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than literal, since Cyrus was not aware that he was being set apart for such a divine
purpose.
The New Testament title of
)
is derived from the Greek
)
which is
exactly equivalent to the Hebrew
for it is also rooted in the idea of “to smear
with oil.” So the term
)
emphasizes the special anointing of Jesus of Nazareth for
His role as God’s chosen one.
TO ANSWER
(
, 6030), “to respond, answer, reply.” This root occurs in most Semitic
languages, although it bears many meanings. With the meaning that undergirds
it
appears in Ugaritic, Akkadian, Arabic, post-biblical Hebrew, and biblical Aramaic. It
should be contrasted to
meaning “oppress, subdue.”
Biblical Hebrew attests the verb
about 320 times. One of the two meanings of
is “to respond,” but not necessarily with a verbal response. For example, in Gen.
35:3 Jacob tells his household, “And let us arise, and go up to Bethel; and I will make
there an altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress.…” In Gen. 28:10ff.,
where this “answering” is recorded, it is quite clear that God initiated the encounter and
that, although He spoke with Jacob, the emphasis is on the vision of the ladder and the
relationship with God that it represented. This meaning is even clearer in Exod. 19:18,
where we read that God reacted to the situation at Sinai with a sound (of thunder).
A nonverbal reaction is also indicated in Deut. 20:11. God tells Israel that before they
besiege a city they should demand its surrender. Its inhabitants are to live as Israel’s
slaves “if it [the city] make thee answer of peace [literally, “responds peaceably”], and
open unto thee.…” In Job 30:20, Job says he cried out to God, who did not “respond” to
him (i.e., did not pay any attention to him). In Isaiah 49:8 the Lord tells the Messiah, “In
an acceptable time have I heard thee, and in a day of salvation have I helped thee.…”
Here responding (“hearing”) is synonymously parallel to helping—i.e., it is an action (cf.
Ps. 69:17; Isa. 41:17).
The second major meaning of
is “to respond with words,” as when one engages
in dialogue. In Gen. 18:27 (the first occurrence of
), we read: “Abraham answered
and said” to the Lord, who had just spoken. In this formula, the two verbs represent one
idea (i.e., they form an
). A simpler translation might be “respond,” since God
had asked no question and required no reply. On the other hand, when the sons of Heth
“answer and say” (Gen. 23:5), they are responding verbally to the implied inquiry made
by Abraham (v. 4). Therefore, they really do answer.
*
may mean “respond” in the special sense of verbally reacting to a truth
discovered: “Then answered the five men that went to spy out the country of Laish, and
said …” (Judg. 18:14). Since no inquiry was addressed to them, this word implies that
they gave a report; they responded to what they had discovered. In Deut. 21:7, the
children of Israel are told how to respond to the rite of the heifer—viz., “They shall
answer and say, Our hands have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it.”