Word Study: Cherish חב

QUICK WORD STUDY – CHERISH – (ARAMAIC) KAV  חב

John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

English has an all purpose word of affection called love. We love Big Macs and we love our parents. We use the same word and it is only the context that will reveal the level or intensity of this word love. Hebrew and Aramaic have a number of different words which translators tend to just lump into this English word love. The word is Aramaic used in John 3:16 is chav which broadly means love but to the ears of the first century Semitic person, they heard the word which to us in English would be cherish. To understand this like a first century Semitic person you should read this as: “For God so cherished the world.”