Moses in the Wilderness

And do not take out utterly from my mouth a word of truth, because I hoped for Your words. Psalm 119:43  Chabad

Utterly – The English seems a little jilted, doesn’t it?  We just don’t speak this way.  The NASB offers little more: “And do not take the word of truth utterly out of my mouth, for I wait for Your judgments.”  Alter’s translation is much better: “And do not take the least word of truth from my mouth . . .”  But the issue isn’t just the translation of mĕʾōd.  It’s the end of the verse as well.  How do you “hope” for words?  Or, in the NASB, “wait” for words?  Alter captures the double meaning of  the verb yāḥal at the end of the verse with “for I have trusted in Your word.”  That makes a lot more sense.  Notice that it is a past tense—“I trusted.”  Not quite the same as “I hoped” or “I waited,” both of which may or may not result in completion.  “I trusted” is already fulfilled.  I’m not waiting or hoping for anything else.  My commitment has already happened.

What do we discover about this strange phrase, “utterly from my mouth”?  As we noted, the Hebrew word is mĕʾōd.  Its quintessential occurrence is in Deuteronomy 6:5, i.e., “with all your might.”  That’s the English rendition of what is literally “with all your muchness, abundance, excess.”  “McBride observed: ‘The three parts of Deut 6:5: lēbāb (heart), nepeš (soul or life), and meʾōd (muchness) rather than signifying different spheres of Biblical psychology seem to be semantically concentric. They were chosen to reinforce the absolute singularity of personal devotion to God. Thus lēbābdenotes the intention or will of the whole man; nepeš means the whole self, a unity of flesh, will, and vitality; and mĕʾōdaccents the superlative degree of total commitment to Yahweh.’” ^[1]  Note Kaiser’s remark about the difficulty of translating this into Greek: “The nt struggles to express the depth of the word mĕʾod at this spot. In the quotation in Mk 12:30 it is rendered ‘mind and strength,’ in Lk 10:27 it is ‘strength and mind,’ in Mt 22:37 simply ‘mind.’”^[2]  Why is this such a Greek problem?  Could it be because in Hebrew the idea of “person” incorporates all and every facet of what it means to exist while in Greek the “person” is broken into various subcategories that exist only in a loose and accidental arrangement?  Why could Descartes say, “Cogito ergo sum” and mean that he, as a being, existed only in his rationality? Because physical and emotional existence were only parts of the person and could be dismissed without destroying the “essential” reason.  This is impossible in Hebrew thought.  Persons are embodied entities, with all that embodiment means.  They are not “souls” trapped in a material world.  The stumbling translation “utterly from my mouth” tries to capture the idea that idiomatically means something like “don’t stop me from saying everything true.”  “The ‘muchness’ of all that I say about Your truth, the whole of Your revelation—that’s what I have trusted in (not ‘hoped for’).  Don’t stop me from saying so.”

The poet reminds us of another Moses encounter.  Remember this?  “But the Lord said to him, ‘Who has made the human mouth? Or who makes anyone unable to speak or deaf, or able to see or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?’” (Exodus 4:11).  The psalmist recognizes what Moses refused to see.  It’s God who makes it possible to be human in every respect.

Topical Index: Exodus 4:11, utterly, mĕʾōd, muchness, person, Psalm 119:43

^[1] Kaiser, W. C. (1999). 1134 מאד. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament(electronic ed., p. 487). Moody Press.

^[2] Ibid.