After the passage of the Jordan, Joshua, the captain appointed by God,

and a type of the Lord in the capacity of Saviour (Heb. 2:10; 4:8 margin),

saw a glorious Being, and inquired 'Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?'

The glorious One answered,

'Nay; but as captain of the host of the Lord am I now come.  And Joshua

fell on his face to the earth, and did worship, and said unto him, What

saith my lord unto his servant?  And the captain of the Lord's host

said unto Joshua, Loose thy shoe from off thy foot; for the place

whereon thou standest is holy' (Josh. 5:14,15).

In this phase of service we do well to remember that each one is part of a

'host' and that the Lord is Captain.  We worship, we witness, we war, but

also await our Captain's orders.

We have seen that the words 'to wait' in our Authorized Version have a

variety of shades of meaning, and we now take up yet another set of passages,

using another word that introduces another phase of hope.  The Hebrew word

qavah which is found in such a verse as 'They that wait upon the Lord shall

renew their strength' (Isa. 40:31), is a word which primarily means 'to

stretch'.  In Psalm 19:4 qav is used of matter stretched forth or expanded:

'Their line is gone out through all the earth'.

The word qav means 'a measuring line', as in the passage,

'I will stretch over Jerusalem the line of Samaria, and the plummet ...

of Ahab' (2 Kings 21:13).

It is also used in the well -known passage,

'Line upon line, line upon line' (Isa. 28:10).

The substantive form is used of 'linen yarn'; thread spun out in lengths (1

Kings 10:28).  In the form tiqvah we meet the word in Joshua 2:18 and 21,

where it is translated 'line', a word which elsewhere is twenty -five times

translated 'hope' and seven times 'expectation'.  Miqveh occurs first in

Genesis 1:10 in the words 'the gathering together of the waters called He

seas', yet in Jeremiah this same word is translated 'hope' three times.  It

is the underlying primary meaning of 'stretching out' that is the link

between such strange associates as the gathering together of waters, the line

for measuring, and the expectation or hope of the redeemed:

'It is a word of gesture, and of like import as St. Paul's apokaradokia

(Rom. 8:19; Phil. 1:20), which is properly the stretching forth of the

head and neck, with earnest intention and observation, to see when a

person or thing expected shall appear: so our Hebrew verb may be

translated To expect earnestly, anxiously or eagerly' (Parkhurst and

There are thirty -two passages that use this special word (qavah) where

it is translated 'wait' in the Authorized Version.  Of these the following

may suffice as specimens:

'They shall not be ashamed that wait for Me' (Isa. 49:23).