ARAMAIC WORD STUDY – PREACHING IN THE WILDERNESS –  MAKARAZ BACHURABA    מכרז בחורבא  

Matthew  3:1:  “In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judaea,”

I don’t know about you but when I see the word wilderness I think of desert and uninhabitable land other than the creatures that wander through the desert.  So for whatever reason, I am picturing John the Baptist preaching to wild animals and bushes.  The word wilderness is eremo in the Greek which means a place where there is no man or uninhabited, desolate, waste abandoned and/or a desert.  Yet is says he was preaching.  Preaching to who?   In Greek, the word for preaching is kerysson which means to proclaim, to speak publically with conviction and authority.   

In the Aramaic, the word for preaching is makaraz from the root word karaz  which means to preach or to announce or proclaim.   However, it comes from a Semitic root found in both the Akkadian and Sumerian and is used for a measuring container. When a preacher preaches he is filling the congregation with the Word of God and then measuring that congregation according to the Word of God that filled them.   Is the preacher giving too much or too little?  Has the preacher carefully measure the Word of God that he is filling his congregation.  Sometimes a preacher can fill his congregation with too much causing them to overreact or too little causing them to give little response.  I believe John the Baptist was not so much preaching as we understanding preaching, but he was carefully measuring the Word of God that the Spirit of God was filling him with.

So did John the Baptist actually do any real preaching in the Wilderness?  The word for wilderness in Aramaic is bachuraba from the root word charav which is the word for a plowed field. A field that will yield a harvest.   

Actually, the Talmud has numerous references to the wilderness or plowed fields of Judaea.  In Baba Kama 79b Jews were encouraged to bring their cattle up to the wilderness or plowed fields of Judaea.  In fact, the Shir hashirim Rabbah (Song of Songs Rabbah) indicates that there were at least five cities in the wilderness of Judaea that he might have been preaching at, but I believe the word for preaching, karaz would indicate something more.   This is likely a metaphor that he was preaching in a land ripe for harvest.  He could have come into Jerusalem with a reputation as a mighty prophet of God from his preaching in the cities of the Wilderness of Judaea but the Rabbah goes on to say that this is the wilderness where the law was revealed, the tabernacle was built, the priesthood lived, the office of the Levites was established here and all good gifts which God gave to Israel was from the wilderness or plowed fields of Judaea. 

I believe this was more a training ground for John the Baptist and it wasn’t so much the miraculous work that preceded John the Baptist that gave him credibility when he came to Jerusalem, it was the fact that he spent time in this Wilderness where all good gifts from God were believed to have come.  Maybe he wasn’t so much preaching in the Wilderness but was karaz in its true sense, being filled, that is, being filled with the Spirit of God in the Wilderness and any proclamations or preaching he did was worshipping and praising God as he was learning to live a life in the Spirit of God.  If that is the case the poor John the Baptist spent thirty years preparing for just a few months of preaching before he was martyred.   

Maybe there is a lesson in that for us.  For many of us, we may spend a lifetime preparing for a ministry that could only last a few months.  Yet, those few months could yield far more results than a few months of preparation and a lifetime of ministry. I was reading about astronauts who spend practically their whole lives preparing for just a few days in outer space.  It is not unusual to spend far more time in preparation for an event that the time spent performing for that event.