What Can’t Be Understood

BySkip Moen, Ph.D.

Knowledge is too wonderous for me, high above—I cannot attain it.  Psalm 139:6  Robert Alter Too wonderous – The translators have taken a bit of poetic license here by rendering pilʾîy-yah with the superlative “too.”  The verb is simply pālāʾ, that is, “be marvelous, wonderful.”  In the derivative, pilʾî, it means “wonderful, incomprehensible,” but as…

The Purpose of Miracles

BySkip Moen, Ph.D.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; It is too high, I cannot attain to it.   Psalm 139:6  NASB Too wonderful– What does “too wonderful” mean to a poet in the tenth century BCE?  Well, not just any poet, but a poet who is saturated with a culture and a nation that believes YHVH to be the one true God.  Perhaps…