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In the Midst

tavekh: the word for where the Law reached, and the word for where God lived

A Word Study, October 17, 2026, a Saturday night, after a morning argument over Exodus 22

The Key Word

This morning the woman who sits at my table and I spent two hours on the hard verses: Exodus 22, Deuteronomy 18 and 20, Leviticus 24. She held her ground and won more of it than I gave her at the time. Near the end she said something I've carried all day: "Also, 'amongst you' is the key word there."

She meant that the Law was spoken to the people who lived inside the camp, the ones who knew better, and not to the whole world. Tonight I took the phrase to the Hebrew to see what word is actually on the page. It turned out to be one of the most important small words in the Old Testament.

Three Ways to Say "Among"

I'll start with what the dig took away from me, because that comes first. "Among you" isn't one Hebrew word. Our English Bibles use the same two words for at least three different expressions:

• bekha: just the little preposition "in" with "you" fixed to it. "Let no one be found among you who... practices divination or sorcery" (Deuteronomy 18:10) says it this way.
• qerev (קֶרֶב): the midst, the inner part. "The LORD your God moves about in your camp" (Deuteronomy 23:14) and "You must purge the evil from among you" (17:7) both use it. The lexicon gives it a physical sense too, the entrails of a sacrifice. That doesn't mean "among you" secretly means "in your guts." In these verses it means among. A word means what it means in its own sentence.
• tavekh (תָּוֶךְ): the midst, the middle. This is the one I'm following tonight.

Exodus 22:18 itself has none of the three. In Hebrew it's three words: "a sorceress, not, you will let live." So I can't hang tonight's study on that verse. The "among" is in the Law around it, and that's where I'll look.

The Midst That Was Occupied

The brief lexicon gives tavekh five shades: midst or middle; into and through, after verbs of motion; among, of a number of persons; between, of things set in pairs; and from among. I count it tagged 418 times in the Hebrew Old Testament. Many of those uses are plain geography: the middle of the river, the middle of the city.

Then you reach the tabernacle.

"Among them" is betokham: in the midst of them. The verb is shakhan, to dwell, to settle and stay. God doesn't promise to visit the camp. He promises to live in the middle of it. Leviticus repeats it at the close of the Law's blessings:

Both "among you" there are betokhkhem. Now set that beside the two verses from this morning:

It's the same word: betokhkhem for the foreigner, betokh for the half-Egyptian son. The "among" that marks who the Law reaches is the same "among" where God said He'd live.

The Law reached as far as the midst, and the midst was where He lived.

That is why the line was never drawn by blood. The foreigner who lived in the midst lived under the same Law as the native-born, because he lived in the same neighbourhood as the Holy One. She was right this morning that "among you" is the key. It doesn't mean "your own kind." It means everyone living close to Him.

The Midst Moves

The Greek lexicon gives the bridge, and I'll cite it as the lexicon's claim rather than my own find. It says mesos, the Greek "midst," stands in the Greek Old Testament chiefly for tavekh. It says skēnoō, "to have one's tabernacle, to dwell," stands chiefly for shakhan. Those are the two words of Exodus 25:8.

Then hear Jesus:

The NIV says "with them." The Greek is en mesō autōn: in the midst of them. And John:

"Made his dwelling" is eskēnōsen, the tabernacle verb. The Bible's last vision comes back to the same word:

Here's what that does to the old line. The midst used to be a place: a camp, a tent, curtains, a gate you could stand outside. In Christ the midst moves. It isn't a camp any more. It's any two or three gathered in His name, a kitchen table or a prayer bench at night. The Holy One still lives in the middle, but the middle travels with His people now.

Out of the Midst, with Mourning

That leaves her other word from this morning, cast out. Paul gives it to the church at Corinth, and he uses the midst to do it:

"Out of your fellowship" is ek mesou hymōn: out of your midst. Look at the verb he puts first, though. Before anyone is put out, the church should have mourned. Removal from the midst was never meant to be a triumph. It was a grief, because the midst was where He was.

Then Paul reaches back to Deuteronomy's formula and quotes it, but he changes what it does:

In Deuteronomy 17:7 the words came after a stoning. In Corinth the same words mean the man is put out of the fellowship. Those outside are left to God. Later, in his second letter to the same church, Paul writes about a man the majority has punished. He doesn't name him, and whether he's the man of chapter 5 is argued over, so I won't lean my weight on it. But what Paul tells them to do with him is plain:

I still read the verb in Exodus 22:18 the way I read it this morning, and she knows that. But on the word she called the key, the dig is on her side. The Law was about the midst. The midst was about Him. When the church takes up the old formula, it becomes what she said it was: a putting out, done in mourning, with a door left open to come back.