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God. They were commanded not to eat any product of the vine (Num. 6:3; cf. Judg. 13:4;
1 Sam. 1:15). Thus, God laid claim to the ordinary and necessary processes of human
living. In all that man does, he is obligated to recognize God’s control of his existence.
Man is to recognize that he eats and drinks only as he lives under God’s rule; and the
faithful are to acknowledge God in all their ways.
The phrase, “eating and drinking,” may also signify life in general; “Judah and Israel
were many, as the sand which is by the sea in multitude, eating and drinking, and making
merry” (1 Kings 4:20; cf. Eccl. 2:24; 5:18; Jer. 22:15). In close conjunction with the verb
“to be drunk (intoxicated),”
means “to drink freely” or “to drink so much that one
becomes drunk.” When Joseph hosted his brothers, they “drank, and were merry with
him” (Gen. 43:34).
TO DRIVE OUT
(
$
, 5080), “to drive out, banish, thrust, move.” This word is found
primarily in biblical Hebrew, although in late Hebrew it is used in the sense of “to
beguile.”
:
occurs approximately 50 times in the Hebrew Old Testament, and its
first use is in the passive form: “And lest thou … shouldest be driven to worship them
…” (Deut. 4:19). The implication seems to be that an inner “drivenness” or “drawing
away,” as well as an external force, was involved in Israel’s potential turning toward
idolatry.
:
expresses the idea of “being scattered” in exile, as in Jer. 40:12: “Even all the
Jews returned out of all places whither they were driven.…” Job complained that any
resource he once possessed no longer existed, for it “is … driven quite from me” (Job
6:13). Evil “shepherds” or leaders did not lead but rather “drove away” and scattered
Israel (Jer. 23:2). The enemies of a good man plot against him “to thrust him down from
his eminence” (Ps. 62:4,
RSV
).
DUST
(
!
, 6083), “dust; clods; plaster; ashes.” Cognates of this word appear in
Ugaritic, Akkadian, Aramaic, Syriac, and Arabic. It appears about 110 times in biblical
Hebrew and in all periods.
This noun represents the “porous loose earth on the ground,” or “dust.” In its first
biblical occurrence,
appears to mean this porous loose earth: “And the Lord God
formed man of the
$
of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life …”
(Gen. 2:7). In Gen. 13:16, the word means the “fine particles of the soil”: “And I will
make thy [descendants] as the dust of the earth.…” In the plural, the noun can mean “dust
masses” or “clods” of earth: “… While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields,
nor the first clods [
KJV
, “highest part of the dust”;
NASB
, “dust”] of the world” (Prov.
8:26).
*
can signify “dry crumbled mortar or plaster”: “And he shall cause the house to
be scraped within round about, and they shall pour out the dust that they scrape off
without the city into an unclean place …” (Lev. 14:41). In Lev. 14:42, the word means
“wet plaster”: “And they shall take other stones, and put them in the place of those
stones; and he shall take other mortar, and shall plaster the house.”
*
represents