When the Torah Uses the Wrong Word

I find lessons to be learned wherever the text uses the wrong word to describe something.

And God set them [the sun/moon/stars] in the firmament of heaven to give light upon the earth,

It sounds boringly descriptive – until you realize that the word for “set” is not the common Hebrew word for “put” (sham). It is instead the word for giving/gifting something. Which is odd. How are the light-giving bodies in the sky gifts, precisely?

Here is a possible answer (I welcome others!):

A key purpose of mankind’s existence is to connect the earth and the sky, the physical and spiritual, matter and energy – indeed, to be a light upon the darkness. The Torah makes this very clear.

But before such a thing can even be attempted, there must first be some kind of linkage, some connection, however tenuous, that allows for a line, and then a rope and then a bridge to be erected and maintained. Something has to be there in order to build on it.

In the case of connecting heaven and earth, that first tenuous line is the connection of light: illumination provides the possibility of co-awareness.

Which then explains the meaning of the “wrong” word: the heavenly lights are a gift, because gifts enable relationships!

Which then explains the meaning of gifts, and giving, elsewhere in the text. For example, much later in the text:

When you come to the land which I give you, then shall the land keep a sabbath to the Lord.

The gift is nothing more or less than a means of establishing a connection. The Land of Israel is thus called a “gift” for the same reason that the sun and the moon are gifts: they enable relationship between the giver and the recipient.