HEBREW WORD STUDY – A WONDER – KEMOPATH כמופת Kap Mem Vav Pei Taw

Psalms 71:7: “I am as a wonder unto many, but thou art my strong refuge”

“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.” The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

I tend to get many flattering comments and reviews on my books and writings. Maybe some people call me to wonder, like the Wizard of Oz. However, once Toto pulled back the curtains we discover the great wonderful wizard was nothing more than a friendly old man who held his kingdom together with a lot of bluff and bluster. I am waiting for Toto to pull back the curtain on this wonder or a Hebrew teacher and discover I am not all I am cracked up to be.

I remember being warned by a pastor of a large church from Texas during my seminary days of the two most dangerous people in the church. The first is the critic who will criticize everything you do. You can’t sneeze without him debating it, discussing its value and insisting he could do it better. This person will discourage you. Yet, there is a person even more dangerous than that and that is that sweet, dear person who will tell you that you are the best speaker, preacher, teacher that has ever spoken. The danger here is that you will believe this person. So, is David the wonder that the people were in awe saying how great he was and what a mighty king he was or was he one that people wondered about, particularly about his sanity.

Kings in those days often had to create the illusion of being a god or endowed with power from the gods. They had to create wonder about themselves. The Pharaohs actually declared themselves as gods and lead people to believe they caused the Nile River to overflow to irrigate their crops and proved it by predicting every year the exact time the Nile River would overflow. However, like any con man, if you pull that curtain aside you found he had his staff working behind the scenes studying the movement of the stars and doing mathematical calculations to predict the seasons. Nebuchadnezzar bypassed the special effects and just bullied people into believing he was a god by building a statue of himself and making people bow down and worship it. The fiery furnace awaited those who didn’t.

Despite what many commentators say, I tend to disagree with their assessment that people stood in awe of David such that he had to find refuge in God. I mean was he really afraid people would find out the truth about him that he was just a shepherd boy? Why would God hide the truth?

The word in Hebrew for wonder is kemopath which may come from the root word yapath which means a wonder in the sense of a sign. I think that is sort of wordplay as he was truly a sign of the coming of the Messiah. But, I follow Keil and Delitzsch’s rendering of this. That is that is a cognate, that is it derived, from the Arabic hafak which means to bend or distort, to turn around. That is, it is something that is contrary to what you would expect.

This is important because David is giving his reason for seeking refuge. David would say or do things as a king that people would not expect from a king. For instance, dancing before the Ark of the Covenant. His wife criticized him for acting like a child, he responds by saying he and God were playing together. Get the net, get the net, David no sooner gets his coronation as a king and already he flipped his crown. When facing the powerful war chariots and horses of the Assyrian Empire he announces that some trust in chariots but his kingdom will trust is in God. That would be like our President or his opponent in the next election saying: “I am running on a platform to disarm all our nuclear weapons and we will just trust God.” That would be the last time we run candidates over the age of 70. I suppose David was a wonder to people, people who wondered what turnip truck this guy fell off of.

I read about an incoming freshman student to a major, prestigious University who posted a Facebook page talking of her Christian faith. She was immediately advised that her admissions to the school were now in question. Coincidence that they question her application after being accepted and just after posting her testimony?

Throughout history, Christian have had their sanity questioned. They thought George Mueller had a couple of pegs missing when he said he would start an orphanage without asking for any money, he would just trust God for the finances. We know how his story of success turned out. Madame Guyon was called a mystic and thrown into the Bastille for no other reason than the fact that she declared she loved Jesus and spoke with Him and he spoke with her. You surely can’t have someone who so many screws loose running around like that.

Have you ever faced humiliation, mockery, or criticism, in a word kemopath because of your faith in God? We do live in a country where there are those who do respect you for your faith, but we have plenty here who will not hesitate to call you out as a fool or even worse, hate mongers, using hate speech if you dare to suggest we are sinners who need a Savior. I believe we are quickly approaching a time when we will, like David seek refuge in God for being a wonder or akemopath.

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