Safe Room

You are my protection and my shield; I hoped for Your word.  Psalm 119:114    Chabad Protection – Interpretive translation.  That’s when the translator decides that the reader isn’t smart enough to understand the text as it is written and so he interprets the text by changing the translation so that it actually becomes the meaning…

A Reminder

The king reflected and said, “Is this not Babylon the great, which I myself have built as a royal residence by the might of my power and for the glory of my majesty?”  Daniel 4:30  NASB 1995 I myself – A man should not write down his thoughts until he has no time left to complete…

Number 8659

Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.  John 21:25 NIV Would not have room – This is number 8659.  Eight thousand six hundred fifty-nine posts about biblical words.  That’s…

Not My Problem (2) Rewind

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God  Romans 3:23  NASB Fall short – Maybe we’re just not prepared to deal with the implications of homelessness.  Maybe we just haven’t seen enough.  But I’ve seen a lot.  And I’m tired.  The more I travel, the more I see men and women…

Gift of the Giver (5)

I know that there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and to do good in one’s lifetime;  moreover, that every person who eats and drinks sees good in all his labor—this is the gift of God.  Ecclesiastes 3:12-13  NASB Gift of God – Just one last thing to add—fulfillment.  Qohelet (the Teacher) is the ultimate…

Not Quite Finished

It came about when the priests who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord had come up from the middle of the Jordan, and the soles of the priests’ feet were lifted up to the dry ground, that the waters of the Jordan returned to their place, and went over all its banks as before….

Experimental Exegesis

“I will make you pass under the rod, and I will bring you into the bond of the covenant;”  Ezekiel 20:37  NASB Rod – One of the tenets of conservative Christianity is that the Bible must be interpreted by the Bible.  What it means is this: if I accept the claim that God is the real…

Private Window

When Jacob finished commanding his sons, he drew his feet into the bed and breathed his last, and was gathered to his people.  Genesis 49:33  NASB Gathered to his people – I stand in the window of the second floor apartment in Glenview, looking at the snow.  Suddenly I begin to cry.  To shake.  My whole life…

Meaning Makers

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.” So God created man in His own image, in the…

The Bullshit Factor

The Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s.  Song of Songs 1:1  NASB Of – A friend of mine spent a lot of time working in Asia, particularly with Chinese people.  Of course, communicating usually meant translating, especially when business contracts were involved.  But translating wasn’t just a matter of finding a Mandarin word for an English…