Preacher

by Brad Scott

The image cast, when mentioning the word preach or preacher to many of us, may be of Elmer Gantry standing on a box on a dusty western street, or perhaps you think of your pastor on Sun-day morning. The etymology of the idea of preaching, however, comes from the Hebrew word parash (פרש). The sh sound was, over time, reduced to a shorter ch sound. Originally, to preach meant to declare the mind of YHVH.

Vayiq^era (Leviticus) 24:12And they put him in prison, that the mind of YHVH might be shown them.

The phrase might be shown is the word parash. This is word for the weekly Torah readings called Parashah. If you read our section called Sabbath you will see what is a very old format taken from this word which means to show the mind of YHVH. Yeshua‘ was teaching us how to preach when He stood up and read the Parashah from the prophets in Luke 4:17-21. Scripturally, preaching was done every Shabbat. This scriptural pattern was followed in the book of Acts, as well. In the book of N^echem^eyah (Nehemiah), this word is translated as distinctly.

N^echem^eyah 8:8So they read in the book in the law of ’Elohiym distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading.

Shalom Alecheim! ◊