Who is the Lord Sabaoth?

By Dr. Eliyahu Lizorkin-Eyzenberg

August 19, 2016

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I clearly remember the day when around 20 years ago I sat in a worship service at one of New York’s Protestant churches, when the worship leader who was otherwise extremely knowledgeable in the Bible and an incredibly capable speaker, sought to clarify something in the hymnal the church used. A line from the famous hymn “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” that attracted the attention of this godly man. He read the text from the hymnal, pausing to explain one confusing phrase:

             Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing;
             Were not the right Man on our side, the Man of God’s own choosing:
             Dost ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is He;
             Lord Sabaoth, His Name, from age to age the same,
             And He must win the battle.

You may have guessed it. The line was “Lord Sabaoth his name!” After noting the archaic language of the hymn, his obvious lack of Hebrew knowledge led him to give an inspiring, but truly inaccurate interpretation. He said, addressing the worshipers: “Do not let these old words, discourage you, there is nothing complicated here at all. “The Lord Sabaoth” is simply – “the Lord of the Sabbath!” In spite of its seeming connection in English the words are not at all connected with each other.

Two hundred times in the Hebrew Bible and at least ten times in the New Testament as well the Hebrew "צבאות" is used. (It is pronounced in Hebrew “Tze-va-ot”). In this hymn it was transliterated into English as “Sabaoth”). Usually this name accompanies one of God’s other names - "אלוהים" (“God”), "אדוני" (“Lord”) and  "יהוה" (“YHWH”). In more modern translations it is often translated as “Lord of Hosts” or “Lord Almighty”. However, the word "צבאות" (Tze-va-ot) literally translates as “armies.” Most people reading think that only heavenly angelical armies were in view, but this is not so. The armies of the Lord (Lord Sabaoth) included both the earthly armies of Israel as well as those of heaven (like in 2 Kings 6).

This kind of misunderstanding could have been easily corrected if the worship leader who made this comment took one look at the Hebrew behind the English. All he needed is to memorize the alphabet and to compare the words ("צבאות" for “armies” and “שבת” for the Sabbath).

I do, however, remember the words of my seminary preaching professor: “Guys, (and it were mostly guys in class) don’t give yourself too much credit when you made an embarrassing mistake. The Kingdom of God, neither stands nor falls with one sermon.”