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שָׁתַל (Shatal): Deliberately Set in a Chosen Place · Reformed Thinking

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  Hello, and welcome back to another session of Reformed
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  Thinking. I'm your host and yeah, I am
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  ready to get into the text today.
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  And I'm here as well, definitely looking forward to opening up
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  the Scriptures. As always, our goal here is what
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  it's simple, but it's significant.
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  We want to look at the Bible through the lens of the
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  sovereignty of God and the doctrines of grace.
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  We stand on the shoulders of the Westminster Confession, holding
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  that God is the primary actor in history.
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  And of course, in our salvation. That is really the bedrock of
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  everything we do here. You know, usually when we talk
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  about things like sovereignty or monarchism, that whole idea that
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  God works alone to save us, we go to the big theological terms,
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  go to Romans 9. We go to Ephesians one.
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  We look at the, you know, the wide angle lens.
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  But today we're doing something a little different.
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  We're going to look at one single Hebrew verb.
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  It's a fascinating approach. Sometimes the biggest theology
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  is you know it's hidden in the smallest bits of grammar.
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  The word we're looking at today is shethal.
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  Shethal shin tav lamid. Now I know what you might be
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  thinking. You hear Hebrew verb and you
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  might be thinking, oh boy, this is going to be dry, but stick
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  with us. Yeah, please do.
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  This is not just a vocabulary lesson.
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  This word shethal is technically an agricultural term.
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  It means to plant. That's right.
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  And on the surface, you know, a verb for planting sounds, well,
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  it sounds remarkably mundane. You might expect us to discuss
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  farming techniques in the Iron Age.
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  And we might. A little bit.
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  We will a little bit, but this specific word appears in some of
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  the most famous, most memorized passages in the entire Bible.
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  We're talking song one. We're talking Jeremiah 17, the
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  tree by the water. Correct, but what most people
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  miss in English because you know, our translations just say
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  planted is it Chathal? Carries a very specific nuance.
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  It doesn't just mean to put a seed in the ground, it means to
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  trans. And that nuance radically alters
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  how we understand spiritual growth.
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  OK. That's the hook right there,
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  because if we are transplanted, that implies a whole lot about
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  where we started and who did the moving.
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  It certainly does. So our mission today is to do a
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  full survey. We're going to examine every
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  single occurrence of this word in the Hebrew Bible.
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  We're going to look at its roots in the ancient Near East, and we
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  were going to uncover the theological implication that,
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  well, God is the active gardener who takes his people out of one
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  soil and transplants them into holy ground.
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  I love it. Let's get our hands dirty.
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  Where do we start? Let's start with the philology,
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  the roots, and the nuance of shuffle.
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  So if you open up a lexicon like Strom's where it's number 8362
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  for anyone taking notes, or the Theological Word Book of the Old
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  Testament, you'll see it defined as a primitive root meaning to
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  transplant. OK, so make that distinction
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  clear for us. How is shafal different from the
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  other Hebrew words for planting? Like isn't there a general word
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  for just sowing seeds? Yes, absolutely.
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  There's Zara. That means to scatter seed.
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  That's the word you get in the parable of the sower, right?
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  You cast seed and it lands where it lands.
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  But shafal is totally different. It implies working with slips or
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  shoots or root stocks. You're taking something that's
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  already alive, something that is already sprouted, and you are
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  deliberately placing it into the ground for cultivation.
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  So it's the difference between a farmer walking across a field
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  just throwing handfuls of grain, and a gardener who's taking a
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  specific rose Bush or an olive shoot, digging a hole and
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  placing it exactly where he wants it to grow.
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  That is the perfect analogy, and we know this isn't just a quirk
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  of Hebrew. This meaning is incredibly
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  stable across the entire Semitic language family.
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  If you look at the linguistic neighbors, the cognates, you see
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  the exact same picture. Walk us through those.
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  It's always good to see that the the Bible's language isn't just,
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  you know, existing in a vacuum. It really isn't so.
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  In Aramaic, a very closely related language, you have the
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  word shuttle, same meaning. In Akkadian, which was the
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  language of the Assyrians and the Babylonians, you have
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  Satalu. The big academic dictionaries
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  like the Chicago Syrian Dictionary list it clearly as to
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  plant. And Acadian is old.
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  I mean, that's going back to the time of the exile and even
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  before that. Very old, yeah, it shows.
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  This word has some strong roots, pun intended.
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  You can see it in Arabic Shahatullah which means to plant
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  or transplant and they have the noun sharat which means a slip
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  or a cutting. So across the board from Babylon
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  to Arabia, this STL route is about moving a living plant to a
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  new home. Precisely.
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  But here's one of my favorite details from the research.
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  It's a bit of a deep cut, if you will.
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  Oh, I like a deep cut. Let's hear it.
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  There's a reference in Punic. Punic.
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  That's the language of Carthage, isn't it?
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  Hannibal and the Elephants. The very same Punic is a dialect
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  of Phoenician which is very close to Hebrew, and there's a
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  citation from a Greek writer getting deoscurities.
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  He was a physician and a botanist in the Roman army
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  around the 1st century AD. OK, and he wrote this massive
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  encyclopedia on herbal medicine. And he mentions A Punic word in
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  this Greek text. He does.
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  He records a Punic phrase. Yeah.
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  Sithilis aid. Now scholars like the famous
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  Theodore Noel deck have analyzed this.
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  They break it down as Shaziel Saeed.
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  And sad usually means field, right?
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  Like in Hebrew El Shaddai, it can sometimes be connected to
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  that. Correct field or open country so
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  feel sad means shoots of the field or plants in the field.
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  It's using that same route shuffle to describe the
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  vegetation. It just reinforces that when the
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  biblical authors chose this word, they weren't grabbing a
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  generic term, they were using a technical agricultural term for
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  a cultivated plant. OK, so we've established the
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  definition pretty firmly. It's transplanting.
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  It involves a shoot or a slip. Now let's get to the grammar.
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  Because in reformed thinking, grammar is so often where the
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  theology lives. It really, really is.
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  When we look at how shethal is used in the Bible, we have to
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  look at the stems or the voices of the verb and this this is
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  where the light bulb should go on.
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  OK, so what's the breakdown? How is it used?
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  The verb appears in what's called the qual stem, the simple
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  act of stem. But here's the kicker, it is
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  almost exclusively used in the passive voice.
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  The passive voice, meaning the subject is receiving the action,
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  not doing it. Correct.
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  The most common form we find is the qual passive participle
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  shatul. That's what we find in Psalm one
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  in Jeremiah 17. He shall be like a tree planted.
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  The tree is the thing being acted upon.
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  The tree did not plant itself. The tree did not walk over to
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  the river and decide to set down roots.
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  It was Shethul. It was transplanted by an
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  outside force. Wow, that is pure monarchism
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  right there in a participle. It is.
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  Monarchism is the doctrine that God is the sole active agent in
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  regeneration. We don't save ourselves, we are
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  saved. We don't plant ourselves in
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  grace. We are planted.
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  No. There are a couple times where
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  it's active though, right? Yes, but this just proves the
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  point. Look at who the subject is in
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  those cases. In Ezekiel 17, which we will
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  definitely get to, the text says I will plant and the I is God,
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  of course. So linguistically, humans are
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  never the subject of this active verb in a positive spiritual
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  sense. We are never the ones doing the
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  planting. We're always the Shethu, the
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  transplanted ones. That sets the stage perfectly.
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  We're looking at a word that means we are slips, cuttings,
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  taken by a divine gardener and moved to a new location.
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  So let's look at that ideal believer imagery.
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  Let's go to Psalm 1. Psalm One verse 3.
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  Probably one of the first verses many of us ever learned.
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  He is like a tree planted by streams of water.
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  The Hyacaeus should do a Polish meme.
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  Beautiful. Now let's focus on that phrase.
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  Streams of water Polish meme. In the ancient Near East, you
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  have different kinds of water sources.
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  You have wadis that dry up in the summer.
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  You have rain, which is, you know, unpredictable.
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  But pelig the singular of pelage, it often refers to
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  irrigation canals, channels of water that are dug and directed
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  specifically for agriculture. So if the tree is Chateau
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  transplanted and it's placed by pulge main irrigation canals,
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  this is not a wild tree growing in a forest by accident, no.
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  This is an orchard. This is a garden.
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  This tree has been placed there on purpose.
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  The location is artificial in the very best sense of that
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  word. It's been moved from the wild,
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  where it might struggle for water, to a place where the
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  water supply is guaranteed by the gardener.
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  That changes the whole feel of the Psalm, doesn't it?
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  It's not just, oh, nature is pretty, it is God has placed me
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  here. And because of that placement,
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  the text says it yields fruit in its season and its leaf does not
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  wither. Exactly.
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  The stability comes from the location, and the location was
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  chosen by the planter. It's interesting to look at the
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  Greek translation here. The Septuagint you use the word
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  fit you, which is the standard Greek word for plant.
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  They didn't quite capture that specific transplant nuance of
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  Shafal, but the context makes it clear enough.
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  Now, Jeremiah 17 verse 8 uses almost the exact same imagery.
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  It's almost a direct quote or a parallel passage.
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  It is Jeremiah is contrasting the man who trusts in man, who
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  he says is like a shrub in the desert, with the man who trusts
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  in the Lord. And he says he is like a tree
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  planted by water that sends out its roots by the stream.
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  And again, Shatul. Yes, Shatul and Jeremiah has a
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  little more detail about the resilience of this tree.
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  He says it does not fear when heat comes, for his leaves
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  remain green and is not anxious in the year of drought.
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  I love that line is not anxious in the year of drought.
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  And why isn't it anxious? Because it's been transplanted
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  to a source that doesn't depend on the rain.
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  Precisely is roots go down to a constant supply, and here the
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  Greek Septuagint does something interesting instead of just
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  planted for the outcome. Some of the Greek text lean
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  toward this idea of flourishing. The Greek word euthinish appears
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  in some contexts around this verse and it means to thrive or
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  prosper. So it highlights the result of
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  the planting. Yes, exactly.
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  The tree thrives because it's transplanted.
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  OK, so we have the tree by the water, but there's another
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  planting location mentioned in the Psalms, Psalm 92.13 or verse
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  14 in the Hebrew text. Planted in the House of the
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  Lord, they flourish in the courts of our God.
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  Shathulagam. Yes, Shathulam, it's the plural
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  passive participle, those who are transplanted in the House of
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  the the Lord. Wow, this is even more specific
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  than by the water. Now we're talking about the
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  Temple, the covenant sphere. It brings out the corporate and
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  you know, the liturgical aspect of this transplanting.
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  We aren't just transplanted into some private spirituality, we
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  are transplanted into the House of the Lord.
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  The text mentions the palm of the cedar in the previous
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  verses. These are majestic, long lived
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  trees, and they are moved from the wild world, the world of the
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  wicked, who spring up like grass and perish, and they are placed
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  into the sacred ground of the covenant.
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  It really reinforces that idea of separation.
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  To be holy means to be set apart.
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  To be shithul means you were taken out of one place and put
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  into another. You can't be planted in the
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  House of the Lord and still be trying to grow wild in the
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  field. That's the hard truth of it.
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  The transplanting requires a severing of the old roots.
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  You have to be dug up. And that leads us perfectly to
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  Ezekiel 17, where this whole metaphor of planting becomes a
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  full blown narrative. Ezekiel 17, the parable of the
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  Eagles. This is It's a wild check, or if
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  you haven't read it lately, it has these great eagles, cedar
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  branches, vines, international politics.
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  It's got everything. It does.
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  It's a complex allegory about the kings of Judah, specifically
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  King Zedekiah, and their their relationships with Babylon in
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  Egypt. But the vocabulary, she thought,
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  is absolutely central to the whole thing.
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  So set the scene for us. What's happening?
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  So a great eagle, which represents Babylon, comes to
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  Lebanon, takes the very top of a cedar, and carries it off to a
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  land of trade. Then he takes some of the seed
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  of the land, and he plants it in fertile soil.
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  And it grows and becomes a vine. Yes, a low spreading vine.
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  Verse 8 says it was planted in good soil by abundant waters.
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  Shatula. There's our word again, passive.
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  It was planted. OK, so this sounds good, right?
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  Good soil, abundant water. This sounds like the ideal
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  situation from Psalm 1. It sounds ideal.
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  It sounds like it should work, but there's a twist.
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  The vine turns its roots toward another great eagle, which
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  represents Egypt. Because it's seeking more water,
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  it wasn't content with where the first eagle had planted it.
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  So it's a story of betrayal because of that shifting
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  legions. The question in verse 10 is will
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  it thrive? Exactly.
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  Behold, it is planted shatula. Will it thrive?
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  And the expected answer is a clear no.
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  It will wither when the east wind strikes it.
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  So what's the lesson there? That being Chateau being
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  transplanted is not enough if you don't stay true to the one
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  who planted you? Or is it that this was a
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  political planting by a human king or an eagle representing a
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  king, and therefore it was always doomed?
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  I think it's both. It shows that even a planted
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  vine can fail if the planting is merely political or if the vine
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  seeks its sustenance from the wrong source.
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  But the real theological gold is at the end of the chapter, God
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  basically steps in and says, enough with these eagles, enough
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  with these human kings trying to build kingdoms.
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  And this is verses 22 and 23. This is where we finally get the
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  active voice. Yes.
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  God speaks. I myself will take a spray from
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  the lofty top of the cedar, and we'll set it out, and then in
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  verse 23, on the mountain height of Israel will I plant it.
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  Vaisha Thaltiani. Vaisha Thaltiani and I will
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  plant it. I myself.
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  That ANI is emphatic. It's there for stress.
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  It highlights God's direct personal intervention.
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  The human kings failed, the political alliances failed.
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  So God becomes the transplanter He.
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  Does and the object What is he planting?
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  A tender 1A shoot. He takes a tender one from the
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  top. Most of the young twigs a tender
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  shoot. This is Messianic language.
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  The Messiah is often called the branch or the shoot and other
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  prophecies. God takes this tender shoot and
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  transplants it to the highest mountain in Israel.
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  And what's the result of this planting?
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  It will bear fruit and become a majestic cedar, and birds of
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  every kind will nest in its shade.
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  It's a beautiful picture of the Kingdom of God, a place of
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  refuge for all nations. I love the grammar here.
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  You mentioned an unusual form in verse 23.
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  Yes, it's eshtelenu. I will plant it.
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  It's a form that has a suffix representing the object.
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  It. It's a strong, determined
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  statement of future action. God is essentially staking His
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  reputation on this planting. This is not a passive event
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  anymore. This is the sovereign Lord
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  getting His hands and in the soil of history to establish His
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  King and His Kingdom. So you have the passive shithul
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  for the believer in Psalm one. We are the recipients of grace
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  and you have the active echelonia for God in Ezekiel 17.
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  He is the author of the Messianic Kingdom.
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  It fits together perfectly. It does.
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  It shows that our stability is these little trees.
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  In Psalm. One depends entirely on the
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  success of the great cedar in Ezekiel 17.
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  We are planted because he was planted.
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  That is heavy, but you know, we have to be honest with the text.
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  Is Chef always a happy word? Is every transplant A transplant
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  to paradise? Unfortunately, no.
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  And this is where the sovereignty of God becomes a
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  fearful thing, not just a comforting thing.
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  The same hand that plants can also transplant into judgement.
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  And we see this in Ezekiel 19. Right.
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  It's eel. 19 is a lament, a funeral dirge.
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  It picks up that vine imagery again.
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  Verse 10 describes a mother who is likely Israel or the royal
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  line of David as a vine planted chef tool by the water.
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  It was fruitful and full of branches.
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  So that's referring to the glory days under David and Solomon.
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  Right, the ideal past, but then verse 12.
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  But it was plucked up in fury, cast down to the ground, and
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  verse 13 gives us the new condition.
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  Now it is planted in the wilderness in a dry and thirsty
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  land. Shatula Bamidbar planted in the
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  wilderness. And note that word planted
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  again, it's still Shasul. It didn't just fall there by
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  accident, it was transplanted there.
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  That is a tough thought. The exile wasn't an accident.
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  It wasn't that God lost control of the situation.
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  It was that God transplanted his people into the wilderness of
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  Babylon. Correct.
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  The condition of the soil matters tremendously.
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  Being planted is not enough, you need to be planted by the water.
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  When God judges a nation or a person, He can transplant them
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  into a dry and thirsty land. It is an act of sovereign
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  judgement. The roots are still there, the
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  plant is still there, but the environment has been changed to
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  1 of scarcity and discipline. It really challenges that simple
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  idea that we sometimes hear bloom where you're planted.
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  Sometimes you're planted in a place that's specifically
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  designed to humble you or discipline you.
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  And that leads us to perhaps the most confusing usage of this
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  word in the entire Bible, Hosea 9, verse 13.
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  Right, the outline calls this a textual mystery.
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  It really is. If you open your English Bible,
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  say the ESV or the NRSV, you might read something like this.
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  Ephraim, as I have seen, was like a young palm planted in the
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  lovely Meadow. That sounds nice planted in the
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  lovely Meadow Shatula Binove. It sounds lovely, but then the
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  verse continues. But Ephraim must lead out his
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  children to the slaughter, so it's a stark contrast.
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  They were planted for beauty, but they're heading for death.
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  But there's a big debate about what the Hebrew actually says
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  here, isn't there? A massive debate.
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  The Hebrew is very, very difficult.
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  The Masoretic Text, our standard Hebrew text, seems to say
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  something like planted toward a rock or planted in a pasture.
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  But the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation, read it very,
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  very differently. What did they have?
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  They translated as something like Ephraim has appointed his
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  sons for a hunter or for prey. Wait.
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  Planted in a Meadow versus appointed for a hunter?
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  Those are totally different ideas.
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  They are. The confusion comes from letters
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  and words that look very similar in Hebrew.
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  The critics, scholars like Wellhausen, Jane Harper, they
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  argue that the text is corrupt, that it's been copied
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  incorrectly over time. They think the word for planted
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  shatila might actually be a misreading of a word for set or
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  appointed shat. So we might not even have our
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  word shethal here at all. It's possible we don't.
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  Or if we do, it's being used in a very strange, ironic way.
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  Planted for a rock, planted toward a sharp edge.
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  It's very ambiguous. So how do we handle that as
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  Reformed thinkers? You know, we love the inerrancy
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  and clarity of Scripture, but here we have a significant
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  textual variant. We handle it by looking at the
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  wider context. Whether the text says Ephraim
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  was planted in a lovely Meadow and then squandered that
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  blessing, or that he appointed his children for the hunter as a
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  result of his sin, the theological outcome is the same.
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  Ephraim is abandoned the covenant Hosea is prophesying
• 18:30
  the destruction of the northern Kingdom by Assyria.
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  So the uncertainty of one particular word doesn't
• 18:34
  undermine the certainty of the overall message.
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  So the main point remains clear regardless of the textual issue.
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  Precisely. And even if we stick with the
• 18:43
  Masoretic text planted in a lovely Meadow, it just
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  reinforces the tragedy. God gave them the perfect soil,
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  the promised land, He gave them the perfect location, a neva, a
• 18:53
  beautiful habitation, and yet they produced fruit that was
• 18:56
  only fit for slaughter. It's the tragedy of the Bad Vine
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  all over again. It's a sobering reminder the
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  best planting in the world doesn't guarantee faithfulness
• 19:06
  if the heart turns away. Indeed.
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  OK, let's start to synthesize all of this.
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  We've looked at the word shethal to transplant.
• 19:13
  We've seen it in the Psalms, in the prophets.
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  We've seen the passive and we've seen the active.
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  Let's just break down the stats one more time to lock it in.
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  The word appears, I believe, 10 times in the Hebrew Bible.
• 19:22
  OK, 10 times. Eight of those times it's that
• 19:25
  qual passive form shethal. The subject is the tree or the
• 19:28
  vine or the person being planted.
• 19:30
  And the other two times. Ezekiel 17.2 and 23 God is the
• 19:35
  subject I will plant. I just can't get over that
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  ratio. 80% of the time we're looking at our passive
• 19:41
  condition, 20% of the time we are looking at God's active
• 19:45
  sovereign intervention, and 0% of the time is man planting
• 19:49
  himself. That is the headline.
• 19:52
  Humans do not plant themselves in righteousness.
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  We don't wake up one day and say, you know what?
• 19:56
  I think I'll be a cedar in the temple today.
• 19:58
  Right, I think I'll just move myself from this desert over to
• 20:01
  that river. It's impossible.
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  A tree cannot uproot itself. It requires A gardener.
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  It requires a spade. It requires muscle and
• 20:08
  intention. And it requires a slip or a
• 20:10
  shoot. Let's go back to that definition
• 20:12
  for a second. You mentioned Shittelay's zatum
• 20:14
  olive shoots. Right from Psalm 128.3 your
• 20:18
  children will be like olive shoots around your table.
• 20:20
  She's dead. And olive shoot is a cutting,
• 20:22
  isn't it? You have to cut it off an old
• 20:24
  tree to start a new one, yes. And think about the violence of
• 20:27
  that image, but a violence softened by grace.
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  To become a transplant, you first have to be cut.
• 20:34
  You have to be separated from the wild stock you came from.
• 20:37
  And this connects so beautifully to Paul's imagery in Romans 11
• 20:40
  about grafting. The wild olive branch.
• 20:43
  Exactly. We were wild olive shoots cut
• 20:45
  from the wild tree and then grafted or transplanted into the
• 20:48
  cultivated olive tree, which is Israel.
• 20:50
  So the very word shafal contains within it the whole story of our
• 20:55
  salvation. We were wild, we were cut, we
• 20:57
  were moved, we were planted. And now we are water.
• 21:00
  And now we are water. You know, I want to briefly
• 21:03
  mention the Greek connections one last time, just to give
• 21:05
  credit to the Septuagint translators.
• 21:07
  They really did try to capture this.
• 21:09
  You mentioned Fetush and you think yes?
• 21:11
  Fetush is the standard plant, but they also use katafetu in
• 21:16
  Ezekiel 17 which strengthens it. It means to plant down firmly
• 21:21
  and in Ezekiel 17.8 when describing the soil, they use
• 21:24
  words like piano which means to fatten or to enrich.
• 21:28
  They understood that this was not just any old dirt.
• 21:30
  This is a fat, rich, cultivated environment designed for growth.
• 21:34
  It's a holistic picture, the soil, the water, the active
• 21:36
  transplanting, the root system, all of it.
• 21:39
  So as we wrap up this deep dive, let's bring it home for the
• 21:42
  listener. What does all this mean for the
• 21:44
  person driving to work or doing the dishes or sitting in their
• 21:47
  study right now? I think the main take away is
• 21:50
  about stability. We live in a world that it's
• 21:53
  incredibly unstable. We feel like tumbleweeds
• 21:56
  sometimes, just blown around by the news cycle, by our emotions,
• 21:59
  by the economy. But Song One says the righteous
• 22:02
  man is not like chaff that the wind drives away.
• 22:04
  No, he is shuttle. He is transplanted.
• 22:08
  His stability is not found in his own strength or his own
• 22:11
  ability to grip the dirt. His stability is a result of his
• 22:14
  location. Location, location location
• 22:16
  precisely. He has been placed by God near
• 22:19
  the water, and for us that water is the word of God and the
• 22:23
  Spirit of God. If you're feeling dry, if you're
• 22:25
  feeling withered, the question is not how do I try harder?
• 22:28
  The question is where am I planted?
• 22:31
  Or maybe how I neglected the stream that God placed me
• 22:34
  beside. And realizing that God is the
• 22:36
  one who put you there brings such a comfort.
• 22:39
  If God planted you, he intends for you to grow.
• 22:41
  He didn't transplant you just to kill you.
• 22:43
  Unless, of course, you are like the vine in Ezekiel 17 that
• 22:47
  starts turning its roots toward Egypt.
• 22:49
  We must be content with the water God provides through His
• 22:53
  means of grace. Here's a provocative thought to
• 22:55
  leave you with. We talked about how shafal means
• 22:58
  transplanting, and we talked about how that implies we were
• 23:01
  moved from somewhere else. Yes, if we are shafu, that means
• 23:04
  our original soil was insufficient.
• 23:06
  It means the wild place we came from was a place of death, even
• 23:10
  if it felt like home to us. That's right, the soil of Adam.
• 23:13
  I wonder how many of us are still mourning our old soil.
• 23:17
  I wonder how many of us feel the trauma of the shovel, the pain
• 23:20
  of being dug up, of having those old roots severed, of being
• 23:23
  moved to a place that feels unfamiliar, maybe even exposed.
• 23:27
  That is a powerful question. We often resent the disruption
• 23:30
  of God's grace. Being dug up hurts.
• 23:34
  Being moved from what we knew hurts.
• 23:35
  But if we could see the streams of water that he's moving us
• 23:38
  toward it, we'd understand that the shovel was an instrument of
• 23:40
  mercy, not malice. The shovel is an instrument of
• 23:43
  mercy. I'd like that.
• 23:44
  So check your soil, check your roots, and trust the gardener.
• 23:48
  Amen to that. Thank you for joining us on this
• 23:50
  deep dive into the Word Shethal. We hope it hasn't brushed your
• 23:54
  understanding of Scripture and of God's sovereign care for His
• 23:57
  people. Until next time, keep digging
• 24:00
  into the word. This has been reformed thinking
• 24:02
  Soli do Gloria.