HEBREW WORD STUDY – MAN OF WAR   ISH MILECHAMAH  יאשׁ  ילחמה  

Exodus 15:3: “Jehovah is a man of war, Jehovah is his name.”

This passage is part of the song of Moses that was offered in praise over the crossing of the Red Sea and the destruction of the Egyptian army.   This verse is so simple in the literal sense that commentators barely give it notice other than to talk about how God will do battle for us, which is fairly obvious from the context.   Our many English translations differ very little on how they render this passage.  Some will refer to Jehovah as “The Lord, or Jehovah, and a couple even says Yahweh.  Some translations will say man of war and some will say, warrior.  Both are pretty much the same.  A warrior is one who is experienced in warfare which is how we would interpret the idea of a “man of war.”

Therein lies the rub. The literal translation of ish milechamah is  man of war.  Does that phrase mean the same to an ancient people as it does to us in the 21^st century?  We need to step into the mind of the ancient Hebrew and their understanding of war.  We have a war going on right now in the Middle East.  Why are we fighting thousands of miles away?  Ultimately there is a threat to our homeland.  Ask any soldier who gets on the plane to fly to the Middle East and he or she will tell you it is to protect our country.  Wars in ancient times were not fought to protect one’s country or homeland.  Wars were fought for two basic reasons, to obtain food and the basic necessities of life and/or for their gods, a holy war. 

Note that if you take the Hebrew word for war,  milechamah and remove the first and last letter you have the word lecham which means bread.  In fact, that is the root word for war lecham or bread.  The ancient Hebrews recognized the basic reason for war and their word for war is bread with the preposition Mem which literally means “because of bread.”  Wars were fought for food.  The last phrase “Jehovah is his name literally reads Jehovah name.  The verb “is” is not there, we put that in because we need a verb.  Wars were fought for the sake of one’s god, as we even see today in the Middle East.  God was fighting this war in His name. God took the Hebrew people out of Egypt not only to take them to a land of milk and honey but to also give them the freedom to worship Him.  

Thus, Jehovah is a man who fights to bring His people bread and freedom to worship Him.  But soft, we have the word ish.  God is not an ish.  Ish is the word for man.   The preposition “of” is not there in the Hebrew, we put that in to create a phrase which is familiar to us, “man of war,”  but leads us into wrong conclusions.   Literally, the whole phrase in Hebrew reads: “Jehovah man war.”    There is no verb.  In English we must always have a verb to make a sentence, you don’t need a verb in Hebrew to make a sentence. 

This means there is some deeper meaning here that we seem to be missing.   What is man war or man because of bread?  The ancient rabbis teach us the word ish is spelled  Aleph, Yod and Shin.    Yod shin also pronounced ish means “there is.”   The Yod represents the right, the Shin represents the left.  These show extremes.  Even today in politics we talk about the “right” and the “left.”   We have two extremes, the conservative and liberal.   Maimonides once said: “Truth never lies in any extreme to the right or to the left.”   So the Aleph or God is in the middle.  God draws two extremes to Himself and creates peace. 

So you see the ancients may have seen totally the opposite in the phrase “man of war” that we see today.  For in the ancient’s eyes “man of war” means that God brings two extremes together in peace for bread.   Even today in the Middle East, when one wants to make peace or reconcile with an enemy they will do this over a meal.   In Psalms 23 where David said: “thou prepares a table in the presence of my enemies”, he was speaking a Hebrew idiom for making peace and reconciliation.  

Oh, and one other thing, the word Jehovah is used, not Elohim.  Jehovah has a feminine ending.  If man of war was meant to mean to create violence, punish and destroy, Moses would have said Elohim, not Jehovah.  The name Jehovah represents the feminine nature of God, the loving, caring and nurturing part of God.  Moses is calling Jehovah a “man of war” because he was saying that He is a God who provides food and brings peace with one’s enemy.  Sometimes the destruction of that enemy is necessary to bring peace, but the primary purpose is peace, not to punish or destroy.  The purpose of violence in self-defense is not to punish or destroy but to protect.  “Man of war” is an expression of self-defense.

So when you call upon God to represent you as an Ish Milechamah against an enemy that is about to do you in, He might not come with guns blazing but with mazos and communion wine.