The last few months have been busy, and I haven’t done as much writing as I have wanted, and this series kind of hit the back burner. As I have only written a handful of blogs over the summer, Who You Are to Me came back to the forefront of my heart, and we will now look at the next name in the genealogy of Adam, Kenan.
My first point of reference when I begin looking at words or names in the Hebrew is the Brown Driver Briggs Hebrew Lexicon, and usually I am bombarded with so much meaning and depth. This time however, I what I found was unbelievably thin. Kenan (kay-nawn) קינן, “possession”, “son of Enosh and father of Mahalaleel”, “Cainan”. That’s it. I decided to look at the root word, qen קן, and found that it means, “nest of a bird, nestlings, on high of rock dwellings, temple as a secure home for Israel, cells like nests in Noah’s ark”. This had me scratching my head, so I went to One For Israel’s blog post Why Bother Reading The Lists In The Bible? which lists this particular genealogy and they list the meaning of Kenan as “sorrow”. As I threw up my hands, I prayed, “Lord, You are going to have to show me the connection between possession, nest, and sorrow because I’m not seeing it!” And He did.
If you are unfamiliar with this this series, it is a persona journey that I am walking through the Bible, verse by verse and letting Yeshua show me who He is to me from cover to cover. When this study brought me to the genealogy of Adam, I was able to see the Life of Yeshua embodied in their names. Let us now, pick back up and explore the connection that was revealed to my heart.
When we look at the word qen and think about the properties of a nest, they provide shelter and protection for a bird’s eggs, as the different cells in the ark provided shelter and protection for the animals, and Noah’s family. The Word is full of symbolism concerning finding shelter in the shadow of His wings, acting as that same type of protection. Now, let us look at the word sorrow from the Greek. Lupeo (Λυπεω) means to make sorrowful; to affect with sadness, cause grief, to throw into sorrow, to grieve. Isaiah spoke of the coming Messiah in Chapter 53 verse 3 saying, He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, One from whom people hide their faces. He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. (TLV) What does this have to do with the bird imagery? Everything.
Yerushalayim! Yerushalayim! You kill the prophets! You stone those who are sent to you! How often I wanted to gather your children, just as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, but you refused! Matthew 23:37-38
In Luke’s account of Yeshua entering Jerusalem, it reads When Yeshua had come closer and could see the city, he wept over it, saying, “If you only knew today what is needed for shalom! But for now it is hidden from your sight. For the days are coming upon you when your enemies will set up a barricade around you, encircle you, hem you in on every side, and dash you to the ground, you and your children within your walls, leaving not one stone standing on another – and all because you did not recognize your opportunity when God offered it!” Luke 19:41-44
Another account His sorrow and grief are found in Mark 14:33-35 He took with him Kefa (Peter), Ya’akov (James), and Yochanan (John). Great distress and anguish came over him; and he said to them, “My heart is so filled with sadness that I could die! Remain here and stay awake.” Going on a litter farther, he fell on the ground and prayed that if possible, the hour might pass from him.
Yeshua’s heart was broken, and He wept for His chosen people. His people, His possession turned their hearts from Him, just as prophecy said they would, but there is coming a day that His words from Matthew 23:39 will be fulfilled, For I tell you, from now on, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Baruch ha’ba B’Shem Adonai’ (Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.) When that day comes the Jewish people as a whole will be reunited with their Messiah, their King. When we are in Messiah, Jew or Gentile, we “belong to the Messiah, and the Messiah belongs to God.” (1 Corinthians 3:23) We are the possession of the One who wept over us in sorrow, who felt anguish on our behalf, and in turn, He is the greatest possession we could ever obtain. Just as He said to Jerusalem that He wanted to gather her under His wings as a hen does her chicks, so does He with us. When we accept His gift of salvation, we step into His shalom, His peace, and we find our refuge and healing in the shadow of His wings.
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