Today's journal Feb 1

Teachers of God's word should be diligent like bees.

According to ISBE, Honey is mentioned many times in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, but the word “bee” occurs only four times, and only one of the four times in connection with honey in the story of Samson (Jdg 14:8)... The other three passages refer to the offensive power of bees. In De 1:44, in the speech of Moses he says, "The Amorites chased you, as bees do"; in Ps 118:12, the psalmist says, "They compassed me about like bees"; in Isa 7:18, the bee is the type of the chastisement that the Lord will bring from the land of Assyria.But everybody knows about the diligence and the honey of the bee.

And since honey is likened to wisdom, we can then liken the teachers of God's word to these diligent bees who work hard in gathering nectar and pollen for the colony.

The teachers must also be diligent in their study of the Word in order to extract precious wisdom to be fed to their congregation.Now let's study more about bees.Bees are flying insects closely related to wasps and ants.Now here is the resemblance to the ants: diligence (Prov 6:6-8, 30:24-25).

Bees are anthophilous.Bees love or are fond of flowers. They are attracted to flowers, the source of their food and honey.So for the teachers, they must be theologophilus, lover of God's word. They are attracted to God's word, the source of spiritual food, wisdom and teachings.Bees store honey in the honeycomb.

Teachers journalize the insights learned from the Word. Vulture bees and cleptoparasitic bees are not anthophilous.Vulture bees are the only bees that do not use plant products as food. These bees feed on carrion. These are not the kind of bees encountered by Samson because these cannot produce honey (Judges 14:8).Cleptoparasitic bees or cuckoo bees have the habit of laying their eggs in the nests of other bees, similar to the behavior of cuckoo birds. They lack pollen collecting structures and do not construct their own nests.Stay away from these false teachers as you will not find true knowledge and wisdom.

The true teachers of the Word are not like these.Bees play an important role in pollinating flowering plants, and are the major type of pollinator (Wikipedia).It is estimated that one third of the human food supply depends on insect pollination, most of which is accomplished by bees, especially the domesticated European honey bee (Wikipedia).Without bees, humans and animals alike will have a problem with food.Without teachers of the Word, the congregation will starve. And the famine of the Word is the worst kind of famine.

The bees are early workers.Early in the morning while having my personal devotion and study of the word, when the surrounding is barely lit, I regularly notice the bees are already hovering over to flowers in our garden. Wow! They are very early, earlier than the early birds. It is probably because they have to cover much ground.

There are also nocturnal bees.These bees have high adapted and extremely sensitive eyes.Some teachers learn more during the night.

The Hebrew word for bee is very interesting.The Hebrew word is דּבורה debôrâh, the bee (from its systematic instincts). It comes from the verb דָּבַר dabar (in the sense of orderly motion) which also literally means to order or arrange words or things.

Now that is interesting but let us not stretch the word so much because bees are just called bees because they swarm in order.There are two women named Deborah in the Bible: Rebekah's nurse (Gen 35:8) and the prophetess (Judges 4-5). The latter is a teacher of God's word!The teachers systematically and properly arrange the words to speak so that they will be easily understood by their hearers (Ecc 12:9-11).
Now those are the good characteristics of the true teachers of the Word.

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