WORD STUDY – LIBERTY

Liberty – Hebrew : darar – to flow freely, to fly away, freedom, liberty

Isaiah 61:1: The spirit of the Lord is upon me; because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek, He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.”

The word captive comes from the root word “shavah” which means captivity, to take as a prisioner, and is tropical for a state of great affliction and misery.  The Shin tells us that we may be held captive by destructive consuming passions such as anger, revenge, bitterness etc.  The Beth tells us that we can become captive to feelings of spiritual superiority and the Hei warns us that when we allow our consuming passions and feelings of spiritual superiority to take hold we can fall into self-deception thinking we are right and everyone else is wrong.  When this happens we fall into a state of “shavah” where we are captive and held prisoner to affliction and misery.

Jesus quoted Isaiah 61:1 in Luke 4:18 and declared He was the one who would set the shavah (captive) to darar (freedom, liberty).   Darar has it origins in the flight of a bird.  As David viewed the Dove and said: “Oh, that I had the wings of a dove, I would fly away”  Psalms 55:6.  To sprout wings and just fly away has always been the ultimate picture of freedom.  Soaring in the skies, no one to stop you, no one to tell you where to go, flying above all your afflictions and misery.   Jesus promises to give us such freedom from our afflictions and miseries but we must follow the teachings of Darar.  The Daleth tells us that Jesus offers a doorway out of our captivity through the Resh which represents repentance and a second Resh which represents returning to your core values such as forgiveness, love, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, etc.  Once we claim the Daleth, Resh, Resh, Jesus can then free us from our captivity to our  affliction and misery.