Barack O bama as a sign of the time!

Dear Brothers!

I have done an interesting word play after looking up Hebrew meanings using my BibleWorks. Here is what I found…

Part 1:

In Matthew 24:27, Jesus explains how his “coming” will be connected to lightning.

²⁷ For just as the lightning comes out of the east and shines over to the west, so the coming/presence of the Son of man will be. (Matthew24)

This verse was always strange to me, because as already Charles Russell pointed out, lightning as in a thunderstorm does not travel from the east to the west. In fact, usually in travels vertically! The ray of the sun does so metaphorically, this is why some translate this ‘astrape’ as ‘dawn’.

But let us see what happens if we take it to mean lightning. The word translated ‘for’ is ‘gar’ and can also be translated as ‘then”. Reading it that way, this travelling of the ‘lightning’ can be taken as a marker in time, as an event marking the coming of the Lord.

Here is the strange thing. Look up the Hebrew word for ‘lightning’. Here is a verse from Zechariah using the word translated ‘lightning’…

¹⁴ And over them Jehovah himself will be seen, and his arrow will certainly go forth just like lightning. And on the horn the Sovereign Lord Jehovah himself will blow, and he will certainly go with the windstorms of the south. (Zechariah9)

The Theological Word Book of the Old Testament shows that ‘lightning’ is…

(287b) qr'b' (b¹r¹q) II, Barak noun common masculine singular absolute.

Barack Obama grew up in the “East”, in the country of Indonesia! His political career is now about to shine upon the West, being president of the United States! Can it be, the “coming of the Son of Man” is nigh?

Part 2:

Since I found this idea interesting (well, weird but interesting), I looked for the meaning of Barack’s surname.

Well, here is a Scripture that has the word “bama” in it…

³² And Jer·o·bo´am went on to make a festival in the eighth month on the fifteenth day of the month, like the festival that was in Judah, that he might make offerings upon the altar that he had made in Beth´el, to sacrifice to the calves that he had made; and he put in attendance at Beth´el the priests of the high places that he had made. (2Kings12)

Here is the comment of the TWOT…

1116 hm'B' bamah {bam-maw'}

• from an unused root (meaning to be high); TWOT - 253; n f

• AV - high place 100, heights 1, waves 1; 102

• 1) high place, ridge, height, bamah (technical name for cultic platform)

As an aside, I want to point out that the 15^th day of the 8^th month is Heshvan15, November12/13 Jewish Calendar and November17/18 BLC.

Now what about the remaining ‘O’?

The Hebrew letter sometimes pronounced as an ‘o’ is the ‘waw’ or ‘vav’. Wikipedia tells us…

Vav Conjunctive: when a vav connects two words or parts of a sentence; it is a grammatical conjunction meaning 'and', cognate to the Arabic. This is the most common usage.

Vav can be used as a mater lectionis for an 'o' vowel, in which case it is usually pronounced as ‘o’.

So actually, we could read the name of the President-elect as “Lightning and Heights” or “Lightning and High Places”.

Michael

michael@2008-2012.org