 is telling us that Abraham did not just pass through the days of his life he ba bayamim came to days or accumulated the days of his life. Each day was fully utilized so that they were fully possessed by him.
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