ARAMAIC WORD STUDY – TONGUES OF FIRE   (ARAMAIC)  לשׁנא נורא  

Leviticus 6:13:  “The fire shall ever be burning upon the altar; it shall never go out.”

Leviticus 9:24:  “And there came a fire out from before the LORD, and consumed upon the altar the burnt offering and the fat: [which] when all the people saw, they shouted, and fell on their faces.”

Acts 2:3: “And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them.”

“Although a fire descended from heaven upon the altar, it is a commanded to add to it a humanly produced fire.”   Talmud  Eruvin 63a

Why was there a command to keep the fire that fell from heaven going?   The Jewish sages such as Alshich taught that the fire was a symbol of God’s love and passion.  A human element was needed to keep the fire going and it was a discipline to make sure that the fire was never extinguished.  Fire has always symbolized passion both good and bad.  Many times God would send fire from heaven as a sign of his passion for justice as with Sodom and Gomorra and He would send fire from heaven to consume an offering to show his passionate love.  Even in administering judgment He is showing His passionate love for those who have been wronged.

The word itself tells us of God’s passion. It is usually found in its Semitic root as just two letters.  It is spelled, Aleph Shin.  The Aleph represents God and the Shin represents a consuming passion.  Fire is representative of God’s consuming passion.

God sent a fire from heaven to consume the offering on the altar.  He commanded that this fire be kept burning.  Certain priests were ordered to keep a daily watch over this fire to make sure it never went out.  Every morning there was a ceremony performed by the priest to add some fuel to the fire to keep it going.  The Talmud is teaching that God commanded the fire be kept going by a human element to show that His love upon this earth is meant to be shared from man to mankind.

However, the fire did go out in the temple during the destruction of the temple in 586 BC by the Babylonians under King Nebuchadnezzar.   The Talmud would teach that the fire would not return to the temple until the Messiah came, was tortured, put to death and resurrected. Then when He would be glorified in heaven on the day of Pentecost the fire would return. In Acts 2:3 we learn that on the day of Pentecost after the Jesus returned to heaven to be glorified the Holy Spirit descended in tongues of fire.  The word tongue in the Aramaic is leshana which really means language.  The believers were filled with the Holy Spirit and they began to speak with a language filled with the passionate love of God.  

Once again the fire was lit. Paul says our bodies are the temple of God and when we receive the Holy Spirit into our bodies, the temple, we carry that fire of God, but yet Leviticus 6:13 commands us that we are to keep that fire from going out through a human effort.   I recall when I was first introduced to Christians who claimed to have received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit.  They claimed this was a separate experience but many showed no more fiery passion or love for God than Christians who said they never had that experience.

Some teach you to receive the Holy Spirit when you are saved, some say it is a secondary experience.  No matter what you believe, Scripture teaches that God will put that fire in you, in your body which is God’s temple but it is up to you to keep that fire going every day, feeding it with the Word of God,  prayer and sharing it with mankind.