Hebrew Word Study  – Leaning – Sha’an – שען   Shin Ayin Nun

Proverbs 3:5: “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.” 

I believe I have spent almost a lifetime studying this verse and I am continually finding something new in them all the time. I would say there are three reasons why I am always finding something new in these verses. 

First the Word of God is a well that will never run dry. I remember as a child watching my Uncle Otto draw water from a well on his small farm for his cattle.  I was awed by the fact that no matter how much water he drew from that well, it would somehow magically refill to the exact same point it was before the water was drawn.  As a child I considered it magic, but as I grew older I learned about aquifers and gravity and all those other sciences that explain the “magic” of the well. In reality that well stood over an underground lake of water which only with the latest scientific technology would you be able to measure it.  So it is with the Word of God. Everytime I draw from the well of God’s Word the level of knowledge of God never goes down. 

The second reason I am always finding something new is that despite studying the Word of God in Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic for almost 45 years three to four hours a day, I am still learning new avenues of the Hebrew Language as I study the many sources of Jewish Literature that has been written for over 3,500 years. 

A third reason is that as I mature in my walk with God the Holy Spirit is able to reveal things to me that I could not have possibly understood, say even 20 years ago. Hence, I never grow bored with God’s Word.  It is new every morning and yes, great is His faithfulness to make it new every morning.

So, let me share with you my newest insight into the above study verse.  As I have said many times, the word trust in Hebrew is batach, This word has its origins in welding.  When you weld two pieces of metal together that metal melts into each other.  Why does the writer say with all your heart?  For over a decade I have been on a search for God’s heart. I have discovered that the more I draw closer to His heart, the more I realize that my heart and the heart of God batach, weld or melt into each other.  I am finding I become more grieved and heartbroken over the sins of the world, a feeling I never had in my earlier years before my search for God’s heart.  A woman got on my bus the other day and asked if I heard of the school shootings in Colorado and the young person who was killed trying to bring down the shooter. She just heard a bit on the news and was anxious to get home to go online to get the rest of the story.  For myself, I had not heard the news, I did not want to hear the news and as she jabbered on about what she knew I had to fight back tears.  No, I am not that sensitive, I have never been that sensitive. I knew and recognized that my heart was so melted into God’s heart that I felt His grief and sorrow over this evil. 

The end of the verse says to lean not unto your own understanding.  This word for lean is tisha’en from the root word sha’an which means to support, to rely upon or to trust but not trust as batach trust,to melt into, but trust as in depending upon.  But this word is in a niphal imperfect form hence it would express the idea “Don’t cause yourself to depend upon your own understanding. I looked over the next year and my first thought is, how am I going to manage the next six to eight months financially, health wise and otherwise.  I am causing myself to depend upon my own understanding of the future.  Then a woman got on my disability bus walking with a walker equipped with a portable oxygen tank. She told how a few months earlier she was healthy, working at a job she enjoyed and able to drive a car and visit her children and grandchildren. Then she had a stroke and overnight, she had to give up her job. She could no longer drive and it was an immense effort to just go to her doctor. She was younger than me. I realized instantly that God had control of our lives. I’m sixty eight years old, I could easily be like this woman. In just one instant something could happen and I would long for the days that all I had to worry about were finances and petty health issues. 

As long as our hearts stay welded to God’s heart we will experience His understandings in a way that makes our understanding seem outright foolish.

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