Hebrew Word Study – And You – Mekem מכם Mem Kap Mem

Leviticus 1:2: “Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, If any man of you bring an offering unto the LORD, ye shall bring your offering of the cattle, even of the herd, and of the flock.”

In the Hebrew, there are a couple of curious grammatical anomalies in the sentence: “If any  man of you bring an offering unto the Lord.”  The word offering is the word qorban which is really a sacrificial offering. In Matthew. It comes from a Semitic root meaning to be near or to draw close. If  you want to draw close to God you need to offer a sacrifice to Him. Since Jesus was our sacrifice He is our qorban today.  He is the sacrifice we present to God to draw close to Him. We cannot draw close to God if there is sin in our lives.  Like the opposite poles of a magnet will attract each other like poles will repel each other. When you have sin in your life you and God will repel each other but when your life is holy it will draw close to Him. 

By New Testament times the word qorban or corban as it is spelled in the New Testament became a colloquial expression used when you did not want to help someone out.  Mark 7:11: But ye say, If a man shall say to his father or mother, It is Corban, that is to say, a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; he shall be free.” Jesus was speaking of the commandment to honor your parents and told the priest and Pharisees that when their parents come to them for the financial help they say all their money is a corban.  In other words, it is a sacrifice to God and then they turn around and use the money for themselves. The parents would rather starve to death than take something away from God so the self-righteous have the perfect excuse to not help them or honor them, except God knows their hearts and they are just using a spiritual exercise as an excuse to not help their parents.  

In Leviticus 1:2 God commands Moses to speak to the children of Israel saying that “If any man of you bring a qorban unto the LORD.”  It is curious that the word for man is adam and not ish. Adam speaks of the human-made of flesh. The word adam is an Aleph before the word dam which is the word for blood. It is the flesh which sin has corrupted so the human in the flesh must bring a qorban or sacrificial offering if he wishes to draw close to God. 

Grammatically this sentence, however, does not read “a man of you shall bring an offering” rather it is correctly read: “a man who shall bring near of you an offering.”  The offering brought is “of you.” It is the animal in man that is brought near.  In other words, he is fully aware that the animal that is about to be sacrificed is really himself. The Apostle Paul spoke of this in 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.” 

What this little grammatical anomaly is saying is that the animal is sacrificed for your sin (which is a picture of the sacrifice of the coming Messiah) but you still must sacrifice yourself to God. You must still surrender your life to God and give Him priority over your life.  As Paul further explains in I Corinthians 6:19-20: “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? (20) For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which is God’s.”

There is talk of what is called easy believeism.  This is what they are talking about. We make salvation very easy, too easy.  Just say a sinner’s prayer and you’ve got it. There is more to it. There is repentance and then there is a surrender of your life to God.  If you sincerely accept Jesus as your Savior, you are accepting the price he paid for your salvation with His life and shedding of His blood so you do not have to shed your blood.  However, that does not mean you are not making a sacrifice.  In return, you give your life which is now spotless and purified, and a holy sacrifice to God to use as He wishes.  He owns you.  I know that goes against our Western thought to allow anyone, even God, to own us but indeed that is what we are doing when we “get saved.”  We sacrifice our lives and die to ourselves, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in us. II Corinthians 4:10: “Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.”

The Apostle Paul was a Jewish scholar, he understood the “of you” in Leviticus 1:2: “a man who shall bring near of you an offering.”  He reminded the people in the New Testament over and over that Jesus sacrificed His life for us but if we wish to receive the benefits of that sacrifice we must also sacrifice our lives and die to our fleshly desires and allow Him to take possession of our lives. 

Frankly, between you and me, if I am to allow anyone to take possession of my life, I sure cannot think of anyone better to do it than Jesus.

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