ARAMAIC WORD STUDY – WHERE IS YOUR STING ‘IKU ‘ANAQIK איכו ענקיך Aleph Yod Kap Vav Ayin Nun Qop Yod Kap

I Corinthians 15:55-57: “O death, where [is] thy sting? O grave, where [is] thy victory?

(56) The sting of death [is] sin; and the strength of sin [is] the law. (57) But thanks [be] to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Deuteronomy 1:44: “And the Amorites, which dwelt in that mountain, came out against you, and chased you, as bees do, and destroyed you in Seir, [even] unto Hormah.”

I remember when I first heard I Corinthians 15:55 quoted when I was a child and I sort of shuddered. Death has a sting to it? For some reason, that expression just never seemed right to me. Why was Paul referring to death with a string? I am not sure what about that bothered me but it just never seemed right. Yet, every English translation I read uses the word sting. The word in Greek used for sting is kentron which means to prick, a sharp point and to sting.

Many commentators believe Paul was quoting Hosea 13:14: “I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death: O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction: repentance shall be hid from mine eyes.” which seems to follow the same line of thought only it says “O death, I will by thy plagues, O grave, I will be thy destruction.” Some say Paul misquoted this verse which would put the inspiration of Scripture in question. Others take you on a little linguistical tour and point out that sting and plagues really means the same thing.

I went to the Aramaic version of the Bible which was Paul’s native language and I found the word used for sting was ‘aqats which has the idea of bending and twisting. It is an agricultural term to forcibly removing the fruit of a vine or a tree by bending and twisting it. Rather than just let the fruit fall from the tree on its own the harvester forces the fruit off the branch by pulling, twisting, and bending it. I suppose I could figure out some connection of this to verse except that is how the word is used as a verb. In this passage, it is a noun and as a noun ‘aqats is used as the stinger on a bee and the idea of the bee twisting and bending his stinger to remove it and he removes the stinger from itself and dies.

I thought of this when we were studying our Torah Portion for our Learning Channel. I remember reading in Deuteronomy 1:44: “And the Amorites, which dwelt in that mountain, came out against you, and chased you, as bees do,”

I remember when I was a camp director with my brother at a camp for inner-city children. We had a session for 6-8-year-olds. My brother and I were co-directors and it was agreed we would play bad cop, good cop to maintain discipline. Of course, you can guess who got to be bad cop. I soon became known as Mr. Meany. At the beginning of the camping session, we all gathered around the flagpole where I layed down the laws (rules) of the camp. One basic, fundamental rule was never to go into the woods without a counselor. Violators would get up to five checks on my clipboard. I never explained what the checks meant or the penalty for having too many checks as there was none. Just the idea alone of getting a check was deterrent enough. That is except for one camper. She was older than the rest (we could never prove it) and bigger and was a bully. One day she convinced her entire cabin to go into the woods with her without a counselor. I was near the trail leading into the woods when I heard a dozen little girls screaming and all of a sudden I see them running out of the woods and right behind them was a swarm of bees. I sort of marveled at the fact that the bees followed them out of the woods. The bees were not satisfied to just chase them away from their hive, they insisted on chasing them all the way to the camp and then they began to wage war against the whole camp. Just a little epilogue to this story. As the little girls were having their bee stings tended to by the camp nurse they started to accuse Mr. Meany (me) of sending the bees to sting them because they disobeyed my order. Yep, that’s me alright, I am so mean that I will sick bees on little girls to sting them for disobedience. Now I know how God must feel.

At first reading of Deuteronomy 1:44, if you are not a city slicker, you would guess that this is what it means when the Amorites chased Israel out of their land, they just kept following them until they reached their own camp. But according to Rashi, a medieval Jewish commentator, the ancients believed that when a bee stung you they lose their stinger and die, which is true for honey bees. His comment on this was that the Amorites were due to die once they lost their stinger like a bee. So too, with the believer, that if anyone tries to sting us, or harm us they will lose their stinger and eventually die.

But when I consider I Corinthians 15:55-57 I find this word ‘aqats fits very nicely as a noun. For we learn in this verse that sin is the stinger. In other words, we would read this as “O Death where is your stinger?” The stinger is death’s tool but for the believer, death no longer has a stinger. As a believer we need never fear death for there is no sin in death, that sin is gone, removed by the blood of Jesus. End of life for the believer is merely a consummation of our marriage with God, the enemy no longer has his stinger, his weapon, he does not even have an invitation to our wedding with Jesus. The enemy is a bee without a stinger, no matter how hard he tries to afflict us with sin, he cannot penetrate the blood of Jesus and he is just a docile little insect crawling around hopelessly trying to penetrate our souls with sin which he cannot do when it is covered by the blood of Jesus.

Hi there! Thank you for reading this Daily Word Study. Can I ask a favor? Share this Daily Word Study with your friends on Facebook and Twitter by clicking one of the icons below.

Thanks & Blessings, it means a lot to me!