yarah

At its root this word is about sending an object flying to a chosen spot. Most often it is shooting arrows, the steady work of an archer who aims and lets fly, which is why the same word names the marksmen who wound a king in battle.

The action is not limited to arrows. The word can describe hurling chariots into the sea, throwing a person down into the mud, or laying a foundation stone and a heap of witness stones in place. In each case something is set or sent deliberately to where it should land.

This concrete sense of aiming and placing is the seedbed for the word's other life as teaching, since to teach is to point a person toward the right path the way an archer points an arrow toward its mark.

This is the meaning that gave Hebrew the word torah, instruction. To teach in this sense is not to fill a head with facts but to show a person the road and set them walking on it. Priests do it with the law, parents do it with a child, and above all God does it, asking to be taught his way and his paths.

The link to shooting is not an accident of spelling. Both senses are about aiming: the archer aims an arrow, the teacher aims a life. The word can mean simply to point out a direction, as when Judah is sent ahead to point out the road to Goshen, and it grows from there into steady moral and religious instruction.

Because the same verb covers pointing a finger, giving a ruling, and forming a disciple, the line between showing and teaching is deliberately thin. False prophets and bribed priests are condemned for teaching lies, which is teaching that aims people the wrong way.