"...In Fellowship With Him We Were Healed!"

"He was pierced for our defiance; he was crushed for our crookedness; he bore the punishment for our peace; and in fellowship, with him, we were healed."  

Isaiah 53:5

New Proposed Rendering

A pair of students of the Bible with an understanding of Hebrew were doing a study of the "suffering Messiah" passage in Isaiah (52:12-53:12) and had one of those "aha!" moments when they'd noticed something different about the text in Hebrew when compared with common translations and even a quotation of 53:5.  The thing is the Masoretic Text reads as presented above.  However, most English translations render the last clause as "and by his stripes, we were healed."  Added to that is that the LXX translates it that way and Peter, or whoever later translated it into Greek if Peter originally penned it in Hebrew, used the LXX as their source for the quotation of this verse.

(Isa 53:5)  וְהוּא֙ מְחֹלָ֣ל מִפְּשָׁעֵ֔נוּ מְדֻךָּ֖א מֵעֲוֹנֹתֵ֑ינוּ מוּסַ֤ר שְׁלֹומֵ֙נוּ֙ עָלָ֔יו וּבַחֲבֻרָתֹ֖ו נִרְפָּא־לָֽנוּ׃

The problem is a classical study in being careful when reading Hebrew to see what is there instead of what one expects to see.  That's because the two words with such radically different meanings are so close that in Hebrew with vowel points added the differ by one dot, that is all, just one dot.  That dot is called the Dagesh Forte and it tends to have the force of doubling the letter so that, for instance, if placed in a chet ( ח ) it will give us two of them ( חח ).  It also takes certain consonants with a soft sound and hardens it.  This is what we have here.  In the verse above the second bet ( ב ) doesn't have the dagesh forte so that the word is Chavurato H2270 which comes from the Hebrew word chavar that according to Holladay's A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic LexiconOf the Old Testament means a "comrade, companion," hence to fellowship with. (pg. 94)

However, sometime before the birth of our Lord and before the invention of vowel pointing somebody misread it as Chaburato H2250, meaning "to bruise, stripe, wound, blow.  (BDB as I couldn't find the word in the more up to date lexicon).  So it was translated as "wounds" or "stripes" in the LXX and early translations of the Bible in many languages based on the LXX used that so that when folks finally started going to the Hebrew text they never noticed the missing Dagesh and continued reading it as if it had it.  The error was further compounded by placing the word Chavurato in Hebrew lexicons as an example of a variance of the word  Chaburato.  How the error crept in is a matter of speculation, however, the most likely scenario is that the Egyptian translator of that portion of the Old Testament didn't have Hebrew as his first language and made an honest mistake.  But there is something else, another factor I will get into in a moment.

When the vowel pointing was invented the scribes preserved the standardized articulation of the words of the Tanakh as they knew it.  And other such pointed versions have the same articulation here.  So this was how they understood it should read.  And why not?  Plug that translation of the clause into the passage as a whole and it fits with thoughts such as him "justifying many" (Vs. 11), "see his seed" (vs. 10), and "he will divide the spoil with many" (vs. 12), and others.  So this translation of the verse states and essential truth of Christianity, that all have to enter into fellowship with our Lord or know him as their personal savior to have eternal salvation.

To stress the importance of this is that this is an example of why we need to pay attention to what is in the text instead of reading what we expect to see in it.  We have further confirmation of this understanding of the verse in the New Testament since Is. 53:5 was apparently the source for what Paul wrote to the Phillippians:

"be found in Him; not having my own righteousness of Law, but through the faith of Christ, having the righteousness of God on faith, to know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, having been conformed to His death, if somehow I may attain to a resurrection out of the dead."

(Php 3:9-11)  

Lastly, I would like to point out something.  Whether by simple mistake or deliberately done (we do know from tradition that some passages were deliberate to confuse gentiles and hide some things by the translators), Providence overruled the matter and turned the alteration into a messianic prophecy which saw fulfillment.  So what we see here is a passage and it's variant in another language both having fulfillment, both of them!  How amazing is that?

Until next time!

Israel in Prophecy

"From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts out its leaves, you know that summer is near."

(Matt. 24:3; ESV)

Sometime around 1978 I saw a book in the Salvation Army store named The Late Great Planet Earth authored by Hal Lindsey and read it with great interest after purchasing it.  At the time I was in a faith which believes in Replacement Theology and brushed off most of what Dr. Lindsey wrote, but one thing kind of stuck with me at the back of my mind for years, the role of Israel in the prophecies of the last days.

I left my previous faith some years ago and now had the opportunity to take a closer look at the prophecies concerning the Return of the Jews to their homeland and the restoration of their national polity with the creation of the state of Israel.  But there is more, there are prophecies yet to be fulfilled, and it was with wonder that I studied the subject and listened to mature Christian men of knowledge expound on the subject.  Some of those men filled in gaps for me so that I see the wondrous whole.  So I decided it is a great time to discuss this subject of import.

The above verse was part of a group of prophecies which Jesus gave his disciples in answer to the question, "Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?" (Matt. 24:3; ESV)  Although the context closely followed the declaration of Jesus that the Temple in Jerusalem would be destroyed (Matt. 24:2), the wording of the question as it was preserved for us asks a greater question, what would be the sign of Jesus “coming” (Really “presence” instead of “coming” as the word here is παρουσιας G3952), thus pointing to something much greater than just the destruction of the Jewish system.  It is with that understanding in mind that we must approach the great prophecies Jesus gave in answer to that question.

Some of those answers applied specifically to the fall of the temple, of that there is no dispute in our mind.  Others had a dual fulfillment, one then and one in the “last days” and some in the last days only.  Where confusion generally runs is in trying to figure out which fits into what category.  We believe that this particular statement may apply to both ages because it references the sign of spring when the fig tree shoots for its foliage from its buds.  The obvious meaning is that of seeing the signs of fulfillment beginning to appear.  In many places the Bible does tell us that one of the signs of the “last days” would be the restoration of Israel to the holy land (Jer. 30, Is. 2:2, Mic 4:1).

In my studies I read several books written over a hundred years ago which predicted with astounding accuracy that restoration based on the word of God, though the author expected them all to happen much sooner than they did.  Still, the accuracy of his words struck me as remarkable.  However, just as Charles Taze Russell did, I’m going to let the Bible speak for itself instead of using his words.

It was in 1878 that the tree of prophecy concerning the restoration of Israel began to sprout forth.  The great historical event historians remember that year for is the Berlin Congress where British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, the first Jew to be Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and other leaders of Europe gathered in Berlin to craft an agreement.  The idea was to hammer out certain details regarding the status of certain nations which used to be part of the Ottoman Empire but were given their freedom under the Treaty of San Stefano which was signed earlier that year.  What is given scant attention if at all about the treaty is that Prime Minister Disraeli insisted on attaching a provision onto the treaty giving the Jews the right to purchase and hold property in the Holy Land.  It was provision which would have enormous consequences later on.

One thing modern academia doesn’t like to admit is that, although the Jews were dispossessed of their homeland, the land was never entirely devoid of Jews.  There were two major cities with large Jewish populations, Haifa and Jerusalem.  However they lived under marginal conditions where persecution was an ever present reality and they weren’t allowed to own land, etc.  Outside of the cities the land was a desolate waste, as reported by people who traveled through the area, including such luminaries as Mark Twain.  But all of that changed with the congress of Berlin.

Shortly after the treaty was adopted a group of Jews purchased a large tract of property and founded the town of Petah Tikvah, or Gate of Hope, for Jews to immigrate to.  Although it had rocky beginnings, Petah Tikvah is still around and one of the major cities in Israel to this day.  So began the return of the Jews to their homeland and the eventual restoration of the state of Israel in 1948.  In the next post we will talk about some bones and what they have to do with predicting the restoration of the Jewish state.

A Study of Christian Love Part 6

Now we come to the final part of our series my friends and readers.  Paul now wraps up his exposition, starting his conclusion this way:

“Love never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall be done away; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall be done away."  (1Co 13:8)

“Love never faileth.”  The Greek word here is ἐκπίπτω  (G1601).  The verb is in the present active indicative.  So in modern English that would be “Love doesn’t fail.”  Thayers Lexicon states it to signify in this verse the thought of “to fall from a place from which one cannot keep”.  However, one other occurrence of this word my shed more light on what Paul means here since it comes from another one of his writings.   That would be his use of it at Romans 9:6, where we read:

“But it is not as though the word of God hath come to nought. For they are not all Israel, that are of Israel”   (Rom 9:6)

Here Paul uses the word to express the thought that God’s word never goes forth without result, in other words what God wills always takes place.  As a studious Jew Paul was well aware of God’s pronouncement on the matter in Isaiah:

“For as the rain cometh down and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, and giveth seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.”  (Isa 55:10-11)

This is precisely the thought expressed in Romans and it is our belief that Paul was expressing something much like it in 1 Corinthians.  God is love (1 John 4:8) therefore everything he does is an expression of his love, even his justice.  So our love cannot fail to have results if we cultivate and use it to the fullest extent possible.  Love is powerful.  And this is most appropriate considering where Paul goes next.

Paul tells us that the gifts of the Spirit the brethren were so proud of there in Ancient Corinth would end.  The brethren had a problem back then in the way they saw things because of the nature of the gifts given back then.  They were miracles and some more spectacular than others.  The problem was that those with the more spectacular gifts seemed to have more prestige than those with others.  This chapter is part of an exposition refuting their thinking which started back in chapter twelve and continues to chapter fourteen, where Paul tells them to adjust their thinking and seek out the more important gifts while they could.  That was because a time would come when those gifts would cease, but when?

“For we know in part, and we prophesy in part; but when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child: now that I am become a man, I have put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know fully even as also I was fully known.”

(1Co 13:9-12)

Simply put the day would come when the Church would grow up in the knowledge of God and his plan.  At the time the Church had an incomplete knowledge of divine things.  Scrolls of the scriptures were expensive and not easy to come by.  And the word of God wasn’t complete as Paul and several others were in the process of writing down what God intended.  Even after the biblical canon was established it wouldn’t become widely available to the world, and the members of the Church until the invention of the printing press made cheap publication of it, and knowledge gleaned from it, possible.

So at the time Paul wrote the Church needed a little something extra to give them what they needed to make their calling sure, and some of the gifts provided that extra boost, which was why Paul counsels to seek those particular gifts out in the next chapter of his letter.  But after that, and especially in the “last days,” when knowledge would increase, including in matters of truth, those gifts would not be needed (Dan. 12:4; 1 Cor. 13:10).  So God would no longer give them out.  That leads us to the question of what we’re left with if we don’t have those gifts.  Paul answers that question for us in one of his most famous verses:

“But now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”

(1Co 13:13)

We are left with faith, hope and love.  These are not only the things which will carry us over the finish line successfully, but will also identify us as God’s true Church.  But the most important of those is love, the love we discussed in this series on First Corinthians chapter thirteen. 

We hope that you, my readers, received not one, but several blessings from this study on genuine Christian love.  We not only examined why it is important, but what it is and is not.  We now know how that love acts and can see why both our lives and the lives of those around us would benefit from our cultivating this most important quality and acting on it.

I hope you have a blessed day my dear readers.

A Study of Christian Love Part 5

Greetings again my dear readers:

So far we’ve covered a lot of territory in our look at the qualities of agape love which the Apostle Paul brought to the attention of his fellow Christians in Corinth.  I imagine you never really thought there was so much to it.  But as we learned in the first three verses of that important chapter in First Corinthians it is of such vital importance to our salvation that we should really try to understand the subject as thoroughly as possible, and its application in our lives.  That is why this series tries to leave no stone unturned.   We move on:

“It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.”  (1Co 13:6)

Do we entertain ourselves with stories of people doing things we know God does not approve of?  Do we find ourselves in agreement with ideas and actions which we know from God’s word he finds offensive?  Do we listen to gossip about others?  Do we secretly rejoice when others get away with something?  Those are all things involved in rejoicing in wrongdoing.

We don’t have to do anything ourselves, just passively approve of them in some way to be acting contrary to Agape love.  So, on the contrary, we avoid such approval and act positively by going the opposite direction.  Love rejoices with truth.  That means more than just avoiding wrong, it means to be focused on what is true.  That can mean on biblical truth, but it goes much further.  We would want to entertain ourselves with those things we know to be truth in a positive way.  We would rejoice with those who follow truth and work towards its glory.

Thankfully, there is music, books and movies which are healthy to entertain and stories around us to rejoice in.  We should especially be pleased to hear stories of how God has worked wonders in the lives of his saints.  That is one of the best kinds of rejoicing in truth available to us.  But being Christians does not mean we cannot entertain ourselves, if that entertainment is such as befits a holy people.

Now we turn to another aspect of love:

“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”  (1Co 13:7)

Love bears up under the load of trouble or oppression, which can come in many forms.  Anytime people gather together as groups for a purpose there are inevitably stresses, politics and other things which may become a “load,” or burden.  The church is no exception this side of the veil.  That load may even become quite heavy as imperfect people are won’t to gossip or in other ways make the way harder for others for many reasons.  But not only do we not want to impute wrong motive to such who make the way harder in some way for us, as covered earlier, but love will move us to bear the load until the Lord sees fit to remove it.

Love believes all things, that is the good.  That’s why it is so loath to attribute wrong motives unless one has concrete proof to the contrary.  Love prefers to believe the best of our brethren, neighbors and others with whom we interacted with daily, but especially our dear brethren.  We never no why somebody might do something contrary to what we might expect in the way of manners, something people tend to get so easily bent out of shape over.

I grew up with a mentally ill mother.  Dad left us when I was an early teen and mother preferred to keep us to her self, not allowing us activities away from her.  Her illness was such that she was in no position to teach us children common manners.  And to this day I can go around a room full of people and offend many of them without any idea of how or why.  My beloved wife has tried to help in that regard, but it still happens at time in spite of my best efforts.  I know I give an extreme example, but ask your self next time somebody does so if perhaps it may just be they known no better, as in my case.  If we believe the best, hope the best; then we will be able to endure both the small and the great things which come our way.

Now I’m going to relate the story I mentioned about some Shakers earlier as this is probably the best way to end this part of our consideration before moving on to the last, and a very exciting part of the message Paul gave.  The shakers are virtually gone now, but for a time they were no really small group and what we consider a shining example of love as a quality.  They did have some extreme views; the communal living and denial of marriage and insistence on celibacy for members are all a big part of why they’ve passed from the scene to become a curiosity.

There is a story of a Shaker commune who discovered a significant part of their crops were being stolen.  When they met they chose their typical path of not reporting the crimes to the sheriff so that the thieves might be apprehended and punished.  They decided that if the thieves were stealing it they had a greater need for it than the Shaker community.  But the story doesn’t stop there.  In the spirit of Christian charity they simply planted more crops, enough to provide for the needs of both their community, and those who were stealing.  Would that all who call upon the name of Christ were that way!

The Shakers left us a wonderful set of abandoned communities which now serve as museums and stand in mute testimony to their industriousness, thrift and inventiveness.  But can anyone doubt their greatest legacy left for us consists of stories like that.  They encapsulate everything we’ve discussed so far about love as a practical matter in our lives.

A Study of Christian Love Part 4

So far we’ve seen that love is characterized by its kindness in various ways.  It always seeks to act kindly to our neighbors, family and brethren in all things.  The next points Paul brings up further that thought:

“doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own, is not provoked, taketh not account of evil;” (1Co 13:5)

What does it mean to “behave…unseemly?”  The word here used is the Greek verb ἀσχημονέω (G807), which Thayer defined as “to act unbecomingly.”  The same word is used at 1 Corinthians 7:36 by Paul in reference to conduct which might bring a “virgin” into disgrace (Vine’s).  Lexham’s Translation renders it “it does not behave dishonorably,” Murdock’s translation as “doth nothing that causeth shame” and the old Bishop’s Bible renders it as “Dealeth not dishonestlie.”

What we get out of this is that Paul was talking about conduct which goes well beyond “rude,” the word used by many modern translations to translate this word.  We’re talking about dishonest conduct, more or less on the level of the Young man who goes around putting notches on his belt by seducing the young ladies.  It goes without saying that the same goes the other way these days.  It also includes being rude, but this is rudeness beyond simple lack of social graces, it is deliberate.  We think a word not heard often these days, boorish, is another way to describe what this word is getting at.

That naturally leads to the next thing love is not, selfish, the thought embodied in the archaic “seeketh not its own.”  Do we always seek to put our own interests first?  Do we try to shove ourselves to the head of the line, both figuratively and physically?  Do we have to always come out ahead of others in any exchange or dealings both personal or of a business nature?  If so we need to see our motives for what they are and work to replace them with love, which isn’t that way.

Something else about love is that love isn’t provoked.”  The Noun form related to this verb is used of the argument Paul had with Barnabas about taking John Mark with them on his missionary trip to Macedonia (Acts 15:39).  The argument was so sharp that they parted ways, with Barnabas taking Mark with him to Cyprus, as the verse states.  So we understand the word to mean a sharp incitement, as it is used in that sense in a healthy way by Paul at Hebrews 10:24.

So do we get mad if we don’t get what we want, or if others seem to slight us?  Are we easily aroused to anger when others push our buttons, trying to make us mad?  If we have love we’ll be known as somebody hard to arouse into an argument, if ever.  And then only when righteous principles are involved much as what happened when Paul confronted brethren spreading false teachings in Antioch (Acts 15).  But as a rule if we have love in large measure we won’t be easily provoked into arguments.

We finally reach the last point we plan on covering in this post, “taketh not account of evil.”  Paul, here, is using a business expression to make his point, which is that love isn’t resentful of the harm others may do to us.  The Greek means to tally up, or to keep count of harm done to ones self by those around him or her.  Such a person doesn’t forgive liberally, or not recognize the wrong as worthy of note in the first place.

A person rich in love will not keep a memory of the sins, or “evil” committed against them in their hearts and even under certain circumstances may ignore them altogether.  They’ll liberally forgive the small sins committed against them by family, friends, brethren, and neighbors which happen on a daily basis because they realize that more often than not they simply happen because of natural sin.  Given the use of the word, “evil,” they’ll even go the extra mile and not keep dredging up in their hearts some serious sins committed against them.  It will be as if they never happened.  The word used here goes beyond the garden variety of bad, but stops short at the really gross and extreme.  There is a different Greek word for that.

So now we’ve seen some more of the things love isn’t, in the next post we will see the last thing it isn’t, and some of what those rich in love do.