Where Would We be without fathers? Well, the answer is obvious: Fathers are necessary to our being here! But there's more to being a father than just procreation, as anyone knows who has longed to feel the security of having a strong helping hand or tender words of encouragement—not to mention financial help through the years. It's natural to want to have a father.
These different aspects of fatherhood—father as our very source and father as our support—appear in the Bible. In fact, the word father occurs 970 times in the King James Version. Most appear in the Old Testament, where the history of the Jewish people is recorded. And in this history of a whole people, because of the absence of surnames or family names, lineages were usually traced through the line of specific fathers. This example from the book of Nehemiah is typical: "And at Jerusalem dwelt certain of the children of Judah.... Maaseiah the son of Baruch, the son of Colhozeh, the son of Hazaiah, the son of Adaiah, the son of Joiarib, the son of Zechariah, the son of Shiloni" (11:4, 5).
In the Hebrew language, this link to one's father appears with the word ben or bar before a man's name, meaning "son of." We also see this in the New Testament in the name of one of Jesus' disciples, known as Simon Bar-Jona—Simon, son of Jona (see Matt. 16:17).
