From the About comes this great question: I have a question about the gender of nations. It seems like nations can be referred with both masculine and feminine pronouns. Is there any significance with this change? For example, Moab is “he” in Isa 16:12, Israel is “he” in Jer 2:14; 50:17 but “herself” in Jer…
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From the About page comes this question: The NET Bible does not render imperatives in Psalm 97:7, while others do. Their footnote is helpful, but not enough for me to opine on which is right. What light can you shed on this? The phrase here is hishtachavu lo kol elohim. The last three words mean,…
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John Hobbins writes in favor of “retaining the standard ‘x and y’ collocation ‘God and men’” in I Samuel 2:26 and Luke 2:52, because it is an example of “standard literary English.” I think “peace on earth and good will toward men,” — another example that John mentions — is now a perfect example of…
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If for no other reason, the phrase “king of kings and lord of lords” is famous because it’s in Handel’s Messiah. We first find “king of kings” in the OT, where the appellation is used for Pagan rulers: Artaxerxes in Ezra (where “king of kings” is the Aramaic melech malchaya) and Nebuchadnezzar in Ezekiel and…
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Another great question from the About page: I have a question about Matthew 27:54. The centurion and the rest of the detachment set to guard Jesus body cried out and said “truly he was the Son of God!” — or is that really what they said? Since it lacks the articles in Greek, and Latin…
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Peter Kirk drew my attention to a post by Bill Heroman about I Timothy 2: If anyone wants us to be perfectly literal about 1 Tim 2:12, we should note, at least as a beginning, that Paul is primarily speaking against one-on-one mentoring, female to male. “I do not allow a woman to teach or…
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Karyn Traphagen points out that there are no distractions in the Old Testament: In doing some searches in Accordance, I happened to notice that there are no distractions in the Hebrew bible. No Hebrew word is translated by ESV, NIV, NRSV, NET (or many others) as “distract,” “distracted,” or “distractions.” The KJV does translate afuna…
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Also from the About page: Here is a question — I have explored the usage of ish and ishah in Ruth (here) and I was surprised to see in 3.14: vatakom b’terem yakir ish et-rei’eihu vayomer al-yivada ki-va’a ha-isha ha-goren and she rose before a man could recognize his friend and he said — let…
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From the About page: I have a question about Exodus 2:2. What does it mean that she saw that baby Moses was tov? Could it be a statement of affection, the way we refer to children and pets as “good?” Or does “seeing that…good” simply echo Genesis 1? Interesting question. I don’t think it’s an…
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