Hebrew Word Hayah- “and came”- and it existed ויהי
Jonah 1:1 Now the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying,
My manuscript on the Divine Kiss is now in the hands of my publisher and the book should be out by Christmas. I am now working on my newest book yet untitled but it will be drawing on what I have discovered from my 60 years of research on the heart of God. I am nowhere near finished with my search but as I am now 74 years old I thought I best get my discoveries on paper while I have the chance.After 60 years of searching for the heart of God with fifty of those years searching the Scriptures in the Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic and earning a PhD in Biblical Archeology and teaching Biblical languages for over 20 years many of those on a college level, I tend to look at many familiar passages of Scripture much differently than I did a half-century ago. The story of Jonah is one of those passages.
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There is an old hymn inspired by the story of Peter walking on water, but I think of Jonah when I hear that hymn, Love Lifted Me. “But the Master of the sea heard my despairing cry, from the waters, lifted me, now safe am I, Love Lifted me.” That was Jonah who ran from God,well not accurate, he ran from the pani, of God, pani means face but as God is a Spirit and has no face we would render this using its other meaning as the presence of God. This happened when the Word of the Lord came to Jonah. Again, it’s not so accurate. In the Hebrew Word is debar which is very specific, it is the Word from the heart of God and it did not come to Jonah, it was yahi, which means it existed in the heart of Jonah.
Jonah lived in Jerusalem where everything reminded him of God and God’s heart was tugging at the heart of Jonah he could not take it anymore so he fled from his country to another country where the pagan culture would not remind him of God, but he could not shake the presence of God until he found himself in the belly of a giant fish where God’s love finally won him over.
How do I know that it was God’s love that won Jonah over and not his rather difficult circumstance in a fish’s stomach? Well, you will need to join our All Access Class to find out. That will be the topic in our Torah Study Saturday which will be recorded and posted on our subscription site as well as an In the in-depth study on Jonah and how love lifted him.
To find out why I believe it was the love and heart of God that raised Jonah, consider joining our All Access Site for this and many other In the in-depth studies and unpublished ebooks as well as five years of Bible Classes and courses on Hebrew and Aramaic at www.hebrewwordstudy.com
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Thanks & Blessings, it means a lot to me!
Thank you for letting us know about your books. Sadly many of us cannot afford books. Still it is my belief that if God wants me to read a book He will show me a way. Twice now I have received books that I didn’t expect and they are wonderful books. One was a Hebrew Bible.
Again however I must ask you where in the Bible does it say that God doesn’t have a face? Is God a Liar when He says that He speaks to Moses face to face or when He says that you can’t see His Face and live,then shows His Back to Moses? Why didn’t God say that He doesn’t have a face? I might bow down to a God that is a liar, but I could never love Him!
While it is true that God is Spirit; just what is Spirit anyway? I believe it is also true that we would not be able to see God with the eyes we have. Do you know that there are colors that most people can’t see? There are some people that are able to see more shades of color than most people.
The movie “The Wizard of Oz” was made before I was born so I didn’t get to see it in the theater,I only watched it on television when I was growing up and it was all in black and white because we didn’t have “color t.v.” Only when I saw it it in color did I then realized that none of it was filmed in true black and white because the first part was filmed with what is called “Sepia tones”. That is like a brown haze to give it a kind of a “feel” of the “dust bowl” of Kansas. Sepia is seen in some of the earliest photograph. Thus I had been mislead again by people that saw only black and white!