Hebrew Word Study – Divine Hug – Deveq – Daleth Beth Qop

Psalms 63:8: “My soul follows hard after you, your right hand upholds me.”

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I am having a hard time (that’s a pun) reconciling coincidences as just beating out the odds or as a message from God.  For instance, this morning I was reading about rabbis who entered a state of devekut during prayer.  As I continue on my journey to discover the heart of God, I am quite fascinated with the Jewish sage’s devotion to prayer as a means to achieve oneness with God.  There is a record of one rabbi who would roll on the floor while praying: “I don’t want to enter the Garden of Eden, I don’t want to enter the kingdom of God, I just want God.”   There is another account of a rabbi who would enter into such a deep prayer that he would begin to ask God to let him remain with him forever.  One day he was in such a deep state of prayer or devekut that it frightened the family.  The son began to shake his father to cause him to stop praying but he could not do it.  The father suddenly collapsed into his son’s arms and died.  There is a record of more than one rabbi who passed from this life to the next in such a deep state of prayer or devekut that they called it the “kiss of God.”  

Now I am not talking about such an extreme devotion to prayer, but yet there is something in this state of prayer called devekut that makes me wonder if I am just scratching the surface with my own personal poor excuse for prayer.  Anyway, I figured that would be a topic I would research later. But, oddly enough, later was really right now.  Was it just one of those coincidences or is it God trying to teach me something?

My soul was feeling distressed this morning and I figured it was time I moved from reading about man’s experience to what God is teaching, that is to spend some time in His Word.  When my soul is feeling troubled I often find myself drawn to the Psalms. I opened my Hebrew Bible and just randomly picked out Psalms 63:  I began reading and found myself getting a little bored as this Psalm was not really addressing my need.  I was just about to move to another Psalm when I read verse 8 and there it was: deveqah nepeshi acherika.  The KJV translates this as “My soul follows hard after you.”  Some translations render this as “My soul clings to you.”  The word for “follows hard’ or “clings” is (you guessed it) “deveq.”   Deveq or devekut simply means to cling to.  In Modern Hebrew, it is the word for glue.  The Jewish sages teach that it means a gateway to the heart of God through holiness and sanctification.  It looks like King David also practiced devekut.  Maybe it was not a practice so much as a way of life or just a natural state as it is for two lovers who hold hands, hug, kiss, and share an intimacy.  They do not practice intimacy, they just simply live it, it is something that is just a normal part of their relationship. 

In the context of this Psalm David is so hungry for God that his soul has entered a state of devekut or clinging (hugging) God.  One Jewish writer describes a prayer of devekut as not praying anything for yourself but seeking only to bring pleasure to God.  It is a state of total humility.   The Hebrew word for humility does not mean thinking little of yourself.  The idea of humility in the Hebrews is to lose all sense of yourself in the presence of God.  It is in this state of humility that one enters a devekut.  

My first thought, of course, is what I have been taught in my good Baptist tradition that one must never enter into such a deep meditative state.  Such a thing is dangerous, why the enemy enter? The old devil can push God aside and say: “No you don’t either, he is mine, I am going to take advantage of this moment.”  Sort of  like a man and woman on their honeymoon about to have an intimate moment when an old girlfriend arrives and says: “Ok, I’ll take over from here.”  That is not about to happen unless, of course, the old boy desires her more than his new wife.  Perhaps this is why David says that the “right hand of God sustains me.”  The right hand of God represents God’s power.  David is saying that even if he enters a state of devekut with God and loses all sense of self, the power of God will sustain him.  

Here’s the clincher, you do not need to enter a trance-like state to be in devekut.  Devekut is simply losing all sense of self. There is an old saying: “Looking out for No. 1.”  In this case that No. 1 is “aleph” or God. 

 Helen Lemel wrote a hymn back in 1922. She was married to a wealthy man, but at the age of fifty-five, she went totally blind.  Her husband left her and left with nothing. She soon became destitute. In the midst of blindness, heartbreak, and poverty, with unseeing eyes, she looked to Jesus and she saw something. She wrote about in her hymn which became popular throughout the world. “Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim.  In the light of His glory and grace.” 

I firmly believe that she entered a state of deveq, She approached Jesus asking not for her sight, not for relief from her heartbreak nor for deliverance from poverty, but simply to please Him with what little she had.  In return, God gave her a Divine Hug which sustained her until her for the next forty-three years when God gave her a Divine Kiss and took her home. 

I am sure we all have many needs and desires and our daily prayers, if we have daily prayers, are filled with requests for God to meet these needs which is fine, Scripture tells us to make our requests known unto the Lord.  However, Scripture also speaks about deveq, to pray for nothing but to draw closer to God. Jeremiah 29:13 tells us that if we seek God we will find Him if we search for Him with all our hearts. That Divine Hug comes when we seek and search for God with all our hearts, confessing sins, repenting and waiting upon the Lord.  

Perhaps now is the time to begin your quest to discover the heart of God and receive His deveq or Divine Hug. 

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