Return-Unto-Me
-hebraicstudies.net-
Please do NOT visit this site on שַׁבָּת - Shabbat or on the מוֹעֲדִים - Mo’a’dim - Feasts!
Re Tanakh versions:
Throughout this site I may use any of
three versions of the Tanakh: 1. “Jewish Publication Society” (JPS-1917), 2. “Mechon-Mamre.org” (MEC), and 3. “Sefaria.org” (SEF), three brilliant versions, However, the
JPS-1917 is my preferred version!
Colour coded details of
our beloved 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 or
(additions) have been made relating to ‘Names’ and ‘Attributes’ of אֱלֹהִים - Elohim (God),
having been corrected like it once was pre the “Masoretic Text”.
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Remember the
following truth from our beloved Torah!
“Ye
shall NOT ADD
TO THE WORD which I command
you, NEITHER SHALL YE DIMINISH FROM IT,
that ye may keep the commandments of אֱלֹהֵיכֶם יְהוָה - the LORD your Eloleichem, which I command you”. Davarim -
Deuteronomy 4:2. (JPS-1917).
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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 - the LORD”.
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Introduction:
Welcome: In
this study we will learn about the call by our beloved אֱלֹהִים
- Elohim to return to
Him, being an invitation to be ‘repaired’ and ‘restored’ to a people we once
were, and that was when we were known as ‘Hebrews’ and later as ‘Israelites’.
The call
“Return unto Me” is one of the Tanakh’s central
summonses: being an invitation from our beloved אֱלֹהִים
of covenant to ‘repent’,
‘renew relationship’, and receive ‘Divine restoration’. 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
- the LORD of Tzva’ot: Return unto Me, saith צְבָאוֹת-יְהוָה, and I will return unto
you, saith צְבָאוֹת-יְהוָה - the LORD of Tzva’ot”.
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 Tzva’ot”.
From the above
verses, we can see that יְהוָה
אֱלֹהִים
- the LORD 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 He will Return to you!
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However much later
at the time of the בֵּית
הַמִּקְדָּשׁ
הַשֵּׁנִי
- the ‘
But sadly at a
certain time; Priests and rabbis renamed us - ‘Rabbinic Judaism’ - יְהוּדִי.
However, we need to understand that all our Tribes and the Judeans lived in
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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”.
Malachi -
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
Tzva’ot. But you say, ‘How shall we return?”
Thus the reply
was, “How shall we return?”
Obviously the answer
can be 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 יְהוָה
- 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, ‘יְהוָה - 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 Tzva’ot, and I will return to you, says צְבָאוֹת-יְהוָה
- the LORD of Tzva’ot. 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. “יְהוָה
- 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 צְבָאוֹת-יְהוָה - the LORD of Tzva’ot, 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
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
אֱלֹהִים - Elohim’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 אֱלֹהִים
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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Please Note: “hebraicstudies”
links are located down the page!
This site was originally created, for those who desired to return to our blessed and wonderful faith. Thus be wise and work on your faith and pray at least two or three times a day (if possible) and always seek our beloved אֱלֹהִים - Elohim’s guidance, for His love is always with us, especially when we seek Him, blessed be He! However this site has become very much a teaching site with hundreds of studies!
Remember what אֱלֹהִים - Elohim, blessed be He, said the following through a number of
our prophets...
“The More Torah,
the More Life”,
For 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 - Tefeelah’s - Prayers and
regular בְּרָכָה - Be’ra’chah’s - blessings before
food and drinks, etc!
שָׁלוֹם
עֲלֵיכֶם - Shalom Aleichem - Peace be with you!
Enter ...