It is not unusual for people to try and find biblical meaning in just about anything. There is a long history of people finding meaning where others never saw it, all through church history and probably even all through Jewish history as well. Some of those meanings are actually applicable to our lives, while many more are merely people seeking meaning where there isn’t any or out of the random vagrancies of life. We must use caution where these things are encountered, as attaching wrong meanings to things can lead us astray.
Biblical prophecy lends itself to the desire to seek interpretation. Many volumes have been written, seeking to provide explanations of one prophecy or another, especially the lengthy prophecy which is contained in the book of Revelations.
The problem with prophecy is that we never truly know if interpretations of it are true, until after the prophecy has been fulfilled. Even then, it is possible that we are applying a prophecy which is meant to convey one message in a totally different context or with a totally different meaning. We can see a simple example of this in the question that Jesus’ disciples asked Him after His resurrection:
Therefore, when they had come together, they asked Him, saying, “Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” – Acts 1:6
Please note that this question was asked by some of Jesus’ closest followers, who had been with Him for over three years, hearing His teachings and seeing the miracles He performed. Yet their own preconceived notions about the Messiah were driving their interpretation of what He said and did.
Just what were those preconceived ideas? At that time, the Jewish people were interpreting the messianic prophecies in Isaiah and some of the other prophets to mean a political savior, not a spiritual one. We see various other references to this, in some of the other things that various disciples said, such as when the mother of Zebedee’s sons (James & John) came to Him, asking that her sons be allowed to sit at his left hand and right, when he came “into His kingdom (Matthew 20:21).
This political interpretation of prophecy ended up altering the way the disciples and others interpreted and understood the things that Jesus said. In the process, they lost the true meaning of His words; which is at least part of the reason why the Holy Spirit was sent. As Jesus said in the Gospel of John:
But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you. – John 14:26
There is something key in this verse, which we must all understand. That is, the work of the Holy Spirit as our teacher. Without His help in understanding what the Holy Scriptures say and mean, it is easy to fall into misunderstanding. This happens all the time, as people try to figure out the Bible with their human reasoning, without seeking the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
We must also understand what the true purpose of prophecy is. Many think that God is trying to do something for us, warning us about the future, in giving us prophecy. The problem is, because prophecy is largely symbolic, it’s easy to make mistakes in its interpretation. That’s why it’s so important to have the guidance of the Holy Spirit in our interpretation of any prophecy. Without that guidance, we will likely be convinced that a false interpretation is actually true.
But there’s another important aspect of prophecy that we need to understand. That is, that God Himself tells us, through the prophet Isaiah, His reason for giving us prophecy:
“I have declared the former things from the beginning; They went forth from My mouth, and I caused them to hear it. Suddenly I did them, and they came to pass. 4 Because I knew that you were obstinate, and your neck was an iron sinew, and your brow bronze, 5 Even from the beginning I have declared it to you; before it came to pass I proclaimed it to you, lest you should say, ‘My idol has done them, and my carved image and my molded image have commanded them.’” – Isaiah 48:3-5
That verse seems rather clear; God gives us prophecy, so that when those things come to pass, we will know that He did them and not attribute the action to some idol created by human hands. Granted, most people don’t worship those sorts of idols today, but we have other things that we attribute happenings to, like pseudoscience and conspiracy theories. They are at least some of the idols of today.
Biblical Hermeneutics
Prophecy isn’t the only difficult thing to interpret, all ancient texts can be. Yet for centuries academics, scientists and scholars have endeavored to understand the writings of those who have gone before us; not just those who have written the Bible, but other ancient texts as well. This area of study is known as hermeneutics. When it applies to the Bible, it is referred to as “Biblical hermeneutics.”
There are a few basic rules to hermeneutics:
- Definition – The definition of a word is determined and it is used consistently throughout the study of a text. The best definitions are provided by the text itself. Since no two languages translate exactly, the challenge is ensuring that the interpretation being used for a word is correct.
- Usage – It is important to understand who is being spoken to and their culture. When we apply our own cultural understanding to a text, we can come up with the same sort of error that the disciples of Jesus did, in thinking that He was going to establish an earthly kingdom.
- Context – The meaning of any word or phrase must be understood in its context. This includes social context, as well as the context of who is speaking and who they are speaking to. We can’t project our own culture back onto the Bible, as if it was written only for us today.
- Historic Background – We must have some idea of the greater historic background of the events in scripture, not only as events in the Holy Land, but also how that fits into the greater world around them.
- Logic – Interpretation is a logical process, in which we must ask ourselves whether the interpretation makes any sense or not.
- Precedent – If we know the usage of a word or phrase, it makes no sense to create a new meaning or phrase, just because we don’t like how it is being used.
- Unity – Each word, phrase, chapter, story and book must fit into the whole. One of the key messages of the Bible is that sin is bad, separates us from God and has created the requirement for a Savior. To come up with an interpretation saying that sin is good is the opposite of this message and would have to be wrong in context.
Although we need to be led by the Holy Spirit in our understanding of prophecy, these seven rules give us a baseline, which we can use as a starting point. The Holy Spirit is not going to give us an understanding of prophecy which contradicts the historic context or which gives us an opposite understanding of what the rest of scripture says. He will always give us an understanding which is in agreement with the fullness of the message that the Bible provides.
So, What About DIVOC?
The word DIVOC has been bandied around the internet for the last couple of years, supposedly as a biblical foreshadowing or prophecy about the COVID-19 pandemic. Those who are behind this interpretation are saying that DIVOC is a Hebrew word, which carries the meaning of “possessed by an evil spirit.” If true, this would truly be a fearful interpretation, implying that to fall sick with COVID-19 is to be possessed by such a spirit.
But is that true?
Before we even look at the definition of DIVOC, allow me to say that having to spell something backwards to make it fit into another language might be an interesting game, but it does not fit within the rules of hermeneutics I’ve mentioned above. If God truly wanted to send a message to ancient people about a coming plague, He could have done it much more clearly than that, as He did on numerous other occasions.
But let’s follow that chain of reasoning and see where it takes us.
To start with, there is no such word as divoc in the Hebrew language. Some have tried to understand this by finding a word that might be misunderstood as divoc and have come up with the word dybbuk, which can also be spelled as dybbuk. While this is clearly not the word sought, if it was mispronounced it could come out as divoc. However, it should be noted that there is no letter “c” in the Hebrew alphabet, only the letters “K” and “Q,” both of which produce similar sounds.
This word dybbuk can be understood to refer to an evil spirit, specifically the spirit of a dead person, which either inhabits or sticks to a living one, perhaps in order to complete something that they could not complete during their lifetime. Please note that this understanding comes mostly from folk literature and not any scholarly work; actually, the type of folk literature that it comes from is more on the order of horror stories.
While the Hebrew word “dybbuk” does appear in Hebrew versions of the Old Testament of the Bible, or the Jewish Tanakh, the meaning can be seen as being more about the stickiness of the spirit, than anything else. The first place we see this word is in Genesis, chapter 2.
Therefore a man shall eave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. – Genesis 2:24
So, where is our “sticky word” in that verse? It is the word that is translated as “joined.” One way of interpreting this word is “stick to like glue.” In other words, when a couple marries, their souls should stick together, as if they had been glued to each other. No disease there.
The next place we see it is in the book of First Samuel, after King Saul disobeyed God and the Spirit of the Lord departed from him (1 Samuel 16:14). This was followed by a “distressing spirit” attaching itself to Saul, troubling him. To rid him of the influence of this spirit, they sought out someone skilled in the playing of the harp, who could play when the spirit vexed him, giving him relief. The young man they found was David, who ended up following Saul as king over Israel.
These are the only two references to scripture that are normally given for this word, although it appears in the Old Testament in 52 different verses. Nevertheless, none of those verses talk anything about evil spirits. Rather, the usage of this word in the Old Testament is in the context of “cleave to” or “stick to” and generally refer to one person sticking close to another, just as it does in Genesis 2:24.
Based upon this, it seems rather clear that those who are trying to say that DIVOC is COVID spelled backwards, are making up with the Bible refers to as “private interpretations” of scripture, something that the Apostle Peter warned us about in his second epistle:
Knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation. – 2 Peter 1:20
We should take care to not allow ourselves to be caught up in these sorts of interpretations. While they may seem interesting and even enlightening at first, in the long run, they lead us into false understanding of the sort that can undermine our faith and cause us to turn away from God and from Jesus Christ.