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#2.
Worship: its relation to Leading, Gospel,
Sacrifice and Revelation.
pp. 143 - 147
The implications of posture have occupied the attention both of Doctors of Divinity
and of Medicine. A lazy posture is inimical both to serious study and reverence in
worship. And as the close association of "bowing the head" with worship meets us very
early in the Scriptures, let us commence our study with an examination of the passages in
which this expression is found.
The word used, is the Hebrew qadad, and occurs fifteen times. Of this number of
references, nine deal with the worship of God, and six with various acts of reverence or
fear in the presence of man or angel. We shall be following the Divine method of
instruction if we begin with the three passages that refer to man, for, after all, the bowing
of the head in the act of worshipping One who is spirit, borrowed as it is from this
evident token of human respect, can have no intrinsic meaning as related to God Himself,
Who sees the thoughts and intents of the heart, whatever attitude or posture is adopted.
The first pair of references occurs in I Kings 1::
"And Bath-sheba went in unto the king into the chamber; and the king was very old
. . . . . and Bathsheba bowed, and did obeisance unto the king. And the king said, What
wouldest thou?" (verse 15 and 16).
"Then Bath-sheba bowed with her face to the earth, and did reverence" (verse 31).
Between the two verses lies the asking of a request and the granting of it. The subject
of Bath-sheba's request was the fulfillment of David's oath that her son Solomon should
succeed to the throne, but that need not take our attention here. It is sufficient to see that
in making the request of the king and in her acknowledgment of the answer given,
Bath-sheba "bowed and did obeisance" and "bowed and did reverence".
The reader will not be surprised to learn that both "obeisance" and "to do reverence",
here, are translations of the Hebrew word shachah, "to worship". It is a simple matter to
translate the attitude of Bath-sheba, when making her request and in thanksgiving before
an earthly and aged king, into higher terms, and see their application to the worshipper
who approaches the "King Immortal" with requests and thanksgiving.
The next two references need not long detain us. I Sam. 24: 8 tells us that, after he
had spared the life of Saul, David cried out to the king and "stooped with his face to the
earth, and bowed himself". We only stay to observe here that the word "stooped" is the
word translated "bow" in the other fourteen occurrences, whereas the word "bow" in this
passage, is the translation of shachah, "do obeisance", "do reverence", or "worship". The
same words are found in I Sam. 28: 14, where Saul, who had restored to the witch of
Endor, "perceived that it was Samuel" and "stooped with his face to the ground, and
bowed himself". While the two passages refer to occasions of a very different nature,