Day 55 of 75 · Parables and teaching
ʾ-R-ʿ
arʿa: earth
ארעא
ܐܪܥܐ
The feel
Arʿa is the ground, meaning soil, land, and the earth beneath the sky. Farmers turn it, seed falls into it, and treasure lies buried in it. The same word is the good soil of the parables and the earth of the Prayer. It appears 106 times in the Gospels.
The root family
| Form | Pattern | Transliteration | Script | Standard | Qala rendering |
|---|
| arʿa | noun, emphatic | arʿā | ארעא ܐܪܥܐ | earth | earth · ground · land · soil (106 occurrences) |
| araʿ | Peal verb, a look-alike, not the same family | ʾraʿ | ארע ܐܪܥ | to go out to meet | met · went out to meet (5 occurrences) |
The verb "to meet" shares consonants with "earth" but is a separate word-family.
In the Gospels this family appears only as a noun, and the verb ʾraʿ, to go out to meet (5 times, Luke 17:12; 14:31), only looks like it and belongs to a separate family.
In his voice
Matthew 6:10
May your reign come. Let your will unfold in the heavens as well as on earth.
b-arʿa, "on earth." The Prayer asks for the reign and the Father's will here on the ground, where people live, as well as in the heavens.
Matthew 13:8
And some fell on good soil and bore fruit: a hundred times, sixty times, thirty times over.
arʿa ṭabta, "good soil." The same word means soil in this parable and earth in the Prayer, so the sower's field and the coming of the reign share one noun.
Matthew 6:19
Don't store up treasures for yourselves here on earth, where moth and rust eat them away and where thieves break in and steal.
b-arʿa, "on earth." Here the earth is where treasure does not last, because moth, rust, and thieves get to it.
Practice
Stand outside on the ground for ten slow breaths. Point to the ground and say arʿa, then say the line from the Prayer, "in the heavens as well as on earth."
Connections