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Tutorial on Original Language

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Diggers, Be Strong and of Good Courage! (We’ve got this together.)

So many sisters, first-time diggers, are joining our upcoming Glory study.  This is thrilling for me because I know, as I’ve said so many times, that women in the Word translates into stronger churches, righteous homes and the souls of our posterity in heaven one day. Bible study, for God’s women, is emphatically crucial for the future of our families, both physical and spiritual. I hope you will be prayerful and encouraged with me as we specifically seek His glory and the honor of glorifying Him this year. 

Some of you have been digging for all eight of our past years and have gotten very good at figuring out Greek and Hebrew meanings of the words you read in the text. But some of you are already finding the new study challenging because the first chapter requires finding some words in your Bibles that have been translated from  the Hebrew words kabad or kabed. 

I want to beg those who may be struggling, at first, to find the words for which we are searching, to hang in there. I think I can safely promise you that, if you’ll give the study a month or two, with the help of those who are on the facebook page, your rewards will be rich beyond what you can be praying as you seek His will in His word. 

So, today, a little tutorial that might be useful to those who are exploring Hebrew words for the first time. Remember, generally, the words in your Old Testament were written in Hebrew. The words in your New Testament were written in Greek. So, in chapter one, we’re looking at some different ways that kabad or kabed or even kawbode were translated into English in our Bibles. 

  1. Look on the first page of the study and notice all the meanings of the Hebrew word “kabad”. Read over these meanings a couple of times. Here they are: כָּבַד ḵâḇaḏ; or כָּבֵד kabed; a primitive root; to be heavy, i.e. in a bad sense (burdensome, severe, dull) or in a good sense (numerous, rich, honorable; causatively, to make weighty (in the same two senses): — abounding with, more grievously afflict, boast, be chargeable, x be dim, glorify, be (make) glorious (things), glory, (very) great, be grievous, harden, be (make) heavy, be heavier, lay heavily, (bring to, come to, do, get, be had in) honour (self), (be) honourable (man), lade, x more be laid, make self many, nobles, prevail, promote (to honour), be rich, be (go) sore, stop.AV (116) – honour 34, glorify 14, honourable 14, heavy 13, harden 7, glorious 5, sore 3, made heavy 3, chargeable 2, great 2, many 2, heavier 2, promote 2, misc 10;to be heavy, be weighty, be grievous, be hard, be rich, be honourable, be glorious, be burdensome, be honoured
  2. Now let’s learn to find that word kabad in various places in your Bible. Very early in the chapter, for instance, you will be instructed to find the word kabad translated in Esther, chapter five. You might be able to locate it by just remembering some of the different words from the definitions we just studied. 
  3. But, if you are unsure where the word “kabad” is, in Esther 5, a good simple way to find it is to go to this very helpful site: https://www.biblehub.com.
  4. Here, there will be a little drop-down menu on the top right-hand side of the page. since we are looking at the Hebrew language, click on Hebrew on that menu.
  5. Then you will see a place to type in your Hebrew word. In this case, we would type kabad.
  6. Then you will see several forms of that word listed. The first word you see is Strong’s #3513— Kabad, But when you click on that, you don’t see Esther 5 anywhere in the list of verses containing this word. So you proceed to the second form of the word, which is Strong’s #3515—kabed. Once again, Esther 5 is not in the list of verses shown when you click on this one. Next is Strongs #3519 (kawbode). This time you find Esther 5 on the list of verses. and you see that kawbode is translated glory in a couple of versions. At the top of the page, you can also click on any of several versions, to view them at any time.

 I hope this is a helpful beginning. In addition, I am currently using a Bible program called Olive Tree on both my laptop and my phone. The basic program is free, it is intuitive and I’ve purchased Strong’s lexicon for the ESV, the KJV, and the NKJV for that program. The program is here: https://www.olivetree.com. E sword, a similar program. also has a free app and it is here: https://www.e-sword.net. Logos is a bit more expensive, and is here: https://www.logos.comBut still, as you can see, you can go to Bible Hub and get the information free and fairly simply. 

Also, it never hurts and usually is very helpful to just google the word you think you’re looking for. For instance, I just googled “glory in Esther 5” and the verse I needed popped right up.

Finally, if you do not want to use the computer at all, you can use the old-fashioned books. You just need an interlinear Bible that contains both the English and the Hebrew/Greek. Here’s an example:
Get one that’s keyed to Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance and each word in the Interlinear Bible will have a number. You use that number to find the word in your Strong’s Concordance. (So, you just need those two books: an interlinear Bible like the one above, and a Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance.I think “Exhaustive” means it has the Greek and Hebrew in there.) Sometimes I like to feel real paper and flip through real pages. These books are easy to use. Once upon a time, I exclusively used these two books to find word meanings!

Most importantly of all, don’t give up. (My husband just said that some of us might be scared away by what seems a little lofty, at first.  Let’s show him that “We ain’t afraid -a-no-Greek!”) Post your questions in the facebook group and I will help you or someone will. (I’ve already had several qualified ladies to volunteer to help with any word study questions you may have and I know there are many more who would.) Getting to the original language and the original definitions of the words we are reading is such a very good and rich tool for our study. And we do not need to be Greek/Hebrew scholars to find these meanings. I know very little about the languages. But I know how to google!  At no time in history has it been this easy to understand word meanings–to research the original intent and weight of what the Holy Spirit said! Additionally, in the first month’s podcast, I’ll help you with every question in the first month’s study, just to make sure we are all on the same page, literally and figuratively. The date of that podcast will be announced later today!

I PROMISE, you will be glad you learned to find the original meanings of the words in your Bible. Stick with it for a couple of months and you will be so glad you did.  (Most of you already  learned to drive, to cook, to coordinate clothing, to navigate Ebay and explore Pinterest. If you can do any of these things, you can look up Bible words….Besides, if I can look up these words, anybody can.) The most important information we can discover while living on this earth is definitely in this one volume we call the Bible. Its veracity has been exposed and proven time and again. Its relevance is in its power to lead us to safety beyond death…a commodity that 100 percent of us will desperately need…and in the near future. You don’t have to have a lexicon to get to heaven, of course. But using one will likely enrich the study of the manual for life and death. Let’s together move our study to the next level! 

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