Now Reuben returned to the pit, and behold, Joseph was not in the pit; so he tore his garments. He returned to his brothers and said, “The boy is not there; as for me, where am I to go?” Genesis 37:29-30 NASB Is not there – We looked into the grammatical implications of this verse once before. Perhaps you’ll recall it (CLICK…
Evening and morning and at noon, I will complain and moan, and He will hear my voice. Psalm 55:17 NASB Evening and morning and at noon – I have always wondered why Judaism calls for prayers three times a day and Islam calls for prayers five times a day. Here is the justification for the Jewish sequence: Abraham initiated…
Do not cast me away from Your presence, and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me. Psalm 51:11 NASB And – Oh, the extent of this mighty little letter. Attach a vav to a Hebrew word, and all kinds of things can happen. Here, in particular, we are faced with some significant translation choices. You see, vav can mean, “so, then, and, with, together, so that,…
Do not cast me away from Your presence, and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me. Psalm 51:11 NASB Your Holy Spirit – Well, if you wanted a prooftext for the Trinitarian view of the third person of the Godhead, you probably would include this verse from David.[1] After all, if David acknowledged the “Holy Spirit,” how could anyone who…
Then God said, “Let Us make mankind in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the livestock and over all the earth, and over every crawling thing that crawls on the earth.” Genesis 1:26 NASB Image/ likeness – How many times have we examined the implications…
So he said, “Who are you?” And she answered, “I am Ruth your slave. Now spread your garment over your slave, for you are a redeemer.” Ruth 3:9 NASB Spread your garment – One of the exegetical assumptions of both Judaism and conservative Christianity is that all of the biblical text is ultimately authored by…
Create in me a clean heart, God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Psalm 51:10 NASB Steadfast – There’s not much point in washing your clothes if you’re just going to jump back in the mud. They might be clean for the moment, but unless you stay away from the muck, you’ll be right back where you started—dirty. That’s the point of…
Isaac went out to meditate in the field toward evening; and he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, camels were coming. Genesis 24:63 NASB 1995 To meditate – Hapax legomenon. That’s what the word śûaḥ’ is. A once only occurrence in the entire Tanakh. If you look in a lexicon, you will find…
When Reuben heard this, he tried to rescue him from their hands. “Let’s not take his life,” he said. Genesis 37:21 NIV Tried to rescue – Jonathan Sacks makes an interesting comment about the literal Hebrew in this verse: It is at this point that the Torah does something it does nowhere else: It makes a statement…
