Hebrew Word Study – Welded to God – Betach  בטח  Beth Teth Cheth

Psalms 91:2:  “I will say of the LORD, [He is] my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust.”

So now the Psalms jumps right in with the secret to finding a refuge and fortress in God.  It is in the word trust. How simple can that be? 

We throw this word trust around all the time as Christians.  It is one of those words that we use over and over and we never stop to think of what it really means.  On July 30, 1956 a law was passed in a Joint Resolution by the 84th Congress and approved by President Dwight Eisenhower that the United States adopt the words In God We Trust as the official motto of our country replacing E pluribus unum  (Latin for out of many one) which was adopted in 1782.  The motto first appeared on coins in 1864 and on our paper currency in 1957.  

During the Civil War In God We Trust was the battle cry of the 125th Pennsylvania Infantry during the Battle of Antietam, one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War.  At the start of the Civil War Rev. M.R. Watkinson petitioned the Treasury Department to add the statement on our coins to show that that God was on the side of the North and the Northerners were not a bunch of heathens.  By the end of the war Congress did manage to pass legislation allowing the Secretary of the Treasury to include this motto on the one and two cent coins. In 1865 the Secretary of the Treasury also gave approval to add it to all silver and gold coins and by 1873 Congress passed the Coinage Act granting that this motto be inscribed on all coins. 

By 1956 this nation was involved in a Cold War against the Soviet Union which promoted state atheism. The United States wanted to distinguish itself from the Soviet Union and this motto seemed to be an obvious way to do that.   Despite attempts by atheist groups to have it removed as our official motto the House of Representatives passed an additional resolution reaffirming the motto by 396-9.  A recent Gallup poll showed that 90% of Americans support the inscription on our coins. After all, this simple phrase bypasses almost all the major religions in the United States including Muslims whose equivalent in Arabic is tawakkul ‘ala.  Hindus see it as a reminder that there is a God everywhere whether we are conscious of it or not.  There have been many lawsuits to have the motto removed, all have failed because the courts have ruled that the statement does not prefer one religious denomination over another.  The Federal courts have ruled that the motto has nothing to do with the establishment of religion, that its use is patriotic and ceremonial in character, and bears no resemblance to a governmental sponsorship of a religious exercise.  I know that has the atheist scratching their heads, but hey with 90% backing any politician seeking to remove the motto is committing political suicide.  I remember when they came out with a reboot of the gold dollar coin and the motto was not on it.  Christians had one big cat fit and declared it was proof this nation was going straight to hell. Actually, by law it had to be on the coin and it was, they put it on the edge of the coin.   Theodore Roosevelt was one president who took issue with the motto on coins for a very good reason, he considered it sacrilegious.  You know what, I tend to agree with the old boy. It really is nothing more than a patriotic symbol and a ceremonial practice.  Of the 318,857, 056  million citizens in the United States and if the Gallup Poll is right 286,971,350 of these citizens are in favor of the motto, how many of these citizens actually know what it means to trust in God?  Do they really understand the Biblical concept of trust?  

After you read the following you may be among the very small percentage of the 318,867,056 citizens of this country who really understand the Biblical concept of  In God We Trust.

The word trust as used in Psalms 91:2 and in many other places in the Bible is batach which means to adhere to. It is the word for glue in Modern Hebrew. But it originally came from an ancient art of welding.  Welding has been traced back to the Bronze Age beginning around 2,300 BC and evidence of welding has been discovered in the Mesopotamian area as early as 1,500 BC and 1,000 BC.  Welding was a known process at the time of the common use of the word batach. It could, in fact, be the ancient word for welding. What happens when you weld two pieces of metal together is that you melt the two pieces of metal into each other. The metal from one piece mixes with the metal of the other piece and the metal from the other piece mixes with the metal of the first piece so that each piece of metal is joined together with each other’s metal. This process is what the ancients used to describe the idea of trust. When we trust in God we blend into Him and He into us.   It is said by any welder that you can break a piece of metal anywhere else before you ever break it at the weld.  When we trust in God we weld ourselves to Him and we will never break in any area of our lives that is welded to Him. If there is an area of our life not welded to Him, entwined or blended into Him that area could break.  The only way to guarantee that an area of your life does not break is to weld it, blend it into God or trust batach it to God.  For my money, I think I would just entrust every area of my life to God.  I will batach weld every area of my life into Him.  

I am told that when you form a weld you must make sure it is free of any impurities such as water, oil or flux.  When this occurs, gases are trapped in the solidifying metal. In steel this could eventually cause cracking.  If you attempt to trust God, to weld yourself to God with impurities in your life that weld will not hold. Romans 12:1  “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, [which is] your reasonable service.” We must present ourselves to God in total purity and of course the only way for that to happen is to have all our impurities washed by the Blood of the Lamb – Jesus Christ. By faith we are cleansed of our impurities so that we can then place our batach or trust or weld ourselves, blend ourselves into God.  I read where skyscrapers have stopped using rivets to attach the metal frames of the building together and they are now welding them together so that they will be sturdier and even more able to withstand whatever storms and/or earthquakes that may come.

We need to do more than just attach ourselves to God we need to be blended, melted into God if we are to stand against the storms of life and remove all our fears.

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