100 Prison Meditations: Cries of Truth from Behind the Iron Curtain (9 page)

Why Did Jesus Change Water Into Wine?

I spent many years among criminals, hearing from them of all the debacles that alcoholism produces. If I had such power, I would change all the alcoholic beverages into water. Why did Jesus do the opposite and change water into wine at the marriage feast in Cana (John 2:7–11)?

The word “wine” in biblical times did not mean what it means today. Natural fermentation produces a maximum of only 14 percent alcohol. Higher alcohol content kills the yeast cell that produces it. Modern alcoholic beverages, which are 50 percent or more alcohol, are a result of freezing and distillation processes unknown in antiquity. In ancient Palestine, wine contained no more than 8 percent alcohol because of the limited amount of natural sugar in grape juice. The Jews had no sugar cane and so could not add sugar.

A second consideration is that both the English Bible and the Greek New Testament translate two different Hebrew words as “wine” or, in Greek,
oinos
.

Tirosh
occurs 38 times and has correctly been translated into Latin as “must” or “fresh wine.” This word probably does not refer to a fermented drink, but indicates rather a fresh fruit of the harvest as in the expression “corn, wine and oil.” In Proverbs 3:10, Hosea 9:2, and Joel 2:24,
tirosh
is said to be filling the presses, so it could not be anything other than grape juice freshly squeezed. Isaiah speaks about
tirosh
as “found in the cluster.” I cannot understand how translators could use the word “wine” for a juice still in the cluster. Micah said, “Thou shalt tread…
tirosh
” (6:15), which cannot possibly be considered as wine.

Yayin occurs 153 times and means fermented wine, but with a limited percentage of alcohol as explained above.

If the story of the events in Cana is translated so that Jesus changed water into must, it would be more consistent with the condemnation of drunkenness and the commandment of sobriety so often repeated in the Bible.

Daring Arguments With God

Saints have sometimes dared to argue with God. And sometimes they have won. When God decided to destroy the Israelites because they were worshiping the golden calf, Moses said to Him, “Turn from Your fierce wrath, and relent from this harm to Your people…And the Lord relented from the harm which He said He would do to His people” (Exodus 32:12,14).

Job accused God of laughing at the trial of the innocent and giving the earth into the hand of the wicked (9:23,24). David prayed in despair, “How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever?” (Psalm 13:1).

The Lord said to Cain (after the latter killed Abel), “Where is Abel your brother?” He answered, “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4:9). Cain was, in effect, saying, “You, O Lord, are the Keeper, the one who should watch over all creatures, and yet You ask me concerning Abel.” The situation may be compared to that of a thief whose burglary escaped notice until morning. When the watchman caught him, he asked, “Why did you steal?” The thief answered, “I am a thief by profession, and I do my work regularly. Your profession is to stand watch at the gate. Why did you abandon your profession? And now you ask me why I stole!” Thus, too, Cain might have spoken to God: “I killed Abel; but You allowed in me the impulse to evil. You are the Keeper of all and yet You permitted me to kill him.
You
have killed him! If You had accepted my offering as You accepted his, I would not have been jealous of him.”

A man once came to a pastor for advice. “What should I do about blasphemous thoughts that pass through my mind?” he asked. “I am assailed by the idea that there is no God and that if He does exist, He is not good. This drives me to madness because if this were the case, the world and life would be entirely senseless. How could we continue to be in a world without a good God?” The pastor answered, “Do not fear. Just go on with your ‘blasphemous’ thoughts.”

Rabbi Elimelekh of Lizhensk once sent his disciples on the eve of the Day of Atonement to observe the actions of a tailor. “From him,” he said, “you will learn what a man should do on this holy day.” From a window they saw the tailor take a book from his shelf in which was written all the sins that he had committed throughout the year. Book in hand, the tailor addressed God: “Today, the day of forgiveness for all Israel, the moment has come for us—you, God, and myself—to settle our account. Here is the list of all my sins, but here also is another volume in which I have written down all the sins that You have committed—the pain, the woe, and the heartache that You have sent me and my family. Lord of the universe, if we were to total the accounts exactly, You would owe me much more than I would owe You! But it is the eve of the Day of Atonement, when everyone is commanded to make peace with his fellow. Hence, I forgive You for Your sins if You will forgive me for mine.” The tailor then poured himself a cup of wine, pronounced the blessing over it, and then exclaimed: “
L’hayyim!
(To life!), Master of the world. Let there now be peace and joy between us, for we have forgiven each other, and our sins are now as if they never were.”

The disciples returned to Rabbi Elimelekh, recounted what they had seen and heard, and complained that the tailor’s words were overly impudent before heaven. Their master answered that God Himself and His heavenly court had come to listen to what the tailor had said in great simplicity, and the tailor’s words had caused great joy in all the spheres.

Speak with God as with a friend. You can be honest with Him. If you consider something He does unjust, say so. Do not cover your inner complaints with flatteries that are not sincere.

God had decided that only males would inherit in Israel. The daughters of Zelophehad pleaded with Moses to return to God and tell Him that since their father had no sons, the law should not apply to them. They should inherit even though they were females. Moses returned with God’s answer: “The daughters of Zelophehad speak what is right” (Numbers 27:7).

Be daring with God. Not all His decrees are definitive. Through clearly expressing your dissatisfactions and doubts, you may receive understanding.

El—A Name of God

Hebrew is a unique tongue—spare, lean, sinewy, yet rich, even poetic. Built around a skeleton of a mere 400 roots, it impresses when fleshed out. Able to bear heavy burdens of thought, it flexes its musculature with great subtlety and hides the secrets of its skill from all but the learned or enlightened.

Many languages contain homonyms, but none so many as the Semitic tongues. Yet the different meanings of a word must have a connection between them in the deeper layers of our psyche, or men would not have chosen to use the same vehicle for different notions.

Therefore, by translating a given Hebrew word into its English equivalent, one does not carry across the whole truth, since in Hebrew, as in several other Semitic idioms, a word has not one but a cluster of meanings. In the Chicago Assyrian dictionary, for instance, eight pages were needed to relate all the possible interpretations of the Semitic word
abu
.

A modern illustration of this clustering of meanings (in this case, among homonyms) comes to mind. Sigmund Freud once wrote of a German psychotic who was obsessed with the idea that rats (
Ratten
in German) were attacking him. Under psychoanalysis it was established that he was worried about two things: he could not pay the installments (in German,
Raten
) on his house, and because of this he was not able to marry (in German,
hei-raten
). These concerns, exhibiting themselves in similar words, were behind his obsession with rats.

Likewise, with Semitic languages, words with the same or similar sounds are related, though more deeply, strongly, or expressively than is the case with our modern European languages.

We must keep these subsurface relationships in mind in order to understand
El
, a name frequently used for God in the Hebrew Bible. (The corresponding Sumerian and Ugaritic name for God is Il.) In the original Hebrew text of the Old Testament, there were no vowels. The name
El
was written with the letters Aleph, a mute sound, and L. Therefore, “
El
” is not the only possible pronunciation of these two letters; they are sometimes pronounced “Al.”

As “
El
” they meant “God,” “toward,” or “against”; as “Al” they meant a mild prohibition, a negative wish, like the Greek me. We find this “Al” in 1 Samuel 22:15: “Let not the king impute anything…” It is obvious that nobody could give the king an order, so the word “Al” is substituted for an absolute command. It is used only with the so-called jussive form of the verb, which is a semi-command.

When a Hebrew pronounced or read a word, all its possible connotations collaborated in producing an impression upon him, just as a chord struck on a piano sets up sympathetic vibrations in every other stringed instrument within range. Likewise, when he approached God
El
, he knew he was approaching a mysterious Being who cannot be reached in this life but who always remains a direction “toward” (
El
) which one moves.

In addition, the one who worships Him automatically becomes a man who is “against”—the same word
El
. Henceforth, he must swim against the stream. Christians, wrote Paul, are not conformed to this world (Romans 12:2). They know which way the wind blows, but they follow their own course.

The moment one calls upon God
El
, another string vibrates: “Al”—the discreet advice, “Please don’t!” A relationship with God includes, then, acceptance of the “Al,” of His plea, “Don’t rush to do this thing you have in mind.” It also invites recognition of the fact that He never spoke against an action unless it was harmful to the individual or to society.

In Hebrew
El
signifies the aim, God, as well as the directing of the heart to Him. Prayer is
El
just as the person to whom one prays is
El
. Thus, “toward” and “God” are the same word in divine revelation.

It behooves us, then, to pronounce
El
, the name of God, bearing all this in mind. Let us repeat it with love…
El
. Just as the name of an earthly beloved—a bride, a child, a sweetheart—brings honey to the mouth, so the names of the Lord, infused with His glory, are sweet.

The Lord taught His disciples to pray, “Hallowed be Your name” (Matthew 6:9). Summarizing His work on earth that last evening before Gethsemane and Golgotha, He said to His Father, “I have manifested Your name” (John 17:6). If we pronounce His name with piety and devotion, our eyes will behold His attributes and His wonderful works.

Often we use the word “God” casually, without reverence. Not so the Jews who, when they write the scroll of the Law for the synagogue, immerse themselves in water for purification as often as they come to one of His names. If they write it fifty times a day, they immerse fifty times—sometimes, in winter, in icy water.

Within an acorn resides an oak. In the short name
El
, the Godhead lives. Pronouncing His name with devotion helps to unite our mind with His and enlarge our understanding.

Between us and our names there is often a difference. A human being can have the name of Mary without being pure; the name of Magdalene without watching faithfully at the foot of His cross; the name of Paul without being an apostle; the name of Richard without having a lion-heart. With God the difference between Himself and His name does not exist. We magnify Him when we magnify His name. He speaks through us when we have His name reverently on our lips.

If the names of God are a flight of steps leading to God himself,
El
is the first step. Flies buzz indiscriminately from blossoms to dunghills, bees only from flower to flower. So we should move from one name of God to another, settling from time to time also on His commandments, precepts, miracles, and on His life as reflected in His saints.

The Hebrew
El
, as well as
Elohim
, another name, like the word “god” in English, was used also for men. God said to Moses, “You shall be to him [Aaron] as God” (Exodus 4:16). Jesus said to His Jewish audience, quoting the Psalmist, “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, “You are gods”’?…He called them gods, to whom the word of God came” (John 10:34,35).

If we seek earnestly to know God
El
and speak His holy name with reverence, we too may find ourselves, in time, individuals toward whom the desires of many turn. Our loving words and our meek “don’ts” will have value. We may even become symbols to those who are against unrighteousness. Such are the gracious significations included in the seminal holy syllable:

El.

Compound Names of God

The possibility of giving names to any thing or person, including God, is circumscribed by the limitations of language itself. First of all, a given language has a certain number of letters or characters at its disposal in the formation of words. Suppose, for instance, that God had a name requiring for its expression an English “w,” a Spanish “n” (as in
mañana
), or a German “ö.” Such a name would not have been accessible to the Hebrews because their language contained neither these sounds nor their corresponding letters. By the same token, the Hebrew name of Jesus—
Jeshua
—cannot be written accurately in English.

Second, the potential for giving names depends on the available substantives, verbs, adjectives, and so on, of a language. The aggregate is called in Sanskrit
naman
, from which the Greeks derived
anoma
and the English
name
. The name of God, then, is the sum total of words in which His character can be expressed. Thus, when you pray, as Jesus enjoined in the Lord’s Prayer, “Hallowed be Your name,” recognize its limitations. Look to the reality for which there are no names in our language, the real person beyond any name in any tongue.

Because no name is complete or all-embracing, there are many names for God in Scripture. The Son of God could be called the Lamb or the Lion of Judah. But when He was introduced to the Eskimos, these names were meaningless, since they had no knowledge of such animals. Other names had to be found.

One should be wary of confounding a name with identification. God has many aliases because every name of His is only an approximation.

Even the word “name” has a double sense in Hebrew. The corresponding word is
Shem
. Now, Shem is one of the sons of Noah and the progenitor of the Semitic race. In Scripture his name stands for the Semites, just as Japheth stands for the Indo-German race descended from him. When Jesus taught His Jewish disciples the Lord’s Prayer, He said, “
Jitgadal shimcha
.” We have here a typical example of how ideas reduced to words can be exposed to different interpretations. The words can be correctly translated “Hallowed be Your name” and “Hallowed be Your semitic race.” He who wishes to hallow God must of necessity approach Him as He is, beyond words.

To overcome this difficulty, the Bible provides not only simple names of God such as El, Elohim, and YHWH (Yahweh or Jehovah), but also compound names, just as in mathematics one uses not only whole numbers but also decimals to arrive closer to reality.

For instance, the Lord appeared to Abraham as
El-Shaddai
(Genesis 17:1), which means “a sufficient God.”

The English translation of Exodus 15:26 says, “I am the Lord who heals you.” But the Hebrew uses only two words, a compound name of God:
Jehovah-Rophe
, the healing Jehovah. Furthermore, the Hebrew does not contain the idea that He heals “you.” God does not revolve around your person. He simply heals.

Jehovah-Jireh
(Genesis 22:14) means literally “God who sees to it or who provides.”
Jehovah-Megaddesh
(Leviticus 20:8) is “God who renews or sanctifies.”
Jehovah-Shalom
(Judges 6:24) is “God-peace.”

Jehovah-Nissi
(Exodus 17:15) means “God—my wonder” or “God—my sign.” This compound name is also the name of an altar built to God, to indicate that approaching the altar can signify approaching God Himself.

The name
Jehovah-Tsidkenu
(Jeremiah 23:6), meaning “God—our righteousness,” belongs not only to the Godhead, but also to His people, since the Jewish nation is called by this name. Thus, joining His flock is like joining God.

One interesting compound name is
Jehovah-Shammah
(Ezekiel 48:35), meaning “God is there.” In Hebrew, “there” when applied to a male subject is
sham
; when applied to a female, it is
shammah
. Here is a case in which the name of Jehovah is linked to a female substantive, indicating the all-encompassing nature of His love and concern for His creatures.

The names by which a sovereign God deigns to be called in Scripture to reveal His character to humanity are many and varied and could inspire volumes. Their very multiplicity underscores the difficulty of reducing the Godhead to the limitations of human language. But they are intended to reveal to sinful man the many facets of a loving God.

How sad it would be for a lover to know only the name of his beloved, when he desires the beloved herself. To sanctify the name of God—to pray “Hallowed be Your name”—means to advance from knowledge
about
God to the blessed reality of His presence.