Hebrew Word Study – Fall Down – Yarad – Yod Resh Daleth

Psalm 143:7: “Hear me speedily, O’Lord: my spirit failed: hide not they face from me, lest I be like unto them that go down into the pit.”

Many Bible scholars believe the occasion of this Psalm was when David’s son, Absalom, staged a coup and sent David and some of his faithful followers into hiding with a price on their heads.  David is desperate for the help of God and declares that if he does not get help speedily  he will be like those who go into the pit.

Most translators add a definite article to the word pit, the pit, but there is no definite article in the Hebrew text, it is just a pit. The word pit in Hebrew is bor. Actually it was more like a cistern or dry well.  There were many such pits throughout the land.  Without modern science equipment it was impossible to tell just how deep you needed to dig to find water. No matter where you dig you will eventually find water, the question was just how far do you have to dig. Digging a well was difficult and dangerous work.  Once you dug about ten feet your digging gets to be more and more dangerous and the walls to the well could collapse and many were the diggers who suffocated.  Thus, well diggers usually only dug so far that they were able to escape quickly if the walls did collapse. So, if they found no water they would just abandon their dry well and move to another site.  It was one these sites that Joseph’s brothers threw him into.  It was just deep enough that you could not escape without help.  Many who traveled alone would fall into such a pit and without help would starve to death.  That is if the scorpions and poisonous snakes, which found these abandoned digs to be a nice home, did not get you first.

Nobody just “goes down” into a pit as if it were a voluntary action,  like most our modern translations translate it. Many render the word yarad as descend into the pit or go down into the pit as if it were something they wanted to do.  The word yarad just as easily means to fall into something.  It is also in a participial form so he is saying that it would be like falling into a pit. That moment when the ground gives way and you realize you will end up in the bottom of the pit with all those creepy crawling things, is a moment of terror. So what David is saying is that he will experience that terror of falling into a pit. 

What is it that will cause this terror?  It is God hiding his face from him. The “face of God” is a Hebraic colloquial expression for the presence of God.  So, here is David fleeing for his life, his own son and best friend staged a coup and stole the throne from him.  But what is it that fills him with the most terror?  It the thought of God hiding His presence from him.  Why does he specifically use the expression of falling into a pit?  Jewish Literature describes a bor or pit also means to have a heart that is in spiritual poverty.  So, David’s greatest fear, his nightmare is not losing his throne, not fleeing into hiding, not living with a price on his head, it is God hiding His presence from him which would plunge him into spiritual poverty.   

Note, he says that his own spirit has failed.  The word fail is kalah which means to be destroyed. It is also the word for a bride. I believe he is making a play on this metaphor saying that it is not only his spirit has been destroyed but He is no longer God’s bride. That part of him, that part of being God’s beautiful loving bride that God delights in is destroyed.  He can no longer feel God’s pleasure.  This is absolutely devasting to David. 

Note there is a distinction being made here between feeling the pleasure of God and the presence of God.  David’s first concern is that his ability to bring God pleasure as His pure bride is destroyed.  Then he begins to worry about the fact that he does not feel God’s presence.  David has a relationship with God, a love relationship.  Doesn’t a love relationship mean that you are thinking only of the welfare of the other person? 

It seems apparent, however, that David has done everything he needs to do to be restored to God’s presence and all he needs now is for God to “answer” him. Answer is the word ‘anah.  This word is used to express the idea of exercising oneself upon another. I have also found it used extra Biblical literature to ravish a woman.  I mean that in a 15th century, Shakespearian way.  To gaze with adoration upon the beauty of a woman.  David is looking to God as a wife would look to her husband to admire her beauty. She wants her husband to take pleasure in her.  She spends those hours at the gym, the hairdresser, the make up department so her husband would enjoy her, ravish her.  This brings pleasure to her.  The husband in turn feels his wife’s pleasure and finds pleasure in her finding pleasure in him – sort of circular.

So here is David in the midst of a crisis, trouble all around and all he can think of is whether God still finds him attractive. You know something, I think we forget this. The virus has caused another shut down causing a loss of income, the elections did not go the way you prayed it would.  You may be experiencing any number of worries and fears and you call out to God forgetting that He is a loving husband who has everything under control. He only wants His bride to clean herself up spiritually and appear spiritually beautiful before Him. All those problems are His concern, our only concern is to be a loving beautiful bride that our Bridegroom can take pleasure in.  

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