the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Language Studies
Hebrew Thoughts
ash''rêy - אשרי (Strong's #835)
Happy
אשר esher (Strong's #835) should perhaps be distinguished from "blessed" בּרך bârakh (Strong's #1288) and its derivative בּרכה berâkhâh "blessing, invocation" (Strong's #1293) [see Hebrew Thoughts column on 'blessed'] and be translated as happy or fortunate. It is found only in the plural construct form אשרי... ash'rêy... "happy is..." or "[O the] happiness of ...". It turns up 26 times in this form in the Psalms out of its 45 biblical occurrences.
אשרי ash'rêy is more likely to be the phrase behind Jesus words of the Beatitudes "Blessed/Happy are ..." (Matthew 5:3-11; Luke 6:20-23) than "blessed" בּרוך bârûkh. All the translations: happy, fortunate or blessed, are difficult as fortunate implies fate or fortune; happy once implied luck and now implies bliss; blessed points to God's favour. The various English words including happy, haphazard, hapless, happen - all including the syllable 'hap' - derive from the Old Viking Norse of the second half of the first millennium and meant 'luck, chance', essentially of the gods. Curiously, "a great majority of the European words for 'happy' at first meant 'lucky'. An exception is Welsh, where the word used first meant 'wise'" (See http://www.etymonline.com/h1etym.htm).
Poverty, for example, was never regarded as a blessed state and only became a happy one when Jesus balanced it with richness in faith or inheriting the kingdom. Indeed, in Psalm 41:1 the happy man is the one who takes care of the poor and weak for God will take care of him (cf. Proverbs 14:21). We are not blessed when persecuted but we may be happy that it has been for God's name's sake (Matthew 5:10-11), it could not be regarded as fortunate.
Jacob's wife, Leah, was 'happy' when his concubine conceived and bore Asher, whose name means 'happy'. The NKJV, amongst others mixes the translation and uses 'happy' and 'blessed' when the Hebrew first uses the verb and then the noun state and then a proper name, but all from the same root.
"The Leah said, 'I am happy, for the daughters will call me blessed.' So she called his name Asher." (Genesis 30:13, NKJV)
The verbal root אשר âshar / אשר âsher (Strong's #833), akin to the similar sounding ישר yâshar 'make even, level, straight' (Strong's #3474) and עשר âshar 'be straight, build up, prosper, be rich' (Strong's #6238), actually means 'to be straight, upright, go straight, prosper, go on'. These all have very practical imagery of a difficult path made straight, or uneven ground made level, ready for building. Hence it came to be used of a man's walk in life, a straight path was a moral one and an easy one, thence a happy one. Psalms 1:1 and 119:1 used it in this way. In later Hebrew it came to also mean the idea of strength and firmness.
One of the Bible's earlier uses of אשרי ash'rêy is in Job 5:17 in which we read that "happy is the man whom God corrects", perhaps "whom God straightens out", although 'corrects' probably means to 'bring up front to put in the clear'.
Most of the biblical occurrences tend to emphasise the happy state as one that 'trusts' in the Lord (Psalm 84:12), makes Him their refuge (Psalm 2:12; 34:8; 40:4), has their sins forgiven (Psalm 32:1-2), or is drawn close to God (Psalm 65:4; 85:4) for protection or to hear his wisdom. It is rarely related to material wealth, although it could be used in that way.
Another early use is in Deuteronomy 33:29, "Happy are you, O Israel! Who is like you, a people saved by the LORD". Israel's happiness is paralleled to her salvation which in turn is not so much a theological word as a practical one describing an open place of liberty and freedom unmolested by enemies. Indeed, the verb used for 'saved' ישע yâsha 'be spacious, broad' (Strong's #3467) sounds just like ישר yâshar 'make even, level, straight' above.
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