Aramaic  Word Study – Dawn – Chashak – Cheth Shin Kap

John 3:19: “And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.”

The other day, I had an old boy on my disability bus named Steven that I drove out to Hinsdale, which was a half-hour trip. During that time the conversation quickly turned to spiritual matters. At one point Steven said; “You may think I am crazy but I am not.”  He then told me that he was a gang banger in Chicago.  He was always getting into trouble, fighting and stealing. He never felt he was doing anything wrong. He was just trying to survive and protect himself and his little brother.  One day a rival gang shot and killed his little brother in an alley.  Steve immediately sought revenge, I mean that was the law of the streets and he was just obeying the law that he understood.  In the process of seeking vengeance, he received a blow on the head which left him with some brain damage and five years in prison.

While in prison laying on his bunk, he saw a bright light. No one else saw this light nor heard the voice he heard.  He said he knew the voice was the voice of Jesus.  He did not say how he knew, he just knew it and Jesus told him that he may have thought he was doing the right thing but he was really living in darkness and the right thing was to forgive and then to teach other young men and children the right thing to do and not the law of the street.

I am sure you are thinking the same thing that I thought, that is the story of the Apostle Paul. I mean do you honestly believe the Apostle Paul was the only one to walk the proverbial road to Damascus?  If you have something that works, why not use it a few more times?  What stood out to me, however, with the story of Steven and the story of Paul is that both felt they were doing the right thing and yet they were living in darkness.

We are seeing so much evil in the world today yet many of those committing this evil feel they are doing the right thing. They do not realize they are living in darkness. Paul thought he was serving God by murdering Christians. He saw himself as a real warrior for God and was quite proud of it.  He was a devout believer in God, prayed three times a day, followed the laws of God yet he was living in darkness.

In the Aramaic, the word for darkness is chashak. Chashak in Aramaic is cognate to chashak in Hebrew, which is darkness.  However, I was reading in the works of an Aramaic Oxford scholar and linguist William Jennings that the word for darkness in Aramaic could also be a word for morning while it is still dark.  In other words, the dawn. I often marvel at watching the dawn turn from darkness to light. It is so subtle and you are not aware of where darkness disappears and light appears.  This is the darkness that Jesus was talking about in John 3:19.

Jesus was having a dialogue with Nicodemus, who was the chief Pharisee, a Jewish scholar, member of the Sanhedrin. If anyone knew about darkness, he did.  A very basic Jewish teaching is the Yetzer Hara, or the inclination to evil.  It is what we would call, in Christian speak, the sinful nature.   The Jews, particularly the Pharisees worked very hard at overcoming the Yetzer Hara. There were some Pharisees who felt so righteous that they were worried that just looking at a woman would create lustful thoughts that when they walked down the street and saw a woman approaching they would close their eyes to avoid looking at her and having lustful thoughts. They got pretty banged up walking into walls and buildings and were thus called “bleeding Pharisees.”

Jesus was telling Nicodemus, in a very nice way, that even though he struggled to live a righteous life and felt he was a righteous man, he was still living in darkness. He needed to be born again. But this darkness-chashak in Aramaic is like the dawn or twilight. Like Steven, he was not even aware of the darkness in his life.

Jesus said something else which is very interesting and that is that humankind loves darkness rather than light. The word for love is chav, but it is in an Aphael form.  The Aphael in Aramaic is like the Hiphil in Hebrew, it is causative. Humankind is caused to love darkness rather than light. What causes you to love darkness is that you want to live in the light, you want everyone to think you are such a good virtuous person.  You love everyone; you don’t want to offend anyone. You want to accept everyone because you want to believe you are a virtuous person, a good person who is walking in the light.

Dale Carnegie in his book, How to Win Friends and Influence People said one very common human trait is that everyone likes to think they are a good person. One way to win that person over is to play on that desire to be seen as a good person.  Even Al Capone thought he was a good person being generous with his ill-gotten gain by opening soup kitchens to feed the poor and hungry. Hitler thought he was creating a better world under the Nazi empire. Yet, both were living in darkness.

The enemy is a great counterfeiter and will appear as an angel of Light. His greatest gimmick is to fool you into believing you are a righteous person, a holy person. So holy that you would expect to hear from the Vatican to receive your permission to have your face printed on a holy card. In reality, if you are not born again as Jesus taught in John 3, you will be fooled into thinking you are in the light when you are in darkness.  The Light will be chasak – obscured.  You are living in the twilight or dawn not sure if it is darkness or light.

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