Inseparable Unions: Semitic Semantics Reveals God’s Grand and Mysterious Ontologies

Starting with the earliest texts in the Hebrew canon, the concept of the “Word,” spreads into the entire Tanakh (Old Testament), into the New Testament, and into Christian life, theology, and spirituality in general. This rich and fertile concept has shaped the experience of faith, and the life of faith, for several thousand years.

The English word — like its parent, the German Wort — has a relatively specific and small semantic field. It refers to linguistic entities, spoken or written. The Greek logos is somewhat more expansive.

The Hebrew dbr, however, has a semantic field larger by orders of magnitude. This semitic root is capable of referring to things which have no linguistic nature at all. It is necessary therefore to work on expanding the concept of “The Word of God” into something much larger than the English “word” can ever completely circumscribe.

The Semitic root dbr can form a variety of verbs and nouns which equate roughly to “events and things” in English. Thus the “Word of God” is also the “Things of God” and the “Events of God.”

There is in such Hebraic thought no sharp distinction between word and object, in contrast to some schools of modern thought, which see such a distinction as foundational to knowledge. The philosopher Quine titled his book Word and Object, but much of modern philosophy would be more aptly characterized as dealing with “Word or Object.”

In Semitic thought and culture, it is not that dbr can mean word or event. It is that dbr means word and event — both equally and simultaneously. When a Hebrew prophet writes of the “Dbr of the Lord,” he writes of the “Word and Action” of the Lord.

The conjunction and refers here to a co-extensiveness. Where God’s Word is, there also is His action and His events. Commutatively, where God’s action and events are, there also is His word. This gives ground for a fresh consideration of those stock phrases which are used in spiritual life.

When Christians speak of a ministry of “Word and Sacrament,” these are not two separate things like “hammer and nail” or “salt and pepper.” Where the written and preached Word truly is, there also will be Sacraments, and vice-versa.

Likewise, the analysis of “Law and Gospel” does not refer to two separate doctrines, but is one doctrine in itself. The “Law” does not have meaning or existence without the “Gospel,” and the reverse is true as well. Both Law and Gospel are present, and inextricably intertwined with each other, in the very foundational text composed of the first eleven chapters of Genesis.

The Incarnation, so central to Christian thought, articulates Jesus as both God and man, being thoroughly God and thoroughly man, so much so that the post-Resurrection and post-Ascension Jesus is understood to still be fully human and fully divine. The and of the Incarnation is not the and of “ketchup and mustard.”

Because leaving one nation-state entails entering another, every immigration is also an emigration, and vice-versa. This example might shed light: the and of “immigration and emigration” is more similar to the and of “Wine and Blood,” as the communicant receives both, and they cannot be sorted out or separated one from another.

So it is that, continuously throughout the Tanakh, the dbr refers to the “Word of the Lord” and the “Events of the Lord” and the “Things of the Lord” simultaneously and co-extensively throughout. It is not a case of “either/or” but a case of “both/and.”

If the dbr of the Lord is God’s Word, and God’s Things, and God’s Events, then where the dbr is, God Himself cannot be far off. So John writes that “the Word was God.” The Incarnation, so simply phrased as “the Word became flesh,” uses an intransitive verb with two nominative subjects: “Word” and “flesh” are coextensive and simultaneous.

So it was that Semitic philology led Martin Luther to find these key insights in Scripture, as author Frank Seilhamer writes:

This concept of “speech” or “Word of God” being God himself, Luther grasped from his study of the Old Testament. Though not a critical scholar in the modern sense Luther was quite cognizant of the root meanings involved in the terms used by the writers of the Scriptures. He was, therefore, quite careful to point out the implication involved in the Hebrew word dabar used by the writer, or writers, of Genesis that referred to God’s activity in “speaking.” He noted in his commentary on this book that dabar had two meanings. Not only does it mean “Word,” but it also means “thing.”

Man being made in God’s image, there is a similar, but much weaker, connection between a man’s being and a man’s words.

If a man’s character and honor — and in some real ontological sense, his being — are inherent in his words, then how much more so is this principle true of God and His Word!

Frank Seilhamer continues:

Luther was cognizant of the fact that the term therefore implies substance and power, as well as message. When a man “speaks,” dibber, he “makes works.” But this means more than that he makes sounds that convey thoughts or ideas. In the Hebrew mind “words” are messengers that carry not only a man’s thoughts, but his honor, his pledge, his essence. In a real sense his “word” conveys his personality; they are an extension of his personality!

The insight that dbr reveals that God’s Word and God’s Actions and God’s Events are inseparable from one another, and intrinsic in one another, hints at why several key Christian doctrines are formulated as pairs: Law and Gospel, Wine and Blood, Jesus is God and Jesus is man, ministry is Word and Sacrament.

Brokenness vs. Sinfulness — The Difference and Why It Matters

As humans, we are both sinful and broken. This is true of all of us. It is part of the inescapable human condition. Jesus was broken. Jesus was not, and is not, sinful. So it can be seen that these are two different qualities.

This might be a potential definition of brokenness: It is the inescapable effect of living in a fallen world. Jesus is perfect, yet He was impacted by the fallenness of the world. This demands another distinction: the one between sinfulness and fallenness.

We might hypothesize that fallenness is the inclination of the human heart toward sin: its susceptibility to temptation. Human nature as it exists in the post-Fall era is fallen. Jesus is fully human, but possesses the original human nature from the pre-Fall era. Fallenness is the predisposition to sinfulness.

The reader should note that the above-stated attempts at definitions are tentative guesses and not mature positions supported by documentation and argumentation.

These concepts are rattling around in the first few verses of chapter nine in John’s gospel:

As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

So also in chapter thirteen of Luke’s gospel:

There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”

Jesus is confronting our tendency to link suffering — and the brokenness of the world makes suffering ubiquitous, inevitable, and apparently random — to direct moral responsibility. He’s telling us that suffering is often, not always, not the specific result of a specific sin. Humans experience brokenness — financial, physical, emotional — not as a consequence of their sins, but as a consequence of the world’s fallen condition. The experience of brokenness is the result of having been born into a fallen world.

In contemporary idiom, Jesus is warning against “blaming the victim.”

Yet human thought patterns often direct us to do precisely that. Why did that person get cancer? Did he smoke cigarettes, or fail to eat an all-organic non-GMO diet? Why did this person suffer from disabling musculoskeletal pain? Did she exercise too much? Or not enough?

Jesus blends His omniscience with His mercy when he says, “neither.” Neither this man nor his parents.

Our faulty human thinking, in its tendency to subtly blame the victim — and here subtlety is the most damning and the most damaging aspect of this inclination, because it is couched in seemingly pious language with the alleged purpose of comforting, and in its most subtle form, the speaker may not even be aware of what the words logically entail — is itself fallen, and blind both the damage it causes and to the absurdity it requires. For, if some connection is asserted between the sufferer’s misery and sinfulness, then the speaker would have to ask reasonable questions, like, those who need contact lenses, or “lasik” surgery, or eyeglasses — do they experience these things because of their sinfulness? If one has bunions on the feet, or has an allergy to certain foods, do we draw a connection between those conditions and the individual’s sinfulness?

All humans are impacted, in one way or another, by the fact that they were born into a broken world. In working to have compassion for those who suffer, we realize that they differ in degree, not in kind, from those who may have little suffering.

Practical ministry to those in misery must include an assurance that they, like the man born blind, like those on whom the Tower of Siloam fell, did not bring this upon themselves, and are not to be reckoned worse than other people.

There is a connection between sin and suffering. Adam and Eve brought suffering into the world because they chose disobedience. But we have no logical basis from Scripture to say to the suffering person today that her or his actions brought suffering into her or his life.

Adam and Eve are to blame for this world’s fallenness and for the brokenness which works misery in the lives of people. The suffering individual to whom we minister is in no way to blame.

There are those whose actions — whose sins — have brought pain upon themselves. But we must be hesitant to give that diagnosis. Even in cases when it may seem obvious that an individual’s sins have brought suffering upon him or her, we do not know, and we cannot know, all the variables in the individual’s history, and all the unseen and unseeable spiritual forces which have worked and which are working in that indiviual’s life. Hence Christ’s command to visit those in prison with compassion. It may seem obvious that their crimes have landed them in jail, and that they’re getting what they deserve, but only God knows the heart perfectly.

If then we are to treat those in prison with such grace and respect, how much more so those who suffer physical or emotional pain which is in no way a consequence of their actions?

Jesus suffered. Jesus was broken. Jesus experienced the effects of living in a fallen world. Yet Jesus was, and is, sinless. He sets the tone for our ministry to those in misery.

The focus of our ministry is to be compassionate words and compassionate actions. We can admit that we don’t know — we don’t have all the explanations — about why suffering in a particular case has invaded the life of a particular person. We can show that we care about that person. We can serve that person. We can listen to the suffering person. We can give them the valuable gift of our time. That is appropriate ministry to those who suffer.