Some thoughts on understanding the Bible
by LewisThe old quote from Mark Twain, “It ain’t the parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand,” is both humorous and true for many of us. One of the explicit statements in that quote is that there are, in fact, parts of the Bible that we cannot — or at least do not — understand.
Some of that is quite, well, understandable, because even God tells us, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55.8-9, NASB)
But sometimes our failure to understand the Bible is our own failure. We don’t dig, we don’t work, we don’t ponder, we don’t observe, we don’t practice, we don’t ask for help — from people or from God — and we move on too quickly. The result is that we become “dull of hearing” and we fail to progress, or perhaps even go backwards, in our ability to understand what God has to teach us (see Hebrews 5.11-14).
I was reminded of that just this morning when I received a devotional thought in my e-mail that included Jesus’ words as recorded in Luke 6.35. Below I have given you that verse from several different translations, and I challenge you to read those carefully, including the punctuation, and notice the differences (sometimes subtle) and similarities. What do you see? What do you understand Jesus to be teaching us? Which translation will you use in applying this teaching to your life?
But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and [to] the evil. (KJV)
But love your enemies, do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High. For He is kind to the unthankful and evil. (NKJV)
But love your enemies, and do [them] good, and lend, never despairing; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be sons of the Most High: for he is kind toward the unthankful and evil. (ASV)
But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. (NIV)
But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. (ESV)
But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil {men.} (NASB)
Rather, love your enemies, help them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then you will have a great reward. You will be the children of the Most High God. After all, he is kind to unthankful and evil people. (Gods Word)
No, you are to love your enemies and do good and lend without hope of return. Your reward will be wonderful and you will be sons of the most high. For he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked! (Phillips)
September 16th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
It’s always a good idea to look at the events, speakers, audience, and ideas involved before, during, and after a verse in order to get additional contextual clues that aid in understanding it. However, for the sake of this exercise, I’m just looking at your list here.
Yes, there are some differences in meaning. In fact, I interpret some of these translations 180° different from another, and I’m not altogether sure why. I see differences in simple conjunctions (but, and, for), which are probably ambiguous in the original text. I see differences in punctuation (commas, semi-colons, and colons) used in the same place.
I’d paraphrase most of these (KJV, NKJV, NIV, ESV, God’s Word, Phillips) loosely as “Love your enemies because that’s what God wants you to do as an obedient child of his. Don’t expect anything back as a result of any loving gestures you make such as loaning something; recompense is not the goal. Your reward is in your identity as God’s child, and that is a great enough reward that anything else pales in comparison. Remember that you were unthankful and evil, and he was kind to you, anyway.” (Caveat: NIV and God’s Word imply that the great reward of being God’s sons occurs because or after doing good and letting go of any expectation of compensation.)
All of that (except the NIV/GW tweak) sounds plausible enough, relatively square with the rest of the Bible.
The remaining translations (ASV, NASB) suggested a different conclusion, which makes even more sense to me in terms of God’s overall themes. My loose paraphrase: “You are God’s children, so act accordingly. God is kind to evil, ungrateful people who don’t even think about returning his affection. As chips off the ol’ block, you’re going to do the same as he has done: loving your enemies, performing actions for their benefit, lending whatever they need, and not getting frustrated when they don’t act the way you think they should. The results aren’t up to you, so let go of any expectations you have about that. Your reward, already great as God’s child, has nothing to do with their behavior.”
The “despairing” word in ASV implies a deep desire for a change in behavior, not just a simple payback. This kind of despair reminds me of God’s profound love for us, although his love, though often disappointed, remains hopeful and optimistic through the ages. The idea of despairing occurs in our attempt to mimic God’s love, but not getting it quite right. A child imitates her father, but he has to guide her to imitate even more closely. So in the ASV and to a lesser extent the NASB, I see this deeper emphasis on being God’s child and how that plays out in our and his involvement with those who will not be his children.
Knowing Lewis, I’d guess he’s going to side against me and with his preferred Phillips translation.
September 16th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
“Hoping for nothing in return” (KJV) indicates that the benefit is all for the one being blessed rather than the one giving the blessing.
However, “never despairing” (ASV) implies that we should not give up, and also that we might do these things joyfully.
In the God’s Word version, the phrases are all linked together with “and,” implying that these are the only things that you can do; but also that this is not general “goodwill” but something Christians should do specifically for their enemies.
For most of the rest of the versions, the stress is shifted with the phrasing, punctuation, and synonyms for the same words, using the same themes as the ones I listed above.
Probably the verse I would be most likely to follow would be the NIV one; it seems the most plain, with the most common sense. It dispels the notion that you should not hope that what goodwill a Christian enacts for others will come back to the Kingdom of God, though not the doer of the deed. (Of course that would be a very literal understanding, but sometimes extracting erroneous ideas is helpful toward focusing on the truth.)
September 16th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
Au contraire, Susan, to my choosing Phillips (though I do love it). And BTW, thanks for playing the game the way the rules were given. Looking at the context is always a good first step, but I was hoping for no steps on this one — at least no steps until some thought had been given.
Actually the ESV and NASB are very close, and they (especially NASB) are my personal favorites. But there is something to like in them all.
The NIV is interesting in its apparent efforts to associate the “expecting nothing in return” phrase only with lending [money] to one’s enemies. I think we should love and expect no love in return, do good without expecting good to be done to us, and, yes, even to lend without expecting a return.
More about all that later, after, perhaps, one or two more comments.
September 20th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Lewis is quite right on why we often do not understand what God says: we often do not look and, most important, we often do not understand because we do not ask.
I would like to point out another aspect: That it is possible to fail to understand even when one digs and studies and reads carefully (which we should certainly do). One reason we may not understand and the main reason the Pharisees did not understand the Scriptures (really at all) even though they had studied, debated, checked commentaries, parsed to the n-th degree, etc., was that their hearts were not open to God or what He said at all. No amount of study or exegesis or any methodology could give them what they refused to want. Their exegesis fit the picture of God that was in their hearts, which was that He was like they were. And they were like their father.
Thus, I am not troubled by the various translations because the meaning of Jesus’s words is not primarily a matter of textual interpretation (even though that is important) or legal parsing but knowing what a God like Jesus would mean by the words He said.
If a Pharisee had written the words, I would understand the text to say that we should be willing to lend money even if we expect nothing in return and we could feel righteous about it because it meant we were like God. The focus would be on the specific action (and our goodness in doing it) rather than the reason for it and would thus greatly limit the scope of our obligation (what we “have to” do–legal concept, legal attitude) to something we could fulfill and be done with.
Given, however, what the Bible tells us about God, it is clear to me that lending money is only an example (perhaps a response to the specific context—following the rules, I have not checked that) of God’s love and therefore how we should love (even!) the wicked and the ungrateful (which includes us). That is the basis on which God has shown His love to us. Even with the varying translations it is clear to me that we are to love, not because we think we will get money or anything else at all or even a reward from God, but because we are to desire to love as God does. Being sons of the Most High, being like our Father is our reward.
I generally use ESV and NASB. However, I must say I find the ASV, with its “never despairing”, to capture best the temptation we are likely to fall into. The others are true in saying that we are to expect nothing in return, which sounds very stoic and a matter of “managing our expectations”. But we are not Stoics nor should we be. Jesus certainly was not. When we do not see concrete specific positive results of what we do (even if we are not looking for a reward for us specifically), we are tempted to give up on God’s blessing what we do in His name. And that we need not despair of.
September 21st, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Thanks to Susan, Dorothy and David for their comments, all of which show thought and consideration — something we too seldom give to many verses of scripture — and thanks to all of you who read and contemplated but declined to comment.
Like David, most of us would not find ourselves troubled by various translations. In fact, most of us wouldn’t go beyond one or two different translations, basically trusting one more than others, like a favorite movie critic.
A particular translation of this particular verse, however, may have changed the course of history.
The phrase in question is translated “never despairing” in the ASV and “hoping for nothing again” in the KJV. On the face of it, those look very different. In fact they are different, and according to A.T. Robertson in his famous “Robertson’s Word Pictures,” the KJV has it wrong.
But it is another “false rendering,” this one from the Latin Vulgate — hoping for nothing thence — that “wrought great havoc in Europe.” That quote is from another commentator, who said, “On the strength of it Popes and councils have repeatedly condemned the taking of any interest whatever for loans. As loans could not be had without interest, and Christians were forbidden to take it, money lending passed into the hands of the Jews, and added greatly to the unnatural detestation in which Jews were held.” (Plummer)
And we all thought reading the Bible was easy….
March 28th, 2011 at 6:32 am
Great site I was really inspired. Have a blessed day and keep up the good work!