Gift of the Giver (3)

You have granted me life and goodness; and Your care has guarded my spirit. Job 10:12  NASB Care – Be very careful with this one.  “It has been said of this verb, which occurs more than three hundred times in the ot; ‘There is probably no other Hebrew verb that has caused translators as much trouble…

Gift of the Giver (1)

You have granted me life and goodness; and Your care has guarded my spirit. Job 10:12  NASB Life – Yesterday we examined the Qohelet’s claim that the animating spirit returns to God at death.  This idea is an important correction to the popular Western conception of eternal life.  It is important to note that this correction…

What Can’t Be Understood

Knowledge is too wonderous for me, high above—I cannot attain it.  Psalm 139:6  Robert Alter Too wonderous – The translators have taken a bit of poetic license here by rendering pilʾîy-yah with the superlative “too.”  The verb is simply pālāʾ, that is, “be marvelous, wonderful.”  In the derivative, pilʾî, it means “wonderful, incomprehensible,” but as…

The Shining Path

Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.  Psalm 119:105  NIV Light – How about some reflective history.  Let me, please, make a comment about what it’s like to write these (now) 8000+ word studies. “Today’s Word” is not your standard approach to Scripture.  Yes, the theology is conservative and…

Parking Spaces

having cast all your anxiety on Him, because He cares about you. 1 Peter 5:7 NASB Anxiety – Many, many years ago, when I was still a teenager, I joined a Bible study group with my friends.  It was actually a pivotal point in my life.  It introduced me to people who seriously examined the text…

The Invention of God

having cast all your anxiety on Him, because He cares about you. 1 Peter 5:7 NASB Cares – If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times: the fundamental message of the Bible is “God cares.”  I believe it, but don’t ask me why.  Don’t ask because I feel what the prophets discovered. “History…

Make Your Choice

Let my prayer come before You; Incline Your ear to my cry!  Psalm 88:2  NASB Incline – “The 215 occurrences of this verb, excluding derivatives, are translated some thirty-five different ways in the KJV alone. The ASV and RSV add other renderings to this wide range of English expressions.”[1]  That’s not very comforting, is it?  If…

Once Upon a Time

So He remembered that they were only flesh, a wind that passes and does not return.  Psalm 78:39  NASB Only flesh – Human life is a fairy tale.  Oh, I don’t mean it isn’t real.  I mean it’s a “once upon a time” story.  Every human life is a wind that passes and does not return.  It’s…

Fault Lines

Do not hide Your face from me on the day of my distress; Incline Your ear to me; On the day when I call answer me quickly.  Psalm 102:2  NASB My distress – Why do earthquakes occur?  The simple answer is that geological plates move under stress.  The shift in the land is what we call…

Paradox

casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.  1 Peter 5:7  NASB Cares – What is a paradox?  We could rely on dictionary definitions like this one: “a seemingly absurd or self-contradictory statement or proposition that when investigated or explained may prove to be well founded or true,” but what this really says is that a paradox is only an apparent problem.  The definition…