revealing roots Ronen Gregory digging deeper into


Revealing Roots is a regular feature column which digs deeper into the meaning of the Scriptures by examining the its original language—Ancient Paleo Hebrew. Each letter in Paleo Hebrew represents both a sound and a picture meaning. Each Hebrew word, therefore, consists of a meaning which is derived from the sequence of letters in a word. We believe that the ancient Hebrew language, and the Hebrew word pictures themselves, were designed by Yahweh to provide a deeper and more complete understanding of His Word.


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hat do you think of when you hear the word ‘discipline,’ as in ‘self- discipline,’ or, as it is more commonly


called, ‘self-control’? How do we get it? And, perhaps most importantly, why is it important?


In searching out the answers from an Hebraic perspective, I went to my Aramaic translation (Aramaic is a sister Semitic language to Hebrew) to look at one of the familiar verses that contains the ‘self-control’ phrase in most modern English translations, and I found this: “But the fruit of the Rukha is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faith, meekness, patience...” (Galatians 5:22,23, APNTT)1


In most modern English translations, the last of the nine listings of fruit is where you would find the Greek word translated ‘self-control’. Yet here, in its place, we find the word ‘patience’ instead. Hmm...


As Torah-guarding believers, you may be surprised to know that there is no single Hebrew or Aramaic word for ‘self-discipline’.


The Aramaic word ‘patience’ used here is M’saybranutha, and its מסיברנותא Sablanuth. סבלנות equivalent in Hebrew is


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(This is the Hebrew in its original, picture glyphs, which we will use to decipher the meaning of the word.)


In Hebrew, each letter has meaning. Each meaning is related in some way to the picture form of the letter. Therefore, the primary meaning of a word comes from the combined meanings of the letters of the root. Any additional letters add additional nuance to the word.


DIGGING DEEPER


Let us look at these words from their foundational, concrete meaning. To do this we need to look at what I call the marriage root (two letter root) Marriage two letter roots .סב of both words - form the basic meaning of any word containing the same root.


is a picture of a prop, something ס The samech which is meant to prop up or against something, and conveys the concept of support.


בּ סּ (marriage root)


is a picture of a home, something ב The bet which is meant to be entered into, and conveys the concept of inside. Together they convey the action of supporting inside.


Someone who has patience or ‘self-control’ is someone who supports (a burden) from within. I insert the word ‘burden’ because a related word means ‘burden’ and ‘bear a burden’ סבל ‘sabal’ (see Genesis 49:15 for an example). Patience and self-discipline are connected with the bearing of


“patience” סבלןות


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