HEBREW WORD STUDY – REPETITION AND CHANGE – SHANAH שנה Shin Nun Hei
Deuteronomy 31:2: “And he (Moses) said to them, “I am a hundred and twenty years old today; I am no longer able to come and go,”
Genesis 6:3: “Then the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.”
Exodus 23:26: “I will fulfill the number of your days.”
Jeanne Louise Calment February 21, 1875 – August 4, 1997 is said to hold the record as the oldest person to ever live. However, there is some disputes over her real age, it is safe she may have made it to 120. The official age is 122 years and 164 days.
Does that prove that the Bible is wrong that God limited a human’s age to 120 years? Well, that will depend upon whether you are looking at a Gregorian Calendar, a Julian Calendar, a Lunar Calendar or a combination solar and Lunar Calendar or any other calendar used throughout history. When you get to be that old any calendar can be off by a number of years when compared to another calendar. The point is that there is no record of anyone living past 120 years give or take. But I don’t believe that God is setting out an exact limit in the age of a human.
A more important point is that the average life span for a human being around the world is only 61 years of age, half of the age God’s limit. If God was really setting a definite age limit then why is it that more people don’t reach 120 years and what about someone reaching 122 and ½ years. What was God really saying here when He put a limit on the age of the human being?
I read something very interesting in the Talmud today in Rosh Hashannah 11a. which teaches that God fulfills the years of the righteous to the day and to the month, as it is written in Exodus 23:26 “I will fulfill the number of your days.” In other words 120 years represent a fulfillment of your mission here on earth.
Now the reason I don’t get excited that someone might have or might exceed the limit of 120 years is because the word year in Hebrew is shanah which does not necessarily mean a quantity of time. According to the Lubavitcher Rebbe, a noted Hebrew master shanah is a cycle, a sequence of transitions that runs it course only to repeat itself again and again. Yet, there is a change upon each repetition that brings you to another spiritual or higher spiritual level. Now to us a year is the completion of the solar cycle. However, there is a spiritual quality to shanah. The Hebrew word for year, accord to the Lubavitcher Rebbe means both change and repetition.
Would you like Chaim Bentorah as your personal Hebrew teacher?
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On a physical level the year is fixed according to the solar cycle. On a solar cycle each year is a repeat of the prior year. There is a winter, spring, summer and fall. It is like a spiral that repeats the same path with each revolution. On a spiritual level our lives experience similar range only there are three seasons each spiritual year of our lives. Three periods of 40 shanahs or repetitions and change. Moses life reflected these three spiritual seasons. He spent 40 years in preparation in Pharoah’s court. Then he spent 40 years as a shepherd preparing spiritually for his task and then forty years performing his job. Three forties in Scripture represents not periods of time but order of time. First there is the time of preparation in the physical sense, schooling, training, apprenticeship or some form mental and physical preparation for the task you were created to perform. Then there is the period of spiritual training, getting to know God and understand His voice. Finally, there is the period of performing the job you were created to perform. In a spiritual year you go through this entire cycle for one spiritual year and then repeat the same cycle for the next spiritual year or on a higher level, experiencing a change and then you repeat after that shanah repetition and change until God takes you to heaven. That is the idea of repeat in the shanah and in each repetition there is a change bringing you to higher spiritual level to experience the preparation, spiritual growth and performance on a higher level.
You see, Moses is the model. He lived exactly 120 years. According to Jewish tradition He died on the same date as he was born and thus Moses fulfilled the number of his days. The key is in the word fill. The word in Hebrew is mele’ which means completion or to be completely filled, like to fill a jar to the brim such that it almost overflows.
The point is that for the believer, God will give us a full life, that is a life that will complete our task here on earth. However, we are continually going through periods of repetition, change and performance with each shanah putting us on a higher level.
The 120 years shanahs of man’s life as mentioned in Genesis were not really intended to mean actual physical years but the three step journey of our lives, preparation physically, spiritually and performance to fulfillment.
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Speaking of life and death, I have been trying to figure something out that has happened recently. My older brother, Philip, died in an accident in 1989 at the age of 37. He was my mothers first child, her oldest son and her favorite child. My husband, John, died in an accident in 1992 at the age of 43. He was my mother-in-law’s oldest son and her favorite child. My mother was dying this past December from Alzheimer’s and the last two days of her life she seemed to be struggling horribly. My sisters and I kept trying to console her and tell her it was OK to let go to be with the Lord, that we would be fine. (My mother was completely dedicated to her family of 9 children) Finally she began to relax in the late hours of her last night and she died peacefully at 11:55 P.M. The date was my brother Philip’s birthday. A month later I received a call that my mother-in-law had passed away, it was at noon on my deceased husbands birthday!! I thought it was unbelievable when my mother died on my brother’s birthday, but when it happened again I felt it was truly significant. I was just wondering if anyone else may have had a similar experience or thoughts on this.
My father died on my Birthday and my mother passed away on Christmas Eve. I never felt there was anything significant about these times. If you feel some significance in your spirit I would keep searching for something as not everyone would feel something significant with these dates which might, I sat might, be the Spirit of God speaking to you. Only you can be sure,