HEBREW WORD STUDY – HEAR – SHAMA’  שמע  Shin Mem Ayin

Psalms 27:7 “Hear. O’Lord, when I cry with my voice; have mercy also upon me, and answer me.”

“My words fly up, but my thoughts remain below.” Shakespeare, Hamlet , Act 3, Scene 3

In Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, Hamlet’s father, the king, had murdered his brother.  Hamlet enters the king’s chambers with the idea of killing the king.  However, he comes upon the king while he is praying or attempting to pray and fears that if he kills the king while he is in prayer the king will go to heaven and he does not want that to happen.  Oddly,  the king is not praying that he be forgiven for his crime, but that he could get away with it.  His prayer is simply words and has no true meaning or feeling of remorse.  The king realizes that it was a fruitless prayer and says: “My words fly up but my thoughts remain below.”  In other words, he knows it is a prayer that God will not hear.

Psalms 27:7 is a curious verse.   David uses the word shama in an imperative form.  The word shama means more than just hear, it means to listen, submit, obey and become a part of, and become one with. He could have used the word davar or even amar rather than shama.  Why does he use this particular word?

Western Christianity is very scientifically and mathematically based where the Semitic culture is more poetically based.  Hence we will read this verse from the mind of a scientist and not from the heart of a poet. In other words, we make little attempt to search out the heart of the poet, to understand his torment, anguish, or his joy and his passion.  Hebrew is an emotional language.  You cannot just look up a word in your Lexicon and say you now know what a word means in the original Hebrew.  You must take this word for a walk, live with it, experience it, feel it, play with it, argue with it and build a relationship with it before you will really understand it. You must never translate a word that has not been first translated into your heart. 

To use the word shama in an imperative form shows the depth of anguish that David is experiencing.  For him to literally cry out to God to listen to him, submit to his request, obey and become one with “his voice” shows the desperation that David feels.  If you have never felt abandoned by God, never felt like your words were flying up but your thoughts were remaining below, you will not understand the true depth of this passage.  If you have had this experience or are even experiencing it now, you are in a good position to translate this verse with your heart and begin to understand the heart of David and what he was really saying in this verse.

David is asking God to obey the cry of his voice.   The word cry is kara which is a call to meet or assemble.   The word for voice is “koli which has a paragogic.  The paragogic makes this not only a voice but a voice of anguish.  David is doing more than just asking God to listen to him, he is demanding that God become a part of his anguish.   

Check out Hebrew 4:15: “For we do not have a high priest who can not sympathize with our weakness but one who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet, without sin.”   The high priest was the one who made the atonement for sin.  Jesus as our high priest, understands our weakness, the reason we so easily fall to sin and thus when He forgives us, He also understands, I know how hard it is, I know the need that drove you to sin,  I know why you sin, and if you will take what I have to offer, you will not have to resort to sin to fill that need.”

David wanted God to be a part of his anguished voice, not just a part of his heart.  For with an anguished voice he could sin.  Yet, if God became a part of his anguished voice, he would not only be kept from sin, but God would also fill that need that would drive him to sin.

Do you ever feel so desperate that you are strongly tempted to do something in the flesh to ease your situation or pain?  Here David is saying that God loves us so much that he is willing to share in our anguish, but not only that  He is also ready to meet whatever need it is that is causing our anguish so we do not have to resort to the arm of the flesh.   In our desperation, we can actually ask God to experience that suffering with us and be a part of it.  For David to use the word shama in an imperative form shows that God is not only willing but ready and wants to jump in the pit with us. All we have to do is what David did – ask. Perhaps next time you cry out to God to relieve your anguish, ask Him to join you in it. He wants to, he loves you so much he even wants to even share in your anguish and walk you through it without sin.  Like Benjamin Franklin said: “He who is in the mud, likes to pull another in.”  Jesus is there with His hand out offering to jump in the fray with you.