Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Hebrew

Hebrew is an interesting language. It does not have a large number of words, so the same works can have several different meanings. The meaning of Hebrew text is not nearly and precise as the Greek text of the New Testament.

This means that we must be careful when reading the Old Testament. The English translators will have chosen the meaning of each word, based on the context, but there will often be other possible meanings. We must be aware that the English translation gives the appearance of a precision that does not exist in the original Hebrew text.

The Psalms often use doubling couplets. Scholars say this a type of poetry, and it is. But there is another reason for the doubling. The writer repeats the concepts in a different way to make the meaning clear. We should be careful about taking the meaning of once line of a couplet, if it is inconsistent with the other line of the couplet, because it could indicate that we have misunderstood the meaning of the words.

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