Grammar Messages

Behold, God is my salvation, I will trust and not be afraid; for the Lord God is my strength and song, and He has becomemy salvation.”  Isaiah 12:2  NASB

Is/has become – Hebrew verbs don’t work the same way as English verbs.  As you already know, the usual copula “is” is not expressed in Hebrew.  Therefore, when this verse is translated “the Lord God is my salvation,” the Hebrew phrase actually doesn’t contain the word “is.”  Here’s the Hebrew with the highlighted phrase:

הִנֵּ֨ה אֵ֧ל יְשֽׁוּעָתִ֛י אֶבְטַ֖ח וְלֹ֣א אֶפְחָ֑ד כִּ֣י עָזִּ֚י וְזִמְרָת֙ יָ֣הּ יְהֹוָ֔ה וַֽיְהִי־לִ֖י לִישׁוּעָֽה

 Literally, it reads “El yeshooati,” that is, “El” (God) salvation me.”  Of course, we think this is the same as the English phrase “God is my salvation,” but we would be wrong.  Without the copula (as discussed in Boman[1]), the expression is ontological, not attributive.  What does this mean?  In English we differentiate between the essence of something and its attributes.  So, for example, when we say, “the car is red,” we mean that there is something (a car) and it just happens to be red.  Red is an attribute.  It is not essential to what it means to be a car.  I am a man of Norwegian descent living in Italy.  Where I live is non-essential to my being.  We could argue that being Norwegian is also non-essential, that I would still be a person (whatever that means) regardless of my ancestry.   But when Hebrew expresses a connection without the copula, it is saying something else.  It’s saying that the following idea isn’t an attribute.  It’s an ontological essential of the noun.  God doesn’t happen to have salvation as one of His attributes.  Salvation is essential to His character.  He would not be God without it.  In the same way, to say that God is good in Hebrew really says that goodness is defined by what God is.

Why does this matter?  Because Isaiah isn’t saying that “in that day” God is my salvation.  He’s saying that the God salvation connected to me I will trust.  It isn’t the fact that God saves me that I trust.  It is the character of God salvation that I trust, that is, the “something” about who He is as the saving God.  I am not afraid because of who He is, not because He has saved me.

This change sets up the end of the verse and the end makes the statement even more powerful.  There is also a middle to this verse which we will get to later, but for now look at the difference between  אֵ֧ל יְשֽׁוּעָתִ֛י and יְהֹוָ֔ה וַֽיְהִי־לִ֖י לִישׁוּעָֽה .  First, you’ll notice that the end of the verse employs God’s personal name, not the word used to designate His office or status.  El is His office as “God;” YHVH is His name.  So, we’ve moved from the ontological office He holds to a relationship with Him, a personal relationship.  Now look at the verb.  Yes, that’s right, here there is a verb, vayhi-li (from the verb hāyâ—to be).  Here we have a deliberately expressed copula rather than an implied one.  But this isn’t a simple future verb tense.  It’s a vav-conversive (in modern terms, a waw-consecutive).  As you know, this form of the verb really incorporates past-present-future in the same frame because while it is strictly a past form, the preceding vav converts it to a future.  So, in English we translate it as “has become” because it is also an imperfect indicating an ongoing, incomplete action.  It isn’t “became” as a past tense, and it isn’t “will become” as a future tense.  It lies between the two; something that happened but continues.  We have yet to discover “what” has become, but so far we know that whatever it is, it is past-present-future all tied together.

Now we have to consider the mistranslation of the last of this verse.  In English, it reads “my salvation.”  But this isn’t strictly correct.  It is really “to me for salvation.”  Loosely, God was-is-will be to me for salvation.  In other words (and this is the big point), what was first recognized as the ontological character of God (i.e., saving) is now phenomenologically experienced.  God-saving is applied.  The shift from what God is to what He does is experienced by me, so that God-saving is how I now perceive Him.  Salvation is not mine.  Rather, I now participate in what is essentially God’s, that is, His saving nature.  This is a bit difficult to explain in English, but I hope you see the difference.  We’ve moved from a declaration of God’s character to an experience of that character.  We have not appropriated something fromGod.  Rather, God has included us in His saving essence.

And now a final bit of magic.  In the middle of this verse there is a truncated expression of God’s personal name followed by the full spelling.  Here it is in Hebrew:

 יָ֣הּ יְהֹוָ֔ה וַֽיְהִי־לִ֖י

You immediately recognize the that first term is a shortened form of the full second term.  In English, this is glossed as “the LORD God.”  But it has far more implications.  God’s full name is not revealed until “to me for salvation” is experienced.  Suddenly this verse is more than personal.  It’s eschatological.  The full meaning of God’s name will not become apparent until His God-saving is disclosed to everyone, to every “me.”  This is why Rashi writes that the words כִּ֣י עָזִּ֚י, translated “my strength” are not correct.  It is not my strength that brings about God-saving to the world.  It is God’s strength, indicated according to Rashi by the dagesh in the letter Zayin.  The usual spelling (עֹז) is changed with the doubled Zayin.  The usual spelling is “used twenty-three times but never applied to God,”^[2] but here the unusualspelling should cause us to reconsider the meaning, deliberately flagged and enhanced by the doubled consonant.[3]  It’s no accident.  God will be for me saving when His name is complete.  The future of my salvation is tied to the complete name of God which is already incorporated in His essential character (and is therefore utterly trustworthy) but which will not become phenomenologically complete until His God-saving encompasses all creation.

Quite an amazing verse.

Topical Index: salvation, vav-conversive, double zayin, strength, Isaiah 12:2

[1] Thorleif Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek (W. W. Norton & Company, 1960).

^[2] Schultz, C. (1999). 1596 עָזַז. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 659). Moody Press.

[3] Perhaps this reminds you of the unusual doubling in Genesis 2:7. “the Hebrew verb used for the fashioning of both animals and humans is the same, yāsar, but when it is about animals (2:19), it is spelled yitser, when it is about Man (2:7), it is spelled yyitser.  This double yod is unique” see https://darkturquoise-snake-123296.hostingersite.com/2013/09/not-exactly/