Speaking Comfortably

The heart (Leb, Strongs #3820), according to Scripture, includes not only the motives, feelings, affections, and desires, but also the will, the aims, the principles, the thoughts, and the intellect of man. In fact, it embraces the whole inner man, the head never being regarded as the seat of intelligence.

Hence we read of men being “wise hearted” (Exod. 31:6; 36:2); of wisdom being put into the heart (II Chron. 9:23); of the heart being awake (Eccles. 2:23; Song of Sol. 5:2); of the thoughts of the heart (Deut. 15:9); of words being laid up in the heart (I Sam. 21:12); and of mercy being written on the tablets of the heart (Prov. 3:3). In II Kings 5:26, Elisha says to Gehazi, “Went not my heart with thee [or after thee]?” Here a combination of knowledge and feeling is implied.

There is also a beautiful expression in the Hebrew, “to speak to the heart,” which we render “to speak comfortably or friendly” (Ruth 2:13; II Sam. 19:7; II Chron. 30:22; Isa. 40:2 [“Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem”]; Hos. 2:14 [“will bring her into the wilderness and speak comfortably to her”].

(Girdlestone, R.B., Girdlestone’s Synonyms of the Old Testament, Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., Peabody, Massachusetts, 1983, pg 81)