Aramaic Word Study – Break – Qatsa’קצע    Qop Sade Ayin

I Corinthians 11:24: “And when he had given thanks, he brake [it], and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.”

Leviticus 14:34: “When you come into the land of Canaan, which I give you for a possession, and I put a case of leprous disease in a house in the land of your possession,”

Leviticus 14:41: “And he shall have the inside of the house scraped all around, and the plaster that they scrape off they shall pour out in an unclean place outside the city.”

I have always been baffled by this verse in I Corinthians 11:24 since I was a little child.  Maybe it was just me, but I would hear this verse every time we took communion, and I would think, “How was Jesus’s body broken?”  I mean, I heard the sermons even as a child, and I listened, and I distinctly remember hearing the preachers say that Jesus’s body was not broken; they did not even break His legs as commanded by Pilate because Jesus was already dead when they came to break His legs.  

The word for break in Greek is eklasen, which clearly means to break or be broken. Somehow, the explanation that Jesus’s skin was broken when he was tortured and whipped is what was meant when He said His body was broken.  Somehow, that just seemed like a lame attempt to explain a clear contradiction.  But then I read this in the Aramaic and found the word for broken was qatsa’, which could mean to break, but is usually used for scraping.  In fact, it is the identical word in Hebrew and the Targums (Aramaic version of the Old Testament) that is used in Leviticus 14:41, where the priests were to scrape the plaster of a home that was covered with the mark of leprosy.

When the people of Israel took over the Promised Land, they did not necessarily build new homes, they just took over the homes that were left by the Canaanites who fled.  We learn that God sent a plague of leprosy over the Canaanites, and if one found the mark of leprosy in their homes, they were to call a priest to remediate it.  Many modern translations will render this as mold or mildew rather than leprosy because it was discovered by modern medical science that a form of leprosy was caused by a certain mold or mildew.  

If one found this mold in his home, he was told to report it to the priest, who would come and examine it, and then, if it was determined to be the mark of leprosy, they would shut the house up for seven days. After seven days, they returned, and if the mold had spread, they were to tear out the rocks that had the mold and then scrape the plaster off the walls.  The word scrap is qatsa’, the same in Hebrew and Aramaic.  Plaster is sort of like the skin covering the walls. Thus, Jesus could have very well been referring to His skin being scraped off by his whipping. 

Jesus was likely speaking of His body having his skin scraped off for us. This could be a reference to that corruptible part of our body, that part that is continually dying and having to be replaced. We are always shedding dead skin and growing new skin.  The scraping of His skin is like the bread that we are to eat, and eat all of it.  Bread was a symbol of life and through the shedding of his skin, He is passing new life unto us.

I wonder, I always rejected Isaiah 53:5 as a reference to our physical illnesses. Isa 53:5 But he [was] wounded for our transgressions, [he was] bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace [was] upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.  I think I am revisiting that opinion.

The word heal is rapha’ which means a physical healing as well as a spiritual healing.  The word stripes is chabburah, which means a wound like that from a whipping.  Could it be that the scrapping or qatsa’ is a reference to both physical and spiritual?  The solution to a nega’, a plague or breakdown of the human body, is repentance.  Is it possible, like the Talmud teaches, that God sends a plague or maybe physical illness as a wake-up call for us to reconnect with Him?  Is it possible that maybe when this physical body begins to break down, God is using this natural process of the corrupt, decaying physical body as a way to remind us that this old body will one day just cease to exist and maybe now is a good time to prepare for eternity and start to repent.  

I give this for your consideration only. 

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