An LSB discussion: What to expect from the OT, Hebrew Acrostics, Song of Songs, and more

00:00:00.000 | [Silence]

00:00:10.000 | >> Well, good afternoon, Joe.

00:00:12.720 | We have finished both the Old Testament and the New Testament, the whole Bible is in.

00:00:18.680 | And in the process, not only did we translate, but people had some questions for us and different

00:00:23.320 | kinds of people, not just people who are reading the current translation that's out, but also

00:00:28.600 | reviewers who have reviewed our notes on translation and such, and several questions have crossed

00:00:33.440 | my desk, and I thought this would be a good time for us to talk about some of the dominant

00:00:38.160 | ones.

00:00:39.160 | So, with that, here's one of those questions that people have posed.

00:00:44.600 | One is, were there any systematic yet subtle changes in the Old Testament?

00:00:50.640 | We're thinking about like a verb translation, a verb tense that was brought out, similar

00:00:55.740 | to how we did the imperfect in the Greek New Testament, in the New Testament translation

00:01:01.480 | of the Scriptures.

00:01:02.920 | Is there anything like that?

00:01:04.240 | People know about the translation of Yahweh, they know about the major things, but were

00:01:07.800 | there subtle things on that line that we brought out?

00:01:11.320 | >> Well, that was part of our goal and part of our desire, part of our translation philosophy

00:01:15.860 | to make things as consistent as possible, but also as precise as possible.

00:01:20.200 | So, there were a few things.

00:01:21.960 | One thing that I'm thinking right off the bat is our treatment of the element, the macro

00:01:29.600 | syntactical marker or the discourse marker, which sometimes introduces a paragraph, other

00:01:35.520 | times it brings the paragraph to the climax.

00:01:38.120 | So, in Hebrew, it would be the "vayehi" form or the "vihaya" form, the "vayehi" being in

00:01:43.040 | the past tense, the "vihaya" being in the future tense, and again, for the most part,

00:01:47.680 | you know how it is sometimes.

00:01:49.560 | So, when we worked with that, we were basing our translation on Nazbi, so it was already

00:01:55.240 | there, but we tried to make it more systematic.

00:01:57.720 | >> So, how would it appear in the Nazbi at times?

00:02:01.240 | >> So, let's take an example from Genesis chapter 4.

00:02:04.360 | This is where Cain kills Abel, and then God appears to Cain, and God speaks to Cain, and

00:02:08.520 | He says to him, "Where's your brother?"

00:02:11.000 | And so, in that conversation, God speaks, God says to Cain that He's going to send him

00:02:17.200 | out, and He's going to cast him out, and Cain, in a way, laments that, and he says, "I have

00:02:22.840 | been cast out from your presence, and I'm going to be a vagrant and a wanderer," and

00:02:29.440 | then most of the translations have it as, "Whoever finds me will kill me."

00:02:34.480 | Well, that's a climax of that verse and of Cain's statement, and so really, in the Hebrew,

00:02:39.880 | it says, it has the discourse marker which shows to us that this is a climax, and so

00:02:46.040 | really, it's supposed to be, "And it will be that whoever finds me will kill me."

00:02:51.640 | And so, we introduced that element into the LSB translation so that you can see that it's

00:02:57.240 | a climax.

00:02:58.240 | >> So, for the reader now, when they see phrases like, "Now it happened," or "And it will be,"

00:03:05.360 | they know this could be a start of a new paragraph, this could be a climactic moment, this could

00:03:11.120 | be even a conclusion to an entire idea.

00:03:14.400 | Is that what's going on?

00:03:15.400 | >> That's exactly right, and just since you brought up the past tense, you can think about

00:03:18.440 | the Joseph narrative, and one of the famous parts is when Mrs. Potiphar, so to say, she

00:03:25.240 | tempts Joseph, and so in that description and the discussion that they have in chapter

00:03:31.520 | 39, you have the part where Joseph goes into the house, and in a way, that's the beginning

00:03:38.680 | of the paragraph.

00:03:40.800 | So it says, "Now it happened that Joseph went into the house," and that introduces that

00:03:46.500 | portion of the paragraph, and Joseph is alone in the house, and Mrs. Potiphar happens to

00:03:51.600 | be there, all the men are gone, and so she tempts him there, she grabs him by the clothes,

00:03:56.460 | and she takes his garment, and he flees without his garment, and then it says that, "And now

00:04:03.780 | it happened when she saw that she had his garment," so that the part, "Now it happened,"

00:04:11.700 | is also the discourse marker, but in this case, it brings the whole story to the climax.

00:04:18.460 | It's in the middle of the story, it's in the middle of the paragraph, and it says there

00:04:22.420 | that she saw the clothes that she had with him, and she was going to make a decision,

00:04:27.660 | and so when she sees that she has the garment, then she cries out, then she calls out to

00:04:32.380 | the men, and the men come in, and she begins to explain to them the story that their leader

00:04:40.100 | brought in this slave who was going to tempt her, if you will, and she repeats this discourse

00:04:45.960 | marker, and she says that, "And now it happened that when he saw that he left his clothes,

00:04:52.100 | he ran away and he fled."

00:04:54.420 | So the Hebrew uses this marker, "Now it happened," to introduce a paragraph, or it uses this

00:05:00.940 | discourse marker to bring the story to a climax, to show that this is the central point, or

00:05:07.460 | this is the peak of the narrative where something very important happens, and so she does this.

00:05:13.220 | And it happens actually throughout Genesis 39, so that you see where the paragraph begins

00:05:17.740 | and where it climaxes.

00:05:19.300 | And so we did that throughout the Old Testament, just making sure that it's visible, making

00:05:23.940 | sure that it's clear, so that the readers can take note of it, and again, this is building

00:05:27.820 | on what Nazbi had already been doing, we just made it more systematic.

00:05:31.380 | So when you read the Hebrew Bible, you look for those discourse markers, you look for

00:05:37.300 | those narrative markers, and the va'iktol, and such, is that right?

00:05:41.580 | That's exactly right.

00:05:42.580 | You see those, you take note of them, and you actually see what are they doing.

00:05:46.660 | And one of our philosophies of translation, or parts of the philosophy, was to make sure

00:05:51.300 | that if it's in the Hebrew text, and we can bring it into the English text and make sense,

00:05:57.100 | we want to do that, because we want to bring everything from the Hebrew into the English,

00:06:00.500 | so that when the people treat the Bible and they study it, they see exactly what the Hebrew

00:06:05.020 | had.

00:06:06.020 | And that's exactly it, isn't it?

00:06:07.020 | It's so that when they see the English, it's as if they're like you when you see the Hebrew.

00:06:13.500 | It's a parallel kind of experience.

00:06:14.860 | Yeah, and this goes back to the analogy that we've been using, looking at it through the

00:06:18.580 | window.

00:06:19.740 | That's really helpful, and now when people see those words, they know the significance,

00:06:25.580 | the role, the important role, that they play as the author, inspired by God, writes it

00:06:31.020 | all down.

00:06:32.020 | Yeah, exactly.

00:06:33.020 | Really, really good.

00:06:34.020 | Here's another question, and I think this one's addressed to me.

00:06:37.140 | People wonder about the translation of chesed.

00:06:40.700 | They say, "Can you change it?

00:06:42.380 | Can you change it to something else?"

00:06:43.700 | And they have all kinds of suggestions about it.

00:06:46.300 | I get a lot of these, and the question is why, as already the New Testament Psalms of

00:06:50.820 | Proverbs has indicated, why keep it as loving kindness?

00:06:54.780 | Why retain that?

00:06:55.920 | And I think our answer, as we discussed it, was that there is a tradition behind this

00:07:00.980 | word.

00:07:01.980 | It goes back to some of the oldest English translations, and there's something to be

00:07:05.580 | said for connecting what we have today with things back in the day, with those who have

00:07:11.620 | preceded us.

00:07:12.660 | It demonstrates that the faith, once and for all, delivered to the saints is exactly that.

00:07:17.800 | It is what we have is what they had.

00:07:20.100 | What they had is what we have.

00:07:21.500 | We do not have a different doctrine.

00:07:23.040 | We do not have a different scripture.

00:07:25.000 | Our scripture is the same, and that tradition reflects that.

00:07:29.540 | And on top of that, retaining loving kindness, I would say, prevents an assumption.

00:07:34.640 | If we kind of translated it a little bit more idiomatically, people could presume that they

00:07:39.980 | understood what the word chesed meant.

00:07:43.860 | They might think, "Oh, yeah, it's just steadfast love.

00:07:45.860 | That's all that it is.

00:07:46.860 | I understand it.

00:07:47.860 | Let's move on."

00:07:48.860 | But there's a bigger story to that word chesed.

00:07:52.420 | There's a bigger story to the word loving kindness.

00:07:54.820 | In fact, Halot, the major dictionaries, don't emphasize love in that term as much as they

00:08:00.240 | emphasize loyalty.

00:08:02.400 | They emphasize fidelity.

00:08:04.660 | They emphasize faithfulness and commitment.

00:08:07.340 | And there's good reason for that, because Psalm 136, God causes the sun to rise and

00:08:12.860 | to set because of his loving kindness.

00:08:15.580 | In Psalm 107, the parallel of loving kindness is not with God's love or affection to his

00:08:21.100 | people, but with his miraculous wonders and his awesome works.

00:08:26.180 | That's the parallel to loving kindness, because in essence, loving kindness is more about

00:08:30.820 | God's commitment, a commitment and loyalty to, say, even the covenant that drives him

00:08:37.140 | to do whatever it takes to do what is right and do what he promised for the good of his

00:08:42.780 | people.

00:08:44.180 | And this flows even into the New Testament, because the New Testament authors sometimes

00:08:48.740 | translate chesed as grace.

00:08:51.420 | God is full of loving kindness and truth in the Old Testament.

00:08:54.640 | And in the New Testament, Jesus is full of grace and truth.

00:08:58.580 | But we know grace is not the same thing as love.

00:09:01.560 | Grace is something distinct from love, and it reflects God's intervention, his irresistible

00:09:07.340 | grace in our lives.

00:09:09.300 | And in the same manner, chesed is God's ultimate commitment and thereby his driving omnipotent

00:09:16.860 | power to do what is best for us.

00:09:19.580 | And that is packaged in this one word.

00:09:22.020 | And I think sometimes when we just translate it in a sensible way, people won't dig deeper.

00:09:28.180 | And so retaining the word loving kindness is very, very useful in this way.

00:09:33.560 | And along that line, sometimes because of translating with multiple words, you can run

00:09:39.960 | into a conundrum, translationally speaking.

00:09:42.880 | In Isaiah 55, it talks about the great and steadfast love shown to David.

00:09:50.960 | Well, it's not great and steadfast love.

00:09:52.800 | It's just great loving kindness, abundant loving kindness.

00:09:56.400 | But because if you use multiple terms to describe this one word, you're going to have to fiddle

00:10:04.000 | a little bit with how it is described and modified, which causes a shift in emphasis

00:10:09.840 | and maybe a misunderstanding what's going on in the original language.

00:10:13.580 | So there's this kind of cascading effect that happens when sometimes we deviate from word

00:10:18.240 | for word.

00:10:19.240 | And plus, the word loving kindness as a translation of chesed is a good translation.

00:10:25.160 | And so we're retaining that to affirm the translation that NASB has because it is a

00:10:29.400 | good translation.

00:10:30.400 | Yeah.

00:10:31.400 | So those are some of the reasons behind loving kindness therein.

00:10:34.520 | And the traditional way to go about it has actually a lot of advantages.

00:10:39.080 | And ultimately, it just reminds us we shouldn't take words for granted.

00:10:42.960 | We should continue to pursue and study them.

00:10:45.280 | We shouldn't assume that we really understand all that's packed in there because often there's

00:10:49.840 | a lot.

00:10:51.560 | Speaking of words and the importance of words, another question that has crossed my desk

00:10:56.520 | is why did you guys change Song of Solomon to Song of Songs?

00:11:03.320 | There's a funny story and not a funny story, a good story.

00:11:05.680 | I like it behind this.

00:11:07.960 | And that is that in Old Testament survey, I teach a lot of students at the Masters University

00:11:12.880 | and I talk about how the opening of the book of the Song of Songs in Hebrew is Song of

00:11:20.560 | Songs and not Song of Solomon.

00:11:22.720 | Do we believe Solomon wrote it?

00:11:24.200 | Amen.

00:11:25.200 | Because the text says so.

00:11:26.200 | Exactly.

00:11:27.200 | And Solomon said that when I wrote it, the title is Song of Songs.

00:11:31.400 | And so I talk about that with the students.

00:11:33.200 | And so a bunch of my Old Testament students wrote me and even talked to me in class and

00:11:37.920 | said, "Hey, when you do Legacy Standard Bible, aren't you going to do that change?"

00:11:42.240 | And so they kind of got involved in the process.

00:11:44.760 | It was one of the joys as a prof to see that, that they were involved, that they wanted

00:11:48.620 | to say in it.

00:11:50.000 | And we kind of decided together, "Yeah, I'll bring this before the committee."

00:11:53.320 | And we kind of pushed it forward in that way.

00:11:55.200 | That's a good joy.

00:11:56.200 | And there's a theological reason for this.

00:11:57.760 | And it was an easy decision to make.

00:11:59.460 | I remember when we talked about it initially.

00:12:01.380 | You talked to the students and whoever sees the Bible and knows what it says, for them,

00:12:05.760 | this is a given.

00:12:06.760 | It should be Song of Songs.

00:12:07.760 | Yes.

00:12:08.760 | Right.

00:12:09.760 | Exactly.

00:12:10.760 | Of course, we're going to translate it as such.

00:12:11.760 | That's right.

00:12:12.760 | That's what the text says.

00:12:13.760 | So call the Bible by the title the Bible gives it.

00:12:16.080 | Exactly right.

00:12:17.160 | And there's a reason for it because the most beautiful song of all is a song celebrating

00:12:23.720 | the highest human love, a love that ultimately, as we see throughout the whole breadth of

00:12:29.280 | Scripture, reflects God's redeeming, saving love for his bride, the church.

00:12:34.680 | So there is this beautiful nature to this ultimate kind of song in and about human marriage

00:12:41.200 | and Song of Songs, but as we see it canonically, a bigger, grander theological idea.

00:12:47.440 | So that's kind of the logic behind it.

00:12:50.000 | Another question that's come across is about the term fool in Proverbs.

00:12:55.720 | And there are some different nuances.

00:12:58.680 | I don't think people realize, perhaps, that there are multiple words for fool in the Scriptures.

00:13:08.240 | And why did we bring that out, and how did we bring that out?

00:13:12.400 | Yeah, so that was already brought out in Proverbs.

00:13:15.320 | And like you said, the word fool itself appears many times throughout the Scriptures.

00:13:19.540 | And especially in Proverbs, it appears many, many times because there's a focus on wisdom

00:13:24.240 | and on folly.

00:13:25.400 | And so when you read Proverbs, or any part of the Bible, but especially Proverbs and

00:13:29.220 | the Psalms, you see the word fool appearing.

00:13:31.400 | And when you read it in English, and I think most of the translations preceding the Legacy

00:13:36.400 | Standard Bible, you see the word fool and fool and fool and fool appear all throughout.

00:13:41.600 | And you see that this is a discussion about fools, how not to be a fool, and what fools

00:13:47.200 | do and how they think.

00:13:49.560 | But there are nuances to different types of fools.

00:13:55.160 | And the Hebrew Bible has those nuances in each of the words that it uses.

00:13:58.880 | So there are different words for the word fool.

00:14:01.840 | Let me just bring out three of them, the three main ones.

00:14:06.240 | If you look at Proverbs, Psalms, you will see that the noun for fool appears a hundred

00:14:11.860 | plus times.

00:14:12.860 | So it's very common.

00:14:14.480 | And you think about the most common one, which in Hebrew is kseed, appears in Proverbs many

00:14:22.200 | times.

00:14:23.200 | And if you think about the very familiar passage, do not answer a fool according to his folly,

00:14:29.400 | answer a fool according to his folly, so that he doesn't think that he's wise, or so that

00:14:34.800 | you show him that he's not wise.

00:14:36.400 | Well, there, the nuance is that this is kind of the general type of fool.

00:14:40.560 | Yes, he has nefarious implications or intentions.

00:14:46.660 | This is an insolent type of folly.

00:14:49.440 | And because this is the most common type of fool, we've retained that as fool.

00:14:55.140 | And so when people read the Proverbs and read the biblical text and they see fool, they

00:14:59.840 | will know that this refers to the most general type of fool.

00:15:04.600 | Now you keep reading the Proverbs and you get to Proverbs, or you start with Proverbs

00:15:09.800 | 1.

00:15:10.800 | There's another very common passage and this is Proverbs 1 verse 7.

00:15:15.720 | And there you see the word evil for fool.

00:15:19.760 | Now this is a different type of fool with a different nuance.

00:15:24.000 | And the nuance here is that this fool is ignorant.

00:15:28.440 | Fools despise wisdom and discipline.

00:15:31.480 | That's the typical translation.

00:15:33.000 | Now if you read the Legacy Standard Bible, you will see that it says ignorant fools despise

00:15:39.000 | wisdom and discipline.

00:15:41.720 | Well, the nuance here is that they do not have sense, these types of fool.

00:15:48.160 | They're lacking common sense.

00:15:50.280 | I mean, to understand that discipline and wisdom is good for you is common sense, right?

00:15:57.680 | And so you receive it.

00:15:59.220 | But these types of fools, the ignorant fools, they reject it and they despise it because

00:16:04.440 | they lack the common sense that you should have in order to accept discipline and wisdom.

00:16:11.240 | And there is one more major one, and this is kind of the worst one of them all.

00:16:16.080 | The fool who is a godless fool or who is a wicked fool, and we rendered it as a wicked

00:16:22.080 | fool.

00:16:23.080 | You think about Psalm 14.

00:16:25.520 | The fool has said in his heart, there is no God, right?

00:16:29.040 | So this type of fool is Naval.

00:16:32.720 | Like Nabal and Abigail.

00:16:34.120 | Exactly.

00:16:35.120 | Yeah, that's the exact same word.

00:16:36.840 | And so there, the fool is a wicked fool, and we translate it as such.

00:16:40.800 | We said the wicked fool has said in his heart or says in his heart, there is no God.

00:16:44.800 | And so this is the type of fool who rejects the presence of God.

00:16:48.000 | He sees the things around him.

00:16:49.860 | He understands the things around him and the complexity of them, but he says there is no

00:16:55.280 | God.

00:16:56.360 | And this is the wickedness of the fool coming out in its nuance.

00:17:00.360 | And so when we translated and we see all of these references to fools, we wanted to make

00:17:05.660 | sure that the difference and the nuance and the distinction between them comes out.

00:17:09.840 | And so we made that evident in the translation.

00:17:13.240 | Another thing we made evident in the translation is acrostics.

00:17:17.240 | I think some translations, a lot of translations do that for Psalm 119, but there are other

00:17:23.880 | passages involved too, Joe, explain to us the nature of an acrostic.

00:17:27.760 | I'm kind of getting ahead of myself here.

00:17:29.560 | Tell us what an acrostic is and then tell us where else it happens in the Old Testament

00:17:34.120 | and such.

00:17:35.120 | Yeah.

00:17:36.120 | Well, if I forget where else it happens, please remind me, but Psalm 119 is a common passage

00:17:41.560 | we refer to when we see an acrostic, but what's an acrostic?

00:17:44.760 | An acrostic is when you start each verse or each line of poetry or a stanza with the letter

00:17:52.360 | of the alphabet in the order of the alphabet.

00:17:55.160 | So you look at Psalm 119, the famous one, the first stanza begins with Aleph because

00:18:01.660 | Aleph is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

00:18:03.920 | The next stanza begins with Bet because the next letter is Bet and Gimel, Dalet, et cetera.

00:18:10.600 | And so it follows the order of the alphabet from Aleph until Tath, from the very beginning

00:18:16.720 | until the very end.

00:18:19.260 | And we already said that Psalm 119 is one of the famous ones, but it's not the only

00:18:23.760 | one.

00:18:24.760 | There are other passages in the Bible where it appears and sometimes, or I should say

00:18:29.300 | many times commentaries refer to it and they bring this out, not always, but many times.

00:18:34.360 | And I think sometimes other translations make reference to it, but again, not always, but

00:18:38.960 | we do see it in other places.

00:18:40.400 | So you think about lamentations, right?

00:18:43.560 | Lamentations one, chapter one, chapter two, chapter three, chapter four, all of those

00:18:48.660 | have their own acrostic from Aleph until Tath.

00:18:51.580 | And you see it all throughout the Psalms.

00:18:53.140 | You have it in Psalm nine and 10 where it begins in Psalm nine and then it runs into

00:18:57.400 | Psalm 10 and it ends in Psalm 10.

00:18:59.760 | You have it in Psalm 37, for example, that you preached on a little while back.

00:19:06.260 | - Yeah, I call that one the ABCs of someone who's been through their one, two, threes.

00:19:11.500 | It's writing Psalm 37 as an older individual, and he's writing the different, each line,

00:19:19.080 | each verse is a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

00:19:21.760 | And it's walking through the most basic things in life in a memorable way.

00:19:26.180 | That's what acrostics often do.

00:19:27.620 | They show completeness, they show memorability.

00:19:30.440 | And he's reminding us, teaching us the life lessons we need to know from an older person

00:19:35.820 | to someone who is about to experience life.

00:19:38.120 | - Yeah.

00:19:39.120 | And I think that's exactly it.

00:19:40.120 | It goes to the meaning of the acrostics, right?

00:19:42.520 | They're not just there for aesthetics.

00:19:44.000 | Of course, they bring beauty to the Psalm or to the poem, but there's much more.

00:19:49.200 | There's exegesis, there's theology behind it.

00:19:52.240 | And I think that this actually goes to a question that may be taken for granted sometimes, that

00:19:57.680 | the acrostic is there because the author of the biblical text intended it for it to be

00:20:03.240 | there.

00:20:04.240 | And if the author intended it for it to be there, then it's inspired because God used

00:20:09.560 | the author to write the biblical text.

00:20:11.280 | And I think that we're going to have a section somewhere in the introduction where it's called

00:20:15.040 | "Acrostics and Authorial Intent," right?

00:20:17.840 | Because we want to explain that this is not just there by accident.

00:20:21.320 | It's actually there because the author's intended so that we get the theology from the acrostic

00:20:28.040 | as well.

00:20:29.040 | And order or the ABCs or the completion of the idea is all of it that comes out from

00:20:37.680 | the acrostic that is within the Psalm.

00:20:40.280 | And actually, if you think about Psalm 9 and 10, this is the interesting one.

00:20:43.520 | This is two Psalms, and the acrostic begins in Psalm 9, but then it stops at, I think,

00:20:49.320 | letter Kaf, which is actually exactly halfway through the alphabet.

00:20:53.460 | And then it picks up in Psalm 10 and then completes the acrostic in Psalm 10.

00:20:57.960 | And for this reason, you look at some of the translations, you look at the Greek translation,

00:21:01.840 | you look at the Latin translation, and they put those two Psalms together.

00:21:05.920 | Because of the acrostic, there's other things.

00:21:07.640 | Of course, there's theme and ideas within the two Psalms, so they bring them together.

00:21:12.260 | But that's what the acrostic does.

00:21:13.440 | It shows completion.

00:21:15.060 | It shows a step-by-step instruction of how to fulfill something.

00:21:19.360 | And you preached on this in Psalm 37, as you said, and it was, you know, this is something

00:21:24.000 | that helps us interpret the biblical text as well.

00:21:26.720 | Yeah, and that, I think, goes back to our translation philosophy, which is to be a window

00:21:32.120 | into what the author intended, what the author designed.

00:21:35.880 | And the more we can reflect that, whether by what we talked about earlier with macro

00:21:39.880 | syntactical markers, or to reflecting a word so that we study it more according to the

00:21:45.480 | author's intent, like loving kindness, or just bringing out that there are different

00:21:49.640 | words for fool, or even that there's an acrostic present in the text and we identified all

00:21:54.920 | the acrostics and labeled them as such so that the reader will know this is what the

00:21:59.740 | author did.

00:22:00.740 | It's a window back to what the author wanted.

00:22:02.600 | And that's kind of, that is, the reigning theme and philosophy and drive behind the

00:22:08.580 | whole Legacy Standard Bible and the entire Old Testament by extension, of course.

00:22:14.000 | And so thanks, Joe, for this time.

00:22:15.880 | Thanks for answering some questions with me, and I hope it's been very edifying for you.

00:22:19.360 | Thank you.

00:22:20.360 | Thanks, Joe.

00:22:21.360 | Thank you.

00:22:21.360 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

An LSB discussion: What to expect from the OT, Hebrew Acrostics, Song of Songs, and more

Chapters