Return unto Me
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Please Note: All verses in this study are from, the “Jewish
Publication Society” - (JPS-1917) version of our beoved
Tanakh.
Colour coded
details of the - TaNaKh:
1. Torah = History
& Law, 2. Nevi’im = The Prophets. 3. *Ketuvim = all
other Writings.
*The Ketuvim - Includes, Poetical books -
Psalms, Proverbs,
Job, the Megillot, or Scrolls - Song
of Solomon, Ruth, Lamentations of Jeremiah, Ecclesiastes, and
Esther, prophecy of Daniel, and history of Ezra, Nehemiah, and
Chronicles I & II.
Please Note: Some alterations have been made relating to ‘Names’ and ‘Attributes’ having been corrected as it once was pre the “Masoretic Text”.
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With Rabbi, Dr. Reuven Ben Avraham-Goossens,
PhD.
נַחְפְּשָׂה
דְרָכֵינוּ
וְנַחְקֹרָה,
וְנָשׁוּבָה
עַד-יְהוָה
“Let us search and try our ways, and RETURN to יְהוָה
אֱלֹהִים
- (the LORD - Elohim (God)”.
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Introduction:
Welcome: In this study we will learn about the call by our beloved אֱלֹהִים – Elohim (God) to RETURN by אֱלֹהִים - Elohim’s (God’s), blessed be He, being an invitation to be ‘repaired’ and ‘restored’ to a people whom we once were, and that was when we were ‘Hebrews’!
The call “Return unto Me” is one of the Tanakh’s central summons: being an invitation from our beloved אֱלֹהִים of covenant to ‘repent’, ‘renew relationship’, and receive ‘Divine restoration’. It is juridical, tender and exigent אֱלֹהִים both reproves and promises. For all seekers, this theme offers a clear ethical heart: that faithfulness is recoverable, that repentance reshapes identity, and that covenant life is lived in both struggle and renewal!
Zecharyah - Zechariah 1:3:
וְאָמַרְתָּ
אֲלֵהֶם, כֹּה
אָמַר יְהוָה
צְבָאוֹת, שׁוּבוּ
אֵלַי, נְאֻם
יְהוָה
צְבָאוֹת-וְאָשׁוּב
אֲלֵיכֶם,
אָמַר יְהוָה
צְבָאוֹת
“Thus saith צְבָאוֹת-יְהוָה - YHVH Tzevaot or the LORD of
hosts): Return unto Me, saith צְבָאוֹת-יְהוָה, and I will return unto you, saith צְבָאוֹת-יְהוָה”.
Mal’a’chi – Malachi 3:7.
שׁוּבוּ
אֵלַי
וְאָשׁוּבָה
אֲלֵיכֶם,
אָמַר יְהוָה
צְבָאוֹת
“Return unto Me, and
I will RETURN unto you, saith יְהוָה
צְבָאוֹת
- the LORD of hosts”.
From the above three verses, we can see that יְהוָה
אֱלֹהִים
- YHVH
Elohim, blessed be His Sanctified Name, knows what is wrong with His people the
Hebrews (Israelites), and He desires us to Return unto Him, and thus He will
Return to you!
We could ask, what is in general wrong with us:
Sadly, there is a great deal, for our beloved אֱלֹהִים - Elohim, is certainly not happy with the people of Yisrael, meaning of course we who should be in reality be known as ‘Hebrews, not with that word that the evil Haman originally gave us, and sadly much later during the time בֵּית הַמִּקְדָּשׁ הַשֵּׁנִי - the Second Temple when rabbis created ‘Rabbinic Judaism’ - Yehuda - Jews. However, all twelve Tribes lived at the end in Judah! The great Rabbi “Moses ben Maimon” who was also known as “Maimonides”, or by the acronym of “Rambam”, he was far from pleased with the newly introduced ‘Rabbinic Judaism’, eventually we became known as ‘Jews’. The truth is, we are ‘Hebrews’ and we should be known as that today. It is no wonder אֱלֹהִים continues to call us to “Return”, but in more ways than one, for there are so many other things that has changed within our beloved faith. But that is a whole other matter.
Yirmyahu - Jeremiah 15:19:
לָכֵן
כֹּה-אָמַר
יְהוָה,
אִם-תָּשׁוּב
וַאֲשִׁיבְךָ
לְפָנַי
תַּעֲמֹד,
וְאִם-תּוֹצִיא
יָקָר
מִזּוֹלֵל,
כְּפִי
תִהְיֶה;
יָשֻׁבוּ
הֵמָּה
אֵלֶיךָ,
וְאַתָּה
לֹא-תָשׁוּב
אֲלֵיהֶם
“Therefore thus says יְהוָה - the LORD: if thou RETURN, and I bring thee back, thou shalt stand
before Me; and if thou bring forth the precious out of the vile, thou shalt be
as My mouth; let them Return unto thee, but thou shall not Return unto them”.
The above is called a warning!
Yeshayahu - Isaiah 44:22:
מָחִיתִי
כָעָב
פְּשָׁעֶיךָ,
וְכֶעָנָן חַטֹּאותֶיךָ;
שׁוּבָה
אֵלַי, כִּי
גְאַלְתִּיךָ
“I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy
transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins; RETURN unto Me,
for I have redeemed thee”.
Mal’a’chi - Malachi 3:7:
לְמִימֵי
אֲבֹתֵיכֶם
סַרְתֶּם
מֵחֻקַּי, וְלֹא
שְׁמַרְתֶּם-שׁוּבוּ
אֵלַי
וְאָשׁוּבָה
אֲלֵיכֶם,
אָמַר יְהוָה
צְבָאוֹת;
וַאֲמַרְתֶּם,
בַּמֶּה נָשׁוּב
“From the days of your fathers you have turned
aside from my statutes and have not kept them. RETURN to Me, and I will
return to you, says
צְבָאוֹת-יְהוָה - the LORD of hosts. But you say, ‘How shall we return?”
Thus the reply was, “How shall we return?”
Obviously the answer can seen from the early statement, when אֱלֹהִים - Elohim clearly told them; “From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them”. Thus the answer was very simple, RETURN and keep the Mitzvoth (the Law)!
Yo’el - Joel 2:12:
וְגַם-עַתָּה,
נְאֻם-יְהוָה,
שֻׁבוּ עָדַי,
בְּכָל-לְבַבְכֶם;
וּבְצוֹם
וּבִבְכִי,
וּבְמִסְפֵּד
“Yet even now, saith the LORD, turn ye unto Me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with
weeping, and with lamentation (mourning)”.
Zecharyah - Zechariah 1:1-5:
“In the eighth month, in the second year of
Darius, the word of יְהוָה - the LORD came to the prophet
Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, son of Iddo, saying, ‘The LORD was very angry with your
fathers. Therefore say to them, thus declares צְבָאוֹת-יְהוָה - the LORD of hosts: Return to me, says צְבָאוֹת-יְהוָה - the Lord of hosts, and I will return
to you, says צְבָאוֹת-יְהוָה - the Lord of hosts. Do not be like your
fathers, to whom the former prophets cried out, ‘Thus says צְבָאוֹת-יְהוָה, Return from your evil ways and from your evil
deeds.’ But they did not hear or pay attention to Me,
declares יְהוָה. Your fathers, where are they? And the prophets,
do they live forever?”
A Voice in the Eighth Month:
The moon hung low over the camp, silvering the half-built walls of the town. Tools lay quiet; hands that had lifted them all day long had now rested, callused and trembling from the work of rebuilding. Among the tents a small number of people had gathered, young men with plaster on their sleeves, women mending a torn prayer shawls, an elder who still remembered the cedar forests, now only a memory. They had come at the summons of Zechariah, who had asked them to meet before dawn.
Zechariah stood with a reed scroll in one hand and a cup of cooling tea in the other. His eyes were not those of a man who sought spectacle; they were the eyes of one who had listened too long for a sound that scarcely seemed to come. He folded the scroll, raised his head, and said simply, “I will tell you what I heard last night.”
He told them of a word that had come to him in the eighth month of the second year of Darius, a word that trembled between sternness and mercy. “The LORD was very angry with your fathers,” he read, and his voice did not harden but carried instead a sorrow that made the listeners look at one another. “Therefore say to them: Return to Me, says the LORD of hosts, and I will return to you.”
A young woman, Miriam, who had only known exile as a fact told in her grandfather’s stories, she asked, “Return how? We have already come back with bricks and beams and names on lists. What more does יְהוָה - the LORD want?”
Zechariah folded his hands around the scroll and answered as one who had been asked the same question by angels and by his own heart. Not only a return of feet to the land, but a return of hearts to the ways that once kept our people whole. The prophets before me cried “Return from your evil ways and from your evil deeds”, and sadly the people of their day did not listen. The words were like rain on rock; they ran off and did not sink in.
An old man laughed then, not unkindly, and tapped the edge of his beard. “Where are my father and his friends now?” he said. “They drank the wine of ease and called it peace. The prophets thundered; they kept their ears closed. Are the prophets immortal? No. Are the fathers here? No.”
The room cooled. In that pause a child began to hum a tune her mother had taught her in Babylon, a melody stitched from two lands. Zechariah took that sound like a thread and wove it into his words. “Our fathers are gone,” he said. “The prophets are not forever. Time does what thunder cannot. It writes repentance on the heart or it writes forgetfulness.”
He spoke then of mercy that mirrored command. “Return to Me, and I
will return to you,” He repeated, letting the promise stand beside the
rebuke like two pillars at the gate of a new city.
“אֱלֹהִים - God’s summons is not simply a rebuke; it is an offer. The people of old were warned and yet they remained the same. “We have the chance to be different.”
One of the younger builders, Yosef whose hands were strong, but whose courage had wavered when enemies mocked their tiny city, asked, “How do we begin? How do we know our doing will not be just another echo of our fathers’ neglect?”
Zechariah looked at the half-built wall outside and then at the faces
gathered in the tent. “Begin in the small things,” he then said ...
“These are the things that ye shall do: Speak
ye every man the truth with his neighbour; execute the judgment of truth and
peace in your gates; and let none of
you devise evil in your hearts against his neighbour; and love no false oath;
for all these are things that I hate, saith יְהוָה - the LORD”. Zechariah 8: 16-17:
Miriam stood and placed her hand upon a stone, smoothing the dust with the tenderness of someone who mends. “If we return,” she said, “will אֱלֹהִים - Elohim truly return to us? Will the years of exile be undone?”
They talked until dawn unstitched the night. They did not pretend that repentance would be a single act like a torch thrown into shadow. They planned instead: a day each week to teach children the laws and the stories not as lore but as living commands; a sharing of grain for families still thin from exile; a justice council to settle disputes without slander or bribes. They placed names in the ground where saplings would grow for their children and vowed to keep watch over those small trees as if tending the words of the prophets themselves.
Years later, when some of those at the meeting had joined the fathers of the earth and others were old with their own grandchildren at their knees. A traveller passing the rebuilt gate would sometimes hear an old refrain carried on the wind: “Return to Me, and I will return to you.” It had become a chant and a promise, a way of life that linked the people to one another and to the God who had called them out of exile.
And when young ones asked why their grandparents had done it differently from the fathers before exile, the elders would point to the living trees, to the sturdy wall, and to the children learning by the light of the same moon that had once watched them plan in the eighth month. “Because we remembered,” they would say. “Because the prophets did not live forever, and our fathers are not here to answer for themselves, we chose to answer for us. When אֱלֹהִים calls us back, it is our duty and our gift to go.”
In the quiet that followed, someone would add in a softer voice, “Return, so that אֱלֹהִים - Elohim may Return”. That is the true circle. It begins with a single small turning and אֱלֹהִים willing it becomes the path for many!”
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In Conclusion, a Question
to Deepen the Conversation:
Which part of the Tanakh study, or possibly a
particular line or statement within it has touched you the most? And
how do you feel about spending more time studying our beloved Tanakh? I pray that
you are doing well as a faithful Hebrew, and אֱלֹהִים - Elohim willing you are upholding as many of our
blessed Mitzvoth’s?
Dear reader, please remember
this, pray for peace and solitude in your life, and then work on keeping
as calm as possible and learn to improve your life, for אֱלֹהִים - בָּרוּךְ
אֱלֹהִים - Bless Elohim, He is
always there and ready to help and guide you!
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PLEASE NOTE: If you need assistance in some way, just ask, I can email you special items to help you with whatever you may need, etc! Just email me (using the link further below) and I will send it to your email, without any follow up whatsoever, or any requests from me! The email is just down this page.
This site was
originally for those who needed to return to our blessed and wonderful faith,
thus be wise and work on your faith and pray at least two or of possible three
times a day and always seek אֱלֹהִים - Elohim’s guidance!
But as you may have discovered it has become very much a teaching site!
Remember what אֱלֹהִים - Elohim, blessed be He, said the following, via a
number of our prophets...
“Return unto Me, and I will return unto you, saith צְבָאוֹת- יְהוָה- the LORD of hosts”. Mal’a’chi - Malachi 3:7. MEC).
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your Sabbath Rest, Shabbat Shalom!
אֲנִי יְהוָה
אֱלֹהֵיכֶם, בְּחֻקּוֹתַי
לֵכוּ; וְאֶת-מִשְׁפָּטַי
שִׁמְרוּ, וַעֲשׂוּ
אוֹתָם
וְאֶת-שַׁבְּתוֹתַי, קַדֵּשׁוּ; וְהָיוּ
לְאוֹת, בֵּינִי
וּבֵינֵיכֶם-לָדַעַת, כִּי
אֲנִי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם
“I am אֱלֹהֵיכֶם יְהוָה (the LORD your Elo’hei’chem);
walk in My statutes, and keep Mine
ordinances, and do them; and hallow My Sabbaths, and they shall be a sign
between Me and you, that ye may know that I am אֱלֹהֵיכֶם יְהוָה -
YaHVaH your Elo’hei’chem”.
Yechezkel - Ezekiel 20:19-20. (JPS).
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“Hebraic Studies” motto is as follows;
“The
More Torah, the More Life”.
For our Elohim is the One who gave us ... our Life!
May the שָׁלוֹם - Shalom = Peace
of צְבָאוֹת- יְהוָה= the LORD of hosts.
be with you, and please always uphold our blessed שַׁבָּת - Shabbat, as
well as the ‘מוֹעֲדִים - Mo’a’dim - Feasts, and continue saying your
daily תְּפִלָּה - Te’fee’lah’s (Prayers) and regular בְּרָכָה - Be’ra’chah’s (blessings) before food and drinks,
etc!
שָׁלוֹם
עֲלֵיכֶם -
Shalom
Aleichem - Peace be with you!
Rabbi,
Dr. Reuven Ben Avraham-Goossens, PhD.
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