HEBREW WORD STUDY – A PROPHECY – CHAZAH   Cheth Zayin Hei

“Job 27:12: “Behold, all of you yourselves have seen (it), why then are you altogether vain?”

“If the judge should say to the man, ‘Take the splinter from between your eye.’  He would reply: ‘Take the beam from your between your eye.’”  Talmud  Baba Bathra 15b.

“And why beholdest thou the mote that is in they brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in your own eye.”  Matthew 7:3

Job 27:12 can be pretty difficult to understand in our modern translations so let me put it another way: To paraphrase what Job is saying to his friends is: “It’s as plain as the nose on your face.”   Job’s friends, I suppose like all of us were good church people who love to give advice to someone who was facing some spiritual struggle. If someone shares with you a spiritual crisis what are you going to say? Maybe there are times you have some answer, most of the time you don’t, other than the common sound bites like: “Just trust God,” “Pray about it, “or “God is faithful.”  Chances are you don’t have an answer that this person has not heard a hundred times or more.  Are you going to say the truth: “Hey, I really don’t know what to tell you.” Odds are you are not. You will search your brain for some answer that sounds good because, of course, you want to be a hero or you just plain don’t want anyone to think you are not a spiritual person.

I cannot say for sure but I believe Job’s friends did not have an answer for Job’s suffering and they knew it.  But like most Christians, they will speak the party line or quote their favorite preacher and only make matters worse.

In my book “Whom My Soul Loves.”  I share a dark period of my life where my struggle with Asperger’s Syndrome caused me to question whether God existed and all this love and feeling of His presence was just something I conjured up in my mind.  As I was going through this I candidly shared my feelings on my blog.  There were any number of people ready to share their advice, their insights, and deep understandings none of which were of any value relevance to me personally.   

Everyone is waiting for the opportunity to share the depths of their wisdom and knowledge.  We all like to think we’ve cornered the market on truth.  Job’s friend was no exception and after hitting Job with all their wonderful words of wisdom, Job responds by asking: “What, are you altogether vain?”   Literally from the Hebrew, he is saying: “You all perceive (and what happens?)  This vanity becomes your vanity.”

The word in the Hebrew for perceive is very interesting to those in the prophetic movement. It comes from the root word chazah which means a vision, deep spiritual insight, or a prophecy.  To put it in terms that are easily understood in today’s language what Job is saying is: “You have a prophetic word. You have word from God.”   But what happens?   “This vanity becomes your vanity.”   The word vanity is haval which means a vapor, mist, or fog.  This creates a double meaning for the word and this word is repeated two times in the text.  This repetition is meant for the two words to play off of each other and create a play on that double meaning.   Something being a vapor, mist, or fog is not clearly defined.  A prophecy or vision is often in symbols and its meaning is not readily apparent, it is like a mist or fog. Thus one use of the word haval is for something that is not clear or readily apparent.   The second use of the word spelled with a Sere’ rather than a Pathah is havel is used to express foolishness and uselessness.   Just as fog or vapor seems to have substance, but when you walk into it, it doesn’t have the substance that it appears to have from a distance.   Thus, Job is saying: “You have a prophetic word, but it lacks clarity and is useless and has made you foolish.

How has it made his friends foolish?   When you look at the word haval and, as Laura calls it, its built-in commentary you discover how.  The word is spelled Hei, Beth, and Lamed. The Hei represents self-deception.  Couple this with the next letter the Beth you have the expression of feeling spiritually superior to others and then finally the Lamed which in its shadow represents self-importance. Thus the word haval gives a good description of Job’s friends.  They were deceived by their feelings of superiority and self-importance and it ended up making the word they had from God into foolishness. Sometimes we just take ourselves too seriously when we give out prophetic words or advice.

It is interesting to note that the word haval for vanity has a numerical value of 37.  A prophetic word also has a numerical value of 37.  If you ever feel you have a word from the Lord for someone, it is best you first examine yourself to be sure you are not haval or deceived by the shadow of the Hei with the shadow of the Beth feelings of superiority and the Lamed self-importance.  If you don’t do that self-examination you may end up like the Talmud warns and Jesus Himself reaffirmed that if you point out the splinter in someone else’s eye, they may turn around and point to the beam in your own eye.

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