Have you ever been sitting in church or listening to a sermon, and the pastor says ‘Turn to Habakkuk,’ and you have to flip to the front of the Bible, to the table of contents, to look up the page number? Then you’re flipping all over, ‘Oop, forgot the page number,’ flip back, finally find the beginning of the book, and then can’t remember what chapter and verse the pastor said… just to realize you’ve also missed everything the pastor has been saying while you where on this wild goose chase trying to find the right page.
Been there, done that. About a million times myself. LOL. Frustrating, right?
Now, of course, there are some beautifully blessed souls who have all the books of the Bible memorized, but that only helps you know whether you’re getting “hot or cold” with your page flipping. Page numbers are a lot harder to memorize, especially when you own more than one Bible.
Unfortunately, the bigger issue is that this 66-book compilation, written over 1,500 years, isn’t very well organized by themes to make studying easier. It can also be confusing when it feels like one passage you just read was covering a new law about not doing XYZ, and the next passage is a king’s drama about a vineyard. When you want to study a topic rather than read linearly, this can be so discouraging.
This is what always put a speed bump in my studying. Having to skip back to the beginning of the Bible to check the table of contents and find the next reference spot was eating up a lot of my free time. Wanting to overcome this hurdle, I started working on a solution…
This week at Palm Sunday service, we dove into Matthew 21:1–11 (after Zechariah 9:9–12 as a double hitter tied to our study in Revelation and for Palm Sunday), and the Hebrew word “Hosanna” stuck out to me, since it was part of that morning’s worship set, and then here again in Scripture. Our pastor touched on Hosanna’s meaning of “save us,” but I decided it was time to dig a little deeper into this word. There were lots of stops in the Bible along this journey to defining Hosanna.
9 The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Hosanna in the highest heaven!”
After reading Hosanna here in Matthew, I wanted to know what it meant in its original Hebrew and where else it appeared in the Bible. By looking at the Hebrew, Hosanna is made up of two parts: “yasha’” and “na’.” “Yasha’” means “save” or “to deliver,” and “na’” means “please” or “I beseech.” So instead of meaning “Salvation has come!” or “Praise God!”, it originally meant “save, please.”
This transformation of the word is actually so beautiful, because when it was first sung in Psalm 118:25–26, it was a plea for salvation. Then, the next time we see it in Matthew, it had transformed into the realization that salvation HAD come.
25 Lord, save us! Lord, grant us success! 26 Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. From the house of the Lord we bless you."
It went from being a cry for help to thanksgiving for rescue. When the crowd sang out “Hosanna” that Palm Sunday in Matthew, it held past, present, and future, pleading and praising, all wrapped into one beautiful word.
Now, that was a lot of page flipping to follow along, from Palm Sunday service scriptures to a singular Hebrew word study. We started from Revelation ➡ Zechariah ➡ Matthew ➡ Psalm.
Now, don’t think I forgot to address what I started working on to solve our problem of flipping all over the Bible during study time. I’ve been working on something for a while now, I just wish I had thought of it sooner. If you’ve ever felt lost in the pages, follow along to find out how I solved this problem.
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Before you go, I just want to say happy Passover & pray for you,
Dear Heavenly Father,
I want to thank You for bringing us together here on the wide open internet to share in our time with You, God. I pray that they, and all Your children, are kept full of Your love and continue to walk in Your Word.
Amen.
