His Encouragement #275

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Welcome to His Encouragement Thursday! I don’t know about you, but Thursdays are my struggle day of the week. By Thursday, I have already been working hard at school and at home, and I just wish it would hurry up and be Friday already. LOL! I definitely need a little extra Jesus time on Thursdays.

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Translations are so…unique. Sometimes the way verses are written get my Spidey-senses going, and the differences just jump out at me.

Here is an example of translation uniquenesses:

• The quote image above is from the ESV translation of Lamentations 3:25-26. The full quote is: “The LORD is good to those whose hope is in Him, to the one who seeks Him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.”
• The JPS translates the Hebrew of Lamentations 3:25-26 as follows: “The LORD is good to those who trust in Him, to the one who seeks Him; it is good to wait patiently till rescue comes from the LORD.”
• And one of the wise sages of Israel (Steinsaltz) translates Lamentations 3:25-26 in this way: “The Lord is good to those who hope for Him, to the soul that seeks Him. It is good for a man to await silently the salvation of the Lord.”

I don’t think there is anything nefarious going on here in the various translations of Lamentations 3:25-26. Honestly, no matter how these verses are interpreted, I LOVE the messages. But, if we are honest, all three sort of do give off slightly different connotations, and we must remember this every time we come to our favorite translated Bible. We are getting a particular message curated by the translators.

Difference #1: hope in, trust in, and hope for. When we hope in we expect someone to make something happen. When we trust in we invest confidence and reliability into something or someone making that something happen. When we hope for something or someone we put our trust into that someone or something and believe that he/she/it will make that something happen. Totally makes sense, right?

Difference #2: the one, the one, the soul. Not too much difference here, except for how the sage translated who is doing the hoping/trusting. The ESV and JPS have both translated it as “the one.” The person who trusts in or hopes in God will receive God’s goodness. But the sage says it is souls seeking God who will receive God’s goodness. Why the difference? I think it is because the sage is referring to people who trust in, hope in God SO much it’s down clear to their very soul. These are people who trust in/hope in God with every fiber of their heart, mind, AND soul. It’s easy to say I trust in/hope in God, but it’s another thing to live this. The sage is saying, “God’s goodness comes to the person who hopes for God SO much he lives it out down to his very soul.”

Difference #3: Wait quietly, wait patiently, await silently. Again, these interpretations are mostly similar. And I am not good at any of them. LOL! The ESV tells us that God will save His kids, but He wants us to wait quietly. That means we don’t complain and whine while we wait for God to do what He is going to do. The JPS tells us the same exact thing as the ESV, but instead of quietly waiting, we wait patiently. Patiently waiting means accepting that this saving by God will come in HIS time, not ours. Finally, the sage tells us we must wait silently. This means we wait for God to save, and we do it in silence. We definitely don’t gripe and groan and moan and scream out in frustration. Instead, we accept God is God. He is the Boss, and He will save when He will save. For me, this is the most difficult part of Lamentations 3:25-26. I am not good at quietness, patience, or silence.

Difference #4: the salvation, rescue, the salvation. At first read, do these words actually seem all that different? They didn’t to me at first. Then I defined them. Both the ESV and the sage use the same phrase: the salvation. Only the JPS uses the word rescue. I stand with how the ESV and the sage have interpreted this part of the verse. Here is why: rescue implies that God will save those waiting for Him because they are in immediate danger. In the minute, these waiting people are in danger of getting physically harmed. Who wouldn’t want to be rescued? Rescued sounds like the better of the two, right?! Wrong!!! Salvation means to be saved from the debt of sin and given the promise of eternal life with God. I don’t know about you, but the JPS choosing to use the word rescue instead of salvation feels like they missed the bigger picture. Sure, no one wants to get hurt. But if I have to choose between getting bodily harmed and having my soul saved from sin so I can live with Jesus for all of eternity…yeah, that’s a no-brainer.

I don’t know if today’s post has encouraged you or wowed you or made you bored, but I do hope it helps get your Spidey-senses tingling the next time words/phrases in the Bible jump out at you. I hope, at the very least, you go into your future Bible studies with the same sense of “Why this word instead of that word?” or “Why did this translation make this word choice when this other translation made a different choice?” or “What does any of it mean in regards to my relationship with God?” I pray that today’s post has, at the very least, encouraged you, dear reader, to dive deeper into the words and meanings of all of God’s infallible Word.

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NOW, IT’S YOUR TURN!

WHAT BIBLICAL VERSE IS ENCOURAGING YOU TODAY?