Hebrew Word Study – Watch Tower – Bachan בחן  Beth Cheth Nun

Your Date Night With God

Psalms 17:3 “Thou has proved mine heart; thou hast visited me in the night.”

The above passage was taken from the KJV.  It translates the phrase “thou hast visited me in the night” in a perfect tense (completed action). I checked through every translation I could find and practically all of them translate this in the past tense. If you have ever celebrated the Sabbath evening with an orthodox family you will notice they leave their doors open during the Sabbath night prayers (or pray facing a door) to welcome the Shabbat Hamalka, the Sabbath Queen or Bride. In the Talmud, the Shabbat is compared esoterically to a bride given to us by God, whom we long for her arrival (Shabbat 119a).  

So what does this have to do with Psalms 17:3?  “Thou hast proved my heart.”  The word for proved is also in a perfect tense (completed action) from the root word bachan which literally means a watch tower.   In a sense, a watch tower is built so someone can look out over the land and prove or test his senses to determine if there is an enemy lurking around.  Yeah, I know, that is stretching it to get the idea of testing from a watchtower, but translators do that and it is appropriate.  However, do we really need to make such a stretch, why not simply call it a watchtower, someone to provide protection or to guard over a city?  Hence this passage could be rendered: “Thou has guarded or protected my heart.  More literally, “Thou has been a watchtower over my heart.”

Why does God guard or is a watchtower over the heart of David?   So he can visit him in the night.  This is where the Talmud gets the idea that what David is referring to in Psalms 17:3 is a visit from the Sabbath Queen or The Bride. This is a depiction of the feminine side of God. What the Talmud is trying to teach here is that we are encouraged to call upon God every day, but only once a week, the Sabbath, are we allowed to be in His presence. Sure, we are in God’s presence every day, but the Sabbath is meant to be a special day to be in His presence.  A husband and wife may see each other every day and be in each other’s presence every day, but many couples will set one evening apart for a date night.  A special night where they are not only together, but they forget all the problems of the day, they forget all their financial problems, problems in raising their children, struggles in maintaining a home, and for one evening this time in each other’s presence, they just focus on each other, like young lovers and enjoy just being with each other, doing special things, things they enjoy.  Such a practice can only be healthy for a marriage relationship.  Just as such a practice with God, to spend one day in each other’s presence in a special way can only benefit one’s relationship with God.  

Imagine just getting married and then having your groom or bride go out on a business trip for 6 days a week.  You make sure your presence is known to each other, you text each other tender little things like, “How’s my boopsie girl,” or you send emails relating to matters of business-like, “Did you pay the electric bill.” You even will even call each other and talk making your presence known to each other.   Yet, you can bet you will not use that one day when you are together at home to mow the lawn or fix the roof, do the laundry or do other mundane chores.  And you can bet you will spend the entire six days mowing the lawn, fixing the roof, or doing the laundry to prepare for the one day you will be in your beloved’s presence.  That is the sort of expectation that the Sabbath was meant to create.  For six days we work in God’s presence, we send him little messages like, “Sure need your help here, Lord,” or  “How am I going to pay this electric bill?” You may even send up little messages of praise and adoration during this time.  But on the one day, you call your date night or Sabbath you lay all these problems and struggles aside and you and Jesus just have a date night where you just focus on each other, hold each and simply enjoy being together.

Some Hebrew scholars suggest that the word visit pakad is really in a prophetic perfect tense.  Only in recent years have Christian Hebrew scholars begun to accept the fact that there is a prophetic perfect in the Hebrew, which is probably why it is not evident in most translations. Admittedly there are still many hold-outs who claim there is no such thing as a prophetic perfect just as they will claim there is no such thing as a paragogic in the Hebrew.  However, I am inclined to believe the prophetic perfect does exist in the Hebrew.  In a prophetic perfect we are speaking of an event that has not yet occurred as if it has already occurred.

The word for visit is pakad which literally means to visit, but has the idea of watch care (fits the watchtower idea), to nurture, to lie with, as well as all sorts of other good things.  So this visit is just not a “howdy-do thought I’d just drop over and watch the super bowl with you” type of visit.  It is a visit that provides protection. If this is indeed in a prophetic perfect tense, then what David is saying is that the Lord will visit him or provide protection but he is so convinced that this is done as God does not live in time and for God, the event has already taken place such that David is saying God has visited Him or protected him even before it has happened.  It is might be that David is filled with such anticipation of being in the presence of God on this date night that he is actually feeling the joy of the date night as he anticipates it.   

It is odd here that the bride is doing the protection.  How does a bride protect her husband?  In ancient times as even today a bride can protect her husband by fulfilling such needs that he will not be moved to lust, adultery, nasty little websites, etc.  A bride can protect her husband from sin.  This is the protection that David received from God.  God watching his heart and then visiting him in the night, the Sabbath Night, where God satisfies his needs and longings so he will not fall into sin.  When one is satisfied with his bride, then money, fame, accomplishments, and all the trappings of the world mean nothing. The world has little to entice us when we are totally satisfied in our bride Jesus. 

Women have no problem calling themselves a bride.  But for a man to call himself a bride and Jesus as his husband, well that can get a bit creepy. Matthew 22:30 suggest that there is neither male nor female in heaven, Jesus may have been male on earth but that does not mean he will be a male in heaven, particularly if there is neither male nor female.  So if the Jews see the Messiah in a feminine sense what is to stop us from doing the same?   If God is neither male nor female, why is it so bad to give God female attributes such as loving, nurturing, caring, and satisfying our needs? Like David, we can see ourselves as a bride of Christ who adorns herself and makes herself beautiful for her bridegroom but we can also see ourselves as a bridegroom to Jesus our bride with whom we look forward to spending our Sabbath evening with.  A bride who will give us such satisfaction that the sin of the world will not seduce us.

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