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and Joseph hindermost” (Gen. 33:2—the first biblical appearance). When applied
elsewhere, the word means “western”: “Every place whereon the soles of your feet shall
tread shall be yours: from the wilderness and Lebanon, from the river, the river
Euphrates, even unto the uttermost [western] sea shall your coast be” (Deut. 11:24).
Used temporally,
has several nuances. First, it means “last” as contrasted to
the first of two things: “And it shall come to pass, if they will not believe thee, neither
hearken to the voice of the first sign, that they will believe the voice of the latter sign”
(Exod. 4:8). Second, it can represent the “last” in a series of things or people: “Ye are my
brethren, ye are my bones and my flesh: wherefore then are ye the last to bring back the
king?” (2 Sam. 19:12). The word also connotes “later on” and/or “afterwards”: “But thou
shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and
afterwards the hand of all the people” (Deut. 13:9). Next the emphasis can be on the
finality or concluding characteristic of a given thing: “Now these be the last words of
David” (2 Sam. 23:1).
*
connotes “future,” or something that is yet to come: “… So that the
generation to come of your children that shall rise up after you, and the stranger that shall
come from a far land, shall say, when they see the plagues of that land …” (Deut. 29:22).
The combination of “first” and “last” is an idiom of completeness: “Now the rest of
the acts of Solomon, first and last, are they not written in the book of Nathan the prophet,
and in the prophecy of Ahijah the Shilonite, and in the visions of Iddo the seer against
Jeroboam the son of Nebat?” (2 Chron. 9:29). Likewise the phrase expresses the
sufficiency of the Lord, since He is said to include within Himself the “first” as well as
the “last”: “Thus saith the Lord the King of Israel, and his Redeemer the Lord of hosts; I
am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God” (Isa. 44:6; cf. 48:12).
These verses affirm that there is no other God, because all exists in Him.
B. Verb.
(
, 309), “to tarry, remain behind, delay.” Other words derived from this
verb are: “other,” “after (wards),” “backwards.”
*
appears in Exod. 22:29 with the
meaning “delay”: “Thou shalt not delay to offer the first of thy ripe fruits, and of thy
liquors: the firstborn of thy sons shalt thou give unto me.”
LAW
A. Noun.
(
, 8451), “law; direction; instruction.” This noun occurs 220 times in the
Hebrew Old Testament.
In the wisdom literature, where the noun does not appear with a definite article,
signifies primarily “direction, teaching, instruction”: “The law of the wise is a fountain of
life, to depart from the snares of death” (Prov. 13:14), and “Receive, I pray thee, the law
from his mouth, and lay up his words in thine heart” (Job 22:22). The “instruction” of the
sages of Israel, who were charged with the education of the young, was intended to
cultivate in the young a fear of the Lord so that they might live in accordance with God’s
expectations. The sage was a father to his pupils: “Whoso keepeth the law is a wise son:
but he that is a companion of riotous men shameth his father” (Prov. 28:7; cf. 3:1; 4:2;
7:2). The natural father might also instruct his son in wise living, even as a Godfearing