Wednesday Bible Study Message Summary
Jeremiah 1, No.5 (4/25):
When the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, he responded by saying:
The word of the Lord came to me: "What do you see, Jeremiah?" "I see the branch of an almond tree," I replied. The Lord said to me, "You have seen correctly, for I am watching to see that my word is fulfilled (vv. 11-12)."
In the original language, “almond tree” is shaqed, and the verb “watching” is shoqed. Note that both words have the same three consonants sh, q and d. In Semitic languages, words are always constructed with three consonants, and the same three consonants mean that the words came from the same cognate word. Words with the same consonants usually carry the same or similar nuances. It is not clear, however, that these two words shaqed and shoqed share the same cognate, but they were probably associated with each other in people’s mind. Almond trees come to have flowers before the leaves in early spring just like sakura. They grow widely in Middle East.
According to the book of Exodus, the lampstand placed in the holy place of the Tabernacle was in the shape of almond branches, and the cups for the lamps were shaped like almond flowers. They were all made as the Lord had commanded. Apparently, Jeremiah was already well familiar with this fact since he was a son of a priest. So, most likely this play on words by the Lord was not a surprise to him. This kind of association of two words with the same consonants must have been easily recognized by the native speakers.
There is another key to the hidden truth. Our scientific understanding of how an eye works was very different from the way the ancient people thought of an eye. For us, an eye is a lens with its retina—a screen behind it. Light goes through the lens and an image is shown on the retina, and the information is sent to the brain through the nerve so that we can perceive it as an image. But for them, an eye was something that gives light like a lamp to the heart of a person. And the lamps in the Tabernacle were the Lord’s eyes that shine the holy place.
Zechariah saw an interesting vision:
He asked me, "What do you see?" I answered, "I see a solid gold lampstand with a bowl at the top and seven lights on it, with seven channels to the lights (Zech 4:2).
The angel expected him to know what this vision meant, but he did not know. So he asked the angel what these were, and he answered:
These seven (lights) are the eyes of the Lord, which range throughout the earth (v. 10).
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