ARAMAIC WORD STUDY – THE WEDDING DANCE – CHADOTHA חדותא Cheth Daleth Vav Taw Aleph
ARAMAIC WORD STUDY – WIND, SPIRIT, BREATHE OF LIFE – RAUCHA רוחא
John 3:8: “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.”
It was very windy today in the Windy City of Chicago. I mean this was the wind that blew Piglet away in the Winnie the Pooh’s Hundred Acre Wood. I was waiting for one of the passengers on my disability bus to come out when I noticed the wind picked up a plastic bag, the type you get in the grocery store. For almost the whole five minutes that I waited for my passenger, I watched the wind pick up that bag and blow it where the wind wanted to blow it. It landed on a fire hydrate, where I thought it was would stay, but the wind blew another gust and up away goes that metaphor that I felt the Holy Spirit was comparing me to. It blew up into a tree where it rests for a moment until another gust blew it out of the tree and brought it down to the ground only to be boosted up in the air again.
When my passenger came out I immediately got out of my bus to assist and was hit by a gust of wind. I stood firm and resisted the wind as it tried to blow me around like Piglet or that plastic bag. My spirit was immediately quickened as I thought of John 3:8. The first chance I had I looked up that verse in my Aramaic Bible and like a light shining on my Bible I saw two words the one for wind and the one for Spirit, but both were the same word raucha.
I realized like a good Rabbi, even talking to the chief of the Pharisees Jesus still responded as a good rabbi would do. He played little word games to get His point across. “The Raucha blows where it wants….so is everyone born of the Raucha.
To be sure the context of this is a reference to being born again as the phrase born of the Spirit was very common to the Jews, it was an idiomatic expression for Redemption, restoration or reconciliation with God. Nicodemus did not understand this born again thing. Oh, he had the term born again in his vocabulary but that was used when a person got married and entered a new life as a married person or when a gentile converted to Judaism and started a new life as a Jew, but Nicodemus knew that this was not what Jesus meant, again Jesus was playing the rabbi using familiar terms for an unfamiliar topic.
Would you like Chaim Bentorah as your personal Hebrew teacher?
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The context is teaching that we cannot understand this born again process any more than we can understand where the wind comes from or where it ends up. We know it is real, we can feel it and hear it blow through trees, but we have no idea where it came from or where it is going, so is everyone born of the Spirit, they just lay back and accept it by faith, they don’t try to figure it out.
However, as I examined this verse in my Aramaic Bible I felt my spirit further quickened. God was reminding me that His Word is like a gemstone. When you take it out to the light, there are many colors that show. God was showing me another color. He wanted me to be like that plastic bag and not resist the wind like I was doing as I waited outside my bus. I realized that lately, I had been resisting that inner raucha prompting me to just go with whatever subject I felt comfortable with during my daily study. I was resisting it because I felt my readers would not be interested in that subject and I searched for topics which would wow my readers. If some famous writer and speaker claiming knowledge of Hebrew and the Torah can sell a half million books comparing Ahab and Jezebel to Bill and Hillary Clinton, will I could do that and much more. In one month I could write a book comparing the United States to Ancient Judah or Israel and hint at what the future of America would be. Yet, I found when I determined to do this, I found the words would not come, they would not flow like they usually do when I just allow myself be like Piglet and let the Raucha blow me in the direction it wills.
Raucha also means breathe and without the Raucha breathing His message into me, there would be no life in that message. Oh, I am sure the brethren would eat it up and I might sell more books than my mere word study books, but it would not have the life. I might do live streaming for our Full Access people but that live streaming would have no life.
Relax, just let the Raucha blow where it may and let it bring Raucha life to others.
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Thanks & Blessings, it means a lot to me!
I appreciate the studies. My FIL is a lifetime Tanakh and Hebrew scholar, and a believer, and his father and grandfather were Wycliffe translators with the Summer Institute of Learning (SIL). I on the other hand was brought up with a lot of bad doctrine and theology, and in pursuit of that a denial of Jewishness, and finding myself disturbed by how such thinking constantly went against what I thought I was reading, so I decided to go back to the drawing board and start again, and of course that also meant restoring the roots of my faith which meant restoring a Jewish understanding. Before I began that I was nearly agnostic. Even where we attend now, in a church which has been helpful for my growth, one of the associate pastors groups Judaism along with Buddhism, Islam, etc. as a pagan religion. There is so much unconscious bias in the church. Now with learning, I am not just more culturally complete, I also have unlearned much and re-learned so much. These studies you make are helpful for that as well, and I’m glad you got rid of that burden of trying to wow readers. To people who comprehend, if God uses you to teach something, those meant to understand will hear it, and we’re all still responsible for our own study and learning. There is a reason God used the language He did, so it’s good to study it. I’m afraid the church has done the world no favors in rejecting so much knowledge. I’m encouraged to see more and more believers wanting to cut through that and go look at things, carefully studying and getting a richer picture for it. Everything about being human, and so much else is much deeper and it’s no surprise considering it is not invented by Jews. It was given to Jews by God who chose what to tell us, and what to leave a mystery.
“This is the air I breathe…
Your Logos Rhemaining in me…
And I in YHWHou
Thank God for you brother Chaim and everyone here carried along upon the ruacha of Our Father’s love in us and with us.
This is not philosophy…
This is philial i
Thank you, Teacher.
Chaim, as long as you bring food to the table I will eat.
I enjoy your books, but more than that, I enjoy your teachings on your site. You have taught me to be able to read and study in Hebrew and Aramaic; And in doing so you have been used to deepen my relationship with God. Many fill their storehouses and are seen as important and influential, but you do not even realize yours is overflowing. The lives you have changed by teaching them how to fish, not just providing the meal, has led to the feeding of many more people than you could imagine. I believe our riches in heaven is seeing all the people that we ministered to in some way, and I know that when you see that crowd and begin to understand the effect of your ministry that you will realize that all these worldly things that would seem to be nice are actually for nothing, as Solomon said. Be blessed my teacher, my friend, my brother. Let the wind fill your sails and create the waves that guide you to your destination, just stay at the helm (in the word) and trust your navigator that is above the storm, giving you direction and correction for what is ahead.
Hmmm, really enlightened; wait for the breathe and not only teach but also act(do). …. Jesus began to teach and to do….
Please do not change writing the way you do!!! And yes, I have even met Jonathan Cahn and I found him quite interesting – and I guess his purpose is to bring the word of God to our nation as a whole. But I think God’s purpose for your ministry is to reach just us regular folks as individuals – the unimportant who fall through the cracks in the different systems – whether religious or secular – and there are a lot of us. I watch various well known preacher/teachers on YouTube – all of them selling DVD’s, books, trips to Israel or asking for donations – and I do find what they teach interesting. But there is no way I can afford to purchase or donate. I wish I could afford to donate to you, but there are months when I have trouble finding enough to pay the electrical. I live alone in the mountains. Whereas J. Cahn is interesting, what you write is like a life line. Because of the way that you write, I have come to understand that it is alright that I see things differently from the mainstream. And I have come to understand that just like your purpose is unique, that mine is unique also and reading what you write helps me to gain clarity. Shalom, shalom, Hannah
Excellent…how refreshing!..To wait on the breath of our Father to hear what He would tell you and then teach us about it.
When His life is in it, you can learn more from one Scripture than if you could perfectly exegete all of one book.
Thank you for this wonderful teaching and to remind us to let His “wind” drive us where He wants as we study each day