Hebrew Word Study – Service – ‘Evod  עבד Ayin Beth Daleth

Numbers 4:47: “From thirty years old and upward even unto fifty years old, everyone that came to do the service of the ministry, and the service of the burden in the tabernacle of the congregation,”

There is something very curious in the Hebrew on this verse that you cannot see in the English Bible. The words “to do,” “service” “ministry” and “service” in Hebrew is la’evod ‘evodath ‘evodah ‘evodath.   It is the same word repeated four times.  Of course, a translator will not translate this literally because he would get: “Everyone that came to service, service, service, service.  That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. 

I remember my first semester of Hebrew in college I carried around a stack of vocabulary cards.  Each card was the size of a business card.  One side was a Hebrew word and on the other side was the meaning of the word in English.  I would carry around hundreds of these cards and every free moment would zip through the cards like flashcards.  I would read the Hebrew word in my mind and then try to think of its meaning. I would then flip the card over to see if I got it right. It was a great exercise in memorization but actually proved to be of little value except to score an “A” on a vocabulary quiz or test.  Of course, when the real work of translation comes along you just went to your handy Lexicon or when pinch your interlinear to plug the English word into a sentence. Then after summer vacation, you return for your second year of Hebrew having pretty well forgotten the majority of the words you so painstakingly memorize the prior year, and by the time they handed you that sheepskin you were lucky to have remembered even a handful of the words.  As a Hebrew teacher I feel I can safely say that most pastors who took a year of Hebrew, maybe two rarely use it and when they do, they simply look up a word in Strong’s and tell you the list of meanings and let you ooh and ahh at their knowledge of Biblical languages. 

If I gave my first-year Hebrew students Numbers 4:47 to translate, I would daresay that most would render this as “Everyone that came to serve service serve service the burden of the tabernacle.”  I would mark them correct as they did give the correct meaning of the Hebrew words and they picked up on the construct form of two of those ‘evods.  However, my advanced Hebrew students would not fare so well.  It is that second year that you get into translation in a serious way and you really need to understand the context and the wide range of meanings that one Hebrew word can have and I will know if you just copied your homework from the NASB or an interlinear. Because the odds of getting a translation exactly like that of the NASB or interlinear are very slim when you discover the wide range of usages of a single Hebrew word. 

This is why you have so many different English translations because there are so many different variations of the use of English words in the context of specific verses. This is where you run into your problems in translation. Some companies spend millions of dollars on advertising but skimp on translators.  Hence you get for “Finger licking good.” Translated in Chinese as: “We’ll eat your fingers off.”  Or for Pepsi: “Come alive with Pepsi” in Chinese: “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead.” With our country becoming so bilingual with Spanish, Coors advertisers really scraped the bottom of the barrel for translators for their light beer slogan: “Turn it loose” which they translated into Spanish as: “suffer from diarrhea.”  I can understand the difficulty of translating English into Arabic but did someone really get paid to translate “The Jolly Green Giant” into Arabic which translated into “Intimidating Green Monster?” I am sure Italians reading “Schweppes Tonic Water” in their own language as “Schweppes Toilet Water” was an innocent mistake by cost-cutting English language advertisers. Although Parker Pens must have really seen a surge in the sale of their pens in Mexico with their slogan “It won’t leak in your pocket and embarrass you.”  After their sharp-witted advertising agency translated it into: “It won’t leak in your pocket and make you pregnant.” 

I hope that explains why we have so many different English translations of the Bible. I have people all the time asking me what is the best translation of the Bible or the one closest to the original language.  The simple answer is that they are all close to the original language.  People will say, “I don’t want a paraphrase. Yet, when you are translating from an ancient dead language, every translation will be a paraphrase. Every translation is man’s best guess. 

For me, the best rendering of these four uses of the word ‘evod is; “Everyone that came to do the service of the service for the service of the burden of the tabernacle.”  Which makes you wonder, what does service of the service mean.  The service of the tabernacle was the sacrifices to God to picture the future redemption of sin.  There were those who serviced that service.  How?  The word ‘evod according to the 19th Century linguist and Hebrew master Rabbi Samson Hirsch showed that there is a relationship of ‘evod to a service of music. The service of the service was the musical worship and praise to God during the sacrifices.  This evolved into a daily song in the History of Judaism.  Even today after the morning Amidah prayer the Jews will recite the Shir Shel Yom, the song of the day. We have only small portions of the thousand, perhaps hundreds of thousands of Psalms (songs) that were song each day by the musical arm of the Levitical priesthood.  Each day had a new song or Psalm.  Another way to put it, each day of the week sings and has its own song.

What that means is that each day is consequential, important. Each day is a gift from God and His blessings and faithfulness are new every morning. Lamentations 3:23: “His mercies are new every morning.”  Each day is a new opportunity, a new chance to learn something new about our infinite God.  What a challenge as I wake up each morning and ask God: “Show me something new about You today that I have not seen or learned in my 70-year sojourn upon this earth.  

And do you know what? A day has not gone by that I do not learn something new about the Jesus I love.

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