Welcome to Torah Today Ministries in our continuing series The Hebrew Key, where we explore insights that are revealed in the scriptures only through looking at the original Hebrew. And in this episode I have entitled “Fingernails & Diamonds.” Kind of an odd title, but hopefully it will all make sense by the time we reach the end.
Now I came across a word this week as I was reading our Torah portion, which this week is Ki Tetze (כִּי תֵצֵא), which comes from a little over halfway through the book of Deuteronomy. And it describes in one of the passages what a man is to do if he’s a warrior — the army has gone in and conquered a city and he sees a beautiful woman there and wants to take her home.
Well, pagan armies, Gentile armies, when they would win a battle and take a city and they saw a beautiful woman, well, you can use your imagination to know what they did. But not so with God’s people. In this portion of Deuteronomy, God establishes a procedure by which if a man does see a woman and wants to take her home with him, there is a process by which he must make her his wife. He can’t just take her. He has to marry her if he wants her, but only after a period of 30 days.
So the process went something like this: he’s won this battle, they’re going through, they’re taking the treasure out of the city, he sees this beautiful woman, says, “I would like to have her as my own.” So he takes her home, but she has to do a few things. She changes out of her beautiful clothing into something like sackcloth, something ugly. She shaves her head. She trims her nails so they don’t look feminine anymore — they kind of look like mine, like a man’s. And then she spends 30 days mourning for her lost loved ones, for those who died in the battle.
Then at the end of that 30 days, if the man looks at her — this bald woman with puffy eyes from weeping, wearing ugly clothes, and no makeup, no pretty fingernails — if he still decides he wants to marry her, he can marry her. But if he thinks better of it and thinks, “What was I thinking?” — he must let her go. But he cannot sell her. He lets her go and he also provides for her, because after all, he’s the one who brought this radical change into her life.
Okay, so there’s the background. So the verse that I read that captured my attention was Deuteronomy 21:12:
And you bring her home to your house, she shall shave her head and pare her fingernails. — Deuteronomy 21:12
And I read this in Hebrew. Each morning I take a chunk of the Torah portion and read it in Hebrew. And I’m familiar enough with Hebrew that when I come to an unusual word, it appears unusual to me. And this was the case with the word for fingernail. I did a little research and found out that this word for fingernail appears only two times in the entire Bible. The word — and you don’t need to try to memorize this, you’re only going to see it twice — is the word tzipporen (צִפֹּרֶן). And it has two meanings. The one is fingernail, as we just read in Deuteronomy 21. But the other meaning of tzipporen (צִפֹּרֶן) is the point of a stylus, or like the nib of a pen.
In ancient times, writing was done by using a sharp instrument — like maybe a small piece of wood where the point has been trimmed down to where it’s very thin and it’s just the right width, or you could use a quill feather, a piece of bamboo — and that point is called the tzipporen (צִפֹּרֶן).
And I like writing with a fountain pen, and some of my younger viewers may not know what a fountain pen is, but I remember as a kid in grade school we had to learn how to use a fountain pen, which uses liquid ink. You have to fill it up and the ink flows down this little groove to the point of the nib. That’s a tzipporen (צִפֹּרֶן). And you write with it. And I enjoy writing with a fountain pen even to this day.
And it makes sense that a fingernail and the nib of a pen or a stylus would have the same name, because a fingernail is hard yet flexible, just like the nib of a pen or stylus is hard yet flexible.
Okay, so what is the second reference where this word is found? Remember, tzipporen (צִפֹּרֶן) is found two times — one in Deuteronomy translated “fingernail,” and the other is here in Jeremiah 17, verse 1.
Now let me give you a little background here. Jeremiah prophesied to the Jewish people, to Judah, before the 70-year-long Babylonian exile. God sent him to warn the people that they need to repent of their idolatry and of their sins and return to following God’s Torah (תּוֹרָה) and keeping God’s commandments. And if they didn’t, they would be taken away into captivity in Babylon. And through Jeremiah, God even prophesied that it would be a 70-year-long captivity.
And Jeremiah, sometimes called the weeping prophet, he poured out his heart, but they didn’t listen. And of course Nebuchadnezzar brought the Babylonian army in to invade Israel and destroyed Solomon’s Temple, destroyed much of Jerusalem, and took the people captive back to Babylon. And that is how Daniel and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego wound up in Babylon. You can read the story in Daniel.
And as Jeremiah prophesied to the people, this is what he said in 17:1:
The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, with a tzipporen (צִפֹּרֶן) of diamond. It is engraved on the tablet of their heart and on the horns of their altars. — Jeremiah 17:1
Isn’t this interesting? Their hearts have become so hard that to scratch into it, to write on it, required a tzipporen (צִפֹּרֶן) of diamond. To my knowledge, there is no naturally occurring substance that is harder than diamond.
And it says the sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, with a point of diamond. It is engraved on the tablet of their heart and on the horns of their altars. You know, a heart can become dead towards God. And then I think a spiritual rigor mortis sets in, and a heart can become so hard it takes something as hard as diamond to make a scratch in it. And that was the case with the people to whom Jeremiah was prophesying and warning to repent.
Now, after the exile, 70 years later, when most of the Jewish people came back to Israel and they rebuilt Jerusalem and its walls and restored the temple, God had another prophet who prophesied after the 70-year Babylonian captivity. His name was Zechariah. And Zechariah is remembering back to the generation that was taken captive. And in Zechariah 7:12, this is what Zechariah says:
They made their hearts diamond hard lest they should hear the Torah (תּוֹרָה) and the words that Adonai (אֲדֹנָי) of Hosts had sent by his Spirit through the former prophets. — Zechariah 7:12
So their hearts were diamond hard. It required an iron pen with a diamond tzipporen (צִפֹּרֶן) on it to even make a scratch in their hard hearts.
Now, if we take some of the elements here — what does this remind you of? So we see here that there’s some writing, in fact it takes the form of engraving, and it’s being written on tablets. And here it’s sin. But Zechariah said that they would not hear the Torah (תּוֹרָה), because after all, isn’t the Torah (תּוֹרָה) supposed to be written on our hearts? Isn’t that what’s supposed to be written on our hearts?
So when you take these elements, what passage does it remind you of? If you want to pause and think about that for a while, please do so, but I’m going to move ahead.
To me, it reminds me of Exodus. And I’m looking at two verses here, one in 31:18 and the other in 32:16. And I’m just putting them together so that they give a fuller picture. And it talks about how:
God gave to Moses, when he had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God. The tablets were the work of God and the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets. — Exodus 31:18; 32:16
And what’s on the end of a finger? A fingernail.
But here’s what stood out to me as I compared the passage in Jeremiah and Zechariah with this one in Exodus. It refers to the finger of God engraving the tablets, but fingernail is not mentioned. The finger can be fairly soft, whereas the fingernail is hard. But it says God just engraved on the stones. It was effortless.
In fact, Jewish tradition teaches that the letters that God engraved on the tablets went all the way through the stone and out the other side, so each letter was a letter-shaped hole that went all the way through the stone. Picture that for a moment. Picture holding up one of the two tablets containing the Ten Commandments, and if you held this up to the light, the light would shine through the letters. In other words, God’s Torah (תּוֹרָה) was light. God’s rules came through and illuminated the eyes and the heart.
God’s word, his living Torah (תּוֹרָה), was weightless. It was supernatural. It was something from outside this world, because the light would come through. Think about that — that’s a beautiful picture. But to think that God could take his finger right on the tablets, engrave straight through the stone, if tradition holds true. But the hearts of the people were so hard, they were diamond hard, to where God, when he went to engrave their sins on their hearts, he had to use an iron pen with a diamond tzipporen (צִפֹּרֶן) on it to even make a scratch.
What is it about us human beings that when we turn from God, our hearts can become so dull, so hard, that it takes something as hard as diamond to make a scratch at it? And why is it that hard hearts have our sins scratched into them, whereas the stones could have God’s Torah (תּוֹרָה) written on them easily?
And of course I think you can tell there’s another passage coming up here, can’t you? And this time I’m going to go to Ezekiel. I spoke of Jeremiah who prophesied before the exile, and Zechariah who prophesied after the exile, but Ezekiel prophesied during the 70 years of exile. Somehow Ezekiel was not taken captive into Babylon. He remained in Israel, in the area of Judah and Jerusalem during this time. And that’s where God spoke to him and that’s where he prophesied. And Ezekiel 11:19 and 20, God speaks to him and says:
And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. — Ezekiel 11:19
So while the people are in Babylon, finding themselves in captivity, repentance began to come. And God says, “This captivity is having its desired work and I’m going to put a new spirit within them.” I think there’s also a much farther-reaching aspect of this prophecy, looking to a day soon to come, I pray, when all of Israel — in fact, all believers, all people around the world — will turn their hearts to God and embrace his Torah (תּוֹרָה) and Torah (תּוֹרָה) will go forth from Zion. And what a day that’ll be.
But he says:
I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people and I will be their God. — Ezekiel 11:19–20
A heart of flesh is alive. It’s flexible. It’s providing living blood flow throughout the body. And a heart that has God’s Torah (תּוֹרָה) on it is a heart that beats in sync with his own.
And we really need to be cautious, lest we begin the process of hardening our hearts against God and against others by putting our ways before his and by putting our needs before the needs of others. We are to love God with all of our heart, with all of our soul, with all of our resources. We’re to love our neighbor as ourself. And it takes a soft, beating, living heart to do those two things.
But when we begin to pull back from either of those, our hearts become a little more stiff, a little more hard, a little less flexible, a little more dead, a little more stony. God can write his laws on natural stone, and he can write his Torah (תּוֹרָה) on living hearts. But when your heart becomes as hard as diamond, what does he inscribe on it? Your sins.
It’s like “where your treasure is, that’s where your heart is.” And if your treasures are in the spiritual realm and you love God’s rules, his laws, his truth, his word that he speaks — with the spiritual realm and the physical — that’s where your heart is. And your heart is alive and beating and it’s strong and it’s doing the things that God wants you to do.
But when you begin to love things in this world and love yourself more than you love God, your heart becomes kind of hard. And instead of God’s word being recorded on it, it becomes a record of your own sins. I don’t want that for my life and I hope you don’t want that for yours either.
So I want to close out with this passage which I just love. I’d like to be able to read more of this, the verses that come before and after, but we’ll satisfy ourselves with Jeremiah 31, just verses 33 and 34, which describes the New Covenant. It says:
For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares Adonai (אֲדֹנָי): I will put my Torah (תּוֹרָה) within them and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God and they shall be my people. — Jeremiah 31:33
He doesn’t have to engrave it. He just katav (כָּתַב) — he just writes it. He just goes onto their hearts like ink on paper.
And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother saying, “Know Adonai (אֲדֹנָי),” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares Adonai (אֲדֹנָי), for I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more. — Jeremiah 31:34
I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s no way to rehabilitate a hardened, stony heart. And if your heart has become hard towards God, it’ll become hard toward others as well. And if your heart has become stony and hard like this, you can’t fix it, but you can replace it. Just say, “God,” [and] ask him to give you a new heart and start all over again. Just start all over.”
And C.S. Lewis said — he’s talking about this, each of us is a story, our lives are stories — and he says, “You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.”
So start anew where you’re at. Ask God to give you a healthy, living, strong, beating heart that is filled with life and is moving life throughout the body and is touching others and is serving him — and a heart that beats according to the rhythm of God’s Torah (תּוֹרָה). That’s what we want. And that’s how we will bear his image in this world. So till next time, I wish you shalom (שָׁלוֹם) and may God bless.
Open All Scripture in Bible Gateway
Deuteronomy 21:12 … and you bring her home to your house, she shall shave her head and pare her fingernails.
צפרן (tziporen) = “fingernail” AND “point/nib”
Jeremiah 17:1 “The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron – with a point/nib of diamond it is engraved on the tablet of their heart, and on the horns of their altars…”
Zechariah 7:12 They made their hearts diamond-hard lest they should hear the Torah and the words that Adonai of hosts had sent by His spirit through the former prophets…
Exodus 31:18/32:16 And He gave to Moses, when He had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God … The tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets.
Ezekiel 11:19-20 “And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in My statutes and keep My rules and obey them. And they shall be My people, and I will be their God.”
Jeremiah 31:33-34 “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days”, declares Adonai: “I will put My Torah within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be My people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know Adonai,’ for they shall all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest”, declares Adonai. “For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
RESOURCES:
Ezekiel 36:26-27 “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes and be careful to obey My rules.”
