HEBREW WORD STUDY – A POSITIVE IMAGINATION – SAVAR  – סברא   SAMEK BETH RESH ALEPH

Genesis 30:37: “Then Jacob took fresh rods of poplar and almond and plane trees and peeled white stripes in them exposing the white which was in the rods.  And he set the rods which he had peeled in front of the flocks in the gutters, even in the watering troughs, where the flocks came to drink; and they mated when they came to drink. So the flocks mated by the rods, and the flocks brought forth striped, speckled and spotted.”

You remember this story from Sunday school I am sure. Jacob was working for his father in law Laban who pulled a nasty trick on him.   He wanted to marry Rachel and was forced to work seven years for her and when the time came he ended up with Leah instead and had to work another seven years to marry Rachel.   Now Jacob wants to leave the farm and go off on his own so he starts to talk wages with his father in law. He agreed to take the animals, his and Laban’s out to pasture.  He suggested to Laban that when he returns he will consider all the animals that are spotted, striped and speckled to be his and the others would be Laban’s.  This set well with Laban, spotted, striped or speckled were not as common as solid color and thus he was about to pull a fast on this allegedly not so bright son-in-law.  

Ah, but Jacob had another plan. He took rods from the poplar, almond and plane trees,  and peeled stripes in the rods and laid them before the animals near the watering area where they would mate.  Under the influence of the striped rods, striped, spotted and speckled animals were born. He had only the hardy animals mate by the rods so the hardy animals would be striped, spotted and speckled and black while Laban’s animals would be the weaker ones. Jacob returns to Laban to give him weak and feeble animals and declare all the numerous, hardy, spotted, speckled and black animals to be his. The Bible says that Laban was not friendly towards Jacob after his nasty little trick.  Well fair is fair – right?

Wait a minute. There is something not right here. I was taught in Sunday school that it was God who increased the number of animals for Jacob and made them hardy. Well my Sunday school teachers were right, but they also did not give me the whole picture. They apparently forgot to mention the peeled branches and the role it played in the mating process. As a little eight year old my hand shut up and I asked what it meant to mate. Once my red faced Sunday school teacher answered that question in eight year old terms, I would then ask why in front of striped branches. After a reprimand suitable for an eight year old my teacher moved on with the lesson. But wait a minute, did this Godly man, this father of Israel really believe those striped branches would influence the animals to give birth to stripe off spring? Is there a lesson here?

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We learn in Hebrews 11:1 that faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence things not seen. A nice definition of faith. The word substance is upostasis in the Greek. This comes from the Greek word hypostasis. Plato loved this word. He used it quite a bit in his Plato’s Republic. In this work Plato speaks of a group of prisoners who spend their lives in a cave watching the outside world only from the shadows it reflects inside the cave. In the words of Plato he calls the outside world upostasis or the reality. This is translated in the KJV Bible as substance. Plato uses the word episkiazo for the shadows. This is the same word used in Hebrews 11:1 for hope.  C.S. Lewis described this world as a shadow of the reality which was the spiritual world. This physical world and all we see is merely a shadow of the reality of the spiritual world. Like Plato’s prisoners in the cave they interpreted the reality in light of the shadow and their perception of reality was distorted.  The Aramaic Bible I thinks expands on this. The Aramaic word for hope is sabara which in its Semitic origins has the idea of a positive imagination. The Septuagint uses the Greek word which we render as hope episkiazo for the Hebrew word hagah which is the word for imagination. I believe what Paul is saying here is that faith is the reality of your positive imagination. When you see a shadow you imagine the reality behind the shadow. You do not see the reality you can only imagine it. It is the evidence of things not seen. The Greek word for evidence is elegchos which is an inner conviction.  The Aramaic uses the word gelyana which means a manifestation.

What has this to do with Jacob and the peeled branches? The word used in the Hebrew for branch or rod is makel which is the word used for a symbol of authority. The peeled rod was a symbol of the authority God gave Jacob to use his positive imagination his sabara, hagah or episkiazo to produce the reality or manifestation of striped, spotted and black animals.

Jacob did more than just lay out striped branches showing white and black. He imagined those branches as animals that were striped, speckled (black and white) and just black. The Talmud teaches that on the seventh day God did not end creation, he just passed the creating process onto man. We are to continue creation. Creation begins with imagination. You must imagine a chair before you can make one or make it a reality.

There is the story in the in the New Testament of a woman who had an issue of blood. She touched the garment of Jesus and was healed. Jesus said, that virtue went out from Him. In the Aramaic that word for virtue is chayala which in its Semitic root means vibrations. Then He said, “Your faith has made you whole.” When she touched the garment of Jesus she imagined herself healed. Thought processes send out electrical impulses or vibrations. Jesus thoughts also sent out electrical impulses, vibrations. Jesus imagined her healed she imagined herself healed and thus completed the cycle of faith for the gelyana or manifestation. It was God’s divine will that she be healed, it was His divine power that made her whole, but it took her imagination to make it a reality.

When our imagination is joined with Divine will and power, reality is created. There was no power in the striped rods of Jacob, it was all his faith or the shadow of his positive imagination that brought forth the will of God to produce the spotted lambs. 

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