HEBREW WORD STUDY – WATERMELON –  BATACH  בטח  

Proverbs 3:5-6: Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not to your own understandings. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct your paths.”

I ran across something in ancient rabbinical teaching and recent archeological discoveries that I thought would have a good application to this verse.  

You see the words lean not to your own understandings uses a rather strange word for not. It is the letters aleph, lamed. Normally your word for not is Lamed Alpeh.  Aleph, Lamed (el) which is used in this verse for not means to or towards. It is also a word used for God. If not for the vowel pointings inserted by the Masoretes, you would almost have to translate this as On the God of your understanding you lean or rest. The Masoretes inserted a Pathah rather than a Segel under the Aleph making the root word “alal” which means nothing. The word for lean is sha’en which means to rest upon. So literally you could render this: Upon your own understandings you are resting upon nothing. 

Well, that makes sense but the fact that the word el rather than lo the negative is used, according to the ancient rabbis, is really a hint to something even deeper. I cannot say I fully understand how the esoteric rabbis arrived at their conclusion, their knowledge of the ancient Hebrew well exceeds mine, but their conclusion really made sense and would explain why Solomon used el here rather than lo.  

The word el as it was in the original text without the vowel pointings ultimately meant God.  The Aleph is three lines next to a Lamed which is pictured as a heavenly fountain. The three lines represent three pipes flowing from this heavenly fountain.  The rabbis call the three pipes Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but I call them the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  The water of blessings, knowledge, and wisdom that flows through these three pipes from the heavenly fountain is pure and clean. However, if we plug up these pipes with our own wisdom and knowledge the water that comes out will be impure. 

Looking again at the Hebrew text, we find that the word el is in a construct state to the word byin (understanding) and with the word sh’en for resting or leaning. In other words, the three pipes flowing from the Lamed or the fountain of heaven bring purity but when we connect those pipes to our own understanding and resting in our own understandings, what flows from heaven through the Father, Son and Holy Spirit become muddied, or impure.  To “trust in the Lord with all our hearts” therefore means that when we trust or are welded to God with our whole hearts, we connect those pipes to our hearts which are joined with God and receive what is pure from Him. If those pipes are connected to our own understandings, what will flow will be polluted and impure. 

Farfetched? Well, then you explain to me why Solomon used the word el and not lo.  You see when Solomon built the temple, he also constructed and refined three water systems feed by the Gihon springs which were carved into rock forming tsinnors which is the Hebrew word for pipes. These systems were protected by shafts discovered by C.Warren in 1867 and known as the Warren Shafts. These narrow vertical shafts at the end of the systems was impenetrable from the outside, therefore making it almost impossible for an enemy to plug up or pollute the system during a time of siege.   During such time the people of the city had to trust in these shafts to prevent the enemy from cutting off or polluting their water supply. Without water, the city would quickly fall. Most scholars used to believe that these shafts were manmade and the product of tremendous effort. But in the 1980’s hydrological studies were made which revealed that these shafts naturally formed by karstic fissures in the rock and Solomon merely took advantage of these adapting them into their water systems that feed into Jerusalem. God already put in three pipes naturally.  

Perhaps Solomon had this in mind when he wrote this Proverb.  In a time of siege, the people of Jerusalem had to trust in the natural shafts that God formed so that the waters that flowed from the fountains (Gihon Springs) through the three tsinnors (pipes) would continue to flow and not be plugged up or polluted by the enemy.

Oh, just one other note about recent Archaeological findings. The word batach or trust means to weld oneself. There is evidence of welding has been found in the Mesopotamian area dating to 1,000 BC. Archaeologists have also discovered that watermelon existed during ancient times. This is important because another use of the word batach is for watermelon.  What does watermelon have to do with trust? Watermelon was a natural container for water and travelers through the desert would often carry watermelon as an emergency supply for water. The rinds were so fragile that they could not stack the watermelons but had to lay them side by side.  Trust is a source of survival but is very fragile. You break that trust just once and it is very hard to win it back. Trusting God is a very fragile thing, you break your trust with God it is very hard to win it back. Thus, when you trust God you must do it with all your heart.