Hebrew Roots · letter 12 of 22
The tallest letter: the goad that teaches.
How sure we are of this ancient picture
LikelyOriginal sign
A shepherd's staff, the ox-goad, hook at the top.
Paleo-Hebrew
The staff inverted: a long stroke curling at the foot.
Modern square
The letter as every printed Hebrew Bible sets it.
Stage 1 has no Unicode encoding, so it stays a drawing, simplified from the copies published by the scholars who studied the inscriptions themselves: Gardiner, Cross, Naveh, Hamilton. Ancient scribes varied, and no two carvings cut a letter exactly alike. Stages 2 and 3 are real Unicode text.
Sounds like
L, as in English. Lamed is the only letter that rises above the line of the writing; on a Hebrew page it is the mast in the middle of the fleet.
Written l in scholarly books.
Its number
30
letters carried number values from the Hellenistic era on
Its name means
ox-goad
Final form
none
this letter does not change at the end of a word
Lamed is the only letter in the Hebrew alphabet that climbs above the line. Everything else sits inside the band of the writing; lamed puts a mast up. Scribes have noticed and enjoyed that for as long as there have been scribes.
Its name is the ox-goad: the pointed stick a ploughman used to keep an ox moving in the furrow. From the same three letters Hebrew builds its verb for learning and teaching, lamad, and its word for a disciple, limmud: a taught one. Learning, in this language, is what happens when someone who knows keeps you moving in the right direction.
Lamed also does a job no English letter does. Glued to the front of a word it means "to" or "for" — a whole preposition in one character. A great deal of what English says with small separate words, Hebrew says with a single letter stuck on the front.
Verses 89 to 96 are lamed's, and the stanza opens on the letter doing its everyday job as a preposition: "Your word, O LORD, is everlasting; it is firmly fixed in the heavens." The Hebrew first word is l'olam, lamed glued to the word for "age" or "for ever." It is a small thing and a lovely one: the stanza about the permanence of God's word begins with the letter that means "to," pointing forward.
Isaiah uses lamed's word twice in ways that carried a long way. "The Lord GOD has given Me the tongue of discipleship" — limmudim, the taught ones — "to sustain the weary with a word." And later: "all your sons will be taught by the LORD." Jesus quotes that second line in John 6 and applies it to everyone the Father draws to Him. The ox-goad word became the word for a disciple.
“The Lord GOD has given Me the tongue of discipleship, to sustain the weary with a word. He awakens Me morning by morning; He awakens My ear to listen as a disciple.”
Isaiah 50:4→
“Then all your sons will be taught by the LORD, and great will be their prosperity.”
Isaiah 54:13→
“It is written in the Prophets: ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from Him comes to Me—”
John 6:45→
Hebrew's word for bread is lechem, and the town called Beth-lechem is "house of bread" — the place name says it plainly. Micah names that town as the place the ruler comes from, "whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting." The man born there said, "I am the bread of life." The name is not a code; it is a farming town's honest description of itself. What happened in it is the part worth sitting with.
“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come forth for Me One to be ruler over Israel—One whose origins are of old, from the days of eternity.”
Micah 5:2→
“Jesus answered, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to Me will never hunger, and whoever believes in Me will never thirst.”
John 6:35→
לֵב
lev — heart
In Hebrew the heart is where you think and decide, not only where you feel. "Love the LORD with all thine heart."
Open the word→
לָמַד
lamad — to learn, to teach
One verb for both sides of it: the letter's own name is the stick that keeps the ox in the furrow.
Open the word→
לֶחֶם
lechem — bread, food
The word inside Beth-lechem, "house of bread" — the town Micah named centuries before the birth.
Open the word→
לוּחַ
luach — tablet, plank
The tables of stone, "written with the finger of God" — and later, the tablet of the heart.
Open the word→
Psalm 119 is the alphabet walking down the longest chapter in the Bible. Every letter gets eight verses, and every one of those eight verses begins with it. Verses 89–96 are the Lamed stanza — eight lines that all open on ל. Every line stands open below, with one preacher’s comment on it directly underneath.
“Your word, O LORD, is everlasting; it is firmly fixed in the heavens.”
Psalm 119:89→
“In all changes God's Word remains firm (1Pe 1:25). Like the heavens, it continually attests God's unfailing power and unchanging care (Ps 89:2). is settled in--that is, stands as firmly as the heaven in which it dwells, and whence it emanated.”
Jamieson, Fausset & BrownCommentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)on Psalm 119:89→
“Your faithfulness continues through all generations; You established the earth, and it endures.”
Psalm 119:90→
“But that the providence and ordering power of the Word also, over all and toward all, is attested by all inspired Scripture, this passage suffices to confirm our argument, where people who speak of God say, "You have laid the foundation of the earth, and it abides. The day continues according to your ordinance."”
Athanasius of AlexandriaAgainst the Heathen 46:2 (373)on Psalm 119:90→
“Your ordinances stand to this day, for all things are servants to You.”
Psalm 119:91→
“If we are to believe this [that God knows the past, present and future] about the ages, much more must we believe it about the day of judgment, on the ground that the Son of God has knowledge of it, as being already made by him. For it is written, "According to your ordinance the day will continue." He did not merely say "the day continues" but even "will continue," so that the things that are to come might be governed by his ordinance. Does he not know what he ordered? "He who planted the ear, shall he not hear?”
Ambrose of MilanExposition of the Christian Faith 5.4.198 (397)on Psalm 119:91→
“If Your law had not been my delight, then I would have perished in my affliction.”
Psalm 119:92→
“I will never forget Your precepts, for by them You have revived me.”
Psalm 119:93→
“I am Yours; save me, for I have sought Your precepts.”
Psalm 119:94→
“The wicked wait to destroy me, but I will ponder Your testimonies.”
Psalm 119:95→
“I have seen a limit to all perfection, but Your commandment is without limit.”
Psalm 119:96→
“I have seen an end of all perfection - The word which is here rendered “perfection” - תכלה tiklâh - occurs only in this place; but a similar word from the same root - תכלית taklı̂yth - occurs in the following places: in Neh 3:21, and Job 26:10, rendered “end;” in Job 11:7; Job 28:3, rendered “perfection;” and in Psa 139:22, rendered “perfect.” It means properly “completion, perfection;” or, as others suppose, “hope, confidence.” It is rendered, in the Septuagint and Latin Vulgate, “consummation.” Luther renders it, “of all things.” It is proper here to apply it to character; to perfect virtue, or to claims to perfect virtue - either in one’s-self or in others. The word rendered “end” here refers not to the fact of its existence, or to its duration, but to a limit or boundary as to its extent. To all claims to perfection made by man, he had seen an end or limit. He had examined all which claimed to be perfect; he had found it defective; he had so surveyed and examined the matter, as to be able to say that there could be no claim to perfection which would prove good. All claim to perfection on the part of man must be abandoned forever. But thy commandment is exceeding broad - The word but is not in the original, and enfeebles the sense. The idea is, that the law of God, as he now saw it, was of such a nature - was so “broad” - as to demonstrate that there could be no just claim to perfection among people. All claims to perfection had arisen from the fact that the law was not properly understood, that its true nature was not seen. People thought that they were perfect, but it was because they had no just view of the extent and the spirituality of the law of God. […]”
Albert BarnesNotes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869)on Psalm 119:96→
“They--the heaven (Ps 119:89) and the earth (Ps 119:90). HENGSTENBERG translates, "They stand for thy judgment," that is, ready, as obedient servants, to execute them.”
Jamieson, Fausset & BrownCommentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)on Psalm 119:91→
Jewish teaching has long made much of lamed's height: alone among the twenty-two it rises above the line, and it is read as the letter of aspiration: the mind or the heart stretching upward toward what it is being taught. The height is a real feature of the script, visible on any Hebrew page. What it is taken to mean is a reading laid on the shape, and a beautiful one, repeated in Jewish teaching for centuries.
Read this way by: Jewish teaching on the letterform, widely repeated in the tradition
The devotional stream reads lamed's staff as authority, leading, and correction: the shepherd's crook that pulls a sheep back and the goad that keeps the ox honest. It sits close to something Scripture does say directly: "Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me." But the psalm makes that point with words, not with letters, and that is the distinction this portal keeps.
Read this way by: The modern "Hebrew word pictures" devotional stream (Frank Seekins; Jeff A. Benner) — named, not endorsed; Psalm 23:4 speaks for itself
