“You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.” Leviticus 19:2b JPS Be holy – Levine’s excursus in the JPS commentary on Leviticus provides an important qualification about the term qādôš (holy): The biblical term for holiness is kodesh. Though the noun is abstract, it is likely that the perception of holiness was not thoroughly abstract. In fact, kodesh had several meanings,…
“You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.” Leviticus 19:2b JPS Be holy – The English translation doesn’t quite capture the force of this command. Baruch Levine translates it as “You must be holy!” He adds: “The verse is distinctive in that it provides a rationale for a commandment: Israel must…
You shall not hate your fellow countryman in your heart; you may certainly rebuke your neighbor, but you are not to incur sin because of him. Leviticus 19:17 NASB Not to incur sin – How can you rebuke someone but not sin doing so? If “rebuke” means “to judge, prove, reprove, and correct,” then what approach should…
When God saw their deeds, that they turned from their evil way, then God relented of the disaster which He had declared He would bring on them. So He did not do it. Jonah 3:10 NASB They turned – “The repentance of the Ninevites, from a psychological standpoint, is less plausible than the physical possibility of the miracles…
“Should I not also have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 people, who do not know the difference between their right hand and their left, as well as many animals?” Jonah 4:11 NASB The great city – Uriel Simon makes an amazing point in his introduction of the JPS commentary on the book of Jonah. “Ninevah merits its Creator’s…
But Jonah got up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. So he went down to Joppa, found a ship that was going to Tarshish, paid the fare, and boarded it to go with them to Tarshish away from the presence of the Lord. Jonah 1:3 NASB To flee – Apparently Jonah hadn’t taken courses in theology, especially not in the…
I will also break the gate bar of Damascus, and eliminate every inhabitant from the [c]Valley of Aven, as well as him who holds the scepter, from Beth-eden; so the people of Aram will be exiled to Kir,” says the Lord. Amos 1:5 NASB Eliminate – Perhaps you recognize the symbolic, metaphorical use of this term. It’s karat. “The most important use of the root is ‘to cut’…
The enemy has come to an end in everlasting ruins, and You have uprooted the cities; the very memory of them has perished. Psalm 9:6 NASB Memory – What was the ultimate objective of the victor in military conflict in the ancient Semitic world? In a word: extinction! It’s not surprising that David praises God for wiping out the very memory of his…
Yet You have made him a little lower than God, and You crown him with glory and majesty! Psalm 8:5 NASB God – You probably learned this verse as “a little lower than angels.” But that’s not what it says in Hebrew. Take a look. וַתְּחַסְּרֵ֣הוּ מְ֖עַט מֵֽאֱלֹהִ֑ים וְכָב֖וֹד וְהָדָ֣ר תְּעַטְּרֵֽהוּ The crucial word here is ʾĕlōhîm (with…
