Every Sabbath in the Synagogues of Galilee in the first century, Jews heard the Torah and the Haftarah [Readings from the Prophets] read in Hebrew and then translated into Galilean Aramaic by a ‘meturgeman’/translator aloud for the hearers. When they did, they would run across the phrase “D’var יהוה ”, many times in the course of a year, since it appears 250 times in the Old Testament. They would have used it in theological conversations. In Galilean Aramaic, that phrase would have been given as ܡܶܠܬ݂ܳܐ ממרא דיהוה , “Memrah d’יהוה”, “Memra of Yahweh”.
This concept was very familiar to 1st Century Jews in Galilee, and to Jews all over the Aramaic-speaking Near East. In the eastern Aramaic community, there was a different dialect of Aramaic, still very close to Hebrew, and the word was “Miltah” in that community. But, both of these words represent דבר יהוה , “The Word of Yahu’ah,” which English speakers have heard as “The Word of the LORD” from their Bibles.
Jews in Galilee, the rest of Israel, and in communities all through the Near East, then, heard and understood already that the Davar, the “Memra”, created the world, walked in the Garden, appeared to and spoke to Abraham and Isaac, wrestled with Jacob, forgave sins, accepted prayer, led them out of Egypt, and would dwell in Israel’s midst and bring final redemption one day. But, never, ever did these Jews think that the Memra replaced Elohim or was a ‘second person’, but that God the Creator sent a representative apparition, a temporary manifestation of God the Creator in an angelic form, which later Jews in the Greek-speaking world and today still call “Metatron”. They understand Him to be the Divine Presence in an angelic being. Never in antiquity was the “Memra”, HaDavar, The Word, thought of as anything other than God extending Himself to mankind.
In the ancient Jewish mind, and in some Jewish minds even today, HaDavar is the living, speaking, working expression of the One God when He interacts with His Creation.
So, when Yokhanan HaShali’akh, John the Apostle, wrote his first verse, he used a word that would be very, very familiar to religious Jews. “Davar”/”Memra”, as a manifestation of God.
When Yokhanan wrote that first verse, he wrote it this way: “In the beginning was הַדָּבָר / HaDavar, and He, HaDavar, was within the form of Elohim, and Elohim was He, HaDavar” (בְּרֵאשִׁית הָיָה הַדָּבָר, וְהוּא הַדָּבָר הָיָה אֵצֶל הָאֱלֹהִים, וֵאלֹהִים הָיָה הוּא הַדָּבָר), he was describing HaDavar as both intimately united with Elohim (God) and fully embodying God’s essence.
This was theology that had already been worked out in ancient Judaism. They understood that God’s ‘essence’ could appear here on earth, while His ‘being’ still sat enthroned in Heaven. There was only ever three times where His “Being” was “seen” on earth when not in the form of הַדָּבָר /The Word: walking in Gan Eden to commune with the first man, Adam; Mount Sinai when the “Elders” saw His feet from below, [Ex 24:9-11] and there also when Moses could not see His face, but was picked up by and covered with His hand, and then saw His back [thus legs/feet] as He walked by [Ex 33-34].
The idea of “The Word of the LORD” manifesting in a humanoid form while God was still on His Throne was not new to the first century Jew. They heard it and saw it every year in Hebrew and Aramaic. The patriarchs all ‘saw’ this Word as the “Messenger of יהוה ”. Avraham saw Him in Genesis 15. He ate a meal with Him and washed His feet in Genesis 18, while at the same time, יהוה from Heaven rained fire down from heaven on Sodom. Jacob wrestled with Him at Beit El (Genesis 32). The Jews feared The Word of יהוה during the Exodus, and saw ‘Him’ in Exodus 15 move from out of the midst of the cloud to defend them against Egypt. God showed Israel The Word, and they were afraid to ascend the Mount (Deuteronomy 5:5). And again, 250 times The Word of the LORD, דבר יהוה , appeared to the Prophets, from Samuel to Malachi.
Thus, John’s verse did not shock nor confuse ancient Jews when he described Yeshua, the Son of God, as The Word, preexistent, eternal, but human, in order to put to rest the confusion that was already in the believing community when Greeks began mixing Greek philosophy with Judaic theology. In the late first century, very soon after Greeks started to come to faith in Messiah, they started roping in their system of belief, citing ancient Greek philosophical ideas about ‘being’, in spite of Paul warning them not to (Col 2:8). And they created the conversation that is still going on today in theological circles about who “Jesus” really is.
But, Galilean Jews did not have that trouble. When he wrote John 1:1, he was basically telling them, “That same Davar/Memra you have always known from the Torah has now stepped into history as a real human being named Yeshua. He said, “The Word became [a body of] flesh, and dwelt among us.”
Ancient Jews understood that God did not leave His throne. But He ‘sent’ His “Word” into the womb of Miryam as His Seed, to converge/unite with the seed of Avraham in Miryam.
God had promised His ‘adversary’, that slant Serpent, a ‘seed’ (זֶרַע / zera‘) would come from a woman:
“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed (זֶרַע / zera‘) and her SEED; He will crush your head, and you will bruise His heel”. The adversary’s seed is all those that are born into sin, (John 8:44) the ‘seed’ of iniquity just planted into mankind by temptation. God’s seed is His Son, Yeshua, who was The Word that became a BODY by the joining of the divine with humanity!
God kept on prophesying that this ‘seed’ would come, through Abraham: “In your Seed all the nations of the earth will be blessed” (Gen 22:18; Gal 3:16 explicitly says this Seed is Messiah Yeshua). This seed would continue in Israel, coming to us through David: “I will raise up your Seed after you … and I will establish the throne of His kingdom forever” (2 Sam 7:12–13). David understood that this “Messiah” would be the Son of God: “The kings of the earth revolt, and the rulers take counsel together, against יהוה , and against His Messiah…Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and you perish in the way, when suddenly His wrath is kindled” (Psalm 2). After David, the prophets kept us aware that a ‘seed’ would come: “A Child is born, a Son is given …” (Isa 9:6)
The Seed promised from the beginning is none other than the Word/Memra Himself, the same Word who spoke creation into being, who walked with Avraham, who appeared to Moshe, who dwelt in the Tabernacle, now finally entering the human bloodline through the womb of a virgin, becoming the individual human “Seed of the woman.”
That is why Paul can say in Galatians 3:16: “Now the promises were made to Avraham and to his seed as a covenant. He did not say, “To your seeds,” as of many, but, “To your seed,” as One, that is Messiah.”
And that is why the Messenger Gabriel tells Miryam (Mary): “For behold, you will conceive and give birth to a son…and He will be called The Son of God Most High; and יהוה Elohim/God will give Him the throne of His father David….therefore the One who is to be born of you is Holy, and He will be called The Son of God. (Luke 1:31–35).
In other words: The eternal Davar/Memra, The Word who was always God’s outward expression and who always bore the divine Name, is the very “Seed” promised from Genesis 3:15 onward.
In the fullness of time, that same Word enters history as a single human descendant — the Seed of the woman, the Seed of Avraham, the Seed of David — so that the one God can now redeem the world from inside humanity, through a real human being who is Himself the living Word in person. This man would not have the seed of the adversary in Him! But the divine SEED of God’s Nature! That is why Yeshua, the man, could overcome temptation, even when He was young and ‘untaught’, when the rest of us cannot. Yeshua never sinned, not because He isn’t human, but because He is the Divine Nature of God wrapped in human flesh, not tainted by the sin of the garden.
So, when Yokhanan wrote John 1:1, he wasn’t saying that God became a baby! He was saying that the very essence of God’s nature would become a human being. That is why over eighty times Yeshua calls Himself “The Son of Man”. “Ben HaAdam” is literally Yeshua saying I am “The Human Being”, the promised Seed of Abraham that Israel had been waiting on for 2,000 years! So, when the Renewed Covenant scriptures seem to English readers to be calling Yeshua “God”, the scriptures are actually calling Him “Divine”, and that is how first century Jews understood him.
Yeshua Himself supports the notion that He is the Son of God, and not trying to “be” God, or attain equality with God, even in the core of HIS being, He is utterly divine!
Yeshua, though divine, humbled HIMSELF, thus, submitting to and being subordinate to His Father, not ‘equal’.
“My Father is greater than I”. (John 14:28)
“The Son can do nothing of Himself” (John 5:19)
“I only say what the Father tells Me” (John 12:49)
“Only My Father knows.”
“All authority has been given to Me” (Matt 28:18) — given, not seized.
This is why Paul writes similar language as John to the Greek believers in Filipi: “Reason this within your hearts, which Yeshua The Messiah also reasoned, who, being in the likeness of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God; but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Himself the likeness of a servant, and was in the likeness of the sons of men; and, being found in the form of Ben Adam [human], He humbled himself and became obedient to death, even the death of the stake; therefore, God also has highly exalted Him.” Phil 2:5-9
A creature would have to reach up and steal divinity. The Word/Memra already possessed full equality of nature, so the temptation was the opposite: to stop living as the humble, obedient Agent. Instead, He emptied Himself, took the form of a servant, and received everything as a gift from the Father.
This is Yeshua, the human being, with His Father’s very nature inside of him, deciding to live AS a human being, to die AS a human being, and to be raised from the dead AS a human being, and to live perpetually at His Father’s right hand, waiting on instructions from Him before being obedient to bring all things to a close. He is not ‘another’ “God”, which was what the unbiblical phrase, “God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit” teaches. Yeshua remained obedient, even though the flesh He lived in did not want to! “Take this cup from me [O My Father]” was a plea so desperate that He bled from His eyes. He is a man.
Now, let’s look at Yeshua as the seed “progeny” or offspring of God, that divine Word in human form: “And The Word became a Body and dwelt among us [1:14]: Think of it as a king issuing a royal decree. The decree (HaDavar) originates from the king’s mind, carries his full authority, and exists as part of him. But to make it tangible and interactive in the world, the king sends forth an emissary—his own son—who embodies that decree in person. The son isn’t a duplicate version of His Father; he’s the decree “made flesh,” walking among people, speaking the king’s words, and executing His Father’s will in the Kingdom. In this sense, Yeshua the human is the progeny because he’s the begotten manifestation: HaDavar stepping into a body, born through Miryam, to reveal God’s nature up close. It’s not that God created a new entity out of nothing, or that God’s Being left heaven and became a man, but that the eternal Word came from in the core of God’s being (John 8:42, 16:28) and was ‘put’ into Miryam as The Seed, and began to grow as a babe. Thus, He “tabernacled” (dwelt) among us in a physical, relatable form—fully divine in origin, yet fully human in experience, and connected to His Father.
God created us so that we could understand Him! The Word emphasizes continuity: HaDavar doesn’t change; it just takes on a new mode of presence for our sake.
So if you’re wrestling with all of this — wondering how to hold the divine nature of the Davar together with the very human life of Yeshua — take heart. You’re not alone, and you’re not failing God by asking honest questions. What the scriptures reveal isn’t a puzzle meant to torment us but a story meant to steady us: the One who spoke light into the world stepped into our dust as a real man so He could walk beside us, not above us. You don’t have to settle every theological detail today. Start where the first believers started: trust that the Father sent His own Word into the world to heal it, redeem it, and show us what God looks like when He bends low in love. Hold on to that, and the rest will grow clearer with time.