Hebrew Word Study – Despise – Bazah בזה  Beth Zayin Hei

Did David Really Despise God?

II Samuel 12:10 “Now, therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house; because you have despised me, and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.”

Every modern translation renders the Hebrew word bazah as despised.  When you check this word out in the lexicon or the back of Strong’s Concordance you will find it means to despise or to hold in contempt.  But come on now, did David, this man after God’s own heart, this man who loved and meditated on the Word of God day and night, this man who sang his heart out to God, who longed to be in the temple before God, whose only desire was to awake in his likeness; did he really despise God?

I once had an orthodox rabbi tell me, “You Christians, you just do not understand the heart of David.”  Indeed, we tend to turn David into a 21st Century Western cultural thinking individual.  David was not an American; he was an Eastern, Oriental Semitic thinking individual.  Sometimes there was a book written by Bob Sjogren and Gerald Robison called Cat and Dog Theology which I highly recommend.  The premise of the book is: “A dog may look at you and think, ‘You feed me, you pet me, you shelter me, you love me — You must be god!’ On the other hand, a cat can look at you and say, ‘You feed me, you pet me, you shelter me, you love me — I must be god!’”   It has been said that the Egyptians once worshipped cats and they have never forgotten it.  Another quote from this book is, “It’s been said that ‘Dogs have Masters – Cats have Staff’. Cats may call you Master but tend to live a self-centered life – where you are there to serve and take care of them. On the other hand, Dogs are eager to see and please their master.”

I find no better way to describe the difference between the Eastern Semitic mindset and the Western cultural thinking.  We in this Western world think like cats whereas the Semitic mindset thinks like dogs.  And therein lays the problem with our Western cultural rendering of the word bazah as despised. 

Did David really despise God and hold Him in contempt when he committed his sin with Bathsheba?  If we trace this word bazah (despise) to its Semitic roots and examine it in light of other Semitic languages, we find something very disturbing.  When we hear the English word despise, we think of hating. David did not hate God.  David simply moved from a dog mentality to a cat mentality.  A cat does not hate his master, he loves his master, his master is there to serve him, pet him, shelter him and love him, to be there at his beck and call.  

I drive a bus for senior citizens and the disabled.  Many times I will drive an elderly lady to her home where she lives alone with just her dog.  As we approach her house the first thing she will look for is to see if Fido is looking for her out her living room window, and of course, he is.  When she opens the door he is right there at the door to greet her, jumping up and kissing her face.  He never asks her for anything, just the opportunity to love her and show his affection. He does not need to ask for anything of his own, he knows she will take care of him.

When you trace the word bazah to its Semitic root you will find it has its origins in an Akkadian word.  The Akkadian language was the language of the Assyrians who were warlike people.  They never asked for anything, they just took what they wanted from other nations.  They treated every other nation as a conquest and its people as just the spoils (baz-ah) of war. If you were a bazah of the Assyrian army you were allowed to live so long as you could meet some need or desire of your conqueror.  If you could not provide any benefit to them, then what good were you?  Oh, and by the way, as a bazah don’t expect anything from your captor, they will provide the bare minimum of whatever you need to exist, so long as you can provide them with their wants and desires. 

God was telling David that in taking another man’s wife and then putting that man to death to cover his own gizzard he had turned God into a bazah, simply another spoil of war, someone to serve him and meet his needs and if He could not provide, well, what good was God anyways. He would just take want he wanted if God did not provide it.

Sounds familiar?  Maybe we are like the cat, we call God master, while we live a self-centered life where God is only there to serve and take care of us.  God to us is nothing more than a bazah, a spoil of war.  You know something, with an attitude like that, maybe despised is not such a bad rendering after all.  We need to ask ourselves if we are just a cat and we are simply bazah(ing) God.  If we do, maybe we really do despise Him.

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