Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
When Samuel saw Saul, Yahweh answered him, "Behold, the man of whom I spoke to you! This one will restrain My people" (1 Samuel 9:17) Many English versions of 1 Samuel 9:17 read, "This one will rule over My people," but that is a mistranslation. The Hebrew verb is `atsar…
We have arrived at the tentative date of A.M. 3474 for the decree of Cyrus, and we have determined to operate as if the 70 weeks of Daniel 9 are literal years. We also decided that Messiah the Prince arrives at the beginning of the 70th week, after the 69…
The book of Proverbs appears as a largely random collection of aphorisms drawn from experience saturated in law. Despite its random arrangement, however, the book does have an over-arching structure that reinforces its main themes. One way to gather clues regarding the structure of a biblical book (or any book)…
I recently had the privilege and pleasure of reading the first draught of Gary North’s Economic Commentary on Leviticus , which will be out some time next year. Gary’s comments on Leviticus 27 were stimulating, and caused me to take another look at the passage. The results, which I sent…
As we have seen in this series, each time there is a new covenant, there is a break in the year-by-year chronology. At the same time, each time the break is crossed by information provided in the text. Thus, the year-by-year chronology breaks down at the birth of Abraham, but…
The Openness of Literature Let’s discuss literature for a moment. There are two ways a story or novel can close. The first is called poetic justice. When a story ends with poetic justice, the bad guys are all punished and the good guys are all rewarded. This kind of story…
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In the time of the New Testament, Judea was a multi-lingual region. Aramaic was the common speech among Jews; but most had at least a smattering of Greek, could hear Latin spoken all over Jerusalem, not to mention Hebrew in certain settings. Linguistically, first-century Palestine was far more like Switzerland…
Curtius also has an excursus on numerical composition in the patristic and medieval period. 33 was a favorite structuring device - Augustine’s Contra Faustum has 33 sections, as does Cassiodorus’s Institutione . Verse in 33 stanzas was popular, and “Nicholas of Cusa provided in his will that 33 old men…
Why would Barr, Saussure, and others think that speakers and writers have only the present meaning of a word in mind? Does it perhaps have something to do with the fact that they have only the present sense in mind? As the previous post showed, this is hardly a universal…
We’re consistently told by contemporary commentators and theorists of hermeneutics that etymologies ought not be used in biblical studies. One text says that it is “always dangerous” to interpret etymologically. There are at least two reasons for this: 1) Word meanings change, and so the original or historical meaning of…
INTRODUCTION This section of Proverbs departs from the two-line structure used through much of the book. Instead, these proverbs run to at least two, sometimes several verses. Verses 17-21, for instance, constitute a single section. Verse 18 is connected to verse 17 by the particle “for,” so that verse 18…
The English delegation to Dort didn’t want the Synod to condemn the view that reprobates can be regenerated and justified for a time, only to lose those benefits. The English delegation was successful; this was not among the errors rejected by the Synod. That is itself a remarkable fact, but…
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