(This is a follow up post to Jesus life in his ancestors
).
In the last post we explored a couple of way of reading the names of Jesus’ ancestors from Elohim (God) to Kenan(Begotten or Sorrowful) could be read as “Multi-God the builder is appointed mortal born sorrowful” or “God a man is appointed mortal born” etc. Whichever option you chose, the names described the context of Jesus birth and early life pretty well. But the prophetic revelation does stop here, because the the next three names read very plainly…
“The glory of God descends to dedicate/a teacher”
Which of course describes the start of Jesus ministry phase. The Holy Spirit descended on him at his Baptism, commissioning Jesus or dedicating him to the next phase of his life. No longer was Jesus to be known as the builder from Galilee, he would be a Jewish rabbi/teacher complete with a school of disciples, and so we read, just after the glory of God descended on him:
“Jesus went about in all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues…” Matthew 4:23
Now actually the verb “To dedicate” and the noun “a teacher” come from the name Enoch so you might want to just use one of the translation possibilities… in which case “to dedicate” works as a both the conclusion to this mini-prophecy or as the connector to the next prophetic sub-clause… but that will be the subject of the next post in this series.
So for the time being lets just explore the names from Mahalel to Enoch.
Mahalel
The “el” part of “mahalel” is of course God, the “Mahal” part is from the root הלל (halal) as in “halelujah”. The root means either “to shine”, like a lamp or a star, or to be exuberant towards as in cheering on or praising. So you will see Mahalel translated as either “praise to God” or “the glory of God“. In this mini-prophecy I’ve gone with the glory of God!
Jared
The name Jared comes from the verb ירד (yarad) a very common verb meaning to go down, descend, decline. I’ve gone for “comes down“.
Enoch
Enoch/חנוך comes from the root verb verb חנך (hanak), meaning to inaugurate, train or dedicate. The adjective חניך (hanik), used only in Numbers 26:5, means trained or experienced, hence as a pure noun the name would imply a teacher.
Putting these together we get”
The Glory of God descends to dedicate/a teacher!
So the names considered so far in Jesus family tree have described the incarnation and early human life of God, and the nature of his ministry. But there are still a lot of names in the lineage list before we get to Jesus, in the next post we will see the meaning of Jesus death encoded by Methusaleh, Lamech and Noah.
But for now:
“God the builder is appointed, mortal born in sorrow. The glory of God descends to dedicate a teacher.”
For the next post in the series, see: Judgement or Grace, the prophecy hidden in Enoch’s heirs.
Christen Forster
Christen has planted churches, been a youth worker, mission administrator and church leaders. The author of several books, Christen is now an itinerant minister, helping churches to step into a more deliberately spiritual experience of the Christian life while at the same time firmly rooting their practice in scripture.
© 2000 - 2024 Christen Forster
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