Hebrew Voices #175 – Thanksgiving to Yehovah for He is Good

Dr. Nehemia Gordon - Bible Scholar at NehemiasWall.com

In this episode of Hebrew Voices #175, Thanksgiving to Yehovah for He is Good, Nehemia Gordon discusses whether Thanksgiving is a pagan holiday, looks at the Hebrew words for "turkey" and “thanks”, and what the Tanach teaches us about gratitude in excerpts from the Support Team Study, "Thanksgiving to Yehovah".

I look forward to reading your comments!

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Transcript

Hebrew Voices #175 – Thanksgiving to Yehovah for He is Good

You are listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon's Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

Today, I’m going to speak about the feast of Thanksgiving, or in Hebrew, Chag Ha’Hodayah. And let me be honest with you, in this episode of the Raw Stream of Torah Consciousness, this is really just an excuse to speak about being thankful.

Now, let me stop before I talk about Thanksgiving and say, okay, there are some people out there who say that Thanksgiving is this Pagan holiday. I just don’t see it. I did the research; I couldn't find it. And it’s one of those things that if you really want to find Paganism, you can find it everywhere, but to me that’s like, “Is that really what it’s about?” And I don’t think it is. I think it’s pretty clear. Now, if you’re a Native American or a First Nations person, you might not really appreciate Thanksgiving, I’ll be honest with you.

As far as I can tell, there’s nothing Pagan in it. I think it’s a great little holiday. I love the whole Snoopy thing, I do. So, now I’ve got to share about the word pun, that’s what I started talking about. Once I gave my caveat of recognizing the negative side of it, let’s go to the positive.

So, in Hebrew, Thanksgiving is called Chag Ha’Hodayah, “the feast of hodayah". And hodayah is the Hebrew word for “thanking.” We’re going to talk a lot about that word, “thanking”. And here’s the really strange thing, which is a coincidence but it’s hard to believe it’s a coincidence, and the strange thing is that the Hebrew word for “turkey” is hodu. Hodu, hodayah, that sounds like a Hebrew word pun like Adam and adamah. And you’re almost tempted to say, “We eat hodu on Thanksgiving to remember the hodayah,” giving thanks to God, but it’s a complete and total coincidence. And I think it's a really important lesson about word puns, that word puns can be a coincidence. And it’s only when you take cumulatively the evidence of hundreds, maybe thousands of them, that you can say, “Okay, we have something we can learn from here.” But if it’s one single word pun, it could be a coincidence.

Now, where does the word hodu come from? Hodu is just the Hebrew pronunciation of “India”. You have the word Hindi, which is the language of India, and their religion is called Hindu, which really just means “Indian”, and in Hebrew it’s Hodu. Hindu, Hodu, Hindi, is the language. So, Hodu is just the Hebrew word for India, and it’s actually mentioned twice in Tanakh, in the Scroll of Esther. It’s specifically in a phrase that Achashverosh, the King of Persia, ruled, “mi’Hodu v’ad Kush,” “from India to Ethiopia,” or literally Kush, which is in Northwestern Ethiopia today, the Kingdom of Kush, or Northern Sudan as well.

So, Hodu appears twice in the Tanakh referring to India, and today it is the national… It’s not the national bird of Israel, but they eat more turkey in Israel than any other country in the world per capita. But there’s no connection between hodu and hodayah, “turkey”, and that’s just how it is.

I want to talk about another word pun if we’re going to do word puns. And that's a true word pun that really appears in the Tanakh, and this is the word pun of the name, Yehudah. Yehudah is what we know in English as Judah, and Yehudah actually has two word puns related to it. One, when Judah is born and his mother decides what name to give him, his mother Leah, and that’s in Genesis 29:35. The other one appears in Genesis 49:8 when his father blesses him just before Jacob dies. And it's very common in the Tanakh, name explanations based on a word pun related to a name. And why am I telling you this? Because the Feast of Hodayah, the feast of Thanksgiving, you could really call this the Feast of Judah.

So, Genesis 29:35 says, “And she conceived again and bore a son and said, ‘This time I will thank Yehovah,’ therefore she called his name Judah.” What’s the connection? In Hebrew she said, “Odeh Yehovah,” “I will thank Yehovah.” Odeh, “I will thank" Yehovah, and Judah was therefore called Yehudah, Odeh Yehovah, Yehudah.

And really it’s, "Yehovah odeh" is what his name means. And really, he should have been called “Yeho-odeh”, but Hebrew doesn’t like Yeho-odeh, these two “O’s” in a row, so it was truncated. And through a process that linguists call, that language experts call dissimilation, when you have two similar things, they become dissimilar, that’s dissimilation. And the dissimilation made Yeho-odeh into Yehudah. Yeho-odeh, Yehudah.

Now, I’ve just got to point out for the Yahweh people that if God’s name was really Yahweh, if it was pronounced that way, there would be no reason to employ dissimilation because you could have called him “Yahwehdeh”. “Yahwehdeh” would have been a perfectly good combination, but he’s called Yehudah.

The second word pun is in Genesis 49:8 where his father says, “Yehudah,” or, “Judah, your brothers will thank you that your hand will be upon the neck of your enemies,” which is a double word pun. Because “they will thank you” is “yoducha”, so, Yehudah, yoducha, also from the word “to thank”. But then there’s another root that’s employed there which is the word, “yad’cha”, which also sounds a little like Yehudah and yoducha, “yad’cha” is “your hand”.

Alright, Psalms 44:9, “Be’elohim hilal’nu chal ha’yom ve’shimcha le’olam nodeh selah,” literally, “We praise God all day long, and to Your name forever we will give thanks,” or “we will confess.” Remember, in Hebrew it really is the same concept. We’re going to throw out those words, remember, the word is “to cast”, “to throw out.” We're going to throw out those words of thanks and those words of confession, “thanking Your name and confessing our sins to Your name.” This is what it means to be thankful in Hebrew, to confess your sins and be thankful for His mercy, for His grace, even when things are bad.

Psalm 54:8, look there and you’ll find there’s this idea of the free will sacrifice and thanking in God’s name. Psalm 57:10, “thanking God’s name among the nations.” Psalm 100, the whole thing is called “Mizmor le’Todah”, “A Psalm of Thanksgiving”, and there’s the word todah, “thanks”, “thanksgiving”, “thanking”.

Psalm 106:47, let me read you the JPS, “Deliver us O LORD,” which of course in Hebrew is “Yehovah,” in capital, L-O-R-D, “Deliver us O Yehovah, our God, and gather us from among the nations to acclaim Your Holy name.” In Hebrew it says, “le’hodot,” that’s the infinitive form of todah, of the verb hod’u, “to give thanks” or “to confess”, “le’hodot le’shem kod’shecha,” “to give thanks to Your holy name,” “le’hishtabech bit’hilatecha,” “to glory in Your praise.”

So, I think that’s really interesting. We’re being gathered from among the nations to acclaim Your holy name, to give thanks to Your holy name. It doesn't say “to gather us from among the nations to be silent about Your name because it's too holy to confess". It says, "no, we’re asking Him to gather us from among the nations, the ingathering of the exiles, so we can confess His name".

But there’s definitely this idea here of giving thanks to Yehovah, to confess to Yehovah among the nations. And it doesn’t say, “Your name is too holy to confess among the nations.” No, it says to give thanks to Him and to confess Him.

I want to end with prayer. I really am thankful to all of those who have stood with me, whether financially or in other ways, to be part of my Support Team and allow me to continue to do what I'm doing. That’s no small thing to me. And really, I don’t want someone to support my ministry because they think, “Okay, we’ve got to pay our religion tax.” I really want them to support my ministry because they want to be part of what I’m doing; they believe in empowering people with information. Like I say, standing with me on the wall.

And again, the image is Nehemia, he’s in the Bible, he’s on the wall, and there’s the trumpeters and there’s the people, and the people are armed with two things; they’re armed with a weapon, and they’re armed with a building implement. And I don’t want to tear down the wall, I want to build the wall.

Some people, their whole ministry is about tearing down; that’s not what I’m about. There may be things we agree with or don’t agree with, but I want to empower you to build your faith and to defend your faith, even when I don’t agree with you on some things, because I’m not about destroying and tearing down, I’m about building. And if you want to be part of that, then I really am grateful for your supporting what I’m doing. That really is no small thing.

I’m going to give thanks to Yehovah. Avinu she’ba’shamayim, Yehovah od’cha ba’amim, Yehovah I will give thanks to You and confess my sins for the nations. Yehovah, our people have sinned, and we ask that You forgive us and have mercy upon us. Even those who aren’t ready to return to You are in these days of pain and suffering, they’re calling upon You the best way they know how. Maybe they’re not speaking Your name, but they’re being cut down in their synagogues as they pray to You in the way that they know how and the way that they’re able to. Please Yehovah, have mercy upon us.

I thank You, Yehovah, for Your city, Jerusalem, and the land You gave my forefathers, Israel, for protecting us in this difficult time from our enemies who want to cut off our heads and sell our women into slavery, literally. I thank You for giving us the strength to stand up to them like a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, with an Iron Dome and the greatest army in the world. We wouldn’t last one minute without You.

I’m thankful for my friends, and my mother, and sisters. I'm thankful, Yehovah, that You have put Your protection around my nephew, who’s in the Israeli army now defending his people, defending Your people, Yehovah. I’m thankful for all my 16 nephews and nieces. I’m thankful for my health, for the knowledge You have blessed me with. I’m thankful for the opportunity to teach Your people the glory of Your name and proclaim Your mighty deeds among the nations, and I thank You for all of these things Yehovah. Od’cha Yehovah, I will give thanks to You, todah Yehovah. Amen.

You have been listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon’s Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

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VERSES MENTIONED
Genesis 29:35
Genesis 49:8
Psalms 44:9
Psalm 54:8
Psalm 57:10
Psalm 100
Psalm 106:47

RELATED EPISODES
Support Team Study – Thanksgiving to Yehovah

The post Hebrew Voices #175 – Thanksgiving to Yehovah for He is Good appeared first on Nehemia's Wall.