The concept of the power of words in Hebrew versus Greek thought. To reclaim the power of the word is desperately needed in our times. I’m looking for models in history of cultures which valued the power of words!

Spoken words especially had great power in native cultures as well; but specifically in Jewish culture. Words had power. Curses and blessings are based on this power. Word is life. Has charge. The potency of words has been a bit lost in our times. We use language rather than embody it. Buber conversely speaks of the two orientations towards Reality as Word phrases! Something we speak! Make sense that Martin Buber the great 20th C Jewish thinker, used language itself as his core metaphor of how to live well!

His words “did things to people”—J Knox

Thinking about the power of words today! Some cultures value them more than others—the inner power of words. Native Americans tend to, as did the Jews—the power of language to create. So it makes sense, with Buber that his two basic life orientations were how we spoke. Speaking creates things in others. Words carry the power of life and death—either curses or blessings are spoken daily to and from us.

“‘Careful with fire,’ is good advice we know,
Careful with words,’ is ten times doubly so.”, as the saying goes…

In certain cultures (lots of indigenous cultures, and the Jewish culture as well), words were seen as activators, creative life force, something which call forth either death or life in things and others. Covenants themselves are of course lodged in words. In ours at times, we often just use language to do things, or don’t consider what life is contained in its syllables and cadences, much less it’s tone.

When St John called Jesus The Word he was tying together both greek and hebrew concepts of God. But it is interesting, that He called Jesus The Living Word become flesh!

One of my spiritual mentors said: be careful, especially as you have a gift with words, not to use, but rather choose your words. Language intrinsically has a gift of life or death. Choose life, hourly with your words.

Or as William Barclay points out about the power of words in Jewish culture:

To the Jew a word was far more than a mere sound; it was something which had an independent existence and which actually did things. As Professor John Paterson has put it: “The spoken word to the Hebrew was fearfully alive…. It was a unit of energy charged with power. It flies like a bullet to its billet.” For that very reason the Hebrew was sparing of words. Hebrew speech has fewer than 10,000; Greek speech has 200,000.