Express Delivery

And hide not Your face from Your servant, for I am in straits.  Hurry, answer me.  Psalm 69:18 [Hebrew Bible]  Robert Alter Hurry – First we need to clear up an English rendering of צָרַר tsarar.  Alter’s choice doesn’t fit the topography of Israel.  The English “strait” is usually associated with a narrow body of…

The Hitchhiker’s Guide (17)

“For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is life not more than food, and the body more than clothing?”  Matthew 6:25  NASB Do not be worried – We often read Yeshua’s words in…

Biblical  Psychology

So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.  God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and…

The Kingdom on Earth

The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid again; and from [a]joy over it he goes and sells everything that he has, and buys that field.  Matthew 13:44  NASB Hidden in a field – Stop reading this parable as if it were about some ethereal spiritual realm far removed from…

The Haunting

For I am ready to fall, and my sorrow is continually before me.  For I admit my guilt; I am full of anxiety because of my sin.  Psalm 38:17-18  NASB Anxiety – At last we come to the real problem.  “I’m afraid.”  The Hebrew word is dĕʾāgâ.  “The root dāʾag signifies anxiety, with a shading toward the meaning of fear…

The Bigger Picture

For I am ready to fall, and my sorrow is continually before me.  For I admit my guilt; I am full of anxiety because of my sin.  Psalm 38:17-18  NASB Sin – Before we can understand the psalmist’s anxiety, we need to know what he means by the Hebrew term ḥaṭṭāʾt, translated “sin.”  As we’ve mentioned, sin is a religious…

Coming to Blows

to slander no one, not to be contentious, to be gentle, showing every consideration for all people.  Titus 3:2  NASB Contentious – The NASB translation is only one of several possible choices for the Greek term ámachos.  Other English Bibles provide “peaceable,” “not brawlers,” “avoid quarreling,” and “avoid fighting.”  The reason for this is that the Greek term is the…