The Mileses

Paul and Olena Miles with Grace Abroad Ministries

word study

Faith, Believe, Fides, Credo, and Gelēfan

The way we speak affects the way we think and the way we think affects the way we speak. And the way we speak is affected by centuries of geopolitical conflict and linguistic changes. Check out this map with translations of the word, “faith,” in various languages around Europe:

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(From http://ukdataexplorer.com/european-translator/)

If you look at the map, you can see certain words that are similar and clumped together. The Slavic languages have something like “vera” (in the Cyrillic alphabet, “вера”). Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish are all from the North Germanic branch, so they are all similar, whereas German and Dutch are from the West Germanic branch, so they look like each other.
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Nuances in English translations of John 3:16

One of my favorite authors calls John 3:16 the most beautiful 25 words of the English language and I agree. The book he wrote was translated into Russian, where John 3:16 only occupies 21 words (not to mention that the original Greek is actually 26 words). When the book was translated into Russian, it maintained the figure of 25 words. It was a good translation, but sometimes when we explain the Gospel, we need to use localization.
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A Chiasm Noticed

A ​lot of details stand out when you read the Bible in its original languages. I’ve been reading through James lately, which is a book that has suffered greatly at the hands of English translation (especially toward the end of chapter 2).

I came across a noticeable turning point in Jas 4:6b-7a this morning:

​”God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. (ESV)

It would be easy to breeze through this in English and take away something beneficial. But, if we take a look at the Greek, we might notice what we call a “chiastic” structure:
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What did Ruth really do with Boaz?

When you take an in-depth look at the events in the book of Ruth leading to Ruth and Boaz’s marriage, you come to believe that Boaz might have actually been a victim of sexual assault very similar to date rape. This is a rather harsh accusation to make blindly, so let’s take a look at the evidence. The argument begins in an unlikely place: the conflict between Saul and David.

When Saul returned from following the Philistines, he was told, “Behold, David is in the wilderness of Engedi.” Then Saul took three thousand chosen men out of all Israel and went to seek David and his men in front of the Wildgoats’ Rocks. And he came to the sheepfolds by the way, where there was a cave, and Saul went in to relieve himself. Now David and his men were sitting in the innermost parts of the cave. And the men of David said to him, “Here is the day of which the LORD said to you, ‘Behold, I will give your enemy into your hand, and you shall do to him as it shall seem good to you.'” Then David arose and stealthily cut off a corner of Saul’s robe. (1 Samuel 24:1-4 ESV)

​Now, where it says, “and Saul went in to relieve himself,” the Hebrew is a bit more graphic. More literally translated, it would say, “and Saul went in to cover his feet.” What does that mean? Well, first of all, the word, “foot,” can be confusing. In Russian, we have the word, noga, which can mean the entire leg. There is much controversy about how they nailed Christ to the cross, because the Greek word for “hand” can also include the wrist and above. Hebrew has one word, kârâ‛, which apparently comes from a primitive root meaning “to bend.” This kârâ‛ is said to mean from the knee down. But, the body part that Saul covers is the regel.
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Does God condone raping and buying virgins? Part two.

Part Two

In part one of this post, we saw that the Law was set up to protect Israel, and we saw that Deut 22:13-30 contains laws to protect her from sexual debauchery. We looked at Deut 22:13-22, and are driving through vs 23-30 in this post. If you haven’t read part one, please do so.
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Does God condone raping and buying virgins?

Does God condone raping and buying virgins? This might seem like an odd question, but it is a sincere question that a close friend asked me a while back. The short answer is, “no,” but, let’s take a look at the Bible passage where my friend’s question comes from. The particular passage that he had in mind was Deuteronomy 22:28-29:
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