LIMINAL SPACE AND THE WILDERNESS

Posted by expedition44 on September 21, 2024

This article is a 20-minute read. The YouTube version of the discussion is at the Bottom of the page and is an 80-minute listen.

Human beings- We are the most incredibly unique, wildly powerful and intelligent beings ever created but also make some of the most awful decisions, repeatedly, on a regular basis.

The Bible is beautifully simplistic and at the same time houses unsearchable depths of God’s wisdom and goodness.

Of course, the Bible says a lot, everything we need, but there is also quite a bit that it doesn’t simply say. We know very little of what Jesus’s life was like for the better part of three decades, however through extrabiblical material such as historical research of that period, calendars, Jewish and rabbinical practices, and harmonizing the gospel narratives, we can gather much about his life that was not said in the pages of scripture. What we do know is that as soon as Jesus walked in obedience through baptism, he was led by the spirit of God into the wilderness.

Matthew 4:1. “Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.”

The humanity of Jesus is certain, but often eludes us, most of us struggle to fast for one full day, let alone a 40 day and 40-night stint. Utter depletion was upon Jesus, and then came the tempting by ha-satan, and testing by God. What follows is three questions and three rebuttals. The result is Satan fleeing and spiritual beings ministering to Jesus. Although the Bible doesn’t say it, clearly there had been some equipping in Jesus’s life.

and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will command His angels concerning You’; and ‘On their hands they will bear You up, so that You will not strike Your foot against a stone.’” Matthew 4:6 NASB

Ha-satan misquotes Psalm 91. Yet Jesus doesn’t correct him and simply notes that this is a test of YHWH and infers that to accept this challenge would be forbidden. The fault is in the demanding of Humans of God. God is not the captive genie of my three magical wishes. Jesus makes this clear yet so many Christians today pray in a way that is rival to what Jesus states here. We make demands of God.

“Throw yourself from the Temple” has several other eye raising implications. Some have a hard time asking God for anything personally as it seems to be at odds with really believing in the will of God and the way that God weaves everything to serve His purposes. Can we demand without the eyes to see such things? Do our demands circumvent His intentions? Sometimes in the Bible, such as with Moses we see God heeding the requests of man and altering what would seem to be His better will. But should we really ask God of that. Does asking God to be a way maker mean asking Him to come to our desires rather than posturing ourselves to simply come to His? Do we not throw ourselves from the Temple rather than throw ourselves on His mercy and sovereignty?

Regardless of where your theology lands, there is much going on behind the scenes of Jesus’s interaction with the challenger and it parallels a story in the Old Testament. Most of us know the story of the exile from slavery out of Egypt and through the Red Sea, but often what’s overlooked is also what the Israelites overlooked in the wilderness. We know that both the Israelites and Jesus had just come out of the water before heading into the wilderness. In the Bible, water often signifies chaos. In the beginning, when the spirit of God was hovering over the waters of the deep, the gives us a description of what life, before God interacts with it can look dark, uncontrolled, violent, and unpredictable. As God brings forth land, we first see the life breathing characteristic of the creator of the cosmos.

In the same way, a believers baptism signifies the reaction to an interaction with a life breathing God. They are lowered into the chaotic waters of life for the last time and are risen into a brand-new life.

The hope and promise of a new life are exactly what Israel stepped in to when they stepped out of the Red Sea. The final ascent up the shores on to free land for the first time began the echo of Psalm 136:12 with a mighty hand and outstretched arm; His love endures forever. Just like baptism, this step into their new life was simply the beginning. It was the beginning of a new way of doing things thus signifying the importance of being trained and equipped to withstand the seemingly impossible giants that stood in the way of the final journey to the promised land.

A voice is calling, “Clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness;
Make smooth in the desert a highway for our God. Isaiah 40:3 NASB

There is one more connection between wilderness and water. In a D32 consideration, God is at war with other fallen spiritual beings and their slave masters, eventually overthrowing them with the greatest symbol of substitutionary sacrifice being Jesus as the Passover Lamb. At first glance the “horse and the rifer thrown into the sea” it would seem that the slavemasters are completely annihilated, and the earthly force is, but it would seem that the spiritual ones connected with the gods they formerly and will continue to serve will somehow find their way back into the Israelite camp. perhaps this is partially a sign of their continual grumbling and demanding that God do what they want and insisting that it is His fault that they are in such a terrible mess. Are you starting to see the connection of the fallen spiritual beings influencing humanity to make demands of God? This isn’t simply grumbling but a severe violation of the first (and greatest) commandment.

The wilderness becomes God’s classroom in obedience and allegiant devotion to God. In many ways today it still is.

The wilderness is harsh and uncontrollable. We want to live in places where we are in control, so we build cities. That is why cities in the Bible are associated with RA not TOV. We don’t like the testing and trying of the spiritual beings in our lives, so we bulldoze the wilderness and build concrete jungles instead. Unfortunately, that becomes a sign of the RA over the TOV. Humankind actually seems to have very little control and when they think they do it is typically a sign they have been manipulated by the RA of life. We feed our self-delusional fantasy that we are self-sufficient as we are duped by the aggressors.

The wilderness is God’s sacred place, what is left of the earth as He created it. When we attempt to reconstruct it in our image, we lose a connectivity to God and His sacred space. For Israel, the wilderness gave the Word of the Lord, the light and cloud they followed, the learning of grace and mercy, and unending provisions. They learned to heal and worship. They learned to trust and seek. If you have never met God in the wild and untamed placed of His sacred devotion you are likely missing what He has always desired to give to you. Perhaps when we dwell within the city limits, we need to remember to be a wilderness witness. Or maybe we just weren’t intended to live in the concrete jungle and trying to do so could actually be rival to God’s design.

___________________________________________________

We are in desperate need to be trained and equipped to withstand the seemingly impossible giants that may stand in the way of our journey through this life. If we move too quick, we can miss an important element of God’s character displayed in Matthew 4.

“Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.”

The word tempted is the Greek word peirazó.  to make proof of, to attempt, test, tempt, but here it is used in the negative sense, a RA sense.

James 1:2-4. My brothers and sisters^] consider it nothing but joy when you fall into all sorts of trials, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect effect, so that you will be perfect and complete, not deficient in anything. (NET)

Conversely, in this passage, the Greek word for trials is dokimion, meaning- a testing or what is found approved. This testing, or a process or being made complete by the testing of our faith, is very good or Tov.

Both words in this form have significantly similar meanings, however the word tempted in Matthew 4 is in the negative form, or Ra (peirazō) meaning “tempt” by means of luring. This is not a character trait of God. Later in his letter, James 1:13 states “When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone.” Although God will not tempt, he still can use the corrupt schemes of the evil forces as way to test our character. This again is a parallel to God seemingly handing Job over to the fallen spiritual beings (sons of God) for the testing of his character to be found worthy of righteousness and faithfulness to YHWH.

James uses a rare Greek verb, peirázō, meaning “to try, to test.” God does not test anyone with evil. It’s not simply a matter of testing. It’s a matter of attempting to persuade someone to do something evil (and, of course, God is the one who determines what is good and what is evil).

How often they rebelled against Him in the wilderness and grieved Him in the desert! Again and again they tempted God, and pained the Holy One of Israel. Psalm 78:40-41 NASB

Asaph uses the Hebrew verb nāsâ, which means “to put to the test, to try, to prove, to assay.” In other words, they didn’t ask God to do something wicked. They simply acted as if He weren’t God. God doesn’t test us with evil, but we often attempt to test Him, and in so doing, we engage in evil as a means of assaying Him. We disconnect while He attempts to reconnect. This is the exact opposite of what our design and destiny is.

When Israel came out of a 400 plus year stay in RA-Egypt, this nation of people needed to be taught how to do things the way of God’s kingdom. Had the Levitical law been lived out according to its intention, this nation of people would have had such profound impact, other nations would have not helped but take notice and be drawn in to such a beautiful culture. They would have renewed the earth. They were meant to grow grapes as big as their heads that their world would have travelled great distances to partake in. This is the lost “analogy” of what it meant to bear fruit. To have fruit that the entire world sought after and desired. And what could be better than that? Well a fruit that was naturally given and produced by God, it didn’t require any toil. This is the mosaic of what a gift from God was intended to be in our lives… the epitome of what it meant to bear fruit in His kingdom. We were the possessors and recipients of a bountiful harvest that required little if anything from us with enormous blessings.

A contranym is when one word can have two different meanings. Although today we don’t use the word kingdom in our everyday language, we often operate under the ruling of many kingdoms. Our nation is often viewed as a kingdom, if not the strongest kingdom of all kingdoms in the eyes of many. We tend to create our own mini kingdoms either by our nationalities, our blood lines, or even our homesteads. The time we spend investing in these areas can certainly look like worship or idolatry, but what trips us up is our tendency to build vertically (like a city). God has a kingdom which cannot be shaken regardless of our efforts to rebel against it or the attempts of the dark evil forces to lure us away from him. The way God’s kingdom operates is contrary to the ways of the world. God’s kingdom is horizontal, signifying the gift and purpose of diversity amongst all the people. No one person is better or higher in stature, but all created equal although incredibly different. There is but one king amongst a sea of brethren. God’s kingdom is built solely on the foundation of love that never ceases to bring forth life. To this day, our universe is constantly expanding. New stars are being born and galaxies discovered. If we can see through the mess of our daily lives, we can also see new life being formed each day around us. God never stops producing and expanding. This is what you and I were made to do. This is our purpose as the church. We were created by THE life source, the author and perfector of life, the well that never runs dry, but God is also aware of the effect that the kingdoms of this world can have on our nephesh. Although we don’t use the word nephesh in our daily language, contextually here it is important. Although Hebraically nephesh is defined as our soul, we often think of our soul as a separate part of the entire whole of who we are. Our nephesh is every part of who we are down to the deepest part of our composition. Our nephesh is all encompassing and when we bow down to kingdoms of this world, or in the case of the Israelites who had been under to rule of a tyrannical system for over 400 years, it takes reconstruction upon one’s nephesh to learn once again or for the first time the SOP or standard operating practices of God’s kingdom.

According to scripture, the wilderness can often produce the greatest bounty of fruit within our lives. As the kingdom of world tells us to gather from around us to store up treasures in our barns, Jesus continues to teach and to guide us to the truth that true life can only be generated from the inside out. He uses examples of that of a mustard seed. He gave them another parable:

“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest garden plant and becomes a tree, so that the wild birds^] come and nest in its branches.” Matthew 13:31-33

The wilderness is what’s considered a liminal space. Liminal is translated as threshold as in the threshold of a doorway. It’s a space that is not quite outside yet not fully inside either. It’s a transition point. It’s the place where we know we are not where we used to be, but we are not yet where we are intended to go. Our tendency is to view these times in life in a negative context, however in God’s kingdom, what can only be produced through tastings in the wilderness has the potential to produce the highest dividend in our lives, yet we see it through a negative lens and put our best foot forward to get out of the spaces and seasons of life as quickly as possible. Many of us are praying for breakthrough in areas of our lives, but at the same time we are not willing to allow God to teach us what the breakthrough may look like and how to get there. These liminal spaces will force us quickly to realize how much control we still desire of our own lives and see clearly the personal kingdom we’ve created.

We know there’s much about Jesus’s life that we are unaware of, but what we do know is that directly out of baptism he was led by the spirit of God into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. At the end of this wilderness season, immediately angels came to minister to him. Matthew 4:11. This opens up the door profound displays of the goodness of God’s kingdom displayed through the life of Jesus. In fact, John said this

“Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.” Yet, God has an even bigger plan for the whole of humanity operating through the Kingdom of God. Jesus is recorded saying this in John 14:12. “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.”

The only pathway for us to experience this type of life, a land truly flowing with milk and honey from the core of who we are, is to be built up, equipped and empowered by God in liminal spaces. The world calls the wilderness Ra. The Israelites did too. They had everything they needed to survive and were on a journey to thrive, but still found themselves not just complaining, but being so caught up in only what they knew that they didn’t have the faith to trust God with what they don’t know.

 “That night all the members of the community raised their voices and wept aloud. All the Israelites grumbled against Moses and Aaron, and the whole assembly said to them, “If only we had died in Egypt! Or in this wilderness! Why is the Lord bringing us to this land only to let us fall by the sword? Our wives and children will be taken as plunder. Wouldn’t it be better for us to go back to Egypt?” 

Richard Rohr calls “liminal space”—a particular spiritual position where human beings hate to be, but where the biblical God is always leading them. Many of the greatest stories are messages of stepping positiviely out of liminal space. Abraham, Joseph, David, Jonah, Ruth, Mary and so many others.

Let us not be so quick to judge the lack of faith and the desire to control of that of the Israelites. This is us, too. We have bought in to the lie that these wilderness seasons of life, surrendered to God, cannot produce far greater than what we could ask or imagine. We are all too familiar with liminal spaces. We can be in multiple wilderness seasons at the same time, or around the corner from another one. Eschatologically, we are in a liminal space. Jesus has defeated the forces of darkness and provided for us a pathway to exceptional life, but we are still waiting his return, and a culmination of all things made right. The question becomes whether we as the bride of Christ are willing to receive from this wilderness season the chiseling, purifying, and equipping that is necessary to present ourselves as a spotless bride.

“so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.” Ephesians 5:27.

Maybe today, we don’t necessarily seek to create wilderness seasons or find the liminal spaces, but in humility we can begin to see the power within them. Most of us are somewhat lofty in our thinking, even if we think poorly of ourselves. We still allow the Ra to have more say over our lives and the lives of others than the Tov that God has for us. Exquisite goodness was on the other side of this forming season for the Israelites, yet they threw it all away for the slavery that was familiar to them.

We are designed in the image of God and thus we are designed to bring forth life in everything that we do, yet if we are not allowing God to do the work beginning on the inside of our minds and hearts, lasting fruit cannot be produced.

 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes^[^a^] so that it will be even more fruitful.

You are designed to bring forth fruit and bring it abundantly. Be the one today who considers it pure joy when you face a trial of many kinds, believing that the testing, the equipping, the chiseling, the forming by the hand of God, can produce a steadfastness within us that leads to complete wholeness and maturity, unshakable by the feeble attempts of a broken world.

Written by Dr. Will Ryan with Special Guest Paul Lazzaroni

watch/listen to the video version of this article

Who do you claim as father?

Posted by expedition44 on June 16, 2024

Luke, I am your father! Every 80’s and 90’s guy knows exactly the implications of this phrase. Today we live in a fatherless world. There are so many implications of this, but one of them is the Christian mainstream claiming things of the Lord, yet in actuality is far from the galaxy of their father. I would urge a return to covenant living.

“As for Me, behold, My covenant is with you, and you will be the father of a multitude of nations.” Genesis 17:4 NASB

In Hebrew Av hamon goyim means Abraham would be the father of many, those inside and outside of his immediate family – the regathering of the lost nations (Deuteronomy 32). Today, Christians believe they are faithful to the same God, Yahweh; but if we would have lived during the time this sentiment was expressed to Abraham (the intended audience of the text) I doubt our modern-day actions or fruit would have been recognized as the kind of devotion or allegiance God was asking for. As I write this, Four Southern Baptist theologians and pastors intend to ask messengers to this year’s Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting to adopt the Nicene Creed as part of the denomination’s official faith statement and it begs the question, what does it look like in a modern world to fulfill what Yahweh asked of us?

According to Rabbi Shraga Freedman, “Even when non-Jewish nations recognize the existence of a Supreme Being and the need to serve Him, they advance many distorted notions of what He expects of His creations. Throughout history, their warped perceptions of religious devotion have caused untold pain and suffering to myriads of innocent human beings.”[1]

At first contemplation you might realize that if you aren’t observant to the Torah then you certainly can’t claim Abraham as his spiritual father, and thus what His father Yahweh asked of Him and those to come. You aren’t of the same lineage. But Jesus also redefines a few things for us, and I am thankful for that!

Skip Moen interjects, “God promised that Abraham would become the father of many goyim, that is, the father of many who do not descend from his biological line. But this does not mean these goyim are free to make up their own religious practices. What it means is precisely what James said at the Jerusalem council in the first century. “For from ancient generations Moses has those who preach him in every city, since he is read in the synagogues every Sabbath” (Acts 15:21). We must remember that the promise to Abraham is predicated upon a prior statement, namely, “Walk before Me, and be blameless.” It is hardly conceivable that walking before Abraham’s God is a matter of personal taste.” [2]

I have written a couple of books on the return to covenant practice. That doesn’t mean that all modern Christians should go back to observing the law, but it might carry some implications. I am saying quite clearly that modern day Christianity is a better picture of unfaithfulness than faithfulness. The primary mission of Jesus was to a lost and carnal world to be reconciled back to Yahweh. The religious leaders of His day had become the farthest from His father. I am not sure that has changed any today.

Jesus was observant. This is a call back to being holy, to leave everything on the beach having no other idols before you and completely follow the Lord. Today if you and your family are largely indistinguishable from those of the world you likely aren’t living by the covenant given. The God of Abraham well might be trying to get your attention by calling out your name and urging you to come back into the fold of his love compassion and mercy. Thankfully that calling is from Yahweh and not a “Darth Vader” father figure that has left this world lacking in so many ways. Return to what is TOV.

[1] Rabbi Shraga Freedman, Living Kiddush Hashem, p. 31.

[2] https://skipmoen.com/

How to say TOV

Posted by expedition44 on April 9, 2024

I remember one time when I was young, my father took me to hear a great lecturer on the Shroud of Turin. The gentlemen that was giving the lecture had a Ph.D. in something and came off as very intelligent. It was one of the first times in my young life I ever heard someone speak with this kind of wisdom or understanding. I remember thinking, “maybe someday.” Well perhaps I have arrived, perhaps not. Some people know that the Biblical names we say in English aren’t really accurate. They aren’t the way they would have been pronounced in Hebrew or Greek they are the English versions of the words. For instance, in this lecture the scholar kept saying, “Yeshayahu.” I asked my dad what that meant and He whispered, “Hebrew for Isaiah.” Little did I know this would end up turning into a significant part of my life path.

Biblical Hebrew (or classical Hebrew) was an ancient language that some say emerged in the 10th century B.C (or 1,000 B.C.) and perhaps earlier. Some believe it was the primary language given by God. During the Roman Period Biblical Hebrew “evolved” beyond recognition. The Jewish Diaspora (or spreading of the Jews) changed the pronunciations to be unrecognizable in many ways. Languages got mixed & new dialects were made. Eventually Biblical Hebrew got so minced that it was unrecognizable and basically “died.” But it’s even more complicated, Jeff Benner addresses the issue like this,

“The Hebrew texts of the Bible were originally written with only the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, which only represent consonantal sounds. As no vowel sounds were originally included in the text, they had to be memorized. As you can imagine with the Diaspora and passing on of the language orally in through different dialect and slang things became very difficult to know exactly what words were what. Around the 10th Century AD, a group of Jewish scribes called Masorites, created a system of dots and dashes, called nikkudot or vowel pointings and added these to the hebrew text. These vowel pointings served to supply the vowel sounds to the text in order to codify the pronunciation. The Masorites also included notes in the margins of the text. Prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest Hebrew manuscript known to exist is the Masoretic text called the Aleppo Codex which was written in 826 A.D. This text is considered the most authoritative Hebrew manuscript and all future editions are based on this text.”

But the problem therein lies that by 826 A.D. most scholars would believe we had already lost the core of what Biblical Hebrew once was. Are you starting to see the issues?

Hebrew experienced a revival in the 19th century – and there was a push to bring back the Hebrew language, what we know was “Modern Hebrew” came as a result.

This was part of the Zionist Movement, or National Revival Movement to create a state/home for Jews and was an instrumental part of dispensationalism. During this movement, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, a lexicographer (dictionary writer/editor), prepared the first modern Hebrew dictionary. With the new dictionary, people started using Hebrew again and speaking 1 language. Because of the influence of European languages (remember, the Jewish Diaspora and evolving mentioned above?), Hebrew changed as a language. By the medieval period, we know of three main oral reading traditions: Babylonian, Palestinian, and Tiberian. Numerous medieval biblical manuscripts have survived representing these oral reading traditions with different vocalization sign systems.

(SOURCE: A comprehensive description of Babylonian vocalization is presented by Yisrael Yeivin The Hebrew Language Tradition as Reflected in the Babylonian Vocalization -Jerusalem: The Academy of the Hebrew Language, 1985).

Modern Hebrew and Biblical Hebrew are different. For instance, the basic word for “I” changed, and words from outside languages came into modern Hebrew, essentially, a Biblical Hebrew “speaker” wouldn’t understand a Modern one and vice versa. In this way a someone that knows modern Hebrew often cannot really easily read the Hebrew Bible. They are “that” different. Because of these things and several others, there is a good bit of “acceptable” linguistic variation. Biblical Hebrew has been hard to track for many reasons.

Mark Ward sheds some light into this, “In New Testament times, the disciples were noted as Galileans, probably indeed because of their accents. What was the “right” way back then to pronounce Kiriath Jearim? And was it FIL-uh-steen or fuh-LISS-teen—or something else entirely? Who can know? I’m not saying we can’t know anything about ancient pronunciation of Hebrew and Greek words; I’m saying it cannot serve as the standard for how you pronounce names in the Bible today. Take that impossible pressure off of you.”

We simply “do not know” and because of this, some scholars have gone to great lengths to try to show why one pronunciation or another may be better, but we are so far removed and there are so many complications to this argument that instead of the scholarly community getting particular about all the various possible pronunciations, for the most part, there is a loose grace that comes with the ground. In Hebrew thought, there is never really an absolute “correct” way of seeing something anyway. The ONLY correct “view” is God’s view, and no one has those exact eyes.

So now, you will better understand how TOV specifically gets interesting.

Most people reading this know that Tov is the Biblical Hebrew word that describes God’s handiwork as “good” [tov]. The Hebrew word tov would best be translated as the word “functional” in terms of God’s order (algorithm may be a better modern word to describe what God does here in regard to devotion) in contrast to this word is the Hebrew word “ra”. These two words, tov and ra are used for the tree of the knowledge of “good” and “evil”. While “ra” is often translated as evil it is best translated as “dysfunctional” or “chaotic”. In the Bible we see narratives such as good-evil, tov-ra, order-disorder, function-disfunction, peace-chaos and so on and so forth, and they all describe the contrast of everything that becomes rival to the ways of the Lord.

Tov becomes a one word Idiom to describe all things as intended by God with the idea of a journey to being what you were fully designed to be from the eyes of God both in a sense of your person and the community that represents God.

In Ancient or Paleo Hebrew each character makes a picture that has a loose description of its intention. The above from “strongs” will help you understand this ancient Hebraic idea.

You might notice if you look up the word “good” that different sources or commentators handle meanings and even the pronunciation of the word slightly differently. This just goes back to the idea above that we really do not know what the original word exactly sounded like and many different scholars have suggested differences of opinion and research.

Transliteration takes the letters from one language (in this case, Hebrew) and puts them into another while trying to preserve pronunciation as best as possible. This presents challenges when languages like Hebrew have different sounds than English and have changed immensely over time. For example, one of the sounds in Hebrew that’s hard to carry over in English is the kh sound. It appears in words like chesed (steadfast love, lovingkindness) and sounds like phlegm coming out the back of the throat.

You may see the word TOV written by some commentators as “tobe” where as others may suggest “towb” or somethings different. Sometimes this is a variation in vocabulary and tense but most often it isn’t. In Hebrew the V, W, and B English sounds are very close.

____________________

HOW TO PRONOUNCE TOV: So specifically, when we pronounce TOV, scholars can agree on a few things; in Hebrew you emphasize a strong syllable, and in this word, it is at the beginning. T and O are strong and for the most part are pronounced like “TOE” in English. (However, this is complicated because in modern Hebrew this O often can take on an “A” sound. You might be familiar with this when people say, Mozel TAV with a long A sound rather than Mozel TOV with a short O sound.) Then when you get to the end of the word TOV (particularly in Biblical Hebrew), the emphasis almost fades to nothing. You end with a nearly slurred WVB sound in English. Therefore, TOwvb may be the closest thing (transliteration) you would understand in English (but don’t give to much emphasis to any of the “w” “v” or “b” sound, they should softly fade together.) It comes off as a strong “Toe” with a fading wvb sound. All that said, TAV, TOWB, TOBE, TOVE, TOV and likely other ways of saying it, are all “acceptable” especially when spoken in English! As I alluded to above, only God knows.

____________________

Dr. Will Ryan