7 More Hebrew Words Every Christian Should KnowSample

PARDES: Which means GARDEN

There’s a Hebrew word—pardes—that has recently been changing the way I read the Bible.

See, there's a verse in the book of Genesis that describes God walking through the flowers and trees of the Garden of Eden searching for His people. The verse reads that “they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden.” The Hebrew word for “garden” here is pardes, a word rabbis also use to define the study of Scripture. For them, pardes is a garden, but it’s also an acronym of the four levels of understanding the meaning of every story in the Bible: P’shat (the simple meaning), Remez (the implied meaning), Drash (the deeper meaning), and Sod (the hidden meaning). Together, the first letters create the word pardes, so the rabbis say that studying the Bible is like being in God’s garden or paradise.

Okay, that’s a lot of info, but what does it mean? I like to think it means that whenever you read a story in Scripture or study a passage, you are walking in God’s garden. And just like in the Genesis story, He is calling out for you!