ARAMAIC WORD STUDY – SON OF MAN – BREH DENASHA  ברה דנשה Beth Resh Hei  Daleth Nun Shin Hei

Matthew 8:19-20: “And a certain scribe came, and said unto him, Master, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest. (20) And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air [have] nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay [his] head.”

This is really a very interesting story.  A scribe comes to Jesus and offers to go wherever He goes.  A Jewish scribe in that day was a member of the aristocracy whose vocation was to transcribe letters, documents and messages for kings and merchants and many copied religious material including the Torah.  For this scribe to say he would follow Jesus wherever he goes meant he would have to leave a good job or he was recently fired from a job and looking for employment.  Most scribes, however, were freelancers and good-paying gigs were hard to come by.  This man was not interested in following Jesus and His teachings, he noticed the popularity of Jesus and knew Jesus was headed for big things. Jesus would be wined and dinned by the elites, given shelter in beautiful homes and as a scribe he would by the Master’s side 24/7 to record any teachings, nifty sayings or quotes. Of course to be by the Master’s side so as not to miss recording any little golden nugget  he would naturally partake of the good food and shelter offered to the master.  Good gig if you can get it.  So Jesus’s response was less cryptic than it may seem.  He was telling the scribe that He was not into perks.  That scribe would not become the press agent for a famous TV evangelist of a megachurch.  Jesus was just a poor itinerate preacher who mostly slept on the ground at night and not in or around what would pass for mansions in those days. 

What really caught my interest in this story was the use of the term Son of Man.  Why did He not use the personal pronoun I.  “But I have no place to lay my head.”  Aramaic has a perfectly good pronoun.   Yet, Jesus felt it necessary to identify Himself to this scribe as Son of Man using, I should add, a rather poor Aramaic grammar, before a scribe of all things.  They were like the English teachers of their day and it would be like saying to your High School English teacher, “Student here has to go to his next class now.” Using the term of the Son of Man in a third person was sending a very clear message.

You see in first-century Northern dialect of Aramaic the term breh denasha or Son of Man was used quite often.  It should be properly translated as human being. It is often a term used to show humility. There was Bar denasha or the son of a man or Breh denasha child of a human being. Jesus used Breh Denasha  to say: “I am just an ordinary human being, I am nobody.”  Of course, Jesus was not just an ordinary human being, He was Divine and not a nobody. But this term is also used in another context which is likely the case here.  It also means “You don’t know my beans from Adam.”  In other words to use the Son of Man in the third person is like saying; “You think I am just another teacher coming down the pike, that is all you really know about me. There is no chance you are going to get a free ticket to wealth because I am not one of those teachers who will suck up to the elite and rich.”    

Bar is the word for son but the word used here is breh which is a word for son or daughter, it is for a child.  I am merely a child of nasha which is the word for a human being male or female.  So Jesus was saying: “I am a child of a human being.”  Which was really a true statement and the scribe did not seek to correct him by saying; “Ah, but you are also Divine.”  No, the scribe was so interested in locking up a lucrative gig he really didn’t care who Jesus was, only that he was popular and with his expertise he would surely be a valuable asset to someone like Jesus with His potential.

There are a lot of Christian entertainers who are popular in their church and told they  have great talent.  So thinking they are going to make it big in the secular world they go to Nashville and discover they are just another kid in Nashville trying to make it making ends meet by working in some mailroom. So they go back their Gospel roots and try to make it big in Gospel music thinking they have a much greater opportunity there and once they are big in Christian music they will secure a good agent and move on to make it big in the secular world (for the sake of God of course).  But you know what? These dreamers are following Jesus for the same reason as the scribe wanted to follow Jesus – it’s a good gig if you can get it, lots of influential people might be a doorway to a good career.  Jesus will tell them I am a breh denasha, I am just an ordinary human being to you who has good connections