Numbers 6:24-27 “The Priestly Benediction”
Numbers 6:24-27 is a beautiful passage that is tucked away in between the law of the Nazirite Vow and leaders of Israel making offerings over 12 days, for the dedication of the Alter in the tabernacle. It’s an interesting place for this little passage, it’s a passage of love and blessing right after the conclusion of the Nazarite vow. To put it another way I comes right after the period of ritual separation in dedicating oneself to the Lord.
22 Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying,
23 “Speak to Aaron and to his sons, saying, ‘Thus you shall bless the sons of Israel.
You shall say to them:
24 The Lord bless you, and keep you;
25 The Lord make His face shine on you, And be gracious to you;
26 The Lord lift up His countenance on you, And give you peace.’
27 “So they shall invoke My name on the sons of Israel, and I then will bless them.”
Num 6:22-24 NASV
Now there is a bit of a linguistic error in this translation which I will get to, however the culprit is in verse 24. Most English translations are close as the word for keep can also be translated as protect or preserve שָׁמַר “Shaamar”. In most translations it will either be keep or protect as used above.
Now this is a literal translation of the Hebrew and its total fine, especially as the following verse suggest that you will have God’s attention hence his protection. However linguistically there is a very small dot called a dagesh that is not present which would be needed for that translation.
In the Hebrew of the Masoretic Text verse 24 is
יְבָרֶכְךָ֥ יְהוָ֖ה וְיִשְׁמְרֶֽךָ׃
It is not
יְבָרֶכְךָ֥ יְהוָ֖ה וְיִּשְׁמְרֶֽךָ׃
They look identical right, well not quite there is one difference, in the first one there is no dagesh which is a single dot after the י “yod” if there were the English translations would be linguistically correct.
So, what does this mean, well without the dagesh the verb becomes volitive. Now what does a volitive verb mean:
Volitive
A verb form found in certain languages which indicates that a certain action is willed or intended, even if it wasn't actually preformed.
In translating a volitive as a desired or willed action the word “may” is quite often used. So a better translation of verse 24 is,
"The Lord will bless you so he MAY keep you."
We now see that this passage is saying the Lord wants to bless you so that you don’t need to go to other “gods”. You have to remember God describes himself as jealous he wants you to solely love him. He blesses you so that you will love him and not wander away from him.
Now I do need to say there are translations that do pick up on the volitive in the verse however they attribute it to both verbs in the verse not just the one in the second clause.
These quite often read as follows,
MAY the Lord bless you and keep/protect you.
The issue with that is that it almost attributes the statement as an entitlement to God’s blessings and protection. Rather than it being a statement of relationship where God wants you to keep himself as your God and keep you as his follower. As the preceding text to this passage is all about dedicating oneself to God via a Nazarite Vow the previous translation with the volitive only being attributed to the word its attached to makes more contextual sense. Otherwise you get a divine edict given by the high priest in response to the sacrifices made during the human actions of taking a Nazarite vow. This would remove the relationship narrative and replace it with cult practice. Even though a large portion of the Torah is defining the cultic practice of יהוה (Yehwah) worship, this verse is focusing why aspect of preforming these rituals.
Job
In Job we bear witness to a discussion in the heavenly realm between God and the Adversary “Satan”. Side note, I use the term Adversary when most translations would read Satan, as Satan is a transliteration of the word שָׂטָן “Saataan”, here in Job it has the definite article in front of the word translating therefore “The Adversary”, as names are already definite and do not require the definite article. In this discussion the Adversary is accusing God of creating a system of worship that is dependent on God’s abundant blessing to ensure he is continually worshiped. He implies that Job only worship’s God because he is abundantly blessed, thus God proves that that is not the case by removing everything Job has yet he still worships God.
This whole book that shows that God wants to bless you so that your relationship and bond with him is so strong that even if it were to all be stripped away that you would remain firm in your love for him. This in turn resulted in increased blessing more than he had received prior which can only of increased the depth of their relationship.
Don't be afraid of Gods blessing towards your life he only wants you to love him and him only. Embrace his blessings and worship him in love and reverence.
