HEBREW WORD STUDY – BELOVED – DOD דוד Daleth Vav Daleth

Song of Solomon 1:2: “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love [is] better than wine.”

Song of Solomon 1:13: “A bundle of myrrh [is] my well-beloved unto me; he shall lie all night betwixt my breasts.”

The word for love or beloved here is dod. This would suggest dod is really a sexual love. Indeed, it is closely related to yada’ which means to know and is used for a sexual relationship in Biblical Hebrew. Another word from the root dod is dadad which represents a mother’s nipples preparing to nurse her baby and then there is yadiyad which is the plural form of dod and means a beloved friend and can be used for spousal love.

It is difficult in our culture to put this word into a proper context as a sexual relationship is almost considered an end in itself. One may have a sexual encounter with a prostitute and call it “getting some love,” or a one night stand, and say: “We loved for one night.” We may even refer to a husband and wife having a sexual relationship and calling it “making love.” Yet, each one of these three words for love may have a sexual component or it may not. It depends upon the context in which it is used. But each word has a different emphasis.

Dod carries the idea of a friend and when used in plural for yadiyad it means a beloved friend. The word David comes from the same root who was a friend of God or one after God’s own heart. You often hear someone refer to their beloved spouse as their best friend. For this couple there is a love relationship between them, a sexual relationship between them and a close friendship. Yet, this is different than the Hebrew word chavar because chavar means a true friend but has no sexual or an intimately personal relationship. The English word friend even falls short of chavar as we have many different ideas what a friend is. We carelessly throw around the word friend like the word love to the point where it has lost its true meaning. Today I have overt 3,000 “friends” on Facebook. They are not chavar’s however. They are just people who follow my postings. I have no relationship with them. A chavar would be more like a business partner, one that you trust and depend upon to be a good steward of your investments. It is one who is honest with you and will protect you from making a mistake. A chavar is someone you can call upon at any time no matter where they are and say; “Help me,” and that chavar will drop everything and fly halfway around the world to help you if that is necessary. Yet, the English word love is never used for chavar in our Hebrew Bible.

Yadiyad is often rendered as love and/or beloved as we find in Song of Solomon. This may be like the other Hebrew words for love like racham and ‘ahav which may also carry a sexual component but not always. In fact the word used for a sexual relationship yada’ is never rendered as love, it is simply “to know.” Unlike our modern Western culture a sexual relationship itself is rarely referred to as love because the Semitic culture recognizes the many different dynamics that go into a sexual relationship. Thus, when dod is used in the highly charged erotic context in the Song of Solomon, we need to examine the nature of the word dod when used outside a sexual encounter. When we do that we begin to understand the real nature of the relationship between King Solomon and the Shulamite woman and consequentially our relationship with God. The word dod literally means a beloved friendship. A relationship of trust, dependency as well as love.

In ancient cultures the cornerstone or a marriage relationship would be the sharing of each other’s heart and soul. Jacob had two wives. He obviously had a sexual relationship with both women, yet he only truly loved Rachel. Only one was really his wife in his eyes. He slept with Leah, gave her children but her heart was still broken because he only shared his heart with Rachel. David had many wives but it was Bathsheba who bore the child that would carry the line to the Messiah for although David had many wives, slept with many women he loved and shared his heart with only Bathsheba.

Putting it another way David loved ‘ahav many women including Bathsheba. Many were also a chavar friends but Bathsheba was his only dod, beloved. None, however, were a racham. God loves us ‘ahav, He is a chavar, true friend, He is a dod, a beloved but as we will learn one day He is also a racham

I remember a time almost five years ago when I sat alone in my car one evening after being challenged in my relationship with God. I was going through a very difficult time in my life. I felt God had let me down. I felt betrayed by God and was angry with God. I began to weep and poured out all my disappointments and frustrations to Him. Suddenly I heard an actual audible voice which said: “Do you want to be friends?” I had been at war with God for some time and I guess He made the first move to hold out the olive branch. I knew and recognize that from the context God was asking this with the word dod.

There is an old Rabbanic story of a king who held an early morning meeting with all his servants every day. Every morning they met at a certain hour and every morning each servant showed up precisely at the appointed time, except one servant. This servant arrived an hour early each morning. The king regularly showed up early himself. While waiting for the other servants to arrive the king would chat with the one servant who showed up early. Before long the two began to share their hearts with each other. The two became beloved friends. This servant was not satisfied to be just a servant, to have the kings ‘ahav – love, he wanted more, he wanted to be the king’s dod or yadiyad beloved friend.

True, we can be God’s servant, we can attend all his meetings on time, and we can listen closely to His instructions and carry them out. We can be loved by God, but do we wish to be yadiyad? We can be serving God so much we fail to realize that He is reaching out to us with his hand, his Yad (Hebrew for hand). But He needs another hand to complete the wordYadiyad hand in hand.

He may be our Master, our King, our Savior but He wants to be more than that. He wants to be our Yadiyad, His hand in ours, His heart joined with our hearts.