HEBREW WORD STUDY – THE MINIATURE MEM – HAGAVRIM MINI’ATAVARI הגברימ מיניאטרי
Leviticus 6:9: “Command Aaron and his sons, saying, This [is] the law of the burnt offering: It [is] the burnt offering, because of the burning upon the altar all night unto the morning, and the fire of the altar shall be burning in it.”
I have a stack of books piled on the floor against the wall and today I just arbitrarily picked up a book. It was on the esoteric Hebrew. I let it fall open to a page talking about the Mem. This is the Mem found in the Torah scrolls, not your standard Hebrew Bible or the Kittle but in the scrolls which are handwritten. The Mem in Leviticus 6:2 (6:9 in your English Bibles) is reduced in size and is smaller than all the other letters. This is part of the inspired version of the Bible. I have not noticed this before and could find nothing in Christian literature to explain it so I went to Jewish literature
The Mem that is being discussed is found in the word moqdah which is rendered in some translations as pyre. I don’t even know what that means. Some translations say hearth. That is still antiquated. How about just of fire.
This word has a Mem reduced in size, that is what I mean by esoteric, why is it shrunken in this verse? Why do the most ancient manuscripts of Leviticus show a shrunken Mem? The Rebbe of Kotzk tells us that the Mem is reduced in size to teach us that the fire in one’s heart should be understated, it should burn within, but show nothing on the outside. You will experience excitement in studying the Word of God as God reveals His knowledge to you. The Mem if found in two forms, the Open Mem found at the beginning and middle of a word and the Closed Mem found at the end of a word. Hence the Mem represents the Word of God and know God reveals to you. The letters in ‘Al moqdah can be rearranged (esoteric rabbis do that, not Christians). You see in the original Hebrew text there were no divisions between words. So who is to say you cannot put that Mem at the end of ‘al rather than at the beginning of moqdah. If you do that you have ‘alm ogdah which means go hide, conceal. ‘Alm also means secret and eternity. As God reveals His inner truth to you the shrunken Mem warns to keep that to yourself and not try to show off your knowledge to others. The shrunken Mem reminds us to be humble with the knowledge God gives us.
Another reason for the shrunken Mem with the Mem representing the revealed Word of God and the hidden knowledge of the word of God is to teach that even a little study of the Word of God carries great benefit. The shrunken Mem before the word fire moqdah tells us that the fire of God within you states with just a little study and it will fan out into a blaze. If you can only spend five minutes a day studying the Word of God then do that and let the joy of the Lord, the thrill of God’s revelation create an excitement in you that you will increase the time of your study without realizing it. That old saying, it only takes a spark to get a fire going.
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