Welcome to Torah Today Ministries and our series called The Hebrew Key. And in this episode — episode number 11 — we want to look at the phrase “a man after God’s own heart.”
Now, this phrase comes from 1 Samuel 13:14, where it states:
“But now your kingdom shall not continue” — and God here is speaking to Saul, because of Saul’s rebellion. He’s taken the kingdom away from Saul — “and Adonai (אֲדֹנָי) has sought out a man after his own heart, and Adonai (אֲדֹנָי) has commanded him to be prince over his people, because you have not kept what Adonai (אֲדֹנָי) commanded you.” — 1 Samuel 13:14
So the kingdom is being taken away from Saul and given to another man — a man after God’s own heart — whom we know to be David himself.
And this passage is quoted again over in chapter 13 of the book of Acts. And this is when Stephen is giving his testimony — his defense — shortly before he was stoned to death as the first martyr of the first-century Messianic community. And he said:
“And when he had removed Saul, he raised up David to be their king, of whom he testified and said, ‘I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after my heart, who will do all my will.’” — Acts 13:22
Now, here is how the word “David” is spelled. There you can see — there’s David (דָּוִד). And in Hebrew, there are no printed Hebrew vowels, only consonants. So we have a dalet (ד) which gives us the “D” sound, and a vav (ו) which has some different pronunciations, but in this case is a “V” sound, and then another dalet (ד) with the “D” sound. If we spelled this in Hebrew — or in English letters — it’d be D-V-D. So we have to know what the vowels are. We know that it’s pronounced David — David (דָּוִד) — in English.
Now, if you listen to me at any time at all, you know how fascinated I am with not just the Hebrew language but the Hebrew letters themselves — the jots and the tittles that are found in the scriptures.
And though there is a Paleo-Hebrew that used a different alphabet than what we see in our printed Hebrew Bibles today, this square script that you see on the screen now supposedly came along from Babylon, and the Jewish people picked it up when they were in exile in Babylon for 70 years. But even so — even if this script is indeed of a Babylonian origin — so what? God uses everything. And God not only runs the life of the believer or the people of Israel — he runs the world. And if he saw fit to have this particular alphabet developed among the pagan Babylonians so that it could be used later by the Jewish people to write the scriptures and to write their holy books, that’s fine with me.
After all, God also orchestrated that the language of Greek should be developed so it could be used to record the Brit Chadashah (בְּרִית חֲדָשָׁה), the Apostolic Scriptures. So God uses all kinds of things from the world, and he redeems them and he sets them apart for his use. And that’s God’s prerogative.
So don’t get hung up that this script that you see here — this Hebrew script — is not the original ancient Paleo-Hebrew, the original Hebrew script. It’s just fine. Both scripts, both alphabets, have many insights and many lessons to teach us. So don’t throw one away and cling only to the other.
So let’s take the name David (דָּוִד). God says that David is a man after his own heart. So let’s look at God’s name. Here is God’s name — that is spelled yud-hey-vav-hey (יהוה). And you can see here that the letter hey (ה) is made up of two strokes — so there’s the right-angled stroke at the top, and then there’s a little yud (י) that’s stuck inside. But there’s God’s name.
Now watch something magic happen.
If I take the two parts — the horizontal and vertical part of the letter hey (ה) — and fill it in, I’m sure many of you already see where I’m going with this. And then we fill in the vav (ו), and then fill in the horizontal and vertical stroke of the other hey (ה) — look what we get.
We get the name David (דָּוִד) — which is at the heart of God’s name.
So when God said he would find a man after his own heart, he demonstrates this even with the very letters of his own name — yud (י), dalet (ד), vav (ו), dalet (ד), hey (ה).
Now, let’s take this one step further. Let me introduce you to this letter dalet (ד), which I have mentioned, and talk about it a bit more. It’s the first and last letter of David’s name. And the letter dalet (ד) means “door.”
And in the mezuzah (מְזוּזָה) scrolls that are put on the doorpost of our homes, on the back of the scroll they write the words Shomer Daltot Yisrael (שׁוֹמֵר דַּלְתוֹת יִשְׂרָאֵל) — “the Guardian of the doors (daltot / דַּלְתוֹת) of Israel.” So dalet (ד) is a good, solid Hebrew word — it means “door.” And apparently this letter is supposed to bear the shape of a ceiling with a door flap hanging down. I don’t know, but that’s a possibility.
Now, if we take God’s name — yud-hey-vav-hey (יהוה) — and we take a dalet (ד) and introduce it into God’s name, so that now we have yud (י), hey (ה), vav (ו), dalet (ד), hey (ה) — we now have the word Yehudah (יְהוּדָה). Or as we’re used to pronouncing it — Judah.
Which tribe did David come from? He came from the tribe of Judah (יְהוּדָה). And Judah’s name is the only one of the twelve tribes that includes the letters of God’s name — yud-hey-vav-hey (יהוה).
Let’s take this one step further. It was through the tribe of Yehudah (יְהוּדָה) — Judah — that David came. And it was through the line of David that the Messiah came. And what did the Messiah call himself?
He called himself the Door. The dalet (ד).
But the door to what — or should I say, the door to whom?
It’s a door to yud-hey-vav-hey (יהוה). He is the door to God.
So the door to God came through the tribe of Judah (יְהוּדָה), and that door is a direct descendant of King David — a man after God’s own heart.
No, you just can’t make this stuff up, can you?
But this is the beauty and the wonder of the Hebrew language. Remember, the Hebrew language is a transcendental language, and the rabbis refer to it as the language of transcendence. Because it’s not of this world. It’s an extraterrestrial language. It’s a language through which God created the universe, and it’s the language through which he communicates his scriptures to us today.
And he even used the Babylonian people, it seems, to create an alphabet that captures so many of the wonders that God holds for us in his holy scriptures — written in his holy language of Hebrew.
So I hope you’ve enjoyed this. I hope it inspires you to learn the holy tongue a bit more. And until next time, I wish you shalom (שָׁלוֹם).
Open All Scripture in Bible Gateway
[It is highly recommended that you click the link above in order to see how the Hebrew letters are used in this teaching.]
1 Samuel 13:14 “But now your kingdom shall not continue. Adonai has sought out a man after His own heart, and Adonai has commanded him to be prince over His people, because you have not kept what Adonai commanded you.”
Acts 13:22 “And when He had removed [Saul], He raised up David to be their king, of whom He testified and said, ‘I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after My heart, who will do all My will.’”
דוד = “David”
יהוה = Y-H-V-H
ד = Dalet = “door”
יהודה = “Judah”
