Jonathan Cahn: 3 Hebrew Words That Show Us What It Means to Be a Christian
Yasha, aliyah and kavode. These three Hebrew words play a huge role in understanding not only the Bible, but also the kind of holiness God calls us to. In his New York Times best-selling book The Book of Mysteries, Jonathan Cahn takes you back to the basics and shows how these Hebrew words shed light on what it means to be a Christian.
Yasha
“The Lord is my strength and song, and He has become my salvation. He is my God, and I will praise Him; my father’s God, and I will exalt Him” (Ex. 15:2).
The word yasha is, as Cahn writes, “the answer to everything.” Yasha means to rescue, to defend, to preserve, to save, to attain victory, and to heal.
Whether we realize it or not, we spend our lives seeking yasha. We crave security and freedom. We seek to have our needs met.
The good news is, God meets our needs. From yasha comes the Hebrew word yeshua which means salvation. It is written in the Hebrew Scriptures: “God has become my yeshua.” He has become our salvation. Our Savior.
“In other words, God would become our help, our defense, our preserving, our freedom, our victory, our salvation. God would become the answer to our greatest and deepest needs,” Cahn writes.
When the name Yeshua is translated into Greek, it becomes Iesous which, when translated into English, becomes Jesus. Jesus especially is our Yeshua. He is our salvation, our rescue and our freedom from ourselves.
Aliyah
“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Ps. 119:105).
You have an aliyah to make.
Aliyah means the going up. The ascent. The journey to Jersualem is called the aliyah because the city is set on a mountain. When Jesus traveled to the Holy City, He made an aliyah. When the Jewish people returned to the Land of Israel after their exile, the return was called the Aliyah. Going to the Promised Land was known as making Aliyah or the upward journey.
We as Christ-followers are also called to make aliyah. But the journey is not literal. It’s spiritual. As the spiritual children of Israel, our lives should be an upward journey that glorifies God. Like climbing a mountain, we are to always choose the higher path. When faced with choices, we choose the one that brings about spiritual growth and glorifies God. We make our entire life the Aliyah.
Kavode
“Thus says the Lord: Heaven is My throne, and the earth is My footstool. Where then is the house that you could build for Me? And where is the place of My rest?” (Is. 66:1).
Kavode has two meanings: weight and glory. When we read in the Bible that Heaven is God’s throne, we understand that it’s where God’s weight and glory rests. The earth is just a footstool. God rests His feet on it but not His full weight.
In turn, we are to do the same. We are called to “set [our] affection on things above” and “not on things on earth” (Col. 3:2). We rest our weight on the earth lightly.
Cahn writes, “The earth is just a footstool. It isn’t the place on which you can rest all your weight or your well-being. Its possessions are only footstool problems. And its glory is only a footstool glory.”
The Book of Mysteries is a daily devotional unlike any other. New York Times best-selling author Jonathan Cahn takes you on a journey uncovering spiritual truth, end-times mysteries, and secrets of life. This book features 365 mysteries, including The Mystery of the Eighth Day, The Journey of the Bridegroom, The Portal, How to Alter Your Past, The Face in the Waters, The Maccabean Blueprint and much more. Now available in trade paper.
