Hebrew Voices #50 – My Favorite Bible Verse (Rebroadcast)

In Hebrew Voices, My Favorite Bible Verse, Nehemia Gordon talks about the first verse his father ever taught him, and why he suspects his favorite verse might have also been one of Yeshua’s favorites, and quite possibly the last words on Yeshua's lips. This episode is available as a video and as a podcast.

I look forward to reading your comments!


Podcast Version Download Audio Verses Deuteronomy 6:4 Matthew 27:46 Mark 15:34 Matthew 22:35-40 Mark 12:28-31 Deuteronomy 6:4-5 Psalm 22:2 Transcript
Hebrew Voices #50 - My Favorite Bible Verse

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

Michael: Nehemia's had a lot of questions come in, and so Nehemia's back with us. Nehemia, good to have you back…

Nehemia: Shalom, Michael.

Michael: … and good to have some of your questions here.

Nehemia: It's great to be here, Michael. This question came from Lynelle Eaddy, who said, “You've spent so much of your life studying. What is your favorite Scripture, and why is it your favorite?

Benjamin Netanyahu: Le ma’an Zion lo ekhesheh, u’l’ma’an Yerushalayim lo eshkot. (For Zion’s sake I will not be silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest. Isaiah 62:1)

Nehemia: My favorite verse is a no brainer. It's the first verse I ever learned in the Bible. This is the verse that, you know, when I could barely speak, my father had me recite after him. And it's Deuteronomy 6:4, the Shema. Shema Yisrael, the way I learned it as a child was, “Adonai Eloheynu, Adonay ekhad. Now, I know it's, in the Hebrew, “Shema Yisrael, Yehovah Eloheinu, Yehovah ekhad.” “Hear O’ Israel, Yehovah is our Elohim, our God, Yehovah is one.”

And what I love about the verse, you know, that it just seems like such a simple thing. And it is a simple thing in many ways, but it's also very complex, there's so much to it. And for me, there are all these associations with it. The stories that I was taught growing up is that the last words on your lips before you die must be this verse, if you can, that as you die you speak these words. And the last word as your breath goes out is “ekhad,” one, that you proclaim the oneness of God and your belief in Him. And we have stories in the Jewish tradition of people who were martyred. You know, there's one Rabbi who they skinned him alive with hot combs.

Michael: Rabbi Akiva, was it not?

Nehemia: Rabbi Akiva. The Romans executed him, and his dying words were, “Shema Yisrael, Yehovah Eloheinu,” And back then they still spoke it, “Yehovah Eloheinu,” they spoke the name, “Yehovah echad.” And I have to wonder, Michael, and I know I'm going off the reservation here. But I have to wonder, you know, we have different Gospels that talk about the last words Yeshua spoke. You know, one Gospel, it's, “Eli, Eli, lama azavtani,” “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me,” and “it is finished.” And I have to wonder, when he was up there on the cross, coming from this culture, the Jewish culture of the martyr speaking these words as he dies, I have to wonder if these were not his…

Some of the words he spoke up there on the cross, “Shema Yisrael, Yehovah eloheinu Yehovah ekhad,” I know that when they asked him what's the most important commandment, he said, “Ve'ahavta le're'akha kamokha, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” And he says, “There's another one like it.” And in one version of that he quotes the Shema, “Shema Yisrael, Yehovah Eloheinu, Yehovah ekhad. Ve'ahavta et Yehovah elohekha bekhol levavekha, uvkhol nafshekha, uvkhol me'odekha.” That is, the very following verse, it says, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Hear O’Israel, Yehovah is our God, Yehovah is one.” And it says, “Love Yehovah your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your might.” And he said that was his favorite verse, or the most important verse, in any event. And I have to wonder if that wasn't some of the last words on his lips as he died.

Michael: We've talked about this, “Eli, eli, lama azavtani?” You know, this is the opening of Psalm 2.

Nehemia: Psalm 22, yeah.

Michael: Yeah, Psalm 22. And so, when you look at the whole Psalm and then you see how the people are responding, then you see that, you know, these are the words that are recorded that he’s spoken. But for him to quote the entire Psalm that's being played out and the people responding accordingly, that all makes sense.

Nehemia: One of the really interesting things about that is, you know, these words, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?” In the Greek Gospel of Matthew and in the Greek version of Luke, those words are quoted in Aramaic, as, “Eli eli, eloy, eloy, lama sabakhtani.” And the really cool thing, we were looking just the other day together at the Peshitta, which is the Aramaic translation of the Greek. Some people say it's the original that the Greek is translated from. But in the Greek, it says, “eloy, eloy, lama sabakhtani,” which is to say, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?” So, if you were writing this in Aramaic, you wouldn't have the words which is to say, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me,” ‘cause that's already what the words mean.

Michael: Right.

Nehemia: And in the Peshitta it has it twice.

Michael: Yeah, say it.

Nehemia:Eloy, eloy, lama sabakhtani,” which is to say, “Eloy, eloy, lama sabakhtani.”

Michael: Right, exactly.

Nehemia: Why would you say it twice? Now, the beautiful thing is in the Hebrew Matthew it says, “And he cried out in the Hebrew tongue, belashon hakodesh, Eli, Eli lama azavtani,” My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? In Hebrew. And it specifically identifies the language that he's speaking as Hebrew. And if this is correct, which I think it is, it means that the Hebrew is what he spoke. It was translated into Aramaic, and then from Aramaic translated into Greek, and then from Greek translated into Aramaic as the Peshitta, into a different dialect of Aramaic. I mean, wow, that's what happened. It's the breadcrumbs that show us what really happened. It’s a smoking gun.

Michael: And that is exactly the position of the Syrian Orthodox Church…

Nehemia: Wow, really?

Michael: …because everything they do is in Aramaic. They use the Aramaic text. And I was with the head scholar of the Syrian Orthodox Church. And he said, “No, we don't use the Peshitta. That is an Aramaic translation of a later Greek text.”

Nehemia: I mean, they probably use it the way Christians use the King James version. But the Christians, other than the independent Baptists, don't claim that this is the original Bible. They just say, “Yeah, it's the translation from the Greek and then the Hebrew in the Old Testament.” And Peshitta means the “simple translation.”

Michael: Right, it's a simplified version...It's like Good News for Modern Man. Let's not degrade the King James, okay? Good News for Modern Man, or...

Nehemia: Is that the translation?

Michael: Yeah, it is. Or the Complete Jewish Bible, which has...

Nehemia: Or there's The Message, which is like a paraphrase.

Michael: Oh, there you go. I say the complete Jewish Bible which has Yiddish words in it, like Yeshua speaking Yiddish. I mean, where does that come from? But it's a fun translation. My children enjoyed it when they were little. But again, we can get more critical on that. Because, again, we know that the early Church Fathers, even in the Christian tradition, said that Matthew wrote his Gospel in the Hebrew language. Several did their best to translate it. And so, we see that Aramaic was next and then Greek has the Aramaic words still in it.

Nehemia: Right, right.

Michael: Not Hebrew, but the Aramaic words.

Nehemia: Which means we have these second and third-hand translations, and sometimes fourth-hand. You know, Martin Luther, who eventually became this vicious anti-Semite, but he actually started out the first few years of his ministry being pro-Jewish.

Michael: Yeah.

Nehemia: And he made this statement early in his ministry where he said - and I quote this in my book, “A Prayer to Our Father” that I wrote together with Keith Johnson. He says, “Hebrew is the source that is the spring.” And he says, “Greek is the stream that flows out of the Hebrew source. And Latin is the downstream puddle.” And if that's so, what is the English? It's like the sprinkles left from the puddle.

But, you know, going back to that verse, Shema Yisrael, there's this amazing story that I learned at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum, where it describes this event where there were Jews who, as they were walking to the gas chambers, the last words they proclaimed were, “Shema Yisrael.” And I saw that at the museum, and I'm a skeptic, Michael. I said, “How on earth can anybody know what people spoke the last moment before they went into the gas chambers? Did the Gestapo agents tell us this, the SS guards? It doesn't make sense.”

And I found out that there were Jews whose job it was to remove the bodies, and they wrote down on pieces of toilet paper and whatever they could get their hands on. They wrote these things and hid them in canisters and those canisters were discovered. And so, we actually have these Auschwitz papers, these Auschwitz scrolls that were discovered in the ashes. And so, this is a real thing. Jews dying in the Holocaust, their last words were, “Shema Yisrael, Yehovah Eloheinu, Yehovah ekhad.”

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.

We hope the above transcript has proven to be a helpful resource in your study. While much effort has been taken to provide you with this transcript, it should be noted that the text has not been reviewed by the speakers and its accuracy cannot be guaranteed. If you would like to support our efforts to transcribe the teachings on NehemiasWall.com, please visit our support page. All donations are tax-deductible (501c3) and help us empower people around the world with the Hebrew sources of their faith!


SUPPORT NEHEMIA'S RESEARCH AND TEACHINGS!
Makor Hebrew Foundation is a 501c3 tax-deductible not for profit organization.

Subscribe to "Nehemia Gordon" on your favorite podcast app!
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | 
Amazon Music
 | TuneIn
Pocket Casts | Podcast Addict | CastBox | iHeartRadio | Podchaser
 | Pandora

Share this Teaching on Social Media
Related Posts: What is the Torah How to Keep Shabbat The Testimony of the Shema The Lost Scrolls of Auschwitz Torah and Prophet Pearls
Hebrew Voices Episodes
Hebrew Gospel Pearls
Teachings on the Name of God
Support Team Studies
  • Karen Powell says:

    Yes, as Yeshua said:The Father is in me, and I am in my Father. The Father’s Spirit,Torah, and Words, were in him! to the very end of his mission.He was doing what the Father sent him to do.
    They were Echad, One mind,spirit,torah,words.

    We are suppose to obey and love God and look after each other.And you shall love your neighbor as yourself !

    The purpose of the speaking of the Psalms was to Shine a Spotlight that the Prophecy was being fulfilled.and how human’s were killing each other due to greed,jealousy,false beliefs about God,or their own false religious or social beliefs. Seriously,How messed up do rulers have to be to torture and kill someone because they are doing good?

    David did no wrong to Saul. It was Saul’s jealousy,and anger that opened the door for evil to enter him.

    David through the Spirit was phophecying of his own(seed) tragic death at the hands of mankind for doing good.

    When we think that we are all alone and want God to hurry up to take away pain,cruel treatment. But,as in Job,God is still watching and expects us to continue believing and come through the hardships that occur.

  • Shalom, I just want to correct Nehemiah on a statement he made with reguards to the Pesthita.

    1. the Eli Eli lamana sabaktani passage is found in Matthew and Mark, not Matthew and Luke.

    2. The Peshitta in Matthew only has the statement one, and not twice. It is only in Mark where you have the phrase occurring twice. And I actually am glad it done this, because this actually does 2 things. it demonstrates that 1. Matthew isn’t borrowing from Mark or vice-versa. and 2. that the translator of one one book and the translator of the other are not the same (no matter which direction you think the translation is occurring). and 3. From my perspective, this convinces me more that the Peshitta comes before the Greek.

    This is due to the fact that the Greek parallels differen dramatically, both how the Aramaic is transliterated and how the it is tranlated is different. Wheras in the Peshitta, the Aramaic of word for word for the first time the phrase is used. The second time the phrase occurs, Mark has Elohi Elohi lamana shabaqtani (which is the exact same transliteration scheme Greek mark follows for it’s Aramaic line).. If you look at OSS (Old Syriac Siniaticus, it’s Aramaic has the sentences only once in both gospels, and follows exactly how the Greek transliteration would have the words being if they were written in Aramaic, and it is agreed by all sides that OSS is a translation and/or Redaction of the Greek (and closely related to a particular Codes of the Western text-type tradition in particular).

  • Yehovah Be Blessed, Shalom.

  • Why would Yeshua not speak the Shema since he was returning back to the Father. Eli, Eli would also be saying asking his Father why have you separated yourself from me? Otherwise, Yeshua with the word forsaken would feel this separation from His Father and would feel forsaken. Again, Yeshua was returning into eternity from time back to his rightful place at the right had of His Father where He always had been. Yeshua was echad with the Father while on earth and in Heaven. The only time there was any separation was at the cross.

  • Sheila Wiley says:

    Nehemia,

    I have heard so many wonderful stories, and some heart wrenching ones, in memory of the saying of the Shema. But no one explains why the Jewish children are taught to say the Shema with their hands covering their eyes.

    I have seen pictures of grown men still covering their eyes. Always brings me to tears remembering the Messiah Yeshua’s sound advice to always come to Yehovah as a child. What an amazing love.

    Could you please share what you were taught?

  • Reyes Nava says:

    The scripture most dear to my heart is Isaiah 56:6-7 which is an invitation to all gentiles being from Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc. so that they may come to the knowledge of the Yehovah the Creator of the Universe.

    “Also the son of the gentile, that join themselves to the Yehovah, to serve him, and to love the name of the Yehovah, to be his servants, every one that keeps the Sabbath from profaning it, and takes hold of my covenant; even them will I bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer”

    Oh, Yehovah teach me to walk in your ways, obey your voice, seek your face and delight in doing your will.

    A final tribute to Gene Wilder and is love of Torah in “The Frisco Kid”
    https://youtu.be/ekmo8EacU70

  • Kelly D Caudle Sr says:

    Hebrews11:1

  • Kenny Vollrath says:

    Trust in Yehovah with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding;
    Know Him in all your ways, And He makes all your paths straight.
    Proverbs 3:5-6

  • YIshis Lassie says:

    This was a GREAT idea, Nehemia.

    My favorite Tanach verses are – DEUTERONOMY 30:19 – “I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before thee life and death, the blessing and the curse; therfore choose life, that thou mayest live, thou and thy seed.” Followed equally by … ISAIAH 1;19 – “If you repent and obey, then you will eat the best of the land.”

    I have a very special one in the Book of Hebrews, too, but I guess this isn’t the moment to share that &: >

    • YIshis Lassie says:

      Oh! After watching the video, I see that we can venture into the B’rit Chadashah … so, even though it feels like I have chosen all of my life to live according to the above verses, still it felt like I was born with a powerful curse over my life, from even before I came out of the womb, as my father left my mother before I was born, and things have just continued to work out similarly my entire life. I call it the “Almost, but not quite” curse, always having almost enjoyed beautiful blessing, yet it was always snatched away in the end before it could come into 100% fruition. After a traumatic mid-life divorce, I took full realization of the curse, and … well, I bound it away from me, but I will tell the story another time. In order to survive the divorce and find the strength to keep on living, the following verse ministered to the deepest parts of me, and became my very most important verse in the Bible besides the above. Here it is … in the “TRUSTING” passage of Hebrews 11 regarding our forefathers and mothers … especially 13-16 …

      “All these people kept on trusting until they died, without receiving what had been promised. They had only seen it and welcomed it from a distance, while acknowledging that they were aliens and temporary residents on the earth. For people who speak this way make it clear that they are looking for a (homeland). Now if they were to keep recalling the one they left, they would hav an opportunity to return; but as it is, they aspire to a better (homeland) and, a heavenly one. This is why God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.”

      And, oh, I simply cannot leave out this one … I YOCHANAN 4:10 …

      “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us …”

      • YIshis Lassie says:

        And lastly, in addition what I have written below, and if you have read it, you may understand why …

        “And the LORD said unto Aaron: ‘Thou shalt have no inheritance in their land, neither shalt thou have any portion among them; I am thy portion and thine inheritance among the children of Israel.” (Deut. 18:20 JPS)

        “JPS Tanakh 1917
        After these things the word of the LORD came unto Abram in a vision, saying: ‘Fear not, Abram, I am thy shield, thy reward shall be exceeding great.'” (Gen. 15:1 JPS)

  • Anon says:

    Yehshua said to him, “T’oma, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.” John 20:29

  • Liat says:

    Joshua 24:14 Now, therefore, fear the LORD and serve Him in sincerity and truth; and put away the gods which your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD.

    This is our purpose, this is why we are here…but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD! You just gotta love Joshua 🙂

  • Evelin Carr says:

    Gal enai veabitah niflaot mitoratecha Open my eyes that I may see the wonderful, hidden things in your Torah. Psalm 119,18 ( I hope my tansliteration of the Hebrew is somewhat correct).

  • dotco8 says:

    “Teach me Your way, Yehovah; I will walk in Your truth;
    Unite my heart to fear Your name.
    I will praise You, Yehovah my Elohim, with all my heart,
    And I will glorify Your name forevermore.”
    Psalm 86:11-12

  • My favorite Bible verse is Genesis 1:1 – In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The reason it’s my favorite is that it is the one verse that everything else in the Bible depends upon.