HEBREW WORD STUDY – FISHERMEN – LEDYAGIM  לדוגימ  

Jeremiah 16:16: “Behold, I will send many fishermen says the Lord and they shall fish them and afterward I will send for many hunters and they will hunt them from every mountain and every hill and out of the holes of the rocks.”

There is a hint here of something very deep that you might not usually pick up on a first reading. I know some people will accuse me of trying to find something that is not really there and there is much merit to this bit of wisdom.  Yet, if there is a hint of something deeper I am going down that bunny trail. You see the hint I find here is in the word dayag (fisherman) 

In the Hebrew text, the word for fisherman is repeated, this is not reflected in the English text. You will find the same for the word for hunter but it is not so obvious. The word ledugim is the noun form of dayag (fishermen) and the word ledyagim is the verbal form, “fishermen fish.  The same with tsayad.  Tsadum is the noun form for hunter and tsayadim is the verbal form  (Qal perfect).  Which raises the question as to why send is in a future tense when this word hunt is in a past tense.  Literally, I will send hunters who have hunted.   

The literal understanding of the passage is that the Egyptians were noted as fishermen and the Babylonians were famous as hunters and thus Jeremiah was comparing God’s deliverance from Egypt with their future deliverance from Babylon.  The idea of sending hunters who have hunted would suggest that their deliverance is already being prepared. Things may look pretty dismal for you right now but God wants to assure you that the hunters or your deliverance are already in preparation.

Yet, there is something embedded in that word fishermen that really catches my attention.  The word fish is nun in the Hebrew and has the idea of flowing, going with the stream. When Jesus said I will make you fishers of men it may have given the disciples who were fishermen some pause.  You see they caught fish with nets, not with rods, reels, and bait.  They just go where the fish are at and drag them in.

Evangelism is simply bringing people to God and letting God do His work.  Too often we use the Western approach to fishing that is baiting a hook with a juicy worm. In other words, come to Jesus and you will get all your problems solved, marriage restored, finances restored, health restored etc.  Then when we make the catch we get our photo taken with our trophy, look what we caught. For the disciple’s fishers of men was their vocation, not their sport.  Evangelism is our vocation, not a sport.  They did not show off their biggest catch: “Wow, look at me, I sure snagged a good one, a star athlete, a CEO, a rich person.”   They took what they dragged in, they were not searching for the big kahuna. 

Is evangelism for you a sport to show off your trophies and brag at what a great fisherman you are, get your picture in Outdoor Life Magazine and guest appearances at the Sportsmen Show to show everyone how you do it?  Or is it a vocation, catching whoever God puts in your net and ask you to drag in, rich or poor, famous or ordinary, popular or loser?  You just bring whoever the Lord puts in that net so He can save them and whisper in their ear, “I love you.”