A Linguistic Connection Between Power and Temples

Sometimes during my lunch breaks at work I pull out my set of Biblical Hebrew flashcards. I like to review key words that tend to resurface throughout the Old Testament, and one of those I came across a few weeks ago was the word for temple, hey-KHAL (הֵיכָל). The great thing about this and many other words in Biblical Hebrew is that often you’ll find common consonant combinations that reveal associated meanings.

In the case of hey-KHAL (הֵיכָל), we see the three letter root yod-khaf-lamed ( ל+ כ + ׳). This root appears is many words related to the idea of power and ability, including the noun יְכוֹלֶת (yeh-KHOH-leht), which signifies “power, ability, capability, capacity, competence, possibility” and the verb לִיכוֹל (lee-KHOHL), which means “to be able to, capable of, possess power to”. Lastly, the Hebrew term for “almighty” or “omnipotent” is kohl yah-KHOHL (כֹּל יָכוֹל), literally translating to “all-powerful, all-capable”.

After reviewing this word, I thought about how temples have been a focal point in God’s relationship to mankind over the centuries, and that whenever the Lord has established His covenant relationship with people in various times and places throughout history, He has always commanded them to build temples. One of the Lord’s key promises as part of this covenant relationship is that He will manifest His presence and power in temples as long as His people live worthy of these blessings.

The temple-power connection resurfaces throughout the scriptures, especially when temples are dedicated. The first example we have is related to the tabernacle that Jehovah commanded Moses and the people of Israel to build while in the wilderness. Shortly after the tent and all its contents were consecrated and dedicated to the Lord, He demonstrated His power in various ways to the wandering Israelites.

“And on the day that the tabernacle was reared up the cloud covered the tabernacle, namely, the tent of the testimony: and at even there was upon the tabernacle as it were the appearance of fire, until the morning. So it was always: the cloud covered it by day, and the appearance of fire by night.”

Numbers 9:15-16

Later, at the dedication of the Temple of Solomon, Jehovah again showed His acceptance of the structure and the sacrifices made by His people to build a House of God through manifestations of His power.

“Now when Solomon had made an end of praying, the fire came down from heaven, and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices; and the glory of the Lord filled the house. And the priests could not enter into the house of the Lord, because the glory of the Lord had filled the Lord’s house. And when all the children of Israel saw how the fire came down, and the glory of the Lord upon the house, they bowed themselves with their faces to the ground upon the pavement, and worshipped, and praised the Lord, saying, For he is good; for his mercy endureth forever.” 

2 Chronicles 7:1-3

The last example comes from the prayer given to the Prophet Joseph Smith by revelation prior to the dedication of the Kirtland (Ohio) Temple, the first temple constructed during the “dispensation of the fullness of times” (see Ephesians 1:10). This prayer was first read publicly at the initial dedicatory session on March 27, 1836. The brief except I’ve included below references the temple-power connection in several places.

“And that all people who shall enter upon the threshold of the Lord’s house may feel thy power, and feel constrained to acknowledge that thou hast sanctified it, and that it is thy house, a place of thy holiness. And we ask thee, Holy Father, that thy servants may go forth from this house armed with thy power, and that thy name may be upon them, and thy glory be round about them, and thine angels have charge over them.”

 Doctrine and Covenants 109:13, 22

Later that evening, during a priesthood session that took place inside the temple, various demonstrations of Divine power were poured out on the church members. The Prophet Joseph described them in this way:

“A noise was heard like the sound of a rushing mighty wind, which filled the Temple, and all the congregation simultaneously arose, being moved upon by an invisible power; many began to speak in tongues and prophesy; others saw glorious visions; and I beheld the Temple was filled with angels, which fact I declared to the congregation. The people of the neighborhood came running together (hearing an unusual sound within, and seeing a bright light like a pillar of fire resting upon the Temple), and were astonished at what was taking place. This continued until the meeting closed at eleven P.M.”

History of the Church, 2:428

The personal take-away for me is that I'm reminded each time I attend our modern-day temples that I and every other person who is there can have access to God's power (according to our desires) in overcoming challenges and unholy influences in the world.

Amen

Before commenting on some of the varied meanings of the Hebrew word amen, I’ll write briefly about why the language has so many nouns and verbs that carry an unusually high number of multiple meanings. Compared to other languages, especially modern ones, Biblical Hebrew includes a relatively small total vocabulary. For example, The Second Edition of the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary lists 171,476 words in current use[i]. On the other side of the spectrum, Biblical Hebrew only has about 8,000. Because the Old Testament Hebrew vocabulary set is so limited, a comparatively high number of meanings are assigned to each word. This makes the language both easy and difficult to learn. Easy, because there are fewer total words to memorize in order to become fluent in the language, and hard, because it requires more time and research to learn the full scope of each word’s possible related meanings. 

When I first started studying Hebrew, it was both exciting and daunting to learn that many nouns and verbs represent five or more ideas. Take the well-known word shalom, for example. Most Westerners are only familiar with one primary meaning, that of “peace”, but shalom actually carries at least nine distinct meanings, including: peace, safety, tranquility, completeness, comfort, wholeness, well-being, hello, and goodbye.

So, what does this have to do with amen? It's another example of a Biblical Hebrew word that takes on various related meanings. Church and synagogue goers everywhere are very familiar with its two main scripture-based meanings, but its last two have added depth to my personal worship as I've learned more about their origins. 

First we’ll start with the primary meaning of amen as expressed today. It operates as a voiced agreement with a prayer, talk, or testimony and means “true”, “surely (it is so)”, or “may it be so.” This Hebrew word gets its principle meaning from neh-eh-MAHN נֶאֱמָן, which signifies “true” and “faithful”. We see the same three-letter root אמן (A-M-N א-מ-ן) from amen and neh-eh-MAHN appear in other Biblical Hebrew words and phrases that also include references to the idea of "truth". The word ahm-NAHM (אָמְנָם) from 2 Kings 19:17 is an example. It signifies "indeed" or "of a truth".

Amen is similarly anchored in the principle Hebrew word for “truth”, eh-MEHT אֶמֶת. Underlining this point, the common modern-Hebrew phrase beh eh-MEHT בֶּאֱמֶת means “Really?” or “Are you serious?”, although it's literally translated as “In truth?” As a matter of fact, the word amen is so rooted to the idea of “truth” in Hebrew that the Savior Himself is referred to as The Amen in Revelation 3:14. In this verse notice how the Lord uses the words faithful, true, and witness, which are all directly linked in meaning to the word amen, immediately after referring to Himself as "The Amen".

“And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God…”

The self-application of the word amen as one of His Divine titles makes sense seeing that He is “the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6). 

The next usage of amen is as a sealing witness by a speaker at the end of a discourse or testimony. In this case, amen changes from being a statement of agreement coming from the hearer to being an affirmation by the speaker that what he or she has just said is accurate and true. In a sense, it functions like a New Testament “verily”, except that it comes at the end of a discourse instead of at the beginning, in effect sealing the individual’s words as a personal witness or testimony. This is the common usage we come across in the scriptures where the Savior or the Apostles are testifying of truth. Besides the examples I’ve given below from the Apostle John’s testimony and the writings of the New World prophet Nephi, see Alma 13:9, Helaman 12:23-26, Ether 5:1-6, and Doctrine and Covenants 81:1-7.

“Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen.” (Revelation 1:7)

“And (1) I bear record that I saw the things which my father saw, and the angel of the Lord did make them known unto me. And now I make an end of speaking concerning the things which I saw while I was carried away in the Spirit; and if all the things which I saw are not written, (2) the things which I have written are true. (3) And thus it is. Amen.” (1 Nephi 14:29-30, emphasis added)

Nephi makes three prior testimonial statements here before capping his witness with the final affirmative amen.

There’s even more to amen when we take into account two verbs that stem from the same Hebrew root אמן (A-M-N). The third meaning comes from a verb that incorporates the concept of truth: leh-heh-eh-MEEN (לְהֶאֱמִין). It signifies “to believe”, “to trust”, and “to confide in”.  So when a listener says amen at the end of a prayer, testimony, or talk, it takes on the deeper expression of “I/we (actively) believe that what was said is true,” rather than just being a statement of passive agreement.

The last application of amen that I’ll reference here is the one that I like best, mainly because it's directly effected my personal prayer relationship with the Lord. I’ll explain what I mean by referring to another Hebrew verb that’s founded on the word amen and, again, is linked to the word “truth”. This form is the masculine, imperative (command) form of leh-ah-MEHN (לְאַמֵן), a verb that means “to teach, train, educate, tutor, coach, bring up/raise”. So, this command-form of ah-MEHN אמן, when stated at the end of a prayer, literally means, “Teach and train me (in the truth)”. It also carries an added indirect reference to our Father-child relationship with God since the verb also means to “raise” or “rear (a child)”.

This personalized amen at the end of my prayers reminds me that I need to pause and patiently wait for the Lord’s tutoring inspiration once I stop speaking, instead of rushing off to other tasks that are calling for my attention.

____________________________________________________________

[1] Oxford Dictionaries online

"To Hear is to Obey"

Shema Yisrael at the Knesset Menorah in Jerusalem

“And at the end of that time she said to Janshah, 'I wish to go with thee to thy mother land, where thou shalt marry me and we will abide there.' 'To hear is to obey,' answered he and took counsel with Shaykh Nasr who said to him, 'Go thou home, I commend her to thy care.'”

A Thousand and One Nights, The Story of Janshah (Volume 5, chapt. 74)

A few years back, at a time when my wife and I struggled daily to help our younger son, Kent, learn to follow instructions, I would often respond to his frequent misbehavior by putting him in timeout and reviewing his choices with him. On some of these occasions, especially those days when he had succeeded at wearing me down to the point I didn’t have the energy or will to creatively address his misbehavior, I would just repeat my default phrase “Kent, you need to learn to listen.” Eventually he caught hold the saying himself, and after a few seconds in timeout he would emphatically declare “I will listen!”

My wife and I know now as we knew then that Kent really didn’t have an issue with hearing or listening. In most cases, he had heard exactly what we had asked him to do (or not to do) - the problem was his failure to respond to our instructions.

It’s always interested me that in Biblical Hebrew the verbs “to listen/pay attention/hear” and “to obey” are one and the same: leesh-MOH-ah לִשְׁמוֹעַ. Not surprisingly, the same linkage exists in other regional, archaic languages. The following are some examples where I’ve listed the language followed by the single verb that expresses both “to hear” and “to obey”.

Persian – اطاعت کردن

Turkish – dinlemek

Armenian – հնազանդվել

Macedonian – слуша

The linguistic connection between hearing and obedience was so well understood in ancient Middle Eastern and Central Asian culture that for centuries the automatic response to a command was either “To hear is to obey” or "I hear, and I obey." This phrasing can be found throughout the famous compilation of Islamic Golden Age stories known as A Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights), as illustrated by the citation at the top of this post. The scriptures also point to this concept in various places. I’ll start with the Old Testament and finish with one example from the Book of Mormon.

In the Book of Genesis the connection hearing = obedience and vice versa is made as Jehovah speaks with Abraham:

“That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies. And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.” (Genesis 22:17-18) 

First line of "Shema" in Hebrew (Deut. 6:4)

Some of the best known examples of the verbal connection between hear and obey are from King David’s writings. Notice that each time the King of Judah says “hear,” he follows up with a request for the Lord to act upon or respond to (obey) his petition:

“Hear me when I call, O God of my righteousness: thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress; have mercy upon me, and hear my prayer.” (Psalms 4:1)

“Hear my cry, O God; attend unto my prayer.” (Psalms 61:1)

My favorite example from the Book of Mormon is found in Mosiah 21:15.

“And now the Lord was slow to hear their cry because of their iniquities; nevertheless the Lord did hear their cries, and began to soften the hearts of the Lamanites that they began to ease their burdens; yet the Lord did not see fit to deliver them out of bondage.”

Obviously God isn’t slow to hear our petitions in the sense that there’s a time delay between when we say our prayers and when He hears them; He knows all things from the beginning, even our thoughts and words before we express them. The verse above uses the Semitic language meaning of “to hear” to communicate the idea that God was slow to respond to (obey) the cries of His people because of their prior failure to hear (obey) Him.