Sincerely Yours
He who walks righteously and speaks with sincerity, he who rejects unjust gain and shakes his hands so that they hold no bribe; he who stops his ears from hearing about bloodshed and shuts his eyes from looking upon evil; Isaiah 33:15 NASB
Speaks with sincerity – Sometimes a translation, even if correct, is so loaded with current cultural influences that we hardly have any idea what the text originally said. A typical example of this is the word “baptism.” In the first century Jewish world, baptism was a common, repeated immersion associated with ritual purity or public declarations of spiritual experiences. The participant was not “dunked” by someone else. You baptized yourself by immersing yourself completely under “living” (i.e., moving) water. And you did it naked. Obviously this is not how we think of baptism, nor how we practice it, so when we read the word “baptized” in Scripture, we think in terms of our modern version, not the ancient practice. The word just doesn’t mean what it used to.
Unfortunately, “baptize” isn’t the only victim of cultural modification. “Sincerity” is another.
“The word [sincere] enters the English language in the first third of the sixteenth century, considerably later than its appearance in French. It derived from the Latin word sincerus and first meant exactly what the Latin word means in its literal use—clean, or sound, or pure . . . and serves to remind us that the word in its early use referred primarily not to persons but to things, both material and immaterial [e.g., a sincere wine or sincere doctrine] . . . As used in the early sixteenth century in respect to persons, it is largely metaphorical—a man’s life is sincere in the sense of being sound, or pure, or whole; or consistent in its virtuousness. But it soon came to mean the absence of dissimulation or feigning or pretense.”[1]
“In French literature sincerity consists in telling the truth about oneself to oneself and to others; by truth is meant a recognition of such of one’s own traits or actions as are morally or socially discreditable and, in conventional course, concealed. English sincerity does not demand this confrontation of what is base or shameful in oneself. The English ask of the sincere man that he communicate without deceiving or misleading. Beyond this what is required is only a single-minded commitment to whatever dutiful enterprise he may have in hand. Not to know oneself in the French fashion and make public what one knows, but to be oneself, in action, in deeds, what Matthew Arnold called ‘tasks’—this is what the English sincerity consists in.”[2]
But what does it mean in Hebrew? You might recognize the word—mêšārîm—from the root yāṣar. “mêšārîm and mîšôr could well be translated ‘justly’ (with justice) or ‘lawfully’ (as in Ugaritic ’Anat 3.3) and describe the way judgment is given (Ps 58:1 [H 2); 75:2 [H 3], RSV ‘with equity’).”[3] The basic meaning is “to be straight, level,” and metaphorically, “to be just, lawful, upright.” In other words, mêšārîm has little to do with our idea of sincerity, that is, truth-telling about oneself. In Hebrew, “sincerely” is about obeying the law, not about authentic speech. When we read a translation like the one in the NASB, we automatically assume that the word represents an idea from our cultural collection. But “dābār is sometimes what is done and sometimes a report of what is done.”[4] This collaboration between act and resulting action is important here. To “speak sincerely” is not merely to utter truthful words. It is to perform the putative assertions of the speech so that the words become physical reality. In Hebrew, to say is to do, and saying something “sincerely” is the endorsement of the action done. If you want to follow the instructions of God given through Isaiah, you will do what your words say, and not worry too much about being authentic. That will follow.
Topical Index: sincerity, authenticity, speak, dābār, mêšārîm, obey, Isaiah 33:15
[1] Lionel Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity, pp. 12-13.
[2] Ibid., p. 58.
[3] Wiseman, D. J. (1999). 930 יָשַׁר. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., pp. 417–418). Chicago: Moody Press.
[4] Kalland, E. S. (1999). 399 דָּבַר. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 180). Chicago: Moody Press.
