Why Do We Blow the Shofar?
Bible Study
Audio By Carbonatix
By One For Israel, Crosswalk.com
The first time that a shofar appears in the Bible, it isn’t blown. It isn’t even mentioned by name. It’s just described:
And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. (Genesis 22:13)
The ram’s horn, which makes the most otherworldly sound when we blow it, plays a significant part in the account of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac. God tests Abraham when He asks the founding father of our faith to bind and sacrifice his son, and the story is full of parallels with God’s own heart-wrenching sacrifice of His own Son: the Lamb that would be slain instead of us. It’s in this story, which features the first mention of the word love, that the shofar first appears, and horns become a symbol of strength and salvation from that moment on. Its significance ripples out like a stone thrown into a lake.
What it means to ‘blow’ the shofar.
The blast of the shofar calls to the deep, cutting through to the soul. It stirs our spirit and invites us with insistence, “Pay attention!” It’s essentially a musical instrument (of sorts) fashioned by God Himself, and as such the sound calls to us from heaven when we hear it. However, not only does the shofar itself hold spiritual significance, but the act of blowing the shofar is also worth meditating on.
Blow a trumpet in Zion;
sound an alarm on my holy mountain!
Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble,
for the day of the Lord is coming; it is near. (Joel 2:1)
When the Bible says “blow the shofar”, it is not using the Hebrew word for “blow”. There are three types of blast: the tekiah (a long, steady, and urgent sound), teruah (a burst of short and joyful blasts) and shevarim (three blasts). In Joel, the word is tekiah.
Strong's concordance explains that the root of the word tekiah (תָּקַע) is a verb to thrust, clap, give a blow, blast (Jewish-Aramaic תְּקַע strike, blow horn). In other words, there’s a fairly physical and dramatic action involved. This is seen all the more in the Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexico,n which puts it like this:
תָּקַע tâqaʻ, taw-kah’; a primitive root; to clatter, i.e,. slap (the hands together), clang (an instrument); by analogy, to drive (a nail or tent-pin, a dart, etc.); by implication, to become a bondsman by handclasping:—blow (a trumpet), cast, clap, fasten, pitch (tent), smite, sound, strike, thrust.
It’s almost like a body blow – a loud noise that strikes us, shocking us into readiness. You can see how this fits in the declaration in Joel.
Similarly, the word teruah (תְּרוּעָה) carries the concepts of an alarm, a signal, the sound of tempest, a shout or blast of war or alarm or joy.
It serves several purposes, such as gathering the community or warning of impending trouble like the sirens we hear so often in Israel today. It can come as a blast during a march, as a battle-cry, or a shout of praise. It can be to gather the troops to get ready to move camp. The shofar is blown to announce kings, to signify the beginning of high holy days, to make proclamations, and to express joy in feast times. It appears many times throughout Scripture.
The blowing of the shofar is used not only to warn of danger, but also as an actual weapon of war, when we think of Joshua circling Jericho and blowing the shofar, or Gideon and his 300 merry men, who whipped out their torches in clay pots and blew their shofars, striking such terror into their enemies that they ran away without a fight. And blowing the shofar can also be used as a declaration of victory when the battle is won.
Who orders the blowing of the shofar?
When tracking the mention of the shofar throughout the Bible with some friends, we noticed that it’s almost always connected with the idea of authority.
It is God who orders the blowing of the shofar again and again, whether it’s for commemorating appointed times, announcing it’s time to move camp, or as a warning. In the Law, God Himself lays out the ways he wants the shofar to be used, and because He is the one mandating it in each case, the sound (or voice) of the shofar comes with all God’s authority. If you hear that shofar raising the alarm, you'd better move! If it says time to pick up camp, you'd better jump to it, or you’ll get left behind. Similarly, when announcing a king, the shofar carries the weight of authority in proclaiming his sovereign rule.
Moreover, it’s God who first seems to be responsible for the very first sound of the shofar in the Bible, at the giving of the Law at Mount Sinai.
"On the morning of the third day there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the people in the camp trembled." - Exodus 19:16
The people of Israel were terrified and made Moses go up instead. The “very loud trumpet blast” is literally the “very strong voice of the shofar”. It was almost like God’s own voice, since no human was blowing the shofar, just God. The Hebrew word קול (kol) can also mean sound, like the still, small voice, or the “sound of silence” that Elijah heard in the cave when he went to seek God. But this time God’s voice was thundering.
In a way, kings are symbols of God and remind us of God’s ultimate kingship. He is the King of the Universe and Lord of creation, who has put this mysterious horn in our hands. All other kings are shadows and pointers, reminders of God’s own sovereign authority.
Repent! Prepare for war! The king is coming!
Not long before October 7, 2023, a British woman said that seven years prior, back in 2016, she felt God had said unprecedented evil was coming. She told of an event that happened at a church prayer meeting for Israel:
Suddenly, out of nowhere, the shofar blew. And it continued in a pattern, and the mixing desk guy — because everyone looked at him like, what are you playing? — and he threw his arms up in the air and said, “I don’t know what this is, I don’t know where it’s coming from!” And it was literally coming from the walls,” she said.
“Someone had the presence of mind to get their phone and record it. That has been under wraps for seven years, and they felt that it was very important that they didn’t tell anyone. But what they did do was get some rabbis and technical people to make an assessment. Interestingly, the rabbis said there were three bursts, and those bursts meant: “Repent. Prepare for war. The king is coming.”
“I heard it,” the woman said. “It was spine-tingling. It was incredible. I just thought we all should know this: Repent. Prepare for war. The king is coming.”
They felt it was right after seven years to release publicly what had happened, just weeks before October 7, 2023.
The horn of salvation.
These are very dark days, and God is surely calling us all to repentance. The insistent sound of the shofar not only carries the message of repentance but also the hope of salvation.
Throughout the Scriptures, horns symbolize both strength and salvation. Consider the dreams of Daniel in which horns represent powers and empires, and also the horns on the altar, to which people could cling for mercy.
King David says, “The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.” (Psalm 18:2)
In Luke 1, when the birth of Yeshua (which means salvation) is announced, Zechariah the priest declares, “He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David.” (Luke 1:69)
One last aspect of the shofar is that the horns are hollow, in essence a tube or pipe, a conduit for breath.
This gives us a picture of how we, too, can be an instrument for God: a vessel through which His Spirit can be blown. If we are emptied of ourselves, pure and clean, God’s breath can come through our lives to be a blessing to others. God can make His voice heard through us like a shofar if we are ready and open. Charlie Kirk is a perfect example of what it looks like to let God’s voice speak through us, and how it can stir others to courage, readiness, and repentance.
When we have paid attention and made ourselves ready, the sound of the final trumpet will bring great joy. It’s the sound that our King is coming. We will pull up stakes and move to the ultimate Land of Promise to be with Him forever.
Photo Credit: ©GettyImages/John Theodor
Originally published by One for Israel. Used with permission.
Established in 1990, ONE FOR ISRAEL began as a Bible college and has since expanded to a multi-faceted ministry with the express goal of reaching Israelis with the Good News of Yeshua, training and equipping the Body of Messiah in Israel, and blessing our community with Yeshua’s love. www.oneforisrael.org.
