Aramaic Word Study – It Is Finished  –  Mashelem     Mem Shin Lamed Mem

(This Word Study is excerpted from Chaim Bentorah’s book: Aramaic Word Study: Exploring The Language Of The New Testament)

Luke 23:28:  “But Jesus turning unto them said, Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children.”

John 19:30: “When Jesus, therefore, had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.”

Now He is placed on the cross and in only six hours he died.  Jesus would have been in prime physical condition, young and healthy, particularly with all the exercise he got from walking. Some men would last for ten days on the cross.  Many lasted for days even after a beating like Jesus received, yet he died only in a matter of six hours. Even Pilate who ordered the men’s legs to be broken so they would expire before sundown was surprised to learn that Jesus was already dead and they did not need to break His legs.  

Why would Jesus have died so quickly?   I say it was because he bore the weight of the suffering of the world.  If His heart ached over the suffering of a future generation that would die a painful death then how much would hanging on the cross, feeling the tremendous physical pain and knowing that those He loved have and would suffer like He was.

Finally, He said: “It is finished.”  This is a very curious word in the Aramaic, it is the word mashelem.  It comes from the root word shelem which is the same root word that shalom or peace comes from.  The Mem in front of shelem in the Aramaic indicates a Pael infinitive.  Unlike the Hebrew, there is no infinitive construct or absolute in the Aramaic.  However, similar to Hebrew the object may come either before or after.  The object of this infinitive is It. 

First just what does shelem mean? It can mean to be finished, but generally, it has the idea in Aramaic to mean submission or complete submission.  Then what is the object pronoun “it”?  That is debatable.  Logically we think it is Jesus saying He is about to die, but He was not yet dead so why to use a perfect tense, why not say it is now almost finished.   Something was completed before He expired and it was submitted. A God who could not die had voluntarily taken on a human form so He could know what death was like. He carried out his mission to the very end, He submitted to all that a human being experiences while on earth.  We can never accuse God of not knowing what physical pain is like, what rejection, mocking and persecution are like, and what death is like. He went through a complete cycle of submission in the flesh up to and including facing one’s own certain death. 

But why did He die so soon? Medically speaking there is something called stress-induced cardiomyopathy, death from a broken heart.  Dr. Stroud in about 1847 introduced the idea that Jesus died of a broken heart. This has since been picked up by Protestants and written about in Christian literature.  People do die of a broken heart.  My parents were married for 67 years and were rarely apart from each other.  They always got along and had a love relationship all those years, holding each other every night. When my father passed away, my mother who had some health issues but nothing that was immediately terminal just went into a coma four months later. Her body shut down and she passed away from what we call “old age.”  I call it a broken heart. 

Jesus asked the Father to overwhelm Him with his love and compassion for mankind but as he began to really experience the pain of mankind, it just broke His heart and on the cross when He physically understood the pain and suffering of mankind, His heart could not take it.

The Jews or Romans did not kill Jesus, our sins caused Him to die of a broken heart.

(This Word Study is excerpted from Chaim Bentorah’s book: Aramaic Word Study: Exploring The Language Of The New Testament)

Thanks & Blessings, it means a lot to me!