HEBREW WORD STUDY – WALK AS A CHILD – YALAK – ילכ   

Psalms 138:7: “Though I walk in the midst of trouble, thou wilt revive me: thou shalt stretch forth thine hand against the wrath of mine enemies, and thy right hand shall save me.”

I was a little surprised when I read this verse in the Hebrew.  I fully expected to find the word halakah for walk but instead I found the world yalak.  Both words have a different root. As there are no synonyms in Hebrew, ie., two word meaning exactly the same there must be something different about Halakah and yalak. Thus, they can both mean walk, but each has their own type of walk.  Halakah is a righteous walk.  That is why I expected to see halakah here as I assumed that one would walk a righteous walk in the midst of trouble.  The trouble here in the Hebrew is sarar meaning pain, distress, grief and being bound up.

However, the word used here is yalak. This is the word used for child, or youth.  In its Semitic root it has the idea of giving birth, bringing forth.  The word midst is karah which really means to happen upon which has the idea of just stumbling into something. In other words through you walk like a child who innocently, through his own inexperience happens up trouble God is there like a parent to revive you.  The word revive comes the root word chi which means life.  He will restore life to you. 

Did ever, by you own immature acts, get yourself into a mess and you feel like you’re dead, you life was over?  David is saying that God will bring life back into you, give  you that second chance even if it is your own fault.  

So, why should God deliver us from trouble that is the result of our own doing or disobedience?  I mean we got ourselves into the mess, why not just leave us alone to get out of it so we can learn a lesson?

The answer is found in the following words;  “He will stretch forth His hand against the wrath of our enemies.”  The hand of God has always been a symbol of his power and/or acts.  But note the next phrase, “thy right hand shall save me…”  

Why does He not say with the left hand destroy my enemies and the right hand saves me?  Why does He specifically refer to His right hand?   The ancients believed that your heart was in your right hand.  Remember the word yadiyad?   This is the word for beloved friend.  It is repeating the word yad twice.  It literally means hand in hand. More specifically right hand to right hand.  

In our politically correct society today the only really acceptable, least intimate physical contact between two people, is a handshake.  Yet in ancient society the hand shake was a very intimate expression, because when you took someone’s hand you were symbolically sharing your heart with that person. 

This is why David says that He will save me with his right hand. God is not a police officer or fireman who saves someone with whom they have no relationship.  Rather God reaches out with His heart to save you. He is saving you not out of duty but out of love. Like a little child who is repeatedly warned by his mother not to play with fire and then when the child disobeys and gets burned, the mother does not scold the child and says “I warned you, now suffer.”  But she only sees the child’s pain and reaches out to comfort the child.  So it is with God when we disobey and find ourselves in pain.  By all rights God should just leave us to our pain, after all He warned us.  Yet, His heart of love will just naturally draw Him to us to offer salvation and comfort.