HEBREW WORD STUDY – GOD’S SINGING – יהוה זמר  YHWH ZAMAR  

Psalms 118:13-14: “Thou pushed me hard and I nearly fell, But the Lord helped me.  The Lord is my strength and my song and He has become my salvation.”

A rabbi once told me that we should read  Psalm 118:14 as: “The Lord is my strength and He is singing to me because He is my salvation.” The rabbi explained the sages teach that God sang a song to David to cut away his yetzer hara – evil inclinations. When God sang to David and David sang to God, in harmony and as their voices blended, the enemy could no longer overcome David with temptation.  

Everything in nature has a certain rhythm or vibration.  You see when we sing to God He is not up there in heaven like some judge on American Idol.  He is singing with us creating vibrations and when our vibrations match His, we are in harmony or as it says in the Hebrew, we are in tov with Him.  The word song is zamar which is a pruning or cutting tool.  When God sings to us He is cutting away all the yetzer hara – evil inclinations or as we Christians say the attacks of the enemy.

There is an old rabbinical story the sages used to explain this.  There was a girl who loved to sing praises to God but here voice was so out of tune and horrible the people in the village forced her to sing alone in the forest.  Another girl had a beautiful voice and blessed the village with her praises to God,  but she would not sing because of her sorrow over her father’s death.  She ran off to the forest to be alone.  While in the forest she heard this awful, horrible noise in the distance. She realized it was this girl trying to sing praises to God.  This grief stricken girl was so aghast at this horrible noise she began to sing the praise to God in proper tune.  Before long the girl with the horrible voice began to follow this other girl’s lead and she soon began to sing in harmony with her.  The other girl drew so close to God singing His praises that the joy of the Lord overcame her sorrow. They walked into the village together singing praises to God in beautiful harmony blessing the people of the village.

So sing to the Lord, even if you have a voice like mine, that causes my neighbor’s dog Sparky to start howling.  You will soon be in tov with God and the enemy will have to flee and not because of your horrible voice.