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The Lord God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may freely eat; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for on the day that you eat from it you will certainly die.”  Genesis 2:16-17  NASB The man – I’ve put “the man” in bold to call your…

Nearing the End (3)

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from Your presence and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.  Restore to me the joy of Your salvation and sustain me with a willing spirit. Psalm 51:10-12 NASB Cast me away – Broken…

Syntax Correction

Be exalted, O God, above the heavens!  Let your glory be over all the earth!  Psalm 57:11  ESV Over – As we know very well, in languages without punctuation, emphasis is indicated by word order.  What matters most usually comes first.  So when we translate Hebrew expressions into English, the word order is often rearranged…

Public Opinion

“Fear not for you will not be put to shame; neither feel humiliated, for you will not be disgraced; but you will forget the shame of your youth, . .”   Isaiah 54:4 NASB Neither feel humiliated – The translation of ve-al-tikalmi as “neither feel humiliated” shifts the paradigm from a Hebrew point of view to…

The Anthropopathic God

“My heart is turned over within Me, all My compassions are kindled.” Hosea 11:8  NASB Within – How much does God care about His children?  If you struggle to find words big enough, deep enough, significant enough, you’re not alone.  The message of the Bible is that God cares beyond anything that we can imagine. …

The Details

How blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD his God. Psalm 146:5 Is In – It’s certainly commonplace for us to say we hope in the Lord, but we might be surprised to find the Jewish prayer book doesn’t render the thought this way. The same…