Hebrew Highlights 46 – BOKER TOV
Shalom. This is Yuval Shomron, coming to you from
Jerusalem.
“Boker Tov!” This greeting we use everyday in Israel
simply means “Good Morning.” “Tov”
meaning “good”, and “boker” meaning morning.
Introduced very early in the Bible, earth experienced both the word, and
the event, for the first time in GEN 1:5, “And God called the light day, and
the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one
day.”
So what? Well, the morning has great significance in
God’s word. Let’s explore some of the
passages which, if you’ll excuse the expression, “shed light” on the subject.
PSA
5:3, “In the morning, O Lord, Thou wilt
hear my voice; In the morning I will order my prayer to Thee and eagerly
watch.” What a perfect time to start our
day with God. According to this verse,
we should not only begin the day with our communication to God, but wait for an
answer as well. It is this watching that
most of us fall short in. We are quick
to make the Lord aware of our needs, but too often run off to breakfast and
then work before waiting for wisdom from above.
In
fact, morning is the time to see victory, according to PSA 30:4-5, “Sing praise to the Lord, you His godly ones,
And give thanks to His holy name. For
His anger is but for a moment, His favor is for a lifetime; Weeping may last for the night, But a shout of joy
comes in the morning.”
Asking
and receiving should not be the only things on our agenda when we wake up, as
we see in PSA 92:1-2, “It is good to give thanks to the Lord, And to sing
praises to Thy name, O Most High; To declare Thy lovingkindness in the morning,
And Thy faithfulness by night.” So, it
seems that a truly “good morning”, would include a time of worship to God as
well.
Sometimes,
after a particularly difficult day, we go to bed in condemnation, feeling that
we have failed the Lord. Maybe the
Psalmist also experienced this since in PSA 90:14, we read, “O satisfy us in
the morning with Thy lovingkindness, That we may sing for joy and be glad all
our days.” The plea is repeated in PSA
143:8; “Let me hear Thy lovingkindness in the morning; For I trust in Thee;
Teach me the way in which I should walk; For to Thee I lift up my soul.”
We
can indeed put our soul in God’s hands at the beginning of each day, and count
on His mercy, as we are reminded in LAM 3:22-23; “The Lord's lovingkindnesses
indeed never cease, For His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; Great is Thy
faithfulness.”
What
comforting words. Most of us could use
compassion every morning. If we take
time to accept it, maybe we will have that same compassion on others we
encounter during the day.
King
David was a man after God’s own heart, and a mighty ruler and warrior. Yet, he found that these morning times with
God were not enough. He didn’t stop
there, as we see in PSA 55:16-18, “As for me, I shall call upon God, And the
Lord will save me. Evening and morning
and at noon, I will complain and murmur, And He will hear my voice. He will redeem my soul in peace from the
battle which is against me, For they are many who strive with me.”
Tomorrow,
when you get up, start your day with a Hebrew greeting to the Lord. Look up to you Heavenly Father, and say
“Boker Tov”. Then, it probably will be
exactly that.
Shalom,
Shalom, from Jerusalem.