Listen Jacob. listen Israel
I am the one who named you!
I am the one.
I started things and, yes, I will finish them.
The land is my work, done by hand.
And the skies, I also made them, horizon to horizon.
When I speak, they are on their feet, attentive.
— Isaiah 48:12-13 (The Message)
At least three times in the Old Testament and four times in the New, God explicitly declares Himself the First and the Last: Isaiah 41:4; 44:6, 48:12; Revelation 1:17; 2:8; 21:6; 10:13 p.m. 1 By that count, the formula “the first and the last” becomes not only one of the most obvious merismas in God’s Word, but also one of the most common. Since the members of a merism are, by definition, comprehensive, opposites implying “everything in between” (as in the sentence, “He looked all over his wallet”), the phrase implies that God begins and completes His Play: And It Stays With Him to the End.
The Jubilee Bible translators capture the essence of merism in their translation of Isaiah 41:4: “I the LORD am the first, and I myself am with the last.” God puts time in parentheses. Looking at time narrowly or broadly, from an individual or historical perspective, God is always there for his people (Hebrews 13:5).
A much less obvious expression of these same opposites—first and last—appears in the biblical use of two verbs, one Hebrew and one Greek. Discovering the implicit merism established in these two verbs is both interesting and instructive.
Christ’s quotation from Psalm 8:2, recorded in His words in Matthew 21:16, provides the axis of the implied merism. We will look at both passages, beginning with the source material for Christ in Psalm 8: “Out of the mouth of babes and children, You have built a fortress against your adversaries. . .” . The Hebrew verb translated as “build” is yacad. 2 Yacad, which means “found” or “begin”, is the verb that corresponds to the first member of the implicit “first-last” merism. It is related to the concept of first.
We find the second member of this implicit “first-last” merism in Matthew 21:16, 3 where Christ quotes Psalm 8:2 at the time of His triumphal entry into Jerusalem:
. . . and they said to him: Do you hear what these say? And Jesus said to them: “Yes; Have you never read
From the mouths of babes and sucklings have you prepared praise?
In the quotation from Christ, the Greek verb translated as “prepared” is katartizo, 4 the meaning of which we will examine in more detail in Part Two. Katartizo is the verb that corresponds to the second member of the implicit merism “first-last”, relative to the concept of last.
So, the “first-last” merism is implied by the Hebrew verb yacad and the Greek verb katartizo, respectively.
Yacad: the beginning
Here, in the first part, we will focus on the Hebrew verb yacad. To begin, we will consider the context of the Christ quote, Psalm 8:2-4 (GWT):
From the mouths of children and children, You have built a fortress against your adversaries to silence the enemy and the avenger. When I look at your heavens, creation of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have placed, what is a mortal that you remember him or the Son of man that you take care of him?
Two themes are developed in this passage:
God’s initial creation, the work of His fingers. This sense, we will see, is the thrust of yacad.
God’s continual maintenance of His creation, in this case, His attention to the needs of mortals as well as to the “Son of Man.” In Part Two, we will find that this “clothing and keeping” aspect of his work (see Genesis 2:15) is the main part of the meaning of katartizo.
With the idea of initial creation in mind, we need to sharpen our focus on yacad, the Hebrew verb behind the word “build” in Psalm 8:2. According to the Hebrew-Chaldean lexicon of Gesenius, the -cad of yacad is related to the Sanskrit sad, meaning “to sit”, as well as the English infinitive “to set”. Thus, the root cad informs English idioms to “lay a table” or “establish a foundation”, 5 or let the concrete or glue “settle”.
Yacad means “to build”, “to found”, “to establish” or, as it appears more commonly in the King James Version, “to lay a foundation”. Most importantly, in its Old Testament usages, it carries the idea of ”beginning” or “foundation.” Don’t contractors build the foundation of a building first, before the roof garden? Yes, there are design activities before construction, followed by soil testing and excavation, but the workers don’t build the rooftop helipad first. is the base.
Think of it in terms of the “stage” of a concrete sidewalk. Such a walkway could last for years if its owner takes care of it competently: if he pressure-washes it from time to time and makes sure that tree roots don’t undermine it, slowly but surely. Those things, and more, constitute ongoing maintenance activities. But all those activities would not even be possible if the concrete on the sidewalk had not properly cured, that is, set. That “setting” process is part of the initial creation of the sidewalk, on day one, you could say. The setting of concrete takes place at the beginning. The following scriptures help us grasp the meaning of yacad:
Exodus 9:18. This first use of yacad clearly illustrates the concept of beginning. The general context is the seventh plague of Egypt: “So, tomorrow at this time I will send the worst hailstorm that has ever occurred in Egypt since the beginning of its history” (GWT). God refers to the time when He “established” Egypt as a nation, its foundation.
1 Kings 6:37 . The New King James Version approaches this passage from a literal perspective, using the noun foundation, although that noun does not appear in the Hebrew text: “In the fourth year the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid, in the month of Ziv. .” The Contemporary English Version (CEV) better captures the meaning of yacad: “Work began on the temple during Ziv, the second month of the year. . ..”
Zechariah 12:1. The Voice manages to capture the essential meaning of yacad by avoiding terms like “laid the foundations” of the earth: “This is the message with which the Eternal charged His prophet about Israel, the Eternal, who began existence by stretching out the sky and the foundation of the earth.”
Isaiah 48:13. The CEV (and at least ten other versions 6 ) gets to the heart of this scripture by translating yacad as “founded”: “My hand founded the earth; My strong hand stretched out the heavens. When I call them, they all stand up.”
Job 38:4. Here, God asks Job: “Where were you when I founded the earth?” The translators translated yacad with the three English words, “laid the foundation,” even though the Hebrew noun for “foundation” does not appear at all in the original text. The meaning is that of a beginning. The New Life Version best extracts the meaning of yacad by translating verse 4, “Where were you when I began to build the earth?”
1 Kings 16:34 . As background, after God miraculously delivered Jericho to the children of Israel, Joshua cursed the city, prophesying that whoever rebuilt its foundations would do so at the expense of his eldest son (Joshua 6:26). 1 Kings 16:34 is a historical footnote, culminating the ancient history of Jericho: “During the time of Ahab, Gall of Bethel rebuilt the city of Jericho. When Hiel began to work in the city, his eldest son, Abiram, died” (Easy-to-read version). The term “initiated work” is the interpretation of the paraphrase of yacad, which indicates an initial action, a beginning.
Zechariah 4:9 . The Message treats this occurrence of yacad well: “After that, the Word of God came to me: ‘Zerubbabel began to rebuild this Temple and will finish it.'”
Zechariah 8:9 . As a final example, look at this translation from the Living Bible:
The Almighty Lord says: “Go on with the work and finish it! You’ve been listening long enough! For ever since you began to lay the foundations of the Temple, the prophets have been telling you of the blessings that await you when it is finished.”
The Foundation Founded
Isaiah 28:16, a well-known passage by virtue of its citation of Paul in Romans 9:33 and Peter in I Peter 2:6, provides an instructive use of yacad:
Therefore the Lord God said: Behold, I have laid in Zion a stone, a tried stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation; whoever believes will be unbreakable.” (Holman Christian Standard Bible)
Yacad is present in this passage, but not in the words “I have laid a stone.” He hides elsewhere. Let’s purge it.
The term “sure foundation” is yacad muwcad in Hebrew. Muwcad 7 is one of the Hebrew nouns for “foundation.” The -cad of muwcad is the same -cad of yacad. So, the root cad appears twice in the sentence. Most translators translate yacad muwcad as “firm foundation” or “secure foundation,” which is not incorrect. The term “secure foundation” emphasizes resolute strength and integrity, implying that the foundation is reliable and capable of supporting the building. 8 As such, it is an acceptable translation.
However, “secure foundation” is neither the best nor the best translation. We have seen that the impulse behind the root strand is “begin” or “found”. So the best way in English to get the meaning and flavor of the Hebrew words is to translate yacad muwcad as “a founded foundation.” That is precisely what a translation does, the Lexham English Bible.
The difference in emphasis between “secure basis” and “founded basis” is marked. The translator’s use of a past participle phrase (ie, “founded foundation”) emphasizes that an anonymous “someone” established the foundation.
We, of course, understand that “someone” is God. From the beginning, He established Christ as the foundation. That was an integral part of the Father’s plan from the beginning. This role that the Father played in establishing Christ is essential, and it is a concept that we will review in Part Three when we look at the use of katartizo in Hebrews 10:4-5.
But, before we get there, we need to “establish a foundation” of understanding regarding yacad’s Greek counterpart, katartizo. That will be the subject of the second part.
final notes
1 Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture citations are from the English Standard Version.
2 Yacad is Strong’s Hebrew Lexicon #3245. Appears 42 times.
3 As a parallel passage, see Mark 1:19.
4 Katartizo, which appears 13 times, is Strong’s Greek Lexicon #2675. The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, translates yacad as katartizo in Psalm 8:2.
5 However, it is more acceptable in English to refer to “laying the foundations”.
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