Rusted Scripture: Phrases I hope I Never Hear Again

Transcript

rested scriptures missed quotes Pat Fraser's stock Pulpit speech statements without a scriptural basis and this is all from

say within this is not about things we hear from Outsiders this is about our stuff

and a lot of it has to do with

as you might guess by this phrase here stock Pulpit speech Brothers

giving exhortations talks presiding in prayers a lot of it comes from that not exclusively so hope the sisters are paying attention too but if you're involved in those things that

okay now

here are the three uh topics and three ways I'm going to handle each one one is what's wrong with that particular saying well what's what's the objection

uh number two what's at stake why is it important why why am I fetching about this and number three is well what's a better way to say it is how can we improve this or or get it there so here's the menu

oh I've gotten to say if we'll get through all five uh the first one is the phrase wise unto salvation

in the appointed way often said by

often said by presiders uh the breaking bread

the phrase referring to our walk is straight and narrow

defining Grace is underserved or unmerited favor

and probably thinking what's the matter with that one I said well you'll see not much but there is something there that we can turn our attention to and the last one with that time is when uh particularly say teaching the brothers use go into Hebrew and with well the Hebrew word really means this got a problem with that so here we go the first one and before I go further uh does any what's the matter with that one it comes right out of the Bible anybody know why that's uh why we shouldn't say that

you often say that in prayers we thank God for giving us the scriptures that make us wise to Salvation

anybody off the up have an idea there

if you don't turn to Second Timothy chapter 3. you've all heard this right

uh

the problem is it's it's an incomplete statement

if this is a classic rested scripture

in second Timothy 3 uh Paul talks about the he talks about the scriptures and at this point I'm not sure if he's referring just to the Old Testament or to any such parts of the New Testament that had been written at that point

and he says starting at verse 15 from a childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith

which is in Christ Jesus

what's wrong is

that it leaves out the complete statement

salvation is through faith it's not through wisdom but we often hear I've often heard say over my many decades dozens of times people referring to the scriptures which are able to make us wise unto salvation

so what's at stake why is this a big deal well it's of course it's partial statement but the implication

is

that salvation becomes a matter of knowing the Bible

per se it's it's a matter of Bible knowledge why this it's you know you know the Bible you study the Bible you learn about the Bible and then God likes you and you're good for the kingdom something like that and there's obviously uh

so certain people would agree with me here depending on you know maybe what circles you've been in over the years of uh an over emphasis on

just Bible teaching Bible classes Bible knowledge without getting to the purpose of it which is to help develop our faith and our character

so that statement I find is not only a classic rest of scripture because it's taking literally uh

A short segment out of a bigger statement but it has a noxious effect of placing the matter of Bible knowledge Bible knowledge is for the purpose of this uh what's a better way to say it quote the entire verse or paraphrase scripture teaches us that true wisdom leads to faith in Christ Jesus true wisdom is the wisdom that leads to Faith wisdom itself does not make us fit for salvation it's our faith that makes us fit for salvation

before I move on to next one any comments uh on that one

and I can only see my screen I can't see anybody so if anybody's waving their hand uh Steve are you seeing

Hey Brother David this is uh Chris sales um reminds me of um the other one that we don't finish quite often we say seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness you mean and we forget to say that last bit so yeah that was cool good good point thanks yeah I might add it to the add that to my list yeah that's a good one by the way my people have contributed to my list when I mentioned this thing I've been working on and they say oh you have this one I said no a good one I'll put that on there okay let's move on to the next one uh

uh the phrase often used by uh

say presiders I think pretty much exclusively this is presider talk and usually it's about

uh partaking of the bread and the wine

sometimes it's mentioned in closing prayers where people say things like you know we've kept the service in the appointed way uh what's what's the problem with that again before I start does anybody have any I'm not going to wait a long time does anybody have something oh yeah I know what you're getting to

well what's wrong with it is there is no appointed way to start off with

uh the instructions about

keeping the memorial table is about attitude it's not about procedure

and the phrase the appointed way

has a distinct legalistic uh smack to it and really grates me to that end that it

to what's at stake

it it turns turns it around the memorial service is God's uh something that God has given to us for our benefit it's not something we do

as an obligation to keep every first day of the week and then okay we did that we remembered Christ we partook it so now we've done that uh then it can become as if a work

that we count for our righteousness because we're faithful because we showed up in memorial service every week and we kept the service in the appointed manner that's uh where this is coming from

and even the FAFSA you've said this or as a presider you you know that that's really not what not what it's getting at people are hearing that young people are hearing that and the other people who may not be that familiar with or the whole ethic and it creates this culture of we're doing the right things because that's what God told us to do he appointed the service and we do it every first day of the week and you better be there and you better be sitting right and get it right because that's the appointed way and that's what God wants from us and they say that's not only legalistic but it's uh reverses the the whole point of this it's not something we do for God it's something God is something Jesus have done for us to give us this way in remembrance of him means bringing Jesus to mind

it's not we're doing it as a like a memorial day is okay I remember Jesus no it's bringing his life and his work

into our minds it's our it's something for our benefit

so if you are presiding or you hear this or you have occasion to think about this uh

I would suggest a better way of phrasing this would be just thanking God for allowing us to be here and participate in Remembering and contemplating the meaning of Jesus life and death the emphasize the fact that this is for our benefit and we thanking God that we have this not that we're fulfilling a duty

comments

David this is Steve Steve it reminds me of that other passage in First Corinthians about uh doing things decently in in order

and uh I think similarly that is sometimes viewed or described as a way of you know as a as a reason for creating detailed rules and regulations you know uh as opposed to I think what Paul meant by behaving in a certain way around the Lord's table uh thank you for mentioning that I actually wrote an article on that for I think it was for the testimony of the christadelphia magazine about that uh is one of their special issues about our service and they asked me to write this on decently and ordered yes that's a good one because you're right that is one that is taken to uh impose uh say an unnecessary layers of formality in order when it was really talking about dealing with the uh Holy Spirit gifts okay

oh wait yeah I can't see anybody so go ahead and speak and I'll just stop okay this is Brian Lloyd um you you referenced uh First Corinthians 11 is there a particular phrase out of First Corinthians 11 that that this

gets taken from or is it just a as just a stock phrase that's on not even in the scripture in the appointed way that's a good question uh I if it comes from First Corinthians 11 I say I don't know what version or or how it's getting there to me uh I think you're probably right it's just one of those stock phrases that uh people start saying and they get repeated and

people grow up in our culture and they get things get repeated yeah I don't know uh

uh any scriptural basis or that even comes close to this uh certainly in First Corinthians 11 there was an issue with procedure but there was a very different situation talking about people speaking in tongues and prophesying and things like that and the order in the appointments that Paul was talking about was Claudia get get your head right your mind right about what this service is all about

foreign

might have in mind when they they quite that when they say that

could be

I would suggest that but the writer was getting at there was certainly about uh failing or not wanting it in the times of persecution they were having right then right there's all the meaning to you know stay together okay could have been from there

any other comments

it's not we will move on to the third item on the menu which is the phrase straight and narrow

certainly you've heard this one of people talking about uh keeping in the straight narrow or even praying to God to help us stay in the straight narrow or referring to the straight narrow way so what's the problem with this it's right out of this Sermon on the Mount is it not

the wrong straight wrong thank you who was that Jane hewittson Jane thank you yeah first of all it's the wrong straight yeah uh and we're not talking about the Bering Straits versus The Straits and Magellan but that is the right straight yeah uh yeah okay so what's wrong with it okay first everything uh

the word is in the uh

is straight s-t-r-a-i-t which means difficult or confined uh not straight As in linear

uh second problem with it is that in the King James

uh

it talks about I don't have the King James in front of me it says

straight is the way in

Narrows the gate is that correct Matthew

it's in Matthew 7. I'm looking

who has that in the KJV

straight is the gate and narrows the way straight is the gate and narrow is the way right

in the Greek text uh the adjectives and the are actually switched

uh and I don't know how when the king in the authorized version they ended up by straight straight As the gate and not narrow as the gate and straight Strait is the way in most modern versions uh the ones that have listed here ESV new King James nib I think the NSB

the

they get it in the in the right order I I can't ex I don't know why that ended up that way

um but that's another uh issue with it

thirdly

the idea of straight and narrow is uh exactly the opposite of what Jesus was teaching in The Sermon on the Mount which was unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees

you have no place the kingdom of God he wasn't looking for legalistic righteousness the Pharisees would have been happy to say we keep the straight and narrow We Don't Stray to the right or the left we just you know keep our shoes clean We Walk This Way that's bad this bad that's bad we're just staying right there so that's a very legalistic uh pharisafe way of doing things which would be completely against what Jesus was just talking about this comes in towards the end of certain amount

straight

uh

is

a word that means

uh

difficult

and narrow means constricted

or confined so what Jesus is uh get to it here okay gotta go ahead of myself it's another legalistic formulation implies we are to be like Pharisees achieving righteousness by avoiding contamination

there's no question he was getting at something here that had to do with difficulty and choice he said few there be that find it the gate

is

a difficult gauge the road is difficult Road the gate is the gate is narrower constricted the road is is uh

uh

well

full of difficulties rather than saying it's the word straight it's probably if we understood this I mean straight is like somebody says we're you know we're in tight straights we're a difficult time but kind of plain old planar languages

to to start on the path itself you it's a difficult Choice it's a hard Choice it's an it's it's constricted a tight spot and you it's a hard choice to enter the gate and after you enter the gate it doesn't get any easier because that road is going to be filled with difficulties and because of that Jesus says most people won't take them

their course

so rather than being a statement about you know keeping your nose clean and uh you know avoiding this avoiding that it's really about making a commitment and Jesus telling us that to choose the weight of the kingdom of God is a noble and honorable this is the right thing but it's not going to be easy

David Bill link here again oh no I'm done verse verse verse 12 of Matthew 7 which leads right up to that is about uh you know whatever you would that men should do to use do ye even so unto them and so it might even be that he's pointing specifically to that frame of mind to that that obeys the Golden Rule

ah

good uh survey interesting yeah

just just to say following that much of you know not taking Vengeance and seeing people no matter how they treat you or or valuing them

that in itself is typically you know that's a hard choice of discipleship right there yeah thanks

anything else

okay let's

move on what time we got here

about halfway through the next two are going to distinctly longer but this one here

is

uh clearly a different sort uh it's not you know plain just wrong or unscriptural uh but

the standard definition if you'd ask just about anybody you know that our body you know what's Grace they'll say grace is undeserved or unmerited favor I'm going to use undeserved I'm going to treat these as equal I'm not going to say it's really undeserved not no they're just take take take your pick but to be simple I'm going to say uh use undeserved and I think most of the time I actually have it spelled right on these slides you might find one that says underserved or something like

um so what's wrong with that

well I hope nobody says something because there's nothing wrong with that in fact

not much grace is in fact undeserved favor but there is a of

something lurking here and I I hope I can get this it uh I've been thinking about this literally for years and I hope I can kind of crystallize how I see this uh in a 10 or 15 minutes

but what I find wrong with it is defining Grace as the negation of something that is it's something that's not merited or not deserved

so if a phrase an expression unmerited or undies undeserved has some meaning there must be something that is merited or deserved favor you can't say Well it's undeserved

uh say okay then what is deserved favorite it's not that but we have to have a that for it to not be that hope I'm clear on that it's a it's a something to find as a negation so therefore we have to say well what what is the the positive thing that it isn't and then okay that's that would least be a start in figuring out uh how this uh definition works

and what I uh

I don't want to say concluded I'm not going to say I've you know end of the thinking on this matter I've included this but what what what at this point what I find a little bit Troublesome about this is that

there's no need to even introduce the idea of deservedness or Merit into this because that refers to something about us even if it's something that we clearly don't have or don't deserve it's still about us whereas Grace is totally about God and that's that's where we're headed so there's two things we want to get out uh look into this definition is is it necessary at all or what's what's the benefit of even putting in a word in front of favor modifying why don't we say grace is God's favor uh but we want to make sure that that favor has nothing to do with us but yet to say it has nothing to do with us we have to introduce ourselves into the formula and that is like saying don't think about you know pink elephants that's like uh to me when

Balaam says well even if they likely give me all the gold in half his kingdom and all I wouldn't be oh okay you know we know what you're getting out there you don't bring up stuff like that if it's really not in in your mind

so I'm not going to get to the third part what's the better way of saying that until we look uh more carefully at what is this idea of undeserved how can we give some meaning to deserve favor or Meredith favor so what what could that possibly be to say if there's such a thing as to deserve favor then we say okay it's not bad it's it's the opposite of that so what could be deserved favor well in my mind there are two different ways or two different categories of of how we say somebody deserves something or uh either scripturally or just conventional uh thought it's about something we do or something about Who We Are

those are the two categories to say in general to to if it's if it's about us in any way is either we did something to get something or something about us creates a uh position of deservedness and that's what we're trying to negate no it's not that

but if it turns out that neither one of these has any real meaning then the negation is in trouble

so let's look at first

if deserve favor comes from something we do or you do then it's deserved doesn't apply because that's what's called earned

it's a contractual agreement

if you hire somebody to do a job that you're at your house and they do the work they put in the four or the fix the toilet whatever they're up to and they give you the bill and say well you know you deserve to get paid I'll I'll pay you that's not how it works they they earned it you had a contract this is what the job is going to cost this is what you're going to pay I'm done job is done pay me my money and that's the standard uh understanding that's how it's used in scripture about the the legalistic concept you do a work therefore you've earned it and then God can't give you anything because you've earned it Paul makes us abundantly clear in in Romans and in Ephesians

so we have to rule out undeserved favor as being the opposite of something we earn

even though the scripture does use that term but that's not that can't be a meaning of desert that that's earning that's something else

so then is it

is it something about us would deserve favor

when Paul says or we say it's not it's undeserved so that means would the deserve thing mean that something just not okay it's not our works but there's something about us

there's something about us and that's why God gives us Grace and then he's going to negate that says no it's really not about you

there's a two problems with this uh one is finding the logical connection and you'll see that next slide

there is a logic what I mean by Logic I mean in the case of burning like if there were a set of works we are supposed to do to earn salvation and we do them and the contract is if you do ABCD

down

then I will give you salvation

that's a contract and there's a logical connection between the salvation and what we did because it's enough then statement if you do these works then I will do you this that's what I mean by a logical connection

but let's look at this other set the ones that aren't about works that are in fact about characteristics of Who We Are

so could deserve favor mean

that we deserve Grace because

we've had somebody you know gave us a bad time in life uh conventionally of course we hear this frequently uh somebody deserves they deserve uh you know a break because they just they've been treated terribly and now that they're you know with our group we're going to treat them nicely they deserve well that's you know an emotional that's a nice thing but what I but now you understand what I mean by Logic there's no if then thinking about this nor is there any logical reason why just because somebody uh had a that bad time earlier that I am obligated now to give them something nice that's a nice thing to do it's emotional but it's not a logical

a few more of the same category people have had bad luck or calamities uh and we think yeah they deserve you know have something good happen to them uh this one here the painter or the guy who did your flooring let's say they

they earned their contract but they went above that they did something beyond that do they deserve more pay

it would be nice but there's no logical necessity it doesn't follow

as a matter of course that because they did that then you owe them something or or you're obligated to give them anything

how about this one uh

they're all you can see they're all the same you know General kind of uh

a vein you work hard or long but you really don't get any place you you guys you know been in the minor leagues for 10 years and he finally someone says yo he deserves the shot at the majors she's been working so hard at this and he's never quite gotten there he deserves that it's an emotional thing there's no logical reason you might say he's been 10 years without success why should we think he'll do any better in this situation

so that doesn't seem to be a meaning a possible meaning of deserved favor

how about just being a nice guy a decent person a really nice person yes not like me you know somebody who's just

you probably do know somebody like that so you know that that person deserves to to to get someplace in life he deserves he's just a really nice guy

again it's a it's a it's a nice thought it's an emotional thing but there's no logical connection

towards giving any favor let alone the grace of salvation

just because any of these things happened to you

so when we looked at

this group it's a it's not deserved

it's that means we're taking out anything about earning

these could be ways of deserve but but there's no they don't logically connect so that's not a way of understanding deserved favor so now we've got a problem is

there's really no meaning to the concept of deserve favor you know there's no meaning to the concept of deserve favor there can't be any meaning to the concept of undeserved favor even though in a general sense we all kind of know what it is

so let's see where we're going with this

I want to highlight the middle one here before we go on

does anybody recognize any place where you could raise your hand and say wait a minute David

in scripture we have this exact thing and this is deserved favor does anybody know where that would be

David yes Chris brother Chris how are you yeah well so as you're going through this and uh I I I'm open I'm on the right track and following your thoughts but we had quoted earlier from the sermon on Mount siki first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all else will be added unto you after he had just you know uh told him not to be seeking and worry about things as the Gentiles do for clothing and shelter and money but he says you know by faith come unto me seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and these things will then be added on to you okay that you but but you come to me by faith first versus Grace being yet while we were sinners Christ died for us okay well he did that not for anything that we did okay grace but he is entered into Covenant relationship with us okay and say now follow me and there are blessings that will come to you if you follow me so I I don't know if that's the distinction that you're looking for but well that is a point I was about to make it's not the distinction but but you are where I'm you got a little bit of actually yeah you're where I'm about to go because I did want to mention that difference between what comes before and what comes after God's grace what I was getting about with this one uh you might be thinking about the parable of the talents where the God made five made five more and as well done you know as you did above and beyond uh anything reasonable you doubled doubled your

your investment

the rois that right Steve

you can't do that with your clients hey without taking big risks anyway uh

you say well what about that does that seems to be that that man was welcomed into so you know welcome into the the

kingdom of your lord uh

because he did something

he went above of

two things about this one is he says well done good and faithful servant it's still about his faith it was about the servant's trust in his master the second thing is

all of these people had already received the grace if I think if I understand how this Parable is unfolding it's you're given these things they've already been given

great grace and what are you going to do now that you've become part of a master's household uh so it's not about getting favored because they did something special it's about responding with uh their appreciation and their work because of what the master has already shown them okay

so my by by the middle caval about this is that there's uh two capitals one is it's it's really hard to figure out what deserved or merited favor might be see it can't be earned favor because that's not even in the category it's not something you do so that means it might be something about us but you look through all those say well those that's that's all emotional reaction it's not a logical thing so I have trouble understanding how undeserved can have any real uh meaning that helps us out here in understanding Grace

and the second point one here is uh

it we are now defining race

as an interaction let's say between God and us it's we didn't deserve it but God gave us to us anyway there's no need to even insert us into the equation Grace itself already takes us out of the equation uh as I wrote here the word itself already implies there's no contingencies it's nothing about it so there's no need to mention whether we deserve it or don't deserve it and by putting us in it it causes us to even so you know thinly but it puts us into I have to do something to deserve God's grace he can't just give it to me for nothing it's undeserved I know that but it puts that it's still it's it's like as I said about you know don't it's a negation don't think about the pink elephants uh kind of thing you can't not so by thinking about undeserved Grace we we end up thinking about ourselves

and how we don't deserve it but yet there must be something there it's like trying to figure how do I not deserve it well I'm good but no that doesn't make it so that that's what I'm getting at is this just leave that part out Grace is God's gift of love and forgiveness period if there's two things this is I think what Chris Clark was just getting at uh

he said one the word grace is most often associated with two other words one is gift and one is uh sinner

while our Sinners God gave us Grace

it's

our response you know what we do with God's grace that develops our character and all the positive things but that's not anything to do with our deserving the grace

Grace is for whatever reason

God chose he he said you you you you

you're my people

okay

what about why me uh don't ask that question it's just I've shown you Grace you know the gospel you know God you know Jesus

that's just the gift God gave it to you carte blanche Point black whatever the right phrase is

and leave it at that so I would prefer we would if someone says what is Grace Just say it's God's gift

end of story okay uh see that was a little bit uh I think deep and I say I've been thinking about this and trying to work it out for for literally years writing making all kinds of paradigms and stuff uh so yeah it seems a little fuzzy or weird okay you uh I get that too uh does anybody have anything still have any comments they'll link again no it's a great comment don't link again with a quick comment I I think Grace is actually bigger than favor

um too because Grace isn't only what God gives to us but it's our response to God as well so the whole concept of unmerited does not make any sense at all it's we should be gracious people

um and I I think that that's you know in all of Paul's Epistles he begins by saying God's grace be with you and then or to you and then he ends with with you and I I think that's something about our response as well there's a there's a lot about our response of Grace

um you know Jesus growing in stature knowledge and favor with God man nothing undeserved about it

yeah uh thanks for bringing that up uh I my original slide I had Grace is one aspect or no one aspect of Grace is God's gift because I was remembering because I know I've heard you talk about this and I agree that Jesus grew in Grace

what's that got to do he has a lot of uh breadth to that term thanks Bill for uh bringing that up hey David it's Jason I I like the tie in there you know Grace is God's gift and It ultimately leads us uh to Romans there in chapter 6 verse 23 for the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ Our Lord and if we follow that idea of Grace We're Gonna measure our lives in a certain way which will lead us to the gift of God as eternal life

thanks good yeah the gift of God he doesn't say the undeserved gift now he does say it in Ephesians yeah uh two the gift of uh not to give the uh he he he he does omit the uh

not of works but of Grace he does address the worst part of it but the other part is you know who we are that's something that doesn't come up in scripture but I'm afraid that's what's left for us to think about if we say okay I know it's not works

so then we're kind of left thinking there must be something about me that God wants well after he gives you your grace yes he does

Chris Clock Again David

you know if this helps I mean my mind goes to John 15 when Jesus says that I am the vine and my father is the husbandman and so uh

certainly there's a response that is required of us but no matter what uh we

bring forth in the way of bearing fruit you know we have to see that it all originated by the grace of God that he was killing the soil and cultivating us okay and that we can really take credit for nothing other than perhaps a proper response to his grace

so exactly

yeah it all starts with God and yes it is our response to that to it not to get it but once we got it very good well you have about uh

12 minutes left so I'm going to tackle the next one

are you ready for this oh you teaching brothers who like to quote for Hebrew okay uh this is not obviously scriptural phrase but it's one we hear a lot the big sorters of people giving classes well the Hebrew word really means and uh

then they give some other definition

uh several problems with this one

what's wrong with it uh

first of all you're probably going to be wrong okay

that means you're thinking I know better than the translators uh with what Hebrew words meant now that doesn't mean that there's not a place to study Hebrew the one exception here is updating the King James version

um in my earlier on I seem to remember many more instances of this earlier than more recently uh

but certainly dozens of times I would hear speakers carrying on about a word and what it really means is this and what they were talking about was a word from the King James that was already translated otherwise in the RSV which I was used for extensively earlier and a lot of people I do we're all sitting here looking at our rsvs we're wondering why the speaker is getting so excited about making this correction when just look at another version you can see it's more likely just updating a term so there's that

uh

but there's a big problem I have with people who know nothing or about Hebrew than how to read a concordance or something like that uh

basing opinions about what Hebrew words really mean uh based on their uh what they wrote about the root or the stem of the word or something like that

what's at stake is really understanding uh two things one how Hebrew works as a language and

secondly just how language works

uh I get the the oppression that comes across is that people treat Hebrew as some kind of a code in our job is to you find a word and you find the corresponding number in strongs and you look it up and you find some cinnamon sentences

synonyms and then you look and see well how is it used in other places oh it's translated like this here so it probably means that over here

and not only is that not how Hebrew works that's not how any language works at all

the languages aren't codes they are part of our human psyche there's much much deeper layers of language

and then you take an ancient language in a book that's written over a period of a thousand years or whatever from the beginning to the end of the actual writing and how much language changes then how a root can be transformed from something to something else there's just so many variables in how language works and how a human mind expresses itself with sounds language is primarily by the way at Oral activity there's very few I think I've got the number it's only like six or ten percent of all the languages in the world's history have ever been actually written languages languages primarily about sound

and grammatical structures in conveying meaning through sounds

so there's a real problem with treating Hebrew is just some kind of a puzzle or a code to decipher

well there are some things that are valuable uh and one of them is use equal concordance to

see where a certain word shows up and it is fair to say that out of 50 occurrences this word is translated this 48 times and these two times it's not there might be a reason for that and there probably is but it doesn't mean that in those two places that the the word was translated incorrectly

you also have to account for uh in Hebrew things called the verb stems or constructions is about uh her voice something about voices or moods there's something the imperative sense or the Joseph sense or the causative or the Intensive you think it's the same word but it's conjugated slightly differently and therefore takes on a different meanings and if you don't know that stuff you're going to make a lot of problems for yourself and there's absolutely no need to try to pronounce Hebrew words if you can't or it's Strong's number 6217 that just gives the impression that this is just a kind of a code you're cracking rather than understanding a living part of let's say human psyche which is what language is now I want you to look at this

uh

this example came up just a few days ago this is uh from actually from first Samuel chapter one

now first of all

uh you can see it's written in Hebrew this is for my englishman's Hebrew concordance which lists the entries by the forms of Hebrew words

anybody other than Brian want to pronounce that word for me it's even transliterated

I don't think we give Brian a pass on this okay Brian go for it

uh us I mean it's it's a guttural EIN that's kind of hard to to say I wouldn't use a g to translate it I don't know how you translate it you can't really you can't thank you right the point is if you see it in English your temp would say it's kagas Cog ass or you see the little end up there it's Kangas yeah and I I purge of course speakers make such statements like this and no it's class into this girl sound that is actually the same sound that is the first syllable in Gaza which we say Gaza the city the the territory of Gaza it's there's no g in it it's Gosling it's a it's a deep guttural sound that starts with this middle letter right there now there's about 21 entries for this war this is the the uh the mass the m means masculine it's a this is the noun form there's a related verb form but just look in these I think there's 21 entries I counted seven different translations

provoking Wrath

provoked or soar grief provocation provocation provocation margin angers grief spite grief anger wrath grief angry angry wrath grief grief anger

anger oops okay so see this is kind of broad but that's the nature of a lot of Hebrew words Hebrew tends to have a vocabulary that is highly context dependent

and award can easily mean something like anger here provocation there uh but the last thing you'd ever want to do is say well in this it must mean grief here because it said it was grief there he

can't get back there okay us

a Fool's wrath is presently known to foolish Sun there's a grief to his father he wouldn't say a fool of science a wrath to his father or at anger so this this is again the nature of a lot of Hebrew uh words

um perhaps even more so with verbs than with nouns

but the ones I want to focus on uh was were these here

uh as I was reading this a few days ago in first Samuel 1 about Hannah and the other wife of elkena it says in verse six or adversary also provoked her sorely or provoke to the vexation it's actually this case where you sometimes see it I'll just say doubled a Hebrew verb to to intensify it it's it's really not like that but the verb occurs twice like provoking her provocation

and then when actually Eli accuses her of being drunk and Hannah replies no I'm not drunk I'm just pouring out my heart this is just 10 verses later the abundance of my complaint and my grief well it's the same word that shows up here what it talks about uh

um was it penina penina

uh provocation and here she says my complaint and my grief

some there's I think I found two translations that are consistent and say provocation here most of the time you wouldn't know that these are translated from the same word so the neat thing about Hebrew is it has these thematic words that show up like this in many many narratives but with different slight different variations of meaning and it gives the narration a Tizer together like a theme or a ribbon that the cohesiveness you want to say well because it's translated this way it's it really means this so it doesn't really mean that at all it's a has a variety of meanings

now the English word provocation it makes a perfectly good illustration of what I'm talking about in English forward

uh so if this doesn't provoke you if I haven't provoked you yet this will okay let's think of the word provocation

it's ultimately some from Latin uh Pro plus volkari vocal vocal voice all the same root of calling forth okay so what could that mean uh it's related to words like provoke and provocative

and say we're talking about some really different things now

provoke nowadays usually has a negative not exclusively in fact Hebrew says you know provoking uh us to Good Works uh but it was it was actually a neutral or a positive term to provoke somebody meant to encourage them to challenge to call them forth to it to incite good behavior uh today we say you know he really provoked me it's it's it doesn't have that new one again this is how how language works

provocative has nothing to do with provoking uh in that sense than it usually again has picked up uh now actually this is pretty old as I remember uh the sexual implication of somebody here with provocative language a provocative dress or something like that even though it's from the same root

say it's going to very different places so you don't want to ever say well the Hebrew root means this therefore it means that that's not how language works it's not how English works not how Hebrew works if somebody I'll just throw this one in does anybody know about the word sincere if you say somebody's sincere

and if you went by the root you know what you'd be telling you know

right they don't have any wax

sincere means son's serum uh we use the word serumen to talk about earwax uh and it came from uh this I think this is valid the ancient Greek Potters who had fixed defects in their pots with waxed and if a pot was not was perfect it was sincere it had no wax in it so you don't want to go by Roots but again I've heard far too many people say well the root really means this Hebrew roots are are very unreliable for uh bringing forth hundreds of years into the writing of that time and say well really needs this not a good idea it can be interesting and helpful but uh you don't want to go there one time uh oh yeah provocative was anemic

you took a provocative to to get evil stuff out of you

so

just looking at this range of meanings and where it originally came from you can see oh this one too a provocation was appealing to a higher ecclesiastial Court I got all this uh out of the OED

well

I can't go back okay so the point is that if you're using Hebrew it's and you're not really really familiar with how Hebrew works as a language and how languages work and the whole idea of translation uh really stay away from

ever saying the Hebrew word really means this either based on how it might be used in one other sentence or

what uh you say the root actually refers to this uh you're really likely to get yourself in big trouble phrase you can do without leave it to say it occurs here here here and here and we can see a connection