HEBREW WORD STUDY – A BLEATING LAMB – TA’ROG  תערג Taw Ayin Resh Gimmel

As the deer panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.  My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: When shall I come and appear before God?” Psalm 42:1,2

How I can sense the heart of David to know our Father. “As the deer panteth…”  In the Hebrew the word for pant is ta’rog which not only has this idea of a longing desire, but also means a bleating, like a lamb bleats when it is lost and cannot find it’s way back to the shepherd and its herd or how a lamb bleats when it wants it’s mother. Do you ever long so much for something that you actually start to make a physical noise, like a bleating sound, we call it groaning, but that is not what it is. It is a verbal cry to want something. To just want more of the Father.

The root word for ta’rog is arog which is spelled Ayin, Resh Gimmel. The Ayin represents insight into the God, the Resh, the Holy Spirit and the Gimmel represents loving kindness.  So the panting or bleating is a desire to gain more insight into the loving kindness of God through His Holy Spirit.

The word thirst in the Hebrew is sameah which means to desire earnestly.  It is spelled Sade, Mem, aleph and means to desire the insight into the hidden righteousness or treasures of God. Oh, we know our Father’s righteousness has many treasures but did you know there is a hidden treasure reserved only for those who seek and pant after it.

In the middle ages there lived a monk named Bernard of Clairvaux 1091-1153. He came from a noble family, his father was a knight and his mother was a Godly woman. She raised Bernard to love God.  His love for God grew so intense that even with all the opportunities his position offered, he chose to live in a monastery to draw closer to his Savior. He soon became the Abbot of the monastery in Clairvaux, France. His love for the Savior drew the attention of kings and princes. It even came to the attention of the pope who commission Bernard to lead a crusade against the Muslims. No, not a crusade with a sword but a preaching crusade.  His love for the Savior was so strong that is it recorded that great crowds of Muslims would follow him and multitudes gave their lives to the Savior, for his message was one of redemption and conversion. Thousands of tough, vicious men in the radical sector of the Muslims gave their lives to the Lord and began to carry crosses unashamedly before other Muslims to declare their love for their Lord and to gladly pay the consequences,  simply because they saw in Bernard a true love for God which they hungered and thirsted after. 

Bernard of Clairvaux’s true love and desire for God was expressed in these words dedicated to St. Agnes who was herself a princess and like Bernard of Clairvaux rejected a royal marriage, wealth, power  and devoted her life to serving the poor in the name of  the Jesus she dearly loved. 

Jesus the very thought of thee;

With sweetness fills my breast;

But sweeter far They face to see

And in Thy presence rest.

Nor voice can sing, nor heart can frame,

Nor can the mem’ry find

A sweeter sound than Thy blest name,

O’ Savior of mankind.

Jesus, our only joy be Thou,

As Thou our prize wilt be;

Jesus, be Thou our glory now

And thru eternity.

I have been on my search for the heart of God now for 14 years and the deeper I go I cannot help but feel like Professor Otto Lidenbrock who in Jules Verne’s novel Journey to the Center of the Earth found that the deeper he went into the earth’s interior, the more glorious it became. I only ta’rok – pant more for more, like a little lost lamb bleating for it’s Shepherd.