HEBREW WORD STUDY – A PECULIAR TREASURE – SEGAL סגל
Exodus 19:5: Now therefore if you will obey my voice indeed and keep my commandments, Then you will be a peculiar treasure unto me above all the people, for all the earth is mine.”
So all we have to do is obey God’s voice and keep His commandments and we become His peculiar treasure. I love the idea of becoming God’s treasure but that peculiar business doesn’t sound good. When I think of treasure I immediately picture an old pirates chest filled with gold and valuable gems. Even though being a peculiar treasure sounds good, I really want to know more specifically what that relationship with God really is. So I am looking today at what a peculiar treasure is.
The word peculiar is not in the text. It was just a little paraphrasing by the translators of the KJV for the word segal which they say means a peculiar treasure. Most modern translations will more correctly say a treasured possession. That word for peculiar treasure segal really has the idea of being a possession. It is used for something that is highly prized. We will be a special possession to God. The Samek indicates that this possession is one which is carefully protected and sheltered. The Gimel indicates that this is a prized, beloved possession, and the Lamed shows that this is a possession that he keeps developing and upgrading. As His peculiar treasure we are under His protection, we are beloved and prized and he keeps polishing us and upgrading us.
The numerical value for segal is 93. The numerical value of the Hebrew word for inheritance or heirloom is also 93. I drove a 93 year old woman to the dentist in my disability bus today. She lives alone and said she was robbed twice in the same month. She said they stole items which belonged to her grandfather, a pocket watch, an old comb, a pocket knife. The insurance company could only give her a few dollars for these items as that is all they were really worth, but to her they were priceless. We are nothing but a handful dust. Some people may be poor, unknown, unaccomplished, uneducated, but if they obey the voice of God and his commands they are like a treasured heirloom, maybe worthless to everyone else but a precious possession to God, so precious in fact that His own Son died on a cross for that seemingly worthless lump of clay.
Maybe in the eyes of the world you feel you are worthless and of no interest or value to anyone. But God promises that if you obey his Word and seek His voice you will be more valuable to Him that a NFL $100 million dollar talent superstar football player. If that football player does not harken unto God, God will consider him just another of the 6 billion people that he created and loves but this seemingly unknown, worthless lump of clay will get His full attention and be prized as a precious possession.
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