HEBREW WORD STUDY – AN INTIMATE VISIT – PAQAD פקד Pei Qop Daleth

Psalms 17:3 “Thou has proved mine heart; thou hast visited me in the night.”

If you have ever celebrated the Sabbath evening with a Jewish orthodox family you will notice they leave their doors open during the Sabbath night prayers (or pray facing a door) to welcome the Shabbat Hamalka, the Sabbath Queen or Bride. 

In the Talmud, the Sabbath is compared esoterically to a bride given to us by God, whom we long for her arrival (Shabbat 119a). Of course, to us, this Sabbath Queen or Bride is really Jesus. There is just one problem with this, we are supposed to be the bride and Jesus is the groom. An orthodox Jewish Rabbi once told me: “You Christians are so one dimensional. Indeed we are. God is a father, never a mother. Yet, He nurtures us like a mother, we seek Him like a child seeks a mother. We know that God is neither male nor female, so why can we not call Him a mother?  People thought Gloria Steinem said something radical when she said: “May God keep you and may she bless you.” Actually, Jewish rabbis and sages have been teaching the feminine nature of God for thousands of years. I believe Psalms 17:3 can be best understood if we consider God as our bride and we as the groom.  I know some of you women may have a problem thinking of yourselves as a husband, but hey, how about us men who are running around talking about ourselves as a “bride” of Christ. 

Let’s take a look at this phrase in Psalms 17:3. “Thou hast proved my heart.” The word “proved” is in a perfect form from the root word bachan which literally means a watchtower. In a sense, a watchtower is built over a city so as to guard against enemy invaders. Keeping in mind that this is in a perfect infliction we would render this in English in the past tense and thus, as bachan – proved literally means guard or a watchtower, we could render this passage as: “Thou has guarded or protected my heart.  More literally, “Thou has been a watchtower over my heart.”

Why does God guard the heart of David? So he can visit him at the night. This is where the rabbis get the idea that what David is referring to is a visit from the “Sabbath Queen or Bride.” In the Talmud, there is the account of a rabbi, Rabbi Yannai, who would wrap himself up in festive clothes toward Friday evening as if to prepare to receive his bride. He would recite: Come, O bride, come O bride!”  More orthodox Jews believe we are encouraged to call upon God every day, but only once a week, the Sabbath, are we allowed to be in His presence as a bridegroom with the expectation of intimacy with His bride.

Now imagine that you just got married and then your new wife or husband discovers that his or her job requires being out of town on business for 6 days a week. You talk on the phone every day, but only one day of the week are you really together. You can bet you will not use that one day to clean the house, do laundry or mow the lawn, or fix the roof.  And you can bet you will spend the entire six days doing those chores to prepare for that one day you will be in the presence of your spouse. That is the sort of expectation that the Sabbath was meant to create. Sure, we are in God’s presence seven days a week, but that seventh day is meant to be something special, it is meant to be a “date” night.

The word “visit” is really in a prophetic perfect infliction. There is considerable debate among Christian Hebrew scholars as to whether a prophetic perfect exists. Jews just translate without giving it a fancy name. The word for visit is paqad which literally means to visit, but it also has the idea of watch care which better fits the watchtower idea. It also means to nurture, to lay with, as well as all sorts of other good things.  So, this visit is just not a “howdy-do you do, though I’d just drop over and break the quarantine” type of visit.  It is a visit that provides protection for the virus, security, and intimacy.

Now God is neither male nor female. We are used to calling Him Father but why stop there? Why not also refer to Him as a female or mother when the context calls for it or even when the feminine form of His name is used?  He is a Husband but he can also be a Bride. If we follow Jewish thinking for Psalms 17:3 and God or in the case of us Christians, Jesus is taking on the role of a Bride, how can Jesus as a Bride protect her husband?  The sages taught in ancient times, as even is the case today, that a bride can and indeed must protect her husband by fulfilling such needs that he will not be moved to lust, commit adultery, or visit nasty little web sites, etc.  A bride can protect her husband from sin. This is the protection that David received from God. God was watching over his heart as a bride watches over her husband’s heart.  As a bride longs to visit her husband in the night and satisfy his needs so too does God long to visit us in the night to satisfy our needs so we do not lust after other gods. When one is satisfied with his bride,  then money, fame, accomplishments, and all the trappings and gods of this world, mean nothing. The world and its gods have little to entice us when we are totally satisfied with our “bride” – Jesus. 

Matthew 22:30 suggests that there is neither male nor female in heaven, hence Jesus may have been male on earth but that does not mean he will be a male in heaven, particularly if there is neither male nor female. He could have come as a female but the culture of that day would not accept a female Messiah. How things would be different if He came as a woman. But in His Spirit, He is a Bride to us males and a Bridegroom to the females. He comes as one who will give us such satisfaction that the sin of the world, prostitutes of wealth, fame, vocation, and the arm of the flesh will not seduce us.

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