Modern Israel consists of people from nearly every nation on earth. Many different languages are spoken, but one mother tongue unites these people - it is the ancient language, the language of the Bible, the language of God. God created the world through speech - but the language He used was Hebrew - the original language - He didn't speak the world into existence in English, but in Hebrew. Since the times of Abraham, Moses, David, the nation of Israel always spoke Hebrew - until the times of exile and Hebrew was only preserved in the Rabbinic writings, prayer services and in Scripture. We had it (Hebrew language), but no one spoke it - it was like Latin - it was a dead language. Even though it ceased being used in everyday conversation - it has always been God's language of choice. According to the Bible, Hebrew was the language through which God created the world - it was in the Hebrew language that the finger of God the 10 Commandments on tablets of stone. The entire old Testament, and most of the Bible was written in Hebrew. While on earth Jesus spoke the common dialect known as Aramaic so that He could better communicate with His Jewish audience - yet He read Scripture and prayed in the Hebrew language. While on the cross when Jesus spoke to God in Hebrew ("My God, my God - why have you forsaken me").
What makes Hebrew so special? So divine? Every letter in Hebrew has a numeric value. Many times people have been able to find codes that are inscribed within the Bible within the authentic original language of dates of occurrences that would happen - people that would be born. Codes and secrets are found within the original Hebrew language when you convert the letters to numbers - at the same time each letter also has an identity. The language reveals the essence of what the word is - an example given breaks down the meaning of the letters. The word "midaber" means "to speak" in Hebrew. Each letter has an identify of itself . . which breaks down to "from" "door" "house" and "head" which translates into "How do we speak from the door in our head?" . . . using our mouth.
The Bible tells us that in the beginning everyone used only one dialect. As a result people remained together in one large community on earth. But it was God's desire that humanity would diversify and spread throughout the planet. However, the ancient world made ambitious plans to build one powerful city that would reach heaven. In response, God confused their language so that they could not understand one another. Frustrated and unable to communicate people spread into the rest of God's created world. Their monumental city was never completed and was named "Babel" meaning "confusion".
In the Bible the prophet Zephaniah declares that in the last days God would restore the world to its original pure language - a language through which everyone would call upon the name of the Lord. Could the Hebrew language be this pure language that Zephaniah was referring to? Or is the prophet simply saying that one day God will cleanse the world of profanity?
Most scholars agree that Hebrew was the original language before God constructed language barriers at Babel. If Hebrew is the language of God and the original language of all humanity then it must be the pure language that Zephaniah is talking about. The only pure language is Hebrew. Every other translation of the Bible is the translation of the authentic - the original - the pure language - the language of God.
Zephaniah's vision of a world restored to its pure, original language remained unfulfilled for over 2,000 years. During this time Jews spoke the languages common to the nations in which they lived. Some spoke Yiddish - a variety of German mixed with Hebrew and Slavic words. Yet Hebrew was virtually dead as a common language. It was only kept alive through the Jewish prayers, poetry and the recital of Scripture.
But in the late 19th century a miracle of Biblical proportions began to occur in the land of Israel. It is unprecedented in history for a language to be revived - it has never happened before. How did it happen? It took a lot of faith and a lot of courage - an entire generation had to decide "I'm going to speak to my children in a language that I don't really know. Even though my mother tongue is German - I'm going to speak to my children in Hebrew - in a language that I am just now starting to learn so that my children when they are adults that will be their mother tongue - and the entire nation took it upon themselves and the whole nation now speaks Hebrew.
The greatest contributor to the revival of Hebrew was a Russian born Jew named Eliezer Ben-Yehuda. He immigrated to Palestine in 1881 during the Ottoman Empire rule. Settling in Jerusalem he initiated a language committee with the stated object of spreading the Hebrew language and speech among people in all walks of life. The Committee began establishing Hebrew terms for modern words that were in daily use creating a uniform system of pronunciation. In time he developed the very first Russian-Hebrew-Yiddish dictionary.
He ingeniously invented many new words when the ancient language was insufficient to express modern concepts. Example - his translation of the word "electricity" is a word used in the Bible to describe the splendor around the throne of God. Similarly, the modern Hebrew word for "computer" is based on the ancient Hebrew word for calculating. Today in Israel barely a hundred years after Ben-Yehuda's dictionary was first published, Hebrew fills the airwaves. It is incredible to think that the language of the Bible, the language of God has suddenly been resurrected in our modern world. It is now the native language of nearly seven million people - the holy land resonates with the sounds of an ancient holy language spoken by the people of Israel and this is just the beginning.
In the book of Zephaniah it says that towards the ends of days not only will the Jewish people speak Hebrew but the entire world will learn the ancient language that God created the world with. People don't realize that we have a country (Israel) where over six million people are speaking a language that no one spoke nearly one hundred years ago. It's a language that has literally been resurrected. Their children's mother tongue is Hebrew - the language our prophets told us would be revived.
In Qumran, a community called the Essenes lived. Some say that John the Baptist spent time among the Essenes. John was a man of the desert and like the Essenes he preferred the wilderness places - he didn't want to be contaminated by the sin that invaded the cities and towns of Israel and specifically Judea, the province where he preached and baptized people in the River Jordan. The Essenes had a similar mentality to John the Baptist. They didn't want to live in the larger cities. They wanted to live as a community apart, separated unto God and therefore avoid the contamination of life. They chose to live in the desert because who would want to live there? Only people of a certain mentality would want to live in a place like this. They understood this and to live in the area of the Dead Sea - a place that only gets four inches of rain a year. But the Essenes were an ingenious people - they built water courses in the hills in the mountains trapping the water as it ran off the mountains during the downpours and trapped it into cisterns. They used the water for their ritual bathing ("mikvahs" according to the Law of Moses).
The Essenes were observers and students of the Holy Scriptures - they wrote down and they translated and they kept in the Hebrew language into the ancient words of the prophets, the law of Moses and many other Old Testament texts. They wrote them down, they preserved them, they studied them and lived by those precepts. The Essene community died out sometime after the first century. In November 1947 the United Nations voted to reestablish the people of Israel in a homeland of Israel. In that same year shepherds lost one of their flock in the landscape where the Essenes lived. A stone was thrown into a cave - if there was an animal in there it would react and he would know he found his lost goat. Instead he heard the shattering of pottery which intrigued him and he climbed down into the cave. Instead he found in these jars what the Essenes had written down so log ago - in Hebrew - the language of the Jewish people. These scrolls were preserved by the dry climate of the Dead Sea. In 1947 the scrolls showed us that the Bible we are reading today is virtually the same Bible that existed 2,000 years ago when the Essenes were writing it down. The differences was minimal - slight changes in punctuation - but the text itself was virtually the same as what we read today. The Bible was preserved, accurate and true.
Zephaniah 3:9 reads "For then I will restore to the peoples a pure language, that they all may call on the name of the Lord, to serve Him with one accord."
After the destruction of the Temple in 87 A.D. and the disbursement of the Jewish people among the nations - for nearly 2,000 years the Hebrew language that the Essenes were preserving and that Jesus read was virtually lost. But once the Jewish people came back into the lands of Israel and in the 20th century this Hebrew language has been revived. Zephaniah's prophecy has been fulfilled with the rebirth and the restoration of the nation of Israel. God has given them the language that was their's to begin with - Our Almighty God keeps His Word and His promises to the people of Israel.
Now, search through history for a sovereign nation Israel . . .
Year 500 BC? "No."
Year 300 BC? "No."
Year 100 BC? "No."
Year 200 AD? "No."
Year 500 AD? "No."
Year 1000 AD? "No."
Year 1400 AD? "No."
Year 1700 AD? "No."
Year 1800 AD? "No."
Year 1900 AD? "No."
Year 1948 AD? "Yes!!!" ... There it is!!! . . . May 14, 1948!
How has the world reacted to such a profound fulfillment of Bible prophecy? A miracle that can be documented by simply looking at a map and a Bible. It has ignored it! Just as God says most of the world will ignore the warnings of the coming Apocalypse. Remember, God uses prophecy to prove that He is who He says He is, and to authenticate the warnings and the promises found in the Bible.
The Bible warns a series of events (which will change the world forever) would begin after Israel would once again become a sovereign Nation (after almost 2,500 years) . . . This remarkable event took place on May 14, 1948! How has the world reacted to such a profound fulfillment of Bible prophecy? A miracle that can be documented by simply looking at the Bible and a map. It has ignored it! Just as God warned most of the world will ignore the signs of the coming 'Apocalypse' (also called 'the time of Jacob's trouble', the 'Great Tribulation,' and 'the Day of the Lord.'). Remember, God uses prophecy to prove He is who He says His is, and to authenticate all the warnings and the promises found in the Bible . . .
(NOTE: This material came from a variety of places which includes at a minimum a weekly television show hosted by Rev. Dr. John Tweedie Israel: The Prophetic Connection aired on April 23, 2015; excerpts from an article on the internet Bible Prophecy: Israel and Jerusalem); Wikipedia on Eliezer Ben-Yehuda; Wikipedia on the Essenes; the Holy Bible).