Hebrew and Facial Pain

  

I have had the incredible opportunity to attend seminary at Dallas Theological Seminary.  I am near the end of my work for a masters of the Theology degree and all I have remaining at this time is to learn the language of Hebrew.  As I am learning this language, I find it fascinating by the versatility of this language.  When I learned Greek, every word had an exact definition and endings were very accurate as to how are they used in vocabulary and grammar.  Hebrew on the other hand is very fluent and very versatile.  One word may have many different meanings, often at times four or five meanings.  Therefore, it is from a western point of view a very difficult language to learn.  However, from the Semitic mind, this language fits the way the mind works.

 

The meaning of a Hebrew word is entirely contextual.  Context determinants the meaning not just the nuances, but the actual meaning of the word.  Therefore, a word cannot stand on its own, has no meaning until it is put into a context of a thought in sentences or paragraph.

 

When it comes to pain, the same principle applies.  Pain without context is almost unimaginable.  There is always a context to pain. Pain is in the context of anxiety or an experience or a physical harm or punishment or many other things that frame the context of the pain.  If the context of a painful event is in a life-threatening situation, the mind often times puts the pain aside and ignores it completely.  However, if the pain is in the context of secondary gain where the person would receive sympathy and attention, then the pain becomes highly exaggerated and center of the patient’s life.  I often see this in mothers who are raising children.  They very often put their pain aside because their children are of high priority than they themselves.  They have contextualized the pain and put it in a place of low priority.

 

Therefore as I am learning Hebrew and its vocabulary, I am reminded how people contextualize pain and that as a treating medical professional that we have to understand the context in order to understand the patient’s pain.  Then we are able to address the pain and to treat it properly.

 

God Bless,

Dr. Ron Prehn