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.
