HEBREW/ARAMAIC WORD STUDY – WELL GLORY! KAVOD כבוד Kap Beth Vav Daleth

Psalms 29:9: “The voice of the LORD maketh the hinds to calve, and discovereth the forests: and in his temple doth every one speaks of [his] glory.”

There was an old TV series back in the early ’60s called Naked City. It was a police drama filmed in New York and about the adventures of the New York police department. Each episode ended with a detective overlooking the city from a bridge saying: “There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.” Even though it was about the New York police department and New York City the detective was overlooking the Halstead Street bridge in Chicago. I know because I spent a great deal of my youth at the intersection of Halstead and Madison Ave where my father helped to start a rescue mission for the men on the streets who were homeless, alcoholics, and drug addicts. My father would go out on the streets and share the Gospel with these men and invite them into the mission where they would get a hot meal, a warm bed, and a sermon from my father as well as a piano solo from yours truly.

Nothing in my life impressed me more spiritually than those days I spent with my father at the Bible Rescue Mission. I saw miracles first hand in my formative years. I mean the miracles of changed lives. Men who were hopeless alcoholics and drug addicts who abandoned their families to live on the streets begging for quarters to buy another drink or another fix. Once they would find Jesus, they would clean up their lives, return home to a wife and children that they had formerly abused, and became loving husbands and fathers. Men like Tom, Frank, and Ben each one with a story that you could write a book. Many were veterans from World War II and the Korean War suffering from what we know today as PTSD.

What I loved so much of those days was how genuinely these men loved God after surrendering their lives to Him. Oh, they were far from perfect. For sure, they still struggled with PTSD, alcoholism, and drug addiction but many really clung to their faith in God. Maybe that is why they were so sincere in their love for God for every time they failed they would come crawling back to God. My father would always pray for and with them and encourage them to keep moving forward. They knew that without the Lord in their lives they would end up back on the streets overnight.

A phrase I kept hearing over and over from these men was: “Well glory!” This was so different than the people around the church. They would say things like: “Praise the Lord” “Thank you Lord” or “Hallelujah.” But these men trying to piece together lives that were broken seem to just give a sigh and it was always: “Well glory!”

I recently read a story about the director of a rescue mission in St. Louis, Missouri back in the early 20^th Century. His name was Ed Card. He was known as “Old Glory Face” because he too would use that word glory. He always ended his prayers with a reference to heaven and say: “Oh that will be glory for me.” I believe I finally realize why these men always said: “Well, Glory.” It was a reference to heaven where they would no longer have to struggle with the demons of alcoholism, drug addiction, and PTSD. Whenever they were tempted they would say: “Well, Glory.” A gentle reminder that one day all their labors and trials would be over and they would be safe on that beautiful shore, just to be near the dear Lord they adore, it will be through the ages of glory for them. When by the gift of His infinite grace, they will be accorded in heaven a place, just to be there and to look on His face will thru the ages be glory for them. Ok, I am sure some of you old-timers may have recognized that old hymn I just quoted by Charles H. Gabriel except I just changed the first person singular to a third person plural. But the words still fit Gabriel’s song O That Will Be Glory.” There was hardly a mission chapel service where I did not play that song on the piano and Old Frank would lead the men in the audience in that song with tears in his eyes and in the eyes of many of those men. Everything would get a little misty for me as well as I listened to these broken, off-key, some drunken, voices sing this old hymn with the fervor and passion which could only come from the heart.

I’ve struggled with that word glory for many years. It is the word kavod in Hebrew which means being heavy, being great spiritually, being wealthy an abundance, and splendor. In the Aramaic the word for glory shavach which is a satisfying fulfillment, a calm and feeling of completeness. In Babylonian or Talmudic Aramaic it means to rise in value. The common denominator is an abundance that can only be an abundance of God’s racham love.

Psalms 29:9 tells us that the voice of God causes people to shout “glory!” What are they shouting? I think these men I knew as a child who struggled all their lives to just live a normal life without their addiction, being a good husband and father knew that one day they would be made complete, fulfilled and be of great value to the God who saved them such that they would condense it all in two words to describe that one day when it would all be ok. They summed it up by saying “Well, glory.”

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