DEVOTIONS ON THE HEB BIB SC: 54 Reflections to Inspire and Instruct - Softcover

Eng, Fields

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0310494532 ISBN 13: 9780310494539

Verlag: HarperChristian Resources, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

Fifty-four short devotions based on passages from the Hebrew Bible--written by some of the top biblical language scholars of today.

The main point of each meditation in Devotions on the Hebrew Bible comes from a careful reading of the passage in the Hebrew Bible, not from an English translation. The authors use a variety of exegetical approaches in their devotions: grammatical, lexical, rhetorical, sociohistorical, linguistic, etc. Some insights focus on particular words and their role in the passage, while others highlight background studies or provide a theological reading of the passage.

Each devotion draws students into translating a short passage and pursuing an understanding of why this or that insight matters for their lives and ministries. Devotions on the Hebrew Bible encourages professors, students, and pastors alike to keep reading and meditating on the Hebrew Scriptures and find new treasures from the biblical text.

Celebrated contributors include:

• Daniel I. Block
• Mark J. Boda
• Hélène Dallaire
• Nancy Erickson
• Michael Williams

Devotions on the Hebrew Bible contains a devotion on every book in the Old Testament and can be used as a weekly devotional or as a supplemental resource throughout a semester or sequence of courses.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Milton Eng has a PhD in Old Testament Studies from Drew University.  He is presently East Coast Project Director for the Institute for the Study of Asian American Christianity (ISAAC) as well as adjunct professor at William Paterson University in Wayne, New Jersey.

 

Lee M. Fields (PhD, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati) is a Distinguished Professor of Biblical Studies at Mid-Atlantic Christian University, Elizabeth City, NC. He has taught courses in Hebrew and Greek, Old and New Testament, and interpretation. In addition to supply preaching and some ministry, he has taught Sunday school classes and other small groups at churches. He has also presented various series for churches on church history, denominations, and one on canon, text, and versions called "From Stone Tablets to Clay Jars." He has also been involved with Bible translation efforts in Africa and Asia. He is the author of Hebrew for the Rest of Us (1st edition, Zondervan, 2008), An Anonymous Dialogue with a Jew in the series Corpus Christianorum in Translated (Brepols, 2012), and Hebrew for the Rest of Us Video Lectures (Zondervan, 2016). He also was contributor and co-editor with Milton Eng of Devotions on the Hebrew Bible (Zondervan, 2015). He has also written articles in various publications, both popular and scholarly, including a blog on Zondervan's koinonia website entitled "Hebrew and You."

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Devotions on the Hebrew Bible

53 Reflections to Inspire and Instruct

By Milton Eng, Lee M. Fields

ZONDERVAN

Copyright © 2015 Milton Eng and Lee M. Fields
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-310-49453-9

CHAPTER 1

A Faith That Grows

GENESIS 15:6

MT

[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]

ESV

And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.

Genesis 15:6 was an important verse for Paul (Rom 4:3; Gal 3:6) and James (2:23). There are distinctions in the Hebrew text that help us understand their different emphases.

The first word in Hebrew is [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] ("and he was believing"), not [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] ("and he believed"), as the ESV and most English versions read. The verb [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] is an open-ended tense in Hebrew that is not used very often. Typically, in past contexts this tense is used when repetition is involved, like in Genesis 29:2–3. (This observation applies to both weqatal and yiqtol.) More rarely this tense is used to mark open-endedness, as in Genesis 2:25, [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], "they were not ashamed ..." [not [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]!]. The tense is used to provocatively present an open-ended stage for the following story of Genesis 3. (See 1 Sam 1:10 "was crying," 1:12 "while it was happening," and 1:13 "was not being heard" for more examples of the open-ended use of this tense.)

The Hebrew verb [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] looks at the process of believing without looking at the beginning or end of the "believing." The tense does not imply that Abram first believed God at this point. Nor does it present Abram's faith as complete at this point. Abram had started to trust Yahweh's promises when he travelled to Canaan in Genesis 12. And the author's choice of this tense at 15:6 forces the reader to think about ongoing implications. In a real sense, Abram's faith was a lifelong "walk." His faith matured and was tested. The most climactic test comes later in Genesis 22 with the command to sacrifice Isaac. James specifically makes the link between Genesis 15 and Genesis 22. James may have been aware of the open-ended nature of [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], and he certainly interpreted Abraham's life accordingly. Paul, on the other hand, linked Abram's faith to the second clause in Genesis 15:6 [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] "and he considered it for him righteousness." This crediting is a simple past wayyiqtol, a complete act, including the endpoint. That was Paul's point, and his application of this verse fits the Hebrew, too.

There is another ambiguity with the word "him." Did Abram consider God's promise "righteous," or did God consider Abram's faithfulness "righteous"? There is a hint in Hebrew that God responded to Abram's faithfulness by considering it "righteousness." The language choices appear to track Abram as the main participant on stage. There is a little helping word "to him" that weaves through the story. In v. 1 the word of Yahweh comes "to Abram." In both 15:4 and 15:7 when Yahweh speaks to Abram, an extra pronoun is added for Abram, [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] ("to him"). The author was using Abram as the point of reference. This makes it probable that the phrase "to him" in 15:6 was referring to Abram: "and [the Lord] considered it [Abram's faithfulness] for him [Abram, a pronominal tracking device] righteousness." Incidentally, the medieval commentator Rashi (1040 – 1105) reads Genesis 15:6 similarly: [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] "the Holy One, blessed be he, considered it for Abram merit and righteousness because of the faith that he placed in him."

Abraham is the father of faith. God is good and his promises are trustworthy. As we journey through life on earth, we do not always see God's perspective on individual situations, just like Abraham did not see how he was going to have children and a great inheritance. But Abraham was trusting God. We can be encouraged. Our faith is not a one-time assertion, but a life of faithfulness. We may look back and say "we have believed God." More practically, we learn from this verse that we please God when we are trusting him. We are believing that his promises are true and sure in Jesus Christ so that we do not need to fear the future even if we do not know the future. We live and grow in faith.

Randall Buth

Emotional Meltdown: Stuttering in Hebrew

GENESIS 37:30b

MT

[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]

ESV

The boy is gone, and I, where shall I go?

After convincing his brothers to leave Joseph in the pit, Reuben steps away from the group and misses the meal at which the brothers sell Joseph to the traveling Midianites (37:25 – 28). Reuben had planned to go back to the cistern secretly to rescue his youngest brother Joseph, but unbeknownst to him, the Midianites had bought him for twenty pieces of silver and took him down to Egypt to be sold as a slave. Unaware of these developments, Reuben hurries to the cistern and finds it empty! Overcome with despair and grief, Reuben spontaneously tears his clothes and utters a statement that could be construed as stuttering (involuntary repetitions of sounds), stammering (involuntary repetitions and hesitations in speech), or blubbering (uncontrollable noisy sobbing). Reuben no doubt assumes that Joseph is dead since his brothers had recently threatened to kill him. Reuben is overcome with grief and breaks out in a sharp and piercing outcry.

In this passage, the author intentionally combines two sound-related poetic devices — assonance (repeated vowels) and alliteration (repeated consonants) — to express the confused and emotional state of Reuben. The repetition of the vowel "a" and consonants [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (aleph) and [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (nun) engulf the stuttered speech of Reuben. Although these literary devices are found primarily in poetry (e.g., Ps 147:13; Song 6:3; Isa 22:5; 24:17), narrative prose occasionally borrows the features in order to emphasize a point — in this case, confusion and grief.

Assonance and alliteration join a series of similar-sounding words into one key idea. They can also serve as mnemonic devices to assist in the memorization of a text, especially in an oral culture. By providing a vivid and sudden shift in the flow of the language, these two features highlight a critical juncture in the narrative and draw the reader further into the story. Hebrew pericopes that include assonance and alliteration are difficult to translate accurately into modern languages. Consequently, readers of modern translations often miss the intensity of the Reuben discourse and the emotional outburst expressed in the Hebrew language.

In our story, Reuben is at a loss for words. He is distraught, disturbed, confused, and angry. What would he do now that his brother was gone? What would his father do upon learning of the disappearance of his favorite son? Modern translators have attempted to represent the mood of this pericope, but none has succeeded in expressing the explosion of emotions released by Reuben, primarily because of the lack of linguistic equivalents between languages. When the reader of the pericope encounters the speech of Reuben laden with assonance and alliteration, he/ she is immediately engulfed into his stuttering and emotional outcry. Reuben's utterance is not connected to the question of where he should go, as found in most modern translations: "The child is not; and I, whither shall I go?" (KJV); "The boy isn't...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: HarperChristian Resources
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0310494532
• ISBN 13: 9780310494539
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 192
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland